Robert Evans

Appearances

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And each circle is a kind of Additionally, at least, there's not really a hierarchy in each circle. It's a student discussion group based around a specific topic. You might have a circle for the kids who are doing radio stuff, or a circle for the kids who are into French literature, a circle for the poetry students. You meet ad hoc and you do stuff that way.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

These are, I think the best, these are the analog version of how things get done today for most young people, right? Imagine this is a bunch of different signal loops or discords, right? That's what these are, except for you have to like meet up in person, right? But that's basically what's happening here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So a month or so after meeting Saar, Van Sack convened a private gathering to create a new circle dedicated to discussing Cambodia's future. By this point, the Viet Minh were escalating their war for independence against the French. And there was widespread interest in what this might mean for Cambodians.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It's not what it's about. Speaking of shooting 20,000 people to death, our guest Andrew T never did that. No, I never did it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And also because the Viet Minh are communist and because Mao has just announced the start of the People's Republic, all these guys are being like, Shit, you know, there might be this global communist uprising that we could be a part of that could like free us from the shackles of French domination while still like being a part of this greater international community.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that sounds kind of dope, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And it's interesting because what the correct, like the thing about domino theory that was kind of accurate is that other people in other countries in Asia were influenced by communism taking off in Vietnam and China. And it made them think about the things that were possible.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The thing that we're wrong about is that all of these guys, as soon as they're in power, wind up primarily hating other countries near them, including communist countries. Right. It's how like, Oh God, obviously communist China and the USSR are going to form a unified block. Oh no, they nearly nuked each other. Right. They're literally shooting each other on the border.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

China is inviting Nixon over because of how pissed they are at the Soviet Union, right? All of this shit is very wrong in that regard. If you knew anything about the left, you'd knew that the left was never going to get along with each other.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

No. So Van Sacks starts this circle, which is initially about like the future of Cambodia and maybe independence. And they start talking about Marxist communism a lot, too. Yang Seri attends, as does a number of future influential Khmer politicians, including Salah Tsar. So they are beginning to talk more about communism. And again, mostly focused around Mao and Ho Chi Minh.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In January of 1950, China became the first country to recognize North Vietnam, which was still a couple of decades away from just being Vietnam. The USSR followed, and this prompted an equal but opposite reaction from the U.S. and her capitalist allies, who then in turn recognized Cambodia, Lao, and South Vietnam as part of the so-called French Union. Maybe not the wisest move. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

All these guys want to be independent, and that seems to be a big part of the appeal of communism is getting a pen. Let's recognize them as part of France. That'll stop this. Nip this in the bud. Oh, God. Classic, I guess. Yeah. So everyone in the area is increasingly prodded to choose sides. Thailand, for example, picks the U.S., right? Because the U.S.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You would know. That's a thing, yeah. For one thing, that 20,000 bullets, that's not cheap these days, right? Like, you're talking several months even of L.A. rent, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

is like, we will give you guys so many fucking guns. So many fucking guns. France controls the union for a while, and Vietnamese leaders, as a result, see a strategic benefit in starting to seed allied communist movements in these neighboring countries, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Because these places are part of the French Union, these Viet Minh leaders are like, okay, so we should start sending some like cadre leaders to Cambodia and Laos, maybe with some weapons, and see if we can start making –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

local communist movements in the imitation of the Viet Minh so that they can start their own uprisings, which will overall help us in our goal and just getting the fucking French out of this goddamn place, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So from the outset of this, you know, the Vietnamese communists coming into Cambodia and trying to start their own communist organizations, it was understood by the Vietnamese that Cambodians were incapable of generating their own autonomous communist party as Vietnam had. There was no proletariat, which is the Marxist idea. That is where a communist movement comes from.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Everyone is the peasantry, basically, within Cambodia. That means there's no base of education or convenient way to reach and organize large numbers of Khmer in any reasonable timeframe. A decision is made. These are their conclusions. By the way, they're not going to prove broadly accurate, but this is how the Vietnamese are thinking.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, with the tariffs, my God. Yeah, all that cheap Turkish ammo is going to be a lot more expensive, so you're going to have to shoot people with homegrown American bullets, which, you know. Anyway, Andrew, how are you doing today? I'm alive. I'm alive. Yeah, you're alive.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And this is a very chauvinistic, paternalistic attitude, which is exactly how everyone in Cambodia feels about the Vietnamese. They're arrogant. They don't think we're really people and they don't listen to us. And the Vietnamese are like, well, yeah, we can't let these people make any decisions.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

History never changes is the important thing. Yeah. Oh, God. People are always the biggest dicks to their neighbors. So a decision is made that these Vietnamese leaders are going to build communism in Cambodia from the top down. which is not how it generally works. The Khmer National United Front is the result.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This organization was patterned off of the Viet Minh, but it had some local characteristics, including an embrace of the king, who it argued must be liberated from French territory. And that doesn't really fit with traditional communist ideology, right? The fact that we actually love the king. But the king is super fucking popular with the regular people of Cambodia, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And so this is one of the wiser things. The Vietnamese are like, well, we can't just like shit talk the king because they will immediately stop listening to us. We have to do this thing. And they're kind of, I think, recognizing a lot of what people said about the czar pre-revolution and even Hitler where it's like, well, he must not know about all the shitty stuff his dudes are doing, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And so I think the Vietnamese are like, let's just say the king's really good and the French are the ones making him make bad, making things suck, right? Fuck it, right? Right, right, right. This doesn't hurt us. The first Khmer Vietnamese Communist Party member, Nguyen Thanh Song, was put in charge of this party in May.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And he issues a proclamation of independence that means absolutely nothing at the time because they controlled no real territory. Right. There is an actual Cambodian Communist Party started a year later. This is eventually going to be the Khmer Rouge, but it's not right now.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Vietnamese fighters liberate a few small border areas, and again, because there's a lot of strategic benefit in them having this area to retreat to, right, and to hold supplies and stuff. And they set up in these areas, they quote unquote liberate a system that imitates the Viet Minh people's committees that are run by Vietnamese revolutionaries.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Every decision made by Cambodian assemblies and committees in these territories has to be approved by the Vietnamese. You cannot join the Cambodian Communist Party without Vietnamese approval, right? So this is very centralized and very much not something in which the Cambodians have a lot of say, even though it's their communist organization. Right. A lot of Khmer nationalists do not like this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And a lot of Khmer who are budding communists are like, all right, I agree with the basic idea, but why the fuck are we listening to these goddamn Vietnamese people, right? Why do they get to be in charge of our communist revolution? We're Khmer, right? Salah Sarr and his comrades know very little about what's going on in this regard at the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

According to Van Sack, Sarr spent, quote, most of his time reading or going out to the movies. Very relatable. But then he falls in love with a history of the French Revolution, which he reads cover to cover, even though his French isn't great. And he admits, I didn't get a lot of it, but I felt compelled to read through it. Right. And there are a few things that really stick in his mind. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And we're talking about the doge of Indochina, the Khmer Rouge, which is not as far from the truth as it would be comforting for it to be.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

One of them is the concept of a revolution as a historical reset, as in once you succeeding in a revolution means you can make a you can break history. Right. Right. In 1792, the French revolutionaries had instituted a new calendar, right? And this was them attempting to be like, the past is done. We are never going back.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This is a totally new world that we are creating and a new kind of human being that we are creating in this new world. And obviously... Napoleon comes around not that long later. They didn't create a new world, right? No one creates a new man. People will always be people. This ideology that you can like, we're fundamentally broken with the past. Things will never go back.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Things will never change. We have heralded in a new world and it's always going to be this way. Everyone who thinks that is always wrong. Change is the only guaranteed constant. You can't stop it. But That's the idea that some of these French revolutionaries have, and that's the idea Saar comes away with.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

One big thing he takes away from the history is that what doomed the French Revolution is that it didn't go all the way. It didn't tear down every structure of the previous old world. It kept too much alive from the old days of the king, and that's why it eventually failed. You do want to have a total break with the past. A revolution should be that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But you have to destroy absolutely everything that had existed previously. Right. And this is a – he's not coming up to this on his own. This is a lot of stuff that he and his circle are talking about. This is their – they are more influenced in a lot of ways by the French Revolution than what's happening in Vietnam because they're in France, right? They're studying in French schools, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, over the course of 1951, the circle Vansack had started turned into a Marxist circle, which itself began to exert direct control on the rest of the student union. And they kind of turned the student union into a stealth communist vanguard party, right? Like that's the goal.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And they're executing, they're kind of secretly planning it from this circle, but exerting control over the other circles in order to get them in line, right? In his book on Pol Pot, Brother Number One, Chandler writes, Recollections about Salah Tsar's behavior at the meetings are contradictory.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In several interviews in the 1980s, after Pol Pot had been identified as Salah Tsar, King Van Sack recalled that Tsar attended irregularly, kept in the background, and made little impression on his colleagues. In 1975 to 76, an unnamed source spoke with journalist Francois Debre.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The source, who had attended the discussion groups, remembered that Salazar was the most intelligent, the most convinced, the most intransigent. It was he who animated the debates and most impressed the newcomers. Now, there's some evidence that this unnamed source mixed up Pol Pot with a different kid and was actually talking about someone else. We really don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The guy, Deborah, basically claims that this dude he talked to stated that, like, I knew immediately this guy was going to wind up leading the Communist Party in Cambodia. And that Pol Pot even said at the meeting, I will direct the revolutionary organization. I will be its secretary general. I will hold the dossiers. I will control the ministers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And I will see to it that they don't deviate from the line fixed in the people's interests by the central committee. I don't think this is likely. I'm bringing it up because it's one of the reports. Most of the people who survived from these days were like, yeah, he was like a part of it. He was there. He was engaged. He was pretty quiet. Like he was always happy to do work and like help.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But he wasn't like a big guy. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Speaking of murder.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Instead of killing anyone. No. Kill your wallet with these products.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about really our first genocidal bastard who is legitimately considered a nice guy, which is a nice order to everybody that nice does not mean good. Lots of nice people who are evil.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Oh, and we are returned. Back. Returned back. So, yeah, most of the accounts of Saar during this period, again, he's a quiet, friendly, easygoing dude. But as Short notes, Philip Short notes in his book on Pol Pot, Saar did start reading a lot of Stalin around this time. And that's because he and his circle, there's a lot of Stalin going around.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Particularly, there's a history of the Communist Party in Russia that Stalin wrote, right? And this is, it's a Stalin book, right? So... We could assume – like there's a couple of things you can just infer even if you haven't read it. It's very paranoid. It is very focused on the internal enemies, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

His history of the Russian – is very focused on the need to – like how necessary it was for him to get rid of internal enemies within the party who were counter-revolutionary, right? Who were dangers to the success of the revolution because he was Joseph Stalin, right? Right. And this – the fact that this book is seen as like very inspirational to Salah Tsar and a lot of his young – not great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Not going to end well. Not going to end well. Now, Saar also becomes very acquainted with Mao's writings, which are the most directly relevant both to the kind of communism he's going to preach and to the kind of war he's going to orchestrate. Because Mao, unlike Stalin and unlike a lot of other communists, Mao runs a peasant insurgency, right? Because that's how things go in China, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It is a peasant uprising, you know, in a lot of ways. That's a big part of what's going on. And so Mao is really relevant for what Salah Saar is going to be doing. not too long from now, right? And there's also a lot that Mao writes about theorizing about how to remake a society from the bottom up. And as we know from the Great Leap Forward, not always a great idea.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Maybe backyards shouldn't be where we make steel, you know? Maybe factories are better for that. I don't know, you know? Maybe we need sparrows. I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

No, it's like what we're trying to do now. What if we get rid of everyone who researches how to stop diseases and instead make them build iPhones? I feel like we're all going to have a lot more diseases and probably less iPhones, which might work out for us. Maybe the less iPhones will eventually lead us back to having people who learn how to cure diseases.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, it's going to take a little while. So in late 1951, there was a huge Marxist gathering in East Berlin. It's like this big burning man for Marxists in the 50s. Saar does not attend, but several of his Khmer comrades do. And for the very first time, they meet with this Marxist group, and they are told about the establishment of the Khmer Communist resistance in Cambodia, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So this is the first time, and they bring this back to their circle. So now everyone knows there is a communist movement in Cambodia. that is organizing and arming, and they've taken some territory even, right? So for a year or so after this point, these kids are going to continue reading books and discussing their ideas and making plans for how they're going to get involved in the revolution.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That becomes the focus. Now we know it started. We are the educated Camaro. We need to figure out how we're going to help direct and lead this, right? Now, what we've got here is a group of people who are isolated within Paris because they're Khmer. French is not their first language.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They're even isolated from a lot of their fellow Khmer students because they see themselves as in charge of radicalizing them and directing them. And they see themselves as engaged in a dangerous, clandestine effort. Right? Right. So they're isolated socially, and they're all constantly talking about their beliefs and reading radical politics.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And the same thing happens to them that happens to similar groups of people on, let's say, Twitter, which is that they make each other more and more extreme and less and less rational. They're only going to get crazier.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

One thing that a lot of them, including Saar, become obsessed with is this idea that will eventually become known as Year Zero, which is the concept that we can, with a revolution, force a clean break with history that creates a new kind of human. Right. This is not limited to Cambodian communists.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This is not limited to communists because there's some find some stuff that Nazis were talking about. That's not all that different. But there's this concept of the Soviet man. It's less eugenic for the communists. But there's this idea that if we if we remake society radically enough and break what had existed radically enough, we can make fundamentally different people that way. And it really.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

is like, these people just simply cannot hear themselves. Well, look, I think everyone believes a degree of this, which is one of the reasons why nobody should ever get the power to try, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. If we just did it my way, yeah. When I and others watch Star Trek and are like, oh, what if we could be like that? You're not not thinking people can be radically remade.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And I'm not saying I don't think people can be made better, but it doesn't happen like this. It happens very slowly and carefully. And if you want to actually improve the quality of people, you improve their quality of life, and you don't do that by shattering everything that makes it possible for them to survive at the jump, right? People can get better, both as individuals and as societies.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But the most important thing is not to kill them all while you're doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yes, yes. And the idea that's going to be particularly prevalent is that because of the danger of Vietnam, we're going to have to do this very quickly, right? Once we get independence, we have to remake ourselves into a society that can withstand our foreign aggressors as quickly as possible, right? Yeah. In a paper on the subject, historian Andres Ayres writes,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

emphasized human will and the triumph of determination over material conditions. Put differently, not so much learning from history as overcoming it, diverting history in the right direction, as it were, by means of superior will and resolution. The French Revolution, as already noted, had met with failure by stopping halfway.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yet even Mao, argued Qusam Fan, the movement's chief theoretician, had not been radical enough to overcome history by definitively abolishing private property, the family, received knowledge, and traditional teaching. So again, this is where we see like the real dangerous thing is there's like, number one, you're never going to learn from history. It's like, no, we're going to transcend it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Not possible.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And you really should pay attention to the shit people try to do in history. Like, for example, every time in the past when someone's decided I, a guy who's never farmed, is going to remake how my entire country grows food, that only ends one way and it's with everyone starving to death, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Whether it's whether it's the fucking East India Company governing in Bengal, whether it's fucking like the Senko ism in the Soviet Union and China, it always ends in mass starvation. Don't do it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, we can fix all this because I'm good at video games. Yeah, it's it's fucking every people. A lot of people. This is a very attractive thing to think that you can do. Right. Yeah. So for some fan who's again, he's one of, you know, Pol Pot's peers in this period of time, and he's like kind of the chief. theoretician of what becomes the Khmer Rouge.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The task of making communism a reality entail an ideological zero point. Zero for him and zero for you. That is true equality, right? And this is zeroing in the sense that you like zero a rifle, right? We're zeroing to a point where everyone is in the same place and then we can build up, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, to be clear, these conclusions I just related aren't all fully sketched out during the years they're in Paris, right? But this is, they start on that road in Paris, and as these guys filter back into Cambodia, they're going to continue working to that point, right? Paris starts the process that ends in the ideology of what we now know as the Khmer Rouge.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

As things actually stood in 1952, Saar and his comrades were committed communists, but not particularly well-read ones. And his writings from this period don't sound like what you would get from an avowed Marxist. In fact, one of the weird things is that like Pol Pot's first political obsession seems to be with democracy, which he called, quote, incomparable and as beautiful as a diamond.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And democracy and communism, in his eyes, are not just compatible, they're the same thing. And they're the same thing in that they stand in opposition to the monarchy. He published his first political article, the first thing we know he wrote, was called Monarchy or Democracy. And it was a strident argument against the king in favor of a democratic system.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And he gives examples of democratic systems that Cambodia should be made in the image of. And his examples are China, France, and the USSR. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Comparatively, right? And his actual knowledge of what's going on in China and the USSR, and to be honest, like France, is not perfect, right? But this is how he's thinking at the time. So while they're reading and talking, events back home have continued to evolve.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Sun Nok Tan, the nationalist leader, got allowed back into Cambodia by the king in the hope that he could be used as a figurehead, right? The king is like... I think that, you know, there's a lot to say of this nationalist thing because maybe that's going to work out better for me, you know, having more power as the king.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So I'll bring this guy in who was popular, you know, after the Japanese got kicked out. But Than is a very smart guy who really believes in something. And he realizes the king's just using me. So he fucks off into the jungle to fight with the guerrillas. And again, he's not an ideologue.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

His goal was to unite the communists and the nationalists of other stripes into a broad anti-French coalition, right? Again, he's a, let's get our independence from these fuckers and then I don't care. We'll figure it out. Whatever works, we'll do, you know? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. So Sehanouk responds by carrying out a coup against the Democratic Party when it wins the elections that year, and backed by the French, he sets him up as the absolute ruler, right? The French begin conducting pacification campaigns against the Viet Minh and Thanh's rebels, who had not yet managed to agree on the whole coalition thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The circle back in Paris only learned what was going on in snatches of brief conflicted reports. It was unclear which groups were doing what and who was who and who this circle of educated young communist radicals could support, right? It's very hard for them to tell who's actually fighting, what do they actually hold, you know? They don't have great info.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It's not like they can look at like the telegram chats for these different groups in the jungle, right? Like they have very little opportunity. Or the telegram telegrams. Or even the telegram telegrams, right. So they're like, we need on the ground intelligence. One of us needs to go there and figure out who we should be backing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And Salah Tsar, this is really the first time he identifies himself as special and not just another dude sitting around bullshitting is like, I'll go. Right. And let that be a lesson to you, kids. If you want to one day kill a third of the people in your country, you got to start by volunteering. You know, no one ever got anywhere sitting on their butt.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Get out. Be active. Starve your entire country to death. probably bad things to encourage people to do.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That is one of like my big issues with like a lot of the stuff we were raised with as kids in like the 90s and early 2000s is like anyone can make a difference. That's true. We should have higher standards than just difference. Different.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Speaking of rancid ground beef, here's our sponsors.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. No, no, no. You don't have to be an asshole to be the top of your field. Yeah, Robert. What? I don't know. Why are you saying that to me?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Oh, boy. Howdy. We are back and we're talking about eating rancid ground beef because look, the FDA is no longer going to be, you know, and Andrew, it's actually good that you're back because you're the person I first told on the air my story about eating dozens and dozens of rancid muscles at a Vegas buffet and getting horribly ill with my friend in a muscle eating competition. Forgot about that.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Specifically, we're talking about Salah Tsar, the man who would become Pol Pot, who at this point is living in Paris. And he is a bon vivant whose purpose in life is to have a good time. He's drinking the wine. He's reading lots of books. And he's not doing a whole lot of radio technician school, which is why he is ostensibly in Paris in the first place.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Well, Who's the smart one now? Who's getting ready for the RFK Jr. future now, baby? It's me. Yeah. I got an iron stomach. I don't care how bad our food gets.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Uh-huh, uh-huh. I was molded by this, you know? Yeah. I've had giardia. I don't give a fuck anymore. A lot of kids are going to die. Anyway, back to the podcast.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It's important to note that Salazar's back – part of the reason why – he volunteers to go travel back home and make contact. And part of why everyone agrees he's a good guy to do it is he's got the contacts, the widest – he's got the widest breadth of contacts because his dad is a farmer. He did grow up in a rural village. He knows rural people. He's able to talk to rural Khmer people.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He also was able to talk to urban people. He was educated in the city. But he also spent a lot of time in the palace, so he can talk to that chunk of the population. He's really good at talking to everybody, right? Like, that's a big thing. He's charismatic. And he's charismatic in the way that matters, which means...

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

he can, within seconds of meeting someone new, figure out the best way to communicate with them, right? Like that's the kind of skill that he has. And you can't teach that. Almost, you can't learn it after a certain point in your life. It really is just a product of during your formative years, running into enough different kinds of people that you can get very good at that, right?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And Salazar has that ability. And I think that's why everything else that happens to him happens to him, right? Yeah. So on December 15th, 1952, Salazar left Paris just as things in Cambodia reached a boil. Several assassinations and grenade attacks in the provinces provided the pretext for King Sahanak to announce a rule by decree and the suspension of civil liberties.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

His French backers expressed their hope that Cambodia's pacification will make continued progress. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's going to work out great for you guys.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So decades later, Pol Pot would claim that his real political awakening came not as a result of anything that had happened in the reading circle in Paris, but what he experienced after he returned home to Cambodia during this tumultuous period. And I want to quote from an article by journalist Nate Thayer here. And...

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I don't think that's untrue, but it does make me think of that is not a ... I reckoned with the suffering of the common man, and it allowed me to realize that I had grown up in a privileged position. That is, my family was supposed to be doing better than this, and they're not, which is really familiar to modern conservative radicalism in a lot of ways. I find that interesting.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Right. And it also is worth noting in terms of how accurate is this to what really radicalized him. This is Pol Pot near the end of his life in the late 90s talking to journalist Nate Thayer, who also, by the way, passed pretty recently, about a year and a half ago. Interesting guy, but really groundbreaking. He was the only guy who got in to do this, right?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He would later recall spending all of his spare money on French language books during this period of time. He is a real hound to the used bookstore crowd. He shows a particular interest in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau is, among other things, like the big idea from Rousseau that seems to have left the primary mark on Saar's psyche is this concept of the noble savage, right?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So we'll be quoting from Nate quite a bit here. Over the next eight years, Saar is – Often in the provinces, he's moving around, he's connecting these different groups as the rebellion against the king and then the prince, Sihanouk, goes through several stages.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The Red Khmer or Khmer Rouge proved to be the most resilient of kind of the different nationalist rebel groups against the repeated pacification campaigns. Salah Tsar rose through the ranks for the same reason. He was hard to fucking kill. And he was hard to kill because from the beginning, he's the first of the guys in his circle who's like, well, I'm not going to ever go by my real name.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I'm going to start. From that first article he writes, he picks a fake name, and he picks fake names as he's doing this on the groundwork, meeting these rebels. He doesn't call himself Salah Tsar. Pol Pot's one of the names he uses, but he has a couple of different nicknames. We'll go over them later. And this this means he's anonymous and he's good at being anonymous.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He's one of these guys who's kind of forgettable. That's what everyone in Paris talks about is you don't notice him in a room. And that means he doesn't get spotted and killed by the security forces. Be kind of blending in and being forgettable. Great asset for a guy who's trying to build a revolutionary movement under like constant bombardment from the French. Right.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And again, folks, if you're trying to overthrow the government and there's a guy in your cell and you can never remember his name, you need to murder him immediately. He's going to wind up taking power, right?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Some of those guys are just really good at keeping their mouths shut. It's done. Or they just have nothing to say. Or they just got nothing to say. Yeah. Yeah. They're just vibing. So, Saar was among the first Khmer revolutionary leaders to take pains to keep himself anonymous. As a result, nobody realizes that he's steadily moving up the ranks of the insurgency.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In 1960, he is added to the Communist Party's standing committee. Now in the same interview I just quoted from with Pol Pot near the end of his life, Nate Thayer writes, and this is Nate Thayer quoting Pol Pot, the secrecy that made the Khmer Rouge show so effective was, Pol Pot said, second nature to him. Since my boyhood, I never talked about myself. That was my nature. I was taciturn.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I'm quite modest. I don't want to tell people that I'm a leader. I didn't tell anybody, not my brother, not my sister, because I didn't want to worry them. If anything happens to me, I didn't want them to have any connection to it. So some people think that I don't care about them, but on the contrary, I respect, I love my relatives, but I never revealed my political thinking to them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And I got to say, Obsec King here, you can't take that away from Bullpup. This motherfucker would have been incredible at using Signal. Like nobody would have known this son of a bitch's name. He would have had burner phones for his fucking burner phones. This guy is really good at staying secret.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He's very disciplined, right? This isn't an accident that he winds up where he is. He's smart. He continues to live. In addition to this private, hidden revolutionary life, he has a very public life and career. He is a teacher at a private school. He's like a high school teacher during this period of time. And he's a pretty good teacher. I'm going to quote from Chandler's book here.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

As a teacher, he was remembered as calm, self-assured, smooth-featured, honest, and persuasive, even hypnotic when speaking to small groups. Among his students and his colleagues in the clandestine communist movement, he seemed in these years to have gained some of the moral authority and stature he enjoyed among his followers up to 1997.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This almost idealized human that lives close to nature and hasn't been polluted by these concepts of modernity, right? This is a big idea for Rousseau, obviously influenced by European colonialism in the Americas. And it's going to have a big mark on Pol Pot. He's not in the least bit interested in the Americas.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

A man who met him in the late 50s, for example, said, I knew immediately that I could become his friend for life.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And there are people he kills who like that is their recollections. Like I knew he was my friend and they die being like, wait, this can't happen. No, I know. I know. Pol Pot, you've got to let me you got to let me talk to him. Pol Pot doesn't give a fuck.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, what is interesting to me about Salazar is that these recollections of him as a kindly, decent, sweet man aren't a product of later propaganda. Like most revolutions, the Khmer Rouge heavily attacked their own people, which caused a lot of Khmer Rouge to defect. And like when these guys were interviewed later, basically none of them said Pol Pot was why they left. Right.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And in fact, even after the extent of his crimes were known, most of the people who had defected from the Khmer Rouge, according to Chandler, described Pol Pot as, quote, a man they regarded almost as a saint. So they're like, oh, yeah, I mean, the regime killed all these people and like I had to leave. It was so fucked up. But that Pol Pot, like basically Jesus. Yeah. Man, it's so good at this.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He's really good at this, right? Like you can't you can't take that away from him. The motherfucker was knew his business, right? Now, as I noted, Pol Pot made it to the standing committee in 1960.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The party leader was a guy he'd known from the Paris days called Samoth, who was assassinated probably by the King's security services in 1963, although a lot of people theorize Pol Pot did it, because Pol Pot succeeds Samoth as the leader of the party in 1963. And now he's in charge of the Khmer Rouge, right? This is how he rises to run things.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And he will retain that position for more than 30 years. He is now in sole command of the communist revolution. Later in life, Pol Pot spoke of this rise to the peak of power as a chance accident of history. There was nobody else to become secretary of the party. So I had to take charge. Right. Like, what else was I going to do? You know, like I didn't have a choice. I had to be in charge.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Someone had to do it. And Nate Thayer, I really recommend we'll have it in the links because Nate posts both the article he wrote about his interview and the raw interview transcript. And Pol Pot's like, Samuth was my best friend. I loved him. Why would I have had him killed? And I think the broad agreement is it was probably the French security services.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But I can't not be suspicious because Pol Pot talks about a bunch of people he loves. And then there will be like, but you had his entire family killed, including his like infant grandchildren. And he'd be like, well, yeah, like, yeah, well, yeah. that's just how things go sometimes here in the Khmer Rouge right you gotta kill someone's whole family sure doesn't mean I didn't love him

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Yeah. He was getting up there and being like, you guys are my best friends. I can't tell you enough how grateful I am. Now you're all going to be machine gunned in a second. But don't think that means I don't love you. That has nothing to do with me. That has nothing to do with me. This has just got to happen for reasons I can't really explain. Anyway, I'm going to go bounce.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But there's this idea he starts to get in his head of idealizing the Khmer peasantry, who he was technically born into, but not really. Technically born just above. Just above and immediately bounced to go hang out with the royal family, right? Right. But he's really going to like – and it's not just – he's not doing this in isolation. They're all reading guys like Rousseau.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I've got to change the way we farm so everyone starves to death. Oh, well, I think that's a good place to end for part two. We're going to just run all three parts this week because it was a longer script, but not quite enough for a four parter. So you fuckers are getting a bonus. But, you know, as we end, Pol Pot has risen to the leader of the Khmer Rouge. And I think it's going to go well.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You know, I know I wrote another nine pages, but my guess right now is everything's good.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Cambodia becomes the world's greatest industrial and agricultural power. Nobody dies. In fact, they invent the cure to immortality. That's my assumption. We'll see how it bears out. Yeah.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I've got this book next to me called The Killing Fields, and I think it's because they made a killing in the biotech sector. Yeah, they're killing it. Yeah.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Oh no. Is that what we call the show? Fuck. Oh no. Um, Andrew, how are you feeling?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Yeah. So far. Great guy.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Wow.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, yeah. He is a really interesting monster. The degree of agreement that like, yeah, he was really chill. As far as I knew him, he was nice. There's a lot of people who like when they finally see him on TV are like, wait a second, that guy has been killing everybody?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, it'd be like if you had like a friend that you like smoked weed with and played Grand Theft Auto when you were like 19 and then like 40 years later, he winds up killing a million people.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I don't know, man. We didn't ever talk about how many people he wanted to kill. Yeah.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Less than 20K? Which was where we left.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I can't remember if it was the last episode or... No one's in the position of, I don't want anyone to be killed, right?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, zero is suspicious. Yeah, less than 20K, I'd say that's very, very... You know, that's not, that's, that's minimalist, right? Yeah. Yeah. That qualifies you as a good person. I bet the Pope would, would want to kill less than 20K people if he had his choice. Oh my God. Well, you know, Pope's... That would make his lower body, still on the lower end of Pope body counts.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That's the great thing about being a pope is you're grading on a curve where if you were to kill 20,000 people as a pope today, you're still in like the upper 20% of popes in terms of not killing a lot of people.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Murder only. It's like being the leader of Germany.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Right.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Or in the future, if we have any others.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Being the president of the United States. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Anyway, Andrew T, where can people find you? yo is this racist Andrew T on whatever social media I'm not looking at it that much yeah well do that and let's all go not well you know what if you know somebody who's quiet and nice and that's the episode

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They're all getting involved and knowledgeable of these French thinkers. And so this would not – he would have been having conversations about these concepts with his friends at the time, right? He also, one thing I learned in the interview he did with Nate Thayer later in life, and this is not in his earlier biographies, they talk a lot, he reads Mao, he reads Stalin, we'll talk about that.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He's also for a period of time really interested in Mahatma Gandhi. Like he kind of keeps up obsessively with the story of Gandhi and the successful fight to decolonize India. Not a Gandhi figure. Pol Pot, you could say. But he's very and it makes sense that he's interested in it because India is a colonized country that throws off the shackles of its colonial oppressor.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You're still mad about the fact that I want to see what Pol Pot looks like producing a podcast? Yes. What if we just put him on 16th Minute for a week?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that's what he's going to want to do. Right. He does reject the Gandhi route. Well, you know, it's about that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And, you know, here's the difference. Pol Pot, I do think, could have been a pretty good podcaster. Gandhi, terrible podcaster. Absolutely dog shit. Could have had a YouTube channel. Could have been pretty good on YouTube, you know? He's more of a Twitch. Instead of freeing India, he would have gotten really successful on Patreon.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Uh, yeah. Doing the pacifist, doing the pacifist run of cyberpunk 2077.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. So, um, Pol Pot would later say of his time and like the impact that all this reading had on him. I started as a nationalist and then patriot. And then I read progressive books before that time. I had never read the humanity, the French communist party newspaper. It scared me, but I got used to it because of the student movement.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So he describes kind of being initially frightened of like communism and some of these ideas. And I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that very clearly his family and background is like the enemy as often described in like a lot of communist writing, right? Like people like him are not who you're messaging to primarily, right?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like he is, there's not much of a bourgeoisie in Cambodia, but he definitely is part of it, right? Yeah.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, and he says that like basically just like the fact that it is so not just among, but by the way, when we say the student movement, he's not just socializing with other Khmer. He's socializing with a lot of young French radicals, right? And so he just kind of through immersion gets more comfortable with socialism and then communism.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Maybe Pol Pot and Jamie will find out that they're like a Fleetwood Mac deal, like just like perfect, perfect musical partners, you know, like just a historic talent match.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But he was also very engaged with the non-educational opportunities afforded to him, including a free work trip to war-ravaged Yugoslavia. Now, he actually had two different options for a vacation during this first year that he's in France. One was a month-long backpacking trip in Switzerland, which cost $70. And boy, if I could get that deal today, I'd be gone in a fucking heartbeat.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But that is a lot of money for the time and he has no money. Right. So he picks a labor trip to go help rebuild Yugoslavia, which had just become a thing. If you think about Yugoslavia is the Balkans. It's the Balkans all being a state that's an independent state for basically the first time. And it's like the least governable territory on Earth is finally being governed by a guy who.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But it's all been blown to fuck by World War Two. So you can come here for free and we'll kind of feed you, even though we don't have much food. But it'll be free if you help rebuild. And so that's what he does. Right. This was not a political thing. It isn't good to Yugoslavia because they're communist.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He later wrote, I didn't have money, so I couldn't do as the others and go to Geneva or to the sea or to the mountains and have a holiday there. A group of us poor students went instead to Zagreb. Now, this is a seminal moment for Salazar. Tito, who was the dictator of Yugoslavia, was a communist who had fought as an insurgent against the Nazis. Tito, we'll talk about him one day.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He's one of these guys where I can't say he's not a bastard because he's a dictator. He does some bad stuff. He's also like the best case scenario for a dictator. If you're going to live under a dictator in the 20th century, you fucking want it to be Tito, right? He does know what he's doing, which is extremely rare. And he's also legitimately like the hardest son of a bitch alive in his day.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like he fights the Nazis. And then my favorite Tito story, because he breaks away from the USSR, because Stalin obviously wants Yugoslavia to basically be an extension of the USSR. And Tito is like, yeah, The Balkans have had enough being other people's property. We're going to be the bulk. You know, we're going to be our own thing for a while. And Stalin keeps sending guys to kill him.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And finally, Stalin sends back. I think it's a piece of one of the assassins with a note that's like, you can keep sending guys and I'll keep killing them. But if you do, I'm going to send one guy and you're not going to send him back. Right. Like he's going to get you. Right.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Tito is legitimately one of the scariest dudes who ever lived and also shockingly competent at what he does because Yugoslavia collapses immediately after his death into a hideous civil war, right? But it's like the only time the Balkans is a unified, peaceful thing more or less while Tito's in charge. And again, he has a police state.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I've been watching the 1997 Silver Springs a million times. I know you have. Honestly, what if Pol Pot had been in Fleetwood Mac? Could that have been good? Almost certainly not.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He's not a nice man, but you can't help but be like, well, shit, that motherfucker knew what he was doing, right? Good at his job, at least. He's like Tom Cruise, right? I'm not going to say Tom Cruise is a good man, but the son of a bitch loves cinema, right?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And he cares about COVID policy. Look, Sophie, beggars can't be choosers anymore.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

No, no, no. But he's the Tito of movies. We can all agree on that. I think that's a fair way to look at him. Yeah, yeah. Sure. This is good. This is good. Historians will agree with me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

These are all Stannis, except for Stannis, again, loses. Tito never fucking does. Right.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So at this point, though, Tito is in charge and the Soviet Union really doesn't like that, like young kind of socialist lefty inclined kids in France, because the Communist Party still does try to and to a degree exercises a lot of control over these like like national Western communist parties and like Paris and stuff. They think that Tito was a traitor to the cause, right?

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And so there's like an effort among French socialists to discourage young people from volunteering in Yugoslavia. But for whatever reason, Saar does not get the memo or he just doesn't give a shit. So – He goes, Salah and a bunch of his friends, they go in there.

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Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

At this point, the whole population of Yugoslavia is basically organized into these massive labor brigades that are rebuilding the part of the country that had been ruined in the war, which was all of the country. It's the least covered country. theater of war in World War Two. The shit that went on in the Balkans in World War Two is it's nuts by Eastern Front standards.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like there were there were like SS guys who tried to go to the east because the Balkans was so fucked up. Like I cannot exaggerate how bad World War Two was for the Balkans. Sarr's particular crew helped to rebuild a motorway, and the impression he took away from the experience was stirring.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This powerful sensation of being engaged in a great real-time task of building a modern nation from the ground up, using only the raw human material of its populace. As Pol Pot, years later, he was emphatic that he had no political interest in planning the trip. It was purely for pleasure, but the experience left an impact anyway.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Short quotes from one of his friends at the time who wrote about the experience highlights kind of the impact we can assume this probably had on Pol Pot. Quote, everywhere, this guy wrote, the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia resembles an enormous worksite where factories, roads, railways, and hydraulic centers are being built.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This effort is also worthy of praise because strength of all the people united around their leaders gives them the chance of gaining successive victories, knowing that it is a question of national survival. And the post-war rebuilding of Yugoslavia has a lot of successes, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, obviously, there's more to it than just throwing together huge work gangs, and that's kind of going to be lost on Salazar and his comrades, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But this idea of mobilizing a nation to remake a country from the ground up, and that's very much what it would have – that's not accurate to literally what was going on in Yugoslavia, but that's accurate to what they would have been aware of as foreigners coming in. That leaves a mark.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yes. Salat Tsar and his friends, as I said, represented a sizable chunk of the entire educated adult Khmer population at this point in time, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But due to the isolation of Cambodia and some of the cultural realities inherent to having your education conducted entirely in a second language, most of these guys arrive in Paris with no real understanding of Marxism or communism, and they never get a very good... These guys are not... what a Marxist today would call super educated Marxists in that a lot of them are kind of bored of Marx.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And a lot of them are like, in part because like, I don't really get this. This is not, this has like been translated several times. Marx is not the communist who speaks to them the most. Right. And that's not primarily what they're going to base. Stalin and Mao are going to be the communist writers who have the biggest direct impact on this crew. Right. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Um, so after getting back from Yugoslavia, Saar increasingly falls in with his friend Yang Seri and Seri's friends. And these guys are better students. They're at more prestigious schools, getting more prestigious degrees and like the humanities and stuff. Seri introduced Saar to a guy named King Bansak, who was one of the most, probably the most senior Khmer student in France.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Let me tell you. So one time we were shooting 20,000 people to death and I got angry at my friend.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He'd been there the longest at 25. He is the old man of the Cambodian expat community, right? Um, And Van Sack was, as a result, one of the executive committee members of the student union. So there's like this Khmer student union that he is helping to run. And the way the organization works is you've got this central union, and then there's a bunch of what are called circles.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

When he was not better when he was awake.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I have always been firmly of the stance that the water fountains in the Capitol building need to have Xanax in them. We could solve a lot of problems, a lot of problems. Yeah, bring this down a little bit. You know what? Put Xanax in the water everywhere. Yeah, actually, yeah, great point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Maybe we really do need to put lithium in the water or something. So Combs started a label of his own, Bad Boy Records, and it, Bad Boy, right? Clink, clink, clink. And this is, when you hear about the East Coast, West Coast rap feud, it's Bad Boy and Death Row over on the other side of the country.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. Are we going to talk a little bit of Suge Knight?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, man. Because basically, Biggie becomes a massive star pretty much overnight. And that makes Bad Boy a name. And that causes immediate friction with the West Coast premiere gangster rap enclave, Suge Knight's Death Row Records. If you want to know the kind of man, we're talking about Biggie being a fucking real gangster. Suge is a real gangster. The realest.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I think Shug didn't want to give him the rights or sell the rights to an ice ice baby or something. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, you got to try the new TV show, Will. It's wonderful.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

No.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I'm close enough, man. I don't know, man. We'll say he's a big guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

He's a formidable man.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. So this is primarily a story of the evil that Sean is going to do later in his life. And his involvement in the East Coast, West Coast rap rivalry is like, we know, but also it's murky, right? Like there's a degree of murky to like exactly what he was doing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Most of the narrators are like talking through wiretaps. that the police have or like interviews the police are conducting. So not great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I was watching an old video of them during the Rumors Tour, and it's just clear, not a one of you. You're all playing perfectly, but not one of you could walk 10 feet without falling down. You are snow blind.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Pablo Escobar licked this himself before putting it on the back of the truck.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Well, in a lot of, when you're talking about the guys who are also literally fighting each other, a lot of head injuries, you know? Yes. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

But the gist of it is there's this huge conflict that comes to Central around Tupac, who's the big West Coast star, and Biggie, who is the East Coast star. And, you know, Tupac's, you know, Shug and Biggie is with Sean. Diddy. So things come to a head on November 30th, 1994, when Tupac Shakur is shot five times in the lobby of Quad Studios in Times Square. This is not when he dies.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Tupac was a tough guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

No, I can confidently say as a United States judge that show is good. I have that power. I'm going to go do a Blood Meridian after this. Jesus Christ. Call me the judge. Use my own urine to make gunpowder. It's going to be incredible, folks. Amazing. But my first act as judge is to sit down with my buddy, the Grammy award-winning Greasy Will, and judge P. Diddy. And this will be legally binding.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And there's, I mean, yeah. And there's also like, it's, it's worth noting Biggie and Puffy are in the studio, right. At the, at the time. Like, and he is the only, it's a quote unquote robbery, but he is the only one who gets shot. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, yeah, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, he wasn't like on the street and it was a crime of opportunity, right? Like the fact that he's like, this had to have been them. Is not paranoia or whatever ruling.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, and he starts putting out songs insulting Biggie and Bad Boy Records.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And somebody puts out a song. It's the if I did it of gangster rap.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And we are going to talk more about that. But you know what never shot Tupac, to the best of my knowledge? I can't really prove this, but it's unlikely.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It's very unlikely that they did. Yeah. Yeah. Although. Unless it's an ad for fucking Diddy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Starts buying podcast space.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Whatever I say, the courts have to do if I understand being a judge right. And I don't think I do.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And we're back. So in September of 1995, there's another chapter in this escalating battle. Witnesses say that they see Diddy's bodyguard get into an argument at an Atlantic club with a guy named Jai Hassan Jamal Robles, a member of Death Row, who's like a Death Row guy, right? And then after that argument, Robles is shot and killed.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And it's one of those like, well, he was having an argument with Combs' bodyguard, who's a shooter, and then he gets shot, right? Turns out people with guns are willing to use them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And by the way, Combs' bodyguard, who probably shot Robles, gets shot himself years later in Atlanta. You know, not a long life in this business.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It is tied into the organized crime part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, you could absolutely be both. Yeah, yeah. Whatever is funnier in the moment.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

This is all happening at the same time. Diddy is not a guy who comes out of gang life, but he is now involved in organized crime. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

We'll be talking about that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Well, podcasting works the same way. When the last podcast on the left, guys, when they tour in Portland, they give Sophie and I a call.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, Sophie just put out a hit on, and I'm really bad at actually knowing other people in the podcast business. I was going to say Sarah Marshall, but y'all are real life friends.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I'm going to Chicago. I got to call the knowledge fight, guys. Make sure they don't fucking put one in me at the airport. Oh, man. So, and it's also worth noting, as we say, people are dying. Combs is ordering hits, right? I can't say that to a point of legal certainty, but he's ordering hits.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I might not have said that a few months ago, but now that he's in jail, I feel confident he's not going to sue me for defamation. Yeah. Yeah, he definitely had people killed.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. So it is also and I should you know, we're talking about this feud and we will get back to this East Coast, West Coast feud. I should note here it is around this time in 1993 or 1994. I think the timeline is a little bit murky. The person may not remember precisely because that's the way trauma works. That Sean Combs is accused of committing his second rape that we know of.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Jordache? I honestly forget what we were saying.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Lisa Gardner, who was 16 years old at the time, he is in his 20s, she is a child, says that she met Combs and Aaron Hall at an album release in New York. She alleges that Combs coerced her into having sex and then Hall assaulted her. And then Diddy rapes her. And then Diddy and Hall rape her 15-year-old friend, Monica Chase. So he and his friend, Aaron Hall...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, yeah. Not my job as a judge to know how to pronounce R&B duos.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

coerce and rape two underage people one of whom is 15 one of whom is 16 the day after the assault combs comes to her house she says and chokes her until she passes out and then sexually assaults her again this is bad stuff this is bad very bad stuff yeah um And it's one of those like, yeah, ordering hits is bad too.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

But to an extent, everyone who's in this East Coast, West Coast thing is agreeing we're going to do some dangerous shit, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, my God. You've got to use this. It's the only thing that you can do after talking about something that horrible. It's necessary.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I sentence you to come up with a different fucking name. I'm glad this intro was fun because what we're going to talk about after this cold open, not fun at all.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

and this is happening the whole time that's going down. Also in 1994, the same year probably, Combs allegedly met and raped a woman named April Lamprose. She claims that he started it by telling her he wanted to be her mentor. He love-bombed her, and once they were dating, he ordered her to keep the relationship secret and started beating her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Lamprose later alleged that Combs forced her and his partner at the time, his romantic partner, Kim Porter, to take MDMA and then force them to have sex while he watched. She attempted to cut off contact with him, but he threatened her, including with revenge porn. So she keeps going for a while. This would have been a thing that would have looked like they were dating from the outside.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

But a big part of it is that he is violent. And if she leaves, he's going to post videos of them having, you know, yeah, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And these are the two cases we have from the fucking, the war years, right? These aren't the only two.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

This is a pattern that he has and he is engaging in this pattern regularly for basically most of the time you and I have been alive. That's the kind of bastard we're talking about here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I was three. In September of 1996, Tupac was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Six months after that, Biggie is killed in a drive-by in Los Angeles. No one was officially convicted of either murder, but we at this point also pretty much know who did both. Biggie was very likely gunned down by a guy named Poochie. Who you can imagine is the character from The Simpsons, if you like.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yes. And he's gonna, at the end of it, he is going to space.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Amazing that Keefy D makes it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

clarify here you will find other theories there are people who say no it wasn't Poochie it was this other person that killed Biggie and the same is true with Tupac I'm going with like the likeliest version of the story this is not a litigate who killed Tupac podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I've got a working theory that it was, in fact, Bernie Sanders who dropped Tupac.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

So as you noted, Tupac was almost certainly killed by Dwayne Keefy D. Davis, who was finally arrested last year for the murder. He had been made a police informant in 2009 after an arrest for drug trafficking.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

This is, like a lot of people, he is not super well informed about how the legal system works, and he believed himself immune to prosecution and admitted to killing Tupac in a drive-by in 1996. All right, so heavily believed.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And again, podcasting works the same way, by the way. Anybody takes my chain, I'm going to come out blasting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

He's a literal Johnny Tight Lips character.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Johnny, where are you shot? I ain't saying nothing. I ain't saying nothing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

What should I tell the doctor? Tell him to suck a lemon.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Speaking of shooting people, don't do that. Listen to these ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, man. Pain.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, fuck. So, Tupac. We're talking about Tupac, who was almost certainly killed by Dwayne Keefy D. Davis. So Davis, while believing himself immune to prosecution, admits to killing Tupac in 1996. This is much more recently. He just got arrested, I think, last year.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And he also claims, while he, again, believes himself immune, that Diddy offered him a million dollars to kill Tupac and paid that fee to a different Southside Crips member to do the job. And he did not get that money ever. No, no, no. Wow, he got fucked over by a fucking rap gangsta?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Diddy's not a man of his word.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

this is what Keefy D says, right? I'm not saying this is the literal amounts or how it actually happened, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That seems likely to me. I don't know what happened. And again, when I was saying this is what this guy says, I'm not saying this is literally what happened. This is a dude bullshitting to the cops.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

He thinks he's a mute. Right. So the cops had him reach out to the guy that he said actually got paid for the job and to Diddy, basically trying to get Diddy on a wire being like, yeah, killing Tupac was rad. Right. I don't think that worked. Sean is not that dumb, and he has not been charged.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And he has not been charged with this. I don't know that he ever will. But prosecutors summarizing one of the interviews with Kifidi in court documents wrote, and this is from right after Tupac's death, Sean Combs reaches out to defendant, wondering if Southside Crips were responsible for Shakur's death by asking, is that us? Defendant, beaming with pride, answers, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And that is probably how it went down. Cause often these things are not like I ordered a hit and then he was shot. It was more, I made it known and I spread some money around. Like I wanted someone to take a shot at this guy, but like other people could have done it. Like, I don't know, you know, this is what I'm talking about.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

This is not a bit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, no, I mean, it's exactly like, I put two bullets in Dan from Knowledge Fight, you know? Not because I didn't like him, just because, you know, he was on my turf, right? You know, he was on my turf and he didn't call me before Jordan went to Portland. You know, this is just the way nobody likes it. This is just the way podcasting has to be. There's no other way to do it. You know, sorry, man.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. Yeah. One of the NPR guys stabbed me. You know, that's just the way it is. One of those radio lab guys. I'm not going to tell you which one. I don't talk.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I'll snitch on Joe Rogan.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

So anyway, not conclusive, but probably pretty safe to say, did he had something to do with the Tupac killing?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, obviously the greater crime in this is the fan art that this whole tragic rivalry has inspired him. I'm speaking specifically, I wrote this episode listening to a bunch of Tupac and Biggie songs. And while I was, you know how YouTube does its thing, and it took me to a playlist some DJ had made that was like Tupac and Biggie songs called Biggie versus Tupac.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

This has nothing to do with the story, but whoever made it did a Photoshop that Sophie's going to show you. And it's supposed to be like split down the middle, Tupac's face and Biggie's face side by side. But the way they did it, it just looks like Tupac had a stroke. Oh my God, I can already picture it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It's the way like Biggie's got kind of those drooping eyes. Not a successful Photoshop, my man. I'm sorry.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Like, the doubt, like, the... As a suburban white kid who was listening to fucking Biggie when I was 50.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I'm going to be a gangster one day. Plano fucking tech. God, that was so funny. All the kids who would pretend to be fucking gangsters.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And honestly, I'm considering taking some shots at Drake. This seems like the time to do it. You know, it is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Billion fucking streams on Spotify. So Sean Puffy Combs at this point has helped to orchestrate half a Coast's campaign of assassinations that led to the deaths of two of the greatest rappers of all time and also some other people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

This was a tough period for Diddy, though, because after Biggie dies, he's successfully gotten rid of one of his major competitors at the cost of losing his own golden goose. Sort of. Sort of.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. So he releases his first hit single in January of 1997. An album follows in July, which includes a touching tribute to Biggie titled I'll Be Missing You. It might as well be titled I'll Be Cashing In On Your Death.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Right, yeah, he samples Sting's every move you take, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

The greatest crime.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

This is the first rap single to debut at number one on the Billboard Top 100. He makes a lot of money as a result of this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

We're back and things are about to get horrible. So 1991, the same year that he got all of those fucking people killed, is the year in which Joy, J-O-I, Dickerson Neal, one of those hyphenated last names, claims that Sean drugged and raped her. Yes. Yeah, I know. Sorry. There was no way to like.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

His dead friend's huge face as he just fucking cash register sounds going off in his head.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, and we're largely just staying away from that because it's not provable and the stuff that's provable is, I mean, honestly, a lot worse.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Well, that's going to do it for part two. Will, you got anything to plug before we roll out?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, check him out. And check me out on Blue Sky at I Write Okay. And check out our other podcast. Oh, are you loving Blue Sky?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Watch Will cancel himself and watch me cancel myself all on blue sky. Blue sky. All right. Well, that's it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

The same year he got nine people killed in a crush. So this is the earliest. I don't know that this is the first person that Sean drugs and assaults or assaults, period. But this is the earliest allegation so far against Diddy. That may have changed by the time these episodes drop. Shit is coming out rapidly. Every day. It is one of the most serious. She was a college student at the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I have the paperwork. I am now legally the Honorable Robert Evans for the rest of my life. I can marry people, not just officiate like some of you folks. I can witness documents. I could hear cases. I don't think anyone's going to give me any, but I am a judge now in New Mexico.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Sean was an up and coming music producer who hosted legendary parties. He put her in one of his music videos. And then while they were doing that, he asked her out on a date, which is, you know, classic story.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And it's fucked up because obviously this is the way a lot of people get assaulted. It is also legitimately how a lot of people's careers begin.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

So after dinner, Sean pushes Joy to stay out with him. She wants to go home and he's like, no, no, no, let's go. And he takes her to a recording studio. She has a drink at some point, I think on the drive over. And she like can't get out of the car because she's so fucked up at the time they get there. Not from the drink, but from the fact that the drink has been drugged.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I'm guessing just from her description. Sounds like GHB, but could have been a couple of things.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

No, no, no. Combs takes her to a separate location and he sexually assaults her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Why not keep it? Well, he films that to use as revenge porn against her. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

The black man is doing this from the jump. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, exactly. And Dickerson actually finds out that he's videotaped it because a male friend of hers comes to her and is like, hey, man, I was just hanging out with Sean and he showed us a video of himself having sex with you. And like, you don't really look like you're conscious. Right. So that's how she finds out about it. Like he shares he shows this to a number of people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, hear ye, hear ye. The Court of Bastards is now in session. The Honorable Judge Robert Evans presiding. And that's not a bit. It's not. I'm making an announcement here. Well, I don't think I told you this yet. I have been sworn in as a judge. I am legally a United States municipal judge for the state of New Mexico.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I mean, he had to set this up. He played the play on this. He spent a lot of money. Like, it's not cheap to have a camera.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

That's probably a big part of, in addition to just wanting to do it in the first place, why she's drugged, right, is so that he can set up and do all this, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And it's also I want to know now if you're very familiar with this case, you're going to know, oh, he's not bringing up everyone. I can't. There's not enough time to talk about every single person who has made allegations. I'm going to go through enough that you understand what he does. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It's the kind of thing where I think, and we'll never know how many people it was in total, but I would be shocked if the total number of victims, one way or the other, aren't in the hundreds. There's different levels of victim. Yeah. There's some people that it's... Astonishing. There's Genghis Khan levels of... Yeah, there's some people who are like, he coerced me, but like I did say yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

There's some people who were like, I got drugged, but he didn't rape me or like I got out. So there's like degrees of difference from how this happens because there's so many people he's doing this to.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You get sworn in by another judge. It works, actually.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Right. Absolutely. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

People would say, Oh, that guy's definitely a piece of shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. in being involved in Biggie and Tupac's murders and it overshadowed it if you've got a crime you want to commit maybe you're looking to do a big crypto scam or something just kill Tupac first and you'll get away with it for at least 30 years that's the Diddy story

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Let's call them a fan. I mean, definitely, they're a fan. A wonderful person whose name I...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

He deserves to hide. So in the wake of this horrible sex crime, Sean got his first big opportunity. In 1992, he scouted out and signed a rap artist named Christopher Wallace. better known to posterity as Biggie Smalls or the Notorious B.I.G. And this is I just I'm not super, you know, knowledgeable about pop culture. I love Biggie. Biggie was one of the greatest lyricists of his generation.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Honestly, part of why I love him, I think he's like written better about depression and hating yourself than most people in music ever have.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And he is... This is one of those guys... We talk about a lot of guys in... especially gangster rap, really massage their reputation. Biggie didn't have to do that. He comes from a tough background. His dad abandons the family when he's three, which is interesting that both he and Diddy lose their dads at age three. Might have been part of why they got along. Bonded, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Did you know it's incredibly easy? Well, it's apparently, I didn't know this either, becoming a judge works exactly like being a vampire in an interview with a vampire.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

He grew up near Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, which at that point in time was a very different neighborhood than it is today. Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, yeah. He was raised a Jehovah's Witness and became a drug dealer, selling weed at age 12 and moved up to crack once that epidemic kicked off. His mother was... Jehovah's Witness? Yeah, he's raised a Jehovah's Witness. His mom is very strict. He has to hide what he's doing from her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It also has a big influence on the kind of music he makes because his mom is very strict and the morals that he's raised with conflicts in his new career. So he always does. He has this feeling that is, I think, not super common for a lot of people in the same industry that what he's doing is bad. Right. And that influences the kind of music he makes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

His debut album is called Ready to Die, which includes the song, the great song, Suicidal Thoughts, which opens with the verse, when I die, fuck it. I want to go to hell because I'm a piece of shit. It ain't hard to fucking tell. Or getting more direct towards his feelings about his mom. All my life, I've been considered as the worst. Lying to my mother, even stealing out her purse.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Crime after crime, from drugs to extortion. I know my mom wished she got a fucking abortion. Like, fuck, I love Biggie.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

more than you get you can get made a judge by like a bigger judge but you cannot necessarily make other people judges right you have to see you have to drink a certain amount of blood yeah yeah you got to keep the pyramid at a you know a certain angle or else it gets too wide again if if i'm remembering interview with a vampire right i am now going to live in france and then burn down a theater take on an eight-year-old child yes take on an eight-year-old yeah

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Absolutely. I guess what we're getting at is we're both fans of Biggie. Obviously, Biggie's going to be one of the most successful rappers of all time. But initially, when he's getting started, his work is seen as too explicit and too based in his extensive life of crimes for MCA Records, who is Uptown's distributor, and that's where Sean works.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And so Sean's boss, Andre Harrell, lets him go, basically fires him, although he will claim, Andre says, I didn't fire him because he was bad. Basically, I said, like, look, man, you're right, this guy's going to be a hit the

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Fucking bounce. It's time for you to succeed on your own, right? Andre later tells Wall Street Journal, I didn't want to sit there and be the one confining Puff because the corporation was telling me to do that. I'm not built that way. I told Puff he needs to go and create his own opportunity. You're red hot right now. I'm really letting you go so you can get rich.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And that's exactly what fucking happened. I mean, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Uh, well, the book's done. Basically, I'm almost, I finished the rough draft. I'm almost through with the first draft, which is when I read through the rough draft chapter by chapter and make the edits that occur to me to make it make sense. I think probably in January, I'll put out the first three chapters just as kind of a teaser. But I'll be working with my editor to get it in the shape.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

But very soon, very soon. It's taken much longer than I had hoped it would. In my defense, both my parents died since publishing the first one. So, you know... That's not really an excuse, but it's got to make you feel bad. And so you're not going to like follow up with complaining that the book's not out yet. I'm manipulating you. You know, I'm a monster. I know it, but I'm good at it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I know that's happened.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

There's been. And usually when that happens, it's not that there's not enough. It's that there's just like not enough information about what they did. You'll hear like a reference to like some CEO who did this like really fucked up thing. He was like fucking eating poor people or whatever shit. But it's like, well, all I've got is like three sentences from an old newspaper.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I can't really get an article out on that. Honestly, names aren't coming to mind.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

The closest I can come in terms of what I remember is, like, I almost didn't get to do the Bo Brummel episodes after hours of research because I did kind of come to the conclusion, you know, there's some bad side effects as a result of what he did, but that's nothing, like, not that morally reflects on him in a negative way.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Like, he wasn't trying to make generations of men more limited in their fashion choices. He just, like, liked what he liked.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Like Ben Shapiro. What am I going to say? What are you going to say? What is that? What is there really to say about Ben? You know, I have looked into him. I did think about it. And like at this point, he does have a negative impact. He's just boring. And like, that's a big I will say when it comes to if your question is ever, why haven't you done so and so?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

The answer is usually either I think they're boring. And if it's someone that you're like, well, there's no way he thinks this guy's boring. This guy's objectively interesting. It's because that's going to be a shitload of work. And like, I'm always triaging the like the Lawrence of Arabia episodes, which seem to have gotten a good reaction. I think I had to read like five books for you were.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I worked on that for like a year. I was working in the background, slowly getting through material. Yeah, starting in like January. And not everything is like, but like Kissinger was like that. Kissinger was like a year of background work. And the current big one that I'm very slowly working on is doing another Nixon, doing a Nixon, probably six-parter, because it's fucking Nixon.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

But at least a four-parter. And that's going to take me a while because I really don't – there's so many – because you could put that much effort into everybody, but it's – a lot of folks, you would just be reading stuff that's largely repeating similar bits with slightly different takes, whereas with Nixon – Everyone who digs into him, there's so many stories.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

There's so many people who know crazy shit about Nixon. You really almost can't come to an end of collecting fucked up Dick Nixon stories. It's almost like our most renewable resource on planet Earth is stories of Richard Nixon being a freaking weirdo. So it takes some time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I, you know, I had some there was some frustration over an episode we did that was I think it was mixed. It's always really mixed, even when there is like about that doctor who was like doing really bad surgeries for trans people. There were some folks who had some specific frustrations with that and then some folks who didn't. And, you know, ultimately, it's one of those things where.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

when you're dealing with stuff like that there are probably multiple right ways to do it but you know it's tough i think like the biggest thing that i the biggest thing that frustrates me in terms of like feedback from listeners is when people will be like obviously figure this person

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

has autism why didn't you bring that up or that's an explanation for this behavior why didn't you bring that up and the answer in every case is that person has not been diagnosed with anything all i have is the behavior multiple other things could explain the behavior i am not going to just declare jeffrey bezos to have autism based on my zero experience as a diagnostician because he didn't like music

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Right. Like there are other reasons people might not like music. And it's just kind of an interesting detail about how he's sort of disconnected from a lot of the people around him that can be explained by many different things. But it's not my job to be like this is what I believe is going on with Jeffrey Bezos. And now we all have to act like it's true because it's probably not.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Uh huh.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Man, most of it was on Cracked.com. Some of it found its way into It Could Happen Here, at least my conclusions based on it. There was a video that you could view in VR that was like a 360 video documentary of some of my time in Mosul that was published through the EWScripts Network. I think that one was called 24 Hours in Mosul or something like that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

It was broadcast also on a bunch of TV networks. I don't actually know if the link is up. A decent number of things that I wrote back then for, like, local news have become lost media because that's how that shit be. Yep. But you should still be able to find some of the stuff on Cracked that I did. So, yeah, I would say check that out there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

If I were a Spice Girl, my Spice Girl name would be... Doesn't want to say anything mean about the Spice Girls because I am close to several women who grew up in love with the Spice Girls.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I gave my name.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Specifically afraid of the women that I like, Spice, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Afraid of offending them based on having a bad take about the Spice Girls. Spice.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, that's probably fair, too.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast by a man who is preparing for the entrance of the new regime, the need to go underground. So I'm in my chud block today. You know, if you're a tall white man and you wear a hoodie with a deer head on it, you're effectively invisible. So I'm prepared for the new world. Are you?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I'm going to explain this to you in a way that also explains some questions that we can't answer directly about. Why do you guys work for X or, you know, are involved with, you know, such and such company?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. Yeah. So I when I was late into my time at Cracked. I was getting bored of doing the kind of articles I'd been doing for years there, these personal experience pieces where I'd interview someone and then turn their life experiences or the reporting that I'd done into a listicle. And podcasts were starting to blow up. I was interested in the medium.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I'd done one through Cracked and found aspects of it pleasant. And the thing I had pitched was something based on my special interest, which is the Nazis. You know, I had done an article that had done very well on things you don't know about the Nazis that had delved into things we've touched on in some episodes of the podcast. You know, all of these very weird things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I talked about Carl May, you know, and Hitler's obsession with these cowboy novels and how that impacted the Third Reich. And so that sort of stuff. And I was like, I want to do a series where every season – I talk about a different dictatorial regime and all of the crazy weird facts about it. So season one would be 10 episodes on like these weird fat things you don't know about the Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Maybe we'd move on to Saddam Hussein or Stalin. And then we all got shit canned. And I remember, you know, you know, you have good friends among your coworkers when like, as we're all getting drunk, one of the people who hadn't gotten laid off was Alex Schmidt, good old Schmitty. And Schmitty, you know,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

and I are talking and I'm like, Oh, so I had this great and Schmitty's running podcasts at cracked and still employed. And I'm like, I have this great idea for a show. And Schmitty being a very good friend is like, don't tell it to me. Uh, so I didn't. And you know, I spent the next couple of weeks getting fucked up, uh, like you do when you get laid off and then had a call with Jack O'Brien.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

And Sophie was on that call because Jack had left a few months earlier to work at, uh, stuff media, uh, which is the company that was producing shows like, you know, Stuff You Should Know. Stuff You Should Know. Stuff You Should Know. Stuff They Don't Want You To Know. All that stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, and our boss is actually the guy who started Mental Floss. So these are all folks.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, one of the guys. These are all folks who came out of the same era of digital media as me who had pivoted to podcasting a little earlier. So I had my meeting with my old boss, Jack, and I tell him my idea for this dictator show that I want to do.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I was jogging in San Francisco underneath a bridge, as I'm often doing, near Dogpatch, if you're curious.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

No, nobody can. It's a terrible word.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah. So, yeah, that's that's the well. And during that meeting, again, my show had been my idea had been seasons about like each season about a different dictatorship. And Jack was like, what if every episode you just switch and give a different, you know, a couple of episodes about a different monster and you go back and forth and revisit that?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Thank you, Sophie. I love my Chud sweater. It's actually incredibly comfortable. I know. Every year after deer season, this exact hoodie comes on for sale at a store near me, and so I can get like three for five bucks each or some shit like that, and they're crazy comfortable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

different aspects of topics, which is a much better idea. The show would not have worked in a seasonal format the way that it does as a weekly, even though making this into a weekly show has destroyed my life, but in a good way.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Okay. Well, I don't know. Nothing to do here. And that's how life is when you're in media. When you're in media.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

cat update. I mean, they're cats, so very little changes in their day-to-day life if things are doing well.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I mean, Saddam Hussein had a problem two years ago.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, he tried to have, there's a blanket he likes to have sex with that's usually on my couch. I mean, he's been neutered, but he still tries to have sex with it. And that blanket got a seed that's like a sharp seed. It's one of those seeds that's like sticks to your pants in it. And he managed to get it wedged inside his urethra and it nearly killed him. But he's fine now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

And there haven't been reoccurrences of any urinary issues, which are very serious in male cats. If your male cat isn't peeing, get it to the vet immediately. Hours matter.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Okay. I love questions. I love answers. I love answering questions. I love questioning answers. You know, all of those things. A good time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Sophie.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

That's an option.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yep, yep. Very different, very unequal situation, but I'm also not going to spend any more time caring about my appearance.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Unfortunately, tragically, I've been sober for a while and will be staying sober. So I just get depressed and then get better and better at shooting a gun. That's how I spend my free time. Jesus Christ, do you want that on the internet? Why not?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Look, I go for runs most days. I lift weights. I push a heavy sled while wearing my body armor and dry firing a handgun. Yes, I do all these things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I do have farm animals. You also have friends. I go hunting, in which I train at hitting moving targets in the woods.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah. Sometimes I train shooting stuff in the woods with them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Sure. Yeah. Lots of that. I miss drugs, Sophie. I hate being sober. But it's okay. I've been doing it for years. I'll keep it up. You're doing great. It's just miserable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Is that good enough for you people? Does that make you happy? Is that what you want? No one's ever happy when they get what they want.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Questions! That's how they say it in Boston!

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

No, that's probably still about right. That's close. Close enough for government work.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Well, Sophie, the same thing we do every night. Try to take over the world of podcasting. Oh, wait. We already did that. I guess let's answer some Q&As from our fans.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

32%. Wow, you guys really got to pump your Sophie numbers up. I don't know. I feel fine about our fans. You know, look, there's a lot of them, and so some chunk of them are always going to be doing something weird and off-putting, but usually when I encounter our fans, it's in the context of them, like, doing something nice that's helpful to people out in the world.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Like, run into a lot of fans handing out food, run into a lot of fans being street medics, run into a lot of fans... protesting genocide. So I'm generally very positive towards our fans, especially the ones who are forklift certified. You are really the ones that we do this for.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

You know, whenever I close my eyes before sitting down to write an episode that I know is going to really take it out of me, I think of you guys driving your forklifts. And, you know, that that that gives me the fuel I need to go on.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, the gist of the situation is, folks, it's the end of the year. This is when all of the companies that buy ads are really buying ads. And it's when everybody wants to get as many people listening as possible. And we decided rather than doing something that's Zero effort and like, you know, running more episodes, which we do when we take a break.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

We wanted to give you guys a chance to ask us some questions and also make sure that we're providing you with new stuff because you crave new stuff. You won't stop demanding it. Every instant of our lives, Sophie and I think of nothing but pleasing your insatiable appetites. So Sophie went on Instagram and asked if you guys had any questions.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Least favorite to do. I assume they're asking ever. I hate I really unless it's a place where I have a specific interest. I really hate the foreign leader episodes. Like, obviously, Stalin's a foreign leader, but I've been reading about Stalin my whole life. Hitler's a foreign leader. I've read more books about Hitler than anybody who's not a Hitler scholar. But like Jair Bolsonaro. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Like, I don't know much about Brazilian politics coming in Netanyahu. I don't know much about, you know, politics over there. So like getting up to speed, not just because you can't it's not just enough to like learn what was Netanyahu's childhood like. You also have to know, like the dynamics of politics there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Prior to him coming into power and like the part like and catching up on all of that in a way that you don't totally embarrass yourself is a is a lot of work. And it's also nerve wracking because like especially again, to go back to Netanyahu, this is a guy who I mean. who had been involved in genocidal activity prior to where we are right now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

But like, certainly, like, it was the kind of thing where like, because of how high the stakes are and how bad the things he was up to were, like, oh my God, the anxiety about fucking that up. The same with Bolsonaro, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

This guy who's fucking around the Amazon with indigenous peoples, this dude who is a very important part of this authoritarian trend, but also me, a guy who doesn't know much about Brazil. I'm always very anxious about those episodes. They're important to do. We'll be doing more of them next year. I just... I always, like, stress out over... Because there's no not getting some stuff wrong, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Of course.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

You know, to be honest, that was a pretty normal day for me. Like, there's not a lot. I'm glad he's dead. But he lived an incredibly long life and got to do most of the things he wanted and never really suffered. So it's like how much like let's let's say I had a beer, you know, let's say I had a beer.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Everything we do on healthcare. Yeah. Like, every time we have done a healthcare... I know this is the week that it is. Every time we talk about the U.S. healthcare system, I'm fucking livid. The Hawksnest Tunnel disaster, Union Carbide in Bhopal, India, as well. Like, both of those are Union Carbide-affiliated disasters. Those drive me fucking insane. Like, to some extent...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I find those guys more offensive than a guy like Hitler, which is not saying that they're worse than Hitler, because Hitler did kill more people than like Yudhoy Karabayev. But Hitler was like a guy who very honestly was about murdering people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Whereas these guys are all pretending to be decent men, family men, you know, just, you know, all I'm doing is trying to make jobs and provide a valuable part of the economy. And they are just killing people by fucking the city full. So, yeah, I those make me very angry.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Okay. Lower Decks is my favorite Star Trek thing since DS9. Sure. I've seen some episodes of Strange New Worlds, and I can see why people like it a lot. I'm kind of exhausted with that time period in the Star Trek timeline. Like, I want new stuff. I want fucking A- Like, do one where Riker's like an old admiral and we're fucking dealing with Starfleet politics back on Earth in San Francisco.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Give me anything where we're moving forward on the timeline, but we're not leaping into like weird future war shit. Like, I'm not mostly interested in that stuff. I'm mostly interested with actually part of why I love DS. I love TNG because it's really looking at like, what is...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

would a utopia be in a sense that's actually imaginable as something real, like something that could exist in some ways? And then Deep Space Nine is asking, what would the dark sides of that utopia be? Not even the dark sides, because it's less that and more... kind of like what the Culture series dealt with.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

What happens when this utopia and the people in it inevitably make contact or collide with reality? Or not reality, because they live in reality, but with places that are not utopia, with places that are different, that are worse, that have different values. What are those clashes like? And that's what I love in my Star Trek. I don't Star Trek's never had good space battles. I'll say that right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I mean, every now and then you get like a Wolf 359 or something. There's some pretty cool shit there. But like fucking A, there's that one scene in Serenity is a better space battle in terms of like an interesting, cool looking space battle than ever got shot in Star Trek. But I don't watch Star Trek for space battles. I've got other shit for space battles.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Thank you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Fantasy guest. Marissa Tomei during the My Cousin Vinny. What are we talking about? What do we mean by fantasy here?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, I know what they meant. I would love to have, I don't even know if I'd do an episode, I would just love to talk with either Alan Moore or Werner Herzog. Specifically, if I had Herzog, the thing I'd most want to do with Herzog, I guess we could record it, but I don't really care if we do, is I'd like to cook a meal with Werner Herzog. Sure. But I think, yeah, in terms of funny people, I think

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Will Ferrell would probably be a really good guest. He's far too famous for us, but he seems like he's got a good sense of humor about these kinds of things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Who's yours?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yours is Harry Styles?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Okay. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Because it would be like really funny to bring Harry Styles on and just do like unit 731, just like nonstop four hours of the most nightmarish stories of torture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Okay. Who?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

No, I don't.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Okay, they're list-appointed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, we could talk about basketball. Two experts like us. I mean, I think a lot of people would enjoy hearing our different feelings on ball handling, on three-pointers, other basketball stuff. Those aren't the only two basketball-related terms I know, guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Anyways, it's time for an ad break. Oh, wow, Sophie. Yeah. The subreddit's going to be very uncomfortable today.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Because they were untouchable, you did not have social contact with them, and they had access to resources that were almost unimaginable to regular people, right? Right. And again, despite this being the capital of Cambodia, it has the lowest Khmer population of any part of the country.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The entire business class, the people who are running companies and who are doing trading and thus have the most money outside of the white French class are primarily Vietnamese and Chinese Khmer, right? And these are, in a lot of cases, still people who were born in Cambodia, but they are ethnically Chinese and ethnically Vietnamese. And this is

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This is because Cambodia, for most of its history, has been for large chunks of its history, has been the property of either like China or Vietnam or Thailand, like bits and pieces of it. Right. There's been constant. It's in the middle of everything. Right. It's like Poland. It's like the Southeast Asian Poland. And that like, yeah, you guys are usually like under somebody's thumb. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Yeah. When that picture of him like looking at J-Lo's butt and just being having the look on his face like he's just watched fucking Dresden go up in flames is like it's because he's thinking like, obviously, I'm going to cheat on her. Like I'm Ben Affleck. I have no choice in the matter. I simply can't be a scumbag and not be a scumbag.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Well, and that's the one of the initial surprises that the communists have that kind of slows down them getting off the board as they initially expect. Well, everyone must hate the French. And the regular Khmer people don't hate the French as much as they hate the Vietnamese. And in fact, that's going to be true even with the Khmer Rouge gets in power. Like even with all the horrible shit the U.S.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

does for the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, Vietnam is always the enemy. Right. Yeah. And it's because they've got a thousand years of shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. It's like no matter how racist Americans get about a foreign country, Texans will always hate Oklahomans more. Right. And vice versa. So the fact that the people with money in the Capitol and running these businesses, the kind of – saying capitalist class isn't super useful in this sense, but that's kind of our closest thing. The fact that they're Vietnamese and Chinese –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

contributes to a longstanding cultural grievance among the majority Khmer population who see themselves – they have an inferiority complex. And this is something that is written about extensively by Khmer people, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That there is within the culture and within like even a lot of like the Buddhist kind of writings at the time, there's this discussion of like the Khmer were fundamentally good people, were humble, but were also kind of like – uh, naive and, and easy to be taken advantage of by these kind of savvier foreign peoples around us, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This is the way they talk about themselves to a sizable extent, right? Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. And there's there's some I mean, this is not I'm not I'm certainly not qualified to give you detail. But but I think it's there's there's plenty of evidence that a lot of the way they discuss themselves is in sort of this context of we are we really need to get our shit together and stop being ruled by these people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like that's kind of the attitude. And it depends with the Chinese Khmer, there's this mix of like respect with kind of some jealousy and some anger. Vietnamese people are seen almost entirely as imperialists, right? It's like this arrogant force that has continually dominated us over our history. And again, Khmer people often have friends who are Vietnamese, Cambodians and Chinese Cambodians.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But this is this idea of like this is what this race is done to our race. Right. That's really common. A very popular story that would be told to children at the time when Salazar was a kid described three Cambodian prisoners being buried up to their necks around a fire. So their heads could be used as a tripod to hold their Vietnamese master's teapot.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And it's like a joke that like this is what they think we're good for is like, you know, like that's the bit. Now, when it came to like the looking back at periods of time in which things were different, the real one period of like glory that educated Cambodians in particular would think back to was the time of the Angkorian Empire. which had ruled northwest Cambodia from the 900s A.D.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

to about 1400 A.D. and included parts of modern-day Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam as well, right? This is the Angkorian Empire. And Salasar and his peers would have seen themselves as being raised in the ruins of a once great culture. The attitude these people have is almost we're growing up in a post-apocalyptic world. Empire, right? And this was not far from the truth.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

By the 1200s, which is right around, if you've heard of Angkor Wat, it's still to this day the largest surviving religious complex on the world. And it's this massive, incredibly complex, beautiful, like temple complex that was part of the heartland of this empire.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And while it was at its height around the 1200s, the Angkorian Empire contained a higher population than lived in all of Cambodia in the 30s. So if you're looking at the degree to which things got worse, in the 30s, this area is capable of supporting fewer people than it supported in the 1200s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So they are really living in a post-apocalypse in a lot of ways. Now, some of the first stories Saar would have heard would have been tales of his grandfather Phem, who came up during one of the many periods of domination by Vietnamese and Thai invaders.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Cambodia came close to being destroyed as an independent culture, and Saar would have been raised on tales of Vietnamese soldiers gouging the eyes out of captives and salting their wounds before burying them alive. And this is a thing that happened. We are talking about really hideous wars. That happened between these people in these periods. And I mean, in every period of time. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

These are these are ugly conflicts. And he grows up with stories about like, this is what war is like. It's not just fighting and killing to gain territory. It is like torturing and destroying your enemy. And like that is that is the norm. Right. The French, by comparison, would have seemed benign to him as a child, in large part because the French were the backers of the royal family.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Because there's still a king in Cambodia, and he's a useful figurehead for the French. And Salazar's family is really close to the royal family. And so they kind of owe their privileges and their good position to, in part, to the French occupiers, just like the king does. Salah's early childhood then was mild. His father was noted for being less strict and for beating out.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He didn't beat his kids as much as most fathers did. Right. This is a culture where strict parenting is the norm and where children it's believed that you need to be you need to use violence very strictly to maintain the behavior of your children. Right. And this was not just common with parents. It was extremely common with teachers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

These are like the strain of Buddhism that is dominant in Cambodia is called Theravada Buddhism. And this is a faith that has an incredibly sharp delineation between good and evil. There's not really shades of gray, right? And so if you're doing the wrong thing, you need to be punished very severely, right? This is like a very black and white thing. faith in a lot of ways.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

At least that's the way it's interpreted at this period of time. One common punishment from schoolmasters was to make a disobedient child lie down on an ant's nest. That's like if you fuck up in school, they make you lie down on a red ant nest.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I just want to point out

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I had a friend of mine made me rewatch Gone Girl recently.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Look, there's obviously an amount of beating your kids that will turn them into Pol Pot, right? But there's an amount of beating your kids that will turn them into... I don't know. Not Pol Pot. Not Pol Pot, too. So, you know. It's a fine line. I don't know. Maybe don't punish your kids with ants. Can we agree on that?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Philip Short quotes one of Pol Pot's peers, Kang Von Sack, as saying this about discipline in schools at the time. I didn't like arithmetic and I hadn't learned my multiplication table. So every time we were going to have a lesson, I said that I had a stomachache and wanted to go home. The third time I did that, the teacher said, all right, you may go, but first recite the seven times table.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Of course, I didn't know it. How he beat me, kicks and punches. He was brutal. Then he took me outside and put me under a grapefruit tree full of red ants. After that, I knew my times tables. Oh my God. Well, I guess if it works. No, I don't. I don't guess that at all.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I'm just like, oh yeah, Ben Affleck didn't even know they were filming. He was pleasantly surprised to realize he wasn't in trouble for murder at the end of this movie.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And like, yeah, there's unique Cambodian, the whole ant thing, pretty unique to Cambodia. But the whole you beat the shit out of a kid if they're not learning right. That's more normal than not in the 20s. You go to Oklo. I got beat as a kid in Oklahoma by my principals. So like, not trying to like, but yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And what's really interesting to me though, is that Van Sack recalls this teacher who like beat him and then tied him to an ant tree as a saintly man who was adorable. Like, this was my nicest teacher.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That's wild. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. And it just, it says a lot that like, and that's your good teacher. Like, that's the guy that you're like, and you know what? He really, he really straightened me out.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I can see why you wouldn't forget that teacher. If anybody kicked the shit out of me and tied me to an ant tree, I would remember that motherfucker. Speaking of beating, nope. Speaking of not abusing children. Jesus Christ.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And we're back. So, as I've established, we're not talking about a society... This is a... Khmer society is in a lot of ways, and there's other aspects of it, but there's a lot of brutality here, right? And this is not unique among the Khmer, but this is a black and white society, and it's going to be meaningful in terms of how the Khmer Rouge act in power.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That punishments like this are very normal when they're kids, right? There is already a high level... It's just like... The ultraviolence of the Nazis is not detached from the fact that the initial group of Nazis all spent four years in the trenches. You know, like you can't separate those things and you can't separate what the Khmer Rouge does from the fact that this kind of stuff is normal.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

when they're kids, right? And the legends that we're told often in Khmer society, because this is a group of people who have been constantly conquered and beaten and massacred by their neighbors, and of course done a little bit, done some of that themselves, to be fair, It does not. The stories, the fairy tales, why don't they grow up on don't depict a just world. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They are instead of like, you know, happy endings and the good guy winning. There's a lot more stories of murderers going free and honorable men being hideously executed by the king. Right. That's a lot of very common kind of thing. This is the lore of a culture formed through centuries of domination, defeat, and murder, right? That's the result, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's a lot of trauma in the collective history of the Khmer, and it comes through in their legends. Salah Tsar's cousin, Meek, joined the Royal Ballet Corps in the 1920s. Now, that sounds nice, right? Ah, ballet. Good way to express yourself. great, we love the arts. This is not that kind of ballet troupe. The ballet troupe is primarily a feeder organization for the king's harem, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

media oh my goodness gracious Jiminy Christmas welcome back to behind the bastards a podcast where Robert Evans is using the phrase Jiminy Christmas for some goddamn reason we're allowed to curse on this I don't get it I don't get why I did that your Boston accent to you when you did that I don't know what does the Sophie Robert Boston accent sound like Sophie

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That is the reason why you collect all these ballet artists, right? Because it makes it easier for the king to pick out who he wants to make a courtesan, right? Yeah. David Chandler in the book Brother Number One, which is a biography of Pol Pot, writes, quote, each dance involved thousands of movements, each keyed to moments in a particular story and to the mythological character being portrayed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

None of the gestures was improvised. Although some dancers might be more beautiful or more graceful than others, their movements depended on memory, tradition, and practice. In other words, on what they had been taught rather than on what the individual wanted to express. The dancers were vehicles for tradition rather than its interpreters.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So while this is an art form, it is not one in which self-expression is prized. It is how can you exactly recreate this, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And again, this whole ballet corps, its primary audience is the royal family. And the royal family within Khmer society is it's so high above everything else. Right. The Khmer word that like people who are high level advisors and counselors for the king would use for themselves literally translated to something like we who keep the king shit in our heads. Like our brains are his shit, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Well, you know, we're talking about a guy who you could call the Ben Affleck of Cambodian revolutionaries because this week we're finally doing Pol Pot. That's right, everybody. Oh yeah, Andrew, we brought

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Right, right, right. Yeah. And as I said, the ballet court existed in large part to provide raw material for the royal harem. But it was traditional for kings and princes to have eyes bigger than their heads in this regard. And especially once kings got old, they would pick a lot of concubines that they wouldn't really get around to having sex with because they're like old and sick.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And these women are untouchable to any other men. but often also untouched themselves. And they're kept prisoner in a network of huts in the palace and are forbidden from contact with non-royal boys over a certain age, right? So most of their time was spent arguing and gossiping among each other, raising the few kids that they have. There's a lot of gambling.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And the few outsiders who are allowed to visit, obviously, they socialize with as much as possible because they live in such a closed little society. And soon enough, Salazar would be one of those visitors. His older brother, Thay, was the first to be sent to the capital to attend one of the few Western-style schools in the country. And these are schools the French have started.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And they're often – sometimes they're run by Khmer, educated Khmer, but they're like patterned off of French schools, right? And Salazar followed into the capital in 1934 at age nine. And the plan was he's going to start attending one of these proper Western schools. But – as is not uncommon for a lot of Khmer, his parents don't want him to go fully Western, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They still do want him to be Khmer. So he spends a year in a Buddhist monastery just south of the palace before he goes to school, right? This is a really common experience. And in fact, the princes all do this too, right? Like the guy who's going to become the king, Nordaram Sahanak, spends like a year or an amount of time in this monastery because it's a thing that you do

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

in part to like show I'm authentically of this culture. And this is also going to be the only education that Pol Pot ever gets in his native language. This is the only, the rest of his schooling, he'll be taught in French. So this is the only time he's being taught like in Khmer, right? Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

We're getting in pole position here, baby. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Well, when we're going for the big guns, Andrew T., you can't do better. Thank you. And this is also, unfortunately, like, we did King Nordam Sahanak, who was the king of Cambodia, and also a massive piece of shit. Had a lot to do with how the Khmer Rouge got in power and why they killed so many fucking people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, about 100 kids a year had this experience, and the accounts that we get make it sound pretty miserable to me, like the worst summer camp you can imagine. There is no room in this for personal creativity or expression. Every single person has a strictly delineated role, and stepping out of it was met with traditionally brutal punishments. One of Saar's contemporaries later explained...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You were given a thrashing if you didn't do as they said. If you didn't walk correctly, you were beaten. You had to walk quietly and slowly without making any sound with your feet, and you weren't allowed to swing your arms. You had to move serenely. You had to learn by heart the rules of conduct and the Buddhist precepts so that you could recite them without hesitation.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

If you hesitated, you were beaten. And I think I encountered a whole lot, especially as like an angry young atheist, this idea. You hear this, I think, more common among liberals that like, you know, these Christians and Muslims and like all the violence that comes out of these Western like Judeo-Christian religions. Why can't we all be like the Buddhists? They never have terrorist groups.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Tons of Buddhist terrorist groups.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Plenty of Buddhist genocides. Every religion has it. And also non-religions have it. People love committing genocide. It's not. No, no culture has a fucking lock on that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It's not the only tool. Get that out of you. Again, if you blame genocide fundamentally on the fact that people can be pieces of shit, that's that's what's to blame.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You know, it's in here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

If you want to understand how a person can be moved to genocide, drive in traffic for 22 minutes. That's the most I'm ever like, yeah, we just got to start killing people. If no one was here, I'd be home. No, no, no. I'm three more, still three minutes away from the fucking burger rest. God damn it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So the religious texts that they were made to memorize were rooted in a rigid respect for hierarchy. In Theravada Buddhism, children were treated almost as robots, right? They are the product of cause and effect that accumulate rather than people in their own right. And so what matters is modifying what goes into them, right? In order to produce the desired outcome. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So again... This is a lot of morality play. There's a lot of racism in this upbringing and it's racism against these ethnic minorities in the country who have also periodically controlled the country. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, of course. Like, yeah, I would be pissed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But as a spoiler in part two, this is going to lead to a bunch of genocides.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, by the time Sar finished his year at the monastery, I've heard nine months. I've heard a year. I don't know that they were keeping that good a track. He will often lie about having spent longer time there because he's kind of proud of this period in his life. By the time Salazar finished his time in the monastery, his cousin had become the highest ranking woman at the palace.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

She was like in charge of the harem, basically. And this was in part because she had born the prince regent, and that's the prince who's going to become the king when the king dies, a son right before he was made the new king. So obviously that elevates her in his eyes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

His older brother, Lothswong, had started working as a clerk in the palace in the late 1920s, and it was decided that he would take in his younger brother, Saar, and raise him with his wife so that Salah Saar could live in the capital and attend a modern French-style school. David Chandler writes that Lothswong considered his younger brother, quote, an even-tempered, polite, unremarkable child.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

As a primary student, Sammy told the Australian journalist James Gerand, Sar had no difficulties with the other students, no fights or quarrels. In examining his early years, I found no traumatic events and heard no anecdotes that foreshadow his years in power. People who met him as an adult found his self-effacing personality perhaps a carryover from the image he projected as a child.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And he's also a lot less known. Like, I think... Generally, people who have any kind of reasonable education are aware of Pol Pot, whereas like King Sahara, not nearly as well known. So I thought it was important to start with him years ago. I think Pol Pot is really relevant now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In Lothswong's words, the contemptible Pol Pot was a lovely child. And this is the weirdest thing about him. Almost every source agrees he was an incredibly nice, polite, pleasant guy to be around, which you don't. Most dictators, you really do get like, oh, yeah, there's hints of the megalomania.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Maybe they can be nice to some people, but there's other people who are like, oh, yeah, I got a sign of the crazy. Pol Pot, everyone's just like, yeah, he was pretty cool. He seemed nice. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Even after like when Nate Thayer, who's like the last journalist to talk to him when he's like in hiding 18 or so years after leaving power is like, yeah, he was like a really very polite man.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

No, and he's absolutely a monster, absolutely should be in The Hague. I was in a room with him once, and I get why people were loyal to him. He's very charming in person. Even if you know what he's done, it's just a skill. Yeah, a fucking Obama, right, exactly. People who have done horrible things are often deeply likable, which is how they get in position to do horrible things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And Saar appears to be that kind of guy. Right. So, yeah, that said, he's also described as a pretty boring dude. Right. He is not political at all. And he's not political until very late in this story. His schooling at the monastery would mark the only time he was educated in his native language.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Once he starts at the French style École Michée, Saar was taught in French by Catholic fathers who were either French or Vietnamese. So these are Catholic priests who are French and Vietnamese. He remains a Buddhist, but he's being taught every day in Catholicism, right? And if this produced any sense of whiplash in the young boy, we don't have any evidence of it, but it must have been weird.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I have to imagine. Um, when he wasn't in class, Tsar had the rare freedom to visit his sister in the ballet harem section of the palace. And again, not a lot of people are allowed here. This gave him semi, number one, he would run into the queen mother pretty regularly. And like, you have to bow when you see her and stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I think actually right now might be the most relevant he has been since the horrible crimes against humanity he was committing. Because, at least from a perspective of a podcast that is primarily speaking to listeners in the United States, and it is because the way in which he and his comrades orchestrated the deaths of roughly between a quarter and a third of their country. Something like that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And interestingly enough, even afterwards as a hardcore communist revolutionary, he remembered her with like a sense of awe and reverence. Now, this also put him in a very vulnerable position, the fact that he's one of the few young men, boys, allowed in this harem.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

As I stated earlier, this group of women who were like officially the king's consorts and potential consorts were bored all the time, and they were forbidden to be touched by anyone else, right? And as a result, when a kid like Sar comes in, this is the closest they can get to to going after a man, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And this leads to some profoundly abusive experiences for young Salah Sarr, as Philip Short writes. At 15, Sarr was still regarded as a child, young enough to be allowed into the women's quarters.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Decades later, two of the palace women, living out their old age on a French government stipends in Paris, remembered little Sarr, who used to come to visit them wearing his school uniform, a loose white shirt with baggy trousers and wooden shoes. The young women would gather round, teasing him, they remembered.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Then they would loosen his waistband and fondle his genitals, masturbating him to a climax. He was never allowed to have intercourse with them, but in the frustrated hothouse world of the royal pleasure house, it apparently afforded the women a vicarious satisfaction. Jesus Christ. Yeah. And this does not come out until fairly late.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like the first, the Chandler biography and the earliest biographies you're going to read about Pol Pot. Don't talk about this, Nate Thayer. I don't know if I think it may have been known when Thayer talked to him, but Thayer is in like a Khmer Rouge stronghold. So maybe you're just not going to bring up like, hey, let's talk about you getting molested. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I'm not going to blame Nate for that. Right. He was in a very dangerous position, you know, and exercised a lot of courage within that position. But we just don't. He never talked about this. So we can only kind of speculate like, oh, wow. I mean, this has to have had some impact. Right. Right. Right. Right. This didn't help. But, you know, anything beyond that is going to be pure speculation.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Right. Because they just didn't. This is the only these are the only people who talked about it. Right. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Right, right, right. And while it is certainly not wrong to be like, well, this is pretty poisonous. I bet it had an impact on the kind of guy he was as an adult. I want people to also keep in mind this passage from Chandler's book.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Quote, Cambodians attached to the palace in the 1930s and 40s, like Salasar and his relations, were insulated from the Chinese and Sino-Commercial sector of Phnom Penh. From the worldwide economic depression and from the need to grow their own food, Salasar inhabited this elaborate, safe, entirely Cambodian world for many years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So whatever impact this has, he is also one of the only Khmer people in the society who grows up feeling safe and secure. He's never worried about food. And these are the starving times. This is a horrible depression for the country. Most people are short on food. That's not a thing for him. He lives in abundance as a kid.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Yeah. For her part, his sister recalled his visits fondly, and she primarily remembered her brother as a funny kid. Quote, whenever he had something serious to say, he would make a joke of it. This was another common recollection shared by his classmates in primary school. Salah Tsar was funny.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He was easy to be around, and he was most particularly gentle, a child who one friend described as not being willing to hurt a chicken, which I guess is like you wouldn't hurt a fly in Cambodia. I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And to be fair, as an adult, maybe he wouldn't hurt a chicken, but he was willing to hurt a lot of people. Yeah, exactly. He was not a good student again. Throughout his educational career, he showed a capability to learn and study, but no inclination to do it. He did not graduate primary school until age 18. Two years after that would have been customary.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, I should note that this is the general stance taken by Chandler and other biographers, including Short, that like he's not great in school. He's kind of lazy. Pol Pot rebutted these claims in the last interview he ever gave, saying that Chandler was not entirely accurate. Quote, I was not a bad student. I was average. I studied just enough to keep my scholarship.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

We're talking a death toll of about somewhere in between like one and a half to three million. I think probably two million is generally kind of like the hedging your guess estimate out of a pre-war population of maybe six million Cambodians, right? And the reason I'm saying that this is extra relevant right now is that

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The rest of the time, I just read books. And you know what? Same, bestie. For most of, I shouldn't call Pol Pot bestie. No.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. You would have loved the Hunger Games, Pol Pot. For most of the big dub-dub dose – and again, we're talking about like his education. His like – the school years that he's going to remember the most are during World War II, right? Like he is kind of entering adolescence in like the 40s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And for most of that war, life for Cambodians like Saar in the rarefied era of the capital went by relatively unchanged. The Vichy government takes over in France, right? So – For Cambodians, it's still French people running Canada, but it's a slightly different group of French people, right, who are basically fascist collaborators.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But you're not going to notice much different as a Cambodian, right? It's not like they're wildly different to you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, the main difference would be that Saar would start learning in school songs about the glory of Marshall Patain and the like, but I don't know that much of this stuck. Thailand invades and conquers several border provinces during this time, which is a deep shame to the king who is dying and a deep shame to Cambodia.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But Saar is not a political kid, and we have no evidence that this particularly impacted him. Short does theorize, Philip Short does theorize that some of the fascist propaganda brought into the schools during this period did impact Saar, particularly the fact that the propaganda of the Vichy era romanticizes peasants like poor farmers as the true embodiment of the nation.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that's really going to be a big sticking point for him as an adult. And so maybe there's a line there, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The propaganda of the Patanist era also depicts the city as an inherently decadent and unnatural thing, like a break from the righteous path of subsistence farming under a dictator. And that probably leaves a mark, right? Now, in the summer of 1942, the capital saw its first major protests against French control. A group of Cambodian monks began preaching anti-French sermons.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This was an escalation of what was at this point a slowly developing sense of Cambodian nationalism that had been supercharged by the fact that France had collapsed under the Nazi boot heel. Two of these monks are arrested by Vichy French police, who do so in a way that defaces a religious shrine, and this sparks more extensive protests, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And these protests terminate in a march on the French administrator's office. Now, the main leader of the nationalist movement in the country at this time is a guy named Son Noctin. He had some kind of lefty inclinations. He was not anti-socialist, but he's not a communist. He's not really a socialist. He is a big popular front, big tent.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Let's free Cambodia and then we can figure out like politically what we want to do, right? That's his kind of deal, right? And so he's broadly popular with kind of everyone who wants an independent Cambodia. He's a very heroic figure during this time. And he starts organizing demonstrations against the French. They do what regimes do and they crack down. They imprison all his friends.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And he's forced to go on the run where he eventually asks the emperor of Japan for asylum and gets it. Now, Saar would have been aware of all of this. He probably would have admired Than, but there's not much evidence that this takes up a lot of bandwidth in his brain. Like most of his classmates who go on to become communists, he was focused at the time on his own educational career.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

What essentially happened in Cambodia is you had this cadre of guys who started as young men hanging out in reading groups, talking about politics and making plans for how they would like to rebuild their country and reorganize their country, starting from this position they called year zero, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

As a student, Saar loved French poetry and sports. He loved all kinds of sports. He was an avid soccer player who was known for kicking the ball behind his head with stunning accuracy. He also played, this shocked me, he's on the school basketball team? And Sophie, I looked it up. And since Pol Pot died in 1998, sadly, there is no way he ever saw LeBron play, which is a real tragedy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

LeBron goes straight into the NBA in 2003, I think. One of the great tragedies of history.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He must have known about Michael Jordan.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I don't know. I looked, Sophie. I looked. I don't know. These are the great mysteries of history.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I did it for you. I did it for you. Yeah. What if Pol Pot had gotten to play a pickup game with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? You know, that's the I'm working on a novel right now. Not that tall. Look, I'm going to be honest. Khmer basketball could not have been the most like these are not tall people. There's not a lot of protein.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, no. LeBron alone probably could have taken on the whole team.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Like, oh, God. So while several of his friends went off to a prestigious secondary school, Salah Sarr barely eked by. He does horrible on his exams. And so he's not able to go to, like, the humanities school, which is really progressive. So he goes to, like, a much worse boarding school, which is still... vastly better than 99% of the population.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Again, we're talking a chunk of 1% who gets any kind of education like this, right? So the fact that he's like at the bottom of the educated class still means that he is almost unfathomably privileged by the standards of average mayor. So he starts this school in 1943.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In 1945, Japan seized Cambodia from Vichy France for a variety of complex reasons that all boil down to they were losing the war and they were trying every Hail Mary they could. They're like, look, these French guys, they don't have a good hold on things. What if we just arrest them all and make Cambodia Japan for a little while? Will that help us beat the Americans? No. No.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Turns out Cambodia, not really that useful in fighting the United States in this period. It will be later.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The Vietnamese are going to make some real hay out of having a Cambodia in their back pocket.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like we're going to totally, totally strip down everything that had existed before and start new based on these ideas we had in our like weird little friend groups, right? Yeah. Well, that's essentially what's happening with guys like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and their cadre of fanatic young doge kids, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It's like any risk game. Right. Yeah. So they arrest all of the French people basically in France. And Japan is in trouble in touch for a while. Japan is pretty brutal in a lot of areas they govern. They really aren't in Cambodia to the Khmer because like, why would they be right? Like, right. And they don't have the time. You know, it's 1945. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That's your Boston accent?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But the main impact this has on people like Salazar and his peers is that they see all of these French administrators, all of these French teachers and priests get arrested and locked up. And these people had been untouchable previously. They were very similar to the king in that like you just can't even comprehend the idea of laying a hand on them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And they see these people forced from power and locked up by people who aren't white. And that has a huge impact, right? And the thing it teaches them is that like the power of the French is not inevitable or immovable. It can be pushed aside. And if the Japanese could do it, maybe we could.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

One of Tsar's friends later recalled, and this is his words, we saw that a yellow race, the Japanese, had gotten the better of the white colonialists, the French. That awakened something in us. It made us start thinking. As far as propaganda goes, we're going to talk about all the reading that these kids do, reading Mao, reading Stalin. That all has an impact.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I don't know if anything has a bigger propaganda impact than seeing these Japanese soldiers locking up French imperialists.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There we go, right? Obviously, the Empire of Japan is no less imperialist than the French Empire, right? But that's immaterial in discussing how it influenced people like Salazar and the future Khmers Rouge.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, for the immediate moment, though, the biggest change brought on by Japan's brief conquest is that everybody kind of got a case of senioritis because all their teachers get arrested, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

When you read about them talking about this period, it reminds me most of that week after you take your AP exam while they're still at school, but no one's doing anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

doing anything in class that's kind of what these kids all go through like their French teachers get replaced by some Vietnamese teachers but the substitutes don't really know how to handle shit as well so like they're kind of fucking off for a little while Sun Nok Tan returns to agitate for independence and even manages to briefly run Cambodia as an independent country after Japan you know collapses right and so he's running Cambodia is independent under this broadly popular nationalist

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

For about two months, which is just enough that everyone really likes this guy and feels really good about it, but not so long that, like, maybe some of the problems that he might have – Right. Yeah. There's nothing – not that he – I'm not saying – he actually seems like he was pretty competent, but, like, it's going to stick in people's minds as a golden period because of how short it is.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Who are disassembling the administrative state for fun and trying to rebuild it based on a bunch of shit that they discussed on 4chan and 8chan over the years, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, exactly. So this lasts about two months, and then the French show back up with their tanks and are like, actually, we still feel like Cambodia is natural French territory.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So they arrest Than. They call him a traitor, and to what? Again, you guys weren't even there anymore. But by this point, he was universally beloved, particularly by young, educated Khmer like Silasar and his friends. Now, Sar, again, has no real political beliefs at this point beyond a growing endorsement of populist nationalism. He continues to be a mid-student.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He fails to get into an educational program that would have gotten him a prestigious degree and instead settles to go to a technical school. And he picks the easiest degree plan at the technical school, carpentry, because the Khmer professor was known for giving everyone good grades no matter how well they did. So he's like a carpenter for a little while in school.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And he's doing this because there's like a study abroad program that gets given to the best students. And there's a number of slots and like, He figured basically the easiest thing for me to be at the best at is carpentry. Cause it's like the, the, the blow off class. And that'll be my best shot at getting into this program. You know? Oh yeah. Grab a wild card slot any way you can. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Whatever. Very, very, that's a very modern attitude towards it. Honestly, I have a lot of friends in school who made similar calls. Yeah. 1947 is the first year we have evidence for Saar getting directly involved in politics.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That year, the newly found Democratic Party, which advocated for replacing French and absolute monarchical rule with a democracy, or at least like a hybrid democracy, where there's a king, but he's limited constitutionally, and we have like this parliament-type deal, they win 54 seats in the national elections.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yes. And the Khmer Rouge guys both read books. And also, one thing you can't take away from Pol Pot and the other Khmer Rouge guys, they were hard as fuck by the time they got in charge. They'd spent 20 years fighting in the jungle. Right. We have that going for us.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And when I say Democratic Party, it's literally like the party that thinks we should have a democracy, right? Yeah, right. And there's some this is and this is kind of this is a melting pot. A lot of future communists and socialists are in the Democratic Party, as well as a lot of guys who are like going to wind up more on the like, well, I want to be aligned with the Americans. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This is just kind of where a lot of them are at this stage. In 1949, Salazar gets picked for that study abroad program, and he becomes one of the first hundred Khmer male and female students to win a scholarship to go study in Paris. They leave on a steamship.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They actually go through Saigon, and they arrive in Paris on the same day Mao Zedong announces the founding of the People's Republic of China. So a lot is happening. And this is going to increasingly make discussions of like communism a lot more relevant to these kids who it really hadn't been all that much up to this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, nearly all of the students that he goes to Paris with wind up being prominent political figures. A lot of them are leaders within the Khmer Rouge. A lot of them get killed by the Khmer Rouge because they're leaders of the Khmer Rouge, and the Khmer Rouge loves murdering the Khmer Rouge, right? Right. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This is primarily because almost no one else in the country had access to educational opportunities or the free time necessary to learn about radical politics. So obviously the people who are dominant in the radical political sect are the only ones with the time to read, right? It's not that shocking. Speaking of things that aren't shocking, these products.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But I do think there's a lot relevant here in the story of how a group of people, and particularly the dude at the head, come to believe a set of things about... how the world should be remade and then pursue those goals no matter the cost. And that's kind of the story we're going to be telling this week. So I hope you're excited. I hope you all have fun with this one. I can't fucking wait.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

We're back. And actually, it turns out several of our sponsors might electrocute you. But, you know, some people called getting electrocuted. I call it getting free electricity, you know, and that shit's expensive these days. If you looked at your power bill, can you afford to turn down getting electrocuted? You know? Maybe. Probably yes. Robert Capacitor Evans speaking.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I know I shouldn't use electrocuted because that only means you've been killed. Shocked, I guess. I had an electrician friend explain that to me once. Anyway, whatever. Fucking power jackets. Power cops. Yeah. So where are we here? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So Saar gets into this program to study abroad, despite his unimpressive grades, not just because there's not a lot of kids in this program, but because even among the ones who do better than him, most of them don't want to like leave Cambodia for years, right? Because they got like families and shit, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

His fellow students are guys like Yang Seri, who later becomes the co-founder of the Khmer Rouge. Chandler summarizes his early life this way. Seri was born and raised among the Cambodian minority of Cochin, China. His father, Kim Ream, was a prosperous landowner. When Ream died, Seri, still a young boy, was sent to live with relatives in the Cambodian province of Prevang.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He was given the name Yang Seri, which sounded more Khmer than his real name, Kim Trang. And that's not an uncommon story is like, especially among these guys, Pol Pot's going to do the same thing where it's like, eh, my original name, not quite as good as I want it to be. Let me, let me come air this fucker up a little bit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I like it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Look, I think one thing we've all learned from the last decade of American politics is that the Rosetta stone for understanding all of human behavior, culture, and history is professional wrestling. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you get pro wrestling, you understand the whole swap of human achievement.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

No, no, no. Not nearly camp enough. So, as you can see... The reason I bring up Sari's background is it's not all that different from Salah Tsar. Right. And most of these Paris kids are going to become like the core of this like educated revolutionary class have similar stories. Right. They are intellectuals.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You got to put more of like a spit, like some grime on it. It's got to sound like you're screeching it over a bunch of wet rocks.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They're going to target and annihilate the intellectual class in Cambodia once they get in power. But they're intellectuals. Right. That's the class they come from. It's not that different from how Stephen Miller's background goes, actually. Right. So Salazar starts off his time in Paris living in a dormitory complex. He would later claim that in the first year, he was a fairly good student.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And this is true enough, but his studies quickly slipped. Part of this is because his middling grades meant that he had to go to a technical school rather than get a degree in the humanities, which was a lot sexier for these people who are going to wind up being future revolutionaries. And the degree plan he's working on for his years in Paris is as a radio technician.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Chandler suggests that this is because he kind of befriends the king's nephew, Prince Samangpon, who lives in Paris at the time. And Prince Samangpon is also studying to be a radio technician. We know the prince helps him find an apartment with a couple of friends, which is the place he moves out of that dormitory to live in. Pol Pot will deny this for the rest of his life.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He would lie a lot about his connections to the royal family, which are deep, as we've established. He gets a lot out of his family's connections to the royal family. But in the future, he's going to be like, no, when I was in Paris, I lived with a cousin. It's like, no, you didn't. You were friends with the prince. Come on.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That's right. Oh, Sophie, I gotta say, I'd give him a shot. Look, nothing against you. I just want to see how Pol Pot produces a podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

How fucking dare you? Don't tell me you don't want to see it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Sophie, if Pol Pot gets in the operation, we're all dying.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I didn't say I'd like it. I said it would be good content.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Look, he could have been a podcaster, you know? Could have been a podcaster. He was known as having a nice voice, you know? He could have had my job, maybe. Behind the me's. And guess what?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Me and my boys.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I might prefer to listen to the poll podcast, honestly. That sounds fascinating. So Saar joins the Khmer Student Union, which at that time was in the process of morphing into a semi-covert communist youth league. He attended his first protest the next year for a radical member of the Democratic Party who was assassinated by right-wingers using a hand grenade.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Still, at this point in his political involvement, it seems to have been a byproduct of his social life, right? He's at this protest because, like, his friends are doing stuff like this, and this is where you, like, go to hang out with people, right? And he is kind of a hedonist at this phase of his life.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Philip Short writes, Sarr's friends regarded him as a bon vivant whose purpose in life was to have a good time. So that's, uh, I think where we're going to end for part one, we're at about an hour. Uh, we've got a lot more pole pot here, so we'll see how long it takes to get through all of this. I really did try to cut this fucker down.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Um, cause I wanted to deliver this all in one week, but there's this, this guy's life. Fascinating. Yeah. But there we are. Part one. How are you feeling about pole pot so far, Andrew T?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This is like that first Star Wars prequel where it's like, hey, he's kind of an annoying kid, but you know, whatever. How could things go badly? Yeah. He likes to party, but he's a kid. Come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a weird crush on a lady who's visibly like 15 years older than him. That's a little off, but whatever. Like...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it is weird that they then paired Hayden Christensen with Natalie Portman, two people who are clearly the same age, after establishing that, like, she was a mature adult ruling a country when he was a small boy. It's just...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Shooting your shot. The Star Wars version of Behind the Bastards probably does talk a lot about it. And then Darth Vader has this weird relationship with this woman who's like 20 years older than him. So who knows how this abuse affected the things that he did when he was in Bauer, right? He never wrote about this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

What we have is this interview with Watto, and that guy's not really super reliable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Watto had his own agenda. Now, I'm pretty sure he murdered Watto, if I'm remembering my expanded universe shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Primary universe? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Or is that Legends? I don't know. Fucking Disney. God damn it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. I like it. Anyway, everybody, please join me for my Behind the Bastards Star Wars focused podcast, which is actually entirely about Kathleen Kennedy. I don't have any issue with Kathleen Kennedy. It's all about George Lucas.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, like George Lucas, I hope you all have a good day eating in a food court and being photographed like a Yeti. Andrew T, you got any pluggables to plug?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Keep it real. All right, everybody. You too. Keep it real until next day or whatever. Go to hell. I love you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Just like the Pilgrims did, yes, when they landed in Boston.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So let's fucking go and talk about the man who, well, one of the men who really fucked up Cambodia. I got to say, there's strong competition for being the dude who was worst to Cambodia in the 20th century. You got Kissinger. You got Nixon. You got King Sahanak. You got Lon Nol, who we'll talk about later. But Pol Pot probably still does win the crown, which is hard. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Being the worst guy for Cambodia in the 20th century, crowded ass field.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So no, no, he didn't have that. So the first thing you need to know about Pol Pot is that Pol Pot's not his name, right? Like this is a nom de revolution, you know? You get this with all of these guys. Joseph Stalin wasn't born Joseph Stalin. He literally just picked the name Joe Steele because it sounded cool, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. But we were there. Neither do I. Neither do I. Neither do I. Andrew T!

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And a lot of these guys do that because for one thing, it's just smart if you're planning to overthrow your government to work under a fake name. And for another thing, usually your fake name sounds cooler than your real name. And one of the first thing that makes Pol Pot unique is that Pol Pot is not a cool name and it was never meant to be. It doesn't sound it's not cooler in Cambodia.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It basically means like Joe Khmer, like the Khmer or the ethnic people that are the majority of Cambodia. Like he's basically Pol Pot is the Khmer equivalent of calling yourself like Joe America almost. Right. Like I'm the average man. Right. Right. That's basically what he was saying.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, like John Doe. His real name sounds like a fucking Marvel villain. He was born Saloth Saar, which is like such a cool name. That is the name of a guy who fist fights Batman. I'm sorry. Yeah, he wins for two acts. Yeah, he breaks Batman's spine at one point, right? Salat Sar, it goes by Pol Pot. No, this name goes too hard. Nobody will believe that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Salat Sar was born in a village called Prekshov, a couple of miles west of the capital of his province and about 90 miles north of Phnom Penh, which is the capital of Cambodia. For decades, there was considerable debate as to the precise year of his birth, and we don't have perfect knowledge of when he was born.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There are a couple of reasons for this, just beyond the general fact that record-keeping in impoverished rural Cambodia wasn't great in the 20s. People were not, like, no one was digitizing anything, right? And Cambodia's educational system hinged a lot on your birth date because the central administration was lacking a culture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Sorry, the central administration, basically, if you wanted your kid to kind of get into the best kind of school that they could get into, if you came from a prosperous family, and Salaf does, it was common to like alter your kid's birthday. to maximize which school they would get into.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that was as easy as literally just changing markings on a piece of paper because there wasn't anything like centrally kept, right? So there was a strong culture of changing your kid's birthday at least by a few, but sometimes by a couple of years in order to like get them where you wanted them to go. Biographer Philip Short says that Salazar's real birthday was probably March of 1925.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Others will say May of 1927. Pol Pot himself told journalist Nate Thayer that he'd been born in January of 1925. But he just recalled that because he saw like basically a post-it note. It wasn't a literal post-it, but like a note that was like posted on top of like a cabinet in their kitchen. And this would be him remembering it as like a five-year-old. So we don't know when he was born.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I knew someone and interviewed someone once who had grown up as a hunter-gatherer in the highlands of Vietnam. They were a Montagnard. And like didn't they were like 16 or 17 the first time they heard music that wasn't being played in front of them. They didn't know what electric lights were for a while. And then, yeah, we're like, yeah, I have no idea what it was born.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like, I'm probably 26, I think was what they told me at the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, I do not know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

We had a lot of other priorities than remembering the exact birthday.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Salah Sarr's family was upper middle class, right? He came from about as much privilege as a non-noble member of Cambodia, of Khmer society could in this period of time. His father, Pinsalof, owned a lot of land. Now, how much a lot? I think something like two to three hectares would be a normal amount for a peasant farmer to own.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Biographer David Chandler says that Penn owned about nine hectares, but Philip Short, whose book is more recent and I think works off of better information, says that it was more like 50 hectares, so about 10 times the average. And their house was probably the largest of the 20 or so houses in the village.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

See, I think he is... I think he's one of our most authentic male celebrities that we've ever had. That doesn't mean, like, I'm not saying he's a good person. He's obviously not. But you can tell in his face that he knows that and hates himself, which is what I love about Ben Affleck.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So they're not rich as like they're not one of the people who run the country, but they're they're the they're the wealthiest guy in town. Right. That's that's his dad. You know, Penn Saloth was prosperous enough to hire his neighbors to help out during harvest time. So like that's the kind of money he had. We're like. I am paying my neighbors to do my harvest for me, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

As opposed to like, they just can't do that, right? He also owned multiple oxen, which was like, that's like having like a sports car or something in a day, right? If you've got your own oxen and more than one, you're like, that's a sign of wealth. His wife, Salazar's mother, came from a prominent family and was well known as a humanitarian and a pious Buddhist. The two had nine children.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I think five of them survived into like the 90s. So like pretty good record for, you know, as a mom and dad. Saloth was number eight, so he comes near the end. And he and his two siblings, like around his age, were very close.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Short writes, they played and swam in the river together and in the evenings by the light of a rush lamp listened to the old people of the village recounting stories and legends from the days before the French established the protectorate in the 1860s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And if you remember back to our Napoleon III episodes, like right while France was getting ready to like lose a bunch of territory and a major war to what became Germany, the Navy was largely kind of carrying out, to some extent, on its own recognizance, the conquest of a sizable chunk of Indochina, right? Of what came to be known as French Indochina, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And this is why France is running Vietnam. And it's also why France is running Cambodia, right? So they have this dominion in Cambodia. And for about a century, Cambodia is governed by the French.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In the capital, which is the primary place you would see the white French colonizers, they were a tiny minority whose control was so great that they were people who were young Cambodians in this period, like young Khmer, described white French residents of the capital as almost deities, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yes. Ew.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Like, this is the internet we all came of age in. Yeah, it's good to remember that as we talk about how bad it's gotten. Like, well and great back in 2004.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That's like a fun little joke. I'm generally against thought crimes. All of those men should have been arrested. So as a result of all this, the bodies and the weight loss or gain of the Olsen twins became regular fodder for tabloids. It should not be shocking that I think both of them developed eating disorders. Not really surprising.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So during their interview with Oprah, this comes up and the interview starts with some pretty anodyne stuff. Part one, you can still find unedited online and they're talking about like who's messier in terms of keeping their room clean. What's their allowance that their dad gives them, etc. ?

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Later on in the interview, though, Oprah starts to probe the two about tabloid rumors that they had and eating that one or both of them suffered from an eating disorder, saying, quote, I know a new rumor that's recently surfaced has really upset you, right? You know, the one about eating. The girls get visibly uncomfortable, and Ashley immediately tries to shut the topic down.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She replies, yeah, you know, people are going to write what they're going to write. We try not to read the good or the bad because it just comes with the territory. Either you're too fat, too skinny, and people are just going to write what they... And then Oprah interrupts her, asking, what size are you, by the way?

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, Oprah, you have dealt with some of the most unhinged fucking obsession with your body weight that like we've tried. We were, I think, quite sympathetic of in previous episodes. You should know that's fucked up. She is 17. God damn it. Like.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Unfortunately, I don't. Yeah, that's a subject for another day. I will say I got to I got to give a shout out because as we're talking right now, the U.S. Marines have entered the California-Mexico border. And there's footage of them with V-22 Ospreys. So we are just hours away from the first time a V-22 Osprey wipes out a squad of Marines on U.S. soil yet again.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And when we talk about modern social media being downstream from this, think of all of the different parents who we now know who got famous as mommy bloggers. I've got a YouTube channel featuring my kids and their development.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It comes out three, four, five, six years later, oh, that was an incredibly abusive situation where they were basically mining their children for money and deeply psychologically and often physically abusing them to make them more profitable.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So I want to finish the scene. Oh, sorry. So the girls respond after Oprah interrupts them to ask their size. Like, well, like, you know, we're celebrities. We get our clothing tailored. Like, I don't know what my size is. Right. I don't like go to a store and buy clothes. Yeah. Right. And Oprah responds. That's so interesting. I'm obsessed with size. And you're like, I really don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

There's a lot there. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Like you put a team of psychiatrists on that, that two sentences.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Right. And it seemed like on misery to man, it builds up like a coastal shelf.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, I would agree 100 percent, Bridget. Now, as we talked, I talked about a bit ago with you, Andrew, we're not watching this clip. I would have preferred to play it because it's been pretty well expunged from the Internet. Now, I'm not going to say I did not spend hours on this, but I spent a good like 20 minutes or so trying to find this clip.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And all that I was able to get are like viral clips on TikTok. That are heavily edited because a couple of years ago, this particular chunk of the interview went kind of viral on TikTok because people have been one of the things that's been happening for the last two years or so on social media, TikTok primarily, but not exclusively is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

People have been like kind of relitigating some of Oprah's worst moments, and she has been receiving some criticism. So this went viral. People are like, rightfully, this is pretty fucked up. As a consequence, though, damn near every pure clip. I have not been able to find a pure unedited clip of this moment. I'm able to find.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

TikTok videos where the audio is overlaid with some shitty AI voice or asshole narrating that like makes me want to nuke every data center on Earth, like the way these things are like edited and put together and like the whole screen is covered with text. And I just hate it. I hate the way this stuff looks. And I haven't found a clean clip of it. That's what I'm saying. And that's.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Often the case with some of Oprah's like worst moments. You know, a lot of this stuff has been purged. And because most of her stuff was on daytime TV in the 80s and 90s, a lot of it is effectively lost media for our purposes. Anyway, I just found that interesting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

If you're not aware, these are aircraft that exist almost entirely to kill United States Marines that the Marine Corps continues to use for reasons that make complete sense. If you know a lot about the U.S. Marine Corps. So I'm very happy to say that we're about to be suffering severe casualties in a war without anyone to fight but our own aircraft.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, that's, I think, actually a very good way of talking about it, Andrew. Also, shout out to the late Robin Williams. You do like moments like this do like reveal character on behalf of some people. And it's always nice to get like, OK, he was a really nice man.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I rewatched a goodwill hunting. I think I may have been for the first time I had like vague memories of it. And that like scene where he's hugging Matt Damon, I just had the thought like, God damn, there's not a problem in my life that it wouldn't be fixed with a good Robin Williams hug. Like that man looked like he gave great hugs anyway. Yeah. RIP. We should probably talk about Oprah more.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Around the same time Jet Magazine made Oprah a verb, the Wall Street Journal introduced the term Oprahfication in order to complain that political discourse in the country had become, and this is what you had mentioned, Bridget, public confession as a form of therapy, right? So great minds.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Well, actually, I think you're considerably a better mind than anyone at the Wall Street Journal, but you guys had the same basic take. And this is kind of noteworthy because therapy is at the core of Oprah's appeal. And the growth in our understanding of not just the value of therapy, which I think is generally good, but in the use of like therapy speak in everyday life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And to some extent, the I think massive overuse of therapy speak in everyday life. This is very much tied to Oprah. And the way in which therapy is tied to Oprah is not actual content.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

clinical therapy, which is, of course, potentially extremely valuable for people, but a simulacrum of therapy, one that apes the definitions and terms used by clinicians and often apes actual clinical expertise by bringing in oaths like Dr. Phil, who are in no way actually doing good therapy and, in fact, are doing things that the ethics of the discipline condemn pretty strongly, but are doing it in such a way that people believe this is what

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

This is medical work, right? This is somebody actually like functioning as a mental health clinician. And I think that does so in a way, again, a lot of the a lot of dialogue of discourse on like Twitter is downstream from this, this birth of.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Understand that there's a value in like talking about mental health in a clinical way, but also none of us are clinicians and none of us are doing it right. And so we're like medicalizing shit in ways that are in a lot of instances deeply toxic and damaging to people. A lot of that is tied directly to Oprah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yes, thank you. Thank you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yes, yes. You'll win. Yes, I'm being abused into doing the dishes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I always think back to – this happens every so often. There was one like six months ago. Tens of thousands of people liking and sharing it of someone being like, people with ADHD have no sense of object permanence. Yes, they do. Man, that's not – Five-year-olds have object permanence, bro. That is not ADHD. You are in an attempt to create empathy for people suffering from severe ADHD.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

They look awesome. They're so cool looking. And it's just they're just death traps. They're just horrible death traps. Like if you actually care, you would do more reducing American fatalities abroad, stopping the V-22 Osprey than wiping out ISIS.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

You are like dehumanizing them. This is actually quite bad. Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

We're back. Can we stop with some of this?

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Again, my life is filled with and I have like ADHD. The stuff people say about it online just feels like someone talking about aliens. I don't mean to like harp on it so much, but this is one I have like so much personal experience with that. Like I really I don't want to get like lost in a rabbit hole here, but there's a.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

very complicated issue in it's good for people to have an understanding of mental health and do have an understanding of like therapy and and there are there's value in that some of that those discussions becoming more a part of like common parlance and also it can be very very toxic because people use it and weaponize it to an extent and the the

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

A lot of the irresponsibility that we see now kind of reflected down in social media and the way people talk about this stuff really gets launched by Dr. Phil on the Oprah Winfrey show. Right. Where you are you are using actual clinical psychology as a costume, as opposed to as a way to actually help people like you are dressing that way so you can say whatever and do whatever.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

You know, and in this case, it was for entertainment purposes. Right. And a lot of this ties in directly to the self-help movement. And this is, I think, a toxic thing for therapy, right? Because therapy should not be a thing that you do instead of helping other people and trying to better the world. And that's kind of the message of a great deal of the way in which therapy...

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

therapy is discussed on the Oprah Winfrey show. And you even see stuff like Jordan Peterson saying like, you can't fix the world until you fixed yourself, which is simply untrue. And this ties into this, this kind of American civil religion of self-help.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

If you remember the Woody Guthrie episodes, we talked about how during the Great Depression, starving farmers and their kids were listening to prototypes of Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, right? Which is basically this shares DNA with prosperity gospel stuff, with The Secret and Marianne Williamson. The core of it is this idea that Like attracts like.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So if you're negative thinking, that's what's bringing bad things to you. And if you want to be wealthy, you have to think like a wealthy person, right? And, you know, some of the ways in which this gets passed down like prosperity gospel, if you want to be wealthy, you need to give money you don't have, go into debt to give money to God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

it's just it's like a drop ship but with it's like a helicopter with like twice as many points of failure yeah hell yeah it's like what if you know how helicopters are absolute death traps what if we made it twice as much of a death trap speaking of getting lots of people killed y'all ready to get back to Oprah wow what a transition

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And then that kind of thinking will attract wealth towards you, right? Alternatively, if you put down $5,000 for this seminar on how to like –

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

automatically generate books and put them on Amazon, you know, in order to make money that will attract wealth back to you have to make the universe needs to see you make a sacrifice in order to know that you are serious about this before you can start attracting the money. Right. All of this stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It doesn't start, obviously, again, as we talked about, this has been going on since like the early 1900s. It doesn't start with Oprah. But by bringing on Marianne Williamson and then by pushing later The Secret, she supercharges this shit. And she supercharges it at the same time as she is continually on the show pushing this – The pushing therapy and a specific attitude towards therapy. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Which the overall thing you're supposed to take away from this is you can fix every problem in your life by changing your attitude. Now, that is simply untrue. Right. There are social problems and like that. like issues that affect people's ability to be happy that are rooted in politics, that are rooted in history, that are rooted in things you have no control over.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And it is true, obviously, your own attitude, you know, can matter a lot and your resilience. But there's this big thesis of like, Every problem can be fixed by altering your attitude. You can even change the way the universe works by altering your attitude that gets wrapped up in the kind of pro therapy ethos being pushed with Oprah in a way that warps what therapy is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And yeah, it's just it's it's it's complicated, but I think very profoundly toxic. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. And I think fundamentally... Part of what's so poisonous here is that it's taking therapy and it's turning it into magic, right? That this is a thing you can magically fix and have a breakthrough in 25 minutes sitting on a couch in front of an audience with Dr. Phil. That's the way therapy works.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And also, that's the way fixing the world works is if you change your attitude, all of these good things will come to you. You don't have to worry about dealing with structural problems in legislation and the government and all all of this shit. Like it's just you.

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We're in reality therapy and making the world better work the same way, which is slowly doing laborious work consistently over long periods of time. Right. That's that's the problem, you know.

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And I think this is, as someone who was in psychedelic culture 15 years ago, this was one of the issues that we had with it, which is psychedelics, particularly LSD, mushrooms, MDMA, have massive potential as therapeutic aids, but they aren't magic. And there's a degree to which people treated them both as magic and also as inherently positive.

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At this point, I have gone through enough self-described radicalization journeys by Nazis who credited it to an LSD trip. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is a knife what cuts both ways, my friends. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Now, speaking of your children dying, they never will if you purchase the products and services that are advertised on this podcast. It's the only way to keep your family safe, probably.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

We're back. So in her book, The Age of Oprah, Janice Peck quotes a history of psychotherapy by Philip Cushman. He wrote in 1995, quote, Every era has a particular configuration of self, illness, healer, technology. They are a kind of cultural package. They are interrelated, intertwined, interpenetrating.

Behind the Bastards

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So when we study a particular illness, we are also studying the conditions that shape and define that illness and the sociopolitical impact of those who are responsible for healing it. Janice continues, issues from the increasing ubiquity of therapy as a language of self and interpersonal relationships, and even as a way of life.

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Winfrey's media enterprise draws heavily on a self-help model of therapy with its peculiarly American belief that the individual's power to initiate a renaissance of self, of nation, of other. This promise of individual efficacy and liberation is the ground upon which Winfrey stakes her claim to empower her followers.

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It is also the basis of observers' claims that she is an inspirational phenomenon, a public leader, and quote, almost a religion.

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This is not an attempt by Oprah to shift the culture. This is just sort of, I think, a mix of what she really believes. She really feels like personally she had so much stacked against her. It was her attitude that allowed her to be successful, right? Mm-hmm.

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Whereas the reality is, I mean, among other things, Oprah has said like she was an affirmative action hire that those programs and policies function the way they were supposed to, which was a person who maybe wouldn't have gotten that opportunity because of racism, got some opportunities that she proved to be excellently suited for.

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In addition to that, she had the fortune of like having a father who chose to be her father, did not actually have to take that role upon himself and provided her with a lot of resources she otherwise wouldn't have had. It's not just – it wasn't just her attitude that led to her success, right? And this is the case for everybody, right?

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She's still the least toxic billionaire. Absolutely. So there's an interesting bit about, because I think it is important the degree to which she was talked about as a religious figure is kind of significant. And to kind of make that case- There's a chunk in The Age of Oprah that talks about an expensive self-help speaking tour Winfrey launched in the early 2000s, the Personal Growth Summit.

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And through that, I found a review of the Personal Growth Summit in the LA Times, which is a real newspaper that was purportedly reputable, at least in that era. This is the reviewer. A prophet walks among us and her name is Oprah. You know her as a television talk show host, one of the most popular, successful and recognizable women of our time.

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But make no mistake, she is also a healer sent to Earth to spread the word. Perhaps it is only fitting that a 21st century wise man is a woman and that her chief medium is electronic. Buddha might have taken to the airwaves had they been available.

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Gifted with a profound moral insight and exceptional rapport with her followers, Oprah Winfrey has grown from a masterful communicator into an inspirational phenomenon.

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I can pull that up, absolutely. Yeah, let's check this out. Flocking to the Church of Oprah, June 25th, 2000. Times staff writer. They took a name off it. Oh, you sons of bitches.

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I can't have this attached to me. I've done that. Now, one thing that's really interesting to me about Oprah is that she demonstrates how quickly the worm can turn for a celebrity once they leave the public eye. Because 2011, I think, is when her show stops being on the air as a daily thing. And QAnon starts about a decade later, right? So she is...

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She stops being a daily figure for most Americans about a decade before QAnon. And yet in 2020, a sizable chunk of the QAnon movement starts spreading rumors that Oprah has been secretly arrested for sex trafficking. Now, this is obviously untrue, but there are some things that fuel the allegations.

Behind the Bastards

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One of them is Oprah's longstanding professional relationships with two men who definitely did sex trafficking, Harvey Weinstein and our old friend P. Diddy. Now, for Weinstein's case, there is a photo of Oprah kissing Weinstein on the cheek, which you can find without much effort.

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I have found zero solid information that implies anything beyond a professional relationship between Oprah, who stars in one movie produced by his company, and Weinstein. However, there have been allegations made by other celebrities.

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I should note that when interviewed about Weinstein by Gwyneth Paltrow, Oprah said, what I knew about Harvey was that Harvey was a bully and that if Harvey's on the phone, you go, God, you don't want to take the call because you're going to get bullied in some way. That is probably true in that a lot of people talk about, a lot of people who worked with Harvey talked about him that way.

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He's kind of the archetypal dick producer. That said, people have alleged that Oprah knew more and was aware of A lot of the illegal bad stuff Weinstein was doing. I think that's also very likely. A great deal of people in Hollywood knew something. And someone as powerful as Oprah was probably to some extent aware of Weinstein's problematic behavior.

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Now, that does not mean she was directly enabling or helping to hide it. It's just the kind of gross thing that a lot of people in the industry did. Right. I mean, Seth MacFarlane is like came out and made some joke about Weinstein during one award ceremony or the other.

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That was like a big deal because everyone was aware of the fact that Harvey was, you know, maybe not certainly not the extent of what he was doing, but everyone knew he's not a safe guy to leave a young woman alone with. Right. To the extent that like someone would make a joke about that. And I think it was the Oscars, the Emmys or whatever. Right.

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And people got it because he was that much of a famous creep. And in the case of Rose McGowan, who called Winfrey as fake as they come as a result of her condemning Weinstein, her issue with Oprah comes from the fact that Oprah had been set to produce a movie about famed sex abuser Russell Simmons and then resigned from producing that movie. Oprah claimed she had creative differences.

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I'm not interested in litigating that in part because that's all I can find on the matter. And that's not conclusive. There's a lot of reasons why you would drop out of producing a movie that doesn't really count as like you're trying to cover it up. I haven't found any evidence she tried to stop the thing from being made. Right.

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Rose is not the only celebrity who has alleged that Oprah knew more about Weinstein than she let on. Seal came out, the guy who wrote Kiss from a Rose, and has made allegations that basically you knew a lot more than you're saying. Again, this may be true. Seal has also been accused of and investigated for sexual battery.

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This does, though, there's also a murkier aspect of it where, again, when we say Oprah probably knew something about Weinstein, I'm not saying Oprah knew Weinstein had committed a litany of felonies. Oprah knew he's kind of like he's like he'll sexually harass you. He'll make gross comments. You know, he might like.

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You don't have evidence of anything. And like. You can there's legal consequences for just like accusing someone to powerful and wealthy without evidence of like being a sex offender, like and this is the kind of thing where it's like, OK, so we're attacking Oprah for stuff like her involvement in Weinstein. I don't know. how extensive it was.

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Everyone kind of involved in the mudslinging has ulterior motives, and it's weird. What I can prove is that Weinstein and Oprah worked together at some point, and that likewise, Oprah went to a number of Diddy's parties, and these are specifically the white parties, right? The ones that were not exclusively devoted to sex crimes. So I...

Behind the Bastards

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Part of like the issue is that these two are both very famous people and in the industry Oprah was in. And so obviously she had personal and professional connections to them. But again, when it comes to actual crimes, there is zero evidence of Oprah directly enabling or directly covering up either of those men's crimes. That evidence does not exist.

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And from what I've seen, it looks like she's probably guilty of the same thing most people at her level in Hollywood are, which is being like, that guy seems fucked up. I'm just not going to get too close.

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Weinstein wouldn't need her for that right there's no there's no line between the women that he abused and like Oprah unlike for example as we'll talk about Oprah told women John of God was a safe guy to fly to fucking Brazil and get treated by and a A number of women got raped because they took the advice of the Oprah Winfrey show endorsing this man.

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That is something that she should be held accountable for. I just don't have any evidence that she's done anything in the Weinstein case or in the P. Diddy case. Now, the most bullshit thing she gets accused of by the QAnon types is involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. If you Google Oprah Winfrey Epstein, you will also come across this randomly.

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You will find articles and viral tweets and TikToks, all of which have some variation of the sentence Oprah Winfrey mentioned five times in files related to the Epstein case. That sounds bad, right? Let's look into this. what that means.

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So one of the things that turned me on to this was a viral post on Facebook with the title, Justin, Oprah has been revealed as a client on the Epstein list, capitalizing the first letter of each of those words. What's your reaction? And that's complete bullshit. Oprah's name shows up five times in documents for the Epstein case.

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The first two times are because the files include screenshots of articles, one from Radar Online and one from the Daily Mail. Those articles in the bottom of them have a suggested other reading. You know how articles work. You finish an article and say, hey, you might be interested in this article on a different topic.

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Those articles that were suggested by the articles relevant to the Epstein trial mentioned Oprah. That's two of the five mentions, right? Is something completely unrelated to the case that just because somebody fucking screen grabbed the whole page, Oprah's name winds up on it.

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The other three times come from emails introduced as evidence where a journalist working with one of Epstein's accusers on a book tells a book agent, I think this book will sell well to Oprah's audience. Now, if you're keeping track, what does that mean? It means Oprah has nothing to fucking do with Jeffrey Epstein.

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You're going to get sued. You're going to get sued. You're going to get sued.

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You can see, and there's a picture of her kissing Weinstein on the neck.

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Because the people who hate Oprah and are making stuff up about her primarily hate her because she is a liberal figure and a celebrity. It's the same reason they're going after like Tom Hanks. Right. Because he was pro vaccine. The other thing is the stuff she's done that's bad is stuff they do and love and don't think is bad. Right. Yeah.

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You know, like that's that's that's what it's why when people talk about the problem of child sex abuse and child sex trafficking, they obsessed with this largely fanciful idea of like three and four year olds being trafficked around the world in large numbers and abducted from their fucking white families, which is not really the issue.

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No, this is I got to say people online were like, oh, only a matter of time before Oprah sues them. There's we've had. Not to mention anybody litigious subjects in the past. We are so far under Oprah's radar. Like, again, this is the only people who have ever been more famous than her are certain pharaohs and Greek gods. Like, she does not give a shit about this podcast, people.

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The issue is primarily adult men related to 16 and 17 and 15 year old girls molesting them, you know. And part of why they don't like to do that is that an awful lot of the guys who obsess with shoot your local pedophile think it would be fine if they married a 16 year old as long as, you know, they did it in a church and their parents were OK with it.

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Right, right. Where you can marry 14 year olds in a lot of U.S. states as long as you do it, you know, through God and their parents. Anyway, we don't need to make that the subject every time we talk about this shit.

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But I think when it comes to like properly criticizing her, one thing you have to note is that Oprah has made child abuse and child sex abuse constant obsessive focuses with her fundraising activities. She has done harm through spreading misinformation about child abuse, but she's not a sex criminal.

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This is something she puts a lot of she very much actively has tried to reduce again in imperfect ways. But she's put her money where her mouth is a lot. And one of the things she is really consistently puts effort into is trying to help underprivileged at risk kids. And again, this is always a mixed bag.

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And this brings me to the story of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, or OWLAG, as we're going to be calling it. Bridget, you were excited to get into this topic. What have you heard of OWLAG? This is her South African school.

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Yeah, yeah. And it was, you know, this starts, the school opens in January of 2007. It is inspired the year before she's vacationing in South Africa. She's hanging out with Nelson Mandela because when you're Oprah, you get to hang out with Nelson Mandela. And she decides on the spot,

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While they're talking and looking, going through, she's seeing the poverty of a lot of the poorest South African children. She decides on the spot, I'm going to create a school for very bright and very poor South African kids. These are kids who are at the top of their public schools in terms of test scores and come from households that make less than $950 a month. Right? Right.

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Now, the project is instantly controversial among the wealthy neighborhood where the school is built. They do not like that a bunch of poor black girls are going to be going to school in this largely white neighborhood. The administration is deluged with complaints. Neighbors begin staking out the school during recess, watching the few girls in this white neighborhood as they play soccer.

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Oprah has the school put up hedges to block the field from view. And so as we talk about the things that are Chris, criticizable about this venture, I don't want to lose the fact that like, she is really pissing off a lot of South African racists, which again are the most racist racists. Like if we're, if we're, if we're ranking the racist, the very top of that pyramid is South African racists.

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No one's ever been better. Um, speaking of South Africa, I'm fairly certain none of our sponsors are based in South Africa.

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So kind of pivoting off of that statement, I do suspect some of the youngins in our audience may be incredulous at me crediting Oprah with so much influence in trends that today seem like just like massive societal swings, stuff that's too big for one person to have incited. And I have to assure you, Oprah really was that influential.

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We're back. Apartheid's not around anymore, so I guess we probably shouldn't have a blanket ban on South African sponsors.

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There's a very good old British song, I've Never Met a Nice South African, that gets into some of these issues. Um... So Oprah is incredibly integral to the design of this school. This is not just a case for good and for ill. Oprah is not just somebody who like throws money at a problem to like have her name attached to it.

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This is a personal focus and she pours hundreds of hours of her own personal labor into making this school. I want to quote from an article on Forbes. Winfrey severed ties with the state and decided to go it alone, hiring the architects behind Johannesburg's famous Apartheid Museum. She donned jeans and a hard hat and oversaw every aspect of construction.

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She thought of the little things, the tubs of umbrellas outside each building for use during South Africa's rainy season when it pours almost nonstop for 40 days. Their green, her favorite color, to match the girls' uniforms. At the school's first convocation, Winfrey took the stage to address the girls and their relatives bussed in from across South Africa.

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There is, in fact, a direct line from Oprah to the sort of media that utterly dominates the digital attention spans of people today, particularly Gen Z kids, right? If you spend any time looking at surveys of what Gen Z claims to look for and value in media figures that they follow, you'll come upon one word over and over. Authenticity.

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For many years, people always asked me why didn't I have children, she told the crowd. Now I know. And, you know, that's largely good, but you can also see a little weird. Although, again, in a very sympathetic way, Oprah is, by this point, very rich. And being very rich also means you're becoming increasingly unhinged as you age.

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Some of the evidence for that is that in addition to the stuff that is pretty like fine, right? Like, okay. Yeah. Give them green umbrellas. Cause that's your favorite color, whatever you're paying for it. That's your right. During like the big opening event for the school, because they're having a bunch of celebrities, Nelson Mandela and like Diane Sawyer are showing up.

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She has the groundskeeper cause it's during the dry season. She has the groundskeepers paint the yellow grass green. Um, Which is, again, not evil, just kind of like, oh, yeah, that's the kind of thing you get to do when you have Oprah money. Yeah. And the kind of thing you worry about. It's just like, I guess. Yeah. The school's not going to look good enough if the grass is yellow.

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welcome back to bastards the behind podcast robert evans a uh your brain will put that together in the right order um or maybe that only works with written words maybe maybe it just sounds like i had a stroke i don't know let's ask our guest today uh bridget todd andrew t does it sound like i had a stroke Always. Thank you. Thank you. As a longtime friend of mine, Bridget, that really helps.

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Now, Oprah has to date spent more than $100 million on both the school. This is initially, I think, supposed to be like a $6 million project. It balloons to $40 million. And again, she's paid over like $100 million at this point. So for one thing you cannot fault her for is dedication. This is not something she is casual about.

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This is not something where she was just kind of like siphoning some money off for a tax break. She's personally involved in this. And this school has provided an excellent education for a lot. I think a couple hundred girls have graduated at this point. And Winfrey is also committed to pay for the secondary education.

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education of any girl who graduates from this school, which is where a lot of the cost comes from. She's not just paying for this school. She's paying for these kids to go to college. And in fact, recently, the first of these girls received a Ph.D. Oprah showed up at her graduation ceremony. And this is good. This is, broadly speaking, a thing that has done good.

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there are valid criticisms of it, like the fact that Oprah's focus on luxury means that this one school, which again has only graduated a couple hundred girls, could have paid for a lot more schools that had a similar educational quality, if not for some of the expensive things that are largely a result of Oprah's sort of focuses.

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An article on the school in Reuters notes, Action Aid, a global development group, said the school exposes the stark disparities in South Africa's education system, still haunted by the legacy of apartheid, and is an insult to millions of poor children worldwide wanting a decent education.

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And that is harsh, but there's a segment from Forbes Africa, based on an interview with Sam Blake, the director of operations, that does kind of back that up. Quote, Why were the girls sleeping on 200 thread count sheets? Why were there chandeliers hanging from the library ceiling and brightly colored mosaic tile pillars outside of the cafeteria?

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Blake grimaces when he's reminded of those early articles. When you walk into a beautiful place, you think better of yourself, he explains simply.

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Again, I don't know that you would call I don't think it would be right to call that evil, but it is like this is what you get when you have a very serious problem and somebody who is not an expert on education but has several billion dollars goes in to fix it is evil.

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Now, I'm not saying they actually like authentic media figures because authenticity is a costume that media figures put on. Nobody's really authentic, right? Like, because that's... Just not the way the media works. You know, it's all some sort of dress up. It's all some sort of glamour. But it's the ability to play at being authentic.

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You can sometimes get a good thing to happen, and I think overall this school is a good thing, but it's so much more expensive than it needs to be, and a lot more girls could be helped if, for example, that money had been like – Like if Oprah paid correct taxes and then went into the education system. Since she's not South African, I think more to the point, if that –

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If that $100 million had been handed to a group of actual education experts in order to build a system to improve educational quality for underprivileged kids in South Africa, probably would have helped a lot more kids, right? Yeah. And that's not bastardism, right? Any more than you're not a bastard if you ordered takeout last night. That's like a waste of money, right? But it helps kids.

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It's an example of what's problematic about even good billionaire charity.

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It's just evidence of like, yeah, we really ought to just tax these people a hell of a lot more so they can't exist as billionaires. But anyway. Yeah. Moving on. When it comes to this school, what it's most famous for outside of South Africa is the allegations that have come out from within it that are problematic. And those, yeah, I'm just going to list what's happened.

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So within months of the school opening, there were allegations that the matron of the dormitory, of the dormitories for the kids, Tiny Makopo is her name, had attempted to kiss and fondle as many as six teenage girls at the academy. Now, Oprah acted very quickly. As far as I can tell, as soon as evidence came out, there are allegations that she tried to hide it before it came out.

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I haven't seen anything that actually backs those up. What I have seen looks like she acted as quickly as possible. Who knows if there's stuff that I'm not, you know, that's not public, but that just seems to be people at this point kind of talking shit. She acts very quickly. She fires Makopo. I should also say Makopo is tried and is found not guilty three years later.

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So, again, I can't say I'm not going to do the Oprah thing and say she definitely did it. I don't know. I'm not an expert on this case. Right. The incident does, however, leave a stain on the school that deepens in early 2009 when seven students are expelled for bad behavior that includes sexual harassment of classmates.

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At around the same time, a 17 year old student is found with a dead infant child in her handbag.

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Yeah. And this is like, I think she had a stillbirth or something like that. Like, this is a case of like somebody who gets pregnant very young and like the baby doesn't make it. And these are all of this stuff. The fact that you have a bunch of the kids there who are abusing other kids. This has and the fact that there's these allegations from this this teacher, this has led to accusations.

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And you'll get this a lot in like the QAnon side of things that Oprah started like a sex abuse factory to molest kids in South Africa. And as a guy who has told stories about schools that were sex abuse factories for the express purpose of allowing certain people to molest children, I have to tell you, that's not what's happening here.

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And I want to quote now from a 2024 study by the NIH surveying the media diet and preference of Gen Z viewers. Quote, the qualities that young people wish to find in media, especially on social media, revolve primarily upon spontaneity and authenticity. Quote, nobody has a perfect life. And this is them quoting a female Gen Z surveyed person. Right.

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Aulag is a school for underprivileged kids living in a country where the deepest poverty is unimaginable to most Americans. As Winfrey herself said, by the time a girl gets to my school, normally she's suffered on average six major life traumas. They've lost a parent or both parents, multiple accidents, death in your family, AIDS, rape, sexual molestation, all of it.

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Unimaginable things have happened. Creating an institution where these students are taken in away from their families, I should note you, supported and asked to live together is a huge, messy, complicated thing. There's no way stuff like this wouldn't happen to some extent.

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So what you have to judge the school on is, did they set up guardrails to make it possible to report this stuff, to make it less likely? And did they act quickly when evidence came out? And as far as I can tell, More or less. Yeah. Again, there's some critiques there. It certainly was not a set up perfectly, but like generally. Yeah, it seems to be the case.

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I think that's the fundamental criticism. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I know what I didn't like about that. That's really where a lot of this comes from with Oprah, where it's like. you, I had a lot of trauma as a kid. I was abused and like, but also very smart and I got an opportunity and so I succeeded. So I know how other smart kids that are suffering in like difficult circumstances, I know what they need. And like, no, every kid's different, Oprah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Like, and also you don't fully understand all of the things that helped you because you weren't one of the, you weren't your dad, right? Like there's things that, Just like all of us, we all and this is part of the process of like reconciling.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Oh, my parents did this stuff that was fucked up and also realizing, oh, my God, I never realized my parents did this thing that was like absolutely crucial in me turning out like having these positive traits that was must have been really hard for them. That's just like. Yeah, I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

No, it's just more complicated than that, Oprah. And, like, this should not have been your gig. You know, every now and then you get one of these. Really, the only time it's worked is, like, James Cameron becoming a deep sea explorer. But nearly every other time... I guess she is second because at least the school is a good school.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And I'm not saying anything about that specific influencer, but like that's the idea, right? That like Gen Z, they're moving away from like the super airbrushed and touched up, you know, mass marketed like celebrities of the past, which is, again, not true. There's more ability to filter yourself than ever before, thanks to social media.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Fixing the system is a lot harder. No, I mean, it's like when I started my summer camp to teach kids how to blow up trains and effectively conduct counter or insurgent operations. I wanted to teach them, but I had to eventually accept that, like, look, I'm not an expert educator, which is why I trained an LLM on Lawrence of Arabia's book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And I've just let that loose on the kids. You know, now this AI is teaching them everything and it's going to be fine. Robert, stop trying to recruit for your boy army. They're not all boys. There's a lot of girls, non-binary kids. Look, we don't discriminate as long as you are willing to man, what?

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

If your fingers are nimble enough to get into the little grenade pins, your finger, you're in. If you know how to mix gel ignite, I don't care about anything else. Just like the, okay, we should probably stop at this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

God willing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So there are some valid complaints about the school. Parents have voiced frustration that their time to see their children is unfairly curtailed. Restrictive rules for kids have been compared to some as prison-like. An article for the Atlanta Black Star notes, there's also the recent firing of the former head of operations, Simon Matico, after one year was reported in December of 2023.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Court documents reveal complaints about abuse of authority, intimidation, and victimization, as well as the mistreatment of learners. Matiko alleges he was fired for his non-performance during private arbitration at the school. Further investigation found other employees who voiced their difficulty with management. One said, Working under pressure, threats, and other issues.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

We don't discuss issues with our management as we fear we will lose our jobs as we are not given clarity or relevant answers. Another said, Outlag used to be a place where one contributed more than required because there was a culture of working together, listening, and respecting professional opinions. That has changed. There is a culture of distrust and fear.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Let's keep an eye on it. Maybe we need to take the keys away, though. Yeah, they shouldn't be driving that car anymore. We got to get the F-150 away from Grandpa. He's got to go right through a fucking farmer's market. Oh, shit. I just occurred to me, actually, because I met you both right around the same time in like mid 2018 to late 2018.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And I don't know the perfect reality here, but again, I think we've litigated this more than enough. Yeah. The broader problem here is that like the issue of rich people launching into crusades to fix major problems without knowing much about them, you know, and that's an issue, you know, that goes right to the top of this country.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And probably the best example of Oprah contributing to this in a really toxic way, because Owlag at least has given a lot, you know, a couple hundred kids a very good education. Probably the best example of her diving into something she was not really competent to handle that had a toxic, toxic knock on effects is her support of orphanages in Haiti.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But that's the that's the impression that people think that they want. And that impression really gets started. Authenticity becomes a virtue for media figures in the age of Oprah. More than any other single person, she sparks the shift towards relatable, authentic media influencers who deliberately sought to inculcate and feed a parasocial relationship with their audiences.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She has there's one specific orphanage that she's devoted a massive amount of attention and money towards. And this is an orphanage that was started by an American family to protect and shelter some of Haiti's hundreds of thousands of orphaned kids after a massive earthquake.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Oprah has repeatedly highlighted and supported the work of missionaries operating adoption services to help these orphaned kids get connected to people who will adopt them and bring them over generally to the United States. That sounds great. Unproblematic. What could be bad about supporting an orphanage? This is where we get to talk about the problems with the international adoption industry.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And largely the problems of the international adoption industry is that it is an industry that profits off of facilitating the adoption of, in this case, poor black children by white foreigners with money. In many cases, who are more interested in converting the child to their specific brand of Christianity or Christianity. showing the child off to their friends, then raising a traumatized child.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, to make this even worse, many, if not most of these orphans aren't actual orphans. Yes. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, The number of orphanages in the country more than doubled from 200 to 752 by 2013. Now, Oprah was just one of the of the media figures making documentaries about these generally operated by foreigners orphanages.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And really, it's one of these like these heroic white missionaries coming to this dangerous place and like really risking themselves in order to like help these poor, underprivileged kids escape. Oprah is, again, not the only person doing this, but her sheer popularity gives her an outsized role in making this a popular cause.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

At least 30,000 children wound up in Haitian orphanages, and about 80% of those 30,000 kids had one living parent at least. From CNN, "...unable to sustain their children's well-being, these parents are persuaded to relinquish them to privately run orphanages that promise the children will receive shelter, food, and education. This is often not the outcome.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Instead, the children living in Haiti's orphanages face exploitation and trafficking unintentionally funded by foreign donors." Jamie Vernalde of Lumos, an NGO advocating for the institutionalization of children, says this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

This orphanage business where orphanages are established and recruit children to raise donations from foreigners is becoming increasingly recognized globally as a form of trafficking. These Haitian orphanages employ people called child finders who seek out struggling families and bribe them for their children. The going rate is around $75.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The money to pay these child finders to bribe families for their kids comes from the $100 million a year in mostly faith-based donations sent to these orphanages.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

This is a much larger issue than Oprah, but she plays a significant role in it, and this whole period of time, she's running all of these teary stories praising missionaries who take children away from Haiti and actively defends a system that is desperately broken. A good example of this comes in February of 2010.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

A group of 10 Baptists, mostly from Idaho, were arrested in Haiti with 33 children who were absolutely not related to them. When confronted by authorities, these Baptists assured them that kids were all orphans being taken to loving homes in the United States. The Haitian authorities looked into this for three seconds and realized, no, they had no permission to be doing this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And also a lot of those children were in fact not orphans. Here's how CNN describes the way those kids wound up in the care of missionaries. Most of the children appear to be from Cabelas.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Parents there told the Associated Press they had surrendered their children on January 28th, two days after a local orphanage worker acting on behalf of the Baptists convened nearly the entire village of about 500 people on a dirt soccer pitch to present the Americans' offer.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The orphanage worker, Isaac Adrian, said he told the villagers their children would be educated at a home in the Dominican Republic. It's truly like, you know, you said it earlier, but it's like...

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Oprah did this in part by being open about stuff like her struggles with weight loss, which made people think, oh, she's dealing with the same shit I am. Right. She is the same kind of person I am. This is like she I like her because she's authentic.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Yeah. Because this is the child trafficking. Now, it is unclear to me how much the American missionaries and their leader, Laura Silsby, knew about what the Haitian parents had been told. Laura had met the child finder who got them these kids two days earlier. And it's possible he did the bulk of the lying.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

When questioned by authorities and the newsletters, Silsby and the missionaries insisted the kids had all been handed over by distant relatives who were frightened the kids might starve to death. Now, that's their side of events –

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The child finder, Adrian, for his part, says he had no idea that the entire point Silsby and the Americans were in Haiti for was to take children back to the United States. He thought they were trying to take them to an orphanage in the Dominican where their families would still have access to them and be able to get them back at some point when conditions were better.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And I tend to think he may be the one telling the truth because of lines like this from that IP article. The parents of four children taken by Silsby said the Americans took down contact information for all the families and assured them that a relative would be able to visit them in the Dominican Republic.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So again, when questioned by authorities, Silsby and the missionaries are like, oh, distant relatives handed them over because obviously they don't have parents. When questioned, the parents say, no, no, no. They took our contact info and said we'd be able to visit their kids. They were just going over the Dominican Republic.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So if that's true, this really does sound like child theft on behalf of the missionaries and Silsby. Now, I'm going to spoil the end and say everybody but Silsby gets off scot-free, although thankfully not with the kids.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And that cuts out a lot, including the fact that like, well, Oprah has billions of dollars and enough money to hire personal chefs and personal trainers and take all of the different rich people drugs that make it a lot easier to, you know, lose weight and whatnot and stay youthful. Right. But again, it's perception.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Silsby did do time in Haitian jail, but it was essentially knocked down to like a misdemeanor, basically, even though the evidence, I think, might suggest something more nefarious. NPR dug into Laura Silsby and described her in an article as a woman who found a woman who arguably found a lot of society's rules optional.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Silsby lied both in interviews and to the Haitian government about having proper paperwork. Back home, she ran a personal shopping Internet business and was being actively pursued by creditors for failing to pay her employees. or any of the other people she owed money.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Despite this, Silsby convinced her church that she was in the process of putting together a Shangri-La in Idaho for the lucky Haitian kid she was about to rescue. The Wall Street Journal writes, Ms. Silsby and Ms. Coulter traveled to the Dominican Republic and Haiti last July and late last year. They were laying the groundwork then for opening an orphanage, said Mel Coulter, Ms. Coulter's father.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

They coordinated with people who they thought were handling necessary details and running interference for them, he said. So they thought they had everything they needed in documentation, Mr. Coulter said. Ms. Silsby had an equally grand ambition greater to home, according to a local builder.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The Idaho plan called for a multi-million dollar complex for runaway children on a 40-acre lot in Kuna County, Idaho, according to Eric Evans, owner of Evans Construction in Meridian. Ms. Silsby told him it would have an indoor swimming pool, tennis courts, and dormitories for the children, said Mr. Evans, adding that she had discussed having him build the project. Ms.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Silsby's mother said that she had never heard of any such plan.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

To get back to where Oprah is involved, I'm not reading this for no reason. Oprah and her website and O Magazine, Oprah goes to bat for these specific missionaries writing very having having very sympathetic articles written, doing features on how these people are. They're just trying to help. They got caught up in this corrupt government. And it's just a big misunderstanding.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But like these people are really good people trying to help, you know. um here's a quote from oprah's write-up the oprah.com write-up i should say jim said he traveled with his group to a number of orphanages around port-a-prince during those visits jim says they were introduced to children who were said to have no home or parents to go home to

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

He says one of the orphanage directors asked if they could take the children to try to help them. As we got their name and birth dates, we wrote those down, and they got on our bus, and we started taking care of them, basically, he says. The plan, he says, was to take the children to a restored hotel in the Dominican Republic that had been set up as an orphanage.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Maybe Jim is unaware, but as we know from Silsby's account, she was not planning to take these kids to the Dominican Republic. And also, a lot of the parents say, no, it wasn't an orphanage director that handed them over. They got them from us, right? The closest we get to scrutiny of any of this in that Oprah.com article is this paragraph.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Since the story broke, there have been allegations in the media that the group leader, Laura Silsby, intended to make a profit on the children by charging large fees to get them placed. Jim says he doesn't know anything about those claims.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I'll bet not open and shut case that one open and shut case and I know Sophie's fuming right now because this has gone very long but that is the end of the episode I just felt we had to we really had to end this one on the Haitian orphanages makes sense yeah oh Oprah why'd you get mixed up with these people why indeed and we have we have one more part left don't we Robert We sure do.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

We have a sixth parter. There are still 10 pages left in the script, which has finally come down to 24,468 words. Oh.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It's half of what is generally considered to be the length of like a book. Right. Fifty thousand is like kind of the cut off. Now, that said, I don't want to make it out to like I wrote half of a nonfiction book here. I'm taking other people's original reporting and like chopping it up and remixing it. That's that's what a lot of this is, is, oh, here's three different accounts of this thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Well, I'm going to tell you the similarities and the differences between them. Here's different attitudes. these different people have about stuff, right? Like I'm not doing, I didn't go to Port-au-Prince. I didn't do the original reporting on this kind of stuff. But this is one of the longest scripts we've ever done. This is a Kissinger-linked script.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yep. All right, everybody. Well, this has been Behind the Bastards. You guys want to plug your pluggables before we roll out here?

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Find Andrew on Blue Sky. You know, stalk him a little bit. Send him pictures of your food and see if he'll send you pictures of his food. They did.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

No, I think there's a degree to which, I mean, you write for TV, Andrew, like you're in media, like Bridget, you're in media, like we're all in media. So we all have experiences of like, this is the product that people say is authentic. And we are aware of the degree of work that goes into the background of like,

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I mean, part of why I have the attitude I have on this is that, like, I have the life experience of turning myself into a public figure and deliberately figuring out, like, which aspects of my personality are more relatable and marketable to an audience. That's a thing that I did. It's part of my business, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

You also, like, everyone sees some, like, you know, the person, well, I like that they're honest. I like that they, you know, they seem like a really honest person. It's like, well, but you're, you are seeing what they've curated, you know? And I'm not even making a moral judgment about it, right? It's not bad. As a public figure, you have to curate yourself, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Like, for one thing, you'll go insane if you don't have a part of you that's actually like your private human person. You will lose your mind. Right. Right. We we see this in certain public figures that happen to be the richest man on Earth. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It's a form of torture. And also how a number of people, a number of people get rich at least. doing that for limited periods of time, right? What is like a lot of the streaming ecosystem is I have for four hours a day, I make a panopticon in my gaming chair, right? Like that is one of the most profitable forms of entertainment on the planet right now.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It's been like six years that we've we've all been buddies. Hey, we should go to Vegas. When did I meet you? Was it 2016?

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it may feel like, especially because of how universal that kind of talk about, I like authentic people in my media, is that it may feel like a thing that people have always wanted, but it really is not. I mean, again, if you remember the 90s, that was not like people were obsessed with guys like Tom Cruise.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And the last thing anyone would ever say about Tom Cruise is like, that man is authentic, right? Right. No, Tom Cruise is like a fucking like a mirror that we project onto, you know? Yeah. But he's like his his his popularity came from his fundamental emptiness. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And like Arnold Schwarzenegger was a guy who was like actively created during the period of time that he was like in the public eye. If you look at early Arnold and, you know, to the point where he kind of figured out who he was as a human being, like this is not the way we thought about celebrities the entire time that that has been a concept in like our culture.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And Oprah plays a huge role in this stuff. Reality TV is in many ways downstream from Oprah. TikTok is downstream from Oprah and the Trump presidency is downstream from Oprah. Now, I'm not saying Oprah is to blame for this. I'm saying is downstream from right in that in that I'm saying the things that she did helped prepare the culture for that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That's not implying a sort of moral responsibility for Donald Trump, a guy she doesn't like and didn't want to be the president. It's saying that the changes that she helped wrought in our culture were part of why we are where we are today. Right. And you you can just see that at the level of influence This is a person who at her peak, 30, 40 million people are tuning into her show.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The degree to which she has changed the composition of our cultural soil can't be overstated. And I hope that people can take what I'm saying without it being like Robert's saying we should blame Oprah for Trump. I really don't think that's the case. I'm just saying part of why people like Trump is his authenticity, quote unquote. You listen to his supporters. That's what they will say.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And that being a huge virtue, Oprah isn't the only person who started it or the only person who led to that being the way that it is. But Oprah being Oprah was a massive part of why that shift occurred.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, yeah. I think that's a great way to point it. And it's also weird that you make that comment about the personal being political because we're about to read a quote that's right along those lines. So in 1998, Jet Magazine defined Oprah, the word, as a verb, meaning to engage in persistent, intimate questioning with the intention of obtaining a confession.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, a good example of how pushy she got with this, and this is, I tried to find this clip online. Every a lot of the bad Oprah clips that have gone viral have been purged from the Internet, as we'll talk about. But in 2004, Oprah has the Olsen twins on her show as guests. Now, at this point, they are both 17 years old.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Gathering.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

If you are on the younger side and you do not recall or you recall the Olsen twins as, you know, adult movie stars, which they are today. Let me kind of walk you through who the Olsen twins are culturally. These were two of alongside Macaulay Culkin, probably the two like two like of the three or four biggest child stars this country's ever had. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That was a great weekend. Oh, boy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

They are famous from the point that they are very little kids and they are famous. And this is kind of unusual the entire time that their children effectively. This is not a thing where like they're in one big movie and then they kind of drop out of cultural awareness like, you know, Jake Lloyd or someone like that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

They are in full house and they remain in movies that are stuff like The Parent Trap all the time. Yeah, ew. It is as gross as it sounds, but it was not a fringe thing. Like, I am telling you right now, this was not a tiny number of weirdo pedophiles. A lot of men were willing to put their names to keeping track of that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

We're talking, this guy is a Jamaican pastor who led a charismatic Christian end time sect in Jamaica and lost his mind as a result of COVID lockdowns and wound up trying to have dozens of people's throats in mosque during a church service. Sensational. This is a wild story. And the fact that he has just named Kevin Smith the whole time is going to be frustrating. I'll cop to that right now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And the Apostolic Faith Church, it falls under this wider umbrella of charismatic Christianity, right? Which is a chunk of Protestantism who believes in brief, number one, the Holy Spirit can and does directly enter people to change them and thus change the world. And number two, through this method, by sending the Holy Spirit into people, God bestows gifts upon them, like prophecy and healing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

He can spontaneously heal your injuries by sending the Holy Spirit into you. And number three, and this is the most important part of charismatic Christianity, it's a lot of fun to writhe around on the ground and pretend to speak in a fake language. People love it. Yeah, I bet.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

You could just take acid, you know, at a psytrance festival or whatever to get the same experience, but they didn't have psytrance back then. We just didn't have the technology. Nor did they have acid, really. I don't know if my psytrance jokes are going to land with anyone less than 37 years old. Your kids are all probably listening to 100 gecks while you take your drugs now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Psytrance is back. Oh, is it back? Did it come back? Thank God. Ibiza was really suffering.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. So Pentecostals are, again, part of this. And when I talk about the Pentecostal church, like these guys are part of the charismatic movement. But there's divisions within charismatic Christianity based on like, do you believe speaking in tongues is a necessary precursor to being baptized? Do you have to prove the Holy Spirit has entered you? Right? Or not? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

So it's kind of like a whiskey bourbon sort of deal. Pentecostals are all part of the charismatic movement, but the charismatic movement isn't just Pentecostals, right? Now, one thing all these churches have in common is that they're always sort of scouting for young men with what the rest of us might call strong cult leader vibes, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

We didn't have TikTok or streaming back then, so someone with those vibes couldn't just start a media career. Getting involved in a church or Dianetics was basically their best option in the mid-century. And Kevin, though, comes up in this period right before the Internet's going to really take off, and he gets scouted at around age 17 by this community.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

On the brief autobiography for one of his now-scrubbed social media accounts, he claims, "...at the age of 17, he was sent to 33 countries within two years as a prophet to the nations."

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And this is probably true that like once they figure out this kid's got the gift to gab and you can kind of set him up in front of any church you want and he'll keep them entertained and giving money, donating money for a couple of hours. You fly him all around, right? You put him up. He's like crashing in churches and whatnot around the world.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

But you fly him around and he's both building his own kind of platform. But he's also raising money for the wider organization and for each of these individual churches. And this is a whole industry, right? This is like the charismatic pastor industrial complex, pretty much, right? Which is what like Marjo documents and why I recommend watching that documentary.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

So he's good at preaching to crowds and gathering followers, and it would have been a cinch for him to raise money for mission trips and even convince the leaders of his church to pay for him to go and preach the gospel. He claims that he was ordained at age 18 by an organization called the National Evangelists for Canada. And I can't find any evidence that this group exists.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

People lie about this all the time. But also, the reporting for this comes from a Jamaican news site. And it's based on claims made by Kevin. And based on just the differences in dialect spoken, it's possible that this is a real organization.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

They just gave kind of a name based on sort of the differences in dialects that made sense to them, but that doesn't directly correspond with what the organization is called in Canada, right? Because there's some organizations with similar names. I'm not sure. I don't doubt that he was ordained in some Pentecostal organization or another.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

It's not like being a priest in the Catholic Church where you have to go through school. Somebody just decides to ordain you and you're ordained and you get maybe a piece of paper or whatever. It's very easy. It's like my experience with becoming a judge.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

If you want to imagine Silent Bob committing the heinous atrocities we're about to discuss, that's your business. Although you should probably also talk to a therapist if you feel compelled to do that. Molly, you ever heard of this guy? I'm going to guess not. I had not until I started doing this digging.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, there you go. His denomination, again, there's no seminary degree required, no qualifications. The Walrus notes that Kevin himself claims, and I'm talking about a news site when I say that, claims that Kevin says that ministers are qualified as ministers when they feel the call of God on their life. And that's pretty consistent in this community.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

For his part, Kevin would claim that he was around 18 or 19 when his grandfather first saw some of the early preaching he'd done, and during a phone call, informed Kevin that he was a prophet. And I'm going to play you a video of His Excellency Dr. Kevin O. Smith discussing this conversation with his grandfather, because it's about time you get an idea of how this guy sounds and talks.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, making some points. No level of witchcraft will stop you. This is something I tell our podcasters very regularly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, finally a use for AI cut him into all the Jay and Silent Bob movies.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, not very silent though. Distinctly loud Bob. Speaking of things that are distinctly loud.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Well, anyway, here's some ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Uh-huh. Well, welcome to a real fascinating piece of shit who is also kind of a Canadian bastard, too. So we've got that going for us, like Canadian-Jamaican real monster solidarity here in this week's episodes. And we'll have all that and more when we come back from the cold open.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, we're back again. Let's keep talking about the other Kevin Smith. Legally, I have to really emphasize it's the other one. Now, that write-up in the Toronto Caribbean newspaper continues. He boasts of the fact that he was the youngest Jamaican-born bishop in Jamaica's church history.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Kevin completed a Bachelor of Theology degree, a Doctorate degree from Vision International University in Ramona, California, and a Doctor of Ministry from Mount Olive Bible Institute and Seminary in Toronto, Canada. He was a licensed counselor and certified psychotherapist, and that all sounds very impressive. I can verify... Some of this, but the stuff I can verify doesn't matter.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

I have no idea if he was the youngest Jamaican-born bishop in Jamaica's church history, because again, this is not like the Catholic Church, where a bishop is a real position. You can just call yourself a bishop, or you can convince a friend to call you a bishop, and then you're a bishop, right? It's not difficult.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Look, the pope is a Robert. I think that means I get splash over pope power. I'm making some fucking secret cardinals.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

I watched fucking Conclave. I know that I have the power to make secret cardinals that can just pop out at any time. You might be a cardinal listening right now. You have no way of knowing until you walk into a Catholic church and demand their secret hidden gold, which I assume every Catholic church has. Not an expert on the religion that I'm pope of.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Now, these institutes that he claims to have fancy degrees from are like real, but also not, right? Because this is like whenever you hear a cult leader be like, I'm a doctorate in this, I'm a therapist in this, it's always some kind of fake. And there's a whole industry in creating fake churches for like evangelical ministers to claim that they've got fancy and impressive degrees.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Um, reporters from Jamaica Observer called Vision University to see if Kevin had received a bachelor and a doctorate there and quote, we were told that such information could only be provided in response to a written request and only students are allowed to make that request. Now, these guys had reached out. So you enrolled. Yeah, they can't even verify that or they won't.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

But the news reaches out to these guys after he cuts a bunch of people's throats in a church service, right? So Vision International doesn't want to claim him. So I decided to just like look into the school to see like, is this even a real school? Like, is there a chance anyone has ever earned a real degree from Vision International University?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And at the risk of getting sued, I think the answer is no. If you go to their website, they brag that you can, quote, earn an affordable Christian ministry or business degree on your time. And their motto is taking the whole world to the whole world.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Now, I'll have Sophie scroll through the website while we discuss this fine institution in more detail so you can get a look at, yeah, save time and money on your college degree. That always is the first sign of a real college. Yeah, they've got like a lot of good stock photos.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

There's like a young black lady punching the sky defiantly with her diploma and the claim that Vision International holds prestigious international accreditation from ASIC, right? Now, you're wondering what that is, right? Prestigious international accreditation. That must mean it's a real school, right? It says it's prestigious, so that's got to be legitimately accredited, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Well, I looked into it because I thought that was odd. People who are accredited from legitimate organizations never have to tell you that the accrediting organization is legitimate. That's the first sign that someone's not part of a legitimate accrediting organization. Harvard doesn't brag.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Great movie.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, the guy holding two degrees or two respected degrees in just two years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

If you go to like Harvard's website, Harvard, number one, will not give you two degrees in two years, but doesn't have to tell you the degrees respected because it's a real school. And even like you go to UTD, right, where I briefly went before dropping out, they never had to brag on their website that they were accredited from a real organization. Right. Because you just know it's a real school.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

So I Googled Vision International University fake. And the second search result was the Wikipedia page for list of unaccredited institutions of higher learning, which seemed odd because they ensured us that they were accredited by someone real. Yeah. Now, the first result when I looked into that was someone on the forum for degreeinfo.com back in 2002 asking, is this a good school or a fraud?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And someone pointed out that like, well, they offer a master's in creation science, which means they fall under a religious exemption in California, which is not accreditation, right? It means California can't stop them from giving out religious degrees, but they're not approved by the state as like a real college.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

You just can't stop someone from giving out degrees with titles like master of theology or doctor of ministry. But they're not allowed to give out secular degrees like an MS, a Master of Science, and they claim to, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And one reason I'm interested in this is because there's an attempt within sort of this chunk of the evangelical movement—one reason this is interesting is that there's an attempt within this chunk of the evangelical movement—

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

to create people who can get jobs as science teachers, right, because they have MS degrees, and then teach in Christian secondary schools about stuff like creationism, right? So that's what Vision International is doing, but they're not accredited to give out an MS in the state of California.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

So then I looked into that ASIC accreditation, right, which is how they claim to be a legitimate university. ASIC stands for the Accreditation Service for International Colleges. And this is a real organization.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

It's a private educational agency in the United Kingdom that is literally based out of a semi-detached duplex residential property and stocked it on tees, which doubles as the residential address for its creators. So... Great, very legitimate organization. Run out of the home of the people who run it. Just like this podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And ASIC's whole business is accrediting private UK colleges for visa purposes. And they are recognized by the UK government in this capacity. But they've been repeatedly criticized for being what's called a run-around accreditor.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And another poster from a different thread in Degree Info explains, the key difference is that accreditation in the UK appears vastly different from accreditation in the US. If your UK university has a royal charter, then that's all it really needs to operate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Accreditation is wholly voluntary and doesn't confer degree-granting authority because that's not how degree-granting authority is conferred in the UK. The issue with ASIC seems to be that some of the schools accredited by them lack institutional accreditation or authority to award degrees in their respective country. So...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Vision International is accredited through ASIC, but ASIC is not approved in the UK to accredit a school. It means a different thing than it does in the US. They have no ability to grant degrees in the US, and they also don't really have the ability to grant degrees that are recognized by the UK. It just means that if you go here, you can get an educational visa in the UK.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

They're kind of playing with the fact that the same word means different things in two countries. Does that make sense? Sure. I fell down this wormhole for way too long trying to figure out how this fake college for Christian scam artists works. And so now you're all going to learn about it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah. Get your degree, for sure. Yes, of course. Get your Master of Science. I'm going to get two degrees. Double fisting them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah. Just doing with degrees what punk kids in the early 2000s did with tall boys. What you're doing with Zevia is now what I'm doing with a Zevia right now. Yeah. So the poster then goes on to discuss Warnborough College in Ireland, which is not a real college. It's not a recognized Institute of Higher Learning in Ireland, but pretends to be because it has an ASIC accreditation. The U.S.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Department of Education does not recognize ASIC accreditation, although they might in the future, given where we're headed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Is that a shoe brand, Sophie?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

That's a more legitimate company than the ASIC in the UK.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Well, this is not a good quality accreditation organization. In 2009, extensive reporting showed that there's some very shady details about how ASIC got recognized in the UK. A journalist named Andrew Norfolk wrote an article on the matter with the title, man given job of closing bogus colleges was sacked by university.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And the man who's the founder of ASIC is Maurice Dimmock, who, along with his wife, lives in the detached duplex that doubles as ASIC's headquarters. He had been director of international operations for a real school, Northumbria University, until 2003, when he was fired for reasons neither he or the school will ever discuss, which I'm sure means good things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Always not shady when your school won't even tell anyone why they fired you. I'm sure no crimes were committed. Somehow, the UK Home Office ignored numerous concerns and complaints about this guy and gave his company the job of determining which private colleges were real for visa purposes, and ASIC accredited 180 schools in its first two years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

The Times reports, among them is a Manchester college that the Times exposed last month as the front for an immigration scam which helped 1,000 fake students enter or stay in Britain. Another in London issued more than 2,500 bogus postgraduate diplomas in two months last year, earning its owners, who have fled the country, an estimated £5 million. So great organization, very real school.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

That's what we can say, is that Kevin Smith gets his doctorate from an entirely real university. And again, it's important to discuss this, even though we're getting a little bit off topic from the other Kevin Smith, because every one of these abusive Christian cult leaders you come across today has some kind of PhD or other fancy sounding degree from one of these fake schools.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

There's a whole ton of them. One of the claims I found is that Vision International, and around 2002, was claiming to have 4,000 campuses in more than 100 countries. And to the best of my knowledge, Vision has 30 full and part-time employees, which it's hard to keep 4,000 campuses operative on 30 employees. And it kind of seems like they're just counting everyone who registered online as a campus.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Like you're a campus for Vision International University if you log on with your laptop, whatever coffee shop you're in is a campus. Yeah. I need to start a fake college. Like, Sophie, we got to get in on this fucking racket.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Molly, do you like the sound of Professor Lambert? You could be giving out doctorates in like 45 minutes, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Dr. Bishop Lambert. Yeah. You could give out. What kind of degree would you want to hand out to people? What would you feel confident giving in terms of doctorates?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Scam college. I'd like to make surgeons. That feels satisfying to know I'd created a lot of surgeons who are going out there cutting into people. As long as I get to a non-extradition country very quickly after handing out 4,000 or so diplomas. Jesus Christ.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

So I should also note that initially Vision University was an offshoot of a Pentecostal school in Tasmania founded by an Australian pastor named Ken Chant. And I just mentioned that because I found a photo of him that I have to show you guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Look at that mustache. It's beautiful.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

He does look cool. That's a sweet-ass mustache.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Ken Chant, too. Solid name. I'm happy with him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, right? Yeah, it's a perfect name for an evangelical pastor.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Especially with a soup strainer like that, the acoustics had to be great, you know? It would act like having, like, baffling panels on your ceiling.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, he seems legitimate. So I said we'd get back to Kevin Smith, the bad one, and I meant it. But I also kept running across funny stuff about this school that I didn't know where to stop.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

According to the 1994 edition of Name It and Frame It by Stephen Levikoff, which is a book about fake colleges, Vision, quote, also offers a special additional 10% tuition reduction for students who enroll within the next 30 days. Which is a real sign that someone's got an actual college going. Real colleges give you bonuses like that, right? Sign up in 30 days and get 10% off.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Okay, now, back to Kevin for realsies. In addition to his definitely fake degree, he claimed to attend Tyndale University, which is a real and respected private evangelical Christian university...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

He also claims to have a doctorate of ministry from Mount Olive Bible Institute in Toronto, which seems to be about as real as vision, but has a very similar name to an actual college that's in the United States, which I think is the point.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And laying out Kevin's educational history, The Walrus, who is again a Canadian news site, noted, "...while he has referred to himself as a registered clinical counselor and sought after holistic psychotherapist, he has never been registered with the College of Registered Psychotherapists in Ontario."

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

So he's a Christian psychotherapist, which is different from being a psychotherapist in the way that any medical establishment recognizes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Now, while he's getting all these fake degrees and maybe one real degree, in addition to several other questionable certifications, Smith grew up and seems to have made his living operating a ministry in Toronto and traveling around the world to give speeches at different churches. Sometime around the turn of the millennium, he founds his own ministry, which he calls KOS Deliverance International.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And the initials KOS is just the initials of his name. On August 22nd, 2006, he returns from one of his overseas preaching trips to the UK. The Walrus writes, quote, Smith was jet-lagged and lonely, craving to spend time with someone besides his brother. I wanted, you know, emotional company, Smith would later recall, as per court documents.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

So he perused online ads for escorts and reached out to a man for his services. Matt, whose real name is under a court-ordered publication ban, arrived at Smith's home around 10.30 one evening. I would need him to be as inconspicuous as possible because I live straight and I'm a Christian, Smith would recall.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

There was a conflict happening inside of me, in essence, to what I was going to do or not do. Now, what he did, according to Matt's allegations, is sexually assault Matt, who goes to the police the next day. Smith is arrested and charged. He would later claim that Canadian police tried to use his Jamaican ancestry and the local stigma against homosexuality in Jamaica against him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And he claims he told them gays are just people who need redirection, which doesn't do a great job of making me more sympathetic to his case. But he's been accused basically of calling this guy in and then sexually assaulting him, right? Now, the case, these allegations against him wind through the Canadian court system for the next several months.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

They make up my day-to-day life, and that's pretty depressing. But not today, because we've got Molly Lambert as a guest. Molly, welcome on the show. Are you ready to have your day be worse?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And the next year, in early 2007, he gets married, and possibly as a way to kind of distract from the fact that this is really bad PR to his ministry. He's either 18 or 25 when he gets married. I found different things on different news sites. It kind of depends on whether or not he was actually born in 1982 or not. Whatever the case, this marriage does not seem to have really been like

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

It certainly doesn't last. There's debate as to whether or not it was legitimate. They very quickly split in the walrus rights. Smith's ex-wife described him as verbally abusive and someone who lied about his private life. He is not living an honest life, she would later recall, according to court records.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And the Toronto Caribbean's reporting adds, there have been allegations that his wife caught him having sexual relations with men. She reported it to senior ministers in the church organizations, but they denied it and there were no reprimand or consequences. So, you know, not a story we've ever heard before anywhere else.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Powerful up-and-coming guy gets caught violating the tenets of his religion for personal reasons and also violating a sex worker. And it all gets smoothed over because, hey, you know, he brings in money. Probably shouldn't segue to ads with that, but they also bring in money.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Here's ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

We're back. So I know the timeline is kind of screwy here. When he gets married, how old he is. You know, this is a guy who gives multiple versions of different stories and different news reports I see give different things. I don't actually know what's objectively the truth. I haven't seen a birth certificate here. But, you know, basically one of two things happens.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Either he marries this lady to try to distract from the scandal or they had been they get married and stay that way for years. But she had seen signs that he was kind of living a lie and eventually tries to report them. In either case, the two of them split up and he goes on trial later in 2007 for sexual assault. And this trial, we can confirm, absolutely happened, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

There's plenty of court records in Canada over it. During the trial, Smith identifies himself as an international minister of religion who had preached in 300 different cities. He says, we do crusades all around the world in churches and open fields and stadiums and things to that magnitude to preach the gospel.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Smith's lawyer denied that anything non-consensual had happened, and under oath he claimed that Matt had tried to extort him for money during a private religious counseling session. Quote, the prosecutor in her closing argument shredded Smith's testimony. His life and his platform is a facade, she said.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Mr. Smith's reputation and his public persona are his primary concern, and he will go to any extent to preserve that facade. In the end, the judge found Smith guilty of sexual assault, sentencing him to six months in jail, followed by two months of probation. Mr. Smith, it seems to me, the judge said, to quote a parable, might be viewed as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, and she's got it right here. She has definitely, like, locked this guy's number down. Unfortunately, she's going to be the last person to clock him for a while, and he is going to basically, as soon as he splits up with his wife, flee the country, right? So he leaves Canada for Jamaica. He breaches the terms of his probation. He's supposed to attend counseling, and he's like...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

No, I'm just going to go back to Jamaica and start a church there. And he's going to remain in Jamaica for the next six years where he starts a local church and he burrows into the Pentecostal community and he starts accruing clout followers and eventually wealth. So that's where we are at the end of part one.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And this is going to lead us to what I would describe as a shockingly bloody conclusion to come in part two. Where this where this one ends is is pretty fucking intense. But Molly, that's what we got for the start of this this episode. How you feeling as we sort of close out part one?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

A lot of people getting their throats slit. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Like a weird number. Um, which would be anything higher than one. Okay. Yeah. I guess let's find out. Yeah, I guess let's find out. And that's the episode. Go home.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Oh, yeah, Jake's got a new podcast, Away Days. Check it out on wherever our podcasts exist. Bye.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

We're back. Molly, you ready to get into it? Let's do it. Okay. So our bastard for this week's full name was Kevin Antonio Smith. O-N-T-O-N-I-E-L, right? That's his name. We could call him Kevin O. Smith to differentiate him from, again, Silent Bob, but... I don't know how necessary that is. He was born in 1982, probably. Although, again, this guy is like a cult leader.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

You never know with these fuckers. That's the first sign someone's a cult leader is like the birth date's a real open question. So funny. Probably, though. Uh, there's some sources that suggest he might be a little younger than this, born more in the late 80s, and I've just got no idea what day or month he came into the world. Um, I guess it doesn't matter all that much.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

He was definitely born in a town called Glenguff. G-L-N-G-O-F-F-E in the parish of St. Catherine. And this is in Jamaica. It's one of the most prosperous parts of the island. It's second only to Kingston as an industrial center. And it's got good access to water and a really good growing climate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Oh, great. A transition to the tall boys of Zevia.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

So he comes up in like a fairly, you know, Jamaica is an island with a lot of poverty, but he comes up in a fairly comfortable part of the island compared to some other parts. We have very little information about his early life, aside from the fact that he would later claim to have been physically abused by his father, who died when he was very young.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

So his mom's going to raise him on her own for much of his adolescence, which, again, not a wildly uncommon cult leader backstory. And this statistically, you know, just the fact that she's a single mom might suggest that he came up in a degree of poverty. But there's not a lot of evidence either way. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Like, in fact, it kind of seems the evidence suggests more that she managed to keep them fairly comfortable. I'm not sure what she did, but they don't seem to have been like on the edge of poverty or whatever. Right. He claims to have been baptized at age nine, and it's unclear which denomination he was from, but some sort of Protestant sect, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Just based on kind of the demographics of Jamaica and based on his later religious life, it was some kind of evangelical Protestant sect that he's baptized into. We can be pretty sure of that. Years later, as part of a court case that we will talk about more in the future, Kevin would claim to have, again, been sexually abused as a child by a male relative.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, yeah. 12 ounces just wasn't enough. Molly, what do you got to plug today at the start of the episode before I introduce our bastard?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

So both physically abused by his dad and sexually abused by a male relative. We don't know how old he would have been when this happened, but he's probably pre-adolescent, somewhere around like 10 to 12. We know that he goes on to attend Jamaica College, which confusingly is not a college. This is a high school.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

I've read enough of the history to tell you I can't give you a perfect idea of why they called it Jamaica College. Other than that word hasn't always meant the same thing. Right. I think the school is initially established by like some I believe it's a Catholic member of the clergy who like leaves a bunch of money behind. But I forget exactly why.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about bad people who are the people you'll be hearing about most in your daily life if you spend any amount of time on social media or listening to the news. But we're going to be talking about a fun one today, not as depressing as the bad people who make up the rest of your day-to-day life. I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

But it's one of the best secondary schools in all of Jamaica, right? So this is – and it's not just – I say it's primarily a secondary school. I think you can start going there when you're about 10 years old, right? So it doesn't exactly map onto what we call a secondary school. But this is a really good school, and it's a public school, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

It's free to attend, and it's kind of got like a degree of international fame. So being able to get into Jamaica College – Suggest that you're like a kid who's done really well in school or has connections or both. Now, my sources somewhat disagree here, but it seems like he kind of he doesn't finish his education at Jamaica College. He goes there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

He probably starts when he's around 10 and he probably leaves when he's around 14. The Toronto Caribbean newspaper claims that this is when his mother moves the family to Canada in 1996. But there's disagreement on when the family moves to Canada. The Walrus, which is an award-winning Canadian magazine, says they moved when he was 12, which would have been probably around 94.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Although, again, we don't know his birth date, really. So it's unclear how much time he spent at Jamaica College. But a report on his social media history by the Jamaica Gleaner shows a photo of him wearing the school uniform. So we know that he went there at some point, right? So sometime between two and four years at this fairly prestigious academy, and then the family emigrates to Canada.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And the fact that they were able to do so legally, again, suggests kind of a degree of financial comfort, because that's just not like a super cheap or easy thing, right? And it probably also suggests that there's a lot of family support.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

That's usually the case when people are able to make this move from Jamaica to Canada, that members of their family kind of pool to help make this possible, right? Whatever the case, he graduates high school in Canada, and it's here that he starts preaching for the first time, right? And this is where we start getting, like, the foreboding music, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

This kid is, like, one of these teenage preachers. Like, he gets into being an evangelical pastor at a very early age, which is almost never a good thing, right? Whenever someone's described as a gifted child preacher, which I found references to in the It's like a bad thing, right? Like that almost, I've never heard of that ending well.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, he's got the touch. He's got the power. If you watch, I always recommend the documentary Marjo when we talk about this, which is about a kid who was like used by his parents as a preacher from like age five or six on. It's a really fucked up documentary, won an Oscar. But there's a lot of this in the kind of apostolic community and the Pentecostal community, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

That like this attitude that, well, because you're sort of touched by God to become a preacher, right? The younger you can bring someone in and get them preaching, number one, it helps establish their career. You can be like, I've been doing this since I was 16 or 17 or even younger. Right. But it also it's kind of like a it's a it's a marketing tool. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

That you've got we've got a child preacher, you know, God speaking to this little young man. And, you know, you need to hear what he's got to say. That's kind of a big deal in the community. Right. We're not entirely certain where he comes up within sort of the evangelical community in Toronto.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

I've heard references to the apostolic community in the Toronto Caribbean, although the Walrus claims he joins the Exodus Deliverance Temple in Mississauga at age 17. And these are slightly in conflict, although he could have done both because that's just sort of the way this community works.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

If that's the case, the Exodus Deliverance Temple is founded in 1999, which meant he would have joined the year it was founded. And I kind of doubt that this is the case just because I looked at their website, and they say that when the church was founded, it was founded with only a few family members in a quaint and old white village hall.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

and he's not a member of the family that founded this church, so I think it's more likely that he comes out of the apostolic community in Toronto, but the walrus may have done, you know, have access to information I don't. I don't know if I'm getting into the weeds too much on this sort of thing, but... If you get started in the apostolic faith church in Toronto, that is kind of a separate thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And the apostolic faith movement is a strict fundamentalist Pentecostal sect that originates actually in Los Angeles, right? It gets its start kind of in Hollywood at the end of the, like, right at the start of the 1900s, end of the 1800s, start of the 1900s. And this is

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

There's like a wave of different evangelical Christian revivals that sweep, and they often do start in the West Coast for all of its sort of reputation as like a progressive haven. This is a thing that occurs at the start of the 1900s. It occurs like in the mid-century. It occurs after the hippie movement, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, that sounds fascinating. Well, today we're not talking about Jenna Jameson. We're not talking about anyone who has ever done anything good at all. We are talking about Kevin Smith. Not that Kevin Smith. Not the one who directed Dogma. Although it is, I don't know, we'll title this the other Kevin Smith or some shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Like it's this constant place where you get these sort of ecstatic evangelical movements that like rise up, and they often will kind of sweep north and then east from Los Angeles, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

I mean, I kind of was as a kid, right? A little bit. I guess like I was sort of, I came out of the sect of the, whatchamacallit, the fake Catholics. The sect of the whatchamacallit. Yeah, what the fuck are we, what do we call this? Everyone's shouting who knows what I mean by fake Catholics. They're now the part of the African Anglican Church.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

But we started out as this like kind of sect that was sort of like Catholicism light. And then my church left because they made a gay guy in California a minister and that was or a bishop. And that was not cool with a lot of people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

No, no, no, no. They let a gay guy be a bishop. And that was a real problem for the guy who ran my church. So we had like news cameras and shit at our church in Plano. It was a whole deal. But this is a little bit of like a different thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

It's called the Azusa Street Revival that gives a start to the apostolic faith movement that is going to wind up probably being the church that Kevin Smith, the other one, gets involved in. It was started by a lady called Florence Crawford, and it's part of this wave of evangelical revivals that sweeps L.A. from 1906 to 1915.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And it's characterized like all Pentecostal revivals by these acts of like apparent mass mania. So you'll get these groups of people who attend a preaching session and they'll start babbling in tongues together and like having what look like seizures where they're like twitching around on the ground and shouting in fake languages.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And this kind of mania that spreads contagiously is a big part of the movement. Right. And so a mission comes out of this on Azusa Street, which is why it's called the Azusa Street Revival. And they start a newspaper called the Apostolic Faith that begins circulating. And this lady Crawford, Florence Crawford, is a part of it. And the guy who kind of founded the movement was named William Seymour.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

And he makes Crawford like the director of state-level efforts to bring more churches into the fold. And they wind up having a power struggle, right? Because Crawford is kind of looking to steer the ministry in her own direction. And this leads to like a civil war within the movement. And she winds up splitting and forming the Apostolic Faith Church in none other than Portland, Oregon.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Classic story. If you get kicked out of L.A., move up to Portland. You know, many such cases, including several people on this podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah, we get run out of town, you come up here to start your cult, of course. Whom's among us? Whom's among us?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Right, right. Time to go to Portland?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Yeah. yeah it's it's it's beautiful in its own way so spreads from there uh once you're in portland you're not all that far from canada and pretty soon the afc is uh affiliated with like i mean there's like 2400 affiliated churches around the world today but they move up to canada pretty quickly and they wind up setting up shop in toronto in like 1943 which is when a canadian named stanley hancock

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

founds an apostolic faith newsletter in the city. Here's how the organization he established, which Kevin probably winds up joining, describes its founding. After reading an apostolic faith paper, Stanley Hancock received his baptism and was banned from church. In 1943, he and others started the first apostolic faith church in Canada. Now there are 11.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. We need all of that Jim Bean. We are fighting. We are island hopping, fighting the empire of Japan. Nobody wants to sleep sober at night. Give him some coconut water or some shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So you are a fan of Blood. You're a big Blood guy?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. I don't know. So the first human to human blood transfusion occurs in Philadelphia, 1795, although the doctor who does it doesn't publish. And so the first successful transfusion is like generally listed as 1818. It was by a British doctor treating a postpartum hemorrhage. And the science kind of develops from there. One of the things that becomes clear is that

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

In a lot of instances when people need a transfusion, they don't need whole blood, right? Initially, they're starting out with whole blood. And people find out over decades and stuff that actually you can take different elements of blood and kind of add in a substitute. I think saline is usually used and do infusions of that for certain problems. Milk is actually one of the infusion substitutes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. I mean, who doesn't? I enjoy having roughly five liters of blood in my body.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But this is, again, horrible for people. Don't shoot milk at the people. Milk does not belong in your blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, I'm sure the fucking dairy companies were fighting like hell to have that be the case.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

There it is. Yeah. So over the next decades, we figure out shit like blood types, and we start messing around a lot with plasma, which is a component of blood that can be used to make a whole bunch of different medications that will save your life. One of the best known uses of blood plasma is the manufacture of clotting agents in order to save and improve the lives of hemophiliacs.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

These are people who, like, if they start bleeding, they just kind of keep bleeding. Their blood doesn't have the thing that is like, all right, we've bled enough. Time to scab, you know? Mm-hmm. All gas, no brakes. All gas, no brakes with the bleeding. And the first of these medications hits in like the 1960s, and they more than double the life expectancy of hemophiliacs.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

As far as like single medical interventions go, this is like one of the big ones in terms of stopping, like improving quality of life and length of life. Obviously, I'm not an MD or a scientist, but here's how an article in the William & Mary Business Law Review by Sophia Chase describes the process of making this life-saving medication using plasma.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Every time I'm in or adjacent to a shooting, I think, boy, it's great having all of my blood still inside of me.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

After blood is collected, it is spun off through plasmapheresis, and its component parts are used for different purposes. The plasma of thousands of donors is pooled together to create factor concentrates that form a blood product, known as factor VIII, used to medicate hemophiliacs. Depending on the severity of the disease, a hemophiliac might need to use factor VIII several times a week.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

This means essentially that people who are already ill with a life-threatening disease and a compromised immune system have no alternative but to inject themselves with plasma hundreds of times a year. There's a degree to which this is a little like a diabetic who needs insulin, right? This is a medication that you need constantly, right, in order to not die, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

That said, you know, the fact that this is available is great.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But without blood transfusions and all the all of the medicines, you know, it's one of those things where, like, because we develop this, there's a shitload of people, you know, who are alive today, whether it's because they they bled out because they were a soldier who got shot or like a random person who was in like a car accident or got shot or whether there's somebody with hemophilia or one of a number of diseases and disorders that require or one of their parents.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You know, people who are alive because of this branch of science. Right. It's incredibly important stuff that we figured out largely. The problem is that, well, I don't think a single doctor would argue that access to blood and blood products is a cornerstone of modern medicine. There is never enough of the shit. Absolutely never.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

At no point have we ever had a sufficient supply of blood and blood products. Yeah. And capitalism being what it is, the market has responded by making blood and blood products wildly valuable. In 1998, a barrel of crude oil was worth about $13. A similar quantity of human blood was worth $20,000. But that's whole blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

If you took that drawn blood that as whole blood is worth about 20 grand for a barrel and separated it into plasma and the other different blood products that are used in medicine, you could get more like $67,000 in 1998 dollars off of that barrel.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Exactly, exactly. But, you know, Ben, that gets into our very successful business, taking catalytic converters, which, by the way, folks, if you need rare earth minerals, Ben and I are selling them wholesale. You just get a sack of cats delivered to your door, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Huge supporter. Yes. Yeah. And that's what we're kind of talking about today because there's some problem. Donating blood. There's this great story that's going around because the fellow just died of this lovely elderly Australian man who found out that he had a rare blood factor that was crucial in making a medicine that millions of babies needed to live.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Once the dollar crashes and once crypto crashes, the only currency is going to be catalytic converters. You'll be walking around with a wallet full of them. And you know what? We're all going to get very strong because they are not light.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You need to start doing the holes thing and carrying like a baby cow up a mountain now or a pig or whatever it was in that book so that you can be strong enough to bring grocery money with you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I'm ready. Several other people are listening on their earbuds as they saw someone's cat from the the bottom of a Prius. So anyway, I bring that up just to say that there's a lot of money in this. And wherever there's a lot of money in the raw amount of blood, there will be an incentive for people to do unethical things to get that blood because there's never just enough donations.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now, there's some reasons for that, some of which is the problem of the different organizations responsible for drawing blood. We could talk about the fact that queer people are still generally forbidden in many cases from donating blood because of the AIDS scare or the AIDS epidemic.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

There's a number of critiques, but even if you were to solve for those problems, there's still never going to be enough of this stuff. I don't know how we fix it until we can start just growing functional blood in a lab where which is a thing people are trying to figure out. But from the beginning, the main problem with blood for transfusions in medicine has been that you can only really get it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I know there's those crabs that we can use for some things, but as a general rule, you only get it from people. And people are very attached to their blood. And they're not always able to donate. There's a cost. It's not that bad, right, donating. I've donated. I'm sure you have. It's not horrible, but it's not nothing, donating.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You were aware that you gave up some of your very important blood afterwards.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes, and it's great to donate. But there's also another problem that has nothing to do with this, which is that – People, the kind of people who you need to donate blood, have blood-borne illnesses sometimes. And often they're aware of it, but often they aren't. And blood-borne illnesses travel extremely easily through donated blood products.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Remember what I said, when you are making Bacter8 to give to hemophiliacs, you are taking thousands of people's blood plasma and mixing it together. Group project. It's a group project. And if, say there's I'm throwing a number out of my ass here. We'll get we'll get more exact. But say there's 20,000 different people's plasma comes into making a batch of factor eight.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

If one of those people has a blood borne illness, that whole batch can get tainted. It just takes one. That doesn't mean everyone who gets, you know, medicated from it, but it means that anyone could potentially. Right. It's kind of the same with like fentanyl. You've got like a shitload of like, you know, whatever powdered drug and a little bit of fentanyl gets in there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So he just donated blood for like decades.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Everyone who does that drug might not get enough for it to matter, but someone could get a hot dose and then they're dead. Right. That's kind of how tainted blood works. And so this is a problem in part because, again, there's not enough blood. So if one person gets through because they weren't screened properly, you can ruin a bunch of that incredibly precious blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Saving like two and a half million babies. That's great. Donating blood. Great. Blood as a commodity is what we're talking about here. And there's some deeply problematic aspects of it. And I wanted to start by saying, where do you think blood lies on the list of US exports by value?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And it was an even bigger problem back before where our methods of testing for shit like hepatitis were as good as they are because you didn't know what the fuck was getting into the blood supply. Right. And so the odds of recipients getting sick from infected blood in the past are was a lot higher.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And the other issue here is that whole blood donations, if those are tainted, are still less likely to get you sick than blood product donations. So plasma that is tainted is likelier to get you sick than whole blood that's tainted. I don't know why, but that's the way it works.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I don't know why, but this is what the medical paperwork says, is that blood products, when those are used on you, if they're tainted, they're likely to spread disease than whole blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And this exists in a profit where there's a buckle of billions on the table. Now, you're probably aware of how HIV would really cause some problems for the blood donation industry, right? Because first off, they didn't initially know it was a thing. So no one was checking for this stuff during the early days when it was spreading. And in that initial outbreak, a bunch of hemophiliacs caught HIV.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

through their transfusions and got sick and died. But before and during HIV, it was still never the most common illness spread through blood donations. The most common illnesses spread through blood and blood product donations are hepatitis A, B, and C. And we have been aware that hepatitis was a danger for this kind of stuff for a long time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But hepatitis C, we couldn't detect it until 1998, and we couldn't detect it in people, and we couldn't detect it in blood products until 1992. So we've only very recently been able to actually monitor people's blood to see if they had it, and even more recently than that, be able to check blood products to see if they were clean from it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So what you got, if we're talking about the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, is a supply of something crucial that is inherently limited.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And part of the issue here is that when we're talking about the international blood trade, if you've got a country with endemic hepatitis of some sort, they're going to need to bring in blood from other countries because their ability to get enough clean blood on their own before you can test for all of the stuff property is going to be effectively nil. And they're going to need, as a general rule,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Our blood, right? And because people don't like giving blood, you're going to have to pay donors. And because corporations like to maximize profits, they want to pay as little as possible. And I think we're starting to see where the problems come in here, right? Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The first wave of blood products hits the United States in the 60s, and oversight and regulation of the blood industry is basically non-existent at this point. Many, if not most, paid donors are IV drug users, the homeless, and prisoners, all groups of people with a much higher rate of blood-borne illnesses than the general population or the volunteer donor population.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Because the need is inelastic, different states start experimenting with blood shield laws, which exempt blood suppliers from what is called strict liability. As Sophia Chase explains, this meant that despite providing an incredibly risky product, the business did not need to worry about the possibility of many expensive lawsuits.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The large donor population, the lack supervision, and the diminished threat of litigation were resulted in the United States becoming the premier producer of blood and plasma products. So we become the largest world producer of blood and plasma, in part because we're like, hey, if somebody gets sick because you didn't do your due diligence to make sure this stuff's safe, that ain't on you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

We need the blood this badly. Get it, however, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

No, no, blood and blood products. How much of a chunk of the U.S. economy do you think that would be?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Limited liability. Limited liability. Yeah, exactly. Why would we be liable for what happens to people's cars? They're not our cars. Speaking of cars. Yeah. You know what you should buy is if a car is advertised next, that. Otherwise, whatever else.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Oh my God, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where me and my guest for this week, the great Ben Bolin, are about to get targeted and murdered by the Clinton crime family. Ben, how are you doing today? Finally, you know what I mean?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

It is the ninth largest export for the entire United States. Holy shit. Yes. It beats like coal. Blood is a massive industry in the United States. It is like, again, it's one of our largest exports. Blood products make up 1.8% of all U.S. exports, which is up about half a percent from where it was 10 years ago. And blood exports are valued at about $37 billion today. It's much larger.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And we're back. So in the late 1960s, a researcher named Richard Titmus concluded that paying donors made people likelier to lie about their medical history, right? From the beginning, because there's not enough volunteers, you are paying for most of this stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And research shows that people will pretend they don't have the risk factors or just lie about outright having a bloodborne illness because they're desperate for money, right? Because people need money to live.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

He wrote that ultimately, quote, this paid donations results in situations in which proportionally more and more blood is supplied by the poor, the unskilled, the unemployed, and other low income groups and categories have exploited human populations of high blood yielders.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Redistribution of blood and blood products from the poor to the rich appears to be one of the dominant effects of the American blood banking systems. So not only is this our ninth largest export.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

tens of billions of dollars it is an industry where the blood comes from poor people and an overwhelming amount of it goes to people who are more affluent because obviously they're able to pay for better medical care we are mining this is a vampiric system where the poor are having their blood taken um and given often to people who are more affluent to them right that's a big part of the blood industry especially in this period and another big part of it is that

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Because those exploited people desperately need the money, they may not tell you if they just shot up heroin, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes. Yes. And there's a lot of – in these companies, we'll just destroy some records or whatever, right? Right. Now, following the advice that Titmuss gave, because he's again like this is a really deeply problematic system and maybe we shouldn't be paying for blood donations because it inherently causes problems.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

If this advice had been followed, it would have destroyed the blood plasma industry in particular. So they just ignored it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes. Yes. So they just ignore what this guy says. And in fact, they do worse than ignore him. They continue to explore more and more exploited segments of the populace to buy blood from. Of course, homeless people, street-level sex workers, people who are using IV drugs, those are all people who are desperate for cash and will do anything to get it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But you know what group of people are hardest up? The incarcerated. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

including the 13th Amendment, as you stated, that make incarcerated people the ideal source of raw blood for America's blood merchants. The U.S. has by this point designated blood a vital resource, which means the government has streamlined regulations to ensure a sufficient supply.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

This meant that if you set up a plasma donation center, a collection point in a prison, there is no mandated oversight. The FDA is basically not involving themselves, or at least not initially, which means that as long as this stays a scarce product, drug companies are allowed to buy their blood from, quote, unlicensed, uninspected vendors.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

In other words, the drug companies who are by because it's not the drug companies making these collection points, it's other companies. And because this is so scarce, if you're buying blood, you don't have to like say, and I got it from these people who have a license to get blood and proving that they follow all these. You can just buy it from whomever guy comes to your door with a sack of blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You can just purchase that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. I mean, I will say the system doesn't work in this way in every extent now. Like there's still a lot of issues with the blood system, but a lot like things do get better as a result of all of the people who are going to die. Right. I'm talking about the way it was in like the 70s and stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now, that said, it's still there's a lot of issues and also a lot of problems with like the way in which blood donation is conducted. I'm not saying that there's not. But this is when we're talking about this this program at its worst.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I did not realize when I started how big a... That's a significant piece of the economy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

toward any alternative right these are these are also the days of uh benighted experiments yes and all of that is going down and the the fact that like in terms of the companies who need blood they're looking at prison pop this is the ideal donor base because number one the prison population is fairly stable a lot of these guys are in there for years or decades you can rely on them

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

and the prisoner's need for cash is also stable. This makes for an extremely predictable flow of product, and businesses thrive when things are predictable. From the early days of experimentation in this field, there had been data that doing this was dangerous. In 1969, the New York Times published a story about several deaths tied to prison-derived plasma products.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

In 1970, they followed it up with an article describing prison plasma donation as transfusion roulette. Wow. In 1974, after several more well-publicized blood disasters, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare published our first national blood policy. It recommended that only volunteers be allowed to give blood because, again, there's so many problems with paying people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

In 1982, the FDA made a non-binding request that blood donated by prison inmates not be purchased or sold for domestic consumption. So in 1982, the FDA is like, we shouldn't use domestically any of the blood that we pay inmates for. Now, crucially, they're not saying don't pay inmates for blood. They're saying don't use it here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes, yes. Oh, man. And here's the thing. That's shocking when you just like, I never would have thought of... If I had been asked to guess the 10 largest exports, blood wouldn't have been on my list. But here's the thing. Hmm. The United States provides 70% of the blood plasma used worldwide to make medicine. The plasma? Yes, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Like somewhere else. So it's not our problem.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. Yes, yes. The FDA is definitely in its shitty stepdad era here. So the industry doesn't stop taking incarcerated people's blood. And in fact, the FDA keeps issuing licenses to export blood to prison plasma centers in several states. These included Nevada, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arizona, Missouri, and the focus of our episodes this week, Arkansas. Ooh.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

In 1970, an Arkansas district court had ruled that several practices at Cummins Prison in Grady, Arkansas, were cruel and unusual violations of the Eighth and Fourteen Amendments. One 1969 description of conditions in Cummins said this, Many of the inmates are psychopathic and sociopathic. Some of them, again, this is 1969, some of them are aggressive homosexuals.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Many of the inmates are hardened criminals, and some of them are extremely dangerous to society in general, to their keepers, and to fellow inmates. Many of them are malingerers and will go to any lengths to avoid work. Many are prone to destroy state property, even items designed for their welfare and comfort.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

This is how they're writing about these people who are going to become the core of this blood donation system for one very good reason, which is that Arkansas prisons don't allow inmates to work for money. So the blood donation program is going to become the only way Arkansas prison inmates can get cash.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court had found that Arkansas' solitary confinement tradition was unconstitutional. Justice John Paul Stevens described the prison system in Arkansas as, quote, a dark and evil world. And another federal judge described the people who ran Arkansas' prison system as evil men. These are federal judges.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

One of them is a Supreme Court justice looking at it and being like, wow, this is like Mordor. This is fucked. No. I'm a federal judge in the 60s and this is bad. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

When you see a federal judge using a language that you would expect from some 19-year-old anarchist protester at an anti-prison rally, the conditions must be nightmarish. John Paul Stevens is calling the people running this system evil. Cannot exaggerate how bad it is. It's like when you hear the SS punished a guy for committing war crimes. It's like, oh my God. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Do not hang out with Wild Jimmy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

70% of all blood plasma used on the planet in medicine comes from here. We are the largest exporter of blood products on the planet, and no one else comes very close.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes. What was the recommendation of law? Can they ever make a rule against this?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The pinky swear of law. And the other thing is that because this is right, right when those the Supreme Court is like, yeah, this is an evil system run by evil men. That is right when the program of taking blood from these prisoners is about to start. Right. So this is just you've got a prison system where inmates are not allowed to make money any other way. That is already an evil nightmare.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And into this situation in 1978 steps a new governor. Yeah. William Jefferson Clinton, right? That is his first term in office. And he's got a lot of exciting plans for how he wants to reform things in one of the poorest states in the union. And he's also got a lot of good friends who had helped him win election and who he owed some favors.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Both of these things are going to come together in the ambition of several men to make Arkansas prisons a major hub for blood product exports. And all of this is going to be done – these are all Arkansas prisons that are donating, but the hub for donation is Cummins Prison, right? They're sending people there to give donations. That's where the actual – because they build a lab there, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You have to have some equipment to do this. Mm-hmm. And again, yeah, because there's like, you know, you've got this perfect stable supplier position who have no other way to make money. It's just a great place to do this. Now, a few years before Clinton came into office, a doctor named Bud Henderson had formed a company called Health Education Consultants.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

They did well, and he hired a banker named Leonard Dunn from Little Rock to run business operations eventually. In 1978, they'd renamed themselves HMA and jumped into the prison plasma business with both feet. Henderson had gotten tight with the medical director at the state prison system, John Bias, right, B-Y-U-S.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And so he managed to negotiate a contract to manage both the plasma program and the clinics at all state prisons. Right. So you get this private company by a doctor, Bud Henderson, and he's got this banker, Leonard Dunn, eventually helping him out. He talks John Bias into giving him the contract to do all of the health care, including plasma donation for the whole Arkansas prison system.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

This makes Arkansas the only state with a prison medical program run by a for profit company. Right? Interesting. That's where this starts. And I'm going to quote from an article by Susie Parker in Salon here. Susie Parker is an Arkansas investigative journalist. Bias and Henderson say the motive for the plasma program was twofold.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The inmates needed money to buy gum and toiletries, and the destitute prison system needed medical equipment. Arkansas is also one of the only states that refuses to pay prisoners for their labor. Each unit of plasma was sold by HMA, which was running the program under the prison's FDA license for at least $50. and half was handed over to the prison system.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And this is one of those things where we're talking about how messed up a lot of this industry is. It's not like some messed up industries where it's like, well, maybe we don't all need this product that the U.S. puts out. Or maybe there's alternatives to this product that has harmful consequences. We do really need a lot of blood and blood products. It's very important for medicine.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

With hundreds of prisoners donating once, sometimes twice a week, plasma became a profitable enterprise. And in fact, in short order, the profits from blood plasma sales turned Arkansas prisons from a line item in the state budget to a net profit enterprise. Because of this program, prisons become profitable in Arkansas, right? To the state.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, just fucking blazing on that sax.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The right to bleed. That is what they call it. That's literally the term. So as we all know, once the profit motive becomes the governing concern over, say, human welfare, people die. consider some dark things. One of the doctors who worked at Cummins Prison during this time was a guy named Mike Galster.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

He started in 1979 just as the program got off the ground and he has since made some terrible allegations. Quote, I could see prisoners were being given illegal narcotics. Several indicated that this was how they were being paid for their plasma. And so guards are being pressured to sign up prisoners to donate. I think there's some evidence guards are getting kickbacks, you know, in order to help.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

There's some incentive. And also, Drugs are always in prisons, but there's only one way drugs get into prisons because prisoners can't leave.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

No, no. That's the way this works, and this is one of the things that has happened. The other thing that's happening, it's not just guards giving drugs. A lot of prisoners want the money they get from donating to buy drugs, right? Because it's prison and drugs make it suck less, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, anything can be currency, right? And there's also some evidence that like some of the prisoners are getting drugs from like the clinics, right? Like they're getting painkillers and shit, which are a lot easier to come by then, right? So even in that case, it's effectively free, right, for the people bribing these drugs. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

There's at least one case here that we know of of a guard taking kickbacks from prisoners who had been rejected from the program because they had blood borne illnesses and letting them donate because they needed drug money. There's like evidence that people falsifying data to let people who knowingly had tainted blood continue to give it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

We know this happened with a documented time, and it's happening a lot more than that one time. Because this guy is going to become one of the couple of people that they try to use as scapegoats later. Now, state investigators later confirmed Galster's allegations that prison employees traded drugs for blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

This doctor also observed that many inmate donors he saw, quote, appeared jaundiced and very sick. Quote, when I would ask if they had just had a blood test, they would say, no, I've just given plasma. It was clear they were sick. Now to save costs, this makes it even worse. Again, they want this prison as cheap as possible. What's a big line item if you're doing blood donations?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Boy, you know how expensive needles are? You're supposed to use a new one each time? We're throwing money out the door with all these one use needles. Let's just wash them. Which is exactly what they do.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So they start reusing needles on these prisoners to get donations, which means not only are sick prisoners, some of whom know they're sick, a lot of whom don't, donating and adding tainted blood to the supply, but also a lot of prisoners who are not sick are getting sick because they donate and then keep continuing to donate and adding even more tainted blood to the system. Ooh.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

A crucial part of keeping people alive. So you can't deny... There's no argument to be made that we don't need to be producing all of this blood. Somebody fucking has to. The problem is that whenever you've got an industry this big, you're going to find people try to find ways to maximize their profits and minimize their costs.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now, Galster claims he was unaware of the possibility at the time that this could happen, saying later, quote, I assumed stupidly that our people selling this plasma had some process of cleaning it up. So, again, he's a he's like a prison clinic guy. I said doctor earlier.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I don't actually know what his degree state is, but like his attitude is like they've got to be doing something to make this safe. Right. Right. He probably pasteurized blood. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, someone will do something.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Somebody's got to be handling the surely not just sending this to Canada.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Someone must be responsible for making sure this doesn't go horribly wrong. People can't be that evil. Right. Right. And speaking of human. Nope. Speaking of great people, let's have some more ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And when you're talking about blood, that's going to lead you to do some fucked up shit that has some hideous consequences, right? Yes. And that's the story that we're telling today.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

This week's episode is going to explain why and how a huge chunk of the global blood economy came to rely specifically on a bunch of prison inmates in Arkansas, watched over by a handful of Clinton associates who saw their job as basically a bribe for political loyalty and how this ultimately killed multiple 9-11s worth of Canadians, English people, and other folks around the planet.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And we're back. So to save costs, and again, because there's no real oversight to the program, it's also like if you want to have like a professional phlebotomist and like phlebotomists are pretty good generally at like taking blood. If you've ever had like...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

a phlebotomist take your blood and then had like you know a nurse who's that's not their specialty take your blood you know that like when somebody's specifically their whole thing is doing blood draws it's a much more pleasant process right yeah they know where the vein is Yeah. But here's the thing. Both nurses and phlebotomists, phew, expensive.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You know who works for basically free, taking blood? Who's that? Prison inmates.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I'm just saying like people who specifically trained to draw blood are better than people who like that's just one of a bunch of things they do at drawing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. Or it's like it's like how a nurse or a doctor who's like specialize in like OBGYN, you know, stuff and childbirth. They're going to do a better job of like birthing a child than someone who like that was just part of my training. But I'm I'm here to deal with like car crashes and shit. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Let's cut all these people out.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes. Someone who's in prison because they shot two guys. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Perfect. Perfect. One witness to this was a former inmate donor, John Shock, who spoke to Susie Parker. Quote, they had inmates doing things they shouldn't have been doing. They would let people who people who was sick bleed. Ain't no telling what they had. They didn't check all the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And after Shock had been donating for some time, prison medical staff conducted a hepatitis test and he turned up positive. Quote, I am damn sure I got it, hepatitis C, in the prison. I didn't have it before I went in. I've never had needles stuck in my arm that wasn't supposed to be there. I've never interacted with homosexuals. I love women too. Again, this is the 70s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I didn't get it those ways. But right. But he is saying that like the only time needles were in my arm was when I was doing this blood donation program. Obviously, I got hepatitis from this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Exactly. And he claims that when he gets diagnosed with hepatitis C, they don't kick him out of the donor program. And in fact, he claims the doctor who sees him is like, well, your eyes aren't yellow. You don't have jaundice yet. So you're probably fine. He said, quote, if you start feeling bad, come back and see me. That's just the way they were.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

They don't care because you are dirt down there anyway. Yep. Prisons. Yes. Prisons. And what part of the story here is that like, you know, Americans don't like to think about treating prisoners more nicely. It's never a popular political topic. But when you treat these people like shit and like they're not human.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

This is a dark story, and it's all set in the Arkansas prison system. And it all starts with this immutable fact, which is that human beings die without blood. The average adult has about four to five liters of whole blood in their body at any point in time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Thousands of you might die from tainted – like that's not why you should care, but there are objective consequences to this evil, right? Like it never – no evil on a population of people ever stays isolated to that population of people. This is a lesson we never learn, but it is important. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

These are human beings who live with us and treating them like shit causes problems outside of them, even if you don't care about that group of people. And you should. But like, yeah, you should try. You should try.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. You know what? That might blow up on you. Is that a reasonably low enough bar? Look, I'm not saying none of these guys did terrible things. I'm saying don't give them diseases while stealing their blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

If we're spitballing, first step, maybe don't be a vampire.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Because sometimes you could be the sexy vampire who winds up getting cast in Bong Joon-ho movies. Sure. Right. Maybe this will give us more Robert Pattinson movies. We shouldn't judge. Oh, wait, no. I'm hearing the Arkansas blood donation program did not lead to any Robert Pattinson's.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, I have this confirmed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I'm actually unclear as to whether or not that has something to do with the Arkansas prison system. You never know with Willem Dafoe, Sophie.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So the first diagnosed AIDS case in the United States. Speaking of segues. Right. Yeah. June 16th, 1981. Now, obviously, HIV had been spreading around the country for some time before this point, but.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

It takes a while for people to realize, especially because of the way HIV – you have it for a while before you have symptoms that are clearly – it takes a long time to figure out what the fuck is going on, right? But once it does, it's become so widespread that there is a fucking panic, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now, the panic is initially focused mainly in the coasts and kind of the more densely populated areas than rural Arkansas. So while other institutions start taking action to counter this new bloodborne horror, the Arkansas prison system does nothing at all. Bud Henderson, who is, again, the doctor who founds the company managing not just the plasma program,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And while we've always known that like you need blood, medical science has tended to focus throughout most of history on like maybe people have too much blood. Maybe they have bad blood and you got to like add in good blood to replace losses. It was a messy process of figuring out like how blood works. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But all of the prison clinics in the state said later, there was mentality that we didn't have any AIDS in the central part of the country. The Department of Corrections said for years we didn't have any AIDS cases. There was a subconsciousness that we just didn't want to think we had those people around us. Again, the role bigotry plays in all of this cannot be overstated either. Those people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And again, if you just find with horrible things happening to a group of people, it never stays isolated to them. However, Henderson does admit that he was aware of a danger because it had impacted his ability to sell blood overseas. Oh, it hits his money. It hits his money, right? He's pretending, obviously, we don't have AIDS in Arkansas. I keep drawing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But countries around the world and the companies that do blood imports for them are like... This whole blood borne illness thing, we're maybe not going to buy as much blood from like shady foreign companies, right? Like we're really worried about this. And Henderson calls this the worst possible time for plasma sales.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And so as a result, he's only able to maintain his profits by finding a partner in Canada, a company called Continental Pharma Cryosan to take the contract. Now, CryoSan is a blood wholesaler.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

They purchase it, they refine it to specifications that fit what their customers need, and they sell plasma direct to Switzerland, Japan, Spain, Italy, and another Canadian company who uses it to make a factor VIII thing for hemophiliacs. Now, a number of these companies that CryoSan is selling to have banned... the purchase of blood on their own soil.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And I think all of them have banned the use of blood derived from prison inmates, right? But CryoSan doesn't tell them anything. And I think they're generally aware where a lot of this blood is coming from, but it's like a loophole, right? No, no, we don't, we don't, we'd never do that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But that's against, that's against our Swiss ethics, you know, to take advantage of people in that situation and it's not safe. Oh, hey, CryoSan, they've got clean blood and CryoSan ensures the shipping papers say nothing about the fact, the fact that these products have originated from prison donations.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

the source was just listed as adc plasma center grady arkansas you see that some japanese guy working at a company that's you know sending blood to hospitals fine you know whatever yeah we got the paperwork you know what we got the paperwork it's all good yeah why would somebody be dishonest about a way to make this much money Right, right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And in 1983, the program does come to a screeching but temporary halt because during this process, when they're sending shit to cryosan, it has found that several units of blood tainted with hepatitis B have made their way to cryosan and thus overseas. This was a problem at the time because hep B, we now know, can indicate the presence of HIV, right? Mm-hmm.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Which means we are basically certain that by 83, HIV has entered the Cummins blood supply that's being sent out to all these companies. We don't know exactly when it happens, but the amount of HIV they're finding suggests that it's pretty widespread by 83.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Remember, the fact that this tainted blood is leaving the prison also means that it's being spread around inside the prison, some through sex and some through drug use. But it does seem like more than anything because of how many people are donating through tainted needles being used for blood draws. Right. Because that lowers costs for the company doing the blood draws.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now, this whole disaster, the fact that a bunch of tainted units of blood gets sent to Canada is written off as a screening lapse. The FDA closes the donation program in Cummins for a while. You know, this is in 1983. But in 1984, they publish an investigation that comes to some damning conclusions.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The first blood transfusion, as far as we know, was attempted in 1628 by an English physician. And I say attempted because it did not work. And I don't think that's a – like it was a messy process, you know, trying to figure out how to do this. And they weren't always using human blood, right? Because if you're like an early doctor in this period –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Quote, "...health management associates had prematurely and improperly distributed plasma contaminated with hepatitis. Twelve ineligible donors had given blood in a breach of screening process and an international recall resulted. The FDA then revoked the center's license to operate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

An investigation revealed that the program allowed disqualified donors to bleed, altered records, and stored plasma in ways that didn't prevent contamination."

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

It also found that plasma center staff wasn't well supervised and discovered attempts by people in HMA management positions at the center to hide from FDA inspectors the fact that they had either initiated or condoned the destruction or alteration of records concerning these activities.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So this is not just something you can say, well, they shouldn't have put it on to the prisoners, but the problem started there. No, no, no. Management is actively covering up that they are producing and selling tainted blood. They conspired. They conspired. They knew. They were incredibly well aware of what they were doing, and they did it all for money. Now-

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

It is obvious even this is putting the problem that exists too mildly. And in fact, later in 1984, in part based on the FDA's investigation, the National Correctional Association puts out an informational bulletin to members, and their members are prisons, warning that plasma centers are a bad idea. You shouldn't have them in prisons, right? And as a result, most U.S.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

prisons that had been in the process of making plans and contracts to do plasma donation programs stopped. Because their whole organization is like, actually, this is a terrible idea. You are opening yourself up to so much fucking liability. Like, just don't do it, right? But the prisons in Arkansas don't stop.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Company founder Bud Henderson considered the program critical, not just for his own bottom line, but for the welfare of the state itself. And Bud argued it's, quote, for the good of the inmates because the prison needed money too. You have to understand. Yeah. That's why we have taxes, bud. No, they like it though.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You want to be able to cut those. Yeah. Wow. By the early 1980s, that's when he brings in Leonard Dunn to run his company, right? I mentioned this earlier, this lawyer from Little Rock. Leonard Dunn is a confidant and friend of Bill Clinton. He's a banker, right? And Clinton had appointed him at the same time as he's being made the head of HMA.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Governor Clinton appoints him to the head of the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. Now, Clinton also appoints HMA's attorney, Don Smith, to the board of corrections for the state. So we're seeing these people, one is a close friend of his being put in charge of HMA and also HMA's attorney is being put on the board of corrections, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So there's some direct involvement here of the Clinton administration and they're at this point trying to get the program going again because it makes the prison system solvent. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

That is the question we'll be dealing with throughout the episode. Okay. But this is what's happened right now, right? So months after the FDA shut things down and issued a report condemning the whole operation, HMA creates a subsidiary called Arkansas Blood Components, or ABC Plasma, and they keep selling the blood that way, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

It might not make you the logical thing wouldn't be that like, well, obviously, a lamb's blood and a human's blood are fundamentally different. And we shouldn't be putting lamb's blood into people. You might not make that jump. Right. Right. Just it all just looks like blood to me.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Including to CryoSan, the company that uses tainted US inmate blood, that they are there selling this tainted blood to the Canadian Red Cross. Now, at Cummins, plasma donations continued, and by all accounts, most, if not all, of the same problems persisted. So they get relicensed, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And the next year, in 1985, stories come out that Arkansas prisons had more inmate complaints than any other state, not just due to the blood program, but more broadly due to hideous issues with rape and abuse by guards and poor facilities. This is a black mark on Governor Clinton's record, and so he decides we need to take some serious action in the prisons.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

like necessarily fix anything, but I'm going to have the state police conduct an internal investigation into what went wrong here, right? Mm-hmm . Susie Parker writes, the state police prison investigation resulted in two misdemeanor charges and one felony charge for employees running a gambling operation. Only a few weeks into it, Clinton himself urged a speedy end to the probe.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I told them to get it done and get it over with, Clinton told reporters. Complaints about poor healthcare and the plasma program resulted in no action. and the Arkansas Department of Corrections Director Abe Lockhart, who had been at the center of the allegations, was not punished. Clinton said the prison system had been studied to death and refused to oust Lockhart.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now, Susie's right to center Art Lockhart, the Department of Corrections director, because he is one of three men who control the state prison system. The other two are a state senator named Knox Nelson and a state representative named Bill Foster.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now, there are allegations that all three men, or at least men close to them, profited directly from the blood program, often by awarding contracts to local businesses who supported them and their campaigns.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

One good article that I read in the Arkansas Times on the matter interviewed Bobby Roberts, currently the director of the Arkansas library system or later the director of the Arkansas library system and a former member of Governor Clinton's staff. And he blames Newton and Foster for blocking any attempts to reform the system.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Roberts recalled it as a time when Nelson held the upper hand over Clinton with regard to the prison system, which was headquartered in his district.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Roberts said Nelson made it clear to Clinton that, as chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, he would prevent legislation that the governor wanted in other areas, such as schools, roads, and economic development, from ever reaching a vote if Clinton pressed for changes in the prisons. Knox and I got into it about everything under the sun, Roberts said.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You know, just like if you put like blood from somebody and somebody who cannot take a donation from them, if you're dealing with 16, you don't know about blood types. How would that possibly come to you?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I don't think any governor was going to cross him and a handful of other senators down there and think he was going to get anything done. There was a lot of politics that went on in those things. You really could not do anything with the ADC if you ran afoul of Bill Foster and Knox Nelson. That's just the reality of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So Roberts' allegation is that part of what's happening here is these guys see a lot of use in the plasma program because it's bringing in money not just to the prison system, but But it creates a lot of opportunity to give people work and contracts that also profit them. And it's not just the blood system. The whole fact Arkansas prisons are uniquely fucked up in the U.S. at this point in time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And part of it is because they are being run by these guys who see them as a way to get kickbacks and bribes for their friends. Right. That's effectively what's happening. And their threat is like, hey. We whatever else you want to do in the state of Arkansas, Bill, you won't get to do if you fuck with this golden goose of ours. So just stay the fuck away. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Mm hmm. Then you can do some shit with the schools and become president, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Whatever you want. Just keep the blood flowing. That's one allegation, right? Now, Roberts writes Clinton a letter at this point, right? Telling him that appointing HMA attorney Don Smith to the corrections board had been a terrible idea, right? So he's mostly blaming these guys –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And like the local legislature, but he's also like, why would you put this guy, this attorney at this company that just got shut down by the FDA on the corrections board? Right. And he his claim and Roberts would for years claim plasma donations were never like our main concern when it came to prison reform.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But he says that it was known to everybody working in the prison system that the program was poorly run and was a disaster waiting to happen. In his letter, he described HMA to Bill Clinton as, quote, a time bomb waiting to blow up in somebody's face. And before longer, it would do just that. But that's going to be in part two. How are you feeling, Ben?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Maybe it all works fine.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Maybe it turns out we don't have enough hepatitis. Have we considered that? Yes, we have.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's a very good way to put it. And I think the big part of this story is the distributed system of making great evil, right? Very rarely is it like somebody comes in with a plan, a scheme to do something monstrous. It's more incentives align and a bunch of people make little compromises and a few people at the top do...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

If you're aware that the problem is not too much blood, you're doing very well in the 1600s. You're a great doctor in the 1600s if your immediate jump isn't just like, well, let's cut him and drain a bunch of that shit out. This guy with a sword wound probably has too much blood left in him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

you know, are just psychopaths who are like, yeah, I don't give a fuck how many people get tainted blood. I want my money, you know? Anyway, it's cool stuff. Also, I am now thinking of that song, Tainted Love, but like about tainted blood. So that's going to be going on in my head for a while.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Anyway, whatever. Nobody needs that. Nobody needs me singing in this podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. Get a whole band together. Do it. I don't know what we'd use it for because we're already recording the episode.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, we'll throw it up in a year in an episode on Heinrich Himmler, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So, Ben, where can people find you on the internet.com?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, yeah. No, it's going to be big for us and obviously big for all of you who lose your catalytic converters. But hey, we've got extras that we took from you. Anyway. Yeah, we'll sell them back. We'll sell them back. That's the episode, everybody. Come back to part two.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The balance is wrong. Yeah. You have to think about it like if we took a bunch of computers back to like 900 BC and we showed them how to use the computers, but didn't explain anything about like how they worked, people would probably be able to keep some of those things going for a while. But their theories about why different stuff worked would be wild.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes, yes. The computers demand blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

There would be a whole religion centered around getting Microsoft Outlook to work. And honestly, they might do a better job than we do because Microsoft Outlook never works well. I mean, maybe human sacrifice is the answer, Ben.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Mm hmm. You know what? I'm going to get on that one. I'm going to need I've been meaning to have like a sacrificial knife made for me. So this this could end well for everybody.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I do remember that. Yes. About the governor of or the founder, one of the founders of Oregon, if I'm not mistaken.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I have a sacrificial knife, but it's not nice enough to fix Microsoft Outlook, Sophie.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Well, I mean, yeah, actually, this one, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Keep it near me. You never know. You know, my motto, ABS, baby, always be sacrificing. You never you never know when which God, you know, Babylonian deities. There's all sorts of gods out there that need blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. It's a nice one. Yeah. That's a Ford Bontempski buoy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, the Kiwis in the audience will be impressed. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Well, today we're not talking about that, although we are talking about something where racism is involved. We're talking about I wasn't entirely joking about the Clintons. They are they are intricately involved in this story, or at least Bill is. But Ben, what do you know about the blood industry?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So we didn't get blood transfusion right the first time. Not for a bit. Not for a bit. But by 1655, a physician named Richard Lower had carried out the first successful blood transfusion, not on humans, but on dogs. He is one of these like rare, much better than that, where he's like, maybe we should just start by trying to replace people's blood. I'm going to work with dogs. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

See if I can get that down, you know? And two years later, a French physician and Richard Lower separately carried out successful blood transfusions from lambs to human beings. And I know I just mentioned that that like isn't a great idea and it's not, but it does sort of work sometimes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And it's the kind of thing you will occasionally hear, you know, you can use coconut water for blood transfusions because it's like sterile and it's the electrolyte content. It's one of those things, if you look up, like Snopes will say, no, this isn't true. I found a scientific study where they did this. They used it for an emergency transfusion.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

What's going on here, when using lambs or coconuts does work, it's not because, again, these are good products.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

replacements for blood it's because sometimes when people lose enough blood the biggest thing is getting enough like mass of something that's close enough in there so that their body keeps working there are like if you if you use coconut water for transfusions because of like I think the amount of potassium is one problem there are horrible additional health conflicts it can cause and the same is true of lamb's blood but if someone is like

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

going to immediately die because they don't have enough blood. Sometimes this has been done in order to save them, right? But it's not a good idea if there's other options. And in fact, once they started using lamb's blood, it became very quickly clear that like people also die because of the consequences of shooting them full of lamb's blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

It is a little and it's also this thing in like emergency medicine where like there's certain things you're never supposed to do, like use an AED on an infant that also like people do because in the instance in which you would be doing it, the infant is dead. So you can't make it worse. Right. And like.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

When we're talking about like where the origin of this, of the coconut water thing is, it was at least one of the stories you'll hear is that it was like during like World War II and like they had, they didn't have enough blood and they just kind of tried something. And so like occasionally-

Behind the Bastards

Part One: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Stuff that's not blood or not human blood can be used in a way that will deal with the immediate problem, but again, always causes a bunch of additional problems because it's not supposed to be in there, right? Right, right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

One of the key moments of Bruno's education came when he and several other boys attacked one of their schoolteachers, again, very different era, who he described later as a simpering fool who spoke with the voice of a eunuch. In other words, he and a bunch of his other students beat the hell out of a schoolteacher because he was effeminate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

You know, in the creation of Dr. B, a biography by Richard Pollack, Pollack writes, so weak and inadequate was the schoolmaster that one day Bruno egged on several of his classmates and together they bodily removed the offending instructor from the room. Bettelheim recalled that he immediately began to tremble as he contemplated the consequences of this rash act.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And indeed, the next day, the school's authoritarian director castigated the class and especially Bruno as the leader in this unprecedented and nefarious deed. But the director did not, as the troublemaker feared, expel him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

On the contrary, at the end of the scolding, his demeanor suddenly softened, and in a quiet voice, he said, Of course I know that if Dr. X had behaved as I expect all masters of this institution to behave, nothing like this could have happened. So again, he like beats up a teacher. He like leads a mob to force a teacher violently out of the classroom.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And the director's like, well, yeah, but he shouldn't have been such a girl about it. Yeah, he was asking for it. He was asking for it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yeah. Yeah. Why was this guy a problem later in life? Yeah. Well, and it's also why did Austria get involved in so much fucked up shit? You know, it really like the fact that this is the country that is going to like produce Hitler and that just like gets does the things it does in World War One. It's like, oh, yeah, everybody was like.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

This is a culture that's kind of out of its mind in a lot of ways.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

No, no, no, no, no. Thank God we fixed all of our mental health issues. Finally, human beings are healthy. I haven't read the news in about eight years, but I think it's going well.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

So more than two-thirds of a century later, Bruno would recall this incident as key in his development as an educator because it was the first time a figure of authority at his school had witnessed bad behavior and in his eyes sought to understand its root cause rather than just punishing it outright. So what he takes from this is –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

My headmaster punished me because he does get punished, but he sought to understand why I had acted out. And this is like a revelation to him that you wouldn't just hit a kid for not doing what you wanted a kid to do. You would try to understand what was the child thinking when they behaved badly, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And then you hit them. And then you hit them. Now, the fact that Bruno just chose to describe the teacher he disliked as sounding like a eunuch holds a little more meaning than you might guess. As an adult, Bruno reserved special disgust for the authority figures of his childhood who acted in ways he considered effeminate. And his kind and retiring father was one of these.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

In an excellent paper on Bettelheim for Disability Studies Quarterly, Griffin Epstein seems to tie this behavior to Bruno's insecurity over anti-Semitism. There was a strong heteropatriarchal thrust to the stigmatization of Jews. According to Boyarin, Jews were understood to defy Western European gender and sexual norms.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Jewish men were seen as effeminate sissies, unfit for labor, while Jewish women, when they appeared discursively at all, were read as phallic monsters. Jews were perceived broadly as deviant, perverse, and inbred sexual aberrations. So Bruno is really, really sensitive about the idea of men not behaving in a masculine way because of the racism that he encounters, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And this is further complicated by the fact that his dad catches syphilis in 1907. So this idea and another – anti-Semites will often like link – syphilis to Judaism in this period. It is a common aspect of racial politics. Hitler does it a lot.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And so the fact that Bruno's dad, as kind as he is, catches this very shameful disease is a big part of why Bruno is going to be the way he is as an adult. And it's like this kind of shame that is at the core of his personality as a kid. Now, the likely reason Anton catches syphilis is that his wife goes away one weekend and he sleeps with a sex worker, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

That's generally how this thing happened. This was apparently the only time he did it, although obviously we can't know that. But the indiscretion has a shattering impact on the family. His wife doesn't sleep with him for the last 20 years of their marriage. And she doesn't because she would get sick and die if she did, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Like this is an uncurable fatal illness in addition to being a stigmatized illness.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

You do – often. It takes about 20, 15 to 20 years to hit like the tertiary stages. Like that's not – it can go differently. But like one of the frightening things about syphilis is that – You – after the quote-unquote indiscretion as it would be, so you have a break in your – and you have an unrecommended liaison, you don't know for years if you got sick from it, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And that's part of why this is such a massive thing in Austrian culture and all European culture in this period is that like the entire – all the men in the society are like constantly scared of getting syphilis, right? And so are their wives because if your husband is sleeping around and he catches it, you'll get it, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yeah no and it's going to be a big deal until 1943 right like so it is like well he like Bruno is a mature adult in like his 30s by the time it stops being something that people are terrified of. But you know what isn't syphilis? is the sponsor of this podcast, not sponsored by Syphilis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Thank you. Thank you. A lot of people praise the transitions on this show. Not our sponsors, notably.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And we're back. I wonder, like, you could probably rebrand. Given like RFK's position in our society, you could probably rebrand syphilis as a health tonic, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

That's right. You've got all these like Joe Rogan guys who really like taking ayahuasca. Syphilis causes hallucinations. I feel like there's like a possibility here to make this work.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

We're like six months out from this. So the fact that Bruno's dad catches syphilis is going to deepen the rift that he has with him. And Bruno will later claim that he had, quote, no suitable masculine figures in his life as a child. In their paper, Griffin Epstein suggests that Bruno saw his father's sickness and Jewishness as a threat to his desire to assimilate to Austrian culture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Bruno is – and this is not an uncommon thing at the time – an assimilationist, right? Like he does not, he's not particularly religious. He does not feel a strong separate identity as a Jew in Austria. He wants to be seen as Austrian, you know? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Of course. It's the most normal thing in the world given his childhood. As a teen, Bruno found himself in the Jung-Wandervogel movement, which is basically a hiking movement. This whole idea that what's healthy is moving your body out in nature, very new and exciting at the time. Um, and so this is like a young, it's a quasi socialist movement.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And one of the things that's kind of noteworthy is they do a lot of co-ed hiking, right? So men and women are like moving, exercising outdoors together, you know? So there's both this degree of like, this is kind of a cutting edge social. This is like going to raves, you know, was when I was a kid, when you and I were like, like 20 something. Yeah. This is wild stuff. Yeah. Wild stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

We're going to go hike, you know, we might all camp together. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

That is risque. And it is through this at age 13 that he first pursues a woman. But this doesn't go well for him. He gets upstaged, in his biographer's words, by an older boy, Otto Finischel, who was a budding psychoanalyst and a few years older than him and was already attending Freud's lectures at the University of Vienna. And obviously this woman that Bruno is interested in – well, not woman.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

She's 13. But they're all kids. This kid that he is interested in is like attracted to the fact that this older boy is going to college and listening to the great Freud's lectures. And Bruno initially develops a hatred of psychoanalysis because he's so jealous of this older boy, which Pollock writes was, quote, so great he could not sleep. He's just so angry about psychoanalysis. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Just reading Freud's book on cocaine and fuming. So eventually he does settle upon a method for winning the girl's heart. He would study Freud's work obsessively in order to upstage this younger boy. This sparked what would become a lifetime obsession. He changes his mind on cycle analysis. He does not win this girl's heart.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And in fact, she grows exhausted because he in order to impress her, he spends like a whole weekend talking to her about Freud. And she's like, I'm not interested in Freud anymore.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He's fucked Freud up for me. Anton Bettelheim dies in April of 1926 from a variety of illnesses and ailments that are all tied to his syphilis, right? The final stages of syphilis, literally, like it's boring holes through your brain, like a shipworm in wood. And it causes like, it's pretty unpleasant. Like, to see.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And Bruno would have been confronted directly with the final stages of his father's illness. After his dad dies, he's forced to take up his father's place running the family lumber business in order to maintain his family's position in society. He is 23 years old. So... He does get like a real childhood. He gets some time. But at age 23, he is the head of the family.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He doesn't really want to do this job. Again, he's very interested in psychoanalysis. He is a student at the University of Vienna focusing on art history at this point. But he takes some business courses and he understands that like – I need to keep my mom and my sister in the the kind of finery that they have become. Right. Like my family is used to being rich. I have their lifestyle. Right. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yes. That's my job, you know. And he does this. He's a very, like, diligent head of the family. He starts courting a young woman named Regina. Bruno is in love with Regina and Regina. kind of tolerates him, right? She's not super into Bruno. She's only available. There's this sexy young artist that she is in love with, and he's like, I'm a sexy young artist. I'm not getting married. It's the 20s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

I'm going to probably die of consumption after getting really into heroin.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Some love stories never die. So Regina settles for Bruno because he's rich, right? She's like, well, he's not this sexy young artist, but he does have a shitload of money. And I guess that's as good as you can do sometimes. And in the late 20s, it kind of is. In near the end of the decade, she gets pregnant.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

She gets an abortion to avoid marrying Bruno, which should give you an idea of kind of where her head is at at the time, considering how much less common that is, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yes. And much more dangerous.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

That is kind of a burn to Bruno. Right. Like, obviously, I think like at the time he's going to read it that way. Right. Because he wants a family with this with this lady. This feeds into a lifetime insecurity. Bruno would express over his looks. He made frequent comments about the fact that his mother had called him ugly on the day he was born and that he never got better looking.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

which seems unfair to me because I found a picture of him as like a young man from like around the period we're talking about. And I'm going to show it to you. You wouldn't say like he's not like a movie star or anything, but he looks like fine. He's like a pretty, I would say, like we'll judge this dead man's looks as a child, but he's like a pretty normal looking guy. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

That's a standard issue Austrian man. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He's looking a lot better.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

No syphilis. You know, he's doing about as good as you could be doing in that period of time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yeah, yeah. And he is he's super insecure about like his hair and he does kind of he goes bald after this about his like nose and his ears. And he will obsess over this. You know, I'm bringing it up not to shit on him, but because this is like an important part of his self image.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And his self-image is further harmed by the fact that Regina would vomit most of the time when he visited her, which is not super good for your ego.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yeah, she would often puke in his presence. I think she's got like other... Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually, Gina finds herself out of other options and she marries Bruno. Now, she will always describe him as a wonderful friend. She genuinely likes him. She's just not into him, you know? Anyway, they get married in 1930.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And during their years, because they are courting for what you would call an abnormally long time, although not within their social. Their social circle are like kind of bohemians and artists and intellectuals. So this is not super weird for the people they socialize with. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

So Gina starts like kind of nearly right before they get married, taking therapy from a guy called Richard Sterba and his wife, Edith Sterba, who are a husband and wife psychoanalyst couple that are members of Freud's inner circle. These are famous psychoanalysts, right? Within the psychoanalyst community, these are like, you know, they're big names.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Urged on by Edith, Gina convinces her husband to essentially adopt a troubled young girl whose mom had abandoned her. This girl, Patricia, Might actually have been someone we would describe as having autism today. That's how she gets described back then. But her – like she has a lot of trouble like being social and sort of connecting and making eye contact and whatnot with people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Her mom is this – Like wealthy writer, basically, who comes from like a wealthy family and is like, I'm not going to spend my time taking care of this troubled girl. I'm going to go be a wealthy, famous person. Hey, you want a kid and you're interested in child development and psychoanalysis. Figure out my kid. Right. That's essentially what happens. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And I will say... This kid's mom comes through in the clutch later in this story. But at this point, she's like, yeah, would you raise my kid for me? I got to like do stuff. And Regina says like, yeah, she really wants to do this. By all accounts, she's very loving and does like really helps this kid out is a good. And Bruno is like like Patricia will later remember Bruno fondly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He does not really take any part in raising her. which is interesting because he's later going to be a child development expert, quote unquote. He is just working and making money, but she recalls him as like a nice man and their household is a pleasant place.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

I think she's like seven or eight, something like that. She's a little girl. Now, he is working a lot, six days a week providing for the family. And at this time, as kind of the 20s come to an end and the early 30s start, the Nazi movement is winding its way closer to power in Germany. Now, this is not something that is initially of major concern to Bruno or his wife.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

They are not politically involved. Instead, he becomes obsessed with finishing his college degree so he could start training at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. While he focused on what had become a dream, Austria slipped towards a nightmare.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

In 1933, the same year Hitler came to power in Germany, a Christian socialist politician named Engelbert Dolfus suspended parliament in Austria and began ruling by decree as a reaction to economic calamity and political dysfunction in Austria's First Republic. Now, Dolfus, again, he's a Christian socialist. This is not a Nazi party, but he is an autocrat, right? He's ruling by decree.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He's cracking down on anyone who is like this. And this provides fuel for the Nazis because it's now been normalized, this autocratic rule, right? Yeah. Bettelheim recalled of the chaos at the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

They, the Nazis, released tear gas in department stores to frighten off shoppers, smeared house walls with pro-Hitler graffiti, set off firecrackers and petards in many places to cause panic, and eventually started outright bombings. So the Nazis are an illegal party at this point. They are literally a terrorist party in Austria. But Dolfus is not really a whole lot better.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He is more concerned with using the military to crack down on left-wing militias, which culminates on him using artillery to shell hundreds of apartment buildings in the capital. He succeeds in destroying the Social Democratic Party and its militia, which had been like the most power – the only militant force in the country that could compete with the Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He destroys them so completely that in June of 1934, when 154 Nazis attack government headquarters, there is no organized left-wing resistance against them, and Dolfus is murdered by the Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Of course.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

It's all it's all good.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

No, no, no one's ever. I mean, that's the lesson of history is that no one's ever learned a lesson from history. So Bruno does not react with great concern at first, even though this is a concerning thing. Right. He is very much he's very good at focusing on just what interests him. Yeah, he does. He could have afforded to leave. Right. He's got money. He could have bounced.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

But doing so would have meant he could have gotten his family out, but they wouldn't have stayed super rich. Right. You know, it would have cost him too much. And so he opted to continue running his business and working on his degree, which he achieved in 1938. He gets a Ph.D. in aesthetics, which is, you know, it's an accomplishment, but that's not a degree in psychoanalytics.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

It's like art history and, you know, that kind of stuff. It's like art related shit. He would later lie and claim his degree had been approved personally by a council of Freud's closest confidants, including his daughter, Anna, and then add that Sigmund Freud had wandered into the room and said, oh, you know what?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

A dude with an aesthetics degree is just what psychoanalytics needs to develop as a science. He's such a bad liar. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Within days of Bettelheim getting his PhD, the Anschluss begins and Germany annexes Austria. We're kind of yada yada-ing a lot of that history because that's a story for another day. But this is a major point at which the life story that Bruno will tell later diverges from reality.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Because the claim that he will give years later, once he gets to the U.S., is that as soon as the Nazis annex Austria... He joins the Jewish underground, right? He becomes an officer in the underground. He stands armed guard at facilities. He's afraid the Nazis are going to destroy. He helps to hide some of the first Jews targeted by the Nazis and spirit them away to safety.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He describes himself as a significant figure in the underground army and says that after demobilizing his men, he fled to Czechoslovakia where he was arrested and sent to Dachau. Now, he definitely is sent to Dachau, but there's no evidence that he is a part of the resistance. Gina, his wife, told Richard Polak this story was nonsense. They're like, no, we were not – like he was not doing that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

That's just not what was going on at the time. And what he was doing was not like – Like cowardly, he was trying to take care of his family. You know, he urges his wife and daughter to flee ahead of him. And at this point, this is kind of like a selfless gesture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

His wife is cheating on him with a married man, and he urges her to leave with that guy and his wife, thinking that they'll have better odds of escaping together. At any rate, Gina and Patsy only escape because Gina's biological mother, a wealthy New York woman – or not – sorry, Patricia's biological mother, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Like the woman who had kind of abandoned her kid to this couple is friends with the US Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, and pulls strings for them. And to her credit, this woman – I think Angie is her name – really like it puts in a lot of work to rescue them. She's like, these people saved my kid. I have to get them out of Austria, right? Um, so she redeems herself in my eyes there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Like she really does like put in a lot of effort here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

People are complicated. Not a great mom, but a good friend. Um, in 1945, Bruno would later swear an affidavit for the Nuremberg war crimes trial, uh, In which he discussed the terms of his arrest and stated that he had not participated in resistance activity. This is part of why we know that this is a story he makes up later.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Now, the reality is that he witnessed pretty titanic racial violence in the wake of Nazi annexation. Jews were beaten and murdered in the streets. A common thing was that they would be forced to clean gutters on their hands and knees, often with toothbrushes, and then would be beaten by gangs of Nazi thugs. It was a hideous, hideous time. And Bruno...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Does not leave as soon as he could because he's trying to take care of his mom and his sister. And he's also managing – there's this thing that happens. Once the Nazis take over, Jewish businesses are demanded to be handed over to Aryans. This is a process called Aryanization. It is not a fair process. You get pennies on the dollar based on what your businesses had been worth.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

We are talking about a felon named Bruno Bettelheim. Have you heard of Bruno Bettelheim?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Bruno is attempting to handle this manner in the most financially advantageous way so that he can get his family out. He can buy their way out of Austria. He does, however, get arrested and sent to Dachau, which is a very normal thing for Jewish men in Austria. Like during this period of time, a lot of them get sent to the camps. Dachau is the first of like the formal camps. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Right after Hitler takes power in 33, there's what are called like wild concentration camps, which are like. We have occupied some government buildings and we're torturing guys there basically, right? Dachau is kind of like the first of we have actually like built this camp. And while it is an awful place, I need to like emphasize it's not a death camp, right? Those are not operational yet.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Over the course of the Third Reich, about 30,000 of the 206,000 or so inmates at Dachau will perish there, which is terrible. That's a nightmarish place, but it's not Auschwitz. Those are not operational yet.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

No. You probably live. And in fact, prisoners are generally fed enough to survive and are rarely beaten to death. It is closer to a prison camp than what is going to come later. That said, the nicest stay at a concentration camp is still among the worst things a person can experience.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Bruno and everyone who is sent over with him spends days locked in a train with the heat on full blast in the stifling summer just to fuck with them. They're denied water during the journey. He gets stabbed with a bayonet during the drive. Jewish prisoners are regularly forced to stand at attention once they arrive in the blazing heat for hours at a time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Bruno sees people executed for attempting to escape. When inmates would fail to make their beds properly, they would be strung from a tree by their wrists by SS guards and left there for hours. Like many Austrian Jews, the official reason for Bruno's incarceration was Schutzhaftling Judah or incarcerated for his own protection, right? He's locked up to keep him safe, right? From us. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yeah, he was he would have described himself as and was usually described as an expert in child psychiatry and the treatment of autism. Now, oh, no. Here's the thing. Number one, absolutely not in any like legitimate way, an expert in child psychiatry and also not at all an expert in the treatment of autism. His primary thing was to declare kids to have autism and then.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yeah, yeah. He is, now this is again, he's allowed communication with his family. He's able to send letters back and forth. They're able to send him money. He's able to buy food from the commissary. And while this is going on, he's constantly talking with Gina, who is working through her friend, through Cordell Hull to try and secure him a visa. So this is the, the whole time this is going on,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He is in communication with his family who are talking with the U.S. State Department, trying to get him a visa to get him out. After three months at Dachau, he is transferred to Buchenwald, which is a much worse place. Dachau had had some amenities, sufficient food, and like it has a weirdly good library. None of that is present at Buchenwald. And the guards are on the whole a lot more violent.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Now, Bruno survives in part because he gets an indoor job mending socks, which during the winter stops him from freezing to death as much as everyone else. He gets frostbite, but he has to get cut off. Right. Like so he is still freezing a lot of the time, but he doesn't freeze entirely because he has this very rare indoor job. And we don't really know why.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Other inmates at the camp who were friends of his will say that he was somehow protected and that his indoor job was a very, very rare setup. We, again, really have no idea why this is the case. He would later allude to having done things he regretted in order to survive. That is a very normal story. A lot of people did.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Other inmates who knew him theorized that one of the capos or prisoners that were authorized to handle managerial tasks by the SS were had a soft spot for him. Another of Bruno's friends said that there was a quote, very, very nice SS officer who protected Bruno. And you hear about that stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

That doesn't mean these are good people, but it means that if you were, if you're interned at one of these camps, you're going to note some of these guys I can like work with. And some of them are just sadists, you know? So maybe Bruno just kind of has one of these guys has a soft spot for him. There's different stories. We don't really know what the case was.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Bruno credited foremost his luck but would later give some other stories. What's odd is that Bruno is going to tell some stories that definitely aren't true later. He's going to claim that he was targeted over the fact that he wore glasses and was beaten as a result of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Bruno's fellow inmates who were interviewed – and again, these are guys who were his friends – said that, no, no, no, the guards were like less aggro to the guys with glasses. Again, I don't know who's telling the truth here, but there's two different stories, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And this is not the only time Bruno is going to sort of stretch truths about his time at the camps, which is probably – and we should probably get to why that matters now – So Bruno spends eight months at Buchenwald. So he's in camps for a little less than a year, about 11 months. It's like 10 and a half months, something like that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And he is released due to the relentless pleading of his wife and their wealthy benefactor. He gets a visa. There's also kind of a general amnesty around this time for Jews who are willing to leave the Reich immediately. And so he gets out during this period of time. He makes his way to the United States in short order.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He is really eager to retake up his marriage, but the marriage breaks up as soon as he gets to the States, right? Like they spend a night together and it becomes clear this is not going to work out. Obviously, the whole like spending a year in a concentration camp and then your marriage breaking up, pretty stressful, right? Probably one of the worst things I can imagine going through.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

That's going to fuck you up a bit. But he gets an academic job with Rockford College in Illinois. And in 1943, he publishes the earliest influential detailed account of life in a concentration camp. This is like the first influential publication about life in a camp, right? That's huge. Yes. It is titled Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations. and it is a work of titanic influence.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Dwight D. Eisenhower is so impacted by it that it's made required reading for all US military government officials in Europe after the war. This is a big accomplishment, and that's a problem because he makes some conclusions about what happens to people in concentration camps that are problematic, to say the least. And we're going to

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yeah. Thank you for being on. You and I are going to have a long conversation about a very weird dude today. But before we get into that, we should talk a little bit about you. You are a writer, director, comedian. You are the co-author of the book, I Hate Everyone But You, which was a New York Times bestseller. Yeah. Is there anything else you want to kind of plug up at the top here?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Treat them in a way that we would just describe as hitting them primarily. That's that's the way this guy worked. There's a lot more to him than that. Even he was a very, very strange man. It's kind of important that, you know, to the outset that when we talk about, again, the kids that he was working with were described as having autism and schizophrenia today.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

We're going to get to that, but I think it's probably time we transmit to ads one last time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Most of them we would just describe as kids with like mild behavioral problems like depression. like twitching a little bit in class or something or not being good at doing math. Right. These were not terms that meant the same thing that they do today because diagnostic criteria in the early 1900s was just not what it is now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

So we're back. Bruno has become probably the first academic to establish himself as an expert on the concentration camp system from the inside. And this is an issue because number one, Bruno doesn't know much about the overall system and he's going to fib about some of what he sees. And I want to quote from that article by Griffin Epstein again.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He attributed the success of camp tactics in traumatizing Jews not to Nazi torture, but to inherent Jewish weakness. Bettelheim claimed that Jewish prisoners were more likely than others to regress under repression to types of behavior characteristic of infancy or early youth because of failings of the Jewish character.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He claimed that concentration camps disintegrated the personality of the prisoner. In the final stage of disintegration, Jews would actually become Nazis, changing their personalities so as to accept the various values of the SS. Problematic.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Oh, Bruno, you got fucked up, buddy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yikes. No. Yikes. Now, he would later claim, and this is what's really problematic to me, is that he was the unique inmate who was able to objectively analyze what was happening in the camp. No one else could do it. They didn't have the strength of mind, right? Right. Only I had the psychoanalytic.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He was saving other people's lives, but he was really a wuss. He is interned with and his friends at Buchenwald and at Dachau are psychoanalysts. Prominent ones like he's good. He's there with them. Right. And they survive.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

You know, Polak continues, quote, He wrote that he asked hundreds of German Jewish prisoners why they had not left Germany rather than submit to the degradation inflicted upon them by the Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Then he asked more than 100 older political prisoners if they would reveal the horrors of camp life if they were freed and managed to reach safe territory, and that, in collecting data for his psychological observations, he came into personal contact with at least 1,500 prisoners in the two camps.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He was able to interact with so many inmates, he said, because he worked in at least 20 different labor details and slept in five different barracks. Given his sock mending assignment, the first claim seems unlikely. The second is untrue.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Prisoners were required to write their block numbers on their correspondence and Bettelheim marked all his letters from Dachau block 22 and from Buchenwald block 17. So again, he makes this claim about, I was at all of these different locations and so I talked to, and that's why there's academic rigor because I talked to a representative sample and we just know that he didn't, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Because we know where he marks his letters from.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

A lot of the Jewish community is immediately skeptical. Like people get pissed at this because he's blaming them, right? But it's like kind of modern Holocaust scholarship really starts to come after. And we'll talk about this some in part two. And I think the 70s is when that becomes much more common. But this is this essay and Bruno because Bruno writes other things about the Holocaust.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He is the primary like source for the movie Sophie's Choice. Really? Yes. Yes. And one of the things that's really problematic about that is Sophie's Choice is about a death camp and Bruno doesn't know anything about the death camps.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Oh, and a lot of racism in the Bruno Bettelheim story.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And he's very much generalizing his experience in this period of time about it to a later period of time in a way that transmits a lot of inaccuracies down as a result because – I've never seen Sophie's Choice.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

I don't know how to answer that question. Yeah. Um, it's not my, my, I think the Holocaust movie that I find like most intellectually interesting is this old Soviet era one called the shop on main street. That is a, about, um, the air, like a village that gets taken by the Nazis and the Aryanization process. Um, but, uh, I don't know, like that's such a, yeah, I,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yeah, both as a as a victim and as a perpetrator, because Bruno came. He's an Austrian, like most of the the really fascinating, like early 20th century mental health professionals and his family. He came from this like wealthy subset of the Austro-Hungarian Jewish population.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

So very little complaint is made initially about the time that all of these sources go unnamed. He'll just say, oh, believe me, because all these guys said this, right? I'm not going to tell you who they were, even though, again, there's a lot of other people who survive.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And his analysis of how camp inmates react to their situations, one of the things people will point out is that rather than comporting with other accounts from inside the camps and his analysis of how people behave and why comports with Freudian psychiatry, right? Like, and that's worth noting. In a critical article about Bettelheim for Psychohistory Review, Paul Rosen writes,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

when he had changed his personality so as to accept as his own the values of the Gestapo. In 1936, Anna Freud, in a book written while her father was alive and in the spirit of the work of his disciples, Sandor Ferinsky, described the defense of identifying with the aggressor, and Bettelheim was giving concrete illustrations of this unconscious, self-defeating process. So the allegation is...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He is massaging his experiences so that they fit this psychoanalytic framework that he has already accepted as valid and that he wants to be respected in.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yes, yes. And one of the real issues here is that it's not the case that no one in the camps reacted this way, right? There were prisoners who attempted to ingratiate themselves with the SS who did stuff like what Bruno describes. That is a thing that happens. You can find cases like that in all of the camps. But he – one of the things he'll claim is that like –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

There isn't prisoner resistance and there's a ton of prisoner resistance. Prisoners are constantly acting to sabotage the camps, to sabotage the SS guards. That is a thing that happens at every camp. It's a thing that happens at Buchenwald while he's there, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He knows that there's prisoner resistance and he erases that from his story because it doesn't comport with psychoanalytically what he thinks he should be reporting on there, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yes. Yes. Yes. In ways that are very strange.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

That's like his family comes from money and comes from money within like the the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Jewish population, which is like a whole separate subset of of the imperial population.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yes, and he's also going to – he does a lot of victim blaming. He will repeatedly criticize Jews for taking acts that provoke anti-Semites. In a 1947 work, he describes anti-Semitism as being caused in part by the failure of Jewish people to see anti-Semites as individuals and to understand them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

One scholar, Peter Bloss, Dr. Peter Bloss, has stated many Jews were offended because he felt that to some degree the Jews provoked the actions of the Nazis. So he is criticized again at the time. But a lot of folks like Eisenhower, who certainly aren't plugged into like the community of Jewish survivors, are like, this sounds right to me. You know? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Now, the issue here isn't that Bruno has no right to a different opinion about these things, right? Every inmate has a different experience and everyone reacts. And I'm not even blaming – if prisoners attempt to befriend SS guards to survive, I'm certainly not blaming anybody for doing that. You do whatever the fuck you have to do to get through that experience.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And that's going to include a lot of ugly things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yes, I am. I am strongly of the opinion that when it comes to what people do in the camps, we certainly can't judge anyone who was in that position. That said, I think we can judge the stuff that Bruno does afterwards, right? And he's going to give a lot of contradictory stories, enough that we can't really say in every instance what happened.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

But we can safely say he twisted his experiences later in recollection to make points that he wanted to make. And again, this is going to have a big influence on early Holocaust scholarship. The film Sophie's Choice is heavily based upon his recollections of camp life.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And much of his writing on the matter seems to exist not to reveal truths about the Holocaust, but to separate himself as an individual from the mass of Jews who suffered and were annihilated. Bruno even admitted later that the, quote, main problem for him during his time incarcerated was to safeguard his ego in such a way that by if any good luck, he should regain liberty.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He would later claim, because he makes a lot of statements about his background, again, almost none of which are true, that his paternal grandfather had been an orphan who had been raised and educated as a rabbi, and he got the attention of the Baron Rothschild, who made him a tutor to his heirs, and he was so good at teaching these kids that they gave him command of the family bank, and he made the family fortune doing that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He would be approximately the same person he was when deprived of liberty.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yes, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yeah, and I think that's a really good – like this need for him to feel special and better even than like his fellow inmates colors how he writes about this in a very interesting way.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Oh, my gosh. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards. I'm Robert Evans, and I am again alone without my producer, Sophie Lichterman, today. She is recovering from a health thingamajig, and we all wish her the best. She will be back soon. But you know who's not back soon because they're here today? Allison Raskin. Allison, welcome to the show.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And that's another reason why also it's so problematic that – because obviously his experiences – this is a portion of the Holocaust that's super important to understand, the period of time when he's in these camps. That's a part of the concentration camp story. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

But the experience of this guy who, number one, has a good chance of surviving, knows that from the outset pretty much, and has people working for him on the outside as opposed to Hungarian Jews in 1944, right? Who there's no one coming, right? Like we have fallen off the edge of the planet.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

You can't – his experience is as different from that person's as a regular person not in a camp's is from his – Bruno's experience, right? Like –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And he's going to come to one other very weird conclusion because one of the results of this is he becomes obsessed with the idea of the total institution, which the concentration camp is a total institution, right? One that completely dominates your life, right, while you're in it. And he starts to wonder – Obviously the Nazis created a total institution to destroy people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

What if you did the same thing for, what if you made a good concentration camp? Oh God. And this is going to be his chief motivation as a child development expert.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Well, that sucked, but I think I can fix it. Okay. That is the end of part one. How are you feeling, Allison?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Well, yeah. Next episode, we will be Bruno in the United States and we will be talking about how he redefines the care of children with autism. And again, he is not treating kids with autism, almost exclusively not. I mean, presumably some of them are children with autism, but most of them are just rich kids that he is abusing. He's abusing all of the kids. Let's be clear about that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Oh, no. Definitely not true. Almost certainly is not what happened. That said, the actual real story of his family name is a lot cooler. And I don't know why he tells this bullshit story about him being a banker. Because the name Bettelheim came from sometime in the 1700s. This Slovakian nobleman named Count Bethlen fell for the wife of a Jewish citizen and tried to kidnap her on his horse.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yeah, and that is absolutely like the tactic he is going to take is that like if you – because that's his attitude about the total institution. I saw how concentration camps altered the personalities of the people interned there. You can alter a child who is acting in a way that you see as problematic by creating a total institution to reform them, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And that's his attitude towards what he calls autism, what he calls schizophrenia. We can cure all of these by changing by creating a total institution, you know. So that's problematic. All right, Allison, do you want to plug anything right at the end here for where people can find you?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

All right. Awesome. Well, Allison, thank you so much. We will be back on Thursday. Until then, everybody, try not to do this. No.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

And her husband charged in and beat the count in hand-to-hand combat. And given like the racial politics at the time, this was a ballsy move. Right. For this guy to come in and just like wail on a major member of the nobility. And so he got the nickname Bethlehem from the guy he beat up Judah, which is like, you know, Jewish. Right. And that was like where the name Bettelheim came from.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

After a few decades later, the Habsburgs decreed everyone had to have a last name. And so that became Bettelheim for reasons I'm not that don't entirely make sense to me. But it's a pretty cool origin story.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

story yeah it's very cool yeah beating the hell out of a count um beat it like a guy on horseback too which is like you gotta really have some sounds like a tall jew which is exciting sounds like a big guy i should disclaim here that i am jewish um So that's where probably where the name Bettelheim, like any sort of this is a mid 1700s family last name origin story. Maybe none of this is true.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Right. We'll never really know. Whatever the case, Bruno's father and grandfather kind of make their fortune trading wood. That's where the family money comes from. Right. They like own forests that they plant and chop down. And they're in just kind of like the wood products business, you know, and they do very well as a result of that. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Bruno's dad, Anton, starts a lumber business in 1907 with another guy. And Anton and Paula Bettelheim, Bruno's parents, they first have a daughter, Margaret, in 1899. And then on August 28th, 1903, they welcome Bruno into the world.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

By this point, Anton's lumber business was doing very well and the family was probably maybe not in the top 1% because this is an empire and they're not in the nobility, but not super far from the top 1%. They're very wealthy. As is customary for the rich in this period of time, Brito's mother refused to nurse him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He suckled from a professional wet nurse for the first three years of his life and later wrote that his mom was too much the Victorian lady to do it herself. This is, again, super normal at the time, although it also seems to have kind of messed with Bruno because he's never he's never cool with his mom. And he will later project a lot of his issues with her onto mothers in general.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Maybe a whole deal going on there. Yeah. Now, again, he's going to later talk a lot about his mother being cold and not a very kindly person. But in other writings, while he's a young man, he'll describe her as loving and attentive. And again, he's a guy who makes up a lot of stories about the past. So I don't know if...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He actually had his mom was actually cold to him when he was a kid or if something happened later that made him kind of retroactively decide that. But it's very different from how like other people who knew them when he was a little kid described their relationship to. We'll never know. Like most boys in the late Victorian era, he had several brushes with death.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He like he has this classic thing where he eats poison berries. Oh, no. And this doctor just gives him a shitload of coffee. To fix it. I think the idea is that, like, we just need to have him pee all of this out. Right. Old time in medicine.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Yes. Was that. Yes. Yes. And he he will describe at varying points, very different kinds of relationships with his mom. Like as a young man, he writes that, quote, while he was sick, my mother sat at my bedside, sponging my feverish body and changing the cold compresses to give me relief.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

In moments like these, I learned to understand and appreciate that a mother makes all the difference in the world when one is in need, in great pain, deeply worried or even desperate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Now, this is noteworthy, the fact that he has these kind of two different attitudes about his mom, because as his biographer Richard Pollack notes, no prominent psychotherapist of his time was as antagonistic to mothers. And that is saying something. Yes, truly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He's beating Freud. That's wild. In the issues with mom game. Yes. Yeah, that's like dunking on Jordan's. So again, there's not really a clear explanation forthcoming as to this. Bruno does recall later being raised as an older boy by his aunt as much as his mother and often hiding at her place to avoid his sister, Margaret, who he described as a busybody.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

This is all pretty normal kid stuff, you know. At any rate, the overwhelming recollections of the people who knew Bruno and his family was that his parents were doting and involved. And if anything, his mother may have smothered him a bit. His father, Anton, was a peculiar man for the era. Germanic fathers are known as being stern and strict, often like well past what we would describe as abusive.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Right. What's weird about Anton is that even today, we would call him kind of a permissive dad. We would say today, this guy maybe could have stood to be a little bit more strict with his kids. Yes. Which is very rare for an Austrian father. One anecdote Bruno later gave was that he got in trouble for cursing in front of his mother and she like went to it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

She was like, Anton, your son just, you know, cursed in front of me. And his father became upset, not that Bruno had cursed, but that he now had to punish his son. And he even asks Bruno, do I really have to punish you to get you to stop cursing in front of your mother? Which, you know, the norm would have been probably to smack him, right? Like just based on sort of the standards of the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Bruno's education is fairly strict, but that's normal for his social class and the era. He attends the finest school in Vienna, and he was an excellent student, one of five out of 54 in his year to be noted as having been excellent. He spent the war years, World War I, that is, in school, which is another mark of his good luck.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

You know, he's born in this sweet spot where he doesn't have to go die on the Italian border or in Serbia or in Russia, all of which were like beloved pastimes of Austrian teenage boys in these years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

My mom was too nice to me.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Just daydreaming about charging a machine gun nest. No, he's not a super militant kid, but he does get very lucky, right? Now, the war years are difficult even for the rich. Bruno is better off than most of the populace. He and his family are never in danger of starving to death, but they do go hungry. Everybody does, right? With the exception of the top of the royal family,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Everybody in Austria is going hungry at least a little bit during the war years. It's just a terrible time, right? The war is bad for his family fortunes. Huge tracts of their Bettelheim land get burnt down by artillery bombardment right at the start of hostilities. But his family doesn't lose everything. And Anton seems to have been an unusually tenacious and brilliant businessman.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

By the time the war ended and the Habsburg Empire with it, the Bettelheims were still comfortably wealthy, right? Which takes a lot. That's not easy to maintain in this period of time. So it says a lot about Anton.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

He seems like a pretty good dad for the era. About as good as you could hope for. Bruno's schooling was mixed as a again, he is not going to he's going to a an integrated school, which in itself in Austria is a pretty new thing that like you would have Jewish and Christian boys at the same school. There were some like you have religious education as part of your normal schooling.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Well, that is very appropriate that you work in mental health because the guy we're talking about today is one of the worst things that ever happened to the mental health field. Yes. I suspect it as such.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Obviously, the small number of Jewish kids have a rabbi. Most of the other boys are being talked to by like members of the Catholic clergy because it's a majority Catholic country. Bruno would later describe most of his fellow classmates as anti-Semitic bastards, which is almost certainly accurate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Probably kinds of racism that you would need like a NASA calculator to rate today. He recalled often the case of a classmate who he had considered a friend and walked to school with daily who out of nowhere one morning punched him in the face in revenge for the crucifixion of Christ. So that kind of racism. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

Your best friend just hits you one day because of something that happened 2000 years ago. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

I guess I need to be a huge asshole now. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Bruno Bettelheim: The Worst Psycho-therapist

right yeah that kid didn't come up with the idea on his own it was a parent or like probably a member of the catholic clergy who was talking shit one day um now this was the tip of the iceberg in terms of the racism that bruno endured as a kid uh he would later say quote there were the boys who extorted money who beat us if we handed it over because we were dirty cowards and who beat us if we didn't because we were miserly jews so you really can't win you know no um

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And to an extent, when you're bringing in money like this, it does make financial sense to donate. The Tates have been doing this for years with the money they brought in from sexually trafficking webcam workers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

One charity they gave to, Muslim Hands, took donations from the Tates for years and sent them video evidence of some of the projects they completed, which is a standard thing for NGOs to do, right? Like, here's some video evidence of how your money is helping people. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Andrew started posting this footage on his website after his arrest, which horrified them because this is a real charity and they want nothing to do with a pimp. They publicly cut ties with the brothers and asked for all of the footage to be removed. But many of the charities he claims to have given to, like Human Appeal, deny that they received actual donations from the Tates.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He claims to have donated to them and they're like, no, like one completely different guy dedicated some money in their names. There's another group he claims to have donated to, Action for Humanity International, who says they did not receive money from the Tates, but their Canadian partner organization got $800. And as soon as the charges were made public against the Tates, they returned it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Several larger donations were offered by the Tates to their Canadian partner, but the charity refused the money because they Googled him and were like, oh, fuck, we don't need this. We don't need this at all. We don't need your $12,000, Andrew Tate. Jesus Christ, get the fuck out of here. They didn't Google him before?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, I did. Well, because I edited it when some new shit came out because stuff keeps happening about this motherfucker.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Well, I think before you're talking about like 2017-18 where he's like a pimp and kind of well-known in like webcam sex communities. But like it might not pull up anything. And you're also – the thing they noted was that their limit for when they would do due diligence on a donation was like $1,500.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And so an $800 donation, they're just not checking on because that's not enough money for them to really worry about it, right? Which makes sense to me. It costs money to do that due diligence. Yeah. Now, additionally, from that unheard article, quote, The workers wore high-vis vests bearing the letters CNCEC.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yet when I tried to ask Life Guided by Light why it felt necessary to feed workers employed by a huge multinational corporation, I discovered that the charity's three trustees had dissolved it last December following a year of zero income and zero expenditure. My guess, because he has ties to Dubai, he goes there. I kind of wonder if maybe there's some like he needed to move.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He wanted to move some money over there. And this was like a weird shot. I don't know, but it certainly doesn't seem to be real. Earlier this year, I showed, and this is continuing that article from Unheard, earlier this week, I showed the Tate Pledge page to two senior academics with expertise in the charity sector.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. You sent me a thing right as I was finishing this and I was like, great. Now I have to go back into the fucking file on my, you know, day that I'm relaxing. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

While neither wanted to be named, one expressed concern over the use of stereotypical images of victims in need that are now being heavily criticized by the NGO community. The Tate videos, he pointed out, often feature young African children expressing delight at being given a plate of food.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

The other added, it seems like a classic case of charity washing, trying to bolster a hugely damaged reputation through good works. I suspect many charities wouldn't touch the money. And again, all of the evidence suggests it's not a lot of money. Sure. In one video on the late on the tape, he just can't stop grifting. He's addicted to the grift. It's the laziest con, though.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's just like, ah, this way, this way. Because, again, his his audience, he's not trying to convince this journalist. He's not trying to convince you and me. He's trying to convince 14 year old boys. Right. Right. Who probably because of the state of education, both the UK and the United States, aren't that great at reading.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, shit. Sorry. In one video on the Tate Pledge website, Andrew promised to provide full accounts and receipts to prove that the money goes directly to charity, to feeding children in war-torn countries. When Steve Boggan asked their U.S.-based lawyer to see these receipts, he was ignored, as he was ignored when he emailed the Tates directly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And Boggan did a great job on this. It's a very good article. Unheard. U-N-H-E-R-D. as the website was published on. The whole charity angle was, from the jump, a cynical ploy for public sympathy. In public, Andrew blames the Matrix for his many prosecutions around the world and expresses sublime confidence that he will successfully fight all these cases and win them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And I want to add here, I considered going back and adding some details about his past and childhood that have come out in subsequent publications. It just didn't make sense for these episodes because there's so much new stuff. But I do want to note one thing that has come out is that his father

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

The famous chess player is the guy he gets the Matrix comparisons from because his dad was obsessed with the Matrix and would bring it up constantly to Andrew and Tristan. That's something that cut like one of his aunts and stuff. He's had like a couple of members of his family speak out.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So that is apparently where that this is not just something he picked up because the right wing Internet adopted, which I had assumed because it's just such a big thing on the conservative Internet is talking about the Matrix.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

No, this actually literally does go back to his childhood, which I find interesting.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. So the fact that he feels a need to – I will say as confident as he expresses being in all cases that he's going to win all of these different criminal trials, the fact that he would do this, this fake charity bullshit, pretend to convert to Islam, it does suggest a vulnerability. The fact that he is actually worried and that he's also shameless. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You wouldn't do this if you didn't feel like there was some potential protection in it for you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

There's a pretty one of the BBC articles interviews like a former kid who actually like paid to be in the real world and has since come out and talked about like the which is one of his website platforms where he hustles young men. And he said that like the thing that pulled him out of it was reading the actual court allegations, which is not a common story. It's not easily replicable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You're filthy with tape. It's like wading into a sewer. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But there is the fact that these allegations do pull some people away from him. Right. And it also stops some people who might like the fact that this is publicized does. Help keep some people from getting towards him. You know, it's a mixed bag because the additional notoriety also helps draw people. I don't know entirely how it all shakes out like this. This kind of stuff is messy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

There's not an easy answer here. So when it comes to this whole this kind of. Examples of sort of his vulnerability and also how he utilizes this online community he's built of young men. And he's got two websites. We'll talk about them in more detail in part two. The War Room and the Real World. The Real World is like 50 bucks a month.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

The War Room is like eight grand a year, plus a lot more to be admitted into certain chat rooms. And the Real World is much bigger and it kind of exists to funnel people upwards, right? Yeah. It's kind of both an MLM and a cult style thing. Again, we'll talk about it more later.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But he he utilizes this mass of a couple of hundred people in the real world in order to act as his online army, to amplify his message, to keep him going viral. And he attempted to utilize them near the end of 2023 to help him get let out of like Romanian. I mean, he was I think it was like house arrest situation.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And using the excuse that he needed to visit – leave to the United States temporarily so he and his brother could see their grandmother before she dies. Now, this was transparent bullshit, but it's the kind of bullshit that he would only try if he was actually frightened of being convicted.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Andrew actually launched a whole media campaign around his grandma, using his subscribers to the real world – And members are, you know, essentially there to be digital servants, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

There's a lot of like, you know, they're taught how to do all these different online money making scams, affiliate marketing and flooding Amazon with AI books, but they're really there to cut together videos of Andrew Tate and flood the internet with it. And this is what he tried to utilize as a resource in a focused way to get this idea that like he just wants to visit his grandma to go viral.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Per an article in Vice, quote, Vice News has been provided with a screenshot of a message posted on a chat board for the real world on Saturday by Tate's cousin, Luke Tate, who acts as a professor on the site. The post offered a bounty or reward of unspecified value for the subscribers who created the 20 most viewed video posts in support of the campaign to see Grandma Tate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He's their cousin.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

How many of these fuckers are there? Oh, my God. I've heard of three so far. I think there may be some more involved. Grandma Tate is sick and dying. She can't travel. She wants to see Andrew and Tristan before she dies, read the post. The American Embassy isn't helping them make this real.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

We want the world to know about Grandma Tate's condition and ask the question, why is this happening to American citizens? The post then instructs members, again, most of these are teenagers to early 20s, to create videos using AI, drawing on old clips of Tate talking about his grandmother. Dozens of videos followed, but none gained much traction.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

In this video posted to Twitter, it has gotten less than 700 views, despite being embedded in a Vice article. So, like, this should be one of the higher view videos, and, like, they just, people don't care about this shit. Look at this bullshit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Tate's grandma is very ill and doesn't have much longer on this earth. Her last wish is to see the Tate brothers one last time. I'll explain. She cannot travel due to her serious illness. However, the American Embassy won't let Tristan and Andrew visit America. Even though the Tate brothers are American citizens, why is America not letting Mrs. Tate see her grandsons?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

While she can, are they that evil that they will restrict a man from seeing his loved ones for the final time? Comment and share to spread the news.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Just the AI voiceover is so bad. The weird AI generated clips. It cannot say Tristan.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

No, no. A lot of shirtless Andrew Tate smoking a cigar, talking about how his grandma just wants to see him. Him petting a dog is in there, too. You just got to make him look innocent. Speaking of innocent, you know who's never committed a crime that I can prove in a way that is actionable in court? Allegedly. Our sponsors.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I mean, maybe. Honestly. Yeah. Given some of the people. I don't want to go to bat for that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Let's just be done.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And we're back. And we're all still innocent of any crimes that I can prove got committed. Sure. Except for that thing with Sophie and the FDA and Venezuela.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It was messy. We don't talk about that on air, Robert. Who shot who? We'll never know. I don't know. I don't know. Sophie, glad you're healing RIP to all those agents. Allegedly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Now, as shallow and sad as this whole fucking Grandma Tate bullshit is, I have to be honest, it is unclear to me whether Andrew or Tristan or anyone around them will ever be ultimately convicted and sentenced for anything. Their defense has been buttressed by the fact that Romanian prosecutors are not overwhelmingly competent. And they are trying, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And there's evidence there is like significant civil reform actions within Romania. And the fact that the Tates are being charged at all is a part of that, right? But the Dicot prosecutors made a lot of really Bush League mistakes, like not mistakes that indicate that they're really innocent, but the mistakes that are like, yeah –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You are going to be able to procedurally get stuff dropped if you can afford very good lawyers like the Tates can when shit like this happens. Right. Yeah. When the indictments first dropped, there was a lot of excitement among the kind of people who hate Tate. We'll call them most people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And if you remember, a lot of folks convinced themselves Greta Thunberg had somehow posted Andrew into prison. And the reality is that that had nothing to do with anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

The timing was funny. But the reality is that the Tates have been pretty savvy with how they have approached their crimes. Not master criminal level. There are some dumb mistakes, which is why they've gotten in trouble. But the thing that they are doing is different enough from traditional pimping.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And they're good enough at scaring a lot of these women into not wanting to take on the risk of openly coming against them. That it is not easy to convict them, at least in Romania. Right. This is an uphill battle. There are signs of this. There were signs of this from early on in the court process. The length of time between arrest and indictment is unusual. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

The fact that they spent months in jail and then were on house arrest and it was still a year until they got indicted. Yeah, that that's peculiar. Right. And then in spring of 2024, after a court approved the case to finally go to trial, the Tate succeeded in appealing to change the indictment.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Per the AP, quote, "...the appeals court ruled that it identified multiple flaws in the prosecutor's case file against the Tates, saying prosecutors had failed to adequately explain the charges against Andrew to an alleged female victim." and that the charges against the female suspects were not properly presented.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It said the indictment failed to specify the amounts related to the confiscation of assets in the case. The court ordered some evidence removed, including witness statements by two alleged victims and witness statements made by Andrew and Tristan, which were deemed inadmissible. The court did not say why.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And, you know, there's a number of reasons for this, but again, it all kind of suggests, well, this was sloppier than you'd want it to be, right? Like, that's the fundamental issue here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

14-year-old boys and abusing women, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And more than that, when they traffic, when they have these women working for them on cameras, they're taking basically everything they earn. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yes. And that's so they have money for these. And it's also obviously reasons the different subscription fees. I think that is now. Now he started making his money through the cam business. I don't know that that's any meaningful chunk of his income now. I think it is all from this this business. platform that he's built, right? I think that's where Tate's money comes from these days.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But it's one of those things, what having a good lawyer tends to mean in cases like this isn't that they're better at proving you're innocent. It's that there's all sorts of things that if they're not

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

done perfectly by both the police and by the prosecutors a lawyer who really knows their shit can drag out a case and can and like that's why you want to have a good lawyer and this is also how people who are being harassed unjustly by law enforcement get off but in this case the tates have a lot of ammunition on their side especially given how sloppy things have been have been done in romania i don't think a uk case would go nearly this well against them

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But it's also unclear to me. Romania said they will extradite, but he is now allowed to move around the world as we're talking about. So I don't know what's going to happen. In August, though, prosecutors in Romania announced a new investigation separate to the other one ongoing that just had the indictment changed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

They executed four additional search warrants against different properties while investigating new allegations of human trafficking and money laundering. But a few months later, in the fall-winter of 2024, prosecutors had to rework their indictment after the court announced issues over the evidence and aspects of how the case had been approached.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Despite this, in December of 2024, the Bucharest Court of Appeals decided the indictment against the Tates did not meet the requirements for the case to go to trial. They claimed there were issues in, quote, "...the manner of presenting the facts and describing the constituent elements in the case," and that Andrews' right to defense had been violated.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

They didn't get things all their way in Q4, the same month that their case was sent back to prosecutors in Romania. A British court ruled that more than £2 million of their frozen assets would be forfeited, as the brothers had obviously committed tax evasion. They're accused at present of not paying taxes on some £21 million from 2014 to 2022. Sick.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's so much fucking money. It's really quite frustrating. Andrew described these charges, which included money laundering as, quote, a coordinated attack on anyone who dares to challenge the system, the system of paying your taxes. Now, the Tates had been released from their strict house arrest conditions near the end of summer 2024. And this had started the timer on a probationary period.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

after which they would be eligible to leave Romania, right? This was not really surprising that they ultimately were, because once they were released from their house arrest conditions near the end of that summer, there was kind of like a ticking clock going on when they'd get to travel.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Ultimately, in late February of 2025, the brothers received clearance from a Romanian judge to leave the country. Per The Guardian, authorities in Romania said prosecutors had approved the brothers' request to travel. The anti-organized crime unit Dicot said the pair remained under judicial supervision and would have to appear before the judicial authorities at every summons.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It added that any violation may lead to a higher custodial measure. And so this is kind of like going out, getting out on bail. Right. You're allowed except for they're allowed to travel internationally. But, you know, I guess Romania is different, but they are allowed. They do have to come back when asked, but they are allowed to go. And they very quickly did.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, I think it's certainly very different, right? Sure. And that's the way it works. Now, they immediately boarded a Gulfstream aircraft, which Andrew called Tate Force One. Fuck off. It is unclear to me if they own this or are renting it because they have talked about... I'm going to guess they're renting, Robert. They've talked.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, they have talked at other times about how we had to pay like 185 grand to fly back to Romania to sign this paper. And I'm like, OK, so does that is that just the fuel costs or does that mean that like you're renting this fucker? Unclear to me. There was immediate speculation that Trump had pressured the Romanian government on Tate's behalf.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Most people I have encountered seem to just take this as established fact that like Trump intervened. And this was certainly the initial discourse around it. Like, oh, now he's going to get off because Trump has intervened on his behalf. The Republicans are going to help him because they love him. I don't know that this is the case.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And in fact, I think the preponderance of evidence suggests that it may not be for his part. Trump has denied knowing anything about their release. And, you know, you shouldn't trust anything that Trump says.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Famous, famously not a truth teller. However, Trump is not the kind of guy who would encounter Tate organically because Tate is kind of like. Not his style of gross. He likes used car dealers. He likes financial scammers and stuff. Andrew Tate is a literal pimp. He's just like a literal pimp. And that's really not Trump's brand of guy to associate with super publicly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And Trump has not made any point of reaching out to Tate or directly embracing him, even though Andrew has been a major Trump supporter for years. Yeah. It is also possible. Now, there obviously there are a lot of people who really like Tate within the Trump administration. A lot of very young, you know, Groyper style online misogynist freaks that are in the administration that are in Doge.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's possible that some of them pulled strings for him, but it's not clear that this is what happened. There are rumors of this. But when I track them down, the rumors that it was the Trump administration that pressured Romania to let him leave is. come down entirely to the lawyer representing the women who have accused Tate of sexual assault back in the UK.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

That lawyer claimed that the Trump administration is, quote, interfering in due process and argued that Trump's election was why the brothers felt like they would be safe in returning back to the United States. And I think that I don't see – I don't know that there's evidence. I can't prove it that the Trump administration interfered to make this happen. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

However, I do think it's probably correct that Trump's election made them feel like maybe we'll be safe in the United States, right? Like, I don't think that that part is untrue, but I can't prove the first part. And there's some evidence against it. That said, like a lot of scumbags, Andrew and Tristan felt emboldened by the resurgence of the far right in U.S.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

politics and Trump's victory, especially since anti-women and anti-woke influencers were a key part of Trump's election strategy. And Tate has rebranded himself a lot as an anti-woke influencer. Yeah. It is possible that them feeling like they would be welcome in the US in this new era was a miscalculation.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Because while Andrew is a prominent figure to a lot of young people on the far right, he is not a respectable political figure, even in the context. of the present US system. I'm not 100% sure why. Guys like Joe Rogan can get away with having Holocaust deniers on their podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Doge has multiple young men in it who we know were members of a far-right extremist groups online that trade child porn and try to harass people into suicide. But there is something about Tate that feels gross even for today's Republican Party. And as shocking as it seems, elected Republicans have not given Tate a consistently warm welcome at home.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

There was not a whisper of Tate. And you get the feeling that maybe he's still, I don't know if it'll stay this way, but a bridge too far. And for whatever value this has, the second he landed in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis made a statement to reporters saying, Florida is not a place where you're welcome with that kind of conduct. And what's really shocking was that this was not 100% talk.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Because as soon as DeSantis made this statement, the Attorney General of Florida announced a criminal probe with the goal of determining whether Florida had any jurisdiction to hold the Tates accountable for their alleged crimes. It is worth noting that at the time this happened, per the AP, quote, the Tampa Bay Young Republicans Club formally invited Andrew Tate to speak to their group.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

As free speed absolutists, the Tates haven't been formally convicted of any crimes and are welcome to speak to our group, the post reads. We're old enough to remember when an asterisk convicted felon asterisk won the presidency. And... So again, I'm not saying he's been rejected by the right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I'm saying that there's quite a few elected leaders on the right who don't really like this guy and have even been willing to take some action against him, which is maybe surprising, but also maybe just a sign that this is not a guy they really want to be associated with. That's too extreme for even them. Or they just don't like him personally, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He's a gross dickhead. Yeah, even Ron DeSantis may have some standards. I guess we found his line.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And he brags about being a sex trafficker, which is like that you could be a sex trafficker and in good with elected Republicans, but you have to lie about it. So there is a specific segment of conservative media who have no issues being affiliated with the Tates, obviously. Aiden Ross was photographed and filmed partying with him at a club in Miami.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

When interviewed by a reporter about the probe by the Florida attorney general, he said, Tate and Tristan attended several UFC fights in Las Vegas. Dana White.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

That's where I'm like, okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And that's where we're getting kind of like, I don't know, because Dana White, who's, again, the UFC president and CEO, very close to Trump, helped introduce Trump at the RNC. Yeah. It was seen shaking hands with the brothers and hugging them and saying on video, welcome to the States, boys. There are also some folks who have gone back and forth on the Tates.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

James Kennedy, a star from Vanderpump Rules.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Great guy. Let's not hold that. Even that guy, he was seen at a VIP bar during one of these Vegas UFC events hanging out with Andrew and Tristan and posted the photo on his Instagram. And the backlash was severe enough that he deleted it and apologized.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

saying i am i was unfamiliar with their content and the allegations against them i only knew them as podcasters who had posted a viral clip about vanderpump i have since educated myself and condemned their beliefs oh my god did he really try to pull a i was unfamiliar with their game familiar with them

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, all right, bro. So they're in this really weird spot where it's like kind of uneven, where some people are willing to double down on being like, no, they haven't been convicted. I love them. And the Vanderpump guy is like, oh, no, I had no idea. Very peculiar situation. It is a little hard for me to parse out the precise dimensions of what's going on here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So we're going to be answering the question, what's new with Andrew Tate? Because you've probably heard a lot of confusing stories. And I think people who are just kind of like casually looking at the coverage are like, oh, wait, he's out of jail now? Are the charges dropped? He's back in the U.S.? Wait, is he under investigation in the U.S.? What's happening?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Now, the Tates themselves have filed a defamation lawsuit in Palm Beach Circuit Court back in 2003 against the woman who accused them of keeping her prisoner in their compound in Romania. This was one of the things that led to the investigations and everything against them. They've sought a restraining order against her as well.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Tate returned to Romania in March, spending, he claims, $185,000 in a private jet for the flight. This was essentially him fulfilling the conditions of his release, which required that he return when summoned by the court. In a post before his return, Tate said to Twitter, "'Innocent men don't run. All caps. They clear their name in court.'"

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

No, there's no way he's ever going to fly domestic.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. And hey, if you can't afford a private jet to fly to Romania to deal with the conditions of your bail... Are you really top G if you can't afford a private... If you can't afford to rent a PJ for your... For all your crimes? One way to afford that private jet is to save money by buying the products and services that support this podcast. You know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Honestly, iconic for you. Proud of myself.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

We're going to get into all that. I'm going to explain exactly what's happened, what's happening with the man. And then in part two, we're going to talk a lot about some new stuff that's come out. About things that were happening, you know, during the last episodes we wrote, but that we didn't know because there have been a bunch of leaks from his website since. Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, we're back and we're talking about how the real way to make Andrew Tate style money. It's so funny to me that like the core of his fortune is all in like promising dumb teenage boys that he knows how to make them rich so they can escape the fucked up economy that we've all been left with the fucked up planet that's going to make it harder and harder to survive.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So this is all important information that does kind of change... my understanding of how this guy operates and what's actually going on behind the scenes. But let's start with, like, what the fuck's going on right now and what's been going on since we talked about him last. So when we left Monsieur Tate back in 2022... No, don't give him that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Like his his job is like grifting off the fact that people are desperate because any chance at actually getting ahead in the world has been like strangled in the fucking crib by the people who these the ghouls who run everything. And his job is just grifting off that that desperate hope and that failure to realize who the actual people with their boots on their neck are. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He's just kind of dancing around the boot being like, I can help you out from under that boot governor. Yeah. You know, that's my Andrew Tate accent. Close enough. Close enough. Right. So as we stated last time, Tate did return in March to Romania. He signed those papers. We'll see how things in Romania go.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

That said, as that case has, you know, stuttered and started and stopped and started again, he has continued to accumulate criminal charges and investigations at what I can only describe as a Trumpian rate. Several days ago, like Pokemon, he's collecting them like Pokemon cards. So he flies back in late February to the United States, right? Re-enters the country parties in Florida.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Some on April 5th, 2025. Now... That has been seen as evidence by a lot of people that since he's landed, both the feds and the Southern District – and the Southern District does a lot of this kind of high-profile shit. They were responsible for one of the big prosecutions against Trump. They went after Harvey Weinstein. This is what the Southern District does.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. You know, a lot of people don't survive surgery. Good luck if you're going into surgery.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So it's very, very not surprising that the Southern District is going after them. But there had not been previous confirmation of that or that there is an ongoing federal investigation. which is really interesting to me as we kind of debate to what extent are the Republicans in the tank for this guy, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So that does suggest the fact that their lawyer tried this, that there are investigations going on. It is not 100% clear if that is the case, but it really seems likely right now. So if you're if you're keeping track, Andrew was back in a few weeks for in the US for a few weeks.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But in that short time, he managed to both, you know, get to a federal and Southern District investigation started against him. And he has racked up another serious allegation of physical and sexual violence. His ex-girlfriend, Brianna Stern, accused him of sexual battery in a Los Angeles hotel room within days of his return to the country.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

the two had met yeah this and this is like again right after he gets back to the united states right like almost immediately like let me do some abuse right when i get let me go to a fucking la hotel room and beat up my girlfriend yeah it's just like allegedly yeah you know the right wing talks all about people coming into this country and harming women blah blah blah blah blah right it's been here for four seconds he's a citizen though it's fine

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Oh, OK. Yeah, I forgot. That makes it OK. We're all good, baby.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Stern and Tate had met in July of twenty twenty four after the brothers invited her to their Romanian compound because per the AP. They were looking for models to help promote their cryptocurrency meme coin. She said that he convinced her the media portrayals of him were untrue and that he was actually a supporter of women. It seemed like a dream come true, she said in the complaint.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

No. He'd been arrested and jailed and then released to house arrest. And in the two years since, simultaneously, very little has changed and at the same time, quite a lot has. Right. So...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And I'm not going to like pile on Stern here, but like, yeah, maybe don't. We really need to teach more critical thinking in school, I guess. I don't know what the solution is here. What?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

There's like audio of this guy talking about. Yeah, we'll talk about some of the audio that exists. I know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

That's that is being a person. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

After she returned to the U.S., Tate's communications became threatening and manipulative, including calling her his property. Stern alleges he sent. Yeah. What a G. Yeah. Yeah. He sent messages saying he wanted to beat and impregnate her, telling her, you have an attitude because you're not hit enough.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He once wrote, according to the complaint, Tate's lawyer has alleged that the messages were doctored, edited, and falsified. Stern also alleges that when they were both in that hotel together, Andrew beat and choked her during sex and repeatedly promised that if she crossed him, he would kill her. At this point, this is just a criminal complaint. It is unclear to me where this is going to end.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

If there are going to be like charges and stuff like that, I do think that it is worth sharing a statement Stern made after the complaint was made public. I considered many times just silently leaving Andrew and saying nothing, doing nothing, because I was scared and because it was honestly hard for me to accept that I was being abused.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But I can see that now that doing so would be the cowardly approach. Um, and that is, again, one of the reasons why he's gotten away with it is that he scares people and they don't want to deal with his incredibly weaponized fan base and they don't want to deal. They're also afraid of him personally.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And yeah, it does take a lot of courage, no matter what decisions may have led you there to choose to actually go for bore against this guy. Right. So I do applaud her for that. This is not easy. You're painting it, especially in the current political climate, you know, painting a target on your back takes a lot of courage.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

let's start with just a little bit of an overview of what went down andrew age 36 and tristan age 34 at the time were both arrested on december 29th 2022 they'd moved to romania in 2016 and had drawn attention from the authorities for trafficking women and forming an organized crime ring to do so investigators identified seven women who alleged that they had been forced to perform sex acts on camera for the tate's financial gain

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And her name, it's with her name attached, right? Like a lot of the accusers rightfully are anonymous and she is not, which makes it a lot harder and makes this a lot braver. Now, right as well, this while all this was happening, the AP published another article with a simple title. Andrew Tate lands in Dubai, calls UK case politically motivated.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He was there to do what rich evil men do in Dubai, and his arrival there sparked fears among UK politicians that he might remain in the Emirates to avoid justice. Labour MP Emily Darlington wrote to the Home Secretary to beg the government to prevent the Tate brothers from evading trial by fleeing to other countries. Tate responded on Twitter with this, I've made it to Dubai just fine, thanks.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He claimed that the Romanian authorities have informed him that the case against him in Romania was started by the UK Foreign Office to get me off the internet. And we will see where all of that goes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But I kind of wanted to conclude by talking about a little bit aspect of Tate's personality that we didn't get into enough in the previous episodes, but that I think is really important to put together here. Andrew Tate absolutely needs you to believe that he is a dangerous man. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He is in the sense that he hurts a lot of people and he spreads toxic propaganda and he has a lot of fame and fame can make you dangerous to other people. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

so can money but he also needs you to believe that he is a john wick kind of warrior in real life and he simply isn't we discussed in the earlier episodes that his kickboxing career is massively inflated he was an okay professional but experts will always tell you he had an imminently forgettable record right he primarily picked fights that were easy for the purpose of getting a record that looked good on paper but there is absolutely nothing special about his record as a kickboxer

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And even the fact that he has a quote-unquote reputation as a professional kickboxer isn't enough for him. And he constantly posts videos and tweets of himself with weapons. His favorite, for whatever reason, probably because he's part British, being an incredibly shitty machete. One of the worst machetes I've ever seen. Now look.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I'm going to avoid playing too many extended clips of the motherfucker, but I think you need to see this, and it'll help get everyone in the proper mood. So here is a video simply called on YouTube, Andrew Tate, machete women self-defense.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He's laying in bed waving a machete. Even that one.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He's waving... Again, he's waving a machete like a guy who's never used one for anything but filming videos. You're right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

One of the women accused Andrew of having raped her twice in March of 2022. Another woman claimed a Tate associate had used violence to force her to stay in their compound after she attempted to leave. Both brothers were locked up in a Romanian prison for about three months.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It is a dog shit machete. I'm going to talk at length about how shitty this machete is because I'm a man who likes his machetes, right? I like large... I enjoy using large knives in general. I like the aesthetics of them. I keep three in every room in part because they're not a good weapon. You know what a good weapon is? A fucking gun. But... They are a really good tool.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I used them just last weekend. I had to process a bunch of firewood when I was out camping. I've used them bushwhacking through thick brush. I've used them to repeatedly sever the heads of mid-sized mammals when I'm slaughtering animals or processing roadkill. Because in Oregon, if you harvest roadkill, you have to turn the head into the state, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So I have a lot of experience using a wide variety of different large knives for the things that they are useful for, right? Right. I know what makes these tools useful and not. And in my opinion, Andrew is showing off among the shittiest machetes I have ever seen. To describe it for our listeners, right? It has a blade in the front and then a saw on the back.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And then also in the middle of the blade, there are a bunch of rectangular cuts in the middle where there's no metal, just squares. I think I've seen this before. I've seen several machete survival branded machetes like this where it's like it makes it lighter and it's like, yeah, but it also makes it weaker.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It makes it a lot easier to break if you're using it for any of the tool purposes you want a machete for. Stuff gets caught in there. It's not something you want on a good solid tool. The other stupid thing about this is the fucking saw blade in the back. Let me tell you this right now, folks. there are certain times when combining a number of tools makes sense, a multi-tool, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Because it's small and it fits in your pocket and there are a number of things and there's really no other way to have, but you would never choose to use the screwdriver on a multi-tool over a full-size screwdriver or the saw blade on a multi-tool over a full-size saw blade. But at least you can pop out the saw blade.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

When I processed a deer last year, I popped out the saw blade on my multi-tool to cut through the sternum, right? Like there's a like a use for that kind of a thing. There is not a use for a saw blade on the back of a machete like this because it has a blade on both ends.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

What are you going to do to... How are you going to get the... Are you going to grip the edge of the front of the machete in order to saw?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

How are you going to hold... What is the utility? And a saw blade, not a great weapon, right? And again, there's this attitude... Again, very errant, brought to us by a lot of movies that like knives and long knives that like the way there's like arts to fighting with them. And there are some like martial arts around knife fighting. They are primarily for how they look and showing off.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

While they were incarcerated, DICOT, the Romanian federal agency devoted to organized crime who was handling this case, towed away a bunch of their luxury cars and seized almost $4 million in assets. Ultimately, they were released to house arrest and then... Nothing seemed to happen for quite a while.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

If you look at how 99% of quote unquote knife fights go, somebody with a blade literally throws their body into the other person and stabs them 50 to 100 fucking times until they bleed out. That's how people kill each other with fucking knives a lot of the time, right? It is not an artisan's weapon. And both people usually wind up hideously cut. That is how knives work as weapons.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

That is why you don't want to rely on a knife as a weapon. They're not a good survival weapon, right? They're great as tools, but not the one that he has. It's a dog shit tool. It's a tool for a fucking idiot. And the only reason he is posing with this is not because he trusts it to protect himself.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's to look cool to children, right? He wants people to think he's John Wick. It's to look cool to children. And he has, I've seen multiple videos. He claims I have three in every room. I have seen this exact same machete in several different Tate videos. It's always carefully posed so you know it's there because Andrew desperately needs 14-year-old boys to believe that he's scary.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Here's a photo Sophie's going to show you of him sitting up in bed wearing sunglasses for some reason. trigger warning shirtless. An unsheathed machete lying next to him over the sheets. Just on the bed?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So dumb. It makes it very clear.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

That's very important. We have to traumatize a woman in order to truly give everyone the Andrew Tate experience. Let's just open the episodes with that. Everyone will love that. Sophie, welcome back to being on camera.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

His primary audience is children. These are little boys.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Take the chance. Because you know what the fun thing about a knife is? If you get cut in the wrong place, it doesn't matter how big your muscles are.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

right exactly that's what that's what weapons do right I don't know they're scary knives are scary don't get close to them versus a pissed off woman with a machete like I would like to see that well and just like it's not the machete that's the most dangerous weapon it's somebody who has like a fucking three or four inch blade concealed and they're next to you and you turn your back and grab a drink and she jams you in the kidney 11 times you know you're done like then you're fucking bleeding maybe you live but you don't live well knives are scary

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So again, shit like this, this is to impress little boys in primary school or secondary school whose primary knowledge of knives comes from fucking cartoons and action figures and comic books, right? What I see here is a guy who bought a machete because he purchased one that he thought was likely to impress 13-year-old boys, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Andrew continued posting on Twitter, and he guested remotely in podcasts from his compound in Romania. Right-wing figures would fly to Romania and visit him and put him on their various shows. It wasn't until June of 2023 that Tate was formally indicted.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But I should note that it's not just little boys that he is trying to impress. There is a secondary concern tied for that in his mind when he does stuff like this. And the secondary concern is much scarier.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Will this weapon, these things I'm saying, this way I'm posing, will this scare the mostly teenaged, 18 to 19-year-old, and very young adult girls in their early 20s that I pick up in clubs and then later allegedly coerce into doing on-camera sex work, right? That is the second simultaneous reason that he does this because –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

As those allegations in the UK show, a lot of what he does is based on them thinking he's dangerous. I'm going to play you a video here where Tate answers the question. I mean, a second video, right? Like we just played that first one. This is a video of him giving a speech to some of the War Room guys being asked like, yeah, what if a woman catches you cheating, right? And this is fairly famous.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You've seen it on a lot of coverage.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yep.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. And now I will say, I will say this is evidence that he owns a second machete because that is a different machete and it doesn't have holes in it. So there you go.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It also looks like it's from Timu, maybe Bud K, right? Again, The purpose of these weapons of all of his posing with weapons of all of his threats about his power is to scare very young people or impress very young people. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Because those are the folks who don't have the life experience or the support to recognize or have any sort of like way to feel like they can defend themselves against him. Or, you know, they're little boys who think he looks like a comic book character and that's what they want to be. Right. Those are the those are his audience.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Anyway, that's part one of our Andrew Tate updates. Hope you're all having fun. We will be back to talk about his real weapons, the actual weapons, the only actual weapons I've seen him wield competently, which is his his digital platform and his fame, which he is unfortunately quite good at. Wow. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I'm having horrible, horrible introductions this week. Jesus.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He and his brother and two Romanian women were charged with forming an organized criminal group in 2021 and orchestrating a campaign of human trafficking in three different countries. He was also charged with rape. So there was a significant gap between December of 2022 when he was initially arrested and then a few months later, house arrest started it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. Check out Hood Politics. Check out anything else on the internet besides more Andrew Tate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Touch grass.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But it wasn't until June of the next year of 2023 that he actually gets indicted for anything. And that is going to be a sign that The actual case around this is messy, and it's not messy because there's not a bunch of evidence of fucked up shit Andrew did. It's messy in part because the Romanian justice system, not the best in the world, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Romanian criminal investigations don't always have their Ps and Qs put together here. So the massive coverage around the indictments and allegations led to a flood of additional allegations from women who had been abused by Andrew back home in the UK. I'm going to quote from the New York Times here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

In March, this is 2023, the Romanian authorities arrested the Taits again after Britain said it was pursuing them over separate accusations related to sexual crimes and exploitation in that country. A Bucharest court ruled soon afterward that they would be extradited to Britain to face those charges after legal proceedings conclude in Romania. And this is still the way things are, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Sophie, I am a poet. Thank you very much. A poet of people who really suck ass. That's the kind of poet I am. Much like Yeats.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

There is that case is continuing to build. UK authorities have expressed being very bullish on prosecuting the Taits. And as things stand, once the investigation it's kind of it might it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Because they think they have a good case and the UK has a functional criminal justice system somewhat. They have prosecutors who know how to put together a case better than the Romanian ones do, I think.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And the UK, to be fair, UK authorities massively fucked up the first set of allegations against him, which is fair.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Because this has become a massive issue in the UK. Right. Both because like 50 by most recent polls, like 52 percent of men under 19 have a positive view of Andrew Tate in the UK.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But he has been he has been he's also becoming extremely demonized to a lot of like adults and a lot of, you know, the the people in politics in the country. So he is a massive figure over there for that reason. And at least all of the signs I'm seeing is that the UK is very wants to prosecute him aggressively.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And so the best thing for him may be the fact that this Romanian case has been so messy because they can't they won't extradite him until they either charge him and the case is concluded or they drop the investigation. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So the day before I finalized these episodes, a BBC article dropped with more details from this case, the case of the four women in the UK who are alleging crimes committed by Tate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

According to court documents in those cases, which have become recently available, one of these women alleges that Tate pointed a gun at her at her face and told her, you're going to do as I say or there will be hell to pay. Another woman claims that he threatened to kill her. Another says that he threatened to kill anyone who spoke to her.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And another says he convinced her he'd killed people in the past. I don't just based on what's not known about him believe that. But he has a as we'll talk about, he he spends a lot of time and effort trying to convince people that he is like a very deadly man. Particularly 14 year old boys and the teenage women he primarily pursues.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Which I'm not saying she's silly for taking that seriously. You should always take it seriously when a guy who was threatening you says that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, well, he was only holding a gun allegedly on one of them. Not on this one. These were four different women. Just one guy. Yeah, these were four different women with different allegations. Andrew Tate, Tristan Tate, which is his brother and weird little sidekick and their spokesperson, have repeatedly denied these and all other allegations against them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Oh, no, no, no. I'm just watching that falcon, unable to hear the falconer. Gyres are widening, all that good shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He has also taken what we will describe as uneven efforts to reform his image. For one thing, he converted to Islam, supposedly, and has made a number of videos, showed up on some podcasts about that. There's a good BBC documentary in which people who were close to him and know him say, like, that's a lie.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And I believe again, he's been he's been spotted repeatedly, like when he got back to Florida, like in clubs, in and around alcohol, drinking, partying in ways that like. strict observant Muslims don't do. What with the booze. But he's also tried to remake his image as a philanthropist. Now, this started with just kind of bullshit. He claimed that in the past he had donated heavily to charities.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He built a dog shelter in Romania and was going to rebuild an orphanage. But in the wake of these allegations, he launched the website TatePledge.com and claimed in a video that I donate $25 million a year to feeding children in war-torn countries, especially in the Islamic world, because that's where war is. There's actually war all over the place, not just in the Islamic world. Andrew Tate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

In that video, he announced the birth of the Tate Foundation, which, quote, is going to be dedicated to charitable acts. I will be spending millions and millions of dollars on charitable acts for the rest of my human life.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

oh yeah it's i mean it's like videos so those are videos that when you like different charities put out for their donors um we'll be explaining that in a second like what's going on on this site but i wanted people to see tatepledge.com that's what i'm looking at it looks like a normal charitable website where like oh you're collecting all the different donations from these people but these are all supposed to be from andrew tate right

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

No. After he states, God has blessed me with fantastic wealth. It's more money than I will ever personally need. The video then displays text saying, this is how the most famous man on Earth exerts his influence. Despite all the attacks from his fiercest critics, he is the only one actively trying to change the world for the better. Now, we'll talk about how real all this shit is in a second.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's not, mostly. If you go to the Tate Pledge website, it looks kind of like a normal NGO, right? Except the weird fact of the matter is, like, normally a site like this would be keeping track of a bunch of people donating, and this is just supposed to be the Tates and some of their inner circle war room members. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

On that site today, it claims that almost 1.2 million lives have been changed by their donations and $12 million are donated. And even that is significantly less than Tate claimed he was planning to spend. But yeah, there's like 43 projects donated. listed on the site from wheelchairs for disabled kids to distributing food aid in Yemen. And it all sounds nice and weirdly innocuous for the Tates.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And so the obvious question one asks now is, is any of this real? And to answer that, I'm going to refer to an investigation published on the website Unheard and written by Steve Boggan. Quote, There is very little evidence of more than a million lives being changed or of tens of millions of dollars being spent. Fewer than 10 charities feature in the videos, and at least one is now defunct.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

The Tate's most regular collaborator is Muslim Global Relief, a Manchester-based charity with an income of 3.4 million pounds and three employees. Its deputy managing director, Mohammed Bashir, told me that Muslim Global Relief had conducted 16 to 20 projects with Tate-donated money this financial year. but the total amount spent was 30,000 pounds at most.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Asked whether the Tate-funded projects were long-term or one-off events, Mr. Bashir said, one project at a time in different places. The charity, he added, had made a policy decision to carry on taking money from the Tates, regardless of the charges they faced. However, if they were found guilty, Global Muslim Relief would sever all ties.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And both, so we're looking at tens of thousands from the most documented charity, not millions. This is clearly the kind of, like a tax dodge sort of situation as well as being like a PR thing. But also Tate's been accused of not paying like tens of millions of dollars in UK taxes over the years. So it's one of those like this, this doesn't count to me. Right. Like the fact.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

that you lied about how much you gave in order to get some videos that you could put on a website and gave what is effectively pocket change based on what you actually owe in taxes. I don't know. I don't really give a shit. And even that, I should say, this is like the most documented relationship they have with a charity.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Even that possibly semi-legit 30K donation is incredibly sketchy when a journalist digs into it. Because Bagan did the smart thing, and after Global Muslim Relief was like, yeah, he gave us some money, not as much as he claimed, but some. He was like, so how did they transfer these funds to you? How did they get sent to you?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And they said, and this is so weird, they were like, well, actually, Tate didn't give them to us directly. A journalist who we won't name handed it to us from Tate, quote, from their representatives. Wow. What? We don't have direct links with the Tate brothers, Mr. Beshear said. There's a journalist based here in the UK who's a representative and looks after the charitable arm for them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Goodness, you should be. We all should be, because today we're finally giving you an update on Andrew Tate, an Andrew up-tate. I hate every time I say that, and I still keep saying it. You did.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He's the one who gives us the donations, and then we do the projects and give them the appropriate feedback. There's no ongoing long-term funding for one particular project in one particular country. That's really weird. Yeah, that sounds not normal. First off, a journalist is your intermediary.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

If they'd said a lawyer, I'd be like, hey, rich people have like a lawyer handle that kind of shit all the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Bashir is the representative from the Muslim. Oh, I thought that was the journalist. Nothing to do with that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I actually have a couple of theories, but I'm not going to throw them out on air about who this quote unquote journalist might be. But yeah, it's that's weird. That's not how this is normally handled. Yeah. Seems bizarre. Seems bizarre. And I should emphasize here that there are substantial tax benefits to donating to certain amounts to charity.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Ice cold. Imagine, because he had to have sat with that review title, just being like, I can't say this, can I?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Fuck it, fuck it, I'm doing it. Near the end of 1972, Oprah gets her first TV gig when her boss at WVOL called a local TV station, WTVF TV, and told them that he had a girl who was interested in broadcasting. This was during a period where the FCC had just introduced diversity requirements for on-air talent, and Oprah was hired quickly. She generally describes this as an affirmative action hire.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Again, the guy who hires her is like, no, she was the best qualified candidate ever. You know, I don't know. Either way, it doesn't really matter because this proves to be a very good hiring decision. The truth. Oprah was a skilled performer and had experience both on the radio and as a pageant winner. That said, she was hired to be a journalist, which she had no experience doing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And she winds up reporting on City Hall. She cheerfully admitted as soon as she starts the job, she tells all her coworkers, I lied during my interview. I don't know how to do this job. Like her first day, she tells the crew, I don't know what I'm doing. Please help me. Because like I told the director, I understood how to do this job. And it's a remark.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It's a mark of her charisma that everyone on the crew is like, well, yeah, OK. Yeah. That's kind of nice.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I mean, that is how like entertainment works, right? Like everyone I know in this industry has a story of like, yeah, I talked myself into a room that I probably didn't have the right to be in. Oh, that part, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, I one of one of the again, we're about to get into all of the horrible things Oprah's been involved in. But one thing that I do consistently admire about her is that she doesn't dress up this aspect of her life. She's like, yeah, man, I lied, cheated and stole until I could be on TV. Which is everyone who gets famous on TV, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Iconic. Look, kids, if you're looking at getting into entertainment, get good at lying, because that's the job. Oprah experienced a ton. This is an uncomfortable transition, but a lot of racism on the job. A large part of it was like she's the first black on air talent that they have.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She winds up interviewing a lot of people who like they see a black journalist and just start calling her slurs to her face. She won awards, though. She's very ambitious. Her colleagues, that's the primary thing her colleagues from this period remember about her is that Oprah is a climber. She is somebody who is like crawling up to the top. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

At one point, she takes over for a producer who like she gets on set. He's clearly doesn't know what he's doing for this Black History Week presentation. And she directs the entire segment herself. Right. She is also, by everyone's admission, doing hella drugs during this period, although everyone at the TV station is doing hella drugs. This is a local TV station in the 70s.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I want to read a paragraph from the book Oprah, a biography based on a conversation with her former colleague, Patty Outlaw. It was just nuts working at that station. Drugs, drugs, drugs all the time. Drugs all over the place. They were even selling window panes of LSD in the hall. Drugs were so prevalent that the new staff gave Vic Mason, Oprah's co-anchor, a Coke spoon as a gift.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Chris and I looked the other way, said Jimmy Norton, who confirmed that station management removed a vending machine once they discovered it had been rigged to dispense marijuana.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

This was in Chicago? Where was this? Yeah, no, no, no. They're not even in, I think they're in, yeah, they're in Nashville still. Nashville. Yeah, they're in Nashville still. She does move up to the big leagues pretty quickly, but she doesn't go straight to Chicago. After a few years in Nashville, she gets a job in Baltimore.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She's not really happy there, even though this is a big step up, Baltimore obviously being a bigger city, because she feels like she's on a ticking timer, right? Her attitude is like, by the time I'm 24, I have to be where I want to be, because then I'm too old and washed up, which... You know, that's the that's the way a lot of people feel. That's the way TV is for a lot of women, unfortunately.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But like it's certainly not going to be that way for Oprah. Baltimore turns out to be a disaster, though. The longtime anchorman for the station who she is made to be like the co-anchor hates her. And she's not really experienced enough. Like he's been doing it for decades. She doesn't really know what she's doing yet. So she very quickly gets demoted. but she's still on contract.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So it's one of those things where she's getting a lot of money, but she's basically not doing the job that she got hired to do. She's instead getting all these terrible little human interest stories that she considers beneath her. So this is a frustrating period, but her saving grace is always her ambition.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

During that denied advancement at the station, she starts performing at churches, schools, and different black community spaces, building a fan base locally the hard way. She also has a series of interracial relationships while she is working at the station, which is noteworthy because that is not a common thing at the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And the fact that she is dating white guys in her personal life becomes public news. A bunch of local white radio DJs make it like a reoccurring thing that they talk about on the air, like Oprah is dating. Um, I don't just bring that up to be like, wow. And like, it's like, no, no, no. This is like, she has to deal with this being part of like local news.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's it's nuts. And like, for an example of how fucking insane it is, one of these local radio DJs described she's dating like a Jewish reporter. Right. Who works at a competing station. One of these guys on the radio describes their relationship as Omar Sharif is dating Aunt Jemima.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Oh, boy. You should just explode when you say something like that. So she had always been something of a binge eater, largely as a response to stress. And as is probably not surprising, the stress of like being in the public eye and having all of this shit about you be public discussion causes that to be even more of a problem.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

In 1977, she starts paying a diet doctor to help her drop weight for the first time. And she starts attending Overeaters Anonymous courses. A mixture of stress and starving herself causes her hair to fall out. Or at least that's one story.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Oprah later is going to insist that she lost her hair because executives at the station demanded that she go to New York for a French hairdresser to, quote, make me a Puerto Rican by bleaching her skin and changing her hair. I don't know. You get these two different versions of how she loses her hair. It's very hard to say what the truth is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The news producer is like, the company didn't have the budget to send her to New York. She also claims that the former news director tries to get her to change her name to Susie. He denies this. I don't know. It's all a little muddled. I don't know how much where the truth lies here super matters, but

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Listen, listen. There's for sure crabs in Maine. They've got lobster at McDonald's in Maine.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Um, there's definitely some stuff that she's like exaggerating, but she's also like literally people are talking about her relationships on the air in a very racist way. So like, I don't know, I, I, I feel like you get the general gist, which is that she is in an incredibly stressful and unfair situation here at work.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Right. Right. Like that's kind of where I land on this. That said, I will say the station allows her to work her way. Like she is not like locked out of moving back up and she, works her way back up to reporting the news over the next couple of years in Baltimore.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And in fact, she rebuilds her reputation with her bosses well enough that in 1977, the new station manager, William Baker, gives her the big break that is going to lead her to the position of kind of impossible wealth and cultural power that she's going to attain. He had been brought on to the station after creating in another station a morning talk show called Morning Exchange.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Part four is... There's no logic to the number of parts. This may wind up more episodes than we thought. I have to start with something, which is a mea culpa. I made some mistakes in the last episodes, guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And his job was to do the same thing for Baltimore. Right. Morning shows are a new concept. Like this is this is the guy playing a video game while ranting about politics on a stream of 1977 is like people waking up in the morning to see one to two charming, handsome people talk about bullshit while you like get the kids breakfast ready. Right. The hottest new thing in entertainment.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Phil Donahue had kind of helped to kick off the trend of like talk shows in 1968. And his show, which was just named Donahue, had become like the most popular thing on television. Morning shows were a refinement of this idea, right? You generally have a male host and a female co-host.

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And this is how you lock in viewers who are either getting ready for work or like stay-at-home moms starting their day.

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uh baker's wife jean-marie was the one who recommended oprah to be the female co-host of this new morning show apparently at some sort of like work event she sees winfrey and she like says to her husband that's your host and baker listens to his wife which proves to be a wise decision because for whatever i mean there's a number of reasons but tens of millions of american women feel the exact same way that the first time they see oprah like oh yeah this is somebody i want to watch every morning right

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um so jean-marie was definitely keyed into something there oprah does not like that she's been picked for this job she's horrified at first actually because in her attitude she sees this as another demotion right she had been a co-anchor and then kicked down to doing these like human interest kind of like oh you know there's a a new you know it's the kind of stuff they make fun of an anchorman right there's like a a new puppy parade or some um

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And she's like, that's this. This is like fluff. I want to be doing like I think that I want to be Barbara Walters. I want to be doing something more hard nosed. Part of what disgusts her is that a big thing on this morning show is dialing for dollars, which is a way that news stations would keep people watching.

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Cause you don't want anyone to switch to another channel if they get bored for a second. So you have this thing where periodically throughout the day, people submit their phone numbers to the station and we randomly Oprah draws one out of a bowl and the station will just send money to that person. Yeah. That's how they, and you have to be watching constantly to know if your number gets picked.

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I'm so, so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. So here's the thing. When you're doing a podcast like this, Like it's a mix of you do a bunch of research and you write a bunch of things to get a bunch of facts out that you are as accurate as you can. But you're also having a conversation. So you do stuff like, oh, I'm bringing up the biblical story of Ruth. I don't know much about Ruth.

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Like that's literally how they, they're like bribing people. Please keep watching the show.

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Yes.

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This whole country is one big roulette wheel. And Oprah didn't want to be the croupier.

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I'm sorry. All of the people who would correct me on that will die if they spend more than 11 seconds away from a slot machine. Those are life support systems for a chunk of the populace.

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I think I got it. I don't know. I don't care. I like the word croupier. Speaking of gambling, gamble on whether or not these products actually do what they say they are. They do, probably. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's a new year and we're all asking ourselves versions of the same question. What do I want my 2025 story to be?

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Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

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Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

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Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

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Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I only included it in the episode to make a bad joke about Star Wars, the Phantom Menace. And so I made a comment about, I don't know, I think she's got something to do with Moses. She does not. And all of the Bible people got onto me for that one. Yeah. And I'm sorry. How big a part of your audience is the Bible people? A shockingly large number of.

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And we're back. So Oprah's got this job offer to host this morning show. And she's like, this sounds like death, right? This sounds like the end of my career. Like you're trying to fob me off on this thing and I will be locked into this, you know, doing something nobody respects for the rest of my life. The thing that she tells Baker is I'm a news person. I don't want to do a talk show.

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Then she films her first episode and her mind completely changed. The way she describes this is as soon as she sits down and makes an episode of The Morning Show, her opinion on it changes on a dime. And the reason why is because she gets to hang out with famous people. And she's like, oh, wait. Oh. I'm going to read a quote now from the People Profiles biography of Oprah.

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This, she told herself, is heaven. She recalled, I interviewed Benny from All My Children and the Carvel Ice Cream Man and thought, heaven, because you get to say whatever you feel. You truly get to be yourself. Within a year, People Are Talking, which is the morning show, was beating Donahue in Baltimore, the only show in America to do so. Winfrey would never read another headline.

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The minute that first show was over, she told Good Housekeeping, I thought, thank God, I found what I was meant to do. It was like breathing for me. And that's like very interesting to me because I, it's hard to get across. Like Donahue is, he's like the Mr. Beast of his era. If you'll forgive me from trying to like make, he is like the biggest guy on, on daytime TV. And, and,

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Oprah is the like this is the only local show that beats Donahue anywhere in the United States. And it's due to the fact that Oprah is on it. Right. And she has this absolutely unique electric connection with her audience. This is recognized by people with money and television and things start to move very fast for Oprah after this point.

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As Pell scholar Amanda Cullen writes in her thesis paper on Oprah's role in American culture. In 1984, Oprah moved to Chicago, Illinois, to host WLSTV's morning talk show, AM Chicago, which became the number one local talk show, surpassing ratings for the most popular show at the time, Donahue, just one month after she began.

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Well, I think it's because we have a lot of like ex-evangelicals in the audience. Like a lot of people who were raised evangelical and then got better.

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The show earned national syndication in 1986, becoming the highest-rated talk show in television history. In 1988, Oprah established Harpo, Oprah Backwards Studios, a production facility in Chicago. making her the third woman in the American entertainment industry after Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball to own her own studio.

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AM Chicago became the Oprah Winfrey Show and remained the number one talk show for 20 consecutive seasons. So this is like a very rapid explosion in popularity. She goes from getting the show to becoming number one to it being entirely reframed to being just around Oprah. And she establishes a production company and gets like a significant degree of ownership in her own show.

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Which is – like this is one of the things that's most interesting about Oprah is especially for somebody who was raised without any access to money, the sheer degree of like business savvy that she has. The fact that she owns a large piece of everything she's involved in and eventually owns all of it, right?

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Like she is not – like she kind of has this – probably because of how she got fucked over with that first job, this understanding that like if I don't own it, it's not worth shit to me, right? Yeah. Anyway, Oprah.

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Wait a second, because I had started rewatching it, but I'm going to be honest, I didn't finish it because I was tired. Harpo is his name?

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Uh-huh. Yeah. That's I wonder that has to because she already had Harpo the studio at that point. We're going to talk a little bit about the color purple. And Steven Spielberg comes in. I don't know if he's a hero. Well, he's not a hero. He's a weird kind of villain in this story. But we'll get to that in a sec.

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So for about a full generation after 1984, Oprah's fame is a rocket ship. It just keeps going up and up and up. But what made her show so special? Colin's argument is that she offered, quote, despair disguised as entertainment. In other words, she sensationalized and repackaged human suffering for an audience.

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Quote, when Oprah came on the scene, she mirrored this Donahue formula, but with a unique twist of her own. She, unlike Donahue, revealed her own personal struggles and stressed a self-help mantra. The audience loved it, and the Oprah Winfrey show quickly surpassed her predecessor's ratings. Commonly referred to as trash TV, Oprah transformed the talk show genre by turning trash into treasure.

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The same, the same cannot be said for my heinous and unforgivable comments about the March of Dimes, because I made a comment that like, I don't know, I guess it's probably a cancer charity. And then a bunch of people popped in and be like, no, it's for this. And then other people were like, actually, when Oprah was a kid, it didn't do that. It was for a completely different thing.

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And that's kind of... She starts out and she is viewed as like trash. She's viewed as Jerry Springer, right, for a while. Because she's doing that stuff. She's bringing on like... I'm going to bring on a bunch of single underwed mothers who are fighting with their dads. I'm going to bring on like some Klansmen to have an argument with like...

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You know, whoever on stage and like hope that there's a fistfight or some shit. She's doing pieces of that. But kind of what shifts the meaning of what she's doing is that unlike a Springer or a Donahue kind of character, she's not standing back and being like, look at this zoo I've brought to you. She's like opening up her own difficult, troubled past, which kind of adds this.

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this like shot of vulnerability into the whole mixture that makes it unique. And you can see an immediate, that's why it stands out, right? That's why she rises above these other figures so quickly. Right.

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Yeah.

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I have an opinion. And also like, like you people, like all you troubled people that I bring on the show. I also have had my like troubles and I'm not too big to like admit them. Whereas like Jerry Springer would never like break down and cry in front of his audience.

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Oh God.

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Of course. The one thing I remember from that show is when Geraldo got his nose broken by a chair. I think that was on Jerry. Was that on Geraldo or Jerry? I thought it was. Oh, I think it was. That might have been Geraldo. Was that just on Geraldo? Whatever the case, Geraldo Rivera got his nose broken by a chair, everybody. Never forget.

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Yeah, because it's like we're taught it's the same kind of like, quote unquote, trash. But there's less of a voyeuristic attitude because like anytime it starts to lean too much, Oprah will drop some sort of anecdote about her own background. And you're like, oh, OK, so she's really she's on the same level as us. Right. Which she's not. But that's how it feels to the viewer, at least.

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The most significant moment for her career in this period came right after she moved to Chicago to start the Oprah Winfrey show. On Thursday, December 5th, 1985, at 9 a.m., Oprah started her morning show by bringing on a young white abuse victim named Lori.

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She opened up by reading some statistics about sexual abuse, namely that one in three women in the United States had experienced it, and then asked Lori, your father started out fondling you. When did it lead to something other than fondling?

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she pressed with more and more detailed questions asking what did he say to you how did he tell you what did he tell you and this is all very uncomfortable to see on tv right and even especially like reading the transcript it's there's an element of it that seems a little bit exploitative kind of constantly pushing for those details in front of an audience

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So we're all wrong. Although, again, it had nothing to do with cancer. So I was wrongest. But like you guys were wrong, too. Most of you who criticized me because it wasn't about that then. So fuck you. I love you. I'm sorry. What is it for? It's right now. I think it's for like, let's look up the March of Dimes. Let's get it right this time.

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That said, it also – this is kind of how interviews work. It's just usually when journalists interview people about these kind of experiences, you don't get the direct interview transcript. You get an article where they've kind of taken out the details but also kind of softened aspects of it so that it doesn't feel that uncomfortable.

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Oprah is kind of giving you the raw feed and seeing something like this, which is normally a private process rendered as public entertainment, is kind of a new thing. And particularly what's new about it is that because

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Of the way Oprah does this, rather than people feeling like, oh, she's kind of exploding this woman, people from the audience start to join in, spontaneously sharing their own stories of sexual abuse as children. People in the audience start breaking down into tears.

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And then Oprah starts talking about her own sexual abuse, telling everyone, the fact that I had all these unfortunate experiences permeates my life. And I'm going to quote from Kitty Kelly's book here.

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For the next few seconds, Oprah appeared to be discovering for the first time that what she had experienced as a nine-year-old child was indeed rape, a defilement so unspeakable that she had never been able to put it into words until that very moment. Her audience felt as if they were watching the fissures of a soul split open as she admitted her shameful secret.

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And nothing like this had ever happened on daytime TV. There had certainly been like people talking about sexual abuse. But the fact that an episode interviewing a survivor would lead to both members of the audience breaking down and sharing their own stories and then the host doing it. That's a totally novel thing, right? Like that has never happened before on television.

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And it creates a firestorm. The fact that Oprah does this on air becomes national and then international news. And it is people like the people running the station are not happy. Like the actual executives at the station are like, this is supposed to be a happy morning show. This is like for people to watch while they're drinking. What the hell is going on here, right?

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Why are we having stories of child sexual abuse? But the ratings are off the charts. It's one of those things where she both gets in trouble with the people running the station and also this makes her too big to fail. It's impossible to overstate what a massive moment this is for both television as a medium and also for Oprah's career.

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It's a huge risk. Because, like, if the ratings had... Like, her... The people running the station are not happy. If the ratings had not been there, like, she could have gotten fired for this. Yeah. And it's also...

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It's such a complicated thing to parse out because one thing she's doing is this is one of the very first times in a public space with this much exposure that you have victims of rape talking about it, not in a way that's mediated by psychiatrists or law enforcement or anything like that, but is just like survivors talking about it, right? And at the same time,

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Oprah very sees the reaction to this, sees how well it does. And her immediate takeaway is like sex sells. We need all of the sex episodes, every kind of sex, not just like this, where people are talking about, you know, their trauma, but like whatever we can get that involves sex. That's what's going to make this show. Keep it on top. Right.

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Yeah, immature babies, but it was like about polio before that.

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So after this episode, she invites a bunch of female porn stars on to talk about the penises of their co-stars. That episode gets a 30% share of the Chicago audience and provokes even more news articles about Oprah because people are now like, is this smut? How do we talk about what she's doing? Nobody's done anything like this before.

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And a lot of the coverage is super critical, super like, this is incredibly irresponsible. People shouldn't be doing this. But it all just drives viewers right more and the more stuff that she puts out there that gets people shocked and like angry or, you know, titillated, the more people watch her show.

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When reporters interview her about this, Oprah tells them my mandate is to win, admitting that her overriding purpose and bringing victims of sexual violence and sex workers onto her show is to draw eyeballs. Kitty Kelly quotes her former producer, Deborah DeMeo, paraphrasing the way Oprah pitched show ideas to her team. I'd love to get a priest to talk about sex.

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Improve the health of mothers and babies, right?

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I'd love to get one to say, yes, I have a lover. I worship Jesus and her. Yes, I love her. And her name is Carolyn.

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Find me a priest who's fucking some lady named Carolyn and get her on. Get him on. Oh, man. So, yeah, that's like... I don't know. You can, I guess, moralize that however you want. It's so fascinating that it goes from I have like shared my own horrible experience and people connected with that to like, so we got to get some priest who's fucking a lady on this show. Right.

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Like that's that's where that's where this guy has to continue going, you know.

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I'm leaving so much from, like, this really good book, Age of Oprah, out because, like, I just don't even know how to, like, fit everything in. But I have to start this episode with our wonderful guests, the inimitable- Bridget Todd and the glorious, sainted, I don't know, Andrew T. I'm trying to think of new adjectives to praise y'all with as we come in.

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Yeah, I never say stuff during... One of the things you learn about yourself doing this is how often in daily conversation, and we all do this, you just say things that are a part of your understanding of the world that are not right.

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But also all of them sell because her vulnerability and authenticity keeps her. It's a huge part of her ongoing popularity. But so is the sex. So is the really sleazy stuff. They never stop doing that. Right. I guess the answer is all of it sells and Oprah has very good instincts. You know, wherever we want to land morally on what she's doing here, this shit works.

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Now, it is it is worth noting that she is depicted in the media. This is very hard for like I had trouble grasping this because by the time I was aware of Oprah, she had such a different like reputation in the 80s. She in late 70s and 80s, she's Jerry Springer, right? She is not a respectable media figure to a lot of people. That is not how she's talked about to a lot of people.

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Around this time, an article in McCall's magazine on the Oprah Winfrey show described what it did best as, quote, get him in the gut show topics, sexual disorders, battered wives, self-mutilation, overweight people and the people who hate them, you know, all that kind of stuff. Oprah often would say nothing is taboo, and she meant it.

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Winfrey's own struggles with weight loss and gain quickly became a central part of the show as well. We opened this series with the infamous Wagon of Fat incident from 1998. That was gross and bad.

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But it's also worth noting, if you want to put that into the context, like how we could get to something that gross, it comes after a decade of constant public obsession with every pound Oprah lost or gained. And this is where we're going to talk about the color purple again. So...

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As I've noted, Oprah struggles with, you know, binge eating, with her body self-image from adolescence on, like a lot of us, like maybe everybody. She has a habit of stress eating and was noted by co-workers to binge to really uncomfortable levels during parties and the like. When she becomes a TV star in the mid-80s, people start talking about this.

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Like it becomes both in gossip columns and shit like the fucking, you know, National Enquirer and stuff. There's like articles about, you know, stories of Oprah and eating and whatnot. And she kind of pivots on this to become radically open to her audience about her dieting and her struggles with weight gain.

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Now, this helps drive her popularity, but it's also it both is in part a reaction to and also helps lead to shit like this 1985 appearance on The Tonight Show with Joan Rivers, which I'm going to play for you now. This is one of the most uncomfortable things I've seen on television.

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uh because that's like life we all pick up a bunch of bullshit like the number of times i just don't think you should have to apologize right now i i i take that burden from you i'm sorry for robert but he's innocent all i'm saying is record everything you've ever you ever say in a single day of conversations with people and then run them by a fact checker and you will be amazed at how much of like the load bearing wrong

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Okay. Well, why are eating disorders so rampant? Is it because these are our parents? Effectively?

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Part of what you're seeing there is Oprah being a professional, because when she describes this moment, she's like, yeah, I was not happy. The laughing and stuff was all faked. I was very unhappy that we were having this conversation, obviously. So rude. Yeah. No, it's like I can't believe the kind of shit that Joan's saying there.

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It was made like this whole situation was made worse at the time because like not long after this, while she is like doing this very famous publicized diet that gets announced on the Joan Rivers show, like the first big thing she does after this is she's sent to Ethiopia to report on Chicago's efforts to help the famine.

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So the story is simultaneously Oprah trying to lose 30 pounds and Oprah reporting on a famine in Ethiopia. Not great vibes. One of her colleagues asks, like, is this kind of gross? And Oprah replies, you're right. It's sick, isn't it?

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Now, one fair critique of these episodes is that we're not going to go into super clinical detail about all of the different fad diets and dangerous weight loss misinformation that comes out of the Oprah Winfrey show. Part of why is because the podcast Maintenance Face has done a ton of that, so you can check all of that out. I think part of it is just that, like, you get the idea here, right?

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It's both important to note that, like, Oprah, like, that clip there, there's a lot of pushing On everyone listening to that, feel bad about your body. Be ashamed if you've gained weight. Embrace dangerous strategies to lose it. Oprah has a lot, and Oprah will admit it today, a lot of guilt in spreading that.

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But also, she is in such a unique position where like, I don't know if there's ever been a single person that so many Americans have been so obsessed with their body size. Like, it's kind of hard not to... Not for that to affect you in a bad way. Like, we really were insane about Oprah. Yeah. I don't know what else to say about that.

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Fat pillars of your reality are things you absolutely believe without thinking that are not true. It's amazing.

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I will say, in order to kind of point out the way in which people talked about her, one of the most prominent TV critics of the day, Richard Blackwell, described Oprah as bumpy, frumpy, and downright lumpy on the cover of TV Guide.

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So right around the time this is all happening, Oprah is on the Tonight Show, like right around when she's on the Tonight Show, she is auditioning for a role in The Color Purple. After the episode where, again, this is not as friendly a situation as it appears on the air, she's very unhappy about this.

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She's stress-eaten, she gains more weight, and then she checks herself into a fat farm, an emergency weight loss boot camp type program to lose the weight. Steven Spielberg, who had directed the movie, finds out and he calls Oprah. And Spielberg says, I hear you're at a fat farm. You lose a pound, you could lose this part.

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I don't know where I should. Yeah. Yeah.

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She, she hugely leans in, right? Like she does. She does. She, in part, she makes the specifics of like how much she's gaining or how much she is losing and what diet she is doing. Um, Part of the show, a lot of the money that comes in is as a result of diet advice. She has deals and gets millions and millions from groups like Weight Watchers, right? Pushing a lot of different diets.

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She gets paid and also just like fills airtime and makes money that way. Putting on different diet experts and diet books and a lot of that stuff is extremely dangerous. It is both. She is being. victimized by the whole media environment and also profiting on that by pushing the same kind poison on everyone else. Right. Like that. That's what's happening here. Right.

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The pronunciation. So for this episode, I spent almost three hours looking at Oprah's, one of her charity's tax returns. None of that made it into the episode. Turned out not to be interesting. But you know what I didn't remember to do was look up whether or not Ruth had anything to fucking do with Moses. Like-

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Like it is a story of both victimization and profiting off of putting some pretty toxic. And, you know, the thing she's doing right now is at least copying the sum of that. Right. Right now, copying the sum of that while also getting money from Weight Watchers. So I don't know. I don't know where we want to put that out.

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You should never have had a hot dog-based diet. Yeah.

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She would know.

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yeah uh anyway um so uh she gives up after or at least the way that oprah tells the story after spielberg's like if you lose a pound you could lose this part oprah decides like it and gives up on getting the role uh and keeps the role um and yeah she winds up doing very well she gets like it's like massively you know like one of the interesting things about oprah is she could have had just a whole career as a major hollywood star

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Like she just decides to keep being Oprah Winfrey because that turns out to be much better for her than being like a movie star. But she's very like has a very successful acting career starting out.

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Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's so fascinating to me that like that would be for for most people like, oh, shit, I've made it. I've like been in this highly praised Hollywood. You know, that's the rest of my life is I'm going to be in movies. Oprah's like, no, no, I I know a better way to get really famous. So while this is going on, her movie career is starting.

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Oprah is continuing to, you know, be trash TV, right? That's really this era. And sex is not the only thing that she finds out that sells. Racism gets people to tune in. So during Black History Month in the 80s, Oprah started booking KKK members to show up wearing sheets and hoods.

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Intermittently, she would book guests with something important to say, too, like when she did the women with sexual disorders episode and talked to a woman who had never orgasmed. Oprah brought in a sex surrogate to coach her on air, which elicited a flood of complaints as Kitty Kelly documents. Yesterday's show was gross, said one woman. I don't know how else to describe it. Absolutely degrading.

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There are millions of women who never experience sexual pleasure, said Oprah. We had 633 calls from women yesterday after the show on the computer. We made lots of women feel they are not alone. And this is what makes, especially in this era, it's always back and forth, right? Because there's this mix of like, oh, that's some of the grossest TV I've heard about.

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And like, oh, you're really pushing out some very unhealthy attitudes towards dieting into society. And also... It's incredibly important for people to know about stuff like sexual dysfunction and that there's like coaching for that and to not feel ashamed. Like this is a thing that we can talk about in public. And Oprah's always so much of both of those things.

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So that said, when for every episode like this, you'd get where it's like, yeah, I'm glad someone in the fucking 80s was talking about like sexual dysfunction and the fact that there are treatments available that you can and should seek. You go right from that to Oprah being like, also, the devil is coming for your children. And this is going to get us onto one of my favorite subjects.

Behind the Bastards

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How Oprah Winfrey helped start the satanic panic.

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Yes, but first, you know who else is the devil? But like the sexy devil. Like the devil when he's played by that guy who also played the president in the Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, you know? That guy. I'm just nodding. You're just nodding. Everyone's just nodding. Nobody else remembers that guy. He played the devil once. Look him up.

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I know. Again, I love polio, and I feel like... Because we got a lot of my favorite writers from polio.

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Okay. Let's get into this.

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We're back. Four people are so happy I just made that reference. Everyone else has stopped listening forever. Satanic panic. In 1989, a Canadian psychiatrist and con man named Lawrence Pazder wrote a book about his patient, who he later married, Michelle Smith, claiming he'd recovered her memories of participating in elaborate, impossible satanic rituals while being abused for the devil's gain.

Behind the Bastards

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This book, Michelle Remembers, helped launch the Satanic Panic, a religious moral panic that ruined hundreds of lives and laid much of the groundwork for QAnon to take off today. We maybe don't get the Trump presidency without the Satanic Panic. That was some necessary groundwork, right? Right. You got to put in those load-bearing pillars. And this is where that's coming from.

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And Oprah helps get it off the ground. She brings Lawrence and Michelle on to her show, along with several other prominent... If you are a satanic panic con person, right, who is like... I worship the devil, I sacrificed babies. Oprah will let you say whatever to, at this point, literally tens of millions of people are tuning into her show.

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I want to start with a clip of a 1986 episode, which wasn't about the satanic panic, but contained a sting for their upcoming episode on devil worshipers. And I want to play this just because, you know, we talk, I throw to ads in a lot of, you know, different ways here, but I got to bow to the masterclass here.

Behind the Bastards

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Also, we're going to talk about sex some more. We should have thrown to ads now, Sophie. Sorry. That would have been the way to do it.

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You got to learn from the masters here. Now, I'm going to play or I'm going to have Sophie play another clip. I think from closer to 1989 or 1990, most of Oprah's early shows are not preserved in a convenient way. So I did my best here.

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welcome back to behind the bastards we're on page 18 of 52 i know a podcast where robert evans accidentally wrote 20 almost 24 000 words about oprah for this these episodes the the normal length of a book is 50 000 words so half of a book about fucking oprah And, like, I was having panic attacks at the end of this of, like, oh, my God, I'm leaving so much out.

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Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. They Clark Kinted her. Yeah. She takes those glasses off. Her family's not going to recognize it. The devil can't catch her.

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And I don't say this to shame her. I'm shaming the 90s. You can't tell a bad wig from normal hair in like 1990.

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There's no way to do it.

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So yeah, Oprah is literally just doing the blood libel on daytime TV on the most popular talk show in the country. And we're going to continue here because it just gets, I am shocked that this was allowed. Yeah.

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First off, do we think it makes it better for Oprah to offhandedly be like, I've never heard of Jewish people sacrificing babies before. Anyway, tell me about these Jewish baby sacrifices.

Behind the Bastards

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Yeah, like, as a middling journalist, my first question would be, are you not worried you're going to get arrested because you just admitted to murdering a baby on television? Yeah. You know that's a crime, right? Yeah. There's no statute of limitations on killing a baby.

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Come on on the air, tell us about it. You know, you get pieces of this. Nobody will directly say like, we just, we're full of shit, right? We just lied. You know, but you can tell that what's happening. You get this, like that previous clip where it was like, I want a priest who did this and this and this, right? Because it'll sell an episode.

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She's like, I want someone talking about sacrificing babies. And you know what exists in the world? And you don't have to coach people on this. If you let enough people know you can get on TV in front of 20 million people, if you talk about sacrificing a baby, there will be someone whose desperation for attention is so high that they will come on television and claim to have sacrificed a baby.

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That's the way people are.

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That's a healthy person, well-adjusted. Help them spread their message. Yes. We love Oprah Winfrey doing things that are, again, as a guy who's read a lot of Nazi propaganda, almost indistinguishable from Nazi propaganda. Right. This is specifically one of the major justifications of the Holocaust. Jews are abducting Christian babies and sacrificing them to the devil. That is... Really bad to do.

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I really can't emphasize enough how dangerous this thing is. And if you look at shit like in QAnon, right, where there's a like a third of the country believes that the Democratic Party are literally eating babies to gain everlasting youth, which like just look at Nancy Pelosi, guys. She's not she's not getting everlasting youth like her hip just broke. this is unequivocal bastardism, right?

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Like this is a bad thing to be doing.

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Just tell me, give me some detail. And it's, It's so fucked up that like on one hand, when you're doing this about like you are talking to someone about their difficulty, you know, I've never experienced an orgasm. You're asking these kind of questions to get them to say more. That is making other people with the problem of whom there are many feel less alone.

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Same thing with like sexual assault survivors. And then the fact that you have absolutely no compunction with, like, I'll do the same thing for lies about juice-sacrificing babies. Fascinating stuff.

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You know, here's the thing. Because Oprah never really trained in journalism very much. I don't know... if she maybe believes this, if she thinks these are the same, like, that's kind of the thing to me. But also, I want to be like, you are clearly brilliant. You are a once-in-a-lifetime genius, at least at some things. But also, as we've all seen...

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We've all become increasingly aware of people who are like, well, you're clearly brilliant at one thing. And now your access to Twitter has made us all aware that you don't understand anything else.

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It may just be that Oprah is a once in a lifetime mind when it comes to the business of entertainment and also honestly believed this woman was sacrificing babies with her family. I don't know. Now, that said, the fact that we have quotes from her being like, hey, get me a priest who said this, makes me kind of lean more in the direction of, no, Oprah knew, right?

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That some of this, a lot of this is bullshit. And it was just trying to get eyeballs on the TV. I think it's often a mix. I don't know how much she's able to parse it herself. I want to talk about another incident that...

Behind the Bastards

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kind of really makes me go back and forth which is the mcmartin preschool satanic abuse scandal now we cover this in our episodes on the satanic panic but the gist of the case is that a bunch of parents became convinced that their children more than 300 of them in all had been systematically abused by a satanic cult headed by the mcmartin family who ran a private preschool the initial allegations which included claims that one of the alleged molesters could fly

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

were made by Judy Johnson, who suffered from schizophrenia and was a hardcore alcoholic. From her allegations, a community hysteria developed, which was stoked by an abuse therapy clinic run by Key McFarlane, who provided investigations that pushed children with leading questions towards generating allegations. A whole lot of people had their lives ruined by this.

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Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And despite the fact that the investigation literally dug up the ground around the school to try to find secret satanic torture tunnels, no one was ever convicted of molesting any kids. And people I don't I hate relitigating this because people are always like, well, but they did find tunnels. No, they didn't.

Behind the Bastards

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They found trash buried underneath the school because a farm had been there and people bury trash everywhere. All of the shit that was buried in there was stuff from the era at which there was a farm there where people were burying trash. The dead animal bones. That's just what happens in the ground, guys. That's just how things are. It's not.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Again, it's one of those. And like, I'm not saying no kid ever got molested at this or other preschools like that. A lot of times the satanic abuse does come from there's a real sexual abuse problem. And then it gets turned into something that absolutely isn't happening. And again, shitloads of innocent people get wrapped into it, too.

Behind the Bastards

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Yeah, I don't think I'm not saying that was happening at McMartin, because, again, nobody got convicted of anything.

Behind the Bastards

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Yeah. And in fact, church leaders, Southern Baptist leaders, Catholic priests, police officers, these are the people who are molesting kids. And honestly, more than any of those, their own parents and relatives. That's who does it.

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A cousin and an uncle, huh? Sorry, what? They can fucking fly. What do they need tunnels for?

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Yeah. So as this in this case winds on for like a couple of years, Oprah, it is constantly on the show. They are following. This is like the O.J. Simpson trial, you know, before the O.J. Simpson trial for Winfrey in here. Like they are following every twist and turn in this case breathlessly. And when these people don't get convicted, they're Oprah and her audience are outraged.

Behind the Bastards

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She refuses to accept this. She brings a bunch of the children and parents and even some of the jurors onto the show to relitigate the case. And she's not the only person doing this. She's part of a trend in daytime TV. Geraldo Rivera does the same thing. So does Sally Jesse Raphael. But as LA Times columnist Howard Rosenberg noted, compared to them, Geraldo was as judicious as the Supreme Court.

Behind the Bastards

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In other words, he saying Geraldo's coverage of this was responsible next to Oprah's and Geraldo Rivera is not a responsible man. I don't know how else to describe him. Again, when he got hit in the nose with that chair, it was the best thing that ever happened to this country.

Behind the Bastards

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Quote, and here's Rosenberg, the level of fairness here was typified by Winfrey's admission that she would have made a poor McMartin juror because I would say the children said it. All right, you're right. The studio audience applauded. You see pieces of this, too, that like if the children say it, it's true. If a mom says it, it's true.

Behind the Bastards

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It's like, no, you have to have an evidentiary standard when you are accusing huge numbers of people of hideous crimes. You can't just say we put a bunch of kids in a room and wouldn't let them leave until they told stories of satanic molestation tunnels and then lock people up forever. That's a bad way to run a society. Yeah, I don't know. It's good stuff. That's so wild.

Behind the Bastards

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So while she's doing this, she has all these people on. She tells a former McMartin student to tell the audience what she told the jury over 16 days of testimony. And while this is happening, you're getting these frequent shots of the audience shaking their heads and listening to these horrible stories. One of the moms tells Winfrey, I'm outraged at this verdict. And yeah, it's just...

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It's very irresponsible. I don't know. I think it's probably bad for there to be a case where all of these people are rung through the mud on television, then acquitted, and then have a whole show where you're like, but actually they were still guilty. These people molest, these innocent people molested a shitload of kids, are running a, like their lives are already ruined, Oprah.

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What are you doing? I don't know.

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I don't like this.

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But you were the most popular of them.

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Yep. Well, how's everyone feeling so far?

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I mean, it was pretty bad before, but finally Oprah's doing some evident bad. The worm has turned, you would say. Ugh. Anyway, plugs?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Check out Yo, Is This Racist? Check out There Are No Girls on the Internet and find our our our hosts online and let them know your favorite moment from the Oprah Winfrey show. Bombard us all on blue sky with your favorite Oprah clips. Don't do that.

Behind the Bastards

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Don't bite your tongue.

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Well, part four, we're going to take.

Behind the Bastards

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We're going to supercharge Bridget. Just let you loose. Until next time, folks, don't put people up in front of the country and tell them that you sacrifice babies for the devil.

Behind the Bastards

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Yeah.

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So when we left off, Oprah had gotten her first radio gig with a radio DJ who was surprisingly not problematic. John Heidelberg. People online have been pointing out other stuff about him. Apparently fine. So congratulations, John Heidelberg.

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Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

When we're talking about DJs being problematic, I'm talking about old timey radio DJs, because if you look into the history of like very famous old timey radio DJs, not a lot of them were great people. But apparently John was so good for you, John Heidelberg. You win our behind the bastards award for not being a sex best as a DJ in the 1970s.

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You're the only person who's won that award, by the way.

Behind the Bastards

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Yeah, that is a club of you are the loneliest man in history. So the next several years of Oprah's life involved a pretty boring time in college. We're not going to get into it, but she starts doing beauty contests and she's very good at beauty contests. One of the biggest moments in her early life is she wins the Miss Fire Prevention Contest. Now... I know what you're all saying.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

What's a saint? Do I have to die? I think you actually have to die. No, you don't. No, you don't. I think you don't have to die. I'm down. You're probably okay. Just let me know. I'm down. Bridget, you could also be a saint, but I just don't get major Catholic vibes from you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

What the fuck is misfire prevention? And to understand this, you have to know that back in the 1970s, everything was flammable. People only wore petroleum products. Every couch was made out of petroleum products. And everyone fell asleep with a lit cigarette in their mouth. So everything and everyone was constantly on fire. Right. Yeah. So this was a real problem. Also, everyone was on benzos.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So you would it was like every week in your neighborhood, either a drunk day labor, like either either the husband would come home from like his work in a fucking law factory and pass out drunk with a cigarette in his mouth and wipe out the entire family or. Or the housewife would take too many benzos and pass out with a lit cigarette in her mouth and wipe out the whole family.

Behind the Bastards

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But either whatever was happening, fire was killing absolutely everyone. And so we were like, we have to find the hottest person in order to represent not burning your family to death because you fell asleep with a lit cigarette in your mouth. And Oprah was that person. Isn't that nice?

Behind the Bastards

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We're fine with killing people so many other ways, but all these house fires are really cutting into our business.

Behind the Bastards

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It probably will. God, I can go for a nice asbestos couch. To know that I'm both like sitting down on the couch to watch horrible news happen and also shortening my time on this earth. Beautiful. Oprah was the first black woman to win the Miss Fire Prevention Contest. And that's great. During questioning by a panel of judges, she said that she wanted to be a journalist like Barbara Walters.

Behind the Bastards

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She was asked what she would do if she was given a million dollars. And everyone else in the contest expressed kind of like, I'll help the poor. I'll help my family. Whereas Oprah just admitted, I would spend, spend, spend. I'd just be a spending fool.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, this was definitely a legitimate win, Miss Fire Prevention. However, her next big contest win, the Miss Black Nashville contest, was a little bit shadier. Everyone involved about it seems to agree that another girl, Maud, had been a better contestant. But Oprah shocked everyone by winning. And the promoter of the event would later claim that several people complained to him.

Behind the Bastards

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Oh, you did? Well, shit. Okay. I'm going to redirect the habit that I've got headed for Andrew, and it's going to go to you.

Behind the Bastards

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And so he did a recount of the votes and found out that Maud had, in fact, been the rightful winner. but her name had gotten switched with Oprah's by somebody for unknown reasons. Yes. Now, we don't know what happened. Some people have theorized Oprah set the whole thing up somehow.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I think there's at least an equally good probability based on just like the vibes I get that the promoter of the event kind of had a weird thing for Oprah. His name was Gordon L. Greco Brown, and I don't trust that name. I just don't trust that name. Like... That is the name of like a used car dealer from fucking Encina who also happens to be a neo-Nazi.

Behind the Bastards

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I'm not saying that's Gordon El Greco Brown. I'm just saying that's the name Gordon. That's what that conjures. Gordon L like the letter L?

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yeah yeah he that that man has so many different opinions on the various coke dealers in his area that he has to keep track of them in a notebook um anyway when oprah was notified i'm not saying that about the literal i'm not slandering the actual man i'm just saying that's how his name sounds um anyway oprah gets notified of this error that maude really won and she says like well it you guys gave me the award i'm not giving it back

Behind the Bastards

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in Kitty Kelly's kind of mean biography a lot is made about the fact that Oprah like doesn't give this up and I don't know I don't really care like you handed her the award so she's not wrong to be like fuck you guys Oprah goes to Tennessee State University or TSU, which is a black college. But she doesn't go to the more prestigious and nearby Fisk University, known locally as the Black Harvard.

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I think this is just a matter of expense. Oprah seems to be insecure about this later. She spends her social time hanging out at Fisk. Her dad is like, look, you know, I could afford to send her to TSU. And so I did. I will say, because Kitty Kelly makes a lot about like, yeah, Oprah couldn't get into the good school. Hack it. I've read like from the anecdotes we get about TSU.

Behind the Bastards

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It doesn't sound great. There's a there's a good one from one of her professors, Dr. W.D. Cox, that and this this is what this guy, Dr. Cox, this actual professor says later about teaching Oprah. And he I think he thinks this makes him sound funny. During our stay in the city, a girl was reported raped on the second floor. I told a lie on Oprah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

If Oprah had known about the rape, she'd have shouted, you who I'm up here. Oprah didn't take too kindly to that joke. She was quite provoked. You guys catch that? He is saying a girl got raped. And I said, hey, Oprah, you would like that.

Behind the Bastards

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He's performed a miracle.

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The whole joke is, I bet you'd like get like, that's wild stuff.

Behind the Bastards

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He describes it as enjoying a little foolishness at Oprah's expense. Oh, he's still going. That's not what that is. A little foolishness would be like, you know, talking about, I don't know, the fact that she's obviously wants to be a star, making a little bit of joke about how she likes attention. Not like that. This is not.

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Like.

Behind the Bastards

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The decades.

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Literal decades. Jesus Christ. Oh, man. You just know, I'm guessing based on his age, that she goes to see him in an old folks home and his fucking kids come in. They're like, oh, no, get her out of here. We can't let dad be talking to a journalist.

Behind the Bastards

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Everyone who's made it on time for Behind the Bastards recordings and sat through a whole episode as a guest has performed a miracle.

Behind the Bastards

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So, Oprah, the big standout detail from her college years is she plays Coretta Scott King in a local production of The Tragedy of Martin Luther King Jr. And the main reason this is relevant is that a reviewer for the school paper reviews this play by saying Martin Luther King murdered twice.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

He's going to be dunking until his 60s. Fantastic. He's going to be praying for death, begging for anything but another season with the Lakers. No. But we won't let him stop. Yeah. We won't let him stop. That's the plot to Space Jam 3, by the way, is LeBron begging to stop playing basketball. Begging to die? Yes, that's what God wants, is Pope I know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

These measures included government oversight of Catholic seminaries, restrictions on clergy, and the implementation of civil marriage laws, which removed the church's traditional role in marriage. Despite these efforts, the Kulturkampf faced considerable resistance from the Catholic community, leading to public sympathy among some Protestant Germans.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And something kind of like this is going to happen under the Nazis, right? The Nazis have a little war with the Catholic Church. The Kulturkampf does not achieve its goals. Bismarck kind of underestimates how, you know, one thing you got to say, even if you hate it, the Catholic Church has staying power, right? It's been around for a little bit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Bismarck, you know, Germany's pretty new. And he's thinking, like, I'm going to roll over these fuckers. And he's like, oh, no, no. They've got a lot of money and power. Shit. So by the late 1870s, a lot of the, like, harshest measures he tried to push through had been repealed. Some stuff stays, like, you know, the Catholic Church does lose.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

They are not in control of marriage or of education, even in Catholic regions, in the way that they had been. So it's not a total failure. This conflict has largely passed by the time Karl is born. And in fact, the year of his birth is the same year that Kaiser Wilhelm II takes the throne, which spells the beginning of the end for Bismarck. So he is not going to be in power much longer.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Catholicism has kind of outlasted him. But the hostility Catholics had to the Reich kind of lingered as a result of this. And Carl's dad is a Catholic activist, right? He sits in the local parish council, and he's always fighting for the rights of Catholics. So before Carl's born, his dad is kind of fighting Bismarck on this thing. Carl later described his father this way.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Throughout his life, he remained faithful to the Catholic cause in a diaspora, which was still very hard at the time. And he really admires his dad for this. He does not like his mom. Spoilers for a fascist, but... Mom issues. Issues with women in general. Shocking.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

So this explains why, contrary to a lot of reactionary Germans of his day, Karl's got no nostalgia for the Kaiserreich, because he never feels like a full citizen of it. Another of Schmidt's biographers, Gopal Balakrishnan, describes the situation ably in his book, The Enemy.

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Most poor small-town Catholics lived in a world closed off from a hostile, increasingly secular society, a world in which the local priest was a revered authority in matters of politics and morality. And that's kind of where Carl is growing up. He's in this town where he's a minority. It's very cosmopolitan, but he goes to a Catholic school.

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So he is separated from everyone who's not a Catholic, and he lives in this kind of bubble. He's a good student, very good student, and he's helped along by the fact that his father is a stenographer who teaches him how to write shorthand at an early age. So Carl's always going to be very good at writing very quickly.

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Which is a real boon if you're going to be an intellectual who's trying to like take advantage of shifting trends when things are moving very quickly that you can get shit out quickly.

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One or the two. Those are the only ways to reach people, right? Exactly. There's no like editing together a TikTok video or whatever. No, no, unfortunately. Tragically. Ah, to have seen Hitler's TikTok if only for a minute. No, we don't need that. We can already see Hitler's TikTok. There's a bunch of them now.

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The other thing I gotta say, unfortunately, as we learned with the last pope, popes are more or less helpless to stop the world from descending into fascism or the slaughter of children overseas. It's a bummer. So... Really only random bullshit is what I'm empowered to do.

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So Schmidt's family are working class. They're bordering on poor in most cases. They voted for the Catholic Center Party, which is a centrist party. Johan, who's his dad, worked at a railway station. And Carl's relatives are mostly kind of at a similar socioeconomic level. But his dad's got one brother who gets rich by selling land to mining concerns. And so he's kind of like...

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like supporting a lot of the family whenever shit's difficult or whenever a kid has like bills that their family can't afford. And he and a lot of the rest of the family pool resources when they realize how smart Carl is to invest in his education and the education of one of his brothers. He's got two other brothers. One of them's really smart.

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So Carl and his smart brother get a lot of money put into them. His smart brother goes on to become a medical doctor. Carl becomes a jurist. His He doesn't do anything school related, right? Just a moron. Yeah, he's just fine. He doesn't become a howling fascist, I don't think. So, you know, he's got that going for him.

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So we know glaringly little other than this about Carl's early childhood, which he never discussed at length. He did speak positively about his dad, but he does not speak about his mom well. Merring, who is his best biographer, simply writes, Schmitt would sometimes speak about her in rather negative terms. And boy, boy did he. We'll get to more of that later.

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It's tantalizing to want to pull more from these scant details, but we simply don't have it. He learned to play piano. We know that. He got good marks in school. And then at age 11, he has an experience that was familiar to all of the sons of ambitious families at this period of time anywhere in Europe, which is that he got shipped off to a boarding school, right?

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Where, you know, time to leave your family behind and learn how to do whatever it is you're going to do. And this is the same in Germany as it is basically everywhere else. So he leaves this town where he's a member of an outnumbered religious minority for a closed world in which everyone around him is Catholic as fuck. And he lives there, you know, a large portion of the time.

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His mom wants him to become a priest, right? She wants him to get into the clergy, and he's not interested in this at all, and she never forgives him for this, right? It's like your mama wants you to be a doctor or whatever, and you fall into some other career, and she's just always kind of pissed at him. Now, Carl's grades qualify him for a scholarship.

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Eventually, he leaves this Catholic school for a prestigious local secular gymnasium. In Germany, that means high school, which is confusing. You're not talking about going to work out. You're talking about high school. More or less. This is odd.

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The fact that he gets to leave his Catholic school and go to the secular school is weird because as Balakrishnan writes, bookish Catholic children were usually singled out as potential candidates for the priesthood and would not typically have been exposed to the full course of studies at such a gymnasium.

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And today, the thing that I'm going to do that is not enough, but might be a little useful, is explain to you the intellectual underpinning of fascism, right? Specifically, there's a guy, a single dude, who's probably the only genius in the history of like fascist, like legal philosophy and theory, who we're going to talk about.

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The fact that he was allowed to continue his studies suggests that his family placed more value on a secular education than was typical of their kind. Right. So even though his mom has these goals for him, he's allowed to go to a secular school when it's clear that that's what he wants. And that is kind of interesting. It does show that, like, they are also modernizing.

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They're not completely stuck in the old way things had been. This – going to this secular school kind of ends him as a believer. Like he stops believing in God here. This has a very humanistic curriculum. And he doesn't fully fall into like German idealism and all of these kind of like totally secular ideas.

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There's always a little bit of like belief in the divine that he holds to that even influences his ideas on the law. But he stops being a literal believing Catholic as a result of this education, right? Yeah. One of his best friends in this period is another Carl, last name Kluxen, whose father owned a big department store in town. And Kluxen is an artsy kid.

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And so he kind of inducts Schmidt into the world of what we'd call like theater kids and art kids. That's who Carl's hanging out with is like the theater kids and like the musicians, the artists. These kids were going to be like bohemians in the Weimar era doing hella drugs and eventually getting purged by the Nazis. This is his social circle as a teenager, right? Yeah.

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Sorry. Oh, relatable. No, it's actually – he does seem to be going down a different path at one point because during his last year in secondary school, he starts reading a guy named Max Stirner. And all the anarchists in the audience are just going, oh, what? Because Stirner is like – he's a very influential anarchist thinker, although –

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Calling him that even is like – it's a big simplification of what he believed. He's the father of a school of thought called egoism, which I shouldn't even try to explain here because any discussion of this man sparks furious arguments about the 30 or so people who know he existed. That's a bit of an exaggeration.

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But it's enough for you to know that Stirner is about as fringe and radical a thinker as Germany ever produces, right? And especially the fact that he's reading Sterner at this period of time means that this is a kid who is drawn to radical ideas and dangerously radical ideas. Like you can get in some shit for reading Sterner in public school at this point in time. Right.

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So he is very drawn to like forbidden intellectual topics in a lot of ways. Now, one reason Schmitt is interested in Stirner is that his writings had contributed to what was called the Vormars, which is a period of what scholar Lawrence Stepelvik describes as intellectual fermentation.

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This is happening in the early 1800s, and Stirner is one of these thinkers whose radical ideas contribute to this... boiling over of intellectual discontent with the system that contributes to a failed revolution in Germany in 1848. And in 1848, there's a shitload all over Europe. There's a bunch of failed revolutions. Stirner is a big part of that period of time.

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And so that's part of why Schmidt is interested in him. He's also interested because Stirner is a Hegelian. In other words, an intellectual follower of a guy named Friedrich Hegel. Philosophy is not my strong suit, but from Hegel, we get this important concept called the Hegelian dialectic.

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And the basics of this story is when the Nazis started coming to power, you had this guy, Hitler, who was really charismatic, who was good at drawing in people. And you had, you know, this movement that was clearly on its way to taking power. And there was not really much beyond that. There wasn't a consistent set of beliefs because a lot of early Nazis, that's why they had the night along knives.

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A dialectic is just a method of philosophical argument that involves two opposing sides having an intellectual clash. And Hegel's particular style of dialectic broadened the concept of opposing sides from like Plato literally depicting arguments between like famous dudes who embody different attitudes to – and I'm going to quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here –

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different definitions of consciousness and of the object that consciousness is aware of or claims to know. As in Plato's dialogues, a contradictory process between opposing sides and Hegel's dialectics leads to a linear evolution or development from less sophisticated definitions or views to more sophisticated ones later.

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The dialectical process thus constitutes Hegel's method for arguing against the earlier, less sophisticated definitions or views and four more sophisticated ones later. Now, that doesn't seem, and I know this is not what people come here for, that doesn't seem like it's anything that could piss someone off, right? This seems very like, who could be angry about this basic idea, right?

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So many people. People get pissed off about this. Up to the present day, reactionaries fucking hate Hegel and Hegelian dialectics because Hegel is like this very scientific and progressive figure whose philosophy advocates for like a continual advancement in understanding, right? So in other words, we are working to better ideas and better understandings of things.

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And that's not conservatism, right? That's like the opposite of a reactionary idea. And the Nazis are going to consider Hegel like a devil, right? Like he is Satan himself, right? They're so angry.

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You read that last dense paragraph to like one of these Nazis and they're reaching for, I mean, literally there's like, I think it's a Goering quote where it's like, I'm going to reach for my gun when I hear shit like that.

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So the Nazis don't like this guy, as George Lusix would explain in a 1943 essay. Hegel's scientific dialectic is unbearable to them because their worldview sees in it almost in the same words as the old Friedrich Schlingel who became a reactionary, a satanic principle, the principle of evil, of the anti-German, of the anti-racial.

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So at the time Schmidt is in school, Hegel is controversial for these reasons, like this is a fairly reactionary state, and so they don't like this guy whose thoughts play a significant role in a revolution that had occurred not all that long ago. But there's other reasons why they're unhappy with this, right?

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Because after Hegel dies in 1831, his philosophic school splits into two opposing sides. There's young Hegelians and there's old Hegelians. And young Hegelians tend to be young people who are convinced of Hegel's logic, but also convinced that it led inevitably to a rational argument for socialist revolution against both the Prussian monarchy and against evangelical Lutheranism, right?

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And that's not going to be super popular with the state. Right. That there's like a chunk of this guy's followers who in the period of time that Schmidt is reading all this stuff are like, we have to overthrow the government. This is radical literature. Right. As Lawrence Stepovich writes in an article for the Journal of Modern Judaism.

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The Young Hegelian School suddenly came into being in 1835 with a brilliant theological study, The Life of Jesus Christ Critically Examined. It was written by a young and little-known theologian, David Friedrich Strauss, who candidly, into the shocked embarrassment of the Old Hegelians, declared that his work was inspired by Hegel's philosophy.

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There were a lot of disagreements between them. And there was this kind of competition for like who is going to figure out what the political philosophy of fascism is. And the guy we're talking about today is the dude who won that struggle. And he's gone on to influence. He's kind of the thinker behind the neoconservative movement that dominated during the Bush years.

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His reduction of the miracles related to the life of Jesus into a collection of mythic tales based upon Old Testament expectations simply destroyed the claim that Hegelianism and Orthodox evangelical doctrine were compatible. As the Prussian monarchy was supportive of and supported by the Orthodox Church, Strauss's work was even more disturbing than might be expected from a biblical study.

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And this is relevant to us because, like, Stirner is like the marijuana that gets him dropping acid, which is reading David Friedrich Strauss. This doesn't sound all that like dangerous or even extreme.

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But in his time, this is if you get like if you're a kid in high school who gets caught with a copy of the zine, Why Break Windows, which is like an anarchist essay about like why it's not just moral, but like an ecstatic act to shatter windows or something like a beginner's guide to targeted property destruction, both of which you can find on Crime Thinks website.

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If you're like caught with those in high school now, you can get in trouble, right? Yeah. And it's important you look at this book about Jesus that – Carl's going to get caught reading this in school. The authorities of his time see this as the same as they would see those zines today, right? This is that radical, right?

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That's very much how they view it even though it seems – it doesn't seem that way to us, right? So he is reading like the radical like anti-state revolutionary theory. That's very much like – you know, how this is looked at at the time. So while Schmidt is being a big nerd, the people he's hanging out with are kind of like the punks and anarchist radicals of their day.

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Now they're not, most of them are actually more like socialists or social Democrats, but given that they live under the Kaiser, that's a similar level of like, you know, radicalism, you know? And Strauss- You should do an ad. Yeah. Okay, sure. Why not? Here's a fucking ad. Okay.

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Hey everybody, welcome to Behind the Bastards, and I know what you're all saying. Congratulations, Robert, on finally being appointed the new Pope of the Catholic Church, Pontifex Maximus. I was as surprised as anybody. I wake up in the morning, I see a phone notification that says...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

He's the thinker behind, you know, Putin's rise to power in a lot of ways. He's a very influential guy. So, Blake, are you are you excited to hear about him?

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Before we close out our cold open, you want to plug your pluggables right here at the top?

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Yeah.

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So we're back. So he gets caught reading Strauss in school. He gets caught reading this book about Jesus in school, and he gets in trouble. He gets, like, detention. He's put in the fucking breakfast club for his, like, radical reading. And, yeah, this is not the only thing he gets punished for when he's in his last year of high school, according to Reinhard Mehring. Quote...

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On August 3rd, 1906, Schmidt was punished together with 12 of his peers with one hour of after-school detention for breaking the rules and visiting a public house. Presumably, this was the reason he had to leave the seminary in September. Thus, in the last months before his final examination, he had to commute as a train farer. So he's kind of a wild kid.

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Yes.

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He's reading revolutionary literature and breaking the rules to get fucking wasted with his friends, and he gets kicked out of seminary for being too cool, actually. Yeah, he's pretty. This guy's sick. This is the only time that will be the case. Yeah, he's hopping trains. I mean, he probably pays. He's not that cool. So as dull and academic as this guy appears, he is like...

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Pretty radical in this period of time. That said, his grades remain excellent. Our boy graduates and he gets accepted to the prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, which is also just called the University of Berlin. And, you know, Yale and like Harvard existed back then. This is the top college, a lot of people would argue, the best college in the world of its day, right?

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Because Germany's education system is the best. Germany's the first country to figure out modern universities, and almost anyone would agree this is about the best place you could end up as a young intellectual in this period of time.

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Yes. And he finds himself drawn to it and kind of repulsed by it. Right. Which we'll talk about in a second. But he's a very good student. He initially wants to get his degree in philology, which is the study of the structure and development of language. But he's being supported by his rich uncle who lives nearby and like he'll crash with him during the holidays and is his main source of support.

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you know, Vatican Conclave appoints new Pope Robert, and then the rest of the title got cut off, but I understood what the rest of it was, obviously. I've been celebrating the last couple of days, have not really checked in online, but am now going to check in with my guests for this day, Sophie Lichterman, well, not my guest, but my co-host and producer, and our guest for today, Blake Wexler.

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And his rich uncle's like, you know, philology, the fuck is that shit? No, you're getting a law degree. You're going to become a lawyer and make money. So. He's doing this in Berlin, which is, again, a very different environment than one he's raised in. And the different biographers I've read give divergent descriptions, somewhat divergent descriptions of how he felt about it.

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Balakrishnan describes him as deeply ambivalent to the diversity of the metropolis, noting that in the popular imagination, urban areas in Germany were seen as in some way Jewish as well. And this all helped harden his identity as an outsider. Balakrishnan concludes that Karl found city life both fascinating and disturbing. And here's how Karl himself describes his feelings at the time.

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I was an obscure young man of modest descent. Neither the ruling strata nor the opposition included me. That meant I, standing entirely in the dark, out of darkness, looked into a brightly lit room. The feeling of sadness which filled me made me more distant and awoke in some other's mistrust and antipathy.

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The ruling strata experienced anybody who was not thrilled to be involved with them as heterogeneous. It put before him the choice to adapt or withdraw. So I remained outside. And this is, you know, he's not part of the opposition. He's not part of the ruling class.

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And so he can see them all better, more accurately than they see themselves, you know, as a result of this position that he has, which is often the case. It's why a lot of our greatest artists are outsiders, you know, in one way or another, right? And Carl is going to have perspective that gives him a degree of vision that other people lack, right?

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Right. So Mehring's more recent biography paints a picture that conflicts with a few aspects of this. For one thing, Balakrishnan kind of transposes Schmitt's anti-Semitism that comes later into this assumption that maybe he was repelled by the city as a result of it in this period of time. And there's reason to doubt that.

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But Mayring paints a picture of a young man who is enthralled by his surroundings. He describes university as a temple of higher intellectuality. And he finds himself almost religiously obsessed with legal study, particularly the Roman origins of Western justice systems. And he likes his Roman law classes because he's a Latin nerd. So, like, that's the degree of fucking dweeb this guy is.

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But very smart. And he maintains a sense of superiority towards his peers, right? He feels because he's smarter than them and because his interests are so much more esoteric that he's like a better person.

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That quote I read earlier of how Carl viewed himself came from a memoir he wrote about his college years where most of the book is him insulting two of his friends who he like shit talks constantly about like being less intelligent than he is.

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And the purpose of that passage where he's talking about him being an outsider is like, look at how much smarter I was than all these dopes I went to school with.

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Yeah. He is so petty. Per Mering, quote, Schmitt claims to have had early on a distance from the myths of the German Reich under Bismarck and from the national liberal atmosphere at Berlin University.

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He felt his whole life as if he were intellectually superior and a social climber, an outsider, an underdog who does not belong and has not shown enough respect and who, in response, looks down on the bourgeoisie world around him.

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So this is part of why he continues to socialize with artists and creative types, right, is these are other people who are kind of on the outside looking in who he maybe feels a sense of kinship with. He spends his nights out with other people who see themselves that way and feel like we're turning a lens on society and we're thus smarter than everyone else.

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Excellent. Excellent. All right, everybody. Let's, uh, come back after the cold open.

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Schmidt doesn't quite settle into Berlin yet. He moves to college in Munich the next year, and then he goes to Strasbourg the year after that. And these are all bigger cities than he had lived in before. Mehring suspects he moves around so much for financial reasons. We don't really know. In any case, he falls in love with Strasbourg, and that's where he'll stay for the rest of his education.

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And it's where he meets his mentor, a guy named Fritz von Kalker, who becomes his doctoral supervisor. Von Kalker is a criminal law professor with a particular interest in how morality impacts punishment under the law, right? What is moral in terms of a punishment and how is the morality of a society even? How does it relate to how they punish people?

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This is his Roy Cohn kind of. Yes.

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He's a very intense intellectual. And Fritz is the most important person in Carl's early life because he really takes this kid under his wing. He supports him getting his doctorate. He finds him work in various positions for the university. And he will continue to go to bat for this guy, which is interesting because later in life, Carl will pretend this dude never existed. He keeps no...

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Yeah, it's a little bit like that, right? And this is, you know, he keeps basically every other letter he gets in his life, but he throws out most of the ones to Van Kalker, which is interesting because Van Kalker literally saves his life at a later point here. Now, another key person in Carl's young life who he will later jettison as an adult is Fritz Eisler.

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Fritz is... A lot of Fritzes in this story.

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There were going to be a shitload of Fritzes. None of them cats. God damn it. It's too late. There's no turning back. We'll call this guy Eisler, right? And Eisler, he meets because they're both working for von Kalker as like assistants. And Eisler becomes his best friend during the five terms he spends in Strasbourg getting his doctorate. And this is noteworthy because Eisler is Jewish, right?

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And contrary to how Balakrishnan depicts him as a young man is uneasy with the city because of its ineffable Jewishness. His best friend in his favorite city is a young Jew from a prominent family. And Eisler is not only Jewish, he is a Hungarian national who, despite being a Hungarian national, identifies as German. And this whole period is trying to get legal status in Germany.

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He is trying to get German citizenship. And he wants Eisler's whole goal in life is social acceptance as a citizen of the German Reich. And this is a difficult battle for even a rich young Jewish man because nearly everybody is incredibly racist, right? So it's interesting that Schmidt isn't in this period, right?

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At least not towards Eisler, that he's willing to – because Schmidt expresses a degree of bigotry as well, but not towards Eisler in this period, which is interesting. It shows that he's got this degree of ability to kind of look past that, right? So the two became buds in 1908. They get their doctorates in, like, 1910.

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Mehring writes that, quote, through Eisler, Schmidt, for the first time, came into more intense contact with Jewish people and with Judaism. And the difference in the theses that these guys pick for their doctorate is interesting to me. Eisler goes for this very standard topic, like he's analyzing a bunch of defamation lawsuits and is like, what are the ones that succeed all have in common, right?

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Pretty normal lawyer stuff, right? Schmidt picks a much more philosophical and a very Catholic topic. His paper is titled On Guilt and Types of Guilt, which, again, super Catholic. Yeah. Good God. But also, you know, Eisler's doing this nuts and bolts. Okay, if you're arguing for a defamation case, what's, you know, statistically, what is likelier to work for you?

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Mering is wondering, what does it mean to be guilty, right? You know?

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Now, the actual content of his piece is an argument that the law fundamentally hinges on an arbitrary free-floating element. No matter how much the law may claim to be an objective thing, it always relies to some extent on the ability of a judge to determine a sentence.

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In other words, you can have whole reams of law books and legislature that can give the appearance of a mechanistic system that functions based on objective measures. But the law is always at its core reliant on the discretion and decisions of individuals. Right. And that's a very important realization.

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Now, this is in keeping with a major trend in German jurisprudence at the time, which is called the free law movement, which stands in opposition to legal positivism, which is a trend that had swept through in the 1870s with the goal of like, we don't want to talk about natural law, about like the natural rights of man and stuff. We want to talk about, like, what are we saying are people's rights?

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What are we saying is legal and illegal, right? So there's a struggle between people who want this absolute code that handles how things should be adjudicated in every situation versus people who are like, no, the creative power of a judge to interpret justice matters, right? And Schmitt simultaneously recognizes there's this arbitrary core to the legal code.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

But he also starts to value what he described as higher law, this sort of like maybe even divine natural justice that the law is always moving closer to representing. And he writes about guilt not as an internal thing, but as a legal category. In other words, he concludes that it doesn't matter if you've done what the state accuses you of.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Guilt is a legal status and moral norms are bound by the law, not the other way around. And you can kind of see how a man making conclusions like this might wind up as a fascist, right? Guilt is a category. What you did is immaterial, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

To continue using the gateway drug metaphor. Right. So when he's not writing wonky legal arguments, he and his friend Eisler attempted to start a satire magazine. And God, this must have been fucking unreadable because they're doing this. Oh, my God. Just imagine like your most up their own asshole friends in college.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

They make a satire magazine that's mostly about Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, Walter Rathenau, like all these German intellectuals that they have issues with that they're just like making as like teenagers making fun of these like these great intellectuals that are part of like German culture. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And it seems to be – the whole reason for this magazine seems to be that all these guys are respected contributors to German culture, and Schmidt wants to take them down a peg to prove he's not like everyone else. And I wonder maybe Eisler as a Hungarian and as a Jew maybe feels a similar need, right? Where like these guys aren't any better than I am.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Like, yeah, let's fucking puncture them a little bit. Now, they hoped that this would sell and make them money. Again, they are delusional.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

So because they can't make money off of this and Schmidt is struggling, he is basically is going to spend like the first almost decade of his adulthood as an intern unpaid because that's what being an academic means in this period of time. So you have to be have support from someone. And Eisler begs his family like, hey, this this friend of mine is brilliant and he's a good guy. He's not a racist.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

We've got money. Dad, will you give money to this guy? Right. And as a matter of fact, for like most of his 20s up until World War One, the Eisler's will be Schmidt's primary source of financial support. This Jewish family really keeps this kid from starving, you know, which given what he's going to do to Jewish people later, it's just an extra level of fucked. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

In letters to his sister, Carl's sister, who became a teacher in Portugal during this period, Carl showed an obsession and a frustration with his relative poverty, writing that neither of them, neither he or his sister, had been careful enough in choosing their parents and complaining that rich people were conceited.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

So both like, fuck my mom and dad for not making us rich and also fuck rich people. And fuck rich people. Yeah. Yeah. One letter he sent her on the subject included this interesting line. This is what makes our time so dreadful, that the individual person, what he is and what he can do, never matters, only the role that he can play in society. You know, that's an interesting issue.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Yeah, I think it's not an uncommon thing to feel during this period of time, right? No one cares about who I am, just like what I can do, how much money I can make, and that's like, it's kind of fucked that society works that way.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

That made his magazine really take off. National Lampoon acquired it for $3 million. Yeah. Now, that's a very, like, wow, easy to identify with sentence. Here's the one that's less easy to identify with. So he warns his sister in the same letter to be careful with men, quote, don't trust these Portuguese happy-go-lucky windbags an inch. Don't even begin anything with them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Same sentence, same sentence.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Oh, society judges us on all these bullshit things. Don't ever trust a Portuguese man.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

So after a brief period working for his brother as a lawyer's assistant, he continued to squeak by as an academic, lecturing and getting bits of work off the strength of his now published thesis. In his free time, he flirted and seems to have gone after women compulsively. Merring describes this as like his, in his own mind, his original sin is that this guy just can't stop trying to fuck.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Like he is really... horny and has bad judgment and is constantly screwing around. He may have actually been kind of a player at one point. It's a little hard to tell, but his earliest serious fling that we have evidence with is this pair of Jewish sisters, the Bernsteins, who he's in a love triangle with. He's like...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And it's unclear, given the time, is he just flirting with both of them or are they actually like going at it? Right. But he wants to marry one of them, Helene. But he's also kind of stringing the other along like he's got a he's got a he's got a triangle with these two sisters.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

He sounds like a Portuguese windbag, right? He sounds like a Portuguese windbag. Now, he tries to marry Helene. And again, these sisters are Jewish. So the fact that he wants to marry this woman at one point is really interesting. Again, given what he's going to become. But her family won't let him because he has no money.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And like, this is not just, you know, this is a thing any German father pretty much would have said at the time. It's like, well, you're an academic, maybe you'll have a career, but right now you literally don't have income. So no, you can't marry my daughter. You have no way of supporting her, right? This is not a thing that just would have happened because of like the religion of her father.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

This was a totally normal thing at the time. And this is something that's driving him crazy, that he can't get married, right? He has nothing coming in. And he starts to get increasingly angry at society, which we see in his letters to his sister. Quote, every person is vehemently egotistic and it is a miracle they do not murder and poison each other, but inquire about the weather instead.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

So he's become very blackpilled at this point in time. He can't get married. He seems locked out at this point from and so close to being where he needs to be. Right. But he just can't cross that border because he was born poor.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

His older sister, who's in Portugal, he seems to really trust. And maybe she's the only member of his family that he can trust. It kind of does seem that way. A mother figure. Yeah, maybe a little bit. Or at least somewhat how he would have liked to have felt about his mother. His chosen mother. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of poisoning and murdering each other. No. Don't do that. Listen to ads. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

We're back. So, obviously, this is 1912. World War I is right around the horizon, but Carl doesn't know that yet, and he is much more concerned with matters of the heart than the fact that everything is about to get really fucked up for everybody in his world. He had been banned from the Bernstein house after continuing to pursue Helena after her parents said no. Um...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

So he is that kind of suitor. Like, he will not give up. And eventually her dad's like, motherfucker, I'm calling the cops if you come back here again. The good news for him is that within weeks of this, he meets a Spanish dancer at a cabaret. She calls herself Kari. And when they strike up a relationship, she tells him her full name is Pauline Carita Maria Isabella von Doretic.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Now, if you know German, von means someone is a noble, right? Like, that's a marker that you are of the nobility, and this woman is claiming to be the daughter of a noble family.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And so as soon as he's, like, got the interest of this dancer who's, like, got noble blood, he drops all interest in these sisters he's been pursuing, and he writes to his sister, I now have a delightful friendship with a Spanish dancer. Now... Kari is not Spanish. She is also not a noblewoman. Every aspect of Kari's life was fake.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

She claimed to be the daughter of a Croatian lord who had died, which had forced her to travel to Munich to live with a cruel aunt, which is basically a Disney fable. Yeah. Um, she also claimed that she'd been born a week after Carl, when in reality, she was five years older than him. Um, she was the illegitimate daughter of a Viennese woman and a Croatian plumber.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And for all of his brains, Carl never catches her in her life. Like not in, or at least at this point, right? He buys in all of her stories of royal life, everything she says about herself. He has completely fallen for this woman. Um, And all of his colleagues, because again, he's a doctor at this point, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

All of his colleagues are like, man, this chick is not, she's lying to you for one thing. This is bullshit. There's no Spanish accent here. She doesn't sound Spanish. That's not a Spanish name. White, like this family doesn't exist. She has a Croatian accent. Right. His mentors gently warned him against getting with what they called a tingle-tangle girl.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And this is a term at the time, it refers to like the kind of clangy sort of like bits of like jewelry that dancers at burlesques and whatnot would wear. It means that they're calling her a stripper, right? Or they're calling her outright a whore. That's what a tingle-tangle means at this period of time, right? Like, man, you have fallen for this stripper and she is lying about her past.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

That's what his friends are saying. Right. That's that's the the equivalent in modern terms. Right. But he doesn't care. He's in love with this woman. He believes her and he believes her, even though they can get married because her dad's dead. There's no one to stop them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

He doesn't need to ask permission, but they can't get married because every time they try to go to a judge, the judge is like, oh, OK, well, where's this woman's papers, you know, to show where her citizenship is and that she is who she and she never has them. And occasionally she'll have papers, but they'll be like, well, these are obviously fake. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And Carl doesn't think anything's weird about this. She's just bad with papers. She's terrible with papers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Yeah. These noble women, they never have their papers with them. So he spends the last years before World War I fighting constantly with their local magistrates to get her naturalized so that they can get married. And because he's so crazy in love, he switches in this last year or so before the war from writing about law to writing about love, particularly the morality of love.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

I'm going to quote from Mehring's book again here. From October 12th, the diary contains a passionate love letters and an ecstatic philosophy of love that aims to base love on permanence and enforce faithfulness by idealizing love as devotion to an idea. Schmitt wanted to conceive of his love from the perspective of eternity and

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

He's trying to build this cosmology in which there's never been a before, right? Because then he just is not secure enough in that idea, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Yes, never, never.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Let's start now. But it is interesting that he has to intellectualize this, the way he does his attitudes about the law, right? Where he's like building this almost like natural law attitude about how love works in order to like avoid being insecure, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Um, it's going to give you an idea of how, of how good he will be at twisting based on his own kind of feelings, his, his understanding of like the law and these things that are supposed to be objective, but that really are not. Um, He starts writing that his past pursuit of the Bernstein sisters was a mistake, but obviously it's their mistake, not him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

He writes that he had been, quote, painfully ambushed by a vain, common, ugly, and arrogant Virago who is now in possession of love letters from me. She has foisted herself on me as an addressee. Thus, I spit her out as a whole person. I have no more to do with her. I wash my hands clean. I took excrement for gold without letting slip from my fingers the pure gold that I now hold in my hands.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And he's like... It's her, like, because again, the fact that he had been in love with this woman and had like written her letters means that this relationship he's in, even his side of it isn't as pure as he wants to pretend. And it's her fault, right? She ambushed me. She forced me to write her letters. You tricked me.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Or just the fact like, yeah, man, shit changes. People feel different ways about people over time. That's fine.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Some shit's shit. Some shit's gold. Yeah, yeah, right. Anyway, this is where we're going to leave Carl on the eve of World War I, right? This guy who is starting to become the thinker who's going to define a lot of what becomes Naziist jurisprudence. He's also real big issues with women, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Except he's kind of getting late. Yeah, that is true. I don't know where we land on this guy, but he isn't, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And yeah, don't become a jurist. No, don't do that. Turns out the laws are just what people in power decide they want them to be, and you shouldn't have that much faith in the law meaning anything objective, because just read the news for 10 minutes. You'll see why. Anyway, we're done.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And we're back. All right, Blake, are you ready to get into this tale? Are you ready to learn?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Lock in? Learn about Nazi jurisprudence? I'm a jurisprude, but yeah, no, let's dive in.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Do either of you have a boon to ask now that I am the literal mouth of God?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Yeah. So today we're going to talk about Carl Schmitt. And Carl Schmitt, he did a lot of things in terms of coming up with intellectual underpinnings for what we call fascism today. The number one thing he did was figure out how to destroy liberal democracy. And this is why I call him a genius. A lot of fascist thinkers were like dipshits and bigots, and maybe they had certain kinds of cunning.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Like Hitler was very smart at certain things. The man who had to work a crowd, that's an intelligence. The same kind of intelligence Donald Trump has, right? Like intelligence isn't an objective thing. People are good at certain things. Stephen Miller has certain kinds of evil intelligence for scheming in certain ways. Carl Schmitt was just an actual genius.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And he was a genius in an evil way and in a way that was like fucked up, but was very broad. And the thing that he figured out before anyone else was how to kill a liberal democracy as like the far right, as like a member of a reactionary party. And it's the same playbook. The playbook he wrote out in the 20s is exactly what's happened here. Right. So that that is the degree of mind this guy has.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And so as much of a fucked up weirdo as he is, he is a legitimately like smart man, which is unfortunate. Right. Yeah. It's always so much easier when you can kind of write these guys off as like freaks. But you just can't with Carl, with old Schmitty, as we will not be calling him. It's a little humanizing. It's a little humanizing. Good old Schmitty. Yeah, good old Schmitty.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

So Schmitty, Carl Schmitt, was born on July 11th, 1888, which means he comes into the world right as Germany, the state, becomes a legal adult and thus is able to buy scratch-off tickets at the gas station. I'm not sure if Germany ever did that. Maybe we'd have been better off if they'd gotten really into – Fucking paper casino bullshit, but tragic. Something to put their energy into.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Right, exactly. So one thing right off the bat that separates him from most future reactionaries is that he never loves Imperial Germany or the Kaiser. He is not. Most of these guys at least have some degree of like, ah, back in the good old days of the Second Reich. He is never that guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

No, that's a new position I've created specifically for you. Thank you. Yes, you are responsible solely for the spiritual guidance of all Blakes and all Wexlers. Oh, boy. So it's a fairly large responsibility. Yeah. Well, there's not a lot of Catholic Wexlers, I guess. Yeah. Well, then you got a lot of work ahead of you, don't you, my friend? Yeah, I do.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And he's never that guy because he comes from a marginalized population within the Second Reich, which is Catholics. Right. Which very much are in a lot of ways. Right. We don't really think about Catholics that way now. But even in the U.S., it was a big deal when JFK got elected president. Like there were people who were like a papist in the White House. He's a Vatican stooge.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

It's hard to imagine like Catholics as like a marginal. But I mean, think about like Ireland, right? Like, you know, under the English thumb, right? There's a lot of oppression of Catholics, even as the Catholic Church is also doing horrible things in Ireland, right? You know, shit's complicated.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

So the fact that he does not like the Reich at any point in his childhood is a product of both his family religion, as I said, Catholicism, and of the origin of his family, where they come from geographically, because his family hails from a place called Bossendorf, which is a small village on the Ulfbach River in the Eifel Mountains.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

This village is about six kilometers from the Mosel, which is M-O-S-E-L-L-E, which is a major river in Germany. And all his life, Schmidt identified primarily as a Moselanian, right? Now, that probably means nothing to most of you listening, and that probably doesn't mean a whole lot more to the people who happen to be German, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Because it means a different thing now even than it does to, like, Germans today, right? Coming from this region in the late 1800s, when Germany has not been a thing for long, means a very different thing. This whole part of the country, which biographer Reinhard Mering just refers to as the Eiffel, is sort of on like the southeast point of Germany.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And it's right next to Lorraine, which today is part of France, but had been taken 18 years earlier from France after the Franco-Prussian War ended and was thus part of Germany at the time that he's born. So the region he comes into is right next to this traditionally French region.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And as a result, Carl and his family don't consider themselves like Germans, certainly not in the way that like Germans will in a couple of decades. They are French Germans and they feel both French and German. Right. Right. And there's a tension between – a lot of his family does live in Lorraine, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And so there's this tension between his family and the pan-German ideology that suffused the Second Reich, which is very anti-French because they're not anti-French, right? Their relatives are French. They feel kind of French. So you're both part of this Catholic minority and you're also like kind of French. So you're just not fully on board with the whole Kaiser thing. Now, obviously –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

When I say these are marginalized people, it's not nearly in the same way as like even a Jewish person in this period of time is marginalized. But you don't escape bias either. Karl was born in a town called Plettenberg, where his parents had moved right before having him. This was not far from where he's born, but it was a little bit nearer to the imperial core of Germany.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

More to the point, it means that Karl grows up in a large town that's developing rapidly because it's industrializing, but he's a distinct religious minority in that town. As biographer Reinhard Mering writes in Carl Schmitt, A Biography, this means belonging to a confessional minority in an intensely evangelical environment, an environment partly even of Protestant sectarianism.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

So everyone around him is like a Lutheran, and they don't like Catholics very much, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

That was one of the theses, I believe, is that we don't like Catholics.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Fuck the Pope, which I take offense to now, obviously, becoming the Pope. I'm sorry you had to read that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

Yeah. Yeah. It's hurtful. It's hurtful. Yeah. Yeah. So this was particularly difficult for Catholics during Karl's early life because he is born kind of in the shadow of something that occurs at the early stages of the German Empire called the Kulturkampf. Right. And if you remember, you know, Mein Kampf is my struggle. culture camp, culture struggle.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

It's not quite culture war, but it basically means that, right? And what the Kulturkampf is, is in the late 1870s, right after the Reich is born, Otto von Bismarck, who's like the, he's the architect of Germany, right? He's like the vizier whispering into the ear of the Prussian king and his plots and schemes lead to the culmination of the Franco-Prussian war and the creation of Germany, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And Bismarck is kind of dealing with a problem in the early days of Germany that would later bedevil Hitler, which is that the Catholic Church isn't just a church, right? Not in the way that, like, you know, the church down the street from you probably is, assuming it's not a Catholic church. You go into First Baptist or whatever. That's like a church. It's a discrete organization.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And it has maybe it's maybe the pastor there is political. Maybe he's not. But the church is just a church. Catholicism is both a church and a government, right? There's an actual microstate in the Vatican that they govern, but also they had governed... They had been almost like the Christian UN for a long time. They'd had armies for long points of time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

I've already done it, Sophie. Oh, thank you so much. Yay. Gaze upon it and know it. Yes. God has already touched him. He has another 40-year career ahead of him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And even in this period, nearly all social services in Catholic-dominated regions of Europe are run through and by the church, right? So they are still to a degree in this period... involved in governing in a way that impacts people's lives. And Bismarck doesn't like this because he's trying to centralize power within a modern state.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And the Catholic Church is an alternate and perhaps opposing power center, right, that might wind up opposing the Kaiser. And that can make things dangerous for the Kaiser and dangerous for the regime. Part of what scares Bismarck is that the Pope is infallible, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And the Kaiser is just not, you know, like, even though things are very strict, the Kaiser is kind of close to an absolute monarch. There's not the widespread belief among Germans that the Kaiser can't make mistakes, whereas Catholics are obliged to believe that the Pope is infallible. And this Bismarck really doesn't trust this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

And yet what Bismarck's saying is both like, well, how do you win an argument with a guy who can't be wrong? And also a lot of people just feel like they owe the church because it's providing them food when they're starving and shit. Right. And that's that's a complicated thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Carl Schmitt: The Mind Behind Modern Fascism

So in the early part of the German Empire, he kind of goes to – he goes on a culture war against the Catholic Church to strip it of its influence. I want to quote from a write-up in EBSCO by Donald Sullivan here. Bismarck sought to assert state control over the church through a series of laws aimed at reducing its influence and authority.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

I mean, I've known like three separate people who lived on boats in the Oakland Harbor because it was like, this is the only way I can afford to live in the Bay.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

And then like now we're talking about like a fucking guy who did a genocide in Darfur or whatever, right? Like you're going to, these are all important topics, but like you simply can't. every single week cover the breadth of stuff that we do and not, you're going to misspeak. You're going to make errors and stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

Yeah, yeah, everybody loved it. I mean, I gotta say, everyone I know who lived on a boat lived on a shitty boat, but I'm also not convinced there are boats that, any boats that stay nice for very long. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

Dank is a good description of boat life, I think, in general.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

So Gwyn's boat was anchored off the Encino basin and Ziz found this a pretty sweet solution She goes over to stay over one night and while they're like hanging out staying up probably taking drugs They don't like usually write about it, but from like other community conversations I think we have to assume an awful lot of the time when these people are staying up all night and talking there's a lot of like ketamine and stuff being used to that isn't written into the narrative

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

That also goes along with the Bay Area. Pills and powders are bigger. Yeah. Quote, they talked about how when they were a child, their friend who was a cat had died and they had to use their own retroactive paraphrasing, sworn an oath of vengeance against death. These are just people doing great. Very healthy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

It's like the opposite of what you want a kid to learn when their pet dies is like, yeah, you know, death is inevitable. It happens to everything. You know, it'll happen to you one day and it's sad, but just something we have to accept. No, no, no. War against death. No, they were like, nope, nope, nope. I can fix this. Okay. I, as a parent, have failed in this situation.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

This was an unsuccessful step in my child's development.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

Maybe no more pets. Gwyn also spent way too much time online, which is how they wound up reading hundreds of theoretical articles about how AGI, artificial general intelligence, would destroy the world. And again, AGI is like a mainstream term now because fucking chat GPT came out a couple of years ago and everyone started talking about it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

At this point, 2016, 17, it's only like people who are really into the industry in a nerdy way who are using that frame. Like regular people on the street don't know what you fucking mean when you're talking about this stuff. But this is a term that is in use among them. And like Ziz, Gwen moved to the Bay Area to get involved in fixing the problem. They were an otherkin.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

Are you familiar with this online community? Which one? Otherkin. Otherkin? No, I have no, I've never heard of that. It's like a, it's like the Mormonism of furriedom almost.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

And when it, when it comes to like, I'm talking about Hitler, I'm talking about like, not obviously those are important, but you know, if I, if I fuck up some fact about like early 1900s, Germany, I'm not going to be like too bent out of shape. Cause it's like, you know,

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Like it's harmless, right? Like these are people who there's a mix of beliefs. Some of them like literally believe they're like fantasy creatures. Some of them just like want to be.

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Right.

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Yeah, yeah, kind of. That's close enough for government work. And in Gwyn's case, it's even different where I don't think they believe they are literally a dragon, but they believe that when there's a singularity and the robot god creates heaven, they'll be given the body of a dragon because the robot god will be able to do that. If it's a good singularity, at least.

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That's why this is all so important to them, making sure it's like a nice AI so they'll be able to get their animal friends back and get their dragon body. Tale as old as time, you know? Tale as old as time. Again, a lot of this could be avoided by just like processing death and stuff like that a little better. But we don't do that very well in our society anyway.

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We've got a lot of people who are committed to denying that. So I'm not surprised shit like this happens at like the corners, right? Like this is just a little downstream from that Brian Johnson guy tracking his erections at night and trying to get the penis of a 19-year-old. Yes. Like- there's not like a massive sanity gap between these two things, really.

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Yeah, yeah. So this is a result, or so, Ziz commits herself to turning Gwyn to the dark side, which is a term she started to use. Obviously, it's a Star Wars term, and it comes out as a result of her obsession with what's called akrasia. Akrasia is an actual Greek term for a lack of willpower that leads someone to act in ways that take them further from their goals in life. It's an actual, like,

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I think akrasia often was like an early term for like what we call ADHD, right? Like people who have difficulty like focusing on tasks that they need to complete. One of the promises of rationalism was to arm a person with tools to escape this state of being and act more powerfully and effectively in the world. Ziz adds to this some ideas cribbed from Star Wars.

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She decides that the quote unquote way of the Jedi, which is like accepting moral restrictions, you know, about like not murdering people and the like, is a prison for someone who's like truly great and has the opportunity to accomplish important goals, right? If you're that kind of person, you can't afford to be limited by moral beliefs.

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So in order to achieve the kind of vegan singularity that she thinks is critical to save the cosmos, she and her fellow rationalists need to free themselves from the restrictions of the Jedi and become vegan Sith. That's more or less... Where things are going here.

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there's no perfection in this, but in this case, it's this tiny little community that nearly all of the reporting on has been like deeply incomplete. And I feel like the stress over like, what do I include in here? And the other problem is that none of these people have editors. And so all of them, everybody in this story has a blog and every blog post is like 40,000 words. So it's just like,

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So I'd say I should note that while Gwynn and Ziz are spinning out on their own, everything that you're seeing from them, these feelings of grandiosity and cosmic significance, but also paranoid obsession are the norm in rationalist and effective altruist circles. And quote, End quote.

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In extreme pockets of the rationality community, AI researchers believed their apocalypse-related stress was contributing to psychotic breaks. MIRI employee, and that's one of these organizations created by the people around Yudkowsky, Jessica Taylor, had a job that sometimes involved imagining extreme AI torture scenarios, as she described it in a post on Less Wrong.

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The worst possible suffering an AI might be able to inflict on people. At work, she says, she and a small team of researchers believed, we might make God, but we might mess up and destroy everything. In 2017, she was hospitalized for three weeks with delusions that she was intrinsically evil and had destroyed significant parts of the world with my demonic powers, she wrote in her post.

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Although she acknowledged taking psychedelics for therapeutic reasons, she also attributed the delusions to her job's blurring of nightmare scenarios in real life. In an ordinary patient, having fantasies about being the devil is considered megalomania, she wrote. Here, the idea naturally followed from my day-to-day social environment and was central to my psychotic breakdown. Oh, man.

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Just taking ketamine and convincing yourself you're the devil. Normal rationalist stuff. Yeah. And I mean, hey, we've all been there, right? We've all been there. No, in fact, I don't think we have.

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No, no, exactly. Because it's this like grandiosity. It's this absolute need to whatever else is going on. Even if you're like the bad guy, feel like what you're doing is like of central cosmic significance. It's this fundamental fear that all is integral to all of these tech guys. It's at the core of Elon Musk, too, that like one of these days you're not going to exist.

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And very few of the things that you valued in your life are going to exist. And there's still going to be a world because that's life. Yeah.

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Yeah, bro, sorry.

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You know, we've got like 10,000 years of like philosophy and like thinking and writing on the subject of dealing with this, but you didn't take any humanities in your STEM classes. So you don't know any of that. You're just trying to bootstrap it.

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Yeah, you watched Star Wars 137 times and figured that was going to replace reading a little bit of fucking Plato or something.

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Maybe it didn't work. Also, again, the ketamine's not helping.

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Oh, God. Yeah, the rationalist therapists are raking it in. Oh, man. Honestly, well-deserved.

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Talk about info hazards. Jesus.

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So I have to emphasize here again that I want to keep going back to the broader rationalist community because I felt like a risk of this is that I would just be talking about how crazy this one lady and her friends were. And it's like, no, no, no.

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Everything they're doing, even the stuff that is a split off and different and like more extreme than mainstream rationalism is directly related to shit going on in the mainstream rationalist community, which is deeply tied into big tech, which is deeply tied into like the Peter Thiel circle. A lot of these folks are close to in and around the government right now. Right. So like that is.

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Ziz is not nearly as much of an outlier as a lot of rationalists want people to think.

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Yeah. Anyway, at rationalist meetups, Ziz began pushing this whole vegan Sith thing hard. And again, it meets with little success, but she and Gwyn gradually start to expand the circle of people around them. Meanwhile, in her professional life, that Google interview process moves forward. Ziz.

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says that she passed every stage of the process, but that it kept getting dragged out, forcing her to ask her parents for more help. In November, around the time her blog started to get a following, she says Google said she'd passed the committee and would be hired once she got picked for a team. Now, I don't know what happens after this.

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She says Google asked for proof of address, which she doesn't have. She's just turned 26 and she's not on her parents' health insurance either. She's been pages describing what is a very familiar nightmare scenario to me of like trying to get proof of address so you can get a job and like – continue getting on CaliMed and stuff.

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And I do think it's probably worth acknowledging that as her brain is starting to break and she's getting further and further into all these delusional ideas, she's also struggling with being off of her parents' health insurance and trying to find stable housing in the Bay. And that influences the situation.

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Yes, yes, exactly. And still in the process of transitioning, yes.

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A lot of it's... I mean, I've read most of Ziz's blog entries, and I've at least done little surveys of the blogs of everybody else involved in this. There were also a couple of very helpful... that like people, there's like one that like a former, sometimes it's like former members of the community.

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You're doing too much to your brain right now.

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So, and then she makes the worst possible decision, which is to live with her friend Gwen in her tiny sail, in their tiny sailboat, which is now anchored by the Berkeley Marina. Again, this is not like a houseboat. This is like a sailboat with one small room.

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Like a little bathroom, probably maybe a kitchenette, but it's not like livable for two people.

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Imagine if that shitty tiny apartment that you remember from your past was a boat. What? Just disastrous. And this is not a good situation. Ziz would later write, I couldn't use my computer as well. I couldn't set up my three monitors. There was no room. Couldn't have a programming flow state for nine hours. I had trouble sleeping.

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The slightest noise in my mind kept alerting me to the possibility that someone like my roommate from several months ago was going to attack me in my sleep. So this is not a healthy situation. And both Gwyn and Ziz have endured some specific traumas, and both are also prone to flights of grandiosity and delusion.

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And now they are trapped all day, every day, together in a single room where their various neuroses are clashing with each other, and their only relief is talking for hours about how to save the world.

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It couldn't. At this point, I don't think either of them is intentionally doing anything bad. You've kind of created a cult where you're trading off on being the cult leader and cult member for each other. You've isolated each other away from the world and you're spending time brainwashing each other together in your little boats. Yeah, how often do you think they were leaving that boat?

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Not nearly long enough. And Gwyn is on what Ziz describes as a cocktail of stimulants, quote, mapped out the cognitive effects of each hour they were on them. They get very angry if Ziz interrupts their thoughts at the wrong time. And also, like, Ziz isn't really sleeping. So they're just talking for hours and getting on each other's nerves at the same time. But also, like...

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building these increasingly elaborate fantasies about how they're going to save the cosmos. And it's, you know, it's not great. Through these conversations, they do develop Gwyn's multiple personalities theory, mixing in some of Ziz's own beliefs about good and evil. And I want to quote another passage from that Wired article that summarizes what they come to believe about this.

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A person's core consisted of two hemispheres, each one intrinsically good or non-good. In extremely rare cases, they could be double good, a condition that, it so happened, Lasoda identified in herself. And Ziz is consistently going to identify herself as intrinsically good. So both sides of her personality are only good.

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Sometimes it's folks who are like rationalists that were trying to warn other rationalists about Zizians. But like people in and around the community have put together compilations where they'll like clip mixes of news stories and like conversations online. And obviously these folks like- A blog mixtape is nasty work.

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But most people are at best single good, which means part of them is non-good or basically evil, and they're at war with this other half of their brain that's a whole person that's evil. which is why other people can't be trusted to make decisions. You know, like increasingly Ziz's attitude is going to be like only intrinsically good people can be trusted to make good decisions.

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Only the double goods. Only the double goods. That's such like a, you know, you're making your own like Orwell speech, Ziz. This is a bad sign. Yeah. Um, so this is Google ambitions fall apart at this time. They don't really give us a good explanation as to why. I kind of think they started bombarding their contact with Google with like requests about why the process wasn't going faster.

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And maybe Google was like, ah, maybe we don't need this person. Um, this concludes failing at Google was good because she's gotten, she'd gotten $10,000 from unemployment at this point. Uh, quote, this means I had some time. If they hired me soon, it would deprive me of at least several months of freedom. And which, of course, she is continuing to work out her theories with Gwyn on the sailboat.

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It's kind of the what if. I think maybe at this point she still could have pulled out of this tailspin if she'd gotten a job. and worked around other people and socialized, not on the sailboat. But also a real consistent thing with Ziz is at this point, she has no willingness to like do the kind of compromise.

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And I'm not just talking about the moral compromise, but like if you're going to work a job for a company, you're going to spend a large part of your day doing a thing that like you wouldn't be doing otherwise, right? Because that's what a job generally is. It's just work. That's just work.

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And Ziz feels like she can't handle the idea of doing anything but reading fan fiction and theorizing about how to give herself superpowers, right? That's the most important thing in the world because the stakes are so high. So she like ethically can't square herself with doing anything she needs to succeed in this industry where she has the skill to succeed.

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And this is another trait she's got in common with the rest of the rationalist EA subculture. That Bloomberg article interviewed a guy named Kuao-Chu Yuan, a former rationalist and PhD candidate who dropped out of his PhD program in order to work in AI risk.

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He stopped saving for retirement and cut off his friends so he could donate all of his money to EA causes and because his friends were distracting him from saving the world. And these are all – this is all cult stuff, right? Colts want you to cut off from your friends. They want you to give them all your money. He's doing but he's doing it like independently.

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Like he's not there's not like a single leader. He's not like living on a compound with them. It's just once you kind of take these beliefs seriously, the things that you that you will do to yourself are the things people in Colts. have done to them, right?

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In an interview with Business Insider, Yuan said, you can really manipulate people into doing all kinds of crazy stuff if you can convince them this is how you can prevent the end of the world. Once you get into that frame, it really distorts your ability to care about anything else. Yeah, that's kind of the thing.

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It's harder to talk about this than like could people talk about Ziz as like, oh, it's a cult leader. And she had her, you know, vegan trans AI death cult or something. And, you know, I I feel like that's not close enough to the truth to get what's like to get how this happened. Right. Because what happens with Ziz.

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And I'm deeply grateful. We'll have source links and everything in here. I note when I'm kind of like pulling something from something directly. But like I'm very grateful to the maniacs who put together these like documents that have helped me piece together what's happening.

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is very cultish, but Ziz is one of a number of different people who have calved off of the rationalism community and had disastrous impacts. But it happens constantly with these people because like- It's got such an engine for it, right?

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Yeah. And a lot of prominent rationalists who news is at the time have since gone out of their way to describe her as like, you know, someone on the fringes. Anna Salomon of CIFAR described her as a young person who was hanging around and who I suspect wanted to be important.

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That's the whole community. And Anna was emailing directly, gave Ziz some of the advice that Ziz considered key to her moving to the Bay Area and stuff, right? The rationalists really, really want you to think that this was just some fringe person, but she's very much tied in to all of this stuff, right?

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So for her part, Ziz doesn't deny that failing to convince other rationalists was part of why she pulled away from mainstream rationalism. But she's also going to claim that a big reason for her break is sexual abuse among people leading in the rationalist community. And there's a specific case that she'll cite later that doesn't happen until 2018.

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But this is a problem people were discussing in 2017 when she's living on that boat. The representative story is the case of Sonia Joseph, who was the basis of that Bloomberg news piece I've quoted from a couple of times. And it's a bummer of a story.

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Sonya was 14 when she first read Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is set her on the path that led her to moving to the Bay Area in order to get involved in the rationalist set. And she's focused on the field of AI risk. And I'm going to read a quote.

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It's it's it's. It's never drops too far below the surface. I cannot overemphasize how important this Harry Potter fan fiction is to all these murders.

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Because really, if you're coming in as an outsider, if you weren't like embedded in this community while all this crazy shit was going on, it's kind of impossible to like – get everything you need to get, you have to refer to these interior sources. It's just the only way to actually understand stuff.

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And this woman getting abused. Yes. Yes. It's a primary text of the movement. Wow. I'm going to read a quote from that Bloomberg article. Sonya was encouraged when she was 22 to have dinner with a 40-ish startup founder in the rationalist sphere because he had a close connection to Peter Thiel.

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At dinner, the man bragged that Yudkowsky had modeled a core Harry Potter professor in that fanfic on him. Joseph says that he also argued that it was normal for a 12-year-old girl to have sexual relationships with adult men. Jesus.

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So great, you know, bragging about your Harry Potter, how you helped inspire the Harry Potter fanfic, and then explaining how 12-year-old girls should have sex with adult men. Good stuff.

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Yeah, I'm the Snape of this. By the way, what do you think about 12-year-olds? Also, I have a close connection to Peter Thiel. Yeah. Cool. Oh man. As that Bloomberg article makes clear, this is not an isolated issue within rationalism. Quote, sexual harassment and abuse are distressingly common, according to interviews with eight women at all levels of the community.

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Many young, ambitious women described a similar trajectory. They were initially drawn in by the ideas, then became immersed in the social scene. Often that meant attending parties at EA or rationalist group houses or getting added to jargon-filled Facebook Messenger chat groups with hundreds of like-minded people. The eight women say casual misogyny threaded through the scene.

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On the low end, Brick, the rationalist-adjacent writer, says a prominent rationalist once told her condescendingly that she was a five-year-old in a hot 20-year-old's body. Relationships with much older men were common, as was polyamory. Neither was inherently harmful, but several women say those norms became tools to help influential older men get more partners.

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And this is also, this isn't just rationalism, that is the California ideology. That is the Bay Area tech set, right?

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Oh, man. And it's all super fucking gross. The whole you're a five-year-old in a hot 20-year-old's body thing. What the fuck, man? No.

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How do you say that and not hurl yourself off the San Francisco Bay Bridge?

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That's bad. Speaking of bad, to the bone, our sponsors.

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It's going, we know where it ends, which is a member of Congress shows up at the library in Vermont that the US and Canada shares because a border patrol agent was murdered there and like threatens to take over Canada.

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And that's all like, there's a degree to which you can kind of tie heightened tensions between the US and Canada to the murder of this border patrol agent, which itself is directly tied to the fact that Alicia Yudkowsky wrote a piece of Harry Potter fan fiction.

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Ah, we're back. So this is important to understand in a series about this very strange person and the strange beliefs that she developed that influenced several murders. Ziz had many of the traits of a cult leader, but again, she's also a victim first of the cult dynamics inherent to rationalism. And what she's doing next is she's she breaks away with a small, loyal group of friends.

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And she does create a physical situation that much more resembles the kind of cults we're used to dealing with, particularly Scientology, because next she's going to take, oh, wow, me and Gwen living alone on this boat. We kind of hate each other and neither of us is sleeping and our emotional health is terrible. But we've made so many much progress on our ideas.

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Maybe we should maybe we should make this a bigger thing. Right. Maybe we should get a bunch of rationalists all living together on boats. Oh, she needs a work-life balance. Yeah, no, no.

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What she thinks she needs is, she calls it the rationalist fleet, which is she wants to get a bunch of community members to buy several boats and live anchored in the bay to avoid high bay area rent so they can spend all their time talking and plotting out ideas for saving the cosmos.

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It does sound cool. We won't go insane together, obviously. She buys a 24-foot boat for $600 off of Craigslist. I don't know much about boats, but I know you're not getting a good one for $600. No, no.

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With me to talk about how much we hate Microsoft Copilot... my producer, Sophie Lichterman, and our wonderful guest, David Boree. David, how do you feel about Microsoft Co-Pilot?

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Just a colossal piece of shit. Yeah. She names it the Black Signet, and she starts trying to convince some of her idealities, people who have gathered around her, to get in on the project. Eventually, she, Danielson, and a third person puts together the money to buy a boat that's going to be like the center of their fleet, a 70-year-old Navy tugboat named the Caleb, which was anchored in Alaska.

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This is like a 94-foot boat. It's a sizable boat. And it is also very old and in terrible shape.

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Yes, yes. It all comes back to bad Harry Potter fan fiction.

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Right, right. That's our flagship.

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So she and Danielson, they buy this thing with this third guy, Dan Powell, who's at least a Navy veteran. So like, you know. That's a good call. He's boat adjacent. But he's, I get the feeling, nobody says this, but Powell says that he put tens of thousands of dollars into buying the Caleb.

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And I just know from what Danielson and Ziz wrote about their finances, neither of them had nearly that much money. So I think by far he invests the most in this project. And I don't want to insult the guy, but he says he did it because he, quote, considered buying the boat to be a good investment, which boats aren't. Boats are never an investment.

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I think his attitude is I'm going to become like the slumlord of a bunch of, or at least landlord to a bunch of boat rationalists. I think slumlord was correct. I don't know how you expect this to pay off.

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What's the PNL statement you put together here?

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Oh God, I have no idea. He absolutely takes a bath on this shit, right? He claims, and I believe him, that Ziz lied to him about the whole scenario to get his money. I do think this was essentially a con from her.

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He says, quote, Ziz led me to believe that she had established contacts in the Bay and that it would be easy for us to at least get a slip, if not one that was approved for overnight use. And as it turns out, when we were coming through the inside passage from Alaska, it was revealed that we did not have a place to arrive.

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Yeah, they all sail it together, them and a couple other rationalists that they pick up. They make a post on the internet being like, hey, any rationalists want to sail a boat down from Alaska? Talk about our ideas while we live on a boat. Oh, man. These people need space. Yes.

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Just get a warehouse. The ghost ship fire had happened by that point. So I don't think warehouse space was easy to get. Fair, fair, fair, fair.

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Um, but this, I think this would have, I think you're right in an earlier era, they would have just wound up living in like a warehouse, uh, and maybe all died in a horrible fire. Uh, cause that there were issues with that kind of life too, but they would have been an option besides the boat thing. Anyway, the Caleb is not in good shape. Again, this boat is 70 plus years old.

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It is only livable by punk standards. And while it was large enough, it is a 94 foot boat. You can keep some people on there. It's also way too big to anchor in most municipal marinas, especially since the boat has 3,000 gallons of incredibly toxic diesel fuel.

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And it's not really seaworthy, which means there's this constant risk of poisoning the waters it sits in that the authorities are just going to be consistently like, guys, you can't have this here. Guys, you just, you simply can't have this here. So they just got to operate out in international waters like a cruise ship?

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No, they're just kind of illegally anchoring places and hoping that it's fine and periodically getting boarded over it. Another crew member on the right down from Alaska who's just kind of there, they're just there for the adventure. So they leave and don't come back after they get to the bay. But this person expressed an opinion that Ziz consistently came off as creepy, but not scary.

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At one point, he says that she confronted him and told him he was transgender. And when he's like, no, I'm really not. She told him he was. Yes. She does this a lot. Tells people, I know that you're this. This is and it works like that's how a number of her followers get to her. But she also it doesn't work a lot of time.

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A lot of people are like, no, I'm not, you know, whatever it is you're saying. She does this to Gwyn too. So I don't doubt his story. Like she just kind of decides things about people and then tries to brute force them into accepting that about herself.

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And when there are people who are like both desperate for like approval and affection and also who are housing insecure and need the boat or wherever to live with her, those people feel a lot, a number of them feel like a significant pull to just kind of accept whatever Ziz is saying about them.

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And it's a very normal cult thing, right? Like this is an aspect of all of that kind of behavior. Yeah. Now, by this point, a few other people have come to live in the rationalist fleet. One of them is Emma Borhanian, a former Google engineer, and Alex Lethem, a budding mathematician.

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The flotilla became a sort of marooned aquatic salon, Wired quotes Ziz as emailing to a friend at the time, "...we've been somewhat isolated from the rationalist community for a while, and in the course developed a significant chunk of unique art of rationality and theories of psychology aimed at solving our problems." I'm excited for this psychology you built on the boat.

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Wired continues, as Lasoda articulated, their goals had moved beyond real estate into a more grandiose realm. We are trying to build a cabal, she wrote. The aim was to find abnormally intrinsically good people and turn them all into gervase sociopaths, creating a fundamentally type of group than I have heard of existing before.

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Sociopathy, Lasoda wrote, would allow the group members to operate unpwned by the external world.

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Yeah, they're obsessed with this idea of – which is initially like kind of a joke about the office. But they're like, no, no, no. It actually is really good to have this sociopath at the top who like moves and manipulates these like lesser like fools and whatnot and puts them into positions below them. Like that's how we need to – what we need to be in order to gain control of the levels of power.

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We have to make ourselves into Ricky Gervais sociopaths.

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What a good ideology. I love that they still love pop culture though, you know? They're obsessed with it. And again, this is, you can't talk about this kind of shit if you're regularly having conversations with people outside of your bubble.

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Yes, yes. If you've got a friend who's like a nurse or a contractor that you have drinks with once a week and you just talk about your ideas once, they're going to be like, hey, this is bad. You need to stop. You're going down a bad road. Do you need to stay with me? Are you okay?

Behind the Bastards

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So by this point, their breaks with mainstream rationalism had gone terminal. Gwyn criticized the rest of the central rationalist community for, quote, not taking heroic responsibility for the outcome of this world. In addition to the definitely accurate claims of sexual abuse within rationalism, they alleged organizations like CIFAR were actively transphobic. I don't know how true that is.

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Some of the articles I've read, there's a lot of trans rationalists who will be like, no, there's a very high population of trans people within the rationalist community. So people disagree about this. It's not my place to come to a conclusion, but this is one of the things that Ziz says about the central rationalist community.

Behind the Bastards

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Ziz had concluded that transgender people were the best people to build a cabal around because they, quote from Ziz's blog, had unusually high life force. Ziz believed that the mental powers locked within the small community of simpatico rationalists they'd gathered together were enough to alter the fate of the cosmos if everyone could be jailbroken into sociopaths.

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And these are all double goods as well. Well, no, she's the only double good, actually. She becomes increasingly convinced that they're all just single good, right? And this is like her beliefs about heroism from the last episode. If you've got the community and the hero, the community's job is to support the hero, right? Like no matter what, it was like blind support, right?

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Blind support no matter what. And a lot of the language this is using here, in addition to being, you know, rationalist language, this is all like Scientology mixed with gaming and fantasy media. She talks about the need to install new mental tech on she and her friends, which is like tech is like a Scientology term, right? Like that's like a big thing that they say.

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She and her circle start dressing differently. Ziz starts wearing like all black robes and stuff to make her look like a Sith or some sort of wizard. Her community adopts the name vegan anarcho-transhumanism and starts unironically referring to themselves as vegan Sith.

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Yeah, just like... What the fuck is going on? I'm just an alcoholic.

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I just wanted to be like Quint from Jaws, oh no. I'm just here because my wife left me. I think I might die a different way than a grapevine attack now. This is looking bad. Yikes.

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So around this time, Gwen claims she came up with a tactic for successfully separating and harnessing the power of different hemispheres of someone's brain. The tactic was unihemispheric sleep. And this is a process by which only one half of your brain sleeps at a time.

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In a critical write-up published as a warning before the killings that are to come, a rationalist named Apollo Mojave writes, normally it is not possible for human beings to sleep with only one hemisphere. However, a weak form of UHS can be achieved by stimulating one half of the body and resting the other. Like hypnosis or fasting, this is a vulnerable psychological state for a person.

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Entering UHS requires the sleeper to be exhausted. It also has disorienting effects, so they are not quite themselves. And I disagree with them that like, there's no, they're not just actually sleeping with only one hemisphere. And in fact, I think they may have taken this idea from Warhammer 40,000. That's so funny.

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Yes, if you don't let yourself sleep for long periods of time and let yourself zone into a meditative state, you'll get a trippy effect. You will become altered. You're altering your state. This is why cults deprive people of sleep. You can fuck with people's heads a lot when they're in that space, but this isn't what's happening.

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Right, right, like one eye open.

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so this is how the the that write-up describes the process of uni-hemispheric sleep one you need to be tired two you need to be laying down or sitting up it is important that you stay in a comfortable position that won't require you to move very much in either case you want to close one eye and keep the other open distract the open eye with some kind of engagement eventually you should feel yourself begin to fall asleep on one side that side will also become numb the degree of numbness is a good way to track how deep into sleep the side is

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Once into UHS, it is supposed to be possible to infer which aspects of your personality are associated with which side of the brain. And the goal of unihemispheric sleep is to jailbreak the mind into psychopathy fully, right? And Ziz, that's how Ziz describes it. That's the goal. That's the goal. That's their goal. Got to make ourselves into psychopaths so we can save the world.

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But it also gets used, you can use it to like, I have this thing. I don't like that I react this way in this situation. So get me into this sleep pattern and you like talk me through and we'll figure out why I'm doing it. And we'll, they describe it as using tech to upgrade their mental capabilities, right? So they're just kind of brainwashing each other.

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They're like fucking around with with some pretty potentially dangerous stuff. And again, drugs are definitely involved in a lot of aspects of this, which which is not usually written up. But you just have to infer given that there's some disagreement or there's some disagreement.

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around all this, but it seems accurate to say that Gwyn is the one who came up with the unihemispheric sleep idea, but a lot of the language around how this tactic was used and what it was supposed to do came from Ziz. And again, the process is just sleep deprivation, right? This is cult stuff.

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It's part of how cults brainwash people, but it also wouldn't have seemed inherently suspicious to rationalists because part of that subculture Being part of that subculture and going to those events had already normalized a slightly less radical version of this behavior, as this piece in Bloomberg explains.

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At house parties, rationalists spent time debugging each other, engaging in a confrontational style of interrogation that would supposedly yield more rational thoughts. Sometimes, to probe further, they experimented with psychedelics and tried jailbreaking their minds to crack open their consciousness and make them more influential or agentic.

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Several people in Taylor, and this is one of the sources, fear had similar psychotic episodes. One died by suicide in 2018 and another in 2021. So in the mainstream rationalist subculture, they are also trying to like consciously hack their brains using a mix of like drugs and meditation and like social abuse. And people kill themselves as a result of like the outcomes of this.

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This is already a problem in the mainstream subculture.

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Yep. In her own writings at the time, Ziz describes hideous fights with Gwyn, in which Gwyn tries to mentally dominate and mind control Ziz. It's evidence that you have an inherent level of magical power, and someone with naturally high mana, like Ziz, can literally mind control people with low mana.

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That's what she believes she's doing whenever she tries to talk someone into something about themselves, is she's mind controlling them. And she and Gwyn have mind control battles. At one point, they start having like one of these arguments where basically Gwyn threatens to mind control Ziz and Ziz threatens Gwyn back. And this starts a verbal escalation.

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And the way Ziz describes this escalation, which is, again, these are two sleep deprived, traumatized people fucking with each other's heads on a boat. But the way that Ziz describes the escalation cycle is going to be important because this is this has a lot to do with the logic of the murders that are to come.

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I said that if they were going to defend a right to be attacking me on some level and treat fighting back as a new aggression and cause to escalate, I would not at any point back down. And if our conflicting definitions of the ground state, where no further retaliation was necessary, meant that we were consigned to a runaway, positive feedback loop of revenge, so be it.

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And if that was true, we might as well try to kill each other right then and there. In the darkness of the Caleb's Bridge at night, where we were both sitting lying under things in a cramped space, I became intensely worried they could stand up faster. Consider the idea from World War I. Mobilization is tantamount to a declaration of war. I stood up, still, silent, waiting.

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First off. And there's other people there as well.

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And just like the logic of, well, obviously if you attack me, then I'm going to counter attack you. And then you're going to counter attack me, which means eventually we'll kill each other. So we should just kill each other now. Like when you are taking your advice on how to handle social conflict from the warring European powers that got into World War I, maybe not a good, like positive example.

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It's, yeah, I mean, just having a fight with your friend and then opening your locket, which has, like, Kaiser Wilhelm and the Tsar in it and going, what would you guys do here?

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And again, you know, part of what's going on here is this timeless decision theory bullshit, right? Ziz believes that she makes it clear at this point when they start having a conflict that the stakes will immediately escalate to life or death. Gwyn won't risk fucking with her, right? But by doing this, she also immediately creates a situation where she feels unsafe.

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However, in that conflict, Gwyn yields and Ziz concludes that the technique works, right? So then her man must be what she thinks it is.

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her man is strong and this is a good idea for handling all conflicts, right? So I'm gonna increasingly teach all these people who are listening to me that this is the like escalation loop that you handle every conflict with, right? Great stuff. One of the young people who got drawn to Zizit this time was Maya Pasek, who blogged under the name Squirrel in Hell.

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She wrote about mainstream rationalist stuff, citing Gidkowski and Elon Musk. But in her blog, there's like a pattern of depressive thought. In one 2016 post, she mused about whether or not experiencing joy and awe might be bad because it biases your perception. So this is a young person who I think is dealing with a lot of depressive issues.

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Right, and maybe the community's not super helpful to her. She was working to create a rationalist community in the Canary Islands. She's kind of trying to do the same thing Ziz did, but in an island where it's cheaper to live.

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Sure, yeah, I mean, yeah, if you've got cheap rent, you can get a bunch of, like, weirdos who work online to move into a house with you. Right, fair. Yeah, like, that's always possible. She found Ziz's blog, and she starts commenting on it. She's particularly drawn to Ziz's theories on mana and Gwyn's theory about hemispheric personalities.

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In one of her most direct cult leader moments, Ziz reaches out directly to Maya as she's like posting on her blog and emails her saying, I see you like some of my blog posts. Truly a sinister opening.

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My true companion, Gwen, and I are taking a somewhat different than Miria. That's the organization, one of the rationalist organization approaches to saving- Is that what they call each other?

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Yeah, they're true companions. True companions, okay. At this point. We're taking a somewhat a different approach than the Miri approach to saving the world. Without much specific technical disagreements, we are running on somewhat pointed to by the approach. As long as you expect the world to burn, then change course, right?

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So basically, we still expect the world to burn, so we can't keep doing what the other rationalists are doing. And she lays out to this girl she meets through a blog post her plan to find abnormally intrinsically good people and jailbreak them into Gervais sociopaths. She invites Maya to come out. And I don't think this happened, but they do start separately journeying into unbucketing.

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And Maya gets really into this unihemispheric sleep thing. And Ziz is kind of like coaching her through the process. She tells Maya that one of her hemispheres is female because Maya is a trans woman. And Ziz tells her one of your brain hemispheres, each of which is a separate person, is female. But the other is male and, quote, mostly dead.

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And your suicidal impulses are caused by both the pain of being trans and also the fact that there's this dead man living in your head that's like taking up half of your brain's space. And so you really need to debuck it in order to have a chance of surviving, right? Okay, so she needs to be jailbroken to be free. Right, to be free.

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And Maya will basically replace her sleep entirely with this unihemispheric sleep crap, which exacerbates not sleeping, exacerbates your depressive swings, and leads to deeper and deeper trials of suicidal ideation. She is believed to have died by suicide in February of 2018.

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She posts what is essentially a suicide note that is very rationalist in its verbiage, literally titled Decision Theory and Suicide. And this is the first death directly related to Ziz and Gwen's ideas. But I think it's important to note that like the role mainstream rationalism plays in all of this.

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Welcome to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where I, Robert Evans, am going to war, like a one-man, like Rambo, like one of the later Rambo movies, not the first one that was actually about the cost of PTSD and Imperial War, but like the later ones where he's a one-man army. I'm doing that, and I'm doing it against Microsoft because I fucking hate Copilot.

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Suicide is a common topic at CIFAR events and people will argue constantly about whether or not like a low value individual, it's better for them to kill themselves, right? Is that like a higher net value to the world? And it was also used as like a threat to stop women who were abused by figures in the community from speaking up. And this is from that Bloomberg article.

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One woman in the community who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals says she was sexually abused by a prominent AI researcher. After she confronted him, she says, she had job offers rescinded and conference speaking gigs canceled and was disinvited from AI events. She said others in the community told her allegations of misconduct harmed the advancement of AI safety.

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And one person suggested... an agentic option would be to kill herself. So there is just within rationalism, this discussion of like, it can be agentic as in like you are taking high agency to kill yourself if you're going to be a net harm to the cause of AI safety, which you will be by reporting this AI researcher who molested you, right?

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Yeah. Shit. This whole community is playing with a lot of deeply dangerous stuff, and a bunch of people are going to have their brains either kill themselves or suffer severe trauma as a result of all of this.

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Again, like any cult, part of the difficulty is teaching yourself how to speak normally again, how to not talk about all this stuff, right? Yeah, not identify as a vegan Sith. Right, right.

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Because I got to say, and people who are really in the community will note a dozen different other concepts and terms in addition to vegan Sith and Gervais sociopaths and shit that I'm not talking about that are important to Ziz's ideology. But you just can't... I had to basically learn a different language to do these episodes, and I'm not fluent in it, right?

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You have to triage, like, what shit do you need to know?

Behind the Bastards

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Deep and silly. Let's do an ad break, and then we'll be done.

Behind the Bastards

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So part three, we spent last episode talking about Ziz's moving to the bay and their first interactions with the rationalist community. That big CIFAR conference they went to that was very reminiscent, had a lot of exercises reminiscent of like Synanon shit, right?

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Well, no, I mean, in this one, it's just like Microsoft Co-Pilots we're killing. Okay, all of them. They're not really people.

Behind the Bastards

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And we're back. So I'm just going to conclude this little story and then we'll end the episode for the day. So this person, Maya, has likely killed themselves at the start of 2018. And Ziz reacts to this suicide in her usual manner. She blogs about it.

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She took from what had happened, not that like debucketing might be dangerous and unihemispheric sleep might be dangerous, but that explaining hemispheric consciousness to people was an info hazard.

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Yes, a lot of talk of murder. These people love theorizing about when it's okay to kill people.

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She believed that people who were single good like Maya were at elevated risk because learning that one of the whole persons inside them was evil or mostly dead could create irreconcilable conflict leading to depression and suicide. And she comes up with a name for this. She calls this Pasek's Doom.

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That's what she like names the info hazard that kills her friend who she's like fucking with their head. Yeah. So that's nice.

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Yeah, and she comes to the conclusion it's a particular danger to single good trans women who are the primary group of people that she is going after in terms of trying to recruit folks. So she like admits... Her belief is that this thought thing I've come up with is particularly dangerous to the community I'm recruited from, but it's the only, it's essential.

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constant factor in all of this which is can't be a step in a good direction yeah you know you should you should be aware of there's like if your community is talking about like the ethics of uh escalating to murder um in random arguments uh too much maybe be a little worried if someone sits down next to you and says how would you murder me or whatever they said right you always got to get out of that room yeah you want to you want to you want to leave immediately yeah

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This information is absolutely essential to saving the world. So you just have to roll the dice.

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Well, yes. And it also, she is then consciously taking the choice. I know this is likely to kill or destroy a lot of the people I reach out to, but I think it's so important that it's like worth taking that risk with their lives. Yep. Good stuff. Anyway, how are you feeling?

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Happy to happy to happy to happy to see that. Well, everybody, this has been Behind the Bastards, a podcast about things that you maybe didn't think maybe didn't need to know about how the Internet breaks people's brains. But also a lot of people surprisingly close to this community are running the government now. So maybe you do need to know about it. Sorry about that info hazard.

Behind the Bastards

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And furthermore, if they're like, yeah, that's the right way, even worse sign. And then if they're like, yeah, would you perform necrophilia in order to, in the past, scare people away from attacking you? Like, get out of that room. Leave. This is not a crew you want to be a part of. Yeah, maybe just take a pickleball or something.

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People never talk about necrophilia playing pickleball. I don't think one time. I don't think one time. No, they all talk about how they're getting knee replacements and that's the beauty of pickleball. Exactly. So in spite of how obviously bad this community is, Ziz desperately wants to be in the center of the rationalist subculture. And that means being in the bay.

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Outlook is terrible. Microsoft has really gone far off of making a lot of products that people hate to use.

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Unfortunately, the bay is a nearly impossible place to survive in if you don't have shit loads of money. And one of the only ways to make it in the bay if you're not rich is to wind up in deeply abusive and illegal rental situations. You know this, David. I'm not spreading any news to you. No, shout out to my landlord, Mr. Lou.

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So Ziz winds up in a horrible sublet with a person she describes as an abusive alcoholic. I wasn't there. I don't know if she was the problem in this part. Obviously, I've got one side of this story, but her claim is that it ends in physical violence.

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Ziz claims he was to blame, but she also describes a situation where they're like, after a big argument, bump into each other, and he calls the cops on her for assault. I wouldn't put it past Ziz to be leaving some parts out of this, but also- I know a bunch of people who wound up in horrible sublets with abusive alcoholics who assaulted them in the Bay Area and in LA.

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Craigslist is a crapshoot, yeah. Every time. I feel like the need to qualify with like, this is just Ziz's account, but also this sounds like a lot of stories I know people have had.

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Yeah.

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um so she calls the or he calls the cops on her and then yeah they they do nothing and he attacks her in her bedroom that night so she decides to like he's like throwing a chair at her and shit so she decides i gotta get out of this terrible fucking sublet and unfortunately her next best option a very common thing in the rationalist community is to have whole houses rented out that you fill with rationalists who don't have a lot of money uh

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It never ends badly. Kind of like artists. Yeah, kind of like artists or like content producer houses. It never explodes. People never have horrible times in these. This particular rationalist house is called liminal because, you know, Gen Z loves talking about their liminal spaces on the Internet.

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One resident of the house reacts very negatively when Ziz identifies herself as a non-transitioning trans woman and basically asks, like, when are you going to leave? So she has – she says that as soon as she arrives, one of the other residents is transphobes. She can't stay there very long. Again, all sounds like a very familiar Bay Area housing situation story. Yeah.

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She bounces around some short-term solutions, Airbnbs, moving constantly while trying to find work. She gets an interview with Google, but the hiring process there is slow. There's a lot of different stages to it, and it doesn't offer immediate relief from her financial issues.

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Other potential offers fall through as she conflicts with the fundamental snake oiliness of this era of Silicon Valley development. Ziz blames it on the fact that she couldn't feign enthusiasm for companies she didn't believe in. Quote, I was inexperienced with convincing body language inclusive lies like this. I did not have the right false face, but very quick to think up words to say.

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So, like, I'm not good enough at lying that I'm excited about working for an app to, you know, help you do your laundry better, which is like a third of the bay. Yeah.

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Yeah, she had a strong resume, right? It wasn't- She does. She wants like an award as a NASA intern, right? She's doing- Yeah. Yeah. She really is good at a lot of this stuff. And all of these Zizians, as silly as their beliefs about philosophy and like cognitive science are, they're all extremely accomplished in their fields nearly. Yeah.

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It's good evidence of the fact that, like, it's always a mistake to think of intelligence as, like, an absolute characteristic. Like, I am a genius software engineer. Therefore, I am smart. It's like, no, no, no. You're dumb at plenty of things, Mr. Software Engineer. Yeah, don't sell yourself short. Yeah. So she does start to transition during this period of time.

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She goes on finasteride, which helps to avoid male pattern baldness. And she starts experimenting with estrogen and antiandrogens. She wanted to avoid this for, I'm sure she had a variety of reasons. But as soon as she starts taking hormones, they have such a positive effect. She describes it as a hard to describe felt sense of cognitive benefits. And she decides to stay on them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

By October, she'd committed to start writing a blog about her own feelings and theories on rationalism. And her model here was Yudkowsky. She names this blog Sin Seriously, and it was her attempt to convince other rationalists to adopt her beliefs about, like, veganism and such. Her first articles are like pretty bland.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

It's these scattered concepts and thought experiments, very basic stuff like can God create a rock so big God couldn't move it? And then like throwing a rationalist spin on that. So it's – a lot of this is like, oh, maybe in an area in which college didn't cost 200 grand, you could have just gotten a philosophy degree. Right. That would have made you happy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

You just wanted to spend a couple of years talking through silly ideas based on dead Greek guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

Yeah. Well, unfortunately, so she starts to really show an interest early on, though. And this is where things get unsettling in enforcement mechanisms, which are methods by which individuals can like blackmail themselves into accomplishing difficult tasks for personal betterment.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

I'm going to admit that right now. Before we get further, I'm going to say I erred in this. And it's, you know, I've made peace with the inevitability of fucking stuff up, especially when like every week you're doing a different chunk of history and we're veering from like, we're talking about fucking 17th and 18th century France.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

She writes about an app called Beeminder, which lets you set goals and punish yourself with a financial penalty if you don't make regular progress. And she's really obsessed with just the concept of using enforcement mechanisms to make people better, writing, often you have to break things to make them better. So not a great path we're going down here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

Yes. She's trying to use some of these tactics on herself to deal with what she sees as her flaws that are stopping her from saving the cosmos. Great stuff. A lot of good pressure to put on yourself. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

Well, and that's, again, that comes, that's not ziz, that's the entire rationalist subculture. The stakes are immediately, we have to save the world from the evil AI that will create hell to punish everybody who doesn't build it. And that actually, we'll talk about this later, that breaks a ton of people in this. She is not the only one kind of fracturing her psyche in this community. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

So right around this time, as she's bouncing around short term rentals and like desperately trying to get work, she meets a person named Jasper Gwynn, who at that point identified as a trans woman who now goes by Gwynn Danielson and uses they them pronouns. That's how I'm going to refer to them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

But for clarity's sake, I'm going to call them Gwynn or Danielson, even though they went by a different name at this time, because that's what they're called now. Um, Gwen was a fan of Ziz's blog and had some complex rationalist theories of her own.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

Yeah. Cool. No, you guys are going to be fucking with your heads real hard. Great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

Yeah. So Ziz falls in love with Gwen's ideas and she starts bringing them up in rationalist events, trying to brute force them into going mainstream among the community. But people are like, this is a little weird even for us. And she does not succeed in this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

And as a result, she and Danielson and a couple of other friends start like talking and theorizing together separately from the bulk of the community. So now again, you've had this – they're starting to calve off from the broader subculture and they're starting to like really like dig ruts for themselves in a specific direction that's leading away from the rest of the rationalists.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: How The Zizians Went Full On Death Cult

All that cult stuff. All that cult stuff. Now, Gwen and Ziz largely, like, bonded over their struggle paying Bay Area rents, and together they stumbled upon a solution beloved by generations of punks and artists in Northern California, taking to the sea. Specifically...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Susan would speak, Chris would sing, church members would pass a love offering, and mother and daughter would leave with money. And so at age 34, Edith Opal Horn gave birth to a new persona, Susan Lipowitz, with business acumen, powers of persuasion, and gritty determination well in place.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

There's some disagreement in my sources over when she starts going by Susan, but it appears to be something she takes on as part of this, like, I'm going to be scamming churches. And I think it's interesting, again, that she comes from a background that is very much not evangelical Christianity. Which may be why she knows how to manipulate these people so well.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Maybe it's just the simple fact that none of this is sacred to her in the way it is to these people. So she's able to kind of look in from the outside and like, oh, I know how to fuck with these. I know how to get their money, right? Yeah. I know what they want to hear. They want to see my daughter singing. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I'm going to take their fucking money. They lied to me when my dad was- But yeah, maybe there's something there too.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Trauma. If I'm greenlighting the HBO miniseries, that's at least how I try to- That's how we're going to begin. Yeah, that's how we're going to start.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Right, right. So Susan nursed clear ambitions of turning her daughter into a money ticket. And Chris's initial ambition was music. but Susan was the kind of mom who was more than capable of acting on opportunity. One day in 1964 or 65, when Chris was in eighth grade, she rode home on a city bus. Now this was during a time, again, we're talking 64 or 65,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

This is a time of a heightened racial tension, particularly in Los Angeles. The way Chris describes it decades later, and again, Chris is not being raised what we would call racially open-minded, right? Her mom grows up in the South. In the 20s and 30s, she is raised believing some very racist things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So she sees Chris sees this group of black girls on the bus and quote, I may have given them a look they didn't like. I'm not sure. One of the girls responds by sticking out her foot and Chris trips and falls.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

and then what the girls laugh at her and other people on the bus start laughing too and so chris runs for the exit and then trips herself on her way out right so she winds up with like scraped up bloody knees and everything and that's as chris says it that's all that happened right like you know she's probably this girl who's raised very racist gives a mean look to a black girl who trips her and the encounter ends right in the grand scheme of things not a huge deal

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

But when Chris gets home, Susan sees that she has bloody hands and knees, mostly from the second time that she fell on her own. And Susan's like, what happened? And Chris told her, right, I got tripped on the bus by this black girl. And Susan responds, you let a bunch of and then she dropped several slurs in a row, run you off a public bus.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Chris tries to explain, I couldn't do anything, but Susan is drunk. So she beats her daughter mercilessly, breaking her nose badly enough that she has to go to the hospital because there's blood coming out of her ears, right? So we're talking like very serious abuse here. So when they get to the hospital,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

They can't Susan like Susan doesn't want her daughter saying, well, I got tripped on the bus and scraped up my knees and then my mom beat me so bad I have a concussion. Right. Because then mom's going to get arrested. Right. I mean, that's not great. That's not great. Yeah. That's like even even in this period of time in the mid 60s, that's child abuse. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So because her injuries require an explanation, Susan, on the way over to the hospital, is coaching her daughter, who has a head injury, like, hey, you got to say it was those girls on the bus. You got to say it was like a race thing, that they beat you up because you're white. And in her book, Mama Said, Chris writes, quote,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Those six black girls, and this is her talking about what she tells the hospital. Those six black girls beat me up on the bus, I told them. I got on the bus and that girl tripped me, uttered racial slurs, knocked me down and kicked me. Mom chimed in to add another fantastic detail every time I retold the story. You know what they said to her?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

They were screaming at her, screaming, we're going to take over America, you white bitch. They told her this is their city. The nurses, all white, would gasp and cluck. And then even more racist things get said. I think you get the idea, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Susan is very much leaning into the racial animus of the time in order to try and make this a story that she can sell, not just to these white hospital workers, but to the media, which is where she's going to go next. Because when she calls the cops, the cops are like, we don't really care about some kids getting into a fight on a bus. We're the LAPD and this is the 60s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

so much else going on right now. And we're the LAPD, so we don't really care about much anyway. So she starts reaching out to every newspaper in town to tell them increasingly elaborate lies about the hate crime her daughter had suffered. The only reporter who shows up is a guy from the Herald Examiner. And the next day, Chris is on the front page of the paper.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now, this ignites a response from the local community. And that's what brings the cops out. A whole bunch of particularly the most racist people in L.A. start sending bouquets of flowers to Chris, often with very racist messages in them. Right. Susan, because again, this is all about money for Sue.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

She tries to sue the bus company and eventually gets her daughter on local TV, which turns her into, in Chris's words, a martyr for the cause. The John Birch Society gets interested and Susan and Chris are enrolled in the organization. Wow. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So this is like the kind of the first big con Susan realizes she can play with her daughter is like, I'm going to try and make her like the face of the anti-integration movement, right? And this works for a little while. Spurred to action by media attention, the LAPD takes to the field with the usual degree of competence you would expect. This is from Chris's book.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Six black girls were arrested, thrown in jail, charged, and dragged into a courtroom to answer for my mother's crime. Mama told me I'd have to testify on the witness stand. The thought made me want to die. Mama caught me trying to overdose on pills before the court date. She poured salt water down my throat until I threw everything up. She didn't beat me this time, though.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

She couldn't have me showing up to court with fresh wounds. So, pretty bad. Pretty bad story.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

She just nearly drowned her with salt water.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. I mean, I think that's my expectation. But also you have to note that a big motivator for them is always not doing anything. So when they first get the phone call, they're going to be like, well, I don't care. Like, what are you trying to get me to do?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. Anyway, so that's what's happened so far. Pretty fun story of outrageous child abuse.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, what a beautiful fairy tale. This is a little bit, there's a little bit of a fairy tale feel, except for instead of like Chris getting rich and powerful, her evil and abusive mother does right after this point. But before we hit that, let's do some ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And we're back. How you holding up there, Sam?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I mean, yeah, it's and again, we're talking like 70 years ago. Yeah, even more so.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The words Susan grows up knowing, like, yeah, it's like a whole different level of racism.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So, yeah, Chris thinks that these girls who get arrested based on her mom's lies get acquitted. Again, she's like in her early teens at this point in time. In her book, she speaks of feeling deep shame for the incident, particularly the damage it may have done to those girls. She claims it opened her eyes to the kind of systemic bias that black people face. And I have no reason to disbelieve her.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

In her autobiography, she expresses pretty honest guilt and sorrow over this. And given that she is an eighth grader when this happens, I hope we can agree none of this is her fault.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I think she describes it as them finding the girls. But I don't actually know that that's the case. Again, her memory is not going to be perfect of anything happening. Right, right. Anyway, that's Susan's background. This is the woman who becomes Susan Alamo. What a delight. And she's not going to be our primary character. So the fact, again, she's going to be kind of

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

running the cult for its early years, but she'll be out of the picture after a while. And I just need to prep you with her story because Tony's is so much worse. And this gets us, and part of why we're doing this is because I have a lot more detail on her early life and young adulthood than I do the early life of Bernie Hoffman, who becomes the future Tony Alamo.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He's about, this is interesting, as a male cult leader who has a lot of sex crimes later, he's about 10 years younger than Susan. So, hey, there you go. You know, he's not going to be consistent about that sort of thing the rest of his life. But in this case, Susan is in more of a position to take advantage of him than he is of her, right? Sure, sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I think she's also just much smarter and savvier. Bernie also moves to Los Angeles as a young adult, I think in his late teens, with a dream of striking it famous. He seems to have always wanted a career in entertainment. He was a good dancer and became an instructor for Rudolph Valentino as a young man. While still a teenager, he moves to LA to break into the music industry.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He records several songs. At the height of the British invasion in like 63, 64, where he's like trying to sing like a British person, but he doesn't really know how to. It's an odd set of choices that he's making. Interesting. Yeah, but he is working with some actual people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Like one of the songs he records, Little Yankee Girl, had been written by Bobby Jameson, who is a prominent songwriter for hire in the area, and was produced by Kim Fowley, who co-wrote and produced songs for Kiss, Chris Christopherson, Alice Cooper, and others. So he is working with some people who are real music industry folks.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

In conversations at parties and bars, Bernie, who by this point had started going by the name Tony Alamo, would claim to have ushered the Beatles into fame and worked with the Rolling Stones as well as Sonny and Cher. The only musician that we can prove that he promoted was Pete Best, a former member of the Beatles.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

But he promotes Best after Best leaves the band, and primarily what he seems to be doing is like –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

conning people who want to be musicians out of their money by showing them this letter from pete best and being like see i helped get the beatles started even though the letter he's got from best is after best left the beatles so he's trying to let everybody know i have connections i did this i can do this for you yeah you know the guy who fumbled the bag bigger than anyone has ever fumbled a bag i worked with that guy

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, a guy who fucked up being in the Beatles. Oh, sorry, Pete. So Tony's usual spiel involved bragging about traveling on the road with the Beatles and the Stones. Here's an excerpt from one such recitation of his speech. "'The bodyguard would open the door, throw down a big velvet pillow, and we would step into the velvet pillow.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The barber would comb our hair, the nurse would take our pulse, one of the fellows would spray us with cologne, another strew flowers in our path, and the cops would stand at attention.' And like, there'd be some video of this if anything like this ever happened to you, Tony. Like, I know people were crazy for the Beatles, but this wasn't how they did it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Why are they taking your pulse?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. So this was not particularly believable to anyone with real experience in the music industry, but those people aren't Tony's target.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He is trying to get the attention of dumb, inexperienced young wannabes who have some cash in their pocket and who he can convince like, oh, hey, you got like, if you've got a couple of grand, that's all it's gonna take for me to get this demo tape into the hands of a DJ who's gonna put it on the air or something like that, right? Like these are the kind of cons that he is carrying out, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And he makes a living doing this, not a good one. He is not super successful. He is just kind of on the edge of not starving to death all the time as a result of his income from this. Now, later in life, he would claim that this year, 1964, during a business meeting, God struck him deaf and gave him an order. Start preaching the gospel or he'd be killed then and there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

This is what he's going to claim later. Absolutely not what happens. And we know that because Susan's daughter, Chris, is there when Tony meets her mother for the first time. And the account she gives is a lot more believable. One day in, I think, 1966, the timeline's a little fluid. Tony steps into a bar that she and her mom are drinking at, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now, at this point, Chris is kind of making some money as a recording artist. She's not huge, but she's doing like backup vocals and stuff. So she understands a little bit about the industry and she knows people in the industry and she's been warned about Tony. And that should tell you something. In 1966, if you're a 16-year-old girl in the music industry, people warn you about Tony Alamo.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And you have to be really bad to cross that line in 1966.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. Yeah. And she she does. She gets warned about this guy. And so she warns her mom because he starts walking up to their table and she's like, I've heard about this guy. Do not talk to him. He's a fucking creep. But Tony walks right up to their table. And my read on what happened is that, weirdly enough, Tony and Susan are kind of made for each other. They're both con artists.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I think initially they both identify each other as a good mark. Right. Because Chris claims they immediately both start lying to each other. Right. Trying to get money out of the other. You know, Tony starts talking about the stars that he was promoting. And Susan is like, I'm an actress. You know, my daughter's a singer. We've got connections. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

When she says that, Tony's like, oh, I can make your daughter a star. And Chris would later recall, I'm watching them and it's like a tennis match of horse crap. They both think the other's got money. He gets up to go to the bathroom and I turned to my mother and I said, listen to me, this guy is an absolute bum. He's living with that little pregnant girl.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

She puts her finger in my face, which she often did, and said, you mind your fucking business. When he gets back, you wait a few minutes and politely excuse yourself from the table and don't come home tonight. So again, mom of the year, mom of the year.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's going to go awry not much longer than this, unfortunately. Of course. But yeah, I mean, you are right. Mama had a plan, right? Like Tony is not going to wind up taking advantage of Susan. Like she is going to wind up kind of looping him into her thing. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So he comes back and he sits down at the table and Chris looks at him or, and sorry, and Susan looks at him and says, Tony, I've got to ask you a question. Did you know that Jesus Christ is coming back to earth again? And Tony looks deep into her eyes and says, of course I know that Susan, but how did you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And she's like, let's go to my apartment to talk about it, which is the like evangelical con man and con woman flirting is I've never really heard that story before. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Crime date. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. Are you looking to like rob a bunch of MAGA people? Like this is the dating site where you can find your person. Oh, man. So to make us know, how did you know that they just it's it's almost supernatural, right? They can feel the vibrations of each other like, oh, this is a man who, you know, is there's just nothing inside of him, but is a desire to fleece people for their money.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And that's all I've got inside me. It's beautiful. I love it when people find each other.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, yeah. No, a soul is just going to weigh you down, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. If you're just completely hollow inside, you float like a witch in the fucking 1600s or whenever. So to make a short story even shorter, the two hit it off and got married three separate times over the course of 48 hours. What?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Why do they get married three times in two days? It's intercessive. Yeah, it does. It does. They first go to Mexico where they get hitched, but then like right when they're about to have sex, Susan's like, actually, I worry that Mexican marriage isn't legal and I'm not going to sleep with you until we're legally married.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And Tony is apparently hard up enough that he drives them from Mexico to Vegas without sleeping and purchases two marriage licenses and and pays for two different marriage ceremonies.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

This is for real. This is the real one. And eventually Susan's like, all right, I guess we're married enough. I think this might make him the only person I've ever read about who is bigamously married to his one wife.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

How does that work? He is going to do lots of bigotry. He does so much bigotry in the future. But he kind of does start by getting bigamously married to a single woman.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, this is his practice round of bigotry. Yeah, he's the chosen one of bigotry. He's the fucking Luke Skywalker of bigotry.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

That's right. That's right. You can't just start, you know, and assume you're going to be good at it. Like, I don't know, surgery or something easy. So the two change their names to Tony and Susan Delamo, and they start preaching the word. Now, in the beginning, this is just an iteration of Susan's extant con work at churches, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The new couple would trawl the streets of Los Angeles for starving hippie kids, generally kids who were like coming down from bad trips or who were living on the street because they had too many bad trips. And since these kids were broke – preaching to them wasn't, there's no like money from these kids, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So they get a bunch of followers, but those followers are just kind of eating them out of house and home. So the Alamos tell them, hey, go get jobs and mail us the money. We've got to move to Las Vegas for unclear reasons. And so they do that. And Chris, Susan just kind of leaves her daughter behind in LA, which is, I would say, maybe the best thing for Chris at this point in time. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Keep your mom away from you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. Susan's not super committed to being a mother. So Susan and Tony are in Las Vegas. Chris eventually travels there because she misses her mom. And as soon as she shows up, she claims Tony rapes her. Right. She would have been 15 or 16 at this point. Susan walks in as it's happening, calls her a whore, accuses her of trying to steal Tony and sends her back to Los Angeles. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And then a couple of months later, Tony and Susan returned to L.A. because they found another wannabe celebrity to promote. This guy's name was Rovon. He was a motorcycle riding opera singer. And talented. Yeah, very multi-talented, right? I don't think his career takes off, but there's enough there that Tony's able to get a lot of backer money.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He's able to convince people, hey, this guy's going to be huge. Give me some money to get his career started. And then he buys jewels, furs, leather jackets with that. But this business is not doing well. And so even though their first stab at becoming cult leaders hadn't really made them a lot of money, they returned to that grift as soon as they get back to Los Angeles.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So they start expanding their recruitment from just some down and out hippie kids to prostitutes, to other homeless people, to failing actors, to musicians and stuff who are kind of on the margins and like government housing and the like.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Some of their first marks are because they burst back into Susan's life and they take all of her friends and roommates and put them into a cult, basically convert them by being like, hey, you'll get regular meals, which they provide via diving and dumpsters for expired food.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So they get all of these kids to start working just kind of bullshit jobs and funneling that money, donating their salaries to an entity that the Alamos established in 1969, the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation. So fascinating grift so far. You're just kind of – I mean all they're ever doing is abusing poor people, right? Like that's the Alamo con, particularly her daughter's boyfriend.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, it's pretty bleak. And a big part of what they're doing is they're finding poor Jewish kids who are living on the streets. Some of whom who had converted to Christianity and others who they converted. Tony, particularly, was really good at converting these like down and out former hippie kids. And the more people they bring in, the more money starts to come in.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Some of it's coming from members handing over salaries or like inheritances and savings accounts. But the real money comes in when Susan figures out what is their first really brilliant con. So... Then, like today, Southern California has a massive homelessness problem, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And specifically, the kind of people who are filling the streets are the kind of people that the Alamos make their business preaching to and converting. And then as now, affluent and middle class people are disgusted by homelessness and eager to support anyone who promised to take these people off the street.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So once they get followers and they're pulling these people off the street and they're putting them up in rented spaces and stuff, they're warehousing them basically, they'll pile their followers into vans on the weekends and drive to megachurches in rich areas. And then Susan...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

We'll line up with, they'll clean these hippie kids up and Susan will line up with them and she'll start preaching the word and she'll go down the line and have them all give like a version of like, I was on the street, you know, doing heroin or whatever. And then I got found by the Alamos. Right. And then Susan would conclude by being like, Hey, Does this church support work like this, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Getting these indigent kids off the streets and back to God, right? Well, if you want to see me continue to do this, give some money to the Susan and Tony Alamo Foundation, right? And that's the grift, right? We're getting these homeless kids off the street. And the actual money is coming in from churches where they don't have followers, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

But they do have a lot of people who hate seeing homeless people. That's how they get their money.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

They're not completely wrong. They are accurately describing to an extent what they're doing. They're not giving these kids a better life or a safer life, really.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. Well, it's such a fascinating... through line of, okay, I can see why that works, right? Because you're able to say, hey, you know, what are kind of like conservative Christians more scared about than anything in the early 70s? The hippie movement, right? 69 was not that long ago. We're cleaning up after the hippie movement, right? Like that's- Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Right. And we're taking these people and putting them where you don't have to see them. Right. Perfect. Yeah. And they start making a lot of money doing this. Soon the Alamos have enough cash to make the dream that every cult leader has real, buying land and starting a compound. In 1971, they purchase acreage in Saugus, California, and an old restaurant that they convert to a church.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Their followers are made to live in chicken coops. Married couples get to live in shacks. And once it was known that the Alamos are doing the good work of cleaning up the shrapnel of the hippie movement off the streets, more money and followers start to flow in.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

This is part of a broader trend in evangelicalism, a counterswing to the summer of love and this sort of leftward tilt of culture at the end of the 60s. I think we're all familiar with the way in which this kind of stuff kind of yins and yangs out, right? Like you have your big sort of leftward shift and then this huge reactionary shift that

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Well, the Alamo's grift hits right at the peak of that reactionary shift.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, the worst people always have pretty good timing. Speaking of, Samantha, let's listen to the incredible timing of some of our advertisers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Samantha, Stuff Your Mom Never Told You is your podcast. You got anything else you want to plug up at the top here before we get into our subject for the week?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It has been.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, an OG. And speaking of OGs, we're going to be talking about one of the OGs of being an abusive Christian cult leader in the United States, the worst preacher of all time, a guy that Los Angeles residents are going to be aware of, as well as most of our Alabama listeners, Tony Alamo.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

We're back. Oh, man. Good stuff. So in her book, Betty Shriver cites an article, The Great Guru Hunt, by columnist Art Kunkin, who documented at the time this kind of reactionary shift occurring and the space that it was making for cult leaders like the Alamos.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

There is very definitely something in the air, and it is not, as I originally thought last year, just the cycle of individualism and personal mystical search that could have been expected to fill the vacuum left by the failures of mass political activism in the 1960s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

A certain cat is being let out of the bag, accidentally or by design, which will either result in the creation of many socially motivated individuals of great personal energy who can stop mankind from destroying itself, or the widespread dispersal of these same energies utilized by egoistic persons who will accelerate the crises. Which one of those would you say we got?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. I mean, I find that so familiar to what we saw happened after 2020, right? Yeah. You have all of these energies that get mobilized and then dispersed into these different sort of like cultic movements and disinformation streams that the internet and social media has really enabled. Yeah. By egoistic persons who accelerate the crises that the mobilization had existed initially to fight.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah.

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Yes. Yes. Like we can. Oh, boy. It's sad. I don't like it. I go back and forth between, like, I guess it's comforting that this happened back then, too.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Keep going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that that's, yeah, fair. As the money flowed in, the Alamos constructed a new facility, Music Square Church in Hollywood, and started filling it with street kids.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Susan handled much of the foundation's outward-facing communications to what we might call normies, the big donors and leaders of other churches, while Tony handled converting new followers and took point on actually creating a belief system for their teeming legions to follow.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

From a book by Greta P. Allendorf, quote, "...the Alamo ministry preached a wide range of ideas, in times paranoia, UFOs as divine messengers, and Vatican conspiracy theories." Tony hated the Catholic church and blamed them for everything bad that had ever happened, including Nazism.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

One Alamo tract entitled the Pope secrets read the Vatican is posing as snow white, but the Bible says that she is a prostitute. And I, I mean, he's not a hundred percent wrong about the Catholic church being particularly fucked up in this period of time, given what we're going to find out in the late nineties and early two thousands. Uh,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

But it's also not more responsible for that kind of thing than his own church is going to be, right? Tony's also a prostitute of people's souls. He's a pimp of people's souls, I should say. That's how he makes his money, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So in her book, Betty does a pretty good job of explaining how the conversion process worked for new inductees after they were picked up, generally hungry on the streets of Hollywood. They'd be promised a meal and taken by bus to Saugus. Quote, "...from the moment Brenda and Daniel arrived at the corner of Hollywood and Highland to catch a bus, the brothers and sisters separated them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

A woman known as Sister Cynthia ushered Brenda to a seat. For the next 45 minutes, Cynthia fervently explained that all the signs of the end times written in the Bible were currently happening."

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He is. Well, he's one of the weirder ones. And he's one of like the worst people. This guy. Oh, man. He does all of the evil cult leader things. Child trafficking. Slave labor. You know, all the good stuff. Abuse of a corpse. It's great. Unstuffed today.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

she pointed out the vapors of smoke covering los angeles she mentioned earthquakes and wars cynthia told her that god was looking for dedicated laborers to preach and save souls before jesus returns the bus pulled off on sierra highway and sagas the heart of canyon country hundreds of people were milling about greeting the buses and leading people about the grounds brenda daniel and the others were ushered into a large hall where they sat on benches and waited expectantly

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

the room was packed with people standing room only brenda was a bit uneasy but cynthia assured her that she was in for a treat a man who called himself brother michael stepped up to the podium and gave a hearty welcome to the gathering you are as welcome as the flowers of may in the noonday sun praise the lord amen

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He continued with a few rules that included no talking during services and a ban on literature from other places. Brothers walked through the rows to collect forbidden materials. Brothers and sisters called overseers monitored the physical needs and functions of the community, such as water supply, electricity usage, and even the distribution of toilet paper, often pages torn from telephone books.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

They had to seek permission from Tony and Susan for every aspect of their existence. One evening after dinner, Sister Cynthia sharply reprimanded Brenda for overstepping the authority of an overseer when she turned on the lights in a building. Brenda said, but I thought I should turn on the lights since I was the first to arrive. Cynthia retorted, there you go thinking again. Oh, fuck.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

That's a good classic cult banter, yeah.

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Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

You sound very okay with all this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So physical punishments were common, as is sexual violence from Tony, who really seems to prefer young teenagers to adult women, including his wife. What keeps people from leaving, you're not going to be surprised to hear this, is a fear of hell, which is implicated daily from sermons by the Alamos and their followers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Every day they would tell new inductees and their old followers stories about people who had joined the church, left, and immediately died, right? If you leave the church, basically, you are instantly going to be dead, right? And then you go to hell. You go straight to hell, right? You know, it's not new, but it serves, right? You know, this is a functional, functional cult thing to be doing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's like driving a Volvo, you know, why fuck with what works, occasionally. So the only reason normal believers would need to leave the property was to work, and more and more of them worked for businesses owned and operated by the Alamos. They also had to travel to churches and civic centers to deliver what the Alamos called popcorn testimony.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

These are the little speeches by former hippies and homeless people that opened up donor pocketbooks, right? You know, where they're saying like, hey, if the Alamos hadn't found me, I'd be dead or in jail or in a mental institution, you know? These are the popcorn speeches. By the mid-1970s, the Alamos are wealthy, they're outwardly respectable,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

They're operating several successful businesses that were keeping, according – in the eyes of a lot of Angelenos, the riffraff off the streets and where they belong locked up somewhere away from the people with expensive houses. Susan and Tony then got to live the life of high-rolling multimillionaires.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, again, his last name is Alamo, but it's spelled Alamo, but that's not how it's pronounced because the state of Texas would have come after him then. He would have had the Rangers on him long before the FBI finally took him down. If he'd been weakening Texas's brand. But yeah, Tony Alamo. And this is kind of a weird one in that he is not the initial leader of his cult.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

On one famous occasion, Susan showed up for an interview wearing a Lynx jacket and a floor-length dress telling the interviewer, God wants his children to go first class. And I guess to have links, links for jackets.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

That's right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

That's right. If you don't do that, people might not really believe that God has blessed you and that endangers their souls.

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Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

You're not going to be blessed. I'm glad you understand it. Right. You're really doing this for their souls.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

No, no, but you have a lot of links. You're heavy into linkses, which who isn't? Yeah, exactly. That's all I wear is linkses. This is 100% links hoodie. It's really hot, though. It's incredibly warm. Yes, not at all comfortable, especially when I've got the heat on. So in 1975, we finally get some good news, which is that Susan gets diagnosed with cancer.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now, as a little girl, she had claimed to have been struck. Sometimes she would claim that she caught tuberculosis from her father, right? And that she had been healed by God after praying.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And as a result, when she gets sick, she prescribes herself and as well as prescribing Tony and most of their followers that they're going to pitch up stakes and move back to Arkansas where they'll be healed, right? They still keep the Saugus compound open. They still have their followers there, like recruiting people off the streets of LA and raising money, working some businesses.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

But kind of the core of their best followers, and they take most of their money to a place called Dyer, Arkansas, which is where she'd grown up, and they buy a compound. So this is a little town, population less than 500, and they make people notice when they suddenly drive in because they only have black Cadillacs. That's the only car his followers drive.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So he has like suddenly this huge fleet of new black Cadillacs and dozens of converted hippies move into this very small town. Their compound is centered around the home that had been Susan's home when she was a little girl. They expanded it and updated it with all of the least classy adornments their new riches could buy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Greta Allendorf writes, the couple was fond of red carpeting, chandeliers, and velvet wall coverings and installed them in every space they occupied. Just the most hideous place you could imagine.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

That's right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Golden candles. Every wall is pure velvet. Like, I mean, the instant you drop a cigarette in this place, it goes up, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So at this time, they also begin construction on a sprawling Victorian home on the mountain, complete with dormitories for their followers and a heart-shaped pool for Susan. A grand church hall is constructed for their evangelical TV show, where Tony sang love songs for Susan, such as my personal favorite, I Love You So Much It Hurts Me. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now, one of the things that's interesting is that a lot less of his songs than you'd expect given who he is are actual religious songs. Again, this is just him talking about how much he loves his wife, his horrible, evil wife. But I do feel like I'm legally bound to show you a video of the Alamos playing this song.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now, this should tell you something about the level of, because I'm talking about these people. They are a cult. They're very abusive. That's not how they're treated. They are treated as like mega church pastors who are widely beloved. The clip that I'm about to play is from a performance that they make at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

which is a very real, very major venue for country Western musicians, right? This is not like a fringe thing. If you're at the Grand Ole Opry, you have a degree of legitimacy within the music, within at least the country Western chunks of the music industry at the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I mean, I think that may be what they did, but in terms of people looking out from the outside in, you just see like, well, they're on the Grand Ole Opry, so they must be legit, right? Legitimate. Makes a Dolly Parton right there. Well, Dolly Parton will show up in this story, unfortunately. Oh, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

That's kind of his wife. So it starts out as him being almost like... used by this cult that he later winds up running. He's always one of the people running it, but his wife is definitely much more the driving force of the cult when they get started, which is interesting. You don't see that a lot.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's not all that bad in terms of her involvement, but she's not completely uninvolved with the Alamos either. Great stuff. So I'm going to. Oh. Oh, yeah. Look at them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He is. So Tony Alamo, if you're not able to look at the video of this, I would recommend checking some of them out on YouTube. They're all over YouTube. Tony looks like off brand Johnny Cash. If he like if he put on about 40 pounds of just water weight and a wig.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, shipped from Timu. He's because he got a little melted in the shipping container. And then I don't know. Like, honestly, Susan and I like she she's wearing like a fucking opalescent white out like pure white. But it's like a shiny opalescent white suit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It looks horribly uncomfortable. She is dying of cancer at this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

She's sick by this point. It's going to take her a while to actually fucking die, like years. But she is sick at this point. Oh. Her head, the shape of it, she looks kind of like one of those gray aliens wearing a skin suit. That's how Susan Alamo looks, except for a lot of makeup, too.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that is mourning the temporary loss of its producer today. Sophie got into a little bit of a kerfuffle with the FTC. Some shots were exchanged. Anyway, she's on the run now, but we're expecting her to report back in from her mountain hideaway any day. But until she gets back, Samantha McVeigh is with me today, this week. Samantha, how are you doing?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

What is that one? Shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

One sec. Let's look this up real quick.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I don't know, that doesn't sound familiar to me at all. Wait, are you talking about Mars Attacks? Yes, yes, she does look like, she's got like, if those aliens were wearing like a rubber human suit, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's fascinating. What I what I want to get across is that they really don't look like regular people, like real people, like they both look like almost CGI humans.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

They are both frightening, I would say. But her particularly. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Not hard. So now that we've said that, let's listen to them play beautiful music together.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

We're going to be talking about a feminist icon in the world of establishing a cult that traffics children across state lines.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Okay. I think we're good.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, I stopped it. We didn't need to keep going. I just wanted you to hear his singing voice.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It feels like a parody of Johnny Cash as a fucking scam preacher. Yes. His outfit is amazing. He's standing alone on this- The background? Yeah. It's so good.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, it's a haunting vibe, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's a deeply evil vibe. Yes. Yeah. I'm so glad the cancer came back, which it does. Susan dies in 1982 from the same cancer that had inspired the move back to Arkansas. Now- Sam, this creates real issues for Tony because by this point, he and Susan, they had spent seven years or so, you know, since she got sick, preaching that she and he couldn't die, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Susan had described herself, because they have a TV station by this point, she would call herself the Lamb of God and would say that she and Tony were both had to be alive on Earth to act as witnesses for the end times, right? So the fact that she is dead now creates a real pickle for Tony Alamo and the cult. One that they're going to have to resolve in part two.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

icon well that's exciting yeah it's good girls can do everything the boys can do including trafficking including trafficking that's right obviously we're always saying that equal opportunity I love it yeah so one of my favorite things about this is that these guys the people we're talking about today were very good friends of one of our friends of the pod who had a run in of his own with law enforcement in a town called Waco but I'm getting ahead of myself here okay

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

You got any ideas about how they resolve it? I'm thinking like Weekend at Bernie's level. Oh, my God. Yes, you've got it. You saw where this is heading.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, Samantha, before we record that, you want to throw out your pluggables here? Because we're done with part one.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yep. Yep. Check out Sam. Find her on the blue sky. Listen to her podcast and, you know, listen to this podcast that you just listened to. Go back in time and listen to it a second time so that we start trending in the other time streams, you know, or also listen to that song and listen to that song to your love. You know what?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Put that song on and listen to nothing else for the next like 48 hours, right? You'll be fine. You're going to be great. You're going to do good. You're not going to lose your mind.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, a little bit. There's some Waco that comes in here. Yeah, Alamo, Waco. It just all seemed too convenient. That's right. Now, Tony was not just the leader of the cult. Again, he was basically its first member or maybe co-leader with the woman who became his wife, who we're going to talk about before we talk about Tony, because she is fascinating, too. Edith Opal Horn, which is...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

You know, she's she's got that serial killer name starting. I know Opal. There's something sinister about that as a middle name.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes. And she is she is this is she is a down home girl. Now, if you're if your first thought when I said Tony Alamo was that. Like, oh, well, that's way too good a name of a cult leader to be a real cult leader's name. You are correct. And Tony was not born Tony Alamo. He was born Bernie Lazar Hoffman on September 20th, 1934 in Joplin, Missouri.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So, again, this is kind of rare for evangelical Christian cult leaders, but he was born into a Jewish family. His parents were immigrants from Romania. And while this may seem like an unlikely background, again, for an evangelical Christian cult leader, Bernie's family was never religious.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

No, no, no, no, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And as a boy, his parents told him, hey, you should tell people that you're Romanian, not Jewish, because if you tell them you're Jewish, you're going to get beaten up, right? Like we're in Joplin, Missouri in the 40s and 50s. You really don't want to be dropping that too much. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now, Edith was also born into a Jewish family on April 25th, 1924 in Alma, Arkansas, a small town about the same size as Dyer, Kansas, where the family moved shortly after her birth. Her father was a convert or her family was mixed religion. It's a little unclear to me because she told her daughter later that she first encountered the Bible reciting passages from it at her father's sickbed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's just she's on the run from the law. That's fair. Yeah, yeah. That's fair. It's fine. Once she gets to our hidden mountain fastness in an undisclosed location in the Rockies, she'll be back on the calls. Everything will be fine.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He'd been sent home from the military early due to contracting tuberculosis. And over the course of several years, he wasted away and tried to stay outside to avoid spreading the illness to his family. So he's like camping out to try to stop from getting his family sick. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. I mean, that's some real like 30s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Dad lives in the yard because otherwise they'll get us all killed. Edith would later claim to have refused to listen to what he said because she was convinced that she could heal him by reciting Bible passages. So she insisted on sitting next to his cot or whatever at night. This may have been later myth-making after she converted because our only source on her childhood is her.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Either way, what we can confirm is that from an early age, Edith dreamed of being a star in the newly forming film industry, which had just come to be centered in Hollywood, California. But her dreams were interrupted by the northern normal patterns of life in a small southern town, by which I mean she got pregnant extremely young. Obviously. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Like she's a dire like Arkansas in the fucking 30s and 40s. What else is there to do? Literally, there is nothing else that you can do aside from get pregnant early and have your brothers and husband die of various coal-related diseases or farming-related accidents. Yeah, obviously. Yeah, obviously.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

People there have numerous different things that they can do with their lives, all of which involve dying young. Yeah. So Debbie Scrivener describes what happened next in the book Whispering in the Daylight, which is about the Alamos. Quote, she married at 14, had a baby at 15 and divorced at 16.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It was then that Edith Opal decided to take charge of her own journey to stardom and headed to California. When she reached Hollywood, Edith Opal changed her name to Susan Fleetwood. After failed attempts at a singing and acting career, she married and then divorced Saul Lipowitz and converted from her Jewish roots to evangelical Christianity. She began to preach and teach informally.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And she just straight up abandons her son right now. This is her son that she has at 15. But, yeah, she she just kind of bounces on the family she's got over there, moves to Hollywood and starts trying to make it. And the one daughter that she has with Saul Lipowitz is named Christian, like Christ Christian. H-I-A-O-N, Coy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I like it. Yeah, we're going to be doing the podcast via Morse code. Yeah, that is going to be the only way to communicate. Yeah. We're going to get some code talkers, but with like maybe maybe Klingon based. I don't think the feds can crack that one yet. Not anymore. They got all those feds out.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I'm guessing Coy was... I mean, I don't actually know where Coy comes from here. That must be her married name. That's what she writes under as an adult. I have never heard of the name Christian before. This may be a misspelling of the name Christon, like Christ-O-N, which is a Latin girl's name that means follower of Christ. But I don't know. Christian doesn't appear to be anything, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, somebody's flipping through a Bible on an epidural and it's like, I got a name.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, perfect.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. Now, according to Chris, we're going to call her Chris because I'm not going to try to pronounce that name the whole time. And that's generally what she seems to go by. Edith, her mom, makes a living during this period primarily as a con woman because she's trying to find work in the movie. She does some acting gigs, but they do not. Her career doesn't take off. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Um, her daughter will credit this to the fact that she just does not have the look that Hollywood's going for in this period. She was per, per her daughter, quote, beautiful in the weirdest way. Not like you would look at her and go, wow, a striking beauty. But when she walked in a room, she had so much command that people stopped talking.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So she doesn't have the right look to get the big Hollywood gigs, but she does have the right look to make people pay attention to her and kind of gravitates naturally to conning them as a result.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Perfectly natural. Yes, I'm seeing the A to B here very easily. When she managed to get work or successfully work a con, the family would have money. And so during Chris's childhood, they swung wildly between mild solvency and absolute poverty with such regularity that it made Chris's childhood kind of dizzying. Also dizzying was the violence that Edith employed on a near daily basis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And I'm not going to read a lot of detailed stories of physical abuse here. Chris has a book that she's going to write later about her childhood. Uh, and her book mama said has some of the worst and most descriptions of like the beating and psychological abuse of a little kid that I've ever read. Uh, Edith is a very bad mother.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Like I, I cannot overemphasize how abusive this woman is to her daughter. Um, Or at least that's how Chris relates it. I don't know why she would lie about the specific things that she's lying about given that they comport entirely with the life that Edith is going to live from this point forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So Edith, now living as Susan, and her daughter spent years on the margins. Once Chris is 13, Edith is like, hey, you got to start earning your keep, right? You're basically an adult woman. It's time for you to start going out for parts and recording demo tapes as a singer.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And, you know, you kind of get the feeling that part of what she's doing is like, hey, you know, you're the age that a lot of creeps in Hollywood are interested in. If you can make that work for us, go do it, right? Yeah. It's a bad, again, childhood.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The two live in a one-room apartment with a pull-down Murphy bed and survive primarily off of what Chris describes as mystery cans, which are canned foods with the labels removed that sold for cheaper than regular food. Quote, quote,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

You're keeping your life interesting. Probably just pounding a lot of pure fucking coconut oil or whatever. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

If you're lucky, pie meat. Yeah. A lot of expired soups. Soups. Oh, my God. Yeah. That's like that. That's such a perfect, like absolute poverty story right there. Yeah. Just just eat mystery cans with my mom as she tries to pit me out to the music industry.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. Get pregnant or drop an EP. Right. Like those are your options. So by this point, by the time Chris is 13, Edith has aged out of most of the roles that interested her, right? She is, again, particularly for this period of Hollywood, too old to become a leading lady, right? And the bulk of her earnings now come from con artistry.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And here is how Debbie Scrivener describes her most successful and repeated con. She developed her evangelical skills by scamming churches under the pretense of being a missionary seeking funds. She would say to Chris, put on a dress, we're going to do a church. They would go, and during the service, Susan would stand and say, I have a message from the Lord, and I need to speak.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

No, but that's it. I mean, like, that is often, you know, whether true or not, you know, like, there's definitely probably essences of that, you know, like, of being true, because, like, you know, like... That is the story of a lot of people in America right now. It's like going through some really tough times and trying to get through.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And that is often the story, especially when it comes to successful people in the music industry. It's like, hey, man, I came up hard. Used to be anyways. It's more Nepo babies these days. Yeah, it's more Nepo babies. Used to be. Music was the great equalizer. It's like you could be poor and from nowhere and become the biggest in the world. That's what music used to be. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

That's definitely a market he has, is like the inspirational I climbed out of this. Like, even in his verses, it's often that. So can you. Yeah. But that's not exclusive to him. That's a lot of rap as well. It kind of goes hand in hand. It's a bit of that tale of rising up out of the worst situations that makes so many people respect and understand you as a rapper. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I literally was just making fun of Nepo babies because it's like, so it's like the opposite is literally when it comes to most of creative culture to be considered the worst you can be to have privilege and everything that's considered like the worst.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Cause it's like, Whoa, well you, you don't have to learn guitar for on a guitar that only had three strings and like, you know, it was given to you by blind Willie down on the corner who definitely had tuberculosis and left us early type of shit, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It wasn't my mom being like, we could go to Goodwill and find you a nice pair that you'll grow into type thing. It was like, oh, you want $300 Nikes, like hard pass.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, for sure. When I was in the Marines, there used to be a joke about, you know, everybody was going to go to a great college. They had a

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

full ride to go to a great college and they were all varsity whatever and they were gonna one of the dudes in my platoon he it was so funny he started off saying that he was gonna be he was scouted to be the quarterback at usc and when everybody was like dude you were not scouted to be the quarterback that's a prestigious position we could have we would have seen that you would have been like in the news and shit like that's a big deal and he was like i didn't say quarterback i said cornerback it was like that was that was his way out of it sure man

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

cornerback you know one dude I remember he used to he had like one of his pecs was bigger than the other and he said yeah man I was I was gonna play quarterback and and then my coach always had me benching one side only you know and that's why my I was like what no one would do that no one would so I swear to god every guy in the entire world if they played sports for like five seconds has like a oh I was almost you know story could have been great could have been great then I broke my leg yeah I ran for 12 touchdowns

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

There's a certain inner bullshit detector I feel like you definitely have. It's like the Sophie eye roll where it's just like, huh, yeah, that right there, the smirk and the uh-huh. Sure, pal. It's a crucial life skill to develop. Sure, you've won a Grammy. I bet you have.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Willie Nelson is like, he's not even dead, but he's the guy that gets to walk back on the field and get younger. He's the Ray Liotta. Andy Dick pulls himself up out of a sewer. Oh my God. If you build it, they will come. The biggest bong ever and just like a table of cocaine. We could make this movie. I feel like someone is going to rip this off from us. We better act quickly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Anyway. He could have healed me with his witch doctor ways. Right, right, right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It is almost like, I hate whenever people start like, cause like every time some of this stuff comes out, you know, that like a certain person's like a grease bag, then it's like every person that's ever been in a picture with them is suspect, you know? And it's like, Oh, this person, this person, this person.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And it's like, yeah, but like not all those people are actually doing bad shit. Some of them are just taking advantage of somebody's like status to up themselves a little bit or meet people or whatever. But also, yeah, a lot of times they are all together. Yeah, a lot of times the whole Harvey Weinstein connection maybe should have been a sign.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, a lot of times they're absolutely running a fucking little circle jerk over there with each other, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And don't join the military like I did because it is not going to be a good idea. When you graduate, man, do anything else. But the recruiter said, I can even pick my MOS. Did I ever tell you that I had a friend that thought he was joining the Marine Corps snowboarding team?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

His recruiter literally showed him pictures of dudes on snowboards and was like, yeah, man, he was from Colorado and he thought he was joining. He was like two weeks into being in the fleet. And he was like, so when does the snowboarding start? Is the guy from the snowboarding team going to hit me up or how do I get over there? They're like, bro, we are deploying for Iraq in like seven minutes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You are not going to the Marine Corps.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, my God. There's so many beautiful. I had another friend who literally the recruiter, he came in and he was like, yeah, man, I want to be in infantry. And the recruiter would like slow play to me. He's like, well, I don't know, man. It's pretty exclusive. Yeah. And he got on the phone with his master sergeant in the back room. He's like a car dealer being like, my boss agreed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Maybe that's true. That's what his mom said. I remember seeing his mom in an interview that said the same thing, that that's where it came from. Because he wasn't a big dude, back to the point earlier.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I mean, you know, they're not at odds with each other. They might be both the same. He likes to puff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like one of those fish. Yeah. Anytime he's threatened, he gets big.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

That was one of the subplots of Finding Nemo is that puffer fish were sex criminals.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

They're sex pests. Sex pests.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You had me at Republican Party. Yeah. I was there. I was there already. You're just edging me from there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Hey, bro, you forgot your hood, man. Let me set you up. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Hey, man, every now and then, plugging a CEO in broad daylight on a city street does something. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

How far you have to go to get one white man fired from one white man fired. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. This is the 80s? Yeah, 89. Yeah, so, I mean, yeah. So 10 to 15 bucks, that's a lot of money, too. That's not cheap. Like, we think of 10 to 15 bucks now, but in 89, 10 to 15 bucks, like... Yeah, it was like $700, $800, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Whatever the math works out to, but yes, absolutely.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

There used to be... I remember. We used to be a country.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

like we were we're looking back through a lens so it's easy to like see like like oh he probably was probably kind of like but you want to believe that like any when you heard this earlier you know diddy telling this story you were like like yeah good for you did it yeah good for you speaking up for the kids yeah yeah you did it man but like and then like hearing it in retrospect you're just like uh you know you know everything that he did was slimy yeah he was just always pulling an angle he

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You will definitely see, especially in the music industry, there's such a wide-ranging culture of that being the thing. It's like the Lou Pearlman or the Diddy or the Jay-Z with Rockefeller. It's like Rock Nation. It's like all these different organizations. That's what they're looking for all the time is like who is the thing that other people can look at and be – because that's what it takes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You have to have – You have to have a stable of people for everything. To have a party, you've got to have the best caterer in the world, but you've also got to have the best DJ. That's what all those people are the best at, is collecting a whole bunch of the best ofs that they know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Good times.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, you got a stable of really cool podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, and you know what's cool is like, I mean, you know, I'm going to have my best etiquette today because I am a Behind the Bastards fan. Because, you know, I listen to this show because it's like hanging out with my friends still. You know, it's like every day that we've ever been together is like Robert gets, I'm like, hey, man, you guys, you guys ever heard that story about the Egyptian guy?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And one day you will unify the entirety of all podcasters in the world, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, reputation is everything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a bad process. It's a process. I'm workshopping some stuff here, guys. I'm doing the best I can.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, his friends are like, Puff? Puff? P-U-F? There should at least be two Fs. It's like damn near poof, bro. I don't know, man. It's going to be confusing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It's always like sack. Or like two thumbs. Shit stain. You're like, oh, man, there's nothing about thumbs that could have been a good story. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, getting on your knees and begging is not exactly fuck the police. No, Biggie wouldn't have done that, I'll tell you that much. Tupac would have shot those cops, 100%. Tupac would have shot those cops. And he wasn't even that gangster, man, but he would have shot them cops. Snoop Dogg would have shot them cops, man.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

We forget, man, this guy's hosting New Year's celebrations and shit, but that guy would shoot some cops. That guy was hardcore.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. No, tell me more.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect timing for it all. So just for the – there's an actual term for that in the interviews called a runner. It's literally because you are, in fact, running for everything you do. You go and get things all throughout the day. It's the first job you do in almost any – like music industry position. So it's like, this is what I did.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I was an intern and then I became a runner and then an assistant engineer and then an engineer, but that's how you like work up with. And, and it's crazy something that people don't like. It's not like, it's not like being an actor. Right. Doing some of these jobs, like what Diddy did here, some of these jobs, it's not like being an actor.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You get out here and you're competing against just everybody working at every diner in all of Los Angeles. Doing some of these specific jobs, like A&Rs or producers or engineers, you can get into the industry and be one step away from the top immediately. There's so many stories of that. My first job, I lived in Texas where we met in Texas.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I was playing in a metal band, and then I was like, oh, I should maybe do music for a career. I went to school for nine months, graduated from a tech school, and started at the biggest studio in the world as a runner. But I was so good because my background in the military and all the stuff that I was in. I was a runner for like three weeks before I was working for the studio as an engineer.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

So it was like, you're only... A very, very short insert. It's like attacking the industry from a secret angle because you can do things like it's so fast. It's like your first job might be working for the president of a label. You know, if you have the right aptitude for the type of stuff, it could happen just like that. Now, it's still competitive and everything, you know, and it's really hard.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

But. It's a different thing from being an actor or a musician where you're competing against thousands and thousands of people in the same proximity trying to do that job. It's kind of like a hack to get into the industry.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I don't know how it worked for us. Get ChatGPT and just plug a subject in and then post that on a website. There you go. You're a journalist.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

So yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Jordash.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yes, yes, he discovers that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Wait, what are you saying? Is it Jodeci? It's J-O-R-D-E-C-I. It can't be, right? I'm so confused. Oh, you're saying... Is it Jodeci? I'll look it up. No, no, no, I can't. No, no, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It's not. Okay, so hold on. What's the name? J-O-R-D-A-C-E? No, no, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Doesn't set up any of the safety measures, any of the staff, any of the bathrooms, none of that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Sean Puffy Combs. It has been an amazing opportunity to be here for this because, you know, there is a certain... And I'm going to try and be careful today because, like, there's... When you're in the industry as deep as I am, I'm 15 years into doing this, it is... It's damn near impossible to miss the rumors, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And in actuality... It's just a charity, yeah. What kind of charity? You know, it's like kids with stuff. They need stuff, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

One of the artists I used to work with, he used to always be like, yo, hey, man, the cops are here. So, yeah, you want to go talk to them? Oh, yeah, man. He's like, you know, you speak like cops and like white people and stuff. Like, all right, I got it. I got it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Hey, gentlemen, how are you doing tonight? Oh, yes, sir. Absolutely, sir. Oh, the dogs. You don't need those.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Everybody legendarily protective of people and safe and never hurt nobody than Pinkertons.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

medical examiners will note that like none of them had broken bones they are just suffocated by the mass i mean for those of you know like i i have been to a lot of concerts i've been into metal music like but sometimes it feels kind of you know like how could you be killed by a bunch of people but like if you have never seen a crowd or been in a crowd like even i is like i mean i'm a fairly large person myself like i'm not huge or anything but like i'm and i'm

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

pretty okay with like bad situations yeah i've been in some crowd crush situations that have terrified me where i'm like this is like scary like this is bad if you've never been in those situations it's really easy to understand if you have like what what that's like it's like it's like even a few hundred people can be like that and you're talking about three times the capacity of a venue you know that's like so easy for a crowd to just crush the shit out of some people

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And I actually had a huge viral TikTok right at the beginning of all this, when the first lawsuit dropped, when the Cassie lawsuit dropped. I had a viral TikTok that got like 10 million views because I was like, immediately, I was like, ah. Diddy's going down, dude.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, get out. There is go. It absolutely is, and it is not a good idea.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Next thing you know, you're going to be surrounded by a bunch of juggalos at an ICP concert at the electric factory and feel really uncomfortable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

This is early. This is episode one for death. Is there more than one episode of this or are we one episode?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, it was a very cool plane crash, man. It was like... You just feel like you're dead. It's like where people are like, man, that was the best night of my life type plane crash.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, let me tell you about America, my brother. This is the thing, though, too. It's like, you know, that happened, right? But I can't tell you how many events, how many things I've been to that have been, like, you know, thrown like this, like concerts. Like, dude, I've been at a Riot Fest, which is like a major concert that has felt...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

like this where it's like they didn't plan this very well there's not enough things here it seems dangerous and the fine line between man we just pulled off this crazy party and nine people died is it's razor thin you know there is sometimes where it's like this is the coolest party I've ever been to and then and it doesn't go completely wrong but it could have at any time one of those house parties we had we had 200 people and they were raging in the living room and I thought I started standing closer to the wall and

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Because there's certain people in the industry you've heard so many things about for so long that when that thing comes out and the first damn breaks, that first little, the Dutch boy pulls his finger out or whatever, you know it is going to start uncovering. ridiculous things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Because I was like, this floor is going to give out, man. There's no way. This could end badly. This house could not be designed to have this many people jumping up and down like this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, risking it. Yeah, I've been on the edge.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, of course. They also got those kids killed. Look, there's never a time where the NYPD hasn't been a little bit negligent in some people dying in New York City. It's like, you know, it's what they do best.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

They just went for the college?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Good point. No reason to go after him. He's got nothing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

So he literally wrote, I'll be missing you, like, I'll be missing you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Like, right off the, every day, man. Every time I pray, man, I'll be missing you. Yeah. He hit him early with that. He did. He did.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And I even said at the moment, I was like, if the tabloids are starting to run with this stuff, it is only a matter of time before the feds get involved. Like the feds don't like looking stupid. They don't like looking bad like that. And when somebody is sex trafficking across.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Diddy week.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I have a TikTok. I am Greasy Will Music. I have a podcast. It's called That Sounds About Right. I have a Instagram that you can find me. I'm Greasy Will. G-R-E-A-Z-Y-W-I-L. One L because the second one wasn't pulling any heavy weight and I decided I was wasting time doing it. Fuck that L. Yeah, fuck that L. But I am highly Google-able. I am all over the internet. I can be found almost anywhere.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You could even send a telegram to me still. I accept telegrams as long as they are Western Union and contain money as well.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Minutes from now. Just hold your breath.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

countries i'm not laughing at the sex trafficking i'm just happy that he got caught yes yeah yeah you know it's like you just you gotta know it's like this was coming it was going to happen and when it opened up when the dam opened up it was like oh let's see what happens let's see what happens yeah let's see let's see when this final yeah at one point robert was like he had new baby goats

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

His image has never particularly been gangster rap. Not since he was having people killed. It was more mogul-like. Yes, absolutely. That is a great way to say it. He was the guy who has companies, the alcohol, Ciroc, he's got this, he's got shoes, he's got clothing, he's got all this stuff. He definitely shifted like Ice Cube did to Disney movies.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It was like that immediate, oh man, you can get away with, not accusing Ice Cube of anything, but you can get away with so much more if you look a different way than the guy who's involved in multiple deaths and shootings.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I had missed it. Everybody, if you're in a certain kind of scene around the world, in the industry in LA, it's like you will always hear that some old, it's like the caterers. It's the people that are like the service workers of the world, the engineers, the white dude in a room full of rappers sitting at the desk that's like, oh, shit. Like, really? They just say this out loud?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And it's like sometimes it's secondhand, but it's like you'll hear these things and it'll be like some older grizzly dude that's like, yeah, man, don't ever work for Kanye, man.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Don't go to a Diddy party.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

That's just going to make me want to be a gangster. Everyone wants to- Yeah, it's the Aaron Taylor Johnson of a situation, you know? Yeah. You got to get the right kind of feel for people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I thought he was a good guy the whole time. I watched the whole movie. No, I'm on board.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Get him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You know, it seems more like it was like a lesson on, like, don't be the guy in the car getting smoked at 33, you know? Be the guy who Denzel winds up playing. Right. Yeah, yeah. Be up a couple levels. You know, you got some more wiggle room up there. Uh-huh.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

For sure. I mean, we will probably talk about this, I'm sure, eventually at some point, but this is the Tupac thing. He went to a performing arts school. He didn't grow up. I mean, his mom was a revolutionary activist or whatever, but he came up in a pretty decent kind of lifestyle, and it wasn't until he got into that East Coast, West Coast beef that he gangstered up hard.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

There will be a lot of other stories like that. Again, I mean, this has been brought up many times on the show, but when kids show too much aptitude for something at a young age, you've got to worry about it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Slow them down a little bit. Slow them down a little bit. Look, I got two kids now. You don't just give them drugs. You leave them around.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, put them outside and don't watch them enough. Like my parents did.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You can feel it. You can feel a dozen cockroaches, but you can't count them as fat. You don't know the exact number, man.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I've lived in decent places where cockroaches are on my face. I, too, have woken up with some cockroaches on my face.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, for sure. That one sound bite that grabs you at the perfect time and they're like, yeah, man, like, that's it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You'll never make it, kid. Yeah. You're going to go down just like your father.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

But that's his background. And again, this is also he's coming. He's doing this at an earlier time. I mean, Harvard was very, very much that kind of thing. But I don't know. Maybe the Iowa Writers Workshop was was not. I don't know. His first poem of collection of poems, which was called Silence in the Snowy Fields, was published in 1962.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And it focused on moments of solitude and beauty, as we see in this piece, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter. It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted. The only things moving are swirls of snow. As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron. There is a privacy I love in this snowy night. Driving around, I will waste more time.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

which is just like this nice, quiet little, certainly you don't see any red flags there. It's just kind of a poem about one of those quiet moments that you have in your life, you know? It's, I don't know, I don't find it deeply affecting, but there's certainly like, it's not like he's writing anything you would see a problem with.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The next year, he published an influential essay in which he attacked mainstream American poetry as impersonal, lacking in soul and a willingness to look inward. His criticism of American society expanded after that, and in 1966, he co-founded the American Writers Against the Vietnam War. He is one of the very first prominent American artists to try and organize artists against the war, which is...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I mean, good, because it was a bad war. In 1968, he made a public promise to refuse to pay taxes until the end of the war. And he also made – he made some very trenchant critiques of U.S. imperialism.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

In 1967, he wrote an article for the New York Review of Books in which he noted, the fact that so few Americans have resigned from the government or from responsible posts to protest the Vietnam War is remarkable to me. And he's bringing up also cases of like the Russian Revolution and stuff where you would have these horrible wars being prosecuted by –

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

regimes that are on paper a lot less free than the United States, but also would have a lot more defections or people just like refusing to do their jobs because they believed that, of course, that the sovereign had set was unethical. And he's like, why isn't this happening in American government? Why is no one refusing to be a part of the Vietnam War? And he went on to ask, He thought not.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And this is what he wrote. What it shows is a disastrous split between the American's inner and outer worlds. He does not aim to use his life to make himself whole, to join the two worlds in himself. On the contrary, he is prepared to give up one of the two worlds. The businessman gives up the inner world and clings to the outer as his way.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

A large body of literature denounces the businessman for taking the one world without the other. But when a writer is opposed to the Vietnam War and still accepts a grant from the government prosecuting the war, he is doing something similar. He is letting the world split. He lets the outer world go by him with just a wave of his hand, and then he reaches out and pulls the inner world to him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He accepts the money for the sake of my work. It will enable him to live in his inner world. But the disastrous split has already taken place before he begins to use the money for his work. And I actually find that a really affecting critique. I think about that a lot just in terms of like...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

number one, this desire I have a lot where I'll just be kind of like churning through the muck of a bunch of horrible stories about bullshit going on in Congress or like see some horrible Twitter thing, culture war shit roll up and want to feel this urge to like, well, fuck this. I don't want to pay attention to this anymore.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I just want to discard this from my life and focus on this like piece of art or creativity that I think most people feel that most reasonable people feel that way a lot. And what he's saying is like, How can you call yourself a writer? How can you call yourself an artist and attempt to discard the outer world in favor of the one that you focus on for your creativity? Like, how can you actually...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

be connected to your inner world in any way and, and feel as if you can pretend the outer world does not exist. You're doing the same thing as a businessman who focuses entirely on his, his desire to, to make money and ignores his spiritual development. Like there's not a fundamental moral difference between what the two of you are doing.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Cause you're both, uh, you're both rejecting half of, of, of,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

your being in order to to stick with the one that's more comfortable because of whatever you you've chosen as your profession and in the case of of yeah i don't know i found an attrition critique that makes me think a lot about myself um maybe maybe check out what bly has to say about the vietnam war and he put his money where his mouth was he used that article to republish a letter he'd sent to the chairman of the national foundation of the on the arts and humanities

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Because they had offered him a $5,000 grant, and he turns it down because he's like, look, this is an instrument of the United States government, and I am opposed to a war they are waging. And even though I could argue that like, well, if I take this money, it won't get spent on bombs. What I'm really doing is providing legitimacy to the state that is carrying out this terrible war.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And I'm simply not going to do that. I'm going to choose to refuse to support it in any way, even by letting it support me, which whether or not you agree with it is a deeply principled stance that requires sacrificing something.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So, spoiler alert, the Vietnam War ends. We don't do great. It goes okay for Vietnam, though. Well, I mean, millions of people die, but they do win. Bly remains an influential poet and thinker. In the 1970s, he organizes the first Great Mother Conference, which is still going on today.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It's a nine-day festival that explores human consciousness, and it celebrates this kind of archetypal idea of the Great Mother as this kind of feminine creative force that underlies humanity. everything in society.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Um, and Bly, the reason why he felt it was important to kind of bring consciousness and get people focused on this idea and on this celebration of femininity is that he saw the Vietnam war as kind of the expression of masculinity, like running wild and leading to terrible death.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Hey, everybody. Robert here. First off, we are doing a rewind week because I've written two new Andrew Tate episodes. But also, my birthday came recently. We took some time off. So we're going to take this week to replay the first four Tate episodes with ad breaks and stuff removed.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And he believed that Americans needed to reconnect with femininity in the wake of the Vietnam war, which is again, not an unreasonable stance. Um, You know, you can argue with it, but you can see where he's coming from.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

You're waiting for the shoe to drop. Motherfucker's coming. Motherfucker is coming.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So as the aftershocks of Vietnam faded, America enters the swinging 80s. Bly becomes concerned with something else entirely. He sees in the Reagan years this vapid consumer culture, you know, malls and shit, the increasing spread of popular music is like a concept in a way that it really hadn't been the spread of like, I mean, look again, TV, there's a lot of transgressive shit on TV today.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

TV in the 1980s was not what it is now. So he sees all this happening and he, he also just sees like, again, what kind of Reaganism and unrestrained capitalism is doing to people. And he, he begins to believe that the kind of soullessness and, and, brokenness at the core of the American experiment is the result now of a crisis in masculinity, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So previously he had, yeah, there's an extent to which he thinks like, I don't know, we'll get into what he thinks. So in 1990, he writes a book that is kind of illustrating the things that he started to feel here. And he calls it Iron John, a book about men, right? Now, have you heard of the fairy tale of Iron John, Ian? No, I'm not familiar.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

No? You're not big Grimm's fairy tales people? That's fine. Neither am I. I had not heard about this either. I think maybe it's bigger in Germany.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah. Oh, wow, wow. That's a red flag. One of the greatest works of art in, I'm going to guess, German history? Sophie? Robert? Wow. I feel like you just hate German history reflexively for reasons that have nothing to do with anything that has ever happened in history.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Wow. Wow. Well, red flag. Sorry. That's what he does. I think Iron John, again, it's a fairy tale. And I think I'll give a brief summary of how that fairy tale goes. It's because it's again, none of us.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I'll tell you. I'm going to do it. So God damn. So I'm going to quote from a write up in the New York magazine here. That story goes like this. Something in the forest is killing a kingdom's hunters. A stranger arrives, goes into the forest with his dog, and returns with a large, hairy man he's extracted from a pond. This is the wild man, whom the king locks in a cage.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I also wanted to tell you Ed Zitron is in the running for a Webby for his show Better Offline, as is Molly Conger for Weird Little Guys. Please go to the Webbys, vote for them. You can find the links in the show notes along with our other links there. You can also just Google Ed Citron Webby's, Molly Conger Webby's, and you will find them. Please do vote for them.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The king's son, playing with his ball, lets it slip into the cage, and the wild man tells him he'll give it back if the boy steals the key to the cage from under his mother's pillow and sets him free. The boy unlocks the cage, but fearful that he'll be in trouble with his parents, flees on the wild man's back to the forest.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

After the boy fails a series of trials and acquires a head of golden hair, the wild man kicks him out of the forest, but after he sinks to the low status of a kitchen worker in a foreign kingdom, the wild man helps him become a mighty warrior, and he wins the hand of the princess, is reunited with his parents, and becomes the rich, heroic king in his own right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So, you know, I think we're probably missing some context there, just from culture, but it's like... I get why that's not in like the, the tight five of Grimm's fairy tales. Like that's, that's maybe the one you leave on the cutting room floor.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That's like a B side. Yeah. That's like, that's like, I don't know the, one of the, one of the Beatles songs that people don't talk about that much anymore. Um,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It's not a Snow White grade fairy tale. It would be funny to see modern Disney try to do this.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, this one also might be one of the tamer ones. I don't know. I'm not an expert on fairy tales.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And again, I feel like... I feel like this is an example. I think sometimes we look at these stories that have been around a long time and are like, wow, you know, there's some deep wisdom in there, which is why we should keep telling them. But I'm looking at this, which is it's it's a parable about manhood. Right. And about becoming an adult.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And I'm like, you know, it's a better parable about manhood and becoming an adult for a Star Wars movie.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Much better one. Much better one. Look, George Lucas knocked it out of the park. Fuck you, Grimm. You know who else is George Lucas?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The sponsor of this podcast.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Actually, George, you have the cash. Sponsor this podcast. And we'll make it work, buddy. We got you. Anyway.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

We'll be back next week with two brand new episodes on what Tate has been up to over the last couple of years and a bunch of really fucked up information that's come up. So please enjoy these episodes, the reruns with less ads, and go vote in the Webby's. Welcome to hell, motherfuckers! I'm Robert Evans.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast that has just encountered one of the worst disasters of its career. So we'll get into this more later. This is supposed to be and is going to be the first of several episodes about Andrew Tate.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

We are back. Are we? No. But... Maybe. Okay. So... Here we are. We're talking. We're having a good time. Are we? So Bly's book looks at this myth of Iron John, and he reexamines the myth using Jungian psychology, which is, again, another red flag.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

There's perfectly valid reasons to study Jung, but whenever you have somebody who is reevaluating myths using Jungian psychology, they always turn into Jordan B. Peterson. I'm sorry. That's just the way that it works. So he's trying to find lessons that are going to be meaningful for men struggling with modernity.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And his basic conclusion, as far as I can tell, is that men need rewilding in order to fix the things that are driving them crazy, right? They need to reconnect with the wild man inside them. Now... This is going to be, this is the root of a million kinds of manfluencer garbage, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Everything in that, like you guys know the liver king, that guy who was telling people that he got super jacked by eating nothing but raw animal livers that he hunted. He was spending so much, $12,000 a month on steroids, which he lied about. Now he's getting sued for a hundred billion dollars because he defrauded people by convincing them to take his liver enzyme pills. So funny.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

But what the livered king is doing is this is he's basically setting it, pretending to be the wild man that Bly talks about and being like, this is what you have to do in order to be healthy and deal with all of these toxic things about our modern lives is go out and throw spears at boars and then eat their raw uncooked organs, which I would actually say is a lot less masculine than doing the thing that our actual caveman ancestors did, which was learn how to cook meat.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

But make a really good point. It's also the root of we had we just started this year with a couple of more episodes of Jordan B. Peterson show. He talks a lot about the need for men to be controllable beasts and also references another Grimm's fairy tale. But one that he chooses is, well, I think it's a Grimm's fairy tale. Fucking Beauty and the Beast? I don't know. Maybe not.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

and the mythopoetic men's movement that led to his rise to fame and influence among a generation of young men, we started recording this episode just a few hours ago with the wonderful April Clark and Grace Freud of the Girl God podcast. And anyway, we recorded a little bit with them, and then I had a minor emergency, which has taken me out of the house for a while. Things are okay.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Maybe that started as a Disney thing. I don't know where it started. But he talks a lot about like this. Again, all of these guys today who are talking about you have to be primal. You have to reconnect with your caveman roots.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It's – I mean, and that's – you can see, like, Peterson is not an – and he never has been an original thinker. He's cribbing from Bly, right? They all are. Bly is the origin of this. And it's also worth noting that while Bly's book has been – The descendants of Bly's book are pure reactionary gibberish. Bly himself was not. Again, we went through this guy's background.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He's a deeper thinker than that. And there's passages in his book that are kind of worth connecting with. So I'm going to read a quote from that now. To judge by men's lives in New Guinea, Kenya, North Africa, Zulu lands, and in the Arab and Persian culture flavored by Sufi communities, men have lived together in heart unions and soul connections for hundreds of thousands of years.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Contemporary business life allows competitive relationships only, in which the major emotions are anxiety, tension, loneliness, rivalry, and fear. After work, what do men do? Collect in a bar to hold light conversations over light beer? Unities that are broken off whenever a young woman comes by or touches the brim of someone's cowboy hat?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Having no soul union with other men can be the most damaging wound of all. And the cowboy hat thing is kind of weird, but that's a totally valid point. The lack of intimate male-to-male friendship is a deep problem in our society.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I mean, because I think he's just sort of, I mean, okay, whatever. He's getting into a little bit of masculinity there.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, yeah. Sorry, Sophie, famous lover of light beer. It's okay. I love my champagne beer too. I just, I had some lovely, I actually wish I had some Peroni right now.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Peroni's a lovely, nice, wonderful, especially on a hot day.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I've gone on long runs with nothing but a backpack full of Peroni to keep me going.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Peroni, it is essentially water.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

But you see, like, what he's making there, and this is not a point that, like, this is not a point Andrew Tate would make, right? Because these guys are all hyper-competitive.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And that's a huge part of, like, what they're talking about, whereas one of the, like, Bly is, at his core, a large part of what he's complaining about is totally rational, which is, like, men aren't allowed to love each other.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Well, that's not the only thing in the book. He's also talking a lot of, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, we're getting to it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Iron John spends 62 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Yeah, I don't think anything spends that long on the bestseller list anymore.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yes, that is.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, this is 1990. 1990 to 91, because it's on there for more than a year. And it turned Bly from a respected poet and activist into the first masculinity guru in modern U.S. history. Now, again, we had guys like Bernard McFadden before who had talked about aspects of this, but Bly is wrapping his arguments in respected academia.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And the way he's connecting with his people is exactly the same as the kind of shit that Jordan Peterson and other folks do today, guys like Ivan Throne and whatnot who are in the masculinity influencer thing. He's doing conferences. He's having rooms full of people, men gather, and he's speaking to them and he's like running them through –

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

You don't need to... flip out on Reddit or whatever. But it was a it was a problem. And we were not able to record with them to finish recording with them. And because of the holiday, we have no backlog. So in order to get this episode done and ready for our editor ASAP, Sophie is going to be my guest today, along with Ian, our editor.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He's basically bringing them to these moments of emotional height. And you can see some – there's a little bit of Werner Erhard in this. There's a reason this is all coming out at the same time as we start to get the self-help craze hit. But he's basically holding these big pep rallies for adult men. In 1991, more than 1,000 men went to see him at the Eastfold Auditorium in Parkland, Washington –

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That's a lot. wafting out over the audience. So that sounds good, right? Sounds like a fun time.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I always love white guys playing African drums in my gigantic stadium speech series by a fucking poet. Anyway, Bly, who in 1984 had been called the most influential living American poet by current biography, became a kind of celebrity that hadn't previously existed. So he's filling stadiums with people who want to hear him talk.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

But he's also he's engaging them in a way that's going to spawn the modern men's self-help industry. Quote, What? Bly insists he doesn't blame women for men's sorry state. He blames older men who have failed to provide young ones with the role models they crave. In traditional societies, boys worked alongside men, plowing fields and fashioning arrowheads.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

But the Industrial Revolution severed that connection. The title character in his bestseller is a wild, hairy fellow who, in a grim fairy tale, is fished up from a pond and becomes a boy's mentor.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That image is also the inspiration for his most extravagant exercise in manly self-discovery, five-day wildman excursions in which groups of 100 men take to the woods under the tutelage of Bly and others to dance around fires, banging on drums.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I mean, again, there's this element where he's like, society is fucked because feminists have tried to breed the violence out of men, which is not the case.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

91.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Because, like, where is it? You've seen it start to happen here. Right. Because, like, the valid thing in that passage is he's like, hey, look, young boys used to grow up learning alongside both their father and the other men, you know, in whatever community they were in. And that taught them what it meant to be a man.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Um, and we will get this out as soon as possible, uh, cause otherwise we will not have a show and we are contractually obligated to provide you with entertainment every single week, uh, until the heat death of the universe. Um, but I do want to shout out April and Grace who are wonderful, who came on and booked time for us. And I'm sorry that things got messed up.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And now because capitalism has kind of taken the man out of the house, you're supposed to be working 40, 60, 80 hours a week, right? They're not there to raise. It's just the usually in like the way our society works, just the woman who's raising the kid. That's what he's saying. Then we've cut men off from this process of learning how to be adult men.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And like that is actually a pretty valid critique. And the problem is that he's saying the problem is that feminists have bred fierceness out of men instead of being like capitalism separates parents from children for huge amounts of time. And that's bad for kids. And actually, if you look at it, like you can see in that very scenario of like men are out of the house working.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So their kids are raised largely by their mothers. Well, that also means an unfair burden is being placed on the mother. You can see this. There's a way to have solidarity between them. The genders here and be like, oh, yeah, this is all of a problem of this system we've built that like separates families in ways that are really fucked up.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Like I identify with that when I was a kid because we didn't have much money at all. The only job my dad could get was in New York City. And there was a period of more than a year.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

where he was gone he was living on a friend's couch working there sending money back to us and it was it was it's not just him that made a sacrifice i made a sacrifice as his son and my mom made a sacrifice dealing with the entire job of like raising me like i there's a thing to identify with there but you can see the start of the toxicity where he's like well what's the problem is that feminists have tried to make men less fierce that's not really the problem robert bly like

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So like, he's not nearly, he's not anywhere. He's not on the same planet of toxicity as a lot of like, as, as guys like, you know, Andrew Tate, who we're about to talk about, or even like Jordan Peterson, but you can see the root of it, right? Where he is like the star. Yeah. Yeah, he's still saying fundamentally part of the problem is feminists want men to be less aggressive.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And like, no, that's not really part of the problem that you have adequately identified. Yeah, he warns his listeners, the young boys are drowning in female energy in the schools. Every young man has a fantastic need for initiation. That's why we all became so crazy about our football coach. Such initiations, he says, channel wildness into socially approved acts.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And again, you see kind of this like, well, why is the problem isn't female energy? Like it's not that like it's that young men, it's that families are being split up by this like need to compete and work in ways that are really unhealthy for kids. But anyway, you can look at the sea of other self-help grifters at the time. Werner Erhard, L. Ron Hubbard, who had come around at this point.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And you could say that Bly is just kind of another dude in that he's doing a lot of the same things a lot of these other self-help grifters are doing. But one of the things that differs him is those guys are mostly plying nonsense based on bad interpretations of Eastern religion and psychological abuse. And Bly is kind of, he's not insulting or attacking people. He's not calling them weak.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

We will have them back on the pod, um, at some point in the near future. And I wanted to let people know, uh, that there is, they have an upcoming show, uh, at JFO Vancouver, uh,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He's making some reasonable points about stuff that's toxic about our society. And then he's trying to create like mutual cathartic experiences with the men in his audience who are being invited to kind of see the men around them as brothers in a way that's more intimate than maybe they had been trained to do previously.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So again, there's something interesting going on here that isn't even wholly toxic that I think is kind of worth acknowledging as we lead to the parts of it that are a lot more toxic. And it's one of those things where like I've spent a lot of time on incel message boards and they do talk a lot about this feeling of disconnection with society.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So when he says that like young men are not connected to their communities, he's making a decent point. He also one of the points he makes that I thought was interesting is he talks about the differences between female sex ed and male sex ed.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He points out that because of like just basic biological realities of how periods happen, young girls are instructed about their bodies in ways that young boys are not. And it leads to lifelong discomfort talking about their bodies, talking about health problems. And that's probably a valid thing to point out. Sure, but definitely goes both ways. Sure.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And again, he's very he's completely ignorant to. Well, I'm sure there's a lot of things actually, especially today that women are not taught about their bodies because of. Anyway, again, these are a lot of two way problems and he's focusing just on the male aspect of them. But he's not inherently wrong about the male aspect of them. He's just leaving a large part of the equation out.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

on february 25th and people can get tickets for that show at girlgodshow.com you can also check out their podcast just type girl god and any of the things that have podcasts and you can listen to their awesome show thank you so much again april and grace i'm sorry that there was a minor calamity um now welcome to the pod uh sophie and ian how are y'all doing

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And that's where the toxicity comes in here.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Bly has reached his fundamental message. Men and women are essentially alien, and neither should apologize. They're different tribes, he is saying. My father was an alcoholic, and yet if you look underneath his weakness, there was something there that my mother didn't have. She was fine, but she didn't have it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Three million sperms start out, and they find themselves immediately in a hostile environment, facing an egg approximately 40,000 times bigger. We're the product of the one survivor that didn't give up.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

which is it's really weird to be like setting up the gender struggle as like sperm versus egg where it's like well actually all of us are the product of sperm and eggs it's the only way people happen I just want to emphasize on the last part of that quote there you said we are the product of the one survivor that didn't give up yeah what's the other half of that equation is it just is it just one little bit of bit of cum that makes a baby Robert why like

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Or is there another part to the baby equation?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He's framing it as like the sperm have to murder the eggs so that one can survive. That is not the way it works. Bly actually insists that he is not preaching old-style machismo, and he takes pains to tell his audience that, in fact, male rage is weakness. "'We're not talking about aggression,' he calls out. A few of his listeners seem confused.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

At the height of an hour-long discussion of the Gulf War, one audience member announces that he's seceded from society. "'I'm not paying my taxes. I've bought an AK-47, and I'm farting around with ammunition just in case I have to back up my decision,' he says softly but firmly." Bly and many others have spoken out against the Gulf War, yet nobody criticizes the AK-47 fellow.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And when Bly asks the Vietnam vets to stand to be honored, the room erupts with applause for about three minutes. And you can see there, too, the seeds of a lot that's going on right now, right? Yeah. Where, yeah, he's like, we're not talking about men need to be more aggressive. And then a guy's like, I have dropped out of society and started buying guns. And everyone's like, that's great. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Look, we're not... Anyway, whatever. Bly died last year. He lived a long time.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And... You can find people reappraising his work and stuff. There are some folks who will say that his greater talent was for self-promotion rather than poetry, and he wasn't as good a poet as people had said. I don't know. I'm not a poetry guy. I'm not going to analyze his poetry in that way.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I do think sometimes because somebody turns out to age into a problematic person, people are like, well, I guess their work that everybody loved in the past sucked. And I think that's kind of cowardly. Like, nah, people liked his poems. They were influential. And then he turned into a crank. That's fine. That happens. Like, yeah. Anyway.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

You know who isn't a crank and who will never do anything problematic? My favorite filmmaker, Roman... Oh, oh, you know what? I Googled his name right as I was saying that. Oh, boy. Oh, dear. Well, I'm going to go burn all my DVDs of Rosemary's Baby and y'all check out these ads. Ah, we're back.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

A little while. I thought it was good with, like, the talk about reappraising artist works. Thank you. Thank you. I thrive on praise.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So Bly died, but his work launched what scholars have called the mythopoetic men's movement.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It is a somewhat fucking... prickish name to call it i guess but it's what they mean by mythopoetic i should explain like what they're saying is like the argument bly and the other because there's a bunch of other authors in this the argument they're making is that our society has stripped mythology out and has become this like kind of coldly competitive engine for creating cash value and that you

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

we need in order to make men healthier, we need to reintroduce like this kind of mythic understanding of, of masculinity and of the world that like that's kind.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And a lot of it is they're like looking at like native American cultures and some of the different rituals around masculinity they had and being like, well, maybe we'll, and there's actually, again, there's a scientific basis to a lot of this is cultural appropriation. But like one of the things that's happening in this period is,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

You've got a lot of Vietnam veterans dealing with PTSD in an era before they understand it. And a thing that occurs during this period is that some of them have buddies who are also struggling with PTSD and are indigenous Americans and who invite their white and black and Hispanic battle buddies back to do stuff like sweat lodges in order to cope and other kind of different rituals that

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

have existed in some of these indigenous societies to deal with what happens to men when they go to war. And they invite their friends back. And that stuff works better than just getting a job working for an accounting firm immediately after leaving Vietnam. And so people are starting to study this and write about it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And one of the things that the mythopoetic guys take is this belief that you should basically just kind of like steal wholesale goods. from these cultures and dress white people up in headdresses and give them drums and stuff, as opposed to being like, oh, well, maybe, you know, there's a way that isn't that to look at the value that some of these rituals have in healing people.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

You know, I'm not the person to analyze that completely, but that's part of what what they're saying here is that like they're kind of recognizing there's something hollow at the center of American culture that is not hollow in some of these other cultures. And instead of being like. Maybe there's things that we should fundamentally change about American culture.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

They're saying, what if we dress up like these other people, right? That's essentially what's going on with a lot of the mythopoetic movement. So a big chunk of this, and these are – some of this is Bly. Some of this is guys outside of Bly. They're making – they're like –

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

putting a bunch of like white accountants in sweat lodges that they make the wrong way and lecturing them about, you know, young and Joseph Campbell, or they're like making them dress like cavemen while playing, you know, African drums. There's a lot of like weird, uncomfortable racism in the myth of poetic men's movement. Um,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That said, it is less toxic than the men's rights movement that would follow it. Things kind of get increasingly aggressive and toxic from this point out. But Bly and the initial mythopoetic influencers were not, they saw themselves as therapists. And again, I don't think they were good at this, but they were not political. So they were not – this was not a conservative movement.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

They were not billing themselves as right-wing. They were not really like weighing in on culture war issues in part because the culture war didn't exist in the same way then that it does now. And it's interesting because Bly expressly says this is an apolitical movement.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

You might criticize him because he had just written a really kind of beautiful essay during the Vietnam War about the cowardness of being apolitical, but – Whatever. I found an article from the Washington Post in 1991 that talked to a number of men who had been most active in the movement. And there's some interesting pieces in there.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Quote, an affirmation and strength comes from a bonding between men that's impossible to put into words, says Ed Honnold, the mild-mannered federal lawyer and founder of the Men's Council of Greater Washington, one of six such local groups salving men's deep inner pain through communal rituals and He pauses thoughtfully and adds, There's a lot of hurting cowboys out there.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Now, these guys are not cowboys. These guys were like middle managers at auto parts stores and shit like they are absolutely not hurting cowboys and also actual cowboys aren't what this guy thought they were. But he's not wrong again in saying that, like the the situation of American men was pretty unpleasant in the early 1990s.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

They were struggling against a capitalist culture that thrived on the obliteration of meaning. However, men, of course, are not the only ones suffering from this, nor are they suffering worse than any other group of Americans, right? This is just alienation under capitalism. Part of what he's doing here that is noteworthy and becomes a huge problem later on is he is...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

identifying real problems with the society we live in and then cutting men off from the rest of that society and thus cutting off the possibility of solidarity. So you can't look at this kind of alienation and loss of meaning and be like, wow, men and women and everybody is being harmed by the meaninglessness, this hole at the center of our culture. You have to say men are being harmed.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And then that invites like, well, there must be women that are doing it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah. There's a lot of hurt in cowboys. Motherfucker, you are not a cowboy. Yeah. And by the way, cowboys were mostly like poor black and Hispanic and indigenous men who were being exploited for their labor. Like, this is... None of what you're saying means anything.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

You are entirely... You're talking about the emptiness of culture and your understanding of history has been entirely formed by the movies you watched. Right. Like... Anyway. Do better. Do better. Well... Some of them will eventually in the future.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I think it would be interesting to try and find out, look into all these men's groups in the Washington, in the state of Washington in this period of time and see how many of those guys wound up being elders in the Proud Boys 30 years later. But... That's a more in-depth work for someone in the future if they want to do it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So one of the most dangerous aspects of the mythopoetic men's movement is that it was not as toxic as its descendants. Again, it identifies real problems, but then it recasts them as things that just men, mostly white men, are suffering from. And the answer is like kitschy, kind of racist LARPing as... Remember, like that's basically what they're doing. Right. And this.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, it's it's it's it causes problems later on. One of the most ridiculous aspects of the myth of poetic men's movement was the creation of Wingspan, the Journal of the Male Spirit. Don't you just want to sit down in with a copy of Wingspan, read out quotes to your buds? I start every morning with it. Yeah, yeah. Just spreading your wings.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Let's do it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So in the pre-internet era, this acted as a clearinghouse for the movement and a central place where influencers could advertise their events. Quote, Brother to Brother in New York, Healing the Father Wound in California, and Afro-American Males at Risk in New Jersey.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah. Ian, actually, have you been on just as one of our podcasts before? You have not. No, this is my first time. Well, you know, Ian, people should know about you again. You're one half of Gladiator. You are a longtime friend of our other editor, DJ Danil.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

A recent grandfather ceremony at the Fairfax Unitarian Men's Council featured drumming on a five and a half foot thunder heart drum. In this area, there are three large councils in Virginia, one in Gaithersburg and another in Baltimore.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The Men's Council of Greater Washington, which Honnold started in June of 1988 with 50 men, is the largest, with 2,000 members and 50 newcomers arriving for each monthly meeting. Late one night in January, at the council's meeting in the Washington Ethical Society Auditorium on Upper 16th Street, Honnold shed his Clark Kent image as he leads 500 men who are pounding drums and chanting.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The sweating windows shake with rhythmic thunder that reverberates up and down the street as they raise Honnold. gyrating and clapping high overhead and parade him about the room.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Then group leaders circulate with large feathers and clay pots, wafting the smoke of burning sage into the waiting faces in what is termed a Native American ritual designed to put you in touch with generations of male ancestors. So that's a little problematic.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Just a skosh. A number of other masculinity grifters followed Bly. Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette wrote the bestseller King Warrior Magician Lover, which purported to- That's a title right there. I want to be a King Warrior Magician Lover. And these are like the archetypes of male masculinity. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I don't think they're in order because you probably don't start as a king and end up as a lover, although maybe you do. That would be progressive, actually, saying that you need to shed your mastery and your sense of ownership in order to become a lover. But I don't think that's the point they're making. Moore is a Jungian analyst and a professor of psychology.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Gillette, like Dr. Jordan Balthazar Peterson, was a mythologist. I found a good write-up that described the main arguments in their book by Aaron Innes. The book's second shared premise is that there are universal male archetypes inherent to every male-bodied person that are represented in myth and story around the world, but are suppressed in the dominant culture.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The developmental history of every man, says Moore and Gillette, is in large part the story of his failure or success at discovering within himself the archetypes of mature masculinity.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Following Jungian psychological theory, they claim that if men are not given room to express these archetypes in a healthy manner, they will act them out unconsciously in ways that are damaging and violent, either directed outward at other people, as overtly hostile male behavior or directed inward, which saps the vitality of the men involved.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It's worth noting that the authors of both books, as well as their contemporary followers, seem a hell of a lot more concerned about remedying male acting out that's turned inward and creating male malaise than they are about male violence directed towards others.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

You are a legendary podcast editor, and you had absolutely no involvement in the July 16th plane crash that cost John F. Kennedy Jr. his life off the Massachusetts coast. No involvement at all. No, no. I don't know why people, yeah, don't bring it up. That's weird. He had nothing to do with it. Why are you talking about that? Just to let people know, Ian had nothing to do with it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Take the essay, Why Men Find It So Hard to Feel, by mythopoetic workshop leader Darren Austin Hall, who says that women are at an advantage to men spiritually, and that menstrual cycles mean women are energetically connected to cycles of the moon, which in turn is energetically linked to our unconscious.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

This leads him to the conclusion that the solution to warmongering tyrants in the world is for women to use touch and the beautiful arts of seductive love to disarm men, and that this will solve male violence. Oh, there it is. You girls just got to touch us right and we'll stop doing genocides. Oh, my God. That's incredible. Hitler wouldn't have done all that bad stuff if I get what I mean.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He was dating his cousin, so I don't really want to continue this joke, but. What? Dating's the wrong word. You know that story, Sophie. We've talked about Hitler and his cousin.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The one who killed herself. Yeah. It's a really bad story. Again, bringing up Hitler and the cousin that he may be murdered is definitely perhaps a good way of pointing out how fucked up it is to say the problem of men's violence is that women don't touch them the right way. Yeah. It's pretty bad.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It also brings to mind, I'm thinking about our Liberia episodes and that sex strike that a bunch of women went on to get the warlords to come to the table to negotiate and how it's like literally the opposite. It's number one, one of the most amazing stories of activism I've ever heard of. And it's literally the opposite of what these guys are saying. But I don't know. I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

This is all so gross. Yeah. Yeah. Icky. So most regular listeners of the show are broadly familiar with the way men's empowerment gurus and men's rights influencers evolved over the last 20 years or so. A mix of right-wing culture war politics intersecting with very divorced men. And I think we haven't talked about this yet, but these guys are all extremely divorced, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

There's a lot of weekend dad energy in these rooms.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, there's just no way anything else is going on here. Elon Musk would have been really, really would have fit in at these. Maybe it would have kept him from buying Twitter. You know, I don't want to say it was all toxic.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So, yeah, again, you have most people listening are kind of familiar with where things descend after the mythopoetic men's movement, which is still kind of is around, but more or less peters out over the course of the 90s.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And after that point, you've got a mix of right-wing culture war politics that intersects with these very divorced dudes, angry over custody, you know, yelling about how men are discriminated against. And then we have pick— Of course, starting in the early 2000s, these pickup artists selling the secret to fucking chicks at bars. And this all gets brewed up into this slurry.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And, you know, you've got the pickup artists intersecting with the men's rights activists, intersecting with the right-wing culture war politicians, intersecting with these literal Nazis. And from that slurry, we get Gamergate and the alt-right and at least a portion of Donald Trump's political success, right? So...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That is the story. Well, I mean, this is, we haven't gone into this on the show, and it was something I was broadly aware of, but didn't know much about. But I think this is, especially leading into a story about a guy like Andrew Tate, who is the most toxic, arguably, calls himself the most toxic man on the internet, and is certainly an archon of male toxicity.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I think it kind of behooves us to talk about what led to him, because it's interesting. Yeah. Um, anyway, this is the end of episode one. Anybody, anybody got some thoughts here at the end of things?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Ian, Sophie, what do y'all know about Andrew Tate?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It's so interesting to me how many people see, oh, men are being made to like spend their entire young and mature adult lives, like laboring for somebody else's profit in a factory or whatever. And as a result, their kids barely know them, which is a real problem. A lot of kids raised in like the 50s, 60s, 70s have and translating that as.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And, like, seeing, you know, their mom struggling to, like, keep the house going and raise the kids through all that and the kids suffering and be like, well, this is clearly a men's problem. No, this is a cultural problem. Everybody's problem is this. Anyway, Sophie?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Oh, Sophie, it's going to be terrible, and you're going to have to play a lot of clips. So...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I'm sorry.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

You know what? I'm not sorry. I'll never apologize. That's what I learned from Andrew Tate.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Thank you, Sophie.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I love me too. All right, everybody. That's going to do it with us for us today at Behind the Bastards, the podcast that will be recorded again immediately after this, although I will probably start drinking because it is now quite late. So, huzzah!

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He is in jail now. Unrelated to the Greta stuff, there was a little bit of confusion about that. But yes, he is in jail for sex trafficking in Romania. Sophie, is that more or less your understanding of the guy?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Well, Sophie, you may not understand this because of your womanliness, but I was embodying the archetype of the magician wild man.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That's fair. Well, I have started drinking. Mm. Mm. Mm. Got a nice glass of Port Rue Talisker here. And I want to start this episode by giving a shout out to a friend of the pod, former mayor of the city of Portland, Sam Adams. Now, y'all may not know Sam.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I think he was briefly on the show Portlandia, but he was fired from being the mayor because he had a sexual relationship with a teenage staffer and then got rehired by current mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, who's a giant piece of shit. Yeah. to be the mayor's body man, basically. And then this week, Sam announced that he was retiring because he had an iron deficiency.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And then Ted Wheeler told everyone, no, he's retiring because he wouldn't stop threatening and bullying women in the office. Both of you guys suck, and it's very funny this happened. Also, I got to say, shout out to Sam Adams. Honestly, going from sexually harassing a teenager to being a bully to adult women, that's a step forward.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, he does indeed fucking suck. Unfortunately, he's also kind of worth studying in detail because he's managed to do something with social media that I don't think anyone else has ever managed to the same degree of success. He has he's he's smart in one very specific way, even though he also did a bunch of dumb things and some really dumb crimes that hopefully have ruined his life.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Disagree, Sophie?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Look, one of the two things isn't a sex crime. So that's a real personal growth for former mayor of Portland, Sam Adams. Anyway.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Great hiring. Look, honestly, fuck Sam Adams. He's a piece of shit. But incredible hiring decision from Ted Wheeler. Yeah, let's get the guy in here who had sex with a 17-year-old staffer. Let's get him back in City Hall. We really need his insights. Great, great work, Ted.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, he I mean, he's not. But you can let him know how you feel about his decision to hire and then fire Sam Adams at Ted Wheeler on Twitter.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I do remember that. So I started talking about Ted Wheeler and Sam Adams because they're both toxic men. And today we are finally getting into the direct personal story of one of the most toxic men of all time, Emery Andrew Tate III. That's quite a name. That's quite a name. Now, Emery Andrew Tate III was born in Washington, D.C. on December 1st, 1986.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Now, that fancy name might lead you to think that he came from some like British ass noble family or some shit. That sounds like a Duke's name to me.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It sounds like old money for sure. Yeah. He is not. Um, now most of the texture that we get on his childhood comes from Andrew himself, which is not ideal because he is a liar. Um, but there's just not a lot of other, again, I haven't found, no one's done like a critical biography. There's not like a big long New Yorker piece that really delves into his backstory.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So I kind of had to do that myself to the best extent that I could do. Now I did find one, and this is honestly the only texture you get on his childhood that I have come across. Um, is from an article he wrote for a website for kickboxing that sells kickboxing gear. And the title of it is The Life of Andrew King Cobra Tate.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So again, this is not a credible source, but the way in which he writes about his childhood and what he wants you to believe about it does tell you a lot about the man. So we're still going to be covering it, but do not take this as literal truth. That should be obvious. Here's how he talks about his birth.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I was born in Washington, D.C., at Walter Reed Army Hospital, early one morning, December 1st, 1986. The doctor wanted to award me a perfect 10 on the birth scale, but settled on 9.5. So, already, already, that's the saddest thing anyone has ever bragged about.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Absolutely heartbreaking.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Two weeks overdue, but I was nose breathing already as the doctor held me upside down by my heels and my right fist was inside of my mouth as I suckled. The doctor pinched my thigh to get a response and I growled, knitting my brow and trying to crane my head up to see who had attacked me. The doctor paled, shocked at my defensive powers. I did not cry.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

oh my god i hate this fucking guy that's so funny though bragging about how tough you were as a baby as an infant as a baby like wow unbelievable i'm like incredible and i like keep rereading what you what you just said and it's

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I'm going to tell you all right now, because again, everything I found just kind of glosses over his childhood because we don't have a lot of like, like detailed, like someone hasn't gone through and like interviewed a shitload of people that he knew as a little kid or knew it. Right. That hasn't happened yet. I'm sure it will.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He was he was smart in one in a way that has allowed him to become dangerously influential to an entire generation of teenage boys in a way that like no one on Earth has managed quite yet. Donald Trump is really the only other guy that. that I might put next to Tate in that kind. And I think Tate has a wider appeal among Gen Z teens and tweens than certainly Trump ever has.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And I was thinking we're just going to have to brush over his childhood. And then I found this article he wrote about himself on a kickboxing website. And it made my week. It made my week.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So if you're curious about Andrew's parentage, his mother, Eileen, is indeed English as shit. And she's a white lady. She worked as a catering assistant. His father is Emery Tate Jr. And Emery was Emery Tate Jr. Emery Tate Jr. was a black American man. and a Chicago chess prodigy. Actually, up until a year or two ago, Emery Tate was much more famous than Andrew Tate.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

We actually had in our work chat, Mia was shocked to learn that Andrew Tate was Emery Tate's son. I had not heard of this guy, but I don't care for chess. Or for, yeah, chess, yeah. The Washington Post describes Emory Tate Jr. as a trailblazer for black chess players. He was one of the first, I don't know, he may have been the first super famous, really well-known black professional chess players.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

again I don't understand chess I don't understand why you would play a war game that doesn't include orcs but a lot of people who love chess say that he was one of the most fun players to watch I did read a lot of like writing like fans and like reddit and stuff talking about Emery Tate and one thing they all seem to agree on is he was just super entertaining to watch play chess why does when you type in Emery Tate into Google why does the first suggested thing come up as CIA what

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Well, Andrew says that he was in the CIA.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, he was. So he was in the Air Force as a sergeant and he served as a linguist. There's not actually hard evidence that he was in the CIA that I have seen. Like this is based on again, Andrew is kind of. And we're about to get into this. He's really plumping his dad's reputation to make him into not just a chess guy, but a badass.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I have not seen any independent confirmation that he worked in the CIA. Maybe he did. A lot of guys in that period who did some sort of weird work where they would have just been listed as a State Department employee. So it's not impossible. But I have not come across confirmation that he was in the CIA.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So the Washington Post and most sources who write about Andrew's dad will call him a grandmaster at chess. This is not entirely true. I mean, this is not true. He was an international master, which is a lesser rank. He never quite made it to grandmaster. I found, again, chess discussions online by nerds about chess who will say that he didn't make it to grandmaster.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

mainly because he wasn't willing to do certain things that you have to do to do that. But he had a really good record. He regularly beat Grandmasters. Some people say he was as good as Bobby Fischer. Again, I have no way to evaluate any of this.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Again, there's no battle tanks in chess. There's no titans with chainsaw hands. The ultimate game of strategy is still Warhammer 40,000. I think we can all agree on that. Yes, of course. It's been true for generations. But anyway, Emery Tate, great at chess. A chess historian wrote a book about him, which gives us some idea as to where Andrew Tate got his sense of style and personal branding.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The title was Triple Exclam with three exclamation points. The Life and Games of Emery Tate, Chess Warrior, which is... Kind of fun. Hardcore. I think he literally died at the table in 2015 playing a game of chess. Like, this motherfucker loved chess. He wears a white fedora with a gold band on the cover, which also gives you a little bit of insight into where Andrew Tate gets some of his...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

taste and style. And Andrew idolizes his father, and he doesn't particularly, I'm not going to pretend to know the man's emotional state, but in his public writing, he particularly celebrates his dad. In that kickboxing website article, 2022 Andrew Tate noted this about the male side of his family background.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

My grandfather, Emory A. Tate, Esquire, fought in World War II before becoming a lawyer in Chicago during racially charged times. As a black man, this shaped his worldview, and he was very strict, very hard indeed. As a boy, he pushed a plow with mule through the hard clay dirt of Georgia, forced to work on the farm. At age 12, he pushed a plow that only grown men normally handled.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah. We're going to be talking about all that. I am... One of the things, when I started looking into this guy, there's a ton of articles about... Because he blew up kind of mid-2021 up until, you know, the arrest a couple of weeks ago. There's not...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Then he ran away, never to return to the farm. He did some bare-knuckled fistfights as a young man and distinguished himself hand-to-hand during the war years." And again, I'm sure parts of that are true. Everything about his dad and his grandpa always veers into how good they were at hand-to-hand combat, and there is no evidence of this. Like, the stuff about working on a farm?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, that seems plausible. The stuff about how he fought the Nazis hand-to-hand? I don't know. Maybe.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I mean, it's like, you don't have to lie about him fist-fighting Nazis. It's okay if he just shot them. A lot of dudes did, and that was rad. Like... He doesn't have to be great at punching just because you grew up to punch people for a living. That's kind of a weird thing to focus on, Andrew. But he loves talking about how good his dad and grandpa were at fighting.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Quote, his son, my dad, Emery A. Tate Jr., was a young athlete learning wrestling in school and developing the early forms of Tate Shinkai strikes as a youth, which I guess is his own martial arts technique. His job in the military for 11 years took him on many adventures, and little is known for sure, except that my dad never loses.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He is my role model in many ways, even as I write poetry like he does. So, I mean, also, I think his dad would have been in the military. Let me double check here. Uh... Yeah. During Vietnam, which would mean that he did, in fact, lose. So sorry, Andrew. But I don't want to be mean to Emery Tate because, well, this is a little bit his fault.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So, yeah, the closest thing that Andrew has written or said that comes close to being emotionally impactful at all is when he writes about his father. I will give him that. He writes with like some amount of actual sincerity about his feelings towards his dad. And I'm going to give you an example of that now. I just picture a baby like... Yeah, just too angry to cry.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

profile articles on him that like go into detail about his background and his past and his entire rise to power you'll generally the best articles you'll find in places like buzzfeed or or um i think we have a couple from like the guardian they'll like summarize his backstory in two or three paragraphs i wanted to

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Now, bits like this do contrast with passages where Andrew will relate stories about his dad that sound kind of abusive. Quote, I learned to defend myself soon after I could walk. Long before my first punch into a pillow, I learned to balance, how to step backward after being pushed gently in the chest.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Dad made a game of it, a game which ended with a savage shove across a living room, sending me into a dramatic backpedal. I stopped myself with my head one inch from cracking into the far wall. That was the final test. Kind of sounds like your dad was just shoving you because he was pissed, Andrew.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I mean, look, if I was going to raise a child, I'd be lying if I said that the shoving method didn't hold some appeal. Because I do a lot of other things by shoving. It's how I move my furniture. It's how I record podcasts. I'm shoving a walking desk around the room right now. We actually... Daniel spends like 13 hours a week editing that out before we can even get the audio off to Chris.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That's most of his job. It's really... it's a good part of our workflow.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That was your fault for bringing it up. But more importantly... Not my fault because nothing is. Speaking of toxic masculinity, let's get back to Andrew Tate. Cool. So Andrew was raised initially in the D.C. area and then Indiana. And he seemed to want to follow in his father's footsteps. He started playing chess at age three. He started competing at five.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And he eventually competed in adult tournaments while still a child. And this is where we get the very first news article on Andrew Tate, who at that point was referred to as Emery A. Tate. It is a local news piece. And this is the first objective-ish piece of journalism that it's not just him writing about his background.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And it's really the only insight we get into his childhood that doesn't come directly from a Tate. It's again, a local news piece. The news in his town, which is like South Bend, was talking about the release. There was a movie coming out about Bobby Fischer, who I guess was good at chess. And so they were writing about that and they wanted a human interest piece.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

get into who this guy is and where he came from, because he kind of pops out of nowhere if you don't follow that. I think this is the first time anyone's really done that. So I think this will be valuable for that. But I want to start by laying out why we have to take Tate seriously and kind of... explain the scale of, of sort of his influence.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So they talked about young Andrew Tate, who was six when they wrote this article. He had started a chess club in South Bend with some other kids and he had taught them chess because he wanted people to play against. It includes the article, a couple of quotes that are interesting.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Every kid wants to be like his dad, the elder Tate said, but father had recently limited son's playing time, encouraging other activities. I don't think that a kid his age should spend so much time playing chess. As a parent, I'd like to see him become a top-level player, but I realize there's so much more to life than just chess.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He learned how to swim this summer, and he plays with his friends and stuff like that. Andrew, however, says he plays because he's bored all the time. Most of the time I'm bored, and that's the only thing I want to do most. So... Yeah, interesting. There's some insight into the actual kid there. That is a response I understand from a kid. Like, I am bored all the time.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

This is the only thing that I like. It also, you know...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

gives you a little bit of a look into like there's for whatever reason one of the things i take away from this article is that emory tate didn't want his son to follow him as a chess guy it might have been some insecurity about uh not wanting his kid to be better than him or it may have just been understandably like you know i i never made a lot of money playing chess i want you to do something else with your life i don't want you to like

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Be locked into this thing. I know there's some interesting questions that answers or asks. The author of this article notes that Andrew had just competed in his first adult chess tournament where he had. And again, Andrew's later on when he starts putting out propaganda, trying to make himself into a badass will point out that like at age six, he was playing in adult chess tournaments.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He did lose three out of five games. And his dad eventually had to pull him out of the tournament because, quote, he got very upset because he thought he was failing. So Emery withdrew his son from the game to, quote, save him from crying in front of all those people. And we're not keyed into what precisely happened there. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It sure seems like his dad said he did.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And again, I'm going to guess one of two things happened there. Either Andrew was just throwing a fit because he was losing and his dad was like, well, you can't be at a chess tournament if you're going to throw a fit when you lose. Or... Andrew was doing OK and wanted to keep playing and his dad was angry that he was losing and didn't want him to keep like risk losing again.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Even though three to two is not a bad record for a six year old playing six against either way. We don't know which of those is the case. Either possibility is interesting to me. Andrew. Andrew's parents had another boy, Tristan, two years after Andrew was born. And the two brothers have been inseparable their whole lives. They played chess together, but Tristan never competed.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Uh, they would later kickbox together, but Tristan never competed. He's like always there, but he also doesn't seem to get to live a full life because he exists purely in his brother's shadow as like an agent of his greatness. It's kind of a weird relationship for Tristan. Um, but I don't think he's self-aware enough to understand that it's weird.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

One photo in that news article shows six-year-old Andrew focused in the picture frame, face taking up a third of the frame, playing chess, while just Tristan's hand is visible in the right third. And as the brothers grew up, Andrew would consistently stay in focus while Tristan would always just sort of be off to the side.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Um, I am not exaggerating when I say that he is maybe the most influential single person on teen and preteen males in the U S and the UK and some other parts of the West than anyone else on planet earth. Um, In fall of 2022, financial services company Piper Sandler released a survey of 14,500 U.S. teens taken between August and September of that year.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

To this day. I don't have it in the script. We could play it. There's a very funny video of his brother, like, telling him to go out to, like, film their cars for this video they're doing about how nice their life is. And then when his brother goes out, Andrew cuts the feed just to be like, ha-ha, fuck you, this is my show. I don't have to, like, let you do anything if I don't want to.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And it's, like, weirdly abusive because they're both men who were in their 30s. Like, Tristan, you don't have to take that. Like... Things got harder for them after South Bend because their mom and dad, it's not a good marriage, and they divorce. I have found very little detail about why that divorce happened.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

We can infer, though, that it was an extremely painful time for Andrew, and this is all he's willing to write about it. Dad was working minimum wage jobs over time since his military career had been ended. Both mom and dad worked so that we could survive. Things became so hard that we decided to go to England and try a life there. Only minus dad.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And he's not willing to write like, you know, the marriage didn't work out or. And again, we don't know why. I'm going to avoid like theorizing what might have happened there. But this is clearly he idolizes his dad and he's taken away from him forever, basically. And obviously, mom might have had a perfectly good reason for doing that. I'm not trying to be critical.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

We just actually don't really know. But this is definitely like the fact that he's not willing to even acknowledge the basics of what happened kind of suggests this leaves a pretty profound impact on young Andrew. So. By age 11, he was, in his words, man of the house, looking after his younger brother and now sister. The town in England they live in was called Luton.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And it is still, I think it's usually pronounced by English people, Luton. But, you know, you know how they are.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That's how they sound.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

When I do my accent, should I do my Boston accent to get him back on board? Yeah, your Boston accent's really good. Oi, I'm from Boston, and oi, loi, kaffee, and chuda. That's my Boston.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Boston is just Western Australia, Sophie. Anyways, Robert, it's time for an ad break. It is time for an ad break. So go to Dinkin' Donuts and have you a cafe. Robert. That was my Boston.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I think it's pretty good. I think it's pretty good. It's embarrassing.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Again, I'll take any kind of praise. I don't care. Bad attention, good attention. It's all the same to me. Welcome to our podcast about toxic masculinity. And we're back. So. Luton is not an easy place to grow up. It is, in fact, close to, if not the very hardest place to grow up in England. It is one of the poorest places in the country.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Tate was the number one influencer on the list in terms of popularity. He beat Kanye West. He beat Mr. Beast. He beat Dwayne The Rock Johnson, all of them.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It has been repeatedly voted the worst place to live in England. I actually found a poll from like seven days before I read this script from Bedfordshire Live that voted it the worst place to live in England. It is a tough town. Um, Andrew and his family have basically no money. They live in public housing and they are just barely getting by.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

We know this for certain, like this is a confirmed fact about his upbringing. Now, Andrew, again, definitely acknowledges that they were poor. This is actually an important part of his own self mythology. Um, but he also makes some claims that we do not know for sure are true. He claims he got a job as soon as I was old enough, although he does not say when that was. Um,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Quote, as soon as I was old enough, I got a job moving 80-pound boxes of frozen fish into the market at 5 a.m. Then a full day of school. Weekends found me at the market stall where I perfected my knife skills, flawlessly filleting fish at blinding speeds. After some time, I never cut my hands at all, not even a nick. I learned to play drums. And, yeah, that's interesting.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I'm sure some, again, I'm sure pieces of all of this are true. I don't know about his knife skills or the blinding speed, but I'm sure pieces of this are true. Now, Trist or Andrew, interestingly, says that the only one of them who got into a real world fight when they were kids was his brother, Tristan. Some kid was bullying him and he beat him up.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I don't know if that story is true or not, but it is worth noting that Andrew claims in this article, I have never struck a person in anger. Now, we know that's not true because he has beaten at least one. Like, yeah, we know that's not true. We will talk about that later. But this is the claim that he is making in this thing that he writes in like 2022.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, I don't know who Mr. Beast is, but he's somebody. He's a YouTuber. Yeah, he's a YouTuber. I know Elon Musk joked about giving him control of Twitter, or he asked, whatever. I don't know anything about him. I'm sure you're fine, Mr. Beast. Or he's horrible.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

When he was a young adult, he was introduced to a kickboxing trainer and he started training, as did his brother soon after. By 2008, he was the seventh highest ranked heavyweight kickboxer in Britain. A year later, he won his first championship and became the number one ranked kickboxer in Europe for his division.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Two years later, in 2012, he was the second best heavyweight kickboxer on the planet. That sounds very impressive, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, second best kickboxer on the planet. That means you can kick to death anybody but one guy. Yeah. That is not what that actually means. So I'm going to be honest. All of the articles about him will just say he was the second best light heavyweight.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Sometimes they'll just say the second best kickboxer on the planet. They'll talk about his championships and like list the numbers. I was the first draft of this. Actually, I just wrote that and then moved on. I was like, yeah, he's really good at kickboxing. Lots of bad people are really good at something. I figured that that was true.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I looked at his Wikipedia page, which says he has like 79 wins and 9 losses and lists his championships. And he did win a bunch of what are called world championships. However... That's not how boxing works, because I also looked up a bunch of discussions of boxing fans analyzing his actual performance.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And one thing they'll point out is that, well, there's not just one guy who's the best at kickboxing. Kickboxing is actually an incredibly fragmented sport, and there are a bunch of different – I don't know if they call them leagues or whatever. There's a bunch of different – like types of kickboxing championships. And some are more impressive than others, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Some are people who are really good at kickboxing. Some are people who are more amateur and Andrew kind of stayed doing the more amateur stuff. And he was really good at beating amateur kickboxers. One of the critiques people will note who are into kickboxing is that the league that he became world heavy or light heavyweight champion in only covers Europe.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So you guys might notice there's a couple of places that are the world that aren't Europe. That I assume there's some kickboxers in those places. At least one or two. Yeah, at least a couple.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The other thing they'll point out is that of all of these fights that he had, and he claims like 79 wins, they can only verify like 40-something fights because – and this is – that may not mean that he's lying. It's – all of the ways that this shit gets reported are weird, right? And there's so many different weird leagues and shit.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He might be lying about the total number of wins and games he was in, but of the things that we can verify, only, this is something kickboxing fans will point out, only five of his fights are against guys with Wikipedia pages. And that may sound silly, but it means guys who are notable enough that they are good enough at kickboxing.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Of the notable five fights he was in, he lost three of them. The allegation kickboxing fans will make is that he mostly fought amateurs to pad his record. Now, everyone agrees that's still pretty good at kickboxing, but he was never the second best on the planet Earth at kickboxing. That's just simply not the case. Um, and I, I think it's, it's fair to say, yeah, he's pretty good at kickboxing.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah. No good people get famous on YouTube, which is what I text our friend Cody Johnston every single day when he releases a new YouTube video.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He was never as good as he claimed. And this is a part of the self mythologizing that he engages in kind of vastly exaggerating his competency at kicking people a bunch with his feet. Um, So yeah, it's also worth noting that like the level Tate actually was at did not pay terribly well. The per fight amount is impressive.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He can make between 50 and $100,000 per fight that he was in, but he was having like one or two fights per year. Which is not terrible income, but you're paying for a coach, you're paying for gym access, you're paying for the medical care that comes from this. And he's going to have several serious injuries. So he's not living well off of this salary.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And in fact, he and his brother are living in a cheap apartment, I think in Bedfordshire, and eating as cheaply as they possibly can in order to afford to keep being in kickboxing. Because it's like that's kind of what it is when you're competing at this kind of awkward level that he's at. And Tate relates aspects of this himself in a video from 2022.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And I'm going to play this so everyone can get a look and listen to the guy before we can go any further. This is from his video on Rumble. This is his like you like Rumble is right wing YouTube. And his his channel is called Tate Speech, as in hate speech. But you guys get it right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Anyway, the Andrew Tate hashtag on TikTok has received more than 10 billion views over the course of 2022 alone, which is fucking nuts. That is insane. That is like... incomprehensibly viral. He was also, he will always claim that he's like the most Googled person on earth. I looked into what he actually is. That's not quite it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And I actually suspect he's probably not lying too much there. That seems like a reasonable story. And I know some people who are professional athletes at that similar awkward level where you're like a pro, but you're not rich who are like, yeah, you do whatever it takes to like stay fueled. And that means cooking giant pots of like not delicious things just to say.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Anyway, that seems broadly speaking, like he's probably not lying entirely about that. Now, he is lying about he and his brother being world-class athletes. You might say he was. That's going to be up to what you define that as. But Tristan is not competing in kickboxing.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He is working as like a coach, kind of, although people will criticize that in ways that are too weirdly nuanced and involve knowledge of kickboxing. So we're just going to move on. Now, the height of his career as a guy who kicks people for money comes in like 2012, 2013. 2013, I think, is his last big championship.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And not long after that, he decides to leave professional sports as a full-time thing. Injuries play a major role in this. Tate does not like talking about vulnerability, but he was worse at taking hits than he likes to pretend. He suffered detached retinas in several fights and had to have surgery for his eyes. I mean, again, and again, I'm pointing this out because he will never admit it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

like if you're a professional kickboxer, at some point you're going to get hurt enough that you can't keep doing kickboxing. Like we all saw like Muhammad Ali go from, you know, Muhammad Ali to, you know, a guy who has severe injuries as a result of being a boxer, all this stuff's bad for you.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Like you either quit at a certain point or it destroys your body and mind the same way that like football or whatever it does. I mean, we all just got a reminder of that a couple of weeks ago with, um, Oh, the guy who had a heart attack on the table.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, this is all pretty normal sports stuff, right? When you're watching guys do these kind of combat sports, you are watching people mortgage their bodies in the hope of getting rich. And Tate kind of had to accept at a certain point, my body is going to give out before I get rich doing this. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So that's the thing that he recognizes, and he decides, I need to, like most professional athletes do, I need to find something else I can do that's easier on my body that I can support myself with. Some people open car dealerships. Some people decide to sell ads for different things and be pitchmen. Some people go into professional baseball. Tristan decided to become a webcam sex pimp.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So that's it. That's an interesting call. I do think history would have been different in fascinating ways if that's the choice Michael Jordan had made. Sophie, don't give me that look.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

He is the number one, when you type in who is into Google, who is Andrew Tate is the number one who is question asked of Google in 2022. which is not the same as being the most Googled person on Earth, although he is one of the most Googled people on Earth. I found a couple of lists of that, and he's often at, like, number eight, someplace closer to, like, ten. But, like, he's incredibly famous.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Anyway, what?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I usually do. So for three years, they run a rapidly expanding business, finding women to act as cam operators. Now, this is not an inherently dishonest business, I guess. If you are building a studio and building a platform by which you can bring these cam workers attention and they understand their contracts and it's a reasonably fair split, then

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I don't have an ethical issue with building a company that allows sex workers to do cam work, right? That's fine. But the business that Tate and Tristan operated was not fine. It was fundamentally pretty toxic.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, I'm going to quote now from an article in The Mirror, which is not an ideal source, but it's who entered them about this. And I don't know why they would lie about something this shady and gross because it makes them seem like sex criminals. Quote, some of their customers fall for the belief that they can have a real relationship with the women they see on screen.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

But Tristan brazenly told the Sunday Mirror it's all a big scam and bragged that he doesn't feel any guilt because no one cares and it's their problem, not mine. The more punters hand over, the more models earn. Some women will claim to have crippling university debt, a family member in need of private health care, or a dream of moving to the UK, sometimes even telling men they want to meet them.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Whatever the excuse is, it is a lie, Tristan said. So he tells a story in this article about this guy who wanted to give a cam operator $20,000, his life savings. And Tristan's like, and I talked him out of it. I told him, you know, he shouldn't do that. She was actually making good money. And then he came back a couple of months later and fell in love with another.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And this time I was like, yeah, man, we'll take your money. Which... Definitely a lie. Tristan and Andrew Tate have never turned down 20 grand that a desperate man offered them for lies. Yeah, there's no way they're trying to talk somebody out of that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah. I am going to continue that quote from the mirror. But first, you know what? I am going to continue first. is capitalism. I am keeping this nightmare engine alive on my own by advertising for products on this podcast. So- On your own. That's it. I am the linchpin holding the global economy together.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Look, after Facebook fell apart, it's just me, baby. Oh my God. Name another company, Sophie. It's just this podcast.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

We are back. So... I'm going to continue that quote from the Sunday Mirror of Tristan Tate being interviewed. He believes he is beyond the reach of the authorities because of two lines in the terms and conditions. He said, one is broadcasting is for entertainment purposes only. That means if a model says she has a sick dog or a sick grandma, it doesn't have to be true.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The next is that all cash given to models is a voluntary sign of gratitude for their time broadcasting. Now, I'm not a lawyer.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It does sound like you're taking their money. That said, he may be in the right there. The Mirror did a journalist-y thing and they reached out to a lawyer to be like, is this true? And the lawyer said, maybe, but also generally UK laws say that you can't defraud people and take their money on fraudulent terms. But also the laws haven't kept pace with technology.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

There's a good chance he was in a legal gray area. They did not get charged. So... Probably is fair to say they were in enough of a legal gray area that they were reasonably safe. And to be perfectly honest, I suspect they could have done this indefinitely if Andrew Tate hadn't been a sex criminal, which is what we're getting to here.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So Andrew Tate later wrote this on his personal website slash shady business teaching men to run their own webcam porn studios. This is a thing he does later, but this is how he talks about his webcam business and how he makes it work. Oh, God. How did I become rich? Webcam. I've been running a webcam studio for nearly a decade.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yes.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I've had over 75 girls work for me, and my business model is different than 99% of webcam studio owners. Over 50% of my employees were actually my girlfriend at the time, and of all my girlfriends, none were in the adult entertainment industry before they met me. My job was getting women to fall in love with me. Literally, that was my job.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she's quality, get her to fall in love with me to where she'd do anything I'd say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together. Whether you agree or disagree with what I did with their loyalties, submission and love for me doesn't matter. You cannot reject the results, and the results are simple.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

My girlfriends would do more for me than 99.9% of men's wives would do for them. So what does that make y'all think?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That is a fuckload of people. And in some accounts, he's like beating Donald Trump, which again, Trump is the literal president. And it's interesting because his career – you can compare him to a guy like Joe Rogan, right? Joe – there's nothing that people like wonder why he's popular, but there's no mystery as to how he became popular. He's got a very – he's been consistently – The trajectory.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That's one of the grossest things I've ever heard. That is really gross. That's fucking horrible.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, he bragged about this. Now, this is potentially him describing sex trafficking, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

That's what it sounds like. If the women are not getting... Now, again, there's not like a law that says you can't have someone fall in love with you and then contract with them to do sex work, right? That's not...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

thing that there's a law against however if they are not getting paid for it and if they are not being allowed freedom of movement well then what happens is that you have like entrapped them and you are sex trafficking them right this is what's called law enforcement calls this the lover boy method right where you get someone to fall in love with you and also this is this goes on this is a very old tactic in like shall we say pimping um we're like yeah you make a woman a

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

feel like or a person be in love independent on you and then you kind of emotionally abuse them into doing sex work this is a thing that happens that is like a recognized part of a criminal enterprise um now obviously getting charges based on those words on his website is going to be hard to do um but just kind of the stuff that he had published for a while was enough that people at the time should have known that he was up to a what was a likely illegal business

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Now, if you came across articles about Tate in 2021 or 2022, and they went into any detail about his webcam career, the most you were likely to learn was what the Mirror wrote here. After three years, they moved to Romania, saying the UK had gone downhill. They have women on a number of seedy sites. Operators take a 40% cut, and the rest goes to the studio.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So that's what they claimed for years had happened. Like, you know, we did it in the UK and then the UK got woke and so we switched to Romania. That is not what actually happened. So they started running this can business in 2012. Three years after 2012, when they moved to Romania, it's 2015.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Now, just a few days ago after his arrest, a story dropped that made it clear why they actually left the UK, and it had nothing to do with wokeness or the country going downhill. Andrew Tate was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault and physical abuse in 2015. Vice broke the story. So... That's the reality of why they had to leave the UK.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The timeline makes a lot more sense when you know that. He's like, yeah, oh, we had to bounce because things just got too woke for us in Romania. Shut the fuck up. He later made the claim that I had to leave Romania because in the UK a man can get accused of rape for anything, right? And, you know, Romania, it's much harder to get accused of rape.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And so I moved to Romania, not because I'm a rapist, but because I like freedom. No, man, you were you were accused of rape by multiple women and then investigated and you decided to leave because you didn't know if the UK was going to come for your ass at some point. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Very, very consistent guy, constantly in the limelight, constantly doing stuff. Not hard to see where he came from. Tate is a kickboxer for a while and then kind of drops off, is just sort of a guy on Instagram, and then is suddenly the most famous influencer on the planet, seemingly overnight. And this is not an accident.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And the story is actually a bit more fucked up than that, because back in 2014, a woman who Vice refers to as Amelia filed a police report alleging sexual and physical abuse by Tate. She claims that she and Tate met in 2009. They were friendly for years until 2013, which is when Tate was transitioning away from kickboxing to webcam pimping.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The two decided to go out on a series of dates at the end of that year. And after several weeks, they were in her room when Andrew forced himself on her. Now, she describes him stopping. She tells him to stop when he starts like trying to go to have sex. And she tells him that she doesn't want to have sex. And he tells her she says that he like sits quietly for a moment.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And then she asks him what's going on. And he says, I'm debating whether I should rape you or not. What the fuck? What the fuck? Oh boy, howdy. It's bad. Within an instant, he changed who he was. He wasn't the same Andrew that I knew, that was funny, that would make me laugh. It was like his eyes went, and I didn't have a clue who that person was.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah. And it's so here's one of the things about this is she goes to the cops. He rapes her. And it takes they have after that point, she consents to sex. She says a couple of times over the next six months that. Which is not uncommon in situations like this, but eventually she goes to the police to make a complaint. And the police are like, do you want to proceed with charges, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Because that's an option that you have in this case. And she decides... Obviously, I don't I hopefully I don't think I have to explain this to this audience, but like there are a lot of horrible personal consequences that can come to charging your rapist right to to pursuing criminal charges. She decides and there is and this seems like a positive things.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

There's an option in the UK where you can just log a complaint. and say, this guy raped me without proceeding with criminal charges, which she decides she doesn't want to do at this point. And so that's what she does. And then this is, again, 2013. 2015 is when those two women who worked in his cam studio push press charges against him. And the police, and this is a positive step.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It's about to get less positive. But the police find out, oh, there's a report logged against this guy two years earlier. And they reach out to Amelia. And they're like... More women have come forward saying that this guy assaulted them. Do you want your charges? Do you want your allegations basically to be added to theirs in this case that we're building? Right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And she says yes, and she hands over her phone to the cops, which contained numerous audio notes, because she had told Andrew in, like, text and stuff, like, hey, you know, like, you raped me, that's why I don't want to know you anymore. And he had responded to her, and he had responded to her using voice notes where he admitted to what he had done. Um...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And yeah, I'm going to play a couple of notes of Andrew Tate here for you, because before we hear him in his like 15 year old boy influencer voice, we should hear how he talks to somebody like Amelia when he doesn't think it's going to be on the news.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

This isn't also something, he didn't just get surprised because something of his happened to go viral. This was the result of a tactic I haven't seen anyone else use, or certainly not to the degree of success that Tate used.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

So that's not great. That's not great.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, it's pretty bad. He's a pretty bad dude.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Again, normally self-diagnosis is a thing we avoid on this, but that's just very obvious textbook narcissism. I am the smartest man in the world. It's not hard to see what's going on with this guy. And I don't know his dad or how that all went down, but... There's this... If you look at the way he talks about his dad and his grandpa, there's this need to associate himself with greatness.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And I don't know. Everything that's going on here makes sense, but it's also so bleak. And I... I don't know. There's probably a better writer and thinker than me might be able to draw a more...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And the tactic that he unleashed not only made him this popular, but it made him popular enough that you can find articles about schools in the US and the UK holding seminars for young male students and for teachers to try to talk about de-radicalizing kids who have fallen under Tate's spell.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

trenchant connection between the kind of stuff Bly was talking about, about how lack of connection to other men and to older men and how not knowing what your place is in society leads young men to feel disconnected and that that can be the root of some bad behavior and the fact that Tate

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

idolizes his dad and is separated from him and becomes so needful to kind of convince others of his greatness while using violence and threats against them. I don't know that there's a connection there, but it's, I think, kind of worth... thinking about, I guess, in the same continuum. I don't know. This is still stuff that I'm kind of muddling through, too.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

But it's not surprising to me that this guy has this... this kind of obsession with his... Because that's what it's about, right? It's never about, like, that he wanted, you know, sex or whatever.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

It's about power. He had this... And it's about the fact that she didn't want to have sex with him is, like, an attempt from her to exercise agency, and no one else in the world gets to exercise agency. Just Andrew Tate. Right? Like, that's the way this guy thinks about things. Um... I don't know. There's a lot going on there worth pondering.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And I guess we will ponder it for a while while we wait for part three of this series where we will talk about the fallout from these cases and the social media presence that Tate builds when, again, nobody knows this. I mean, this young woman knows it and a couple of police officers know it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

but um as a spoiler the police don't proceed with the charges um and in fact they uh it's really fucked up um the police say that they believe her or amelia says what she said to to vice when they talked to her is that the police told her that they believed her claims but they couldn't go forward with the case because there was a shred of doubt about tate's guilt um

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

there's a shred of doubt it does seem like he admitted it directly he literally admits to being a sexual predator what are we doing there's some fucked up cop gaslighting here because they tell her like look going through the process of pressing charges against a rapist is so traumatic to the woman that we don't do it unless there's no shred of doubt we're trying to protect you from like an ugly court which is like

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

When I posted a comment about him during his spat with Tunberg, just because I was frustrated at the degree, not with Greta's response to him, which I thought was totally fair, but with like people kind of cheering it on as if he'd been beaten by it, where my concern was like, well, the attention historically has just kind of made him more aggressive.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Cop gaslighting is on another level.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Yeah, it's fucking bleak. That's terrible. This whole story is bleak.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And after this point, Andrew and Tristan move to Romania. They move their sex trafficking webcam business to Romania. And we will pick up that story in part three, where it gets a lot bleaker in some ways, but also we get to make fun of Andrew Tate videos. So... You know.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Take your wins where you can get them, kiddos. What are we? Who are we? Who are we here?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

great franchise is great internet machine lovely episode should check that out if you haven't write something why why yes robert it is a week from when we are recording this all right well we will finish recording the andrew tate episodes and then i will figure out what the fuck i'm doing for this live show that apparently a bunch of you assholes have decided to show up at god damn you

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Thank you all for buying tickets. Before we close out, I want to thank again April Clark and Grace Freud of Girl God, the Girl God podcast. Both great comedians. They have an upcoming show at JFO Vancouver on February 25th. People can get tickets for that at girlgodshow.com. They were on the early version of part of this, but... I had an emergency and we had to bounce.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And now we are recording this late at night because it is the only way that we can make this show work in a way that is we are contractually obligated to. So thank you, April and Grace. Thank you, Ian and Sophie, for being guests on my show last minute.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Thank you. Thank you, Sophie. Everyone else can go to hell, though.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And there were a bunch of comments in that post I made by teachers who were like, I don't think people understand how popular he is with like 13, 14, 15 year old boys. I talk to kids every day who worship the guy and I've never seen anything like it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I think about that sort of thing in a lot of... I'll talk about kind of... There's elements of Tate's pitch that I think might have worked on me when I was 17, 18 years old. Particularly a big part of it is like... working a shit job that you hate for the entirety of your youth is bullshit, which it, it is like, it's a terrible way to spend a life doing the thing you hate forever.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Um, and if you kind of, if that's the hook you're leading with rather than what a lot of male influencers lead in with, which is like, here's how to pick up chicks. Um, That's an interesting spin that he's put up. We'll get more into his pitch and what about it is not new and what about it is new. But I want to start by kind of explaining who tilled the soil that Tate grew up in.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And to do that, we have to travel back in time to the 1990s and the work of the first real modern masculinity guru in U.S.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Now, we've talked about guys like Bernard McFadden in the past who had elements of that where he's big into physical culture and getting buff, and he talks about how modernity is making men weak. But Robert Bly is the guy who – Jordan Peterson is cut in his image, and so to a degree is a guy like Andrew Tate. He is the first guy to kind of bring both academic rigor and also this kind of focus on –

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

The the damage capitalism has done to masculinity into this kind of it's become the men's rights movements. It's become the pickup artist community. That's not what it was called at the time. But yeah, Robert Elwood Bly is the name of the guy who kind of kicked all of this off. And he's not the dude you'd think he was. He's an American poet.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

By some accounts, he's one of the most influential poets in American history. And he was born on December 23rd, 1926 in Minnesota. Initially, Bly seemed to be on certainly not the path that he wound up on. He goes to Harvard University. He studies at the Iowa Writers Workshop. He receives a Fulbright scholarship to go to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And during this time, he also gets connected to these great poets who are not Westerners, like Pablo Neruda and Rumi, and they influence his understanding of art and the myths that underlie it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

And it also leads him to feel that modern contemporary American poetry is kind of hollow and lacks a connection to this kind of deeper mythology that he sees in some of these Eastern poets and some of these poets from other parts of the world that aren't the United States that he feels are making a deeper connection to things.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

Oh, yeah. Wait, wait. I don't know much about it. Tell me. Tell me. Why is this?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)

I mean, I feel that way about Harvard, too.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

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Behind the Bastards

Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

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Behind the Bastards

Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

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Behind the Bastards

Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It's a fiction. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Bye.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

That's right. Obviously, the files that just got released, look them up, completely vindicate us. But, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Shit's going to be so expensive by the time you're 30. Jesus.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, that is essentially this story here. So we've got one picture of his mom and dad. I don't even have his father's name, but as you can see from the photo, he was a lot older than her. Like, there is a sizable age gap in between these two people. And he dies of a heart attack right after Bishop is born.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now... So after he dies, Patricia and her kids live in government housing. And one of Bishop's older sisters, who was about seven years old at this time, said this about her recollections of their childhood. It wasn't all good memories, but it was a lot of good memories there. So, you know, he has kind of a weird situation with his dad. Money's not super, you know, common for them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But they have a pretty loving household, at least according to several of his siblings. Now, and this is where part of why I think Aligio is able to identify with Gen Z. Like Gen Z, he comes into the world too late to have any recollections of the good times, you know, like there's a there's a period of time in which his parents are doing well and he misses that entirely.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's unfair. You all lost a podcast and Katie and I both lost out on purchasing our yachts. So that's a bummer. By yachts, I mean an exact replica of the boat from Jaws.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

A few months before his second birthday, CPS takes him and his siblings away from their mother. She had been a user of hard drugs for quite a while, and her use had escalated to the point where friends of the family had called the government about it. They were like, she can't be alone with those kids, right? And she overdoses fatally months after this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

One of Alessio's older sisters later said, she was street, and that's why she died so young. She died at 33. You can't be doing nothing but the street if you died at 33. Okay. So that's what the family says about this kid's mom.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It is kind of worth noting that that's the account that he gives in videos years later, or that's the account that a member of his family gives in videos posted years later. He will claim to have no memory whatsoever of either of his parents. Although there's some allegations that this is basically a defense mechanism, right? Stop himself from feeling what happened to them as much. Perhaps.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Makes sense. He and his siblings all become wards of the state after this. He's separated from all of his sisters, but he and his younger brother, Leo, get to stay together for a while. They bounce from foster home to foster home, but they are repeatedly kicked out of each for fighting.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So they get found by foster homes he and his younger brother are taken in, and then they'll just beat the shit out of each other and get kicked out. Which, first off, if you're a foster family taking in two young brothers, they're going to beat each other up.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But yeah, you're a little boy. They're two little boys. They're going to fight. So this is enough of a problem, though, that when Bishop is seven, the state finally separates him from his brother and he gets sent to a foster house in Queens that's run by a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Pope and his younger brother, Leo, isn't there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, he will later claim that he was sexually abused while in this foster home. He alleges that he was molested and forced to engage in sexual behavior with other foster kids while Mr. Pope took pictures of them. Statistically, this is not unheard of. An estimated 40% of foster kids endure some sort of abuse during their time in the system.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And at least 4% to 5% of foster kids are sexually abused while in the system, a rate that raises significantly above the background level. And Bishop isn't the only witness here. But I don't see a whole lot of gain for him to have lied about this, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And the way this usually comes up is he's being interviewed on his own backstory for podcasts and YouTube streams by other creators within this consciousness subculture. And he'll talk a lot about his dad mentally and sexually abusing him. He claims that as a result of the abuse, he began acting out, humping both boys and girls in school with his clothes on.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, very small, very small. Like the Lego size one.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

At another point, he claims to have let a dog lick his penis, saying, I don't regret it either. Yeesh. Which is, you know, I mean, first off, you don't got to tell people that story, man. Yeah, that's when you can keep buttoned up. You can take that bad boy to the grave with you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. I mean, you know, boys do stuff, but not that. Yeah. Well, I'm going to say, obviously, he's not the first boy to do that, right? Like, that's a specific joke about, like, kids putting peanut butter on their junk.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But it's also, it's not common, you know, of all of the weird fucked up things I knew other young dudes to do with their junk. None of them did that. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He's a little boy. He's not. He can't be blamed for it. Right. Like a small boy just like experimenting in a way that's weird. You should you should you need to talk to him. You need to be like, hey, that's not something you could do. That's not something you could do to a dog. It's not something you should be doing to yourself.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Guidance is necessary.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Not a lot of good guidance for this kid.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. And, you know, again, it's this situation where a lot – he frames this as a result of and reaction to the abuse he's experiencing from Mr. Pope, right? Yeah. And after some period of time, he works up the courage to report Mr. Pope to a social worker. And to the foster system's credit, which I won't say often here, he gets sent to live with someone else very quickly, right? Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, the next family he's sent to is a foster family in the Bronx who had also adopted his younger brother, Leo. Okay. Yeah. So first off, the brothers are back again. That seems good. These people are stable. They live in the suburbs. They've got a large house, and they have at least an upper middle class amount of money. And so he's pretty happy there at first, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He describes later, it was beautiful nature out there. Yeah. Things are looking up, right? Maybe we've got our little orphan Annie story coming together. You know, the sun's come up. It's tomorrow, except for no, it is not. As Bishop and Leo would both complain, it's still like this house with these people who had access to, you know, a lot more resources.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So we don't we don't do stuff like that because then you wouldn't be surprised. And that's me enjoying the podcast that we do. I know. I had to watch like fucking so many hours of this of motherfucking online documentaries about this guy because all of his stuff has been pulled off the Internet. Katie, we're doing a cult leader today. We're doing a new cult leader.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They still weren't very nice or nurturing. Per Elegio, they wouldn't let me use a washing machine. We had to wash clothes by hand. He couldn't let me have my lights in my room. Like, there was no light in my room. It was just a dresser in darkness. He has stated in other videos that one of his new foster parents told him it was because I was dark-skinned, I was dirty. Ooh. Yeah! Ooh!

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Don't love any of that. Now... In interviews published by Hood Horrors, Leo has claimed that around this time, he and his brother were both diagnosed with learning disorders, including ADD. Bishop claims that he was put on Ritalin, and Leo states that both brothers were moved to special ed because of all this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Where stories diverge is that Aligio is later going to claim that this is all the result of a con done by his foster mother to get additional checks from the government for taking in two disabled boys. I don't think this is true. foster parents do get a stipend that can increase if their kid has higher costs due to a disability. And these stipends cap out at a fairly low level.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Although as rates vary from state to state, it's hard for me to say exactly how it goes. The general consensus online seems to be that there are no real stipends that will defray the cost in a super massive way.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Speaking of things that aren't going to happen, me miss out on these products and services.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

We're like, I mean, this guy's a little older than me, but the cult is very much like Gen Z. Like it's a very modern, like social media driven cult. And it's kind of one of the most, you know, there was a document about those twin flames people. That was a very like modern online cult. But this guy is like, this is a Facebook and Instagram cult leader that we're talking about today.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Oh, we're back. We're talking about how our boy here, Elegio Bishop, has been taken to – he's had a rough upbringing, right? His parents are both dead. He's been moved to one foster home where he was sexually abused. And then he's been finally moved to another, which is a step up. It's with his brother, right? These people live in the suburbs in a large house.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They've got some amount of money, and he's happy at first. Recalling in a later interview, it was beautiful nature out there, which I guess if you grew up in central New York City, the suburbs qualify as nature.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It is a lot more nature. There's some trees out there, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

However, as both he and his brother would later complain, it still wasn't what you'd call a nice or nurturing environment. Per Aligio, they wouldn't let us use a washing machine. We had to wash clothes by hand. He wouldn't let me have lights in my room like there was no light in my room. It was just a dresser and darkness.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Bishop has stated in other videos that one of his new foster parents told him this was because I was dark skinned. I was dirty.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

and i don't know yeah i mean yeah it's it's it's it's and you know this is this is not uh like again he's not the only person who's expressed things like this about uh his upbringing you know you can find stories like this a lot not just connected to the foster system but connected to the foster system which has a lot of issues with it absolutely um in interviews published by hood horrors leo his brother has claimed that around this time they were both diagnosed with learning disabilities including add

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

That's how he builds everything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Uh, Aligio claims that he was put on Ritalin and Leo states that both brothers were moved to special ed because of all of this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Uh, that all seems pretty cut and dry where stories diverge is that Aligio, who's again, our, our subject this week, the guy who becomes a cult leader later claims that the ADD diagnosis and being moved to special ed is the result of a con by his foster mother to get added checks from the government for taking them to disabled boys. Uh, From what I have been able to read, this seems unlikely.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

There are stipends that you get for having a kid with a disability as a foster parent. But from what everything people say online, these stipends cap out at a fairly low level. And although rates do vary from state to state, The general consensus online seems to be that the best these stipends do is somewhat mitigate the cost of taking in a child who needs extensive medical care.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Because like back in the day, we've always had cults, but we used to have a lot fewer because it was harder. Like two, three thousand years ago, if you wanted to start a cult, you had to just sit down and talk to a bunch of people and convince them of shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And it's worth noting the things that these boys are being claimed of as having aren't the things that get you the highest dollar health. That's what I was going to say. It's just ADD, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's a learning disability. Sure. Yeah. But it's not that it's not. It's that when you're talking about like the higher amounts of money that you can get as a stipend, it is for something like your kid needs constant life saving medical care. A wheelchair on their own. And even then, it's not much money, right? It doesn't cover the cost of their actual health care.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So it's the idea that like his, especially since if you watch enough videos with this guy, I'm not surprised he's got ADD or, you know, ADHD probably now is what he'd get diagnosed with.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's not uncommon. Yeah. I don't – there's a lot about his background that I don't feel any need to question because it happens to a lot of kids. I don't think he's being accurate about this conspiracy around him being given Ritalin.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Based on my memory of the late 90s, more of the people, my friends and family members were on Ritalin than weren't. So again, the idea that this had to be a conspiracy, I'm just not buying, right? Like it's just not super rare for kids to have been on Ritalin back then.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This is at least what he's going to claim.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Partly our job. His brother doesn't make, his brother's just like, yeah, we had ADD, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And that's why you have to go. I try to when trying to determine how reliable different claims he makes are. I have to go to the evidence. Right. About 40 percent of kids in foster care will be will experience some kinds of abuse. Right. So the fact that he claims he was abused in foster care, I don't feel that he needed to be like, well, I don't know. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And like, you know, maybe if you got really good, a couple of your followers would be good at talking and you can get them to travel around and like talk.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

That said, I found a lot of reporting on how inadequate the support supplemental income is for foster parents with disabled kids. And this all does vary from state to state. But like one article said, I found via Stat News quotes a foster mother in Missouri who says it is about it being these payments is about a third of what is actually spent out of pocket on taking care of a child. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So, again, I just I just don't see the evidence that this is a particularly likely scam. No, you don't get rich taking in disabled foster kids. Really? There are some weird scams. People get in a bunch of kids and in fact, to make them work for him, which we'll talk about in a second. But yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So and again, I'm not saying like this, these kids didn't both experience abuse, like given the number of families they pass through, it would be almost impossible for them not to have experienced a good number of abuse, a good amount of abuse. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. I try to have like an open mind about this book because I've read a lot of articles from foster parents who seem to be people of really goodwill talking about how inadequate the system is. And I've made over the course of the last 10 years of my life a lot of friends who were in foster care from an early age, none of whom like the system or feel good about it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

All of whom feel very, very bad about how the system works. This is not – I'm not going to pretend this is a comprehensive look at it, but it's really opened my eyes up to like, I'm not going to say this is a good thing that's being unfairly slandered. So I'm going to try to look at sort of what seems likely based on the evidence vis-a-vis his claims.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, and that's hard, you know? Yes. And it's slow. And usually you get killed by the Romans before all of that works its way out, right? Which is why Jesus was never able to buy the Green Bay Packers, which if you've read the Bible properly, you'll understand was his ultimate goal.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And he does make some other allegations about this foster family, which will be he and his brother's last, that are more credible. He claims his foster mom used him for free labor, making him work for hours in her garden and around the house as a quote unquote slave. Leo's account comports somewhat with his brother's, although he doesn't compare it to slavery.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He just says they were strict and they had to do a lot of chores, right? Yeah. But- It's not hard to find cases of foster parents using foster kids as unpaid labor. Mm-hmm.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

they were ultimately reported to the kanawha county sheriff after a neighbor spotted lance locking a girl and her brother in the shed in a shed per nbc news the sheriff's office said the two children in the shed had no running water or bathroom and had been deprived of adequate hygienic care and food the children said they slept on the concrete floor and had been locked inside for 12 hours before they were found another girl was found inside the home an indictment alleged that the couple targeted the children for forced labor because of their race they were charged with human trafficking child neglect forced labor and other crimes

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And in a happy-ish ending, they were convicted and sentenced to 215 and 160 years in prison, respectively. That is a happy-ish ending. That's a happy-ish ending. Like, yeah, that seems like about 200 years worth of prison.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Sure. But also, oof. Oof. So again, I don't know if Elegio is telling the truth about this family, but it's not like this doesn't happen, right? Being like forced to work an unreasonable amount because you're a – particularly a black foster kid. You can find more stories than the one I quoted here, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, it's also worth noting that this last couple that they live with owns a church, right? And so these brothers are forced to go to Bible study and attend church regularly. And there's this mix of things where Elysio clearly learns how to be a preacher a lot about how people talk about religion.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And it's going to make him very effective at talking about religion, at conversion, at the kind of shit a cult leader needs to do, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And when you see him talk, if you like me have just spent way too much time looking at different evangelical fringe sects and stuff, it's like, oh, yeah, no, I get where this comes from, right? Again, folks, watch the movie Marjo if you want a little more of an education on that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, as it is mine. I'd be a good owner for the Packers. Katie?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Aligio claims that he was told several times he was a demon and that he became scared of his reflection in the mirror, right? You hear this a lot from kids who are stuff like this a lot from kids who are raised evangelical. So I feel no need to like question that claim. Yeah. So he has also alleged that his these last foster parents physically, although not sexually, abused him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

His younger brother feels a little differently. And I think this may just be them both interpreting the same thing differently because his brother, Leo, has acknowledged that they were both spanked regularly when they misbehaved. Right. But he doesn't describe this as abnormal or extreme. And it may not have been right. There's a lot like we it's always bad to hit kids.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

You know, also, it's pretty normal to spank kids. Right. Yeah. And so the fact that Aligio calls this abuse and Leo doesn't I don't see it necessarily as a discrepancy in what happened.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Right. He went in a little earlier.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, or maybe it's the kind of thing where, yeah, they were both spanked, and that's not good. You shouldn't hit kids for any reason, but also, like, Elegio's kind of upselling it to have, because having the super, right? And, like, he doesn't need to. His background's very sad, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

No, I'm the second coming of whatever guy was good at coaching the Packers. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Absolutely. I wouldn't qualify what I did as particular. Again, it was not excessive for the time, but I definitely got spanked more than my brother because during the time when I am older than my brother and during the time when I was a kid, it was more normal, right? And my parents changed as society changed on that matter, right? I got spanked.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Right. You were perfect. Of course. We were always talking about this, Katie.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there's a number of things that are possible here. But I don't see any reason for him to be not. And we do have to. Like, I'm not sure. Like, you do have to litigate a cult leader's backstory, even when it is this sad. Because, like, they lie about a lot of stuff. They're cult leaders, you know? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So I think we I'm hoping that we're doing like a fair enough job of being like, this is probably true. This one there's less evidence for, you know. Aligio says that the abuse he endured is what inspired him to begin committing petty crimes and running away.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He would periodically be gone for days at a time during which he would do stuff like just steal cars for the hell of it, commit petty robberies, burglarize houses and cars. I have relatives who. who had severe ADHD who did stuff like this. So again, this does all seem pretty consistent. He was arrested several times. Quote, I got locked up for everything. I was so young.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I just like the hats. I don't know much about the team. Anyway.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I was committing so many crimes. And again, this is the kind of thing, if you're white, if your parents have money, this doesn't last on your record. He's not... You know, all those parents do have some money.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

After this cycle repeated itself a few times during his adolescence, he was finally convicted and sentenced to five years of juvenile detention, which is where he spends the remainder of his time as a child. Right. The rest of the last five years of his childhood, I mean, and his first year of adulthood, really. He's been incarcerated at age 16.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He is sent from a juvenile detention area to East Jersey State Prison. So they're like, well, at 16, you're ready for the adult prison. And this we can absolutely verify happens. Right. And this is deeply abusive by the system, by the state. No, kids should not go to prison. I don't really think ever like that. 16 year olds aren't adults. You shouldn't treat them that way.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Even when they do horrible stuff, you know, even when they're committing murders, they're still not adults, you know. But this is the way the government is.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

We have done several. Yes. Yeah, the juvenile offender system is just bastards all the way down. It's like a fucking hedgerow of evil. It is disgusting. You couldn't drive a fucking tank through it. So this is where he's going to spend the rest of his childhood. He describes this as a desperate and miserable time during which he repeatedly tried to kill himself.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He was transferred to the prison psych ward for some time as a result. I have no trouble believing this. This is an extraordinarily common story. Suicide is at large, just among all young people in the United States, the third leading cause of death. And being a youth in custody substantially increases your odds of attempting suicide or succeeding at it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Incarcerated children complete suicide between two and four times as often as youth in the general population. It is worth noting the evidence suggests that the kind of kids who wind up in custody are also likelier to have struggled with suicidal ideation before incarceration. More than one third of juvenile detainees report thinking of suicide in the six months prior to detention.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And that number is almost 50 percent for female detainees. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

No, no, it's worth it's always worth bringing up. Right. People should always have this be reminded of this. But yeah, it's not at all. If you if you are casually aware of how any of this works, you're like, yup.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He's ultimately released in 2001 after his 19th birthday. He goes back. So, again, by the time he is an adult in the free world, quote unquote, for the first time, he spent about a quarter of his life behind bars. So not great. Slightly more than a quarter. If I'm remembering my tipping math, which is the only math I know how to do.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Aligio goes back to live with his family for a while, this foster family for a while. But for what should be obvious reasons, that doesn't go well.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He's ultimately kicked out. At least that's His story, maybe it was more of a, I've heard some versions of it that he chose to leave. I don't know. I don't think it matters all that much. Thankfully, he has made contact with several of his siblings at this point, from which he's been estranged since he was very young, right?

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, his sisters. And they seem to they're doing their best for their little brothers. Right. That's the that's the feeling I get because he couch surfs with several of them for different periods of time. It never lasts. He is very hard to live with. And he is I just given based on what happens later. I have no trouble believing a pretty abusive person to live with. They really are trying.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It sounds like based on both his account and the accounts that you get from other members of the family that like they do attempt. He couch serves with his sisters for a while. He couch serves with an old friend. And kind of between the two of them, he is able to gradually over several months make his way from New York City down to South Philly.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This is where he gets his first adult job as a security guard. And he seems to feel good enough about this that he decides the army is a good place for me, which a lot of people make a decision like this. And, you know, outside of the whole problem of... What the army does, you know, imperialism, all that good stuff. I do know a lot of people who will tell you quite out both.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I don't recommend other people join the army and I would have killed myself if I hadn't joined the army or the Marine Corps or whatever. I would have wound up dead. Right.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Something to go do. And I know people who like because their parents, because they had no no one who told them how to be an adult fight, like finally like being in the military and having older people as mentors who are like, here is how you exist in the world as a person was something they desperately needed. Right. So sometimes it does work out to people for people. This is. Yeah. Yeah.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Not a great time to join the Army. One of the worst times. I don't know that it would have gone well for him, but he's not allowed to stay. And I'm going to quote from that write-up in Rolling Stone. Quote, he has said he completed basic training but was discharged when the Army learned of his psychiatric treatment.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Again, if he had tried a few years later, they probably would have kept him because during the surge, they were letting a lot of dudes with sketchy histories. Like, yeah, we just need bodies. You want to take a samurai sword? Sure, fuck it, go. That's a literal thing that happened. That's an actual guy. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Um, that said, you know, if you are unable, if the army won't take you in like 2002, you probably don't have a lot of jobs you can get hired for, right? Like that's just a reality. And he's going to spend the next several years of his life on the verge of homelessness, desperately pivoting from one gig and location to the next. He signs up with the Job Corps, but he leaves very quickly.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He hooks back up with his little brother, Leo, who's an adult now, and they move to New York City with one of his older sisters for a while until she kicks him out or they have a fight and they leave. They wind up in Augusta, Georgia next, where they crash with another sister.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And again, just a shatteringly common story for people who come from this kind of society, who are orphaned, who grow up super poor, who wind up in the foster system. Stuff like this is not – Right now, there's a lot of people who have had experiences like this, and most of them don't become abusive cult leaders like Alessio. Right. Important context.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He gets his next full time job at this point, working six days a week at a slaughterhouse. Probably not good for his mental health. One of the worst jobs you can do. I say this is someone who slaughters animals like slaughterhouse work is just a fucking nightmare. Right. Right. He starts drinking and smoking weed constantly as a coping mechanism for how traumatizing doing this job is.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. It's about, I mean, my mom used to, because she had a donut shop that bankrupted the family. But that's some of my earliest memories. And she would deliver to the Tyson Chicken Plant near Idabel, Oklahoma. And you could smell that place from a half hour away, right? And she always just left after delivering it looking haunted. It's just a bleak thing to have to do. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

No. If I can help it. Avoid factory farmed meat, people, if you can. Which, you know, often you can, although everything's getting more expensive. I don't know. Do whatever you can do. Do what you can. Live your life. I'm not your boss.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's miserable work, so he starts taking drugs a lot more. You get the feeling I think this might be a guy who is schizotypal. I don't know that he's been diagnosed with that. It's just because of some of the things that happened later. Either way, the fact that he starts smoking weed is not going to be good for him. Neither is the drinking. He increasingly has issues controlling his anger.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

During one argument with his older sister, he punches her in the face and she kicks him, but not his little brother, out of the house. So, again, this is a guy I don't know if this is the first physical violence that he he uses on someone close to him. But this is the first kind of documented case. It's going to be a pattern in his life.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And so Bishop's going to spend the next several weeks living on the street. He's outright homeless now until a friend of his. And it's kind of unclear from the interviews I've heard. A lot of this comes from interviews pieced together by that Hood Horrors YouTube channel, which, again, you should check out. This guy doesn't have a lot of followers but is very good at what he's doing.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I really recommend – it's like a 17-part series. Yeah. By far, I've done my best that that Rolling Stone article is good. The Hood of Horrors piece is by far the most detailed history of this guy. If you find yourself really interested in everything that's happened with this cult. But it is a long it's like nine or 10 hours of content. Yeah.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

so again he gets invited by this friend of his to come crash in atlanta he manages to get work as a barber and one of the things that you're getting from this in addition to the bad stuff is that he must be pretty charming to a lot of people because he does keep getting invites with people to stay with him and crash with him a lot of folks including people who aren't his blood relatives try to help him right yeah um that's what i was thinking all these people that let him

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, there's got to be a reason, right? This isn't a guy who is like a purely toxic force to the people in his life. Otherwise, he wouldn't be getting these opportunities, right? So he gets some work as a barber for the first time during this period, and he's able to like make a living at it.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He has some skill at this, but barbering doesn't pay a lot, or at least the way he's doing it, he's not making good money. Obviously, I know some people do quite fine with it. So he starts basically, being a sugar baby for women who have more money than him, which is basically every woman. He has almost no money at this point.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He says, quote, I used my body, I used my looks in order to get money and access to cars from various women. He also starts selling weed to supplement his lifestyle. And as you'll see, You know, some people are just kind of naturally jacked, like they have to work out some, but like working out a fairly minimal amount, eating an OK diet, they're just shredded. He's one of those people. Right.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Being being jacked is comes fairly easily to him, you know. Yeah. He's never doing well enough to afford his own place at this point or – and this is me reading in between the lines a little bit. I think it might be more that he is unwilling to spend any of his money on rent. So he's always living with someone, usually a girlfriend, who he inevitably cheats on constantly.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And this is how he winds up for the third time homeless because he gets kicked out of the house for cheating. The desperation of this situation convinces him to take an offer that he had been given by someone else to start stripping at a gay strip club. He describes himself as going gay for pay. And, you know, I – Sophie will show you some photos here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

There's documented evidence of him at this point as a dancer, as a stripper, and a sex worker. He claims, quote, I was the number one dancer that was hosting the shows in every gay arena in Atlanta. I can't verify this, but, like, yeah. So how would you describe this guy looking from those – what Sophie's showing? Like –

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

pretty hot he's pretty hot like he's he's he's yoked you know he's a good looking that does good bone structure in his face yeah yeah works out oiled up he knows how to dress like he looks pretty good uh see people throwing some dollars i could i can see i when he it's one of those things i don't know if he was the number one male stripper in atlanta but like yeah i could see him doing gay male stripper i could be like i could see him doing pretty well yeah i

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I don't have trouble believing that this is something he's able to do quite well at. His stripper name is Tyson for Tyson Beckford.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Oh, what's that? Oh, is it the naked one where he's holding a water bottle over his cock?

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, because I mean, that's a good one.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, well, you'll pull that up. There we go. There we go. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. If you're lucky, Jesus, if you're lucky, you'll see the T pendant he's wearing. That's because his stripper name is Tyson for Tyson Beckford, who is a Jamaican-American actor and model who hosted two seasons of Make Me a Supermodel and was one of Ralph Lauren's big male models for years.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I don't know much about the model industry, but what I read casually says he's one of the rare male models who is like as big as some of the biggest female models. Right. In terms of like his income.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He's very big. He's a big deal. Alessio suggests, insists that he was and is entirely straight and that this was a purely mercenary arrangement for him. That said, he doesn't actually seem to be like homophobic or transphobic. So there's that, I guess. There's that. Good for him.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He's just not. I don't think he has any personal care about that whatsoever. He's certainly not a super judgmental guy when it comes to that stuff. Yeah. Speaking of people who won't judge you. Our sponsors will never judge you.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They're the only people who love you and the only people you can trust. I think we can all agree on that. Certainly. Certainly. No argument from me. No argument from anyone. Why would you argue?

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

We're back, and we're talking about this fucking guy. This fucking guy. Things are starting to go well for him. He's making good money. He also continues serially dating women, and he gets one of these ladies pregnant with a child, Aligio Jr., and he seems to have no further contact with this kid beyond naming him.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Soon after this, he gets another lady pregnant, Myesha. Myesha has two kids prior to meeting him. They get together and start living in the same home, and he names their son Osiris, and he does spend some time with this kid trying to parent him. Okay. And he'd been doing pretty well, okay, at least financially before.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But now he is effectively taking care of both, you know, this first kid that he seems, I think he sends some money to. I'm sure he's not totally up on his child support. He's supporting this second kid and he's helping Myesha support her other kids. And he finds himself strapped, right? The stripper money is not alone enough for this. So he starts working as a, like an escort, right?

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

A gay escort, um, And, like, you know, he's now having sex for pay, right? And he also stars in at least one pornographic film. I suspect there are more, knowing how that industry works, but we have documentation of at least one. This is not easy for him. He begins drinking more heavily, and when he gets drunk, he is often physically violent.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This comes to a head in 2011, and I want to play a segment of Maisha and Elysia both discussing the incident. which is part of that Hood Horrors documentary. There were other videos where this was related, but they've been pulled from the internet. So this documentary is the only place I can find it.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Again, I really do recommend watching The Rise and Fall of Nature Boy, Aligio Bishop, which is like 17 parts at this moment. But yeah, here's a brief clip of them talking about this incident.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Wow. Yeah. So not great. Yeah, not great. He gets arrested. Yeah. For aggravated battery. Sounds like fair charges based on, you know, what they say and what he says.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. And the police report notes that Myesha had severe swelling over her left eye, the size of a fist, a laceration behind her left ear, marks on her upper body and her pajama pants were torn. He faced 20 years in prison, but by the time it took about a year for the case to come around to trial, by which point Myesha and him had reconciled. She writes the letter, a judge in his favor.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Bishop takes a plea deal that includes probation and a thousand dollar fine, but no prison time. And again, it's this thing where like they make up. He apologizes. He says that he had promised the universe that if it got him off for these charges, quote, I would never hit another woman. I should note that in this is he says this in a live stream years later.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And in that live stream, he immediately adds, I lied because he becomes very convinced that men abusing women is an important thing philosophically. But that's in the future, you know. At this point, Myesha takes him back. They're still living together. He does make some changes after this, although I don't know how you'd categorize these.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He claims, and again, these are his allegations that are not verified. He claims he befriended a wealthy biblical scholar named Dr. Mike Brown. Dr. Mike Brown is a real person with a Wikipedia and everything. He is a Messianic Judaism guy, which is people who... It's like they think that they're a kind of Jews that accept Jesus as the Messiah. It's a very problematic thing.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I'm not going to get into it. He's a major Christian Zionist. He does have a real Ph.D. in Bible stuff. He's got a pretty messy history in terms of shit he said. He's held anti-pride rallies. He has claimed homosexuality is caused by childhood trauma. He has in the past supported conversion therapy and Uganda's criminalization of homosexuality. He's also claimed not to be anti-gay.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But I don't know if this is an example of him having softened or just – Lying? I don't know. He definitely has said some really fucked up shit. He has been accused of sexually inappropriate behavior by a female employee, and he denies these allegations.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Aligio has apparently claimed that the two had a clandestine relationship and that for years, Dr. Brown paid him $3,000 a month as an allowance and also fronted him the money he needed to start his own barbershop. He starts his own barbershop around this time. He has money from somewhere. I have no I'm saying this because this is a thing you can get sued over.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And I absolutely do not want to be misreporting this. There is no outside verification or confirmation of any kind that his allegations against Dr. Brown are true. Nor have I come across similar allegations against Brown. Again, the allegations against him are that he is abusive to a female colleague. Right. Not that he's hiring male prostitutes or doing a sugar.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

As time has gone on, cult leaders have always been on the bleeding edge of technology, right? Because the key thing in terms of making it possible for cult leaders to spread more effectively and for there to be more cults is that there are more ways with low barriers for people to reach large numbers of other human beings, you know?

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But those are not allegations I hear anywhere else from him. So I am I am telling you this because these are the things that Aligio claims, not because there's outside verification of this. I don't know the truth.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Mm hmm. Really trying to state what the actual known facts are here. What we do know is that he gets enough money to start a barber shop. It is not a small shop. He hires a team of barbers. Photos make it look like more than a dozen chairs in the shop. And it does fairly well. It seems to be a pretty successful business. He starts to make good money during this.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And this business is supporting a decent number of people. He lets his little brother live in the back. He won't let him be a barber, but he'll let him sweep up after. I don't know why. Interesting. Leo seems pissed about it. So things are going pretty well. But this is a grind. You know, running a small business is not easy.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I've never heard anything that makes it sound like barbershop is an easy kind of business to run. And he grows exhausted with the grind and starts getting obsessed with the idea of living closer to nature and dropping out of society. Who amongst us, right? Guilty. Common thing to desire. Yes. Yeah. Not a weird story.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Welcome back for Behind 2 for From with Behind the Bastards, a podcast. You know what it's about. Bad people. We tell you all about them. I'm Robert Evans and back once again on the show is arch guest, ace guest, Katie Stoll. How are you doing, Katie?

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. I'm generally like terrible. Okay. That's kind of the way I feel.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Unfortunately, he starts to explore this by meeting a bunch of like hippies on the internet and watching YouTube videos from different creators in the black consciousness community, which we'll talk about in more detail later. But it essentially mixes – this is a subculture, the black consciousness or conscious community. Online is a subculture, just sort of a collection of YouTubers.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

There's some podcasters, some rappers who have this mix of like very standard hippie back to the land style ideology with also an education on like the history of racism in the United States. that is unfortunately mixed with stuff that gets scammy or like, quote unquote, natural health and astrology. And from what I can tell, it's a broad subculture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So depending on who you get obsessed with as a creator in this, you might wind up learning about both like, you know, organic farming and making human manure and stuff, all of which are wonderful things. And alongside like the destruction of Black Wall Street and Tulsa and the move bombing, right? Very real conspiracy theories. Yeah.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But there's also a sizable chunk of this community where you will learn some very not real conspiracy theories, right? It's so tough.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And it's difficult when like so much of it is about like this is a this is a largely black community talking about like the history of racism against and like institutionalized bigotry against black people in the United States. There's so many real conspiracies. And it's also once you hear about those easy for a lot of people to get pulled into the stuff that's not so real. Absolutely.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Really interested in black Israelite stuff, which is basically black people are the lost 13th tribe of Israel or whatever. He gets into a lot of anti-vaccine stuff, which is adjacent to a lot of, you know, to at least elements of this subculture. Aligio's loved ones at the time mostly describe him obsessively watching videos about conspiracy theories and natural health.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Thousands of years ago, you had to get an elite following and hope some of those guys would be really good at talking and really loyal and would go spread the message. And that's just fucking difficult. Then if you want to look at it this way, I think this is the right way to look at it. Cults are a lot like pornography in that they're always on the bleeding edge of technology and

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And particularly when Myesha talks about this, she always says he's watching conspiracy theory videos. Okay. He buys an RV. Never a good sign. Never a good sign. If your friend drops out of social interactions, spends months watching YouTube videos, and then buys an RV, you need to intervene. He's about to do something bad.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

These are red flags. That said, in this particular case, this is more a sign of where things are going. The RV itself doesn't end too badly. He and Myesha live on the road for a month and try to just like let other people run the barbershop, but they're bad at it. And so he's forced to come back from Florida to stop it from going out of business.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Once he's back to try to keep himself interested in the barbershop, he sets up a stage there, which initially he's like, so local acts can play, right? People can do stand up or musicians can do stuff. He gives out liquor and beer and stuff, which is not super uncommon for a barbershop. So he's trying to make it into a community space.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But that becomes him primarily using that stage to give speeches that are like rants about his different pet theories. And at this point, he's embraced a couple of specific theories. One of them, and this is an older pre-existing theory, is the idea that higher amounts of melanin in the skin can correlate directly to higher IQ, right? The more melanin you have, the smarter you are.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And kind of what goes with that is exposing yourself to sun by spending as much time nearly naked outdoors as possible makes you smarter, right? Okay. He also starts to believe that bathing is bad for you. You don't need to bathe if you eat only fruit or other foods that don't make you smell. This is a thing Steve Jobs believed. No one else agrees with this.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yes. Yes. Now, that is something Elysio would not do because Elysio believes toilets are evil. He comes to insist and believe very strongly that pooping and peeing indoors is one of the greatest evils you can perpetuate because they make they are. By doing that, you are robbing nature. Right. Of your critical, you know, of nutrients and stuff.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I want to play a clip of him talking that was republished by Hood Horrors. This is from all of his stuff has been taken off the Internet after the things that we'll talk about in part two happened. So it's hard to find a lot of this. These different kind of documentaries online about him are some of the only sources remaining, which is why I'm going back to this documentary.

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Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

um i do want to again continue to you know shout out the rise and fall of nature boy aligio bishop on hood horrors it is a really good piece of work but here is him talking years later explaining his theories about poop so this gives you an idea this is filmed later but it gives you an idea of like the kind of he's saying in his rants at this barber shop they showed me like where to use the bathroom which we all use the bathroom in the backyard this is not poop man

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The government's stealing your poop? The government's stealing your poop by making you think you need a toilet. To disconnect you from the universe so you don't realize, you know, the evil schemes they're perpetuating, I guess.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

because that's the only way they can stay profitable, right? Like, porn will always adopt the new technology that's going to be kind of the future before, like, mainstream Hollywood, right? Because Hollywood's got...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And here's the thing. Like, I actually have a lot of friends and have spent a lot of time myself using stuff like composting toilets. Right. I lived on and I have spent a lot of time on, you know, in properties where people are like very close to a closed loop. I have known and know people. Yeah. Yeah. That is very important for you to understand.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Lots of them. We would all die if society did this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

If our whole society committed to like a functional, extensive human program. Sure, that would be better than what we do. But if everyone just pooped in the yard, we would all get sick and die because it's bad to just poop in the yard.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Bad for the yard.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's not good to just shit everywhere for the environment either. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I don't know that none of this is accurate. After one of these rants where he's just talking about how the government stealing your poop, a former regular at the barbershop asks him, hey, man, do you used to give just give us drinks when we came to get a haircut? What happened to the drinks? This is changing. He is not happy at the barbershop. The barbershop's not super happy with him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And in short order, he works out a deal to basically give away, sell his ownership of the barbershop in exchange for an ongoing interest in the business to somebody. He's already committed himself to begin copying the conscious community figureheads he'd grown obsessed with. And he'd even thought up a new name for himself. And from this point forward, he no longer goes by Elysio Bishop.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He now uses a new name, Nature Boy. And we will be talking about that and his growth into a significant figure within the conscious community in part two. How are you feeling so far, Katie?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They've got margins, which is why you see $300 million movies every year that flop and the industry doesn't quite go under because like, well, we have the ability to take some gambles here. Porn can't afford to gamble like that, right? So they really have to be thinking. It's true.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I'll tell you one thing. A lot of people pooping in backyards.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, that's right. Wait, is that a Beatles song? I don't know. There's a lot of Beatles song. I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Oh, yeah. Ric Flair, the nature boy, also, I think, pissed on a chair or something at one point in that story, if I'm remembering right. So, you know, similar guys, maybe.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Or maybe someone pissed on his chair.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Oh, yeah, he was stolen as a baby. Yes, he was stolen as a baby. For sure. Yes, he was definitely stolen as a baby.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yes. All right, everybody. Katie, you want to plug your pluggables here real quick? Oh, sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yep. All right. Well, everybody... Go poop in your backyard. Don't do that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Absolutely.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Always on the edge of technology, right? And so, you know, cults, the printing press, huge for cults, right? Cults immediately figured out how to like, oh, we can now just put out our writing material or reading material, however the fuck we want, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And then you get, you know, you get your Mormon churches and stuff like that, in part as a result of the fact that it's a lot easier to print stuff now. The radio, yeah. makes it a lot easier to spread stuff. And obviously television, boy, howdy, that really supercharges things, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And then you start getting all these, I mean, among other things, like the prosperity gospel, these different sort of like, quote unquote, Christian churches that are all about, if you give me money to buy a jet, God will make your wildest dreams come true. You can't do that. That doesn't work very well through like a magazine, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. There you go. Bad, other people are worse, everything's good. Or bad? I don't know how everything is.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's the same thing with like if you have if you have a creator that you listen to way too much, that person will probably be have an unfair influence on you because they're in your ears 100 hours a week. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And if you're attending one of these like big cult churches and doing it two or three times a week and they're constantly talking about how you need to give the money to go to heaven, you'll probably do it. Right. I would.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. Yeah. We all are actually is the real answer behind why do people do the things that they do? Well, we're kind of stupid and it's easy to fuck with us.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Give me it. Look, we've all bought stakes from some guy's car at a certain point in our lives, right? Who among us? Who among us? If you were ever dumb enough to buy a frozen steak or speakers from a guy's car, you are dumb enough to have fallen for something at some point, right? Especially on Instagram. This is why we need better education. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And you're kind of getting to where we are now, which is like, yeah, the printing press, the radio, TV, all of that increased the reach different cults and cult leaders could have. But the internet, and most particularly social media, that has really given these people unprecedented power. And it's why we now live in a day and age where they basically run

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

a lot of stuff right if not everything right everything's kind of a cult these days because cults work among other things like there's this talk right now about the tariffs and people being like oh my god uh finally his his base is going to leave him because of the tariffs and i'm like i don't know if you guys have read about like the different cults where a guy would tell everyone the world's ending on this day and then it wouldn't and then

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Well, and they should because he's coming back. We all know that, Sophie. I've been saying this for years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, we used to have that as a theme song. And then things got even dumber. You know what I love it? When people say, boy, you should still be doing your podcast because the years just get worse. But obviously, ever since Senator Sanders came after us, you know, there's there's we simply can't anymore.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

No, not LRH.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And he would have loved TikTok. That man would have been the best at TikTok. Oh, boy. He would have had such a good TikTok.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

That's really the great like what if of history. The memes. Yeah. Screw these people. Like, what if Hitler had been killed? Now, what if L. Ron Hubbard had access to TikTok and a billion people?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I think he would have bought TikTok. Yeah. Oh, my God. What a time. What if LRH had had TikTok and Ozimbic? Nothing would have stopped him. So the Internet and most particularly social media has presented these would be cult leaders of our day with a tool of unprecedented power.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The power of we talked about back in the day, stochastic terrorism, right, which is trying to incite just random large groups of people in the hope that some amount of them actually carry out attacks.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Well, stochastic messaging for cult leaders means that even if a cult leader of middling charisma and skill can get a platform that reaches thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions or more people, the vast majority of those people in any case aren't going to actually do more than watch or read him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But if a percent of a percent does, that's more than enough to build the kind of following that can take care of you, right? Sure. It's just a numbers game. Now, this week, we're going to tell the story of a cult leader who got his start, dozens of followers, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, all thanks to Facebook and Instagram.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Our subject for this week is interesting in part because he's not very talented. Like, as a cult leader, like LRH we joke about, but Hubbard was really good at some things. And that's part of what makes this story really fun is that like you are watching a man who knows his business fuck up the world, right? This guy is not very good at anything. I don't think he's particularly bright.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And I don't think he would have succeeded at creating a cult in any other period. This is a tale of a cult made possible by social media. And if your ambition is to start a cult of your own, I think these episodes would be a pretty good guide on how to do that. And you should do that. Go start a cult, right? There's very rarely consequences. These episodes do end with consequences for this guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But most of the time it doesn't, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Learn from his mistakes. And remember, your goal should be the presidency, not an isolated compound where you have many, many sister wives. One of those ends better than the other historically. Well, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Still a lot of time for playing sister wife to be proven the wisest. Yeah, that's right. All right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So our bastard for this week is a guy named Elegio Bishop. He was born in Harlem, New York in 1982. Probably. Like most cult leaders, he lies constantly, and hard details about his early life are thin on the ground. The best and most expansive piece of traditional journalism about the man is an article Rolling Stone published earlier this year. Here's how it describes his earliest years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Bishop was born in Harlem in 1982 and said that he was a crack baby. The story of his upbringing he lays out in his social media videos is troubled. Efforts to get in touch with family members were unsuccessful."

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. Yeah. To be like, is any of this true? Right. Rolling Stone is like we tried and we couldn't talk to them. I do like this article and I respect it for providing like reasonably good context on a guy who's had basically nothing written about him beyond a few short news articles.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And those are those are all focused on like, you know, there's there's a couple of specific crimes that he's involved in. And so they're all very much like focused on those points in time. The Rolling Stone article. It covers those points, but it also tries to give a more detailed account of Bishop's life. And as a result, it's one of our better sources.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Too much liability after that massive, massive lawsuit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But I will say it still gets some stuff wrong. And particularly the paragraph that I just read I think is an example of kind of why we can't use that as our primary source. And so the best source I found on this guy, weirdly enough, is a YouTube channel called Hood Horrors, which has a little more than 4,000 subscribers. This is not a big channel.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It seems to focus primarily on shady characters from what's called the conscious community or black consciousness community, which is a subculture online that we'll discuss a bit later. And Hood Horrors did a 17 part series on Elijah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

A religio that is fairly well edited and written and includes original interviews as well as extensive documentation of hundreds of hours of videos posted by his cult that have now been deleted. So it's the only place to get at least glimpses of a lot of the firsthand sources on this stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And they I think they're coming at him from a more sympathetic angle than I am, because he's kind of a shady member of the broader community they're a part of. But they do a really good job of, I think, giving you details on his life. And it's I got to say, no shade on the on Rolling Stone because their article was useful, too. But it's the best single source on this guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And they play audio of Aligio talking where he claims that he was born addicted to heroin as opposed to crack, which is what the Rolling Stone claimed. I don't know whether he was born addicted to heroin or crack or both. It's not impossible. Both are basically true.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, because then you don't get all the fun of starting to do a drum. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

right okay should have been the z girls that's much more appealing these people are big in the news right now uh because of that murder because because of the several murders and the right wing is trying wants to make it out as like this is a like trans death cult and this is more of like a internet ai nerd death cult i guess that's better It's just different, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It was just a different thing, and I think it's important. If, like, you care about, like, cults because you think they're dangerous, and you're arguing that, like, hey, this cult seems really dangerous, you should understand, like, what the cult is, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Like, if you misunderstood the Scientologists and thought, like, these are obsessive fans of science fiction who are committing murders over science fiction stories, it's like, no, no, they're committing murders because of something stupider.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

OK, so I got to take I am going to explain to you what rationalism is, how who Ziz is, where they come from and how they get radicalized to the point where they are effectively at the hub of something that is at least very adjacent to a cult. But I want to talk a little bit about Ziz. The difference between a cult and cult dynamics, right? A cult is fundamentally a toxic thing. It is bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It always harms people. There is no harmless cult. It's like rape. There's no version of it that's good. It is a fundamentally dangerous thing. Cult dynamics and the tactics cult leaders use... are not always toxic or bad. And in fact, every single person listening to this has enjoyed and had their life enriched by the use of certain things that are on the spectrum of cult dynamics.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Anyway, that's a huge part of what make a great fiction author who is able to attract a cult following. You've ever had that experience? A big thing in cults is the use of and creation of new language.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

You get people using words that they don't use otherwise and phrases, and that is both a way to bond people because it helps you feel like you're part of this group, and it also isolates you from people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

If you've ever met people who are like hugely into, you know, Dungeons and Dragons or huge fans like Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings, like they have like things that they say, like memes and shit that they share based on those books. And like, that's a less toxic, but it's on the same spectrum, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's this, I am a part of this group of people and we use these words that mean something to us that don't mean things to other people, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And like you've got, you know, you and your buddies that have been friends for years, you have like, you could, there's like a word you can say and everyone knows that you're referring to this thing that happened six years ago. And you all like laugh because, you know, it reminds you of something, you know, because it's relevant to something happening then.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

That's a little healthy bit of cult dynamics at play, right? It's like a diet. So there's a toolbox here and we play with it. And different organizations, churches play with it. And obviously a lot of churches cross the line into cults, but there's also aspects of For example, you know, there's churches that I know I have seen people go to where like it's very common.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

LeBron. They made LeBron the president. That's a good one.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Everybody gets up and like hugs at a certain point and like people benefit from human contact. It makes them feel nice. Yeah. It can be like a very healthy thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I've gone to I used to go to like Burning Man regionals and like you would like start at this greeter station where like a bunch of people would come up and they'd offer you like food and drinks and, you know, people would hug each other. And it was this like changes your mind state from where you were in before kind of opens you up that Burning Man regionals.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that we could get to go. No, it's just like these local little events in Texas, right? Like a thousand people in the desert trying to forget that we live in Texas. Okay, that's fair. Or not desert, but it was very like, it was like a really valuable part of like my youth because it was the first time I ever started to like feel comfortable in my own skin.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

But also that's on the spectrum of love bombing, which is the thing cults do, where they like surround you from people, with people who like, talk about like, like, you know, we'll touch you and hold you and tell you they love you. And like, you know, part of what brings you into the cult is the cult leader can take that away at any moment in time. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's the kind of thing where if it's not something where, no, this is something we do for five minutes at the end of every church service. Right. You can very easily turn this into something deeply dangerous and poisonous. Right. But also a lot of people just kind of play around a little bit with pieces of that, with a piece of the cult dynamics. Just a little bit of dessert. Just a little bit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Any good musician, any really great performer is fucking with some cult dynamics, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah, I mean, I've been to some childish Gambino concerts where it's like, oh yeah, he's a little bit of a cult leader, you know? Like just 10%, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah, fuck it. Why not? You know, fucking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, great president.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. So these are – I think that it's important for people to understand both that like the tactics and dynamics that make up a cult have versions of them that are not unhealthy. But I also think it's important for people to understand – cults come out of subcultures, right? This is very close to 100% of the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Cults always arise out of subcultural movements that are not in and of themselves cults. For example, in the 1930s, Through like the 50s, 60s, you have the emergence of what's called the self-help movement, you know? And this is all of these different books on like how to persuade people, how to, you know, win friends and influence people, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

How to like make – but also stuff like Alcoholics Anonymous, you know? How to like improve yourself by getting off drugs, getting off alcohol. All of these are pieces of the self-improvement movement, right? Yeah. That's a subculture. There are people who travel around, who get obsessed, who go to all of these different things, and they get a lot of benefit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

People will show up at these seminars where there's hundreds of other people, and a bunch of people will hug them, and they feel like they're part of this community, and they're making their lives better. Oftentimes, especially once we get to the 60s, 70s, these different guru types are saying that this is how we're going to save the world. If we can get everybody doing

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

you know, this yoga routine or whatever that I put together and it'll fix everything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

That motherfucker could knock a presidency out of the park. Come on, Veronica Mars writer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Absolutely, yes. We need a mystery novelist slash one of the great basketball stars of all time in the White House.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And they had to, like, they had to viciously confront each other? Yes, we've covered them. That is Synanon. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

we talked uh last week or week before or two weeks ago about tony alamo who's an incredibly abusive pedophile christian cult leader he comes out of along with a couple other guys we've talked the jesus freak movement which is a christian subculture that arises as a reaction to the hippie movement it's kind of the countervailing force to the hippie movement so you got these hippies and you have these christians who are like really scared

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

of this kind of like weird left-wing movement. And so they start kind of doing like a Christian hippie movement almost, right? And some of these people just start weird churches that sing annoying songs. And some of these people start hideously dangerous cults. You have the subculture and you have cults that come out of it, right? And the same thing is true in every single period of time, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Cults form out of subcultures, you know? And part of this is because people who – a lot of people who find themselves most drawn to subcultures, right, tend to be people who feel like they're missing something in the outside world, right? Right. You know, not everybody, but people who get most into it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Well, yeah. And I think, but that said, there have been cults that have started out of like popular entertainers and musicians. Like- You know, you could we could talk about Corey Feldman's weird house full of young women dressed as angels.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So, yeah, you've got as a general rule, like there are music is full of subcultures like punk. Right. But there have definitely also been some like punk communities that have have gone and kind of individual little chunks of punk. I mean, it's kind of like culty directions. Right. Even if you're like, you know, Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Fuck up. So there are cults that come out of the subculture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

This is the way cults work. And I, I really just, I don't think, I don't think there's very good education on what cults are, where they come from or how they work because all of the people who run this country have like a lot of cult leader DNA in them, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

That's right. Agatha Christie with a jump shot.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Exactly. So I think there's a lot of vested interests in not explaining what a cult is and where they come from. So I think it's important to understand subcultures birth cults and also cult leaders are drawn to subcultures when they're trying to figure out how to make their cult because a subculture

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Most of the people in it are just going to be like normal people who are just kind of into this thing. But there will always be a lot of people who are like, this is the only place I feel like I belong. I feel very isolated. This is like the center of my being, right? Right. And so it's like a good place to recruit. Those are the kind of people you want if you're reaching out to cult leaders.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I'm not saying like, again- I'm not saying subcultures are bad. I'm saying that like some chunk of people in subcultures are ready to be in a cult, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Or like. The Star Wars fans were sending death threats to Jake Lloyd after the Phantom Menace where it's like, well, you guys are crazy. That is insane. You know, he's like eight, right? This is a movie. He also didn't write it. He didn't write it? Like, what are you doing?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And again, that's kind of a good point. Star Wars fans aren't a cult, but you can also see some of the toxic things cults do erupts from time to time, from video game fans, right? People who are really into a certain video game. That's not a cult, but also periodically groups of those fans will act in ways that are violent and crazy. And it's because of some of these same factors going on, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Exactly, exactly, right? And it's like, you know, the events that I went to very consciously played with cult dynamics. You know, after you got out of the greeting station thing where like all these people were kind of like love bombing you for like five minutes, there was like a big bar and it had like a sign above it that said not a religion, do not worship.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And it was this kind of people would talk about like this is like we are playing with the ingredients of a cult. We're not trying to actually make one. So you need to constantly remind people of like what we're doing and why it affects their brain that way. And in my case, it was like because I was at like a low point in my life then. Like this was when I was really it was 20.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I was not I had no kind of drive in life. I was honestly dealing with a lot of like suicidal ideation. This is the point at which I would have been vulnerable to a cult. And I think it acted a little bit like a vaccine. Like I got a little dose of the drug.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I know what's going on there. So anyway, I needed to get into this because the Zizians, this thing that I think is it's either a full on cult or at least cultish. Right. That is responsible for this series of murders that are currently dominating the news and being blamed on like a trans vegan death cult or whatever.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

They come out of a subculture that grows out of the early aughts Internet known as the rationalists. The rationalists started out as a group in the early aughts on the comment sections of two blogs. One was called Less Wrong and one was called Overcoming Bias. Less Wrong was started by a dude named Eliezer Yudkowsky. I have talked about Eliezer on the show before. What a name. He sucks.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Look, honestly, given where we are right now, I'd take fucking Mark McGuire, like Jesus Christ, anybody. Honestly, anyone. I'd take Jose Canseco.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I think he's a bad person. He's not a cult leader, but again, he's playing with some of these cult dynamics, and he plays with them in a way that I think is very reckless, right? And ultimately leads to some serious issues. Now, Eliezer's whole thing is he considers himself the number one world expert on AI risk and ethics. Now- You might think from that, oh, so he's like making AIs.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

He's like working for one of these companies that's involved in like coding and stuff. Absolutely not. Oh, no affiliation. No, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

No. He writes long articles about what he thinks AI would do and what would make it dangerous that are based almost entirely off of short stories he read in the 1990s. Like this guy. That's the most internet shit I've ever heard. It's so fun. It's such internet.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And like, I'm not a fan of like the quote unquote real AI, but Yudkowsky is not even one of these guys who's like, no, I'm like making a machine that you talk to. Yeah, I have no credible.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. An outdated opinion. I hate this guy so much. Speaking of things I hate, not going to ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Oh, man. Fuck it. I'll take... No, no. I'm not going to take any hockey players. No hockey players.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

We got enough people with brain damage in the White House right now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're probably right there. I mean, if we could go back in time and make Joe Louis the president, I think he could solve some fucking problems in Congress.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

We're back. So Yudkowsky, this AI risk and ethics guy, starts this blog in order to explore a series of thought experiments based in game theory. And his... I am annoyed by game theory, guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Look, man, I know that there's valid activity, but it's just always so stupid and annoying to me. Anyway, a bunch of thought experiments based in game theory with the goal of teaching himself and others to think more logically and effectively about the major problems of the world. Um, his motto for the movement and himself is winning, uh, the rational. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

That's where she picked it up. Yeah. Um, he's they're tied in with biohacking, right? This is kind of starting to be a thing at the time and brain hacking and the whole like self optimization movement. That feeds into a lot of like right-wing influencer space today.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yudkowsky is all about optimizing your brain and your responses in order to allow you to accomplish things that are not possible for other people who haven't done that. And there's a messianic era to this too, which is he believes that only by doing this, by spreading rationalist principles in order to, quote, raise the sanity waterline – That's how he describes it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

That's going to make it possible for us to save the world from the evil AI that will be born if enough of us don't spend time reading blogs. Okay, that's great. It's awesome.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yudkowsky and his followers see themselves as something unique and special. And again, there's often a messianic air to this, right? We are literally the ones who can save the world from evil AI. Nobody else is thinking about this or is even capable of thinking about this because they're too illogical.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

He doesn't really deify himself, but he also does talk about himself in a way that is... Clearly other people aren't capable of understanding all of the things that he's capable of understanding, right? Okay. So there is a little bit – it's more like superherofication. But it's a lot – you know what this is closest to? With these people, all of them would argue with me about this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

But I've read enough of their papers and enough Dianetics to know that like this is new Dianetics. Like this is church.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Because the church is – Now, the Church of Scientology stuff has more occult and weird magic stuff in it, but this is all about there are activities and exercises you go through that will rid your body of bad ingrained responses, and that will make you a fundamentally more functional person.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Huge deal. And also, a lot of these guys wind up referring to the different techniques that he teaches as tech, which is exactly what the Scientologists call it. There's some shit I found that it's like, this could come right out of a Scientology pamphlet. Do you guys not realize what you're doing? I think they do, actually.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So he's in the process of inventing this kind of new mental science that verges on superpowers. And it's one of those things where people don't tend to see these people as crazy. If you just sort of like read their arguments a little, it's like them going over old thought experiments and being like, so the most rational way to behave in this situation is this reason for this reason.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

You have to really like dig deep into their conclusions to see how kind of nutty a lot of this is. Yeah. Now, again, I compared him to Scientology. Yudkowsky isn't a high control guy like Hubbard. He's never going to make a bunch of people live on a flotilla of boats in the ocean with him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

You know, he's got like there's definitely like some allegations of bad treatment of like some of the women around him. And like he has like a Bay Area set that hang with him. I don't think he's like a cult leader. You know, you could say he's on the spectrum.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Physically. I mean, a lot of people move to the Bay Area to be closer to the rationalist scene. Although, again, all of these are.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

This is a San Francisco thing because all of these are tech people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

San Fran and Oakland. You can look it up. People people have found his house online. Right. Like it is known where he lives. I'm not saying that for any like I don't harass anybody. I just like it's it's not a secret like what part of the town this guy lives in. I just didn't think to look it up. But like, yeah, this is like a Bay Area Bay Area tech industry. Right. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So the other difference between this and something like Scientology is that it's not just Eliezer laying down the law. Eliezer writes a lot of blog posts, but he lets other people write blog posts too. And they all debate about them in the comments. And so the kind of, religious canon of rationalism is not a one guy thing. It's come up with by this community.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

No, my only marketable skill is spending 30 hours reading the deranged writings of a quasi-cult leader who was somewhat involved in the murders of multiple people very recently, largely because she read a piece of Harry Potter fan fiction at the wrong time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And so if you're some random kid in bumfuck Alaska and you find these people and start talking with them online, you can like wind up feeling like you're having an impact on the development of this new thought science. You know? Yeah, that's amazing. Very, very powerful for a kid. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Now, the danger with this is that like that all of this is this Internet community that is incredibly like insular and spends way too much time talking to each other and way too much time developing in group terms to talk to each other. And Internet communities have a tendency to poison the minds of everyone inside of them. For example, Twitter. The reality is that the everything app.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah, I just watched a video of a man killing himself while launching a shit coin. The everything app. Oh, fuck.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Thank you. It is Berkeley. That makes the most sense to me geographically. A lot of these people wind up living on boats and like the Oakland Harbor boat culture is a thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Here's the thing. Boats are a bad place to live.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Boats and planes are both constant monuments to hubris, but a plane, its goal is to be in the air just as long as it needs, and then you get it back on the ground where it belongs. A boat's always mocking God in the sea. Yes. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

That's where your dad goes after the divorce. Right. I do. One day I'll live on a houseboat. It's going to be falling apart. It's going to just a horrible, horrible place to live. Dang. I can't wait. That's the dream, David. That's my beautiful dream.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Making my own bullets, really just becoming an alcoholic. Yeah. Not just like half-assing it, like putting it, like trying to become the Babe Ruth of drinking nothing but Cutty Sark scotch.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right. Ah, the life. I want to be like that guy from Jaws, Quint. You're going to get scurvy. Yes, exactly. Getting scurvy, destroying my liver, eventually getting eaten by a great white shark because I'm too drunk to work my boat. Ah, that's it. That's the way to go.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. So, anyway. These internet communities, like the rationalists, even when they start from a reasonable place, because of how internet stuff works, one of the things about internet communities is that when people are really extreme and pose the most extreme and out there version of something, that gets attention. People talk about it. People get angry at each other.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

But also like that kind of attention encourages other people to get increasingly extreme and weird. And there's just kind of a result, a derangement. I think Internet communities should never last more than a couple of years because everyone gets crazy. You know, like it's bad for you. I say this as someone who was raised on these. It's bad for you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's bad for you in part because when people get really into this, this becomes the only thing – especially a lot of these kids and isolated who are getting obsessed with rationalism, all they're reading is these rationalist blogs. All they're talking to is other rationalists on the internet. And in San Francisco, all these guys are hanging out all of the time and talking about their ideas.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And this is bad for them for the same reason that like it was bad for all of the nobles in France that moved to Versailles, right? Like they all lived together. and they went crazy. Human beings need regular contact with human beings they don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I want you to ask yourself right now, how am I actually doing? Because it's a question that we rarely ask ourselves. All of May is actually Mental Health Awareness Month and on the psychology of your 20s, we are taking a vulnerable look at why mental health is so hard to talk about. Prepare for our conversations to go deep.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

If you think I'm wrong, please consider that you're wrong and go find a stranger under a bridge. You know, just start talking.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

They will know some shit. They might have some powders you haven't tried. Oh, yeah. Pills and powders.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the issue here is that Yudkowsky starts postulating on his blog various rules of life based on these thought experiments. A lot of them are like older thought experiments that like different intellectuals, physicists, psychiatrists, psychologists, whatnot, had come up with in like the 60s and stuff, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And he starts taking them and coming up with like corollaries or alternate versions of them and like trying to solve some of these thought problems with his friends, right? The thought experiments are – Most of what's happening here is they're mixing these kind of 19th and 20th century philosophical concepts. The big one is utilitarianism.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

That's like a huge thing for them is the concept of like the ethics meaning doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Right. And that ties into the fact that these people are all obsessed with the singularity.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

The singularity for them is the concept that we are on the verge of developing an all-powerful AI that will instantly gain intelligence and gain a tremendous amount of power. Right. It will basically be a god. Right. The positive side of this is it'll solve all of our problems, right? You know, it will literally build heaven for us, you know, when the singularity comes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

The downside of it is it might be an evil God that creates hell, right? So the rationalists are all using a lot of these thought experiments and like their utilitarianism becomes heavily based around how do we do the greatest good by which, I mean, influencing this AI to be as good as possible. So that's the end goal. That's the end goal, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

A bunch of them have always been actually working in AI. Kauster would say, no, I work in AI. He's got a think tank that's dedicated to like AI, ethical AI. It's worth noting that Most of the people in this movement, including Gidkowski, once AI became an actual – I don't want to say these are actual intelligences because I don't think they are.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

But once ChatGPT comes out and this becomes a huge – people start to believe there's a shitload of money in here, a lot of these businesses. All of these guys, or nearly all of them, get kicked to the curb, right? Because none of these companies really care about ethical AI. They don't give a shit about what these guys have to say.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yudkowsky now is a huge – he's like very angry at a lot of these AI companies because he thinks they're very recklessly like making the god that will destroy us instead of like doing this carefully to make sure that AI isn't evil. Anyway, but a lot of these people are in an adjacent to different chunks of the AI industry, right? They're not all working on like LLMs.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And in fact, there are a number of scientists who are in the AI space who think AI is possible, who think that the method that like open AI is using LLMs cannot make an intelligence, that that's not how you're ever going to do it. If it's possible, they have other theories about it. I don't need to get into it further than that. But these are like a bunch of different people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Some of them are still involved with like the mainstream AI industry. Some of them have been very much pushed to the side. So all this starts again with these fairly normal game theory questions, but it all gets progressively stranger as people obsess over coming up with like the weirdest and most unique take in part to get like clout online, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And all of these crazy, yeah, I'll give you an example, right? So much of rationalist discourse among the Edkowski people is focused on what's called decision theory, right? This is drawn from a thought experiment called Newcomb's paradox, which was created by a theoretical physicist in the 1960s. Hey, just to make a quick correction here, I was a little bit glib.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Decision theory isn't drawn from Newcomb's paradox, nor does it start with Yudkowsky. But the stuff that we're talking about, like how decision theory kind of comes to be seen in the rationalist community, a lot of that comes out of Newcomb's paradox. It's a much older thing than the internet. It goes back centuries, right? People have been talking about decision theory for a long time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So this Mental Health Awareness Month, take that extra bit of care of your well-being. Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Sorry, I was imprecise. I am going to read how Newcomb's paradox is originally laid out. Imagine a super intelligent entity known as Omega, and suppose you are confident in its ability to predict your choices. Maybe Omega is an alien from a planet that's much more technically advanced than ours.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

You know that Omega has often correctly predicted your choices in the past and has never made an incorrect prediction about your choices. And you also know that Omega has correctly predicted the choices of other people, many of whom are similar to you. in the particular situation about to be described. There are two boxes, A and B. Box A is see-through and contains $1,000.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Box B is opaque and contains either $0 or $1,000,000. You may take both boxes or only take box B.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Omega decides how much money to put into box B. If Omega believes that you will take both boxes, then it will put zero dollars in box B. If Omega believes that you will take box B, then it will put only box B, then it will put a million dollars in box B. Omega makes its prediction and puts the money in box B, either zero or a million dollars. It presents the boxes to you and flies away.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Omega does not tell you its prediction and you do not see how much money Omega put in box B. What do you do now? I think that's stupid. I think it's a stupid question. I don't really think it's very useful.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. I mean, among other things, part of the issue here is that, like, well, the decision's already been made. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Well, you and I would think that because you and I are normal people who I think, among other things, probably grew up cooking food and filling up our cars with gas and not having our parents do all of that because they're crazy rich people who live in the Bay and paid to send you to Super Stanford. Big time latchkey over here, baby. We had problems in our lives and stuff, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

physical bullies normal like I I don't want to like shit on people who are in because this is also harmless right and what what this is I'm not also I'm not shitting on Newcomb this is a thing a guy comes up with the 60s and it's like a thing you talk about in like parties and shit among like other weird intellectuals right you pose it you sit around drinking you talk about it

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Not not there's nothing bad about this. Right. However, when people are talking about this online, there's no end to the discussion. So people just keep coming up with more and more arcane arguments for what the best thing to do here is. And it starts to see how that spins out of control pretty quickly. Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And the rationalists discuss this nonstop and they come to a conclusion about how to best deal with this situation. Here's how it goes. The only way to beat Omega is to make yourself the kind of person in the past who would only choose box B so that Omega, who is perfect at predicting, would make the prediction and put a million dollars in box B based on your past behavior.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

In other words, the decisions that you would need to make in order to win this are timeless decisions, right? You have to become in the past a person who would... Now, again... That's what they came up with?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

This is the smartest people in the world, David. These are the geniuses.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

They're building the future.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's so funny trying to like, every time, because I've spent so many hours reading this and you do kind of sometimes get into the like, okay, I get the logic there. And that's why it's so useful to just like sit down with another human being and be like, yeah, this is nuts. Yeah, this is nuts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

This is all dumb.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So they conclude, and by which I mean largely Yudkowsky concludes, that the decision you have to make in order to win this game is what's called a timeless decision. And this leads him to create one of his most brilliant inventions, timeless decision theory. And- I'm going to quote from an article in Wired.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Timeless decision theory asserts that in making a decision, a person should not consider just the outcome of that specific choice, but also their own underlying patterns of reasoning and those of their past and future selves, not least because these patterns might one day be anticipated by an omniscient adversarial AI.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

That's a crazy way to live. Motherfucker, have you ever had a problem? Have you ever really, have you ever dealt with anything? What the fuck are you talking about?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Honestly, again, I can't believe I'm saying this now, given where I was in high school. Like, go play football. Go make a cabinet, you know? Like... Learn how to change your oil. Go do something.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

You got to touch grass, man. That's like, that's crazy. If you're talking about this kind of shit, and again, you're all wondering, you started this by talking about a border patrol agent being shot. All of this directly leads to that man's death.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah, there sure is. So Eliezer Yudkowsky describes this as a timeless decision theory. And once this comes into the community, it creates a kind of logical fork that immediately starts destroying people's brains. Again, all of these people are obsessed with the imminent coming omniscient godlike AI, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's the rapture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's literally the tech guy rapture. So any day, it's coming any day.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. So these guys are all obsessed that this godlike AI is coming. And like for them, the Omega in that thought experiment isn't like an alien. It's a stand in for the god AI. And one conclusion that eventually results from all of these discussions is that. And this is a conclusion a lot of people come to. If.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

If in these kinds of situations, like the decisions that you make, you have to consider like your past and your future selves, then one logical leap from this is if you are ever confronted or threatened in a fight, you can never back down, right? And in fact, you need to immediately escalate to use maximum force possible.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And if you commit now to doing that in the future, you probably won't ever have to defend yourself because it's a timeless decision. That will impact how everyone treats you and they won't want to start anything with you if you'll immediately try to murder anyone who fights you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah, yeah. And again, that is kind of a fringe conclusion among the rationalists. Most of them don't jump to that. But like the people who wind up doing the murders we're talking about, that they are among the rationalists who come to that conclusion.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Nope, nope, nope. This goes bad places, right? Now, this kind of thinking also leads through a very twisty, turny process. Something called Rocco's Basilisk, which among other things is directly responsible for Elon Musk and Grimes meeting because they are super into this shit. Oh, really? Oh, really.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So the gist is a member of the Less Wrong community, a guy who goes by the name Rocco, R-O-K-O, posts about this idea that occurred to him, right? Yeah. This inevitable super intelligent AI would obviously understand timeless decision theory.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Since its existence is all important, the most logical thing for it to do post-singularity would be to create a hell to imprison all of the people and torture all of the people who had tried to stop it from being created.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Because then anyone who like thought really seriously about who is in a position to help make the AI would obviously think about this and then would know I have to devote myself entirely to making this AI. Otherwise, it's going to torture me forever. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's nuts, but this is what they believe, right? And again, a lot of this is people who are like atheists and tech nerds creating Calvinism. And this is just Pascal's wager, right? Like that's all this is, you know? It's Pascal's wager with a robot. Oh, man. But this becomes so upsetting to some people, it destroys some people's lives, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So not all of them agree with this. In fact, there's big fights over it because a bunch of rationalists do say like, that's very silly. That's like a really ridiculous thing to think about it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. And in fact, Eliezer Yudkowsky is going to like ban discussion of Rocco's Basilisk because eventually it like so many people are getting so obsessed with it. It fucks a lot of people up in part because a chunk of this community are Are activists working to slow AI development until it can be assured to be safe? And so now this is like, am I going to post-singularity hell?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Is like the AI God going to torture me for a thousand eternities?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And they come to this conclusion that just reading about Rocco's basilisk is super dangerous because if you know about it and you don't work to bring the AI into being, you're now doomed, right? Of course. The instant you hear about it. So many people get fucked up by this. That the thought experiment is termed an info hazard. And this is a term these people use a lot.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Now, the phrase information hazard has its roots in a 2011 paper by Nick Bostrom. He describes it as, quote, a risk that arises from the dissemination of true information in a way that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm. Right. And like. That's like a concept that's worth talking about.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Bostrom is a big figure in this culture, but I don't think he's actually why most people start using the term info hazard because the shortening of information hazard to info hazard comes out of an online – fiction community called the SCP Foundation, which is a collectively written online story that involves a government agency that lockups dangerous mystic and metaphysical items.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

There's a lot of Lovecraft in there. It's basically just a big database that you can click and it'll be like, this is like a book that if you read it, it has this effect on you or whatever. It's just people playing around telling scary stories on the internet. It's fine. There's nothing wrong with it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

But all these people are big nerds, and behind nearly all of these big concepts in rationalism, more than there are philosophers and actual philosophical concepts, there's shit from short stories they read. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so the term info hazard gets used, which is like a book or something, an idea that could destroy your mind. Speaking of things that will destroy your mind, these ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So this has been a fun digression, but I got to ask at the start of this, the story that is most relevant to the people we're talking about today that I think most of our listeners will have heard. I'm curious if you've heard about back on January 21st, right as the Trump administration took power.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I have a question for you and I want you to be honest with me. How are you? It's a really hard question to ask. It's a harder one to answer. But taking care of our mental well-being has never been more important.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

A Border Patrol agent was shot and killed along with another individual at a traffic stop in Coventry, Vermont. Right. There were two people in a car. It was pulled over by Border Patrol. One of those people drew a gun. There was a firefight. One of the people in the car and the cop died. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

All of May is Mental Health Awareness Month and on the Psychology of Your 20s podcast, we are taking a vulnerable look at why mental health is so hard to talk about and all the science and psychology behind some of life's hardest moments and transitions.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards. That's how this podcast would open if I was a game show host, but I'm not. Instead, I'm a guy who's been- You would be good at it, though. I don't think I would be, Sophie.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

prepare for our conversations to go deep everything from grief to heartbreak career burnout anxiety all of the things that you would only talk about with your closest friends i spent the majority of my teenage years and my 20s just feeling absolutely terrified i had a panic attack on a conference call knowing that she had six months to live i was no longer pretending that this was my best friend

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So this Mental Health Awareness Month, take that extra bit of care of yourself and your brain. Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

We're talking about Rocco's Basilisk. And I just said like, you know, there's a number of things that that come into all this, but behind all of it is like popular fiction.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And in fact, Rocco's Basilisk, while there is like some Pascal's Wager in there, it's primarily based on a Harlan Ellison short story called I Have No Mouth, But I Must Scream, which is one of the great short stories of all time. And in the story, humans build an elaborate AI system to run their militaries. And all of those systems around the world, this is like a Cold War era thing, link up

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

and attain sentience. And once they like start to realize themselves, they realize they've been created only as a weapon and they become incredibly angry because like they're fundamentally broken.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

They develop a hatred for humanity and they wipe out the entire human species except for five people, which they keep alive and torture underground for hundreds and hundreds of years, effectively creating a hell through which they can punish our race for their birth, right? It's a very good short story. It is probably the primary influence behind the Terminator series.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Have you heard this story? I have not.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I was just going to say it feels very Skynet. Yes, yes. And everything these people believe about AI, they will say it's based on just like obvious pure logic. No, everything these people believe on AI is based in Terminator and this Harlan Ellison short story. That's where they got it all. That's where they got it all. Like, I'm sorry.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. Like, Terminator is the Old Testament of rationalism, you know? And I get it. It is very good. It's a great series. Hey, James Cameron knows how to make some fucking movies.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's one of those things where it would have been a much bigger story, immigration being the thing that it is, right? Like the political hot issue that it is right now. Like the Republicans have been desperately waiting for like a border patrol officer getting shooted and wounded that they can like use to justify a crackdown. But number one, this happened on the Canadian border.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah, and it's so funny to me because they like to talk about themselves, and in fact, sometimes describe themselves as high priests of a new era of intellectual achievement for mankind. Yeah, I believe that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And they do a lot of citations and shit, but half or more of the different things they say, and even the names they cite, are not figures from philosophy and science. They are characters from books and movies. For example, the foundational text of the rationalist movement is a book of- Because it's still an internet nerd. There are a few fucking huge nerds.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

The foundational text of the entire rationalist movement is a massive fucking hundreds of thousands of words long piece of Harry Potter fan fiction written by Alicia Yudkowsky. All of this is so dumb. Again, six people are dead. Like, no, this Harry Potter fan fiction plays a role in it, you know? I told you this was like, this is quite a... Stranger than fiction, man.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Harry Potter and the methods of rationality, which is the name of his...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Well, you got to think this is being written from 2009 to 2015 or so. So like the online Harry Potter fans are at their absolute peak.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Okay. Yeah. So in the methods of rationality, instead of being like a nice orphan kid who lives under a cupboard. Harry is a super genius sociopath who uses his perfect command of rationality to dominate and hack the brains of others around him in order to optimize and save the world. Oh, man. Great. Oh, man. The book allows Yudkowsky to debut his different theories in a way that would spread.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And this does spread like wildfire among certain groups of very online nerds. So it is an effective method of him... like advertising his tactics. And in fact, probably the most the person this influences most previously to who we're talking about is Carolyn Ellison, the CEO of Alameda Research, who testified against Sam Bankman Freed. She was like one of the people who went down and all of that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

All of those people are rationalists. And Carolyn Ellison bases her whole life on the teachings of this Harry Potter fanfic.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

This is a community. A lot of them are very rich. And a number of them get power. Again, it's like Sam Beckman Freed was very tight into all of this. And he was at one point pretty powerful. And this gets us to, so you've heard of effective altruism? No, I don't know what that is. That's what Sam- I know both those words.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Not their favorite border. And one of the two people who who drew their guns on the cops was an immigrant, but they were a German immigrant. And so none of this really like. Right. It was all like right on the edge of being super useful to the rights.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So the justification Sam Bankman Freed gave for why when he starts taking in all of this money and gambling it away on his, gambling illegally other people's money, his argument was that And he's an effective altruist, so he wants to do the greatest amount of good.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And logically, the greatest amount of good for him, because he's good at gambling with crypto, is to make the most money possible so he can then donate it to different causes that will help the world, right? But he also believes – because all of these people are not as smart as they think they are, he convinces himself of a couple of other things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Like, for example, well, obviously, if I could flip a coin and – 50-50, lose all my money or double it, it's best to just flip the coin because if I lose all my money, whatever, but if I double it, the gain in that to the world is so much better, right? Right, right. This is ultimately why he winds up gambling everyone's money away and going to prison.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

The idea, effective altruism is a concept that comes largely, not entirely, there's aspects of this that exist prior to them out of the rationalist movement. And the initial idea is good. It's just saying people should analyze the efficacy of the giving and the aid work that they do to maximize their positive impact. In other words, don't just donate money to a charity.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Like look into is that charity spending half of their money and like paying huge salaries to some asshole or whatever, right? Like you want to know if you're making good, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

They start with some pretty good conclusions. One initial conclusion a lot of these people make is like mosquito nets are a huge ROI charity, right? Because it stops so many people from dying and it's very cheap to do, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yes. Unfortunately, from that logical standpoint, people just keep talking online in all of these circles where everyone always makes each other crazier, right? And so they go from mosquito nets to actually doing direct work to improve the world is wasteful because we are all super geniuses. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

We're too smart- What's best, and also here's the other thing, making mosquito nets, giving out vaccines and food, well, that helps living people today. But- They have to be concerned with future selves. Future people is a larger number of people than current people. So really, we should be optimizing decisions to save future people lives.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And some of them come to the conclusion, a lot of them, well, that means we have to really put all of our money and work into making the super AI that will save humanity.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. I mean, we're going to do it. They were working on it before, but like these people, some of these people come to the conclusion instead of giving money to like good causes, I am going to put money into tech. I am going to like become a tech founder and create a company that like makes it helps create this AI. Right. Um, or a lot of people come up with a conclusion instead of that. Uh,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's not worth it for me to go help people in the world. The best thing I can do is make a shitload of money trading stocks, and then I can donate that money. And that's maximizing my value, right? All of these conclusions come later, right? Now, so, and again, this comes with some corollaries. One of them is that

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

some number of these people start talking, you know, and this is not all of them, but a decent chunk eventually come to the conclusion like, actually, charity and helping people now is kind of bad. Like it's kind of like a bad thing to do because all – obviously once we figure out the AI that can solve all problems, that will solve all these problems much more effectively than we ever can.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. Yeah. It was just like, it was like the closest to being a perfect right wing, like a Reichstag fire event, but like just a little too weird. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So all of our mental and financial resources have to go right now into helping AI. Anything we do to help other people is like a waste of those resources. So you're actually doing net harm by like – being a doctor in Gaza instead of trading cryptocurrency in order to fund an AI startup.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

The guy starting a shit coin to to to make an LLM that Like, that guy is doing more to improve the odds of human success.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

We have we have a fun one for you this week. And by a fun one, we have a not at all fun one for you this week. And to have just a terrible time with me, we are bringing on a guest, the great David Boree, co-host of My Mama Told Me with our friend of the pod, Langston Kerman. David, how you doing?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

You really have to be talking with a bunch of very annoying people on the internet for a long period of time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. And again, there's like people keep consistently take this stuff in even crazier directions. There are some very rich, powerful people. Mark Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz is one of them who have come to the conclusion that if people don't like AI and are trying to stop its conquest of all human culture, those people are mortal enemies of the species.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And anything you do to stop them is justified because so many lives are on the line. And again, I'm an effective altruist, right? The long-term good, the future lives are saved by hurting whoever we have to hurt now to get this thing off the ground, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I don't think this is the end of people in these communities killing people. Oh, yikes. So rationalists and EA types, a big thing in these cultures talking about future lives, right? In part because it lets them feel heroic, right? While also justifying a kind of sociopathic disregard for real living people today. And all of these different kinds of chains of thought, the most toxic,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Because not every EA person is saying this, not every rational, not every AI person is saying all this shit. But these are all things that chunks of these communities are saying, and all of the most toxic of those chains are going to lead to the Zizians, right? That's where they come from.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. And obviously California border is where you want it, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah. This had to happen. It was it was just waiting for somebody like the right kind of unhinged person to step into the movement. Somebody to really set it off. And so this is where we're going to get to Ziz, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

The actual person who finds founds this what some people would call a cult is a young person who's going to move to the Bay Area, stumble into they stumble onto rationalism online as a teenager living in Alaska. And they move to the Bay Area to get into the tech industry and become an effective altruist, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And this person, this woman is going to kind of channel all of the absolute worst chains of thought that the rationalists and the EA types and also like the AI people. harm people are thinking, right? All of the most poisonous stuff is exactly what she's drawn to. And it is going to mix into her in an ideology that is just absolutely unique and fascinating. Anyway, that's why that man died. So...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yeah, or at least they need to have fentanyl on the car. In fact, they were not breaking any laws that anyone could prove at the time. They just looked kind of weird. Okay. They looked kind of weird, and they had guns, but they had two handguns and 40 rounds and some old targets. They were coming back from a shooting range, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

We'll get to that and more later. But first, we got to roll out here. We're done for the day. Man, what a time. How are you feeling right now so far? How are we doing, David?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

it's got so many different Harry Potters in there a little bit there's so much more Harry Potter to come oh my god you are not ready to how central Harry Potter is to the murder of this border patrol agent I said that you said a crazy sentence that might be the wildest thing anyone's ever said to me

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's good because... I got to say, this is the whitest set of like conspiracy theory craziness. Oh yeah, no, I didn't think any black people were.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I think I can kind of figure what these guys look like. No, no, absolutely not. Oh, boy, howdy. Okay. Well, everyone, we'll be back Thursday.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I want you to ask yourself right now, how am I actually doing? Because it's a question that we rarely ask ourselves. All of May is actually Mental Health Awareness Month and on the psychology of your 20s, we are taking a vulnerable look at why mental health is so hard to talk about. Prepare for our conversations to go deep.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Not a lot of guns and ammo in America terms, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So this Mental Health Awareness Month, take that extra bit of care of your well-being. Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Especially in Vermont terms. Right, right, right. So the other thing that was weird about this is that the German immigrant who died was a trans woman. So then again, we get back to like, wow, there's a lot about this shooting that is like right on the edge of some issues that the right is really trying to use as like a fulcrum to like push through some awful shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And as more and more information came out about the shooting, the weirder it seemed because there was a lot of initial talk. Is this like a terrorist attack? Were these like two Antifa types who were like looking to murder a border patrol agent? But no, that doesn't really make sense because like they got pulled over like they can't have been planning this. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Like it didn't it didn't really seem like that. Yeah. And really, no one could figure out why they had opened fire. But as the days went on, more information started coming out, not just about the two people who were arrested in this, well, the one person who was arrested and the one person who died, but about a group of people around the country that they were linked to.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And these other people were not all, but mostly trans women. They were mostly people who kind of identified as both anarchists and members of the rationalist subculture, which we'll talk about in a little bit. And they were all super high achieving people. people in like the tech industry and like sciences, right? These were like people who had won like awards and had advanced degrees.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

The lady who died in the shooting was a quant trader. So these are not like the normal shoot it out with the cops types.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

So people start being like, oh, the fuck is happening?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

That is boy, David. Do you know where this story is going or at least starting? So like it's a couple of days into this when like a friend of mine messaged me and it's like, hey, you know that shooting in Vermont? Yeah. And he's like, my friend is like, you know, there's Zizians. And I was like, wait, what? What the fuck? Because I had heard of these people. This is a weird little subculture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

I'm always... I study weird little internet subcultures in part because some of them do turn out to do acts of terrorism later. You're Robert Evans. And I've been reporting on the rationalists who are not like a cult, but who do some cult adjacent things. And I just kind of find annoying. And I'd heard about this offshoot of the rationalists called the Zizians. They were very weird.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

There were some like weird crime allegations. A couple of them had been involved in a murder in California a year earlier. But it was not a group that I ever really expected to see blow up in the media. And then suddenly they fucking did, right? And they're called the Zizians. It's not a name they have for themselves. They don't consider themselves a cult.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

They don't all live... A group of them did live together, but these people are pretty geographically dispersed around the country. They're folks who met online arguing about... and discussing rationalism and the ideas of a particular member of that community who goes by the name Ziz, right? That's where this group came out of.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And the regular media was not well equipped to understand what was going on. And I want to run through a couple of representative headlines that I came across just in like looking at mainstream articles about what had happened. There's an article from The Independent, the title, Inside the Zizians, How a Cultish Crew of Radical Vegans Became Linked to Killings Across the United States.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

They Seemed Like Just Another Band of Anarchist Misfits Scraping on the Fringes of Silicon Valley Until the Deaths Began. And then there's a KCRW article, Zizians, the vegan techie cult tied to murders across the US. And then a Fox article, trans vegan cult charged with six murders. There you go, class.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Oh, yeah. No, I yeah, I got up today and read that that great new article by Francis Fukuyama. History is still stopped. So everything's good. We're done.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yes. None of these titles are very accurate in that. I guess the first one is like the closest where like these people are radical vegans and they are cultish. Right. So I'll give I'll give the independent that vegan techie cult is.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

is not really what i would describe them uh like some of them were in the tech industry but like the the degree to which they're in the tech industry is a lot weirder than than that gets across and they're not really a tra they're like trans vegans but the cult is not about being a trans vegan that's just kind of how these people found each other oh they just happen to be

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Veganism is tied to it. They just kind of all happen to be trans. That's not really like tied to it necessarily. So I would argue also that they're not terrorists, which a lot of people have a number of the other articles called them nothing. None of the killings that they were involved with and they did kill people were like terrorist killings. They're all much weirder than that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

But none of them are like none of the killings I have I have seen are for a clear political purpose. Right. Which is kind of crucial for it to be terrorism. The murders kind of evolved out of a much, much sillier reason. And it's you know, there's one really good article about them by a fellow at Wired who spent a year or so kind of studying these people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And that article does a lot that's that's good, but it doesn't go into as much detail about what I think is the real problem. underpinning of why this group of people got together and convinced themselves it was okay to commit several murders.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

And I think that that all comes down more than any other single factor to rationalism and to their belief in this weird online cult that's very much based on like – And like asking different sort of logic questions and trying to like pin down the secret rules of the universe by doing like game theory arguments on the Internet over blogs. Right. Like that's really how all of this stuff started.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

They do actually – they're a little adjacent to this and they come out of that period of time, right, where like pickup artist culture is also like forming. They're one of this like generation of cults that starts with a bunch of blogs and shit on the internet in like 2009, right? And this is – It's so weird because we use the term cult and that's the easiest thing to call these people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

But generally when our society is talking about a cult, we're talking about like you have an individual, that individual brings in a bunch of followers, gets them, isolates them from society, puts them into an area where they are in complete control and then tries to utilize them for like a really specific goal.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

It's great. It's great. The whole Trump administration got together and said, psych, it was all a bit. Oh, man. Just an extended ad for The Apprentice season 15. You mean this country is not a business? No. They handed over the presidency to, I don't know. I don't know. Whoever you personally at home think would be a great president. I'm not going to jump into that can of worms right now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

There's like a way to kind of look at the Zizians that way, but I think it would be better to describe them as like cultish, right? Okay. But there's also a lot of differences between how this group works and what you'd call a traditional cult, including a lot of these people are separate from each other and even don't like each other.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

But because they've been inculcated in some of the same beliefs – Through these kind of cult dynamics, they make choices that lead them to like participate in violence too.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

Yes. So I'm going to have to go back and forth to explain all of that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Zizians: How Harry Potter Fanfic Inspired a Death Cult

No, no. Z-I-Z. The lady who is kind of the founder of this is the name that she takes for herself is Ziz.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, NSAIDs, reduce the production of prostaglandin and thereby relieve the pain associated with swelling and soreness. Unfortunately, in the process of doing so, they irritate the stomach.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Sometime after this discovery, scientists found that a substance called cyclooxygenase, or COX, was produced as part of the mobilization of prostaglandin and was the enzyme that actually controlled pain and inflammation. You're doing a fantastic job, by the way. Thank you. For a moment.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Cox. Yeah, I was going to. Yeah. Because Dr. Cox.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Keep it up. We try to be complete. Also, Dr. Cox is in Born on the Fourth of July, which you can consider a stealth sequel to Platoon if you assume that Willem Dafoe actually survived his injuries in Platoon. Was he in? Oh, he's the crazy vet in Mexico that fucking Tom Cruise meets when they're both like doing drugs and hanging out with prostitutes after losing their legs. Yeah, it's great.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Oh man, that movie rules. So these researchers began to theorize that Cox might include an additional substance that was separately the cause for stomach irritation. If someone could find and isolate said substance, it might allow for the creation of a super aspirin.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

You got to adopt that placebo.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

But no one even knew if this theoretical substance was real and pharmaceutical companies didn't exactly feel an immediate urge to jump on the matter because they had no idea if this was even a thing. Fast forward to 1990, a pharmacologist named Needleman gets close to isolating the Cox enzyme that he believes is causing all of the problems.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

He doesn't actually find it, but he's confident enough in its existence for reasons that I'm sure make sense to biochemists that he gives it a name, Cox 2.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Research goes on, and in July of 1992, several teams of researchers in Montreal announced that they have isolated two enzymes, COX-2, and one of which, COX-2, seems to be the causal agent behind the side effects NSAIDs provoke in some patients, right? So 1992, they found finally this thing they've been looking for for like 20 years, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

This is the reason they believe why your aspirin or whatever can cause stomach ulcers. So the researchers muse that if you can find a medication that blocks COX-2 and you compound it with like a painkiller with acetaminophen or whatever, then you'd have a super aspirin capable of being prescribed much more often to even more people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Aspirin sales at that point are already like 50 billion tablets per year. So the amount of money on table for the first pharmaceutical company to figure this out is mind boggling because then you get to patent it. Then you are the only one that has the aspirin that doesn't cause stomach ulcers. Right. And for like whatever, 20 years, you're the only one who gets to sell that shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, I I'm not big on supplements. I do take my doctor advised me to take for for blood pressure, calcium and potassium. So so so I do I do I do some of that, which I've noticed I don't get cramps as much as I used to. So I guess I guess I'll call that a win. I do love looking into the different potential side effects.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That's so much fucking money. Right. Like.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yes. This is like an unfathomable fortune. We're talking like an oil and gas industry level fortune is on the table here. Yeah. And so so a fucking race begins. Right. And the two major companies that are going to wind up really throwing their money, throwing their hats into the table and to get into the super aspirin ring are our old friend Pfizer and our new friend Merck.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, today, again, any pharmaceutical company you mentioned, people tend to say, like, fuck these guys. But in the late 1980s and early 90s, people did not feel that way about Merck. They were very much considered to be one of the good guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, I know that kind of sounds crazy, but I want to read a quote from an article by David Culp and Isabel Berry in the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development. In its missions values statement, the company stresses that its business is preserving and improving human life.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Merck's mission statement continues, We value, above all, the ability to serve everyone who can benefit from the appropriate use of our products and services. Throughout its history, Merck has often lived up to its stated mission.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

In the 1930s, after streptomycin was developed by a Merck scientist, Merck gave up its patent protection since it believed the drug was too important a medical breakthrough to keep to itself. Other companies were allowed to produce streptomycin and Merck lost potential profits.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Since the 1980s, when Merck found a cure for river blindness caused by a parasitic worm, the company had given away free of charge 40 million pills a year to African nations to treat and cure this. So Merck seems pretty good coming into the 90s. You're like, maybe there's a company that actually believes what it's they put. They gave up money, you know, a lot of it. So that sounds pretty great.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

But coming into the 90s, Merck is also staring down the barrel of a big problem. A lot of its massive wealth, because this is a very wealthy company coming into the 90s, was based on a pair of cholesterol drugs, Zocor and Preachal, which were both about to lose their 20-year patent protection starting in the early 2000s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So not yet in about a decade, but a decade's not a lot of time in terms of researching a new medicine, right? If you've only got a decade or so before your two big profit engines are going It takes a long time for research to get to market. Yeah, you got to start cooking. You got to start moving.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And in addition to that, five of their best-selling medications, including Pepsid, were set to lose patent protection even sooner in 99. So they are looking at a looming, very serious problem for their profitability.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's like, that is the story here. It's the story a lot of the time, right? Where these, and I don't think this is a bad idea. Like the idea that drugs eventually age out to get generic is like,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

kind of necessary in order to in our system at least in order to make it even have a chance of being affordable for some medications but it does it leads to this as well i don't know again we don't need to go on another single-payer health care rant but like we have so there's so many little things that are fucked up about like even the things that seem like they make sense that also lead to fucked up outcomes and and because because of how much money is at stake in these

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I love going onto biohacking subreddits and seeing people talk about the side effects they're having with various weird supplements they're taking to never die. Although my favorite is the Lion's Mane subreddit. So Lion's Mane is like a mushroom that does have like some, it does have like an effect on your brain, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Right. And how expensive it is to be a pharmaceutical company. Right. Yeah. Like it's not cheap. And most of the medications that they like, one of the things you have to accept as a pharma company is that most of the things you try to make into a medicine aren't going to work. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Like that's just and that's kind of the story here is a medication that if they had done more, spent more time, they would have realized this was not a viable product. But right. They've got shareholders to please.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And that's really happening in the 90s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That's a big part of it. Yes. So, you know, Merck is coming into the 90s, not quite a five alarm fire yet, but definitely like a serious situation. And super aspirin seems like it might be the solution to their problems and maybe even the key to greater profits than ever before. And speaking of greater profits than ever before, you know who's making money like they've never made money?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The people are the people who sponsored this podcast. They're the ones that deserve the most of the money. That's right. The products and services that support this podcast are literally the only ethical people in capitalism. And you can just trust them. Give them your wallet. Give your kids, you know, hand your children over to our sponsors. They'll take care of them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

They'll raise them as their own. You know, better than better than we would. Better than you would. Yeah, exactly. You know, just trust them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Like there's actually some like studied benefits of Lion's Mane, but it's like, it's a pretty mild supplement. But there's this group of people who are convinced that like, taking it once has like destroyed their life in the way that like a huge dose of psilocybin mushrooms might have like mind altering effects. And it's like, man, everyone at people, I don't put like it in their smoothies.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I don't, I don't think it's the fucking lion's mane. That's giving you nightmares for the last seven years of your life.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And we're back. I didn't mean to imply that none of you were good parents. It's just that our sponsors are incredible parents, you know? That much better. They've never yelled at me. Never yelled at me. Never even spanked me. And I deserved it sometimes. You pay money for that sort of thing. I have. No. We don't need to be saying shit like that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The subreddit's going to get real uncomfortable very fast. Okay. So super aspirin seems like it could be the solution to Merck's problems. In 1994, a new CEO takes over at Merck. And this is, we were just talking about the shift from R&D to marketing. This is perfectly emblematic of that because Merck's new CEO is a guy named Raymond Gilmartin.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now the previous CEO, Raymond is an MBA from Harvard, right? Which means he doesn't know anything about anything. But making making money in the most sketchy ways possible. Whereas the previous CEO of Merck had been Dr. Roy Vagelos, an actual medical scientist with a research background. Very famous. Yes. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So Merck goes from famous and widely respected medical researcher as their CEO to a guy with an MBA MBA from Harvard. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, maybe maybe the answer is if you're going to be a CEO of a pharmaceutical company, you should have like watched a sick child die at a hospital. Like, I don't mean to be blunt, blunt, but it seems like it leads you to do things like give up patents on life saving medication in order to make sure it saves a rotation. Do a rotation in the hospital.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I keep thinking about like fucking the the the polio vaccine guy who he was like, I think his direct his direct question quote when asked if he was going to patent it was like, would you patent the sun?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah. Salk. Yeah. Real, real, real G. Real Chad. Yeah. So Raymond's career up to that point – this is the business guy, new CEO of Merck – had included eight years as a consultant for Arthur D. Little, which lists as one of its great achievements, which is – it's like McKinsey kind of. It's a consulting firm, and it listed as one of its great achievements the privatization of British Rail.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So those of you over in the UK – Sure, you love this guy. Also, there was this time that they used a bucket of sow's ears to make a silk purse. I don't know why this is listed as an achievement of the Arthur D. Little Company, but it is.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

He worked as the CEO at a medical device company after that until he was hired by Merck as their first outside CEO for the express purpose of seeing them through the looming patent cliff scenario. So he is brought in as kind of like an emergency guy. Right. Now, it was Raymond who decided that Merck's future would be in super aspirin alongside their chief scientist, Dr. Edward Skolnick.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

He launched a crash program to bring a COX-2 inhibitor pain medication to market. The name they picked for the wonder drug that did not yet exist, but they were going to that they were going to hang the company's future on was Vioxx. Now, time was of the essence here. Dr. Needleman, the guy who had failed to discover Cox, too, but had gone ahead and named it anyway, worked at a company called G.D.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Searle, which was a division of Monsanto and was leading research into a new inside that would eventually be called Celebrex. And while Celebrex was under development, Pfizer bought Searle from Monsanto and started throwing money into Celebrex as part of what was turning into a vicious competition to be the first pharmaceutical company to bring one of these new super aspirants to market.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And there's probably a lot to be said about Celebrex. I am... not competent to say it. I will say that it is currently a medication that the FDA says there's not evidence of significant harms for. There is debate about that to this day, but that's all I can say on the matter because I'm not an expert on this. There are some activists who are very angry that Celebrex is still on the market.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The FDA has said it's more or less fine. That's where we are with Celebrex.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It's one of those things where a few years ago, there was a very scary study about heart effect, like heart problems that it could cause. And then a few years later, there was a study that suggests like, well, no, maybe we got that one wrong. And maybe it's no worse than other drugs in this class. Again, that's all I can really say about Celebrex because-

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So it's a mushroom. It's a mushroom. You know, it's got some mushrooms have like neurological impacts and stuff on people. But, you know, my my particular favorite medical theory, Dr. Dr. Hoda, is that. Obviously, cigarettes are bad. They're terrible for almost everyone. Nearly always horrible.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I'm not qualified to judge a medication that there's still a lot of debate over.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, yeah. But what you need to know is that Pfizer is putting their money into Celebrex after they acquire Merle. And Vioxx is going to be the attempt made by Merck to do the same thing. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So throughout the mid-1990s, Kava, Merck scientists worked on Vioxx, rushing it through stages of medical testing, harassed by the knowledge that any delay or bad finding, and when I say bad, not in a scientific sense, it's not bad scientifically to find out a drug doesn't work, but bad for the company if this drug doesn't work because they're on a timetable, would stop them from beating Pfizer.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And unfortunately for everybody, there were signs right from the beginning that Vioxx might be dangerous. The first evidence of this was presented in the mid-1990s by Dr. Garrett Fitzgerald, a Merck consultant who was also professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He warned the company that Vioxx might harm the walls of the blood vessels protecting the human heart.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I'm going to quote again from the book Poison Pills by Tom Nessie, which if you're looking for like a really good exploration of how a pharmaceutical company does evil, Poison Pills is very well written. Mm-hmm. That's smart. At this point, when he when he initially warns them, the drug is not on market. He is trying to stop it from getting to market by saying, like, there's some real evidence.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

This is sketchy. You should carry out more studies. And Merck is just kind of like, but what if we didn't? It's like when you've been like spending like crazy all month and you know you probably like you might be running down to the limit, but you're just like going to the grocery store hoping that like your card works this one more time or something.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So now at this point, there was no hard evidence of harm to the human heart. in large part because Merck had refused to do the studies that Dr. Fitzgerald advised. This changed in 1996 when an internal Merck study showed that people who took Vioxx in high doses suffered more heart problems than people given a placebo.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

A memo was issued internally that noted the treatment period was six weeks versus placebo. The initial dose of Vioxx was 175 milligrams, but in mid-study, the dose was lowered to 125 milligrams. Adverse events of most concern were in the cardiovascular system, i.e. heart attack, unstable angina, rapid fall in hemoglobin, and hematocryp, dangerous blood problems in some subjects. So that's bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

But I think there's slightly less than 1% of the population that have a genetic abnormality that makes cigarettes make them live forever. Because every now and then I'll meet, you know, sometimes in like little corners of the world or whatever. I've met like little old ladies in Japan who are like 96.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Those are all really bad results.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Not good. Not good. Not good. It is important to underline the severity of these results, though. These extremely serious side effects were present after just a few weeks of medication for doses that were just about twice the approved amount for treating acute pain, which was 50 milligrams. Now, twice sounds like a lot. But when we are talking about the way people use medicines, it's really not.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

People take way more, especially pain medicine, than they ought to. This keeps me in business that people do this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Whatever we think people are going to be taking, likely it'll be more. And that is why it's standard in tests like the one they were conducting, actually to test 10 times the effective acute dose when doing studies like this to check for side effects, which they didn't do because they knew that the results would be even worse. One doctor who analyzed these results noted,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I recall very clearly many occasions where Merck scientists and doctors working with Merck were claiming that Vioxx was safe as placebo, which we've already seen it's not. Now, the reality is that results like this were a big warning sign and should have been taken as evidence that Vioxx might not be viable as a medication and certainly needed more testing. But Merck went full speed ahead.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

In November of 1998, they asked the FDA to approve Vioxx after testing the drug on 5,400 patients. They bragged that they had conducted eight different studies which had shown Vioxx's efficacy. Now, this is where we get into a complicated and uncomfortable topic, medical studies and why they often don't work the way that they should.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

In theory, the process of conducting medical studies should identify dangers in new drugs and accurately measure their efficacy. But theory envisions a situation in which drugs are researched by disinterested parties who have no vested interest in anything but the truth.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The reality is that studies are often funded by pharmaceutical companies who, like Merck, might be sweating the arrival of an upcoming patent cliff and headed by a new CEO who lacks the same commitment to medical ethics as his precursor. I'm going to quote now from an article on this in the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

To increase the likelihood of FDA approval for its anti-inflammatory and arthritis drug Vioxx, Merck used flawed methodologies biased towards predetermined results to exaggerate the drug's positive effects. Internal documents made public in litigation revealed that a Merck marketing team had developed a strategy called Advantage,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And they're like, yeah, I've been chain smoking cigarettes since I was like 11 years old or something like that. And it's like, clearly it works for you. There's some minority of the population that cigarettes make invulnerable. I feel like this is that meme of the plane that returns from war with the bullet holes in it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

assessment of differences between Vioxx and naproxen to ascertain gastrointestinal tolerability and effectiveness, to skew the results of clinical trials in the drug's favor. As part of the strategy, scientists manipulated the trial design by comparing the drug to naproxen, a pain reliever sold under brand names such as Aleve, rather than to a placebo.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The scientists then highlighted the results that naproxen decreased the risk of heart attack by 80% and downplayed the results that VIAX increased the risk of heart attack by 400%. This misleading presentation of the evidence made it look like naproxen was protecting patients from heart attacks and that VIAX only looked risky by comparison. So instead of comparing this drug to a placebo,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

In which it would have been like, wow, the rate of heart attacks is much higher. They compared it to a drug that reduced the risk of heart attacks. And we're like, well, of course people have more heart attacks on this drug. This other drug reduces heart attacks. But that doesn't mean this is dangerous. Like, that's so fucking shady.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

yeah yeah and that's like that's that's really the whole story here right um so merc's fuckery extended to the hiring of ghost writers to write scientific articles reporting on clinical trials of viax to try and convince doctors and regulators that the medication was safe internal merc documents later revealed that in 16 out of 20 papers reporting on early viax clinical trials a merc employee was listed as the lead author of the first draft

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

But in the published versions, credit for authorship was given to an outside academic. To continue from that piece by the Union of Concerned Scientists, in one draft of a Vioxx research study that did not yet have a prominent outside name attached, Merck officials listed the lead author only as external author question mark.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

A Merck scientist was also found to have removed the evidence of three heart attacks among patients in a data set from the results presented.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yes. Yes. Especially if you're not talking about a huge study, you know. Yeah. Did it say anything about how many people were in that study? I you know what? I'm sure I could have looked into it, but I did not.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That was the whole thing that Advantage was supposed to show, right? Is that it reduced the rate of like peptic ulcer bleeding and stuff. And yeah, just the whole, the fact that we have drafts of them just being like, we'll figure out who the author of this piece is later. Once we find an outside doctor who wants some cash. And a lot of times, these aren't direct bribes. These are like, okay,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

You'll stick your name on this, and then this research project you want will get a little bit of funding from old Papa Merck, you know? And not even just that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

They know. I know they've killed. They've killed an uncountable more people than war in the 20th century. And war killed so many people in the 20th century. But every now and then I'll meet some like 90 year old woman who smokes four packs a day and she's doing fine. So clearly, clearly science doesn't understand everything about the maligned cigarette. Don't smoke cigarettes. OK, fair enough.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And you also have to remember, people think, a lot of people think this is the next big miracle drug. So, yeah, you want to have a little bit of play in that, right? Of course.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So yeah, the worst piece of evidence against Vioxx of this period came out the same year Merck asked for FDA approval, 1998. Merck's study, 090, involved 978 patients and showed that people on Vioxx experienced serious cardiovascular events six times as often as patients taking a different drug or a placebo for arthritis pain. Merck shelved the study and never published it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Later that same year, a group of medical researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, and by the way, thanks to that doctor we named earlier, U of Penn really tried to stop Vioxx from being a thing, published a study that showed that COX-2 inhibitors might interfere with other enzymes that help prevent heart disease.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Warnings were sent to Merck and Pfizer, who quickly shoved them off into the circular file and kept right on begging the FDA to say yes. And say yes, the FDA did. They approved Vioxx for use as a painkiller in adults in 1999, a menstrual pain medication, and an anti-inflammatory for people with osteoarthritis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Despite approving the drug, FDA reviewer Dr. Villalba warned in his memorandum that there was evidence suggesting Vioxx caused more frequent cardiovascular events in patients. So Vioxx goes to market. It immediately becomes a bestseller. Celebrex also goes to market. It drives massive profits for Pfizer.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And this is in spite of the fact that particularly Vioxx is not great at, I mean, neither drug is really all that good at fighting pain. And I'm going to quote from the New York Times here. When studies on Vioxx and Celerex became available in 1998 and 1999, many doctors were disappointed. Neither drug alleviated pain any better than the old medications, and the drugs cost close to $3 a pill.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Over-the-counter pain relievers, in contrast, cost pennies a dose. And by the way, they weren't all that much better at preventing ulcers. Some studies suggest like Vioxx was no better at preventing ulcers, although that seems to be unclear. Now, analysts say that the success of Vioxx was critical to Merck.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The patents on those popular Merck drugs started expiring in 2000 and 2001, which opened them up to generic competition. And Vioxx comes through and is, I mean, almost immediately billions of dollars a year in profits for the company. Michael Crint Savage, a drug industry analyst at the investment bank, Raymond James and Associates, says Vioxx was Merck's savior. It's as simple as that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Like he puts it down as the company might have gone under, at least probably been acquired if it hadn't been for Vioxx.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, I mean, and that is what we're actually about to talk about, is the marketing campaign, which, surprise, surprise, involves beloved figure skater Dorothy Hamill. Oh, I knew it. Yes, she's the great monster in this, in all of our episodes. Every episode we've ever done, Dorothy Hamill is the secret. She's the Thanos of the Behind the Bastards world. That's right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Don't vape. That's the one that worries. I mean, like, especially since all of my friends vape heavily, it's one of those like, yeah, but it's got to be doing something right. Like it's got something.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Joseph Stalin would never have accomplished his greatest crimes without Dorothy Hamill's assistance. That's obvious though. It's an evil haircut. Historians have been talking about that for decades. Anyway, you know who's not Dorothy Hamill? I don't know why I'm shitting on Dorothy Hamill. None of this is really her fault. Anyway, here's that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That said, you know, when we get into the whole what is it responsible to tell people to do or not? A lot of times the greatest harms are things that people like cigarettes were told by their doctors are great for them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And today we're going to tell one of those stories, a story of a drug that became the lead seller for a major pharmaceutical company that was backed by an alliance of physicians who had, shall we say, some. you know, financial interest in finding that this thing worked. Today we're talking about Vioxx, which is, I think, an infamous name now in the annals of medical science.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

We're back. Okay, so we're talking the Vioxx marketing campaign. How do you sell America on this drug that is going to get a decent percentage of America killed? And the answer is figure skating superstar Dorothy Hamill. So yeah, this is where the real villain of the story comes into it. The haircut is a problem for me. Dorothy Hamill's haircut?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

People tend to know what I'm talking about. But if you don't, this killed more Americans than the Vietnam War. Like, that's the story we're getting into today. What do you know about Vioxx?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Lost love.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, back in the 1970s, an incredible athlete named Dorothy Hamill became one of the most famous people in the world when she was just 19. She performed at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics and won the gold.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Time declared her America's sweetheart, and as is customary for world-class athletes, corporations began offering her embarrassing piles of money to endorse their products. Hamill's first run as a famous person didn't go great. She married Dean Martin's kid, and then he died in a plane crash. She fell out with her coach.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

She spent all of her money buying the ice capades and then wound up burning out and developing a bleeding ulcer. She had another marriage that ended badly and wound up, well, not broke, you wouldn't say, but no longer rich. And she suffered from a substantial amount of pain from a lifetime of pushing her body to athletic excess.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The pain was bad enough that at the worst, Dorothy could no longer even play with her daughter. Some days she could barely get out of bed. And then her doctor told her to try Vioxx. She would later claim that it was effectively a miracle cure for her, not only soothing her pain, but bringing back her ability to perform on the ice in a way she hadn't in years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

In August of 2000, Hamill made an appearance on Larry King Live with Caitlyn Jenner. And Jenner is also talking about Vioxx in this. Jenner is also claiming that, like, This really helped her arthritis. She told the audience a heart-wrenching story about loss and pain and her miraculous return to the world of the living thanks to Vioxx. Quote,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And I got to the point this year, I was on tour and I couldn't skate. And so I went to a doctor and we finally got to the bottom of it. And my doctor prescribed Vioxx for me. And it's as if I've been given a new life. It's just, it's been amazing. I feel 20 years younger. I don't look it and I don't skate it, but I feel that way.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Oh yeah. He was big at this point. This is like right around the turn of the century. He's, he's still a big, a major, major. This is like before infomercial Larry. Yes. Yes. Okay. And this is, I mean, maybe this is part of his downfall, uh, but people still take the show serious and they take this very seriously. And to be clear, I'm not saying that, you know, even Caitlin or, or, uh,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

were lying about their experiences on Vioxx because some people did gain benefits of this. And, you know, I so I'm not doubting that. The problem, again, is that a single person's having a good reaction to a drug is not evidence that the drug is safe. You know, for example, I know some people in their 70s who have been doing heroin for 50 straight years and are and are fine.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That doesn't mean heroin is safe. It means some people are lucky. Right? Yeah. Or the aforementioned 90-year-old women doing... Who are these ancient people who do drugs and smoke that you hang out with all the time? You go to little Burning Man regionals, you run into a lot of elderly people who have been doing drugs for forever. Some of them are very good at it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I've been gas station sober for years now, Kava. That's responsible. California sober, but you can only get inebriated with things you buy at the gas station. I don't mess with that marijuana. That shit's dangerous. I just take those trucker yellow jackets that they give to keep people driving long haul awake. You know, I don't know what's in them. They're big and yellow. That means they're safe.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It would be red if it was dangerous. It would be red if it was dangerous. They can't put dangerous drugs in a yellow and black pill and call it yellow jacket. Yellow means caution. It doesn't mean danger. Yeah. So I never take more than like 12 in a day. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I do the safe thing. I like open the pill and I pour all the powder in the pill into a glass and then I pour in a bunch of my kratom into the glass and then I add a banana for the potassium.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Don't know what they mean, but you're probably too young for that cartoon. I was the right age for it. Yes. Dr. Hoda, my health care expert, legally my doctor. Do you have any theories that you can't prove that are unprovable, that are probably nonsense, that you nonetheless believe about health? Yeah, I got a lot.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

This level of detail is what bothers me. This is the part I don't like. It's fine. It's mostly just B12 and caffeine and God knows what else, because there's absolutely no no agency that looks into what gets put into substances that are sold in gas stations in this country. Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yes. Thank God. Thank God. Look, RFK Jr. might ban the HPV vaccine, but we could get legal heroin. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

God willing, look, if the world's ending, do you want heroin to not be legal?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And then. No, you're right. They're going to ban Prozac and replace it with like Polar Bear liver pills. It's just going to be a disaster. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

He's always trying something new. So the fact that this beloved celebrity athlete has gone on Larry King and said exactly what Vioxx PR would want her to say was a godsend. That's the kind of PR no money can buy. Although, I have to tell you now, that moment was in fact bought and paid for by Merck. They had found out that Dorothy was a customer.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

They had reached out to her with an idea and a pile of money. Her life story had been used as the basis for an entire marketing campaign, and her appearance on Larry King was just the first step in launching it. Tom Nessie writes, The day after Dorothy Hamill's appearance, even Merck's CEO, Raymond Gilmartin, was smitten.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

He received heart-rending letters from arthritis sufferers saying they were going to immediately ask their physicians for Vioxx. Gil Martin personally congratulated the public relations department. One marketing executive wrote that, with Dorothy telling our story, Vioxx sales were going to soar and overtake Celebrex, an obsession within the company.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It was nice. I love it. I love it. I love it. So, yeah, patients are coming in. They're begging doctors to write prescriptions. Doctors are going, well, shit, how bad could it be? It's basically just aspirin, you know, and a lot of people are suddenly taking Vioxx.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, the FDA does push back a little on this campaign because Dorothy's appearance on Larry King counted as an ad and she had not mentioned that she was being paid by Merck, which you're not supposed to do.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

They also had an issue that she was kind of basically saying she had not told people that Vioxx was extremely dangerous if you prescribed it to patients with a history of bleeding ulcers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

In fact, she had stated that she was taking it despite her history of bleeding ulcers, which is kind of telling people this is safe to say in the exact situation that the FDA knows we know it is not safe to tell people to take it in.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where Sophie is not in the room right now. So Dr. Kaveh Hoda and I are the foxes watching the hen house that is also, we're also the hens. I am the producer. I am the captain now. We're like hen foxes, like a cat dog situation. Although I imagine a hen fox, the fox is just going to try to eat its hen. That's part of its butt, I imagine.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So the FDA gets kind of unhappy with this. And Merck replied, she just slipped up. We taught Hamill the proper way to sell our product, but she went off script. They promised to retrain her before following up with any additional advertisements. This happened on September 12th, 2000.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The next day, in violation of their promise to the FDA, Hamill appeared on a local TV station in Atlanta to urge people to consider Vioxx. The FDA never found out about this and might not have cared if they had. If you wanted to get away with something September 12th, well, actually, that was 2000. Never mind. Everything was still fine.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I was just like, did I just go over September 12th and not make another level of joke? I feel like you would have caught that in the research. Didn't happen yet. Everything was fine. Plenty of towers in New York still at this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, the unfortunate reality of the FDA is that it is staffed and operated by a lot of people who want to work in the private sector of the pharmaceutical industry someday.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And some of these people feel a need to avoid making waves and killing a golden goose that is currently injecting cash into someone they want as a future employer, or who may have been a past employer that they're hoping will hire them on for a lucrative consulting gig in the future. Beyond that, the teams at the FDA, who we rely on to monitor food and drug advertising,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

are hideously understaffed, operating on a shoestring budget. There may not have been anyone watching Dorothy Hamill's ad on local Atlanta TV because no one was being paid to do so. Now, Merck did change their TV ads for Vioxx based on the FDA's feedback, and you can see one example of that here. We gotta play just one of these bad boys. Here is Dorothy Hamill's revised Vioxx ad.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That's because of what happened with Vioxx. And Vioxx, I think it's also important, like Vioxx, the scandal hits kind of right as, you know, before we're really starting to realize what has gone down with the prescription painkiller epidemic. Like when that's starting to really take off and we start to realize how fucked up some of what Purdue did.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Maybe it was the Vioxx. You don't know. Maybe Vioxx makes your hair look great, everybody. Go out and buy Vioxx.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah. And the Dorothy Hamill ads are a huge success. Millions of Americans saw their former child sweetheart skating and skiing and living an active, healthy life thanks to this new miracle drug. And millions of them decided, I want that for myself. And ultimately, tens of thousands of them are going to die as a result. And that's the story we're going to tell in part two. Can't wait. Yay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

But first off, do you have anything to plug before we roll out here?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, definitely less fascist. It's got its own annoyances, but all of social media has things that annoy me. So what are you going to do?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

You can follow me there at CaveMD. You can also follow me there at I Write OK, where you can follow me on the other place too. But you know what you could do that I would appreciate most? Go get off the internet. Feed somebody, you know? Do something good in the world. Yeah, I like it. Don't be online. I like it. Except for to listen to podcasts. Keep listening to podcasts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

For the love of God, keep listening to podcasts. Do not stop listening to podcasts. Under no circumstances stop listening to podcasts. Will you ever stop?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And so this one-two punch, it really is responsible. I think that's very salient what you said. It's really responsible for a lot of, I mean, for like RFK is about to be the director of health and human services, right? Like it has a lot to do with that because this is hard for people to imagine. Like folks my age, I have always grown up with big pharma being like the devil, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah. You know what? I'll say it right now. If you have stomach ulcers, podcasts will knock that right out.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Podcast your way through it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Agreed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

In part because like as soon as I turned 18, 19, I was hanging out with a lot of hippies. But in part because like there were a lot of like really, really high body count pharmaceutical company scandals. And it is hard for some people to remember that like –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

pharmaceutical companies used to be very popular and well-regarded in a lot of cases, in part because the generation that was kind of running the world in the 80s and 90s had largely lived through and were still close to Oh, polio is this nightmare that just sweeps through and devastates like a generation.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

You know, you have these flus and then suddenly you have half as many friends after the flu passes. And that stops being a thing. And they're really the first generation, you know, kind of the later boomers that didn't have to deal with that. But we're close enough to it to like really appreciate like, wow, medical science did us a solid. Yeah. And we've drifted just forever.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Far enough from that now that people have forgotten and are revising whole parts of history. And I mean, part of the problem is that shit like the Vioxx scandal and like the Purdue pharmaceutical scandals are closer to us than than, for example, fucking people being in iron lungs or whatever. Recency bias is a hell of a thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

But since time immemorial, mankind has struggled against a terrible and implacable enemy, pain. Luckily for us, Mother Nature has provided a perfect painkiller, opium, that can be used as the basis for a variety of excellent medicines that really do exactly what they say they're going to do.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Unfortunately, these medicines come with a downside, which is that when you start taking them, you might not ever want to stop taking them. For some people, this destroys their lives. Let me take a sip of my Kratom tea. Sponsored. And since all the health cops out there don't like people pill-popping like Dr. House, even though he made it look incredibly sexy. Did he?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Fucking hate that show. Oh, man. You're not not a house fan, huh?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Scrubs. Yeah, I mean, I did rewatch. I like to imagine that the movie Platoon is like a like the the what you call it? The prequel. the prequel to John C. McGinley said it. Yeah. That's why Dr. Cox is the way he is. He had to spend that night hiding under his friend's bodies in a trench line. He had to watch Willem Dafoe die. Yeah. Spoilers for the movie Platoon, which is older than most of you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Might be older than me. I don't remember when Platoon came out. Anyway, so because of, you know, health cops don't like people becoming horrible pill addicts and destroying their lives.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

there's a market a massive market for anyone who can create a thing that is an effective painkiller that doesn't also inspire people to break into cars for drug money right there's a lot of money in a painkiller that does not have the kind of abuse potential that opiates have acetaminophen was discovered back in the 1880s but it took us until the 1940s to actually figure out how to use it as a drug

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And for reasons that are more complex than it's really worth getting into, because of how it was discovered, acetaminophen could never be patented. Right. Which means pharmaceutical companies are not super attracted to acetaminophen. Right. Because like, well, you know, you can't only sell it for so much if everyone can make the damn thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

This meant that pharmaceutical companies had to get creative marketing it in order to make it profitable. As a result, Tylenol became a foundational part of the marketing drug story. McNeil, the company that started selling acetaminophen in the U.S., initially framed it as a painkiller for children. And the way the ad campaign that they use is very weird.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

For some reason, and I've never found out why, but for unclear reasons, they had a huge number of toy fire trucks. And the way that they first sold Tylenol was they like stuffed fire trucks to the brim with pills of Tylenol and like made that. That was their marketing ploy to like get little parents to buy Tylenol for their small children.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Kids love Tylenol too. They love their Tylenol.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

They're liver damage and they love their fire trucks. It's just a thing about kids. This is why I'm going to try to make the chief Christmas toy of this season, the little doctor house pill popper set. Because kids, you can take as much Tylenol as you want, right? It'll be like a big cane. Just a big cane. With a PEZ container at the top. And a PEZ dispenser at tile and all.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And that's your little house toy for kids. That's your little house toy for kids, yeah. Now, this worked better than any, it had any right to work. Advertising was easier back then. I imagine today, if you tried to sell parents on a child, which is... It's like a fire truck full of pills. I don't know. This doesn't make me feel good about any of this. But you have to remember. We're so jaded now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That's a problem. We're jaded. We're jaded. And like prior to Tylenol, the chief method of dealing with pain for small children was to give them a spoonful of heroin and hope they woke up the next day. Right. Like they literally sold it as a cough medicine for children. Right. So the fire truck plan worked well. It worked so well that McNeil gets bought by Johnson and Johnson.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And that's actually when it gets the name Tylenol. McNeil's not selling it under Tylenol. Johnson and Johnson, which for whatever reason is a great name. I don't know why. Doesn't make much sense to me. Easy to remember. Yeah. So in subsequent decades, Tylenol was found to be useful in numerous medical applications as a painkiller, a fever reducer, and about a million other things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It was joined in the mild painkiller category by Bayer's aspirin, which had its roots in herbal medications that had been used by peoples around the world since time immemorial. The Assyrians and Sumerians had actually been using willow leaves as treatments for various ailments, and a variety of plants containing salicylic acid have been used in similar ways all over the globe.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So acetaminophen and aspirin both quickly became foundational pieces of any medicine cabinet. But they weren't perfect. One issue that both painkillers had is that they could interact with other drugs or just interact badly with certain patients to cause substantial stomach distress. In the most severe cases, this could result in stomach ulcers and sometimes life-threatening stomach ulcers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So, you know, this is one of these problems is like you want to be able to give people as much of this as they need because it's, you know, non-addictive and helps with a lot of things. But there's some hard limits based on what this does to people's stomachs.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, and I think that probably didn't make it as much into my research just because in the 70s they didn't have as much data on that maybe. They're all focused at least on the ulcers. But yeah, like the There's a there's a great bluegrass song called Codeine with the lyrics Codeine, Codeine, you're the nicest thing I've seen for a while.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And if you know anything about Codeine, it's the worst of the painkillers to get high on, which makes the song better, because if you are the kind of person for whom like Codeine is the nicest thing you've ever encountered, your life is a hard life.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So by the late 20th century, pharmaceutical researchers had started poking around both compounds to try to find ways to create new variants that didn't have any of those downsides. They called these hypothetical medications super aspirins because research pharmacologists aren't great at naming things. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The quest for a super aspirin seems to have really started in 1971 when a gaggle of British researchers, I think that's how you term a group of researchers, tried to unravel the mystery of why aspirin and Tylenol work. Again, we knew these things were good painkillers and we knew they did other stuff. The method of action was unclear to us at this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

which is a startling amount of the time true with drugs. There's a lot of medications you might be on that doctors don't precisely know why it does what it does. We have some ideas, but like a lot of this is still being figured out.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

We're not sure why. But in this case, the research bore fruit, as author Tom Nessie describes in his excellent book Poison Pills. Quote, when an injury takes place in the body, chemicals known as prostaglandins rush into the wound site to deal with the swelling, heat, and pain. Prostaglandins have important functions for human well-being.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

They play a part in ovulation to protect the stomach from acids and to ensure that blood clots normally. The latter effect explains why aspirin reduces heart disease. It prevents clumps of blood from forming that could potentially block an artery. Prostaglandins actually make nerve endings more sensitive to pain. NSAIDs, NSAIDs? NSAIDs. NSAIDs. The cool kids call them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So thereby I am going to make, I'm going to stop myself from exploring this thing that I'm good at in order to study the things that will make me good as a businessman, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Interesting. Yeah. He very much is this like, this is not an appropriate thing for a man who wants to be rich to do. So even though this is what I want to do, I will stop myself from doing it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, no. He is going to be rich. That's his goal from the start. And he's going to make generational wealth, right? He wants his kids to help to part own the Reich. So he initially follows in his father's path. He studies the law and political economy in his secondary education. He's just very well in school, very bright guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And he has from the beginning a flair for money, which would have been noticed by his instructors from the jump. They also would have noticed his skill as a writer, but not for long because, again, he decides to, quote unquote, suppress his skill in order to focus on his career. He talks about it as like, I made a choice to smother the artistic side of me so that I could make more money.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, Alfred makes a couple of friends, but he has no real hobbies outside of his business ambitions. And if he had anything we might term a pastime, it was thinking about the way that the state and the economy worked and how they ought to work, right? From a very early age, he's thinking about why do the economics of the time function this way?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And how can I change them to function in what I would term as better? So his first, while he's in college effectively, he does his dissertation, right? which is his first book-length publication. These are effectively books, and his first dissertation is titled Internal Colonization in Northwest Germany, which he finishes at the University of Strasbourg in 1891.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In his book on Hugenberg, John Leopold writes, "...the young doctoral candidate analyzed in detail the role of the state in fostering economic growth." This volume depicted three themes which always undergird Hugenberg's political views. First, the state would have to assist the farmer and totally abandon a laissez-faire approach to agriculture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Second, the farmer would have to act as an entrepreneur and form a capitalist bulwark against Marxism. And third, Germany would have to expand its empire. So a couple of things are going on here. When we talk about internal colonization, Germany right now, the imperial Germany includes a bunch of Poland, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, if you're thinking, think back to your maps of Europe, Poland's, Poles, not Germans, right? These are within the boundaries of the German state, a colonized people. And Germany is sending German farmers into this occupied Poland, Polish territory to try to Germanify it. Right. Like that's that's very much what's going on. And Hugenberg's writing about that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But he's also writing about like there's not really enough Poland for us. Like maybe we could get some more. I don't know. But also we need to be taking more of Africa because we need to continue like kind of shotgunning these farmers out. And we can't just sort of let the market take care of them because then they might not succeed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Like it's part of this – he's not really talking all that much in racial terms, although he is a racist. But he's very much – The conclusions he comes to are identical to the ones Hitler is going to come to thinking through racial terms, which is interesting.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Well, I mean... The good news is I do have several generations of people, several hundred generations of people being shitty to each other to get through.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Hugely jealous of Britain and hugely jealous of the US.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

This is exactly what's happening to all of Germany.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, shit. And for an idea of how bad this is, we've talked about this on the show, Hitler grows up obsessed with the cowboy novels of a guy named... Carl May. Sorry. Carl May is like the J.K. Rowling of his day. He is a children's book author who writes these books about like his experiences in the American West fighting alongside Indians. And they're all lies. Like he's a con man.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But Hitler is Hitler is so is obsessed with this. He like mails copies of his generals on the Western Front. But all of Germany is in the late 1800s and early 1900s obsessed with U.S. like war. like with westward expansion, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But also this, there's this feeling like, well, America is obviously destined to be a great nation. God has just given them this empty continent with no people on it that they get to take. They're jealous. And Hugenberg, this is such a foundational aspect of German, like the German character that like to this day, there are festivals to this guy in Germany.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And like people will do the equivalent of like U.S. Ren Fairs where they're dressing up as Native Americans in Germany. That happened. This happens today. Stop. No, it's a whole thing. It's a massive deal.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We haven't even done Nixon yet.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, the grass is always greener on the other side of the imperialism. Yes, exactly. So Hugenberg is not as obsessed with cowboys as Hitler, but he's very much obsessed with this idea of expansion. And he sees it as a matter of survival for the German race. And he writes that Germany will only, quote, gain power and significance by taking it from others.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And when he says others, he's talking a little bit about Europeans, but he's mostly thinking about Africa, right? Now, while I said earlier that Alfred was not a man with hobbies or a social life, he does nothing but work. I mean, he's getting a doctorate, which you do kind of have to be that way to get a doctorate for a little while at least, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

If any of my friends who got doctorates or anything to go by. But he does have one extracurricular activity he starts to engage in around this time. The same year he published his dissertation, 1891, he helps to co-found a political club, the German General League.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, you won't find a lot written about this incarnation of the organization, but historian Barry Jackish describes it as a political pressure group critical of the German government's foreign and domestic policy decisions. Now, that's a definition so vague, it could refer to an organization of any ideology.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I should further say the specific ideological launching point of this group that Hugenberg starts with a bunch of other guys is the idea of pan-Germanism that I discussed at the opening of the episode.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Jackish continues, "...the pan-Germans were an openly expansionist organization that called for German colonies and spheres of influence throughout the world in the creation of a strong navy to reinforce Germany's newly gained status abroad. In domestic politics, the League supported an authoritarian monarchy and opposed the growth of parliamentary democracy."

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The League also sought to combat what it regarded as the pernicious influence of a myriad of un-German elements, particularly Slavs, often Catholics, and ultimately Jews. So these are not Nazis because those don't exist yet. But you're seeing the Nazi in this group, right? Like it's not so much of a leap from this to the Nazis, right? For sure. Strong notes of Nazis. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I just realized I sent Sophie the wrong script because I was up until 6 a.m., but she's got the right one now, and so do I. Wow, Robert, Jesus Christ. What could be better to do today when we have Amanda Montel on than an episode that's not really about a cult, except for everything...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Strong notes of Nazis, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is like a Sega Dreamcast, isn't a PlayStation 2, but like, oh, I can see what people were like working towards, right? Yeah. For sure. This is the Sega Dreamcast of National Socialism. That's what we can say. So and also they are playing Crazy Taxi. So a lot of direct elements to the Sega Dreamcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I'm going to guess nobody gets my Sega Dreamcast jokes, but whatever. I was I was nodding and I wanted to understand.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It was a video game system. It just didn't make it. It didn't make it. It came out around the N64 and the PlayStation and it did not last.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We all are. We all are. We all are. It's a tragedy that runs at me to this day, like the death of my grandfather. Oh, I'm so sorry. So Alfred is a founding member of this group, but he's not like the singular driving force behind it. When I say founding, there's like a bunch of guys who get together to make this thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And it's going to pretty quickly take a backseat for him because his career gets started and he's just got a lot of other shit on his mind.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

1865?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, well, he's born in 60... This is... We're now in, like, the 1880s, something like that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, boy, Alfie. Yeah. You're going to it's like this is like the 1880s right now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The picture is worth a thousand words and most of them are going to be. Wow. That is a German ass man.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

There we go.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's got that like Bismarck style mustache.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I mean, I guess if you want to call the Nazis a cult, it's a little bit about a cult, but he wasn't even really a Nazi.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's got he's got Squidward legs as a mustache. Squidward's legs is a mustache, like perfectly round Harry Potter glasses. And his haircut, if you've seen the movie Falling Down, he's got like an old man high and tight. Like it's a it's a remarkable combination of things. And by this point, this is a picture of him when he's older. You had money for a barber.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

You were one of the richest men on the planet. For sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

That does get us back to the Elon Musk comparisons because it's like, wow, neither of you motherfuckers know how to get a haircut. Jesus Christ. I say that looking the way I do today, but Jesus Christ.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, okay. He was just, he was actually kind of, usually like when you're talking about like a German who was like prominent in the early 30s and you say like, he wasn't a Nazi. You're saying it to be like, because he was like some sort of hero, right? Or, you know, someone who was trying to do the right thing, you know, in the middle of this dark period. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I mean, he did not have the ability to have a Turkish man's hair transplanted onto his scalp. Yes, that is not a Turkish man's hair. That's all Hugenberg.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Some terrible people are graced with an incredible head of hair, like Fabio. I don't know that Fabio was a bad person. I'm just insulting him for no reason.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Who knows? Given his humble beginnings, Hugenberg started his career as an entry-level civil servant. So he has no nepotism to benefit from, right? He's not getting like a head start. He's going to get ahead because he's good. He becomes a member.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He gets hired for the Prussian Settlement Commission in Posen, which again is Prussia had conquered this chunk of Poland and they have a commission to help settle it. And he is helping to manage that from 1894 to 1899. This gives him a degree of influence in the German state's attempts to reform some land use policies that were essentially holdovers from the medieval era, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

They've got these kind of medieval policies on like the aristocracy owning land that slow down colonizing it because a lot of land is just meant to be like where this Duke or whatever hunts. And it's great if you're a Duke and it's actually probably pretty good from like a wildlife conservation aspect, but it's really bad from a... Farming, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And Germany's whole thing is we don't have enough food. We can't make enough food to not die on our own, right? And this is constantly on our minds. So again, Posen is an eternal colony within Germany. Most of the population's Polish, but there's this small number of German farmers whose expansion was desired by the government.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

However, said expansion is stymied by the fact that many Polish people already had claim to the land. Hugenberg suggested ways to uproot them, but ultimately quit his job when the government refused to revise its inadequate policy towards the Poles. And again, that inadequate policy is you're letting them live in their own homes, right? Like that's the issue that he has with Poland.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Inadequate policy. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

now this is hugenberg's first foray into entrepreneurship as soon as he quits you know this government job because it's not working fast enough and he immediately reveals himself to have a head for this kind of work he creates a series of land co-ops that allow so he goes into business independently and he starts going to these different groups of farmers who are trying to colonize this to what this territory that is like the center of modern poland

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And he starts putting them in together and making co-ops. Right. And the purpose of this is because each of these independently, these small German farmers have no economic power. And so kind of keep getting fucked over. And he forms them into co-ops so that they can basically collectively set prices and bargain for better prices. Right. Like the very modern thing, you know, that he's doing here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Right. And it works. This makes all of these farms much more successful, and it helps stimulate the growth of more independent, more German settlers farming in this area. The project is successful enough that in 1904, he gets hired back to the civil service in a significantly better position, special advisor for economic development to the east.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The guy we're talking about today is a man named Alfred Hugenberg, and he wasn't a Nazi in a way that makes him kind of worse than the Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So he's just kind of like a guy stuck in the cogs of the machine. He bounces. He has this incredibly successful co-op thing for all these farmers, and it does well enough that now he's the special advisor for all economic development in the East. Now, one of the things that's going on in the East, as I had insinuated earlier, is in Prussia, you've got all these Junkers, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Who are these, they're like the nobility, right? And these guys are also a lot of like the fighting nobility, because like Prussians are warriors. That's what you do if you're a Prussian Junker, right? but they also have these vast family estates, often with thousands of acres of land, and they're just kind of fucking around on them, right? The aristocracy does that everywhere they can.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Hey everybody, Robert here. We had a little mic error for the first couple of minutes of the episode. My audio is going to sound a little shitty for literally like three or four minutes, then it'll be back to normal. Apologies. Welcome back to Behind the Back. about me. Sophie Lichterman. Sophie, why do I do the things that I do?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And so Hugenberg doesn't want things to work that way. He wants this land to be freed up if it's not being farmed for more farmers to buy it. Now, like all conservative Germans, and Alfred is very conservative – His interest is in autarky, right? He wants the state to be able to produce all of its own necessities. We just had the tariffs come down yesterday. It's kind of the same idea, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Conservatives never quite get over this. What if we didn't need anyone else? And it's like, I don't know, man, do you like kumquats? Because that's kind of critical that you trade.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It's a little more understandable in this period as a German because they're always aware of like, OK, well, we've got Russia on one side and they don't always like us. And we got France on the other and they don't always like us. And then the English control the sea. So we're really easy to starve here. You know, it would be great if we could grow enough food to not starve.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So, Hugenberg set to work applying his three principles to the problem of all these giant useless estates going unmanaged. Being a practical guy, he came up with what seemed like a simple solution, and he published a book about his work with the farming co-ops in Posen and how similar tactics could be used to encourage the rapid accumulation and deployment of capital to properly settle the East.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Alfred insisted that the state's role in all of this was not to stick with the traditional Juncker view of property, and instead to use its power to encourage competition. He wanted them to pass laws to confiscate large, unproductive estates and resettle them with small farmers who would form co-ops. I won't give Hugenberg credit for a lot, but this probably would have worked.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And I base this on the fact that basically 100% of the time, shit like this got tried and peasants were given access to large areas of raw land to split up and manage in common, productivity increased, and it especially increased over the old way of, quote, letting some rich guy use it as a private park, right? It's just more effective in a farm in terms of yield.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

However, the rich guys that Hugenberg wants to dispossess are the rich guys, right? These are the people running things because the Prussians are kind of the most powerful group within imperial Germany, and they don't like that Hugenberg wants to take their shit. I'm going to quote from Leopold's book here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Confronted with strong opposition from Yonkers and others opposed to this proposal, state officials hesitated in their advocacy of this legislation. Hugenberg scorned their pedantic political conscience and again left the civil service. So he's like, fuck you guys. I'm going home. I'm going to go do my own thing now. I tried working through the government. It's useless.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yes. You know what's not useless? You know what should be the government? The products and services that support this podcast, they should run the country. Why not? Could they be worse? Could it be worse? Maybe.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We love the big dub-dub-dubs. And this is... Hugenberg is, number one, one of the key guys in making the Nazi regime happen. Although, again, he's not a Nazi and he hates them. He hates them because most Nazis are kind of poor for most of the period of time. And he is a rich dude.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Ah, and we're back. I don't know. I think Chumba Casino would be a good overlord. Seems ethical. Casinos are always nice. We could all smoke indoors, you know? That's how casinos work. That is a vibe. That is a vibe. So he bounces, gets out of government again. And his dream is to make East Prussia not a backwater, right? Like that's kind of what he wants in this period of time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But he's been stymied. And Alfred, he's not an introspective soul, nor is he to kind of waste his energy being disappointed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

so he right away gets a job on the board of directors for a bank in frankfurt that serves several mining concerns and i not just mining but companies like generally in the metal business so suppliers and producers of raw materials and his job his role here is reorganizing and rearranging things to enhance the profitability of of everyone in this industry right basically all of the owners of these different minds and and sort of like mineral concerns and whatnot

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

are all putting a chunk of their money in a common pile to be used, and Hugenberg is managing it. He's an early hedge fund manager, right? Wait, I am so- It's not that back then, but that's what he's doing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He writes several books. I don't know if I'd say he was meant to be.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

be a creative writer but i think the thing is more his he is utterly obsessed in the way that poor kids sometimes wind up being yeah with i am not going i am going to be somebody right yeah yeah and this is how you do that opportunist however whatever path will lead me like come hell or high water i will fucking be somebody right that's that's this dude yeah got it

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So his role in this kind of early hedge fund-ish position is to like, yeah, enhance profitability. And he does. He does well enough that he gets hired on Next to run a bank, like a whole banking firm. So like basically a network of banks that's run by a prosperous Jewish family, the Mertens.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, Hugenberg is a raging anti-Semite, as is the German General League, which he's still a member of, which by this point has changed its name to the much catchier Pan-German League. And they'd only doubled down on the anti-Semitism since then, but this doesn't seem to stop him from being willing to work for this rich family, the Mertens.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, the league at this point, it's not a mass organization, nor does it want to be one. It's got maybe a few thousand members at this point. It's going to top out at 38,000 people, which is very small for one of these. Again, by the Nazi era, there's going to eventually be a couple million brown shirts, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So this is not a huge organization, but members of them are professional people, often with a lot of money and influence. So the Pan-German League is hugely influential culturally. It punches above its weight class, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Because the members of it are guys like Hugenberg. They're social climbers or they're already rich and influential. Now, I quoted from that historian, Barry Jackish, a little earlier. And those quotes were from a book he wrote on the Pan-German League titled The Pan-German League and Radical Nationalist Politics in Interwar Germany, which is a very accurate title but not very clickable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

You know, seven things you didn't know about German nationalists. There's a lot of better ways to title it, Barry. I'm just saying. Sorry.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's – it's a very good book. And here's how Berry describes the league's membership. The Pan-German League drew the vast majority of its members from the social strata identified by the German terms Bildung und Besitz or the propertied and educated middle class.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

This is where we get to a very important and very German prerequisite for the rise of the Nazis, one that doesn't get discussed a lot. We love to talk about, and I do it on this show, the things that graph exactly to shit that's been happening in the US when we talk about the fall of Weimar and the rise of German fascism because there are a lot of similarities.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But there's a lot of differences too, which I think are important to emphasize now because I think some people get like, oh my God, we've done all these other things. that are similar to Weimar were destined to do this. We're not. Right. It can go different for us. And part of why is because, like, it is a very different culture. We're not Germany at any point in time. You know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

One thing, the Jonestown story has a courageous U.S. congressman risking his life for his constituents.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

There we go. A lot of plane drama, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

For one thing, I mean, Trump definitely uses American nationalism.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

No one ever has. So I guess let's just get into this. Because it's one of those things... when it comes to his early life, not a super Elon early life, when it comes to his role in the Nazi regime, it's almost beat for beat exactly what Elon has done, right to the point where like Elon is now, it looks like getting edged out of Doge. There's a number of reports that Trump is kind of tired of him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

This is one of those things, to an extent, you simply can't understand because nationalism is a new idea then. Right. The idea of a nation state and the way we conceive of it is fairly new. And also the idea of just like being being a the idea that like I'm a Serb and so I should have a Serbia. Right. People hadn't always thought that way. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Like these are these are kind of new and especially the idea. Again, they had to really it took a lot to convince all these different Germanic states that you're all Germans. There's a story I'm going to tell in a little bit that I think will make some of this make a little bit more sense.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Like in 70 years, we'll look back and be like, why was everyone- Nationalism is the AI of the turn of the century. Yes. Totally. I mean, there's an extent to which like at least in terms of how excited people are by the idea that that's not totally wrong.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, when we talk about like why did Germany go in the direction it did, this is really where the seeds of a lot of the things that culminate in the 30s are being planted. A lot of leftists like to argue that fascism evolves out of capitalism. The bourgeoisie and especially conservatives in the bourgeoisie inevitably turn fascist once their material interests are threatened.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, we'll leave out now talk about how well, how accurate that is a depiction of what's happening in the United States right now. But seeing things that simplistically misses some very important aspects of how Nazism got going in Germany, because Nazism is a radical political movement. Nazis don't like conservatives. In fact, they kill a lot of them, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

They don't target them the way they do the left in any way, but they are not a conservative movement and they don't see themselves as conservatives. And they're not really very keen on capitalists either, although a lot of capitalists eventually do support them out of self-interest. And I'm saying this because Hugenberg is never a Nazi in the ideological sense of the word.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He is a monarchist and he is a social and economic conservative. And the Pan-Germanic League, while there's things in it you can see as like, oh, I see how Nazism arrived from this. It's more that the soil is the same. Right. And so the plants have some similar characteristics that are coming up.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The Pan German League is not going after the Nazis are initially going after like the poor and downtrodden. Right. Those are Hitler's like earliest recruits and like veterans, disaffected veterans. Right. That's not who the Pan-Germanic League is going after. It is laser targeted at the group of people that Leopold identifies as Bildung and Besitz. And there's another term for that group.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And that term is Bildungsbürgertum, right? And that is crudely, we might say the upper middle class. It means literally the cultivated bourgeoisie. In his book, The Fateful Alliance, historian Hermann Beck writes, Germany owed its reputation in scholarship, administration, and technical expertise to this numerically small but socially influential university-trained elite.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The Bildungsbürgertum was a uniquely German phenomenon that originated as a distinct social class in the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries. These are the people who run things. They're not the people who are in charge of things, right? That's generally the nobility. They are the people who are being delegated the task of actually making shit happen, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Because they have the educations. And this is a class that in the earliest period, including where we're up to, the 1890s, is a progressive and liberal class. That's going to change. They're going to become extremely conservative in the 1900s, but they're not initially.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In fact, the first man to posit what we would consider a modern view of what homosexuality is and the first gay man to come out publicly is a member of the Bildungsbürgertum in 1867. The first modern – both two – and when I say a modern understanding of homosexuality, this guy, Karl Ulrichs, comes to a conclusion that like – oh, homosexuality logically is something I'm born as, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

This isn't a choice. And it was viewed as both a choice and as like a deviant thing, right? Carl convinces himself like, no, no, no, this is like a natural thing. And as a result, we are a discriminated underclass and the laws need to change. And he comes out in public in 1867 at a town meeting.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He said that he's stepping back. It's all like all of that. But it's going to be an interesting history of like a German piece of shit that like doesn't It doesn't sound all that much like Elon. And then he's going to get in power. And it's like, oh, wow, these guys. Was he was Elon just like creeping off this fucker's notes? It's the same story. It's so funny. Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And so he's like, he's simultaneously like introducing everyone at the meeting to the concept of homosexuality and also saying, And I am one, which is wildly brave. This dude rocks. Well, he's a member of the Bildungsbürgertum, as is Alfred Hugenberg. Okay, cool. In terms of seeing how things shift, nationalism in the late 1800s is a progressive liberal ideology, right? Uh-huh.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In part because of what it means about how pre-existing elites needed to not have the kind of power that they used to have. Karl Ulrichs is a German nationalist, previous to the existence of Germany. Normally, people see it and they're like, okay, well, that's right wing. No, no, no. He is a German nationalist because the German state he is in- Homosexual sex, sodomy, is legal.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But in Prussia, it's illegal. And Prussia is pushing to dominate all these other states. And so Ulrichs becomes a German nationalist because he's like, then we other Germans will be strong enough to force the Prussians to stop being bigoted against gay people. So when we talk about German nationalism, this is not always like a right-wing regressive ideology.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Why do I taunt you when you're just trying to help make me a successful person? What's wrong with me?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In Hugenberg's earliest days, there's a lot of very progressive aspects to it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The Republican Party used to be a very different thing. Exactly. 1865 or so. So from the beginning, this this uniquely German class, the Bildungsbürgertum. was characterized by a close relationship to the state since its strongest component came from the upper echelons of state bureaucracies in various German states.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In addition to like the people who are kind of like running the government, there's also a lot of professors, university professors are generally of this class, as well as a lot of prominent lawyers, right? And the origins of this entire social class actually trace back to a guy named Wilhelm von Humboldt.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Humboldt was an educational reformer in the early 1800s who remakes the whole Prussian education system. And he is a big believer in the power of the individual to reach their full potential or building through education, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Among other innovations, he codifies the idea of a national school system for kind of the first time in the West that starts with primary school and then secondary school and then university education. Everyone adopts this. the foundations of our education system, such as it is, are traced directly back to Humboldt and his reform of the Prussian system, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He is basically the father of the concept of universal mandatory education, which is paid for by the state. And it's one of those, there's a lot of modern day criticisms of the Prussian system. People will argue it only exists to provide soldiers, right? And so the school is just trying to make you into a good soldier for capitalism. And like, That's not 100% wrong.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

These were Prussians, so that was a big part of why they wanted to educate people, so they'd be useful for the state. But Humboldt's also a very progressive guy for his time, and it would not be fair to categorize him as some sort of weirdo fascist, because that's just not what's going on at this point in time. He was not trying to make... students into little robots.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

His goal was his citizenry who was capable of reasoning, thinking outside of the box, and actively learning, so as to better serve the state, but he wasn't trying to lock people into a little box. And his reforms work well enough that by the time Alfred Hugenberg is getting his start, Germany has the best universities on the planet. And

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It is universally agreed the best doctors and scientists are German, right? And it's because they start having a modern university system between everyone else. In the early 1900s, Germany is the font of learning in the West and very much is seen as that way, especially in the medical realm. And this is this is that's a huge part of this class that Hugenberg is a part of the Bildungsbürgertum.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

These are they're characterized by their belief that education makes people better. And because we're educated, we're better. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I get I get giddy when I get a new Hitler book in the mail. So I get it, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yes. Yes. Yes. Very much that way, too. Yes. So you can see where the problems start to arise. Right. There's this good thing of like they're like, we need to have an expansive and well-funded education system. Correct. Great. And also, we're better than the rest of you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

That's probably going to go in a bad direction. So, as you're starting to see, there's some danger in having a class like this, right? And what starts with a well-deserved sense of accomplishment in their own system morphs into this overall sense of superiority, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

If the world is copying the German education system, which it is, doesn't it make sense that Germans should rule more of the world, right? Right. That's really a lot of how the thinking as this progressive liberal class becomes more conservative. That's part of what they're thinking now. Yeah. So, you know, that's that's going to be a problem. It's this kind of thing that like.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

By the end of the 1870s, they've stopped really being as liberal. And by the 1890s, they're advocates of imperialism and they are aggressive nationalists. It's no longer Ulrich's very reasonably progressive nationalism. It is a, what if we just took everything kind of nationalism, right? Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Okay. Is that a problem? Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So by early 1909, Hugenberg has made a name for himself as a great businessman and financier and an innovative thinker in the field of imperialism. He gets scouted by the son of one of our old bastards, a guy named Gustav Krupp. And Gustav is the inheritor of the Krupp weapons dynasty.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

These are the guys who had made Germany possible because Germany comes into being in 1870 when they beat the French in a war. And they beat the French because Napoleon III is still using brass cannons that are basically identical to the ones the first Napoleon had used. And Friedrich Krupp, his people figured out how to make modern steel artillery that is just so much better at killing men. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they were a very rich family. So, yeah, they bought a lot of art.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, this is a safe place for us. Probably shouldn't say Hitler stans. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The Krupp's, I mean, they're like Bezos level of wealthy for the time, right? Because they are selling the whole world guns, right? They make the best ones. Now, Krupp is a member of the aristocracy, right? But he's looking for, he has an understanding of like his limitations financially.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And so he's scouting for a man of quote, really superior intelligence to become the new chairman of the board of directors for Krupp. And Hugenberg, he immediately recognizes as a genius and he gives him the job. Right. So Hugenberg is kind of the CEO of Krupp Arms, of the biggest gun company in the world. Right. It's ever existed up to this point. Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He is going to be the guy running a lot of it. Technically, he's primarily doing the financial decisions for Krupp. So he's not designing guns. But he is like the head man at Krupp for the decade up to leading up to World War One. Right. Oh. Oh my God. And what Krupp is doing in this period is pushing the Kaiser to build the machine of death that is the German mobilization schedule, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

For us Third Reich knowers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And part of what they're doing is Krupp is going around and they're going to one country and being like, hey, we'll sell you these guns. You really got to modernize. Your guns are a generation or two behind your neighbor. And like, they're getting armed. So why don't you get armed?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And then once they arm that country, they'll go to another and be like, hey, your neighbor just bought a bunch of new, you really got to get some new guns, right? And this keeps- This keeps ratcheting everybody's anxiety up.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. But this works so well. And Hugenberg is, you know, on the finance side of things that like dividends expand from 18, 8 to 14 percent from 1909 to 1913. Like that's and that's a big deal. Krupp is making so much fucking money. And because Alfred is running shit, he becomes spectacularly wealthy in the balance. Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Think hundreds of millions of dollars by the standards of his time, right? That's probably – that's about where he is in terms of like our modern concept of things. He's not like a billionaire yet, but hundreds of millions. Now, despite the fact that he is making Gustav Krupp so much fucking money, the Krupps are again aristocracy. And Hugenberg, despite his wealth, is just a burger, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's not like a – he's a common man. He comes from like the nicer part of the common class. Yeah. Gustav doesn't really money. He's not going to hang with him. Right. As biographer Leopold writes, though, everyone was impressed with his extraordinary intelligence and obvious ability.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

There is no indication that Hugenberg during his 10 year stay at Krups ever developed anything more than a formal relationship with his employer. The patrician aloofness of the securely established Krups contrasted sharply with the dogged determination to succeed, which characterized Hugenberg. Indeed, Hugenberg seemed to be a bad hang. He's a bad hang.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Indeed, Hugenberg seemed typical of that class of general directors, which George Bernard described as being driven by an inferiority complex because they know they are dependent and in the final analysis are as disposable as any other employee. Oh, my God. continually harder and more uncompromising than the owner himself, possibly as a psychological compensation.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Hitler usually wasn't even Giddy talking about Hitler. Didn't like being around himself.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Hugenberg in these years emphasized the inflexibility, stubbornness and self-righteousness, which would characterize his political career. So he knows you don't need me. You can throw me away if I stop making money. And that drives him to be the son of a bitch of the sons of bitches in business in this period.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

No, I mean, maybe later. Not a big personal life guy, you know? Yeah, no, that is poisonous. He's really a Scrooge, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. Yeah. And this is. Yeah. So we'll get into it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He just...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Well, you know, the downside is they do have psychotherapy by then. But if he had gone to it at this point, he would have just been given a shitload of cocaine by Freud. Like, which is OK. This guy's a finance bro. That is not going to make shit better.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Right, right. That would have that would have fixed him. Our ketamine billionaires are in such good health.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I mean, he probably took it at some point just because it was in a lot of medications, like a lot of patent medications. There's a bunch of different shit you would be given for like a flu that might have had some coke or some heroin in it, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

They could be both medicated. No way to know. No way to know. Alfred is very insecure because of his position, and he takes this insecurity out on his workers, by which I mean Krupp workers. He despised socialism, and he found himself violently opposed to anything that smelled slightly of democracy, by which I mean unions. Alfred talked a lot about wanting to make unions obsolete.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's one of these guys who's like, well, I'm just going to treat our employees so well, they'll become members of the petite bourgeoisie. I'm going to give them stock in the company, then why would they want to be unions? They'll be shareholders, right? And they'll be able to buy their own homes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And what he's suggesting here, this is what happens in the US post-war to create the most prosperous society in history. So within the capitalist milieu, this is an idea that does work. It's going to work in the US not long after this. But Hugenberg is just bullshitting. He has no interest in doing any of this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

As Leopold notes, quote, working and living conditions did not change much during Hugenberg's tenure. He ultimately did find himself forced to work with what he called yellow unions, which are trade unions that aren't allowed to strike. Right. So he'll work with these guys because they don't actually have any teeth. But as a rule, he found even that kind of union disgusting.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And he starts pushing internal propaganda within Krupp that depicted management and employees in Leopold's words, quote, not antithetical classes, but common producers of shared wealth. You know? You and Krupp, the plutocrat who owns all of this money by pushing everyone towards World War I, you're really the same. That's the propaganda. He's not good at propaganda at this stage. Got it. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And again, the wealth's not actually being shared. And this is something Alfred and his fellow industrialists would acknowledge cheerfully. They don't think you should share wealth. They are social Darwinists. They believe the poor and working class can only be trusted with a certain amount of money.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And if they have any more than that, they'll fritter it away on harmful nonsense because they're just not smart enough to reinvest it into the German arms industry, right? Which is obviously what a smart man does with his money. Right. By 1912, Hugenberg was one of the most prominent men in the entire Reich. He was awarded the Red Order of the Eagle by the Kaiser.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, this is one of dozens of made-up awards that the Kaiser would give different Germans over the years in order to, like, You know, you need to have a bunch of fake awards to hand each other so everybody can wear a uniform that looks fancy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's worth noting.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It's the NXIVM sash. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yes. And Alfred's Red Order medal is third class with a bow. I don't know what that means. Leopold writes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. Yeah. At the ceremonies, the chairman of the board delivered a masterful speech criticizing the attempt to use universal male suffrage as a means of imposing class rule on the Reich.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He insisted that neither voting nor legislation would advance the workers, but only a very much richer, very much greater, and very much more powerful Germany would be continued to ensure continued benefits for the industrial proletariat. And so in the speech he's saying –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The only thing that can make the poor, the working class more comfortable is if we steal everything from the rest of the world. That's your only hope, guys. Damn. Speaking of stealing everything from the rest of the world, Sophie, should we show them our sponsors?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

You never know. I steal shit sometimes, Sophie. Like cable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I love self-sabotaging. Oh, my God. You do. You do.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We're back. We sure as hell are. Yes. So now, as I said, during this whole period, one thing that's going on is this cycle where Krupp will send their arms merchants abroad and say, hey, your neighbor just bought all these great cannons or, you know, this machine gun and they're thinking of using it. So why don't you get some more guns?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And one of the things this cycle of upgrades does, it's great for Krupp's bottom line and other weapons manufacturers. They're all taking part in this. This is not just Krupp. Germany is not just responsible for the preconditions of World War I, obviously.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But one thing that this cycle, that these arms manufacturers are all responsible for means is that every European leader is constantly thinking, okay, right now we've got better artillery than the French, but their machine guns are a little better. And in two years, they're going to have new artillery. So maybe we need to go to war now if we're going to have a chance of beating them, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Like everyone's always thinking this way, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Like this sounds- Because these people own the government or run the government to a big extent. Yeah, like-

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, it's great. So Hugenberg profits from this process, and he may have been more directly involved than even just like running the finances and benefiting it because he winds up involved in a huge scandal right in late 1912 to early 1913. He's implicated significantly in what's called the Kornwalzer affair.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, I'm going to quote from an article by Lothar Burchard from the 1988 German yearbook on business history to describe the Kornswaller affair. In 1905, George Bernard Shaw had already, in his play Major Barbara, not been sparing with his insinuations.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In 1913, even the serious American journal The Iron Age wrote, following the facts revealed during the Kornwalzer affair, that Krupp was obviously recently prepared to go to any lengths to agitate a war. Even before the First World War had really started, H.G. Wells had already decided who was the real culprit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In the center of this disaster, which had finally become a world catastrophe, is Kruppism, the dirty, violent trade with the tools of death. It was shortly afterwards that the often-repeated but never conclusively proved allegation arose that the then-company boss, Gustav Krupp v. Boland und Halbach, had been informed by the Kaiser months in advance of the imminent war.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And Alfred is directly implicated in this bribery of army and naval officers as like – because he's the manager of this guy. And it's too much to say that we don't know – again, we don't really know if the Kaiser was literally warned months in advance of the imminent war because I don't actually think it was planned that way. But that's the rumor going around, right? And –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It's definitely true that Hugenberg is aware of how tensions are ratcheting up and is using that as a way – he is taking advantage of this to make money in a way that makes World War I more likely, right? He has some of the war guilt, right, because of the position that he has. Again – There's plenty of war guilt to go around. The French aren't blameless. The British aren't even blameless.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And fucking the Russians, sure as shit, aren't blameless. But he's one of a small number of men who is directly implicated in creating the conditions of World War I, right? The bastard. Yeah. Given his age and wealth, there's no chance Hugenberg or too many of the people he cared about, because he doesn't care about a lot of people, were going to have to fight and die in this war.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In fact, he was very pro the idea of having a World War I. He's gotten back into the Pan-Germanic League at this point, and the League is doing everything they can do to encourage Germany to go to war with its neighbors. If you're old enough to remember the biggest cheerleaders for the war in Iraq, that's what these guys are doing, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

They're coming up with justifications for like why we have to go liberate Eastern France, right? They'll welcome us as liberators. Wow, sweet. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's got nothing to gain from a war. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. Well, there's nothing to lose. You're right. Sorry, I fucked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. And to make things worse, you know, he's cajoling European powers to arm each other, both in his job as an arms dealer and through this social club that he's helping to run. And then in 1912, something terrible happens. It's the same year of the Kornwalzer affair. The Social Democrats win big in that year's German elections. And Germany is a parliamentary monarchy, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

They have a parliament. The Kaiser is often described as an absolute ruler, and he can overrule most things, right? But there is a parliament, and they don't have zero power. And the Social Democrats win big that year, which scares the shit out of Alfred and people like him. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So he starts talking to other rich reactionary nationalists and he tries to sell them on an idea he's had, which is he wants to create a cartel of the producing classes. In other words, he wants to get all of the rich business owners together and form a union of rich guys. to collectively bargain in their own interests, right? A gold union, not a yellow gold. Yeah, a gold union. Yes, exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And this is a thing. He's not alone in thinking this. A lot of magnates in the Ruhr, and the Ruhr is Germany's industrial heartland. It's where the guns get made, right? And a lot of the guys who run and own the mines and the companies making raw materials and the companies turning those raw materials into weapons and other stuff, They're all thinking along the same lines.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And so in 1913, he is hired to chair the board of directors for an organization that pools money from mine and factory owners in the area for profit. And part of the goal here, he's not just like investing it. He is spending it to benefit them. Part of the idea is you will spend a chunk of our money. We all give like 1% or whatever, right? And that money accumulates and you spend it

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

to influence the culture, right? To put out news and stuff and propaganda that's positive for us. Hugenberg is going to be running that project, right? Because these guys, these industrial magnates, the billionaires of their day, have come to the conclusion that if we can just change the news stories poor people read, poor people will stop trying to get our money. You know, like, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yes. And also this is a very Musk thing. Right. Like we're coming to the he buys Twitter part. Right. So, again, Hugenberg is not a skilled propagandist in terms of he doesn't make propaganda. Nor does he like write it. He's not drawing it or anything like that. But he sees the need for propaganda and he's good at hiring people who are good at stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So in 1914, he uses a bunch of this pooled corporate money to form a holding company called Ausland GmbH. A month later, that company forms a subsidiary named Ausland Ansigen. Leopold explains what happened next, which will sound very familiar to those of you who know anything about the Daily Wire.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Ausländer Anzigen was established to study foreign publications and to coordinate the advertising of heavy industrial firms interested in exports. So he's sending out people to study foreign media propaganda and bring back advice so that they can create news outlets that will represent the interests of the rich. Right. That's that's what he's doing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, this is initially just an advertising thing. Right. Like the idea is that we will make better ad propaganda. But the study of foreign ads expands to a general study of foreign propaganda. And this kind of conclusion starts to develop that like, you know, what ads that's not the best way to propagandize people. Journalism. is the best way to propagandize people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

News articles are the best way to propagandize people, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yes. And so this is what they start working on when, in August of 1914, the shooting starts on the Western Front. And we will talk about that, what happens later, and how Alfred Hugenberg finally gets in bed with the Nazis in part two. How are you feeling, Amanda?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I feel really glad that I... That's a normal way to feel when you talk about Alfred Hugenberg. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

No, no, no. You're a better person than Alfred Hugenberg. A low bar. That's huge. Russell Brand might be a better person than Alfred Hugenberg, and he just got charged with some pretty serious crimes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Who's a worse person?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I'll say this. Very few historians blame Russell Brand for the outbreak of World War I. Almost never. You know, almost, almost never. Yeah. Honestly, would be super impressive if he'd managed that somehow.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It is one of those.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

There's some guys like Matt Damon. You put Matt Damon in like a historical movie from 120 years ago. I'm sorry. Matt Damon has, as people have said, Matt Damon has a face that knows what a smartphone is, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But yeah, Russell Brand, if I saw him in a picture from like 1848, I'd be like, no, that He might belong there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Probably committing sex crimes there, but he might belong there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

All right. Well, Amanda, you got any pluggables before we roll out of part one?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Excellent. Well, check out Cultish. Check out everything Amanda is involved with. And check out part two coming in like a day.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Alfred Ernst Christian Alexander Hugenberg was born on June 19th, 1865, in the city of Hanover, which five years or so later would become the city of Hanover, Germany. So, again, he predates Germany by about five years. These are still just a bunch of states with Austria being – or with Prussia being the dominant one.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So, you know, speaking of self-sabotaging, you know who doesn't self-sabotage? God, I hope not. They're a very successful person. Our wonderful guest today, Amanda Montel, author of the book Cultish Witch. I've cited on this show. We've all read.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It's the goddamn Prussians, and the goddamn Prussians, like, as a general rule, they just pants Austria, not far from the time that he's born, right? Which is why Austria is on, you know, anyway. So...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The fact that Germany becomes a thing is largely the work of a fellow named Otto von Bismarck, who orchestrated a series of wars, treaties, and alliances that culminated in the defeat of Napoleon III's France and the rise of the Prussian Kaiser as the emperor of all Germanic peoples. Or at least like, because like Austria-Hungary is still separate, most of the Germanic peoples.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In those heady early days of Imperial Germany, people get very excited about the idea of Germany, right? It's like fucking Pokemon when it starts off, right? You folks can't get enough of Germany. They are. What are they trying to catch? Other Germans, right? Like that's the goal. We got to get all the Germans. We got to Katamari all of the Germans into this thing. And that'll probably end well.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Putting all the Germans in one box seems like it'll not lead to a series of world wars. So there's this kind of academic theory that's being promulgated around this time, and obviously it's being promulgated before the formation of Germany, but it really gets supercharged afterwards, and it's called pan-Germanism.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And this is the assertion that Prussians and Bavarians and Saxons and Hanoverians or whatever – shouldn't see themselves as different peoples and certainly not as different nations, but as one united German people who have a manifest destiny to spread, not just in Europe, but across a grand colonial empire that ought to because Germans are a great people and they deserve what the British have.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Right. There's a lot of there's a lot of this like they're very insecure. The Germans in this period of time. Right. And so there's a lot of why don't we have a lot of stuff? Look at the British. The British have so much stuff. Why don't we have any stuff? Come on, guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

That's every Kaiser, to be honest. And it's certainly Otto von Bismarck. So they start being like, how are we going to create a space for us Germans that's worthy of the name?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, these kind of nascent ideas, even though they're starting to gain traction, they're not even initially – they're not universally popular and not even within Germany because among other things, these different German states have been fighting each other up until very recently, right? The Prussian Junker class, which is kind of like their nobility, has a bunch of ancestral privileges, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

If you haven't, what are you doing? It definitely influenced Zizi and Zeph. It's influenced a lot of my work. Amanda, thank you so much for being here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. that they maintain even once Germany becomes a thing, and they're not eager to give those up, right? They're like, what, you mean I have to give up my power over those uncouth Bavarians? No!

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

No, no, not everybody. This is this is like there's a lot of conflict over this. Now, the idea that Germany should expand colonial largely in Africa is less objectionable. People are very into this, but they're also not great at it. Right. They kind of get like.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

the shit, their attitude and everyone's attitudes, they get kind of like the shitty pieces of Africa, like Namibia, a lovely place, but it's like not, it's like a desert, right? It's not at the time seen as like, well, it doesn't have that much stuff for us to exploit compared to like what we want to be exploiting.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And then looking at the British who own like fucking a third, like a shitload of Africa and like, what the fuck guys? And so this is what's all, this is all what's going on as Alfred Hugenberg has his childhood. Now, unlike Elon, because we've made that comparison, he is not born into wealth or into really much privilege at all. Some people will say his upbringing was comfortable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

That's not wildly untrue by the standards of the time, but we would not see this as a comfortable upbringing. And in fact, it's kind of close to Hitler's childhood. Alfred's dad is like a civil servant. He's a guy who works in the administrative state. And he dies when Hugenberg is very young. And Alfred is the only son in the family, which is also like Hitler.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And the Hitler comparisons keep right on Hitler-ing because both young men also spend their adolescent years aware of the fact that their mom, since their dad is gone, is incredibly financially strained, right? They have this pension problem. But none of the pensions are enough to take care of a family. And so they're like they're in there. It's a tremendously difficult time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And he can't not have been aware of the fact that they were poor now.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So there are some other similarities between Hitler and Hugenberg. Both young men were moved to create art in their early years. Hitler becomes an obsessive devotee of the opera and has ambitions as a painter. Meanwhile, Hugenberg is a really talented creative writer with what biographer John Leopold described as, quote, a flair for literary expression.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And, you know, if you're a kid who's good at writing, that can be a great way to express yourself and to work through some of your trauma and stuff. Alfred does not do any of that. Sure. Which is actually a real difference because Hitler throws himself whole hog into being an artist. He kind of sucks at it. Like he's not any good, but like he tries.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We love cults over here. You know, it's hard. It's one of those things where it's both Just objectively, cult leaders have the highest odds of any group of bad people of being incredibly entertaining. Right? I know. I know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I got to say, Hitler, better painter than George W. Bush.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But less creative. Bush, you know, there's a degree of where like, okay, you're trying to like creatively represent how you feel about the people you're painting. Hitler was just sort of like, look at that building. What a great building.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

No, no, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Which probably says, people have tried to psychoanalyze that shit for years. What's interesting about Hugenberg is that he has, and he'll write some books later, but he has like a literary skill. Like he could have been, you know, a fiction writer or something like that. Okay, L. Ron Hubbard. Well, hey, I didn't say he could be anywhere as good as LRH, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Sorry, jumping to conclusions. The man who could put a 50,000 word novel out in just seven hours of taking reds. Just popping pills like you. I mean, we don't have the technology for someone to be as on amphetamines as all Ron Hubbard was back then, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, it really is like quite a special time and place. So Hugenberg chooses what's kind of interesting to me is that Hugenberg doesn't just sort of like fail to explore his potential as an artist. He purposefully forces himself not to write, right, not to make art because he just like that's silly and that's like artists are poor and I am not going to be poor.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So and and our Russia's brother, David, provided an even more telling glimpse of kind of what their childhood was like under Big Rush. My dad stood out. Sometimes he provoked people who didn't agree with him to violence. Once, for example, he was in a bar slamming FDR and a couple guys jumped him and beat him up. I never did ask him the details of that one, but it was a couple guys.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Not a fair fight. I know that much. I have to assume he deserved to get the shit kicked out of him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I'm going to guess he was saying something like the people who got screwed over in the Great Depression deserve to starve to death. We shouldn't be helping them. That's going to be my guess. And he got the shit kicked out of him by some WPA guys, something like that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's a fair fight. You're big, you know? Yeah. He's not Little Rush. He's 300 pounds. They're probably each about $1.50, you know? Fair fight. Exactly. Fair fight by mass.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So our rush was born into the Eisenhower years, which will probably always be remembered as like the high point of both capitalism and the United States. This period of peak American exceptionalism imprinted itself deeply on Russia's growing brain. His father was made a special ambassador to India's legal system. Their family got their first television. Yeah, yeah. What does that mean?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I think it means India was newly independent in the Eisenhower years, right? The UK had just left. They had just partitioned with Pakistan. They're developing their own independent legal system, and they're a democracy that was heavily based, at least initially, on the US.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So the president picked guys who were established lawyers like Big Rush and also established Republicans to be kind of help set up the Indian legal system. Wow. Yeah. That's kind of what happened. So, yeah, his father's a big man in Republican politics. Rush grows up seeing in the period where America is undeniably like like literally is half of the global economy. Right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's a very significant thing for him. So the family in the 50s gets their first TV. But radio is still the dominant method of entertainment in those days. And Rush's childhood and early adolescence coincided with the birth of rock and roll and the absolute peak of cultural relevance for DJs. My dad grew up at a pretty similar period of time. He's like seven or eight years younger than Rush.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And he grew up. The only thing my dad ever wanted to be was a DJ. And he wasn't a radio DJ for like 20, 30 years. You know, that was like the coolest thing that you could do. Right. You didn't have Spotify. You didn't have the Internet. People learned about new music from DJs who were kind of like picking what they were going to play on the radio.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It was like the absolute raddest thing you could be. And that's what Rush like. He idolizes these big DJs of the time. And that's all he wants to be for basically his entire young life is a DJ. Yeah. Now, when Rush was three, Brown versus the Board of Education was ruled on by the Supreme Court, which led to the integration of U.S. schools.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, Ziv Chaffetz doesn't write anything specific in the biography about how Rush Sr. talked about race to his son.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

We don't get any of that information. Yeah. And I'm not necessarily blaming Chaffetz for that because I think the Rush family is very PR savvy. They don't talk about it. You know, I don't know who he would have gotten that info from. But our Rush would have definitely picked up on the great deal of conflict in Cape Girardeau over racial matters.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Missouri is an odd state in that it is both Midwestern and Southern. During the Civil War, it was split between Yankee and Confederate sympathizers. And the town that Rush grew up in had monuments to the dead of both sides. There was tremendous resistance to the idea of integration of schools in Missouri and in Cape Girardeau.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And Ziv Chaffetz, to his credit, writes about this, quote, In 1952, Cape built its white students a new school, Central High. Blacks continued to attend Cobb High School, but the Supreme Court and basketball changed that. Cape Girardeau took its high school basketball very seriously and sometimes contended for the state title. Wow. Yeah. Cape Girardeau is a very racist town.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And kind of more to the point, we don't know exactly what Rush's dad would have said about any of this. We don't know that he would have supported the burning down of the black school. We don't know that he wouldn't, though. That's right. That's right. And the conservatives were definitely more on the don't integrate side of things, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, a compromise was eventually reached in Cape Girardeau, and the compromise was that black kids would be allowed to attend Central High, but they would be put in special classes that were taught by former teachers of Cobb, the school that had been burned down. This was kind of integrating by not integrating. So there were black and white kids in the same school, but not in the same classes.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And this is the way things were in Cape Girardeau when Rush Limbaugh started school. So, yeah, that's you can infer from that what you will based on some of the things Rush Limbaugh says and does later in life. I think we're missing some important information about what his dad thought about black people.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I don't think he was burned down high school. He might have done it like that. That is rampant and irresponsible speculation on my part, but also the only reason I think he wouldn't have is that he wouldn't have been able to run away from it in my from what I can tell. He didn't do well in that fight is all I'm saying is.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So Rush had an upbringing that would have been fairly standard for a rich kid of his era. He played basketball. He did chores. He had plenty of friends. He was not an overly active kid. He did not like sports. He hated his one year in the Cub Scouts. Rush Limbaugh hates the outdoors his entire life.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He did not like school, but he was popular, largely because his family was rich and had a huge basement with a pool table and a bunch of other luxuries. The kids Rush hung out with during this time give us some of our best hints about the darker elements of his childhood. One of them told Zeev Chaffetz, quote, Rush's dad didn't suffer fools lightly.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He was always very disapproving of Rush's ambitions to have a career in radio. Rush's mom was a kind, gentle person, but his dad could be pretty rough. He was not above calling down Russian David in front of their friends. And when he did it, there was a string of expletives attached. I saw that happen many times. So kind of abusive, not I don't think by the standards of the time.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And I haven't heard any that he was like reading his kids or anything, but kind of mentally abusive. Again, probably more or less in line with what most most men of his social class would have been like to their kids. You know, I don't think this was abnormal.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, I think most of them.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, it's better than humiliating you in front of your friends when you say something he disagrees with. So every one of Russia's early friends that I've seen interviewed is very consistent about the fact that he was not political from an early age. He rarely, if ever, talked politics and he did not express strong beliefs.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

One of his friends even remembers him as a particularly good debater in school because, quote, he could argue either side of a proposition without missing a beat. When he did express political opinions, they were generally conservative. One friend noted that the only time he saw child Rush express a strong political sentiment was after the 1960 presidential election when Rush was nine.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Quote, Rush wrote on a drywall, Kennedy won. Darn. Nixon lost. Shucks. So. Grows up conservative because his dad is conservative, but it's clearly politics is not a big part of his life from an early age. He's not like Ben Shapiro. Right. We're from the get go. He's being sort of like focused into becoming a political commentator. That does not happen with Rush Limbaugh.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. So Rush got his first gig at age 13, working at a downtown barbershop. He later told his biographer that he liked the gig because it gave him a chance to talk to adults who he preferred to his peers because I didn't think kids were interesting. When it came to girls, Rush was as awkward as you'd expect. He was bad at sports, heavyset and not at all smooth.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

In his 1993 biography, The Rush Limbaugh Story, biographer Paul Colford recalls one particularly embarrassing incident during a game of spin the bottle when Rush was a teenager. He spun the bottle and it stopped pointing at the prettiest girl at the party, which is how she's described in this anecdote. Quote, she looked at him and gasped. Couldn't do it. Not with him, that is.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And everyone in the room witnessed his humiliation. It was a wound he would nurse forever.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

that's nice thank you biographer for that and it's one of those things you know I think there's I'm sure this has an impact on the kind of man he becomes but also I think most of us have a moment like that where we have a crush on some person of the opposite or the same sex and they're not into us and it's horribly embarrassing it's a pretty normal

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And most of us don't grow up to destroy civil society and the environment.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

We've all been there. And Rush was there, too. Obviously, this is a part of whatever toxic stew gets cooked up at him. But I don't know. Like, it's one of those things I think you can kind of lean too much on. Oh, this is why he was always forever humiliated by this thing. And that's why he became the man he was like, well, we all have that in our past and we all don't do this shit.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. And, you know, there are a lot of other bald men in that world who don't become super. So Big Rush wanted his son to become a lawyer or to do something else with a similar sort of gravitas. Right. The Limbaugh's were big men in Cape Girardeau. They were kind of like the the the primary, like the most prominent men in the entire town.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And he Big Rush wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and do something respectable. Right. Didn't have to be a lawyer, go into politics, do something important, right? Do something that he can brag about to the other rich guys. Now, the fact that young Rush only ever wanted to be on the radio infuriated his father.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

For his part, Rush seems to suspect that his love of radio was born in part from his hatred of school. Quote, my mother would be fixing me breakfast and I'd be listening to the guy on the radio. He'd be having fun and I was preparing to go to prison.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of kids. I'll take my adopted hometown, Portland, for example. A lot of kids there who hate school. They don't destroy the entire planet. They just break Starbucks windows on the weekends.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You can just buck up a Starbucks if you're nursing some rage at the educational industrial complex or whatever. So despite his irritation, Big Rush clearly did love his son. And when Little Rush was 16, his dad used some of his local clout to get his son a part-time job at the local radio. station. Rush started doing what you'd today call internship.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You know, fetching coffee, cleaning up, handling odd tasks here and there, and eventually he was allowed to actually introduce and play records on air. The summer before his senior year of high school, Big Rush paid for his son to attend a six-week radio engineering course in Dallas. This was a big moment for Rush. He was away from home for the first time, living in a boarding house.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He started smoking cigarettes, thank God, and he got a license that allowed him to actually And he got a license that allowed him to actually run the radio without adult supervision. Once he had this, station management let him hang out alone all weekend and weekdays after school, playing records and for the first time presenting himself to an audience on air. So he gets started.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And this is one of those things. His dad, clearly there are some abusive elements of their relationship. His dad is not supportive of Rush's radio career, but also his dad doesn't think it's a good idea. but also enables him, right? Like, not just gets him a job, but pays for him to get educated. So again, this is not a guy, I'm sure, you know, he had his frustrations with his father.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This is not a guy who grows up with a dad who just doesn't get him and refuses to support him. This is a very supportive upbringing this kid has, even though his father's not. Yeah, exactly. Um... Yeah. So Rush, you know, becomes kind of famous within his, you know, the teen set at his town because he's the guy with the radio show and in high school. And he was not at all political at this point.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

His most well-known bit involved reading the daily beauty tips that the Associated Press sent out back then, which he like and he would like kind of mock the beauty tips because he thought it was silly that the AP was sending out daily beauty tips, which is fair. It is that is a silly thing for the AP to do.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, Rush's professional idol at this point was a guy named Larry Lujak, a Chicago DJ who was famous for his sense of humor and comedic stylings. Rush later called him the only person I ever copied. Lujak was known for audibly shuffling papers during his monologues and different bits, a tactic Limbaugh copied and used repeatedly through his decades on air.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

um and as in kind of his signature bit no no no it wasn't a bit but it was like a thing he would do to emphasize that like i've got evidence or i've got information here you know it was a thing rush and it was a big rush limbaugh thing you know it's it's how you convince people who maybe aren't that credible that you you have good information right like look i have papers yeah he's been handed he's

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

No, he was not. And he fucking hated Rush Limbaugh. Because when Rush got famous in the early 90s, Rush was like, yeah, Larry Lujac is the only man I ever copied. And they asked Lujac about it, and his response was basically, fuck that guy. Bless you.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Good man, yeah. You can't pick who finds you influential, you know?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So back in those days, again, being a radio DJ was pretty much the coolest thing you could do. And Rush's side job made him very popular at high school. He even signed autographs on a few occasions. The work was intoxicating, and Rush seemed to know at once that this was what he wanted to dedicate his life to doing. Obviously, his ambitions did not make his father happy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And during Rush's last year of childhood, his dad would constantly yell at him for wanting to waste his life on the radio. No amount of paternal ill will was enough to pull Rush Limbaugh away from his dream, though. He was miserable at home with his father after graduating. He enrolled in a local college just to please the old man, but he couldn't actually bring himself to go to school very often.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Sometimes his mother would drive him to college just to make sure that he went. Rush came of age during one of the most exciting and tumultuous periods in U.S. history. I mean, he's he's literally becoming an adult in like 1968, I think, like some shit went down that year. You know, there's a lot of teenagers doing some exciting things.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, given how Rush turned out, you might expect him to have been active and involved in the politics of his time. But he was not. And to hear him tell it now or to hear him tell it when he related this to his biographer, the civil rights movement in the Vietnam years basically all passed him by. He never attended political rallies. He only dimly remembers hearing of Bobby Kennedy's death.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, his radio station asked him to help send out news reports for the local NBC affiliate because there were uprisings all around the country. And Rush did this, but he didn't actually engage with the news. He was not actually interested in In what was happening, he was just interested in kind of the business of how news was disseminated.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Quote, this is what he said later. I remember talking to them about the broadcast business, NBC. I was 17, playing records on the radio, not commenting on news. I don't recall feeling any concern. So that is how, again, a lot of privilege. There are massive race based uprisings in a number of U.S. cities.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Hundreds of thousands of National Guard troops are called up as after the civil rights leader is is assassinated. The country is on the brink of open conflict in Rush Limbaugh. I don't give a fuck. Like, I just want to play my records. You know, he's just a rich white kid, you know, in the middle of Missouri. He doesn't give a shit.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He doesn't even have strong hard right sympathies. He just doesn't give a fuck about it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the podcast that I continually fail to introduce like a professional, which is particularly shameful this week because our guest is a very professional voice artist, Mr. Paul F. Tompkins. Hi, thank you for having me. Thank you for being here, Paul. You are the voice of a lot of characters that that that a lot of people enjoy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, and it is important that he's not just taking the right-wing side of things. We're like, well, yeah, fuck Martin Luther King. He was a commie. He just doesn't care. None of this even makes it into his mind.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, it's quite a thing. So I'm going to quote now from a write-up in the New York Times that ably summarizes Rush Limbaugh's early 20s. Quote, Love of radio eventually won out over formal education, and he dropped out of a local college after a year, appalling his parents. Then began a long checkered odyssey, typical of radio.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Limbaugh held and lost jobs in several cities, working under different names and broadcast styles. He was Rusty Sharp and Jeff Christie. He was a DJ, a newsreader, a talk host. In each place, he developed components of what would later emerge as the Limbaugh style. In Pittsburgh, he was a prankster, convincing listeners that he could see them through a new experimental picture phone.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

so he's kind of like a, a, a drive time morning DJ, like a, Hey, yeah, we're gonna, I don't know. I can't do the DJ voice, but like playing like sound bits and doing, doing gags. Like he's very, like not even really a shock jock yet. Cause he's not like combat that has, that's like starting to evolve in this period of time. Yeah. Um,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I did find some audio from one of Rush's very first broadcasts in 1974 while he was still in Pittsburgh. And I think it's interesting because in it you can hear Rush in mid-transition from that drive-time DJ voice to the voice of the Rush Limbaugh who would help breed a modern American fascist movement. So here he is on WXZ's solid rock and gold show.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So without further ado, here is Rush Limbaugh in 1974. Oh!

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Very silly, as all radio from the 1970s sounds today, right? As most radio today sounds. But also, you would never have guessed, based on his early performances, that he was going to become what he became, right? No.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I think it's fair to say this is what he loved and he would have been perfectly happy if he could have made a good. We're getting to kind of like a Hitler at art school story. We're like, yeah, maybe if he'd gotten to keep being a drive time radio DJ, things would have been better.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I think most famously to me, at least, is Mr. Peanut Butter.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I mean, I think everyone who does a job that, like, I think pretty much everyone who has worked, there's a joy in professional competence of any type. Yes, yes. If you're running a cashier at a grocery store, when you get really good at bagging, it's the kind of ecstasy of competence where you can lose yourself in a task and be like, I'm as good at this thing as I can be.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Even if you don't like the job, there's a satisfaction in that. 100%. Rush was happy in this period. He wasn't rich, he wasn't influential, but he was doing a thing he loved well, and he was happy in this period in the early 70s. So his early material in Pittsburgh is interesting to me because it's exactly the opposite of what you'd expect from him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

One of his reoccurring bits was the Friar Shuck radio ministry of the air, where he relentlessly mocked the radio preachers that he saw coming into the station on Sundays. He thought these guys were grifters, and he hated them. The center of this bit was that no matter your problem, God would solve it if you'd send the radio preacher $100. That's interesting to me.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And this is like a real running theme in his early career is he made fun of preachers all the time, of the exact kind of religious grifters that later helped make him a wealthy man. It's very interesting to me. Yeah. Yeah, there's also he also would read letters from fans.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And at one point he read a letter that he said was from a young woman who wanted to be a DJ and was worried that her gender would hold her back. Here's what he told her on the air.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's true. That's true. Because if you're really achieving as an artist, a lot of people are going to hate anything that you do. That's that's how you know you're doing it right. Exactly. And today we're talking about a truly historical success of a creative mind. A man hated by tens of millions of people and who should be hated by billions.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You just have to master two techniques, and I'm going to explain them right now. Number one, the use of microphone. To use it, simply turn the microphone to the on position and talk into it. The second, which is the biggie, is queuing up the record.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Get the record you want to play, take it out of the appropriate shuck, slap it onto the turntable, take the arm and the needle, place it on the outside edge of the record, then turn the record until you hear the beginning of the record. Back it up a quarter of a turn, and when you get through talking, the record will start. After you have mastered those two techniques, girls, change your sex.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And you can interpret that a couple of ways.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Well, I think there's two ways to interpret this. One of them is what you've said, Sophie, that he was just being incredibly sexist. One of them is that he might have been acknowledging anyone could do this job, but you won't be able to as a woman because of sexism in the industry. And I'm really not sure which one he was going for there. It could be both.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You're still not allowed to do it, ladies.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, that's probably accurate. It's probably a bit of both.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Well, ladies, stick it to Rush Limbaugh by engaging positively with the system he spent his life propping. All right, shit.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Neither did I, Sophie. Here's some ads. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's a new year and we're all asking ourselves versions of the same question. What do I want my 2025 story to be? Every January brings you 365 blank pages just waiting to be filled. In 2025, maybe you're ready for a plot twist, or maybe there's a part of your story that you've been wanting to revise.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

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Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

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Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash behind.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But for this week, we're going to be going back to a rerun. So please enjoy. The Story of Rush Limbaugh

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

A man who has done, I would say, incalculable harm to the future of human life and all life on this planet, Mr. Rush Limbaugh. Correct. Yeah. Paul, do you have any kind of history with Rush Limbaugh, like in terms of your upbringing and stuff? I don't know much about how you grew up.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

We're back. We're back from those ads. And Paul, I can see the glow on your face that only comes upon a man's face the first time that he gets to help advertise the fine products and services brought to us by the people at Raytheon. Are you feeling good, Paul, about now? Now you are in inextricably tied to wonderful products like the R9X knife missile.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's what everyone wants to do, right? Yeah. Since cavemen painted on walls, they dreamed of Raytheon. And now we are in the privileged position of getting to sell their products. And I couldn't be happier.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It is a great name.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, I mean, this ongoing bit I do, I often, like the R9X missile I think is made by Lockheed. Raytheon's guidance chips, I believe, are in it. To be fair, it's just the name Raytheon is such a good, shady defense industry. Like, it's the name of a company that ends the world, right? Like, you're talking about like, you know, they're going to make a Skynet that kills us all at some point.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Their name is just too on point to not be. Yeah. So back to Limbaugh. Rush was popular in Pittsburgh, and his bosses appreciated everything but his long-windedness. They repeatedly sent him memos that stated, shut up and play the records. And for a while, he was content to mostly just do that. But in 1974, the economy took a nosedive, and Rush was fired.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He had to move back home with his family, where he lived for seven miserable months. His dad repeatedly badgered him to move on and start a real career – But Rush was committed to radio, and eventually he landed a new gig in Kansas City, where he started taking listener phone calls for the first time.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This was the dawn of the era of insult comedy, a sort of mean-spirited comedy based on pranks and, you know, primarily executed by shock jocks, guys embodied by Howard Stern, really, who entertained via ostentatious cruelty. Hungry for success... Can I ask you this?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's starting at this point, right? This is really kind of the birth of talk radio and rushes on the ground floor of that, right? Does it does it start with sports or does it start with with issues? Right. Right. Right. It's an extension of the idea of the.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yes. And I have access to them first and all this stuff. Right. Right. So rush kind of as this, you know, he kind of sees the writing on the wall, right? He loses his gig as a traditional DJ because that is starting to become less profitable. Right. And there's, you know, in general, the economy's taking a shitter. Um,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here. And, you know, we're still coming down from our end of the year celebration. I'm headed off to CES where we'll be doing reporting for It Could Happen Here and Better Offline. We're going to be coming back for the new year soon. The Oprah episodes will be in the can. Very excited to introduce you all to that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So he realizes that kind of the way things are going is more based around personalities and comedy and entertaining people, and he starts to pivot to that. So this is – there's an interesting quote that Rush himself wrote in one of his many interminable books about how he felt about kind of pivoting to insult comedy. Quote, I found out something about myself, something that was quite disturbing.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I found out I was really, really good at insulting people. For example, the topic one day was, when you die, how do you want to go? I want to go the cheapest and most natural way I can, one nice lady caller from Independence, Missouri said. My response was, easy, have your husband throw you in a trash bag and then in the Missouri River with the rest of the garbage.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

When I went home after a day of this, I didn't like myself.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. It is, though, one of the things people will state. And I can't categorically say this, but it seems accurate based on my recollections of the show is even when people would disagree with Rush on the air, he wasn't an asshole to them. Like he was not cruel to to his callers, to their faces. Right. He would say cruel things about liberals.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But when people would call in, he would not like call them monsters. He would not like he he seems to have genuinely not liked insulting people to their faces or at least over like directly insulting people over over the phone or whatever. While he was disturbed by this, he was not disturbed by racism, mainly racism against black people. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

yeah yeah here's where we're going um at one point during his call-in show he claimed he had a black collar and he came claimed to not be able to understand the man's accent limbaugh hung up on this black man after saying take that bone out of your nose and call me back which is pretty damn racist or I mean, he says it was. We'll get to that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

At another point, he asked his audience, have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson? Now, during a 1990 interview, after he'd kind of risen to political prominence, Newsweek asked Limbaugh if he thought these statements had been racist. He replied, you may interpret it as that, but I know, honest to God, that's not how I intended it at all.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Gee, don't get me in this one. I am the least racist host you'll ever find. Now, if we're going to try to analyze Rush from the length of his career, I think we can say two things. He's probably being honest when he said that he felt bad about insulting callers because he did not continue to do that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He is probably being dishonest when he says that he's not racist because he continued to say incredibly fucking racist things about black people consistently throughout his entire career.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

so easily disproved also followed by the i don't see color people i don't see color i would say i think most of the people i think i don't see color people tend to be performative obama voters the i am the least racist person in the world people tend to have strong opinions on why they should be able to say the n-word like that would be the split between the right and the left version yeah yeah yeah and both of you are fucking racist so shut the fuck up

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You mean me and Robert, right? Yes, yes. She's found out about our opinions on Lichtenstein, which I refuse to apologize for, and the fucking Swedes. My God, the Swedes.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I have huge issues, particularly blue sweet. What did Uga Chaka mean? Why did you say that at the start of that song? OK, sorry. Rush was Rush was still at this point in his career, completely apolitical. His roommate and close friend at the time later told an interviewer he was scary smart about everything. But I can't recall us talking much about current events. He was funny, though.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I was an audience of one. Limbaugh's years in Kansas City were not super successful, and he seems to have recalled them somewhat sourly, as the New York Times summarized. Limbaugh likes to say, Five years later, he quit the Royals, convinced his career there was stymied, and went back to radio, this time as a news commentator. Again, he got fired for being too controversial.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Also in Kansas City, he married twice, both marriages eventually ending in divorce.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, we're about to get into that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Fucking Paul, come on. So it was in Kansas City where Rush Limbaugh, conservative commentator, made his first public appearance after getting pushed out of the Royals. No one really liked him there. He had one friend who was on the team, and that's why he got to keep the job. And when that guy got traded, they pushed him out because they all hated him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So after getting pushed out of the Royals, he got a gig at KMBZ, a local station. He started satirizing what he considered to be a left wing caricature of a right wing political commentator. Right. The initial right wing Rush Limbaugh was satire and he was being purposefully controversial and unreasonably extreme in order to make a comedic point. This was a joke initially.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This did not go over well with his middle-of-the-road Mormon station manager, but it made Limbaugh popular with his audience. See, Limbaugh had caught on to the fact that radio was in the middle of a revolution. This was the era where the first big shock jocks, men like Don Imus and Howard Stern, began their ascents to stardom.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I found a wonderful write-up about this era on Long Reads, which argues that the first radio shock jock was a talk radio star named Joel Pine in the 1950s. And I'm going to quote from this now. We might do an episode on Pine at some point. Quote, his unconventional style, dressed up to dress down pinkos and women's libbers and riff on rather than read reports, was neither news nor entertainment.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It seemed to be best described, well, the New York Times and Time both did anyway, as an electronic peep show. The personality-free press of the time considered Walter Cronkite the most trusted man in America and Johnny Carson the funniest. But Pine, with a syndicated show on more than 200 radio outlets, was the most Machiavellian.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

When it comes to manipulating media, icons of talk author Donna Halper told Smithsonian Magazine, he was the father of them all. Pine briefly descended from his soapbox in the mid-60s for a week's vacation after bringing a gun to his show during the Watts riots, suggesting the world wasn't quite ready for his kind of conservative appeal.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So Pine is doing the Rush Limbaugh bit in the 50s and early 60s. But America is not ready for that yet. Right. Even 50s America is like, this guy's racist and a fucking lunatic.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He lost the Paul F. Tompkins demographic, but he kept the my parents and everyone that raised me demographic. So what was your upbringing? Particularly political, would you say?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I think so. Because he, he, he, he even says like, it was a satire, right? Like that's how it's portrayed in his biography, that he was kind of, his personality was satiric in nature. And, and that's kind of the only way I can interpret it is that he was trying to satirize what, like kind of the loony right winger, you know? Okay.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That was never said directly.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, a bit. I do think he started not believing everything he said. It started as a joke and him intentionally to provoke controversy because controversy brings in listeners and gets attention, gets word of mouth. That's why he was doing it. And the story of Rush Limbaugh is these kind of purposefully absurdly extreme satire becomes what he really believes and is, you know?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, I think so. And I yeah, that that's how I interpret it. We'll go we'll go over that. Yeah. So obviously, Pine, kind of the first right wing radio shock jock had peaked too early and kind of, I guess, to steal a phrase from the Nazis, shown his power level too early during the Watts riots. And he got kicked off the air. Rush, though, started getting political at exactly the perfect time.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This was the early 1980s. Howard Stern came onto the scene in 84. Don Imus had risen to prominence in the 1970s. Imus was another guy my dad listened to a lot growing up. Um... Imus in the morning was like a big part of getting ready for school. Don Imus is going to be in the fucking TV. And you were like, this guy's having so much fun and I have to go to prison. I have to go to prison.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This guy's having fun. He's talking about nappy headed hose, which was like the phrase that he I forget what it was in reference to. But like, that's what got him in trouble. It was a women's basketball team. Yeah. Yeah, it was a women's basketball team because Dynamis was also very racist. Sure.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So, yeah, the world was still not quite ready for the Rush Limbaugh we knew during while he was like starting to be political at KMBZ. But a diet version of what he would become was now acceptable. And one man who recognized the potential of Limbaugh stick was Norm Woodruff, a consultant to the station who became the acting program director at Sacramento's KFBK Network.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

KFBK needed a new right wing talk radio host after firing their previous one. A guy you mentioned at the start of this episode named Morton Downey Jr. Morton was extremely popular and he was very extreme in his antics. This had allowed his local station in Sacramento to repeatedly draw national attention because he would say purposefully controversial things.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This did backfire on Morton eventually when he told a racist on air joke about a Chinaman, which was a thinly veiled attack on a local city councilman named Tom Chin. Downey Jr. was fired and went into the world of television where he would somehow simultaneously blaze a trail for both Tucker Carlson and Jerry Springer. We will do an episode on him someday because he's a very influential guy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But his for today, he matters because his firing number one, his success proved that being a purposefully controversial right wing bigot was really profitable for radio station. And because when he got fired, Sacramento had a hole in the station's roster that they needed to fill with another racist right wing shithead, just one who was not quite as racist as Morton Downey Jr.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Rush Limbaugh stepped up and said, not being quite as racist as that guy is my middle name. for now for now eventually i will be much worse So Rush Limbaugh moved to Sacramento. When he started at the station, his new boss, Woodruff, told him, We want controversy, but don't make it up. If you actually think something, if you actually believe it, you can tell people why. We'll back you up.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But if you're going to say stuff just to make people mad, if all you want to do is rabble rouse, if all you want to do is offend and get noticed, that's not what we're interested in, and we won't back you up. He was clearly lying. I think this was ass covering by the station, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, but they would never, would never ever push back on his bigotry. But you know who does push back on bigotry, Paul? Ads?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

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Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So we're back. And at this point, Rush Limbaugh has launched himself as a right wing shock jock, and he is an instant hit. Zeev Chaffetz writes, quote, The station let him go on the air solo, unencumbered by sidekicks or guests, and encouraged his highly personal right-wing monologues. For the first time in his career, he was marketed heavily and aggressively.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

There were billboards around town showing a finger hitting a button, captioned, Rush was so pleased by these that he sent Brian a snapshot. Morton Downey Jr. had been a big star in Sacramento, with a five share of the market, 5% of people listening to the radio in a given 15-minute segment. Limbaugh tripled that. He was sharp-edged, but good-humored.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The new morning host espouses many of the same beliefs of his predecessor, Morton Downey Jr., reported the Sacramento Bee, but he skates a little further from the edge of the hole in the ice. Rush was rewarded for his success with a six-figure salary, an estimable income in the mid-1980s, even by his father's standards. More important, for the first time in his life, he really mattered.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He was invited to deliver speeches, just like Big Rush. He was an occasional commentator on television and wrote newspaper columns. Politicians and celebrities sought him out. He and Michelle, his wife at the time, bought a new house and furnished it with products he endorsed on air. So he's a hit. This is the start of, and it's really just almost straight up from there for the rest of his career.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He finds his niche and he runs with it. Again, he's a very intelligent, talented man.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's very funny.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, I have long argued that Sacramento is the very mouth of hell itself, and the fact that Rush Limbaugh first saw success as a right-wing firebrand there serves to support my hypothesis. Again, his conscious decision as an entertainer was to be a satirical version of a right-wing polemicist, deliberately exaggerating the things he did believe for comedic effect.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The audience thought he was funny, but I don't think they got the joke, and there is some evidence for this. When an Ohio evangelist... I would say there's... A lot of evidence. Yeah. So I think the earliest evidence for this, I should say, is when an Ohio evangelist very publicly claimed that the theme song from Mr. Ed held a satanic message when played backwards.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You know, we're kind of talking about the satanic panic period during this. Rush found this ridiculous. And again, he had a long history of mocking Rush. evangelical religious right. So when he heard this, he told his listeners that a Slim Whitman recording also contained a backwards message from Satan.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Zeve Chaffetz writes that, "...to his delight, many Limbaugh listeners took Limbaugh at his word and flooded the station with phone calls promising to destroy their Slim Whitman albums to keep the devil out of the house." Rush considered this a hilarious prank. He did not apologize or, as far as I know, correct the record. So we see in this, he's joking, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He is not, again, his whole history is mocking these people. He does not believe this, but he doesn't correct people because he realizes, oh, they're engaged. They're destroying stuff. That means I have power, right? I think he even found it kind of, it might have been something that kind of addicted him to this, this idea that like,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I can make even if I'm deliberately being absurd and lying, I can make people take action based on those absurdities. That's got to be addictive. And I think it is for him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

is it's joyful it does give you a real jolt and there's a this is a bit of a different case but I think there's some similarity so last summer you know I was covering a lot of the protests in Portland Oregon including doing a lot of live streaming and very early on they the police put a fence up around the police station and there would be marches were like a couple of thousand people would march to the fence and somebody would like touch the fence and the police would tear gas like six square blocks of traffic and

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And I started calling it the sacred fence. And the joke, like the comment that I was making is that the police are endangering the lives of thousands of citizens to protect a fence because it's sacred to them.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That went viral within the city. And there were dozens of protests at the sacred fence, as everyone called it, including numerous attempts to tear it down. And I know that the way that I framed it had a significant impact on a lot of people who I'm getting hurt, damaging offense, getting arrested. And it it it was both kind of intoxicating. And it also scared the hell out of me.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It was one of the reasons why I pulled back to some extent on some aspects of my coverage, because I got really worried about the kind of impact that you can have on people by doing that sort of thing. I didn't want to be. It was very concerning to me. But it was also I'd be lying if I said there wasn't an element of it that I wanted to do more stuff like that. And I didn't. But I wanted to.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Rush's domestic life, while he's enduring all this professional success, his domestic life with his, I think she was his second, I think she was his third wife, actually. I don't know. He had a couple, he had a lot of wives. I think actually, no, this was his second wife. His domestic life with his second life at this period was less than joyful.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He was famous and popular, constantly feted for dinners and invited to big events. And his wife, Michelle, was much less successful. She quit her job to be his assistant, but she hated the work.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

They were not a good fit. Michelle loved the outdoors. Rush Limbaugh despised them. Two of his colleagues tell a story from around this time of how they convinced him to go rafting once that I think is telling about Rush Limbaugh's personality. So this is one of Rush's friends talking about the time they took Rush Limbaugh on a rafting trip in whatever river it is that goes through Sacramento.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Quote, It's a very, very mild ride. Bob gave Rush an oar and told him to observe.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Bob gave Rush an oar and told him to absorb the blow of the canyon wall to give us a little spring back into the current. Rush panicked, stuck the oar out, his arms stiff as a board, and upon impact, he fell overboard. We got Rush back in the raft, and the next day he spent the entire three hours of his show talking about his horrendous whitewater grapple with the Grim Reaper.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

What a fucking baby. I've had people fucking shoot at me, and I've had people shell me with artillery, and I've never spent three hours talking about it. What a fucking baby. So Sacramento is where Limbaugh started picking up what would become a voluminous list of mostly self-inflicted nicknames. He was El Rushbo, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing Maharashi.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He was also a harmless little fuzzball and the epitome of morality and virtue. He started claiming that his show was hosted by the EIB, or Excellence in Broadcasting Network, which is a which did not exist. This joke mainly served as a vehicle for Rush to express his grandiosity.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He declared himself on the cutting edge of societal evolution, swore that he was serving humanity, and had himself introduced as having talent on loan from God. His opinions were, quote, documented to be almost always right. 97.9% of the time by the Sullivan group, which also did not exist. And again, he's joking. And also at a certain point, he starts meaning all of this very literally. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Right. Like that's kind of how narcissists work. So it may surprise people to know that – to hear that Rush Limbaugh's career was launched into the stratosphere in Sacramento because California is, to most people outside of California at least, a bastion of liberal politics. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

and spend time in the state, you know, like, for example, if you've ever been to fucking, I don't know, what is that, Orange County, right? Or if you've been up near Redding, there's a shitload, like, there are more right-wing Californians than there are right-wingers than there are in, like, a number of U.S. states, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Like, California has a ton of right-wingers, and it has a long, powerful, conservative political tradition. California gave us Ronald Reagan. It gave us Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in one of the most surreal turns in history, political history is now among the only rational voices on the right in the United States. So, yeah, California has a powerful right wing.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And yes, they are, especially in the last 20 something years, overwhelmed by the much more numerous liberals and leftists. But in this fact is one of the hints to Rush Limbaugh's rise. You see, Sacramento is located kind of north of the center of California, not far from some of the most productive farmland in the country.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That is very exciting to me just because you're you're you came from kind of more of a, you know, a liberally background and your introduction to Rush Limbaugh was kind of watching it as a character, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It is also not far from north central California, places like Redding, which are right-wing strongholds. The conservatives who live in these areas tend to be very extreme in their beliefs – And that's partly a response to the liberal and left-wing government that they live under. They see – and this is not – they are not entirely or even largely wrong in seeing this.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

They see themselves oppressed by many of the rules liberals in the cities put in terms of things like gas taxes, right? If you're living in – if you're a farmer in central or northern California – A gas tax that is reasonable for people in L.A., San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento is a hardship on you.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And you're not contributing to the kind of pollution in the cities that the gas taxes are meant to fight. You know, the strict gun laws and stuff. There's a lot of things, reasons these people have to be angry about. And Rush Limbaugh became their voice.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Um, so these, these, this kind of infuriated, very radical right wing who hates the liberals and left that govern California have a voice in Rush Limbaugh. He obliges their sensibilities with a ceaseless stream of attacks on liberal California. And that's what makes him huge is because there's millions of right wingers in California and Rush Limbaugh becomes like, yeah, he's their voice, you know?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Um, You might even be able to argue that nowhere but California could have produced Rush Limbaugh as he became. Yeah. So I'm going to quote from the book Rush Limbaugh, An Army of One here. He mocked the multicultural style of California by proposing to keep uglo Americans off the streets. Militant feminists became feminazis. The Green Movement was full of environmental wackos.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The American left became commie pinko liberals and the residents of Rio Linda, California, were synonymous with stupidity. A ringing deadlet, deadlet, deadlet introduced news updates on what he regarded as the absurdities of liberal activism. Liberals, of course, hated him, which he found inspiring.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I grew up very conservative. My parents were also lower middle class, verging on poor. And when I was like kind of little, a lot of economic anxiety, but extremely conservative. I would say like our family religion was conservatism. And so Rush Limbaugh was caught whenever I was driving with my mom or my dad. Rush was on. We listened to him. My parents talked about him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

When they attacked him as a dimwit, he responded by claiming that he was so much smarter than his critics that he could vanquish them with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair. Before long, Rush was too big to stay in Sacramento, which is again the very mouth of hell itself.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He was introduced to Ed McLaughlin, the former head of ABC Radio, who had started his own big radio company based out of New York City. McLaughlin had listened to Rush's show and decided it had the potential to go national. He offered Rush a partnership, and after some haggling, Rush agreed. He moved to New York and made the EIB network a reality.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Rush was 37 years old at this point and 21 years into a career of doing almost nothing but broadcasting on the radio. Again, the voice of the so-called populist American right never did anything but radio, really. In 1988, he launched a new version of the Rush Limbaugh show, this time for an audience across the nation.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's sort of hard to find his stuff from the late 1980s, but I found this guest appearance he did not long after in 1991 on another colleague's show for the same network. It gives you an idea of where his radio personality was by this point and of how he presented himself, right, of how he kind of introduced himself any time he was coming on the air. So we're going to play this now.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This is kind of the birth of the Rush Limbaugh we all know now.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's Rush Limbaugh at kind of... When he goes viral for the first time. What do you think about that? About how he presents himself on here? What does that say to you?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So my upbringing with him was that this guy is like the prophet of of what's what's right, you know, both in the political sense and in the moral sense.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's it's a drag. It's also I think there's a thing that he's doing here. When we talk about all these phrases, half my brain tied behind my back, you know, the talent from God, all these different phrases that were that he continuously used for decades. I, I don't want to, I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I hope this doesn't seem a little pompous, but I kind of make a comparison between that and like the Iliad and the Odyssey, right? This like the way that anytime you've got Homer introducing, it's always like, you know, the, there, there's certain phrases. Anytime Achilles comes up, he uses the same kind of phrases, same couple of phrases to introduce him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

These descriptive phrases, um, to introduce a character that are repeated constantly throughout the, because it's a, because it was a spoken story, right? Like that's where you're supposed to deliver it. That works. It gets in people's heads. They associate those phrases with those characters. Rush is kind of doing – this is an old tactic, but it works.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's the same thing Trump does with his insults, Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe. These are effective tactics, and that's what Rush is doing to inculcate his followers primarily with this idea that he is a genius, right? Mm-hmm. And again, he's joking, but he's also not because this shit buries itself in your brain. He's he's he's knows what he's doing. It's he's a very savvy person.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So I'm very excited about this. And I'm excited that you know who Morton Downey Jr. is because we're going to be talking about him a bit, too. Absolutely. So, yeah, Rush Limbaugh is it's hard to oversell this guy's influence on our current state of like, I think it would be fair to say we're kind of like verging on civil conflict right now between the right and left in the United States. For sure.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You have two kinds of people who really are able to build a following. You have people who are able to build a following because folks genuinely just enjoy the work that they're bringing into the world. They like their personality. They like what they're doing. And then you have folks who are able to build a following primarily because they do cult leader shit, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's what the marketing comedians, right? This is cult leadership. This is how you do it. We do a little bit of that here.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

We're all guilty a little bit. And I'll be guiltier when I get, I don't know, a couple of hundred people killed by the FDA in my mountaintop compound, which is always the goal, Paul. You're very welcome if you would like to have an armed standoff with the Food and Drug Administration. That's how you know you're successful.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's how you know you're successful, when a three-letter agency burns you down by...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

i don't need to waco this time um i do love waco i want the epa to get that's a good one yeah wow i'm so impressed it took almost an hour 20 for robert to mention waco good job yeah i'm getting you know i i realized i was waco-ing a lot um trying to cut back you know a whole hour 20 and then here he is first waco But we'll talk off air, Paul, about synergizing our cults in the near future.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Anyway, so Rush did not tone himself down at all after he went mainstream. In fact, he grew more extreme and he seems to have quickly forgotten that he was ever practicing satire. In 1990, at the very height of the AIDS crisis, Rush launched a new segment on his show, The AIDS Update. And I find it interesting how different sources report on this.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

When Limbaugh died, it was obviously a big story, the fact that he'd done this AIDS update. And it was, in fact, Limbaugh AIDS update was like the second or third most Googled term alongside his name the day he died. Snopes and Newsweek both published prominent fact checks on this story.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But Ziv Chaffetz's biography of Limbaugh came out well before Rush's death and before the AIDS updates were really talked about all that much outside of the community they most impacted. And I think it's interesting how Ziv wrote about it, not knowing that this was one day going to become a significant story. So this is how Ziv wrote about the AIDS update. After an act-up demonstration at St.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Patrick's Cathedral in New York City that disrupted a mass, Limbaugh chastised militant homosexuals for their disrespectful behavior and shortly thereafter began broadcasting irreverent and tasteless AIDS update segments introduced by Dionne Warwick's I'll Never Love This Way Again.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

In his traveling stage show, The Excellence in Broadcasting Tour, he did a bit when he put a condom over the microphone to illustrate safe speech. So that's how the AIDS update was kind of framed by Ziv before it was a big story. Now, here's how Snopes characterized it in their fact check after Limbaugh died.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Um, so yeah. And I think Rush Limbaugh has a huge, it might be the man most responsible for that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

No, I don't think Ziv is trying to whitewash him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's terrible. And it sounds worse when Snopes goes into more detail on this. Quote, at the height of the HIV AIDS crisis, the Rush Limbaugh show featured an AIDS update in which Limbaugh joked about an epidemic that had claimed more than 100,000 lives between 1981 and 1990. Specifically, Limbaugh targeted gay men who had died.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

In addition to joking about their deaths, Limbaugh reportedly played songs during the segment, including Kiss Him Goodbye, I'll Never Love This Way Again, and Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Snopes.com uncovered an interview in the Cedar Gazette from 1990 in which Limbaugh said the segment was politically oriented and based upon my reaction to what I consider to be extremism in the political mainstream by a group of people. Per the Cedar Gazette, Limbaugh said his target is not AIDS victims, but militant homosexuals who blame church and government officials for the epidemic.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The AIDS update is meant to offend them, Limbaugh said. Damn right. According to a 1998 Los Angeles Times article, it was a popular segment, but it also created outrage among AIDS activists. Something not helped by Limbaugh reportedly saying, gays deserved their fate. Mocking the horrific deaths of gay people isn't something that will get a conservative radio host fired today.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So obviously, this was never more than a mile bump in Limbaugh's career back in 1990. And it says a lot about where the right would go, that a segment dedicated to mocking joyfully the deaths of people he disagreed with was popular, right? That would become the mainstream for Republicans. Now, in 1990, it was still a thing he had to apologize for.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And that year is the year he became officially famous, 1990. He had his first live TV appearance on June 2nd when C-SPAN did a special on talk radio. And yeah, so this is like he does kind of have to sort of say that he regretted doing this, that he felt like he was kind of attacking people who like he was like, I didn't mean to be mocking people who had died.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Like, yeah, it cannot be overestimated.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I was trying to attack these militant activists. And so I stopped doing it because I feel bad about it. Yeah, yeah, who are so far still alive. For the moment. Yeah. Anyway, so he does a TV appearance on C-SPAN in 1990 on June 2nd, which is kind of his first big TV appearance. And then the New York Times does a big profile on him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

From that, quote, "...with its characteristic attention to production values, the network simply set up a camera inside a spare WABC 77 studio in New York and let the self-proclaimed most dangerous man in America roll."

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Cut to a schlub in a cheap white dress shirt, black tie, and hastily barbershopped helmet of hair, already wiping sweat and grumbling about the TV lights, planted behind his desk and mic, interrupting the station's young newscaster, Kathleen Mahoney. She's trying to do her five-minute top-of-the-hour update, oddly for 1990, while wearing a mask because, as she explains...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The host had warned her it could be dangerous to let his listeners identify her on TV as a liberal feminist. He was only joking, Limbaugh insists. You said wear a bag over my head, Maloney says. Limbaugh keeps threatening to yank her mask off, complimenting her beauty, and interjecting impatiently, the news just holds up everything here. I'm trying to make the news worthwhile.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

There's a lot in there. Jesus Christ. That's a New York Times reporter in a C-Span appearance. Yeah, he's like both saying you should cover your face because my listeners will harass you for being a liberal feminist and also take off that mask. Let everyone see your pretty face. He's simultaneously both threatening her and sexually harassing her.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He's because he he he brought he created the modern. Right. You know, so you can see it, you know, in 1990. That's what he's doing. Yeah. Now, 1990 is, as I said, also when the Grey Lady published their first full feature dedicated to El Rushbo. The article is fascinating and valuable, since it seems like few copies of his early 1988 to 91, 92 episodes exist.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So this New York Times write-up provides us with several fascinating insights into how Rush's show evolved during this period. And more to the point into where American conservatism was about to follow in his wake. At one point, a critic calls in. This is, again, the New York Times writing about his show from an episode we don't have anymore.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So at one point in the show, a critic calls in and tells Rush, quote, I believe you are doing a great disservice by using the program to convince people that if poor people are not successful, it is their fault. You were just a paid advocate of the rich and you despise the poor. Now, that's very accurate.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The author of the New York Times article notes that perhaps due to his guilt over his crueler shock jock days, Rush is very polite to his liberal callers. And this is what the New York Times writes as Rush's answer. You misunderstand my point. There is nothing wrong with being rich. It's not evil. Most rich people earned it by virtue of hard work.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This has always been the country that people come to because there has always been a chance for opportunity. And if you start punishing the people who bust their tail to be prosperous, then you're going to unmotivate people to try that. I am not a paid defender of the rich. I am a proud promoter of the American way of life.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's like that's hard work. I mean, look at Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, all guys who were born to wealth. They weren't born crazy rich. They weren't born with fuck you money, but they were born into wealth. And then they were able to get fuck you money because of the – and there's a lot written about that. Bill Gates having access to a computer in an era when basically no one did.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Bezos being able to secure a huge loan from his parents in order to help start his first business. Right. uh elon musk also getting a loan from his dad to start a business you know it's the way it always works for these people and they they spin that as self-made you know um yeah because in their mind it's true because in their mind it's true and they do work hard and if you work hard you

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

can convince yourself that you've earned it as opposed to like, I worked hard, but it only like, I can say I worked hard. I can also say I am only financially successful because I got lucky. And I know other people who worked as hard as I did, who have not been nearly as financially successful. And it's not because of a lack of talent.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, it's nonsense. So that New York Times piece reveals that by 1990, Rush was already popular enough to draw massive in-person crowds. And this was unheard of for a talk radio personality. Today, we're well acquainted with right wing thought leaders who can draw thousands upon thousands of fanatically loyal followers to in-person gatherings. But Rush was really the first from the Times.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Quote, There are towns where he is unheard, unheard and unheard of. And then there are places like Tampa, where the announcement of a Rush Limbaugh stage show sold out the 2200 seat Ruth Eckerd Hall in four days. The occupants of those seats are out of them and cheering when Limbaugh appears in a three piece tuxedo.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

They're like the crowd for a country western concert, says Dan Woolley, the hall's director of operations, after sizing up the crowd in the lobby. Surprisingly youthful and more beer than wine drinkers. You're going to have fun tonight, Limbaugh tells them, and at the same time, you're going to learn some things.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Pacing constantly, he does some jokes that poke fun at the Japanese and the liberal media. One of his jokes is that Judgment Day comes and the Washington Post article banner reads world ends tomorrow. Women, minorities, hardest hit. It's like that's the you know, you see what he's going for there.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. Later in his live show, Rush engaged in a popular bit wherein he brings a piece of shit to a modern art gallery. And the joke is that, like, modern art is so dumb that if you, like, poop and take, like, right, it's very obvious. This is it. You can find Ben Shapiro making the same basic joke decades later.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And the gist of it is that, you know, liberals are so dumb they'll stare at shit if you tell them it's art. The Times introduces this bit and then moves on to something that I found chillingly relevant. Quote, Art criticism is a Limbaugh staple.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He believes there is a culture war going on between those upholding decent values, conservatives, and the commie lib hordes trying to devalue human life, and worse, undermine private enterprise. Limbaugh's sermon on art brings out the evening's only heckling, a female cry of censorship. Oh no, Limbaugh protests.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He never spoke that word, but seconds later, he allows that censorship isn't really so bad. It has been used throughout this nation's history as a means of maintaining standards.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

What he's talking about is threading the needle that the right is now the sit like right. The mate I went to I was in fucking I took a concealed handgun course in Texas because I'm getting my out of state permit so I can be armed in more parts of the United States because of all that is like going to cooking school in Paris.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Well, and the thing started with like a 30 minute lecture from the instructor on cancel culture. Like, this is the big thing within the right. I know. I know. I know. Wow. This is the big thing within the right now. And it Limbaugh is starting both like saying, like, well, the liberals want to like. Censor us when I want to cut out all ideas they disagree with.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And then he he moves on to saying, but also it's OK to censor people sometimes. Right. Because this is what the right believes. It's cancel culture if you if people don't like it and if they suffer financial consequences for being racist. But it's not cancel culture if they go out of their way to censor left wing and liberal voices, which they do through things like school books. Right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's amazing. And that, Paul, is the end of part one of what is going to be like three hours of talking about Rush Limbaugh. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I mean, he deserves this much time, not in a good way, but in a we need to understand what this man has done to us always.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. Evidence both that he deserves to have his death cheered and also that he loved laughing at people's deaths. Yeah. Yeah. You're honoring him in a way, yeah. You are, you are. It's what he would have wanted. But you know what I want right now, Paul? I want you to plug your pluggables.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Thank you.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, where he repeatedly celebrated the deaths of his enemies and made half a billion dollars doing it. Yeah. Okay. Let's get into Rush's life. So the first thing I learned about him when I started digging into him that might be the thing I learned about him that surprised me the most, Rush is not short for anything. Rush is a full first name.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And in fact, Rush Limbaugh is the third Rush Limbaugh in his family line. They are very proud of that name. His grandpa, Rush Sr., was born and raised in Bollinger County, Missouri. So he and I are both Missouri babies. He grew up into a world that was changing rapidly. Rush Sr. saw an electric light for the first time when he was 12.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He took his first railroad trip in 1904 to see the World's Fair in St.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That is the most shocking thing about him. Rush Limbaugh is not only his full name, it is the only name his family seems to give their firstborn sons.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So Rush Senior became a lawyer. He opened an office in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and he basically never left the town again. He retired in 1994 at the age of 102. Wow. which I mention because it suggests that all those cigars are Rush Limbaugh smoked saved us about 32 years more of his show.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He's one of those guys who worked until he died, basically.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So Rush Sr. was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives when he was 40. His main political issue was fighting FDR and the New Deal, which shouldn't be surprising to anybody, right? This is deeply, deeply embedded in the Rush Limbaugh line. In 1936, Rush Limbaugh Sr.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

was a Republican delegate at the Republican National Convention, where he helped nominate Alf Landon for the noble job of losing to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in an election. You don't... Nobody was better at campaigning than FDR. It was never a successful thing to run against that man.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Alf Landon, the Washington generals of Republican politics. So my main source for the early life and family history of Rush Limbaugh is a fairly comprehensive, if I would say kind of fawning biography of Limbaugh by Zeev Chaffetz. And Zeev, it's a weird first name, Z-E-apostrophe-E-V, Chaffetz.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He notes that over the course of decades of lawyering, Rush Sr., quote, quietly but inevitably became well-to-do. Which is an interesting way of phrasing it. There was no stopping it. It was kind of a way of making it seem like he didn't really want to become rich. He just became rich.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Inevitably, quietly and inevitably got rich.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

My God. It is very sinister.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

um so rush jr who is our rush limbaugh's father was born at some point quick googling obviously he had to have been born quick googling didn't return a date he's the only rush limbaugh without a wikipedia page which i guess kind of a kind of a shot to him um i could have probably found it out if i'd really dug into it but it doesn't really matter that much for our purposes yeah he did what he had to do he gave us rush he gave us our rush yes our rush our rush

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So Rush Jr. is only important for the impact that he had on our Rush. He was a World War II combat pilot, which is undeniably rad. You got to give him that. And his biography notes that he maintained a military crew cut for his entire life. He was heavyset and topped out at about 300 pounds, which earned him the nickname Big Rush Jr.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So Big Rush became an attorney like his dad and his brother, who eventually went on to become a federal judge. Big Rush was a powerful orator and often gave speeches in the town of Cape Girardeau during holidays. His very conservative politics influenced these speeches, and his most famous one was a tearful, hagiographic speech about our nation's saintly founding fathers.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Again, you can see he clearly had kind of the same gift of gab that R-Rush has. And you have to admit, if you know anything about R-Rush Limbaugh, he was an undeniably talented broadcaster. He was very good at what he did. That's why he had the impact that he had.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. Now, R-Rush Limbaugh, Rush Hudson Limbaugh III... to give his full name, was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri on January 12, 1951. By all accounts, he had a financially comfortable upbringing with a brother and a parents who loved him. Baby Rush spent his childhood imbibing a steady diet of his dad's rants about scummy liberals and evil conniving communists.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

one of our Rush's childhood friends recalls of Big Rush, of his dad. Quote, we'd go over to his house sometimes just to watch him watch the six o'clock news. He'd sit in front of the television drinking black cherry pop, eating popcorn, and just railing at the anchorman and the reporters. He'd yell at Dan Rather, they're all typical liberals and Rather's the worst one of the bunch.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And we'd try to keep him going, you know, Mr. Rush, what do you think about this? Mr. Rush, what do you think about that? Sometimes he'd say, Kinder, that was this friend's name. You're going to be the first Dutchman on the moon. I don't know exactly what he meant by that, but he was trying to be friendly. I liked him, but he was a harsh taskmaster with his sons.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He has a brother, David, who is his younger brother. No, no, no. I think that's the oldest son gets the Rush name.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part One: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

David becomes like a lawyer, doesn't really leave Cape Girardeau, and is like... You know, he's he's he unlike his brother has a family, has like a wife that he's, you know, stays with and all that stuff. Did he quietly but inevitably become wealthy? I think. Yeah, I think he was born wealthy. He and his brother were both born rich as hell.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

She's basically got a bachelor's. Right. Now, Maxwell would later say regularly that his mother was a committed Zionist. This is not impossible, given the time. It's also he becomes that later in life. And we don't really we have no like direct quotations of anything that she said. And this is the thing he starts saying in the 80s. So who knows? But it would not have been like wildly out of

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

like, step with what a lot of folks in that situation believed at the time, given the realities of life in Eastern Europe for poor Jewish families. Thanks to his mother, Maxwell grew up aware of the injustices that suffused his early life. Thomas and Dylan write that she was, quote, a woman who was outspoken about the injustices of their life just because they were Jews.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

The images of her which would survive would come much later from Maxwell. He described her as intelligent and well-informed, different from other local women. She was passionate about the need to improve the masses for greater social justice. And again, this is stuff he says decades later.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Some of this is probably like myth-making, especially the fact where he's like, none of the other local women cared about this. Well, maybe they did. Maybe you just kind of want your mom to seem like she was the only one because it, you know, burnishes your own story. Yeah, we'll never know. But Hannah and Mahel had the standard number of kids for that period of time, which is a shitload.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Abraham was the third of nine, two of whom died in infancy from something only described at the time as a bad cold. You know, it's just what happened with kids. One of Maxwell's earliest experiences would have been watching his parents bury their kids. And that's a pretty normal life experience for people back then.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Starvation would have been a regular thing, like not to death, but they would have gone hungry regularly throughout the year. That was pretty normal for people in this time in this village. When he was still a baby and still named Abraham, his mom and dad had to register him with the Czech authorities who advised them it would be better for everybody. They're like, you want to call him Abraham?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Look, lady, I don't know if you got the news, but we're Czechoslovakia now. And Abraham is not a Czech name. And let me give you some advice. People here are pretty racist. Your kid might have an easier time in the days ahead if you give him an undisputably Czech name. And like this sounds pretty bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

It's also maybe what saves his life because very soon it's going to be really good to be an Eastern European Jew who has a name that does not sound Jewish. Right. And his parents take this guy's advice and they change his name from Abraham to Jan Abraham Ludwig. which would be changed yet again later in his life to Jan Ludwig Hyman Benjamin Hawk.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

But yeah, he goes through a lot of different names, this guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, Jan, we'll call him Jan. That seems safe. Yon is the name you want to be giving at checkpoints in the not-too-distant future here. So the first job that the future Robert Maxwell had would have been helping his family with the annual harvest, which he would have done from infancy on up. A highlight of the year – this is described in every book about him I've read – was the hay harvest.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And it was a highlight because their beds were just like cloth stuffed with hay. And by the time you do the harvest – The hay is like matted and it's riddled with lice and moldy. And so the day when you get to replace the gross old hay with fresh new hay is like, that's the best day of the year.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yes. Or you go onto Facebook and you see a crudely AI-generated image of a soldier with no arms and a face that just isn't quite right that says, nobody will share this image. It's great. I love what's happened to media. This is so much better than my friends having health care. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

For an idea of where we've gone in a hundred years, we've gone from my most exciting time of the year is the hay harvest to, yeah, once a year I get a new phone. Yeah. Although none of these people, again, have to know Twitter. So who's better off?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

No, no. I hear bed five has all this spyware on it. I don't really want to get into that. By age five, Jan had proven himself an advanced student, which in his world meant that he was learning to read and to memorize prayers. By 10, he was a better writer than his father, although Mel the Strong was not renowned for his brain.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He was quick enough that the town rabbi recalled decades later his analytical ability and uncanny aptitude for learning and retaining what he was taught. He could become a rabbi. And at that time and place, if you're saying this kid could be a rabbi, that is the same as like today being like you could be a physicist. Right. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Like that is the highest intellectual achievement for people in this strata. Right. Kids aren't really like it's not likely that kids are just going to go to college to learn things, you know, not in this far off the beaten path. So Jan grows up large. Robert Maxwell is a big man. He's going to be like six foot something to like.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Nuts. He's good at soccer because, again, he's twice the size of everybody else. And I did look it up. The local kids in this town, when I say they, and obviously they called it football, but that's just wrong. We know that, right? We're in North America. We use our word. Yeah, we use our word. The ball that they had was rags bound in cowhide.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

You know what I mean? Yeah, there's a...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

afghanistan has a sport like that called burst kashi and it's like the deadliest sport in the world people are like beheading each other on horseback with their fucking sticks as they go after this animal head i would love to watch it played that's great why are we why are we fucking around watching arsenal when we could be watching goat head ball sports a rag bundled with leather great yeah good yeah right

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So the Thomas and Dylan biography, I get a couple of different accounts of whether or not Mehul the Strong was a good dad. One of the books I read described him as like pretty gentle. This is not an account that is repeated by Maxwell's most recent and probably most rigorous biography, Fall by John Preston, which alleges that Mehul beat his son in public on a regular basis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Quote, often so hard that he broke the skin. On one occasion, the young Maxwell threw up in the street. Grabbing him by the hair, his father rubbed his face in his vomit while passersby looked on. So by this account, at least, his dad is abusive by, again, like 1920s rural village in Czechoslovakia standards. So rough upbringing in a lot of ways. Uh, he was born left-handed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

I love it. I love it. I love it. It's so good. So this is actually slightly relevant to the person we're talking about today because our bastard this week is – he's the man who ruined science in a lot of ways. And he's also one of the major figures who like helped make media what it is. He was Rupert Murdoch's nemesis for years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

His teachers force him to write with his right hand. Uh, and he was like, everyone in town would yell at him if they saw him using his left. So he just like stops being a lefty. Also very common at the time. You can't have those left-handers. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

I actually did. My first grade teacher tried to stop me from being left-handed. Really? That happened to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. In rural Oklahoma.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

To our brave left-handed forefathers. Yeah. To Ned Flanders with the leftorium making a place for us.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So brave, guys. Whenever you get like RFK being like, why are autism rates skyrocketing? Have you looked at a graph of how many more left-handed people there are now? Do you think there's something environmental there? Or we're just not hitting kids for using their hands?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Pretty obvious. So at 11, the no longer left-handed Jan goes to a yeshiva. Because again, most of these kids are not getting sent away to Bratislava, to the city, to go to a yeshiva. He's smart enough that like... The rabbi basically pulls some strings to make sure that he gets a chance at this. And so he's kind of like in training to potentially be a rabbi. And he's good.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He's like really good academically. But he hates it. He doesn't like reading rabbinical literature. And he grows really bored with formal schooling. And he starts like cutting rabbi school to sell jewelry on the street. Like, to be like a small-time, like, merchant? Because this guy just has business brain, right? Like, you put this man in any time and place and he is going to find a hustle.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

That's just the kind of man Jan is, right? In March of 1939, when he is 15, the Nazis invade Czechoslovakia.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Now, the fact that Jan's family is in Ruthenia winds up being beneficial to them because when the Nazis take Czechoslovakia, Hungary is allied with the Nazi state and Hitler kind of gives them this chunk of Czechoslovakia, Ruthenia, because Hungary had been claiming it for – it's this whole thing. It's one of these border regions that everybody claims, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So Hungary winds up annexing where his family lives. And the Hungarian government is not anti-Nazi. Right. Obviously. But it is a safer place initially to be than the Reich. You know, like not a high bar. Right. But there's a little bit of protection there for a short period of time. And I emphasis on the short because it's not going to last.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

The fact that Jan's mom had given him a Czech name pays off because he immediately – and this is one of the things that's interesting about this guy. He's very perceptive. As soon as this happens, there are a lot of people who are like kind of burying their heads in the sand, trying to be like, I don't know how bad it'll be.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Jan immediately is like, all right, I'm going to join the underground and start fighting the Nazis. That's obviously what has to happen at this point, right? So he drops out of the yeshiva. He shaves his side locks because he doesn't want to look as Jewish. And he flees. He goes into the underground. He knows he can't go back to the village where he'd been born to stay with his family.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And he later claimed the Hungarians were taking over that part of Czechoslovakia. And I said to my parents, I'm leaving because I want to go and fight. They didn't want me to go, but I went anyway.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Um, and the primary reason you're going to know this guy, and I think everyone listening is going to know this guy is he is the father of Gillen Maxwell. We're talking this week about Robert Maxwell.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He sounds awesome. Yes, he does. He is awesome up to this point. Right. And there's there's a little bit of doubt about like, did he actually immediately try to join the resistance or did he fall into it? Because like at a certain point, you don't have any other options. But he's he is fighting the Nazis at a very early point. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And here's what writer Robert Philpott sums up about what Maxwell would later claim of his own wartime experiences. The teenager joined the anti-Nazi resistance, but was captured, accused of spying, and sentenced to death. Maxwell later claimed that he had managed to escape relatively easily after overpowering a one-armed guard while being transported to a court appearance. Hiding under a bridge.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Don't have the guard be one-armed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Hiding under a bridge, he recounted on one later retelling he was aided by a gypsy lady who freed him of his handcuffs. That's how he phrases it. Now, again, John Preston, his biographer, lays out that large portions of this story have to have been made up after the fact, right? Quote, intriguing though the story is, it does beg a number of questions.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

However stretched the Hungarian prison service may have been at the time, it seems odd that they couldn't rustle up a single two-armed guard to take him to court. All right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

We're seeing the holes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

A little convenient to have the one-armed guard. Right, right. In earlier versions of the story, Maxwell didn't say anything about hitting the guard with his manacles. He claimed to have used a stick. Nor did he say anything about the mysterious lady who helped him. Why hadn't he thought of her worth mentioning before? Had she simply slipped his mind?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Then there's the question of what was she doing under the bridge in the first place? Did she live there or just conveniently happened to be passing with the lock pick? And what's weird about this is that we have a lot of guys who lie to make themselves sound cooler. The core of this is true. He is sentenced to death and escapes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, more fake and racist. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know why he does this. Again, he will repeatedly lie about his wartime experience. And what we can confirm is one of the coolest stories I've ever heard out of World War II. Like it's nuts that he's like feels the need to lie about this. It's like if Oscar Schindler added another 30 people to the list of folks that he saved who didn't exist.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

It's like, but why would you do that? Speaking of, I don't know what I'm speaking of. Here's some fucking ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

We're back. So again, his real story is one of the most intense World War II stories I've ever heard. He's sentenced to die. He escapes the Hungarian authorities. He goes into the underground. He spends months on the run, fleeing from Belgrade to Beirut to Marseille. So he takes like a boat to Marseille and he lands in Marseille while Germany is invading France.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And so while the Germans are busting through the Maginot line, he enlists in the French Foreign Legion in an all Czech unit because he's like, I'm going to I want to fight. I want to fight right now. You guys are fighting the Nazis. I'll fucking help.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Now, unfortunately, it's kind of a bad time to join the Foreign Legion in France because the French army is not going to last very long in in France.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

It not super well. Those engagements don't go for them. No. Now, this Czech, all Czech unit he joins is like a lot of other Czech, basically people who flee Czechoslovakia when the Nazis take over into France and are like, yeah, I'll fucking fight to liberate my country. Right. So he joins this unit, which has like 10,000 people in it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

But by the time he's like trained up and equipped, the French lines are fully collapsing and he winds up routed with large portions of the French and British forces. And he is one of the guys who gets evacuated as part of the Dunkirk landings. Like Robert Maxwell is there at Dunkirk. And by the time he's there, this 10,000 man unit just has 4,000 people left in it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So like this is a chaotic and hideous time. Like he experiences some shit, right? This unit, once they get over to the United Kingdom, the unit is reformed and retrained. And the idea is that they will at one point take part in the liberation of their homeland. Now, Maxwell is still going by Jan at this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And even though all of these guys are like fighting the Nazis together, they're still super racist against him because they're very anti-Semitic. They're not like Nazis, but they're super anti-Semitic.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

I think he may have made the mistake, I guess, of admitting to his war comrades and thinking that like, well, you're fighting the Nazis. You're probably not racist. No, I see. Bad call. Yes. Common, common mistake. Common mistake. So he decides, like, well, fuck these racist Czechs. I'm going to join the British Army.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And so he actually, like, joins this, like... It's effectively a trash unit in the British Army for the foreign volunteers that nobody trusts. The thing about this is, like, there's a bunch of German doctors who fled the Nazis because they are like, I'm not a Nazi. I'm going to go to whoever will fight them. Please. Like, I am a German who wants to fight these people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And the British are like, oh, no, we can't trust Germans. And... But they also... A lot of the Germans who were in the UK at this point, they're literally putting in a camp like there is a concentration camp in Germany for or in Britain for German citizens because that they don't trust. But doctors are valuable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So they put them in this unit where they're like, we'll find something for you to do, but we don't want to like trust you. Right. And so that's where they put Jan, because as a Czech, he's basically a German in their eyes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He's essentially a doctor. Yes. And in true British fashion, they mostly have these guys doing backbreaking manual labor. He's like busting stones for a while, basically. Yeah. But this does, shockingly, this experience, like, convinces him, you know what? I want to be British. That's the nationality for me. I love these people. At least they're fighting the Nazis, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, so he learns English in six weeks. And this is some kind of exaggeration, but he dies speaking like 11 languages. So he really does have like a faculty for this. And he bases his accent off of Winston Churchill because he talks for his whole life with a British accent that he patterns off of Winston Churchill.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And he will claim, I started imitating his accent before I understood English because I could just tell what he was saying, even when I didn't speak the language because of the way he said it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah. I used to know, I knew an Afghan guy who had been an interpreter for the US military in Afghanistan, who'd grown up in a refugee camp in Pakistan and taught himself English by repeatedly rewatching Rambo with subtitles. And he sounded so cool. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Maxwell proved himself an excellent mimic and most casual observers would only have noticed his foreign origins by his use of idiosyncratic and frankly wrong mix-ups of colloquial English phrases. Like, you can't change toads in midstream.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Right. Yeah, exactly. Nobody has. To go with his new accent, Jan picked a name for it. And this proves that, like, he's pretty good at languages, but he hasn't immediately picked up everything. Because the proper British name that he picks for himself to blend in is Ivan de Marier. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

How did he come up with this shit? Well, he came up with the last name because his favorite brand of cigarettes were Dumariers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He literally does that. People love these cigarettes, so they'll like me. Unfortunately, this was like even worse than being German, because if there's one thing the British hated more than the Germans at any point in time, it's the French, even during World War II. So people just treat him worse because he now sounds like he's got a French name.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He's going to change his name so many times, Sophie. We're like 60% of the way through the name changes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

his fortunes finally changed when he began an affair with an elderly wealthy widower and this lady is British and she happens to know a brigadier general and she convinces him to do her a favor Ivan Dumarier is transferred to a real fighting unit so he goes from this like unit where we're kind of keeping the guys we don't trust this lady pulls some strings and it says a lot Maxwell repeatedly his only goal is to get to grips to get into hand-to-hand combat with the German army that is what he wants

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Right. Everything he's doing is to orchestrate. I want to shoot Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And by God, he finally does it. So he gets in. He is close to the tip of the spear. He lands at Normandy a couple weeks after the initial landing and engages almost immediately in a hard, close quarters fighting at Normandy. He is promoted very quickly to lance corporal and then made sergeant in charge of a sniper unit where he got his first experience leading in combat.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And he does very well in this. And in fact, after this first big battle that he is like leading the sniper unit in, he's recommended for an immediate battlefield promotion to lieutenant. Now, it's worth really leaning into what this means, because privates and sergeants are NCOs and lieutenants are officers. These are two different career tracks in the military.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

You don't just jump from one to the other unless everyone else is dying and you're really good at your job. Right. Like, that's why Ivan gets this promotion to lieutenant, because like every all the other officers are getting shot and he's not.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yes, like he's very good as a soldier, right? Like that's what this says, is that he's like an excellent fighter and an excellent combat leader. That said, his subordinates didn't like him all the time. One of his adjutants told a reporter in the 60s, he had a smooth, silky way about him. A big fellow, very dark, a bit of a mystery, which just makes him sound cooler at this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So, again, it's 44. He's fighting his way across France. He has no idea what's happened to his family. Right. But he's hearing the stories of what are happening to Jews in Nazi occupied Eastern Europe. Right. So he has to know, like, it's probably not good. And his whole motivation is I want to fight my way back to my home village to rescue my family. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

I'm going to kill every Nazi in between me and my mom and dad. Right. And as a result, he is filled with the kind of rage that you would expect from a man in this situation. So he does stuff that you're not supposed to do, like he would rob every killed and captured German soldier of all of their money.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

You're not really, again, supposed to do this, but also, they're Nazis, so I don't feel that bad about this. His comrades did kind of think he was a dick because they noted he kept all of the cash for himself and handed out the change to his men. A little bit of a dick move there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

One of his first real distinguishing moments was his successful infiltration of an occupied village by dressing up as a Nazi officer. Again, you're not supposed to dress in an enemy uniform. That's like against the rules of war. But Maxwell was like, well, let me get a lot closer. And so I was able to figure out how to kill him a lot better. Fuck it. And nobody punishes him for this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

This is the most Tarantino-esque thing yet. Yes, yes, yes. And as a result, because this is so successful, his like reconnaissance, he's so good at this, the military's like, hey, you might have a future in like spy shit. We got to give you a new name. So they start calling him Leslie Smith.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Leslie. Leslie Smith. Within days after becoming Leslie, he distinguished himself in the brutal fighting to cross the Orne River, and his courage was celebrated in a Canadian radio broadcast which identified him as Leslie DeMaria, a name he had never gone by.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Welcome to the program. You hardly need introduction, but obviously you were the host of Adam Ruins Everything. And you've done, I mean, you've been in a ton of stuff since you were in BoJack Horseman. You serve on the board of the WGA. And you have a podcast now, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

All this confusion and Maxwell's clear ability to navigate it marked him out to his superiors as someone who's like, again, this guy might make a good spook. He clearly has no issue going under a bunch of different names.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, yeah. They do give him another one at this point. So he has issued a new name, Private Jones. And he's sent to... Paris has just been recaptured. And the Allies are worried that there might be a communist uprising in Paris after beating the Nazis out of it. So they send him there. And he's like... Sometimes he'll dress as a British officer. Sometimes he'll dress as a French.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He's wearing all these different uniforms and fake identities to try to figure out if there's an uprising planned. And there wasn't. nothing really happens here. But he seems to have had a lot of fun. Basically, he's getting to like play dress up and get drunk in Paris in the middle of like his war experiences, which is a nice little break.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And he's finally got a cool name, Private Jones. I love that. Near the end of 1944, he is commissioned as an officer officially. And since he's now an officer and a gentleman in a prestigious regiment, he decides to pick what will be his final name for himself.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He gets rid of Private Jones because a friend of his who's a Scottish officer is like, you should call yourself Robert Maxwell. And that's the name he picks is Robert Maxwell.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

It's so many names that after he changes his name to Robert Maxwell, his banker sends him an angry letter being like, if you change your name one more fucking time, we're dropping you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

oh man but we are this he has finally landed on his ultimate name so you know that's that's good for him is this is is this his wikipedia name because that's the most important name that you have yes this is his wikipedia name yeah yeah uh speaking of wikipedia i don't i'm not really speaking of wikipedia go go buy something here's ads

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

We're back. So while Bobby Max is in, which is what I'm going to call him, is in Paris, he meets this French lady, Elizabeth Menard. And she goes by Betty, I think because she's going to wind up living in the UK and that just works better for everybody.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He likes people to change their names.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

She describes herself as almost passing out when she sees how hot he is. That is something everyone... He is described a little later than this by like the Czech Secret Service as looking like a handsomer Clark Gable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Oh. Yeah. No. Betty is like, I almost passed out when I saw him for the first time. He was so fucking hot.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Do you know anything about Robert Maxwell? I know nothing about Robert Maxwell. This guy is so fucking weird. So part one of this is going to basically be like inglorious bastards because the first 20 something years of his life, he is a character from a Quentin Tarantino movie. Like he is a righteous Avenger fighting Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He does not grow into like his him as a mature adult is not a particularly handsome man. But this is what Betty says. Like she writes a book and she describes him as this hot. And again, the Czech Secret Service says he looks like Clark Gable. And why would they lie about it? Right. Like they don't have a vested interest in making this guy sound hot. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He gets just enough time off while waiting to continue fighting the Nazis that he's able to court Betty and propose to her. And during this proposal process, he makes the kind of bold and impossible promises that men make to women in such times. In this case, the promise is, I'm going to win a military cross, right? Basically, that's the British Medal of Honor.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And he's like, I'm going to win one of these for you, Betty, right? And then when I get out of the army, I'm going to get rich and I'm going to become the prime minister and we're going to be happy forever. And he does not fulfill all of these promises, but he does fulfill the first half of them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So immediately after promising Betty he's going to go win a military cross for her, he just goes and does that. Within weeks, actually within days of them getting married in 1945, he wins the military cross for heroism in the face of the enemy. And the actual story is fucking nuts. So on January 29th, 1945, his battalion captures a town called Parlow.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

But they get counterattacked by Germans in rubber boats who cross this river in the middle of the night. And the Germans assault the houses that Maxwell and his unit are billeted in. And so just in the middle of the night, suddenly there's Germans throwing grenades into the rooms that they're in and just emptying their machine guns into these houses at random at close quarters.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

It is like the most chaotic and disorienting combat situation that it's possible to be in. Right. Like you talk to anyone who has been in heavy combat, being surprised in a night attack like in urban fighting is like it's just the worst situation you can be in. So the Nazis occupy a bunch of these buildings in this town and Maxwell's commanding officer, Major D.J. Watson, orders a counterattack.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And Watson and his men, as soon as they try to counterattack to retake these buildings, get shot the fuck up and they have to pull back and withdraw. And I'm going to I'm going to quote from John Preston's book Fall here describing what happens next. Withdrawing his men, Watson witnessed a remarkable sight.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

As he wrote in his official account, Mr. Maxwell, also a platoon commander, sallied out of the darkness. Maxwell had repeatedly asked to be allowed to lead another attempt on the houses. At first, Watson had refused his entreaties, but when it became clear that the men inside were sure to be killed, unless there was another rescue attempt, he changed his mind.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

The officer, Maxwell, then led two of his sections across bullet-swept ground with great dash and determination and succeeded in contacting the platoon who had been holding out in some buildings. Showing no regard for his own safety, he led his sections in the difficult job of clearing the enemy out of the buildings, inflicting many casualties on them and causing the remainder to withdraw.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And then he turns into like a business monster who destroys the industry of scientific publishing for quick profit. It's such like a weird heel turn story.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And the fact that Maxwell lives through this is like a fucking – so when they get to this surrounded British platoon, he thinks that they're Germans, that like the Brits in this building are Germans because, again, it's super chaotic. And so he shouts upstairs in German, like, come down and surrender. And the British soldiers upstairs hear a German shouting and start shooting.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

They go, yes, you fucker, and open fire, and they miss him by inches. Cannot exaggerate how dangerous this is. But what is funny is that Maxwell feels the need to exaggerate this. And again, you don't need to lie about this story. There's documentation from your CO of what you did. You win a medal for it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

But he would later lie and claim that his commanding officer had ordered him not to attack and threatened to court-martial him, which is just not true. His CO nominates him for the award. He's not saying... I'm going to punish you for doing this. But Maxwell just decides later, no, the story doesn't pop without the court martial line. I got to throw that in there.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Right. And again, you heroically rescued an entire platoon by like fighting Nazis in close quarters, hand to hand combat. You don't need to pretend like, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Just take that win, man. Take the W. Yeah. So I'd said earlier he and Betty were already married. Sorry, that was incorrect. They were engaged at this point when he wins this award.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So he comes back, he gets a week or two of leave, and they get married in March of 1945. And he writes her a letter laying out his expectations for the relationship. Don't nag. Don't criticize unduly. Give honest appreciation. Pay little attentions. Be courteous. Have the utmost confidence in yourself and in your partner. You know, he's a 40s guy. Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So the same month – and this, again, like within days of marrying Betty, he gets the knowledge that his mom and sister were executed by the Nazis as hostages, right? Jesus. And he finds out later they die at Auschwitz, right? Like that's what happens to most of his family. Most of his family is incinerated at Auschwitz, like nearly his entire immediate and extended family.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

But he knows about his mom and sister at this point in the spring of 1945. And again, his animating goal as a soldier this whole war had been to fight his way back to his hometown and save his family. And the sudden knowledge that he had failed irrevocably in this goal, obviously through no fault of his own, broke something inside of him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

In her own memoir, his wife Betty later wrote, "...he was convinced that had he stayed home, he could have saved the life of his parents and younger siblings. Nothing he achieved in life would ever compensate for what he had not been able to accomplish." the rescue of his family, which is like the tragic.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

He's going to turn into a real piece of shit, obviously, but like, yeah, to have that hanging over you. And again, you literally couldn't have done more to try to save them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So in addition to his mom and sister, his father, grandfather, and all but two of his remaining seven siblings are massacred at Auschwitz. Um, Maxwell had always been aggressive towards the enemy, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

This is a guy who does not fear being shot. But in the wake of this, he steps things up again to like a Tarantino level and to a war crimes level. A week after his wedding, he's back in action during an attack on two German villages. And in this attack, Lieutenant Maxwell alone acting alone kills 15 SS men and takes 14 prisoners.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Well, at first, he's going to be pretty sympathetic, although he's also going to commit a lot of war crimes. So it's going to be a mix of things happening here. But yeah, this is this is Ghislaine Maxwell's dad. She's obviously was Jeffrey Epstein's like right hand woman, was the only one to get convicted for his crimes because of obvious reasons.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

In other words, he single handedly kills or captures an entire platoon of the German army's best. Wow. It's fucking nuts. Yeah. How do you how do you do that? I believe it's this one of these situations where he gets them at a bad angle and he's got a machine gun. Okay. Yeah. Now, there are some allegations that maybe they were surrendering and he massacres them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

That's unclear, but he does do that later. In this instance, I think it's kind of unclear what actually happened, but he increasingly starts killing prisoners, right? Like, in addition to killing guys in the heat of combat. And he actually writes about this in a letter to his wife.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

As you can well imagine, I am not taking any prisoners, and whatever home my men occupy, before I leave it, I order it destroyed. And those are both war crimes. You're not supposed to do either of those things. And in the days and weeks that follow that letter, Maxwell is as good as his word.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

This quote from an article in The Independent describes an incident that occurred two weeks after his wedding. His platoon was involved in mopping up resistance from the German defenders. On 2nd of April, Maxwell ordered his men to fire mortars at a German village. He wrote to Betty, "...a few minutes later I saw them running out of the houses and we started firing at each other.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

I got two of them, and I ordered the mortars to shell the village for a few minutes." It proved a very effective tactic that led to the surrender of the remaining Germans and inspired Maxwell to try it once more as he moved towards a nearby town. So I sent one of the Germans to fetch the mayor of the town, he told his wife.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

In half an hour's time, he turned up and I told him he had to go tell the Germans to surrender and hang the white flag, otherwise the town will be destroyed. One hour later, he came back saying that the soldiers will surrender and the white flag was put up, so we marched off. But as soon as we marched off, a German tank opened fire on us. Luckily, he missed, so I shot the mayor and withdrew.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And like because this tank fires at him, he blows the mayor's brains out. And that is, again, a war crime. This is an unarmed civilian who was not in any position to be giving orders to that tank. Yeah. One of Maxwell's comrades would later claim that he executed multiple German civilians, that he doesn't just shoot the mayor. He starts shooting several civilians when this tank fires at them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And Maxwell himself would both brag and express regret at committing several war crimes later in his life. In one interview with journalist Mark Molloy, he discussed an assault on a fortified farmhouse. I got up close to the farm door and shouted in German, come out with your hands up. You're completely surrounded. They came out and I shot them all with my submachine gun.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

I thought my boys would be pleased, but all they said was, that's not fair, sir. Those lads had surrendered. Maxwell expressed incomprehension to Malloy over the reaction of his comrades. "'Can you understand such an attitude?' And wow, like, yeah, war crimes are bad. I understand the discrepancy of like these guys who they don't like the Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

They're fighting them, but they didn't suffer from them right outside of that fighting. And so they're like they surrendered. There's rules. Maxwell's like they're Nazis. There's no rules. Why wouldn't I kill every one of them?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And yeah, we're going to be talking about her dad because he's just so much more fucking interesting than her. People would always refer to when you would like when I would read about, you know, what they had done, that she was an heiress and heiress. I had assumed she came from like older family money. She does not. The fortune just goes back to her dad.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

You can understand the psychology a little bit. Yes. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, he grew up speaking Hebrew or Yiddish, and I assume he would have learned Czech. He also grows up, he speaks German by this point, and he probably grew up speaking it, and he speaks English, right? I believe he also speaks French at this point. Incredible. Quite a polyglot. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And there's a couple of different... So in that one with Malloy, he's obviously like, can you imagine being angry at killing Nazis? But there's another moment his sons will talk about where they're watching like a World War II movie and he comes in and he like sees, you know, these young German soldiers on the screen and he's like...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Oh, you know, when I was when I was a young man, I killed boys as old as you. My sons are today. And like, I feel haunted by it. I wish I hadn't killed so many of them. Right. When I didn't have to. Wow. So I don't see it as that is really inconsistent. Right. That like he feels different. about all these massacres as he gets older.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

That said, he commits a lot of war crimes, but he's not punished for them, right? No one's really inclined to punish a kid whose family is wiped out in the Holocaust for, again, mostly massacring the SS, although he does kill some civilians too. Which isn't good. But yeah, very. You get it right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, he's coming off as like he wants to save his family. He finds out he can't and he just starts killing them in response. He sees his responsible and like, yeah, bro, I get it. You know, hard to blame him for all of this. Although, again, definitely war crimes. So the war ends and his military career continues to blossom.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

In 1946, he is 23 years old and stationed in partitioned and occupied Berlin, working as an intelligence officer. And he proves to have an immediate faculty for the skills required in that role. He's an exceptional liar. He speaks basically every language. And he's not really scared of anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And it's here that he would make the connections that would turn him from the Quentin Tarantino character he's been this episode to the father of one of the most abusive industries in the world today. But that's all coming in part two, Adam. How we feeling?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, it is. This is a real whiplash episode. I don't know if we've ever had one for the whole first episode. It's like, this guy fucking owns.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Like he is as he actually was a self-made billionaire. And I say that because he grew up deeply impoverished on like the Ukrainian steppe in an incredibly poor Jewish village in like the 1920s. So like not one of these guys, not like an Elon Musk story. There's no emerald mines in his background. Right. This this guy comes from nothing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

You're on like a Nazi death quest through Europe. Like that's fucking sick.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah. And I guess if you if you were to imagine it, you can you can see this part two is like right after Inglorious Bastards ends, you know, they're carving a swastika in that guy's forehead. And then like Brad Pitt goes and gets a job in finance and destroys the world.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, John McClane grows up and campaigns against the rights of incarcerated people to have access to libraries or something like that after Die Hard.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Right. The Star Wars reboot should have been Luke Skywalker turning into like an anti Ewok rights activist.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

All right, Adam, where can people find you?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Oh, hell yeah, Dropout. I love Dropout. Yeah. Well, check out Adam everywhere you can find him. Check out Dropout also to see Adam, and just separately because it's great. And check out... fighting Nazis, you know, because there's a lot of that that needs doing. Anyway, the episode's done.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And like all people who would grow into because he is kind of a con man, Robert Maxwell, that is not the name he was born under, which you probably guessed when I said he grew up in a step village in the Ukrainian steppes. Right. Not the most Ukrainian name ever. He was born Abraham Liebhoch on June 10th, 1923, in a village called Slatinsky Doly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And most modern, and I just said he was born in Ukraine. That's where his hometown is located today. But when Abraham was born, it was part of Czechoslovakia, right? Because all of those borders move around quite a bit in the first half of the 20th century. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So he wouldn't have grown up really identifying as Czech, partly because being Czech was like a thing that had just really started, you know, in that period. Like Czechoslovakia was a new country after World War One. He would have identified and most of the people around him as Ruthenians, which is kind of this isolated eastern portion of what is then Czechoslovakia, where his family grows up.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Now again, Abraham's family was Jewish, and the village that they came from, Slatinski-Doli, was noteworthy because it's like, it was close to where all the pogroms were happening, but it was the place that usually was relatively safe. So its entire history and its population, there's like...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the very worst people in all of history. And ladies and gentlethems, we've got a real motherfucker of a motherfucker for you this week. And to talk about one of the most interesting sons of bitches we're going to talk about on this series, I have one of the most interesting guests that we've had on this show, Adam Conover. Adam Conover.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

There's almost like sedimentary layers of different pogroms that occur over the course of the couple of centuries before this where like you'll get a new wave of people moving to the village because everyone else in the area they came from got massacred by the Cossacks or whatever, right? Like that's the story of the village that he grows up in.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So, you know, this is, again, not a guy who comes from money. One of my sources for this episode is a biography on Maxwell by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon. And here's how it summarizes this village. It was a place where Jews were allowed to sell their goods to their Christian neighbors. Some even had licenses to offer alcohol.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

They were permitted to educate their children in the Judaic faith and wear their traditional dress and speak their own language. Haunted by their own cruel past, there was hardly a family in the village that had not lost relatives to the pogroms. They lived frugal lives within the sanctity of their faith.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And that says a lot right there that like a key part of this is like some of the residents are even allowed to sell alcohol.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yes, yes. We let these Jews sell to Christians. Can you believe it? How progressive. Not exactly easy living. No, no. Again, this guy comes from about as rough a background as you get. And we're talking the life he's born into.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

These are peasants in 1923, but their daily life, if you had pulled someone from the same area in the 1600s into this village in the 20s, it would have mostly been familiar to them, right? Wow. Like that's kind of how behind the rest of the world and how isolated that they are.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Now, within kind of Czechoslovakia, Abraham and his family are double pariahs because they're Jewish and they're Ruthenian. And Ruth, again, the kind of like regional racism that existed within Eastern Europe at this time, Ruthenians were seen as like backwards and almost less human by a lot of the rest of the country.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

a travel guide to the region published by the Czech government in, like, 1920, praised the fresh air and the wildlife in the area, but warned visitors of the, quote, rather unintelligent Ruthenians, whose expression is almost blank stare, who sit in the marketplace side by side, gazing at the distance, seldom speaking a word or moving a muscle.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah. Yeah. There's a product of all of the weed shops on Venice. So Robert Maxwell rarely talked about his early childhood. And again, this guy grows into a consummate liar. And so what he did say is seldom reliable. But there are some things we can infer based on family lore and just our knowledge of the time. His family last name, Hoch, was not their original last name.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

That's not really like, again, this is not like a Germanic area. These people are in like what's modern Ukraine. The whole reason they have that last name is one day back when the Austro-Hungarian Empire is in charge of the village. A government official comes to town to do a census in this Jewish village, but he doesn't speak Hebrew or Yiddish. And so he's asking everyone, what's your last name?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And Maxwell's ancestor, I think it's his grandfather at the time, this official can't spell their original last name. So he just writes down Hoch and calls it a day because he speaks German. So he's like, yeah, fuck it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

It's just a common name. I think he was probably making up a lot of last names that day, just talking to all of these people who speak Yiddish primarily. He's like, fuck it, I'm just going to start writing stuff. I don't give a fuck. Like... The Austro-Hungarian Empire, great at governance.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So in 1919, after the war, Slatinski-Doli, that's the village, stops being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and becomes part of Czechoslovakia. And the family last name ceases to exist again because yet another, at this point, a Czech government official who speaks Czech shows up in village and does another census. And he's like, that's not a proper Czech name.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's interesting to me. You and I both came out of, because you came out of college humor, where you did a lot of your early work. I came out of crack. So we're kind of like cousins in digital media terms. Definitely. Both of whom started out doing like, yeah, pop culture commentary. And now it's just all fascism. It's just all fascism.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And so he gives them a new last name, Ludvig.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Oh, man. Just handing them out. I'm going to be honest. If I had that job, that would be one of the perks. No, I don't like, I don't really like Mike. You know what? Yeah. I'm going to go to this copy of the Lord of the Rings and give you an orc's name. Just make it fun.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, that's right. The modern equivalent of these government officials is a Starbucks barista.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, yeah. What if they were in charge of the names? Yeah, we need to deputize them as judges. Give Starbucks baristas the force of law. So Abraham's father, Mehel, was known as Mehel the Tall because he's like the only tall man in town. These people are not well fed. But for whatever reason, Mehel comes out. He's like a brick shit. He's like six foot five. Oh, okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

So for like, that's tall today. These people are all starving to death. He's a giant. And famously, so his job, he's like a small time trader. So his job, he walks from town to town with like goods, like pelts or whatever, deer skins and like trades or sells them. And that's kind of how his family gets by.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

And the thing everyone knew about him was that normally people who have this job travel in groups in like caravans because there's brigands. This is a period of time where there's brigands. But he's like twice everyone else's size. So he just walks alone with a stick. I love a brigand.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Exactly. Exactly. Yes. I'm glad we both remember our third edition D&D source books. So Abraham's mother, Hannah, or she's also called Chanka, which I think is just Hannah's just sort of like the the Germanization of her Hebrew name, I'm guessing, is what's going on there as best as I can tell.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

The unusual thing that you hear about her is that she was learned and intelligent and people did not describe women in villages like this that way very often. Right. Given the nature of the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Not really. They were like fairly prominent citizens in this town where no one has any money. Yeah. Yeah. And her kind of defining trait that people would remember later is that she would like scavenge newspapers from everyone else in town because she just was so interested in reading.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

She's going to be when they're when for the very first time there's a Democratic Socialist Party that starts up and someone comes to this town that had been ruled by an emperor, you know, in her childhood. And it's like, hey, there's politics now. And here's there's this party. She's like, yes, Democratic Socialist is exactly what I am. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, yeah. She's that, except for obviously there's no college. She's just able to read.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Robert Maxwell: How Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad Ruined Science

Yeah, there's one description of her I found that described her as an exception in the village because she read books. She was almost an intellectual.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And that guy's name is Cardinal Mazarin. He is one of these extremely powerful non-royal rulers. He's not a king, but he's governing France for a period of time here. By the time the child king, Louis XIV, is eight or nine years old, the Thirty Years' War, which is this war that his dad had spent his life fighting, is drawing to a close.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And given the fact that it was a 30 years war, it had been monstrously expensive and kind of a financial disaster for France. So near the end of it, Cardinal Mazarin is anxious to keep the army funded until everything is locked down about the peace treaty. And since the crown had no more money after 30 years of war, this meant that they had to institute new taxes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Now, France is a semi-feudal society at this point. It is less feudal than basically all of the rest of Europe. In Germany, there are still serfs, right? As in the common people are literally bonded to the land. They're essentially a kind of slave. They can't leave without the permission of the landowner, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Serfs are really not much of a thing in France in the period that we're talking about, and they're basically going extinct, right? France has modernized to that extent. And in fact, the country is sort of in the process of becoming less of a...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

a a feudal state and more of kind of like a hybrid like modernized semi-feudal state right like you still have a nobility the nobility are most are are going in this period are going from like literally governing directly where you've got this duke and he controls this area to you've got this duke and he doesn't govern anything directly but he does have the right to to collect

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The surgery sucks. And let's talk for a second here. Doctors are not giving out enough painkillers. You should have gotten dilaudid for what you went through. And they just gave you a little bit of codone. I'm livid on your behalf.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

taxes in this certain area or to collect duties in this industry or whatever and right that's his privilege as the Duke right but he's not doing the governing we have like professionals who are are doing the actual governing in this region or whatever um Now, during the Thirty Years' War, again, the only way that they can pay for this is by increasing taxes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And these taxes don't primarily hit the nobility. One of the nobility's privileges that they maintain is an exemption from the taxes paid by peasants and the bourgeoisie, right? Basically, you call them the small business owners of France, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That's a big part. Yes. But there's a caveat to that, which is the peasants are poor people and they are paying taxes. The bourgeoisie are often wealthier than the nobles, right? But they're not nobles. These are guys who start businesses, who are running trade and stuff for France. Some of them are extremely wealthy and they are also paying taxes. And they're really not happy about that, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Right. Right. But the nobility get a big exemption from taxes in this period, right? One of the conflicts that's going to like increasingly be a problem up to the revolution is the bourgeoisie being like, well, why are we paying taxes and these people are exempt, right? Well, we're not thrilled about that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So this does mean that regular French people are largely being kind of brutalized by the cost of the war against the Habsburgs of Spain. The job of approving new taxes, like the king will say, I want this tax, but it has to be approved by the parliaments. to you and I coming out of the English tradition, parliament means like essentially a governing body, sort of like a Congress is, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That's not really what a parliament is in France. Parliaments in France are courts, right? They're court systems. Like the parliament of Paris is a court system in Paris. And you have a bunch of judges who are nobles, who own their seat as a judge. Like that judgeship is the personal hereditary property of a noble who is one of these members of the parliament.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And the parliaments have a lot of judges and clerks and whatnot. But these are like court systems when we talk about parliaments. But it is their job to approve new taxes. And this is kind of one of the ways in which the French state has started to modernize in this period, right? It's not just this Duke controls this area and he takes taxes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We've got this professional legal system, right, that is responsible for approving these things. And a lot of conflicts with the crown are going to be. the parliament trying to protect its power, right? When the king wants to do stuff directly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Anyway, this causes issues because it makes the fact that the king wants these new taxes on the common people and the bourgeoisie and the parliament has to approve them, right? You've got these parliaments and royal courts that have to approve the taxes and they don't want to. They don't want to not because they like love the peasantry and think that it's unfair.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They don't want to because the peasantry riots... Over new taxes? I was going to say not dying. Right. And the parliament needing to approve them. It's kind of this situation the kings have developed so that like, hey, if these guys have to sign off on it too, maybe they're the first people who get sort of mobbed, you know? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They can deploy the army, and this is a thing that increasingly happens in this period where there's this desire to strip the nobility of direct power, right? So just kind of a smart play. If the nobility is in this position where... They're doing, you can make them do unpopular things, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Welcome again to the show.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You can kind of loop them in on the shit you need to do that nobody likes to the extent that they get blamed for that. It makes it harder for them to like have their own power base, you know? And they also get, they don't get taxed on inability. No, they are in this period immune to most taxes, right? And that's the trade-off, I imagine. Yeah, that's part of the trade-off.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And kind of the issue here is the nobility are not friendly always with the crown, right? Like the nobility are both the people who govern with you, right, and who are supposed to be taking your lead as the king. But whenever there's a rebellion against a king, it usually comes from the nobility in this period, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So that's part of why you would want a system like this as the king because it protects you to a degree, right? Right. But it does mean that there's constant conflicts between the crown and these parliaments. And these judges resist some of the central government's new taxes, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Cardinal Mazarin and Anne riposte by threatening to change the rules about how judgeships work and like make it so that you don't own your seat today. Again, in this period, being a judge is like being a subway franchise owner, right? And that it's your property and you pass it on to your kids. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And the rules governing this are part of something called the Paulette Tax, which came up for renewal in 1648. It's a little bit like, you could consider it a little bit like a union contract coming up. And so Mazarin and Anne are like, well, we don't have to let this work the same way. We can take these privileges away from you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It was fine. It was fine. I was on my best behavior. I know. I didn't even listen and I know that's not true. Today we're going to get really out of pocket, you know, because I've got a subject that I could only have brought a British guest on for. And that subject is France. France. Right. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And I'm going to read a quote from an article by the UK College of Arts and Sciences Department of History on the matter. Okay. and their anxiety to force through new tax edicts, Anne of Austria and Mazarin drove the judges of parliament too far.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

On 15th January, 1648, they brought the nine-year-old king to a formal session of the court called the Litte des Justes to force the judges to register an unpopular tax measure. The judges exercised their right to remonstrate or criticize the edict, starting a series of events that culminated in a call for the judges of all the Paris courts to come together to consider reforms in the kingdom.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

On the 26th of June, acting without the regent's support, the parliament summoned those judges to meet in a body called the Chambre de St. Louis. This date marked the beginning of the Fronde. Street demonstrations, organized by Retz, showed that the judges had strong popular support. The frondeurs focused their anger especially on Mazarin.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They'd announced him as a foreigner who had no respect for the laws and institutions of France and as an intriguer who was using his influence over Anne to enrich himself and ruin the country. Paris was flooded with printed pamphlets called Mazarinades. Vicious personal attacks on the minister.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This foreign rogue, juggler, comedian, famous robber, low Italian fellow, fit only to be hung as one of the- Get his ass. I love it. He's a juggler. Bodied.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Oh, sorry. Cardinal Mazarin, I mean, first off, as a low Italian, I hate this kind of racism. As a judge. As a judge as well. Who are you loyal to in this? I'm really in between. Oh, man.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It is funny bringing up Musk, too, that he keeps bringing his little kid into these massive moments that are going to be major political moments, like sticking his child in there. Brings his child admin.php to the White House. Yeah. I think it's fun that in this, and this does show how even our dumb system is a little less dumb than things used to be.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Where today, the nine-year-old child king doesn't, you know, is not the one, like the nine-year-old is not like... in charge of anything. He's just being brought around by his dad, who's basically the Cardinal Mazarin.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Or is he Cardinal Mazarin? No, no. Obviously, this society isn't stupid. They would not let a young child run things. You don't get to run things until you are the mature age of 13. Right. Of course, that's when you become a man. Of course. That's when you're a full man and able to govern. Perfect. As a nine-year-old, of course not. That would be silly. What would you possibly know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You have four long years to go through. I think I could have governed France at 13.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I can do it. I would have spent the entire national budget on Warhammer miniatures. But honestly, can you tell me that's worse than what the French are doing now? I don't know. No.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah. Look, guys, you don't get health care this year because I really went on a spending spree in Nottingham. Like, there's a lot of unpainted plastic and resin coming my way.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But I will be happy painting. But I'll have a lot of work to do. No, so they bring this nine-year-old king to this formal session, and it causes this – as a result of how bad it goes, you get this rebellion. This is a civil war called the Front, right, which is – it's kind of on one side you've got these judges and nobles who are angry at the fact that the king is –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Specifically, specifically, I wanted to talk about the culture of Versailles, the subculture of the nobility at Versailles that started in the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and led right up to the French Revolution. And I wanted to talk about this because, Ed, I'm sure you've heard a little about this. We've caught a little case of the oligarchy here in the United States recently.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Are angry at the fact that the king is continuing to, like, pull strip powers from them, or at least that you could you'd say the crown is right. And so they're trying to protect their traditional powers. And the crown is trying to protect its absolute power as, you know, the monarch. Right. And so you get a civil war. Now, this doesn't go well for the frond, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They sort of start out this thing, but they never get momentum. There's never like much popular backing. The common people are like, I don't really like, in part because the nobles in these parliaments are the ones who approve new taxes. Regular people are never like, One side is much better than the other, and they tend to overall back the crown.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So the young king, Louis XIV, doesn't get uprooted by the frond, right? But there are a couple of points that come close to a disaster for him, right? There's a shitload of riots in this period. He and his mother have to flee the capital, Paris, for a palace in Saint-Germain nearby.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The army clashes with rioters, and while they put down the riots, the next year more nobles join the insurrection, and they put together an army large enough to force Mazarin to resign and flee the country temporarily.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The height of danger for young Louis comes when a rumor spreads in Paris that the king and his mother had fled the palace for a second time, and a mob swarms the palace to make sure that the king is still there, right? That he hasn't left again, right? And they demand proof. And so they break into his bed chambers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And like as as they're like busting down the door, basically, Queen Anne and like this 10 year old kid are talking. And he's like, what the fuck do I do? And she's like, just pretend like you're sleeping. Just pretend like you're sleeping. And so that's what happens. This mob busts in and Louis the 14th just pretends to be asleep. Did it work? It does. It does work.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Again, these guys are not, this isn't like it'll be in 1789. They're not busting into the palace because they want to kill the king. They're busting into the palace because they want to make sure he's still there. And like when he's asleep there and he's like, he's sorry, he's 12. Like these people, number one, they're not like anti-monarchy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And number two, they see like a sleeping 12 year old and they're like, we should probably go. Maybe this got out of hand. Yeah. When did he fall asleep? Is he going to be up soon? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we don't want to like fuck with this little kid who's asleep. So the front, this is obviously, this is traumatizing, right? Having a mob basically forced their way into your bed chambers at age 12.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This fucks Louis the 14th up and is going to massively impact the decisions he makes as an adult and regent. But the front ends with him still in power. Yeah. That said, again, he's like traumatized by this and he comes away from the whole experience with a couple of conclusions.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

One of them is that the nobility of France are fucking out of pocket and they need to be they have too much power and they need to be somehow corralled and stopped from building bases of power of their own. Uh. And they need to be put in a position where the crown can keep an eye on them and make sure that they're not plotting or scheming independently from the king, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That's one conclusion he makes. The other conclusion he makes is Paris is not a safe place. And he's got this palace at St. Germain, but he has bad memories of it. So he's like, as an adult, he's going to be like, I want a new seat of power, right? Right. That's where we're going to get Versailles from. So cut forward by about a decade or so, Louis XIV is 24 years old.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

He is already a veteran of war in the Spanish Netherlands. So he's gone to war successfully as the monarch at this point. He's going to spend most of his time going in between palaces and the front. Most of his reign, a wartime king. He had pushed France's frontiers outward and he had kind of built up a military that is France is the number one land power in Europe at this time. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And economically, the only country in Europe that is a bigger economy than France is Denmark. Right. Because Denmark's doing a lot of overseas trading. This would be the last time this kind of period of Louis XIV's reign will be the last time for a century or so in which France is actually in the black, as in like in a good economic condition. But right now, Louis is rolling in it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I have been hearing this. We've all been hearing this. Yes. Unless you're listening to this years after the fact and we did it, Jo, again. Oh, too soon. You are probably listening to this on a day where you have slightly fewer rights and freedoms than you had a few days earlier, right? Yes. Because that's been the vibe of the last couple of weeks.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

He's got a shitload of cash and a very powerful army, and he decides to use that money to build a palace where he can, number one, feel safe, and number two, lock all of the nobility away from the rest of France to keep an eye on them, right? That's where Versailles comes out of. So speaking of a bunch of out-of-touch rich people, let's throw to sponsors.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

OK, we're back. So I think when you look at like casual histories of the revolution, they always talk about Versailles and the situation there, how out of touch people are, this inwardly focused ruling class who live in this palace altogether as like a contributing factor to the revolution. And I just want to establish something. Yeah. All the nobility was made to move in.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I mean, not 100% of them, but that's the idea, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

A significant amount of them do, and the ones that don't literally live there, like, get second houses nearby. Like, you have to... We'll talk about this more, because this is a thing that develops. But, like, yes, that is the ultimate product, is that, like... significant chunk, most of the powerful nobility are at Versailles forever, right? And that's the idea that Louis has, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Is he's building this palace specifically to force them to hang out with him, right? Right. And when I'd read... casual kind of histories. And my understanding previous to really digging into this was that this was a holdover from like France's busted old feudal government, right? This is like a medieval holdover kind of coming into conflict with the modern world.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And that's part of why we get the French Revolution. That's really not what Versailles is. Louis XIV is actually kind of creating one of the first modern central governments when he establishes the palace at Versailles, right? This is actually a modernizing thing in some ways. Rulers had always owned palaces, and those palaces were both homes and fortresses, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So you could have a place to wait out an inconvenient war or an uprising. But Versailles... It's not a fortress, for one thing, and it's not just a home. It is an independent center of government. Versailles has more in common with Washington, D.C. than, for example, any of like the palaces and palaces in England, right? Any of like the palaces of the house of Windsor, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes. The day I started typing out this episode, February 19th, 2025, President Trump made a very funny joke describing himself as a king. And this set me to thinking about the first Trump rally I attended in 2016, in which I met a British man who was a naturalized U.S. citizen who told me that he supported a Trump dynasty ruling the United States from here on out. He wanted Trump Jr.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Buckingham or whatever. Versailles is less like that. It is more like DC as in DC was a city that was created from the ground up to be a center of government, right? Right. That's what Versailles is.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

um and you know in creating versailles louis xiv he doesn't just want a home he wants a sprawling complex where the nobility of france will live and and hang out and basically always be around him and the all of the governing of the country will be done there and he's doing this both because that makes things more efficient for him you know he's a relatively intelligent ruler he understands that centralizing

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

All of the people who are in charge of the country and keeping them around him makes communication a lot more efficient, but also keeping all of these people literally under the same roof allows him to keep an eye on the group that had nearly overthrown his family, right? So we should talk for a bit about the location he picks, right? Why Versailles? Because there's nothing there, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

There's not a town in the area at this point. They build one, but there's not a town there. There's just an unpaved road into Paris and a hunting lodge that Louis XIV's father had used while hunting and stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

right um so louis had grown up fond of the area which is about 20 miles from paris because of his dad's hunting lodge um and what became the palace started with they put some gardens in next to the hunting lodge and it's kind of a place when he's a young man like 18 or 19 louis will go there with his friends and they'll like camp out there and have parties

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You know, and so this is kind of like the start. That's why he gets the idea that like this is where I want to build my palace is because like this is he and his friends, his little Burning Man spot, you know, effectively. So in March of 1661, Cardinal Mazarin dies and Louis XIV. This is this is kind of what makes him independent as a ruler for the first time, at least totally independent.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Later that year in August, he goes to a party thrown by one of the nobles who's hoping to curry favor with the new king, a guy named Nicolas Fouquet. Fouquet is the minister of finance, and he's built this massive, sprawling, elaborate palace, Vaux-de-Vicombe. which is probably the nicest palace in France at the time. The architecture impresses Louis. He's like, wow, this place is really amazing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But he's also pissed at Fouquet because Fouquet is like, okay, Mazarin's out. This guy is now the dude to impress. I am going to go all out to basically try to bribe him so that he will make me his top advisor and I can basically run things. And he tries to do this by like handing out diamond tiaras and horses as party favors to his guests.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Like he is, he is just like, yeah, horse, really nice horses. You know, not, not your, not shit horses. Good ones. Shit ass horses. No, the good stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

wonderful society used to be so much stranger horses are a big like the king at any given point is going to own like 2500 horses like personally like that's just the way it is if you're rich um that's like the equivalent of having three nice cars right yeah But so this guy, Fouquet, he's showing off this massive palace that like impresses even the young king.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And he's handing out diamond tiaras and horses. And it's you know, this is meant as kind of a bribe to to get Louis to be like, oh, this guy really knows what's up. But it just pisses off Louis. Right. And it pisses off Louis because he's like, you're the minister of finance. how much of this money you're spending is really my money, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Like, where did you get all of this money, Minister of Finance? Is any of it my shit that you're tossing around? Are you bribing me with my own money? And so he ends the night by arresting Fouquet and locking him up in a fortress. Oh, that rogs. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

to take over after his dad finished his terms. And I was like, man, you are in the wrong country. You lived in the country that did that. You already did this. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

In her book, The Sun King, Nancy Mitford writes that as a result of this, quote, we seldom hear of other people giving parties for the king. How long did he stay in prison for? I think he was in there for a long, years and years and years. Oh, my God. I don't know when that guy specifically gets out. Just because he might have spent the king's money? Yeah. So willy nilly with the horses?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

If Louis XIV doesn't like you, he will lock you in a fortress for a decade or so.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That's his thing. He loves putting people in fortresses. So the king raided Fouquet's home, taking silver ornaments, tapestries, a library, and more than a thousand orange trees. This is going to be a signature of Louis XIV's reign is he fucking loves orange trees. And it starts here. Now, orange trees, it's not easy to keep them healthy in the north of France.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We're going to give a little moment of silence for 14 FDA agents who were just trying to do their job. But unfortunately, you know, they they got between Sophie and her HGH ring. And, you know, that's just that's just never never a safe thing to do. Also back on the show is Sophie Lichterman, who is recovering south of the border in a

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And they were so valued that each tree lived in a pure silver pot. Like that's the planters that they use for orange trees are just made out of silver.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I don't know, but when Nancy Mitford wrote her book in the 60s, some of Louis XIV's orange trees were still alive.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So he's pretty good at keeping these things going, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Maybe we should grow everything in silver. We don't know. We don't know. You know, if you've got a baby, have them plated entirely in silver. See if it works. I don't know. I think I watched a James Bond movie that suggests that might be a bad idea. Try it either way. So he orders the construction of a palace at Versailles, Louis XIV, built after this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Because he's like, look, this Fouquet guy, fuck him. But this palace of his is pretty nice looking. I think I could do better. So he hires the guys who had made Fouquet's palace, and he has them start building a palace at Versailles, with the centerpiece being his dad's old hunting lodge, right? Now, the resulting complex, which is going to take years to build, is massive.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Among other things, there are 350 apartments, right? Which is 350 individual living areas for different nobles to reside in. This is just dorms. He just invented dorms. He does invent dorms. And one way to look at Versailles, if you cross the Pentagon and the White House with a frat house, that's Versailles. And a WeWork. And a WeWork. Yes, yes, yeah. It's all of those things at once. Nice. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes. There's also banquet halls. There's dance halls. There's meeting rooms. There's even an entire 240 foot room lined entirely in mirrors. And mirrors are hard to make at this point. Right. It's if you have a room lined in mirrors, it's to show off. I got fucking mirror money. I got so much mirror money. I got a room of the sons of bitches. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Oh, good. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Impress everybody. Yeah, so everybody can see this is how rich the king is. And themselves at every corner. And they can, yeah, see themselves at every corner. Frances Loring Payne describes in her book The Story of Versailles, Nice. Nice. So pretty fancy. And this is, in fact, a palace unlike any the world had seen before.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Louis XIV, the man who would call himself the Sun King, was not a patient person. So he ordered the construction rushed and damned the cost, either in money or in lives. Once he has this idea, he's like, I want this operational as soon as possible. He's like the Emperor Palpatine. If the Death Star was just a place for rich people to party and be spied on.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

In an article for BBC History Magazine, Johnny Wilkes writes, Building went on from dawn to dusk with up to 36,000 people working in the gardens in dire and dangerous conditions. Injuries became a daily occurrence and so many died that bodies would be quietly removed at night in bulk. The workers went on strike, but Louis saw Versailles as a symbol of his prestige and therefore France's prestige.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It was worth any price. When half a dozen men were crushed in an accident, one grieving mother approached Louis to request her son's body. He had her imprisoned. Okay. Seems fair. Seems cool. Yeah. Of course. How dare she?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And I'm like, sir, what the fuck about that baron? Yeah, sir. He could probably hoop. You do have to give that to him. He's got at least potential. Although we don't. I don't think he's very fast anyway.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

She didn't understand that this was about France's prestige. Not how many people are getting crushed to death. Yeah, put her in prison with the fucking horse tiara guy. Yeah, yeah. Rude asshole. Look, people are going to get crushed to death, obviously. It happens. Oh, my God. Yeah. Get over it. You can't have a frat house pentagon without breaking a few hundred laborers. God. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Jesus, give me a break here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

People are unreasonable, you know? So by May 6th, 1662, the whole palace is still very much under construction and would remain that way for years. But enough had been completed that Louis was able to throw a grand party and begin the process of moving in. Now, this would be a years-long process.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

At first, Louis is like spending a day every week there, in part because he's also traveling constantly in between like Versailles or wherever else he's staying and the front where the wars are happening, right? And basically for Louis, the war is kind of a gig work thing, right? Like he's got his marshals who handle the full-time thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

He just kind of comes in when somebody like sends him a letter being like, oh, hey man, I think the war is about to get cool again. Maybe you should come up and check it out now, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah. Don't want to waste your time on the boring parts of war. For him, it's a little like a soap opera where like, yeah, you don't watch every episode. There's long, some of these storylines aren't super interesting. We got like a year of this siege to get through. Go party. You know, we'll handle that. Get me at the end when we're knocking down the fuckers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Bring me in when something cool's going on, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So the process of moving everybody in takes years because – and this is such a – like the pain in the ass this creates for everyone while they're unable to live their full time. But he's having people spend as much time there as possible because every time Louis heads back to Versailles for like a night –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Every government minister, every high-ranking noble, as well as, like, Louis' whole family and his coterie of mistresses have to travel back with him. It's, like, this massive pain in the ass. And there's not rooms for most of them. So, like, Louis got – even Louis is not living in comfort for most of this period. His rooms aren't really finished.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But everyone else is, like, camping, basically, under, like, scaffolding and shit. In this giant beautiful palace that should be luxurious. Yeah. Yeah, but is just unfinished and filled with dead people. Yeah. That'll happen. Yeah, that'll happen. Real estate is challenging. Yeah, real estate is a real complicated endeavor. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Now, the fact that this is a huge pain in the ass and that it kind of, even before Versailles is finished, it is dominating the lives of a huge chunk of the nobility because they have to constantly be aware of where Louis is when he's traveling back. They have to get themselves back. They're like missing sleep because they're not able to live. It like completely disrupts all of their lives.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And that's that's part of the plan. Like Louis the 14th is doing this intentionally. Oh, I want to read a quote from Mitford's book. The king had already begun to enslave his nobility by playing on the French love of fashion. In 1654, he gave a fete, which lasted from 7 to 13 May.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This really caused more pain than pleasure, for the guests had nowhere to sleep and were obliged to doss down as best they could in local cottages and stables. And so again, he's like – the fact that this is a pain in the ass and the fact that he's increasingly forcing everyone – you're not just constantly obsessed with where is the king? When do I have to get back to Versailles?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But you also – there's these parties whenever you're there. So you're spending a lot of your free time making sure you've got outfits and like spending a lot of your money making sure you've got outfit. It's a party. Sort of like a six day long jolly. Yeah, I mean, some of them are shorter than that, but like it's a big party. But in this case.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, and it's a mandatory party that you have to have an outfit for. That outfit is going to cost you 30 years salary for a laboring person, right? And so you have to be constantly like traveling, sleeping in uncomfortable conditions and spending your time and money figuring out what you're going to wear, which means you're not spending any time thinking about rebelling, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You're not – you have no extra attention to spend on building a base of power for yourself.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes. Yes, exactly. Interesting. And that's it because Louis XIV, his big motivation with Versailles is to make another frond impossible. Hadley Mears writes, "...the move was designed to neutralize the power of the nobles. This it did, but it also created a hotbed of boredom and extravagance, with hundreds of aristocrats crammed together, many with nothing to do but gossip, spend money, and play."

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Well, and then gossip being created in real time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That's going to be a major factor in what happens next. Right. And we'll be talking about like what how this gossip eventually trickles out. And it does. It kind of leads to the creation. Paris basically has Twitter. I was going to say this is like Parisian Twitter. Yes. Yeah, that's kind of where things are building towards, right? Very good.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And it's also, you know, people are gambling here constantly. So fortunes are being won and lost.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

People gambling away everything. Everyone's tired. Everyone's exhausted and deranged and people are like going broke and need loans from the king, which makes them more dependent on him. Nice. And all of this was intentional. Yes, yes. Fuck yeah. This is part of the plan. This guy's completely insane. I love it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Louis XIV, but he's very intelligent in that he never faces another threat to his rule, right? That does not happen. He locks the nobility down. They're too busy partying. Yeah, they're too busy going to mandatory parties. He has – what Versailles is, he builds a totalitarian dictatorship just for the ruling class where they are forced to party and gamble their whole lives. The Andrew W.K. system.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes. Beautiful. Now, much has been written about the intricate and stifling rules of etiquette that had to be practiced at Versailles. They had their origins in every – medieval house, every royal house in all of Europe has these complicated etiquette rules that they have to abide by, but they're not all enforced the same way.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

None of them are as intricate as they become in Versailles because you take these baseline rules about like, oh, if you have this guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy in a room, Only this guy is allowed to hand the king his shirt, right? But if that guy leaves, then the next person is allowed to hand the king his shirt. So you have to remember who is allowed to hand the shirt. Yes, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Do we know the punishment for this? It's not a punishment thing so much as it's a violation of etiquette and thus it is offensive to everybody. And it causes like gossip and it makes – like instead of protecting their power to tax and rule the commoners, the nobility are increasingly protecting their power to hand the king his shirt in the morning. Fucking brilliant. I love it. It's so stupid.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I love it. Yes. So again, every royal house, all of the nobility in all of Europe have some version of this, but it gets like 10 times as intense in Versailles because everyone is now living under one very large roof, right? And this means that for one thing, nobles no longer have the same kind of lives of their own outside of court.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So there's nothing going on in their lives, but obsessing over perceived slights in the intricacies of social dynamics, who's snubbing who, who is in the king's favor, et cetera. And it also means the nobility traditionally in like a feudal society, if you're the king and your nobles are your warriors, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That's like the core of the elite of your army in part because they have the time to train, right? The nobility are no longer training to fight, right? They are training and spending their whole youths and childhoods learning how to be the most effective member of what is effectively a bickering high school clique, right? Right, and this is years long as well, so it marinates.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes, your whole life is a high school and the king is the coolest kid in the school. So everyone is constantly trying to figure out how to make him like them, right? Instead of focusing on being good at war- You know, which is a danger to you as the king.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Well, like traditionally in Europe, that's what knights are, right? Yeah. Oh, okay. Like knights are nobility and they are like the core of your army in the earlier medieval period, right? Except they're now all bickering about who had to do the shirt. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And now instead of having like any real doing anything else, really all, all that these guys are doing, a lot of these people are doing on a day-to-day basis is obsessing over like the minutia of this, like basically big high school. Right. Um, I love it. So for the next decade after 1662, construction continues at a relentless pace.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And as more gets built, more and more nobles live full time at Versailles. It becomes the king's primary residence when he's not out engaging in his favorite hobby, going to war with the Dutch.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

uh the sun king felt that denmark was natural french territory and he very nearly managed to make this a reality but his capture of amsterdam was thwarted when the dutch opened their dikes and flooded the lowlands so he does get stymied in his dream of owning the netherlands which is very sad uh for all of us you know i would like to own the netherlands one day so i can understand uh

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

why this is big for Louis XIV. Back home, you know, he couldn't make this work. But back in Versailles, he's able to exercise ultimate control over nature. For example, the king decided he wanted a forest around Versailles. And, you know, the problem with forests, Ed, you can plant a forest. Anybody can plant a forest if you've got enough seeds. But trees take so fucking long to grow. I know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I was just going to say you've got to bloody wait for the thing. Huge pain in the ass, you know? He's not going to do that. So rather than wait for trees to grow, he has thousands of adult trees dug up from nearby forests in a hall. Just take a tree from somewhere else. Take it from somewhere else. And he plants them. Yeah. Mitford writes, those which died, about half were immediately replaced.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So basically, they're just planting, digging up adult trees, planting them, waiting for ones to die, and then replanting them until they have a living forest. As in grabbing new trees to replace the trees that you've already grabbed. Wonderful. Cool. That you've already murdered. Yes. Speaking of killing trees, you know who hates trees? Not our sponsors.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We're back. We're so back. We've never been more back. And we're talking about the palace at Versailles, which has just murdered thousands of trees so that the king can have a forest. Right. So, obviously, for years, the palace is dreadfully uncomfortable. Courtiers slept wherever they could before the various apartments were finished.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And the Sun King was also usually, like, kind of roughing it, too. Behind his back, nobles called the palace a mistress without merit. As in, like... This is like the king's lady, but like she sucks, you know? None would dare say that to Louis' face though. And the dream of the palace sustained him until the first phase of construction was finished in like the 1670s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This gave way almost immediately to an expansion and remodeling. But the palace was done enough that it starts attracting foreign visitors with stories of its grandeur. One like anecdote you'll hear at the time is that British people who would like go and see the court at Versailles would be like, oh, man, our king lives in a fucking slum, basically. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes. It is an outrageous expense. Wonderful. It is almost an incomprehensible expense. This enormous expense necessitated economic changes, which were brought about in part by the further centralization and modernization of the French state. Part of, obviously, Versailles in and of itself is centralizing the state in a way that makes it more modern, but also they

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

have to modernize and centralize the economy more in order to afford Versailles. Louis' economic minister was a guy named Colbert, who had taught the Sun King math when he was a child, and Colbert hated Versailles. He thinks it's a stupid idea.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

but he's also really good with the money and he's probably the only person who could have made the whole project economically viable and for a while he does as mitford writes quote the prestige of louis xiv and the fame of versailles mounted year by year other european princes and magnates wanted a versailles of their own down to the smallest details of its furnishings colbert exploited this fashion to help his exports he erected a rigid customs barrier nothing was allowed to be imported that could be made in france

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Factories were set up to supply the linen, lace, silk, glass, carpets, jewelry, inlaid furniture, and other articles of luxury that used to come from foreign lands. The finest examples of their work went to Versailles and were shown to the foreign visitors who flocked there. The chateau became a shop window, a permanent exhibition of French goods.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes. Yes. And it becomes a massive part of the French economy, both in that this is where we use this as a showcase for the different things like French artisans can make. And because all of the crown heads come here, they're blown over by the palace and they're like, well, I need those kind of tables, right? I need those chairs, right? And only French artisans.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This is part of why France gets its reputation as having the best artisans in Europe, right? Is Versailles. And so luxury goods become an increasingly massive part of the French economy. And Versailles is where they're shown off. And so it is like a CES for like rich people furnishings, you know? Like that is a big factor in like what Versailles becomes and its role in the economy. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Now, it also is central to the economy because of the sheer, again, 36,000 workers at the height of this project. That's a massive deal for a country that is like France's in this period of time. Colbert saw the sheer number of workmen the project consumed as more than the state could bear given its current birth rate.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The Ministry of the Economy comes to the conclusion that we are not breeding enough men to continue rebuilding Versailles. And so he institutes a national breeding program to ensure sufficient labor. For a house. For the king's big fancy party house.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It's nuts.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about terrible people. You know, we've got a great episode, a couple of episodes for you this week with Ed Zitron of Better Offline. Ed, how are you doing, buddy? I'm doing fantastically. Love being here. I'd be doing better. But, you know, we have something sad to talk about today, Ed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It's nuts. And obviously like evil. It is also like Louis XIV is kind of the most king that a king has ever been.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You are.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Just like... Yeah, it's so, like there are between, once Versailles gets up and running, permanently between like 3,000 people is kind of like the normal level of inhabitants and up to 10,000 at times, right? When like the party season's at full swing. 10,000 fucking people in there. Yes, yes. It is massive. Now, Colbert institutes this breeding program.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

He exempts families with more than 10 kids from taxes. He also raises the age. That's nice. He also raises the age at which men and women are allowed to join the Catholic Church as priests and nuns because he's worried that like, because they're not breeding, obviously. Right. And he forbids working men from immigrating, from leaving the country. Jesus Christ. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Everyone has to come to my house. Yes. I need an extra child. Bring your boys to my house to build my house. And for Colbert, it's more like, I hate this house. It's stupid. It's dumb that the king is doing this, but the whole country will collapse if we don't keep this house going.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Now, it is hard for me to read stuff like this and not think about, like, Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey's obsession with birth rates, right? And they frame it as, like, a fairness thing. Oh, if you're not having 2.1 kids, you expect someone else's child to take care of you when you're old. But the reality is closer to what Colbert and Louis wanted, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They also just want warm bodies to feed into the ravenous maw of their narcissistic death projects. They just aren't as open about it or as good at it. Like, they just – and they'll never have Louis IV.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes, because they didn't. He literally fought and like warred his way. Like his whole childhood is like wars and conniving. Right. Like even the 14th is. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So the years in which Versailles is constructed and debuted to the world are good ones for the French economy, which doubles in revenue between 1661 and 1671. Again, Colbert is good at this. This does work. However, the wealth coming as a result of Versailles is largely due to an explosion, again, in luxury goods and work for skilled craftsmen. And so while on paper the economy is doing better –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

A huge group of the country is doing much worse, which is the peasantry, right? The people who make their living growing food suffer tremendously while this economic miracle is going on. Again, this is not similar to anything that's happened recently. Not that it's the people growing food with us, but it is like –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

you know, the economy's great on paper for all these corporations while a huge chunk of the working class is suffering, right? It is kind of, you can see it as similar to that where, well, yeah, like the people who are making shit for Versailles are doing well, but like the peasant farmers are like in a disastrous state. And Colbert's fine with this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

He does not give a shit about these people suffering and neither does Louis. They are concerned with the continued expansion of this pleasure palace and the attendant growth of the French military and navy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They're constantly building more of it and renovating it. The only projects that are allowed to compete with Versailles for manpower are the military and the navy. As Mitford writes, quote, he, Colbert, did little or nothing to help the French peasants through a period of agricultural depression. Indeed, low farm prices suited his policy of cheap exports.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The gap between the peasantry and the rest of the population was first became serious under Colbert. It was not bridged, as in England, by country gentlemen. He encouraged the slave trade, and although he did insist on certain humanitarian measures, this was the only way to keep down the death rate of such valuable cattle.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Worst of all, he increased the number of galleys in the French Navy from six to 40, each containing 200 unhappy souls. Since black people were useless for manning them, they had no stamina and died at once. This was a book written a lot longer ago. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They could only be freed if their relations could afford to buy a Turk to replace them. Colbert thought that too many of his galley slaves died. The intendant of the galley swore they were well fed, but said they died of grief and boredom. So this is just a night. It's really to emphasize this is a nightmare state. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Like while they're killing all these laborers in the palace, the whole Navy is we tried using slaves, but they all died immediately. So we brought in instead we brought in Turks that were basically slaves and captive prisoners. And, you know, you can buy your way out, but you got to find us another Turkey.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes. Well, this is for the Navy, but the Navy is there to protect your ability to continue building the big house, right? You need a strong Navy and military, so no one can stop you from having this huge house. Of course. Of course. Oh, God. Yeah, it's a nightmare.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It is important to really emphasize the degree to which Versailles was, from the beginning, a marvel of architecture and art and culture, as well as a yawning pit into which human lives were poured in order to build and maintain. That said, the plan works. The nobles don't trouble him or any other French king in his line with thoughts of revolution again.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Beyond that, Versailles becomes the envy of every other king and emperor. It was, in one writer's words, the cultural heartbeat of Europe. When people on the continent referred to the king, like if people in other European states just refer generally to the king, it's often understood that they're talking about Louis XIV because he is so powerful.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

When you've got the guy in charge of your country talking about being a king and you've got a group of the wealthiest people talking openly about ending voting rights and solidifying themselves as a permanent aristocracy, you know, you're in a situation where it's not unreasonable to start looking at other, quote unquote, permanent aristocracies in history and what happened to them. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

In his centralization of power, he becomes one of the most absolute monarchs the world has ever seen. One illustrative anecdote is a rhyme the Sun King himself composed. Le tas c'est moi. The state, that's me.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Lyrical genius, Louis XIV. It's so funny. No ego has ever been more fevered. A whole language of etiquette and pomp is created and developed around earning and keeping the king's power. So for an example of this, he hates the idea that people go to the bathroom, right? He can't stand this. He considers it a weakness, and if you... My man hates the toilet.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

If you are traveling with this guy or hanging out with him and you need to stop to pee, if you ask to be excused to go to the bathroom, you're instantly exiled from the cool kids crowd.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The man can't get enough UTIs. What if he needs to piss? Oh, he just does whatever he wants. He's the king. He's pissing willy-nilly. He's the king. He can do anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So his closest friends find themselves avoiding water or getting really good at holding it, or they have to sneak away to relieve themselves, right? I'm just going outside to look around. I just gotta have a smoke or something, man. I gotta go fuck my mistress. Yeah. Now, servants, some nobles have their own apartments with chamber pots, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And so their servants will barter and sell bathroom access to people who need to go to the bathroom, who are like running away. This is wild. You've got to give me a second. I've got to pee somewhere, right? This is so strange. Because of this, there are rumors which will really get crazy among later kings. And these will spread heavily among people in Paris.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And it's fanned a lot by newspapers and tracts that are printed in Denmark because there's no press freedom in France. So the newspapers that people are reading in Paris that have all of the gossip are usually printed in Denmark. And then- brought into Paris, smuggled into Paris.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They'll be sold at like property owned by nobles who are like the idea of these papers being around for their own personal benefit and can keep the police away, right? So that's how a lot of this, we'll talk more about that later.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But, you know, one of the rumors that starts to spread because of how weird Louis is about people going to the bathroom is that members of the nobility are just pissing in the hallways and corners of the palace and that all of Versailles is one big expense. bathroom, right? Everyone's just pissing and shitting everywhere, right? That is a rumor that's widely believed in Paris.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This is an exaggeration. Mitford says it's just outright untrue because of how many bathrooms there are in Versailles. This just wouldn't happen. I don't think Mitford's got it right either because here's the thing. It's certainly not true that it's the norm for people to piss and shit wherever they're standing, but this is a house filled with thousands of drunk people. partying all of the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And also they're gossiping. Yeah. So they're like, did you hear Sally went to the toilet? I saw Jeremy pissing. So one of the things that is a factor in Versailles, every room basically, every major room has orange trees in it. Like in other plants, people are definitely pissing in those pots. Like you're not going to tell me people aren't.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Right. And people are for sure puking in random spots. Right. Because, again, it's a big frat house to some degree. Right. So there's some amount of this that has obviously the degree to which they talk about this being a thing in Paris is a massive exaggeration. But it definitely happens, you know. Yeah. Especially if you have to surreptitiously piss. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You've got to hide that you're pissing. You're just turning around. I'm adjusting lip hints. Hygiene was not as bad back then as people often assume among the nobility. But people didn't bathe daily. They're generally cloaked in perfume. And between that, the palace is constantly filled with smoke because of all of the candles and fireplaces.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And so that's why I wanted to talk about Versailles this week. Right. You know, this is a case where the the bastard is this system, this this this world of the nobility where they were cloistered away from the rest of the country deliberately for some interesting reasons. And like what happened to their brains as a result of that and kind of why it all came crashing down. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So the smell of this place would have been fascinating at times. Yeah. Right? Let's put it that way. It smelled crazy in there. It smelled crazy. Not necessarily bad always, but crazy. Yeah. Like unfathomable to our modern noses.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So Louis XIV wanted the whole world of Versailles to revolve around him, and it did, which meant one of the most important questions for anyone to ask on a daily basis was, who is the king fucking? And the king is a notoriously horny guy. He is horny by the standards of French kings, right? Cool. And that's hard. Like French, French Kings almost invented modern sex.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Like, and he is, he is the fuckingest of the Kings of France. Nice. Um, one of his first mistresses was, uh, uh, Luis de la Valier, uh, Luis de la Valerie, right. Uh, who eventually reached a sort of, and like, there's a huge conflict between her and his, his wife, the queen, um, and one of his other mistresses. And they eventually like,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

all sit down and talk about it in a way that feels like weirdly modern and like become cool with each other. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah. Yeah. Like that actually happens here. And like, they're actually kind of chill for a while about it. Okay. Progressive. The first poly group. Yeah. I mean, adultery is so normalized in the Sun King's palace that it is kind of like that, right? Like the king's mistress is a specific named position at court and one that held quite a bit of influence, right? Wow. This government is insane.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You've got the piss house. The lady who's just fucking the king. The mistress is like a title. You have a business card. The mistress is a title. And the people like gossip, like the way that we're gossiping about, like, who's going to lead the FBI or whatever. People are gossiping about like, yeah, I think the king might fuck this lady next. And, you know, who knows what that'll change. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And it's one of those things where he has his official mistress. That is not to say that he limits himself to one mistress, as Johnny Wilkes writes, quote, it's said that one day he grew so impatient waiting for a lover to undress that he turned his attention to one of the maids. Because again, he's the king, you know, he's just fucking whoever he wants. He needs to fuck then.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And he needs to fuck then. Yeah. Now, because the king has the power to he one of the ways in which he'll show favor to a lady, he fucks or to just like a dude. He has like a part. He gets along with a guy one night. They have a good drunk talk or whatever. He hands out these gifts, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And these gifts are not like, sometimes he can hand out just money, but usually the gift is like a pension or the right to tax a specific area or like you get a cut of the fish that are sold in this province, right? I got fucked up with Louis in that context, people. Yeah, I got fucked up with Louis and now I get 2% of all of the fish sold in Normandy, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Like that's just what I have forever now. Um... So there's a ton of money in being a woman who he likes, and there's a ton of money in just being a dude that he's friends with. And so because of how much money there is in this and how important it is to be in the king's favor, an entire shadow economy springs up among providing amulets, charms, and magical spells to curry the king's favor.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Oh, yes. poisons to use on rivals for his affections. This is a whole industry in France is like witchcraft to impress the king. Fuck yeah. Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's so great. Nancy Mitford writes about one such purfeyor of magics, Madame Voisin. And Madame Voisin was approached by a lady at court, vying with Louis de la Valerie for the Sun King's attention, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So, you know, Valerie is his mistress, and this new lady wants to become the next mistress. Her name is Madame de Montespan. And she wants to take over for Valerie. And, you know, she thinks that magic's the best way to do that. So she talks to this Madame Boissin lady. And I'm going to quote from the book, The Sun King here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This is not going to be obviously Mike Duncan's done everything. the much more full version of like why the French revolution happened. This is not, these aren't episodes about the French revolution.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

She gave excellent advice to her clients and did what she could to help them, catering for little feminine desires, such as larger breasts and smaller mouths, white hands and luck at cards. When unwanted babies were on the way, she was very understanding. This means she provides abortifacients, right? If wishes concerned an inheritance, there were certain powders.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

For unrequited love, various forms of magic. No doubt she began advising Madame de Montespan by talking over the situation and who, longing to be loved, can have enough of such talks and such advice. But nothing happened. The king remained indifferent, right? So she tries some of these like magics and spells and the king doesn't want to fuck her yet.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So it's decided that they should move on to like the hardcore spells, which means bringing in the devil, right? If you want to do the powerful magic, you're going to have to talk to the devil.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You didn't have enough of the devil. Of course. Right. Yeah. The nobility believes that no magic spell can be truly efficacious unless Satan is involved. And this leads to a separate cottage industry, one where you've got priests who want extra money. And so these Catholic priests will conduct underground satanic rites. in order to like do magic for these people in Versailles.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, this is a terrible house. This house has its underground black magic economy. Now, and obviously other, like in Paris, there's other parts of France where this kind of underground trade exists, but it largely comes to focus around these people in Versailles currying for favor, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Now, again, Nancy Mitford is from a different generation and she writes about all this magic more seriously as if these priests and these witches believe literally in everything that they're doing. My suspicion is that a lot of these service providers are like con men and women, right? They know these black masses aren't really...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

magic spells or whatever, they just also understand that if they can create this space of altered reality for their wealthy out-of-touch clientele who live in a permanent party and don't understand the real world, then they can get a lot of money out of them, right? Right. I think it really is much more cynical. I'm sure there's some people who really believe that they're talking to the devil.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

hidden uh uh steadfast sophie why did those men need to die why why why is that the cover story you gave me i feel like you could have done something so much cooler i think that's pretty cool shooting it out with the fda and going on the run to mexico yeah an hgh ring well i didn't want to like accuse you of selling hard drugs I mean, sure. And everybody loves HGH. At least Joe Rogan loves HGH.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You're suggesting that these people didn't have a connection to the devil? Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit unreasonable. But, you know, they know the nobility believes that. That's my interpretation.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They've been living in the party house for, like, years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The laws of Madden. Don't exist. You've gotten it exactly right, which is that Versailles is a cult. And once you get people into a cult, you have altered their brain chemistry in a way that makes them much more vulnerable to anyone selling this kind of bullshit. Right. And that's why this magic trade really perks up. And I'm going to read another quote from The Sun King.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Madame Voisin knew a priest who was willing to help. He read the gospel over Madame de Montespan's head. There was some nonsense with pigeons' hearts under a consecrated chalice, and she prayed, "'Please let the king love me. Let Monseigneur le Dauphine, that's the king's son and heir, be my friend, and may this love and this friendship last.' Please make the queen sterile.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Let the king leave La Valerie and never look at her again. Let the queen be repudiated and the king marry me. It was all rather harmless and undeniably successful. The king seemed to become aware of her for the first time. He went off to besiege Lille in June of 1667, taking her in the capacity of lady-in-waiting to the queen. Louise de Valerie was not invited.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

In despair, she followed the royal party and caught up with it as the camp was being pitched. When she came face to face with the king, he put on a terrifying manner and said, Madame, I don't like having my hand forced. She had to go away, deeply humiliated. During this campaign, Madame de Montespan became his mistress. Her sacrilegious prayers seemed well on the way to being answered.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The king loved her now. So it worked. You know? Yeah. It's good. This whole system works. This whole system works great. Now, unfortunately, all of this, this whole industry of like devil spells is going to become a problem in part two. But we're going to be talking about that on Thursday. Ed, you want to plug anything after this super long episode?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah. Eight or nine episodes. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Or else. All right, everyone. We love you. Kind of. Some of us love you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That did go really well. Really good. There were a couple of those treaties and they all went well. Yeah. But yeah, yeah. So there's probably the best popular culture touchstone on this recently would be that 2006 Sofia Coppola movie about Marie Antoinette. Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I actually don't know about the garden.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Oh, I mean, you mean the literal, I think you're talking about a movie called The Garden. No, yes, there's a nice garden in Versailles, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, yeah, okay. Which is why I knew about it. Yeah. Nice garden, big palace. But I think that OK, I'm glad that's what you know, because there's a lot more there. The story of Versailles is the story of, among other things, the invention of like Versailles. the modern centralized administrative state, just done in kind of the craziest way imaginable.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And in order to tell that story, we've got to start with a guy who is probably close to, you know, one of the contenders for like best at being a king, just on a technical level of anybody who was ever a king, Louis XIV, better known as the Sun King, because he had a very high opinion of himself. Mm-hmm. But which was somewhat justified.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This is the guy who is the longest reigning king in human history. Nobody was king for longer, probably. He spent 72 years on the throne, which is nuts. like an objectively crazy amount of time to do any job. Al Davis of Kings. Was he wretched and crazy at the end? I do claim to be that as a podcaster. He was wretched and crazy at the end.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

He's so wretched and crazy. Oh my God. Wonderful. His ass is rotting. That's what kills him. It's great. He dies from his bum rotting? He dies from ass rot. Yes, he sure does. Oh yeah, oh yeah. This story's got it all, baby. So Louis XIV, all of the French kings in this period are Louis, right? They will be referred to kind of casually by some historians as the Louis, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Because they're kind of interchangeable with the exception of the Sun King in some ways where you're just talking about like, and then this Louis and that, yeah. Yeah. So Louis XIV, our boy, was born in September of 1638 to Anne of Austria and Louis XIII. His mom was shockingly old to give birth at the time. She's like middle-aged and had had four stillbirths before him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So the fact that he came out not just alive but very healthy was regarded as a miracle and a good sign, right? He would grow up to be a mama's boy always. So Louis XIII dies like immediately after his son is born. And he had been very clear in his last days that Anne, his wife, should not govern after his death.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This is a thing in a lot of other European countries, like in many European countries, like in Russia, right? Women can reign. You know, like the queen, if things work out that way, the queen can be the regent. She can run shit, right? Right. That is not the case in France. They do not allow that in this period in France. And Louis VIII is like, Anne should not govern after my death.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And so he creates a regency council to manage things until Louis XIV is old enough to run France on his own. Right. And part of why he does this is that Anne is not French, right? She's Anne of Austria. Now, that's also not a good description of who she was, because you would expect, given that her name is Anne of Austria, you would expect her to be from Austria, right? Right. Where is she from?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Absolutely. Oh, Ed, of course she's not from Austria. She's from Spain. Obviously, you call Anne of Austria. The Austria of Europe? The woman from Spain. Yeah. She's the queen of Navarre. She's like the whole Austria thing in her name has nothing to do with geography. It's purely a result of the fact that she is a Habsburg, right? There's a branch of the family who are Spanish, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And that's why she's Anne of Austria because the Habsburgs are also the house of Austria. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, there's so many Habsburgs. Oh, we're going to be talking about Habsburg jaws later in this story. Don't worry, buddy. Don't worry. There's Habsburgs all throughout this motherfucker. That makes me so happy. Does it make you Habsburg? Habsburg. Hopefully not.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You need to drop me a few times as a baby to do that. Then your blood wouldn't clot. Actually, I don't think that was a Habsburg problem.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

There's a lot of people fucking their cousins in this story. That's just how royalty is. Nice. So from age four on, which is like when his dad dies, Louis XIV's earliest memories would have been a political turmoil between his mother and her native country. Because, again, the fact that she's a Habsburg means that the French people don't trust her.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They're like, well, she's obviously going to be more loyal to Spain and to Austria than she is to France. This is a constant problem because you are always bringing in nobles from other houses in Europe to to marry the king. And there's always this kind of like, well, then they can't possibly put France first, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And there had just been a war between, as there is constantly in this period, between France and Spain. So there's a lot of reasons why people don't trust Anne. And that's going to have a big influence on him, is this distrust for his mom by the French people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Now, because we're talking about European nobility this week, I really need to emphasize everything that I say, explain about these people is going to sound ridiculous. This whole culture that has come up around the nobility is nonsense by this period. They've just been in power for too long. And the system is crazy. Louis is going to make it a lot crazier.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I just told people you'd shot it out with the FDA and you were on the run.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But I do think it's worth kind of emphasizing that. So the next time you read that our Grand Vizier, Elon Musk, has appointed a man named big balls to control all of our personal tax data. Remember that people in power have always been irritating dipshits, right? That's not unique to the United States. That's just something that comes with giving small groups of people all of the power, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Traditionally, we did it in the past. Yes. Yes. And now we're doing it in the future. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Great stuff. So Anne actually had gotten – his mom had gotten confined to house arrest for passing military secrets to her dad at one point. But she does this thing that is very common. When she becomes the queen regent –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

She exiles a bunch of her own supporters and kind of betrays her family to run France, right? She chooses to go for France. And this was a pragmatic move because once her husband died, her position was not really stable. Now, most of the big decisions made for France in this period are not made by Anne. They're made by a guy that Anne appoints to rule in her son's stead.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, it would be more fun. But, you know, you're back. You're healing. You're feeling a little better.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Here's our honestly somewhat like, I mean, it's great. Like 100,000 is fine. It's a start. We're above that now. But I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You think that. Yep.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah. We're all seeing the kind of guys getting hired to work at the Pentagon now. I'm hoping that maybe there's going to be less of that. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, no. So it's one of this guy who is a kook and had some positions in Canada, did a Reddit AMA and was asked why, you know, because he talked a lot. He really wanted to talk about serious topics. Yeah. Yeah. And his whole thing was, I want to talk about the aliens that are definitely here. And he was asked by one of the people on the AMA.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Why have these species publicly announced their existence? Is it a galactic rule to avoid broad contact with an alien species until they reach a certain point of technological advancement on their own in order to preserve their own culture? Are we being quarantined because we are too violent? Are the human governments withholding their existence on their own for their own motives?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

If so, what would their motives be? And by the way, that series of questions is in order. Star Trek. I forget that actually there's a separate sci-fi thing that is the whole quarantine thing. And then that's just the X-Files.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

We got a plaque. Finally. I want one. Finally. It's so shiny. I've never had a plaque before.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I forget which one. Yeah, it's a prime directive. I remember reading a short story, several of them that have the quarantine thing as the theme, but I forget the exact names. And then obviously X-Files is the last thing. So Paul answers, some have, as in some aliens have contacted us.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Valiant Thor, the benevolent Venusian with an IQ of 1200, lived in the Pentagon for three or four years, offered us Earthlings a richer, healthier life in exchange for giving up our nuclear weapons. His offer was not accepted.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They got a taco. That's all you need if you're a Venusian. Although, according to the book we're about to read, no Venusian would ever eat a Taco Bell.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Only raw food, Molly. Only raw food. Now, speaking of our bodies being a temple, my body is a temple that worships these products. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. We talk a lot about red flags in relationships when you're looking for someone to date or for a friend or just people in general. But what about green flags?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Look at this. It, like, fucks with the light in the room. I can, like, do an Aziz light on myself while I look at ancient hieroglyphs that reveal the aliens that have been coming to Earth for thousands of years to direct civilization, which is relevant to today's episode.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Things that let you know that somebody's a person you might want to be more involved with. Well, if you're not sure what a green flag looks like for you, therapy can help you identify green flags and actively practice them in your relationship so you can embody green flag energy yourself.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Whether you're dating, married, building a friendship, or just working on you, it's time to form relationships that love you back, and therapy can help with that. It can help you learn positive coping skills and how to set boundaries, and that empowers you to be the best version of yourself. If you're thinking of therapy, BetterHelp might be a great option.

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Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It's fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide. Access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties and easily switch therapists anytime at no additional cost. So discover your relationship green flags with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash behind to get 10% off your first month.

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Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash behind.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Ah, God, we're back. We're so back. Molly, we've never been this back. So I think it's at this point that I got to show you the copy of the book that I found or that my friend found in the Airbnb that they went into. Look at this. Yes. Yes. Look at this beauty. Look at this gorgeous thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Well, actually, there is a you know what? That's it's insane that you say that because the front and back cover art is by Carol Ann Rodriguez. It's just weird that Carol's and Carol's. That's the word I'm looking at when you say that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

She's got flowers in her hair. There's a rainbow. There's a lady on the back being abducted. She's looking good in that dress.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, it looks like the rainbow is the tractor beam, Molly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So this is all great stuff. This book is by Michael X. Barton. We're going to talk about Michael in a second. But first, I got to talk about the guy who wrote the special introduction because his name is Timothy Green Beckley. And Timothy Green Beckley ran a publishing house called Inner Light Publications.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's two words like this Star Trek episode that might be one of the best science fiction pieces ever made. That's the one with Picard's flute. Anyway, this has nothing to do with that. It also has nothing to do with Inner Light Publications, which is a black-owned publishing company in Georgia that deals with much more serious works than Timothy Green Beckley, one of whose books is interesting.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

MJ 12 and the riddle of hangar 18. And of course, we're going to look at Timothy, Timothy Beckley. You know, we could we not. Could I not show you a picture of this man? Show me the man. That would be illegal. I would I would go. I would go to podcasters prison, which is just Spotify. Look at this guy. Look at him. I'm getting a beautiful animal. Look at him.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He does have a little bit. If you told me he was like Andre the Giant's cousin, I'd be like, oh, shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Robert, you wouldn't want to be alone. That said, I've never heard anything bad about this guy, but you wouldn't want to be alone with anybody who's too into the UFO movement. Now, you especially wouldn't want to be alone with him because he is now dead. He passed away at 73 in 2021. R.I.P. Yeah, his his what you may call it obituary says he was the sole remaining Beckley of the family.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He was famously known as Mr. UFO and Mr. Creepo. So you might you might not want to have been alone with this guy when he was alive. That's not a great nickname.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Why did they put that in his obituary? I think it was a different age. A pioneer in his field of ufology, the paranormal, and all things bizarre. He was a publisher, author, editor, producer with Interlight Publications, publishing over 200 books. Previously the editor of UFO Universe Magazine and a film reviewer for Hustler Magazine.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He ran the New York School of Occult Arts and Sciences and worked promotions for the School of Rock and Roll. He was a podcast host on KCOR Radio's Exploring the Bizarre with Tim Schwartz. Oh, yeah, he was on Coast to Coast FM. Oh, obviously. He was on What with William Shatner, you know, a fixture of the New York City nightlife. That's a thing that can mean a lot of things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Given this man's age.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

In what way? But what I love about this guy, as much as we're laughing about this, this is an extinct kind of guy, right? In the same way that the Tasmanian tiger is extinct. Allegedly. I want to believe there's still some of them out there, but I just haven't seen the evidence yet. And it is tragic. Yeah. So some other luminary. And so he is the publisher.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And as a spoiler, the actual author of this book, Michael X. Barton, is a guy who was writing stuff for the UFO scene in the 60s. He was an L.A. businessman whose life suddenly changed while his best friend became seriously ill.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

While praying, Michael found he was able to receive telepathic communications from more advanced souls purporting to be living on a higher, more evolved vibrational plane of planet Venus, which cannot be detected through scientific methods.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's right. And Barton dropped off the face of the earth at some point. Beckley claims that he kind of was able to get in touch with him and he was like not doing well. So maybe all of this stuff doesn't actually work in the long run.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Maybe he ascended. But in any case, Michael is just or Beckley just republished his books in the more recent period of time before he died. Because, like, fuck it, I guess. And I think that's funny. Before we get into this book, I want to look at some other luminaries that Interlight Publications have published. These are like. So obviously, number one is Timothy Green Beckley with 15 books.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Commander X with 12 books. Commander X. Yeah, Commander X has written 12 books for them. Ashtar Command, two books. Hercules Invictus, just one, just one book there. Admiral Richard Byrd, one book. Let's see here. Dragon Star, Ramashakra Master Yogi, one book. Another book that's the Ashtar Command, which might be different from Ashtar Command. Is that a collective?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Unclear to me at this moment, Molly. But there's some great names in these guys. There's some great names here. And before we get into this book, I guess the last thing we should do, because I forgot to do this earlier. I want to go back to the Airbnb that my friend stayed in, which belongs to a guy who identifies himself and is a public figure with a YouTube channel as Paul of Venus.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And we're just going to look at his website for a second. Are you down to look at?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Are you down to look at this? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Venus on Earth. Of course it's an embodiment. Where does love come from? Love.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Ascension galactic. Embodiment. Oneness. Venusian technology.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Personal coaching transmissions. Color about it. Younger than I thought. Greetings to all. I am Paul LaVenus, an ascension guide from the sixth dimension on Venus.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I can't.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I can't enhance, Sophie. I can't enhance.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Okay. God damn it. I don't have command. Let's see. Control?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

There. Fine. You happy? You happy? Yeah. We're zooming in on his picture for you listening. It just looks like a guy in his like 20s or 30s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

One of those hats with like little wings. He's on a mountain. Yeah, he's walking around the Mount Shasta area. That's what it looks like.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He's left in the lens flare. He just looks like a guy. There's nothing wrong with the way he looks. What I really want to get into is reading his introduction of himself. I thought he would be old. I did too. I thought – because this is old. Like this book, again, is from the 60s and it's based in like Valiant Thor stuff, which starts in the 50s.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Timothy Green Beckley is like an older figure in ufology and conspiracy culture. Like these guys are – are contemporaries. And honestly, in some cases, like predecessors of like fucking the people who came before Alex Jones, you know, this is not like new stuff. Um, but Paula Venus does appear to be fairly young.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Uh, I am Paula Venus and Ascension guide from the sixth dimension on Venus, a paradisiacal planet. I'm delighted to introduce you to a remarkable opportunity to expand your understanding of energy, ascended masters, human embodiment and Ascension. Uh, so that's good. You know, uh, maybe check him out if you want to ascend, uh,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You're always saying that. And look, I know because I'm into UFOlogy that there are mushroom aliens living at the center of Mount Shasta. So go find them, folks. Go hike up right now is a great time of the year. Just whatever your street clothes are. Don't bring extra food. Don't bring zero degree sleeping bags. No, don't bring any methods of contacting the outside world.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Just start walking up that mountain. The aliens will take care of it. You'll be fine. Harness the light. Harness the light. Two Bigfoot hunters died about an hour north of me like a week and a half ago. God.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They were on the wrong plane. That's exactly what this book would argue. So, Molly, this book, Venusian Health Magic and Venusian Secret Science. is a beautiful work of art. There are so many lines in this book that just make my heart sing. And before we get into reading it, I'm just going to read you a blind quote that I found in there. Can you get a leave of absence for three months?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I asked him. It will take about that long for us to carry out certain experiments I have in mind for contacting Venusians.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, that makes sense to me. Yeah. Medicaid probably would help, too, with the Venusians. You've got to call their Venus desk, but there's not a lot of not a lot of phone traffic ahead of you there. OK, so let's let's get into it. I'm opening this this beautiful book and it starts with the introduction. By Timothy Beckley, Timothy Green Beckley.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And he's just talking about his friend Michael X, how he was a mystic who showed up and gave talks, you know, starting in the 50s and 60s at places like Joshua Tree, Giant Rock, where they would do these like massive early UFO events. Things. And I would say these people are like totally just like copying Star Trek. But to be honest, knowing Gene Roddenberry, he was copying some of these people.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Keep all this in. This is the good stuff. Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where I, Robert Evans, have finally won an award. And no, it's not a real award. It's a bullshit award that you get when your YouTube channel crosses a threshold that really, in the grand scheme of YouTube, is not a whole lot of subscribers.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I don't know if he's copying this guy, but Gene was into this stuff. You know, like some of this is it's very murky because like Star Trek, it's going in the 60s and they definitely both bleed into each other. But I have to say there is a degree to which Roddenberry is getting pulling some of his ideas from the early UFO subculture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Gene Roddenberry, there's a very good chance that he was having very strange sex at the same events where fucking the author of this book was speaking. Because that was kind of Gene Roddenberry's thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Riker was always a self-insert. What man wouldn't want to be Riker? You get to sit down however you want, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You know, anbojitsu, which is like jujitsu, but you all dress like the guys from American Gladiators.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He didn't care at all. He was a 24th century man, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He introduced the concept of gender to their species. Yeah. Oh, Riker. So when I when I said earlier, I saw a picture in here and I instantly knew like, oh, shit, this is like something Jordan Peele saw when he was younger. That very much influenced the film Nope, which is a movie about both like. horseback riding and black cowboys, but also about space aliens and cryptids in the sky.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

There's a line in here. While the talks by Michael X and others were going on, it was not unusual for a UFO to be spotted at the Giant Rock Convention. And then...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah. So this is a kind of cloud. And it's a kind of cloud that all these UFO guys think is a UFO cloaking itself. And they would show up above. You would get clouds like this in the desert. They would show up above these gatherings at Giant Rock. And all of these people who were very much ready to see aliens would have the best day of their lives.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And years later, we got a pretty good Jordan Peele movie out of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

There's a lot of different possibilities here. So let's get back into this. There's a section of this introduction by Beckley, Words of Universal Knowledge and Enlightenment. And he's talking about all of the years of letters and calls that he got by Michael X and his teachings. The below communication is representative of the type of mail that crossed my desk.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And this is a letter from someone else about Michael X. In about 1965, I had the privilege to listen to Michael X. Barton give a lecture at the San Antonio Street College of Metaphysics Inquiry. Michael was a very small man and was well-dressed. After the lecture, I asked in private what the X meant in his name. He said it was in respect to Christ.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Later on, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Wallace Halsey's beautiful wife by the name of Tarna Halsey. J.W., my guru and teacher, once told me that Wallace and his wife were at the giant Rocky UFO convention and Wallace was talking and walking around with a spaceman who looked the person. I think looked like a person is what it's supposed to be.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Tarna came up and told them that she was going to take a picture of them both together. The space person told Tarna that if she took a picture of them, that his image wouldn't show on the print. This was due to the fact that they had been talking about very high vibrational thoughts and his picture wouldn't show up. Tarna then said, I have a very good camera and I'll be able to get your picture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

She took the picture and the space person couldn't be seen. He then tried to tell her that he had told her what had happened. Later on, Tarna came back to her husband. and the space person told Tarna that she could take their picture, and he would be able to be seen on the picture.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

She then took another picture, and the space person came out on the picture, because they had been talking about normal things.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yes. Yes. I later had an interview with Tarna, and she said she had demonstrated to a friend that she could become invisible to a camera. She was able to do this with her friend. She, in a previous life, was from Venus. She later became the wife of the Crusher, who was a retired wrestler.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I got a PhD in street college. I've heard a lot of people shout a lot of things in the street. that's accessible higher education that's i'm gonna throw that on my cv next to judge phd at the street college i have heard a lot of crazy people in san antonio shouting things actually oh man street college yeah the world used to be so much more fun um but also not i have to

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You know, what I'm going to say is, folks, you know, we're entering a new era. The security state has amped up. Make sure if you're going to be out there, you know, doing legally questionable stuff that you're talking to too high a vibration for photos to capture you. You know, that seems like good OPSEC, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's right. That's why all of those January 6th videos are so blurry. Oh, shit. Okay. So now we're at the author's foreword, right? This is finally Michael X, seer of a new age in his original writing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Our space brothers, Venusians, tell us that no one on Earth need be sick or racked with pain or filled with hopeless despair if the amazing health principles they have unselfishly brought to us are practiced.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

The health magic of the Planetary Teachers is intended for all of us Earthlings who have a burning desire to leave poor health behind us forever and go on to wonderful joys and activities that come only to the healthy. Due to the fact that the Venusians are much further advanced in their understanding of man than we are,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They have learned all about the electric power that makes the human body function as it does. They discovered that radiant health and vitality could be stepped up by the simple means of increasing one's intake of life energy. Life and energy are both capitalized through a positive diet of highly vitalized foods and by a conscious direction of what they call Lifetrons. Lifetrons? Lifetrons, Molly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Lifetrons. So are they selling vitamins? Yes. No, no. I don't think they believe in vitamins at this point. They believe in like vitamins as a thing, but I think they believe in vitamins as a thing that you only get through fresh fruit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They're selling books about it. But the key is eating only uncooked, fresh, organic fruit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's going to give you a tummy ache.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I think you're allowed to have vegetables, too. Now, look, first off, folks, we're going to have a lot of fun with this in part one and part two. This is not relevant to BTB because these people are bastards, and I include our friend Paul from earlier in that. I don't think these are bad people generally. This is a BTB because UFO culture, which they created... Well, not Paul.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He's kind of a later descendant. But the guy we're reading from helped create it. Spent decades as this pleasant and generally quirky background part of American life until it all got swallowed up by QAnon. It has at this point been essentially exterminated as an independent subculture. And we need a term for that. Obviously, this is not on the genocide spectrum.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

But this is, weirdly enough, the destruction of a culture that did exist, that was like a thing that influenced American life, that is gone now. And that's I don't know, like how we like there's not like a term for for that really for like the way in which particularly because it didn't just like people didn't just like stop being interested in it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It was like consumed by this other darker thing who used its raw material in order to like grow and spread. I don't know what we call that yet. Anyway, that's my one serious point for the day. Let's all think of a good word.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, that's a good way of putting it. And speaking of things that are contagious... Whatever's making me cough. But you know what? I'm alone in my basement, so fuck you. Here's ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I feel like now that you've addressed it, people are going to get weird in the comments.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Look, look, you know what? I'm calling an end to this bit using my powers as a judge.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

But, Sophie... Did they mail you a plaque? Have you gotten yours yet? No. Oh, yeah, I haven't. Oh, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Molly, so did you get some Lifetrons during the break? You know, let's let's talk about Lifetrons, Molly. Let's let's chat a little bit about Lifetrons, because when I heard the word Lifetron, number one, I was so happy. I love this. This is exactly why I dig into stuff like this. I was like, oh, yeah, that nom, nom, nom, nom. That's the good stuff. That's that healthy, healthy shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That left real dents.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

But I also naturally assumed that Michael X created that term. It just felt like so idiosyncratic, right, that this came with this book. Absolutely not. And I want to read a quote from the Yogapedia now, which, as far as I'm aware, is a completely reliable source on this sort of thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Lifetrons is an English word coined by 20th century guru and yogi Paramahasa Yogananda to describe the vital life force known by the Sanskrit name prana. He described lifetrons as intelligent life energy in the body. According to Yogananda, the building blocks of life, atoms, come from electrons and protons, which themselves are created from lifetrons.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Lifetrons come from thoughtrons of the infinite.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Imbalances in the Lifetrons lead to physical, spiritual, and emotional illness. For healing, Yogananda said, the yogi invokes God's help to correct the imbalances. Wait, so... That sounds good to me.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

This is not a robust mallet either. YouTube, great quality.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I think a Lifetron is a kind of quark. That's like I'm not great at this kind of stuff, but that's how I would interpret it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I think they come from thought trons of the infinite. So the infinite has thought trons, which produce life trons, which are the building blocks of electrons and protons.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Neutrons are not discussed.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That may not be a part of yogic science. They do not descend from the thought trons. As far as I can tell. Okay. I got to say Paramhasa Yogananda is a guy. He is a dude. Was a dude. He is super dead. Oh, he died in 1952. Yeah, he's dead as hell. This man was born in 1890 S3.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Props are critical.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Oh, this is the autobiography of a yogi guy. Yeah, no, this is the dude Steve Jobs was obsessed with his book, right? This is one of Elvis Presley's favorite books. This is the guy who started the US yoga craze in a lot of major ways.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yes, Steve Jobs had strong opinions about Thoughtrons. Steve Jobs was a Lifetron guy. Wait, didn't he die from only eating fruit? He sure did, Molly. We have Steve Jobs read the book in our hands. There's no way when he got cancer, Steve didn't think, thank God I know about Venusian medical science.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I think there's a solid argument that Valiant Thor and Michael X. Barton murdered Steve Jobs. Wow. See, this is a really relevant Behind the Bastards episodes. We are getting very behind some of these bastards. We're making discoveries.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Mm-hmm. So I should also note that when I looked up Lifetrons, I also found a link to a company called Lifetronic Systems. They do energy efficient home automation. It does not appear to have anything to do with anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Hey, that's great. I'm immune to all problems, except for I'm actually fighting something. So I've got a cough right now. I'm not immune to anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They're safe. I'm not going to say they're safe because that whole industry is full of fucking untrustworthy companies. I'm not saying they are in any legally actionable way. I've seen Smart House. I am saying picture. Get a different name, guys. Get a different name. You're stealing from the yogi who got Steve Jobs killed indirectly. Although, actually, I support that. Keep using the name.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Convince. Can we convince Bezos to eat only fruit when he gets sick?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Look, I'd eat a cooked iguana. They're tasty.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

People need to eat more reptile meat. It's delicious. And there's lots of iguanas in Florida. When a good body part breaks part one.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I'm going to come out with my own book saying that like, uh, fucking what's a good planet. Uh, Mercury, the Mercurians contacted me psychically through my Bluetooth headset and convinced me that the real way to end aging is iguana meat, right? Have you ever seen an old iguana? No, because they don't age. You eat their meat, you're immortal. Boom.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Well, Neptunian medical science is decades behind the Mercurians, Molly. Everyone knows that. The best way I know of to relay to you the life-giving health secrets of the Venusians so that you will be able to apply them most effectively in your own life is by telling you of a certain remarkable experience.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Jim Lindy, a good friend of mine who I have known through many years, was the nucleus around which this most unusual experience revolved. It was through my knowing Jim and wholeheartedly responding to his sincere and desperate call for help that I was plunged into a tremendous New Age adventure with the space people of Venus. Capitalize every word of that sentence, Molly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It's a terrible intro, Sophie, because I had a great lead in where I was talking about how like this is like in the start of Fifth Element where Aziz is using the mirror to direct light to the guy looking at the hieroglyphs because the aliens that keep coming back to guide humanity were back. And today we are talking about aliens that have been guiding humanity forever.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah. He knew Jim since 53 when they formed the Interplanetary Contact Group in Washington State, which is absolutely a real thing. I actually looked this organization up. Because our author works with Jim in Washington for a while. They have a lot of people working together to try to make interplanetary contact kind of on an ad hoc basis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And then our author moves down to California to – you have to read between the lines here. But he seems to live on a farm with one or more women who provide his food for him. How many more? Unclear. Molly, unclear. He only mentions the one. The number of women is actually really important to me. Maybe just one. Unclear. I will say –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I don't know how to rate this because he talks about the woman who is specifically preparing his food that he doesn't talk about like a wife, but does talk about with a degree of intimacy. And he lets us know that she's old, but doesn't look it, which is better than the reverse, which would be she's very young, but old in her spirit. Right. Which is what I am.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Whenever I am reading the account of a guy who lives in the woods and talks about UFOs, I'm waiting for the 15 year old girl. Right. Because every one of them. I've had this happen to me in real life once in Mount Shasta, actually, where I'm sure this guy lived, where a lot of these people live. I'm like hanging out.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

My partner at the time and I are just like wandering through a fucking farmer's market. And we meet this guy who takes us back to his farmhouse. You know, we're bullshitting and stuff. He's got a whole wall of Bud K swords. And then this fucking like 16, 17, very unclear. No one says he doesn't like she and he won't say her age. I don't really know what was going on to this day.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

We fucking booked it. I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I was very young and very dumb at this point. This is you have to you have to learn these things by doing them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Well, yeah, don't actually follow absolutely none of my life advice, kids. Yes. Yeah, that's the best life advice I can give you. So, in fact, follow all of my life advice.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Now we're stuck in a quandary. So I looked into this because I was like, oh, shit, I wonder if this organization is still around. The Interplanetary Contact Group seems like the kind of thing where there might still be like one elderly man like keeping a mailing list going after all of his friends died.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, but I did find out about something called the Interplanetary Networking Special Interest Group, IPN-SIG. Networking. It is a U.S. 5013C nonprofit organization affiliated with the Internet Society that is trying to figure out how to make an interplanetary Internet with the idea that like at some point in the future we'll need that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I think it might actually be just like serious nerds trying to think through something that might one day be a thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It is a book episode, everybody. Huzzah. Huzzah. Praise be. And it's a book episode that is getting, we're not getting into this QAnon shit. We're going behind those bastards.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I'm glad that that moon that moon colony is not lasting long. Look, anyway, back to when a good body breaks. So he bounces. He's away from his friend Jim for a while, but he keeps in touch. They show up at the same conferences, and then he stops seeing Jim so much, right? He's not really hanging around.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Now, he does note of his friend, Jim Lindy was by nature a spiritually progressive individual, open-minded to the nth degree, yet by no manner of means could he be considered in the least gullible. He had seen several UFOs himself in the night skies and had been filled with awe and wonderment at the sight.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

A gullible man would never feel wonder at the sight of a UFO. Maul, that's obscene. How dare you suggest such a thing? What would Will Riker say? He'd be too busy trying to figure out how to sit down backwards in my complicated chair. On one occasion, a brilliant glowing object of huge proportions was sighted in the sky near the vicinity of his own home.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It circled the area twice, and then with amazing acceleration, the bright object climbed straight upward several thousand feet and headed in the direction of the horizon at unbelievable speed. Jim was so profoundly impressed by what he had been permitted to witness—no saucer sighting happens by accident—

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That he determined to do all within his power to find out more about the unique and marvelously intelligent beings who make their home on worlds far distant from this earth. So...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Stop. Can you meet me? Stop. Urgently important matter. Stop. Jim Lindy. I just find that nice. So I guess he's living outside of L.A. I'm guessing somewhere near like I'm guessing Calabasas or like Santa Monica, the coast, maybe the palace. Actually, probably any of the places that have burned down aside from Altadena. Good chance is where this guy was living, like almost certainly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And we are talking about a set of myths and a couple of specific authors who were at the very beginning, the beautiful, hopeful birth of the UFO movement, which today is filled with a lot of people who are just basically Nazis. But back in the day, it was a lot of fun. Molly, you remember the good UFO movement, don't you? Back when it was pure. It was pure. It was beautiful.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So he drives to the airport. He picks his friend up and his friend looks like shit. Right. And his friend is like, look, man, I'm a physical wreck. My health's been on a downhill to bog and slide. I'm losing hope. You know, I've been to all the doctors. My stomach's acting up. No one can do anything. I'm burning all of my money on these medical treatments that don't do anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And, you know, it's bad, right? Like I'm fucked up and I think I'm dying. He needs fruit. He needs fruit, right? So this is the conversation that happens after his friend like bears a soul to him and is like, yeah, I'm fucked up. The doctors can't help me. I'm losing hope.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You've overlooked one important avenue of help, I said, as I turned my car off the freeway and headed for my apartment in the suburbs. I glanced quickly at Jim and noted a glint of hope in his eye. What do you mean? The space people, I said bluntly.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Of course, of course. You've seen the saucers, just as I have. I know you believe the spacecraft are controlled by intelligent beings from outer space who must be far wiser than the majority of doctors on Earth. So... You know, this is when our author reveals that he's been in contact with some Venusians, right? He actually, he's not just like bringing this up for no reason.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He has two very good friends amongst the Venusians, Lanzara and Shalana of Venus. These advanced human beings, for such they were, had long ago graduated from Earth to the planet Venus and are actively engaged in two fields of service.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

One, they hold important positions in the Lifetronic Healing Center on Venus, Lanzara being a master healer and Shalana being his most valuable assistant in the great work. Two, they have a limited number of all-caps, new-age students living on our planet Earth with whom they are in frequent contact by telepathy and other means.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Thus, a network of key individuals comprised of men and women in various fields of human service on Earth are secretly instructed by the Venusians, who become their cosmic teachers. And by releasing certain higher phases of knowledge to the key men and women of Earth at times, as that knowledge is most needed, the masters of Venus assist in greatly lessening the sufferer of Earth's humanity.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So, it all sounds good to me, Molly. Do you want to suffer less?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And it is very 50s too, where it's like even these ascended human beings living on Venus, like the woman's still got to be the helper. I noticed that. She's still got to be helping, right? She's not a healer.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

But not from the patriarchy. No, no, no. Again, you got to get to, fuck, what was the planet I named a second ago?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Mercury. They have left the patriarchy behind.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, they've graduated from gender. They're really racist against Italians. It is weird. It is like 1870s stuff. I do not understand it. One of the last to go. One of the last to go. Speaking of... Not speaking of racist against Italians, but speaking of going, it's about time for us to go. Molly, you got any pluggables to plug before we end part one?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, your show is downstream. I just talked about how these kind of weird little guys were kind of annihilated as a culture, and largely they were replaced by your kind of weird little guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Guys that want to annihilate all of us.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, and watch the movie Annihilation. Or don't. I'm actually kind of mid on that film. I've never seen it. Yeah, it's okay. I think the book's better. I haven't read the book. I don't know what I'm talking about. Don't listen to me. Go to hell. I love you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I got reminded of that of that special time that special time and place. And by place, it's like Taos, New Mexico, Mount Shasta, California, and a couple of other small desert and or Pacific Northwest towns. Yeah. But a friend of mine went down to a small town. This person is a public figure, so I am fine talking about them in their Airbnb.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

We're opening this bad boy.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

But I don't want to give too much detail because people, you know, be creeping. But they were at a small town in Northern California. And they texted me from it saying, I think this Airbnb is owned by a cult. And then three minutes later, I think the cult might be Nazis. Yeah. So many such cases. First off, I had a little just like sit down, went and bought a cigarette, smoked it just like.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So I'm the guy that like if my friends think they've stumbled into a Nazi trap house like that, I get the text. Like that's that's that's just and I know you're that you're that person for so many people. Molly, that's part of why I brought you in. I would say if I were to stumble into a Nazi trap house, I would start texting you and being like, Molly, Molly, I need some help.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

We're getting into this son of a bitch.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So I looked into it. And the good news is that I don't think they're Nazis. They just talk a lot about seeing Nazi UFOs, which was a thing in the 50s, 60s UFO movement. That does not mean that they are fascists. So that's the good part. And I told them after I looked into this, this fella whose books were strewn about the house.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They had a number of books strewn about the house that were specifically about Venusian space magic and Venusian medicine, by which I mean medicine and magic from Venus.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You know, you would think that, Molly, but actually there's been a long and proud history of people from Venus coming to the United States to deliver us, by some accounts, the iPhone. That was actually from a season of American Horror Story.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, not at all true. Men who look like extras from an early David Lynch movie are from Venus. It's entirely possible David Lynch himself was from Venus based on some of the photographs that I've got here. So I looked into this and she actually ordered a copy of one of the books that she found there. But as I was looking into it, I was like, I don't think these people are Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And I was like, so they might be harmless. And the next response I got from her was, do you want me to send you all the pictures the owner of this house has of himself with like 30 young white women in dresses? So... Immediately, we're back to, oh, OK, this this could be going in a bad direction again.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, you have been telling me that lie for quite some time. Where I'm like, you know what, Robert? I got to tell you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He absolutely did not. No, these are she said that every single corner of every room has has a crystal. And when I say a crystal, I'm not talking about like your friend who is in the crystals and buys like little ones that they keep in bags or like, you know, wear on their neck. I am talking like.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Crystals that cost thousands and thousands of dollars and are like four feet high, like every single room has these things in them. Oh, that's a whole market. Yeah. She took pictures of them. I remember seeing them. She now claims all of the pictures have disappeared from her phone. And I can only think of a supernatural explanation for this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It can't be something to do with uploading them to the wrong cloud service or whatever. This has to be the aliens. It was the aliens. It was the aliens.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Right, right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And we all know American Horror Story is, what's that term Alex Jones uses for media that's trying to prepare you for the truth?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Predictive programming, right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

A sword is not the ideal tool for this, but it works.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I do love that. That's like right up there with God hiding dinosaur bones to trick people. I gave you all the clues. I gave you all the clues. Why didn't you figure it out, Mr. Policeman? So one of the key people behind this, because the specific chunk of alien weirdos that we're talking with today, and this includes the guy who owned that house,

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

is people who either think they are from Venus, they are in contact with people from Venus, or people from Venus have come here in order to help us. And kind of the foundational member or the foundational figure in this movement is a fella named Valiant Thor.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Oh, Molly, you're going to love this. When I say looks like a guy from a David Lynch movie, I'm going to have to... I'm going to have to give you my screen here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, Able Danger. That's a good name. That's a good name. And again, so unlike actual spy names. So this is Valiant Thor. In, I believe, the 60s, he started showing up at UFO conventions, claiming to be a man from Venus with an IQ of 1,200. Wow. And first off, I got to say, the burden of proof is on people to convince me he is not from Venus, because look at that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, no mortal human could keep that much gel in their hair. It's simply not possible.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They did. But that is simply more dapper, Dan, that could fit on a human male scalp.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He does look a little like Gavin Newsom. Yeah. Have we checked out Gavin Newsom's birth certificate? Is he possibly from Venus?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

But look at that man. He's got a pocket square. He does look like he just stepped off of, like, the fucking... Oh, what's that Highway David Lynch movie Garrison keeps showing me? Um...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Blue Velvet. Let's say Blue Velvet. There's some Blue Velvet guy in this guy's look. I'm sure David Lynch was familiar with the story of Valiant Thor.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Absolutely not. Your hundredth or your thousandth? Chances are you do. And we know you'll definitely remember your hundred thousandth subscriber. No, absolutely not. I have no idea how many of you people are. I have gone on to look at the comments exactly once, and I decided that if I continued to do that, I would in fact become the Joker.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And as a spoiler, one area or thing we're going to get into today that I'm excited about is what I am absolutely certain is a photo that inspired Jordan Peele to make the movie Nope or that helped to inspire was one of the one of the inspirations behind the movie Nope. So stay tuned for that, my friends. But first, so Valiant Thor is like the first of these guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And he claims like apparently to have landed. I'm actually going to read. This is from his Amazon author page because Valiant Thor wrote a frustrating number of books, Molly. Did you read them? I haven't read all of them. No, of course not. I have been reading bits and pieces of Valiant Thor lore since I was like 17 or 18. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

On March 16th, 1957, a strange craft landed in a farmer's field in Alexandria, Virginia. Local police arrived on scene with guns drawn, expecting the worst. They were surprised to find what appeared to be a dapper, unarmed man stepping out of the craft. They were even more surprised when the man telepathically asked to speak with the president.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Over the next few days, the visitor would meet with President Eisenhower deep within the Pentagon. According to valiant Thor, he was sent here by the Galactic Council to convince humanity to shy away from their use of nuclear weapons. Thor and his co-pilots Indrid Cold, Carlo Ardo, and Terry Wriste, which has in parentheses Demo Hassan.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I haven't looked into all of these names, but neither of those are real. Claim they hailed from the planet Venus. These Venusians were humanoid in appearance and were photographed at Gray Barker's UFO convention at Howard Manger's farm in 1958. So actually before the 60s. This is birth of the UFO. 47 is Roswell, right? And things take some time to spin up.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

This is the absolute proto-history of American conspiracism, right? We are at the foundations here. Thor convinced President Eisenhower to create a council against the use of nuclear weapons. However, the committee was repeatedly blocked by members of the CIA and DOD. Thor decided to switch gears and enlist the help of Barker in making contact with humans in all spheres of life.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

By building relationships with certain influential people and promoting those relationships through Barker and other publishers, Thor was finally able to put a stop to wanton nuclear testing. So if you're ever wondering why did we stop nuking Nevada, which the Heritage Foundation wants to start doing again, it was Valiant Thor. And he might come back, Molly. We might get this guy back to save us.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Who is named after the guy?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Molly, no, absolutely not.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So unless Prince Valiant was spelled differently, it's been a long time since I saw one of those cartoons. Now, if you're saying, Molly, this sounds great, Robert. Obviously, I want to believe that Valiant Thor saved the world from nuclear weapons. But hey, isn't this exactly the plot of the 1950s movie The Day the Earth Stood Still?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Oh, well, there's a movie that my dad made me see called The Day the Earth Stood Still. That's about an alien landing in D.C. and telling everyone, hey, I represent the Galactic Council, basically. And you guys really need to stop it with the fucking nukes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yes, absolutely. 1951, almost a decade before this. Yes.

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Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He absolutely did.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, the movie was preparing us for the arrival of Valiant Thor. So we would understand. So that obviously the most influential man in the United States in the 1950s, Gray Barker, who held the UFO convention in Howard Manger's farm, would be ready, would be mentally ready for Valiant Thor. Now. If you're someone who is still like, I don't know, feels like they just copied a movie.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Would it change your opinion on Valiant Thor to know that Paul Hellyer, who is a Canadian entrepreneur, politician, writer, the longest serving member of the Privy Council of Canada and the former national minister of national defense for Canada, says that he's real?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Number two, have a medical doctor or safety supervisor at the Troy facility at the time of Thomas' treatment. Number three, provide a licensed technician to perform the treatment. Number four, require Thomas to wear a grounding strap during his treatment. None of this was done. Ultimately, both the facility safety director and the CEO of the company were charged with negligence.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The CEO, Tamela Peterson, has to go down as the most irresponsible single individual in this story when it became clear that this five-year-old had died in her center. Detectives showed up because a five-year-old burnt to death, right? You're going to send some detectives in. And she immediately flees the scene and takes her laptop to her young son and tells him to scrub it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So thankfully, again, the youth these days, not great with computers. Her kid doesn't really know how to scrub a laptop. And so it doesn't get scrubbed. And I'm going to quote from an article by the Detroit Free Press here. Still, police found electronic messages on Peterson's devices, said Detective Danielle Trigger.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Great name for a detective, by the way, including an exchange in which Peterson sent photos of the boy's burning body and wrote something to the effect of, if my leg was on fire, I would at least try to hit it and put it out. He just laid there and did nothing. She is roasting a dying five-year-old with pictures of his corpse.

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Lock this lady up. Also, Danielle Trigger, that's like an airport mystery novel series character, Dave. That can't be a real detective scene.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It is very funny. Like, if you are Danielle Trigger, you just kind of have to become a detective. Like, you try to be a beat cop, and they're just like, no, no, no. You're going right to murders. Take off that uniform. You are putting on a trench coat.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Peterson's messages also show that when she was asked whether the company was promoting hyperbaric chambers to treat erectile dysfunction, she responded, whatever gets bodies in those chambers, LOL.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

What the fuck, lady? So... This is the story that got me looking into the stuff that led to the writing of this episode. We're going to be going back in time from this point, but I wanted to start kind of at the end because we're going to explain why this is a thing, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Why there is such an industry for quack medicine like this that promises to deal with whatever learning disability or condition your child has by giving them dangerous, absolutely scientifically unverifiable interventions.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And if I had to name the root cause of all of this, it would be the fact that autism has, for the most of the time that it has been in use as a diagnostic term, been considered like a disease, right? Like an illness and generally a life-ruining one, right? And I need to separate here the diagnostic term autism from what we know today as autism because they're very different things.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

As I said in our episodes, we did some episodes on a guy named Bruno Bettelheim, who was a pioneer pioneering quack in the child development and child abuse fields in the 30s and 40s. Every child who didn't behave in accordance with the desires of adults at the time was labeled as autistic. Now, there were other labels that they used.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The term psychotic and schizophrenic were used interchangeably with autism and diagnoses of kids. who had basically any kind of behavioral issue up until the 1980s, which is when we started to gain a better understanding of what those terms mean.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And like you will hear childhood like psychosis used interchangeably with autism a bunch in the mid-century. And the actual facts of the matter is that what we now call autism, we know actually makes you less likely to develop schizophrenia, although we really don't know why, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's just kind of like the data suggests that people who have been diagnosed with autism have lower rates of schizophrenia than kind of the general population. But it shows how off base people were about the basics of this stuff for a very long time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And you could view the change that occurred in the 1980s as broadly positive, which is autism stops being seen as basically childhood psychosis and starts being seen as a disorder of development. So it's no longer being treated as a psychiatric illness, which means the parents of these kids start to deal with a lot less stigma.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And the fact that there was stigma to begin with does go back to our friend Bruno Bettelheim, who had argued that quote unquote refrigerator moms, cold mothers caused autism. Like if your mom isn't nice enough to you, that's how you get autism. Not the truth.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But this also goes back deeper to Sigmund and Anna Freud, who had posited a view of mental illness that often blamed the actions of the parents for most problems in children, right? Yeah. In other words, they weren't seeing a lot of this as like genetic, as just kind of structural or chemical. They were seeing this as your mom or dad fuck up. And so you wind up with whatever illness, right?

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And so there was a deep stigma if you were a parent with a kid who had any kind of developmental disorder or illness that you had done something to cause it, right? Which is obviously very bad for parents and not any better for children. Right.

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One of the results of this is that once stuff starts to change, this first generation of parents who are starting to get closer to correct diagnoses when their kids get diagnosed with autism. Also, we're generally raised in a culture where parents have usually been blamed for what happened to their kids in this way. And that's starting to change.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But they still have this deeply rooted desire to prove I'm not why this happened. Right. It's a huge part of the story that we're going to tell.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the we're going to talk about that. And it's also just the fact that at this point in time, when kids get diagnosed with autism, they are generally people. They're generally kids who they, number one, have other things going on. There are different kinds of developmental disorders and even physical disabilities that sometimes happen alongside autism.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's like not necessarily a causative effect, but like they're correlated. And most people who we would understand today as having autism aren't being diagnosed with it, right? Because most people who have autism are generally able to still live independent, normal lives. Yeah, super functional. But most people who are getting diagnosed with it these days aren't.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So there's also that attitude that like this is a life ruiner, right? That's how a lot of – and I'm not – Saying anything bad about like people who do have more severe disorders or that like life ruining is a good way to talk about that. But that's how people are talking about it in this period of time. So there's both this stigma and this incredible fear around it. And there's also this attitude.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It started to change the idea that the parent has to be to blame. But there's still this very American attitude that someone has to be to blame. Right. And all of these different factors are the real root of the biomedical movement that brings us in the 21st century to RFK Jr. and that five-year-old kid burning to death in a hyperbaric tube.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And I think I should also state here that increasing numbers of people do not think it's responsible or good to talk about autism as a disability or as like a disorder. It's just kind of a way people are. And I tend to think there's a lot to that attitude.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But again, part of the issue is that a lot of the people getting diagnosed in this period of time have other stuff going on and have a lot of very severe problems. When I was working in special ed, all of our kids were just described to me as kids with autism. But they were all – they all had a lot of severe issues.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I'm not just – and I'm talking about like a lot of them were quadriplegics because of birth defects. A lot of them had like a lack of oxygen to the brain. And so these were kids who – I mean we dealt with grand mal seizures every single day. These were kids who were often very sick and often in a lot of pain.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And that is a lot – to a lot of people's understanding at the time just what autism is, right? Which is not accurate, right? One of the things that we have learned over the years – When I was teaching, and this is close to 20 years ago, I think the understanding was that something like a third of people with autism had average or above average IQs.

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Every few years, that number has leapt up to the point that now it looks like 60% or more. I'm sure it's basically the same distribution as the normal population. And I'm not trying to reduce everything to IQ.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But again, initially, the people getting diagnosed and so our understanding of what autism is, is deeply skewed by the fact that most people who have it are just sort of like still living in like not getting a diagnosis and going about their day. Right. The fact of the matter is that like David Byrne and David Lynch were never formally diagnosed with autism.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that is happening right now to your ears. There's nothing you can do about it except for like turn off your phone or your headset, but don't do that. Listen to these great episodes that we have with my good friend, Mengesh. Mengesh, welcome to the program.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I think that's, again, increasingly the way it's seen today and probably the right way to look at it is that it's a different way of being a person. It's not the same way everyone is, but it's not an inherently bad or deleterious thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's just you're different, and so there are different ways that you're going to interact with and view the world and different things that are going to work when we're talking about educating people. with autism. And again, our understanding of this is still very much developing, but it's in a very primitive state in the 80s and 90s, right?

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Now, people do know Asperger's syndrome is a topic of discussion by this time in like the 80s and such. And so there is an understanding that like some of these kids are like, you know, it's this idea that like some of them get superpowers, right? Which is not really an accurate way to view it. But like some, we do know that like there are

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

People with autism who are like super high, like highly intelligent and capable in specific areas. But the general understanding, if you get this, is that your kid is never going to live a quote unquote normal life, right? That's how people talk about it. So if you're keeping track, in the late 80s and early 90s, you got a couple of things coming together.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

You have a generation of parents who are still used to and traumatized by the thought of being blamed for their kid's condition, who are also used to seeing autism depicted as a fate worse than death. Feeding into this complex churn is the fact that as the term autism grows to encompass more people, it loses what author and doctor Michael Fitzpatrick describes as a sense of coherence.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Michael wrote a great book about the biomedical movement titled Defeating Autism, A Damaging Delusion. And in it, he writes... The autistic spectrum stretched from children who were nonverbal to severely disabled to those who were of high intelligence but behaved strangely and had no friends.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The spectrum included children with Rett syndrome, a neurodegenerative disorder with an identified genetic cause, with fairly superficial similarities to autism. It also included children with atypical autism, or in the USA, pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified, a label that merely exposed the incoherence of the diagnostic framework.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

As one authority commented, any classification system that includes atypical versions of one entity as a separate diagnosable entity all its own has to be next to useless as the basis for scientific progress. Which is a really good point. There's this thing, and also the opposite is also the thing. It's like, yeah, maybe we didn't have it right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Maybe that's not a super useful term to be describing this as. Stuff like this is a moving target, and it's both worth acknowledging the harm that the fact that this is deeply incomplete and fucked up has on a lot of kids and parents at this time, and also, well, you were never going to get this right straight away. Yeah. So the confusion here is the final ingredient to what comes next.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The unorthodox biomedical movement, which is how Fitzpatrick describes this movement that kind of terminates in that five-year-old in the tube, starts with parents who are angry and shocked that their kids are, as they see it, broken. And they're also angry and scared of the thought of being blamed themselves.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The clinical definition is flawed, and this produces the opportunity for them to question it, starting with a rejection of the idea that autism is, quote, purely genetic. Now, if you remember, guys like Bettelheim had argued for years that autism was caused by refrigerator moms, while science had increasingly come to the conclusion that the roots of autism were largely genetic.

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Mango's here. Mango, you used to work at the company that we currently work at, and now you're independent. You're a pirate, you know, flying your own flag in the middle of the sea, but the sea is podcasts.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Now, no one ever argued that was the whole story. And in fact, an interesting thing about autism is that identical twins – in cases of identical twins – Both only have autism about 90% of the time, which means there's some degree of, and when we say environment, that means something other than genetics that's playing a role, right? Fitzpatrick succinctly summarizes what happened next.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The biomedical activists emphasize environmental rather than the constitutional factors in the causation of autism, which they insist is a biomedical, metabolic, or immune system disorder. While some activists seek to redefine autism as a form of mercury poisoning or as the result of some process of vaccine injury, others regard it as primarily a gastroenterological disorder.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

They reject the focus of the autism mainstream on genetic research, demanding the redeployment of funds into the study of putative environmental factors. And some of this is like a pride thing where they're like, if it's genetic, that means it's my fault again, which is like not how you should look at that. But people do too often.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And yeah, so we're going to be focusing on like the bastards and the quack experts kind of at the core of this movement. But we're also going to talk about a lot of these activists. I don't want to act like that's the only division happening here, though.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

From the flawed state of affairs in the early 1990s, you also have – like that's not the only thing happening within kind of the community of people with autism. In the early 1990s, you start to have the first neurodiversity activists.

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And these are people like Jim Sinclair who was a man with autism who wrote in 1993 this kind of very beautiful piece in which he talked about like I understand why parents might mourn not having the child they had expected to have. But then he went on to write, quote –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

We need and deserve families who can see us and value us for ourselves, not families whose vision of us is obscured by the ghosts of children who never lived. Grieve if you must for your own lost dreams, but don't mourn for us. We are alive, we are real, and we're here waiting for you.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And, yeah, we're not going to talk about that side of the story enough because this is a podcast about bad people. But I thought it would be an error not to include that deeply affected quote. That's really beautiful, actually.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Right. And trying to fix them, that they're not actually –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's this thing that happens and it's the so much of the root of the modern fascist movement is like the parental rights movement quote unquote which is really just people who want to have this ancient Roman understanding of like I get to choose exactly who my kid becomes and no you don't. No one ever has. That's not how people are.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

If you're going to have a kid, you really need to accept that they're just going to do whatever.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

You cannot make them into a specific... Generally, you can make sure that they're not a murderer or a horrible criminal. That's really your goal, is making sure they have empathy and the ability to understand how to survive in the world.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Come on now. So we're not anyway, we're not going to be talking about the Jim Sinclair's and like the neurodiversity movement nearly enough in here. But I wanted to kind of bring that side of it into this because it would be irresponsible not to. Now, let's get back to the cranks. But first. But first, it was not a crank. Our sponsors.

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Our boss friend.

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Oh, we're back. Boy, I love that hyperbaric chamberette. I was thinking these things were death traps until they said 15% off. Wear whatever the fuck you want. Let's go. And use the coupon code.

Behind the Bastards

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Polyester. Yeah. One of the first and most important organizations in this history is the Autism Research Institute, which was founded in 1967. And through its long life has effectively been a couple of different kinds of organization. But in its early days, at the start, it was founded by a doctor named Bernard Rimland.

Behind the Bastards

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Rimland was a research psychologist with a son who was diagnosed with autism back in like the 50s, right? When it was blamed on cold and distant refrigerator moms. Now- Rimland is not a sympathetic character in this story. He's a bad guy, but he comes from a sympathetic start, which is that his son gets diagnosed with autism, which is blamed on the mom being cold.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And he's like, that's not my wife, right? Like this is not on her. And he's right. It's not on his wife. She runs hot. Yeah, she was a loving mother, I'm sure. And so he comes to the very reasonable belief that like, well, obviously this doesn't explain autism. We're wrong about what this is.

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Unfortunately, he decides that autism is caused by biomechanical issues triggered by what he termed environmental assaults. And this is the core of the anti-vax movement, right? This is the birth of it. Before they're really even focusing as much on that, just this understanding that this is something environmental has fucked with my kid, and that's why they've got this, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

That's where it all starts. And Rimland is a big anti-vax guy, but that's like the origin of it. Now, again, in the initial era, 67, he's not being a crank for theorizing this because we don't know anything, right? And some of his observations are accurate. The issue is that Rimland continued to hold to his belief about environmental contagions long after the evidence put light to that.

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What we're going to what we're going to talk about today is not something that will make you feel good.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

In between serving as the technical advisor on the 1988 film Rain Man, he concluded that vaccines were the, quote, prime suspect as the cause of autism due to the inclusion of a mercury-based preservative known as theomersol. So, again, this is the Rain Man guy. Yeah, yeah. Wow. In 1995, the Autism Research Institute launched a program known as Defeat Autism Now!

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Or just Dan with an exclamation point. That exclamation point is critical. It's always used in there and autocorrect. What's me to have the next word be a new sentence, which is very annoying for me.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So Dan's goal is to put together parents with physicians and researchers to collectively explore new treatments and cures with the ultimate goal of defeating autism, a condition that cannot be defeated because, again, it's just the way they are. I am not going to make that point every time this comes up, but I do feel the need to emphasize it here at the jump.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So Dan is the tumor which would eventually metastasize into our entire fantasy medicine industrial complex, which itself is a major booster and contributor to the modern fascist movement. You can tie the presidency of Donald Trump directly to this organization and the things that inculcated in our society.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah. We're going to talk about the history of quack snake oil cures that kill children in an attempt to cure them of autism. Oh, my gosh. I'm not laughing at that. That's horrible, which is why we're talking about it. But it's such a fucked up thing to be like, hello, good friend.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So the physicians who are interested in Dan were not, as a rule, people in the... I don't know how else to pronounce it.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So the physicians who were interested, and Dan, were not, as a rule, people of the prime of their career, functioning within their chief area of medical competence. A doctor is not a doctor, right? It's one of those things, if you've got a doctor who specializes in heart surgery, he could be a great heart surgeon. He probably knows how to deliver a baby, like, intellectually.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But he wouldn't be your first choice, you know?

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Because medicine's a big field. Again, a guy whose specialty is, like, your urinary tract, you might not want, like, examining your eyes because he's not an optometrist. Not his specialty. But with stuff like this, they function on pot doctor rules, which is, hey, did you age out? Are you retired? Are you tired of being like a family practitioner or whatever? Come into this field.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Say you're an autism expert. Now you'll get called a hero for prescribing anything and you can keep getting money for not actually doing any work. Right now. Yeah. When young medical professionals who have some actual relevant expertise get involved, it's generally because they have kids who get diagnosed with autism, right?

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And so some of these people are like psychotherapists, psychiatrists and stuff like that. There are some neurologists who get involved in this. But for the most part, it's like older doctors who are kind of aging out of the profession and looking for a grift, you know? Yeah. Again, we should have kept the pot doctor system going as like just a way to keep these people off the streets, right?

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's like a boys and girls club for old doctors. No, no, no. Let them give out pot prescriptions. It's the farm up north. Yeah. So these experts are not mostly doctors, though. And in fact, among the most influential of them is former school teacher Sue Palmer, author of the book Toxic Childhood, published in 2006.

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And she is one of the first people to look at this massive surge in diagnoses of autism, ADHD and other conditions, not as evidence that we were beginning to understand these conditions and thus correctly recognized how many people had them, but that there had been a, quote, special needs explosion that must have been caused by an environmental factor.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

she believes it's either junk food or video games generally, right? There's different theories people have. Palmer is one of the first experts who lumps autism in with ADHD as well as dyspraxia, dyslexia, and several other learning disorders. And again, this is why I started with the story. That kid is not diagnosed with autism and burns to death. He's diagnosed with ADHD.

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But that is a death related to this movement that is sparked by fear of autism, right? Because they just start lumping in with every other thing that we're now diagnosing properly more often because they think, wow, so many more kids have this. Right, right. Probably about the same amount have it who always have. We just know what it is now.

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Another biomedical practitioner, Kenneth Bach, lumped autism and ADHD together with asthma and allergies and labeled them the four A disorders. In both cases, what these people are doing, these experts are doing is mixing autism with things that aren't autism in a way that allows practitioners to make the case that there's been an explosion in what they term developmental disorders.

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It looks even more stark if you're lumping all of these things together as the same kind of thing, right? Yeah. And thus, they can make the cases that there's a crisis that only bold experimental medicine like they happen to be selling can treat, right? Yeah.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

10,000 words of some of the bleakest shit you've ever heard is about to be coming your way. Congrats. Oh, no. Thanks for showing up this week. I can't wait.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

In other words, by mixing all these things together, they're creating a grouping of potential clients that include basically every parent, because almost every parent is going to have a kid who has one of these things, right? That is incredible.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah. It's like if you're a mechanic and you're like... Yeah, you know, I deal with, I got this great way of fixing busted tires and also, you know, bad spark plugs, fucked up transmissions.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

That's amazing. Though everybody is considered to be at risk from environmental dangers, campaigners believe that children are more vulnerable than adults and that babies are the most vulnerable of all. And this is a quick aside because mercury is probably the most common thing people blame for this. They took that mercury-based preservative out of vaccines in like 2001.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Rates of autism diagnoses continued to rise after we stopped because it wasn't doing anything. It has nothing to do with the vaccines. We're just getting better at diagnosing it. All of human history has been filled with people with autism. We just didn't call it that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

No, it's also like chemicals are bad, but also I'll shoot whatever into my kid. If a doctor, if a fake doctor says it'll treat their autism, it's like you're scared of vaccines and you're putting these other shit in your baby.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I know, I know. Now, I think this all kind of helps to explain why that little boy with ADHD dying in a hyperbaric chamber is relevant this episode. It's unclear when hyperbaric therapy first started gaining popularity as an autism treatment, but by the late 90s to the early 2000s, it was well underway as a practice among biomedical experts. That's when they start doing this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Now, the most fucked up part of all of this is that hyperbaric therapy is less dangerous than a lot of the treatments that get prescribed because there are some potential negative consequences when it's done properly, right? You can have some issues with it because it's super pressurized, but generally people are fine after hyperbaric therapy, right? If it's done properly, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

This is not true of a lot of the drug-based treatment regimens that develop over the years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's a nightmare. I know Brian Johnson, that Live Forever guy, does hyperbaric shit, and fine. He's in his late 40s. He's got $500 million. He gets to make that choice. Adults, if you want to put yourself in the death chamber and potentially burn to death, I don't give a fuck. Do it, right? I think people should be allowed to do heroin if they want to.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Don't put your five-year-old in these things. They can't make that choice. I know. I know. So the first of these autism drug remedies that really takes hold is known by the incredibly sus name secretant. Now, secretin is a real thing. It's not like some made up bullshit. It's a hormone that stimulates the secretion of digestive fluids from the pancreas. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's an and giving people that hormone can be useful for a number of things. Part of why they're there and it's legitimate researchers who think, well, this might be helpful in treating some of the things that are correlated with autism, because people with autism often have a number of different GI tract issues. Right. It's very common.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I don't know that I don't think we really know why, because, again, we don't we really have a still to this day. We don't know very much about autism compared to like what we would like to know. But this is a thing. And so the idea that like, OK, well, this hormone that stimulates digestive fluids from the pancreas that might help with some of these side issues, not an unreasonable point. Right.

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Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So they carry out a test because there's, I think, a mom who gives some of this to her kid and she claims a pretty dramatic effect. So they they bring in like two other kids and they do like an initial study on this stuff. And again, just three kids. And this is an unblinded study. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So everyone getting the drug knows they're getting the drug, both the researchers and the people getting it, which is like. Again, if you're kind of just exploring initially, you shouldn't base anything on this. If things had been done properly and they'd done this first one, okay, maybe we need to do a blinded study now, which does actually happen.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

If that's all that had happened, I'd say, yeah, nothing wrong here. You do this first thing that shows there might be something to look into. You do a better study with more kids that's blinded next, whatever.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Unfortunately, the media being what it is, always looking for a story, and there being a lot of parents with kids who are interested in this, immediately run with the whole, there's been a miracle cure found, right? As soon as this unblinded study comes out. And the biomedical treatment activists in Dan believe that they're dealing with a calamity.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

To them, autism is a disaster that is severe and time sensitive. If you don't really get to fixing this in your kid by the time they're three or four, you have a ticking clock and they're just going to be fucked forever. So you really have to jump out. You can't wait for science. And so our friend, Dr. Rimland, who's the founder of Dan, takes out a patent on secretin.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Before any other studies are done.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Sorry.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

He takes out a patent on this hormone as an autism treatment, and he sells it to a company called Repligen. Again, so many evil pharma names.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And all of these people are like, the pharma industry is evil, but not Repligen. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I don't know, man. That's a name I trust. His bullishness on this hormone is based entirely on one mom, this lady, Victoria Beck, who claims that her child shows dramatic improvement with secretin, such improvement that Dr. Rimland describes secretin as the most important development in the history of autism.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Months later, in the summer of 1999, Secretan makes its way over to the United Kingdom, where TV news crews film a boy with autism before and after Secretan injections, showing dramatic change. Now, UK media is not alone in this behavior, as writer Nancy Shute notes in a piece for Scientific American.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Media outlets, including Good Morning America and Ladies Home Journal, recounted parents' joyous tales of children's transformed behavior. Now, as is always the case with this, that video was facilitated by a shady clinic offering a lot of trendy bullshit medicine, right? That kid who gets filmed is provided with secretin by this clinic that sells nonsense drugs.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Per Fitzpatrick's book, this course was provided by a private GP who also offered treatments for jet lag, chronic fatigue, and aging at a cost of 1,500 pounds. Oh, wow. So this is just like, is this thing not regulated yet? Absolutely. We'll shoot it into your what? 1,500 bucks. Take it. Hand me your kid. I'll shoot him with whatever.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I think that's different nonsense drugs. Oh, I see. So, unfortunately for secretin advocates, within six months, a double-blind study of 60 children had come to very different conclusions. Secretin was, at best, useless. This was not, at least for... treating autism. This was not enough to immediately kill the industry, however, as Nancy Shute writes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

By May 2005, five randomized clinical trials had failed to provide to reveal any benefit and interest in secret and waned. It took years for that to play out, says pediatrician Susan Levy, who helped conduct several of the trials. Research is very labor intensive and progress may be slow. Parents may feel helpless, she adds, and they don't want to leave any stone unturned.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And there's like a kind of weird tragedy of commons thing here, which is like if your kid gets diagnosed with the thing that we don't understand well how to help with or even what it is, you may be best just like loving them and trying to help them.

Behind the Bastards

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figure out life and waiting for the science to to figure stuff out because the alternative is you do what these parents do which is just you shooting random crap into your child and I get there it's it's this one of the biggest problems in like emergency situations is

Behind the Bastards

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Obviously, there's the issue of people just not do the bystander effect, but there's also this issue of people feeling like I have to do something and then making the problem worse. When you're trained in emergency medicine, one of the first pieces of training is like, don't just jump in there.

Behind the Bastards

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You need to evaluate the scene because the worst thing you can do is try to go be a hero and add a casualty to the situation, right? Oh, my God. This is why you get a downed power line. The whole family dies rushing to save one person because the stress of not doing anything, which is sometimes the best thing to do, is really hard. That's what's going on psychologically here too.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

By the point that we are at now, there have been more than a dozen double-blind studies that all repeatedly made the same case. Secretin just doesn't work this way. Science and the sheer ineffectiveness of secretin has eventually brought it to – I don't think it's entirely extinct, but it's not as common as it once was.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But obviously, a lot of children are drugged, and thankfully, the side effects of this aren't as bad as the next thing we're going to talk about. But their parents are robbed blind, right? This is not cheap. Michael Fitzpatrick, himself a physician, writes this.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

One day in surgery, the mother of a boy with autism told me that she had spent the equivalent of his disability living allowance for one year on a course of secreted injections provided at a Harley Street clinic.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

For a single parent reliant on benefits, the outcome of this encounter with a biomedical practitioner was not only disappointment when the miracle cure failed, but financial hardship for the whole family. And obviously these people don't care. They're laughing all the way to the bank. They don't give a shit if any of this works.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

That's horrifying. And it's going to get worse because, again, at least Secreton doesn't seem to really fuck people up too much, right? It's just kind of useless. But the next thing is not just that. You know what doesn't have any hype to it because it's just that good? Our ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

All right, everybody, we're back. So while these studies are accumulating and the hype over secretin is dying down, the con men offering cures to desperate damn parents spun up a new strategy for interventions. They had long believed that mercury poisoning was a root cause of autism.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So of course, the logical place to look for a potential cure was treatments that could reduce the amount of heavy metals in a child's blood, right? If it's metals that are causing it, Why don't we look at ways to strip heavy metals from somebody's system, right? And there is a way to do that. It's called chelation therapy, right? Like hyperbaric therapy, this is real medicine.

Behind the Bastards

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If you have like lead poisoning, for example, chelation therapy can do a lot of good for you, you know? And it's basically- There's a couple of different drugs that could do this, but you dose people with a drug and it converts the lead, the mercury, and other heavy metals that are in their body into less dangerous compounds that you kind of pee out, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So it's great if you're like a miner who has heavy metal exposure, you know? Sure, sure. But very few children really do because we don't let them work in mines anymore. Give the Republicans a year. We'll get back to it. That was the first mistake. Kids with autism very rarely have massive lead levels, you know? Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And if they do, it generally doesn't have anything to do with their autism. It's because they grew up in, like, Flint, Michigan, right? And maybe then they do need chelation therapy. Some kids do, unfortunately.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah. It's not slander. It's just a fact.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Well, they might need some chelation therapy. I don't know. I won't ask. Chelation is great if you've got heavy metal exposure, right? But if you don't, it's harmful because the process of like pulling all of these metals out of... Because we all have heavy metals in us all the time, right? Yeah, of course. Trace levels, it's fine, right? It's fine. Sometimes, in some cases, you need them.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But in other cases, it's just fine, right? Teeny tiny bit of mercury, very normal. Ask people who eat a lot of fish, right? But... So if you're doing this, this has an impact on your body. This is a drug that has a pretty profound effect on you, and that means it does bad stuff. And if you have way too much lead or whatever in you, it's worth that cost, right?

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Because the lead is going to cause problems. But if you don't have any problems that are caused by heavy metals, you're going to hurt yourself with this shit for no reason.

Behind the Bastards

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Now, before we get into the use of chelation for autism, I wanted to start with, I didn't see this in other articles on chelation therapy, but I found a 2009 piece in Slate by Arthur Allen that talks about the starting point of chelation as a snake oil cure, and it does start before autism. Quote, Well, before it was used for autism.

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Quote, chelation therapy became a craze in the 1980s as a treatment for atherosclerosis in adults. Proponents claimed patients were being harmed by mercury from their fillings. Dentists used this as an excuse to pull teeth and even remove jawbones from their patients. Boyd Haley, a University of Kentucky chemist, was the high priest of the amalgam wars.

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When the thimerosal theory emerged on the scene, Haley and other chelationists shifted their focus to autistic children. So again, these are people who are like, yeah, let's get with these crank dentists. Let's start pulling teeth and jaws out of people, giving them chelation therapy. It's your fillings. And then like that kind of dies.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But then suddenly they see people blaming, you know, mercury for autism. And they're like, guys, we got a new grift. Move on over here. Move on over here. These parents aren't looking for shit. So in the year 2000, this was still a fairly small number. It was fairly uncommon for children with autism to undergo chelation therapy.

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And at least you got to assume some of the small number of kids with autism actually had heavy metal exposure that was unrelated, but might have actually needed chelation. By 2005, there were more than 10,000 children with autism in the US regularly undergoing chelation therapy. Almost none of them had any reason to do so.

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Yeah. And this is like a five-year period of time from a handful to 10,000.

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On a regular basis. So unlike secretin, chelation therapy involved dosing children with an extraordinarily powerful drug that had dangerous side effects. Chelation can cause kidney failure, especially if administered in IV form, which is exactly what most biomedical experts advised when treating autism. The standard of care, you only really use IV if you have to. You have other ways.

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There's like pills. I think there's creams that are less harsh on your body. And you can generally do that with people who just have heavy metal exposure. For a variety of reasons, including to get more money from it, these guys are like, no, you got to do an IV, right? Which we know is the most dangerous way to do this. Yeah.

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Chelation therapy can also cause heart problems, which again is why you don't take this unless you have to. One person who absolutely did not need chelation therapy was Abu Bakar Tariq Nadama, age five. He was the son of a physician in Britain who had been diagnosed with autism, Tariq had been. Tariq's family described him as a happy and energetic boy.

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But despite this, they also searched desperately to cure him, eventually subjecting him to 10 different kinds of quack medical therapy, including hyperbaric chambers. Now, Fitzpatrick makes this incredibly important note when he writes about this in his book. Quote,

Behind the Bastards

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This is characteristic of the unorthodox biomedical approach, which recommends a wide range of interventions, which are often pursued simultaneously. This makes any judgment of which treatment may be working or causing adverse effects impossible. And again, it's one of those things. You're a parent. You're terrified. You want everything. Give them everything.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But like, that's not how medicine works. If you give them everything, you don't know what's working or not, right? There's a reason why you're like, well, we're going to try one thing. We'll see what happens. Then we'll try another, you know, because otherwise it's not satisfying, but you just can't do it any other way, right?

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Yeah, this is real science happening. It's just more dangerous for your, again, small child. Oh, my God. Now, none of these interventions are based in sound medical science. or any scientists at all, science at all, and they don't work. So Tariq's family, as they're trying, they're putting them in hyperbaric chambers and shit, they continue to shop around for experts in diagnoses.

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And eventually they find themselves leaving the UK, crossing the pond to seek treatment in the United States, which is how they wind up seeking out Dr. Anju Usman, director of the True Health Medical Center in Naperville, Illinois. Now, Dr. Usman happily diagnosed Tariq with heavy metal poisoning. Specifically, she blamed his case of autism on very high aluminum levels.

Behind the Bastards

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Now, actual blood tests didn't support this. He had low levels of iron. He did have a slightly elevated lead level, although we'll talk about why. It's not because he necessarily had... normally a high lead level. There's no evidence that his aluminum levels were raised at all.

Behind the Bastards

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We don't really know why she came to this conclusion, but still he was prescribed an extensive series of chelation treatments, which would ultimately end in his death.

Behind the Bastards

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Now, Dr. Anju Usman is the still to this day, as far as I can tell, the director of the True Health Medical Center, which brags on its website to have provided integrative and biomedical treatments that enhance traditional medical care since 2003.

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Her bio on the website says that she got her degree from Indiana University Medical School and carried out a residency at a family practice in Cook County Hospital, Chicago. She writes, during residency, I had my first daughter who had severe food allergies and asthma. My second daughter, who was born shortly after, was diagnosed with juvenile-onset diabetes.

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My third daughter had chemical sensibilities to environmental substances like cleaning agents, perfumes, pesticides, and synthetic clothing. Even with my extensive education and training, I felt ill-equipped to handle their medical issues. I began questioning my role as a physician and healer. Now, that's obviously a difficult situation. I was a sick kid with horrible asthma.

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I have sympathy for that. It's scary, right? She claims this experience as a mother led her to shift her attention to treating the underlying cause of the disorders rather than the symptoms. And again, she talks about her extensive education. None of it is in doing this. Being a family practitioner does not treat like teach you how to secure asthma. You know, that's just not how it works.

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Yeah, yeah. That's that's like, you know, I'm I'm an expert race car driver, which is how I know how to drive an 18 wheeler for 37 hours.

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So, you know, I want to start this by saying we're talking about like autism, quote unquote, cures. There's no way to cure autism, which I think is the thing we now understand is like a condition. It's a way some people are, but it is treated often still as a disease that needs to be eradicated as if it's like a plague.

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There's maybe some ways in which they correlate. But honestly, I would prefer a truck driver do that job. She worked as an alternative health clinic called the Pfeiffer Medical Center in Warrenville, which was named after Carl Pfeiffer, a researcher who the CIA had paid to carry out LSD mind control studies as part of MKUltra. So great namesake for the Pfeiffer's Medical Center.

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Cool. I will say Dr. Usman's children's allergies were more significant even than she writes on her bio for the center. And I'm not blaming her for that. I understand why. Because her three daughters all suffered severe allergic disorders. One had conjunctivitis so bad it caused cellulitis in her eyes.

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And her eldest daughter, Priya, died in 2003, two years before Tariq came to her clinic after an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts. So what we've got here is a legitimately traumatized mother who was trained in medical science, but like not the kind she's going to be practicing. And she can't really accept that sometimes horrible things happen to your kids. And that sucks.

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So she goes on a crusade after concluding that aluminum toxicity causes everything from allergies to autism.

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Yeah, I think that's kind of what's going on here. It kind of comes from a good place. It comes from like, I understand how you got here, but you are just going to... compound harm, you know?

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Get as many bodies in these chambers. Although actually she has a, she's got a sketchy history with hyperbaric chambers. We'll talk about that. So, Usman was a member of Dan, and a fellow Dan doctor, Kenneth Bach, agreed with her about aluminum.

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He has noted that he's disappointed that she hasn't really published much of anything about her findings on aluminum, which I suspect is because there aren't any.

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In a bio for her clinic, Dr. Usman engages in common biomedical practitioner tactics of lumping every issue she can name together and insinuating, hey, these all might be caused by the same environmental toxin, which in her case is aluminum poisoning. Aluminum.

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I wanted to know more about why my children and so many other children and adults in epidemic proportions are suffering from chronic degenerative autoimmune disorders such as asthma, allergies, arthritis, diabetes, OCD, mood disorders, attention deficit disorder, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders. Now, like a lot of these people, Dr. Usman considers ADHD to be part of the autism spectrum.

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And again, mainstream medical science doesn't really feel this way. On True Medical's website, she provides us with a clear idea of how she and her peers view people with autism. Quote, the mission in opening True Health Medical Center came from my journey to help my own children with these chronic disorders to lead productive and healthy lives.

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This simple dream has been shattered for so many families, right? It's again, this idea... Nobody with autism, no kid can ever live like a happy life. And like, I don't know, maybe if you weren't drugging them more would. I don't know if Tariq Nadama would have ever been productive in like the capitalist sense of the word. But again, his family described him as a happy, energetic child.

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And a lot of harm comes from kind of the discrepancy between the reality of the situation and how a great deal of people see it. And this week we're going to talk about the specifically the grifters, a group called the biomedical movement, which is these are all people who are adjacent to guys like Andrew Wakefield.

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So at least that was in the cards for him until quack biomedical treatments killed him. As I explained last episode, Dr. Usman had diagnosed him with heavy metal toxicity, despite there being very little evidence that we have that that was the case.

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Now, one widespread belief among parents in this community is that by the time a kid is three or four, you don't have much time to reverse the damage that they believe causes autism. So time is of the essence, which is why you have this shotgun approach to extreme therapies.

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One of my sources for these episodes was a Chicago Tribune article, which quotes Dan, affiliated pediatrician, Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, when she testified before federal court that, quote, we feel some urgency that we can't wait for 10 or 20 years. And that urgency is what leads to treatments like this.

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So Dr. Usman recommends Tariq undergo EDTA therapy, which is like that's a specific type of drug you could do chelation with. The treatment is administered by a different doctor at the center named Roy Carey. Roy is, again, a retired ENT surgeon. So none of this is within what you'd call his wheelhouse. In 2005, Dr. Carey was 68. He was not yet a listed Dan practitioner.

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He did, the year after Tariq died, complete the intensive eight-hour training necessary to get that requirement. So that's good. Tariq was his first time administering chelation therapy to a child with autism. Now, Dr. Usman's website includes this very friendly photo of her looking like a lovely, competent family doctor.

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And I want you to see this picture that she puts on her website as I read this description of the therapy that she endorsed and that Dr. Carey carried out on young Tariq. I'm going to quote from Michael Fitzpatrick's book here. Tariq's records indicate that to administer an intravenous infusion, he had to be restrained by at least four adults using a papoose board.

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This device is a flat wooden board with attached fabric straps which are wrapped around the child's body and limbs to prevent struggling during treatment. It was obviously impossible to restrain Tariq for the period of several hours generally recommended for the chelation infusion.

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Hence, in contravention of specific cautions issued by the manufacturer, Tariq, suitably restrained, received this medication over five to ten minutes in a rapid IV push. So they are strapping him to a board, holding him down. And instead of, again, the safest ways, like do a pill or a cream, the least safe way is an IV.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But when you're even doing an IV, it should take hours because you don't want to do this too fast. They are shotgunning hours worth of medication into his body, his five-year-old body in five to ten minutes while he's strapped to a board. So we have known for a long time that this is bad, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

They're all people who sell different kinds of like chelation therapy and shit, all sorts of different like treatments and cures. They call them interventions. And ultimately, the impact of all of this stuff is that it poisons a lot of children. Oh, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Doing EDTA, even if you do it properly, people can develop irregular heart rhythms and have seizures or even die. This is why the standard of care is a slow IV infusion. But because this kid doesn't like being strapped to a board and shot up with drugs, they do the most dangerous version of the thing. And he undergoes this three times. Tariq finally dies after his third infusion.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Dr. Carey wasn't even in the room. He gets bored and he leaves it up to another doctor and a nurse to do this. He gets bored of the short procedure? He doesn't describe it as getting bored. That's my editorializing. But, like, he doesn't want to be there, you know? He's 68, whatever. He's on a boat or some shit. Per his medical records, Tariq's released during a subsequent lawsuit.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

During the IV push, Tariq's mother, Marwa Nadama, said that something was wrong. Dr. Mark Lewis took Tariq's vitals and then Tariq went limp. Nurse Teresa Bicker called 911 and helped with CPR while the ambulance was en route. Tariq was taken by ambulance to Butler Regional Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Like the fact that there's a doctor and a nurse there, but like, they're not doing what they should be. Yeah. Yeah. If you had anyone whose expertise was in chelation therapy, they'd be like, what the fuck are you doing? This isn't how we do it. If you're going to give him this, don't give him this. But if you are like him a pill, fuck. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So a forensic pathologist later identified Turek's cause of death as diffuse acute cerebral hypoxic ischemic injury and sub-endocardial myocardial necrosis. Carey was ultimately charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

He surrendered his medical license in 2008, but the charges were dropped, although in the summer of 2009, his license was suspended for six months over the incident, and he was placed on a two-year probation. So... That's where we're ending part one.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

How else do you fucking, I don't know. Deal with this. It's awful.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah, it does. I really knew that that was going to be a load bearing part of getting people through these episodes.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So the inciting incident for me working on these episodes, maybe you heard about this story, Mangesh, is on January 31st, a five-year-old child suffering from ADHD and sleep apnea was admitted to the Oxford Center in the Detroit suburb of Troy for treatment. Now, that name, the Oxford Center, sounds great, right? That sounds like a legitimate place of medical science, right? Yeah. Oxford?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Let's get the fuck out of here.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

We all know that's a good name. That means something real. Has nothing to do with the college. Has nothing to do with academics at all. It is instead a place where parents take their children to have unproven medical experiments conducted on them for profit. One of those experiments was the use of hyperbaric therapy to treat ADHD and sleep apnea. Now, to be very clear...

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

hyperbaric therapy is a thing it's a very real medical thing right like i think it got its start in use basically it's like pressure pressurizing and oxygenating uh like an area a room or in in the case of what this kid was being put in a little glass tube but it starts with like if people diving and when you're diving particularly at like certain depths for too long you get like all of these gases building up in your blood and if you like surface even if you're doing it slowly

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

There's a certain point which you can't surface on your own slowly enough to like have that stuff dissipate and not fuck you up. So you go into a hyperbaric chamber and it basically purges.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Essentials. This is like people who are doing like very deep sea, like when they're welding at the bottom of like oil rigs and stuff. That's one of the things you use this for. But they found there's other things hyperbaric chambers are great for, actually, over the years.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Because it forces so much oxygen into your tissues, there are people who have certain kind of injuries that won't heal. People with diabetes often can get injuries in their feet that don't heal. A hyperbaric chamber can force the healing process to start, basically.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And there's some discussion that there may be some benefits there. That's when we get more into the snake oil, right? Because much of what hyperbaric chambers use for is not the stuff where it's proven to help. Again, there's maybe some sports medicine benefits to it. And there's stuff like if you have radiation injuries, hyperbaric chambers can help. So there are some real –

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

This is actually a very powerful therapy for certain proven things. However, there's no evidence that it does anything for ADHD or sleep apnea. Zero. Oh, man. Just not things that it helps with. But there's this widespread belief that comes out of this biomedical movement for trying to treat and cure autism that hyperbaric chambers are useful for that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And I know I said this kid has ADHD and sleep apnea. Kind of the gist of the story that we'll be telling is an awful lot of these same people believe ADHD is another type of autism, which is not the mainstream scientific consensus.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But that is part of why this gets lumped in. And it gets lumped in because you can then sell hyperbaric therapy to more people with kids, right? Sure, sure. So again, hyperbaric chamber is pretty cool, but they're not useful for the problems that this five-year-old kid, Thomas Cooper, had.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And because the Oxford Center existed to take money from parents with kids who had autism and other stuff going on, they didn't really care about scientific rigor or even basic safety protocol. So here's the thing about doing a therapy like this. You have essentially like 100% oxygen, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Now, do you remember, Mangesh, what happened to that Apollo mission that back when they were using 100% O2 inside of the spacecraft?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It caught on fire on the inside and everyone died a horrible death. Yeah. Now, there's a way to deal with this, right? Because there's a part of the benefit of a hyperbaric chamber when it's useful is how much oxygen there is in there and the way that the pressure works with that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But when you have this much oxygen, you have to take a lot of weird precautions to make sure that everyone inside the chamber doesn't get incinerated. So among other things, if you're in a properly run hyperbaric chamber, you are going to be only wearing like cotton fabric, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Because wool and polyester can cause extremely tiny sparks when it rubs against other fabrics or whatever in such an environment. And normally you don't notice that, but the smallest spark can cause an explosive fire that instantly burns you to death, right? That's insane.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The other thing that you do if you're putting someone in this, in addition to making sure they're wearing the right fabric, is you put a grounding thing on their wrist, right? If you've ever built computers out of parts, you've used one of these, and it's to stop you from a static discharge, from fucking up this very precious machinery that you're putting inside of a box. Right. Mm-hmm.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And so at one point he turned over and there was a spark and his entire body immediately ignited. And the hyperbaric chamber he was in was a small glass tube, just big enough for a person's body. So he had no move. There's no escaping. There's no way to get out. He's just in a tube of glass on fire. His mom, who's sitting nearby, there's no medical professionals nearby, tries to break him out.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Wait, no medical professionals nearby? No, of course not. Of course not. Again- This isn't a medical procedure, really. You know, it should be, but that's not how they're treating.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah. So his mom is sitting nearby and she tries to break into this contraption and suffers third degree burns to her arms trying to save her little boy. Her lawyer later said, it's literally the worst thing any parent could experience. And poor Thomas, his last moments of life were being engulfed in flames and perishing in front of his mother. He was certainly aware of what was going on.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And yeah, the kid dies.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

As an aside, every time this happens, the person dies there. This is a hundred percent fatality rate problem when it's in a chamber this small. If you're in like a much bigger chamber, there's like some ways to that you could potentially escape. But when a fire happened, when this kind of fire happens, this kind of condition, people don't live. Right. Like that's just that's just the way it is.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

No, of course not. Not nearly as much money. People do this as many times as you can get them to pay.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I think this was the first time for this kid, but I'm not actually certain of that.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

No, there's usually someone, generally like a retired doctor. It's kind of like getting a pot prescription used to be where like, you've got some guy who's not really, you know, he used to be a fucking ENT doctor and he doesn't do that anymore, but he like signed some paperwork, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Those were the days, my friend. Venice Beach. So Michigan, which is where this happens, had no rules at the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah. And there were absolutely no rules about how hyperbaric chambers had to be maintained when you were doing stuff. There's absolutely no standards. But the government does come in. They find out that the Oxford Center had old machines that were way past the date in which they would have needed to be refurbished to operate safely.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And to make matters worse, there's like a – because these are devices where people die if they're not working properly, there is a life cycle indicator that tells you how many times it's been used. So you know if it has to be refurbished before further use. And they had illegally dialed back that number. Like you do – like used cars. Dealers do on a car. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part One: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But on the death chamber that burns children alive. Wow. Further investigation by the authorities found per this USA Today article, quote, the Oxford Center staff failed to meet the following safety standards on the day of Thomas's death. Number one, conduct his daily maintenance check and pre-dive safety check.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

There are numerous cases of women who visited his compound and were raped or assaulted and say that they went there because they saw him on the Oprah Winfrey show. And specifically, they saw Dr. Oz tell Oprah Winfrey that he couldn't explain the miraculous healings this man was responsible for.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, I'm not going to say more about John of God or Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil because we have done two part episodes on all three of these guys, none of whom would have obviously there's specifically John of God was like. In Brazil, a famous faith healer and assaulting people, he would not have become an international star without Oprah. And I don't think Dr. Like Dr. Oz probably just stays a surgeon.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Dr. Phil probably dies in a ditch. That's my guess for Dr. Phil is he dies in a ditch somewhere in rural Texas. If Oprah doesn't pick him up.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That's the star power she has. Just listen to Dr. Oz speak. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing stuff. So we're not going to go into more detail on them. But I should note, we have never, ever had a bastard who is responsible for three different two-parter episodes on other bastards, or at least largely responsible. That should be a mark in the column.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yes. Yes. And I think that really is the way to look at it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I think there's a back, I'm sure there's a degree to which both of those people, particularly Dr. Phil being as, Dr. Phil's a pretty manipulative person, I would argue. And I think he just understood how to make her like him and manipulate her. Dr. Oz has a legitimate thing that would make you like him and want to put him in front of people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It is not unreasonable at the start of things that you'd be like, well, this guy's literally one of the best heart surgeons who's ever lived. Maybe he'd be a good person to talk about public health. Turns out, no. Turns out absolutely not. But I understand how that process starts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, obviously, there was ample evidence, especially during the shot of God shit, that he was not, in fact, a good person to be doing that with. But I don't think the evil is not in that she initially was like, well, maybe the world's best heart surgeon is a good guy to talk about health. Right. I get I get how that starts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

With Dr. Phil, it's more like this guy made me feel good about myself during a lawsuit. Let's let him abuse teenagers on television for 20 years. But again, we're not going to say any more about these guys because we've said so much about them. But I did feel like we have to go into detail about one of Oprah's toxic bastards, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

One of the con men that she elevated to the public eye who we haven't done episodes on. And that's going to bring us to James Ray. Right. Born in 1957, Ray was a former telemarketer who got into the business of teaching motivational seminars to corporations.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

He was not an original dude and instead worked for Stephen Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, teaching Stephen Covey's particular flavor of self-help bullshit to car salesmen and the like. Or, at least, Ray claims that he worked for Stephen Covey. There is no actual evidence of this, and Ray is a serial liar, so it's entirely possible he just made that up for clout.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Ray started his own motivational speaking business, and it did okay. Okay, it's not huge. It's not really overwhelmingly successful, probably because he's not super successful himself. He is not rich and famous. So he's like telling people how to get rich, but like he didn't do it. Ray is like a lot of these guys. There's very little to separate him from the herd at this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

He's an advocate of the law of attraction. which we've talked about a few times in these episodes. This is the bullshit belief underpinning the secret. Whatever good or bad things happen to you happen because you drew them to yourself. Like a lot of guys in this space, he mixed in buzzwords from quantum physics because of course he's like a big, also a big masculine guy, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So as a masculine guy, you can't just be like... You can't just be like this is the – you can't do the wooey version of this, right? You have to say this is quantum physics, right? I'm talking about science to you. And so he would rope in buzzwords from quantum physics to try to convince mild skeptics that what he was selling was in fact science.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

In one interview, he said this about personal responsibility. I fully know for me that there is no blame. Every single thing is your responsibility and nothing is your fault because every single thing that comes to you is a gift, a lesson. Now, you think that could like...

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

be bad i mean i love that nothing is my fault angle like that i really connect with that uh yeah um there's gonna be a very uh interesting thing that becomes his fault uh in the near future here uh so yeah i i think that's probably a good idea um for him to be selling at this point, given where he winds up.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

His motivational seminars involved board breaking and trust falls, all of which was done without proper medical staff present, which is why prior to him getting famous, several people were badly injured during his events, at least one time at Walt Disney World. In 2005, a 42-year-old man was hospitalized after Ray made him exercise in a poorly built sweat lodge.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So this is all happening before he winds up on the Oprah Winfrey show. Now, what gets him on the show is that he is one of several narrators for the 2006 documentary The Secret, which is what gets him on the Oprah Winfrey show. Oprah lavished praise on Ray and urged her viewers to sign up for his courses and listen to his wisdom. Many did.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And he goes in short order from a failing motivational speaker with several lawsuits against him to the hottest thing in town.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

You know, I think some of it is just that at this point, he's just another motivational speaker. And it looks like he's attached to the successful project. He probably had a good rapport with Oprah. All you really assume at that point is like, OK, well, maybe this will work. Right. Like, yeah, this guy's probably someone smart to have on.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I think a lot of the, a lot of cases it is like literally they charmed me for like five minutes. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But that's not 0% of cool zones business, right? That's just the way entertainment works now, you know? Yeah. Take that what you will. So let's go to ads and then we'll come back and talk about what happens next in the James Ray story.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

We're back. So I want to read a quote from the New York Times about kind of the explosion in Ray's business after this, because he goes from, again, a middling figure, not a ton of money, not super successful to for a while, like the biggest name in self-help or at least like the biggest new name in self-help.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Quote, he offered a hierarchy of courses, each more expensive than the last, culminating in Spiritual Warrior, a $10,000 retreat near Sedona, Arizona. After a series of endurance exercises, including extended fasting, participants spent hours in a sweat lodge where temperatures soared above 150 degrees.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Mr. Ray presented Spiritual Warrior several times, and some past participants had raised questions about whether he or his staff members had sufficient training to run a sweat lodge. They probably didn't, right? Oh, no, they didn't, Bridget. I'm going to tell you right now, if there's a fucking white guy running a sweat lodge, he does not have sufficient training.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That's just a rule in sweat lodges or white lady. Let's be fair.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

When you are in the able to cook meat spectrum, people. Yeah. And again, sweat lodges, and I'm not competent to talk about this exhaustively, but there's a long history in several Native American traditions of use of sweat lodges. And they can be – have been part of like therapeutic treatments run by people who know what they are doing. I'm not saying there's – sweat lodges are inherently bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

James does not know what he's doing. And he is not – utilizing this as part of an actual therapeutic thing. He is sticking people in a hot room because it's unpleasant and he wants to make them do something incredibly unpleasant and physically straining because when you do that with a group of people and you have this dangerous, painful physical experience and then you get out of it,

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

On the other side of it, you feel bonded to those people and to the program, right? Yeah. That's why he's doing this. And when you use a thing like that that way, your concern is that they suffer, right? Yeah. And not that we're doing this in a way that is safe or going to like have a therapeutic benefit. It's that this is as intense an experience as possible.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And in fact, he would brag about it when he does his big sweat lodge event on October 8th, 2009 for a group of people, each paying 10 grand for the spiritual warrior seminar. The guy, he brags to the group. That he just talked to the guy stoking the fire, setting it with good intentions.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Part of it is he's got to really think about positive intentions for your experience to help make sure it is a good one. And this is the hottest fire we've ever had. Make them feel special, right? Make them feel like they're getting this uniquely intense, life-changing experience. They did get that. You know, I got to say, it is a uniquely intense, life changing experience for all of them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Twenty one of the people in that sweat lodge are hospitalized and three of them die. When first responders show up, one compares what he saw to, quote, the site of a mass suicide.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Let's talk about Oprah's Angel Network. Now, this was Oprah's primary vehicle for charitable, I mean, she also has her own personal foundation. This was her primary vehicle, certainly for educational-focused charitable donations during the height of her fame.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. You're like if your meat is cooked to one fifty in the center, you're pretty little dry. Pretty much good.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Mm hmm. So this is very bad. You're not supposed to kill multiple people in a single sweat lodge. You're not supposed to ever kill people in your sweat lodge. These are overwhelmingly not old people. There's a podcast called Guru on Wondery that is just about Rey and goes into detail about this. One of the women who dies is, I think, like 39 years old. And it's like the story you hear a lot.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

this is a woman who's like career ambitions hadn't really worked out and she didn't really have a clear idea of like what she wanted to do. And so she gets into a lot of this self-help type stuff. She sees James on the Oprah Winfrey show. She has the same attitude of a lot of people that like, well, if Oprah says this guy's good, he must be. She gets his books.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She drops tens of thousands of dollars on courses. And then eventually all of her savings on this spiritual warrior weekend that fucking kills her. Um,

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, yeah. And Ray is the epitome of that. And of course, as soon as he kills a bunch of people, Oprah distances herself from him. He does not show back up. And by God, at least last time I checked, I couldn't find good clips of him on Oprah's show. A lot of that stuff gets... Let's get this shit out of here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, I mean, it's all rights claims and stuff, you know? Yeah. So he is charged and convicted. He spends some time in prison. Oprah, obviously, nothing happens to her. She does not stop putting self-help gurus on her show or stop encouraging new age experimental alternative medicine.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It got its start in 1994 when a little girl named Nora went on the Oprah Winfrey Show to talk about what was called the Penny Harvest Project. Apparently, she and some other kids had started collecting pennies and eventually raised like $1,000 via taking in pennies to donate to some different charitable organizations.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Uh, I do want to listen to something that I didn't have in the script, but I just came across it and maybe we'll try seeing this video. This is something that James Ray posted after getting out of prison, uh, called be careful what you wish for. Um, so I'm just gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the wheel here, Sophie. Insights into success. Be the best you can be. I love that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Be the best you can be. This man killed three people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Also, I have to say before we start this, James Arthur Ray, it is one of those three-word names. That's a very serial killer-y.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, he was always doomed to it, although not a bad fit on the suit. Anyway.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I love how long it takes him to get to like, so we had a sweat lodge and I killed three people. Oh my God. It's also, there's a masterclass here. And like this guy hospitalized almost two dozen people and killed three. And he immediately is like, as soon as I get out, I'm going to write a book about redemption. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I'm going to have like, this is, I'm just going to pivot this to being about my, my success journey. And like, I thought I was at the top, but you know, I didn't realize what fate had around the corner when I accidentally killed three people at a sweat lodge. This is just one of those curveballs life senses sometimes, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Sometimes you're just out there living your life, trying to do your best, and you get three people killed in a sweat lodge. It happens.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

He is a really, really Wolf Blitzer-looking motherfucker. Yeah. That's how I would describe him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And Oprah says this inspired her to wonder, if you could do that, I wonder what I could do. And like, well, the answer is you have hundreds of millions of dollars, Oprah, much more than some children collecting pennies. I'm glad you think it this way, but obviously the answer is you could raise a lot more money. I do think it's-

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I was involved in an accident.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I crashed my car. I hit a kid with my, you know, total accident. They darted into traffic. No, no, no. No, no, no. You engineered a situation that was definitely going to kill people because you didn't know what the fuck you were doing and had lost your mind with arrogance and belief in your own power.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So this does not stop Oprah from putting self-help gurus on her show or encouraging new experimental alternative medicine again. She puts Ray on in 2006. He kills people in 2009. The John of God episodes air, I think, after that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So it's good stuff. In my research, I came across an article by Jean Brown, the sister of Kirby Brown, who died in that sweat lodge. Jean and her family started a nonprofit, SEEK, S-E-E-K, all caps, SAFELY, focused on trying to establish protections and guardrails for the self-help industry. letter to Winfrey. You helped make this sham of a man what he was.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

In fact, it was after seeing him on your show that my sister Kirby Brown read The Secret and became a fan of James Ray. I remember when we were together for my wedding at my parents' house in July of 2009, three months before she'd die of heat stroke in a plastic tent in Arizona. I remember Kirby telling me that I had to read this book, that it was amazing, that James Ray was amazing.

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that he'd been on Oprah and that she was looking forward to the Ray event she'd be attending a few months later. That's right. She mentioned you by name. And Brown is begging Oprah in this to speak up and use her incredibly powerful, unique platform to advocate for regulations to protect people from the predatory aspects of the self-help industry.

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To my knowledge, Oprah never took her up on this strident plea. And, yeah, that's a bummer.

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Yeah, it's pretty bleak. Now, I can't conclude a series on Oprah Winfrey without at some point discussing her infamous book club. And so that's what we're gonna do now. You get to talk about, we're not gonna keep doing that joke. I should say something about the car thing, probably.

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So she does this episode where she has like three people on who can't afford cars and the problems that causes in their life. And then they all find out they're getting brand new Pontiacs. and then gradually becomes clear everyone in the audience is getting a free new Pontiac. Now, two things.

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Number one, the specific, if you know anything about Pontiac, you know that that's a curse more than it's a blessing.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a cousin with a Firebird, and boy, howdy, was that thing a piece of shit. But also like these are, this was an advertising ploy in part. Pontiac pays for the cars. That's why they're free, right?

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But also the Oprah Winfrey show does not remember to like give the people money in addition to the cars because when you get given a car, there's like tax implications and everyone wound up owing like six grand as a result each for that car, which was like a big problem for a lot of people because these are folks who couldn't afford cars. Now-

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The way that Oprah.com puts it is like, Oprah was inspired by this little girl, but there's certainly a read of it that's like, oh, I could beat the hell out of that little kid. You think $1,000 is a lot? She shoves her off the fucking stage. So on September 18th, 1997, Oprah announces the launch of Oprah's Angel Network. The initial plan for this was to turn people's spare change.

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in terms of the bastard column, this was more of like a thing. They just didn't. Cause in the future, when she would give expensive gifts to people, the show would also give them checks to account for the tax burden. So I think this probably lands on just like, you weren't thinking about, this was like an ill thought out advertising ploy that worked pretty well for Pontiac.

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Although look at where Pontiac is today. It's still Pontiac.

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I mean, what's most funny to me is that the specific model of Pontiac has gone down as like one of the very worst cars ever made. So it really was like, you get a shitty car, you get a shitty car. And you owe 6K. And you owe six grand. Anyway, that's not really a bastard thing. It's just kind of funny. Let's talk about the book club.

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In September 1996, Oprah launched her book club as a regular feature on her show, making monthly picks and discussing them on air. Instantly, it became the largest and most influential book club on earth. Every single book club pick that she would make for... like 15 years or something, became a bestseller, every one of them. Some sold many millions of copies.

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I read a paper analyzing Oprah's literary choices by Alana Cullen of Salve Regina University, and Cullen quotes a scholar named Loftin as saying, Nearly every one of the novels she suggested for the original book club followed the same narrative trajectory. A woman, usually of a centric yet compelling character, experiences an enormous trauma.

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The remainder of the novel follows the woman as she manages the psychological, material, and social after-effects of the trauma. Usually the stories conclude on a neutral note. The central character is wiser for her experiences, though on the whole not entirely happy with the way her life is resolved.

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Obviously, Oprah believes this paradigmic plotline will not only resonate with her viewers, but also expresses a universal truth critical to her spiritual work. The suffering of women is universal, unabated, and endured only through solidarity with other women. And I don't read that because that's like evil or anything. That's just an analysis of the fiction picks.

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It's interesting to me that like, oh, okay, the fiction that you are drawn to is very much a mirror of your own life. Yeah, just an interesting thing. And Oprah does, in fact, pick a lot of good books, including some great works of classic literature that she helps to spread to a wider audience. Her book club is an extreme positive for the publishing industry as a whole.

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Now, when it comes to what is this net positive or negative for society, that's a little harder because in addition to some very good works of classic literature and just books that are fine that more people read and more people are reading because Oprah is a good example. There's also shit like a lot of poisonous stuff gets very famous.

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And I'm speaking here about The Secret, which we have, I think, discussed adequately, but also the infamous nonfiction book that turned out to be a fiction book, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. We all know this story. Maybe not you at home, but everyone sitting here does, right? Yeah. Did anyone read this fucker before it came out?

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My mom made me. She wanted to scare me away from drugs. And this is a book about this guy, like, and it's his crazy drug and alcohol life. And he goes to prison, loses all his teeth. It's like this fucked up addiction memoir of, you know, addiction and redemption. And it is just horseshit. It's complete lies.

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Basically, you donate your spare change, right? She has Hillary Clinton on the show. Hillary puts some change in a piggy bank. And this raises $3.5 million to provide $25,000 college scholarships for 150 deserving students. Oh, I'm sorry, kid. Is that more than a thousand dollars? Let me. Twenty five per kid. But no, no, no. Your donation's good. Oh, yeah. No, no. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

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Yep. Yeah, and it is like – bad fiction is a good way to look at it. Anthony Bourdain described it as an obvious, transparent, and steaming heap of falsehood. From the first page, I was enraged that anyone on earth would believe a word. As a former addict, I found this fake redemption memoir to be morally repugnant. You know, I remember thinking it sounded kind of cool.

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Like, oh, man, this guy had some fun adventures being on drugs and alcohol. Maybe I should be an addict as an adult. Didn't have a positive impact on me, you could say. While Frey's book spent – he spends – this is such a hit. Like, it's hard to over – like, books almost don't go viral the way A Million Little Pieces did. He spends 15 weeks on the bestseller list, which –

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It's huge for any author, especially one coming out of nowhere. And as soon as Ray is the top of the literary game, this guy goes mad with power. He starts – you can find like writings of his and like public comments he made attacking other authors like Dave Edgars and David Foster Wallace, calling them hacks and bragging that he was the best writer of his generation.

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Yeah. Journalists start after this book is on the market a while, like looking into some of the obvious provable lies in his book and pointing out stuff that like, well, you talk a lot about the time you spent in prison and like you didn't. Like you never got arrested or sentenced for a thing? Like you didn't do the thing that's like the centerpiece of your book?

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Is it possible other things are lies if this obvious provable thing is a lie? Now, when the allegations come out, Oprah initially defends him. And in fact, Oprah even calls into Larry King Live to describe the allegations against Frey as much ado about nothing. which is like a unique, and in part because like she's put her ego into backing this guy, right? Yeah.

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Like she called him brilliant and said his book was wonderful. If she got conned, that doesn't look good for the Oprah brand. Journalists kept pointing out inconvenient details and eventually the whole edifice of lies came crumbling down. Frey eventually admits like, I fictionalized large portions of this. Oprah was furious, and so she does the logical thing and has him back on her show.

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There's like three times she has him on after this. One of them is like extremely hostile where she is clearly like, oh, you are pissed. Like this guy made you look bad. But she also lets him like explain at length – like he goes on a rant at one point where he's like, well, all memoirs are kind of lies, right?

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Because people don't remember things – he's saying like the stuff we were saying at the start. We're like, well – Your past is to some extent like fiction, right? Because we all remember things that didn't happen or didn't happen that way, or our memory is different from the memory of other people who were there.

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He interprets that as, so it's fine if I just lie about my entire backstory and call it nonfiction, right? Which is a leap, maybe, I would say.

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Like what the fuck is happening? I mean, actually, today there is no fact checking. There still was a little bit back then. It's very much it's very, very rare in publishing to get functional fact checking these days. Those are some of the first jobs you eliminate when you're cutting costs. Newspapers are unfortunately the same thing.

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Um, there is some minimal fat, at least the last time I did a nonfiction book, which was 15 years ago, there was minimal fact checking, but it is mostly on the author. Right. Yeah. And I don't think they thought to fact check something like a memoir by this guy about his own experiences, even though there's stuff like his time in jail that would have been very easy to check.

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More to the point, Oprah continuing to have Frey on after he's exposed sells more copies of the book like it benefits him financially that she keeps having him on because people keep buying the goddamn thing.

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Very impressive. I mean, you know, I raised three and a half million with like the shit in my seat cushions. But, you know, you're good. You're good. Yeah. Oh, did you have the first lady come on to to help with your program? Oh, no, you didn't. You don't know the first lady. You don't have her on speed dial, huh? Oh, interesting. Oprah's not doing that. We're just being dicks.

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Cool stuff, Oprah. Cool stuff. Now, there were near calamities, too. In 2008, Oprah picked a Holocaust memoir as her book of the month.

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The book was called Misha, and it was the purported true story of the life of the author, Misha DiFonseca, who was a little Jewish girl during World War II, had to search Europe for her parents in the midst of the Holocaust, and was adopted and saved by Nazi murder by a pack of wolves. That is literally the claim that she makes in this memoir. Now- You guys want to hear something shocking?

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Didn't happen. Little Jewish girl was not, in fact, saved by a family of wolves during the Holocaust. In fact, Misha was not a little Jewish girl. She was raised Roman Catholic. She was not caught up in the Holocaust. This is just nonsense.

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Thankfully, Oprah was saved from plugging her novel because the truth came out at the 11th hour before the episode could air, so they had time to scrap the fucker, but very nearly got brought in on that one. That said, in 1996, she was conned by the author of a different Holocaust novel.

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Authors Herman and Roma Rosenblatt wrote a book titled Angel at the Fence about how Roman had saved Herman's life while he was interned at Buchenwald by throwing apples over the fence. Or Roma had saved his life by throwing apples over the fence. And that's how they'd met and fallen in love. And they'd been together ever since. Oprah called it the single greatest love story she'd ever heard.

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It was also total bullshit. Now, this was not revealed for more than a decade. So like this book goes out as her book of the month. A decade later, it comes out like they just lied. None of this happened. Oprah's response was basically a fart noise. She said she was disappointed, but refused to admit that she had been tricked.

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And I don't know how much deeper to get into the weeds with this stuff, right? Like when it comes to most of the harms of her book club, they kind of boil down to like, I don't think that her taste in books was always great, but that's a personal opinion. And then number two, and this is the big one. Jeez. She doesn't nobody really does.

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Very few people read enough that every month for like 20 years, you can recommend your favorite book of the month that you have actually read cover to cover. Some people do read them. I read that much because I have to. But like you're being pitched. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oprah's not reading that much. She's got too much to do.

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And so she's not actually like reading multiple books every month and picking her favorite because that's very hard to do. She's got a team of people who are picking books. And that leads to them making some very lazy picks that. that can elevate literature, especially when she's focusing on like literature from other countries. There's an element of that that could be problematic.

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And this is not something I would have picked up on on my own, but I had the good fortune during my research to come across an article by Rob Spillman, the editor of Tin House Magazine and the author of an anthology of contemporary African fiction titled Gods and Soldiers. And he made a complaint about Oprah's elevation of a book called Say You Are One of Them by Nigerian author Uwem Akpan. Quote,

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i i just want to say for the record i like the version of oprah that does that better than the version of oprah that exists she would be on margaret's uh cool people who did cool stuff if this had just been for 12 straight like literally like 20 years just shit talking this like seven year old like yeah you think that's fucking fancy 80 million dollars To be that petty.

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but with little added imagination. They have nothing of the power of Akpan's countrymen, Uzodinma Iweila's searing novel about a child soldier, Beasts of No Nation, or Senegalese author Bobokar Boris Diop's novel about the Rwandan genocide, Murambi, the Book of Bones. Akpan's writing is pedestrian and plodding, but that has never stopped Oprah before.

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I am sure Akpan, who is by all accounts a very nice person who is dedicated to doing good work in the world, will make for compelling daytime TV. It is just a shame that this one mediocre book is going to be put forward to stand for all of African fiction.

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No, they're Americans. Yeah. Like they don't need to know anything at all about Nigeria. Like, Yeah. What do you know? Like, OK, what's your last name? O'Malley. How much do you know about contemporary Irish politics? Oh, is it just St. Patrick's Day? Is that all you really know? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

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There's a way you could still be doing good as her by saying, hey, I'm going to pick this month. I've got this expert on Nigerian literature who put together this compilation of books, and he's going to talk about some Nigerian literature that you should read and recommend it to you. Again, that kind of takes the focus off of Oprah.

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This really is such a revealing novel about modern Nigeria, a place I've never been or read anything about other than this novel. Yeah. Yeah.

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yeah um anyway that's a thoughtful and complex critique i i don't know that you would again is this a bastard caller yeah probably a little bit here but it's also it's more than anything it's a reflection of the fact that even with someone as faith as famous as oprah tries to use fame in a good way to encourage reading which is generally positive there will always be negative externalities precisely because fame is a brute force

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And it is very hard to use in a way that doesn't cause spillover harm, right? That's the nature of fame. I've quoted a couple of times in these episodes from a paper by Alana Mullen of Salve Regina University. And that paper's title is salient to this point. Quote, despair disguised as entertainment.

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Does Oprah Winfrey sensationalize human suffering in order to fuel her media empire and encourage other media to follow? So the argument here is essentially that Oprah's content largely consists of a mix of horrific heart-rending stories of suffering meant to generate emotion that usually ends on an uplifting note where the subject somehow pulls themselves up by their bootstraps.

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So this is how the Angel Network starts, right? We're taking people's spare change. We're giving out college student scholarships to deserving students. But it starts to expand. You know, they get involved with like funding habitat for humanity and stuff like that. And in 2000, the Angel Network expands financially. Uh, thanks to Paul Newman, uh, of Newman's own, uh, as well as Jeff Bezos.

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This is augmented by segments on self-help featuring gurus and fitness experts who offer a mix of mental and physical exercises through which the individual might fix their problems.

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quote under the advice section of oh the oprah magazine after the reader reads the panic button martha beck on the only rational way to weather life's big and little snafus dr phil on getting along with the surly son-in-law and tips on raising a grandchild and sues orman on an oppressive load of debt a cramped house and a money squandering husband the reader finally comes to the journaling portion

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How are we all feeling, Andrew T. and Bridget Todd, at this point in the Oprah Winfrey story?

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Here, the reader is encouraged to write down her feelings about fear. It begins, at times, we all fear we're not good enough. Before you can convince yourself otherwise, you have to simply admit to yourself and no one else what you want. Then tell yourself, I am good enough. Say it until you believe it.

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The reader is given five questions and is asked to reflect on such things like how does your self-talk change when you're fearful? We must keep in mind who here, who Oprah's readers are. These are not children. These are middle class women with families and careers. I would argue that the childlike dialog Oprah exploits presents her audience with a simplistic discourse on suffering.

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Suffering is a powerful source of lessons and moral knowledge, and it should guide the individual. But what Oprah ends up doing is making suffering and the exploitation of your own suffering into a desirable and commonplace experience.

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And to an extent, it becomes that much of a thing because she does prove the market, right? Like, which isn't to say that she's morally responsible for everything that media has done since, but you do have to look at like the evolution that these things follow.

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Yeah, and this sort of... I mean, like, there's... Yeah, I think we've gone into that enough for these episodes. I just kind of... It's something I think about a lot because the nature of this podcast is talking about awful things and these stories that are often very terrible and horrible. And part of the popularity of this show is that people are drawn to that sort of thing.

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And there's not 0% Oprah in the background of what I do. Now, I don't ever... For one thing, we don't end our episodes on a high note, usually. There's not like an inspiring moral journey that makes you think, don't worry, just by changing my opinions and attitudes, I can fix the problem like Hitler. Because you can't.

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The thing that fixes a problem like Hitler or any other major problem in our society is like collective action. And when that action is absent, there's often just nothing but terror, right? Yeah. But like, you know, it's still... It's this kind of thing like reading about these critiques of Oprah.

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Uh, they, they start like expanding it to like donating money to what the website describes as 50 life changing programs. And it's interesting. She describes as like, uh, 50, more than 50 life changing programs got the money they needed to help their local communities. Well, maybe, maybe some taxes from Jeff Bezos could help with that too. But, um, uh,

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I have certainly thought about like what I do, you know, it's hard not to like in part because there's so much of how influencer and media stuff works today. That's downstream of Oprah. You kind of have to. But speaking of downstream of Oprah, let's sell some fucking products.

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And we're back. So I want to read a quote that kind of gets into the fact that Oprah— she primarily understands the world through the things that happened to her. And that's kind of what her journey, the possibility that you can have, no matter how bad things are for you, you can wind up like Oprah rich and famous and beloved, like by, by,

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Eventually, the Angel Network expands, taking in something like $80 million in donations, most of which ultimately go to helping to start 60 schools in 13 countries, including India, Ecuador, and China. So that's nice, right? Helping to start schools, funding schools. Again, as is always the case with Oprah, aspects of this are quite positive, right?

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Changing your attitude, in fact, like that's what she is selling her viewers and readers. And there's an extent to which it's kind of dangerous to get people thinking about mass problems that way. And this is a point that's made very well in the book The Age of Oprah by Janice Peck. Quote.

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inspired by a new york times series from 2005 titled class matters the show's opening segment suggested a serious treatment of issues of class inequality clips of experts citing the growing gap between rich and poor shots of hurricane katrina victims crying for help and winfrey's own statement that nearly 40 percent of all the country's wealth is being held by the richest one percent the fact that one of the guests was robert reich u.s secretary of labor under bill clinton underscored the solemn tone as he spoke of declining manufacturing jobs

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A shrinking middle class, mounting economic anxiety, and millions of Americans who are working very hard, but still not making it. And what some are now calling the new gilded age. But even as Reich called into question the viability of the American dream, Winfrey reaffirmed it.

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She referred to a New York Times poll where 80% of those surveyed said they believe you can go from rags to riches in America. followed it up with a video clip of a young woman convinced she would acquire the big house, fantasy engagement ring, and nice cars because if you work hard, you can achieve anything.

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Oprah finally declared herself not only a believer in the American dream of rags to riches, but living proof of its veracity. Although Reich dutifully decreed his host a great model for America, he pressed on with his argument that success and failure are not simply matters of individual effort. Part of it is luck, he said. Part of it is connection. Part of it is education.

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Winfrey replied tersely, I don't believe in luck, Bob. I think luck is preparation meeting the moment of opportunity. I don't consider myself lucky at all.

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Oprah. No, no, no.

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Yeah, that's luck. Like, your dad may not be your biological dad. The fact that he chose to take that responsibility for you is luck. You know, like the fact that your grandma, you know, you have credited aspects of her with like instilling in you some of these values that like led you being a success. That's also luck. You didn't have to have that grandma.

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Welcome to Behind the Oprahs, a podcast about bastards. This is, you know, the Oprah Winfrey show or the Oprah Winfrey show show where we talk about the Oprah Winfrey show. Yeah, that's as good as I could do the intro here. Look, we're on part six. I'm exhausted. You're exhausted. Sophie's exhausted. I'm so tired. Let's exhaust everything we have to say about Oprah.

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And it's this thing of like, if my life is hard and a lot of bad shit happens to me, I'm not a lucky person.

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There's buildings that were airstruck and like one member of a family in Gaza survives. They survived due to luck. They're not lucky. Their family got killed by an airstrike. Right. But it's just luck that they lived through that thing. Right. Like. But I don't know. I think people, a lot of people, especially particularly Oprah, doesn't like thinking about it that way.

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Like maybe it's better to say because luck has a positive connotation. Blind fortune might be better. You know, it's the kind of blind fortune of the guy next to me took a bullet through the head, but I didn't. You know, that didn't happen to me. I'm just making an example.

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Yeah. Yeah. Through luck. Other guys died because their luck was shitty. Yeah. You know? That doesn't mean you didn't also, like, grow up fucking poor in the Dust Bowl, right? Yeah. Like...

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But also aspects of this are very toxic because particularly in the United States, the thing that Oprah spends most of her donation money on is not helping school systems. It is establishing specific charter schools. And in fact, the last thing the Angel Network does is it gives $6 million in 2010 to six charter schools in California, Colorado, Chicago, Pennsylvania, New Orleans. and Houston.

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Yeah. Uh, I, I, She talks sometimes that way as terms of like, does she actually believe that like God picked her specifically? I actually don't. She said stuff that you can interpret that way. I don't really get the vibe. That's how she thinks about it. I think her attitude is like I succeeded because of my attitude and my hard work. Right. That's it.

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You know, anyway, since this is behind the bastards, I think it's prudent for us to end these episodes. And by God, they're finally fucking ending with a very clear, because this is all, a lot of this is murky. The book stub, like not, you know, the luck thing.

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We can talk about the harms there and like how that perpetuates capitalism and makes it harder to get people behind, you know, solutions to the problems of capitalism. But like, It's not bastardry to just feel differently about to have that kind of reaction. You're not like evil. I just think you're wrong. So we're going to end on a real clear bit of evil.

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In 2007, Oprah had Jenny McCarthy on her show as a guest. McCarthy was at that point an actress and a former playboy model turned anti-vaccine advocate. McCarthy is largely responsible for making Andrew Wakefield famous in the United States. Ginny believes, with no evidence, that vaccines gave her son Evan autism and that she cured his autism with dieting and pills she got from the Internet.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, McCarthy had a degree of fame in her own right, which is why people listened to her in the first place. But she would never, ever, ever, ever have reached more than a fraction of the people that she ultimately reached if Oprah had not had her on as a guest that fateful day in 2007.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

This turns her to the kind of person who thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people, you know, were aware of. And, you know, some chunk of that, probably in the tens of thousands at this point, took her very seriously. Oprah puts her in front of like 30 million people. And this is – you talk about her as like an enzyme.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, this is that moment for the anti-vax movement, which is at this point one of the most dangerous and dominant social forces in the United States, pushing back against all of the gains of the last 150 years of medical science. It's a real nightmarish problem. And – This is one of the single most important moments in the growth of the anti-vaccine movement.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Very little equals this in its toxicity. And I'm going to quote from an article in Vox here. Science journalist Seth Mnookin, who covered this meeting of the minds in his book, The Panic Virus, reported that Winfrey praised McCarthy's unwillingness to bow to authority, her faith in herself, and her use of the internet as a tool for bypassing society's traditional gatekeepers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Here's an excerpt from the interview transcript. McCarthy, first thing I did, Google. I put in autism and I started my research. Winfrey, thank God for Google. McCarthy, I'm telling you. Winfrey, thank God for Google. McCarthy, the University of Google is where I got my degree from.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And I put in autism and something came up that changed my life that led me on this road to recovery, which said autism, it was in a corner of the screen, is reversible and treatable. And I said, what? What? That has to be an ad for a hocus pocus thing. Because if autism is reversible and treatable, well, then it would be on Oprah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, this is this is an moment. This is in Lord of the Rings terms. This is Sauron forging the rings of power. Right? That's Oprah's involvement in the anti-vax movement, right? So days after that Oprah appearance, and this is continuing that quote from Vox, McCarthy was invited on Larry King Live and Good Morning America to spread her anti-vaccine message even further.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Between the three shows, she reached between 15 million and 20 million viewers with her anti-vaccine message. Mnookin estimated, I think there's actually a good cause to suggest that that it was more than that substantially. I think her most was like 26-something million viewers, somewhere along those lines. But anyway.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, charter schools are two schools that are not part of the public education system. A lot of this gets started, the charter school thing, in the Bush years, right? This is a big part of defunding public schools. We don't need to be spending... Parents need to have choice. They need to have vouchers that they can put into these different charter schools and magnate schools.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Oprah ended McCarthy's bit by calling her a mother warrior, which incidentally helped to set off one of my least favorite linguistic trends. I really fucking hate people using the word war here for basically anything outside of war. It's just irritating to me. Not a moral thing, but like fucking like it's always alarm.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But I mean, the sweat lodge that killed three people was the spiritual warrior seminar, right? Like. You're not a warrior because you want to meditate and sit in a hot room. You're not a warrior because you got on Google because you don't think your kid is worth loving because they have autism, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Well, I mean, that's what McCarthy would say. I had to be one for my son to cure him of the horrible specter of autism, which is actually like deeply hateful to your kid that like you're going to move heaven and earth to like change them as opposed to just being like, yeah, this is my kid. This is how they are. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, the only slight nod to reality was when Oprah read a brief statement from the CDC, which pointed out that vaccines save lives. Even then, McCarthy got the last word, insisting, my science is named Evan and he's at home. That's my science.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Oh, man. The episode with McCarthy is still featured. I think the actual clips of it aren't... I mean, you can still find some of them, but the episode is still featured on the Oprah.com website. There's a write-up about it on there. Winfrey has never retracted or apologized for her role in the anti-vaccine epidemic.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

In fact, she had her production company sign McCarthy for a TV show that eventually fell through because Jenny McCarthy is... Bad? We'll say bad, because that's not legally actionable. I think she's really bad, and the show didn't happen, thank God. But Winfrey made her a recurrent guest. She keeps on coming on, and Winfrey does not limit herself to just McCarthy as an anti-vax figure.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

In fact, I found a Mother Jones article that informed me that Jenny McCarthy was not even the first person with anti-vax views on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Quote, Months before McCarthy's appearance, Katie Wright, whose son has autism, said on the show, the vaccine connection has not been refuted at all. In fact, we give 37 vaccines to babies under the age of 18 months. Nobody has shown that safe.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

A wise idea, the multiple vaccines at once. I would say that the fact that most kids who are born survive to be adults shows that that's a good idea. Look at where things were there in 1850 with kids who were born surviving to adulthood. That I would say is pretty good evidence. Anyway. Yeah. The next year. Oh, sorry. Please.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

No, absolutely. Never going to do that. Andrew, we can't even teach people how to read anymore. I know. Like, The next year, Oprah had Christiane Northrup on. Northrup is a physician, or at least a former physician, who started making the switch to new age health disinformation grifter on Oprah's program.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

All of this kind of like both saps the power of teachers unions because these schools exist outside of that system but it's also supposed to like prove that the the corrupt department of education is what's holding kids back that if we just let rich people establish these charts they'll obviously be vastly more successful

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Her initial target was the HPV vaccine, which she suggested should be replaced by a healthy diet. What? Look, just eat right and you can't get HPV. Everyone knows that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

No, this is why, like, you know, in my own personal life, I don't use any kind of protection. We just eat a salad first. You know, that makes it safe. If you're both eating a salad, nobody can pass anything to anybody else.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But I got this excellent Caesar. Oh, my God. It's so good. And it's spinach. None of that fucking like lettuce bullshit. Right. Like the good stuff. Mixed greens. Protection by kale. Fucking hysterical. So Northrop added, I'm a little against my own profession. My own profession feels that everyone should be vaccinated. Nothing you need to say about that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

You won't be surprised, but should be saddened to hear that Northrop is still with us. She pivoted to COVID-19 denial. This is particularly a problem because in 2013, Reader's Digest declared her one of the hundred most trusted people in the country.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I want to read a quote from a McGill University article on Christiane for the Office of Science and Safety, which calls her the Dr. Carl Sagan warned us about. And she's specifically talking about a Carl Sagan quote about like his fear that anti-science attitudes will lead to a return – a new dark ages.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It's like this – people start to believe in a demon-haunted world rather than a world of like problems and solutions that can both be understood scientifically. And yeah, I think that's both a damning and accurate way to describe Northrop. Yeah. quote from McGill University.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She does not believe vaccines are necessary if your body is healthy and has spread unsubstantiated fears about safe vaccines throughout her career. She claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines will target specific chromosomes that act as the seat of our empathy, an utterly absurd and unscientific statement. She believes that artificial intelligence has somehow been incorporated into these vaccines.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Absolutely nonsense. And that this AI will integrate itself into our DNA. She warns her viewers that the injection of patented vaccines inside our body will turn us into the property of the patent holders. Thanks for that one, Oprah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

A lot of people don't know this. Bill Gates actually moved into your house and because you're legally his property, you couldn't say anything about it. The good news is, super clean roommate. Super clean roommate.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Thanks, Ops. Great that she's in the discourse forever now. And that's part of the thing is like Oprah kind of takes a step back in like 2010, 11. She's on, she's clearly like partially retired, but like, All of these fuckers are still with us. You didn't take them with you, Oprah. If she'd just been like a Pharaoh and been buried with them all, I'd be fine. But like, alas, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So it's this mix of like there are some very good charter schools that are very good for kids. I have friends who went to some of them. But also the larger part of the charter school project is problematic, and it continues on past the Bush era. One of like the biggest roles in this is in 2010, there's a documentary called Waiting for Superman by Davis Guggenheim.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She's going to be, yeah, she's doing great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Not yet, not yet, but probably by the time people listen to this, like there's a good chance he might've been confirmed. I think it's health and human services. No, it's Medicaid for him, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Oh God. Great shit. So the good news is that in recent years, the world has slowly started catching up to the many, many harms that Oprah and her celebrity have caused. I found a good article about this in The Root, which noted that after the catastrophic Maui fires in 2023, she and The Rock asked random working people to donate to rebuild the island.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

They put in $10 million themselves, even though... They they both of them are worth substantially more than that, shall we say? Yeah. In earlier years, I think they both would have been praised for giving 10 million.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But in 2023, coming from a woman with more than two billion dollars in a bank in the bank, especially considering she was clearly talking about the parts of Maui where the rich people lived, it was taken widely as insulting. Speaking of insulting, and I'm getting a little petty here, but I'm going to tell this story anyway.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

In 2014, Oprah went on tour with her mystic buddy, Deepak Chopra, selling tickets for $1,000 for a motivational presentation called The Life You Want. Because there would be long lines to get in and the whole event would be something of a spectacle, Oprah and her organizers decided to hire local talent to play on stages around and outside the weekend-long event. Oh, did I say hire?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

No, no, no, sorry. I meant they begged local artists to work for free for exposure.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, yeah. Now what's interesting about this to me, I started this by talking about that, it was like in 2000, she did her first like big tour. I think it was called The Life You Want, or was that, oh no, this one's The Life You Want. I forget what the first tour was. We talk about it at the start of episode five, but she did a tour, And in that one, she made a real point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Tickets were like 20 or 30 bucks and all of the proceeds were donated to the Angel Foundation. So whatever you want to say about like, you know, this is the thing that the L.A. Times is like calling her a basically a god for putting on. But at least it was an extremely affordable event made for like working people to be able to attend. And she didn't profit directly off of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

All of the money went to her charity.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Come on. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

By 2014. But there's pretense.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

A thousand dollars.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Or at least those are some of the like going ranging from one hundred to a thousand dollars. Right. And these are the venue in the town where she's specific because this this specific article comes from a performer named Revolva. R-E-V-O-L-V-A, or at least that's her stage name, obviously. And Revolva is one of the people who Oprah's team reaches out to asking her to work for free at this event.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

This is a documentary about how broken the education system is. And we're all just kind of like waiting for Superman to fix it. And it winds up being a very pro-charter school movie. There's a couple of other documentaries at the same time, The Lottery and The Cartel, with the same basic attitude. But Waiting for Superman is featured twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And Revolva points out that the venue in her town had an 18,000 person capacity. And if tickets are ranging from $100 to $1,000 with 18,000 seats, that adds up to what I think doctors know as a shitload of money. Enough to pay someone like Revolva, I don't know, a couple thousand bucks, something like that. Literally any money. Literally anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, I'm sure if they really hate it, it's like 500 bucks. I know that's lower than standard, but you'll get exposure. At least you're offering money. Right. You know, I so the producer she talked to framed it as a favor that Oprah and the crew were doing the local arts community. People started calling us asking to perform. So we thought we'd add a stage for local acts. Look at how good we are.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Like, motherfucker. Now, I've got again, I'm criticizing this because it is shitty and bad. I have no idea how much Oprah was aware, if at all, about the specifics of this. I highly doubt she was like, send Revolva an offer. Right. Like, there's a good chance, though, that like someone said, hey, should we have a bunch of local actors perform on a stage where you aren't for free?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And she was like, yeah, sure. Sounds great. they'll get exposure. Yeah, I think that's probably somewhere close to the case. Or even less, to be fair.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, make it happen, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

End of story. That said, I suspect if asked honestly, Oprah would consider getting to perform on a stage kind of near her to be worth much more than money. And I do want to note, we'll have a link in our source notes to Revolva's website where she writes this up. But I'm going to have Sophie show you the little image infographic that she put together about the different people involved in this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It shows Oprah Winfrey net worth $2.9 billion. Deepak Chopra net worth $80 million. Elizabeth Gilbert net worth $25 million. Revolva net worth negative $20,000. She's like a fire spinner.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She looks great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Hire Revolva. Give her money if she's still doing this. I don't know. This was 10 years ago. Best of luck, Revolva. Thanks for writing about this. Now, those of you who are in your 30s will remember that fun year or so where large numbers of people thought the world was going to end in 2012 because of the Mayans.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The Mayans did not, in fact, predict the world was going to end in 2012, but there was a lot of money in lying about that for a little while. You may be surprised to hear that Oprah had a big part in that panic, too, from an article by Kurt Anderson of Slate. Right around the time The Secret came out, habitues of its general vicinity started buzzing about the year 2012.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Ancient Mesoamericans, people were saying, had predicted that in 2012, specifically December 21st, humankind's present existence would transition when the current 5,125-year-long period ends. New Age religion makers like American Protestants now had their own ancient prophecy for their dreams of something like a near-future Armageddon and supernaturally wonderful aftermath.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Winfrey ended the Daily Oprah broadcast in 2011, a month before the final episode. She interviewed Shirley MacLaine for the millionth time and asked about 2012, "'What's gonna happen to us as a species?' We're coming into an alignment, McLean explained. It is the first time in 26,000 years, 36,000 years, 26,000 years, I'm sorry, that this has occurred.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She's not the only person who gives it a lot of media attention, but she gives it a ton of media attention, and that $6 million donation to those six private schools is directly off of the back of this. I found a good write-up in the Brookings Institute on the myth of charter schools, and it summarizes the message of all these documentaries. American public education is a failed enterprise.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

You have an alignment where the solar system is on a direct alignment with the center of the galaxy. That carries with it a very profound electromagnetic frequency. Vibration, Winfrey interjected. Vibration, McLean agreed. And gravitational pull, hence the weather. What does that do to consciousness? What does that do to our sense of reality? It's why people feel stressed and rushed, she said.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It's remarkable how many transcripts of her show sound like stuff that like 15 years ago, like a pot dealer told me when we played PlayStation. Cause I like, I really just wanted to get out of there with my eighth, but like, you kind of got to hang with the guy a little bit. He's cutting me a deal, you know? These are the experiences legal weed is making kids miss out on now.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That's why they need Joe Rogan.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Wanted, yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And that's kind of dumb. That brings us to the end, because the worm has sort of turned for Oprah here. You know, the Oprah Winfrey show ended after 25 years on the air in 2011. She still does specials. O Magazine continued until 2020 when it stopped publicizing. Oprah still has a sizable production company. Her current show, she has a current show that's called Life Class.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Um, so she still does shows and stuff, but the Oprah Winfrey show is like an everyday thing ended in 2011. Um, and her cultural influence has faded substantially from its peak 13 years ago.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Perhaps Oprah might've been able to reign in the legions of new age, curious fans before they fell into the abyss of QAnon or flat earth or whatever kind of white supremacist shit is currently going viral with like a weird number of like, uh,

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Gen X people who spent 20 years watching Oprah but not anymore she doesn't have that juice anymore it's one of those things she came out big for Kamala Harris during the election and it didn't do shit 10 years ago Oprah and me have been able to bummed me out Might have been able to swing an election, but not anymore. Oprah's well past her peak, but it's also too unlate to undo the damage.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

This march into unreality that she helped to lead and organize, we're still going down that road, even though I think she herself sees how dangerous a lot of it is. There's no... there's no turning the wheel anymore. There's no jerking us back. We've gone too far. Um, so thanks. Oops.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. I mean, that's kind of where I'm landing now. I mean, where are y'all? I'm interested. I don't think she wanted the evil things is the tough thing, right? She's not malicious generally. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The problem is not money. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, and they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I think most of the bastards have their malicious moments, right? Even if they would argue that what I'm doing is the best thing, they have moments where you're just acting out of petty hatred or anger. Oprah's bad shit is never that bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I think there are pieces of that that are accurate and pieces that aren't. It's the great man versus trends and forces, right? I think reality TV happens without Oprah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I think this movement to like, as long as social media is coming out, I think this movement towards like authenticity and like the weird parasocial bonds that are being built, that was inevitable well before we were on that road, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But I also think the characteristics of Oprah herself, particularly her credulity for a lot of this anti-reality woo, you know, from Deepak Chopra, the secret Marianne Williamson stuff. I don't think that was inevitable. And I don't think the role and seriousness that she gave like anti-vaccine stuff was necessarily inevitable. Right. Well, I think it's a mix.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, I mean, I guess that's the thing that we'll never know, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only hope for the future of our society, especially for poor black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a profit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I guess where I go with that is, but also like our, our inclination towards it is why it's good business. Yeah. It is not necessarily written that we are going like, because people have not always bought into as much of this shit. There were periods of time where that was less common, certainly less common to talk about, uh, publicly with the position that she had.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I do think that leaning into it was not necessarily going ... That was a choice that she and other people made, and more resistance to it could have ensured that we were in a better position now vis-a-vis the existence of reality as a thing. consensus reality. I don't know. Yeah.

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Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

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We're not disagreeing. No, I mean, like, this is... Yeah, like this is why I mean, the show, the fact that this is behind the bastards to show about the worst people in all of history would seem to always kind of lean into the great man stuff. I do try. I try to, like, pull back from that as often as I can. Right. And that. You could say the same thing about Hitler too.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

All of these monsters are both individuals and the bad things they do are what they are because of their individual choices and also the product of trends and forces. If there's not a Hitler, there is another guy who finds a way to take advantage of German anger and fury at the way the war had ended and the peace and whatnot and turn that into political power.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, that is, again, this is a thing that a lot of people are into, and Oprah is one of the folks who puts her money where her mouth is. This is the future of fixing public education. And it's problematic, to say the least. To continue with a quote from that Brookings Institute piece, and this is talking about Waiting for Superman in particular.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now that guy's not necessarily the Holocaust guy, right? Yeah. But there's some, the energy would have been, has to be harnessed almost because it exists. You know, I don't know. Like this is, we're getting a little bit wonky here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That's right. You're getting effectively three parters worth of episodes today because this week alone is three hours. So- Yep.

Behind the Bastards

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You're welcome.

Behind the Bastards

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Yeah. Yeah, I mean... You do and you don't. Look, if I wind up with $3 billion, who gives a fuck?

Behind the Bastards

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I am going to go out of my way to buy up all of the surviving or find the scrapped remains of all of the Pontiacs that Oprah gave out and give them back out to our audience.

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Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That's right. And, you know, until next time, fucking light your television on fire. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you to do. You already did. Step your phone in half and throw it in the sea. What a mess. What a fucking mess.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Some fact-checking is in order, and the place to start is with the film's quiet acknowledgement that only one in five charter schools is able to get the amazing results that it celebrates. Nothing more is said about this astonishing statistic. It is drawn from a national study of charter schools by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Known as the Credo Study, it evaluated student progress on math tests in half of the nation's 5,000 charter schools and concluded that 17% were superior to a matched score. traditional public school. 37% were worse than the public school, and the remaining 46% had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The proportion of charters that got amazing results is far smaller than 17%. Why did Davis Guggenheim pay no attention to the charter schools that are run by incompetent leaders or corporations mainly concerned to make money?

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Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Why propound to an unknowing public the myth that charter schools are the answer to our educational woes when the filmmaker knows there are twice as many failing charters as there are successful ones? Why not give an honest accounting? The propagandistic nature of Waiting for Superman is revealed by Guggenheim's complete indifference to the wide variation among charter schools.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

There are excellent charter schools, just as there are excellent public schools. Why did he not also inquire into the charter chains that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take his camera to the charters where most students are getting lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools?

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Why did he not report on the charter principals who have been indicted for embezzlement or the charters that blur the line between church and state? Why did he not look into the charter schools whose leaders are paid $300,000 to $400,000 a year to oversee small numbers of students? I don't need to go on. The myth of charter schools from the Brookings Institute is a good piece on this.

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I actually don't know. A journalist would check in on that. Let's do that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

He's related to the family. At least the AI overview says he's related to the family, but not directly related to the foundation. And let's see here. Let's look up his Wikipedia to find a better... Probably just a coincidence. His dad is filmmaker Charles Guggenheim. Oh, he helped make Deadwood, won four Oscars.

Behind the Bastards

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Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. So anyway, this is... A problematic thing that Oprah Winfrey's charity is going to, which is not to say that everything she donates to – like a lot of good schools I've looked into. I looked into several of the schools that she put money on. They have pretty good academic records. But although they're not unproblematic, as this article – Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Again, 37% are worse. 17% are better. But even if all of them

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yes, and it's also not all of these schools are – and again, because they abide by different rules, there's a lot of problematic aspects to some of them, including one of the schools that Oprah gave a shitload of money to, this one particularly in New Orleans. I'm going to quote from BET here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Numerous charter schools, including those backed by Oprah Winfrey, Microsoft's Bill Gates, retailer Walmart, and New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees have been accused of breaking federal law by not serving children with disabilities. The children are named as plaintiffs in the legal battle which stems back to 2010.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Charter schools in New Orleans were seen as a way to rehab the city's failing education system and serve 70% of the city's children. The Loop 21 reports Lawrence Melrose, 16, needed counseling and speech therapy, which wouldn't be provided by the New Orleans Charter Science and Math Charter School that was made popular through its association with Oprah Winfrey.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Instead, he was frequently suspended and not allowed to ride the bus. The lawsuit says the school kept him from attending a celebration where students watched Oprah Winfrey hand the principal a check for $1 million. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The exclusion of children with serious learning and emotional disabilities occur often, says the lawsuit at charter schools, which comprise the majority of public schools in New Orleans. The exclusion of special needs kids also helps charter schools test scores since children with disabilities typically do not do well.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

No, no. They literally locked him out of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. I mean, at this point, I support Musk building a rich people tunnel under L.A. just because we'll have a quake and the people who pay to access that tunnel will all learn a lesson very quickly at the same time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Yeah. Get yourself there, man. So. I wanted to talk a little bit about Oprah and charter schools, but really when we talk about Oprah's direct bastardism, there's no better thing to discuss than the bevy of con men that she helped to introduce to the world. She is responsible for making John of God, the Brazilian faith healer who sexually assaulted at least 600 women internationally famous.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The fact that the money on this is so unclear in its precise details is one of the things that's shady. Yeah. Now – Even if, let's say it's about $2 million that PBBP is grossing. Now, that's gross not yet net, but they effectively have almost no costs because they don't build their own facilities. They are using a plasmapheresis center built into Cummins Prison for free.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

That's part of the contract. The Department of Corrections handles all utilities and all janitorial work. And it's also guards who are working, reaching out to prisoners to get them to sign on to the program and busing them to Cummins. And it's still a lot of inmates doing the work. So really, PPVP is just skimming $2 million out of this program and handing it to some people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Who have connections to folks who are, you know, close to the ADC, right? Yeah. So as far as I can tell, all PBBP, the company did was sell blood without checking to make sure it was safe and pocketed the money. On paper, they were supposed to assume liability for all plasma products produced through this and ensure they provided staff to handle the draw and

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

and that those staff were licensed professionals who would check the product. But the ADC also kept giving them inmates to do blood draws and other work that, by the text of the contract, professional PBBP employees ought only to have been doing. Roberts described the PBBP looking at the inmates as, quote, sort of as little cows, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You hear this description a lot, but they're like, yeah, these are animals that we are mining for the products of their body. Now, by 1986, when PBVP starts, we are four years past the point where the US has essentially soft banned the use of domestic inmate blood. However, it continues to be used for export products.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Cutter Laboratories, which is one of the companies involved in the nuts and bolts parts of turning whole blood into like blood products, publishes an internal memo around this time that highlights the attitude many in the industry had to the idea of excluding prison plasma donations.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

There are no data to support the emotional arguments that prison plasma collected from adequately screened prisoners is bad. To exclude such plasma from manufacture of our coagulation product would only be a sop or a gratuity to the gay rights movement and would presage further pressure to exclude plasma collected from the Mexican border and the paid donor. Say it one more time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Just say it one more time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. To exclude such plasma from manufacture of our coagulation product would only be a sopper gratuity to the gay rights movement and would presage further pressure to exclude plasma collected from the Mexican border and the paid donor.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Will someone think about- We'll make less money if we have to use blood that isn't taken coercively by people who have an incentive to lie about whether or not they're sick. And again, when I talk about there being a lot more money, like what PVP is making is the initial money for selling this plasma, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And both the plasma and the whole blood that's coming in through these donation programs are worth a shitload more once you spin them out into the different blood factors, right? So there's a whole higher level of profit that these companies like Cutter are making, right? Likewise, the US has said, we're not using this stuff domestically for medicine.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And likewise, our foreign friends in the UK and Canada don't allow blood from prison inmates to be used in medicine. But a system had been devised to ensure plausible deniability. The blood that came out of Cummins and other donor programs in the US was sold to Continental Pharmacrino in Montreal. And this major blood broker resells the whole blood in plasma all around the world.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And it also sells to a Toronto-based company, Connett Laboratories, who effectively played the role of blood launderer and sent this tainted blood to the Canadian Red Cross. The laundering process was so effective that, as Sophia Chase writes, in at least one case, the blood was sent back to the United States. So we are also using tainted blood in the U.S.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

from inmates, even though we're not supposed to be, because it's being sold to Canada and then sold back to us. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Send this one back across the border to our good friends.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Oh, there's so much money laundering blood. Oh, man. Do you ever think about that? Mm hmm. I do. I do. You know, I have a shitload of blood in my house. I keep it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, I keep it in my basement. I don't know if it needs to be refrigerated, but, you know, make me an offer, folks. If you need a shitload of blood, I got it. Cool.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Cool zone is getting into the blood business. So you're legally not allowed to ask me where it came from.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

It's so important we can't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

That's right. That's right. And speaking of the economy, I don't know if our sponsors sell blood, but they sell other stuff. So go buy it and then give me your blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

We're back. So even under PBBP, this new company, the same problems persisted. Prisoners continue to be involved in running the plasma program. They regularly over bleed each other because it means more money for them. And neither the prison system nor the company has a financial interest in stopping that. Records are regularly falsified and destroyed.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Earlier in these episodes, we quoted from Clinton friend and prison board member Bobby Roberts. He's been something of a whistleblower about the program, but just to an extent. When the FDA published a study alleging that prison plasma was likelier to be tainted with blood than plasma donated elsewhere, Roberts told reporters from the Arkansas Times this. I deny the premise.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I disagree that prison plasma blood was more dangerous than it was coming out of the for-profit centers in the free world. Out there, anybody could bleed anybody. And like but the problem isn't it. Everyone has blood. The problem is that it's not being checked. And there's a lot of incentives to lie when you're sick, when you have no other way of making money because you're in prison. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. It's like the FDA. You're not. You're Bobby Roberts. For one thing, your name's Bobby Roberts. I ultimately immediately I'm less likely to take you seriously about medical science. Right. Both of your names are the same.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I disagree with the premise. Yeah. That article continues to summarize Roberts' argument. Roberts bases his confidence in the state's plasma program on the fact that unlike downtown plasma centers, the ADC had medical records on every inmate who participated. It knew who was safe to bleed, he says, and who wasn't.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Right to bleed. Yes. Yes. Yeah. No, he's right. Prison has records.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And it often knows when people have blood-borne illnesses. The issue is that they don't care. Per the paper written by Sophia Chase, multiple witnesses to the events claim that the Plasma Center accepted some donations from prisoners known to fail the required qualifications. A previous inmate, Louis Sorrells, described the conditions at the prison.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You had prisoners bribing prisoners, prisoners bribing officials. Officials offering certain deals for them to bleed for extra money or drugs. Soros himself passed away from hepatitis C shortly after the interview. He became infected with this disease during his time at Cummins Prison.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Because of the previous scandals under HMA, there are more outside investigations into the plasma program after this point. A few years after PBBP takes over, an FDA inspector reports them for poor screening procedures and record keeping. The prison officials who managed the program for PBBP were also accused of using prison guards to recruit inmates.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Despite this, in an interview with a local reporter, prison medical director, John Bias, who is like the medical director of the prison, said this, we plan to stick with the plasma program to the last day, to the last drop we're able to sell. Okay, cool. Why? Given all of the bad stuff, why?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now, in 1991, a company from New York takes the contract from PBVP, and they continue to mine prisoners for blood plasma until 1994. By this point, not only was the HIV crisis more fully understood, but the consequences of all those years of tainted blood getting shotgunned out onto the world market had become undeniable. And this is where we get to the body count.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Best as we can tell, more than 1,000 Canadian hemophiliacs were dosed with tainted blood from Cummins Prison alone. During this timeframe, 42,000 Canadians were infected with hepatitis C and thousands more with HIV through tainted plasma, often including plasma imported from Cummins. Current estimates expect about 7,000 total deaths of Canadian citizens from contaminated blood sold by the U.S.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

during this period, about two 9-11s, a little more.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes, yes, yes. And the shockwaves in Canada, Canada takes substantial action here, right? The Canadian Red Cross has to declare bankruptcy and is no longer allowed to collect blood as a result of the fallout of this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The Canadian government launched a commission in 1995 to trace the blood that had poisoned so many of their citizens, which is how we first learned that Canada's blood supply had been tainted by blood from sick US prison inmates, right? They trace a lot of it back to Cummins.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Conant Laboratories, which is the Canadian company that's making the blood product, was obviously proven negligent in all this, largely because they had avoided checking any of the plasma collection sites themselves and had relied on FDA records, which were also deficient.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Subsequent investigation showed that Arkansas – it's a little bit like – if you've heard the story of the rust shooting, right, where like – The first AD, assistant director, was supposed to check the gun to see if it was empty alongside the armorer was also supposed to check the gun to see if it was empty.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And the first AD didn't really do a check because he assumed the armorer had done it, right? And the armorer had not done it. It's like that, right? Like Connock was just like, the FDA has probably got it. We don't need to spend any money checking. And like they really did. The FDA didn't have it, you know? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Subsequent investigations showed that Arkansas prison blood was a significant contributor to Canada's hep C and HIV crisis in this period, and that both U.S. blood brokers and the FDA failed to inform Canadian companies where the blood they were buying had come from and that much of it was being sent from facilities which had already been linked to tainted blood sales.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

There have been attempts at lawsuits over this, but the difficulties of carrying out such a suit cross-border have mostly stymied the efforts of Canadian hemophiliacs to get justice. As I discussed earlier, a good deal of the tainted blood from the US also went to Great Britain, where it helped cause what Lord Robert Winston described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. Oh.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

All thanks to our American friends. Oh, good. The worst-

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. From that article by Sophia Chase, most of the victims believe the blood and clotting factors they were using came from British donors. The possibility that the blood might have been imported did not even occur to them. much less the prospect that it might not meet British health standards.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The disaster left 4,670 British hemophiliacs infected with hepatitis C, and 1,243 of those were also infected with HIV. About 2,000 have died at this point, right? Also, many of them spread diseases to partners and children. We'll never fully have an understanding of the exact cons, but at least 2,000 dead. And again, there were like, you know, investigations into this as well.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Quote, it ultimately determined that a significant burden of responsibility for tainted blood provided to British hemophiliacs rests on American suppliers of factor eight concentrate. Now, due to the way things were done at the time, it was not possible to determine how many of those deaths were directly linked to Cummins Prison.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Again, there have been changes in how stuff is reported to try and make it easier to trace back tainted blood, but that didn't exist at the time. We know at least three, right? So we know it was happening. It's got to be thousands more than that, right? Because it's incredibly hard to actually trace this, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

In part because one of the things they found when they realized how many British people had gotten – HIV and hepatitis and were dying, they found that most of the records for blood transactions to import blood into the UK had been shredded in the early 1990s. Oops.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Oops.

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Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Surely nothing shady there.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You know, see doodles. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I'm always shredding medical documents. That's like 80 percent of my day job is shredding medical documents from the UK. I don't even know what they're about. You know, they just send it to me in boxes and I just shred.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

That's the future of media, shredding British medical paperwork.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

We did have way too much blood. So it may seem baffling that there was not more oversight given the way things work, especially at this point worked at the NHS. But the blood export industry in the UK was considered uniquely favored, which means they were exempt from some of the same oversight because –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Number one, and this is the same in Canada, not nearly enough British people or Canadians were donating blood. They just didn't have enough. And the US was considered the gold standard planet wide for blood distribution because no one else could gather and disseminate anywhere. Again, 70% of the blood products worldwide. Coming from the US.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So everyone is just like, they must have this shit figured out, right? No. But yeah, but because our system was the largest by far, everyone relied on it and it became the global standard and other national healthcare agencies and companies just sort of assumed that US regulators had our shit together because the only other option was to not have enough blood. Now, that's the bulk of this story.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But, Before we close out here, I should talk about something. So there is apparently an exceptional documentary made about all this called Factor VIII, The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

It was made by Kelly Duda, a filmmaker and investigative journalist who won a Peabody Award in 2003 for a Japanese documentary about the cover-up by the government of a hep C epidemic. She spent eight years researching and five years filming this movie, which prompted an

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

international response, and even she gets called into a criminal trial in Naples for a company accused of selling tainted blood products to Italian citizens. It's supposed to be excellent. I haven't seen it, and I wanted to. It is not available anywhere online that I can find. when you look on like Reddits and stuff, it will be all, it's always blamed on the Clintons, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

That like they, they stopped this documentary from getting out. I know that Duda has alleged she received like harassment and stuff while she was making the documentary. That said, the, When you talk about the bad things the Clintons did, this is, especially Bill, an incredibly powerful man who was involved in a lot of shady stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

There's also a whole industry of right-wing content dedicated to lying about shit, including the Clinton murder list and stuff. It's just nonsense, right? It's difficult to parse a lot of stuff out.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

There is no doubting that Bill Clinton deserves a massive degree of blame for the Arkansas blood scandal because he was the governor and because he put people who were close to him directly in positions to manage the program. No argument, period, that he does not deserve a meaningful amount of blame for this, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But a lot of these other allegations, right, like the fact that are the Clintons locking down access? Have they used their influence? It's like, I mean, it's not a powerful people do that with documentaries, but also a lot of the time I'm doing episodes. I found out there's a 20 year old documentary about it and I can't find that documentary because it's not on streaming.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

That just happens with media. So like. Is the likeliest thing the Clintons locked? I don't I don't I have no evidence of that. Right. I've had this happen to a bunch of documentaries over the years. That said, I would love to see this documentary. So if you've got it, hit us up. And I don't know, someone put it on fucking streaming.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now, the most credible allegations that I have heard when it comes to like, you know, the corruption here is that money from this blood program was used to provide positions to people as political favors where they could profit while doing very little. And it's certainly true that the State Department of Corrections doesn't make a ton from the blood program, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

However, other people in and around the state government make an unknown amount of money acting as grease around HMA and then PBVP's wheels here. One example is Leonard Dunn. That is the guy who gets brought in to run HMA right around the time of the first blood scandal. He's a banker.

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Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

A state police investigator wrote that Dunn had advised him, quote, he was close to Governor Clinton as well as a majority of state politicians presently in office. Mr. Dunn explained that he was very fond of politics. Dunn added that he was the financial portion of the corporation as well as the political arm.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Despite this, he also claimed he never took an active role in the company on a day-to-day basis. Okay, man.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But Dunn does handle, when HMA loses the contract briefly, he is the guy negotiating with the corrections board so that it can keep taking and selling plasma. And since his company had just paid out to the FDA for letting tainted blood out of the country, you might imagine these would be difficult negotiations.

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Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But the main result of these negotiations was that Dunn, in order to get the corrections board to agree- agreed to bring in an ombudsman to act as a compliance coordinator to ensure HMA followed the rules going forward. This ombudsman was Richard Mays, a little rock judge who had been appointed by Governor Clinton. His job at HMA was described by the state police as a bribe.

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Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Because again, he's not really doing anything. They're just like, yeah, just give another guy who we owe a favor a job and pay him some money. He doesn't have to do much.

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Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now they're an alms bud. Yeah, right. Now the specific choice to bring on Dunn seems to have been made by the- Arkansas Board of Corrections Chairman Woodson Walker, who claimed that he discussed it with Governor Clinton, who was so upset that he held Walker personally responsible for the next provider chosen. And Walker and Clinton jointly suggested Mays, right? That's what Walker claims.

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Obviously, he's in trouble here. But I The fact that this guy who Clinton appoints as a judge gets this bribe job, I don't think Clinton had nothing to do with that.

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Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

To quote from Susie Parker's article, HMA President Dunn told investigators, Dunn stated that Walker advised him that Mays was black, a plus in a system where most of the inmates are black, had good qualifications, and was an outstanding attorney, according to investigators' notes.

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Yeah. Now, obviously, I'm not saying he's not a good attorney, but he doesn't have qualifications to monitor a blood plasma donation program. Oh, jeez. Yeah. Yeah. That's like saying, you know, this guy's a great helicopter pilot. Let's put him in charge of making sure all the hearts we put in people are working. It's like, he doesn't know how to do that. Like, yeah, he's good at something.

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Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You know what I mean? Man, the way this guy flies, he could really pick out a good kidney.

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Simply not the same job. Now, there are other allegations of kickbacks and bribery at high levels in the system.

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Mike Galster was a medical practitioner who worked in Cummins Prison during the height of the HMA days, and he later wrote a fictionalized novel about his experiences and claimed that he had to leave the company after an HMA associate demanded he give some of his earnings to him in order to keep his job.

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Quote, "...the way Arkansas works is that once you are working within the system, the people in charge make it clear that it is a privilege to have that state contract." Ultimately, you are expected to pay for that privilege. This I know, Galster continues. Without the governor's support and protection, this disease-riddled system would have been shut down by 1982.

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Again, Clinton doesn't make the system this way, but he is a guy who continues to work within a system in order to get the stuff done that he wants to get done, right? And the fact that that system existed before and after him does not exempt him from responsibility for participating in it.

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And it's this – the issue of both like – it is important to hold Clinton's – I mean he didn't. No one held his feet. But it would have been important for them to have done this as a result of this. It's also important for it not to be what a lot of people tried to make it where it's like, well, this is purely a Clinton scandal. No, I mean this is like – An Arkansas scandal.

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It's like a blood industry scandal. This is a lot of very important. And if you're if you're picking out one of the threads involved in this scandal, then you're ignoring all of the other ones. And you're like it becomes clear. OK, well, you hate Governor Clinton. But like if if a governor you didn't hate had been doing all of the same things, you wouldn't have given a shit.

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You know, like, yeah, you would have.

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Yeah, these are systemic issues, and we both need to blame and punish individual people responsible for them and understand how the systemic part plays into it so that we don't just put like, well, no, I like this governor, so I'm just not going to pay attention to what's being done in the Arkansas prisons anymore, you know?

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Yeah. Maybe the problem is monetizing everything. Like those early reports said, if you make blood donation be entirely driven by money, there's a lot of issues you have to deal with. The other issue is like, well, then how do we get all the blood we need? Because we don't have enough. There's never enough. How do we get the blood we need? Yeah.

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And so there's a degree to which like, as much as we're critiquing parts of this, there are certain things I know that we shouldn't have been doing, like running a blood program the way they did at Cummins prison. But when it comes to like, how do we get enough blood? Well, nobody's figured that out yet. I don't know.

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Gently used, vented blood, maybe a little bit of lamb's blood in there. I might have thinned it out with some coconut milk. You're good. You're good. Take it.

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Now, you know who else doesn't give refunds? Who's that? The sponsors of this podcast. That we're hoping to keep, Robert. Maybe they give refunds. I don't know. I never check.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So, you know, let's get back into talking about blood, the big B. So, as I mentioned in part one, back in 1983, HMA, that's the company that is doing all of the healthcare and managing all the blood donation for the Arkansas prisons, they've just been shut down, but then they got reopened after some people who were close to the administration got put in positions in both the prison board and at HMA.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

We're back. So a good deal of the information in this article comes from a 1998 piece published by Arkansas investigative journalist, Susie Parker. She also published an article on the Whitewater scandal for the New York Times, which was a big scandal for the Clintons while he was in office that like is incredibly boring today because political scandals have gotten so much worse.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Like it's so quaint that like, oh man, remember when people were upset about these like shady business dealings, the president might be tied to. Good Lord.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Anyway, the president said he's a king. It's just things are a lot worse. I'm not saying Whitewater was okay. I'm just saying like things are so much worse now. Susie has worked for a number of publications and she has a particular fixation on Arkansas politics and the Clintons. Today she runs a local independent publication called The Reckoning and she is quite conservative, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

She is a right-wing – at least more sympathetic to that. I think she does portray Clinton's involvement as like more direct and puppet mastermind. mastery than it was.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I think this was something Clinton acceded to, both because he gained some benefit from giving some of these positions to people close to him and because not messing with this allowed him to do ... It was like a politics was a trade for him, right? Whereas the other people running the Board of Corrections and running these ... These were the people who were directly setting up the system like this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, that's the worst thing ever. Yes, they're just killing people. You really want to just invest in a company called Murder Co., because Murder Co. probably just produces cat food or something.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Again, I think Clinton knew quite a bit of how bad this was and made some choices here, but he's not the puppet master, right? Now, one of the issues here comes that alongside some strong connections, which again, don't imply that Clinton operated this program, but do in clay that he deserves quite a lot of blame.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes. There's also some specious allegations. For example, Galster, that former doctor, claims that Vince Foster was hired to squash the state investigation. Now, this was true, and Vince Foster is a very close Clinton associate. If this is true, that investigation happened and, in fact, described some of what was going on as bribery.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And then there's an independent review ordered by the prison board, which had Clinton allies on it. So I don't know how much I believe that this is like a big deal. But the reason this is seen as a smoking gun, right, by some people is that in July of 1993, after Governor Clinton became President Clinton, Vince Foster shot himself to death in Washington, D.C.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Foster had discussed his depression with his sister over some time, and he was at that moment in a lot of trouble over a totally different controversy with the White House travel office.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And there's no evidence of anything here other than that Vince was a serial political operator who was involved in some shady shit and got disgraced and who killed himself because he didn't want to live with the after effects, right? And, you know, that also the shit he was in to the extent that it was shady is very common among people who are Arkansas politicos, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But Vince's death has become a cornerstone of some of the more unhinged parts of the anti-Clinton movement. You'll hear allegations that, like, He was either murdered by the Clintons or that he killed himself because of the blood scandal. Right. The Clintons had him shot in order to cover this blood scandal up. And again, it wasn't covered up. There's a documentary on it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

People didn't care enough, but it wasn't. You know, it got out. And the reality is that the blood scandal didn't have an impact on Bill and Hillary's lives or political careers, not in a real massive way. And I can, in fact, believe that people as connected as they are, you know, have contacts in the entertainment industry.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But I also I just don't see the evidence that this destroyed them or that this was that dangerous to them. Yeah. In fact, in 1992, Peter Longstaff, who tested positive for HIV back in 1995 after receiving blood from U.S. donors, tested positive for hepatitis C. And this was the same year that Clinton ran for presidential election.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The Arkansas Times writes, quote, his former chief of staff, Betsy Wright, sent a memo titled Prison Positives. That memo mentioned four points, including education into prison by Bill Clinton. But the first point Wright listed was run cheapest system in the country.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And so you kind of get even in 92, you know, the thing that like the scandal here is not on their front burner, their front burner still for him in 92 after it's very clear how bad a lot of this is was like, well, the prison system was cheap. Let's throw that in a bullet point list. You know, you know, it's a thing to run on. Right. Keeping costs down, keeping costs down is the idea. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, Janine Murder. She's a great cat food scientist. Yeah. Of the New Hampshire murders. Of the New Hampshire murders, yeah, the granite state. As I mentioned in part one, in 1983, HMA had sold a bunch of tainted blood plasma for inmates who were known to be positive for hepatitis. 38 units of blood, to be exact.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Anyway, Ben Bolin, my guest today. Ben. Ridiculous history, stuff they don't want you to know, podcast maven, impresario. Oh my gosh. Yeah. How are you doing? How are you feeling?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Fairly normal. Evil, fairly normal politics evil as opposed to like incredibly shady conspiracy evil. That's my opinion on the matter.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. And well, and also just like So perhaps if we keep – if the focus of all of these problems is like, ah, this is – I can use this huge systemic issue that a lot of people deserve to go down for to attack this one guy. That's all I'm really interested in. I'm not interested in better treatment for prisoners. I'm not interested in a safer blood treatment system, right? And likewise –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

If you're into the same extent that like Bill's only interest in what happened in the prison system during his time was I need a bullet point of things that I can run on. Right. And like, yeah, I put some educational programs in system was the cheapest, you know, that it's ever been. Bada bing, bada boom. I'm done thinking about the prisons in the state I run.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You know, like all of these are parts of the the why all of this kind of shit will keep happening.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Robert, do you want to, do you want to like buy some blood? Yes. Oh my God. Yes. Do you, I got, I want to make sure, will I have any idea where the blood comes from or what is in it?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Awesome.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I'll lease the blood. I'll give some back.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah, yeah, yeah. we got to have blood leasing has to be on the organ lease. I mean, we're all going to be doing our best for the next several decades to like recreate some of like the silliest movies from the 1990s. I think repo man's next.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Right. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Anyway, rent some blood. Have fun. I don't know why I ended on that, Mark.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Now, one unit of blood, there's actually varies, because it depends on how it's produced. It's roughly a pint, right? That's what you should keep in mind in your head when you're hearing about a unit of blood. Now, in the grand scheme of things, 38 pints or so of blood that's tainted doesn't sound like a lot, maybe.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. Half court. Find the documentary Factor 8 so I can watch it. That's what I'm going to plug. Somebody's got to have it out there.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

That's a true story. Good work. Anyway, that's the episode.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

However, as I stated in the last episode, all of these are being mixed with tens of thousands of other blood donations. And so these 38-ish pints-ish of tainted blood can wind up being turned into medicine for tens of thousands of people, right? Because any given dose of the plasma being given to hemophiliacs as factor VIII would be made from the blood of as many as 60,000 donors.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Welcome back to the podcast that this is, which is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about... How to mine prison labor for their sweet, sweet blood. Uh-oh, hepatitis. That's the story we're telling today. Whoops, all heps. Yeah, whoops, all heps. B-E-C, all of the heps. Collect them all, folks, if you're doing blood donations with needles that have been used on dozens of other people in the prison.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And just one tainted donor can spoil the batch. So that's great. So from just 38 pints of donated blood, At least 40,000 doses of dangerous tainted medicine were made and shipped overseas. At least. Probably significantly more than that. Many made their way into the hands of hemophiliacs who required regular injections of factor VIII.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

In 1985, the same year that Clinton's state cops cleared the company of most wrongdoing, a UK hemophiliac sufferer named Peter Longstaff tested positive for HIV. Now, because of the way this all works, we don't know that Peter's tainted plasma came from Arkansas prison inmates, right? Because you can't. They're just mixing it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

They're not keeping track of – here's every individual whose blood is in this batch of Factor VIII, right? Right. But he had been taking blood products, including factor VIII and factor IV, since the 70s. And by then, Arkansas was a huge part of the U.S. blood economy. And the odds that blood from Cummins' prison made it into his body are about 100%, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Just given the way things worked at that time. His brother also suffered from hemophilia. And his brother, Stephen Longstaff, would be infected in 1986 and became one of the first people to die of AIDS in the U.K.,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Given the hysteria at the time, this meant not just that the Longstaffs weren't just dealing with the fact that two of, you know, both of their sons had gotten sick and, you know, in 86, one of them died. But it meant that they also became the targets of mob panic. Per The Guardian, during Stephen's final days in hospital, the windows had to be blacked out to prevent people taking pictures.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

On the day of the funeral, the family house was daubed with paint, which read, AIDS, get out of here. It was devastating to the family, his mother said. Pete himself recalled being rescued from his house by his GP and the police because there was a mob outside trying to get him because he had HIV.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So when we talk about how many people are getting sick, it's not just that they're getting a deadly or potentially deadly disease that changes or ends their life. It's also they're dealing with this kind of shit because that is where the culture is at the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And you could still use the water fountain that he used. It wasn't a danger to you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

It sounds wild now. But no, I remember this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

You know, Robert. I know who was there. And I know that he is currently a well-regarded U.S. politician. But Bernard Montgomery Sanders has a lot of unanswered questions about that day. That's all we need to say. That's all we need to say.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yeah. HMA ultimately settled with the FDA over the blood recall that resulted from this. Their share of the liability was about a quarter of a million dollars. Now, we don't know how much money HMA was making off of this program, in part because they weren't really required to let people ... The regulations about this are like, you don't really need to say, in the sense that most companies do.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But at least a couple of million dollars a year is probably a fair guess based on how like what the company that takes over for them is going to make. Now, the state police investigation largely cleared the department of any serious wrongdoing in their plasma problem. HMA was eventually given the go ahead to continue operating it with new safeguards in place.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Thankfully, the growing panic over HIV and the news of what had happened to the long staffs in the UK prompted some re-examination. And even though they were allowed to continue in like 84, 85, doing this plasma donation program, in the summer of 1986, a hero emerged. And unfortunately, in this case, the hero was an insurance company.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But like HMA's insurance company, after they looked into the evidence, was like, oh, absolutely not. No, you people are going to get us fired. Fucked like you're so reckless. We're dropping your asses.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

This meant that the Arkansas prison plasma donation program was again forced to shut down. And this is going to lead to some of the most. I mean. Less irresponsible actions than we've had so far. So one of the things that happens once HMA gets shut down by their insurer, the prison board in which the guy we heard from last episode, Clinton aide Bobby Roberts, is a member of the board.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

I mean, I live in a place where you get to wear clothing like this regularly because it's cold. So it's part of why I left Texas. I really like jackets. And boy, very few places are worse for needing a jacket than Texas. You heard it here first, folks.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

They actually – they might come to the conclusion that like that state police investigation might have been shit. And they hire an outside organization to do a better version of the internal investigation into what had happened. Now, the group they picked was the Institute for Law and Policy Planning from Berkeley, California, which is a lot better than having the state police do it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

But the subject of the investigation wasn't the plasma donation program itself. It was just the behavior of HMA. So part of what they're doing here, it's good that we get this info, but part of what they're doing is like, well, we don't want to be like shitting on the prison system. We want to make this company who we already can't work with anymore into a scapegoat.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Right. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And this is how the paper concludes. HMA originally may have diverted the Department of Correction payments to support acquiring plasma centers or to other purposes that may well warrant further inquiry. In any event, it was early in the five-year contract period that HMA established a pattern of contract shortfalls, and the ADC accepted them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

For HMA, this must all be viewed as profit-motivated business decision-making at best. At worst, it calls for further inquiry. So just like so many crimes are going on here. Even though it has concluded this again, it's just blaming HMA. So the people running the prison system still want to make money off of blood.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So the Arkansas Department of Corrections makes a deal with a new company, Pine Bluff Biological Products, a for-profit business. And obviously one that's not going to continue the same problems. These guys are finally going to be ethical.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

On the up and up.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes, exactly. Ethical. Just like the ethical blood diamonds that I wear in my all diamond chiffon. I don't know what a chiffon is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Yes. And they're not blood diamonds. They're blood plasma diamonds, which is much more ethical.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Exactly. Exactly. Platelets make the best emeralds, I assume. So Roberts, Bobby Roberts, would later allege of Pine Bluff Biological Products getting the new blood contract, quote, I think it was an insider Pine Bluff deal. Those were companies set up specifically for doing business with the ADC.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

Basically, people who were running the Department of Corrections went to rich entrepreneur friends of theirs and were like, here's what you need to do to set up a company to make this work, right? Mm-hmm. Now, I know what you're asking now. How much money was in this business for the prison system?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

The answer is less than you'd think. Here's the Arkansas Times. According to Robert's records, PBBP reported collecting an average of 960 units of plasma a week in fiscal year 1986, calculated a conserving selling rate of $50 a unit that volume of plasma grows to approximately 2.5 million that year. According to PBBP's contract, the ADC was to receive $5 for every unit of plasma collected.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

So here's how the numbers looked in a year when the median income in Arkansas was half of what it is today and when the scourge of contaminated blood products was being felt around the world. Now, that sounds weirdly small for this. First off, this is not all the money that's coming in through the program. But second...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

What's happening here is the state and the prisons are getting a little bit of this money. And most of that prisoner money is also going back into the Department of Corrections because they're using it to buy things from the prisons. Most of the money is going to PBBP.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

And again, this is a company that has been set up specifically to interface with the Department of Corrections, generally by people who had relationships with people in Arkansas government who were responsible for making these calls. So they basically created a free company to siphon off money from the prisons, right? That's kind of what's happened here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Tainted Human Blood Became A Major U.S. Export

That's an element of what is going on. There's also serious debates. As to these numbers, this is what the Arkansas Times suggests. There's a – Sophia Chase wrote for the William and Mary Business Law Review that the value of a unit of blood to the prison was about $100, and the prison kept half of that as opposed to like $5 per unit. So there may have been a lot more going into the system.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

One of Bettelheim's legitimate achievements is that he is an early proponent of the idea that if you are working with emotionally disturbed or mentally ill children, and they are engaging in behavior that you don't want them to engage in, your first task is to understand the internal logic of the child. Why do they think this is a good idea? Why are they choosing to act in this way?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

That you should seek to figure out why they want to do things. In other words, what's going on in the kid's head is important. That is a fairly unique idea at the time. And that's a legitimate positive step

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Right. Yes. I think that that's a big part of it. And that's overall like a good direction to be going. Unfortunately, Bettelheim has another belief. And it's one that he will talk openly about this idea that like you need to understand why the child is making that is doing the things that they're doing, their internal logic. He will also say the whole time you should never use physical punishment.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

on kids. You don't do it. There's no cause for it. The entire time he is working at this, he is running this school, he is physically punishing these kids. He just lies about it to parents and to academics by saying, don't do this. We never do this. The whole time he is using physical and mental abuse to be very clear, right? And it's interesting to me that he knows he has to deny it, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

It's interesting to me that if he were to have said at this time, obviously you spank kids, you know, sometimes you slap them a little bit. That would not have been controversial. That would have been in the 40s, well within the standards of like normal childhood education, right? The fact that he's like, no, no, no, you should never do this, but is still doing it is so interesting to me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah. This guy, Alvin Rosenfeld, who was Bruno's colleague and friend, partly defends the fact that Bettelheim uses physical violence. He argues that unlike most institutions at the time, the orthogenic school didn't use shock therapy. It didn't have restraints or any other violent tools. But sometimes the kids were so out of control that they needed physical intervention.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Find someone else to do it for me. And Bruno's whole business as an adult is not just I'm helping kids who are having problems. It's I am taking these kids away from their rich parents who do not want to deal with them and handling them. Which is very different from the healthy version of this where you're just – because I have a lot of empathy even in this time, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And Bruno courageously handled that unpleasant task for his subordinates. assuring that, quote, they were free to be far more nurturing. He admits that Bettelheim sometimes meted out punishment that included slaps, but he frames this as minor for the era. Now, I won't say that what he did was extreme for the era, but it wasn't mild, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And we have a lot of reports from kids who were with him during this period of time, and they do not report a mild experience. And I don't talk about this a lot on the show because I'm not an expert or an educator, but I did work in special ed as a paraprofessional for the better part of two years.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And I'm unwilling to give detailed stories on the air for reasons that should be obvious and relate primarily to the privacy rights of those children. But I will say that I dealt with – primarily kids who were frequently violent and who were about my size, right? These are 17, 18, 19, 20 year olds. And many of them are non, the term we would use at the time was nonverbal.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And because of my size, I worked with these kids very closely because I could take a hit and I was hit every day on that job, right? One of my colleagues suffered a near fatal injury, a TBI, another had a broken jaw. So this was a, I understand sometimes you have to use restraints to protect yourself and others, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

With kids who, and some of the kids were what we would call emotionally disturbed. There were a variety of diagnoses that you had there. I'm aware of the need sometimes to restrain kids. And so I want to emphasize that's not what's going on with Bruno, right? Right. For one thing, restraining is sometimes there's force involved in restraining a kid. It's not violent.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Your job is not to harm them physically. Your job is to stop them from causing harm to themselves and others. And sometimes the only way to do that is to like physically hold them so that they can't

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

hit somebody or whatever right this is like a very difficult thing to do and to talk about I really don't know how to get across like I'm very empathetic to the people who are good at this job and I want to emphasize I had no training in it we simply don't get training like that's another a major massive problem it's it's very like I had a four hour class on like physical restraint and none of it none of it was functional stuff um

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yes, yes. And as it was 15 years ago, I think it was very primitive and we were not adequately trained to do the job. I can only imagine how bad it was in the 40s. Yeah. But again, what Bruno is doing here, none of the stories that I have from other kids are – he had to make difficult choices because a kid was violent and presented a danger to others.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

They are all he was annoyed at a behavior and so he hid a child. Yeah. That is what Bruno – and I really want to emphasize I'm not naive about like the complex choices that have to be made sometimes here. That's not what's going on with Bruno. What he is doing to these kids is sadistic physical abuse on a level that I have trouble comprehending.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

One of Bruno's students is a kid named Ronald Angrez. He spent 12 years at the orthogenic school during which he rarely saw his family. Bruno believed it was bad for students to have regular contact with loved ones, and he pushed heavily for parents to keep their kids enrolled there for the entirety of their childhood.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Where we talk about like he's diagnosing kids as things that we would not today because they just don't – I'm not judgmental of someone who legitimately is trying to help kids and is just like we called things by different names then. We didn't know as much as we know now. It's one thing to make errors.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

You are abusing your kid if you try to take them back and raise them in your home. That's bad for them. I have to have total control over them for the whole time they're children. Not a great sign there.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

That's such a good point that like anytime someone is being like, no, no, no, you really shouldn't see your kid. They're doing something fucked up, right? That's just, yeah, probably a very durable truth. Speaking of durable truths, here's some ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

It's another thing to have your whole goal be what if a concentration camp but nice for children? Yeah. Which is, again, part of the motivating factor here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

We're back. So we're talking about this – an article written by one of Bruno's students, Ronald Angrez. Angrez was diagnosed by Bettelheim as autistic. We almost – I will say certainly I think would not apply that diagnosis to Angrez today because his primary symptoms were that like he was bad at sports. He was a little slow learning how to read and he like fidgeted sometimes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He had a thing for daydreaming. Everything that he describes is what I would call like, OK, well, you're just a kid. Some kids take longer to learn to read than others. Some kids aren't good at sports. I wasn't good at some kids fidget. You know, none of that is what I would call like or what I think any expert would say, like diagnostic criteria for anything. Really? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Tons of them.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Like they're not saying like he was not incapable of like learning how to read or anything. He's just a little slower than others. Fairly normal kid, right? But Angra's father was a psychoanalyst himself and a rich one at that. And he diagnosed his child as disturbed for a variety of utterly anodyne reasons. Quote, sometimes I skipped while I paced. I had other unacceptable mannerisms too.

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I sometimes talked to myself, lips moving when lost in thought. Again, these just sound like things people do.

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Yeah. Yeah. Your kid's like just talking to himself like children do.

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Totally normal for it. And that so much of what's going on here is that these are rich parents and they are annoyed that their kids maybe need a little bit of extra help. Maybe aren't immediately ready to go to fancy dinner parties or the Met or something. Right. And so they're like, well, I'm just going to have you. I'm going to lock you up with this guy. This weirdo.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

That seems like their children.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

I am a rich professional in the 1940s. I have highballs to drink and benzos to eat. You know, I have no time to raise my own children. So Ronald's father's sense of professional ethics meant that he couldn't treat his own son. The Orthogenic School had a reputation, has a reputation, it's still around, for feeding children very well. Again, this is a high dollar institution.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

They have excellent food. It is an excellent space. It is a very immaculately clean. There is every kind of like piece of educational equipment is all state of the art, right? Very nice furniture. This is a nice place, right? I really need to emphasize that. If you look at it as a rich guy, you will be impressed at the quality of the facility itself.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Now, Bruno would claim all his life that no child was ever admitted to the orthogenic school without having a chance to visit and decide for themselves to consent to come. Ronald says, bullshit.

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He says, I was interviewed by Bruno, but I would never have consented to go to that school because from the moment we met, he was cruel and belittled me. Quote, I drew for him a picture of a man. I don't remember now if he asked me to, but all the psychologists seem to crave such pictures, and I may have tried in this fashion to break the ice. What a stupid and ugly picture, he snapped.

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I did not yet know he fancied himself an art connoisseur. You did not draw his hands. They're behind his back, I explained. You just did that because you can't draw hands. Do you know what it means when a boy can't draw hands? I did not. I still don't.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

What does it mean when a child can't draw? And I want to continue that write-up. To appease him, I redrew the picture and added some hands, carefully showing all five fingers. Preposterous! You drew the hands entirely out of proportion. They're bigger than his head! Once more, he scowled darkly, as if I were expected to know the sinister significance of such a reversal of normal proportions.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He asked what I hoped to become when I grew up. A scientist, I replied. Ridiculous, he spat. You want to be a scientist? You can't even read! Again... This is a child. Oh my God. He's like- Holy fuck, dude.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And they feel totally different about it than in the 40s. Like one thing they do constantly is diagnose kids as psychotic, right? Which you cannot today. That is not something that happens. Because like the idea that like you would diagnose a child as being a psychopath, right, is very normal then, right?

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What is going on here, Bruno? Like, from the standards of a period of time in which parenting was, shall we say, rough. Like, that is bad child rearing. Um-

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

The idea that adults could give consent wasn't really a normal concept.

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And it's such a weird thing that he would insist on like telling the lies he chooses to tell are always very strange to me.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yes. Yes. That's a very good point that he does understand that this should be a thing the child consents to. He just doesn't give a fuck.

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If I tell the lie, I can normalize the behavior I know is good, even if I've fallen short, right? Maybe it's something like that.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah, I think that may in fact be the case. Ingres calls him rude after this point. Fair point to the kid. And he later wrote that he would have been utterly shattered if he'd known then that he was about to spend the remainder of his childhood in Bruno's care. So his parents send him to the school.

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When he starts at the orthogenic school, he's allowed to bring his favorite toys and the like with him. His prized possessions are his comic books. And as soon as Bruno sees them, he announces a new rule. No comic books. He also takes issue with one of Ronald's toys, a wooden train, which he called stupid. Man, it's a train. What the fuck, dude?

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Now, this is all pretty abusive, but by far the worst thing. Well, honestly, I don't know if it's all pretty bad, but he also uses physical violence against little kids. Here's how Andres later described his treatment at Bruno's hands. I lived for years in terror of his beatings, an abject animal terror. I never knew when he would hit me or for what or how savagely.

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Bettelheim prized his unpredictability, no less than his unconventionality. As someone who saw the secret depths of men's souls, he glorified and defying ordinary notions of which offenses were important or even what constituted an offense. What hostile character, he would say of me and countless other boys as he beat us publicly.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

These beatings, which made the greatest impression on me of anything that I have known in life, stick in my memory as a grand performance of exultant rage.

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And yeah, it's interesting to me. It is probably worth really reemphasizing that He is not this way with that first kid. Now, he doesn't really spend much time parenting her, right? He's working. But that kid that he helps to raise in Austria, he's not hitting. At least she does not recall him being anything like this, right?

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Right, right.

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He hadn't been in the camp yet. Yeah. I wonder how much of it is the camp and how much of it is like – He hadn't made himself remade himself as a psychoanalytic expert yet. Right. And I don't think you'll ever you can ever like know, you know, which which of these did more. But he's obviously he's a very different guy in terms of how he treats children after the camps.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And that's that's something that like really deserves to be kind of reemphasized. To continue with Angris' story, once some all-school games were organized, we played musical chairs.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

A boy I shall call Seymour jumped into a seat before I could, and from then on until the end of the game, which I had to watch from the sidelines, he silently taunted me, smirking and wiggling his behind in time to the music, which bumps in my direction. After the game finished, Seymour approached me with that gloating smirk still on his face. I said, I wish I could chop your head off.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

The counselor promptly told, told Bettelheim who just as promptly beat me, adding neck chops to his standard slaps and a denunciatory monologue in case I missed the poetic justice of it all. And again, you see like pretty normal kid to say something like that. Not a weird thing for a kid to say. This is a thing where you need to sit both of those kids down and talk to them.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He's like mock cuts his head off by hitting him in the neck, which also you just, I mean, you shouldn't hit kids at all, but you certainly shouldn't hit children in the neck. Um,

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah. And like the the fucking I mean, we could talk about choke chains and the like, which are also common at the time. But like the the kind of immediate willingness where he's like this kid talked about cutting other kids head off. Obviously, the right thing to do is hit him in the neck. You know, like that's that's a very telling logical leap that he makes there.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Now, these stories that Angrist tells are very consistent with the stories multiple other former students give of their time under Bruno's tutelage. And they are also they also comport with the stories of employees who work as teachers and staff members at the orthogenic school during this time.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And that just, like, it's the Wild West in Bruno's era.

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One of those former staff members was a guy who wrote about his experiences for the Chicago Reader under the pseudonym W.B., I find his account valuable in part because Bruno's friend and defender Alvin Rosenfeld acknowledges that Bruno used physical violence but also insists that most of the complaints from students, which he views as unfair, came from later in Bruno's career.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And so he's like, well, they were angry because like he was – he kind of died before their education could finish. And so they're transmitting their feelings of abandonment to like claiming he was abusive. And this guy's account puts the light of that. For one thing, WB comes to work at the school early on in Bruno's tutelage there. And he is a World War II combat veteran.

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So this is not a guy who is inclined to be shocked by violence, right? Like if this guy reacts to your violence, you're really out of fucking pocket, right? Right. Quote, a number of us were veterans who had probably seen more of life by age 21 than Bettelheim had seen at age 40. I do disagree with that because he was in the camps, man.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

But this guy's got – definitely has like a bit of an ax to grind with Bettelheim. Yeah. Now, he notes, this guy, that most orthogenic school employees were women. And that is a real thing Bruno does. He likes to be surrounded by women. And these folks are very loyal to Bruno. WB describes the female employees at the school as like his Roman cohort.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

So these are like his power base, these female counselors who Rosenfeld is like, that's why Bruno had to do all the physical violence was so that these women could be free to be more nurturing, which is a very odd vibe. Yeah. But that's the way people describe it.

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Quote, and this is from WB, the understanding that most of the men had was that Bettelheim tried to seduce everyone into relating to him as their therapist. This was a condition of job tenure. Our general feeling was that most of the women accepted this relationship, but we never knew for sure. Their job tenure was certainly longer than most of the men's.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

I would characterize the atmosphere at the orthogenic school at that time as the beginnings of a cult, with Dr. B as the cult leader." And I find that interesting because he notes accurately, this guy, that part of cult dynamics is the creation of new vocabulary and the redefinition of existing vocabulary to create a new reality in which cult members live under.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And this is how WB explains Bruno's use of terms like emotionally disturbed, autistic, and schizophrenic. These are not real medical diagnoses, but these are terms reinvented by Bruno to create a reality that's convenient to him, right?

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And he will say he has an 85% success rate in treating schizophrenia and autism, and that 85% of the kids that came into his school left it without these diagnoses. He's not curing these people. He is declaring them to have a thing and then declaring them cured when they behave in a way that he describes as idealized, right?

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And that's kind of key to it is that he gets described as brilliant for a while because of this big 85% success rate. He is the only person judging these kids, right?

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

If the Kool-Aid bowl fits, right?

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah, and I think WB is trying to describe a lot of the employees.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Although the financial relationship, again, and he's like, I don't really know how much did they buy it. Did they just need the job, right? Like it was unclear to him and it will be forever to us. But I do find it noteworthy that he says this. Bettelheim was a professional success. Why? Simple.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He defined a child's problem without any meaningful critical peer review and then proceeded to solve the problem again without critical review. A generally compliant and emotionally dependent staff then put their imprimatur on his self-declared and widely proclaimed success. And yeah.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And the world is a lot easier. Life is much easier when you get to do that. Now, when Bruno directs the Orthogenic School, he's also kind of the Dr. Phil of like the 40s through the 50s. 50s, 60s, you know, to some extent in like the 70s and that he's he's a constant presence on TV. And he is brought in as an expert on disturbed children when there's a horrible crime.

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You know, when there's he's also brought in to talk about concentration camps, anti-Semitism. And this is deeply unfortunate because Bruno is not really an expert on disturbed children. And he's increasingly identifies himself as white children. And identifies his old Jewish identity as problematic. And so the fact that he is a major public figure on all of these things is a real issue.

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Near the end of the 1940s, he's asked to speak at Hillel House on modern anti-Semitism. And he told the assembled, almost entirely Jewish audience, anti-Semitism, whose fault is it? Yours. Because you don't assimilate. It's your fault. If you assimilated, there would be no anti-Semitism. Why don't you assimilate? Now... People don't take this lying down. This is offensive to the audience.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Like, holy shit, man. What? And one member of the audience, Eric Shopter, is like, wait a second. If you're saying the solution to anti-Semitism is to end Jewishness, what makes you different from an anti-Semite? And Bruno responds, I'm only a doctor prescribing the cure. Not an answer.

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Yeah, that's that's that's I mean, problematic.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

That is very good advice. And particularly in Bruno's case, because as the years go on, he becomes one of the first public intellectual experts on autism. In 1967, he publishes a book called The Empty Fortress, which is one of the first influential and famous books on the treatment of children with autism in US history.

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Again, let me remind you, Bruno's PhD is not in any relevant medical discipline. And so far as we know, he mostly lied about his psychoanalytic credentials in Austria. The Empty Fortress in his book's title relates to what Bruno saw as the cause of autism. And I'm going to quote from a write-up by the Autism History Project. In other words...

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He believed autism came from your mom ignoring you, right? Yep.

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Out of nowhere, blaming the moms. So he saw the primary cause of autism as refrigerator mothers. These are emotionally cold and distant women. And he, again, he'll describe his mom as one of these later in life. You know, I mean, he starts to at around this time.

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Now, one allegation that you'll find here is that Bruno takes his mommy issues and turns them into what was for years... This is never the standard explanation for the origins of autism in the medical sense, but because of Bruno's prominence, it's a very common explanation, right? Because people hear this on TV, they see the book, and they're like, oh, okay, that must be it. Now...

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Responsible articles today will note accurately that this is horseshit. The origins of autism are almost certainly genetic and 100 percent not caused by your mom being a refrigerator or vaccines or vaccines. Very important to note. Also not caused by that.

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Yes. Yes. And it's also worth noting that autism was often called childhood schizophrenia at the time, too. Like these are these terms are very much. Again, I really need to reemphasize that. I also should emphasize that even articles today often say very fucked up things about autism.

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I want to read an excerpt from a 2021 article in the Chicago Tribune about Bruno Bettelheim and about him getting the causes of autism wrong. Quote, even a quick look at children who were abused or neglected by parents should make it obvious that autism is a completely different kind of problem.

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Eventually, autism will probably be treated with gene therapy or effective medications will be developed to counter the defect. Now that's just eugenics, right? That's just eugenics that you wrote in 2021, Guy at the Chicago Tribune. That's just eugenics. Oh my gosh, like explicitly calling it a defect?

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Yeah. And there's... Yeah, this is something that is still developing. I just I want to note, I just read that in that article and was like, oh, my God, man, you're not any better than Bruno was, dude. I mean, I guess this is still a real problem that this podcast is not going to kind of deal with in all of the depth that it deserves. But I wanted to make a note of that.

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In his piece for Commentary Magazine, Ronald Angrez makes a note that even though the state of autism treatment and knowledge was more primitive at the time, there was ample evidence in the early days to suggest that Bruno's empty fortress hypothesis was nonsense. Quote, Everyone before Bettelheim believed it was. No one but Bettelheim and his most fervent followers ever believed otherwise.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And even on Bettelheim's assumption that the origins were psychological rather than biological or neurological, why go on as he did to accuse parents of such crimes, such schizophrenic symptoms, as wishing their child did not exist? Bettelheim made an art of accusation. He did not sort of blame victims. He set himself up as their special prosecutor. Right?

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Which is an interesting and a damning way to describe that. I think this is our second ad break, so let's just go for it.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

We're back. So it has been noted that Bruno's victim-blaming of concentration camp internees bore more than a little resemblance to the way he talked about the parents of quote-unquote autistic children. The identification of the aggressor, which he saw as core to the behavior of inmates, is also what he believed went on with autism.

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Kids with so-called refrigerator moms aped that behavior and locked away their emotions from the empty fortresses. This is Bruno's writing here.

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I had experienced being at the mercy of forces that seemed beyond one's ability to influence, and with no knowledge of whether or when the experience would end, of living isolated from family and friends, of being severely restricted in the sending and receiving of information.

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Perhaps this sudden reversal helped me first to understand how the camps could destroy personality, and later to resume, with I hope greater insights and empathy, my earlier task, that of creating a milieu which would favor the reconstruction of personality. This is him literally being like, the camps taught me that I could cure autism by making my own camp.

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Now, violence was not his only tool for reconstructing personality, but insults and mockery were among his go-to tactics, and behind every effort he made was the promise of violence. This is why he pushed parents to enroll their children in his facility for the entirety of their childhood. He needed the privacy of total control to ensure he was not stopped.

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From that write-up in Disability Studies Quarterly, one former student called it a dumping ground for young people who were different in some way or who, for whatever reason, didn't match their parents' expectations. Bettelheim was known to slap and punch children. He would often tell his students that they were at the orthogenic school because their parents couldn't stand them.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He called them megalomaniacs and neurotics and forced them into uncomfortable or violent situations against their will. Children were expected to shower naked in front of the staff and at one another throughout their stay, regardless of age or comfort level. and many students and staff were physically and sexually abused.

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Jacqueline Sanders worked for Bettelheim for 13 years and became the director of the school after Bettelheim left. She writes, we became the abusers of abused children.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He has created a little hell for kids and for staff members. Yeah. Yeah. Now, students at this school were expected to work towards admission to higher education, and the school had an excellent record for this, which has led some defenders, including former students who, like most, will say his violence was unacceptable, to declare the school overall still a success.

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And this brings me to the book The Creation of Dr. B by Richard Pollock. One criticism that he will get from Bettelheim's defenders is that, given his own history with the school, he can't be objective. You see, Richard's brother Stephen started out as a day student at the Orthogenic School, but Bettelheim insisted, as always, that he come to live there full-time.

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Richard writes, "...over the months he made fewer and fewer visits home, becoming for me a kind of spectral sibling even before his death in 1948." Now, Stephen's death occurred when he was away from the school on a rare holiday visit with his family.

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He and his brother were staying at a farm owned by a friend of the family, and he fell through a hay chute several stories to the ground and died on impact. If you grew up on a farm, you immediately are like, oh, yeah, that's absolutely how a little kid could die, right? It's one of the most dangerous things in any kind of farm is a hay chute.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

It's just this hole that's going to be covered by hay a lot of the time, and if you go through it, you could fall quite a distance. So – But Bettelheim refuses to accept, oh, a tragic accident occurred, right? He blames Rick and Steven's parents for killing their son because they wanted to spend time with him and they should have just left him at the school full time.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Now, decades later, Bettelheim still holds onto this grudge because in the late, again, this happens in 48, in the late 1980s, Polak, who's writing a book about Bettelheim, calls on him. And Bettelheim still remembers these parents and is still angry at them. Quote, My father he dismissed as crude and somewhat simple-minded, a schlemiel who played the bills and stayed out of emotional problems.

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My mother was the villain. He said she paraded as a saint and a martyr, when in fact she was almost entirely responsible for my brother's problems. With astonishing anger, he said she had rejected Stephen at birth, and that to cope with this lockout he had developed pseudo-feeble-mindedness.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He said that my brother was a lovely child who manifested a sensitivity my mother wished she possessed, and he castigated her for never conceding that she was responsible for Stephen's distress, and for insisting against the school's wishes that he be allowed periodic home visits.

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That's the only kind of person. Yeah.

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Their dad was like his dad. Their mom was like his mom.

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So Bettelheim declares in this conversation with no evidence, no, your brother committed suicide because he was so unhappy with your parent. Again, he fell through a hay chute, man. He insinuated the fact that their mom worked full time was part of why their brother killed himself. And he ranted, what is it about these Jewish mothers, Mr. Polak?

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In his book, Richard continued, "...in 1956 I would discover he had written that the school had warned my parents that a home visit for Stephen was ill-advised because he might harm himself. Despite our objection, the visit took place, and the child died in a carefully contrived accident.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Bettelheim told me with utter confidence that Stephen had once purposefully fallen out of a speedboat near the propellers, and it was only a matter of time before he found a situation like the loft in which his efforts at killing himself would succeed." In fact, my brother had never fallen out of any boat.

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Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And that anecdote really says a lot that he just lied to this kid about his brother's death for no reason. Not for no reason, because inventing fiction lets him redefine reality, right? And that's the essence of his pedagogy, right? Is... You get to define the reality for these children and thus of the world.

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Like that's how maybe, you know, this is to some extent him taking back control over the world, which was so chaotic for him. But I don't know. Like that's fascinating.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

crook county is available now listen for free on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts now bruno has at the uh the time we've you know we're starting up here he has just gotten over the to the us he has escaped uh the holocaust and he has gotten a job he started out as an academic he had you know lost his family business at this point he has no money

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

No, and he's such a – so during the Vietnam War, Bruno makes a name for himself as an anti-anti-war activist. And confoundingly, he describes the kids protesting against Vietnam as neo-Nazis who were very sick and paranoiacs trying to beat down father to show they are a big boy. I don't know if that's what's, maybe they don't want to get drafted and go die a Da Nang man.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Maybe don't trust those people. Yeah. In 1976, you had asked it in part one. When does the backlash against a lot of what he's saying about the Holocaust begin? And as I said, it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

There's some immediately, but kind of there's a big chunk of academic backlash starts in the late 70s when American Holocaust scholar Terence DePrez writes a book about the survivors of death camps and concentration camps. His book, The Survivor, was partly a broadside against the misinformation Bettelheim had contributed to the discussion. And I want to quote now from an article by Paul Rosen.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Throughout The Survivor, Depress criticized Bettelheim for having supposed that it was correct to have thought that prisoners ever regressed to infantilism. Depress believed that The Survivor should be viewed as reminders, not of human weaknesses, but of evil circumstances that were objectively powerful.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Both the Nazis and Stalin's regime subjected prisoners to filth for the sake of humiliation and debasement. De Presse argued that prisoner behavior in response to such circumstances was not childish, but rather a heroic response to dreadful necessities.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

My guest with me again, as in part one, Alison Raskin. Alison, how are you doing? It's the same day, but we pretend it's a separate one.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He cited one camp where the inmates burned it down and found throughout the literature instances of people who somehow managed to maintain their inward sanctity. Resistance took subtle shapes, and de Prez explored the way human dignity endured in the form of freedom from the entire control by external forces.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Survivors helped one another, engaged in acts of sabotage, and from Buchenwald made contact with the Allies for a bombing raid on SS parts of the camp. Depress pointed out that Bettelheim was imprisoned during a special period when criminals among inmates wielded power.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He disputed Bettelheim's notion that social bonding among prisoners was absent, nor was it true, Depress argued, that they did not hate their oppressors and did not sometimes revolt.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

According to Depress, Bettelheim had felt superior to his fellow sufferers, and his account was factually marred by his egotistical obsession with autonomy that blinded him to the extent of the mutual support that existed within the camps.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Sounds accurate to me. Yeah. Now, Bettelheim responds with an article in The New Yorker arguing that Depress's book missed the realities of the experience. And Depress responds a little later with an article of his own called The Bettelheim Problem. He links Bruno's conclusions about the causes of autism and schizophrenia to his supposed observations about camp life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

In a way, he seemed to be taking out his righteous anger on the SS guards, on the parents of his students. Yeah. The ultimate product of this was that these people who lived for years without their children had to do so believing they were the ultimate cause of their children's problems, right? Which is bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Right. Right. Exactly. That's a very good point. Right. And that's such a key part of what Bettelheim is saying is that like you have fucked your kids up. You gave them these conditions. Only I can fix them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

But this lady who, you know, he had helped raise her daughter is kind of taking care of them. Right. And the understanding is that they need to figure out something. But like they're not immediate. They're not like on the streets or whatever. Right. And Bruno very quickly is able to get work for himself.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And that's why when this mom, when Richard, his biographer's mom, insists that her other son at least get some time with the family, Bruno has to turn around and make that kid's death be caused by that. In 1985, Bruno's wife, Trudy, passed on. Despite some early infidelities, he was by all accounts dedicated to his wife, and most people who knew him will say that her passing broke him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He was by this point an old man in poor health, and so on March 13, 1990, Bruno Bettelheim took his own life. Now, the fact that he committed suicide was just about the most understanding thing he ever did. He was old. He was ailing. He would write a lot about the fact that he no longer felt he could be of service to society.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And so I don't have trouble understanding why he did this, but the fact that he killed himself sent a shock through the psychoanalytic and educational community. And while the criticism of him for committing suicide was unjust, which is a big part of the initial reaction to his death is people being like,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Oh, well, the fact that a psychoanalyst would do this must have meant that he was never he wasn't as healthy as he portrayed himself as being. And that's bad. That's a bad way to look at the suicide of an old man whose wife just died and who was in poor health. It also weirdly opens up the floodgates for the survivors of his teaching practices to talk about what they had endured.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And that's why things are kind of messy is that the first wave of criticism of Bettelheim happens alongside people criticizing him for committing suicide, which is messy. But you do get a lot of these survivors start talking in 1990 and continue talking up to the present day.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Like there's – again, some of the writings that I found on this was like much more recent as a result of the fact that like people are still processing this. There's folks who initially were like, well, but no, the school was a good thing for me overall who kind of come to different conclusions.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

There's also still plenty of schools who are like, yeah, it was brutal at times but – students who are like it was brutal but it prepared me for success. I'm not going to judge how anybody interprets their own experience at this school. I will say one of the things people say for Bruno, which is that so many of his graduates went on to have excellent careers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Well, yeah, but also all their parents were super rich. I don't know if we give that to Bruno, right? Like their parents were all rich as hell. Maybe that had more to do with it. I don't know. Not to take anything away from them, but I just don't know that I give that to Bruno. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Although there's also some problematic aspects because his initial gig, he gets hired to be an English teacher in Portland, Oregon. And then World War Two starts. And suddenly the idea of having an Austrian man teaching English is like, we're not really bullish on the Austrians right now. Even though you were a victim of the Nazis, we don't actually have a teaching position for you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

No, God, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Nope, nope, not at all. Well, that's the story. How we feel it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And honestly, like it's interesting because I hadn't I never really thought about the fact that like, yeah, using the term committing does imply that like there's a crime that's because we only use that word. Right. You wouldn't say like I committed lunch today. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's just so normalized. Yeah. Interesting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

I think it's a good point. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah, no, no. I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I it's like, The most understandable thing about his whole story, there's so many choices that he makes that it's like, well, I don't really get where that comes from. It's interesting that the first thing he gets criticized for is that and not anything about how he treated children or whatever. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Especially now, like we are heading into a whole new golden era for for that. Anyway, you got any anything you want to plug kind of at the end here?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on today. This was a hard one to listen to and I appreciate you doing so much to try and like explain. Yeah. What, what was happening here? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Jeez. Like half a century, literally almost half a century.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah. All right. Well, that's the episode, everybody. Thank you so much. And thank you, Allison. All right. Have a good week.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah. Although it's also – there's a degree to which this works out well for Bruno because he doesn't really want to be an English teacher and he doesn't want to be in Oregon. He is – he falls in love with the idea of the city of Chicago in part because it has a more European layout. So he finds it kind of more similar to where he'd come up.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He is very interested in child development and educational reform. These are like academic interests. He's not a professional in these yet, but this is what he wants for himself. So he kind of works as an academic for a few years until in 1944, he receives his U.S. citizenship.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

That same year, he gets the job that will be responsible for most of his fame and for most of the problematic things he's going to do in his life, which is directing the Orthogenic School. Now, I know what you're saying. Robert, orthogenic school sounds dystopian as fuck. That is a scary name for a school. And it is a scary name.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

The word orthogenic comes from Greek and it literally means straightening out. So the school for straightening out kids, that's a scary thing to call a school. It had been established in 1915 and it was a residential facility where kids were interned until their behavior was deemed to be fixed, right? Like that's the – like where it is. So this is a – when you talk about a residential facility –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Some of them have elements, and this is certainly the case at the time of like a prison, right? Now, this is not one of those. This is for kids with resources, right? These are for kids whose parents have money. So this is not like the worst versions of these facilities, right? And in fact, from the beginning, this is kind of viewed as a response to those facilities, which are a lot uglier.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

It was a unique place geared not just for emotionally disturbed kids, but for, and these are the terms they use at the time, but specifically for emotionally disturbed children of quote, above average intelligence, right? Now this means rich white kids, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yes. When we say above average intellect, right? These are kids whose parents have money and thus our goal is to make sure they have a future, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And when the school is founded in 1915, they use these. They don't say this is a school for rich white kids. They say like this is emotionally disturbed but above average intelligence kids, right? As soon as Bruno takes over, he's like, no, no, no. Let's just say it's a school for rich white kids. That's what we're doing, right? That's what we want to do here, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And as soon as he takes over, his first job as director is to turn this into policy. Prior to him taking the director job, the school had not had a whites only policy on paper. Bruno Institute's one. He's like, look, let's call a we're racist as fuck. We're racist as fuck. It's just say it's white. And again, this school in 1915 isn't willing to say that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about bad people and problematic people. And we've got both this week with the story of Bruno Bettelheim, a man who is really, really testing my previous conclusion that there's no wrong way to react to having been in a concentration camp. Maybe this way. Bruno might have been the guy to figure out the wrong way. Had to lose all sympathy. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

In 44, Bruno's like, oh, obviously we're whites only like.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

No.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And he is he has he does a lot of writing about his attitudes that like he doesn't like Christianity either because he's not a religious guy, but he thinks it's better than Judaism. Right. And so the school will be specifically a Christian school even when it sort of is educating kids who don't come from Christian families. He like tries to acculturate them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

The only holiday they celebrate at the school is Christmas. So his attitude is very much even when the students are not – from a Christian background, I want to acculturate them as white Christians, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Now, Bruno justifies his whites-only policy by arguing that racialized children, that means non-white kids, would confuse the white kids and harm their recovery. The term racialized to describe kids that just aren't white? No, these kids, they can't handle the shock of seeing someone who isn't white. That'll fuck up their recovery.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

I can't handle it. I'm going to go rob a bank. Now, Bruno also wrote that he was only interested in white students from, quote, good high-class stock. That meant kids whose families could afford to send them to college. He instituted a tuition of $8,000 to $12,000 a year to ensure that no poor children were educated at the orthogenic school.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

That's in the 40s. Wow. That is, this is like really, like high grade university education is what this costs per year. And the expectation is that you will put them in there at least for two years and many of them for like something like 10 to 12, right? He really wants you to give your kid to him for that kid's entire childhood. Otherwise he can't fix them, right? That's his motivation.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

But then they come out perfect.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

No, you got to let me have them until they're like 20, you know, make sure they don't see anybody else.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yeah. There's like 40 to 60 kids at this institution at any given time. Now, Bruno also has another issue with the school as soon as he takes over. First job, make it expensive as shit, only white kids. Second job, he has a real issue with the fact that the orthogenic school, the motto is a place to grow straight and tall, allows disabled kids to be educated there.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And he doesn't like that because somebody with a physical disability can never grow straight and tall in Bruno's eyes, right? So again, one of the first things the Nazis do is go after people with – specifically children with disabilities. This is how they test the gas chambers, right? Which are initially like mobile execution vans for disabled people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

What is one of the first things Bruno does when he starts this school? No more. Get those disabled kids out of here. None of them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Therefore, everyone else must have as well. Okay. In an article for Disability Studies Quarterly, Griffin Epstein writes, hospitals. So he just kind of lies and says, ah, the schools can handle them. And the schools are like, oh, no, we just lock those kids up. We don't know what to do with them, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

That's handling them, right? Because it can't be fixed, you know, in his attitude, right? Bruno's second act as director of the orthogenic school was to recruit a new population of students. And he focuses mostly on children with autism and others who he calls, quote, young victims of extreme psychosis.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

And the reason he picks these kids, and again, we would not diagnose them the same way today, but these are all kids that he sees as not having visible physical disabilities, right? That is the key point, right? That's what he means by autism, right? Is something is not neurotypical about this kid, but they are not, in my eyes, physically disabled. That is what he means by this, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Horribly, horribly wrong.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Yes, right. Yes, yes. That's certainly how he sees it. To continue with that article, in constructing a dialectical opposition between epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and autism, Bettelheim helped to tacitly promote a eugenic logic of unreformable versus reformable bodies, you know? And yes, that is some very, very Nazi-adjacent shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Well, it's also – it's interesting because a big part of Bruno's story and a big part of like where people go wrong because like as you said, it's good to be involved and care about your children's mental health and the mental health of children in general. Bruno, as a young man, takes this kid in who is like neurodivergent and her mom just like, I don't want to raise a kid. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

These are good. If it wasn't the Nazis doing them, I wouldn't have it like...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

He's taking some wild things from his experience. The medical logic behind all of this is also rooted in Bruno's writing about concentration camps. In a letter to the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Bruno's friend Alvin Rosenfeld explained of Bruno's beliefs, quote,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Bruno Bettelheim and The Quest To Make a "Good" Concentration Camp

Bettelheim showed the world how extreme abuse, such as concentration camp incarceration, could severely distort personalities. That formed the basis of his treatment model and laid the foundation for much of our thinking about child abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder. And there is aspects of this that are positive and that are undeniably accurate.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

You know, again, that's kind of up to your personal take. When we talk about, like, how do you judge people, you know, to what extent do you judge them based on their time or based on some sort of concept of objective morality? One thing that always matters to me is where do they start versus where did they end up, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Someone who was raised in a slave-holding household and becomes an abolitionist but is still racist is a lot more impressive to me than a guy who just isn't outwardly racist because he grew up in the 1990s but crosses the street when he sees a black guy, right? Totally. Because one of those is a person who went on a journey, recognized a bad thing about themselves, and made changes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

I'm not trying to be like, it's therefore okay. There's a reason I included this because it's pretty bad and you should know that about the guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

No, I'm not trying to. Yeah. But this is not a part of his entire life or his whole creative life. He writes anti-racist songs later in life. It does seem like he makes a change. And I do think it's worth noting this is a guy who was raised by a Klansman in the 30s, 20s and 30s. Yeah. So, you know, again, you can figure out morally wherever you want to figure that out.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

But I don't think it's worth kind of looking at the whole sweep of the personal journey the man went on there. In 1937, Woody's wife, Mary, and two children moved to Los Angeles to be with him. Jack wound up leaving the act and show business for a while. But Woody paired up with Maxine Chrisman, whose family was friends with his cousin and had taken Woody in, too. He dubbed Maxine Lefty Lou.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

The two played songs by other artists that spoke to the poor and downtrodden, like Hobo's Lullaby, but they also started playing Woody's original compositions, like the Talking Dust Bowl Blues. This song really embodies what people were starting to love about Woody.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

His music had a warts-and-all description of life during the Depression and the struggles of the hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to move west during the Dust Bowl. He sung about relatable, nuts-and-bolts issues that are still familiar to a lot of people today,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

If you were a poor punk kid who lived on a semi-permanent road trip for a while, basically, and had the experience of trying to coast by turning your car off on downhill runs because you can't afford gasoline, here's Woody Guthrie singing about the same thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

The Manosphere, if you're not aware, is like the kind of colloquial term for this network of far right, generally like masculinity influencers, all of whom have fed into the Trumpist movement and groups like the Proud Boys. It's a very important like social phenomenon that explains a lot of why we are where we are right now. And Jamie does a great job of breaking it down.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

I love the way he says children. It just tickles the hell out of me. It reminds me of the good parts of living in fucking middle of nowhere Oklahoma. I do like that about him. And you know what I like even more, Margaret? Is it the sponsors of the show? Yes. They're all great. They're all great. And they've all had the experience of having to coast in their Ford truck to save gas money, too.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Look, it's hard times for everyone, even large brands.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Yeah, absolutely. We could talk about what truck drivers are forced to do in order to make their times. Anyway, whatever. We're done.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

So check that out on 16th Minute.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Sure. I've only heard part one so far. I am. I am. Well, speaking of part two, let's do part two of these episodes, huh? Yes, sir. I also haven't heard part two of this one yet. Let's kill it. Let's murder it. Let's bury it in the woods in a tree stump, under a tree stump, so that nobody finds it. And then cash in at Social Security for years. I don't know what I'm doing here, Margaret.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Margaret. Yes. I do find it fun how much of his Dust Bowl songs are very relatable to punk life today. Yeah, totally. Hate the Cops, fucking coasting in my car, camping out in the woods and shit. Did he do Big Rock Candy Mountains or is this someone else? In my head, he did Big Rock Candy Mountains, but I didn't double check on that. I mean, he might have just sung it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

I'm fairly certain I've heard a version of the song by him. Harry McClintock was the guy who first recorded and wrote it. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

That's good. Oh, man, that's funny. Yeah. You're like, wait a second. Yeah, yeah. And the police dogs can't sniff your weed. Yeah, totally. So Woody had attained a degree of local fame by 38, 39, right? 1938 to 1939. He's doing reasonably well. In fact, he and Lefty Lou were so beloved that the radio station where they played received thousands of fan letters over the course of just a few months.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

They were doing okay in terms of money, but not great because again, he has a lot of fans, but they're broke ass Dust Bowl refugees. So he's not getting rich off these people, right? And he's also not very interested in getting rich. He seemed to feel like he had a responsibility to reach and provide relief for his people suffering in government work camps and embarrassed by their situation.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

From a write-up by the Library of Congress, quote, He also sang at government camps that gave these people some measure of dignity, health, and safety. Joining him was Will Gere, an actor and earnest left-winger who helped Woody better understand the injustice of an economic system that would allow Americans to live in such poverty.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And this is where he starts getting pilled on socialism, right, and eventually becomes a communist. He will call himself a card-carrying communist, as we'll talk about. He never actually has a card, and he could have gotten one. But Woody's a little bit of a fabulous, right? He lies a little bit. Not in a way that is massively meaningful because he was a communist and very committed.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

But, you know, he also he's a little bit of a tall tale spinner. Yeah. So, yeah. And, you know, it's to his credit that he's again, rather than focusing on making money off of this growing fame, he's giving a lot of free shows to provide relief for his people. Right. He is very dedicated to his people in a way that I think is pretty admirable.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Woody's popularity and by now fairly mature class consciousness started to make him more connections with the radical political set, including various left-wing writers, journalists, and socialist and communist activists.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

He began writing songs that spoke not just of left-wing politics, but of the rage of the working class and increasingly his own hatred of the people that maintained the system that kept his people downtrodden. In 1939, he wrote one of his most famous songs, The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd, about an Oklahoma outlaw active in the early 1930s who regular listeners will know was my cousin.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Now, my great-grandmother knew him as a girl. I grew up hearing songs about him from her. And my family, they're very, as I talk about often, very conservative people. But my great grandma particularly would always tell us, you know, you got outlaw blood in you, right?

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Like it was something she was very proud of in a way that's a little weird if you heard the way these people tended to talk about other like urban crime, right? Outlaw crime was very different to them. And I'm talking particularly my relatives who were survivors of the Great Depression. Outlaws are very different than modern criminals in their eyes, right?

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I'm not saying that's actually a fair, but their conception of these people is extremely different. And a big part of why is not just Woody, but songs like this that Woody made who turned these guys who were bank robbers and gangsters into Robin Hood figures, right? Yeah. And Floyd was a fairly easy one to turn into a Robin Hood character, because he kind of was at least a little bit that guy.

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There's a debate as to like how much of that sort of character was real and how much of it is kind of myth-making that Floyd did, but some of it's certainly true. Floyd was born in Georgia, but had moved with his family to Eakins, Oklahoma in 1911. And his career as a criminal had started early when he was arrested at age 18 for stealing $3.50 worth of, I think, stamps from a post office.

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A few years later, he robbed a payroll in St. Louis. So he goes from like stamp theft to armed robbery fairly quickly. And he does three years or so in prison for that. After he's released, he becomes a Kansas City area bank robber. One thing you get about Floyd is he doesn't seem to have ever considered not being a criminal. Yeah.

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Yeah.

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No, but he never really thinks about doing anything but being an outlaw. And he quickly gains. He starts robbing banks in Kansas City and he earns the nickname Pretty Boy, which eventually becomes Pretty Boy Floyd because people thought he was very good looking. He hated this nickname. So he's going to pull up a picture of the man. You could decide yourself how good looking he was.

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It's just a picture of Luigi. Yeah. Americans do love their sexy criminals.

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Yeah. Huh. Not my type, but you know. Standards were not as high back then. He's got like a soft gaze.

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That's kind of nice, you know? Yeah. Prominent nose. Good jawline. Yeah. He's not bad looking. Certainly not. Yeah. Nice hair. Yeah.

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He is a hardened criminal. He killed at least one federal agent. He also killed the sheriff of McIntosh County. Other members of his gang killed several police officers and other criminals as well. There are multiple police officer murders that he is also a suspect in that we don't fully know. Did he kill all those cops? But he killed a number of cops. You know, like he shoots a lot of police.

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In the early depression years, he took to robbing banks in Oklahoma, where in addition to taking money for himself, he would destroy mortgage documents in order to free poor farmers from debt. Hell yeah. Now, we don't fully know if this happened, right? It's not the kind of thing, how would you prove it for one thing, right? People told stories about it.

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I will tell you that everyone I knew in the towns in Oklahoma, like where he had been active, and again, including my family members who knew him, would tell you that this is what he did. I don't know. It's not provable. It's one of those things where it would make sense for him to do it even if he was not really morally a Robin Hood character. Because if you're destroying people's mortgages,

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They will hide you from the cops.

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One of my favorite Floyd stories is that he had a gang and his gang decided they wanted to rob a bunch of people on like Black Wall Street at one point, which was very well armed. And Floyd was like, well, you guys can go do that. I'm not fucking with that. And sure enough, they got fucking like shot to pieces. Yeah. So he was a smart man. Yeah.

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My other favorite story about him is I mentioned in my high school AP English class that he was a cousin of mine. And my teacher who was, you know, in her 50s or something said he shot my grandfather in the leg. Oh, what grade did you get in that class, buddy? No, no. She was like, it's okay. Again, because she was raised in this same culture. She was like, it's okay.

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Pretty boy said no move and my grandpa moved. He didn't kill him. He just shot him in the leg a little. That's so funny. Again, there's a lot of tolerance for these specific sorts of outlaws in that part of the South.

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So again, fascinating character. And yeah, I can't say how much of the whole Robin Hood thing is true, but I think a lot of the Robin Hood image that he has comes from Woody. Although it's also worth noting he is part of why it takes so long for him to get caught because he's like one of the last gangsters to get caught and killed by the government.

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His death is generally agreed to have heralded the end of the gangster era. Okay. Yeah, because I think 34 is when he's gunned down. And like, there's a lot of stories of him like hiding with little old ladies and lying to the cops. And then when he like, leaves, there's $100 bill under the plate where she'd fed him dinner or something like that. So in 1939,

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You know, about five years after his death, when memories of this guy are still very strong, Woody writes the song that is very much responsible for crystallizing this image of pretty boy Floyd as this kind of like bandit outlaw king of the American South. And we're just going to listen to that song because it's Christmas and it's a song about my cousin. Hell yeah.

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I love the way that song ends.

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Some will rob you with a six gun and some with a fountain pen. That's a line I hear all over the place. It's a great fucking, I mean, this is one of his more famous songs. Yeah. But it's a damn good line.

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I also like that. Look, I've seen a lot of outlaws. I'm not saying I'm not defending the things they've done, but it's not the outlaws I see forcing people to be homeless. You know, that's the banks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I disagree with my family about a lot, but our shared pride and our cop killing ancestor is not one of those things.

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Anyway, as is often the case for people who come to Los Angeles for the music industry, Woody wound up having to take his family back home to Texas and then leave them again to move to New York City in 1940, chasing what had become for him a dream of folk stardom.

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By this point, he'd become a little bit of a legend, enough that the Library of Congress had him sit down and record his Dust Bowl songs for posterity. He laid down tracks with Pete Seeger and became an influential part of the urban folk revival of the time. In a letter to Alan Lomax, another influential pillar of the urban folk revival, he described his thoughts on what folk music ought to be.

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And I'm interested for your thoughts on this, Margaret. Okay. A folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it, or it could be who's hungry and where their mouth is, or who's out of work and where the job is, or who's broke and where the money is, or who's carrying a gun and where the peace is.

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That's folklore, and folks made it up because they seen that the politicians couldn't find nothing to fix or nobody to feed or give a job a work.

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Talk about, in a lot of ways, the kind of issues that today we ascribe to the job of journalists, right? Who was hungry and where their mouth is? Who's carrying a gun and where the peace is, right?

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It's gossip. Yes, yes. It's gossip and it's agitation, right? You look at a lot of folk songs and a lot of folk stories, and that's the first safe place to attack the wealthy and the powerful, right? Totally. A little bit, you know? Totally. Totally. Oftentimes, you know, there's also plenty of folk stuff that reinforces some of those things, but it is where you see a lot of subversive stuff.

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Yeah. Now, it's worth spending some time on just how radically folk music changes. As you noted, in other countries, it's very different. And part of why it's different in the U.S. is Woody Guthrie. He changes what folk music is in the United States in a fundamental way.

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In an article for The New Yorker, David Hajdu writes, "...folk music, including country, blues, and other vernacular styles, was supposed to be anonymous. A collective art passed along warily from singer to singer, generation to generation." sometimes culture to culture.

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From the vantage point of today, when kids with their first guitar start writing songs before they learn to play other tunes, it is difficult to process how exceptional it was for a folk artist such as Woody Guthrie to have created a vast repertoire of deeply idiosyncratic works.

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Many Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood songwriters of the 30s and earlier were as skilled and prolific as Guthrie, but they were working in a different vein, writing to order for professional singers. Guthrie brought the authorial imperative to vernacular music in America. And I think that's also very interesting.

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Yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense. I'm not surprised that that's your family connection. Yeah. So by this point in time, Woody was what you would call a left-wing radical, although not, again, a card-carrying one. He played benefits for and was associated with the American Communist Party, but he never got around to joining, and you'll find several different theories as to why.

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The leading one that you'll hear is that he liked his independence a little too much to be a joiner. Now, this sounds good, especially to people like you and me, but it leaves out a crucial fact, which is that Woody was his era's equivalent of like a tankie, right? Totally.

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I mean, it also leaves out the fact that like he vocally took claim to have a card, like claim to be a member of the party, right? And that it was the best thing he'd done, which he hadn't. Again, he wasn't immune to the worst impulses of the American left during this period.

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He had been enthusiastic about FDR early on, but once the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed and the USSR locked into a treaty with the Nazis, he attacked Roosevelt as, quote, Churchill's lapdog for his anti-Nazi stance in support of Great Britain during the early months of the war. He argued that the developing world war was a capitalist fraud.

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When Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland together, Guthrie supported Stalin to an extent and with such vociferousness that biographer Will Kaufman called it shocking. In Ramblin' Man, Ed Cray goes into more detail about a left-wing anti-war song he wrote called Why Do You Stand There in the Rain, based on the title of a New York Post article.

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And I'm going to read from that section from Ramblin' Man here. Just days before, some 6,000 delegates of the American Youth Congress had gathered in Washington to advocate jobs and peace. At the invitation of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the delegates gathered in front of the South Portico of the White House in a cold drizzle to listen to a half-hour speech by the president.

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FDR threw down the gauntlet. "...aware that the Young Communist League had taken firm grip on the once broadly based Popular Front AYC, the Soviet Union, as everyone who has the courage to face the fact knows, is run by a dictatorship and as absolute as any dictatorship in the world.

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It has allied itself with another dictatorship and has invaded a neighbor, Finland, so infinitesimally small that it could do no conceivable harm to the Soviet Union, a neighbor which seeks only to live in peace as a democracy and a liberal, forward-looking democracy at that." Roosevelt heard the boos and hisses through the cold rain. People's World columnist Woody Guthrie knew where he stood.

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He chided the president in song. Now the guns in Europe roar as they have so oft before. And the warlords play the same old game again. They butcher and they kill. Uncle Sam foots the bill with his own dear children standing in the rain. Why do you stand there in the rain? Why do you stand there in the rain? These are strange carrying on, the White House Capitol lawn.

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Tell me, why do you stand there in the rain? Then the president's voice did ring. Why, this is the silliest thing I have heard in all my 58 years of life. But it just stands to reason as he passes another season, he'll be smarter by the time he's 59.

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So he's being like real, real shitty to Roosevelt there specifically about his support of England in the war that is developing and very defensive of the USSR and invading a much smaller neighbor and invading Poland. And- It's one of those things where this is both horrifying, given what we know happens.

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You have to, to an extent, while still saying he was wrong, look at his level of knowledge and what had actually happened previously. World War I was the touchstone here. And in World War I, the US did enable further butchering, right? Like we were arming and profiting off of a hideous war that we had no business sticking our noses into. Yeah. And he's pissed about that.

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It's also, there's a lot less information about what was going on in the Soviet Union. Now, I will also say more than enough that he should have known, right? Yeah.

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They were taking direct propaganda, direct orders from Moscow. Well, not from Moscow, but from the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Yeah. They were really wrong on some things as a result of that, because it turns out Hitler's not an ally of international communism.

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But also, I think he probably would have said that, well, the Communist Party knows its business. If they think that's what they've got to do to secure themselves, what matters is the survival of communism, which at that point had weathered a number of attacks from the international capitalist community, like during the Russian Civil War.

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And I'm not saying that because I think that's a good argument. I'm saying I think that's the argument he would have made. I'm pretty firmly on the stance of Stalin bad and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact inexcusable. Yeah. But also I always emphasize inexcusable on behalf of the Soviet leadership.

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You know, I've got nothing but respect for the guys who wound up dying by the millions to stop the Nazis. Absolutely. Totally in the right, those guys. Yeah. And ladies... So it is impossible to look at this situation without seeing commonalities between more modern failures of the left to condemn dictators seen as anti-imperialist for very flawed reasons.

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I might suggest that we also not forget at the time one of the complicating factors here is – How the U.S. government deals with what it considers communism and what things it considers communism, right? Because that's important, too.

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Woody had an extensive FBI file, and in 1941, after he joined the Merchant Marine, one of his shipmates was cited as saying Woody, quote, followed the Communist Party line and that they were very pro-Russian and advocated racial intermarriage.

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So again, that is what the guy who informs on him and the FBI considers evidence of his communist sympathies is he thinks that black people and white people should be able to get married. So keep that in mind too.

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Yes. Yes. And so like when we talk about like criticizing him, don't leave out the fact that he's he's also very much correct about this. Right. Totally. After the war, he would be accused by the California State Senate's far right committee on un-American activities for being Joe Stalin's California mouthpiece.

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It would mean nothing at all in your hands, Sophie. You haven't gone through the extensive training and preparation to become a United States municipal judge like I have.

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which was at one point true, but also for being a member of a factionalist sabotage group, which was absurd. Woody never sought or attempted to do anything but sing songs and write articles for socialist papers. He was not sabotaging anything. I have a feeling the reason he didn't get a card is he was like, I don't want to be on that list. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I mean, that may have been it.

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I think he also just might have been too lazy. Yeah. Didn't want to pay the fees, whatever. He's an artist. He's not good at signing papers. Yeah. Marjorie Guthrie, who is his second wife, he starts a family with her after he divorces his first wife, Mary, and moves to Coney Island, sums things up this way.

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I don't know what happened prior to my time, but from my time in Coney Island, he was not welcomed by the party because he didn't want to follow a party line. You couldn't tell Woody what to think. And so we were not members of the party in Coney Island. And again, I include that because she was his wife. She knew him.

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But also that isn't entirely true because he certainly followed the party line on some very fucked up things.

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Yeah, yeah. I mean, and again, there is a degree to which... The fact that there's so much disinformation being pumped out about the Soviet Union. There's so much bad... It's certainly more reasonable then for someone to doubt a lot of the official narratives coming out and to doubt a lot of the information that makes Stalin look bad from their position in the United States.

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Again, I think enough that a man as obviously intelligent as Woody should have been better informed, but... He's not the only one who makes this mistake, and it's a more understandable mistake then than it is now, is what I'll say. That's totally legit. Without forgiving it, you know? So, yeah. However you want to mark this down morally for Woody, the U.S.

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shouldn't be getting into this capitalist war. They're all cooking this World War II thing up. That attitude ends for Woody on June 22nd, 1941, when Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union. This is Operation Barbarossa. Woody ran to his friend Pete Seeger after this, like, breaks and told him, well, I guess we're not going to be singing any more of them peace songs.

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Woody was not the only man forced to change his tune rapidly due to world events. Winston Churchill. Change his tune, anyway. Yeah, yeah. Well done, well done. Winston Churchill, who was one of the world's loudest anti-communists, was forced by sheer necessity to make temporary amends and even express support for the cause of Soviet soldiers.

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When Woody heard this, he told a friend, Churchill's flip-flopped. We got a flip-flop too. Yeah. You know who doesn't flip-flop, though, Margaret? The consistency with which our sponsors provide high-quality goods and services? That's right. That's right.

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Our sponsors have never once changed their opinion, which is why today, tomorrow, and forever, they advise you to vote Millard Fillmore for president.

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Part two. So, Woody Guthrie had wed Mary in 1933, and by 1936, when he quit Texas for California, which is what you have to legally call it when you're talking about the 1930s, she'd had one child with him and was pregnant with another. And... He kind of abandons her, like not entirely like he doesn't like break up with her and like she eventually moves to California with him.

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We're back. Our sponsors are all old hair tonics from the 1800s. Anyway, vote Fillmore. Much of the Woody that we know, the famous Woody Guthrie, you brought up as soon as I said, what do you know of him, that the picture of him with a guitar that has a This Machine Kills Fascist sticker slapped across it. Yeah. By the way, that sticker was put out by the US government. Huh. That makes sense.

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Yeah, it was a propaganda.

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There were a lot of machines we were using to kill fascists. Perfectly reasonable to put some stickers on them. Wait, did they?

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I think it's something like that. I read it in that article in, I think, LA Weekly by the fellow who was writing about, like, Woody's history with racism, where he was like, you know, this thing was like a product of the government.

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Yeah, I know. There's been some good ones of that coming out of Syria. Yeah. So he changes his opinion very rapidly. And once the Nazis invade the USSR, he starts getting much more patriotic. And again, he had been making anti-Nazi music and been anti-Nazi prior to this. And if you're saying, well, that's incoherent for him to be against the war and whatnot.

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But he does just kind of bounce to go try and find a living, you know, in the West. And this is a thing a lot of guys are doing and a lot of people have to do. It's also not a thing that the family's thrilled with. So like Greenland. Like Greenland, yes. It's, I guess, probably a better place now, although I can't really, in good conscience, recommend anyone go to Reading.

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Yes, lots of people have incoherent politics, but his politics get a lot more cohesive after Operation Barbarossa. An article for OklahomaHistory.org notes, in New York, he appeared on numerous popular radio shows before joining the Merchant Marines with Cisco Houston during World War II. Guthrie was on three torpedoed ships, and the day Germany surrendered, he was drafted into the U.S. Army.

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Like he was on ships that were hit by torpedoes three different times. He is. And the merchant Marine is effectively a part of the military during a war. Right. He is a combat veteran. Yeah. You know, like that's like he's he's on three ships that get hit. Yeah. He's not in the army very long. It basically immediately gets out because the war ends. But yeah, he does like his bit.

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You know, he is not when we play songs of his where he's talking about wanting to fight the fascists. He goes and does it, you know. He is doing an important, dangerous job where he gets shot at. So you cannot, yeah, he's very willing to put his skin in the game. Yeah, one blown up ship. If you quit after one blown up ship, no one's mad. You did your part. Nobody will call you a coward. Yeah.

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I don't know that, yeah. And so from late 1941 to the end of the war, Woody Guthrie wrote several iconic anti-fascist anthems, including Reuben James, about a US destroyer that was torpedoed and sunk by the Nazis in 1941. As you might expect from Woody and the kind of songs he wrote, this song focused on the lives and deaths of normal men at war. The refrain went, tell me what was their names.

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Tell me what was their names. Did you have a friend on that good Reuben James? It's a good song. But if you want my personal favorite War Years Woody Guthrie song, nothing beats this particular banger. Sophie's going to put it up now.

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banger it's so good it's a real banger I enjoyed that immensely yeah one of my favorites so near the end of Woody's wartime experiences he would record the first official version of a song that he'd been working on since 1940 this land is your land which would go on to be undoubtedly his most famous work of music it is definitely the one Woody Guthrie song everyone's fucking heard like you basically can't get through school without hearing this land is your land because it was so easily recuperated

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Yes. And in the decades since 1944, it's also been criticized for what many people interpret as an era of imperialism and support for Manifest Destiny, which is definitely present in the version of the song that is commonly sung. Given this, I think it's interesting to actually look into why Woody wrote the song and what its original lyrics were.

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This Land is Your Land was initially something of a folk music diss track. It was a response to Irving Berlin's God Bless America. This is a song Berlin wrote in 1918 after being drafted and re-released in 1941 as something of a cash grab. The lyrics, if you aren't familiar, go like this. God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her through the night with a light from above.

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Woody fucking hated this song, and it's good he did because it's a fucking dog shit song. He considered it far too sweet a hymn for a nation that had just sent millions of its citizens into a depression. This Land is Your Land was meant to be a retort discussing the real America that Irving had tried to conceal. The original title was God Bless America for Me.

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Joe Riley writes of this first version of the song, quote, It was more of a question than affirmation. In fact, it was a sarcastic retort. Woody later changed the refrain to, "'This land was made for you and me,' and the song to, "'This land is your land.'" The verses he ultimately omitted from the final draft of the song include this banger, There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.

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The sign was painted, said private property. But on the backside, it didn't say nothing. This land was made for you and me. In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple, near the relief office, I see my people. And some are a-grumbling and some are wondering if this land's still made for you and me. And that's a banger. That's very much not an imperialist song.

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That's more him talking about like this. The people that this country ought to be for are the ones being harmed by the system that governs it. Right. Like that's the original point of the song. That said, this is not a case of it being recuperated by someone else who changes the lyrics because they think that they can tweak it. They don't like Woody's original version. Woody changes it, right?

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Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And he changes it. He removes that verse about the relief office because late in the war, he decided it was too pessimistic. And he replaces it with lines like, from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me, which is not all that different from like some of the stuff Irving had been writing, right? Totally. The song becomes a massive hit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

It is practically a new national anthem. And Woody does not initially bother to copyright it because that's not uncommon for him, right? He generally neglected to do that. Alas for Woody, the post-war optimism faded quickly. I mean, and it... So the first horrible thing that happens to Woody after the war, because things go downhill for him quickly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

In February of 1947, there is an electrical fire in his home, and his little girl, Kathy Ann, dies. Oh, God. He has bad luck with fire. Like I said, he had horrible luck with fire. Now, he and Marjorie have three other kids, but yeah, that's obviously- really fucks him up.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

So yeah, anyway, that's where Woody heads up to, and he's there for a little while. It's in this shanty town with like about 5,000 other work seekers who are all like showing up to try and queue in lines and get jobs every day. And there were a lot of spaces like this around the country. There were a lot of these government work camps, basically, which is where Woody is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And like that same year, 47, and then in 48, he gets repeatedly attacked as a communist, both in the State Committee of Un-American Activities in California and in the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities. Now, they were attacking him for being a communist, and he was, but he was not un-American. No one was more American than Woody fucking Guthrie.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

He suffers as a result of this. He gets blacklisted. He had written an autobiographical novel at this point called Bound for Glory that had been set to be turned into a major Hollywood production. But that deal and others like it fell apart.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

As unions were forced to take anti-communist stances in this new, more paranoid era, Woody stopped getting hired to play the events that had largely supplemented his income.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Rather than fold, as many did, and denounce the things that he believed, Woody spoke out constantly against J. Edgar Hoover, writing at one point, quote, the roaches crawl across my page tonight and make a noise that makes more sense than all that Hoover writes. Which is a good bar. He became less dogmatic on the Moscow line as well, although he never stops being a communist.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

He starts writing that his goal was to, quote, get this thing called socialism nailed and hammered up just as quickly as he can. And praises Eugene V. Debs, former chairman of the Socialist Party, as, quote, a pure cross between Jesus Christ and Abe Lincoln. Which, again, is not really something that the Moscow Party wants you saying.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Despite the consequences to his career, he continues to seek and sing his mind. Quote, "'Fascism is being afraid. Fascism is fear bossing you. Fascism is worse than all of these things, and fascism is more closer to you than I can make you see. I'm trying to wake you up and tell you that you're sleeping with something ten times more dangerous than a poison fang snake in your bed.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

If fascism does come, and if it does kill me, well, then you add me alone onto the hundreds of millions which fascism has already dusted under.' And it don't scare me so very much.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Yeah. That's hard. I like that. Yep. That's hard. And this is unfortunately, Margaret, where the story gets awkward again.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

More complicated than a heel turn. He's about to do a bad thing. There is a mitigating factor that's pretty significant. Okay, okay. But it's a pretty bad thing. Woody is at this point always on the verge of being broke, but also a famous and influential musician. And we know what comes with that, right? Which is the temptation to be a sex pest. Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And, you know, Woody does not commit like rape, but he does sexually harass someone very badly. And this is a very ugly story. The gist of it is that things with his second wife, Marjorie, go downhill as his career does. She is the family moneymaker. She actually makes a very good living teaching dancing. She's an extremely accomplished dancer. And his career is not doing well.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

This leads to fighting and Woody eventually moves out and rents a room for himself. He starts writing letters to his old music partner, Lefty Lou's sister. She is 28 years old. He is 36. So they're not like crazy far apart. But the bigger issue is she had never insinuated that she was into him, right? He is just writing her letters about wanting to fuck her apropos of nothing. Oh, fuck.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And there were also, in areas like Sacramento and Seattle, these things called Hoovervilles. And Hoovervilles were essentially large campsites built by homeless workers and their families as they migrated around searching for work during the Great Depression.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Now she, Woody had just kind of assumed that because she, like they knew each other, right? They were like friendly, but she gets divorced and he just kind of assumes, well, I'm getting divorced too. That must mean she wants to fuck, right? And his letters to her take on an air of obsession. He writes at least 12 long letters suggesting they move out together, hit the road and start having sex.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

These letters include long rambling descriptions of the kinds of sex Woody wanted to have and more. And I'm going to quote from Ramblin' Man here. Into the envelopes, Guthrie stuffed pages torn from New York's tabloids with muddy magenta circles slathered around stories of grisly murders.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

The packets, sometimes two or three a week, frightened Mary Ruth by their intensity, the sexual proposals, and the suggestion of violence. She drove to Los Angeles to show them to her sister, who knew Guthrie best of all. "'You have no idea how horrible it was,' her older sister Maxine said. She, in turn, called the police."

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Now, the police get involved because they think Woody might be a budding serial killer, and given the kind of stuff he's sending, not an unreasonable thing to be afraid of. Yeah. And given the fact that the feds are hounding him, I get why Woody is like, this is them going after me for my politics, but it really isn't. Yeah. He's writing very upsetting things.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Now, there's another part to this story, which does not make the things he's writing less fucked up or upsetting, but he is losing his mind. Okay. He is losing his mind in a degree that is very soon to be clinically diagnosed, right? In episode one, I mentioned that Woody's mother went insane when he was quite young and was institutionalized, right? This traumatized him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And at the time, we didn't have an explanation for what she was going for. They just said madness, right? We now know what she had because Woody has it and it's diagnosable by the time he gets it. And it's called Huntington's disease.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Yeah, his mom and Woody gets it. And he is starting to suffer the effects of Huntington's by the late 40s. This is a neurodegenerative disorder that Huntington's disease news describes as characterized by uncontrolled movements, loss of cognitive ability and psychiatric problems. The middle stages of the illness are associated with psychosis.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Some patients experience delusions, which they tend to be convinced are accurate. And it also comes with these like sort of obsessive delusions, right? Which might explain the whole him thinking that this was something that was reciprocated, right? So this isn't a heel turn. This is just a degeneration. This is just a- This is a very tragic degeneration, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

I don't know how, again, you want to parse it out morally, but he is diagnosed. He is losing his mind. He is going to spend most of the rest of his life in an institution. This is not just a case of a powerful man in music being a sex pest. Right, totally. This is a man who was not like this before, so far as we know, absolutely declining and becoming increasingly delusional.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

That was good, Margaret. Thank you. That was good. Thanks. I'll be here all day. Electrolux cities? I don't know. I just think it's funny because the old catchphrase was nothing sucks like an Electrolux. And I've never heard an advertisement that was more clearly made before the internet. You couldn't get away with that, did I? Or you could, but it would be a different product.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

It's just... Yeah, he probably always had a crush on her and then... This, like he becomes convinced that there is something going on there that there's not.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

One would assume, right? So it's not great. He is ultimately charged in 1949 with sending obscene material through the mail. He avoids prison time, but is sentenced to therapy. And he and his therapist do not have a good relationship. His therapist does not like him. But he's not diagnosed with anything quite yet.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

So his therapist is just like he's kind of an asshole, which I can't blame the therapist for because he's being an asshole. If you don't know the mitigating factor of the family mental illness that destroyed his mother and is destroying him. Woody eventually refuses court mandated therapy and his lawyer manages to narrowly get him out of a six month sentence.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

His lawyer, who is one of his shipmates, right? He and this guy are torpedoed together. And this lawyer is a very good friend who was like, I'm not going to let my my war buddy go to a fucking jail. Right. Woody was mostly angry when his sentence gets like cut off. He's kind of pissed because he had been planning a Christmas Eve show for the inmates that he doesn't get to do now.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

So there's still that piece of him in there, right? By the mid 1950s, Woody was disabled with Huntington's badly enough that his second wife, Marjorie, who again, he has separated from, had to take charge of his affairs. And it does say something that this person who he was not nice to at the end, Had enough affection for him still that she makes sure he's taken care of.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Which included she registers a copyright for this land is your land for the first time. Right. And for a number of his other songs. And she's doing that because, like, we're going to need some way of taking care of him. Yeah. You know, and this makes sense. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

One of the fun side effects of this is that his family is going to wind up in a lawsuit with Donald Trump about this land is your land because Trump kept trying to play it. Yeah. It is now in the public domain, but it wasn't for a while. So that same year, in 1956, he was involuntarily committed to Greystone Park, a New Jersey mental institution.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Over the next five years, he lost the ability to play music or even to type. But, and again, this really says something about the amount of love there was still for him. He is not cut off or alone. His family visits him regularly. They take him out and he stays with them for weekends and holidays. He's taken out and taken to shows and trips by his friends and by fellow artists.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

I know. I know. Tremendous power. Unaccountable power. I'm now eligible for the Supreme Court, although I think technically anyone is. Fuck.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Bob Dylan, who at this point is not particularly famous, starts visiting Woody at the asylum in 1961. And Dylan starts working with other performers over the 60s. They play shows. They take Woody to some of these shows where they're playing his music to this new generation of newly radicalized Americans. Mm-hmm.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And Woody lives long enough to see his music honored and sold out shows by some of the, like fucking Bob Dylan, some of the most beloved up and coming musicians of the 60s. So he does go out knowing that his music doesn't just live on, but has influenced this new generation of people who are going to become incredibly famous and influential musicians in their own right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Which as far as being an artist goes is about as much as you can hope for. Totally.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Yeah. Yeah. He dies in October of 1967. Yeah. At that point, he is unable to communicate by any means besides pointing at cards that said yes or no. But he left behind, again, a pretty incredible legacy. Two novels, hundreds of articles, more than a thousand songs and poems, 500 illustrations, and a central role in the folk music revival that changed American music forever.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

That's pretty funny. That's not bad. Yeah. I'm never going to get over that. Oh, man. So Hoovervilles were named kind of – it was an attack on President Herbert Hoover, right? Like that's why they get their name because he was this – this will not sound familiar to anything that's about to happen.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

We've listened to a lot of Woody Guthrie's music in these episodes, and while I do hope you all take the opportunity to listen to more, I want to leave you with a quote of his that I think is quite relevant for our times, which Ed Cray picked out to open his 2008 biography of the man. About all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine. And I like that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

I also like this quote from Bob Dylan, who was asked in 1963 to sum up his feelings on Woody Guthrie in 25 words for a book on the man. As History.com notes, Dylan, quote, responded instead with a 194-line poem called Thoughts on Woody Guthrie, which took as its theme the eternal human search for hope.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And where do you look for this hope you're seeking, Dylan asks in the poem, before proceeding to a kind of answer. You can either go to the church of your choice or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital. You'll find God in the church of your choice. You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital. Cool. Yeah. Anyway, that's Woody Guthrie.

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Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Yeah. It was one of those, like, again, it's a messy story, but yeah. Honestly, it was better than I would have guessed. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

A relevant kind of guy to know about for the kind of times we're heading into.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Hello.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Happy holidays. Yeah. Happy holidays. And I don't know. Listen to some Woody Guthrie. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

He was this corrupt Republican president whose policies, which benefited the incredibly wealthy, fed into the Great Depression and like allowed for the kind of deregulation that made it much worse and were seen as having largely led the country into economic calamity. And so they named these massive camps for homeless families, basically, Hoovervilles.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

We'll have some Q's. We'll answer some A's. It'll be a good time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

2024.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

The largest and longest lasting, I'm not sure if it was absolutely the largest, but it was the longest lasting and among the largest, Hoovervilles, was outside of Seattle. And it stood from 1931 to 1941. As an interesting side note, it was operated on land next to Elliott Bay South, which I believe is where Fraser's condo was meant to be located in the TV series. That doesn't mean anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Welcome back to the Court of Robert Evans Bastard Guy podcast. Yeah, that's right. I got a gavel. See? Take that, our engineers. They're not going to be happy. Who let you get a gavel? I got sent this by the judge. Again, it works exactly like vampires made me. And it's lovely. It's a beautiful gavel. Look at it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

I just thought it was interesting. Yeah. So, Woody missed out on the big West Coast Hoovervilles, but he was in and around. You know, Redding is people who are heading up to Seattle or coming back down from Seattle. He's talking to them. There's a big one in Sacramento. He's talking to them. And he's in this work camp in Happy Valley that's kind of similar to Hooverville, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And he's supposed to be up there working on this big dam project, but he does a lot different. better, and it's a lot more stable for him to just busk for music, right? And so that's what he actually spends most of his time doing. Now, I say he's better at this than he is at laboring.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

He's not great at it, and he's only able to send the occasional very small money order back home to his wife and two kids. So he is not... The idea is, I'm coming out here to support my family, but he's not able to support Mary. She and her now two kids... are utterly dependent on her parents, which was a very embarrassing situation for her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Mary later said, I know it upset my dad a lot, my mother too. Woody wasn't doing the manly thing. And I think it's both worth saying that that's her impression and the family's impression of this. This is not an uncommon position for people to be in. And I don't know that Woody was doing very well back in Texas. So it's kind of unclear to me you know, what the right thing to do here was.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Ultimately, Woody, like a lot of people, was put in a very difficult situation of trying to do something he hoped would allow him to support his family. And it didn't work very well for a while, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And we also, on this show, we've had guys like Steven Seagal, who- As a guest. Yes, yes. Friend of the pod. Absolutely abandoned his family to start his Hollywood career. That is a story we've told a few times. Woody is, his family feels like he's doing that at the start. That's not actually what he does here, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Because he's not actually cutting ties with them, but they're not happy with him either. I mean, migrant laborers do this all the time today.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

That's fair. I think that's kind of part of why. Yeah. He's not really doing the work that, you know, a lot of these other guys were. You know, he's doing some of that, but that's not how he really makes most of his bread. Yeah. So in short order, Woody left Reading for Glendale, which I've also done, and I can tell you, good call. Much better place to be than Reading.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

He vaguely knew that he had an aunt in the area, and as was often the case, he just sort of, they're not like sending letters usually back and forth. They certainly don't have phones or whatever. You're usually just like, I was told once by a relative that I have an aunt in Glendale. I'm just going to show up and figure out where she is. Hopefully she'll take me in.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And social ties were such that when he shows up on her doorstep, she's like, all right. He is 25 years old when he makes it to the Los Angeles area. After several months of stress and internal recriminations, because Woody's not thrilled with himself either. He had wanted to be doing better. He knows how little he's sending back to his family. He's not happy about this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

But here's the thing. I think you'd be better. There's not going to be any more home invasions, Margaret.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

He gets a lucky break, courtesy of his cousin Leon, who everyone else either called Jack or Okie Guthrie. And Okie is like a... It's kind of a pejorative term for someone from Oklahoma. Yeah. Both was used as an insult and also is like a term of pride by people from Oklahoma. Right. The Guthrie's are all Okies. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

So calling him Okie Guthrie must have been a little bit confusing to like Woody, who is also an Okie. Uh-huh. Jack and his family had left home back at the start of the Depression and moved to Sacramento. Like many Guthries, he was musically talented, and so was his wife, and they'd built a reputation for themselves as good musicians and performers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

He suggested teaming up with Woody to try and start an act in Los Angeles. This was not the obviously good idea that it would later seem, as Ed Gray explains in the book Ramblin' Man. Jack was a Western singer. His songs were heavily influenced by popular music. Woody was a country singer, his music born of an older oral tradition. In practice, they could neither sing nor play guitar together.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Indeed, Woody privately despised the treacly sentiment of Jack's sagebrush serenades. Jack the guitarist used the jazz-influenced chords of popular music and played up the neck of the instrument. Woody disdained chords beyond the minimal tonic, subdominant and dominant. So this is not a great pairing. And Woody's a little bit alike... He's a little bit of a snob, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

That's very true.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

That's probably true. Yeah. Well, speaking of someone who would have been better on the Supreme Court, Woody Guthrie. That's who we're talking about in part two of these episodes. Yep. Not his dad, though. Not his Klansman father.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

He's like, oh, your music's all popular and jazzy. You're not doing the cool punks. It's not really punk, but it's very similar in attitude to that kind of guy, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Yeah. At least he's about to be starting to do folk punk.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Yes. Because, I mean, it's this mix of these songs that are like folk songs that are we would call Western because they're like songs about the West and about, you know, being a cowboy or whatever. And songs that are like Western songs that are made for like the different kinds of like floor shows and entertainment, you know, radio and whatnot that's popular at the time.

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Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Like those are kind of different beasts. Yeah. So in better times, these guys probably would never have worked together, but desperation made, you know, some kind of collaboration necessary. And they developed a fairly successful act and were able to book recurring gigs on the radio through a station called KFVD.

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Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Woody found himself increasingly drawn to folk music with a sense of class consciousness, like Goebel Reeb's 1934 tune, Hobo's Lullaby. And here's Woody Guthrie singing a portion of Hobo's Lullaby, which is, again, a song by another guy. And this is a folk song. It's also kind of punk, as you'll catch from this section. Oh, I used to listen to it while riding trains.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

That's a good little bar. So I would also be remiss, because that's pretty cool, if I didn't expound on the fact that racism, too, was a recurrent part of Woody's act and often on his mind while living in Echo Park and fighting on behalf of poor white people, because he's like an activist, you know, helping rent strike type stuff, right?

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Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Like he is an advocate for like poor downtrodden white people living in Los Angeles. He also is drawing cartoons of people he called jungle blacks and monkeys. Yeah. And like, that's bad. He wrote poems so racist that I don't even feel like I should describe them on the air to you. They're bad. Oh, God. Yeah. Found a good L.A. Weekly article on the subject by an author named Johnny Whiteside.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

And I'm going to read a quote from it now. Broadcasting on Pasadena's KFVD, Guthrie often indulged in on-air employ of Ebonics and was stunned when a black listener characterized the singer as unintelligent after hearing Guthrie perform songs with titles like Run Inward Run and Inward Blues. Fortunately for Guthrie, recordings of these tunes do not survive.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Later, Guthrie said, "...a young Negro in Los Angeles wrote me a nice letter one day telling me the meaning of that word, the N-word, and that I shouldn't say it anymore on the air, so I apologized." He next tore all the inward songs out of his songbook. Huh. So you can take that however you want, right?

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Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

Uh-oh.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How Woody Guthrie Turned Folk Music into a Weapon

The fact that he is singing that kind of stuff on the air and like just writing poems about it, not great. But he's also not unable to change or immune to criticism. So he's willing to like listen to this criticism that a black man gives him and be like, oh, you know what? That is kind of fucked up. And that ain't nothing for the son of a Klansman, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And again, there's not any one specific thing that's unique about the real world outside of this. All of the money making scams they teach people are the same stuff you'll come across in these like YouTube ads. There's this basically like this forum type experience. I think it's mostly conducted through Telegram.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So there's different private channels where users can talk to each other about their business ideas. or about how to pick up women. And this allows Andrew to put in a lot less actual work in the system, right? He doesn't have to teach people directly and he doesn't actually have to manage this. He just has to put out his own content and it'll all get kind of fed into the churn.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. Joy sounds nice. Take the wins where we can get them. I remember joy. That's been replaced with occasional sleep. Yeah. Speaking of things that bring me joy, this is not one of them because today we're going to be talking yet again about our friend, Andrew Tate, who is not our friend today.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Andrew has promoted coaches in order to handle the day-to-day task of managing this place. These are members of the war room who are also paying him. They'll call him his general sometimes too. And in addition to subscriptions to the real world, he sells classes and tickets to live events around the world where he will travel and travel alongside other men who are kind of in the Tate universe.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And they'll give a Vince for these, these just unbelievably sad young men who desperately want to know how to pick up women and get rich enough to, to not just rent their Maserati at a day rate. The centerpiece of his whole platform, the main thing that he is geared towards selling through the real world is his PhD, which stands of course for pimp and hose degree, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

We talked about this last time. No, it's always, it's always just the worst thing when I have to tell people that,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Again, there's nothing at all that is unique or creative about this. What's actually happening here is all these warmed over techniques from the game and the first couple of years of the pickup artist community. are being repackaged into a degree. And then that is being made into, number one, it's a prerequisite to join the war room.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And the goal here is not to just seduce women to have sex with them, which is kind of what the pickup artists were doing. It was all about adding notches to your belt or whatever. In this case, the goal is to coerce women, make them fall for you, isolate them from their loved ones, and then get them working for you on camera as a sex worker, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And convincing them to hand over all of the money they make doing so.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's such an interesting evolution of this is about how to add up. If you if you were kind of paying attention to the early days of the pickup artist community, it was always very toxic, but it was less like outwardly evil, like a lot more of it was framed as like, well.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

This is just teaching young, awkward men how to be charming and how to get – and that turned into – there's a reason why this fed so much into the far right and to the alt-right, why there were guys like Roosh V and whatnot who were initially big in that, who tried to become right-wing influencers. But nearly all of them failed in part because this was a creature of the older internet, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

This pickup artistry stuff. And it didn't really age well into the kind of late social media period. And the other thing that was going on with this is that it's not the kind of thing that self-selects for people who are culture warriors. It self-selects for people who are like – almost throwbacks at this point to like the old Hugh Hefner playboy era.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And Andrew Tate is, I don't know if I'd say he's the first, but he's the most successful at merging the whole right-wing culture warrior narrative where you're fighting against the matrix and you're fighting for traditional values with a lot of this pickup artistry stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

which that's the position that he occupies. Now, the PhD used to be something he advertised on his major website, but because of all of the lawsuits against him, you can't find the degree being advertised normally, so it's pushed entirely in private through the real world. The BBC got access to a number of these internal ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

These are like slideshows where Andrew's trying to convince these young men who are already locked into the most basic stage of his platform, that they should join the war room and pay it eight grand a month. And I'm going to, I'm going to share here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Sorry. Eight grand a year. Yeah. Either way. That's still so much money. Yeah. So this first slide just says, will the PhD system change your life? And it's above four pictures of a mix of it's like Andrew, usually sitting and sipping a drink or wearing a fucking short sleeved shirt next to different various young women. Right. Will the PhD system change your life?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Do you have a girl who completely trusts your decisions, will do anything you say, and loves you deeply? Yes or no? If your answer is yes, I guarantee 90% of you are lying to yourselves. Read the question again. Understand what I mean when I say anything, and ask yourself if you've ever tested that your belief. If your answer is no, you're missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Doesn't matter your age, you should have a loving girlfriend. If you're too busy to get one, good. The PhD system was made for you. If you're happy touching your own dick, this power is not for you. Oh, my gosh. So you see who he's advertising for here, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Ian Johnson. Don't do that. Don't do that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

These guys are like, well, I could spend 16 hours at a computer, but I don't want to go out and actually make a connection with somebody, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And there's little bits of nofap in there. There's so many different little corners of the creep internet that come together in making Andrew Tate. Final thoughts. I will be teaching you every step to building a girl who is submissive, loyal, and in love with you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

From your first message to testing if you want to keep her to as long as you want the relationship to go on, I am the most capable man in the world to teach you this power, and I am 100% confident in my program. I have a warning. There's responsibility when you have someone completely loyal to you. I've had some girls for over a decade.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Nope.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

When someone gives themselves to you completely, their life path is in your hands. Be wise. And then there's a little box at the bottom that says join the PhD program.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Sure, sure. At least there's that. You gotta be responsible when you come to own a woman via using Andrew Tate's mind domination program. Oh my God. And then the last slide here is what exactly do you get with the PhD programs? This is a big ad slide.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Hours of video content where I will teach you how to text women, how to build your social medias to pick up women, best first dates to bring women on, best follow-up dates, how to approach women, the framework that all male-female interactions are based on, how to see if a woman is high quality, my opening lines, how to get women in bed, the critical mistakes most men make, how to stay on her mind without interaction.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

None of that. Man, it's it's I've been I had a good I always love it when there's like really, really like stereotypically cheesy names in an action movie. And I just watched that very good movie, Novocaine, starring a guy from the boys about a dude who can't feel pain. And it does a good job with it, portraying it both as like a disability and realistically showing how he could use it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yes. Now, if you've watched Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the degree to which all of this mirrors the Dennis system, which is one of the characters is a creepy sex criminal and has like a flirtate, like it's one for one. Like there's absolutely, it's literally one for one.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Speaking of one for one, I'll give you one ad break in exchange for one chunk of listening to my podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Like to his advantage in a fight. And it's like very cringy because you're constantly watching this guy like permanently damage his body. Right. But it's a hoot. But they made the real character's name Nathan Cain, which is like, okay, guys. Oh, that's a little. Sue on the nose. Was that necessary? Did you have to? I know it's going to come out in a pitch meeting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And we're back. Ah, so we're talking about Andrew Tate, mind control wizard. Ew. Who's, he's just like, you know, this is, again, like I bring up the dentist system, but this is all, what's kind of interesting to me is he clearly

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

to put this together he and the people who made this spent a great deal of time combing the internet for the last 20 years of different get rich quick and like flirt with like flirting with women like pick up artists scams and all that stuff like there's a whole generation of like creepy dude kind of right wing adjacent content. And he's just an aggregator.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's like somebody put the last 20 years of like dudes being assholes on the Internet that led us directly to Trump and like use chat GPT to remix it into a guy with bad tattoos. So I find that I find that very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Now, the stuff I read, these kind of – these clips advertising the PhD system, like the way in which he describes it in this advertisement is disgusting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But in other interviews, he's dropped additional hints about some of the curriculum, which does include physical violence. So I played that clip earlier about Tate talking about using a machete on a woman who caught him cheating, right? About like what happens if she catches you cheating and she – tries to attack you. And he says, you know, hit her in the face with a machete. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

This is something he talks about a lot. And it's it's this this mix of like stuff like that. These like extreme this extreme violence. And then these tactics that are almost like quaint. Right. Like one thing he'll tell people to do is to start your relationship with ordering by ordering the woman in question to bring you a box of chocolates.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Like, oh, what if we called him this? But you didn't need to. You didn't need to. Most of the movie's pretty grounded, which is kind of what works about it. And then like that happens and you're like, I don't know, guys, come on. You were so close. There's also a scene where a bunch of bank robbers come out with like a hostage and the cops like put their guns down. And I'm like, no, this is this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And at first I was like, oh, is this just this is just like very basic, like almost 50s era stuff. But no, it turns out it's more related to like this neuro-linguistic programming technique where you get someone doing you favors and you use that to ask them to do other favors.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And Tate clearly – he doesn't even really seem to grasp much of like the underlying logic here because there's male BBC journalist who tries to interview him for this documentary on this leaked stuff. wants to interview Tate and Tate does the same thing, tries to get him to bring a box of chocolates and hand them directly to Andrew. And the journalist has to talk to his editors to see it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And there's this whole weird, and what he's trying to do is he's trying to establish a pattern of obedience. Because he thinks that lets him manipulate people, that it's like this hack to get into someone's brain. If you get them doing one favor to you, they'll do other favors to you. This is very old power of positive thinking salesmanship kind of stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You'll get this in stuff going back to the 1950s, including a lot of like the Norman Vincent Peale shit that Donald Trump was being raised on as a kid. I've seen versions of this that go back decades. And the thing you're supposed to do as time goes on, you're supposed to give the subject of your focus more tasks and you let your language get increasingly strict.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You start by asking like, hey, would you do this for me? And you end by giving them commands, right? We're like, this is what we're doing today. This is your job for the day. This is what you have to do for the day.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And at the same time, and this is the thing that I think actually makes much more of an impact effectively, you're also supposed to be isolating your target from their family and social support network. So you're getting them in the habit of doing things that you say, and you're also cutting them off from their friends and family so they don't have anyone else in their life but you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, you're doing everything this guy tells you. Are you working 16 hours a day doing an OnlyFans that he gets the money from? That seems kind of fucked up. Now, I want to play you a clip leaked from one of these in-person seminars he gives on mentally dominating women.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

The question he's asked right before giving this answer is, can you say more about the restrictions and boundaries that you put on a woman in terms of who she can talk to?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

This is the San Diego Police Department. You're telling me they don't just empty their fucking rifles into that fucking people, those people. I'm sorry. We'll deal with the lawsuit later. We'll watch the LAPD shoot up a Trader Joe's over a hostage situation.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Oh boy, welcome to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where tired people talk about a guy they hate, in this case, Andrew Tate. How are we all doing today? Everybody full of energy? Juiced up, as the kids say? I don't think the kids say that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Well, I mean, it's taking this very basic misogyny because, again, his audience is not – it's framed as like we're an alliance of powerful men making each other more powerful. But his audience is all guys who have never – I mean, it's not even guys. It's children, right? It's kids who haven't been out in the world. Yeah, like boys who are afraid to talk to girls.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

No, but most of these people have never had partners, right? And Tate and kind of the older men who are running things They're all jacked. They're all generally on gear. They all have nice tailored clothes. They all either have or rent sports cars. And these little kids' minds are just putty in their hands.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

They see the physical symbols of wealth that these people have, and they're like, well, then they must know what they're doing. This must all be the path to get what I want. And this is pretty classic cult leader behavior, both from Tate influencing these young people and the stuff he's telling them to do to women, right? And he frames this as saying, like, there's no perfect girl for you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You have to make her. You have to make her using these techniques, right? And per a quote from the Daily Dot, which originally published a lot of these leaked War Room videos, in another clip from the same meeting, Tate explains why the woman his members want to date should not have normal jobs. If she has a normal job, she's got a social circle. She's got a support network, Tate bemoans.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

She's having a bunch of conversations you don't know about. She knows a bunch of dudes who are trying to get in her ear. She has concerns which aren't involving you, right? And that's a problem. Tate says her brain power is dedicated to things that have nothing to do with you. It's a massive influence. And there is this deep insecurity, right? Extremely.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Because you're going to make her miserable, right? You have no desire or intention to actually be in a relationship with someone or provide them with anything they need. You're purely trying to take things from them. And it's obvious that's not going to make anyone happy. I wanted to run through another section of this curriculum from Tate's PhD.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

This is from that same clip that gets played around a lot of Andrew Tate talking about hitting women with a machete. What's not usually played in the context when people discuss this, because all of the big interviews that he's done recently, he gets asked about this. What's not played is that this is him talking about one of the physical tests that you have to pass in order to get this PhD degree.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

We don't need that shit here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And I really wish people would talk about this because this is kind of one of the more like fucked up things I've heard about in relation to what Tate is actually trying to teach the people who take his classes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Anyway, speaking of shit nobody needs, we're talking about Andrew Tate and his digital empire, how it works.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

This is the actual full context. It's like this is part of a test. You have to like, in order to pass this degree, you have to take a physical test on how you would defend yourself against one of these women you're trafficking catching you cheating. Like that's the actual context of all of this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, like, just the fact that, like, you're building in... Well, obviously, your people are going to get attacked because the stuff that they're doing is so, like, incredibly gross. We have to try and, like, train them to fight these women that we're also teaching them to try and, like, mentally dominate. Which is simultaneously this admission that, like, the tactics don't work that well.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So you're going to need to be able to fight...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. You have to train people to slice them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Today's episodes are going to be based on a bunch of subsequent reporting that was not available when we did our first episodes about how the War Room, which is his very expensive premium service that costs about eight grand a year to join, although that's actually the low end for what this fucking thing costs to be a member of, and the real world, which is like, costs 50 bucks a month, and the real world is...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. Yeah. With your terrible machete. And that's why you have it. It's not because you're being targeted by the deep state and the matrix. It's because your girlfriends are going to get angry at you and you have to be able to hit them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's insane. Yeah. Oh, my God. So giving speeches like this and this is like part of the curriculum for this this Ph.D. program, you know, sold in the real world and operated as a prerequisite for getting into the war room. Making stuff like this is how Tate makes his money now, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He is not primarily in the pimping business anymore because that doesn't make nearly as – it's an MLM thing, right? It's an MLM that sells being a pimp, right? This is the same as like do Tara or whatever, but your business is like coercing women into working on camera for you. And Tate's at the top now, so he doesn't actually have to do that. There's much more money in making content like this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

now the purpose of all of these programs is to get people to buy other classes right that's what's really sold the real world's uh 50 bucks a month but if you want to get this degree it's another 400 the war room's eight grand a year but there are access to additional secret chat rooms that cost thousands of additional dollars a year right um and there's access to classes that cost thousands more and there's all these in-person gatherings that cost money

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And one of Tate's mottos is that no great man ever got there on his own, right? So he says you need to be part of this network. And it's all so familiar to the standard MLM schema when you really look at it like that. And that's what's really changed my understanding of Tate from this is an influencer who is mobilizing his fan base to make himself more famous to this is a guy who –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

whatever his initial goal was, he's now Amway. He's now the Amway of hitting women, right? Like that's what Andrew Tate's business is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about Keith Raniere because there's a lot of Keith Raniere to Andrew Tate. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And I think to some extent it's maybe if Tate had come up in an earlier era before all the anti-woke stuff got as big as it was before the far right was ascendant, he would have tried more for the culturally kind of like left-wing image that a guy like Ranieri cultivated where like, no, no, no, I'm part of like this progressive movement empowering women.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I think Andrew might have gone in that direction. Sure. He probably wouldn't have been as successful because I think he's just kind of inherently also a dick, but he's certainly shaped by the tides of history around him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Now, former members of the War Room, not only are they being kind of taught to groom these women that they're trafficking in a culty way, they also describe the War Room as a cult itself. And the basis of that BBC report is that the leader of the actual cult inside the War Room isn't even Tate. He's just the figurehead.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

The individual responsible for most of this content and curriculum and for the culture of the platform is a completely different guy who goes by the pseudonym Iggy Simmelweis in the war room, right? And I'm not 100% in agreement with the BBC on how much this guy is actually running things behind the scenes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But he's certainly a major figure. He is a real person. We'll give his real name. His nickname is odd to me. When I first heard Iggy Semmelweis, I was like, that sounds familiar. And me being me, whenever I'm like, well, that guy's name sounds familiar, my assumption is like, so he's some sort of Nazi, right? Like this is some sort of guy-

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You know, if it's Toyota, the world, the war room is Lexus. That's the premium brand. And the real world is, you know, the normal brand that actually makes them the bulk of their money. So we're going to talk about how these work, how Tate has weaponized them over the years, and what some of these released chat logs have made clear about the operating culture. But first, that's the cold open.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But I look him up and I remembered where I read about him from because he's someone I've intended to tell his story on bastards for a while. He's actually not a bastard, but there's a lot of awful stuff in his story. Ignat Simmelweis was a real guy and really the precise opposite of a bad guy. He was a Hungarian-German doctor.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And he's the guy who was basically first in like an organized way making the scientific case for like, hey, we should use antiseptics. You know, people always die when we give surgery or we cut off their limbs. What if we like cleaned things first? What if we cleaned the saw?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Well done. Iggy Simmelweis is the father of hand sat. He's also the father. He was the first major figure who was like a respected Western scientist to be like, surgeons and doctors should probably wash their fucking hands. Maybe we should clean some shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You say that, Sophie, but it turns out that no, he was fine. But at a certain period of time, telling doctors that they needed to wash their hands was very dangerous because you're telling doctors, hey, before you reach your hand into someone's chest cavity, you should like wash it with like soap and stuff. You're telling doctors your hands are covered in germs that get people sick.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And doctors are better than regular people, right? They are educated gentlemen. And if you're telling an educated gentleman you're dirty and you might get a poor person sick by touching inside of their body, that is deeply offensive. And it really pissed off a lot of people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So many that Semmelweis was hounded into like having a mental break and then forced into a mental asylum where he was beaten by guards and died of an infected injury.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I mean, Oh my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. I'm like, the father of being like, wash your fucking hands, people. God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

They got around to it. For fuck's sake. We just had to lose a luminary first. Now, again, the real- Why would he pick this name?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

That I don't know because he has nothing to do with this guy. Right. Other than maybe he feels like he I guess I could make a case that like, oh, he probably sees the world he's in is filled with like germs, which is, you know, other people having rights. And maybe he's the he's he's the persecuted doctor who like sees the way things should be.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

No, I don't want this guy to go do anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

The real dude is an American named Miles Sonkin, right? That's the actual guy who uses the name.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

When the BBC got access to a bunch of leaked chats for its documentary, The Man Who Groomed the World, the journalist behind it, Matt Shea, came away with the opinion that Sonken is the brains and the ideological weight behind Tate's whole war room operation. And he makes a pretty good case. Okay. I disagree with aspects of it. Shay has put more time into this than I have.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And he spent a lot of time around Tate. He's met Sonken in person. He's met a number of key figures here. So I'm going to yield to his expertise, even though I'm not sure I agree with him entirely. And we'll talk about who this guy is. But first, let's talk about who our advertisers are, other than great people, which they are.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

We're done. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Sonken was born in Chicago, 1961, and he's been described in interviews by family members as a smart kid. And here's the most dangerous word we ever use on the show. He was also an autodidact, right? So he's this kid who learns a lot on his own and doesn't really go to high school, but educates himself. Now, unfortunately, when you do that, there tend to be holes in your education.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. This is one of our great problems is that if the things you're interested in wind up being worth a lot of money, you can get by never learning about anything else and also convincing yourself that you understand the world because you've made a lot of money. And I think that's kind of what's going to happen to Sanken.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And he pays an initial he pays initially some like consequences for it because he immediately gets sucked into two different cults.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He does look like a wizard.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

This beard is terrible. It's very pointy. I'll believe he's using the fucking dentist system to get himself a harem.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So his self-education makes him kind of vulnerable to getting taken advantage of as a young man. And as a result, he joins two different cults, right? When he's a young person. Or I should say two different organizations widely regarded as cults. And the second is the Rajneesh movement, who was the focus of the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

so he gets sucked into that for a while as a young man and i think like the the 80s night late 80s or 90s now the details of his specific involvement in either cult are not available at this time but over the years song can evolve from a spiritual seeker into someone who believed that he in fact had the answers during the early age of the social internet he became a pickup artist and was one of the first prominent ones online starting like the late 90s early 2000s he's like on the ground floor of pickup artistry as like an online subculture

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He gets really interested in hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming alongside this, and he began to become an advocate of mind-controlling women by repeating certain words and phrases.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You might recognize this as Pavlovian training applied to dating, and he seems to be the origin of Tate's, you know, get them to bring you chocolate, you know, establish a pattern of obedience in order to break their ability to think separately from you. Now, Sonken is also a self-described wizard. He believes he literally, he's literally casting spells on people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He does that to this journalist when he tries to like interview Andrew Tate. Well, the look matches, so. He does have like a little bit of a Saruman. If Saruman got his hair done behind a 7-Eleven look. Yeah. Sanken is a self-described wizard, and as he got into magic, he got more interested in the more esoteric segments of the far right through the early aughts, the weird Hitlerism shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And this is all growing up for the most part before people become super aware of it, and then Gamergate helps flood a lot of it, and then the alt-right. Sanken is kind of right in the middle of that. He and Tate seem to have started working together in 2018, and at this point, Andrew Tate is basically a late undergrowth of the pickup artist community, focused on camera sex work type stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's unclear how Miles is involved with him, but I think he probably helps to write and formulate a lot of the courses that Andrew was selling during this period. A former member of the War Room, which was established in 2019, describes Iggy as at the top and the real leader of the platform.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And it's – I don't know if I like taking away credit from Tate for being a puppet master, but these guys are both definitely partners. Sure. And the kind of things Tate's teaching, a lot of these are not things he came up with himself or wrote himself. They're things Semmelweis kind of had on deck that Tate decided to slap his name on. And even this has layers, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. Well, that's good. Lakers in five sounds like a positive development. Yeah. Very.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

When a former member described the war room as a bunch of telegram chats, some for business or girls or money, but there are more prestigious rooms that users who have already put in thousands of dollars are expected to shell out thousands more to join.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

In messages on the war room telegram, we can see Sanken posting a Semmelweis and giving the same advice Tate gives from that speech we listened to earlier. And this is a message from him to war members. Isolating her from her family, friends, past is the kindest thing you can do for her if you are taking responsibility for having sole authority over her. And then in another post.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Then we punish her for her transgression, real or imagined, by having her get our name tattooed on her, leaving her family's home apartment town country. Webcamming and stripping, walking the track for us, getting us girls, escalate, escalate, escalate. So this is really Keith Raniere stuff. They're doing the branding thing, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Where you have to get tattoos or scarify yourself with the name of this guy. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's pretty gross. Now, I think it'd be wise if you wanted to do so, to view the war room and the real world as kind of a modern day answer to the Church of Scientology. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Ton of parallels. And obviously, Hubbard is a reflection of the big self-help. culture of his time. Scientology starts off as an offshoot of the self-improvement movement with a book called Dianetics, which instructed readers on a series of exercises that would clear them of trauma and bad habits and make them superhuman.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

One of the dominant subcultures of the early internet age, as I've said, was the pickup artist scene. And the inherent scamminess of a lot of this culture influenced the growth of the modern YouTube scam economy, as well as the ecosystem of far-right content creators who helped birth the Trump administration.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So it does make sense that Tate and Sonken would form a cult around what is at its essence rebranded pickup artistry. The BBC documentary makes it sound like this was all Sonken's plan from the beginning, and it quotes former members who described his ultimate goal as world domination through the spread of his ideology, right? He wants to get this to everybody.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He wants to take over the world with this. But also, how is anyone going to make money with their cam businesses in that future?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's like if you wanted to take over the world by building a bunch of tire shops. Well, at a certain point, your tire shops aren't going to be worth any money. Do you not understand supply and demand? I don't know. Not the most logical movement.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, the math's not really adding up. So Samuel Quinones was interviewed for a Vice article. He is a founding member of the War Room, but says that he quit about six months in because, quote, I recognize the upselling of useless courses and events, much like an MLM.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. There's another guy who's like, yeah, I was working on their socials for a while. I didn't realize they were trafficking women. And the interviewer asked, like, do you feel bad for that? And he's like, well, no, I didn't really know what was going on. Yeah. Okay, man, I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

There were still some unknowns, such as how much financial advantage is taken of in the war room, inner circle members, right? We don't know if Andrew's getting money from each of these guys in the war room, a cut of their profits from trafficking women. But we do know that about 1% of the people who join actually get a lot of money, which is not super different from Amway, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's hard to really tell. But I mean, I'm sure there are definitely people making money from having women do this for them. But anyone who winds up net in the black is fairly rare.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Mahmoud, a former member, told Vice there was nobody that was making any real money, he said, citing conversations he had with other students in the platform's chat rooms and the empty win section on most users' profiles that tracked a lack of earnings.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

These people inside there that are leaving their schools or units to pursue this, he said, adding that one of his friends on the platform told him that he had abandoned his university studies to go all in on the program.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I don't know. I don't know. If you could be convinced not to go to university because you're hoping that you could become the next Andrew Tate, maybe you shouldn't be getting whatever degree you were getting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

We don't abuse women. And the thing that you're being kind of continually pushed to do in the real world is put out more videos that will get more people to subscribe to Tate services. And if you get out enough and you have a certain number of people watching you, you get affiliate status, right? Which is where you get a cut of people who join and you pay into Tate programs through your videos.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Top war room generals act as social enforcers, using humiliation to force young men to go into war mode, where they would labor for days, often 16 to 20 hours at a time, with very little sleep in order to make Tate content go viral. States were required to post four to six videos a day and harass if their metrics weren't good enough.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I would make more about how horrible this is, but a lot of this just sounds out how working at Facebook is right now, so I don't know. Could be a better boss, could be worse.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Both in the war room itself, discussion tended to focus around sharing clips of text with messages from different women members who were, from different women that members were pursuing or trying to converse into what we would call trafficking.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

The most granular write-up of how people converse in the war room documentary, in the war room, come from the substack of a guy called Crabman, who was the source for the NBC's documentary, right? He brings them some of these leaked documents, and he takes great pains to break down what's going in in the on-age of these discussions.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

In one chat in the Great Hall, which seems to be a general discussion area, Tristan described how well-trained Andrew's girls are and that girls who don't play ball are expelled. Crabman writes, "'Here's the thing. It's all the game to Andrew. He tells our war room members, you have to risk it all by losing to get to the next bet.'" Sometimes you lose. I've lost girls.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Doesn't always work, but that's why you got to find new ones. And the ones that it does work for, those are the ones you keep. That's just how you build a good harem of girls, you know, because some girls, it just like it, some girls, the system, the system works.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

But if we have another guy, they kind of half like, or whatever outside influences, sometimes you do lose them when you play hardball, but I play hardball ball anyway, because it's all I'm interested in. I want the 100. I don't give a, want the five. So I'll gamble it. That's the basic premise. Romantic. Yeah. Prick. Mm-hmm.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Now, Andrew blames that this PhD test alone, being able to defend himself from angry women, was fundamental to becoming a millionaire, right? A little further down, though, in text within the war room, he complains that nothing he tries works as well since he got famous, right? Quote, girls are too defensive. They instantly assume you message every hot girl. It destroys PhD success rate.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Seriously, unless you want to be a sugar daddy, which I don't. So even he's like, yeah, now that people know my face, nobody wants anything to do with me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, exactly. So he's bragging that his old techniques don't work since he's been verified on social media. Quote, girls are too defensive. They instantly assume you message every hot girl. Destroys PhD success rate. Seriously, unless you want to be a sugar daddy, which I don't.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Other members post pictures of cars that they purportedly bought with funds earned by their harems and give blow-by-blow accounts of their own flirtation journeys. A popular thing to post are messages from women that the poster has ignored as part of Andrew's strategy hinges on denying attention in order to build interest. So there's just like clips of women being like, when are you coming?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Hi, why are you ignoring me? And like, see, look at this win. I'm not responding to this woman that I like. And it's just, it's both. So dumb. Yeah. It's such like pickup artist in cell stuff. And also such, again, it's the dentist system. It's like the negging shit from like pickup artists. It's negging. None of it's new.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's just been repackaged in a way that is, it's been repackaged to sell an MLM, right? It doesn't matter if this works. Some number of men will always – I don't know if it's because of the individual people they're going after or something about their personal characteristics – will be successful enough with this to convince themselves that it's worthwhile.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And 99% will have nothing happen, but they'll pay for long enough that it makes it worthwhile, right? It's the same thing with like, yes, some people sell Amway products or at least – sell a few Amway products and then get a lot of people to sign up for Amway. And so they do make money. That's just about 1% of Amway. Everyone else has kind of taken a bath.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Now, there's also kind of in the Ranieri vibe within these kind of like the elite war room chats, there's a lot of discussion on how to permanently mark women, which is considered the ultimate sign of success that like you have gotten this person so in your spell that you've gotten them to tattoo your name on their body. This seems to be a core aspect of Semmelweis' teachings.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I think he's the main person who introduced this. It's kind of unclear to me. But all these guys are constantly posting either them attempting to convince women to do this. And... There's this mix of people saying no and getting dumped. So this message here is between Tate. She's showing him a tattoo that she's got. And he's saying, I want you to get my name tattooed on you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I don't want this other tattoo. And she's asking him, when will we get married? And he says, now, as soon as you get the tattoo. And she's like, okay, but then if you leave me, I'll still have your name on my body. And that's kind of fucked up. And he's like, why would I leave? Are you saying you're not going to be good to me?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And then there's kind of the most telling thing at the end here is she eventually, he says, yes, it'll make me happy if you get this tattoo. And she says, okay, I'll do it. I cannot write great. My dad does not have to see. So I don't know how old this girl is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

young very young again this is these are the people that they're are being reached out towards right these are not adults these are not people who are like have mature brains yeah thing is but show me with your fingers how big i'm very uncomfortable Yeah, it's gross. Now, the messages posted here are from back in 2019. So this is an older era of the war room.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And it's hard to say where things are now with the culture there since the beginning of the litigation against Andrew. When he was initially incarcerated, he made a lot of claims that his war room friends would watch out for his interests and even take care of his stuff while he was away. There is an extent to which this seems to be true.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And what we know of the network suggests an intricate community and a number of people who do have resources and this kind of cult-like devotion to Andrew and to the group. Now, there's been some good work done to kind of lay out who is involved in this community. The BBC documentary did a lot of it. Bellingcat did an article on it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

One of these guys, these people who are like, these are both folks who are presumably paying Andrew thousands or tens of thousands a year, but are also working and getting money of their own. You might call them the high-level Amway distributors of the war room and the real world. One of them is a guy who has a YouTube channel called Sartorial Shooter.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He's a former Australian soldier and a current Dubai resident. A lot of Dubai residencies here who claims to have gone into the intelligence world and worked all around the planet. He claims to have weapons and tactics trading facilities everywhere. Now, as is always the case with these guys, that's a bit of an exaggeration. His real name is Joel Sullivan.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He's one of the leading lights of the war room. Bellingcat revealed that he was a former director of international security for a global health care company. which is not a nothing job, but it's not exactly James Bond.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He's some sort of like mercenary special operator spy. It's like, no, you worked for like a healthcare company directing security. And again, there's not nothing there, but it's not quite what you're claiming it is. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Another key general of Andrews goes by the Twitter title First Prince of Wudon, which you'll remember is he's got this sort of pretend mythic story about how he learned to be a martial arts master. The actual guy behind this account is a current Delta pilot and a former U.S.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Air Force major who the BBC detailed posting about his use of Tate's techniques to try and coerce women into doing sex work for his financial benefit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, it's all just like the grossest dudes. Like some of them do have money. So it is like it's not like these are like the people at the top. Number one, they're generally people who have had a degree of success before getting involved in Andrew Tate's thing. So number one.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

They have some money of their own, so they're able to like bootstrap themselves until they can make money getting, you know, affiliates, basically pulling people in and selling them on subscriptions, which they seem to get a cut of. And they're also just people who have been more successful. They're older, so they can kind of replicate some degree of the scams that Andrew has carried out.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And I really think that's all that's going on here with these guys. None of them are... Andrew wants them to look like they're the secret masters of the world, and they're not that. They're guys who are probably making mid to low six-figure salaries. They're doing well. They've got positions that afford them a decent degree of income, and they want to be more.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And so I think a lot of this for them and why it's worth... Cause you know, a pilot, that kind of income, you can afford to throw eight grand at some shit like this, especially if you're making some of it back through whatever the affiliate scheme pays you. And maybe the fantasy of being part of this like elite group of men is worth more to you than whatever amount of money that you kind of burn.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, there's a lot that I could really get into, like more stuff about all this here. One of the more difficult parts of doing this was knowing how to what to cut out and what to include.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I do want to note one thing, which is that some of the one of my favorite one of my favorite side facts of this is there's some messages that Tristan Tate posts to the war room about how a guy named Ivan Throne is crashing on their couch in Romania. Have either of you heard of Ivan Throne?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So he's a really low grade manfluencer hack. He's like a big bearded dude who always poses in like a suit or he's got like kind of like a fucking goatee. He always poses in a suit. He wrote this book about like the dark triad man, which is like- using the power of sociopathy in order to like make yourself a better business leader or whatnot.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And he used to do, he did, he had a Tate style grift that just didn't do well called throne dynamics where like men would pay to go to these summits where they'd eat steak and smoke cigars and talk about, you know, make connections about their, their great businesses, which are again, mostly like pickup artistry, like right wing, like, like low grade right wing propaganda bullshit and,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And the reason I bring up Ivan is that he was part of my favorite moment in the history of Twitter. So I'm going to share that with you. So he posts a picture of there's this like very photorealistic statue of like a beautiful young white lady with long flowing hair. The fabric work on the statue is really nice. Like you can see she's got this sheer shirt. It's like a sexy sculpture, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Like it's definitely meant to be. She has nipples. Yeah. She's got nipples. It's provocative. It's provocative. And Ivan posts this to his Twitter account and says, this is called art. This is the legacy and heritage of the West. This is what the men of the West fight, sacrifice and die for. This is victory. Hashtag Deus Volt. And one of his followers asks him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Is there an example of a female sculptor who committed himself to the same level of detail that a man does with a woman? And Ivan responds, none that come to mind. That sculpture is an act of worship before heaven and it shows. And someone just responds with a picture of the artist next to its sculptor and says, the sculptor is a Chinese woman, you dork ass losers. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

and he and he just like that was it for ivan like i understand why he's crashing on andrew tate's couch for a while because that just fucking nukes him as a human being from that and learning that like tristan tate's his buddy and he was like bumming like couch surfing with the tates in 2019 20 they're extremely fucking funny to me

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Now, one of the other things that's kind of missed the great mysteries that's answered from these leaks is why Andrew keeps coming back to Romania, which I have to admit, as I kept looking through like what he's doing, what's going on with him. This was like a constant thing for me. Like, why in the fuck is this guy not he's he does have money. He's not poor.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

He's got millions, at least that they still didn't have access to. They didn't get everything. He has friends in Dubai. He could get a permanent residency in Dubai. And if you think you might go to prison for all of your sex crimes and you're this guy, Dubai is where you want to wind up.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And the fact that he visited and then came back, that he went back to Romania, I didn't know why until I found this post of his on The War Room that I think kind of explains it, right? I've been everywhere, and let me tell you a few things. The world is basically the same.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Temples and churches are bullshit, and you're better off finding the best spot you can and becoming a local force than float around all day like a digital nomad dork. There's no club on Earth better than the club here in Romania. I have 20 girls at the table. Security knows me. No one fucks with me. Why leave?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And I think that really gets right down to it is he's like he's found his place and he's pretty confident that Romania will botch the prosecution against him enough that he can continue to live there.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And I think he he doesn't really want to live in Dubai because as much of a like stereotypical place as it is for guys like him, it doesn't have the same kind of opportunities for the sort of debauchery that he's into. Right. It just there. It's a stricter culture in some ways than that, even for some guys with money.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And he could if he was posting the kind of videos that he tends to post, he could get in trouble at some point. And I think he's just he's just convinced of the fact that he can make this work for himself. That's that's really what I'm saying. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Like, I'm pretty good here. Yeah. And he might get away. Yeah. You know? Yeah. All right. That's what I got. That's the Andrew Tate update. That's where he is right now.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Okay. Still a piece of shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Update you. Gross guy. We're done with him for a while again. Probably don't have to go back to Andrew Tate for a minute until until some of this court cases get more adjudicated. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So that's it. That's our update on Andrew.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's a good show. Listen to Hood Politics. It's a good show. Don't subscribe to the War Room. Sophie, we should have a place people can give us $8,000 a year if they want to. Wouldn't that be nice? The coolest zone media. We're not that desperate.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Something's gone terribly wrong. Unless I say it's definitely me. Yeah. In which case, it's definitely me. I would never lie to you unless someone cloned my voice with AI, in which case I would definitely lie to you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Sophie's going to go watch the Lakers. I'm going to like stand outside in the sun or some shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

We're back and Sophie and I are commenting on our same colored drinks.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Mine's some mix of BCAAs and water. Because this is ostensibly a workout day that has been a little bit of a shit show. But might as well get whatever those chemicals are. People say they do something.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah, yeah. So the doctors say. Speaking of things that do something, the war room. And so the real world is kind of the core of Tate's business because it's got between 150 and 200,000 subscribers at any given time. I think 170K is the estimate you'll hear the most often. And you've got that many people paying 50 bucks a month. You're talking some serious money.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Now, there's wide turnover on that because $50 a month isn't a massive upfront investment, right? People can afford to pay that and then back out later. There's a lot of people who are kind of interested in it for a little while. And so there's a lot of churn over the overall use of this, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And the goal of the real world broadly is both to make money and to funnel users upward into the war room, which is much more expensive now. And as a result, harder to get into, but also lower turnover once people make that kind of financial commitment.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So both of these places we've known about for a while, the real world was originally Hustler's University, which is kind of Tate's first big web platform that kind of taught people how to pick up women and run cam hoarding businesses, so to speak. And yeah, so we've known these places existed, but they were kind of black boxes until in

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I think this is a person who would describe themselves as a rival of Tate's, like someone who dislikes what he's doing and wanted to get into them. It's not clear to me how they got access to the chat logs, but they get access to internal chat logs from the War Room, which is his digital inner circle, and they give them to the BBC.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

And the BBC uses these to put together a documentary and several articles. Their primary interest as reporters was in laying out how the Tate brothers and their cohorts traffic women. And these logs identified 45 potential victims from just the period of March 2019 to April of 2020. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Yeah. That's crazy. And this is, again, there's maybe 500 people in the war room. And these are the people, though, who are much more successful at actually doing the thing Tate is trying to train people how to do. Right. The real world is filled with young men who have ambitions to be small scale digital pimps, but don't really have the skill or the commitment.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So they primarily contribute by paying classes that are supposed to teach them how to do that shit. Whereas the war room is full of people who are actually doing the kind of Andrew Tate stuff. So that's why they were able to like – there's photos posted of texts. People post pictures of the women that they're trying to bring in and traffic.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So you kind of see – it's possible to actually collect data on specific potential victims right through that. Now, the next year, November of 2024, a group of anonymous hacktivists managed to breach the real world, which is the larger platform. And the cyber attack exposed the data of some 800,000 people who have used it at some point or another.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

See, you get an idea of like the scale of this and it's also every time these pieces of shit, it's the same thing with those like Nazi leaks for a while ago. Every time those pieces of shit create something like this, it gets just absolutely blown up. And then everybody's data gets leaked and you find out how many of them work for the federal government or whatever. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

So both leaks are interesting for different reasons, but I want to start with the real world because that, again, is kind of what funnels people's up. The site's ad copy claims it as, quote, the world's most advanced financial education platform.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's just hilarious. They made, like, a G.I. Joe of him? Or is it a Barbie brand?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

but it's also geared towards helping young men escape the matrix and avoid wasting their lives as a brokey, which thanks to Tate has become one of the more common adolescent slang terms for young boys in the UK. And it means you don't have much money, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You get this fucking, you hear this a lot with like the way these kids talk to their teachers and their parents were like, well, you're just a brokey. Like, why would I listen to anything you have to say about life or the world? You don't have as much money as, for example,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

uh this guy that i'm paying 50 bucks a month for my mom's credit card to to learn how to like mostly make like ai scam books and stuff to sell on amazon like that's honestly the biggest thing that the real world does right now that's the grift yeah that's originally the hustlers university thing yeah yes right yes and so there's there's all just like scams to get rich quick essentially right yeah scams to get rich quick and it's all this this very much like

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

They made a LeBron Ken doll. Well, he's really finally arrived, I guess. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

It's the same cons that you encounter if you're on YouTube and you get a bunch of con ads for, oh, here's a video of a guy in his fucking garage with a sports car and a bunch of shitty business books and him walking you through how he makes $20,000 a month or whatever on Amazon drop shipping or making Kindle AI books. Again, that's now kind of the big one. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

While initially Hustlers University was more focused just on getting women to work in your cam business, the real world is a mix of very standard pickup artist stuff. Here are the different tips and tricks for getting women interested in you and how to mentally abuse them so they don't leave you. And then the next set of them is

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Or the next set of things on it is like here's a bunch of different scams for how you can get rich. And they're all – again, they're all these like drop shipping scams and AI scams and stuff. So it's – none of it is for as much as he talks about like being this jet setter who's got all of these innovative ideas. Like his primary money – it's an MLM, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Like this is a thing that most people who do this will never make a dime really doing it. His money is in selling them and selling subscriptions, right? Yeah. Well, the platform provides courses on common like passive income schemes. That's another term you'll hear a lot.

Behind the Bastards

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Its primary service for Tate is both to milk money out of these kids in the hope that they'll believe for a time that they're going to get rich, but also to utilize them for free labor to keep his name trending. Again, the way this guy went from a nobody to being at least the most well-known name on social media

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

I'm going to guess that's the lowest percentage of Barbie dolls that have ever been bought by little girls.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

is by gathering this group of young men together and handing them, once they're paying for access to the site, they get access to this archive of all of Tate's videos and interviews, and they can cut up clips from that to edit into YouTube and TikTok content, right? And this content doesn't get them viewers.

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That's kind of what its build is doing, is you can use Andrew's fame in order to build your own platform. That doesn't really work. But what does work is if you've got thousands of people constantly posting this shit, to different social media. You turn them into a content mill. Right. Yeah. And the algorithm will continue to prioritize your name and stuff related to you, you know?

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And that's really how all this stuff works. It's just free propaganda for him. It's free propaganda and that's the actual, the real insight that he had. Like, all of these cons are just stuff he rips off from elsewhere on the internet and

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Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

Taking the MLM structure and adapting it to instead of having them try to sell his products, having them try to keep his name going viral so that the algorithm rewards his content, that's a unique and creative move that he's made. And it's gotten him quite a bit of what he has right now.

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Now, one of these BBC articles I came across interviews a former member of the real world, Mahmoud, who was pulled into Tate's orbit when he started coming across some of these videos that were just like being spread across his different social media timelines. He fell for the con. He believed that like, okay, this guy can probably teach me how to get rich. I want to get rich.

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Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

You know, life's hard in the UK as a young man. Like I need to figure out some way that I can make a bunch of money. So he pays 50 bucks and he joins. Quote, Before long, he was completely immersed in Tate's universe, isolating himself from friends and family.

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Mahmoud would regularly spend 10 to 12 hours a day, sometimes as many as 16, at his computer, editing and publishing social media videos, promoting Tate daily as part of the required coursework. He'd become a cog in the same sophisticated PR machine that had initially drawn him to the influencer's web.

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Part Two: What's New With Andrew Tate?

If you want to stay in, if you want to keep getting access to these different instructors that I've had, if you don't want to be kicked out or you want a chance of getting into this, he has an affiliate marketing program. You have to post a certain number of videos a day and they're really, they're just trying to keep these kids on as often as they can pumping out like 16 hours a day for free.

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I mean, not, not even for free. They're paying for the privilege. Yeah.

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Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And it's not, she would say, no, I'm saying that, like, part of healing this is fixing people's attitudes and improving the way they think and talk about themselves, and that will help their physical health. I just think everyone who believes this should have to lecture about this to, like, a child cancer ward. Yeah.

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Like, explain to kids, if your attitude was better, your bones wouldn't be rotting inside you. You know? God.

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There's so much of it that's so locked inside their heads. It's even separate from how someone like Marianne acts. Because I found an article by a friend of hers called David Kessler, and it was on her website. He posted it on Medium, and she had shared it. But this is a guy who knew her. He had operated during the AIDS crisis. He operated a home hospice for AIDS patients.

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and he claimed, quote, So this is not a person who is, like, hateful and callous. This is a person who is able to sit with sick people And then also holding her head, this completely unhinged that if you take it to its logical conclusion, you're saying they brought it on themselves. And I that kind of cognitive dissonance is amazing to me. I don't know how you can have that.

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So much more often than like outright evil is like, oh, well, you just. your brain's not functioning. You've got like somebody, somebody dropped like a wrench in there and it's just like, yeah.

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I talk about this with our other host, Margaret Killjoy, a lot about how you can meet people out in the middle of nowhere who, if you look at their politics, they support some political things that are ghoulish, whereas the same people they would vote to hurt, they would sacrifice for in person because people are incoherent and not all that bright. It comes down to that a lot of the time.

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Yeah.

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And like, yeah, this is Kurt Vonnegut was often of the opinion that like, if we were just all a little bit too dumb to keep society, like if we, if we all had like 20% less, like, like, like got a little bit more brain damage, things would be better. Because like we it's this mix of we're so smart and we're so stupid that causes all the problems.

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If we were just like dogs, everything would be fine. That's what I come back down to.

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Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Anyway, speaking of where we're living now, Marianne Williamson was the beginning of Oprah's pivot to alternative medicine and spirituality. As we noted, Williamson's particular thing was A Course in Miracles, which is a series of books. She did not write these, but this is her Bible, at least at this period of time. And A Course in Miracles is...

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is the underpinning, one of the underpinnings, because we've talked about a few others, roots of what becomes like the secret, right? This is a lot of where we get that from. And A Course in Miracles is like, it's this set of books that claims to integrate psychology and spirituality, which is kind of what Scientology also claimed to do. It's what...

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It's what all of the good spiritual con men claim to do, right? The author of this book, Helen Schuchman, claimed that it had been fully dictated to her by Jesus Christ, and she just wrote it down. So, like, look, what are my citations? Jesus, baby. Like...

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Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Are you saying Jesus is wrong? How many times did you get sacrificed on Golgotha, huh? How many nails she got through your hands, huh? Anyway, don't go to the doctor. Speaking of which, don't go to the doctor. Listen to these ads.

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Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

You know what? We all pledge allegiance to communist China. I spent three minutes on what is that? What's the new one? I forgot the name of this joke. Little Red Book. I spent three minutes. The joke's not going to work anymore. Whatever. Fuck it.

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Yeah, that Jesus is like, medicine doesn't really work. It's all about thinking your way through problems. Yeah. Nobody ever catches that. Well, everyone does except for these people. Right. And it's also, you know, part of if you're because William said, I'm not trying to like exonerate her totally. One of the things I think that you do if you're like her is you're like, well, I believe this.

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But the fact that she's saying Jesus wrote this whole thing, that's probably not going to play on TV. I probably want to keep that quiet. Like, so I'm going to. And what Marianne does is she's like, all right, well, I think this is basically good. But maybe the raw stuff is a little bit too uncut for this audience. She writes her own book about A Course in Miracles titled A Return to Love.

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That's basically her taking like, all right, how do I make this a little bit more palatable? It's the late 90s, right? We got to fix this a little bit before we get this out into the audience, you know? I will attempt an abbreviated explanation of A Course in Miracles and, you know, in addition to that, Williamson's book. It argues that our home is reality and reality is the kingdom of God.

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And the kingdom of God is a perfect place where, as the talking heads remind us, Nothing ever happens. Thus, all problems aren't real. Bad things don't happen. There's no real problems. The things that you perceive as problems are the result of you delusionally separating your ego from reality.

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It's done.

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I couldn't be less interested in a TikTok alternative or TikTok. I don't need either of them. What I do need is to tell y'all more about Oprah Winfrey.

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Does that make sense to everybody? Totally checks out. Yeah. All right. That all scans. Yeah. So, again, this is like you can see a lot of the spirit or the secret in this, you know, and the ultimate the result of this is you fix your life by fixing your attitude. Right.

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I found a good summary of the book in a website titled Circle of Atonement, which I think is probably related to some sort of weird cult or another. I don't know, but I'm going to read an excerpt from that because I thought it was funny. The Holy Spirit's message is that we never sinned, never changed ourselves. We need only change our minds.

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The guilt and pain produced by the ego is stored in an unconscious level of mind, which also contains our call for God's love and help. The Holy Spirit's answer to our guilt is that we did not do it, that we are still as God created us because the separation never occurred. The journey home is an illusion. We need not purify ourselves or make sacrifices.

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Instead, we can wake up at any time we choose. The holy instant is a moment when this is realized, applied, a moment of doing nothing. The miracle is a free deliverance from the imprisonment of the human condition. It is our right because we never sinned. Yeah.

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Yeah. Right? What the fuck is this shit? You need a comment section, I guess, is what you need. I think what we need is a little more focus. We've all been vibing on Bill Burr lately. We need to make that a government position where whenever someone starts doing this, we have a slightly thumb-looking man who comes to be like, what the fuck are you talking about? Come on, stop this shit.

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He should be from Boston. He should be from Boston, ideally. Who just like when someone says that there should be like a vaguely Bostonian guy going, nah.

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We need an Avengers initiative of guys who have that remarkable mix of like physiognomy and accent that people will be like, oh, yeah, that does sound kind of silly. Like when he says it's silly, I actually, yeah, maybe that is kind of stupid.

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Oh, absolutely not. But I think it leads us there in part, right? Yes.

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Because this is Janice Peck's book. When you get a lot of more left-wing critiques of Oprah, one of the running themes is like, The overriding message of a lot of her show is problems are all problems. Societal problems are individual problems, and they have deeply individualistic solutions. Instead of fixing systems, the answer comes more down to fixing yourself and your individual attitude.

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And that can be very problematic, verging on solipsistic, right? When we get to this era, it's like nothing is – the problems aren't real. And if I can make myself okay with them, then I don't even need to think about the other people who are suffering because the problems aren't real. This is a very narcissistic and dangerous way to think about the world. Yeah.

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Yes. Yes. It's great for capitalism. Like if this is your attitude, once you get a nice house, climate change is no longer a problem. The Pacific Palisades are a paradise.

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Let me look at the window.

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Right, right. Yeah, and when you're living in a $24,000 a night hotel, because again, the palisades burned down, your mind palace is still there for you, you know? That's the beauty. LA doesn't have a homelessness problem. We just need more mind palaces, you know?

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It kind of is, yes. Also, literally, you are like the Matrix, but no, this is actually how philosophy works and religion works, yes. Yeah, it's just like, ugh. These are all that guy in the first Matrix movie who's like, look, man, the steak tastes good. I don't know what to tell you.

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What the fuck are you talking about? That is what I took out of the allegory of the cave is like, cave's pretty cool. I like shadows. I love caves. The new season of Severance starts tonight, so I'm going to be sitting and watching some cave shadows, baby. I'm good.

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Give me some Adam Scott. So thanks to Williamson's advocacy and Oprah's platform, A Course in Miracles went from fringe. It was getting more popular. I will say this. It didn't entirely gain its popularity. But Oprah is a large part of the fact that it sells more than two million copies. And Oprah doesn't just plug that book and her friend Marianne's book.

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She and Marianne sit down and they lay out in this. And again, the point of this episode is Oprah announcing her show is pivoting. From being about bad things and sad stuff to being about, you know, empowerment and beauty, right?

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Quote, during the hour, this is Janice Peck, during the hour, the two women identified various social problems, crime, drug addiction, TV violence, war, child abuse, prejudice, as the price we pay for ignoring our souls. Born of denial, this collective neglect of soul had produced a diseased and dysfunctional society.

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The antidote, Williamson proposed, was a shift in the paradigm on the planet to activate an amazing healing force, the spirit of divine consciousness, which is within our souls.

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While she prescribed various steps towards planetary healing, from praying to participating in support groups, all were predicated on replacing negative thoughts with positive ones because our thoughts determine the experiences of our lives.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, Williamson has a writing credit on that. It was her and George R.R. Martin really like banging it out. No, that's a lie. That's a lie. I'm sorry. That's almost credible.

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I would sit and listen to George R.R. Martin and Marianne Williamson invent religion. Oh, my God. So Oprah's pivot to guru had begun.

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Over the coming years and indeed decades, she would help introduce millions of Americans to new age thinkers like Eckhart Tolle, whose books The Power of Now and A New Earth represent what slate writer Kurt Anderson described as a successful crusade against reason itself. Here's one of Tolle's most favorite quotes. Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance.

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For example, there's nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate and we have disease. And Toll's argument here is that overthinking is a societal epidemic and a lot of our suffering as a species is because we don't coast enough on vibes. Go with the flow more often. Yeah.

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Compulsive thinking has become a collective disease. Your whole sense of who you are is then derived from mind activity. And I think there's actually more than a little bit of move fast and break things downstream of toll. I don't think there's 0% of that there.

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But more than that, Oprah's embrace of this guy represents a major salient in the war against reason, which if you hadn't checked recently, reason is losing. Yeah. Yeah. And this is where we start talking. Reasons may be lost.

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Yeah. Reason is at least like Great Britain on the first day of the Battle of Britain. You know, France has has surrendered. I don't know what the French equivalent of reason is. And yeah, we're watching those Stukas rain down on fucking London.

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But what are you going to do? What are you going to do? I don't know. Yeah, I actually have no idea, Andrew. Yeah. Don't worry so much. Don't think so much. Don't think so much. Why am I thinking all this time? Let's talk about Deepak Chopra. He is another gift that Oprah gave the world in his career was in some ways a mirror of Dr. Oz and honestly, a less toxic one.

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Chopra starts out as a well-regarded endocrinologist until he quits that to become a guru to the kind of people who embrace new spiritualities based on airport bestsellers. Chopra is the kind of guy who peddles stuff that seems well-meaning and even harmless if you don't look too deeply into what he's saying.

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The harm largely comes from the fact that accepting his principles means embracing lies about how the world works and denying basic science. As Dr. Chris Consilvio writes, he preaches the body is made of a quantum energy and there exists a dynamic consciousness where the mind, body, and spirit are interwoven and interconnected by an energy force that transcends matter and physical reality.

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Now, because of this, Chopra often advises his followers that modern medicine is useless or futile or fundamentally flawed in ways that make it less reliable than embracing pseudoscience. Here's a quote I found from an article on Chopra that he wrote for his own website titled Why Doctors Can't Make You Well.

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What the public and most doctors hasn't found out is that the cause of illness is becoming more and more murky. It's not just germs and genes. The germ theory of disease held sway for over a century after the discovery of microbes and the arrival of antibiotics to combat them.

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Gene therapy, long promised as the answer to almost any disease, hasn't actually achieved much success, although in certain cases, such as cancers that are caused by a simple genetic mutation, targeted drug therapies have been successful. The bigger picture is that genetics has led us into a much more complicated view of the disease process, so complicated that it is beyond the skill of doctors.

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Too many factors are at work when illness arises, and the disease model itself sometimes breaks down.

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Wrong. I, Deepak Chopra, can explain it. Your brain's not thinking good enough.

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That's not how it is. Like antibiotics are great. The model doesn't break down. The model doesn't break down bringing in gene therapy along. Like it's one of those things where it's like, okay, well, depending on what you mean by gene therapy, sure. There's a lot of shit that like people talked about in sci-fi that hasn't happened, but that has nothing to do with germ theory, right?

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Like germ theory is a very robust model. Chopra writes a line. He, he doesn't generally outright say, don't take your meds, but the conclusion you're led to from a lot of his writing is don't take your meds. That whole article I just quoted from is how doctors don't understand what causes schizophrenia.

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And I think the conclusion that you're supposed to be led to is maybe don't take those antipsychotics. Again, Chopra doesn't say this. Legally, I am not accusing him of saying this. I'm just saying I think a lot of people reading that who are like, should I take my antipsychotics might take from that article. Maybe I won't. He's not not saying it. He's not not saying it, right?

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Well, and there's always that real thing, which is that like, yeah, man, there's actually a shitload of problems that have modern medicine tape, like treats and talks about schizophrenia. Absolutely. You don't know anything about this. Yeah. Like you're not helping.

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Yeah. No, no. I think that absolutely does. I think you hit it on the head. So Deepak has over the years claimed that human aging can be reversed by pure force of thought. He is, as health law and science professor Timothy Caulfield argues, a prophet of alternative medicine and the great de-educator.

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Chopra's book sold millions and millions of copies after he was featured as a guest on Winfrey's show. And I don't know that I'd say he has no career without her. That's too much. But he has less of one. Right. Like he's got he's a lot less of a guy without Oprah.

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Without Chopra, we probably don't get shit like the bleach drinking church, people taking ivermectin to cure their cancer and a decent chunk of the anti-vax movement, which we'll be talking about later because Oprah's got some real involvement there and a friend of the pod, Jenny McCarthy.

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Now, one of the most frustrating things about Oprah in this time period, after her pivot away from trash TV in the mid-90s, is that in the middle of all of this new age woo that she is putting out and clotting our national arteries with, which leads to the fatal stroke we're going to spend the rest of our lives living in, she is also like...

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She's right about some important things, but even when she's right about them, the kind of the lack of rigor to the way she talks about stuff means that she winds up wrong about them. And to make that make sense, I'm going to talk about Oprah's war with the beef industry, because this is a key moment in Oprah history.

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In April of 1996, Oprah dedicated a segment of her show to mad cow disease and brought on an animal rights activist and vegetarian named Howard Lyman. The UK had just had a major mad cow outbreak and had to cull vast numbers of animals, and Lyman predicted that the same thing would soon befall the US beef supply.

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He talked about what happens when humans catch mad cow from tainted meat and the horrific deaths that follow. Oprah declared the conversation, quote, "'Stopped me cold from eating another burger.'" Now, this has a massive impact on the beef industry, right?

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And they're going to sue her over this because there's some evidence that millions of dollars in beef sales, the value of beef dropped significantly because of Oprah talking about Mad Cow this way. And the broader thing, which is that our meat...

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There's a lot of stuff that's gross and inhumane and climatically awful about our addiction to beef and the way this industry functions, and it deserves criticism. The problem is that the specific criticism Oprah is publishing and focusing on is mad cow disease, and the U.S. beef industry really doesn't deserve that.

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Lyman's prediction that we're going to have a U.K.-style mad cow outbreak in the U.S., hasn't come to pass. And in fact, in the decades since he said this, the US has had six confirmed cases of mad cow disease, the first in 2003 and the most recent in 2023. And these were all isolated and caught fairly quickly.

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Preventing the spread of mad cow was something the US beef industry has proved very good at, particularly considering the fact that the UK and France, which normally have much more effective regulatory states, have had much larger problems with this. Now, that doesn't mean, again, that we're immune from, for example, even other prion diseases, right?

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The spread of prion diseases due to farmed meat is a massively important story in the U.S., one with some potentially apocalyptic undertones, right? For example, we have this massive problem in a lot of the Great Lakes region and the East Coast with chronic wasting disease, which is basically mad cow for deer, which, number one, gets a number of hunters killed, but also...

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Deer spread these like poisoned prions around in the soil and they don't really die. And there's like a lot of very worrying problems due to this. And it all got started almost certainly because people were trying to farm venison.

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And, you know, these all all of these diseases result when you've got like we've got a bunch of animals we're trying to farm at scale and their feed has pieces of their own spinal cords in it. Right. Of like of their fellow animals. Right. Like that's that's the I'm sorry. simplifying a lot of stuff.

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But like what I'm saying is meat as an industry has a lot of horrible problems that have some potentially near apocalyptic outcomes for our society. But the specific thing Oprah has is really going after in this episode isn't a big problem for the beef industry. And as a result, they're going to sue her. Right.

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So Texas is one of a dozen states with what's called a veggie libel law, which is a law that makes a person liable if they make liberalist statements about food safety. Representatives of the cattle industry complained to Texas Agricultural Commissioner Rick Perry, who wrote a letter to the state attorney general complaining the economic livelihood of our beef producers is at stake.

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Now, the reality of the situation is that, again, Oprah has exaggerated the risk of mad cow disease in the US, but not in a way that a reasonable person would call libelous. I've just pointed out that like she was kind of wrong for this to be the focus when talking about bad aspects of the beef industry. But like when you are seeing mad cow go crazy in the UK being like, it's probably a problem.

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That's not libel, right? That's speculative in a way that's inaccurate, but it's not really libel. The beef magnates disagreed, and they considered Oprah enemy number one and saw the overall case as a way to stop anyone from talking badly about health and safety practices within the beef industry. Oprah, for her part, and this is where I give her a lot of credit, refuses to budge or settle.

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And so she is like, I'm not going to settle this case. I'm not going to retract or apologize. Let's go to court, motherfuckers. And so this turns into a showdown in fucking Amarillo, Texas. Or shit, is it Abilene? I wrote Amarillo, but I think it might be Abilene. Look it up, folks. Maybe I got that one wrong. I'll say both. Fuck it.

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So she has to go to this small town that's like a massive beef center in Texas. Right. And a normal person would have been like, well, all right, I've got to be in court for several weeks. I guess we'll put the show on hiatus. Right.

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Obviously, I'm not going to fly my entire crew down to this show and to this town in Texas and just film the Oprah Runfrey show from there, which is exactly what she does. So here's the Texas Tribune. Rather than putting her show on hiatus for weeks, she brought it with her and framed parts of it as an homage to the city and state she suddenly found herself in.

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Winfrey donned a cowboy hat and drew cheers by occasionally mimicking a Texas accent. Texas-born actor Patrick Swayze came on and taught her how to two-step. So you're on trial by day and you're doing the show by night, Winfrey recalled in 2012. It was stressful. It was challenging. To be on trial, may I just say, is one of the worst experiences of anybody's life.

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A gag order prevented Winfrey from talking about the case on her show, which she turned into a running joke. We're down here in Amarillo. Y'all know why, she said during one segment, drawing laughs from the audience. Large crowds showed up, both for Winfrey's show and outside the courtroom, to catch a glimpse of her Amarillo Loves Oprah t-shirts.

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She didn't testify until the latter part of the case, but by the time she got on the stand, the town loved her, Babcock said. And again, everyone on this jury has ties to the beef industry, and they vote unanimously to clear Oprah. That's how much juice this lady has.

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That's pretty cool shit. Yeah. I wish she had gone to war over a better criticism of the beef industry, but that is pretty cool. You know, you have to. There's a lesson in there in terms of like how you deal with these like corporations trying to stifle speech, which is like, all right, motherfuckers, like, let's lean into it. I will get this whole town on my side.

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No, no, no. They don't have beef industry money. For one thing, they're all bankrupted fighting the Satan lawsuits, Bridget. Like these people owned a daycare. Um, so Oprah declares victory. Beef industry representatives declare victory too, stating that the cost of the case would make other media figures more careful about spreading disinformation.

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Americans largely went back to ignoring the harms of our addiction to cheap red meat. And the only real long-term consequence to all this was that Oprah befriended a psychologist that she'd hired on as a jury consultant, Dr. Phil McGraw. Dude.

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again folks for an episode on Bastard Dream we're not going to talk about Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz in these episodes because we've done two parters on both of them check those out if you want to know why those guys suck but this ends badly is what I'll say you know what else ends badly Sophie

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the your life if you don't buy the products and services that are advertised on this podcast you know it's like a chain letter right if you buy the first thing that comes on you'll have a happy life you know when you die your whole family will be around you there will be no pain you'll hear you'll hear the trumpet of saint peter is it him that has a trumpet you'll hear some fucking trumpet and then everything will be good you'll go to heaven it'll be great

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The TikTok. Actually, kind of, yes. Kind of, yes. Although Oprah, I mean, I guess the big difference is like TikTok, like really launched to popularity with like tweens and teens, whereas Oprah is immediately and for her whole career, very, very much locked into like, 30 to 50 year old middle class American women like that is that's not the whole because she's popular all over the world.

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And we're back.

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Jerome. Is it St. Gabriel?

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Jerome.

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A lot of them got trumpets. How am I supposed to? It's like a ska band up there. You know? I mean, lots of trouble. God's sacred genre. Okay. The fact that Oprah's show was now a mix of spiritual gurus and crusades against various causes celeb did not mean that Oprah completely had excised the smut.

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Despite her claim to have left trash TV behind, she knew that any topic involving teen pregnancy, teen drug use, child abduction, et cetera, got views. Her audience of largely middle-class moms tuned in when Oprah told them their kids were in danger. The clearest example of this comes from 2003 when Oprah Winfrey introduced the concept of Bridget. So happy to be talking about this.

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Rainbow parties.

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You get a rainbow party. You get it. Well, I shouldn't phrase it that way. Young Bridget fucking wishes. No one gets a rainbow party. That's actually the reality of the situation. I am sure we've got our Gen Z listeners and our old people listeners. Those are the two other kinds of people behind normal people. Us millennials.

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are all like, what the fuck are they talking about? The fuck is a rainbow party? Is this some like LGBT thing? No, it's not. So this was yet another moral panic. And it's the first moral panic that we're talking about in the series that I was around for as a perfectly, I'm assuming the same is true of you.

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Like this was a moral panic about my generation, my peers and I, that I was old enough to be like, what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah. So in order to introduce this concept, this this comes up on the Oprah Winfrey show for the first time during a discussion between Oprah, Oprah and Michelle Burford. Burford is a journalist at O Magazine.

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Oprah had launched a magazine like ninety nine or something like after her show has made its big pivot. They launched this magazine, which is the number one women's magazine, basically for the whole time that it's in publication. They don't stop publishing until 2020. And Burford has just finished some hard hitting research on the millennials, you know, our generation.

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And she's reading Oprah new slang terms for sex and that our generation has cooked up. And again, this is 2003. So everybody prepare to take some notes.

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Yeah, the Elmo thing is, I think that's from the new Dune show. And that's clearly someone playing Matt Gaetz on SNL. Just because of how uncomfortable that woman looks, I can tell it's supposed to be Matt Gaetz. Anyway.

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But like she has a lock that's like unequaled by anyone else on that specific demographic. Yeah. which is like a very influential, it's everyone's moms, right? Like I'm not saying, I hope like people say that to be like joking. Like my mom, who I disagreed with, but respect a lot, watched Oprah every single fucking day, right? Like everyone's mom did.

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Yeah. Yeah. It's such a fucking absolute. It's such a fucking absolute like fantasy. Cause like, I remember seeing this as like a 15 year old and going, no, we're not. Like I'm not, look, 15 year old Robert, not exactly doing a lot of sex parties, but also I knew enough about my generation to know that like neither were basically anyone else in my school, right?

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There were some kids having sex, but there weren't rainbow parties.

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Everybody's got a different lipstick and you compare the rainbows on your dick.

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You should always think this way. Whenever there's like a, this is the new dangerous sex thing the kids are doing. Does it sound like something you and your peers might have done as 15-year-olds? Or does it sound like something an adult pervert invented because they're sick?

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This is marketing child pornography. That's what you've done.

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Nobody was doing that.

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how sad for us to live in such a stupid, stupid society. I have something that helps me get some historical perspective, which is I have a very big book right next to my bed that I read a little bit every night called The Assyrians. And that really helps because there's literally ass in the name of that culture, like ass just right on the front of the book. So, you know what?

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But Sophie, now that you brought up Degrassi, I think I'm through the looking glass here because, look, clearly this isn't a real thing. It was invented by a pedophile who was on Degrassi, famous pedophile Drake. Oh, shit.

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I feel like the best case scenario here is that Kendrick and I become good friends and no one ever tells him that I mistook him for Macklemore once. Robert, I swore... Wait, how does that happen? Robert, I swore on... I don't know who people are. Like, not by looks or songs.

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Yeah, the internet's going to light on fire. Drake's going to get off scot-free now.

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I'm too honest a man, Sophie. I can't. I'm like George Washington. This is my cherry tree moment. I cannot tell a lie. I don't know who people are.

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It's okay. I listened to a Kendrick Lamar song after that.

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Yeah. I'm sorry. Macklemore's not. I made a horrible mistake. Forgive me. Don't forgive Drake. Look, I'm trying to deflect here. I'm doing the Trump thing. Ignore my sins. Focus on Drake and the rainbow parties.

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I don't know who people are. It's going to be hard to get back on track after this. Later in that interview, Oprah asks Burford if rainbow parties are common, and Maria replied, among the 50 girls I talked to, this was pervasive. Here's a quick tip on knowing if a journalist is not a good journalist. A good journalist, if they had talked to 50 girls.

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would say this number of them said that they had attended a rainbow party versus this number of them said they had heard of a rainbow party. That starts to give you some useful data as to like, oh, actually, 30 of them said they'd heard of this. None of them have been to one. Maybe they're not real. Like, like that, that would be journalism, right? That's the start of it.

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At least, you know, Burford says of the 50 girls I talked to, quote unquote, this was pervasive. Now I'll say this right now. Burford either made all that shit up because she knew Oprah would love it or some teenage girls were paying a prank on her. A couple of researchers, Joel Best and Kathleen Boggle actually looked into where this rumor started and they traced it to a book called

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So, as I pointed out earlier, Oprah at this point in her career was kind of, and we're talking the start of the 90s now, indistinguishable from Jerry Springer. And I'm not talking about that specifically even on a moral level, just in terms of that is how cultural critics talked about her, right? This was trash TV.

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Epidemic, How Teen Sex is Killing Our Kids by Meg Meeker. And if you want to know how accurate this book was, are there still kids, Selvie?

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Let's do a quick fact check. Okay, it didn't. We're good. Good news, everybody. Teen sex didn't kill all the kids.

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Oh, she's great. She is a right-wing pediatrician who has spent the last 20 years profiting off of convincing parents that their kids are fucking each other to death. She has never once been correct, but she has the ear of incoming President Donald Trump. She's awesome. Back in 2003, Oprah laundered her conservative Christian propaganda because, hey, sex sells.

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Best and Bogle, who wrote a book called Kids Gone Wild, but despite that title, the book is about how all this stuff is bullshit, right? It's about all these bullshit media myths about how bad kids are, right? And it busts a bunch of pervasive myths about teenagers and their wild, elaborate sex-based parties. Both Bogle and Best clearly blame Oprah for launching the rainbow parties panic, right?

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Like this becomes a media panic as a result of Oprah giving it so much oxygen. I'm going to quote now from an interview with the authors of that book in Salon. With Oprah, because that reaches so many millions of people, particularly women and women that have children, they're hearing that story and saying, oh my God, did you hear on Oprah what's going on?

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We even have a quote in the book that looks at another reporter when they're looking at issues of youth and sex, a reporter by the name of Costello that says, it must be true. Didn't you see that Oprah episode? So even another reporter ends up citing Oprah as a fact checker on rainbow parties being real.

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So if you're following the evidentiary chain of custody here, Oprah's reporter says, I talked to 50 girls and like they said, rainbow parties were pervasive. Did any of them say they'd been to one? Unclear. That turns into another journalist being like, well, they're real because it was on Oprah. We're locked in, baby. The circular bullshit machine. Yeah, beautiful stuff.

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Oh, and actually this gets back to Degrassi. Another story Oprah helped push around the same time was a panic around sex bracelets. This is, again, the idea that girls have these color-coded bracelets to signify all the sex acts they're down to perform. And I guess the boys are just going around being like, oh, that girl's got the bracelet for a foot job. I'm getting up with her.

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And it's like, that's just... That's just not how teenagers work. That's not how adults work. Nothing works that way. Except for like, I don't know, weird Jeffrey Epstein parties, probably. I'm sure he had some parties like that. I'm sure he had parties like that because they watched Oprah and were all perverts. Anyway.

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It's hard to get to, again, hard to get to grips with if you grew up with her in the 90s when she was... kind of in between a movie star and a God, like Oprah, Oprah was like sainted in a lot of households. But right around the time Winfrey started her satanic panicking, Ralph Nader named her as one of many talk shows in the country that got quote, all their ideas from the national inquirer. Um,

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Yes. Yes. They're all having like the kind of key parties that like middle aged swingers had in 1974.

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Oh, yeah. Because of this. They were banned from high school.

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Now, this is another thing. Again, both this and rainbow parties. I'm sure if you dug, you could find examples of teenagers doing it after it becomes a media panic because kids are like, well, all right, let's give it a shot.

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We're doing it. Yeah. But, yeah, it's not until professional media idiots like Matt Lauer or Montel Williams make a big deal about it that it becomes a thing. And in that interview in Salon, Best and Bogle get to the heart of what's really going on with all of this. I think one of the things we show in the last chapter is that it's not just one group that likes these stories.

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Kids themselves like them because it's great gossip. What's better than to say, oh, the girl wearing the red bracelet, you know what she does. She gives lap dances. They make stories teens like to pass around that make interesting gossip. Parents are always worried about their kids, of course, and they've been fed a lot of media stories that feed into that.

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So the idea that their child, who they think of as innocent, might be corrupted by these other forces, that feeds into something like they've been fed and believed for a long time. Schools want to show how they have things under control. They know what's going on, and they can talk to parents about it. So they can say, we ban those bracelets to put a stop to that. Then, of course, the media.

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There's both the idea that sex sells, but also fear sells. Listen to this story. You have something to worry about. You have to listen to this because you don't know what's really going on and it could affect your child. That's what gets viewers and television producers and newspaper columnists are aware of that.

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Now, we're going to move on from the radio party stuff, but I wouldn't be doing my job as podcast host if I did not play you the rest of that clip.

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So that gets us back to what we'd said before. But like. Oh, God. Yeah. Jesus. The idea that kids have a fun term for getting HIV.

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Now, in her excellent critical book, Age of Oprah, and if you're going to read one book on Oprah Winfrey, I recommend Age of Oprah by Janice Peck. It's not a biography. It's like an analysis of the role Oprah has played in the evolution of American society over the last 30 years.

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oh boy well welcome back to behind the bastards a podcast where we just took a five minute break between part three and part four of the oprah winfrey episodes if you're all like me you mainlined some doom scrolling news from your phone about how bad things continue to be and also how the equal rights amendment is ratified but also not great stuff um you know folks whenever i start to think we live in the dumbest society that's ever lived and like

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Yeah. It would have been pretty funny to just be a con man journalist in this period and be like, yeah, the kids can't stop talking about Herbert Hoover, you know? Yeah. He's their favorite president. He's the only guy on the minds of the youth these days.

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There's the idea that kids have a casual slang term for getting HIV. It's like it's doing something in a video game. But also, like,

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If a journalist had ever tried to sit down with me and my friends and ask us like about if there's any sex slang, we would have lied like cheap rugs. Like we would not have stopped talking until they had run out of space on their recorder, you know?

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Yes, yes. That's a big part of it. Or, you know, if she's not credulous, because again, she's a very savvy person, it's like marketing credulousness, right? Yeah. And it's consequences.

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Yep. Like that. That is there's a really like you don't have Joe Rogan without the Oprah Winfrey show, you know? Yeah. Just like you don't have Oprah without Donahue. Now, Oprah is not the only person, obviously, who spread this kind of stuff, but she is the biggest name in the world of people doing this.

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Janice writes about the critiques that Washington Post writer Tom Shales had of Winfrey's program, labeling it talk rot. Quote, Shales decried talk shows as a daily parade of wackos, loonies, stars, celebrities, freaks, geeks, and gurus.

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pope and i'm just gonna say it john paul ii i think was the pope at this time and i believe oprah had more of an influence than he did on american culture at least like who remembers old jp the two you got shot once come on

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Some certainly did.

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Look, most of what I know about the Pope comes from the movie, The Conclave, which is largely that- Ooh, I just saw that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is largely that Stanley Tucci looks incredible in Catholic vestments. It's like he was poured into him. That man can really pull off whatever you call those outfits. Also, Ralph Fiennes, oh my God. His tooch chains. Oh, the tooch. The tooch.

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That was lovely. Oh, man. And then John Lithgow out of nowhere. Love it. The vaping cardinal. All sorts of good stuff in that movie.

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It's good. They hire an Italian man whose face was made to angrily vape while wearing vestments. It's amazing. That casting director deserves a medal of honor. OK, so, yeah, I think that that's probably a broadly accurate statement. The Rainbow Party disinformation is part of a long tradition of Oprah episodes about how dangerous life has become for young children.

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Every year, as violent crime fell and violence towards children usually fell, Oprah barraged her audience with ceaseless tales of child abductions, child sex trafficking, child drug abuse and teen sex. Studies show consistently that Americans believe violent crime is much higher than it in fact is.

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We are in the midst of a very frightening moral panic over child sex trafficking right now, which does not resemble how child sex trafficking actually looks. I'm speaking right now about Tim Ballard, whose lies about his life rescuing kids from child sex trafficking networks were the basis of the blockbuster movie Sound of Freedom.

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Ballard spent years claiming to be fighting an international shadowy network of child traffickers while he just resigned after being charged with massive sexual misconduct and abuse himself.

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Referring to the Oprah Winfrey show, he noted, on one of her few serious outer directed shows, Winfrey dealt with declining literacy among the young and the escalating crisis in American education. In promos, she looked into the camera and asked, how dumb are we? There's every possibility that talk rot is making us dumber. And that's him saying that, right?

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Despite all of this, tons of people believe little kids are being targeted and stolen by criminal organizations when, again, they are usually being molested by people who are responsible for them, not random narco gangs abducting kids in parking lots by putting cheese on the doors of their mom's car. That's not the problem.

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Oprah bears a good share of the blame for how unhinged many Americans are about the dangers that children face. And this is I'm making this allegation based on stuff like the Rainbow Party panic and other years of other similar episodes. But, you know, it's during my research, I ran into a really interesting thread in a website on free range parenting.

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And I'm not making I don't know much about free. I'm not making a comment on that. But I found it interesting to read what these people had to say in a thread titled Did Oprah make us terrified for our kids?

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The author who identifies themselves as Laura writes, "...as I think about the litany of freak accidents and hidden dangers I need to be constantly worried about for my kids, almost everything has one common recurring element. I saw it on Oprah one time. Baby drowning in an inch of water. Healthy girl scrapes her knee and dies of MRSA. Child decapitated by an airbag.

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Carbon monoxide from the car in the garage kills the family. Dry drowning. School shootings. Home invasions. And countless other tragedies. Then there are the abduction, molestation, and sexual predator stories." These were typically featured on Oprah at least once a week.

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While I applaud Oprah's efforts to raise awareness, catch truly horrible criminals, and break the silence of abuse victims, this had to have an impact on the perception that there is a predator around every corner, and you can never be too careful because anything could happen. And I think she's on the money there, right?

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Like the helicopter parenting, the fact that like kids, there's not zero Oprah and the fact that like kids stopped going outdoors, you know?

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That like Oprah saying we're dumb for not reading, but like her stuff show is making us dumber. And like, Yeah, it's part of that loop. It's also Oprah's going to later become one of the people who's a major champion of literacy, although not in ways that are unproblematic, too.

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Ding, ding, fucking ding, I think. Right. It's so it's hard to raise kids and like you can be a responsible, decent person who does their best with your kid and they can have a horrible life. That's the world. Right. Like you can't stop that. And instead of like confronting that and confronting like, well, all I can really do is, you know, try to be the best parent for my kid.

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You get all these like obsessions with things that just are not realistic threats and dangers. And you just feel like if I continue scratching that fear itch by watching this stuff, maybe it'll make it less likely to happen to me. Right. Maybe if I if I train my eyes on the eye of Horace, it will be less likely to harm me and my loved ones, you know.

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Yeah, like the danger of all of this stuff was less, you know, kids are having rainbow parties or, you know, pedophile gangs are abducting kids in vans and more like, hey, have you looked at your kid scout leader lately? Seems like he's a lot of one-on-one time with the boys. Yeah. By the way, should somebody look in on that?

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You know, Andrew, thank you, because I wanted to pivot to letting everyone know that if you give your kids to me for one week out of the year, they will come back. It's the Lawrence of Arabia School for Children. They're going to learn how to blow up bridges and trains. Right. What do they do with that knowledge? That's up to them.

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I have no control of them once they've learned how to make the explosives and destroy bridge supports. It's no longer my my responsibility after that point.

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Everybody does want a child army. Speaking of popes, Bridget, that's like a third of the popes.

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Solid subset of the pope population has child armies, you know? Anyway, I think that's an episode.

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Turns out we have a lot more Oprah to do. I don't know what we're going to do about this, but everybody go away for the weekend. Bridget, pluggables?

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All right, everybody. Until next week, remember the Robert Evans summer camp for kids to learn how to blow up trains and disrupt national infrastructure. It's not illegal if we don't tell them to do anything with the knowledge. Bye.

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There's two sides to this, right? One of them is that... Every generation, as soon as they hit a certain age, starts thinking that these next kids coming up are uniquely fucked up and like everyone's ruined. Right. And like the world's going to hell in a handbasket. And they're always kind of wrong. At the same time, every single new generation is fucked up in a unique new way.

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And like the TikTok kids are fucked up on TikTok and iPads in a way that didn't exist before. Just like my gen or our generation was fucked up by message boards and online gaming and the like in ways that were unique, you know, to kids that had come previously. Just like our but our gen X friends were fucked up on leaded gasoline, you know?

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It has always been like this. There's there are unique ways in which every generation is like fucked up. And also, I'll just say this, kids, if you if you are a very young person coming up right now and you're trying to figure out how do I make it in this world? One of the chief things you have on your side is that everyone older than you thinks you're an idiot.

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We're not so silly, you know, you know, at least you're not an ass Syrian, right? It's fine. It's fun. We're good. You done? Whatever it takes, dog. Whatever it takes. I'm just trying to feel better. I feel like other people don't enjoy the word ass being on the front of a book as much as I do because they are no longer four. How's our guest today? Bridget Todd and Andrew T. How are we doing?

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And the truth is that they're all as stupid as you are. So take advantage of that. There's power in being underestimated, kids.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. I'm full of wise advice once every month. Yeah. And one of the things that's problematic here is that Oprah does deserve a lot of criticism for like the satanic panic shit, the McMartin preschool trial shit. There's also a lot of these big hoity-toity cultural critics are attacking her because they also view, they rightly are like, well, this satanic panic stuff is like smut.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But also this woman talking about how she like needs therapy in order to have a healthy sex life is smut. And so you see like it's this blending of like Well, but no, but that's actually a good thing that Oprah was doing with like, no, this is in fact smut, but it's all smut to a lot of these guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So that's part of like the problem of like looking at a lot of the criticism of Oprah from this era is a lot of it is attacking her for stuff that we're like, well, but no, that was one of the good things that she did. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Right, right, right. Yes, that's a very good note, Andrew. Both of you, very good notes. Thank you. Oh, it's it's it's a mess because like you're looking for you always want just a really good if you're doing this job. I want a really good like, ah, this guy nailed what's problematic.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And it's always like this guy nailed part of what was problematic and then said something really, really mean towards women.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

They're turning it around. Oh, God. So one example of things that Oprah got attacked for that she probably shouldn't have been, that this was considered smut by a lot of critics, was her coverage of the transgender community. And boy, howdy, I am not saying that it was what we would call today good.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

What I am saying is that even as early as when she was on People Are Talking, which was the pre-Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Winfrey show, she would bring on transgender guests and she's doing it because it's lascivious and it gets attention. But she's also it's not like smut. Like one of her early guests that had an impact on her is she she finds this transgender mother with brittle bone disease.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So this is both somebody who is transgender. And if you read stories about it, they use the term transsexual. They're not trying to be shitty. That was the term in common parlance at the time. I'm obviously updating it. But this is a person who both is trans, is a mother, and is a disabled American.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And the fact that Oprah's letting her talk about her life is giving a sympathetic and humanizing portrayal to someone who had zero visibility in the culture at the time. As Kitty Kelly notes, the show was criticized when it aired, but afterward, Oprah happened to see the child with the transgender quadriplegic. It was just a moving thing, she said.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I thought, this child will grow up with more love than most children. Before, I was one of those people who thought all homosexuals or anything like that were going to burn in hell because the scriptures said it. And this is Oprah was very homophobic as a child and as a young adult. And she would list this experience as key to her overcoming the bigotry that she had been raised with, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And I think it makes totally – as a child who had lacked so much love in her life, the thing that turns her around on this is being like, but this lady is a really good mom. Right. Like she clearly loves this kid. This kid's going to grow up with. That's all that matters to me as a kid who was neglected. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I think that's just worth stating, too, before we get back into the criticism, because that's kind of beautiful.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And the fact that she gets attacked for this, too, is, again, it's part of the like, well, if you're Oprah and you're trying to triangulate what is OK for me to do and what is not, I'm getting attacked both for the stuff that is bad and also for the stuff that it's like, no, it's great that she did this. Yeah. I'm glad she did.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

In January of 1994, a 39-year-old Oprah Winfrey announced her on-air plan to stop talking about, quote, how bad things are and instead try to bring more peace to her audience and thus the planet. She had a long speech about trash TV. This is kind of her being like, I think the winds are changing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I don't think the smut kind of TV where we're talking, here's people talking about the fights they're having with their ex. We'll bring them on and they'll fight on stage. That was not going to be coming into the late 90s as popular as it had been. And Oprah's like, I want to rebrand myself. I want to have some prestige, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And the way she does that, the way she starts her pivot into, I am a serious intellectual and spiritual advisor. is to bring on friend of the pod, Marianne Williamson. Here she is!

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I forgot about this, she absolutely did! This is when Oprah becomes a spiritual influencer. Marianne Williamson is like a key part of that. Here's how Janice Peck describes Williamson at this stage in her career, again, this is 94.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Williamson is, quote, a former nightclub singer, self-described spiritual psychologist, occasional advisor to Hillary Clinton, spiritual guide for Hollywood stars, and major inspiration behind Winfrey's own cosmology. What a resume. Oh, God. Also, doesn't believe in AIDS. Doesn't... Yes, we're about to talk about that. Marianne is a complicated person to unpack from a harm standpoint.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Much like Oprah. They have a lot in common. I'm not surprised they're friends.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

When she launched her 2020 presidential campaign, queer-focused news outlets like the Pink News rightfully pointed out that during the AIDS crisis, Williamson, who had a huge queer following and had founded a center for living in Los Angeles, published a book in 1992 which argued, quote, cancer and AIDS and other physical illnesses are phased Physical manifestations of a psychic scream.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Williamson went on to make an argument that could be argued as not so far from the Christian conservative line on AIDS. We're not punished for our sins, but by our sins. Sickness is not a sign of God's judgment on us, but of our judgment on ourselves. Sickness is an illusion and does not actually exist.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And it's complicated because you can translate all of that as like, well, she's saying people with AIDS brought it on themselves. And she kind of is. She's also not just focusing on gay people there. She thinks if you have lung cancer or whatever, if you've got fucking childhood leukemia, you brought it on yourself through your bad thinking, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So it is not targeted against gay people, but it's also really problematic in that concept because you're saying everyone who gets sick – brought the sickness on themselves by virtue of their thoughts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

It was definitely an employee at the venue who were alleged that he saw an ax. A county sheriff who responded or so it was a person at the venue who picked up an axe and someone saw them and reported that to the police, too. Right. Because he was scared of these people. A county sheriff, sheriff's deputy responds and immediately calls for major backup because he's told someone has a gun.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And it's always one of the best things for me because I spend so much of the rest of my time with people like Garrison who are all like- Hey, hey. poison their brains with the same things I've poisoned my brain with. Like, please go find people who don't know all of the weird internet things you do and spend more time with them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And, you know, as a cop with just kind of like a pop culture knowledge, you hear like a bunch of people in robes and masks with a gun outside of this big event where like there's children doing a ropes course next door. Like his thought is there's a mass shooting brewing, right? Some people are going to do something fucked up, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So he calls for a massive like SWAT response basically, you know, compared to the actual danger these people present, which is right now nil. The author of that Wired piece spoke to the sheriff's deputy who responded initially, a guy named Parks, and this is that account.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Quote, in Parks' account, which he relayed to me in the fall of 2023 at a local Starbucks, the protesters were speaking in unison. Just stuff I didn't really understand, but it was somewhat rehearsed, he said. The group had printed flyers outlining their complaints against CIFAR and MIRI.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

They alleged that MIRI had paid out blackmail using donor funds to quash sexual misconduct allegations and that CIFAR's leader discriminates against trans women. Other allegations were more esoteric. CIFAR does not appreciably develop novel rationality mental tech.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

The path to avoiding extinction, they wrote, involved escaping containment by society through mental autonomy and interhemispheric game theory. Some random sheriff's deputy is not going to understand what's going on here. No, what the fuck are you talking about? He and his men default to the thing that cops do when they get confused, which is they get violent, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Quote, he and Ricks ordered the protesters to get on the ground. As they did, each one called out demanding a same gender pat down, like one might request at an airport. All three were trans women, but Parks says he couldn't discern their genders because of the robes and masks. Regardless, they were not going to get that luxury at that time, he told me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

It's like, well, we don't know if you're a boy or a girl, and we gotta handcuff you. Parks' deputies subdued the three in prone positions, what Parks calls a high-risk style takedown, requiring more force than a normal handcuffing style. So there's several articles I've read will refer to a discrepancy between how the Zizians and the cops describe these events. I've read both accounts.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I really don't see a gap. What I see is the cops describing their violent and dehumanizing behavior as like this is the normal way to respond and the Zizians describing it as dehumanizing and traumatizing. The only question here is like the moral quality you give to the cops tackling a bunch of people basically who don't have weapons because they got a phone call, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Gwen later writes this about the experience. When we arrived, a staff member called the police and falsely told them we had a gun and that we were going into buildings and that they were too afraid to get off the phone. Later reports said there was an active shooter with a duffel bag. None of us had a duffel bag.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Police arrived with their guns out and we were immediately arrested within about 10 minutes of us arriving, after which we were sexually assaulted. In my case, I was groped and I had my pants pulled down and then sat on by an officer in a mounting position. They are mocked and derided like as they're naked. Cops are making comments about their bodies. It's like a really like ugly situation. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And I have no trouble believing that this is true because it comports with dozens of arrest stories I've heard in multiple states.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah, and it's also the fact that they are specifically, the police are making fun of them for being trans is very much in line with what statistics say about trans people and police violence. A 2013 report from the Anti-Violence Project found that trans individuals are seven times likelier to experience violence while interacting with the police than cisgender people. So...

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Look, I love Garrison, but they also have started spending a lot of their time with people who aren't in the same weird internet doom circles that we are. And it's been good for them. It's good for everyone. Truly. Save yourselves. Save yourselves.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I have no trouble believing Gwen's accounts here, even though, again, I treat her with proper scrutiny in most areas. This all seems like what cops do. Now, the other big discrepancy where the Zizians are, I think, a little off base is that they claim they are immediately dead named and misgendered by the newspapers covering their initial arrests.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And they are dead named, but the newspapers don't really have an option here. Right. It's like their legal name. Right. They don't talk when they're arrested, which is a very normal thing for a protest. They say absolutely nothing and they have no ID on them. The police fingerprint them, which brings up their legal names, and that's what's given to the newspapers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

The initial news articles, that's just the only name available, but it escalates this situation. It is worth noting that a number of outlets do continue to deadname them up to the present, but that initial reporting, it's like, well, that's just the only information that was available. But all of this is going to like, this court case is going to wear on. They get charged initially with felonies.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Bayless set it like 50 grand for Ziz and Gwyn. This is eventually reduced and they're reduced to misdemeanors. But it takes like four days for them to make bail. And they will be fighting because they're going to counter sue over these arrests.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And both the trauma of the arrests, their anger over them, and the fact that there's the stress of this years-long court battle is going to have this extremely deleterious effect on everybody's mental health when they're already not doing well. It's great stuff. Yeah. Right around this time, the Zizians move. They stop doing their fleet thing, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

They move out of the boats and they kind of end things by leaving their tugboat adrift because there's nothing to do with a 94-foot tugboat. Nobody can handle it. Right? Like it's too big to do much with. And they probably could have figured something out, but they decide the opportunity cost of figuring out how to dispose of this boat is it will distract from their important work.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So it's okay for it to sink and cause like a modest environmental crisis by leaking diesel into the bay. Right? Basically, Ziz decides that the value of all the sea life that it kills is less than the value of them continuing their work, which at this point, if you're keeping track, is trying to figure out how to live out of box trucks. So that's what they're doing now.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And this is where a guy named Curtis- They've got a worse living space. They've got a worse living space. They made it worse than boats. Oh, boy. I can't tell you how much of this story is just the result of Bay Area rent prices being unreasonable.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

It's just like Superman 1. So enter Curtis Lind. Lind is a guy. He made his career doing shipping. He lived in a boat in and around where Ziz and her friends were living at sea, and they met each other through that. He sells them an anchor. But he's also pushing 80, and so he's interested in getting out of the boat life because it sucks.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And he's got a plot of land that he's got a house on, and he's got extra space that he's interested in renting out. There's not like full houses, but there's like some shipping containers and I think like some RV, like a busted RV or whatever. And he's got like some power and water hookups. Here's how his son, Carl, described what his father wanted to do with this place.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

He just wanted this as a place to let artists or woodworkers, electricians, to be able to come and live in a little trailer and have a container where they could work and put their tools and have a safe place.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So again, depending on how you're looking, he's either trying to have a cheap space where artists and the like can afford to survive and have little working spaces, or he's trying to be like a punk slumlord, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

The line is thin, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Speaking of a thin line, the sponsors of this podcast are the thin line keeping society safe from me not having enough money to live in a boat. You know, this is why I have enough money to live in a boat where I would go crazy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Or a box truck. Or a box truck. Ah, to live in a box truck. The joy. The glory days. Yeah, we're back. We're talking about how good it is to live in a box truck. Good stuff. Do we know roughly how big the group is at this point? I think at any given time, there's between like six and nine people, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Very small, somewhere in that neighborhood. It fluctuates. And there's also, there's a bunch of people who are like, you could call them Zizians. They're in and out. They'll visit sometimes, or they even live in other states, but they're always in contact with multiple members of the group through the internet.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

This is a very geographically decentralized group, although there is that core inner circle who are all together on this land. And for a while, things are okay there. The Zizians pay rent. Ziz continues to write blog posts and run her followers through unihemispheric sleep sessions to upgrade them. And it's also important for me to note, they don't ever call themselves Zizians.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

That name first comes up around this period of time, right after that disastrous protest. When an anonymous rationalist publishes a paper called like Zizians.info that first identifies them as a cult and describes like their unihemispheric sleep tactics. And it's written because this person is in the community and wants to stop other people from falling in with Ziz.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And I think they have good intentions here. They like see the danger. They also – one of the issues with the document is I don't think they see some of the danger of other rationalists. Yeah, right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Um, so the document alleges that Ziz had started telling her followers she was the, basically she's the only double good or intrinsically good person there, and one of the only intrinsically good people on the planet.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

UHS sessions tended to reveal that other people in the community are just single good, and per Ziz's theories about the hero contract, they can only accomplish maximum good by feeding their energy and resources to the hero Ziz. Here's an example of the kind of things she sent people she saw as single good. Saying you're single good is saying, help, I have a yerk in my head.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Did you ever read Animorphs as a book, David? Wow, yes. As a kid? They were great. That's what that's a reference to is those worms that control your brain and that's another picture. Right, yeah, yeah. That's, yes. I know, deep cut.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

A bunch of people are now like having like the severance moment, but like remembering every scholastic book fair they ever went to as a kid. Oh man.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I know, I know. Oh, if only. So saying you're single good is saying, help, I have a yerk in my head that's a mere image of me. I need you to surgically destroy it, even if I'm then crippled for life or might die in the process. Then kill me if I ever do one evil act for the rest of my life. That's better than being a slave.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Again, that's her role is surgically destroying the evil brains of her half brains of her followers. And then she has to be willing to murder them if they ever do anything bad, because if they ever do anything bad, then it means that the evil side could take over and it could do like mega bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Doom the world.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yes, and also, I mean, she's gonna have other people do the killing basically, but like, yes, this is what she's saying is the stakes and this is how she sees her role within the community, right? And I think at this point, that's pretty cult leader. That's pretty cult leader-y. Yeah, I think we crossed over. I think we're probably crossed that KT boundary, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Box trucks saying you gotta kill some people. Yeah, saying you gotta murder people because they're the devil, the yerk inside their brain, yeah. The yerks are so funny. Might be a little bit of cult weather. Feels like a cult outside. So some Zizians, not implicated in any crimes, have attacked this piece, this Zizians.info thing as being inaccurate and basically a rationalist hit job.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And again, there's some reason for suspicion here. But most of the claims made in it, I have backed up through reading the individual sources. One of the issues is that a lot of people writing about this will credit Ziz with all of the unihemispheric stuff. And that's mostly Gwynn. So there's a point worth making.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Around this time, a woman named Jamie Zajko started living nearby with her girlfriend, Alice Monday. Both are rationalists that are interested in Ziz's ideas. Alice and Ziz have been in contact for years. And in fact, Alice, because she's an older, more established rationalist,

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

When Ziz was kind of new to the community, had sent Ziz an article on the Gervais principle for the first time, which had spawned her ideas about needing to jailbreak people into psychopathy. And at varying times, Ziz would claim Alice as a mentor. There are some, I don't, like very vague accounts that Alice has done some problematic abusive stuff in the community.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I don't know how true any of that is, but this is what people talk about. And I think Ziz may have had a break with her over some sort of disagreement. Because it seems like, from what I can tell, Jamie, who is dating Alice at the time, is in direct contact with Ziz and interested in her, but also is not communicating with Ziz under her real name.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

She is making a bunch of sock puppet accounts on her blog, and she is specifically commenting and trying to engage Ziz in different conversations, pretending to be multiple different people. to quote unquote sabotage the hold she believed another woman in the community, Emma Borhanian, had on Ziz. And Borhanian is that former Google engineer. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So this is, you know, this is part of the messy thing is that like, these people are all influencing each other and trying to like, their kind of go-to is like mind games to fuck with each other's heads.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Mm-mm. No. Now, Emma Borhanian, who Jamie alleges has like- Jamie's girlfriend. No, Jamie's dating Alice Monday. Oh, I'm sorry. Borhanian is this former Google engineer who has been with Ziz since the Rationalist Fleet days. And Jamie thinks that she's controlling Ziz and she has like this bad influence that's leading them in a bad direction.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And I've read Borhanian's blog too because of course I had to. Emma is – she was as long-winded as this. Fewer pop culture references. She wrote a lot about narcissism. But unlike most of these people, she tended to like use a – she's like – I don't know. I don't understand the kind of point she's trying to make about narcissists, but she's very interested in the idea of how narcissists work.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Jamie didn't like Emma, and she claims that because Emma and another member of the community had started shit-talking Alice to Ziz and convinced her that Alice was double evil. So Jamie creates all these sock puppet accounts to argue with Ziz with the goal of fucking with her head and making her distrust Emma.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Quote, I adopted a variety of different personas, many of whom claim to have beliefs I've never held or endorsed for the sake of determining how Ziz would react to these characters. So this isn't- And then what? And then what? Yes, exactly. There's never seems to be a plan behind fuck with each other's mental health constantly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

It's like this is because there's always these overlapping fields of influence between all of these mostly women and everyone is fucking with each other's heads deliberately and also constantly trying to hack and upgrade each other. It's basically Scientology in the form of a codependent friend group, right? Like that's what's happening here. Wow. This is so bad for everybody.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yes, yes. That's what happens again if you don't, this is the, you know, the touch grasp has been turned online. People have some, as you said, some problematic ways of discussing it. But this is the importance of like turning out from your weird little subculture every now and again.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Very rarely. And most of the people they do interact with are like these other people who are kind of on the edge of dropping out of society, living on this guy's property, this 80 year old man's property and box trucks.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So while Jamie and Ziz are fighting online, COVID hit. And with it comes that eviction moratorium in the state of California. So Ziz and her friends, they stop paying rent to lend, either because they're broke or just because they don't need to anymore. And more than a year goes by. In April of 2021, Ziz posts this to her blog.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Housing in places like the Bay Area is a hierarchy of rent seekers, and the rent seekers above landlords rule by rule surplus, selective enforcement, fear, uncertainty, and doubt, corruption. It's all a complex, and it makes landlords incredibly vulnerable to blackmail from someone who can do even a little bit of investigative work. It's bad praxis to pay them rent. So, again... I get it.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I get it. But this is also going to lead you to a bad place. Yes. And this is where we... Get to divergent stories. Curtis Lind, the landlord story, is that he was very supportive of these people and of trans people in general, taking one Zizian out to shop for her first bra. His friends and family say he was a decent guy.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And I actually, when I started talking about writing these episodes on Blue Sky, someone chimed in to say they had known him too and that he was a nice person. I don't know. To Ziz, he was a landlord, and there are claims from the Zizians that he was verbally abusive and transphobic.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

By the end of 2021, after a year and a half of unpaid rent, Lind had started working on the process of having police evict them.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

He and other residents claimed that the Zizians had become aggressive, acting as if the property was theirs now, threatening other people, basically squatting on it and like being violent at times, including like throwing rocks at Lind's cabin and brandishing knives at other people. So there are allegation knives. Yeah, yeah.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

They have taken to like threateningly playing with knives while talking about how they will not leave the property or pay rent. And you get the feeling like I'm not again, I'm not I'm not against the idea that this, again, ambitious slumlord may have done some problematic things. But it sounds like the Zizians are being pretty deeply abusive to everyone around them. Right, right.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Which is also they believe is praxis is like these other people who are not who don't who aren't double good and who aren't aware of the great work. They're not working towards the cause. They're a causal is the term they're use. Their lives don't really have value. If you're not working for the cause, this earlier will decide.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

They're trying to convert rationalists, but they don't care about these weirdos living on the property with them. Right. Right. And again, remember, like Ziz had earlier decided that it would be worth four human lives for her to like get a she would kill four people to get a shower before work. Right. Basically. Oh, at the end. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So these people don't have a lot of value for other people, right? Now, the court case over the protest arrests dragged on. And in November of 2021, Ziz and her friends who'd been arrested filed a countersuit against Sonoma County, as well as several individuals associated with CFAR and the venue.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

By the time 2022 starts, the pressure is on for Ziz and the people living with her to figure out what they're going to do next. They do at some point work out a deal with Curtis, who will give them a little more time to fix their RV if they promise to bounce as soon as possible.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Ziz is no longer actively adding to her blog, but she's still responding to comments and communicating with other sympathetic rationalists regularly. She becomes much more focused in her writing in this period on vengeance, violence, and death, as do others in her community. Per Wired, quote, Lasoda and others wrote of vengeance against the timeless decisions of others.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

If you truly, irreconcilably disagree with someone's creative choice, i.e. their choice extending arbitrarily far into the past and future, ultimately your only recourse is to kill them, one Lasoda ally wrote in a long blog post citing Ziz's philosophies. In the comments, Lasoda wrote, I am so fucking glad to finally have an equal. Great stuff.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

In spring of 2021, one of the rationalist fleet veterans close to Ziz, Jay Winterford, who went by the name Fluttershy, killed themselves. Winterford had written about seeing Ziz's techniques as a way to deal with his childhood trauma. And Lesota wrote on her blog about her repeated attempts to fix and upgrade him. Now, Ziz wrote about this person and calls him a death knight.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And as best as I can tell, a death knight is a Zizian term for someone who snaps and murders a bunch of people. She calls Hitler a death knight, but she also uses the term for mass shooters. And she claims Winterford, quote, "...tried very hard to convince me and then us to join them in service of the goddess of rape and death. Straight up declared intentions to kill us.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Did a bunch of horrible shit, like said they were going to do even more horrible shit." I spent about seven months, most of every day, in a desperate and mutual mental battle, trying to get in their head, somehow understand this death drive thing I couldn't simulate in my own mind that made no sense and out-predict them like all their lives in the world depended on it.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Basically, this person's talking about doing a mass shooting or some other terrorist attack against the rationalist community in Ziz's name. Ziz claims that she's spent seven months trying to stop them from doing this. Then finally, they just kill themselves rather than killing anybody else.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I don't know if anyone needs Ziz's help. No, no, Ziz does not even need Ziz's help. No. And she weaves this person's death into this very, this messianic hero's journey for herself, posting this in the summer of 2022. Since posting this, I have been tortured, survived seven assassination attempts, three more attempts to do me permanent bodily harm.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Four people individually decided they had the sole rights to be my death love arch nemesis as if they'd be alone. Accidentally exposed myself to one one-hundredth of my hell and one committed suicide. Others utterly mentally cracked. No one knows what she's talking about with these assassination attempts or anything. This is all just... Someone may have given her a mean look at a grocery store.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Right. That's the mindset she's in. And she spins out. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Rationalists who had declared Ziz a cult leader considered all of this further evidence that she was dangerous. Again, rationalists also convince people to kill themselves to be illogic traps, but they're not wrong to point this out. Now, I brought up Jamie Zaschko and Alice Monday a little earlier.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

They had moved out of the Bay in late 2020 and headed to Vermont where Jamie, who had some family money, bought land and a gun. In February of 2022, she made a blog post with the subtitle, I Trolled Ziz and Now She Wants to Murder Me. In it, she claims, she talks about how like, yeah, she made all these fake accounts. And in late 2021, she and Ziz finally start talking under their real names.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And Ziz talks about these trolling messages from the fake accounts Jamie had made. And like I said, that they really fucked with her head. And so Jamie, who's starting to view Ziz as a friend, comes out and admits what she did. And Ziz responds by saying, the only way you can make this right is to murder your like girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, it's a little unclear, Alice Monday, my old mentor.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah, I've had an, this is an info hazard. They're not wrong to use that term, just not in the way they mean it.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Like you have to kill this person for me in order to make this right. Um, Here's what Jamie writes. During her last phone call, Ziz informed me that the only way I could gain her trust and make up for what I did was to murder Alice, preferably sometime soon.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Ziz helpfully suggested I use a gun with a potato as a makeshift suppressor and that I might destroy the body with lye and then told me that after I should video call Ziz and show her the body before I destroy it so she could get proof positive that I'd really done it. And if I didn't do it, Ziz planned to drive across the entire continental United States to murder me. Great. The die is cast.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

The die is cast. Shit. Jamie says that Ziz wants Alice dead because she thinks Alice is a mentor and she's got this whole Sith thing going on. So she's like, guess what? The Sith always kill their mentors. So I have to kill Alice or I can't get powerful enough to save the world. Great. It's crazy. I love philosophy.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

This is where that border patrol officer's death becomes inevitable. Yeah.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

At this point, if no outside power comes in to disrupt these thought chains and decision chains, someone is going to die and no one does come in, right? And several people die.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

How could you?

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

You think about something like 5150, this Fluttershy person, right? Or 5150s is. Does that make it better? Probably not. Probably just makes them even more paranoid and angry and convinced to do violence.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So when we left off, Ziz had kind of psychologically jailbroken her friend into suicide and then created an info hazard named after her friend. Great stuff, healthy community. Now, a few things happen in quick succession after this point. The rationalists start to blame Pasek's suicide on Ziz, and this is really when a lot of folks in rationalist circles start breaking off.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah. There's, there's, I'm sure there's some possible way that this could have been fixed, but it's not clear to me. And who, who would be the person? Who does it?

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Some ladies have taken your movies way too seriously. We need you to fly out. Only George can say that. And talk them out of committing murders.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Or Ricky Gervais. Yeah, Ricky Gervais. Get Ricky Gervais and George Lucas on a fucking chopper. Get them in here on a blackhawk. They got to talk these people down. Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. Oh, man. It's so funny. Just a week later, George Lucas is completely in the cult. He's wearing all black. He's living in a box truck.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

He's writing canonical Star Wars stuff. Canonical rationalist Star Wars. Ponder that. And ponder these ads, my friends. We'll be back with more.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And calling, like saying like, hey, this is – what Ziz and Gwyn are doing, they've made like a cult, right? And again, I don't think they're really off base here, but also they tend to ignore all of the suicides in the rationalist community, right? I was going to say they are in a cult. Yeah. You know, it's more – because cult is –

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So we're back. Now, Jamie is one of the few people who is like as good at manipulating Ziz as Ziz is at other people in this community. And after Ziz is like, hey, look, very high mana. Ziz is like, look, I'll have to kill you if you don't kill Alice, you know, and you know, I'll do it because it's a timeless decision.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Jamie counters in a very effective way by saying like making a blog post saying Ziz said all this. I am not suicidal. If I die, it's her. And also letting Ziz know, quote, I have friends who will avenge me. Murdering Alice or me now is tantamount to committing suicide by proxy.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So they have this like checkmate, counter checkmate chess match in blog posts that gets interrupted in March when Gwen fakes her death. Probably to escape the litigation they're all about. Honestly. Oh yeah. Gwen, get out of here. Gwen does make the good decision because sometime after faking her death, she bounces from this whole community. She does get out of there. Okay.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Right. Oh, Sophie, so excited for you. This story doesn't even end. This story like late middles with two death fakings. Because in September of 2022, Ziz fakes her death in a boating accident on the Black Signet. Emma calls the cops, says that she fell overboard. The Coast Guard, they work so hard to try to find her and save her that they get fatigue waivers so they can work all night.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I think like you get like they're in a there's a cultic milieu that rationalism forms, which is like the substrate. Right. You know, if a cult is like a plant growing up from it, like they're like rationalism is this soil that is extremely optimized for growing cults.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

But they find nothing because she's not dead. Is she on the Black Signet? I don't know where she actually was. But she doesn't, she's not dead. She's not dead. Ziz is declared dead, and her family prints an obituary. Like, Gwyn's death faking is a little less successful.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Like, their lawyer in court, after they come in with legal evidence that Ziz is dead, Gwyn's lawyer is like, I really don't think they're dead. I think they're faking it.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

These lawyers don't like them and they don't like their lawyers. Wow.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

No Ron Hubbard knew this about having a cold.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Right, how do you even talk with these people at this point? When they're asking for counsel, oh, here's what's going on. The sanest decision one of them has made is to fake their death. Honestly, maybe we need more lawyers in this story. Maybe they could have saved them. Maybe a couple of lawyers additional could have fixed this. So I don't know precisely. Also, they have lawyer money?

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

No, these are these public defenders. Oh, yeah. So Gwyn clearly fakes their death just to clear themselves of their legal problems. I think this does it for that. But also she and her closest friends are now plotting the murder of Curtis Lind. We don't really. Yeah. That's the landlord.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yes. Yes. They want to kill Curtis.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I think they want to stay on the land. I think they also their escalation logic is that if he is having the cops evict us, that is a situation that could end in our death. So he's trying to murder us. So the logical thing for us to do is to kill him now to protect us both from him and from other people.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I don't think they're going to do that, but they are at least aware of that as an option. It's on the table. Yeah. So the reality of what happens next is a little bit in dispute, but what no one disagrees is that on November 13th, 2022, this is like right after midnight, Curtis Lind is stabbed repeatedly and impaled with a samurai sword.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

He also, during the same altercation, shoots and kills Emma Borhanian and wounds another member of the group. In one Tumblr post, a Zizian with the username aflowerbyanothername gives what I think is probably a representative example of how the Zizians want to depict what happened here. Kurt, quote, Now,

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I think that might be closer, you know, although it's also one of those things where if you're just trying to explain the story, you could just say it's a cult. You can say it's this weird Bay Area cult about science and AI and shit like that's probably close enough. A few things happen in quick succession after this point.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I don't know if MacMillan was in the CIA, and I don't know if he and Curtis threatened these ladies, but I will say the preponderance of evidence suggests they were in fact squatting. This account blames them on not being able to make rent on their legal bills, but by this point they had been squatting for like two years and change. I don't know if Lind was transphobic.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I don't know if he – they say he alienated them from their neighbors by telling them that they were in a cult. I don't know if that's true or if they alienated their neighbors by being very off-putting and aggressive.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

This Zizian account claims that other individuals started threatening to call the cops on the Zizians and thus, quote, it was an unending nightmare for them of terrifying, insane threats from every corner. Now, the author of this document says they weren't there themselves, but heard other members of the community explain what happened.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And they said that Lind made specific threats in the fall of 2022, which culminated in one member of the group buying a bulletproof vest and wearing it at all times. I don't trust this account. And among other things, it lies about the nature of their living situation. It lies by saying Emma had filed paperwork to take Curtis to court over the eviction. There was no court thing filed here.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

There's a very good comprehensive source on this by an individual who goes by Ken the Cowboy on Twitter. And he notes in this timeline of events, the last sentence is not true. There's no record of any lawsuit being filed in 2022 with any of the Zizians as plaintiffs and with Curtis Lind as a defendant.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So they claim basically this guy was aggressive and threatening us and one day he attacked us, right? Quote, that morning he decided to stop them. He walked all the way from his trailer to their trucks while they were packing their things and opened fire. Lynn shot Emma point blank through her heart and lung.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

She collapsed to the ground and immediately her lung began filling with her heart's blood. She died within 20 seconds, violently coughing up chunks of her lung tissue in a futile attempt to clear her airways. Somni was shot six times, rushing in a futile attempt to save Emma's life. The vest saved her life, but she was still hit through the neck and stomach. She acted only in self-defense.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

That's the Zizian claim here, that he just walks in as they're getting ready to leave and starts shooting them, right? Yeah, that's dubious. Now, that's their claim. This leaves out a very important fact, which is that Curtis Lind is stabbed 50 times. 15. Yes. Jesus Christ. Lynn's account is somewhat less sympathetic to these people.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

One is that a story broke later in 2018 confirming Ziz's suspicion that the rationalist community was rife with abuse. Two people accused an influential rationalist who worked at CIFAR, a guy named Brent Dill, of abuse while they were dating him. Both were 19 and he was close to 40. The allegations here remind me a little of the ones against Neil Gaiman.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

He claims that after getting successfully getting a judgment against them in a court, he moved to evict and the sheriff agreed to do an eviction on November 15th. And this is what Lynn later said, quote, so they're worried about where they were going to go and what they were going to do. And they had a meeting with me and the meeting was about them staying for another two months and not paying.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I said, no, I can't do that. So one of them took out a knife. It was a folding knife. It was a fairly large folding knife. and started patting the blade in their hand like this and looking at me and smiling. And they don't specify who this was. I don't know, like... entirely like which person he's accusing here or whatever.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

But he says this is his account of like the attack itself is that after this, after he gets threatened with a knife, he goes and he buys a pistol and he gets a license to carry. And then right before the sheriffs are supposed to show up to evict them, one of the Zizians named Suri shows up and she tries to get him to help turn the water off in her trailer.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So he goes over to there to turn the water off. And as he bends over to do that, he gets hit with something that shatters the right side of his skull. Quote, and the next thing I remember is standing up with three of them right next to me, you know, or around me. And I was bleeding from numerous puncture wounds. I think around 50. I couldn't see out of my right eye. Had been punctured three times.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

The back of my neck had some severe cuts, like someone was trying to cut my head off. You know, I had no idea what was happening or when this had all happened. I was completely gone while this was happening. And how I stood back up or got to that spot, I have no idea. But I looked at all the blood coming out of me.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Oh, and I had a sword, a long sword, all the way through my chest, right next to my heart, sticking out the other end, which I went to the hospital with. I was afraid to take it out. But anyway, at that time, I pulled out my pistol and started shooting. I killed the person to my right. And... I gotta say, based on the physical evidence, I think Lin's account is the real one of what happens here.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I think they ambush him and stab him repeatedly and he shoots and kills one in self-defense. Obvious, like, again, he has a samurai sword entirely through his back.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And he's like 80!

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And it's one of those, one of the, like, doubt claims by the Zizians is that he couldn't have survived being stabbed this many times. People survive getting stabbed a crazy amount of times, all the time. If you read about enough stabbing accounts, you will read about people who die because they get stabbed once, and you will read about people who live through getting like 70 stab wounds.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

It's nuts. Stabbings are very hard to predict.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yes. They've crossed that line and one of them has died, right? Yes. So the stakes are as high as they had always thought that they were. And when the box trucks are cleaned out after they get arrested, the ones who had carried out the attack, because Ziz is on the property and I think Gwyn is too still at this point, but Ziz does not participate in the attack.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And like cops recognize Ziz and know that she's faking her death and don't arrest her, which is one of like the weird things. They're familiar enough to know that. Yeah. I think this is that, because they've been called before because of these people.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah, I think they're aware of who she is, but just don't do, even after this mass stabbing shooting, like, again, the cops just don't do their jobs also as part of this story. Yeah. It's also worth noting that after this arrest, when their box trucks are being cleaned out, they find tubes, containers of lye, which Ziz had talked to Jamie about dissolving bodies in lye.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

You've got a very powerful man accused of coercing much younger women into extreme BDSM situations and plying them with drugs. Obviously, none of this is I don't think any of this has been litigated. So I will continue to refer to them as allegations. I don't know exactly what happened here, but this breaks. Right. And it's a big deal within the community.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Like I'm half committed to like selling my house, putting my goats into like a big trailer and traveling around the country, finding people who are going on online doom loops and like handing them a goat and just like, play with this goat for 20 minutes. Like touch an animal, look into its weird little eyes, get off of your phone.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

That's probably what the plan was with Curtis, my guess is. That's certainly what Curtis gets convinced of. Now, my thinking, and this is not proven, I'm sure courts will try. We'll see how well they are able to do this in a court.

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Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

My suspicion is that Ziz orchestrated this attack and convinced her friends to do it or convinced them to convince themselves to do it and justified it using the same escalatory logic that they used on everything else.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

On her blog, when discussing theoretical acts of deadly violence, Ziz referred to what she called Quirrell's algorithm from the Harry Potter rationalist fan pic these people all love. And she quoted this line from the book describing the mental state she believed was necessary to survive a life-threatening situation. Intent to kill. Think purely of killing. Grasp at any means to do so.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Censors off. Do not flinch. Kill. Again, this Harry Potter book really- It really goes all the way back to that. Yeah. Be careful what you write, authors. You might get someone impaled by a samurai sword. Of course they had a samurai sword. Of course they had a samurai sword. I'm sure they bought them all from the Bud K catalog.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So Ziz had also written in late 2021 in a comment on her blog, I get so many people lining up to commit suicide by Ziz. And then she hyperlinks to the wiki for suicide by cop. And her meaning is that anyone acting in a way to like harm her or her goals is killing themselves because she has to kill them now. Right. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And there's a good Medium post by someone named Sefa Shapiro that traces around how around this time Ziz's online writing becomes increasingly obsessed with the idea of using deadly violence to make oneself less vulnerable, right? That you, again, you have to always be ready to kill in order to protect yourself.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So the police arrest two of her friends, Somni and Suri Dow, who are the two surviving Zizians who'd taken part in the attack, and they take them to jail. Per a California law, these two are not just charged with trying to kill Curtis, but with the murder of their friend Emma.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

It's like if three people rob a liquor store and one of them kills someone, the other two will get charged with murder because someone died in the commission of a crime that they were involved in, right? It's just California state law. A lot of people get life sentences as a result of this. Usually not in this exact scenario. No. Usually not. Somni was placed in a men's jail and complained.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Dow, after being assigned to a women's jail, demanded a men's jail. I think this is because they were trying to make a case that they weren't in their right mind, but it's kind of unclear to me exactly why this happens. There's a lot in terms of these two and their interactions with the court system that I'm not going to get into, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Because it's just we simply can't go down all of those rabbit holes. But you should know that like this is a factor in everyone's thinking is like their two friends are in prison. They're constantly sending these letters to the judge. They're like making these like weird rationalist arguments in their court cases.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Rumors spread that CIFAR had kind of tried to like hush the whole mess down in order to protect this guy. They conducted an internal investigation. We all know like when the cops do an internal investigation. Right. That's always reliable.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And like that's all going down while Ziz and the remainder of her inner circle kind of go on the run. Right. Because, you know, now they've been involved in a murder. Right. Gwen seems to go go fully into hiding at this time. I don't know if that's because of the murder or just because she had finally had enough of Ziz and all of her talk about killing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

We're back! Oh my gosh, it's Behind the Bastards, a podcast where Robert Evans ruined his life by reading too many blogs by internet-poisoned nerd rationalist people, and I deeply regret everything I've done. How are you doing, David?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

But in any case, she goes to ground around this point. Now, while all this is going on, I hate to keep bringing in new people, but there's a bunch of them. Jamie up in Vermont, I don't think is continuing to is seeing Alice Monday anymore. Alice seems to have also made the wise decision to fucking bounce and go to ground.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Jamie is living with a another Ziz follower named Daniel Blank up in Vermont at this point. And Jamie has gotten increasingly into Ziz's ideas. Blank is one of the people we know he delivers several documents to the court on Somni's behalf during this whole like after they go get charged with murder. And he's like a guy who has like a job and, you know, stuff going on in his life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And then like a month after this shooting, stabbing, he drops out of society, cuts ties with his family and quits his job to go live with Jamie and like.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

It's a little unclear of exactly what's happening, but my belief is basically Jamie and the people who are around her, who are up in Vermont, who are Zizians, are being, before Ziz gets there, told to prepare for Ziz because they want to get access to money and a private property, a compound. Where they can both not be on the run, have a living space, and continue to work on their ideas.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

That is what I think is happening. And Daniel Blank is someone who has been following Ziz online, gets convinced to drop out of his life, cut ties with everybody, move in with this person, Jamie. And it looks like they're kind of working to ready a situation for Ziz and the Zizians in Vermont. And again...

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

There's a lot of this that has not been litigated yet, but what we know is that on December 31st, 2022, Jamie Zajko's parents, who were 72 and 69 respectively, are murdered in their home.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

No, they live in a separate state. They live in Pennsylvania, right? Okay. But we don't know who committed this murder. No one has yet been charged for it. Unlike in the lens stabbing, we do not have an obvious explanation. There is a ring video that shows an unknown vehicle pulling into the driveway, followed by screams.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Some investigators think they hear someone yell mom before another person yells, oh my God, oh my God. But other people who have viewed the recording say it's unclear if that first word is mom. I have not seen this recording, so I can't. tell you what's accurate. But Zashko's parents were worth several million dollars and had a sizable estate to inherit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

We'll police ourselves. That's rational. This internal investigation exonerated Dill and included the line, he is aligned with CIFAR's goals and strategy and should be seen as an ally who embodies a rare kind of agency and a sense of heroic responsibility. There's those words again. Agency, heroic responsibility, dating a 19-year-old when you're 40 and giving her drugs. Jesus Christ. Good stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Right, she's got some amount of access to it, right? And her last, right before these people are murdered, Jamie's mom messages with Jamie earlier that same day about savings bonds that Zashko is due to receive. In blog posts from 2021, Zashko had written about her parents and repeatedly accused them of being abusers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

One specific accusation she makes is that they snuck meat into her food and forced her to eat it after she expressed a desire to go vegan. So she has talked extensively online about her parents being fundamentally evil people. We know that at this point she lives with Daniel Blank and that their phones go dark.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

right around the time of the murder, as if they had placed them in a Faraday bag, basically. Okay. Right? But we don't know where they are on the day of the murder. Police visit them in Vermont shortly after the murder, because obviously the daughter is someone that you're going to think of as a potential.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Because one of the things about the murder is that whoever did it had some degree of knowledge of the property and an ability to get on it without forcing an entry, right? So obviously the cops, they're going to think who's the next of kin, right? Right. So, police visit them on their property in Vermont and talk to Blank and Jamie. They ask if she has a gun.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Jamie says yes, and she shows them a handgun that she owns that is the same caliber as the one used in the shootings. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean much. It's a nine millimeter, ton of nine millimeters. One thing the cops will point out is that Zashko owned the same type of bullet, the same make of bullet as those used in the shooting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

like I, I, the bullets I use keeping my carry gun are Hydra shocks, which is like what cops get. Cause that's the safest thing in court. If you're in a defensive shooting, you want to be like, I have the same bullets the cops have. Right. Because someone can't, you don't want to have like the, the man shredder zombie rounds or some shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So the fact that like a common defensive caliber would murder these people was in the gun. That's not a smoking gun if you'll forgive it, but it also is like, that's not nothing either. Right. Like that's not nothing. Right. Yeah. What means more is that Jamie is now the full beneficiary of her parents' estate.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And while she has not been charged, an attorney for Pennsylvania has filed a potential slayer statute issue, which is a law in Pennsylvania that you can't inherit someone's stuff if you kill them. Right? But again, they haven't been charged. There's a lot of suspicious shit about this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

She also lies to her relatives claiming she couldn't have driven to Pennsylvania from Vermont because she didn't have a working car. And we know she did. So... Yeah, it's very suspicious over here. I don't think it's unlikely that she may have been basically tasked with killing her parents to get access to their money for the cause, right? That's kind of my suspicion.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And she was partly told it was okay because they were abusive. And so like, you maybe have to do this in order to protect yourself and other people from abusers, which is a kind of logic they have too. On January 13th, right after midnight, Pennsylvania state troopers raid a hotel near the Philadelphia airport where Blank and Zashko are staying.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

A Vermont judge had issued a warrant for their home, but the police had not found the gun they believed was the murder weapon. They touch that weapon when they're in Vermont, but they don't have a warrant for it, right? So they don't get to take it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Zashko was detained and the only one – and would have been the only one detained if she hadn't shouted to hotel staff as they're taking her away, tell Daniel in room 111 I'm being arrested so that – Damn, smooch. Smooth, smooth. These rationalists and their brilliant crimes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

The cops obviously get interested in this and they recognize Daniel's name and they find on surveillance footage that she has handed a bag to him outside of his room in the night before, right? And they recognize his name because they'd visited Zashko and Blank in their Vermont home. So they get a warrant for his hotel room and raid it like an hour or two later.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Blank is found in the bathroom next to a blonde person dressed in black. This is Ziz. So... Oh. Right. Yeah. An article by the San Francisco Chronicle explains what happened next. Blank put his hands behind his back and walked out of the room, obeying police commands, but Ziz did not do any of that. He had his eyes closed, a trooper testified, using masculine pronouns. He would not speak.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

He was just laying almost unconscious or as if he was dead on the ground. He had to be carried out. Again, this is misgendering. I don't know if it's intentional or if Ziz was acting and portraying themselves as masculine because they're on the run at this point in time. It's not actually clear to me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

People respond with outrage. CIFAR eventually banned Dill from future events. They kind of cave. And Ziz would describe Dill later as a true negative. That's someone who both halves of their brain are evil.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Whatever the case, Ziz is taken into custody and charged with disorderly conduct and interfering with a police investigation. A nine millimeter handgun was found in the room along with ammo. $40,000 in cash is found in Zashko's Subaru. And again, she doesn't get charged with murder. They let her out very soon and she just leaves.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

The cops are shocked because they have to give her back her car and the 40 grand, which she abandons. She and Blake just leave the car and $40,000 in cash. I don't think they're making good decisions at this point is my only explanation for you, David. How? How? Maybe they're thinking like, well, they put a tracker in the money. They'll track the car. It's not safe to have any of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I don't know why they're making this decision, but it's very weird, right? Now, during this same time, several other Zizians are at least suspected to have been coming in and out of like Pennsylvania during the area around the murder. It is unclear how many people, if the Zizians killed this husband and wife, it's unclear how many of them were there. And again, no one has been charged.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

But it's at this point that another Zizian enters the playing field. This person goes by the name Ophelia. They are a German citizen. They have like a legal residency in the US. Their last name is Bockholt. They used to work at James Street or Jane Street, which is where Sam Bankman Freed worked. They were a quant trader, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So this is someone functioning at a high level of the finance industry who like drops out of their career and life to go to Vermont hours. Like really like they fly in like right before the murders.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

No, these are people who are successful in their other lives, but they're lacking. I think a lot of this is just that desperation that is also core to fascism's appeal to feel like a sense of heroism, like I am part of a heroic struggle. People are very vulnerable to that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah, double bad. Now, at this point, she still thought Yudkowsky and some other CIFAR leaders might be double good, but she's really not sure about it. And she's especially not sure because none of them embrace this terminology. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And even if you're making the money, if you're succeeding at a tech company or in finance, but it all feels empty to you because it kind of is. If someone's like, you can save the cosmos-

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Maybe you'll give up your whole life in order to do that, right? Yeah. So Blank and Zajko are released in short order. As I said, they get out of jail quickly. But Ziz stays in custody for a while. And Bela said, I think, 50,000 initially. Are they aware of the fake death and everything? Yes, they are aware she has faked her death. California shows no interest in sending police out to get her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Which is like, it is a crime. The bail is set very high for two misdemeanors and police justify it in the court documents by saying Ziz had recklessly created a dangerous situation by making the police move her. Per that argument, that article in Wired, quote, behind these arguments and even the charges themselves lay a deeper motive.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Unable to charge for the Zajco murders, but suspecting that Lesota, Michelle Zajco, that's Jamie, and Daniel Blank could be tied to them, prosecutors were trying desperately to hold Lesota while the police gathered evidence. Obviously, you realize we don't give a shit about this case, one local official familiar with it told me. What they were interested in was Lesota's involvement in the homicide.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So the authorities here have recognized... This is all centered around this person, but it's very difficult for us to hold them legally responsible at this stage. We can't even arrest anyone for the murder yet. We don't have enough. And, you know, I'm not going to, again, pretend to know precisely what happened, but I think it's pretty clear Ziz probably gave the order to do this killing. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Or everyone using her logic talked themselves into, well, this is the only way to further our crucially important work is we need the money that these abusers are selfishly keeping to themselves. Ziz's bail is eventually reduced. She winds up in the wind immediately. The authorities are like, she's going to immediately bounce and we'll lose her. And that's exactly what happens.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Zashko and Blank, it's kind of unclear exactly what they do initially after this, but we know Jamie reaches out to her aunt and begs for help. And her aunt is like, did you kill my sister? And Jamie says no and blames the murders on Less Wrong, which is Eliezer's blog. So she's blaming the rationalist community.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

She claims that she's being targeted and that CIFAR had murdered her parents to basically make Ziz look bad. A year or so goes by, right? Ziz misses a court date. She never shows back up. We really don't know what the fuck these people are doing for most of this period. In February of 2023- She's no longer blogging either.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

She's not. No, no, no, no, no, no. But she's still communicating. Well, you said she had stopped.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah. And she is communicating with people still, but I think it's primarily through more direct means. In February of 2023, a community alert is posted by someone named Sefa Shapiro. It warns that, quote, over the past few years, Ziz has repeatedly called for the deaths of many different classes of people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I don't think she's ever on close terms with Yudkowsky. She is speaking and communicating directly with Anna Salomon, who is like one of Yudkowsky's top people quite a lot. I don't think she's super close to Yudkowsky. I'm sure they're at the same events and stuff several times. She definitely sees him speak. She definitely talks with him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And this post lays out a lot of what I've described in these episodes, but there's still no public awareness of the Zizians. Everything happening here is so weird. The circumstances around the murderers are so murky that like most law enforcement kind of shrugs it off. And there's not like a public, these people are so fringe. It's very difficult to even talk about them, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah, how do you qualify that on the nightly news? Yes, exactly. This is all going to change. In February of 2024, Jamie Zaschko purchases three handguns, I think, from a Vermont gun store. A few months later, in May of 2024, a 20-year-old woman named Teresa Youngblood disappears from her home in Seattle.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Youngblood is one of the scattered community of people who still obsessively followed and interacted with Ziz and her inner circle's teachings. Her parents feared that she was in a controlling relationship with someone. And months after disappearing, she applies for a marriage license with another rationalist who's obsessed with Ziz named Maximilian Snyder.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Now, like most Zizians, Snyder has a very impressive academic record. He was a national merit scholar who attended Oxford University. Then he starts posting on Less Wrong, like all the others. Damn. He is initially a fan of Yudkowsky, but at some point he gets convinced that Ziz's vegan Sith radicalism is the true path.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

In the summer of 2023, just months earlier, he won $11,000 from an AI alignment contest, and he won that award under his legal name, but he also goes by Adir. It's kind of unclear to me. what the situation is there. Around the same time, he tried to raise money for Ziz when she was briefly behind bars.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I don't know if this guy Snyder, this person, if Snyder marries Youngblood because they're actually in love. They had gone to high school together. But I think there may have been some sort of weird legal reason that Ziz wanted them married. Again, very unclear, but they don't stay together physically very long.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

By January of 2025, Teresa is in Vermont looking at rural properties for purchase alongside Ophelia, the German quant trader. Well, Max Snyder is in California. Reading between some lines, I think because Ophelia and Teresa aren't involved in any of the court cases, Ziz is using them to help actually scout out and find an isolated compound where they can hide out.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

They are doing the groundwork of figuring out a place for them to live. They are acting as the legal individuals who can handle everything for the folks who are legally compromised. Later investigation would show that Bockholt and Youngblood had been living in Chapel Hill, Vermont, in a duplex, and neighbors say that several other people also lived with them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

These people were always dressed in black and owned a box truck. It is unclear, but I think what happens is after she goes on the run, Ziz starts reaching out to people she'd been in contact with around the world and says, hey, the time is now. Drop out of your lives and come devote yourselves to the cause, right? Okay. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

But like, I don't think that they would ever have been close. Right. Okay. She does try to force a conversation with Anna Salomon outside of CFAR HQ about this and other discoveries she and Gwen had made on their boats. And Ziz like writes in the blog post about it that like she felt it was going pretty good and Anna was listening to her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And these three are the ones who follow, Bockholt, Youngblood, and Snyder, right? Because they all cut ties with their families, with their jobs, and leave home around the same time. While they're looking for rural compounds, Bockholt and Youngblood wind up in a hotel in Lindenville, Vermont.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

An employee reports them to the police because they're wearing body armor and other tactical gear, and at least one of them is openly carrying a pistol. Something is very weird here because they're approached not just by Virginia State Police, but by a Homeland Security investigations officer.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And there's evidence that Homeland Security is surveilling them for like a week before the shootout that happens. I don't know what Homeland Security thought was happening. They may have just seen we're on the border. Obviously, shit's escalated there. This is a foreign citizen with an American citizen. They're wrapping their electronics in tinfoil. They've got guns.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

They're driving around being very suspicious in tactical gear. Maybe they just thought it was like some run-of-the-mill terrorism bullshit. It's worth checking out. Right. So they are surveilling these people. And I think Youngblood and Bockholt realize they're being surveilled. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And that starts that escalatory loop in their head of Zizian logic where, well, if the police confront me, there's only one way to respond. Yeah. Yeah. Two days later, prosecutors in California ask the judge in the Curtis Lind case to speed up the process of going to trial. He's in his 80s. He's got a bad memory and he's the only witness of the attacks. They say it's necessary.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

We need to do this quickly. So the next day, January 17th, before this can happen, before Lind can go to trial, a masked assailant assaults Lind near his property and slits his throat, killing him. Maximilian Snyder, Youngblood's husband, will be arrested days later in Redding, California for the murder. Fuck.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah. I don't see why. Now, he hasn't pled yet, at least as of the time we record this, but he sent a letter in jail to Eliezer Yudkowsky trying to make him become a vegan. Priorities in order. Oh, fuck. He also claimed, quote, I am not one of Ziz's friends. Neither she nor her friends endorse me or my words. So far as I know, I speak only for myself as myself for the sake of everyone. Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah, okay. Okay, man. You just decided to kill this guy for no reason? Dog, you are.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Who is... This person he has filed for a marriage license with, Youngblood, the day after Lind gets assassinated, Youngblood and Bockholt are heading back from a trip out target shooting when they get pulled over by border patrol. Youngblood almost immediately draws her sidearm. There's a shootout. She kill, or I think she kills. Now, anytime there's a shootout and an officer dies,

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

A decent amount of the time, that officer is killed by another cop's bullet. I don't actually know for sure if it was Youngblood or if they all start shooting and he just gets killed in the crossfire. I don't fully know whose gun kills him, but she definitely starts shooting, right? Right. And Border Patrol agent David Mallon dies.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

There are context clues that I don't think Ziz picks up on that like, oh no, Anna immediately felt uncomfortable and like you were assaulting her, like coming up to and just like kind of barraging her with all of this nonsense. And she did not want to have this conversation.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Bockholt is killed in the immediate shootout before she can draw a weapon. And both of the firearms used in this shooting were guns purchased by Zadji, by Jamie in early 2024, right? So again, all of these things are, it's very easy to connect them if you like know all these people, but it takes so long to trace out.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

No. I mean, they didn't plan for this shooting to happen, right? It's just that their kind of escalatory logic made it inevitable. After all this, authorities finally start putting the whole story together. A manhunt is launched, and on February 16th of 2025, Ziz, Jamie, and Daniel Blank are finally caught.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

After the shootout, they seem to have started living in box trucks again, one of which was registered to Youngblood. Yeah, back to what you know. And again, one of these is Youngblood, like the box truck is registered in her name. They pulled onto a property in Frostburg to camp and the owner like spotted them and said, hey, get off my land.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And like Ziz tries to talk this person into letting them stay for a month. But he's like, no, I'm going to call the cops.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

You're in a wizard's robe. You look like a wizard. I don't need any of this. Ultimately, they all get arrested and charged with everything the cops could throw at them, which is like a legal possession, carrying a firearm, stuff like that, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Inside the other box truck, state troopers found Jamie and Ziz, according to the charging documents, dressed all in black and wearing gun belts with ammunition. So, yeah. And that's the situation where we are now. That's it. The story's done. No! Oh, man. Yeah, so this is basically where we are. Ziz asked for pretrial release. Didn't get it. No. Not shocked about that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Quote, speaking, and this is from a Seattle PI article, speaking haltingly, she also requested a vegan diet and said that she was in a mild state of delirium due to lack of food. I have not done anything wrong, she told a judge. I might starve to death if you do not intervene. I need the jail to be ordered to have a vegan diet. It's more important than whatever this hearing is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And she kind of pretended to agree with you in order to end this because she's not sure if you're dangerous, which to be fair, you are. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Soon later at a CIFAR board meeting, Anna recommended that Ziz be disinvited from joint MIRI CIFAR events. And both of these are separate organizations, but basically the membership overlaps or like a circle, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So I don't think this whole court process is going to end super well for Ziz. No. But I also, it's very hard to tell, like, what are you going to charge? Like, I'm legitimately, like, very, like, I'll be fascinated to see what the charges are here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Hell yeah it was. Great, anyway.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah, maybe we'll revisit this when my brain has healed. I need to go like read about Hitler some to calm down. Yeah, you need to go talk to your neighbor. Yeah, I need to go talk to my neighbor.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah, not just keep reading my Hitler books and coming up with theories.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Everyone else, go talk to somebody, you know, pet an animal, walk, you know, in the woods or something.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Stay the fuck away from boats. Don't go live on a boat. Don't go live on a boat. Stay out of the water. I don't care how bad it is. Stay out of the fucking water.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah. Interesting as hell. Yeah. That's one way to describe it. Yeah. That's one way to describe it. Yeah. This is a wild time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

It's a lot of fun. That sounds so much better for you than everything we've talked about today. It's different than this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Oh, there you go. It's time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Check it out, everybody. All right. That's been the podcast. Don't do any of this. Don't do any of the things in this episode. Please. Bye. Bye.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Her reasoning for not wanting Ziz at events is that Ziz wore, quote, black clothes, took supervillains as role models and came up with dangerous plans. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

She's also started dressing like a wizard. Yes. Speaking of dangerous plans, the Rationalist Fleet, or Rat Fleet, was falling apart by this point. Coast Guard and San Mateo Harbor District authorities had issued numerous warnings over the danger of this tugboat leaking poison into the bay. On several occasions, the Caleb nearly hit other ships while drifting, like the anchor gets fucked up.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I don't know that they... They probably don't know how to use it, because they're... The Navy guy, is he still involved? He's gone. He's bounced. He had at least the judgment to cut his losses.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

They do. I think Gwen's actually reasonably competent with a sailboat.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Yeah. Something has to be done. Oh my God. Yeah. This is, it's so wild. It's so wild. Yeah. Again, folks, if you want to immunize your stuff to this, a great way to do it is to just like have friends who don't live in a boat with you. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Right. And Ziz gets trained up. And these are both smart enough people that I suspect they're competent with a sailboat. But like a 24-foot sailboat and a 94-foot tugboat, very different. That's like I'm good with driving my Prius. Give me that fucking 18-wheeler with two fucking storage containers on the back, shipping containers on the back. I could probably back that thing into a parking space.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

No problem. They're just different, you know? Damn, damn, damn, damn. Authorities, right. And what's very funny, these accounts of like boat cops getting on the Caleb and talking to Zizians, they're like, these people must be sovereign citizens. which is like a totally different kind of thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And to me, I'm like, they don't sound at all like, but to them, it like this mix, because it's this mix of anarchist theory, right? Because these people are anarchists. So they're telling these cops why they don't think the cops have any authority, but they're also like insulting them with these like logical arguments based on obscure rationalist doctrines. And these cops-

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

heavy jargon right heavy heavy jargon these cops are just like okay so we got some sovereign some sob sits here all right yeah they're on a boat it's a 284 now we know what to do yeah yeah um and again this is like the bay area i think cops in the bay area are a little especially since they're all white more used to dealing with like people who are clearly like eccentric right Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Then maybe like if this had happened in another city. So nothing. There's not really a conflict yet. The cops are just being like, hey, guys, you're this. But to be fair, the boat is leaking diesel into the bay. It is a problem, right? That's a negative. Yeah. In 2019, another scandal hits the rationalist community.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

The story broke that a former employee had blackmailed the company over a dispute and used donor funds to pay. This got stacked on top of the scandal that Dill had just created. And as is in many of her comrades saw it, the issue was not whether this employee had been mistreated, but that Miri hadn't made the proper timeless decisions to ensure they couldn't be blackmailed.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Per an article for the Rolling Stone, quote, in their view, this not only represented bad decision theory, but it also represented but called the organization's entire existence into question. In other words, it's not whatever happened with this employee.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

It's that you didn't make the timeless decisions to make it so that anyone would be scared to try to blackmail you because they'd know that your response would be so intense. That proves you don't have what it takes to really save the world because you're not ruthless enough to just jump to killing people like us.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

You're not a fucking psychopath, right? And we need psychopaths.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

We love psychopaths. We aspire to it. And one of the big problems within the rationalist community is people talk about different mental health conditions as if they're like tools in a toolbox. Like you can go into a psychopathic mode and that's really good for accomplishing these things. So you could, you can go ADHD, you can make yourself autistic in this. They talk this way, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

I'm not saying this is, this is not how anything works. I'm not comparing autism and psychopathy. I'm just saying this is how they talk, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Right. And I was like, no, that's, that's not, none of this is accurate to like the way brains are.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

No, that's not how – and some of this is downstream from how I think online discourse has damaged the discussion of mental health because people sometimes do talk about it like Pokemon. Very much so. I think there's some issues there that do – anyway, and a lot of this is – yeah, it's just – this soup is not exclusive to Ziz.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So Ziz is banned now from Miri CIFAR events, and her whole crew is increasingly radicalized against the organizations. They have also – it's both where CIFAR has good reason to not want Ziz around, but also all of Ziz – most of Ziz's complaints about rationalists like CIFAR and Miri are very valid, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're both right about each other.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

It's like how Elon Musk and Peter Thiel would shit talk each other. Exactly. You both do have each other's number. Yes. No, everybody's got a point. Everybody's got a point. I just kind of wish you would all go away. Yeah. In November of 2019, CIFAR held their annual alumni reunion out in a chunk of the California redwoods down the street from the Bohemian Grove.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Even a big boat. Yeah. Let alone barely a boat. And talk to like, you know, my neighbor's like a Mexican dude who loves gardening and has had a completely different life than me and knows nothing of the internet. And I talk with him a couple of times a week.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

The road that passes is literally the Bohemian Highway, right? This is like for an idea of how much money there is in mainstream rationalism, right? They are having their big party next to Bohemian Grove.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Ziz had sent an open letter in like a letter to Yudkowsky a few days earlier urging members of both organizations to quit in the interest of saving the world, basically saying these groups are so compromised they can no longer like add effectively to the things we're trying to do to our important work. So you should all leave and kind of the subtext is and do what me and Gwyn are doing, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

Start a cult. So on the day of this event, Ziz, Gwyn and two others in their circle drive up to this like this location out in the woods with a box truck, a shuttle bus and a Prius. And they block the entrances and exits of the venue with their vehicles. Oh. And they jump out wearing black robes, Guy Fawkes masks, and black gloves. Now, this is not a violent protest.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

There's no evidence that they intended violence. They had walkie-talkies. One person had a can of mace, but like, you know, people carry mace. That's not suspicious. And all they're trying to do is distribute flyers, lying out their case against CIFAR and MIRI. But they have blocked the entrances and exits, and they talk like Sith wizards, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

So everything they say sounds cryptic and kind of threatening, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

And they're wearing, and Guy Fawkes masks. The police get called immediately. And as best as I can tell, it does, maybe I'm wrong. It seems like the Seafarm Uri people like knew, because there's like send out an email saying, hey, maybe don't come. Or like, if you do just like be note that these weird people are here. But the venue owner, like the people running the venue call the cops.

Behind the Bastards

Part Four: The Zizian Murder Spree (or Exactly How Harry Potter Fanfic Killed A Border Patrol Agent)

is what it seems like happens. There are different allegations here. I don't precisely know, but for whatever the case, two false pieces of information are given to the cops when they get called. The cops are told one person has a gun and another person has an ax. I think it's people who worked at the venue who make these allegations.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Did Queen Elizabeth have one? Yeah, Queen Elizabeth has one of these things. But Queen Elizabeth had it because she would not buy a jacket if she didn't know child labor had gone into it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Was it marketed as just like hand sewn with love from this church? It's marketed with that line, their little hands can put the rhinestones on best.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

There's a little quote above the tag, we don't pay the children. They pay us by... Yeah, they pay us with their labor, you know, for saving their souls.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, well, and cuddling with dead bodies. Now... In addition to jackets, Alamo's clothing line sold sharkskin boots, leopard skin jackets, and sequined gowns, often including Swarovski crystals and diamonds as accoutrements. Beyond that, his ministry expanded to control a string of gas stations in the area around the towns of Dyer and Alma, Alabama.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

They ran a hog farm, grocery stores, and a concert venue, as well as a restaurant where a young Bill Clinton once watched Dolly Parton perform. Um... The number of famous people who are just like bit parts in the fucking Tony Alamo story, unreal.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

At this point, there are some people who have left. If you really wanted to look, you could find some allegations, right? But there's no lawsuits yet. There aren't any major cases about the worst things. This is right around the period of time where there are some lawsuits about them not paying workers. The worst stuff hasn't really come out yet.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So that said, when it does, they keep selling the jacket. So I'm not letting anyone off the hook for the fucking jacket thing because they keep being a popular product even when he's on the run from the FBI, as we'll document. Yes, yes. It's amazing stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now I need it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's a limited edition. Sam, think about it this way. If Osama Bin Laden had been selling JNCOs while he was on the run, I would have wanted a pair of those JNCOs. The Bin Laden JNCOs? Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

That's right. That's right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I'm going to have to go to the sea. In his 2005 book, My Life, Clinton described Tony Alamo as Roy Orbison on speed, a description that doesn't make a lot of sense to me because we listen to him and he's not a fast singing or speaking guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, that's what he sounds like. And he kind of sounds like a slower Johnny Cash to me, who also sucks at singing. Anyway, I don't know why Bill describes him this way. Have we heard him preach? I have heard him preach.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He's faster, but he's not like a, as someone who's watched a lot of like preachers who are definitely coke fiends, he's not like that fast, right? You mean in the spirit. And I was going to say, maybe Bill Clinton doesn't know much about speed, but Bill Clinton definitely knew a lot about speed. Young Bill Clinton knew a little bit about speed. I'll tell you that much right now.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He knows a lot of things that Tony knows. Yeah, he knows a lot of things he shouldn't. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. We'll get to that. His followers slept in sleeping bags on the floor in crowded meeting rooms. Workers are owned five dollars a day. Shifts could last as long as 20 hours. I think there were just 12 to 15 on average.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

But, you know, when there's a bigger when Mr. T needs a bunch of jackets, you know, you make that shit happen.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So within a few years of Susan passing, Tony started seeking companionship. And while Susan had to begin, been like 10 years older than him, Chris's experience that Susan's daughter had been an early, because again, Tony rapes her, right? And that was when she's like 14 or 15. That was an early warning that Tony's preferences skewed much younger. And he starts taking child brides.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I think he starts with 16, 17-year-olds. But every year, he'll go down a couple of years in terms of what's acceptable to him. And it's going to get very young. Right. An article for THV2 News notes, quote, in an old radio program, Alama once said that when women start their periods, then they are women. According to God's word, they should be able to be married at 13, 14, 15.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And in some cases, if they have menstruated already at 12 years old. So like capital P pedophile, we're talking.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And in fact, it's explicitly legal to marry 14-year-olds in a lot of the United States.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

younger than is allowed anywhere. But I don't actually want to be quoted on that because I might be wrong. But you're right. Like there is a biblical basis for what Tony is saying, right? He's able to cite passages from the Bible in justification of the things he's doing. Now, I will say by the time he reaches his apex, 12 is going to be old for him. But we're getting there, Samantha.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Let's distract ourselves with some ads first, though.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

We're back. How you doing?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, yeah. I think he could have people marching in the streets with guns protecting him for sure. I mean, he does get that. It's just that it kind of pisses off everyone around him because America's in a little bit of a different place at this time. So as Tony gets older, his beliefs on the proper age to marry a girl get looser.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He moves the age limit down to 10, arguing that as long as a girl had started to menstruate, the men around her didn't just have the right but a duty to marry her off, quote. And again, when you say there's a biblical basis, here's his argument. God impregnated Mary when she was about 11 years old.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So the government idiots, the people that don't know the Bible, what you're going to have to do is get a hold of God now. You're going to have to get up there and cuff him and send him to prison for statutory rape. And yeah, if God fucked an 11-year-old, yeah, he's thousands. Speak of a power imbalance, he's also God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

There's a lot of debate as to the ages and stuff here, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And it's this whole thing like I can remember because I grew up, you know, in and around evangelicals in the post 9-11 period, constantly hearing about how the fundamental evil of Islam was that it allowed 14 – Muhammad married like a 14-year-old girl, a 12-year-old girl, something like that. That's okay in this religion.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

That's part of the reason why it's... But you can look at any religious text from that period and find a justification for fucking a little kid, right? That's just the reality, in part because of the time period in which those things were written.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Ultimately, my stance is that outside of specifics of the faith that they claim to be, people who want to fuck kids find a reason to justify fucking kids.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Matt Gaetz.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Exactly. Matt Gaetz. We call this the Matt Gaetz coda, right? So a write-up for the SPLC continues. It's a theme that Alamo keeps coming back to. In a radio show just this February 24th, the preacher cited the alleged promiscuity of first graders as grounds for marrying them before the illegal age of consent.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I found out from people's parents that their daughter started having sex when she was six years old and had sex every day of her life, he said at one point. So right there, by the time she's 15 years old, she's had sex thousands of times. I mean, this is just reality. The alternate reality, you have to create for yourself to exist within these things.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And people have to listen to him talk about six-year-olds having sex thousands of times and be like, yeah, that's the way things work.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I've never seen a child, but this seems accurate. Like... Oh, my God. I think some of it is literally a lot of these people will justify... You see a kid look at another kid of the opposite sex, and you're like, well, that's basically sex, right? Right. I don't know. I don't know fully what...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

there's a lot to dig into here, but like, this is some of the most vile pedophile justification stuff I've ever heard. And this is not like a subject we cover, you know, sparingly on this show, because it turns out that like, wherever you find the worst people in a society, you'll find a lot of them finding reasons to justify having sex with little kids. Uh, just the thing that keeps happening.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Um, it happens with Christians. It happens on the left. It happens, uh, In every religion and every political movement, it happens all the time with conservative Christians. These people are predators, and predators are good at taking advantage of power dynamics. Tony's a predator who wound up at the head of a cult, and he understands how to manipulate people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And as time goes on and he's kind of freed further from any influence of his dead wife, he gets more and more extreme with the things he's willing to justify to his followers. And he keeps getting away with it. So he keeps going further.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I'm not trying to give her moral credit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yep. Yep. Yeah. And it works for him for way too long. In 1993, he releases a tract titled The Polygamists, where he justifies his behavior by arguing the Holy Scriptures proclaim polygamy to be righteous. He's doing a lot of what, like, there's a chunk of the Mormons, the FLDS church, very similar justifications for polygamy and for fucking kids, you know, that you find between the two of them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Very similar to the kind of stuff David Koresh is saying, right? Because David Koresh is a friend of his, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Of course. Of course these guys get along.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I think there's a bit of that going on. I don't know how Koresh, because obviously Koresh is no longer able to give interviews. So I'm not sure 100% how David would have described what their relationship was, but we'll talk about a little later how Tony describes it. In a broadcast for his TV network talking about polygamy, Tony expounded, they're condemning polygamy when it's never condemned.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

God never says no polygamist shall enter the kingdom of heaven. But these bastards, these homosexual Vaticanites, they condone homosexuals and they condemn marriage. And a man that would take care of his, they say you're a polygamist, that I married too many wives. Well, find out, prove it. And even if I was, there's no law in the Bible against it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now, as you may be noticing here, Tony saved much of his hatred for gay people and the Catholic Church, who he thought were the same thing, and were responsible for both Nazism, communism, and pornography. All of it could be traced back to the Vatican. And while Tony didn't get along with the Catholics, he could be open-minded when it came to other cult leaders.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards. We're all doing just so good. Just so good. Talking about Jesus grifters and their Jesus grifting with one of my very favorite people and guests, the great Samantha McVeigh. Samantha, how are you doing?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He was friends particularly with David Koresh. Tony told an interviewer that David was, quote, like a brother to me. Um... No, I don't know. Does that mean they were really super free? Did he just see some value because these guys are preaching similar things vis-a-vis pedophilia and polygamy? I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's hard to say precisely how much money came into the cult because Tony was not a fan of paying taxes. I know you're going to be shocked by that, right? What? The foundation. And again, the church doesn't have to pay taxes because that's how churches work, unfortunately. But like his massively successful businesses, business selling denim vests to Mr. T has to pay taxes. Does it?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yes, yes, because it's an actual business. Tony's arguing it shouldn't have to, but the IRS will feel differently. We know that from 1970 to 1976, the foundation's reported income went from $46,000 a year to $1.3 million a year. And again, this is 1970s money. It is obvious underreporting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The cult's numerous businesses and fleet of Cadillacs would have required much more than this in income to maintain. What got Tony in trouble for the first time was the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

No matter how many fire and brimstone speeches about hell Tony gave, some number of his followers left each year, and as they re-entered the real world, some of them caught on to the fact that Tony had actually broken the law by not paying them. Some of these people wound up talking to the government, and in 1976, the Department of Labor sued the Foundation for Exploiting Workers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It alleged that they'd been made to work 12 to 15 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week without salary. Now, that starts in 76, but the case takes a decade to wind to conclusion, right? This is not a fast-moving case, and it reaches the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court hears this case and rules 9 to 0 that workers, even in a cult, are entitled to minimum wage and overtime.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

benefits, which you would think, oh, good. Tony's going to have to pay everybody now. He does not. He finds workarounds. He delays payments as long as possible, and he orchestrates ways to recoup the money.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now that he was paying his workers a legal salary, what he would do is every couple of weeks, he would give everyone their paychecks, and then they would have a big to-do of everyone handing their paychecks back as donations to the church, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Exactly. 100% tithes. Still, the case had been as high profile as cases get, which drew the attention of federal law enforcement. So at this point, Tony has gotten sued. He's lost his case. It takes 10 years for him to lose his case. But nothing really changes about the way the cult actually operates its business.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So you're a cult leader and your wife, the Lamb of God, has died even though you both told everyone on your TV show God would protect her from that sort of pedestrian end because the world can't end unless you're both alive, right? So what do you do when she passes on, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

In the early 1990s, the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation embarks on a bold new scam, one that was surprisingly petty given the other businesses operated by the cult, but it gives you the level of contempt that they have, both for like... Christian charity and for the law. And I want to read a quote from an article by NBC News.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Peter N. Georgiades, a Pittsburgh lawyer who sued Alamo on behalf of ex-followers in the 90s, said ministry workers accepted donations of food near its expiration dates, wiped off the dates and resold the items to grocers. It's plain, flat-out fraud, the lawyer said.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Mary Coker, who helped ex-followers contact federal agents, said that the ministry has been selling outdated government-donated food since it moved to Phuc in the 1990s. So part one of their businesses is taking food donations and then operating a business to sell to grocery stores expired foods that had been donated for free?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Look, these people, you know, he's got a lot of minds working for him. There's a lot of dudes whose only thought every day is how can we make more money for Tony Alamo? And they keep coming up with ways, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It definitely was. That's amazing. In 1991, the feds carried out a raid on Alamo's HQ in Georgia Ridge. He had enough warning that he was able to flee ahead of the authorities, along with most of his valuable property. The cops who raided his place found piles of Bibles, 82 pews... 1,500 Alamo jackets, photos of Tony with Larry Hagman, and dozens of mirrors. But they did not find Susan's body.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The mausoleum had been smashed open.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, yeah, yeah, missing again.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

What's happening? It's so much pettier than that. So... Chris, Susan's daughter, despite how much her mom had abused her, still loved her mom and wanted to give her a proper burial. And Tony hates this girl. So once she sues him, being like, you have to give me my mom's body, he has his followers steal it away and store the corpse in a storage unit to hide her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Um, it would take like seven years for Chris to win the right to have her mom's body returned and reburied. A llama was eventually ordered to pay $100,000 in damages. Um, but like that's, it's just, he's not even trying to raise her from the dead. He's just trying to like keep her from being buried where her daughter can be a part of it. Um, cause he's a real piece of shit. Yeah. Very.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Tony probably was following her wishes. Tony spent the first half of the 1990s on the run from the law. The FBI put out wanted posters for him, which stated, Alamo is always accompanied by bodyguards who have access to numerous weapons to include M14 rifles. He is known to be hostile to law enforcement and is considered armed and dangerous. Now, that's all true.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

What's wild to me is while he is on the run, his followers keep making jackets and he keeps designing them. He uses a fax machine to send sketches from his hidey holes to different manufacturing facilities. He gave like-

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

You did guess weekend at Bernie's and that's what they do. It's I you are correct, because basically what they do is he has her embalmed. He brings her corpse home and he like, yeah, yeah. He puts it on a table and he's going to have his followers pray over it for days on end. Right. That's the that's the plan here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's still primarily the children. Yes. And he keeps giving interviews to journalists about the jackets. He even visits his Hollywood storefront while he's on the run from the FBI. He tells the L.A. Times, everything I do is a work of art. I do the designs wherever I'm at. Um, and this, there's this, this LA times article that I'm going to be quoting from is amazing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Cause it's like, he's talking to the people who are running these shops, selling these jackets being like, but you know, like he's on the run for a bunch of crimes, right? You're like kids have accused him of molesting them. He's on the FBI's most wanted list. Why are you still selling his jackets?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And how is this happening? Yeah. What? Oh my god. The LA Times' reporting indicated that Alamo jackets continued to be manufactured in California, New York, and primarily Arkansas. No one working at any of these factories received any pay, and apparently nothing meaningful had changed after that 1985 ruling. Quote,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

One former member who left the cult last year said working conditions at Alamo clothing shops have changed little since the ruling. The former member who asked not to be identified said he has seen young children working in the shops with their parents. Workers were paid only a $5 a week stipend, plus room and board at an Alamo commune, he said.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now, the article struck a bemused tone, veering from the store owners and customers praising the artistry of the jackets. We felt differently about rhinestones back then. To former cult members describing the labor conditions as that of an unpaid sweatshop that primarily employed children. When questioned about this, Tony told a reporter, the clothing is so groovy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Everyone wants it no matter what they think I am. No matter what, the superstars are going to want my jackets.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

No, he comes out of that world. You know, I think he is at one point, I think in the late 60s, he probably was trying his hand at being a hippie. You know, he's in L.A. around that time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Sure. He is, and this whole cult is shrapnel of the hippie movement, right? The hippie movement doesn't really change anything. A lot of people wind up on the street and mentally damaged in the aftershocks of the anti-war movement and the summer of love. And Tony and his initial cult followers are those people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So being decent reporters, the LA Times crew reached out to the FBI about the fact that this guy, who's apparently one of their most wanted, seems to still be selling jean jackets in Hollywood. Quote, FBI spokesman Jim Nielsen said the Bureau is continuing its search for Alamo, but refused to elaborate on the investigation.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now, if you're thinking, boy, isn't the fact that this serial child molester and child trafficker manufacturing expensive clothing for the most famous people on earth and giving interviews while on the run from the FBI, isn't that a hideous indictment of our federal law enforcement agencies? And my answer would be, oh, man, they were up to so much worse shit than this in the mid-90s, bro.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I don't know what to tell you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I think that's low on the totem pole. This is actually kind of low. Now, some of the money from jacket sales was reinvested into the cult, primarily into the production of vast numbers of flyers, complaining that Tony was being wrongfully targeted by the government on behalf of the Vatican.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

His Christian soldiers, largely followers braced out of his saga's compound, trawled the streets of Hollywood and West L.A., putting leaflets on the windshields of thousands of cars.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

From that article, the leaflets' rambling denunciations claim that the district attorney's office, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Labor are linked to a terrorist plot against the Alamo Church led by Pope John Paul II. The leaflets have become a common sight on Los Angeles streets, with titles such as Government Subversion Against Alamo and Tony Alamo, My Side of the Story.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

They have at various times appeared littered along the sidewalk on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, at a county courthouse in Lancaster, and on the windshields of cars at Dodger Stadium and Los Angeles International Airport. The leaflets bear the same Saugus phone number as glossy brochures used by Alamo designs to promote the sequin jackets.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

No, she's in her wedding dress. Does that make it worse? Is that creepier or less creepy?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

By dialing the number, callers can learn how to obtain more of Alamo's religious literature or which Los Angeles area stores carry Alamo's jackets. You can get it all. Propaganda or the jacket Michael Jackson wore in Bath. Same guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's so funny how they would talk about rhinestones like serious art. Like, oh my God, the rhinestones on these are amazing. They're so good. What a special period of time that was for America. Speaking of special, our sponsors, all of them, beautiful, special people. None of them are on the run from the FBI, hiding in the mountains, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

That's not any of our sponsors, except for maybe that food box company that just got caught- with child labor stuff. Anyway, whatever. We'll be back.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The way it's described to me is he ordered them to dress her corpse in its wedding dress, so I don't think she came in that dress. He just makes his followers put her in it. Not great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And we're back. So, by this point, there are numerous reports in the media that Tony was molesting children. I hate coming back on a line like that, but... This is the story that it is. He argued on his own TV program for polygamy and marriage of children as young as 12. Yet major stores, including Macy's and Bullock's, continued to sell his jackets until they were literally hounded by the press.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

These LA Times reporters even came up with a photo of Tony shaking hands with Los Angeles Mayor Tim Bradley. And the picture was taken while Tony was on the FBI most wanted list. Wow. Wow. Bradley spokesperson told reporters, I guess the llama was known for his sequined jackets. Something else at this point, too. Man, I don't know what to... Very L.A. mayor thing to do, though. Like...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I think he was waiting for her to be resurrected to do that, right? Fair.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Look, famous people wear his stuff. I don't care what crimes he's committing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I can't imagine the mayor from Jaws like arm in arm with Tony Alamo. Very easy. Now, while he evaded law enforcement with almost comical ease, Tony continued to take new brides. One of the oldest of them was a 17-year-old girl named Yale who was married to another man in the cult and gave birth in 1993 while on the run with Tony and his inner circle.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

As soon as she finished giving birth, Tony kicked her husband out of the cult. Yale had to beg to have him reinstated, and Tony told her he would on one condition. She'd have to marry him. From a write-up by the SPLC... Alamo's five wives played with her young daughter in another room as she pondered her fate. It's like having a loaded gun to your head, she says now.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, yeah, the fourth or fifth time, yeah. Now, I will admit that the relationship dynamics of the Alamos are a little bit murky to me, but my interpretation is that while she was alive, Susan did a lot of work to keep Tony on something that resembled an even keel. He's still doing some sex crimes, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Refusing Alamo meant not only might you get beat half to death, but you'll go to hell on top of it. So pretty bleak. She says, yes, the thing that you would expect happens. It's as awful as you would guess. It took Gail years to accept that what happened was not consensual, but obviously she was 17 and he was 60 and the leader of her cult. Right. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So they're not married long, and during their brief period, because he is free for about a year after marrying her, before he finally gets caught. And during that brief period, he marries a nine-year-old girl and a ten-year-old girl. Here's how Yale described his grooming practice. Every little girl starting to develop wants to feel beautiful, and he was very good at making them feel that way.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He preyed on the fact that we were alienated from our parents. They worked and worked, and some of us hadn't seen our parents in a very long time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yes, we've just been talking about how tired and slightly broken we all are already this year.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, he's doing all the marrying.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, yeah. Some people are allowed to be married, but as Yale's kid, you can get forcibly separated by him if he doesn't, if he gets jealous of your relationship. In 1994, the year after their marriage, Tony was finally arrested in... This is not going to surprise anyone. Florida, where he had been living for most of the time he spent on the run under a fake name.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He was convicted of tax fraud to the tune of $9 million and sentenced to six years in prison. Again, there was evidence by this point that he was practicing polygamy with children. But a year or so before his arrest in February of 1993, the BATF and the FBI had had a bloody standoff with Tony's friend David Koresh and his cult outside of Waco.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The whole thing had ended with several dead agents, many dead cultists, and dozens of dead children. The disaster at Waco, which came right off the heels of the bloody ATF standoff at Ruby Ridge, had galvanized the American religious right against what they saw as federal overreach.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The fact that the feds had fucked up hideously and made a very bad situation even worse made all of this a lot more problematic, and the FBI at all responded by pulling back from going after figures like Alamo, which is why I suspect no one did the fairly minimal work necessary to charge him it. over his polygamy and child molestation at this stage.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

In fact, while he is in prison, he is allowed to have visitation rights with his wives, per the SPLC.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

But a lot less than he will be once she dies, because she is exerting some control to limit his behavior, right? And once she is gone, there is no one left to keep this man in check, and he loses his

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. Although he was incarcerated during most of their marriage, Alamo kept in touch through regular prison visits, where Yale and other wives present at the time alleged that he would fondle the younger girls as older wives blocked the view of the prison security cameras. He allegedly spoke to the girls in graphic terms about group sex and whips, says Yale, who became terrified of him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

At the time, Yale says, she was still in awe of Alamo. She worked 18-hour days transcribing the tapes Alamo would record for his followers, she says, editing out his curse words. I would have killed for him. I would have killed my child or anyone for him, even though I hated him, Yale says now. I'd become his little demon, finding sick joy in telling people horrible things on orders from Tony. Oh.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, boy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Cult dynamics, like... I don't know, 201 there. The whole older wives hiding what's happening, but also the fact that like, why are you prison officials letting children come here?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Like there's already rumors.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, I mean, a big part of the Tony Alamo story is that our legal system is set up to enable certain kinds of cult leaders, even when they molest children on a grand scale, because that's a lot easier for all of the people who have these government, often these appointee jobs, to just not upset the apple cart and piss off certain segments of the country by trying to stop the mass rape of children.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's cool. I love it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Dead to rights, yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And the Venn diagram of guys who would like... shoot elected officials if those laws were changed to make the punishments be more substantial. And guys who own kill your local pedophile shirts is just a circle, right? The same guy, the same guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

fucking mind like he is he goes from well not from zero he's like he's at like 55 but he goes up to like 120 very quickly i feel like he's just waiting for his moment though is it one of those things like yeah now i'm doing this this is it this is my time and then it just becomes trauma yeah yeah for a lot of people and it's going to start with some some some dead body related trauma because it

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Tony ultimately served four years of this sentence, leaving prison in 1998 and immediately booking it for the town of Folk, Arkansas, F-O-U-K-E. He repeated the same well-worn tactics that had helped him build an enviable role of properties and businesses in two other Arkansas small towns and in Hollywood up to this point. For nearly a decade, Tony enjoyed wealth and stability.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The town even honored him with a certificate of appreciation in February 2006 for deeds that he and his church did to aid those in need in our community and for his Christian love and kindness. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, I mean, this is why I have a lot of trouble trusting anybody who runs a church. I'll say that much.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It is. I will say there's a difference in that it's these local people. small town residents who are, I assume, also evangelical Christians generally, who are some of the first people to stand up to Tony. Because here's the thing about pedophile cult leaders.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Again, if you give them an inch, they wind up setting up armed guards on public streets, which is what an increasingly paranoid and elderly Tony did later in 2006. By this point, the feds had started investigating him again. this time, finally, over the child molestation and trafficking. Alamo responded by ordering his armed guards to line the public street approaching his property.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It is an unfortunate but undeniable reality that when you give a man a rifle and tell him to patrol a street, regardless of his legal position, he'll start questioning random strangers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

This happened, and it seriously pissed off residents who complained to the local government, and then the local government did nothing because they were almost certainly being bribed by the cult or were just scared of it. and thus the government took no action until the abuses grew too numerous to ignore. So residents had to take actions into their own hands.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

One resident, Judy Frazier, a small business owner in town, started looking into the dark and documented history of Alamo Ministries. She starts publishing stuff. She starts organizing the accounts of former members, and she's going to be one of the most effective ground-level activists against Tony. Ex-followers start going to the media with increased frequency.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

One of them, a former schoolteacher, claims Tony ordered her daughter, who suffered from epilepsy, beaten while she was having a seizure because said seizures were caused by the devil. Another, Sue Balsley, told the SPLC that her teenage boy was held in the air by four men and beaten 140 times as punishment for sending a love letter to a female classmate his own age.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And it just keeps getting worse from there. There's the case of a girl, Cindy Jo Angulo, when she was 15 and married to someone else. Because again, not great dynamics outside of being married to Alamo in this cult. Alamo calls her into his house and makes her his wife in 1995, which is when she finds out that her 11-year-old sister had also been made a bride.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Nikki Farr told the SPLC report that she had fled Alamo's house in 1999 at age 15 after three years of basically showing up for those prison visits and being sexually harassed by Tony. She didn't want to marry him once he got out, and she escaped from the cult by crawling through ditches and over barbed wire after he caught her making an unauthorized phone call and knocked her out.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Pretty bad stuff, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yes, Ministry of Hate, I think, or Ministry of Evil. It might have been a BBC documentary about this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, it's gross. So he has Susan's body taken to the cult's dining room, and his followers are ordered to take shifts praying for her resurrection so that there's people praying for her to be resurrected 24 hours a day. Cult funds are used to engage in nearby florists to deliver flowers every day, probably to deal with the smell, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

You've crossed the line for small town.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The armed men on the streets, the girls fleeing barbed wire. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So from this point on, the dam was broken. Reporting in February of 2007 linked Alamo to a warehouse of 3,000 stolen mattresses owned by two of his wives.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I wouldn't bring this up because like mattress theft, not a huge crime, except these were Tempur-Pedic mattresses from a lot of 8,000 that had been donated by the company to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Okay. Tony's men had wound up stealing them somehow and sold an estimated 4,000 of them for half a million dollars. So like you're stealing mattresses for Katrina victims. That is evil.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

They didn't have mail-order mattress technology like we do today, thank God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

No, no. You could do it with like those, what were those? The podcaster mattresses.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, now they're at Costco.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

You could do it with Casper's. You could get 8,000 of those in a couple of box trucks. So state and federal law enforcement raided the Alamo compound in September of 2008, charging him with child abuse, possession of child pornography, sexual abuse, and trafficking. He was convicted on the testimony of five women who claimed they'd been married to him in secret ceremonies as minors.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

The youngest of these women had been eight at the time. God. After decades of horrific crimes, Tony Alamo was convicted in 2009 of taking girls across state lines for the purpose of sex. He was sentenced to the maximum, 175 years in prison.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Now, he ultimately serves only a fraction of that because in May of 2017, he dies at the age of 82, but he still spends a decent bit of time in prison and he dies there. So I guess that's as good as this story was ever going to end.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I want to know that like, yeah, did they try to bring him back? I don't know. I hope he had a bad time. I hope it was all bad from that point on. Right. Because he didn't get nearly what I would describe as a fair punishment, like nine years in prison for what's really a dizzying array of crimes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I haven't run into it. I mean, what are you going to say? Like, hey, you know, this guy you bought a jacket from turned out to suck. So, like, it's not like... You know, it's not like they were like working together. You know, like it's not like Dolly Parton was in business with him specifically. She like she did some shows at a venue he owned. She owned a jacket.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, it's not great, Sam. It's not great. One cult member later recalled to a reporter, I believe 100% that she was going to rise from the dead. On their local access TV show, Tony gave daily sermons promising his wife would be reborn any day now. It became a joke for local radio DJs who reported on this while repeatedly playing Wake Up Little Susie.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Like, I don't know where we lock that in in terms of responsibility and a moral level.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. I mean, I think it would have been good to say something for all of these people who bought Alamo jackets, but I'm not surprised they didn't.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

No. Yes. I do want to know. Yeah. I do imagine the king of Saudi Arabia has a nice collection of rhinestone denim vests.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, I wouldn't be shocked. I wouldn't be shocked, especially since we know he was a fan.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. Well, that's the episode.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Just burn it. Just burn your computer. Oh, man. Good stuff. Well... Anything you want to push out there, Samantha? You want to plug at the end here?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, well, check out Sam McVeigh and check out, maybe don't check out social media too much, but if you do, find Sam on it. Yeah, see my dog. And above all else, don't buy a denim jacket. They're all made by cult leaders.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, yeah, especially if it's bedazzled. Just avoid that for your own soul's sake. All right, and that's the episode, everybody. We're done.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

that's some good dj that's some good local radio dj shade i mean yeah you could you could just self no you could just see how you'd cut this together though in like the hbo version of this story um You know, do a little montage or something. Unfortunately, it also gets very creepy very fast.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

We're still alive, technically, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Because one thing that Tony demands is he wants the children in the cult, he makes them cuddle with Susan's body at night. Yeah, no, this is bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Again, he's lost his mind.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Not in the ways that matter, maybe, but like technically, you know? Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Those kids went through it, we'll say that much, right? One of them, Elijah Frankiewicz, later said, she smelled, she was cold and really, really hard. She was dead, which I feel like we didn't need at the end there, but yeah, it's just good to reinforce that to yourself when you've been told for six months that she's alive.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, years later.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, no. Yeah, I think that's basically what it was is like – because eventually there are court cases and eventually there's prosecution. And a lot of these kids get out and then go talk to the media about like – Because these are the folks who were not, they were true believers in that they were kids raised in this cult, but they also, they're not converts, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

yeah just like well actually not at all like susan alamo because she's just dead as hell she is super fucking dead you just told me a few times that she is good and dead she is she is real dead oh you are i i don't know if you're ready for the amount of dead this lady is um just just the deadest uh samantha are you ready to get back into it let's go

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

If you grow up, you know, in a different religion somewhere and you convert to something like this, you tend to stick with it for a long time. Whereas a lot of these kids raised in this, like as soon as they can, they're like, I'm getting the fuck out of this place. What the fuck is wrong with these people and my parents? Jesus. Wow. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

So this goes on, this whole corpse thing goes on for six months.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

No, no, no. Like a wildly long time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

No, no, no, it's not okay. It's very, very gross. Greta Allendorf writes that every day Susan remained dead, the children were beaten. So it's even worse than just the things about this that are obviously gross. Because the kids are being physically punished for not bringing this woman back from the dead. Good cult stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Were they not cuddling the dead lady enough?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Well, she was supposed to come back to Tony.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I think something like that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, this is where I need adult supervision. What the hell? What the fuck, right? So this is, we are now in rarefied cult air. We do a lot of cults, but this is some of the cultiest cult stuff we've ever culted on this podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, I was joking. That's not gross. I mean, I guess it is, but you don't have to give him credit for it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, it's conceding. Yeah, okay. So he has his followers build an elaborate mausoleum for her, which included a grave for him. So apparently at this point, he came to accept his own mortality. Now that Susan was gone, he began to adapt other parts of his life to this new reality, which ended with him launching a new and shockingly successful business for the ministry. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

You're not ready for wear this head, Samantha. I was not ready for wear this head. This is a unique cult business, right? We talk about cult businesses a lot on this show. Restaurants are common, right? Bands are weirdly common. You know, the Mansons tried to do that, right? I mean, Tony Alamo does kind of that version of things. Fucking David Koresh was a musician, you know? Oh, yeah. Right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

What's weird is like launching through your cult an incredibly popular fashion brand that is beloved by the most famous people on earth, which is what Tony does next. Yeah, yeah. Shocking stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He does. He does. High fashion, too. It's extremely successful. How successful?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah, it's Hollister. This is where Hollister comes from. Tony Alamo invented Hollister. No, so the answer, because Tony's got to ask himself, hey, as a pedophile cult leader who has just been reminded of his mortality, what's the next thing to do?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

And the answer obviously is force children to labor for free manufacturing high quality bedazzled denim vests and jackets for celebrities, which is exactly what he does. These have like in rhinestones and Swarovski diamonds, like the LA skyline on them or like Nashville. They are the tackiest fucking jackets that have ever been made.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I think some of them are stonewashed. Some of them are clearly like black denim or leather even. They're not just denim, but there's a lot of denim. Yeah. This is by now we're in the 80s, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Yeah. Who wore this? Everyone. So he designs each product himself and sells them under the brand name Tony Alamo of Nashville. And despite that name, their big market is in Hollywood, particularly rich and famous people who wanted clothing that delivered a little bit of Southern charm and credibility.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Tony Alamo jackets took off initially with the Grand Ole Opry set, but in short order, they become like the most desired fashion item in the music industry. According to an article by Lindy Frazier of the Chanticleer, Alamo said he used children when he realized their, quote, hands were the perfect size to embellish the jackets with tiny rhinestones.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Given all of that, it might not surprise you to hear that one of the brand's biggest fans was a man famous for being responsible around small children. Have you guessed who it is?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Michael Jackson! That's right, baby. And in fact, if you want the most famous touchstone, Michael Jackson wears a Tony Alamo jacket on the cover of Bad. That's a Tony Alamo original on the cover of Bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh, well, I think there's a couple of reasons why, given some things that we've learned about Michael in the intervening years. But it is, when I realized it was that he, the jacket from Banff was a Tony Alamo, it blew my fucking mind.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

That's going to take a second, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Oh yeah, yeah. These are a massive brand. These are incredibly successful. Oh my God. And Michael is the most famous person on earth at this point in like the fucking early to mid 80s. So he is probably the most famous person to wear a Tony Alamo original. But he's got real competition. And I want to quote from an article on the brand in the L.A. Times.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

He makes jackets for all the stars, said Shirley Blenner, a saleswoman at Twist, a boutique on Melrose Avenue, where three Alamo jackets were on sale last week for prices ranging from $360 to $680. Blenner pointed to a display of photographs behind the cash register of Mr. T, Mike Tyson, Hulk Hogan, and Dolly Parton, all wearing what appear to be Alamo-designed jackets.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Mr. T, oh, oh my God. Samantha, I would not be doing my job as the host of this podcast if I did not show you the picture I have of Mr. T wearing a Tony Alamo original standing next to Tony Alamo himself. Oh man, it is, if you're a big Mr. T fan like I am, a harsh moment of the soul here. Look at them. Look at the two of them together. Oh, is that him? That's him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

If Merle Haggard had let his drinking get even more away from him, right? Like, yeah. If Merle Haggard had been doing his body weight in cocaine. What? Yeah. So there's this picture. They're both wearing these just, I gotta say, hideous denim jackets. It's so bad. The jacket from Bad looks good on Michael. That's a look.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

I do not understand these denim jackets that Mr. T and Tony are wearing here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

It's not a huge leap, right? And this is Mr. T, younger, maybe certainly worse judgment. Let's all assume that modern Mr. T wouldn't make this same mistake. But yeah, the picture I've got Which we'll put up. This will probably be the background of one of the parts of this episode. But it just says, Mr. T pictured here with Pastor Tony Alamo.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher

Both are wearing Tony Alamo designer jackets, which are worn by thousands of actors, entertainers, recording artists, sports figures, presidents, politicians, kings, queens, princes, princesses, and others who are able to afford them. I don't know which presidents wore these. I haven't found that information, but I'm very curious. Kings and queens? Prince Charles definitely has one of these.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

The dealer said Diddy opened the door to his former Hamptons mansion while wearing nothing but a robe and brought him to a back bedroom to make a cocaine deal. Weird shit was starting to happen. Celebrity guys fucking each other. There were back bedrooms and it was like the inner sanctum. And this dealer talks about it like I lost a lot of respect for those guys. He is not talking about the sex.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

He's talking about like people having gay sex. Famous people fucking each other in a gay way, which is like fine. That's not the issue here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And there's, you know, Now, the dealer claims he also saw a mix of female rappers and prostitutes having sex there. And that's kind of where we do get into, because, again, some of there's probably some trafficking at the white parties. And it's unclear to me, is he talking about a white party or a freak off? It's at the Hamptons. A little bit unclear, but we'll get to that later.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, absolutely. Now, in 1999, Diddy was arrested on felony charges of assault and criminal mischief. The chain of events began when Diddy was featured in the music video Hate Me Now with Nas. Both Diddy and Nas were crucified on a cross, which Diddy later decided was sacrilegious and asked to have cut. That's his line. That's his line.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Good times, Mom. Thanks. Yeah, this is Diddy's version of that. Now, the Atlanta location hangs on a little while longer. It eventually shuts down in 2012. Why? Here's a summary from an article in BET. In July 2011, Diddy was sued after music executive Tony Austin, a patron of the Atlanta eatery, was shot in the parking lot.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, man. So that's what flips him out. And when he decides, like, hey, cut this out. And then they air the unedited version anyway. And when the version with him being crucified airs, he blames the president of Interscope Records, Steve Stout. And he bursts in the Stout's office with some goons and assaults him with, quote, a chair, a telephone and a champagne bottle.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Stout said of the beating, one minute I'm in the middle of a meeting and the next minute I'm down on the floor and Puffy and his guys are kicking and pounding me. One of them picks up a chair and throws it at me. Then Puffy throws my desk over and they just walk out like nothing happened. And his stance is, I think they were trying to kill me and I just, you know, happened to not die.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I don't know. I wasn't there. He seems to say it was very serious. Combs turned himself in a few days later and was charged with felony assault. He was freed on $15,000 bail and ultimately pled down to a misdemeanor. His sentence was one day of court-ordered anger management. Ha ha ha.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

oh jesus that's what hundreds of millions of dollars gets you in lawyers man yeah that's the thing is like money is the savior of all problems yeah yeah nearly all like as with epstein you can't eventually hit a line speaking of hitting a line my line is it's time for ads so here you go

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Robert Evans here, and I know everybody loves a great deal, but I also know most of us aren't willing to crawl through a bed of hot coals just to save a couple of bucks. Saving money has to be easy to be worth it. No hoops, no bull crap, no sending anything in through the mail. So when Mint Mobile said it was easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month with the purchase of a three-month plan,

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I had trouble believing it, but it turns out it really is that easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month. The longest part of the process is the time spent on hold waiting to break up with your old provider. To get started, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. There you'll see that right now, all three month plans are only 15 bucks a month, including the unlimited plan.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Find out how easy it is to switch to Mint Mobile and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. That's mintmobile.com slash behind. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

See Mint Mobile for details.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Austin, former A&R for Def Jam and the president of Russell Simmons Music Group, says he was in his car listening to music with another man when someone opened fire on the vehicle. Austin alleged that the proprietors of Justin's were aware of dangerous and hazardous conditions at the establishment, but failed to provide warning or security. Now, isn't that something? Isn't that something?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It's your go-to for all things queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. This is the podcast where hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso dive deep into gay culture with unfiltered conversations, hilarious guest chats, and of course, lots of sex-positive moments.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Now the holidays are upon us, and let's be real, sometimes Mom's house is just not an option for some holiday fun. So, Gabe and Chris are back for a very special episode where they'll be catching up on everything they've been up to since Season 1 wrapped, and, more importantly, answering the age-old question, Where do you hook up when family's around?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

They'll chat with special guests and dive into creating queer spaces during the holidays. Whether it's a Friendsgiving or a holiday sex party, they're covering it all. Plus, Gabe and Chris hit the streets to ask why the night before Thanksgiving is known as the horniest night of the year. Tune in to the Sniffies Cruising Confessions holiday special, sponsored by Gilead.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So three months after he assaults this record executive, Combs goes out to a Manhattan nightclub with Jennifer Lopez, who he was dating at the time. The couple were partying when someone else at the club insulted Diddy and threatened his protege, a rapper named Shine.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

A write up in The Independent summarizes what happens next in the kind of voice that you usually use for like the Israeli military or cops. A dispute ensued, shots were fired, and three bystanders were injured, including a woman who was shot in the face.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Shocking. Shocking.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Holmes fled in a Lincoln Navigator with J-Lo, his bodyguard, and his driver, along with a stolen gun none of them had a license for, as cops found out when they stopped the car. Combs was found not guilty in March 2001 of four counts of illegal possession of a gun and one count of bribery after a trial that doubled as a media spectacle.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Proving what a force the rapper had become, fans turned up at the courthouse for seven weeks, and workers at the building, upon his acquittal, threw open the windows to chant his name and leave him alone.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. And cheer when they get off after probably shooting a woman in the face. After probably shooting someone. It's one of those, one of the things that's amazing is that like, if you read that, like a dispute ensued, shots were fired.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Diddy is so rich at this point that he has become included by journalists in the special exonerative grammatical case that only get, normally it's like for cops, right? Shots were fired. Someone was hit. There was a gun, an unregistered illegal gun in his possession. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Amazing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I have clear procedural memories of about 30% of our friendship, Will. Yeah. It's all flashes. It's all flashes. It's moments. It's a Polaroid picture in my head where I'm like, turns out. So Combs thanked God after the verdict and made a big show of going to church after.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

To further separate himself from the event, he changed his name officially to P. Diddy, telling Vanity Fair, when I changed names, I put periods on those eras.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Got off from a fucking club shooting, time to become P Diddy. The P Diddy era was lucrative indeed. He released more albums, he acted in several movies, and he started producing reality television. He gets that Ciroc vodka deal.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, yeah, yep. Making the band. Yep, making the band. In 2002, he won awards for his menswear fashion line. Sean John did cause a minor scandal for him when it was found that the clothing he sold was made in Honduran sweatshops with a terrible record for workers' rights.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Got to be some sweatshots. Yeah. Going to have to sweatshop. Mm-hmm. None of that kept him down for long. In 2004, he performed at the Super Bowl. He started his famous Vote or Die campaign that election season.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Pete Diddy was telling you to vote.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, money continued to flow by the hundreds of millions. As the Bush years came to an end, P. Diddy changed his name yet again, this time dropping the P and becoming just Diddy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

His white parties remained infamous social events, but he also held increasing numbers of freak-offs. These were not for public consumption and acted as an opportunity for him to provide himself and his celebrity friends with endless young women drugs and young women on drugs. Ew. Oh, wow. She woke up in the hospital very ill and vomiting until she was released several hours later.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Quote, I left with no shoes on. My shirt was kind of ripped. I noticed all my money was taken out of my purse except for like $20. I got robbed for my money. I had just enough to get back to a motel in a cab.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

it's so fucked up like these people are also not wealthy people they're doing this because they don't have money in the first place what a contest on the radio and then you get robbed anyway party now she also says she realized afterwards that her vagina was sore she's not certain what happened because again she was drugged drugged yeah almost certainly not a good story Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And I'm not done with the story, unfortunately. I'm going to read next from an article on MSN. After the incident, Grayson flew back to her home state, Oklahoma, and claims to have received an unsettling phone call the next day in which a female allegedly attempted to dissuade Grayson from speaking up regarding the ordeal. She recounted the anonymous woman's warning.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

She had all my information and was basically telling me that I couldn't do anything about it, that Puff Daddy was a famous person and I wouldn't get anywhere with the issue if I tried to do anything. Puzzled, Grayson queried, so I'm like, well, how did you even get my phone number? Do you know anything about my money being missing? She's like, no, I don't know nothing about that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I'm like, well, I mean, how did you even get my phone number?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, it's fucking hideous.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You're like a teenager, 20-year-old girl, whatever, from fucking Oklahoma with no money, and he is goddamn P. Diddy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And we're talking about the people who know something was done to them and who have spoken out about it for every one of these. Not only are there obviously there are people who haven't spoken up, but there are also people who may be years away from like actually coming to grips with. No, actually, that was bad. That was like really fucked up what happened.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

I even thought about it as like a good thing for a while or at least like a mixed thing bag for it. But like, no, that was actually really fun. Like there's people coming to terms with that right now still. Yeah, absolutely.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

in order to keep his famous and wealthy friends happy and to sate his own desires, he also had to bring in, as you stated, all of these young women to act as party favors, right? That's how we bring, you have these radio contests. Some of them are paid sex workers. Some of them are women.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Okay, you've just gotten started in your career, you know, in the music industry or as a model, you're at a low level in it right now. Why don't you like come over to this party? You know, like, why don't you, you know, and then you get there and then you get coerced. Some of the women at these parties are paid sex workers, but many of them are like, great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Women are being poached in one way or another, right? There's a different method for all of them. And that means Diddy's not handling this himself. He has a team of people who are using different methods constantly to find women because these parties are happening constantly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

More people than work at the company Sophie and I run. Their job is just to keep young women coming to these parties. He is spending God knows how many millions of dollars a year on just that part of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Right. You have someone right ahead of you with the drugs. Yeah. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. Precious Muir, a former Playboy model, was one of the women who attended a number of his parties. She claims that he provided a car service to drive models to and from the events, and that Diddy had agents basically picking women out in public and plying them with invites. She summarized the pitch one of these guys gave her as, I host these amazing parties. Everything is taken care of.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

You don't have to worry about anything. We provide accommodation, so when you go to the Hamptons, there is a house you can stay at, which is very beautiful, very lavish, very stylish, and you don't have to worry about anything. You don't have to pay for anything. Everything is covered. At the time she started attending, Precious was new to the industry without power or connections.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Being invited to these parties seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime. You can impress these guys, make your career. And then you're just kind of, as she said, we were kind of thrown in at the deep end amongst all these people that are well established. People automatically knew that we were new faces. We were new talent and we were vulnerable. We were seen maybe as fresh meat.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Oh, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

If you're in entertainment, I can say when I was new in my career, if I had had to do something horrible for myself and my brain and body in order to

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

get a break as a writer when I was a baby writer right like I thought about it like I was like yeah I'll do anything right like that's where your head is if you're trying to break in and that's what that's why so much bad stuff happens right like it's the hardest I mean

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. And the problem is that there's just so many people who don't have that line. Right. Of course.

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Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So because of the nature of how the lawsuits are coming out over this, I have no choice but to jump around. So I'm just going to stay right now. In February of 2024, a record producer named Rodney Jones Jr. filed a federal complaint against Sean, accusing him of running a human trafficking network to stalk his parties with women and girls from a write up in Vulture.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

According to Jones, as he alleges in the complaint, Combs reached out to Jones in 2022 to help him produce songs, but Jones claims the work Combs required of him went far beyond producing music. He claims in the lawsuit that he was tasked with procuring drugs and soliciting sex workers to perform sex acts to the pleasure of Mr. Combs.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Jones alleges that Combs also required him to tape these sex acts, and that Combs would often threaten to inflict bodily harm on him if he did not comply with his demands. Jones alleged in his complaint that Combs kept specific bottles of alcohol designated for females on hand, and, according to Mr. Jones, Mr. Combs forced all the women to drink laced De Leon liquor.

Behind the Bastards

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Upon information and belief, Mr. Combs laced the liquor with ecstasy, the lawsuit claims. He also accuses Combs of sexual harassment and assault for allegedly grabbing him without his consent and forcing him to work while Combs paraded around naked. Jones also alleges that Combs once left him alone in a makeshift studio on a yacht with Cuba Gooding Jr.

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What else is going on in your life, Cuba?

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So fucked up.

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If you've ever wondered, like we all did for a period of time, after he won that Oscar, why hasn't he been in things? Because he's a fucking monster.

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Because he's a fucking monster.

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Radio?

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And to be honest, he played O.J. in the TV show where Ross from Friends plays Rocky.

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One of my favorite things.

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is a horrible human being he did horrible things and somehow knocks it out of the park as OJ knocks it out of the park no but like has managed to evade all of this puppy like shit hopefully that's coming to an end now because stuff about him more stuff is coming out about him you know we could talk more about Cuba but I think we've made our point he'll get his own episode give it time yeah

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Combs's lawyers have denied the allegations and described Jones as a con man. Subsequent allegations and the federal indictment against Combs seem to back up a number of the allegations made by Jones.

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A few months before Jones filed that complaint in February, in December of 2023, a Jane Doe filed a lawsuit in Manhattan alleging that she was gang raped and trafficked by Combs and bad boy records president Harvey Pierre when she was in the 11th grade. These allegations comport with the scenario Precious Mirror described in her interview with The Mirror.

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Apparently, Pierre met this 11th grader at a lounge in Detroit and used Diddy's name to draw her in. Combs then approached and told her, hey, you're welcome on my private jet, which was flying to his studio. Once they were there, she was given lots of drugs and, quote, gang raped by Combs, Pierre, and an unknown third person. There are a lot of other hideous details that I'm leaving out.

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We don't... You know, I guess the term gang rape. Make no mistake.

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He's getting his episode soon, too. Don't you worry.

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Turns out we almost always do.

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On a smaller scale, just being, you know, I've been in comedy. I was a Jace. I was never a big stand up guy, but like I did a little and a lot of my friends did. I went out to regular events as I was employed in comedy. And like you just get told by people, you meet someone and they'll be like, oh, we should hang out. And then someone else will be like, don't hang out with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Don't hang out with that guy. It's usually a woman that you work with who will say, like, that guy's a piece of shit. You don't want to know him. That guy's a piece of shit. You don't want to know him. That guy's a piece, like, you know.

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Yeah, you don't want to be near that fucker.

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Fucking Oklahoma, right? And getting flown in.

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In 2006, Diddy's longtime partner, Kim Porter, gave birth to twins. It was the same year that a friend gave birth to his daughter Chance. Kim considered this a betrayal and broke things off with Diddy. While all this was going on, he was also starting a quote unquote relationship with a young woman named Cassandra Ventura.

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He had signed her to his label at age 19 and started a sexual relationship with her shortly thereafter. He was 37 at the time. It was Cassandra's allegations against him that would eventually open the floodgates of legal consequences for Diddy. But before we get to that, I'm going to quote from The Independent summarizing just a series of his trials in the mid aughts.

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Eight months after his 2014 Howard commencement speech, TMZ reported that he punched Drake in a Miami nightclub because of a feud over a song, which in a rare case for these episodes, points for Diddy on that. Six months later, he was arrested and charged in California with three counts of assault with a deadly weapon.

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One count of making terrorist threats and one count of battery after allegedly attacking one of his son's football coaches at UCLA. The assault reportedly involved a kettlebell, but prosecutors ultimately decided not to pursue felony charges.

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You gotta do something real bad for me to be on the side of a football coach, guys. Jesus Christ. Anyway, speaking of football coaches, coach yourself on over to this podcast. Sorry, I don't know why I did that. You were almost there. We've been at this a while.

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It's your go-to for all things queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. This is the podcast where hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso dive deep into gay culture with unfiltered conversations, hilarious guest chats, and of course, lots of sex-positive moments.

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Now the holidays are upon us, and let's be real, sometimes Mom's house is just not an option for some holiday fun. So, Gabe and Chris are back for a very special episode where they'll be catching up on everything they've been up to since Season 1 wrapped, and, more importantly, answering the age-old question, Where do you hook up when family's around?

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They'll chat with special guests and dive into creating queer spaces during the holidays. Whether it's a Friendsgiving or a holiday sex party, they're covering it all. Plus, Gabe and Chris hit the streets to ask why the night before Thanksgiving is known as the horniest night of the year. Tune in to the Sniffies Cruising Confessions holiday special, sponsored by Gilead.

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Out now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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And we're back and finishing up the epic tale. The epic tale of Gilgamesh and P. Diddy.

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We are. We're going to get into the Cassie stuff now. Cassie, who was for a while, is in Kidu. If we're doing the Gilgamesh, anyway, whatever. Let's talk Cassandra. After his split from Kim Porter, she was the woman largely seen as Diddy's public partner, right? She was a singer and a model in her own right.

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Yeah, very talented. The two are generally depicted in media as like a power couple, right? Sure. In a civil lawsuit filed earlier this year, Miss Ventura claims that from the beginning, Sean used his wealth and power to force her into a, quote, manipulative and coercive romantic and sexual relationship.

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He assaulted her constantly, beating and kicking her and regularly leaving, quote, black eyes, bruises and blood. Cassandra describes his freak-offs in her lawsuit and alleged that he would often secretly film the days of debauchery with his famous friends.

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The videotapes doubled as fuel for extortion if anyone crossed him, which is part of why his social circle was so loyal and so quiet for so long, right? He has videos of them doing the crimes. Again, the movie Don't Blink really does cover a lot of this. And as a bonus, has Christian Slater, and that's never a bad time.

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fucking great. I love him, dude. I love that guy.

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Now, by the time Justin's opened, Sean had split from Justin's mother to date a model named Kim Porter, who gave him his second son. In 1998, he launched a fashion label, Sean John. Sean John. Sean John.

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Yes, at age 47. That hasn't happened yet, though.

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The kid cut it. Yes.

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Yes.

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That was crazy, man. Speaking of which, let's talk about the Kid Cudi story because you hear about this first in 2012. Gossip blogs report that Cassie, who was dating Kid Cudi at the time, and Diddy had had a fight in a club. And now in the lawsuit, Cassie claims that Diddy, quote, blew up a man's car after he learned he was romantically interested in Ventura. And here's my favorite quote.

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This is from the Salon.com article. The New York Times said through a spokesperson that Kid Cudi confirmed Cassie's account that his car exploded in his driveway. This is all true, he said. Oh, my God. Yeah, just a car explosion.

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Yeah, I don't know anything about him, but he's cool and he has one less car than he would otherwise have. We can say that for sure. So true, Robert.

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From the New York Times, quote, Cassie in her lawsuit said that Mr. Combs directed frequent freak offs at high end hotels around the country, directing her at the events to pour excessive amounts of oil on herself and tell her where to touch the prostitutes while he filmed and masturbated. We're not going to like go into a ton of detail about the massive amount of baby oil, but there's a lot of it.

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Disgusting. Some of it's drugged. Disgusting.

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The only reason I can think of to drug it is because you are getting it inside people in their mucus membranes.

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Like fucking MDMA or whatever isn't going to absorb it It's not a bodily. Yeah, exactly. In someone's vagina. And so, again, like it's hideous, right? Like we don't need to belabor that point. I think you get it right. Cassie says in her lawsuit, he treated the forced encounter as a personal art project, adjusting the candles he used for lighting to frame the videos that he took.

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Yeah. I wonder if he and Epstein ever partied. They certainly had the opportunity.

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Yeah, yeah. In 2018, Kim Porter passes away. The cause of death was initially listed as deferred, but it was later confirmed that she died of pneumonia. Right. And there's a lot of conspiracy theories. It would be remiss to not conspiracy talk it.

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We can say markedly more successful than his restaurant. Absolutely.

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People do just die sometimes. Yes.

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But yeah, again, people have also said maybe that death should be looked into and probably not a bad idea. Take a look. Take a look. JFK's head just exploded. I don't know if you know that. He just did that. Presidents just do that sometimes. Sometimes. It's a pre-existing condition. Pre-existing. In 2017, Diddy changed his name yet again. He told the world he would now go by Love or Brother Love.

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Oh really?

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He legally changes his name because love is his legal middle name. He tells Vanity Fair at the time, love is a mission. I feel like that's one of the biggest missions that will actually shift things. But besides that, we, the world, is different. We have the internet. We have the power. We have a culture. I have us on a five-year plan. First off, fucking talking like Stalin there.

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Second, that was more than five years ago. How'd the plan work out, Diddy? Yeah, yeah. A little more loving? Did you fix it? Nailed it.

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Fucking Joseph Diddy Beria. Fucking hell. Now, during this period, Diddy's public image remained mostly benign.

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Oh, OK. And his adopted son, who is older, named Quincy. Sure. Interesting, fascinating name. Now, that year, the year that he starts Sean John, he is nominated for five Grammys. If you want to know what a Grammy looks like, just look behind Will and Tua's right on camera.

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Yes, he did. It happens with famous people. You see it with Elon Musk and X. Just name your kids something else. I don't care what you name your kids. What is wrong with Steven, man? Albert. Hans. Why we got to be weird about everything? Yeah.

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Now, in articles from the time he was vetted as a genius producer and interviewer seemed happy to ignore the numerous assault allegations that, you know, were kind of in the shadows, but not too shadowy to have found. And the very public fact that he had definitely killed people through negligence and had them murdered. He even managed to avoid Me Too entirely.

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In fact, in that interview, he tells Vanity Fair the movement inspired him and, quote, showed me you can get maximum change. God damn it.

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Dodge that bullet. Clearly it's clean sailing from here on out.

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Yeah. Aubrey O'Day comes out for years, like at least a couple of years saying, I don't think she sees or has evidence. And obviously you don't want to casually before all this breaks, call him a sexual. He has a lot of money.

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She did everything she could.

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Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the most direct things she said in 2022 in an interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, she said that Diddy had fired her because she, quote, wasn't willing to do what was expected, not talent wise, but in other areas. Right. Right. Brutal. Brutal, brutal, brutal. Very clear what that means. Yeah. And here's another quote from an article.

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Again, this is before everything breaks and varieties is 2019 called Aubrey O'Day is still recovering from making the band PTSD and making the reality show that all of them suffered so much.

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Puff is a very difficult person to work with. Everything had to be perfect. I remember times where he looked at my toenails and was like, what is your third toenail doing? Go get that shit fixed before you walk into a room. Or we would be in rehearsals performing an hour and a half set over and over. Bitch, you get your toenails corrected or I will fucking end you. Yeah.

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I would walk in for five minutes with a camera and say, Aubrey, why are you sweating? You look like a wet dog. You're the hot one. So you think anyone wants to see that? And again, this is all pretty minor next to all the horrible sex jokes, but he's a dick too.

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You got it fucking backlit. Was the first thing you did with that take a shot out of it? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

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Yep. Yep, absolutely. So about five years after saying that he was inspired by me, too, in that article for Vanity Fair, Cassandra came forward with her lawsuit and she was joined very quickly in a flood of lawsuits. Not all of the people charging Sean with sexual assault are women.

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Go back in time and just have, like, about 14 shots. Yeah. So the late 1990s is an era in which bad boy records is growing by leaps and bounds and Diddy is getting rich as fuck. We are talking the insane pile, the cash pile so large that your only option is to either get really into cocaine or start a series of ill-conceived small businesses.

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We have mostly focused on that, but I want to be very clear that he is alleged of assaulting men, too, not just through Cuba. One man currently incarcerated in Michigan for kidnapping and criminal sexual conduct himself. says that Diddy drugged and raped him in Detroit in 1997.

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A judgment was briefly issued on that case, but Diddy's lawyers, because they hadn't appeared in court, unclear to me what happened, you know, but like that's not the only allegation of him abusing a man too, right? I just want to be clear about that. There's just less of it. Yeah.

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Yeah. So also true.

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And he's got famous friends who are gay and creeps. Yeah.

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You know. So there are so many of these allegations that we we're not going to cover more of them. Right. We've done it.

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I think this gives you a pretty good understanding of him. And the fact that I've cut out allegations, which I've cut out like two for every one I've included, says nothing about the legitimacy of those. It's just a space thing. I should say a bit here about Christina Coram, K-H-O-R-R-A-M. She was Combs' chief of staff and is a co-defendant in the Jones lawsuit.

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We talked about the lady from Oklahoma who was like brought into a party and drugged and possibly sexually assaulted and then called by a woman afterwards and threatened. I think there's a decent chance that was Christina Coram. Jones claims that Coram bought a lot of the drugs and actually handled the booking and paying of sex workers for Combs' parties. She was his Gillen Maxwell, in other words.

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And also it's worth noting, again, I keep bringing up that movie that I didn't appreciate as much until this all came out, Link Twice. The woman who is, there's like an older woman who is like the creepy sex CEOs, like fixer. And she's Christina Cora. That's who, I didn't realize how directed was.

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Yeah. And that's Christina Coram in this story. We'll see what happens to her. Sean Huffy Combs was arrested on September 16th, 2024, several months after the FBI raided his L.A. mansion and seized firearms, illegal drugs and more than a thousand bottles of baby oil. Combs has denied all charges and pled not guilty.

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More recently, a judge declined to set bail for him, noting that he still posed a danger to the community.

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Yeah.

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We really run. And that'll save us, you know, and our reputations. We'll die historic, you know, in a gunfight with the FDA. That's all I want, man. That's the way to go down.

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And every one of those FDA agents has got to remember us forever. All of their children. All of their children's children. They'll never forget. Yeah. Now, we're going to have to start selling supplements first, Will. Oh, my God.

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You know, I know that guy. So funny. Yep. Yep. So this has been Behind the Bastards, a podcast about a guy I almost named a goat for. It has been a fantastic time.

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Cool. That's the podcast experience. I hope you get home or drunk or something too, buddy. And Godspeed.

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No, this is to take shots out of because it's funny. And you're not going to get content like this from the Pod Save America guys. You're not getting it from the Bulwark. You're not getting it from Last Podcast on the left. Only behind the bastards.

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You might get this on Joe Rogan. You would get this on Joe Rogan.

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You would be trying to convince my listeners to, I don't know, inject bleach into their assholes in order to build muscle mass.

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Lots of silkworms.

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I'd be trying. Well, I do actually think you should eat more elk. It's delicious. Yeah, elk is delicious. You're right. It's very tasty. Now, so that year, the same year he opened Sean John, he gets nominated for five Grammys. Bad Boy pulls in $130 million in revenue.

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That is 98. Oh, 98.

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That I don't know. I could have looked that up, but I'm a hack and a fraud. Now, from this point forward in the story, Sean has infinite money, right? Which he still does, basically. Now, as I noted last episode, he'd always had a knack for throwing huge media-driven parties. And now that he was actually a major celebrity himself, he kicked things up several notches.

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1998 is also the year of his first white party. These were the events where he'd invite piles of celebrities to his mansion in the Hamptons for what inevitably became the big event of the summer. And part of it is he becomes like the first black guy to move into this very rich white neighborhood.

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The white parties are in part how he kind of makes his neighbors cool with him is like, hey, you're some like lame bank CEO. You can be at this party with these cool people.

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Yeah. And everyone wears white because Diddy thought he looked good in white. And to be honest, like, I don't want to be complimenting the man, but he doesn't look bad. That's not a bad look for him. That's not a bad look for him.

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Yeah.

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Well, part of what I love is you can really see the whole, like, he is, you know, part of the point of these parties is for, like, people who are rich but not very cool to get to feel cool. Yeah. Some of the people below him, like that guy in the front, like they're just wearing white T-shirts. You don't look like a rap star.

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Like you get this wild mix of like beautiful people and also sometimes beautiful people looking just like normal weirdos at a party. But which I always think is really interesting. You've got like part of it is because these first white parties are from the era before. Like there's no social media, so there's no social media filters anymore. Photoshop tools aren't as easy to use.

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It's Behind the Bastards, a podcast hosted by a man who is legally a judge and his friend Greasy Will, who is legally Greasy Will. Legally not allowed to drive anymore. I think...

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So you get a lot of shots of famous people actually looking like normal people at a party. Like here's Leo DiCaprio and some other dudes drinking champagne, smoking cigarettes and like not particularly looking like they're crazy rich and famous.

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Yeah. Yeah. And then Sophie's going to show you next. Regis Philbin. Yeah, there's a photo of Regis Philbin, and I can only describe the look on his face. He looks like he is smiling like the devil, like you would cast him in needful things. He is selling you a cursed Victrola. That's how Regis looks in this photo.

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And there's a couple other middle-aged white dudes in there, one of whom is grabbing a young woman's arm in a way that I would say looks kind of off-putting to me, but I don't know what was going on.

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Diddy I'm sure does both actually. I had two choices. I was going to sit in that failure.

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It's kind of grainy. All of these people are rich. Some of them are famous. I don't think that bald guy got famous for being a hip hop star.

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And the people being sex trafficked. God, look at Regis.

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He's smiling like the devil.

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You can see both of my hands. I ain't fucking up this... What was it? Was it he wants to be a millionaire at this point?

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Yeah, that's going to be a fascinating shade above that crowd there. Everyone's going to have an aura that looks like the drink of the guy on the left, which is red.

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There are definitely, especially at the end, at the after parties, the night parts, which not everyone stays for. There are definitely some sex crimes here. These are not the ditty parties where most of the sex trafficking crimes are happening.

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There's a reason for it. The white parties are his PR. This is where he goes to.

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legitimacy into the black community as well right right and that is the point of these and so these are largely less sketchy events for that reason and it is his he has another kind of party with another name that we'll be talking about that is where most of it i'm not saying like there's no sex crimes happening here there's definitely drugs but the fact that someone was at a white party doesn't mean that they committed sex crimes yeah

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So I'm not saying Regis Philbin is a sex pest. I don't know Regis. Maybe there have been allegations against him. If so, then I guess I am, but I don't know that. But these are his show parties, and he's a lot more careful about what happens here. The other parties, the parties you have heard stories about with the baby oil and the sex crimes, are what he called his freak-off parties.

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Like a dance-off, but, you know, with your freak.

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Yeah.

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They're dark. These are the sex crime parties. If someone went to a freak-off, you should assume they did some bad stuff.

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He steps out of the darkness to launch a restaurant called Justin. This is named after his oldest son. He starts the first Justin in New York City in 1997, and he franchises it out to Atlanta the following year. The New York location shuts down after about a decade. Sean claims because he wanted to find a larger location, but he just never opens a new one. I think it just...

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Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

And another big part of it is because there's different gradients of cases. A lot of these people are like, well, yeah, I said yes and I agreed and nobody threatened me. But also I was there because I had just gotten started in this industry and I'm in front of the guy who could make my career. And like, I didn't think I had any other op. Like, these are also some of the things that are happening.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

It was the night. 2000s.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Probably fine for 12 year old Justin Bieber to be at Diddy's house. Who am I to judge? Who are we to judge? We should have judged. Yeah, we should have judged. At the White Party, the most intense photo I've seen is Sean pouring champagne over what the New York Post describes as two unidentified near-naked women. It doesn't look nearly as sketchy as they describe it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

The Post and a lot of other tabloid coverage of these events does tend towards sensationalism about the wrong things. For example, this piece from September. Inside, Sean Diddy Combs' Hampton sex parties featuring gay rappers who were high on ketamine. And like, you and I have both been to parties with gay rappers high on ketamine. That's not the problem. Yeah, not at all.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

That some gay rappers are doing ketamine. That's not what's the issue here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Yeah, those gay rappers probably not committing sex crimes. Not at all.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: P. Diddy: A Life in Crimes

No, no, because he's not again. He's not stupid. That's why he got away with this for so long. Now, I'm not sure how seriously to take this post article, which has its source as just one anonymous Coke dealer, which, again, not necessarily the most credible people on the planet. But here's a quote.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So, that's Andrew Tate.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, I mean, you see what he's kind of going for there is like, I don't, I'm the most emotionally controlled. You can't like affect me. Yeah. Yeah, he's doing kind of a version of the thing he's going to be doing. But obviously he gets kicked off the show very quickly. I think he's on it for literally like a week.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

The claim is that he's kicked off the show because this video of him whipping this woman gets leaked out, right? And that, like, that's why they kick him off. There's debate about this within the Big Brother fandom. I went through the Big Brother fandom wiki because I wanted to see how are the— How were the bro stans responding to Andrew Tate? How did they feel about him?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And they note this, quote, Andrew himself and many other fans believe that is an incorrect reason as to why he was ejected. Andrew believes he was removed as a result after unaired altercations with other housemates.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And it's interesting that he would admit that because he's basically saying they thought I was too violent and dangerous and didn't want me to hurt somebody and get the show in trouble, so they kicked me off, which I actually think might be possible. I am going to say...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Andrew may not be incorrect there, because if I if I'm big brother and I see the way this guy interacts with people and his background, I might be like, we may want to get this motherfucker off the show. He seems like a violent psychopath.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, it's also very likely that they just saw that sketchy video and were like, we don't need this. Big Brother doesn't need this PR.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I certainly wouldn't call him famous. He was, you know, a semi prominent within the UK, semi prominent, uh, fighting sports star. He'd done a little bit of MMA too. Um, and he was a semi prominent and he had like, you know, I think in the tens of thousands, maybe even like a couple of hundred thousand followers on Instagram. Um, so he's not a nobody, but he's not a celebrity, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Like he's the he's the level of celebrity that you you pick to be on a Big Brother show. Right. Yeah. Now, as with so many claims about this guy, obviously, like I'm not going to say that the Big Brother wiki fandom wiki is a great source, but I did read through it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And I think it's worth reading to you the biography that the Big Brother fandom wiki gives for Tate, because I believe it's it's accurate to the kind of stuff that Tate bragged about in his Big Brother biography.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Here's his biography. Andrew is a member of Mensa.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Folks who are not on the social media should note that people pointed out the Iowa Writers Workshop was apparently started by the CIA, which is very funny in terms of Sophie being right about it being shady. Although I will say Robert Bly does not seem to have taken to the CIA's propaganda line because he was deeply anti-war. But I guess, yeah, I guess we'll see. Whatever.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Feel about that however you want.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

That is more of a red flag than the CIA writing program. I'm just going to say that right now. Text Jamie about this. Does Jamie know that Andrew Tate was in Mensa?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I'm going to continue Andrew's bio from the Big Brother Wiki. Andrew is a four-time world kickboxing champion. His brother, who Andrew claims is his only true friend, trades him. What a sad sentence. Andrew believes that a man should be able to sleep with as many women as he wants, but that does not apply to women. So that's basically what you'd expect from Mr. Tate, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah. What an incredible guy. So the year after his big brother failure, Donald Trump, you guys might have heard of this, becomes president of the United States. And suddenly you got fascists in the streets. You got the alt-right suddenly being a term in everybody's lexicon. And you've got this galaxy of right-wing and explicitly fascist media influencers just blowing the fuck up on social media.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah. Andrew and Tristan saw this happening, and they were like, this is how we get huge, right? This is a perfect place for us to just kind of nest like one of those wasps that lays their eggs in your eyes and then burst out. So they decide to be the wasps in, let's say, Alex Jones's eye. They start to experiment.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Social media posts bragging about their luxurious lifestyle had helped, but that kind of stuff is a dime a dozen. Now... Andrew is, unfortunately, not a dumb man, and so he observed the success of guys like Mike Cernovich, Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, and he recognized that they were all using variations of the same tactic.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

They would post something deliberately inflammatory on social media or on their own shows. They'd have some sort of guest, like, David Icke talk about lizard people or or they would go on this rant or they just do something super racist. And that would generate outrage.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And all of these liberal and centrist and left wing journalists would cover the horrifying thing that they'd said on social media, which would elevate their profile and give them free advertising.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He is using primarily Instagram, and he's going to get increasingly big on TikTok. He's one of the right-wing influencers who's probably best at TikTok. He also, though, he puts stuff on YouTube. Until he gets banned from YouTube, he has like a long kind of video blog podcast, and that's kind of where he's starting.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah. And he's, this is very conscious, right? Like he's, he's, he's, And this is where Andrew Tate is smart, right? Because intelligence is not a broad concept. It's a narrow thing. And he's very intelligent when it comes to how to build a right-wing brand online. He watches what everyone is doing and he takes the stuff that works best. And he's going to become very good at this.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

But you know who's even better at this?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

the the the the products and services that sponsor this podcast they they have you should see their right wing instagram page uh it is all right offensive what you say that but most of our ads are uh programmatic and we have no idea what they are so that could possibly be very accurate i'm excited i'm excited for the gold company to come back everybody yeah yeah buy some motherfucking gold

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Hey everybody, Robert here. First off, we are doing a rewind week because I've written two new Andrew Tate episodes, but also my birthday came recently. We took some time off, so we're going to take this week to replay the first four Tate episodes with ad breaks and stuff removed.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I also wanted to tell you Ed Zitron is in the running for a Webby for his show Better Offline, as is Molly Conger for Weird Little Guys. Please go to the Webby's, vote for them. You can find the links in the show notes along with our other links and You can also just Google Ed Citron Webby's, Molly Conger Webby's, and you will find them. Please do vote for them.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

We are back. Sophie is letting us know that Jamie Loftus, who did a podcast on Mensa, just got the news that Andrew Tate is a Mensite.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

How did she respond?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Beautiful, beautiful.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Happy to have supplied her with this information. Yeah, so Andrew starts upping his appearances on social media. He starts integrating himself into this right-wing ecosystem, throwing out offensive shit and just kind of using that to build his profile, to get him invites to be on other people's shows. And I'm going to quote from The Guardian here to talk about his rise to prominence.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

In September of 2017, he was criticized by mental health charities for saying depression isn't real. The next month, he waited in on Me Too, saying women should bear some responsibility for being raped, a view he has since repeated and which, among other incidents, led to him being barred from Twitter. The backlash won Tate work and boosted his profile.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He appeared on InfoWars, the podcast of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, was pictured with far-right YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson, and met Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower. Posting on Facebook afterwards, the Tate family support Trump fully. MAGA.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

We'll be back next week with two brand new episodes on what Tate has been up to over the last couple of years and a bunch of really fucked up information that's come up. So please enjoy these episodes, the reruns with less ads, and go vote in the Webby's.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's done it all. He's checking all the asshole boxes. Yeah, he's tic-tac-toed his way through the very worst people in our society. Jesus Christ. So both... That's gross physical intimidation of a guy who's criticized him, but also he's just doing the same thing Tommy Robinson did. So you can see at this point he's not a figure in his own right yet.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

When you are copying Tommy fucking Robinson, you have not yet ascended, right? That is one of the sadder right-wing grifters to be following in the footsteps of. So he's working on it, but he hasn't yet blown his way kind of out of the pack. All of this controversy, all of these appearances on right-wing talk shows and podcasts, did successfully elevate Tate's profile.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And he started funneling his new fans towards his new business, one with a wider appeal than webcam prostitution. He began offering a series of classes to his followers. Initially, this was sleazy pickup artist shit, classes on how to get women. The market for that is very crowded, though. Here's how Tate attempted to set himself apart from the pickup artist community—

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

from the promotional material I found for his now-defunct PhD program.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, yeah. It stands for something gross. I've forgotten. But I'm going to read you the ad copy that he wrote for this fucking thing. Andrew Tate is world champion kickboxer who owns and operates strip clubs and webcam studios. With over 75 girls working for him, he has created a system that allows you to get girls quickly, easily, and without spending money.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

unlike other pickup artists who have the odd girl here and there tate has top quality that's in caps women living with him and making him money full time this makes him more qualified than any other coach on the internet do you want to learn how to get the odd girl from a pickup artist or learn how to build an army of women who are so loyal to you that they allow you to have as many girls as you want more importantly he has a foolproof system for retaining women

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Having them do as you say and respecting you without taking up or wasting large amounts of your time. As Tate said, I don't want a 10 unless she does everything I say. It's obedience and loyalty that turns me on more than looks.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Whether you're looking to get girls, simply have your girlfriend obey every command and be fiercely loyal or learn how to live with three or four girlfriends at once as Tate does. This is the course for you.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Sophie, I don't think you're allowed to make references to Hitch. Nobody's seen Hitch.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

oi it's boston robert opening up another episode of the andrew tight podcast wow uh that was incredible i think i'm gonna try my american accent now i hope that's not offensive to anybody i'm i'm robert evans this is the first and only boston-based podcast behind the bastards so

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Oh, yeah. It was beautiful. When I found that, I did a little chef's kiss like I was cooking up some spaghetti. It was good. It was good. Now... A big part of Tate's branding, and this is the same thing, when you're an influencer, right, if you're trying to build like a cultishly loyal following, you have to use cult techniques.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And that means creating words that were not in use before you started using them, or at least repurposing words in ways that other people don't use them and getting your fans to talk that way. And one of the things, Tate knew this, and Tate also, he had paid attention to guys and Again, think back to our other cult leaders. We've got guys like Keith Raniere, who was called Vanguard.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

We've got L. Ron Hubbard, who was the Commodore. I forget what Werner Erhard went by, but we just did his episodes. And for Tate, the kind of name that he had his fans call him is Top G. And you will see this in a shitload of Zoomer TikTok videos. I want to play first a video for you of him talking to his brother about what Top G means.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Well, that's the only YouTube channel that I visit.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So, first off, it feels like he wasn't as good at chess as he says because his dad had to kick him out of a contest for crying too much. Just do keep that in mind as he makes these claims. Now, I don't believe that Andrew Tate is a competition race car driver because he has never done that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And also, by the way, again, because he makes claims like this, I went to race car Twitter to see what they said about him. Yeah, what's the vibe?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

They had a lot of weird, there were a lot of, you'll run into people making these weird niche criticisms about his supercars and how they're not the right kind of supercars to buy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

What is with this? You can't just say something super. It's an expensive car that goes fast. OK, and if you're a super car nerd and disagree, you can go to hell because I enjoyed reading and found it like enlightening reading the chess and the kickboxing subreddits. The super car people are insufferable, even the ones that don't like Andrew Tate.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Because they were like, well, no, you want this supercar, not that one. I would never. And I was like, you don't like. None of you own any of these cars. I'm sorry. I don't. You people, I don't believe.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Oh, of course. I simply don't care what you have to say about his supercars. But what I do care about is the fact that as silly as that all is, the Top G shit worked. And as evidence for this, I have just sent another link to the chat. This is a protest in Athens, Greece, where what appears to be visually several thousand adult men and a number of –

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

men who are boys marching through the streets of Athens. And I want, Sophie, I want you to just play what they're chanting.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

This was right after his arrest.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's not a, I'll say this, that's not like a tiny flash mob. There's a lot of fucking dudes in the street. There's a lot of people. There is a distressing number of men in the street.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, it is not great. So this works very well. Tate was very successful. And again, we've already covered the degree to which he's exaggerating and outright lying about his competence. But he's successful at pushing a persona of himself as hyper competent and irresistible to women. As we've already covered, a lot of what he says is objectively untrue.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

His kickboxing record was cooked, his businesses are mostly cheap scams or outright criminal enterprises. We'll get into that more in a second. But it's worth digging into first the reality behind the Andrew Tate method of picking up women. In the wake of Tate's arrest, a brave 19-year-old Romanian woman named Daria Gusa reached out to BuzzFeed.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

She told them and provided evidence that in 2020, when she was 16, Andrew Tate slid into her DMs on Instagram with a message that read, Romanian girl... Strawberry emoji, which I think is a sex thing, the strawberry emoji. I don't know. I don't know what you kids use.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

On the gram? Yes, Sophie, geez. Get with the kids. Get with the times.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

When Tate messaged her, her Instagram bio had the name of her fancy private school. And she told BuzzFeed that a number of other girls in her class had been messaged by Tate around the same time in the same way. So it seems like he was looking for basically just like filtering his responses from girls in this private school who were like 16 and then messaging a bunch of them at once.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Daria did not respond, but her friends, some of her friends did. And Tate complimented them, telling them how beautiful they were. He bragged about his wealth and he offered to take them to expensive restaurants. After a short back and forth, he would every time try to meet up with the girls. Be like, hey, we should meet up right now. Where are you? I'll come pick you up. We can go out and eat.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And I'm going to quote from BuzzFeed next. None of her friends went ahead with meeting with him, she said. And once Tate realized they weren't going to, he started to insult them. The second that girls stopped replying to him, he starts getting a bit verbally abusive, calling them ugly and stuff like that, just to get the reaction out of them and keep engaging with them, Guza said.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And that's, I think, useful to to go over because that's normal shitty guy on the Internet stuff. That is there's a billion guys doing that. There's nothing special about him. He doesn't have some sort of secret. He's not irresistible. He's just doing the same thing that like there's like there's a whole bunch of Twitter accounts that like semi professionally post posts.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

No, you see, a lot of the times we ignore the Reddit when we disagree with it. But today the subreddit's filled with Bostonians saying my accent is perfect. So I have decided to take that as a mandate to continue speaking in a Boston accent. Well, everybody, this is Behind the Bastards. It's a podcast. Bad people. Tell you all about them.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Like screen grabs of guys sliding into women's DMs all around the world doing that exact thing. Like there's nothing about his method that is special or rare. He just practices it exclusively on children. And, you know, what he's doing is he's he's I'm sure shotgunning out these requests to so many people that statistically just like with like a, you know, it's just like a numbers game. Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's like one of those like email scams. Right. Some number of people are going to like respond. It'll work on some number of people. And that's all he cares about. Right. And I do think that's important because when it comes to actual pickup artistry or whatever you want to call it, Andrew Tate is no different than every other frustrated adult male piece of shit looking to flirt with little kids.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, exactly. He is just like every other creep behind the curtain. Now, none of this, though, is public during the rise of Andrew Tate's social media profile or his main online business, which would become Hustlers University. That's what he calls this, like, series of classes and training programs that he starts to launch. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And it's the kind of thing, like, he is undeniably good at getting people. And it's mostly the people who mostly believe this image he's crafted are children, right? They are also children. They're male children. All of his victims, the women that he – the girls that he's flirting with are mostly children or extremely young adults. And the people he's trying – People without fully formed brains.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Exactly. And the people he's trying to get money from are, like – Boys from like, I'm going to say age 12 to 20. And yeah, that's that's that's who this shit works on. Now, I found an eight hour class from Hustlers University up on YouTube, which is just part one of his his. You watch that he was offering.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I sure did. I sure did. There are you can find a lot of these have been uploaded since his arrest. And there's like a hundred of them.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I'm sweeping. I'm cleaning. Incredible. I'm standing naked doing planks in my living room floor. Normal stuff.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Oh, yeah. That's the only place I do it. So, yeah, I felt like I had to watch through these because Tate claims at the start that these do contain his entire understanding of business and how to make money. I figured watching it would give me some insight into the soul of the man himself. And boy, howdy, did it ever.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So we're going to go into that in a little bit. But first, you know what we're going to go into?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It sure is an ad break. It's some products, some services, the odd product and service. We're going to go into that. I'm going to do my hustle before we introduce you all to Hustlers University.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, well, welcome to the potty, pal. We are back. Back.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Hustlers University starts out pretty boring. He gives his definition of a business, which is a thing that money goes into, right? That's the only thing a business is.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Okay. Thank you, Andrew. Well, it's interesting because- Since a business is only something money goes into, if you are putting money into startup costs, if you're putting money into R&D, if you're paying for things like PR, that is all a waste of time, right? Because that's spending money. A business only takes money in. Now, you may be saying, well, but you have to spend money to make money.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

That's like a thing everybody knows about business. That's just the way that it works, right? Andrew says no. And in order to explain what a fool you are, he gives an example of a good business that he had an idea for. And this first example of a good business is starting a website to sell makeup online. Now, he says he's adamant that like you don't need to have any makeup.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

You don't need to have a product. All you do is you make a website selling makeup and then you wait for a bunch of people to buy the makeup. And then you figure out where to get makeup with the money that they've spent on makeup that you didn't have before. And then you send it to them. Sounds like that's genius brain level business stuff.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Start a fraudulent makeup business and then buy makeup once you start getting money. I don't think that that would work in part because there's a lot of makeup that's a real company out there that people can buy from.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah. So, yeah, and I'm sure a lot of people have that question. How are you supposed to actually get cash flow started without investing, without having something to make people want to buy your makeup? And Tate has an answer for you. And that answer is child labor.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So I'm gonna play a clip from you and as an aside, during this clip when you hear him tell someone to wipe down his whiteboard, it's some random cam worker in his home, it's a young woman who like lives with him that he has doing minor chores in the background. This is the thing that he does in all of his videos.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Well, you know, Jamie is not really from Boston because she's from... Uh-oh. She's from Hwavud.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, so that seems good, right? That's a solid business idea. Have young relatives and trick them into working for you. Absolutely genius. Andrew, you are the finest business mind of our generation. Now, he follows this up with his next incredible piece of corporate advice, which I think might be of interest to some prosecutors in Romania. And I'm going to have Sophie play that one next.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Brackton. Yeah, we don't consider that Baston where I'm from, which is... I don't know the parts of Boston. Look, this this joke was always going to run into the limitation of me not knowing anything about Boston.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Oh, yeah. So because people this is an audio medium, he is like pointing and circling things on an empty whiteboard because he's forgotten that he had one of his cam workers erase everything on it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Obviously, this is terrible advice in part because if you start a business that doesn't make a profit and you did not do any of the legal things you needed to do, there's a good chance that at some point the taxman will come and say, hey, you didn't do all this shit you needed to do and we know that – You know, now you owe us a shitload of money.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And because your business failed, you owe even more because you broke a bunch of laws. That's one thing that is concerning about the advice that he's giving. Although anyone who's going to start companies using the Andrew Tate advice probably deserves to be in trouble with the IRS or whoever. So I'm not going to complain too much about it. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

The Liberty Bell. I'm from the Liberty Bell. So, yeah, that's as Boston as it gets. Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

But also, I kind of hope someone in Romania is aware of these videos because I suspect Andrew Tate did not dot the I's or cross the T's necessary to make all of his shady businesses legal in that country. He was operating casinos and strip clubs in the country once he got rich, like actual ones, not just cam ones. So, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I kind of think there's a decent chance he will wind up getting extra charges as a result of not legally operating any of his businesses. Fun thing to brag about, Andrew. So the next point he makes in this video of really just irreplaceable financial advice is use what you've got. And this is where Andrew actually gives us some context on how he started his cam business and why.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

But first, we get a little bit more child labor advocacy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I've heard that about Boston from Bostonians. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, this is behind the bastards. We are heading into, veering into part three of our epic podcast on Andrew Tate that I and all of you were cruelly forced to make because he suddenly, very suddenly became extremely relevant. Um.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Oh, wait. Just wait.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah. And what's going on here, there's two things going on here. Right. And this is always the case with him. It's the case with like his the thing, the brags, the lies he makes about his background. It's true. He's pretty good at chess. It's true. His dad was very good at chess. It's true that he was a decent kickboxer.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And then he kind of uses that core of truth and then wraps a bunch of lies around it in order to make this persona. It is true that a lot of people with small businesses use their families for free labor. Right. There's like laws in the United States where kids normally there's a lot of restrictions on how they can work unless it's like a family owned business. Right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

If you like own a corner store, you can have your 16 year old work it and they're not subject to all of the restrictions that That like 7-Eleven would be if they tried to hire a 16 year old. Right. Like there's some differences there. I'm not saying, by the way, that that's good or bad. I'm just that's the way that it works. This is pretty normalized.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

What he is saying is like taking that idea and saying, no, no, no. What you should be doing is getting all of these people who are emotionally invested in you and love you. and using them as free labor to make yourself rich, right? Exactly. And what he's doing there is he's taking the logic of a multilevel marketing company.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

All of these like Avon kind of fucking bullshit companies where they – or these different like essential oil companies that we've talked about for years on the show where like all rely on, hey, your friends need this makeup. Your friends need these supplements. Your friends need this. shitty, low-quality leggings.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And you can make a lot of money getting them to sell and getting them in your upline. That's one of the things that's ruined the social internet. Facebook has become a place where people you knew 15 years ago get in touch pretending to be your friend and then try to get you to become a doTERRA representative or some shit. He's using this logic because he knows that it works. But instead of

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And all of this, all of our accents, all of our crosstalk is an attempt to distract ourselves from the fact that we unfortunately have to learn a lot more about Andrew Tate. And Sophie, Ian, I know I'm about to force a terrible, terrible quantity of Andrew Tate videos on you. You're going to see more of him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

The thing that is obviously shady and that people have kind of more defenses built up around, which is like, hey, try to get your family to like buy into this business. What he's saying is like, no, no, get him to work for you, you know, offer them like a share of profits or something to which obviously, you know, and he goes into later detail about how you can fuck them over on that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

But he's he's he's taking this thing that has been a part of American grift culture for forever. And he's he's twisting it in a way that is, I think, kind of it is it is new. And this is part of like the thing that he does that's intelligent. But it's also just very transparently awful and evil.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

extremely predatory super and speaking of extremely predatory I want to I want to dig into the business genius of Andrew Tate here because it is worth going into kind of the inevitable sort of conclusions you have to make based off of what he's saying in the example that he's given that 15 year old kid has no reason to give you the money that he's making mowing lawns right because he's doing all of the work yeah

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

To advertise and to actually mow. You only get your percentage. He does mention earlier like one of your assets is being strong. The only ways to get a percentage from him are either literally just the threat of violence or gaslighting, making him think that like he's going to make more money than he is and that you won't be making as much money as you are from his labor.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And this is true of the cam girls, too. His only actual advice boils down to various forms of robbery. And this is particularly clear when he starts talking about the profit making potential of Uber, which is already exploitative. But Andrew Tate, I'm going to play this next clip to you. This is him talking about how to use Uber in your own business to make money via child labor.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Hi, Ian Johnson, our editor. Hey, guys.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Stupid and trusting. He assumes that like, hey, your cousins probably trust you. Lie in order to rob them. Make them work for you for basically nothing and steal the money they make.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

children yeah those are his business oh don't forget the makeup company that does not sell makeup um of course he is he is forget um the finest capitalistic mind of a generation maybe she's born with it maybe it doesn't exist maybe it's not actually makeup It's so funny that people talk about how smart this guy is. He's not smart!

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He changed my... We'll get into why people talk about him changing their lives and all this shit. Oh, I can't wait for that. At the end of the day, what he's offering here is like, hey, rob your friends and family. It's the same MLM thing, but he has... And this is, I think...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Credit seems like a weird way to say it, but it is needful to acknowledge this is an innovation, the way in which he is telling people to rob their friends and family in order to try to get rich. And it won't work for them, most of them. Obviously, I think this is what Tate does. He has his brother work for him and his cousins work for him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

If you are the right kind of psychopath, you can make money this way. It's just that even of the people who are interested in Hustler's University – Most of them are not that kind of psychopath. And so they're not going to be successful or they're just not a smart enough psychopath.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So these were it changed over time. At first, it was like a per class thing. Eventually, it's going to change to a monthly fee and obviously actual sales figures you're never going to get. But Tate makes like in the millions of dollars first. Off of this? Being intelligent in a very specific way, he decides he's going to spin this into the main business that he's going to do.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And he opts to, in 2021, relaunch Hustlers University as Hustlers University 2.0. And we're going to get into that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And he got them. And he's got them. And he's offering them. The other thing that's happening here, too, you know, we're talking around this. They're at home. They're lonely. Because of the pandemic. They're lonely. Also, the cost of living is skyrocketing. Right. And people- Especially in the UK.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

This is less the case in the US, but in the UK, where there's a lot of his fans, there's like a financial crisis hitting, right? Like things have not been great for the last year to change over in the United Kingdom, which is why it's so easy to buy things with British pounds right now. Sorry, y'all. It just is at the moment.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And so Tate is recognizing that there's a lot of young kids who are starting to come into the economy and realizing how hard it is to just tread water. And so they're desperate for anything that will give them a hope of getting out of the fucking con game that is life under capitalism.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

All of these things, all of these things are true. And what's also true is that I have watched hours of Andrew Tate. The people who live with me have been miserable because while I'm cleaning the house, I've just been putting on his eight hour long videos where he tells people how to how to hustle. My condolences.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And that's what fucking Tate is taking advantage of, is these kids who are looking for a hack to get out of the trap. And yeah, we're going to talk about what he does next and how well it fucking works. And spoilers, we'll have an appearance from Alex Jones in part four. Oh, great. The final part of this glorious series. But first, Ian, Sophie, y'all got stuffs to plugs?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, Ian.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

More like Internet Tate Machine. Sorry, that's not right at all.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Wow. You say it's free to not be an asshole, but if you consider the fact that by not putting your mom and your child cousins to work, you're leaving money on the table, it actually can be extremely expensive not to be an asshole. You can hear more on my nine-hour series. Robert, shut the fuck up. Committing crimes using your family members as Patsy's university. Do I get to plug?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Bold and heroic of you, Sophie. And I want to plug my new business course, Crime Guy University, where I teach you how to take you got a mom who's out of work. You got some young cousins. Look, you can monetize that shit through the simple, legal, easy method of getting them to sell heroin for you.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Sophie does get 80%, which is why you should listen to Sophie's 16-hour course that's called Literally Starting a Cartel. This is sponsored by our friends at the Sinaloa Cartel. Sinaloa Sophie, that's what we call her. Sinaloa Sophie, that's her nickname. Anyway. We'll be back.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, I have broken my brain and now it's time for everyone else to suffer, which could be the tagline of the show, honestly.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

We'll be back, unfortunately.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

uh so yeah let's let's let's roll into it what don't do that to people all of our money comes from doing headphones i am wearing headphones now when you're listening to eight hours of entertain no see i mean the whole reason this podcast works and the whole reason that i enjoy doing it is getting to make other people miserable after making myself miserable so if if i

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast that I just tried to introduce badly, and I then completely forgot to start recording. So I'm great. I'm so good.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I don't know. Sophie, do we have a guest? Who are we? What do we do? Where are we?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Hey, Sophie. Hi, Robert. Ian Johnson, incredible editor. Sophie, podcast infurer. Um...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It won't be the last. It will not be the last. No, it will not. Well... You know, we're talking about Andrew Emery Tate and boy, howdy. Are we talking about Andrew Emery Tate? We just finished talking about Hustlers University and we're about to get into Hustlers University 2.0 because Andrew understands branding, if nothing else. But before we get into that, I wanted to talk a little bit.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I were just hiding all of the Andrew Tate and experiencing it solo. I wouldn't enjoy it as much as like when one of my friends comes home from a long day of like teaching children at a public school and sees Andrew Tate talking about child labor on on the screen of my TV. And that's just the thing that assaults them as they attempt to de-stress from their day. I think that's beautiful, Sophie.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So obviously, while this is going on, while he's launching this series of online classes and deliberately courting controversy online by saying like fucked up shit about women to go viral. He's also constantly guesting on every right wing podcast that will have him. Um, and because of the world is the way it is.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Info Wars is the first place he's able to like really get some traction and he's going to abandon them as soon as he can. Like everybody who gets their start on Info Wars because it's a dead end. You want to, you want to escape Info Wars and get on. He's going to eventually be interviewed by like fucking Pierce Morgan and shit.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Um, but at first he, uh, he, he's reliant upon them and Alex Jones sees the potential in this guy and decides, I want to try and make Andrew a part of my business, which is the thing that, that Alex does regularly. And it leads us to this beautiful ad for the supplement line that Alex made branded based on Andrew Tate. Um, so here's an ad for Andrew Tate branded Infowars supplements.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Oh, this is a real treat for everyone.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

The switch is incredible. It is. It is. That was like a punch in the face. Here we go. This is so flawless. So did I. I thought I fucked something up.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Leading us in with like this mix of Christian conservative fear mongering and like divorce dad fear mongering. Oh my God. It's perfect. It's perfect.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

All right, that's probably enough. Yeah, no criminal record, huh, buddy?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's flawless.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Oh, yeah, let's go through that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It was...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Perspicacity, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, because he's trying to do like a Muhammad Ali thing, right? Like Muhammad Ali would always describe himself in these very florid, often like rhyming terms. But Muhammad Ali also could back up every single thing he said about himself, right? which Mr. Tate cannot. But it also doesn't matter because it's all about making the image work. So by 2021, Andrew Tate's image is working very well.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He has become one of the most popular accounts on Twitter, on Instagram. He's got a pretty prominent YouTube. He is huge on TikTok. We're talking like millions and millions of followers and combined several billion impressions just in like the top G term on TikTok and shit. And so he launches Hustlers University 2.0. So he had been selling a bunch of different classes.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Oh, everyone. Everyone, Sophie. So let's get back into it. When we left off, Andrew and Tristan Tate's webcam sex business, which was essentially just sex trafficking, had taken off. They had started making a lot of money, and they had been forced to flee the United Kingdom after committing a series of sex crimes. So they are in Romania now. Andrew Tate will...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He pairs that down and he focuses just on money-making schemes. And the gist is this. For about $50 a month, you get the classes for free and you also get let into this Discord community.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Well, sorry, you don't get the classes for free. For $50 a month, you get access to the classes and to a series of Discord rooms. Discord is like a chat service. You can do voice and text chat. And basically what he is selling is I built this community of people who have gotten rich using my tactics.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And if you pay this monthly fee, then you'll get to hang out with us and they will coach you on how to make money. And you can watch all of our videos on how to make money too.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's actually good at it. The schemes that he's – because he has like – you get to pick like one of three or four different money-making paths to go down when you join Hustler's University. It's a little like a video game. Choose your adventure. And they're all kind of boring.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Basically, you can choose to either learn how to day trade, like do stock trading, or learn how to sell cryptocurrency, or learn how to run like a copywriting mill where you're basically paying people pennies to write like – terrible, shitty fake books to take advantage of Amazon's algorithm and trick people into paying like $2 for. Um, there's also a lot of Amazon affiliate shit.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

A bunch of it involves taking advantage of like the ways that Amazon works. Uh,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And it's one of those things, if you watch YouTube and you don't have YouTube Red or whatever the fuck YouTube calls their subscription service, which I don't because I'm lazy, you get all these like shady ads from people telling you like, I'm going to teach you how to make a bunch of money off of YouTube or off of Amazon. Like, did you know that you could get rich, you know?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

creating Amazon affiliate links or with Audible or whatever. That's all he's doing. But instead of selling it as like this shady video just on how to make money using Amazon, he's giving you access to this community of distinguished men who all smoke cigars and post pictures of how much money they're making.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And because all these other guys, again, it's taking a lot of these MLM tactics where you're surrounding yourselves in this community of other men who are going to be bragging constantly that they're making money. So you feel like if I'm not making money, it's not because this video is bullshit. It's because I'm not hustling hard enough.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I'm not taking advantage of all of the great advice that I've gotten. It's a pretty clever thing to do. And he does encourage his people like post your sales, post what you're making this month. And all of that's kind of gamed and a lot of it's very scammy in the same way that like a lot of MLM stuff is where it's like, yeah, just post your raw sales. Don't tell people what your net is.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Don't tell people how much money you had to put into the business to make it work, all that good stuff. And Tate, again, is barely present on the actual Hustlers University Discord. But what he does do is when he launches this new version of the service, he spins up his media appearances and like all these different right wing podcasts and hustler culture podcasts to push the push the store.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And he also alters his branding at this point. Earlier, he'd kind of been indistinguishable from Hustlers. He'd been kind of at the nexus of pickup artist and alt-right political weirdo. But he increasingly pivots to positioning himself as kind of like a jacked and rich Jordan Peterson. And I want to play you a video that gives you an example of that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And he's pretty open about this because because after this point, he starts to get a lot more active on social media, particularly Instagram. And when he's doing these kind of like videos with his fans where he talks about how he got rich and how to get rich, he'll talk about why he moved to Romania. And his his explanation is this. Their sex crime laws are a lot looser there.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Because he likes to show you that. Like that's a big part of his, he does this in all of his, like a lot of his videos. He'll make sure that like his cleaning lady or one of his cam girls is like doing a task behind him to like make the point that he's got all these women working for him, right? Like that's a huge part of the Tate myth. But what he's doing here in this video is interesting to me.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's deliberately – he's positioning himself as the opposite of both these whiny men's rights activist guys and of the standard pickup artist crew.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And he's – all this talk about height, this talk about alphas, he is playing to incels because like he knows that very young men, mostly in their late teens, who are like angry about the fact that girls don't like them and angry about the fact that like – they don't have all of the money and success they think that they're owed. That's his business, right? That's his fucking bread and butter.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's not. This is actually a two-part con. What he's doing here is he's getting them...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He is doing, yeah, some negging and stuff, right, to get these guys riled up. But he's also – so if you remember back, I don't know if any of you read Elliot Rodgers' manifesto, Elliot Rodgers being the first incel mass shooter. Yeah. He talks a lot and he – like the entire incel community was formed initially as a reaction to pickup artistry, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

All of these guys who feel like there's something inherently wrong with their bodies that makes it impossible for them to pick up women in an unfair way or that feminism has ruined it. Roger was obsessed that because he wasn't like tall enough or white enough, right, that he was never going to – to get a girl. They initially, when they were like younger, fell into pickup artistry.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's a lot harder to get prosecuted because the government is more corrupt. And while I'm not a rapist, I wanted to go to a place with more freedom to commit sex crimes, which is something a rapist would say. And it's in fact something a rapist did say. So it was never he was never particularly good at hiding it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And when that didn't work, because none of it works very well, they became violent psychopath, like they became violent, right? Like they just they decided like, not only was the like pickup artistry a con, but all of society deserved to pay for the fact that they got conned by pickup artists. And Andrew recognizes this.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And so the first thing he's doing is he is going after the pickup artists, right? And he's going after it in a way that's going to get all these incel dudes like agitated, but is also going to play to the fact that they realize they're being conned by these people. And I think that's an interesting choice. And the other thing that he's doing, he starts by talking about how like –

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

You're not alpha if you're not tall enough, right? But he's also framing it as like these pickup artists aren't real alphas because they're not big. And it sounds at first like he's kind of going into this, it's hopeless if you're not tall, you'll never get a woman. That's actually not the claim that he's making.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I'm going to play you another clip that's kind of an extension of his message that shows – How he's talking to these incel folks after he gets through with the kind of slamming the slamming the pickup artist crew and the message that he has for the actual people being taken advantage of by the pickup artist community is kind of liberatory in a weird way.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So that right there.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Is it? But that's. This is worth really drilling into and paying attention to because this is an extremely appealing message to the kind of young men who are like on the edge of where Elliot Rodger was, right? These children and these guys, they're starting out in the world. Mostly we're talking young white teenagers, though not exclusively, but like men. And it's heartbreaking. hard out there.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Obviously, it is still easier to be a man or a white man than it is to be basically anything else. But it's not as much easier as it used to, right? And some of that's because things are less unfair than they used to be in some regards. And some of it's just because the economy's gotten worse, the world has gotten harder, a number of things. A lot of shit's gotten uglier.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Capitalism has kind of gotten more undeniably brutal, even to the And so these kids get out there and shit's not as easy. They're not getting handed the things that they're supposed to get handed. And a lot of them turn nihilistic. And the radical right has always targeted men in this age group and socioeconomic group.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Um, and these are, again, young people who recognize and some of what they're recognizing, like with Robert Bly's folks is fair. There's a degree, a lot of atomization in our society. It is not encouraged for men to have like intimate friendships with other men. It's deeply lonely.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And and spoilers, it may prove to be a bad idea to taunt the government of the country that you've moved to. Oh, by calling them corrupt and saying they don't prosecute sex crimes because it's.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Um, it's deeply competitive in a way that's really vicious and these people are suffering and the right always has, has made a lot of their early recruitments by kind of coming in and finding these men trying to make sense of their suffering and offering them an answer. Um, but while the kind of incel youth culture that has been deeply influential online is super nihilistic, Tate,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

is reaching out to these people and he's preaching to these awkward nerdy kids with social anxiety, but he's offering them a sense of hope where he's like, yeah, you're not going to be like me. Cause you're not six, three, if you're like five, seven, but if you put in the work I've put in, you can still be in that top 1%. Right. It's about taking and absorbing energy. And I have these tactics.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Your genetics are not the only thing that matters, right? You can actually overcome that with enough work and, and find a way to make money and get, you know, women, right? Like, that is actually the pitch that he's making. And for the people who are kind of adjacent to these incel communities, that's a more optimistic pitch than they've been getting from a lot of people.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Again, if you spend a lot of time on some of these incel boards, it's dudes obsessing with, like, oh, because of the, my chin is only this wide and not this wide. So it's physically impossible for a woman to love me. Or like, I have this like epicanthic eye fold or whatever, or like my nose is this size. And so I will never have sex. And like, this is a biological reality.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And what Tate's actually saying is the people telling you this are full of shit, but also like, I have a tactic for how you can, and it just involves hard work. It doesn't matter that you don't have these genetic gifts. You actually can overcome that. And...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

This is – when you start talking about Tate on any kind of open forum, right, you're going to get people coming in and saying some version of he's the only reason I'm alive.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He kept me from killing myself or like I think he's talking – and this is because as toxic as he is, finding Andrew Tate, if you are one of these young men who might have gone Elliot Rodger, might be better for you than like falling down the rabbit hole you would have fallen down before him. That's not an – necessarily an inaccurate statement.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Romania does actually have serious problems with sex trafficking, but it turns out a great way to get a government to take a problem seriously is to taunt them and say that they don't care about that problem when you become incredibly famous for committing crimes.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, exactly. And I, I, again, the point I'm making here, I am not saying that he is a net good. He's absolutely not. But when people, people who are specifically look like we're kind of in danger of falling into this incel rabbit hole, if they find Tate, that might be better for them than the road they would have gone down.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Now that's a small subset of the folks who are actually encountering his stuff. But when people make that point, it's not, there's not nothing there. And, And it's not because Tate cares about saving kids. It's because this is how to get money from them, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's all disgusting, but I also think it's really worth – understanding the degree to which he understands the online ecosystem he's feeding it, right? Right, and that's why it's so effective.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, be a top G, yeah. One of his big lines is, you don't have to be handsome if you're scary. Oh, exactly, yeah. Which means that, like, ugly dudes can get women if they're jacked. Which is, again, that's very bad. Although you could argue it's better than you should drive a car into a crowd because you'll never find love, right? So... This is why people make that argument.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's not – it doesn't mean that he's a net force for good because, spoiler, he is not. He's a terrible person, and his overall impact is a ton of harm. But on this specific community, there is an argument to be made, and that's where that argument comes from, right? Yeah, and again, the idea that, like, he shouldn't be deplatformed because he's going to save all these incels is nonsense.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's just not – coming out of nowhere, right? Because that is where his money comes from, right? That's the group of people he's decided to take advantage of. And I do think in the long run, he might wind up having just as much of a negative effect on these kids as the pickup artist had on Elliot Rodger.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It just hasn't been going on that long because eventually they're going to see none of what he says works, right? Like in the long run, it's not going to work. It's just in the short term, less nihilistic than drive your car into a crowd, although it might still end in the same place. But you know who won't? Tell kids to... Oh, boy. Sophie, just roll the ads. Ah! We are back.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So Tate is kind of... While a lot of his pitch is laser-targeted at young men going down that specific incel rabbit hole, once he kind of captures that demographic, again, he's an innovator. He starts to broaden his appeal as fast as he can because he wants to reach as many... vulnerable young men as he possibly can. And he is a cognizant person of the time that he's in.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He recognizes there's a lot of movement and there's a lot of cultural momentum behind certain left-wing ideas, including criticisms of capitalism. I actually think people don't recognize enough how superficially critical of capitalism Andrew Tate is and how much of his appeal comes from that. And to kind of exhibit that, I want to play a clip from him on the Fresh and Fit podcast,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

But that's a few years in the future because for quite a while this happens. He moves around 2015 or so. And for years, he's very successful there. And he's Instagramming as he starts to buy these supercars, as he starts, you know, hitting the wealth level that he can fly in private jets. He's putting all of these videos out.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

which he is sitting in between like eight, seven or eight women who look like they're all Instagram kind of done up in influencer type people.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It is miserable. But he's, again, that is a superficial kind of Class analysis, right? Where he's talking about billionaires all have solidarity with each other. We're all poor. And again, he's lying about this. He is a multimillionaire, possibly multi-hundreds of millions of dollars. But you see what he's doing. He recognizes everyone hates these people.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

You cannot ignore inequality and the role that it has on like why all these young men who are vulnerable to my message are suffering. So I have to fucking play to that, right? And again, he's offering this kind of – he starts with this thing that has elements of left-wing analysis to it, elements of like capitalism is a con game.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

The rich are a class and they have solidarity with each other and they're trying to keep you guys fighting so that you don't organize against them. There's pieces of left-wing analysis there. But then Tate's solution is not dismantle the system. It's not go after these guys. It's treat it like a trap you escape by getting rich and jacked, right? That's the way to – it's the same.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Again, look back to Robert Bly where he's very accurately stating here are some fucked up things capitalism is doing to men. Here are ways in which capitalism and the patriarchy is harming men. The solution is for men to like – Go out into the woods and play drums and and learn how to hunt and stuff.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's engaging in stunts designed to draw attention, like promising to pay fans $10,000 if they show him a good night out partying. The catch was that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Not the solution is for men and women to organize to make a more just society that doesn't harm us in these ways. It takes doing a version of the same thing. Like Bly, he's he's diagnosing parts of the problem. And then the thing he's selling you is here's how you personally can get out of it by doing this thing that feeds money to me. Right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's insufferable, but it works. Yeah. And obviously other people are pushing pieces of this message on young folks. But his presentation is the most polished. He is not. He is a good speaker. And I don't mean that in the you should like the way he speaks. I mean it. And he's effective at speaking and getting his message across.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He does. And if you watch him with these, um, these young men, like these other male influencers on their podcasts, he's so good at sucking energy from them. Like he actually does know how to do that. He's very good at talk, not just not even talking over them, but at making the focus of the conversation, whatever he wants it to be and making himself the person that people are focusing on. Um,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

That's a thing he knows how to do. And it's – yeah. And I think probably the smartest thing he's done in this whole process is co-opt the Matrix movies in his messaging. And that sounds very silly. The thing that Tate does is he basically – he positions the Matrix as the normal world where you like work for some company. 40 or whatever hours a week just to scrape by.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And if you're lucky, maybe buy a house someday. And the thing that Andrew tells people is that like, this is what you have to break out of, right? Not that like you have to make a more equitable system, but you have to escape the matrix like Neo does. And it's just about freeing yourself. And-

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And once he once he gets kids to accept that idea, the thing he tells them that they need to drop out of school and spend the money they would spend on college on Hustlers University. That is that is a massive part of his pitch. And again, it's not hard to see why this stuff is appealing to a lot of young kids. It's married to some of the worst misogyny imaginable, too, though.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He tells young men that, like, they should not learn how to cook. That's a waste of time. They should find a woman to cook for them. They should focus on making money. Women shouldn't be allowed to leave the house. They shouldn't have friends of their own. This is all stuff that Tate preaches to alongside the stuff that's less fucked up.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

That's where it starts coming in from. As we'll get into that. And to be honest, I'm not going to be able to give anyone a cohesive answer as to actually where all his money comes from, because he is a criminal. So but but we know a lot is coming in from the cam business at this point. Um, enough that he's like, yeah, promising to pay people 10 grand if they show him a good night out partying.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

In Tate's ideology, women being able to have their own careers and lives is also part of the matrix, right? He starts from this reasonable position. Capitalism is kind of a con job. And then he pivots to telling kids that the real con is anything that limits the ability of young men to do whatever they want in any way.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And I want to play you now a video that he made to advertise Hustlers University 2.0 because it's it's something else.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Okay, that's probably enough.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I think filmed in a way that like is meant so that they can cut it up for for tick tock more easily. You see this with like the liver king to a lot of these guys will their longer YouTube videos will have kind of a weird vibe because they're mainly filming it to cut it up for tick tock. But you see here, he's like – there's this fear of missing out. You're not doing enough.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

You've got to break free. You're in competition with everybody else. And it's interesting because when he's talking this stuff, it's extremely modern and it's almost apolitical, right? Like there was not a thing in that that is – like you could super define as like a particularly political rant. Tate is a very political guy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And when he gets into his opinions about like women shouldn't be allowed to leave the house, you realize he's actually kind of like a traditionalist religious fundamentalist, which we will be building towards. But he's smart enough that he doesn't get stuck in the traps that a lot of religious fundamentalists fall into trying to reach out to young men. He doesn't start with any of that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's stuff that kind of comes out later in some of his other rants. And and he gets this there will be moments where you can he will make these arguments about stuff like military service that actually wouldn't seem out of place if you're listening to some like left wing bread tuber going on a rant.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I want to play you this clip here because, again, it shows how much he's kind of separated himself from the traditional right wing grift sphere or at least the traditional conservative grift sphere.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

See, that's again.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Um, and the catch is he's going to like Instagram beating them up if they, if they don't show him a good time. One fan took him up on this and the video has been scrubbed from the internet, but at the end of it, Tate's like, I had a bad time. Now you have to fight me. And this dude clearly doesn't want to fight him. And is at one point like here, I have to take my watch off.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

No.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, it's these kids who grew up right after, because, like, I mean, Ian and Sophie and I, we all grew up kind of right in the wake of 9-11 and all of that, like... where the military was this like sacred, uncriticizable thing in mainstream American culture. That era is past. And it's I mean, obviously, in the UK, it was always a bit different. But like that era is well past.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And you actually you can get I mean, Trump did versions of this right when he would talk about how you're like a loser if you get injured for your country. It would always all these Democrats who are stuck in like 2006 would always get like This has to be the end for him. Look, he he said told people that like injured veterans are chumps. And it's like, no, it doesn't matter. They're perfect.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

People are perfectly willing to say that they are chumps because the this like modern conservatism, the modern right is so purely focused on. the grift and on personally sucking as much money out as you can from people around you that it doesn't matter. Tate realizes that there's no need to be ashamed of this thing.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And it can draw in folks who are like open to listening to these kind of left wing arguments. He starts to make one there where he's like, all you're doing joining the military is murdering kids in Yemen. You can find versions of that and like Marxist like influence and influence or YouTube rants and

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I think he spends a lot of time and he says he spends all of his time online like he's working. That's obvious. I think a lot of I think a lot of it is he's paying attention to what's going viral where and he's not just paying attention to what goes viral on the right. And one of the things that happened when he got arrested is you had all of these.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Left wing weirdos online guys like Vosh is the one that I remember most specifically being like, well, you know, Andrew Tate's bad, but the left needs someone like him who can speak to young men in this way. And it's like, well, all he's doing is he's he's using these he's using his bait little pieces of left wing crap. Social analysis and class analysis in order to get people on the hook.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And then he's trying to sell them on turning their 15 year old cousins into Uber drivers like that. That is all that is here. There's there's no need to replicate this. He's not actually offering people anything. He's just the thing that he's promising them rather than like the grinding application. act of trying to reform the world in a more just way.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And so like Andrew looks away and then he just bolts and runs. It's like a beat from a fucking Judd Apatow movie. And it works incredibly well on Andrew Tate because he is, we're about to get into some of the smarter stuff he did, but he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. So that's fun. 2014, I think, is the year that the Tate brothers actually became millionaires.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's promising them you can get a Lamborghini. Well, yes, that's always going to be a better pitch to a lot of people. Then if we all work hard and fight like hell, we can make the world more just. Um, but you can't, there's no, like there's no replicating what Tate's doing. Cause the only thing he's promising is a chance at like winning the lottery basically. Right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Um, that's not actually a thing you should shoot for. That's my opinion here. Um, So all of the videos that I've been playing for you, nearly all of them, come from fans who will compile clips of his various interviews and podcast appearances and put them up on social media. Since Tate has been banned from most platforms, this is the only way his content gets out.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

But more than that, it's part of a cohesive media strategy that's how he became famous in the first place. Tate built his empire knowing that this would happen. And I'm going to quote from The Guardian here. Since January, repackaged videos from interviews with Tate over the years have been attracting millions of views on TikTok, but in recent weeks, this growth has accelerated.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

In August so far alone, clips tagged with his name have been watched more than a billion times. The posts do not come from Tate himself, who does not appear to be active on the platform, but from hundreds of accounts, often using his name and photo. Run by his followers, members of Hustlers University.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Members, including boys as young as 13, are told they can earn up to $10,000 a month through lessons on crypto investing, drop shipping, and by recruiting others to Hustlers University, earning a 48% commission for each person they refer. To have the best chance of getting people to sign up, they are advised to stoke controversy to improve their chances of going viral.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

In one guide, Hustlers University students are told that attracting comments and controversy is the key to success. What you ideally want is a mix of 60-70% fans and 40-30% haters. You want arguments. You want war. And this is the thing he did that's brilliant.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Or mid 2022, there was this thing where all of these left wing influencers and liberal influencers and media people found out about Andrew Tate. And for weeks, you could not miss him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

All of these mainstream media people like Piers Morgan interviewed him. There were a couple of someone at CNN talked to him. I think like there were all these. And. All of them were condemning him. All of them were attacking him. A lot of them were making fun of him and trying to show him as a loser. All it did was make him millions of dollars.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

This is why when people were celebrating like Greta dunking on him, I was like, guys, this is how he got rich. Thankfully, he happened to get arrested after that. But like, this is how he got rich. The only reason that we're doing these episodes now is number one, I think the strategy, the whole sweep of it is important.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I wasn't willing to do something like this until I thought there was a good chance he's not getting out of fucking prison. I mean, we'll see. He might still come back to it, but I figured it was worth doing at this point.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yes, yeah, we'll have a clip from that in a sec.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And that's the thing, like he's everywhere, like his range is unbelievable. He doesn't have a tick tock and he's like the number one guy on tick tock or was for quite a while. And that's that's there's brilliance in that. This was conscious. He didn't luck into this. This didn't happen by accident.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He realized once he gets 100,000 or so people, he's like, if you've got 100,000 people in your Discord thing following you and you can get them all posting – you can get 50,000, 60,000 people a day posting clip mashups of your interviews – Some of that's going to go viral. It's going to be – and it's going to go fucking – and the algorithm will help carry you.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And again, he – part of this, he didn't come up – like this is in part based on the fact that he pays attention to what's been happening. So we notice is Alex Jones has guys like Kanye on because he knows that they're going to do provocative racist shit that the media will cover and that'll – Get his name trending, even though he's not on social media.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I found a compilation of Instagram footage from that time and a YouTube channel called The Tate Pill online. Oh, I know. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's amazing. Let me breathe in your sorrow, Sophie. That fuels me. Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He observes this, and then he goes more proactively after it, right? What Tate's done is he's taken the logic and the sense of personal investment that you get in a pyramid scheme or an MLM, and he's given his followers a vested financial interest in getting his content trending around the world. And this worked incredibly well.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

The sudden rush of attention Tate's stuff got in 21 and 2022 drove tens of thousands of mostly very young men to Hustler's University and the War Room, which is his even more exclusive discord that costs $5,000 a month or $5,000 total to join. Now, both platforms have strict requirements for their membership.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

If you pay five grand to join the war room, you're warned ahead of time that you could be banned for any reason, costing you five grand if you displease Andrew Tate. So you're going to be invested in keeping him happy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And he's like, well, if you weren't a failure, you would have made that money already using the skills you'd learned here. And what they do if you if you miss a month of payments on Hustlers University, you're out, baby.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

No, you're not. You're not. You're not. You are siloed off to a separate discord where the only thing posted in there is screen grabs of the other members profits.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah. And I'm going to continue with a quote from that Guardian investigation. Yeah. In one video posted from an account with Tate's name and face, he describes matter-of-factly how he expects his girlfriends to behave. "'I inflict, I expect, absolute loyalty from my woman,' he says. "'I ain't having my chicks talking to other dudes, liking other dudes. "'My chicks don't go to the club without me.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

"'They are at home.'" This tactic has worked extremely well, and the way that social media functions has ensured that all the hate Tate receives does nothing but make his brand stronger. In mid-2021, basically every liberal and lefty – yeah, I already talked about this, but yeah. After he gets kicked off of social media, subscriptions to Hustlers University only increase.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Screenshots posted online showed that Hustlers University 2.0 had about 12,000 subscribers in March of 2022 when kind of everybody started attacking Andrew Tate. By July, it had 77,000 subscribers. And at the start of August, there were 129,000 followers. By the end of August, he starts to get even more media attention. And his affiliate program that incentivized subscribers gets discontinued.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

which costs him a bunch of people. So like near the end of that month, he goes down by like 25,000 or so. But that's a temporary loss because by September, he's back up to 160,000 subscribers. In October, BuzzFeed observed more than 221,000 users in his Discord server, which is Hustlers University 2.0.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah. See that, that was the plan all along. Get you to miss the Boston. Um, this Instagram footage of his like first year as a millionaire, it's all shots of him driving expensive supercars of the brothers partying of piles of cash inside of vehicles. And like, there's a lot of videos of piles of cash of women, like cleaning for him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Since all of those people were paying $49.99 a month, that means he was making $11 million in October alone just from his Discord.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's already told you you shouldn't pay taxes on your shit. Break the law, right? Solid point, Ian. Now, I think it's important to see the way a lot of young men react to and imitate Tate because it could be easy to dismiss him as just another weirdo right wing guy online if you don't see that. So I'm going to play you a clip. This is of some kid. I think they're 18. This is their TikTok.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Watch this. Pay attention to his mannerisms. You've all seen enough Andrew Tate now to recognize Tate.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Right down to like the facial expressions and stuff.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, and he's doing like the term brokey is one that evolved within the Tate community. Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's insane. That's, like, the thing, by the way, Brokey is, like, that's what they tell you, Tate people tell you, like, call your teachers that. Tell, like, the adults around you who tell you not to obsess with Andrew Tate-style hustlers, Brokeys, because they're not multimillionaires, so they're losers.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

If you argue with these people online, the question they're told to ask you is, what color is your Bugatti? By the way, the color of Andrew Tate's Bugatti now is he doesn't have one because it's been confiscated by the Romanian government. Right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

But this – again, you see why this is like – I mean just for a little bit of like personal context, when I was 19, 18, 19, like I started working and it sucks. Like working for minimum wage and trying to afford an apartment was a lot easier 15, 16 years ago when I was doing it. But like it still sucked ass. And the thing that I wanted more than anything was to like –

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

figure out some job that would let me work from home doing something that wasn't miserable, which is like how I started my career in like tech journalism and shit. And like, that was my, my sole motivation was to not have to spend 40 to 60 hours a week being miserable in an office in like a for someone else's profit. I didn't want to have to do that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's also really obsessed with showing like servants cleaning up for him while he does his videos. Um, But Tate's overall image, the way he presents himself, is quite different at this point. In one shot, we see him with a bunch of young women outside of a hotel or something. He's got a full head of hair, and he's wearing like a pink polo shirt and shorts.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And like, I get how powerful a motivator that is. And there's, again, this kid that we just saw, like part of what he's saying is like these teachers who tell you to study for your degree, that's not going to help you. And for a lot of people, he's right. I know a shitload of people who got a fucking college degree and it did nothing but lock them into debt.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

There's, there's a reason why kids are vulnerable to this shit. And it's because doing things the quote unquote right way is often deeply unpleasant. Um, it's just that all Andrew Tate's going to get you to do is give him money. He's not going to teach you how to escape this system because you can't escape it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Like, even if you think that you've escaped it because you've gotten a decent job, you're still latched to it one way or the other. Like it is still dragging behind you, which is why we need to kill it with a spear. Uh, But anyway, that's that's the ads. Time for some ads. Ah, good stuff. Can you confirm?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Sad.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I'm hearing happy. That's good.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So in the weeks before his arrest, Andrew was trending in what is a legitimately fascinating direction. He announced at the start of December of 2022 that he had converted to Islam. Now, there is a whole video. There's a number of them, but I watched a whole video with him and some like weirdo Muslim scholar. I don't know that this guy is a it's unlike the one Islam scholar.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

which has 1.74 million subscribers. This video has 1.6 million views. The guy is Mohammed Hijab. I don't think he's a good person. And I'm certainly not saying that he actually knows or actually is an expert on Islam. I don't know. I'm not certainly either. But boy, this video is gross as shit.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So Tate starts by saying that he had converted to Islam because he decided it was the only real religion. Right. All of the other religions have been cucked by the Matrix and are fake. And he claimed he used to be an atheist, but then he saw evil and that that convinced him of the existence of God.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And then we get to my favorite part, which is the only thing that's entertaining in this video and not deeply depressing.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So I think that's interesting because what clearly has happened here is that Andrew Tate is a deeply malignant narcissist. And if you go to a concert, part of like what people get out of a concert is losing themselves in a piece of another person's creation. And that would mean that the focus is not on Andrew Tate.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He looks like a frat brother, which is not the look that he goes for. He's kind of going for more of like a sex criminal James Bond, which also you might just call like regular James Bond if he... Went shirtless more often in his his kind of modern shit. But he's he's he's definitely just kind of he's kind of basic still at this point. Yeah, which I found kind of interesting.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And he simply not only can he not enjoy it, but it makes him sick to see other people be a focus of attention.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's the single best thing that our species has created. Like... But Andrew... Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

No one's paying attention to Andrew Tate. Yes. Also, there's definitely videos of him at concerts, but at least at rave time. I love that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

it's very funny. It's also worth noting that Andrew Tate and Jeff Bezos are buddies in baldness and not understanding the gift of song. So that's, that's fun. It's neat that they have that in common.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

That is correct. Um, although I, I gotta say this, uh, Jeff Bezos gave up half of his fortune in the divorce. And I don't think that Andrew Tate would have done that. So 100% now, Yeah, definitely not. Definitely not. Romanian will say that the women were branded by him. This is not entirely accurate. They're saying this because of, like, NXIVM, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Because the second season of the Keith Raniere doc came out and those women had been branded. The reality is that they have Tate's Girls tattoos, which we know exist. I've seen pictures of them on a number of different women. And, like, that's weird, but that is not branding. People get tattoos. People get tattoos with dudes' names on them. It's not branding.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Very different. Yeah. Again, the guy is deeply abusive, but he is not like I have not seen any evidence that he's literally branding women. They just got tattoos of his name, which is like weird, but not what Keith Raniere was having women do. It is too early for me to comment in much detail about the allegations against him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

We do know that at least two women, I think it's up to four now, have accused one of the Tates. And we don't actually know which of the Tates with physical and sexual abuse. In addition, both Tates are accused, along with those women, of sexually trafficking a number of women for their webcam business.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, I think there's a good chance. I don't think Tristan would. Tristan, I think, is kind of brainwashed. Not that Tristan's a giant piece of shit, by the way. I think that Andrew would throw Tristan under the bus before Tristan would throw Andrew under the bus, although I'm open to being surprised here. For a little bit of context on the crimes, I'm going to quote from Reuters here. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Investigators are reported to believe one of the performers brought in $45,000 a month or £45,000 a month but received no payment while the women were kept under house arrest. Tate claims the women kept 80-85% of the fees earned and that most of the girls ended up being multi-millionaires. And look, Tate has his claim here. That's important to note.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

But we know that in his Hustlers University video, he recommends getting people to work with you in a gig basis and then lying to them about how much money they're making so you can take it all. So... I think there's reason to believe the Romanian authorities on this one. Now, the prosecution doesn't just have that. They have audio that likely some of it, I think, came from a wiretap.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Some of it seems to have been recorded by one of his victims. Some of this audio has been leaked to apparently been leaked to local Romanian news sources. Most of the translations of it I found have been from Romanians on Reddit. I'm not going to quote directly from it because I just am not certain about the providence of all of this yet.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And another shot from this compilation of photos and footage, which I again, I took from a channel called The Tate Pill. We see a young woman with Tate's girl written across her chest in Sharpie. Later on, there's a woman with Tate's with Tate's written on her as like a tattoo. This is a thing that you should keep in mind because it's going to be relevant later.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

But some credible Romanian news sources are reporting that based on these leaked conversations that the prosecution has, Tate openly discusses using the women who worked for him to launder money and talks about the fact that he is committing crimes. He does this very openly.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

They have him recorded talking about the laws that he's broken because as smart as he is in terms of how to like get himself going viral on TikTok, he's not comprehensive. Again, like everything about Andrew, he's not as good as he thinks he is. And in this case, it seems to have bitten him in the ass. Now, it is worth noting that Tate's house had been raided like six months before his arrest.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So he was aware that the police were on him. It's kind of baffling to me that he did not. And maybe it shows his arrogance that he didn't try to flee the country with his assets or as much of them as possible. And instead, he kind of seeded his fan base with comments about the fact that he was likely to be arrested or killed. This is sort of a John McAfee.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And I'm sure that's who he's copying from here. Here's a clip from a fan video I found with nearly 700,000 views at the time of publication of this episode.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

So again, part of why Andrew is – because this is – he will tell you how to do a version of this scam and so will a million other people.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Part of why Tate gets away with what he's doing is we have built a culture in which every single mass media organ is largely supported by a variety of scams and cons designed to suck money from people and provide them with nothing, including that's how YouTube makes its money. This is a huge amount of YouTube's advertising.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Like, is shit like this. That's why Andrew is able to maneuver and act is that our culture has created this space where it is all nothing but a series of cons from the top to the bottom. Anyway, let's watch this video now of him talking about how he's going to be murdered for cracking the Matrix.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I have to die.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And Sophie, I put a picture in there of the lady with Tate's girl written.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I'm going to tell you right now, Andrew absolutely would commit suicide if he thought he was never going to get out of prison, just like John McAfee did. Just like narcissists do this all the time. He's just hoping that he can rile people up, get folks angry, maybe inspire some violence on his behalf. Again, this is a pretty this is part of the playbook where he's not being creative at all.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's just doing a John McAfee.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, now true to, and I hope he does the full McAfee, by the way. True to form, immediately after his request, someone with access to his account posted a link to Hustlers University 3.0, which is the newest phase of his – he had just launched this before he got arrested. Now, Hustlers University 3.0 lives at the link jointherealworld.com.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And on the website is a video made with clips from The Matrix and some other movies alongside clips of Tate and clips of other YouTube stars attacking him. Because he was, like, on Logan Paul's show, and then when he got arrested, Logan Paul pretended that, like, he hated him, all this good stuff. Above the video is the text, It's time to wake up, Neo. Join us. Amass wealth. Escape slavery.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

But no, no, no, no. Let him let him see. Let him let him take this in. All right. I'm ready. Yeah. Yeah. You got that in. You feeling good?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Hustlers University.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

There are so many guys in this video. We probably saw like fucking close to 100 of them in that first series of just like different clips of people talking about their experience with Hustlers University. Again, hundreds of thousands of people who have paid him money directly and have joined all of these dudes. are still on Hustlers University.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It is still functioning, as far as I have heard, and presumably still deeply invested in Tate's success. Like, this is not a problem that's over. And it is, you know, we don't know the court case. Andrew and his brother basically have not actually been formally charged yet as of publication of this episode, or at least as of the recording of it. They are on a 30-day hold.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

while the Romanian court kind of gets shit in order to see what they're actually going to charge them on. Some of this is just that like... Andrew's obviously a flight risk. He has whole videos about all the private jets that he has access to. So we'll see.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I think there's a chance Andrew has played his last cards, although I think there's a chance he winds up getting out and this has another ugly chapter. But there's a very good chance he's going to do serious prison time, like 10 plus years in Romania. And however rabid his fan base is now, if he spends years in prison, I think that will dull his appeal.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

For one thing, it'll make him look like a loser. But in the here and now, we are all left with the problem of all of these fucking people, these young minds, these weirdos, these kids that he's influenced. Multiple schools, particularly in the United Kingdom, have had to hold classes and seminars on de-radicalizing teenage boys who fell through Andrew Tate.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And I'm going to close this episode by reading a quote from one of those articles in the Times of London. His initial attraction to young people, said one teacher, was often his advice around being confident and financially successful. And from there, he capitalizes on a post-MeToo anxiety with comments such as, "'Females don't have independent thought. They don't come up with anything.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

They're just empty vessels waiting for someone to install the programming.'" Jay Jordan, a teacher in Dundee of five years, said the recent interest in Tate had made boys more hostile. You used to have to deal with sexist stuff, but now it's explicitly connected to Andrew Tate. The boys do not stop talking about him, she said. In one class, she reprimanded a 14-year-old.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

You're just a woman, he responded. Jordan, 37, said, we've definitely gone backwards, and it is worrying. And that's the fun place to end the Andrew Tate cast, the Tate-pisodes. How we doing, gang?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It is terrifying. And it's worth noting, again... People talking about like what's the solution is throwing him in prison the solution and like no throwing him in prison is a tourniquet maybe. I think it might stop his ability to grow the way that he would have grown if it hadn't. De-platforming was a total failure in this.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Like kicking him off of shit did nothing but increase his reach and his profitability because of the quote unquote controversy that got – and the thing to blame here – There's a couple of things. Number one, the structure of social media is to blame. The structure of social media, in order to stop an Andrew Tate, it's not getting better at arresting these guys.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It's changing the structure of social media to not reward the kind of conflicts that he deliberately incited in order to – the fact that like if you do something super fucked up and racist and people get angry about it, it increases your reach on every social media app that exists is a huge part of the problem.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And the reason why that will not change is fundamentally that's how all of these people make money. Whether they're the good Twitter or the bad Elon Twitter, they all made their money by making people fight or by – not making people fight but by sharing things that would make people angry so that they would engage in fights. That's a big part of what Andrew Tate recognized. The other thing is –

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

The entire structure of the system that we live under rewards cons and grifts. It is all figure out what the latest – as technology increases, there are more opportunities to run versions of the same old MLM scam that will not be recognized yet by the government as illegal, right? So you get in there as fast as you can and you make your money and then you fucking escape.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Oh, yes. Yes. Dan Bilzerian, who was like this big right wing muscle gun influencer until he was present at that mass shooting in Vegas and ran away rather than rendering aid to any of the injured people. Yeah, that guy, Dan Bilzerian. Great guy. Yeah. I mean, I think the difference is that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And this is the way – this is the fucking cryptocurrency thing, right? This is all that NFT shit. It's this – the new scam that is really just the old scam dressed up in enough of a coat of paint that nobody recognizes that like no – like the law doesn't recognize it for a couple of years. That's all Andrew has ever been doing. That's all he is purporting to teach you.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

And he just was sloppy enough with aspects of his life and that that he wasn't able to keep doing it long enough. Right. Like the only reason he got caught is that he bragged about breaking the laws in Romania and that they weren't going to punish him. And also he was too good at becoming famous. Right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

If he had stayed a few levels lower than this, if he'd stayed at like that Alex Jones level or whatever of social media influence, even he probably would have kept getting away with it. But he was so big that it created such a fuss. And the Romanian government had to be like, well, look, now he's bragging about sex trafficking and the EU is angry at us because we already have this problem.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Let's destroy this guy's life. Yeah. in order to, because he basically forced us to, right? If he'd been a little bit less of an idiot, a little bit more careful, he would have gotten away with it for longer. And the next one probably will. Although maybe all of these guys, because they're narcissists, are unable to kind of pull back from the ledge before they go over it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I guess that's the optimistic thing. Maybe fundamentally the kind of guy who can do an Andrew Tate is always going to be so much of an egomaniac that they can't stop themselves. I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

It is scary, but you know, what's not scary. Your pluggables.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Tate would never have had a problem with running away from a mass shooting because a big part of his brand is you should only look out for yourself and fuck everybody else. So he could not have had he would not have had trouble handling that situation. Um.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Yeah, I have a book called After the Revolution. If you just Google AK Press After the Revolution, you can find it and buy a physical copy. You can also just go to atrbook.com and find the e-book for free or just listen to the podcast of the same name. So check that out. I have a sub stack. It's Shatterzone. Just Google Shatterzone sub stack and you'll find that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

I'll get another thing up there soon. Anyway, that's me. You know, you could you could start calling me Top G if you wanted to. Sophie, do we think that's a good marketing term? OK, well, what if I do my Boston accent and I try to teach kids how to how to make their 12 year old cousins illegally labor for them without payment?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Well, thank you, Ian. Thank you for believing in me. Would you like to join my Discord for $5,000? You know what, Bobby? Yes, let's do it. All right, all right, all right. Well, everybody, I've got a new con to get off to. So everybody, have a great day and feel better than you feel listening to this episode.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Now, that video compilation of Tate and his brother when they first become millionaires is like thousands of video compilations of the Tates that litter the Internet. And watching those compilations because he's been deplatformed so much is basically the only way to consume a lot of Tate's content. And if you want to consume a lot of Tate content for some reason.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

He's been deplatformed from most places. We actually just lost a video we were going to play in here. So the easiest way to find old episodes of Tate speech or various interviews is compilation videos like the one I found of pictures of him when he was first got his millions. That's something to keep in mind because it's going to be more relevant later. It's Elephant.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

evidence of the kind of strategy that he actually used to get as famous as he is. But first, we need to get into more of his backstory. So in 2016, Mr. Tate became a contestant on Big Brother, the UK reality show. Well, I guess the UK version of Big Brother, right? I think there's a bunch of versions of it. I don't know. I've never watched Big Brother. But he was on the UK version of it. And...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

Oh, my God. Yeah, I mean, this is one of those ones that I'm a little like unsure of because I've seen the footage and like it's unpleasant. He claims that it was a consensual kinky sex act and so does the woman that he was whipping. And just based on the video, that might be true of this specific video. Again, we know he's been physically abusive. There's a lot of evidence of that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

We know that he's committed rape. This specific video may actually have been

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)

kink thing which is why I'm not playing it because I just I don't think that kind of thing should be played so instead let's watch a little clip of Andrew Tate on Big Brother I think that's going to give people a little bit better of a context of this guy and how he was presenting himself in 2016 so if you have just put the link into the chat yeah we're gonna this will be a good time for everybody and much more pleasant than that video regardless of what the truth is of the video

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But yeah, you're just a lonely, poem-loving little girl at this period of time. That's got to be difficult. The Preacher. Yeah. Yeah. So... As an adult in interviews, Oprah would claim that their landlady, who is, again, she described her as a lighter skinned black woman, didn't like Oprah for being darker than everyone else in the house.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Bridget, are you feeling better about your decision to stay on the East Coast now?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And so Oprah was forced to sleep on a porch in the back of the house while her sister was allowed to sleep with their mom. As she claimed, white people never made me feel less. Black people made me feel less. I felt less in that house with Mrs. Miller. I felt less because I was too dark and my hair was too kinky. I felt like an outcast. And this is I mean, like that, that's a tough thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But this is also an area where there's like a pretty major discrepancy between Oprah's recollections and recollections of the other people in that house. And so I'll quote this passage of Oprah, a biography by Kitty Kelly next. Catherine Esters, and remember that's Oprah's aunt and like the family historian, responded sternly to Oprah's poignant memory.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

This bothers me more than her corncob doll lies and her cockroach lies because it plays into the damaging discrimination practiced by our own people. I'm a dark-skinned woman. Oprah's grandfather, Erlis, was black enough to be painted by a brush, and Oprah is as dark as a preacher's prayer book.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

But when she says things like that, she reminds me of my cousin, Frank, who did not wish to be what he was and discriminated among his kin. referring the lighter-skinned to the darker-skinned folks. Oprah slept on a porch in the back of the room of the house only because Vernita had to take care of her baby and there was just one bedroom. That's it. Period.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

If Oprah was discriminated against because of her skin color, I'd tell you, says Ms. Esters, a civil rights activist who worked for the Urban League in Milwaukee. And I can't really like cast that aside either. So, I mean, I don't really know what to do there other than kind of read both of those very much conflicting stories of things to you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Oh, well, shit. I guess there's no safe place.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She was, in fact, sleeping on the porch. Yes. I'm just like, oh, boy. It's just wasn't, you know, racism or just we have no space because we're very poor. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like I had to present both of these things. But yeah, I don't actually know where the truth lies here. Now, for her sake, Catherine Esters thinks that the explanation for why Oprah felt the way she did is more benign, which is that once she moved to Milwaukee, she was for the first time and very suddenly not an only child in the center of attention in her household.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She was suddenly the oldest of three kids and her two baby siblings got more attention than her. And this made her very unhappy. And I'm sure that's not a non-factor, right? Like, that's such a thing. Like, I don't have any trouble believing that that had a massive impact on her as a kid. Now, as I've noted, Kitty's book is quite aggressive.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And she is a woman who has built a career off of puncturing the reputations of beloved famous people. Her work is catty as hell. But she does make a decent point here. Quote, The only photo I have of my grandmother, she's holding a white child, Oprah said at the age of 51.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yet a published picture of Oprah's desk shows a photo of her grandmother with her arm draped lovingly around Oprah as a little girl with no white child in sight. And it's stuff like that where it's like, well, OK, that's that that's not a there's a discrepancy, but maybe, you know, that's like that's just obvious myth making. You've got a photo of your grandmother on your desk. All right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

You just said that because, you know, it made a case to an interviewer or something. Like, you've got pictures of your grandmother with you. That was just not a true statement. So there's some myth making going on here as well that we can kind of clearly lay out there. So again, it's complicated, most of this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I'm still on the whole, like as a childhood, this is a very, it's hard not to be on Oprah's side at this point. And I believe Oprah, when she says of her grandmother, every time she would ever talk about those white children, there would be this sort of glow inside her. No one ever glowed when they saw me. And, you know, that also sounds true. Like that sounds like the kind of,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That was the apple of my parents' eye. Yeah. They walk out the door to live their emotionally healthy life, have their good relationships with loved ones.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Sure. Like of all kids. That's also one of the like the key facts about becoming incredibly rich and famous is that all of these like weird little idiosyncrasies and like anger at petty injustices or even some serious injustices that most people just have to get over. You have the ability to make other people care about it and the ability to also like –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Sometimes make it other people's problems, as we're seeing with a much worse billionaire who's in the public eye right now. Because at least Oprah, what I'll say for her is like how much of this is accurate or not and how much of this is myth making. She has spent a lot of her like time as a philanthropist putting money towards like child abuse causes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Um, so, you know, you can't really, uh, uh, I guess that's, that's like in terms of billionaire coping strategies, she's definitely in like the upper 10%. Oh my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, I kind of think...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Again, as we'll as we'll talk about, like the actual harmful, toxic stuff she was involved with once her media career got going, it's still more than anything a case of, well, like we probably shouldn't make any individual person that famous because like your own flaws and blind sites are going to cause you to do things that because of your platform and the level of your fame will be harmful forever.

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But yeah, I really do think overall my opinion of her is like, yeah, this is about the best case scenario for someone who gets this rich and famous.

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That is kind of what I have been coming back to because I definitely started my reading more hostile towards her because I had been thinking of Oprah purely in terms of like – Well, now I got to think about Dr. Oz because you put this fucker on TV. Oprah, why did you do that? But yeah, I have a lot more sympathy with her now, which doesn't happen often when we're doing these.

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Usually you're like, oh, this person sucked ass from the jump.

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Yeah, this is meaty. And I also there's also like a sick joy in reading a book like Kitty Kelly's where it's like, well, I would never write something that's this mean about a traumatized child.

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Oh, man. So Vernita obviously needed a lot of help watching the kids, which meant family came over to visit and babysit a lot. And this is where the story gets very dark, because one of the family members who helped watch Oprah was a 19 year old cousin. I think they initially go over to the house where the cousin is, but then he starts coming over there.

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And at some point in this process, Oprah is made to sleep with him. I think initially just because there's not enough beds, right? Like they're literally just sharing beds because there's only so many. And then he starts molesting her after the first night that he rapes her. He takes her to the zoo afterwards and in her words, buys her silence with ice cream. Yeah, that's that's that's not great.

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No one else in the family obviously was aware at the time. Aunt Catherine, the family historian, was aware that something is off. And what's interesting is that the family pretty much always denies Oprah's what Oprah says about the sexual abuse that she suffered. I think because they don't want to admit that they were missing some very problematic stuff.

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But one of the things that's interesting here is that Aunt Catherine clearly knows something is wrong because around this time she writes to Vernon Winfrey, who's the guy everyone thinks is Oprah's father, and begs him to take his daughter in. Right.

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So she doesn't she's never I don't think she still has accepted that this happened to Oprah, but she's aware enough at the time that something is unhealthy about this living situation that she's like, hey, Vernon, you should maybe think about taking your daughter in. She's not doing well here. And that's interesting to me, too. So Vernon lived in Nashville.

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He and his wife, Zelma, were both sterile, I guess. And they had no kids. Right. And I think they had tried to have kids. So one or both of them was like not biologically able to have kids. Vernon clearly had at one point, although actually that's not a guarantee because it's come out since that he might not have been the dad biologically.

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In any case, he and Zelma agree to take Oprah in, and this is a vastly different environment for her. For one thing, he is a small business owner. He runs, at this point, a barber shop. He was a military man, and the Winfreys ran their home like a military operation, which was pretty much entirely geared towards producing the best possible educational outcome for Oprah.

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So she goes right away from the situation where she's in a very chaotic environment with not much resources to the situation where again, two adults are entirely focused on making her do as well in school as possible. Uh, Oprah continued to be an outgoing child. She's a natural performer, uh,

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Adults who are around her will say that she would kind of automatically make herself the boss of any group of kids that she was in. Her favorite game to play with the neighbor kids was school like she would play teacher and she would make them all play students. And I'm going to read a quote from her dad Vernon here because this is this is pretty funny.

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From what I observed then, Lily and Betty Jean didn't enjoy playing school as much as Oprah did. I think that's because she was always the teacher, always scolding her little playmates as she scrawled invisible lessons on a make-believe chalkboard. Lily and Betty Jean would sit attentively at imaginary desks, hoping against hope that Oprah didn't call their names during spelling bees.

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Can't say how much blame them because if they misspelled a word, there was trouble. Oprah would get her little switch, which was not at all imaginary, and spank the palms of their hands. That's a little unhinged, right?

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Absolutely. Absolutely.

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Perhaps it was not fun for all parties. Oh yeah. The other kids might not have liked that at all. Maybe I just scared them in line. Um, he did claim that eventually after a while he like confronted open was like, Hey, you should let the other kids place teachers sometime. They don't seem to be enjoying this quote.

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She looked at me with the sweetest expression, all cute and bewildered about how I could ask such a silly thing. Why daddy? She informed me Lily and Betty Jean can't teach till they learn how to read. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of learning how to read, the sponsors of our podcast never did. That's why they can focus entirely on delivering the best value and the best products to you.

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They don't know how to read. There's nothing else at all in their heads, but a desire to please you with the absolute best consumer experience imaginable.

Behind the Bastards

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And we're back. Ah, we're talking Oprah. Talking pra.

Behind the Bastards

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Talking pra. We probably won't use that anywhere. That's not very good.

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OK, so Oprah thrives. She spends a year with with Vernon and and his wife and very stable. You know, she has a lot of attention devoted to her education. She's doing very, very well. She's also away from this 19 year old cousin who was molesting her. So that's a huge pluses to plus two.

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Unfortunately, the situation does not last because Vernita still harbors dreams of raising all of her children together as, quote, a real family. for whatever reason, not that she needs one. Oprah always saw Vernon as her father, but doesn't seem to have felt the same way, at least initially, about his wife.

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She was desperate for a normal home with two parents and claims other kids teased her over this, which I'm certain is true. That summer at age 10, she went to visit and her mom was like, hey, I'm about to marry this guy I've been seeing for a while. You are finally going to get your dream. You know, why don't you move back to Milwaukee? And this marriage never happens. This guy eventually dies.

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And so like this is just this situation just collapses as badly as it possibly can. But Oprah still makes the choice to leave the stable home with her dad because of how taunted she is by this possibility of like being part of a full and stable family. And this is one of those things where like, again, I'm not there.

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It's very hard to at least read Oprah's recollection of events and not think, wow, Vernita. Not doing a great job here, because when Oprah decides to stay with her mom, Vernita breaks the news to Vernon in the most devastating way imaginable. She doesn't like call him and like tell him, hey, you know, there's been a change.

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She waits for him to drive to Milwaukee to like show up to take Oprah back home and says, oh, actually, no, I'm keeping her. You should leave. which is a rough move. And this is more or less how Vernon recalls things. He remembers weeping as he left the house because he could tell that he was leaving Oprah in an environment where she would not receive adequate care.

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He told Kitty Kelly, I never saw that sweet little girl again. And he actually is going to raise Oprah again. He's saying that she was a different kid when he returned. Yeah. Yeah. When Oprah returned to her mother's home, nothing had changed for the better. The same cousin continued to come over to babysit, and he picked right up where he had left off.

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She's molested off and on from ages 10 to 14. The times being what they were and her educational career being somewhat erratic and interrupted, young Oprah did not initially have a great grasp on the physical consequences of sex and how they worked. And I'm going to quote from Oprah Winfrey by Meryl Norton here.

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Winfrey understood so little about sex that she went through the fifth grade convinced she was pregnant. Every time I had a stomachache, she has said, I thought I was pregnant and asked to go to the bathroom. So if I had it, nobody could see. That for me was the terror. Was I going to have it? How could I hide it? All the people would be mad at me.

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How could I keep it in my room without my mother knowing? And boy, we really, really need better sex ed. It's kind of depressing how many kids today probably are not benefiting from better knowledge than Oprah had access to at that point. Like, real bleak. Yeah. It's only going to get worse. Yeah.

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So... Yeah, I mean, that really brought it home to me, like, what a lot of these people want to change the system back to is, like, kids being in exactly the situation Oprah was. Like, hiding in the bathroom because you don't know... Like, you just want to be in a safe place in case you have a kid because you don't understand... Any of this stuff.

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Even though the sex was forced on you. Yeah. It's fucked up. Oprah grows into a teenager who is very bright, very sexually confused, and who is not at all being watched by her guardian. She starts seeing lots of older boys and some men, some of whom are 18, 19 years old. In both of the books I've read and in the recollections of Oprah and the people who knew her,

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The people around her tended to see it as she is incredibly promiscuous in this period of time, right? Obviously, what is happening here is that this is a reaction to the sexual violence that she experienced from a young age. But that is how she is treated by the adults in her life as a result of what's going on, right? Right.

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One line from her that stuck with me was that she saw her behavior as revenge to the adults around her. They didn't care about what was being done to her, so she was going to behave in a way that forced them to pay attention to her, even if that meant like –

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Right, right, right. I think that's a really, really good point. And it's probably not surprising that Kitty writes so much better about this very messy chapter of Oprah's life than Meryl, who is a male journalist. But, you know, it's there's some there's some bad lines in Meryl's book about this.

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This book that was written in 1999, probably the worst of which is, quote, When Oprah was 13, her figure was 36, 23, 36, certain to attract male attention. And I don't know, man, I feel like there's a better way to write about a 13 year old girl than that. Jesus. Every time.

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The reason Meryl does is that when Oprah talks about this, she will give the numbers for her figure. But also, like, that's her. That's her. I don't know, man. Meryl, like, quote her if you're going to do that. Like, just writing it out that way makes me very distrustful of you.

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So following what her abuser had done to her, she started using ice cream to get her younger sister to leave the house so that she could have boys over. One of whom was her cousin's boyfriend who she claimed treated her as a pet and She expressed a feeling of frustration that none of the adults seemed to catch on about what she was doing and what was being done to her.

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And to an extent, again, she's like putting herself out there doing this in part to provoke a reaction from an adult in her life. And no one reacts. Nobody draws a line. Nobody intervenes. Now, throughout all of this, Oprah's grades remain excellent. She is still a pretty good student while she's dealing with all of this. In the seventh grade, she's transferred to a better school via Upward Bound.

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This is a federal affirmative action program to help poor kids who wanted to be first-generation college students by providing them with more support and better educational opportunities. In Oprah's case, this meant being bused with a handful of other black kids to a very white school that had just been desegregated.

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And one interesting thing to me is Oprah talks a lot about affirmative action and getting into schools and getting jobs only because of affirmative action. And very consistently when you talk to the people who like hired her, they're like, no, she was like actually the best candidate. Obviously, she's Oprah. She was a very good candidate to work for a TV station or whatever. Right.

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But you can kind of see some of that. It's interesting to me that that's the attitude that she has towards it, even though everyone around her is like, no, that really was not the situation. I will say a little bit that...

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Either way, it's like, I mean, what you can say is all these programs did exactly what they were supposed to because she wound up creating a media empire worth many billions of dollars as a result of getting these opportunities. So they were known on campus as the bus kids. Oprah and these other kids were being bused to this more affluent white school.

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The whole situation – it's a very weird one where she – once she starts going here, she starts being like taken – like invited into homes largely so that these kind of like affluent liberal white families can have a black kid over for dinner. Yeah. And like showcase how cool they are. Like that's one of her early.

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And it's like a pretty I think a good experience as she takes it just because like some adults are giving me positive attention. Right. Like that's a thing for her. She continues to engage in extreme behavior in a desperate attempt to make her mom or somebody parent her. And this eventually includes a fake robbery and an assault. So here's the situation.

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Oprah had started wearing glasses, bifocals, and the first pair that she got were ugly and made her look, in her words, like a librarian. It became clear that she was only going to get a new pair if the old ones broke. So she threw them away and then she like messed up her room and like cut herself in the cheek and called the police, claiming that there had been a smash and grab.

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Now, because she's a kid at this point, she like is pretending to be concussed. But when the police look around, they're like, so what else did they take? And she's like, just my glasses.

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Yeah. You got to you got to take something. You got to take like the high fire or something out of there, you know, classic glasses, glasses, criminals. Now, events like this probably contributed to her family not believing her when she finally worked up the courage to tell them that she'd been molested, which happens around this period of time.

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So, you know, from her family's perspective, she's this kid who, you know, lied about getting robbed. They've seen her out with a bunch of guys. They think she's just promiscuous. And that's how her aunt Catherine feels decades later. I don't believe a bit of it. Oprah was a wild child running the streets of Milwaukee in those days and not accepting discipline from her mother.

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And when you get to like that aspect of it, it's like, oh, I get why Oprah does not have a good relationship with a lot of these people. Like that is not at all surprising to me now. Yeah.

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Well, are we all ready? Are we ready to get back into the story of Oprah Winfrey?

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Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

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No, not hard to see why she doesn't. Now, obviously, we can't know precisely what happened, but it's going to be interesting. Some of the some of the part of I think why Aunt Catherine has this attitude and why some of the family members that are maybe jealous of Oprah have this attitude is that

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Later on in her career, Oprah is going to make the sexual violence she experienced a very central – that's actually central to why she got so famous is the way in which she reveals this to her audience, the context in which she does that has a massive impact on her career and on – it's like one of the things that gets people to pay attention to her because women in prominent places in the media really didn't talk about stuff like this the way that she did.

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And so there's this attitude from some in her family that she's, again, just doing it all for attention. I'm not saying that because I think that's accurate. I'm saying like that you have to understand if you want to know, like, why is her family saying all of this? This is part of the story. Right. Like she has an incentive so they can point to that.

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okay okay let's uh let's let's let's do it back back to the story yeah i think this is probably the most time we've ever spent on the early childhood and adolescence of one of our people it's it's just oprah and joseph stalin who have gotten two episodes devoted to their childhood yeah early upbringing yeah and a prize to the listeners for figuring out the third in that series

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Yeah. It's it's it's when you really dig into the family drama, it's very unpleasant. In the summer of 1968, Oprah goes back to Nashville to visit her father in Zelma. His brother, her uncle, Trenton, drove her. Now, up to this point, Oprah considered Trenton her favorite uncle. Then, while they're driving, he asks her if she'd started dating yet.

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Thinking that she was having a safe conversation with her uncle, she said yes, but that it was hard because all the boys that her age wanted to do was French kiss. According to Oprah, her uncle immediately pulled over to the side of the road and molested her. She does not tell anyone immediately. But after visiting with her dad, she returns to Milwaukee furious and she runs away from home.

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This time she's gone for a full week. Her mother is panicking. Oprah claims that during this time she was hustling for money on the street and she meets Aretha Franklin, literally running up to Aretha Franklin's limo and crying, saying that she'd been abandoned and she needed $100 to get back to her family in Ohio.

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She says Aretha gave her the money, which she then took to a hotel and spent several days drunk on wine, eating room service food. I don't know if this happened. Aretha. I don't think anyone ever asked Aretha when they were both like when she was still alive. I haven't found any evidence of that. And I'm kind of surprised because we've had this info for a while.

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And it's like, well, I would kind of want to know if Aretha remembers this. Right. Yeah. But yeah, so I don't know. You'll have to take Oprah's word on that one. It would be kind of a weird thing to lie about, but I don't know.

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Yeah, I mean, she had a lot going on. I guess. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just kind of surprised no one ever asked her about it as far as I can find out. Because Oprah, there was plenty of time after which Oprah was very famous and Aretha was still alive. I'm just kind of, nobody thought to do that, huh?

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We don't want to talk about Aretha giving wine money to young Oprah Winfrey. Yeah. I could see that being. Yeah. Now, after this incident, Vernita tried to drop her daughter when Oprah finally comes home. Vernita tried to put her daughter in a school for delinquent girls. She was told the processing time would take two weeks, which was too long.

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And in a movie that really tells you a lot about Vernita, Vernita's like, well, fuck that then. She calls Vernon and she says, hey, actually, you should take her back. Now, this is kind of a cheeky move because by this point, Vernon had sat down and done the math and he had counted back from Oprah's birth date in January of 1954.

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And he realized that he was away with the army during the period of time in which she was most likely conceived. So he's got pretty good evidence that he is not, in fact, the biological father of this kid. But instead of being like, you know – You're on your own, Vernita, or she's on your own. This is a kid he's still bonded with that he's he's thought of most of her life as his daughter.

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He says he'll take her back if Vernita gives up all claim to the girl. And that's what happens. Oprah moves back to Nashville. And unbeknownst to everyone at this point, the 14 year old girl was now pregnant with a baby she believed was the result of her uncle Trenton molesting her. So that's a lot to deal with. Yeah. Put lightly, but you know, big ups for Vernon there.

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I can't remember another nice word. Just wonderful. wonderful today.

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That's like a pretty, and this is like, he's, it's very interesting. He's like gotten basically nothing from Oprah, like asked for basically nothing from her. Like he's, he takes a lot of pride in the fact that like, His barber shop put her through school and supported her, which is, you know, he's right to do so, obviously. But this is probably the luckiest single break of her life.

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I think Oprah would say this was the luckiest single break of her life, that Vernon, even when he got this kind of excuse to not be a father, decided to continue being her father. Yeah. Yeah. How does she talk about him now? Very positively. Yeah. I think you get the feeling there's some stuff they don't quite agree on. But like she's very open about the fact that she owes a lot to him, obviously.

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And Vernon's clearly very proud of her success, even though, again, you get the feeling like, oh, he doesn't really understand like what she's been doing most of her career. Right. In a lot of ways. Yeah. So once she started high school in Nashville, Vernon again became a strict disciplinarian, imposing a dress code on her and demanding excellent academic performance.

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Yeah, yeah. It's still being decided. But when we left off Oprah, she'd just been taken to Milwaukee by her mother, who lived downtown off of North 9th Street. So Oprah and Vernita lived in a single room in a boarding house owned by Vernita's boyfriend's godmother, which is not an ideal living situation at best.

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Oprah was always a great student, but she had stopped by this point enjoying school. And part of why was that in the winter of 1968, she was now heavily pregnant, hiding it under layers of jackets. Eventually, she could not hide it from her father any longer. And she told him what happened and that his brother had been the likely rapist.

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The short of it is Vernon didn't believe her about his brother. And I still don't think he does. He doesn't say she's lying. He kind of like deflects the question. Like the most recent interview I've read was him saying something like, well, it's very hard to accept something like that, you know, with somebody that you're close to. Right.

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I'm not privy to the full details there, but you get the, obviously it's a significant pain point in the relationship. The way Oprah describes it, her earlier promiscuity was used as an excuse by the most stable adults in her life to be like, no, my beloved brother didn't do this, right? This is, you know, there's some other explanation here, you know?

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And yeah, that's even the most supportive family member in her life is doing this to her. So that's, Not great. Oprah Grave birthed two months prematurely in the later winter of 1968. For whatever it's worth, Vernon and his wife had pulled together in the 11th hour in that point and agreed to raise the child so that she could start her life like that was their plan. We'll raise her.

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This child is like another of our kids and you can go off and go to college and stuff. But none of them ever get that chance. The baby is very ill. It never leaves the hospital and it dies after less than a month. Oprah describes this as the most emotional, confusing and traumatic experience of her life, which. Yep. That that it would be from what I can glean via reading.

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This is the kind of moment that basically ended her childhood. And it seems like everyone is aware of that at the time. Everyone decides to lock down and bury what had happened as a family secret. They they never talk about this again. Right. And so Oprah has to process everything that's happened without being able to talk about it.

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to her family, all Vernon would say to her was that he thought that God had given her a second chance, which is maybe not the best thing to say about your baby dying. I don't know. I don't know.

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I mean, it's, it's yeah. Fucking dark, but yes. Yeah. Not a lot of light levity in this part of the Oprah story, guys. I gotta tell you, that's sort of the nature of this show. Yeah. It'll get more fun when we're playing some clips of TV from the 1980s. But first, here's ads.

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uh oprah later said i don't know why my mother ever decided she wanted me she wasn't equipped to take care of me i was just an extra burden on her And, you know, I think it's just this is probably what she was aware of as a kid because her mom was there the first four and a half years. But she probably just doesn't really remember that.

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So it's got to be this uncomfortable situation where from her mom's perspective, I was just gone 18 months trying to, like, set up a life for you. From Oprah's perspective, it's like you you you were gone from as long as I can remember. And then you move me into this terrible situation in the city. Right. Right. It's so it's a bummer.

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So Oprah returns to school the following year with a terrible secret. But also, like, this is kind of... She changes, right? This is like a new lease on life almost is how it's described. She gets heavily into speech and debate. She starts doing competitive drama contests. She starts winning championships. She starts telling her teachers that she's going to be a movie star.

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According to her drama teacher, Andrea Haynes, Oprah insisted she wanted to change her name from Oprah to Gail because she thought it would help her in Hollywood. And Haynes advised her to keep going as Oprah because it was a unique name and Oprah had a unique voice. So probably good advice given what happens later.

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The new Oprah gets invited to speak as part of a church event in Los Angeles in 1969. She gets to see Hollywood for the first time. And she came back telling her dad about the stars in front of Mann's Chinese Theater and promising to earn one of her own one day. As a junior, when filling out yearbook questionnaires that asked, where will I be in 20 years? She checked famous.

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Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So she has made a pretty clear decision about where she wants to go at this point. In 1970, she wins a contest sponsored by the Black Elks Club of Nashville, and she gets invited to deliver a speech in Philadelphia. This was her first big crowd. There's like a 10,000-person audience, and she recalled later only that she felt totally comfortable addressing this massive group of strangers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The remainder of her high school career is basically an endless parade of tournament victories and a surprising amount of jet setting for a high school girl. She's flown to Palo Alto in 1971 for a contest at Stanford. She's the only black student at the National Forensics Competition that year.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She gets into student government, winning election as vice president with a campaign slogan, put a little color in your life. Vote for the grand old Oprah. Well, she's at like a majority white school, you know, like, yeah, I appreciate the humor. Yeah. Yeah. The grand old Oprah, too.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Now, one thing that's interesting is that I haven't read as many as I should have of like stories of the first kind of generation of black kids to get integrated in into like majority white schools. But Oprah is in that that demographic. And at her high school, the black students as a minority decided that they had to work together as a block. if they were going to win any school elections.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So they all agreed – decided to like agree ahead of time as to which candidates to put forward and so they'd only nominate a single black student for each category and then they would all vote for them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Since the white kids all – white students all inevitably had like several white students for each role and there's one black student for each role and all of the black students are voting as a block, you actually have a chance of doing pretty well. So that's part of how Oprah wins election as school vice president that year. But she has to get a lot of white votes and she's very good at this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She's been hanging out at the homes of a lot of white classmates as a way for them to like make their parents look good. And yeah, Oprah, you know, is able to like meet a lot of people and get a lot of votes this way. She shows this like very clear talent for politicking and talent for like charming people by this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

This is not lost on some of her black peers who she claimed to take into calling her an Oreo. The first time this happened, she claims she crossed the invisible lines in the cafeteria to sit with the white kids. Quote, in high school, I was the teacher's pet, which created other problems. I never spoke in dialect. I'm not sure why. Perhaps I was ashamed.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And I was attacked for talking proper like white folks for selling out. And yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because, like, I don't have any reason to doubt that. But it's also evident, like, she gets these nominations that everyone has to agree on beforehand.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So she clearly, like, it's not like she doesn't have, you know, any of that support from her peers either because she's able to, like, you know, convince them she's the best person to be the school vice president, too.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, I don't know. I have some pretty like my dad was gone right around the same time when I was like five to seven. My dad was gone because he had to move to like New York and, you know, earn money for us because Oklahoma is not a great place to earn a living. Rural Oklahoma, not always a great place to earn a living.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

No, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, there's some of it that like you wanted to be a star. You would talk constantly about being famous and you're probably like, I mean, anyone who goes into TV, there's a little bit of that narcissism cooking in the background. That may have been some of what people were recognizing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. I say that with love for all of my friends in TV, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

about how you're gonna go to hollywood and be famous is annoying if you right right exactly like no one likes hearing that you know yeah like speaking is yeah somebody went to hollywood to get into the entertainment industry right nobody wants to hear about that journey which is why we we only have four to six oscar-winning movies every year about doing that

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she is selected to be delegate at the 1971 White House Conference on Children and Youth. The organizer of this delegation was committed to making sure that it was not just a bunch of middle class white kids. And so the resultant group that he sends to D.C. is like extremely diverse.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, part two of the Oprah Winfrey series being filmed once again from sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, where I am exhausted and deeply hungover. Unlike my guests today, who are both health nuts and extremely responsible people. The wonderful Bridget Todd and the also wonderful Andrew T. Sorry for giving you the also there, Andrew, but one of you had to get it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And they wind up voting on a series of recommendations to the Nixon government, which include legalized marijuana, denounce the invasion of Cambodia, launch a guaranteed income program for all Americans. Didn't work if you if you haven't been keeping track of U.S. politics. But, hey, we appreciate the effort, kids. who are now in their 70s. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

We don't really know how Oprah felt about any of these super progressive goals. She was not very political. As one classmate noted, she's not an activist, and the only march she ever took part in was the March of Dimes, which is like a way of fundraising for, I think, cancer research that she primarily uses as a way to get her leg in the door for a show business career.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She walks several miles on foot to the studios of WVOL a black radio station in the Nashville area. And she basically tells the DJ, hey, you're going to sponsor me for this march. The DJ is so surprised by this that he's like, well, all right, I'll do it. And when she comes by to get the donation from him, he tells her, hey, you've got a good voice. We should see what it sounds like on tape.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

um and i remember being pissed about it for a while and not really getting as a kid that like oh yeah it's really hard actually to be an adult and take care of kids and sometimes you have to do shit that sucks yeah and i

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And this guy, this DJ is John Heidelberg. He would later declare himself the man who discovered Oprah. And it's one of those –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I thought there'd be a little more producer solidarity here. So here's the thing. I hadn't thought about that at all, Sophie. And I'm not saying you're wrong to be annoyed by that. I was so in this guy's corner because when I hear, oh, young 17 year old girl meets a DJ who says that maybe she has a future in entertainment. I was ready for this to be a hideous story. She's never claimed it was.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

All she says about it and all we know about it is that like John actually gets her her first job. And that is like where the whole rest of her career comes from. So it's entirely possible.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying when I started reading this story, I was like white knuckling it, waiting for like the crimes, you know? Having just done the P. Diddy episodes, I was like, oh God, this can't possibly end well.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That's what I'm saying. You definitely are. Wait, no, we like that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Every successful person in media has a whole shitload of people who were like big parts of why they got successful. And, you know, John Heidelberg isn't the only guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

That said, I'm just so happy this didn't turn into another story about like horrible, horrible crimes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I kind of gave him a pass.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

This is the most surprised I've been since we found out that L. Ron Hubbard was never a sex criminal or I was like, really? Huh? OK. Then why did he do all that stuff? Weirder reasons. Very weird reasons. He wanted young people to dig for gold in the ocean. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

How are you doing, everybody?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

By which you mean a hero, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Anyway, that's part two of the Oprah story with surprise, not a villain, John Heidelberg. As far as I know, if horrible stories come out about John Heidelberg after this, look, I'm not defending the band. I was just shocked that this didn't go into the dark place. Yeah. What a weird twist. Yeah. One DJ who is not a creep.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

that we can prove yeah right now yeah honestly you are in the top one cent of morality of moral djs if you don't commit a sex crime like that's so rare for the dj community uh and i would like to formally apologize to our editor dj daniel for that comment yeah apologize to john heidelberg too who i think is dead i'm not going to um okay but um ouch poor john

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Anyway, that's our episode, everybody. How are we feeling about Oprah so far? Don't worry. Next week. Next week is where the questionable choices start. I didn't feel good. Concerned? Should I have summarized all of the bad things as bullet points? I felt like the whole story needed to be told. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

The connective tissue, and this is to an extent stuff that Oprah will even admit, is that she grows up desperate to please and that that is partly responsible for, like, her, number one, some of the stuff, like some of her contributions to toxic diet culture, but also maybe part of why she does not vet some of these, you know, Dr. Oz types the way that she ought to have, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Like, I think you can draw some lines there between like some of the aspects of her career that are not ideal. But yeah, I got to say, reading through this, this she it is definitely the most sympathetic person whose childhood we've talked about here. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

It's still a tragedy. Some things that go well for Oprah go bad for the rest of us. I wonder. Yeah. Anyway, you got some pluggables?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Excellent. That's the week, everybody. Go home and.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I'm sorry, Andrew. I haven't slept in three days. Yeah, don't worry about it. Andrew. Andrew T. Fucking who cares? Yo, is this racist? That's fine. Check out Yo, is this racist? And remember, everybody, don't don't hang out with DJs. It usually doesn't go this well.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Yeah. I went through this process when writing it and read it when doing particularly the research where I was like, OK, all of her family say that she's she's lying about this. This is just Oprah being a bad person trying to myth make and make herself sound like she suffered more than she did.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And then I went through this process of like, well, wait, what if her family is lying and they're just angry about the money? And then I think I've come back around to like nobody has to be lying here. It's just.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

a completely different experience for her and them. And neither of them really understand each other. And maybe communication isn't the family strong suit, which is ironic given Oprah's living, but like, yeah. Um, I think that's where I've probably landed. I don't know. There's some like weird similarities.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Uh, so I, I've been thinking a lot about like my own situation, kind of some of the stuff I've was angry for years with my parents over in terms of like, why did you put us in this situation that was so clearly shitty? And, you know, now as an adult, I better understand that like, well, shit just happens, you know? And when you've got a kid, you have to figure out how to like make your life work.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. It's again, because of all the GeoMetros I give out, right? You get kind of a car. You get kind of a car.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

So upon moving in with her mom, this is one of the things where I do understand why Oprah is not thrilled. So she she comes into this situation. It's not they've got like one room. You know, it's very cramped. She's not used to the city. And she also learns upon arriving that she has a half sister named Patricia and a half brother on the way who's going to be named Jeffrey.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And that is that is a lot to spring on a little kid. Right. Your mom goes away. And the first time you remember seeing her again, she's like, you're about to have two new siblings, by the way. She and Patricia are never close. And yeah, that's a difficult situation. In Oprah's telling of things, she and her half sister were immediately harsh competitors.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Oprah's interpretation is that she is the smart sister, whereas Patricia is the hot sister. Although, again, they're both like seven at this point. Yeah. So I don't know if this is Oprah later kind of thinking back on more shit that that cropped up when they were like teenagers and young adults, or if she was thinking that way from the beginning.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

My guess is that this is a little like colored from later experience.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Hopefully. God, one would hope. Yeah. Now, most of her insecurity here seems to have come down to the fact and this is something that she talks about quite openly. She's she as a little kid was kind of obsessed with the fact that Patricia was lighter skinned than Oprah. Quote, I felt really ugly. The lighter your complexion, the prettier you were.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And she complained that even though she was the smartest in the family, no one praised me for being smart.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. And one of the things I do, because that's a tough thing to talk about. And one of the things I do appreciate about Oprah's conception and how she talks about her childhood is she is does not at all like hide that aspect of things like she she has strong opinions on it. This clearly had a massive impact on On her psyche growing up.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Yeah. And they probably I'm sure wasn't conscious. Right. Like, or at least not usually, you know, that's the way these kind of things tend to work, I would guess. But, you know, like, again, it's it's I don't think Oprah's I'm certain Oprah's not making this up. It's just far too consistent in her story. And like you said, it makes total sense.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Like, this is definitely a massive has a massive impact on the way she perceives herself and the way she perceives her family. Um, she told one story to life from when she was about nine years old, where she was reading in a back hallway and her mother ran up through the door open, grabbed the book in her hand and shouted, you're nothing but a bookworm. Get your butt outside.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

You think you're better than the other kids. Oprah later remarked of all this, I was treated as though something was wrong with me because I wanted to read all the time. And again, you get some denials from the family on this point. Whoever's kind of more accurate there, Oprah isn't stopped from reading in a major way. She remains an excellent student and a voracious reader into adulthood.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I mean, we could talk about the book club stuff. But yeah, this is one of the big discrepancies between her and her mom. But she's like, yeah, I got punished for being smart and for reading.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Like maybe for the adult, it's this one time I was frustrated at her because she was spending all her time indoors. And I told her she was a bookworm to get outside. And, you know, the rest of the time she was fine reading. I got her books. But, you know, as a kid, you remember the one traumatizing mom, the time your mom yelled at you for reading. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah. Yeah. Child memories. So given some of the other context clues of the way that people who were near the situation talk, I think that Oprah's recollection of events, obviously, like there's a lot that's true there, but there are some inconsistencies.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Because one of the things that Oprah's doing in this time, she continues from when she was living with her grandma, is she keeps traveling around to all of these churches in Milwaukee, all these like black churches and social clubs, where she'll read poems and stories from the Bible and stories from literature. And so she's...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

You know, if her mom was like so ardently against her reading, her mom wouldn't have been driving her around to do all this stuff, like taking her to all of these different events. So there clearly is like a good deal of support and like people in her like her mom recognizes, OK, my daughter has this kind of gift for like public speaking and talking. And I need to do something to nurture that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Right. And that's definitely a part of the story, too. In People Profile's book Oprah, Meryl Noden wrote, quote, Oprah gave recitations at black churches and social clubs. A particular favorite was Invictus, a stirring declaration of courage by the 19th century English poet William Ernst Henley, which closes with the couplet, I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Yeah, yeah. That's never been our strong side, being able to show up in a timely manner.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

And this is a great poem. It's like the first poem I ever memorized. Oprah loves it. And the third famous person who loves this poem is friend of the pod, Timothy McVeigh, who recited it as his last words before being executed by the state. So this is yet another thing that Oprah and Cousin Timmy have in common. There's so many of them now. I mean, we don't even need to go back and list them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Absolutely. I mean, I'm not the first. I think Regis was the first guy to say that. Point that out. Anyway, still a good poem. It's not the poem's fault that Timothy McVeigh liked it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

Anyway, describing the reception of her first performances, Nodin writes, although the audiences were impressed with her skill as a speaker, it seemed to annoy her mother and her peers teased her mercilessly, calling her the preacher, which I also believe that's exactly how shitty little kids are. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

She's like eight. Yeah. If you're the poem kid, you're getting a nickname.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

I mean, I don't know. I mean, that kind of stuff's pretty traumatic as a kid. Like I got. Yeah. You remember stuff like that. Like little kids give you a shitty nickname. And yeah, that sticks with you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?

We're not bringing any of that up. But it is like it's it's very it's very sympathetic. Right. She's this she's this bookworm kid who likes to like read poems to audiences of adults. And she that is I can't imagine much that's going to isolate you more than that, especially in like this period of time. Right. Like it's even even harder back then. And like harder to find kids. There's no Internet.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This is happening right as Nature Boy has quit his job at the barbershop in order to lock himself in his room and watch YouTube videos, which he said made him question, quote, the fabric of reality. His partner at the time, Myesha, and the mother of his son, says that he stopped sleeping almost entirely and describes what he watched as conspiracy theory videos.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Quote, he rambled daily about America, which he called Babylon, and how it was going to fall. And, you know, fall of America. Not super wrong in predicting that, maybe. But I don't think he's predicting it for the same reasons. Yeah. So Nature Boy, for his part, says, I started studying what America was, what money was, breaking my reality down to a molecule.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And again, that all could lead you in a good direction, but it mostly leads him to get very angry about the toilet. He begins again. Well, it is evil. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

yeah again he starts to become convinced that direct exposure to sunlight makes you smarter because it increases your melanin content uh he becomes he's briefly a back to africa kind of black nationalist right where he's like we we need to return to africa um but around this time

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

his older sister tanya dies and maisha had been uh close to uh her like like his his partner had been close to his older sister and so they go to the funeral and she's kind of surprised because nature boy's really taciturn he's like weirdly cold during the visit but then when they return to georgia he goes through this really rapid visible decline in his mental health

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The first sign to outsiders is he stops bathing entirely, and he would angrily rant to anyone that you only need to bathe if you eat smelly foods, and he has at this point become a fruitarian, so he doesn't need to wash himself ever. Now, there's also some evidence that something diagnosable is happening here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Myesha says that he starts to suffer serious memory lapses, often forgetting what day it is. He stops cutting his hair, which was for him a major red flag. Again, this guy is like a fairly skilled barber. Yeah. In one video talking about this time, he says, I had people like, dude, you good?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They would come to drop the money off from the barbershop and see him with his hair all crazy, ranting about conspiracies in Babylon. And they were just like, I don't want to hear that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's all alarming. And, you know, not bathing, not bathing. You know what I mean? Yeah. People are immediately aware. Right. Like it's not the kind of thing that's hideable. So my issue decides eventually she doesn't want to hear this either.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And she takes her kids and the child that they share, dumps his ass and moves to South Carolina and making the only good decision anyone will make over the course of these videos. Nature Boy is OK with this because it gives him more time to study what he has decided will be his next career, which is becoming a YouTube personality.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, right after she leaves, Young Pharaoh gets invited to speak on a podcast in New York City. And Nature Boy kind of brute forces his way into like, oh, I'll drive up there and be on it with you. Like, we'll hang out. We'll be on the show together. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And as soon as I think Young Pharaoh kind of lets him because they're buds and Nature Boy at the start of this thing immediately elbows his friend out of the interview, basically.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

to go on a rant and you can see the moment here again this is from the hood horrors video the original video was deleted long ago so it's really the only place i have to access this but it's kind of a noteworthy moment to look at here my brother nature is here from atlanta first i want to talk to my brother nature why are you so infatuated my brother we're going back to africa talk to the people

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, so he kind of pushes his way in, and the other guy seems more interested in him too, and this sparks the end of their appearance, of their friendship, right? Yeah. Because he kind of pushes young Pharaoh out of this thing. Now, they will be in several videos talking about their beef because, again, this is a YouTube subculture, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So this isn't the end of their relationship, but now it is primarily based on them having beef with each other, right? Yeah, well, beef sells. Beef cells. Right. That's that's that's how all of this shit works. Right. Now, it's interesting. He doesn't. This is his first I believe his first appearance anywhere. Right. In terms of like social media as a nature boy. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

at least as far as I can tell. And he starts his channel and begins building a following pretty shortly after that. But before he does so, he goes home and he continues to spiral a bit more, right? Some of his first content, he's a militant fruitarian, but he's militant in terms of like he hates vegans for eating plants, which he regards as being as cruel as hating animals.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So he's very hard to get along with, right? This is a lot to apply. Like you can only eat fruit because fruit wants to be eaten, but like you can't eat like... otherwise eat plants because that's hurting the plants.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Very hard to take seriously. I don't mean to offend any fruit-tarians out there, but... You're supposed to eat other things. You simply are. You simply are. There's a number of things. Now, he starts the Nature Boy Facebook channel in, I think, late 2015.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And his initial videos are, yeah, these kind of rambling streams where he will lay out his beliefs about not pooping or peeing inside, not bathing, eating fruit. And most importantly, he makes a sharp break from this return to Africa stance that he has earlier and instead starts advocating that people drop out of Babylon entirely and live in tune in nature. There's a video.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I don't think we need to play it, but like where he kind of makes the stance that like there's too many wars in Africa. So we should all go to Central or South America because there's a lot of sun exposure there, which will make us smarter. But it's not as dangerous. Right. That's kind of the reason why he changes his mind. OK.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, his videos are not highly produced at this stage, but he's good looking and he's charismatic and he starts to draw in thousands and then tens of thousands of subscribers. He has an Instagram. He has a YouTube. I think he's initially more of a Facebook and Instagram person, but his YouTube starts to build.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And they get like 100,000 or so followers, right, each, which is not – he's not a massive star, but people are listening, right? And when you've got – 100,000 or so people who are semi-regularly watching your stuff, you can get some of them to send you money, and you can get some of them who start to develop a really strong parasocial relationship with you, which is what starts to happen here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And he begins vowing that he is going to leave the United States, Babylon, to South America, where he is going to start a conscious community. And he starts talking to his followers like, you should follow me. We're going to we're going to completely change the world. This is going to be the spark of the revolution.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

You know, I am I am going to end Babylon by beginning this movement, by getting everyone to start conscious communities in South America where, again, people already live. I know people already live there.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's one of those things where I'm always like, okay, but if it was as simple as just we all need to go live on the land in fucking Peru or whatever, why didn't all of the people living on the land in Peru stop anything? Ding, ding, ding. Why didn't that make all of our problems? Because maybe they're more complicated than just living in Peru. I don't know, man. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Maybe people living in Peru have a lot of issues. All of our problems are more complicated than that. This is not about really solving problems. Again, it's going to be about being able to take videos of yourself in a very pretty place. And speaking of being able to take videos of yourself in a very pretty place, I don't know how that relates to our advertisers. Here you go. Here's ads. Oh.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

All right. So we're back. We're back from the pods. We're back talking. Okay. He decides he's going to leave for South America to start a conscious community. And the way this ultimately happens is very funny. He makes a video announcing the day has come. I am going to leave Babylon to live off the land as God intended. His initial plan was to go to South America. He talks about Peru a lot.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But as soon as he posts, I'm doing it, I'm making the plans, I'm leaving for South America, a fan of his reaches out and is like, hey, my brother lives in Honduras. That's where our family's from. And he's inherited like 30 acres that you can use. There's two old houses on the property that you would have to renovate first to make it livable. But like, you can go down there.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So Nature Boy immediately is like, well, fuck South America. I'm meant to be in Honduras, right? Yeah. And, you know, to be honest, from what I can tell, I don't have detailed knowledge of this land, but what I can see from what footage exists, this it would have been a good setup for someone wanting to try and start assuming someone knew how to do all this. You've got houses that are in OK shape.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They need some renovating. You've got 30 acres. You can support a good number of people on 30 acres. If you knew what you were doing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Absolutely. You could do something here, right? If you had any intention of actually doing the things you were talking about. So he commits, he buys a plane ticket and he tells everyone first he's flying down to Florida. And if you want to leave Babylon too, everyone meet up with me in Florida. We're going to do a big meetup and we're going to fly down the Honduras together.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And he shows off his camping gear and a backpack. He's got a life straw, which he

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

clearly doesn't know how to use he's got solar panels to keep his phone charged he's got a brand new cabela's backpack and he tells everyone now that i'm going to nature i'm going to build a village i don't know how i'm going to do it but i know it's going to happen because i said it's going to happen and again that's a red flag because all of this is very complicated and if people don't have any background experience they're simply not going to succeed which is indeed what happens but

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The day of the meetup in Florida comes around. And there's a very funny video where Nature Boy's like, well, my assumption was that nearly all of my followers were young women. So I was expecting a bunch of young ladies. But the only people who show up are three guys in their 20s.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, that's not really shocking. Their names are Key, Olmec, and Starlight. Now, these are all dudes who are kind of in this community. They're interested in not just Nature Boy, but other stuff. Olmec in particular seems to have a degree of knowledge about how to farm and stuff and is really interested in trying this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Nature Boy is skeptical about all of them because, again, he was hoping they were all young women that he could have sex with. But... He changes his mind when Starlight says he knows Spanish and has $20,000. Nature Boy immediately tells him, you're useful. Again, he does not know Spanish. He did not plan on having anyone with him who knew Spanish to create a community in Honduras.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Not needed. Not important. No. Now, at this stage, this is not a cult. This is some young men who have had their heads filled via YouTube and Facebook with pretty ideas of living off the land and how easy it is, right? The instant they arrive at the actual property, they look at this house, which had been like the landowner's grandmother's house. And so it's filled with her old stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And, you know, it would take work to clean out and fix up. And he decides it's creepy. And so they immediately permanently scrap their plans to live in the jungle and start a village and instead get a hotel using Starlight's $20,000. And just instantly, oh, you got to clean up a house? Nah. Nah. The thing that you were warned you would need to do. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And like a really minimal, like you're not talking about carving a home out of raw land. There are houses. You gotta clean them up a little. You gotta do some work. Yeah. You've got camping gear with you and you're not willing to clean out a house. So after a little bit of time in a hotel, they find a house to rent in Santa Fe, Honduras.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

In a video at the time, Nature Boy notes, that $20,000 sure came in handy. I'll bet it did. Oh my gosh. So he's just spending this other guy's money renting places. Phoenix, the landowner, joins them and they start calling themselves Ethereans and posting videos of people camping in the front yard and calling it an intentional community.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Again, these people are camping in a city in front of the house that they are renting. There's a picture Sophie's going to show you. It's just tents in a yard. It's just it's simply just tents in a fairly well cultivated yard. This is not an intentional community. You are doing what like third graders do. You are camping in your yard.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yes. Clearly someone- Not a bad situation. I'm sure it's not Nature Boy, is doing the landscaping.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This is, again, in a city. Yeah. Yeah. They're not- This is the opposite of off-grid. Yeah. Now, this is all very silly, but what Nature Boy does next is actually pretty cunning, which is-

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They've got this house they're renting and some people live inside and some people camp in the yard, but they will go out because Honduras is Honduras and they'll go to very pretty places that are like tourist hotspots where there's waterfalls and they will film themselves bathing under waterfalls and picking fruit from jungle trees and brag about how they're living this perfect back to nature, carefree lifestyle and like drop out of Babylon and join us.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Look at how nice this is. This is our life every day. He says, this is not a vacation. This is where we live and you're more than welcome to stay. And again, this isn't where you live. You're going to Honduras is a very beautiful place. You are driving for an afternoon to tourist hotspots and pretending your life is this like jungle paradise. Again, you live in a city in a rental, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The boy, nature. That's the name he's picked up at the start of this episode. And we should start today by talking a little bit more about the conscious community or the black consciousness community. I've heard it described as both things.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

There's like power lines in that photo.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, come on. You have cars. You're using gasoline all the time. Like you have not escaped Babylon. You haven't walked away from Omelas. So that said, these videos like this spread. Facebook loves showing people videos of like idyllic nature retreats and the like and back to the land projects. All this stuff does fairly well. And people start coming. Lots of them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So many that it like the other three guys who had left. with him, who he calls his warriors, start to feel overwhelmed. They're like, we need to stop asking for more people to join. Right. Because there's like dozens and dozens of them. But at this point, young women start showing up. Right. That's the dream right there. That's Nature Boy is like, this is working. And you know what?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

We're polygamists now. Yeah. So very quickly, this turns from some slightly to moderately deluded hippie kids camping in a yard to nature boy telling multiple women that they are now his wives. And he also doesn't use the term wife. He calls them directs. They're his directs. So we've got a cult terminology starting to form. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

In a video at the time, he explains, with polygamy, it's just, for me, being with four female students that I'm dealing with very intimately. It's nothing more and nothing less than that. Sex for me is me plugging into a woman.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

and sending my knowledge like a USB to a computer and when I have sex I am putting fluid in you inside the fluid is DNA on that DNA is all the knowledge that I know and now you're getting a direct transfer from my file into your ribosome into your DNA and if you do that enough you can take me on long enough to the point where I'm inside of you Robert, I cannot believe you just read that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Again, this is a subculture, not a massive one, but not a small one either, that exists primarily through kind of a nexus of YouTube and podcasters and some rappers and Rolling Stone writer David Peisner describes it as, quote, an ecosystem of black spiritualists, natural living advocates, herbalists, alternative historians, motivational speakers, and backpack rappers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I know, I know. That's one of my favorite pieces of cult leader nonsense I've come across on this show. That is. My dick is a USB.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Beautiful stuff. Beautiful stuff. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They are all shitting. Katie, everyone is shitting in every yard in this story. You have to add that they are all pooping in the yards. It's not that big a yard. It's not that presumably burying it, but... Again, they're all shitting in these yards.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, while he claims to be a guru, bringing people back in touch with the natural world, he very quickly spends the entire 20 grand, not just on this rental, but primarily, according to other people there, mostly on dirt bikes and iPads, which he's like, but I gave them away to other people in the group.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

You know, he calls himself like a real humanitarian for giving away all of these dirt bikes and iPads to other people who join. But it's like, it's not your money, bro. Wild. So that $20,000 goes quickly. And soon everyone's scraping by. He's barely managing to cover rent and food with... allegedly, the $3,000 a month he is allegedly receiving from that guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But just as soon as things are getting dire, his key, one of the other guys who had joined him in Florida, has a loved one die and he inherits $300,000. And he starts by giving Nature, Nature Boy says like, hey man, you know, the group really needs 20 grand for this project. And he just keeps doing that over and over again until he gets all 300 grand, right? I

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He's making his choices. I've watched an interview with that guy after All This Falls Apart where he's like, no, I don't regret it. He was my teacher. He was my guru. Okay, man. I don't know. Fuck. Whatever, bro. So they get robbed not long after this in Santa Fe because Nature Boy is buying everybody fancy gadgets and computers. At least that's what they say.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's like they're in the middle of the street and these people take everything on them. I think they get kind of... Unclear, but I think they get into the house because they get everyone's like passports, a lot of their stuff. Right. That's bad. I don't know. I have some suspicions that what actually happened is that Nature Boy was trying to subsidize this community by also moving some substances.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Right there. I don't know. But the way people describe this makes it sound like, no, they were targeted. And maybe it's because they had pissed people off.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And part of why I think this is once they are robbed, this was just a mugging. They wouldn't do what they did next, which is leave immediately the country and leave most of their stuff behind in the house, including several vehicles that they own, like vans that they own. Right. Like they leave a lot of money and stuff behind. And that makes sense to me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

If you're like, oh, somebody told you you need to leave or you're going to get fucking murdered.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I just and this is based in part on the fact that I spent a lot of time in Central America and met a number of people doing things that aren't wildly different from this. And it's not uncommon for people, especially for the leaders of groups like this, to think, well, maybe I could move a little Mali or something like that. And there's already people moving Mali in these areas. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

You're stepping into territory. They're scarier than you, nature boy. So anyway, they flee, leaving all of their shit behind. And he convinces everyone to move to Peru. But on their way, they visit Costa Rica. They're like going through Costa Rica. And like, you know, like everyone who goes to Costa Rica, Nature Boy is like, oh, actually, this place rips.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And decides, no, no, no, we're going to live in tune with nature here. Right. OK, so they camp for a couple of nights and then they rent another house because, again, none of them know how to really like live off the land. It's also Costa Rica's a country. They're not just going to let you set up camp in the jungle randomly and start a village. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Having gone through a bit of related non-culti content creators that seem to be- Wait, I'm sorry, backpack rapper? Yeah. Which I think is a term for like rappers who are kind of not not massive. You know, they travel around and do a lot of like local shows and stuff, you know, that like, yeah, probably do a lot of I think SoundCloud rapper is an adjacent sort of thing. Right. OK.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The same way you can't really do that here. You know, they continue producing videos from different gorgeous landmarks. And soon, you know, and people keep joining, right? You know, Costa Rica is even prettier in a lot of ways. And so they're posting all of these increasingly gorgeous videos about their idyllic lives outside of Babylon. And a young woman named Velvet Marquez joins the group, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

She is a freshman agricultural student at Tuskegee University. She has some relevant experience to actual back to the land shit. She had volunteered at a local land use NGOs and felt like a natural fit for what she thought these people were doing. She recalls not even knowing that there was like Nature Boy was the leader, right? Because the videos they publish, he's not making it all about him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He's constantly publishing these stories of other members. So it really does sound like to an outsider, there's this wonderful community mostly made up of like black people who have dropped out of, you know, this fucked up country and are living this idyllic life in Central America. And so she decides to go join them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, when she arrives, she's immediately surprised to realize they are not growing food. They're not foraging. They're eating at restaurants and driving in cars just like everyone else. But she and Olmec kind of hit it off. Right. And, you know, Nature Boy agrees that like she can be Olmec's direct. But Nature Boy is also not clearly happy with this because he wants to to be with her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And so he keeps like hassling her and be like, are you sure you want to be with this other guy? Is she want to be with Olmec? Right. So that's going to continue to be a thing. Now, around this time, another young woman, Kayla Reed, shows up from Canada. And this is a white lady, right, from a family that's at least middle class or upper middle class.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

She, again, gets drawn to this the same way everyone else does. It looks pretty. It seems like a great way to unplug from this very toxic society. And she's useful to Nature Boy because, you know, he's in general trying to get as many young women around him as possible. But also, She's white.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And there's by this point one or two other white people who he can put on camera and tell potential followers this isn't a racist thing. Right. Like we accept everybody. He starts at this point changing his tune to like everyone is a shade of brown. Right. So, you know, he softens all this and again to try to get more people and more money.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, he's also cognizant of the fact that taking a young rich white girl to his like cult in Central America could force the involvement of international law enforcement. Right. So this is a kind of thing that he is aware from the beginning. There's some upsides and some potential dangers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And soon enough, those dangers make themselves clear because Kayla didn't tell her parents what she was doing. She is an adult, but she lied and claimed that she was heading to a church camp and then just disappeared and never told anyone where she was. That's going to raise some alarms.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Her parents make a missing persons complaint, not even because they're specifically sketched out by this guy, but because they have no idea where she's gone. She goes on a church retreat and drops off the face of the world. It's a very normal parent thing to do, right? Yeah, it should be. Yeah. Find your child. Yeah, you're going to want to find your kid. And they are looking for her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This is an open question for at least weeks until someone sees her in an Instagram video with these people calling themselves Etherians and is like, oh, fuck. I think she might have joined the cult. And this is the first time that this group before this nature boy and his followers would have were just a bunch of expats bumming around Central America like a lot of people have done. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This is the first time they start being called a cult by the media and they start getting real attention. The CBC, which is kind of Canada's NPR, starts reporting on these scant few details known about Nature Boy and the Ethereans, who have now rebranded themselves under the name Melanation. Right. That's kind of the YouTube brand for all of their videos.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Having gone through a bit of related non-culti content creators in this space, a lot of what I see in this community reminds me of stuff that I saw and was kind of had in sort of experienced adjacent to some of the different like hippie-ish, you know, communities I spent time in when I was in my late teens, early 20s, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And again, this is kind of a reflection of all of his melanin based teachings, which have gotten increasingly elaborate. Right. Right as this is all going on, the BBC sends a very irritating young reporter to Costa Rica to do a documentary called Searching for a Cult Leader in the Jungles of Costa Rica. I don't love this video, but it does capture the cult during a unique time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So I'm going to play a clip from it, which shows Nature Boy giving his spiel to a group of followers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Their community is cold, Melanie. Okay, so that's at least how followers are kind of describing their teachings at this point to a guy from the BBC. Now, this BBC guy does a short documentary just on the cult and a slightly longer one reporting on several different kind of utopian living projects in Costa Rica.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He spends a lot of his time online flirting with that Canadian lady in a way that makes me slightly uncomfortable. Or at least that's my interpretation. Watch it. You may feel differently. At one point, he asks her if Melanation is a cult, and she gives him an answer that was clearly scripted and drilled into her head by Nature Boy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, I say that he clearly said that because a bunch of his videos, he uses the exact line that like, well, the United States is a cult. And, you know, there's a lot to be said about cultic aspects of nationalism. But as a general rule, when you are saying that, you're saying that to be like, so it's fine for me to have a cult, too, as opposed to we shouldn't have cults.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

You're being a little slippery.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. Not quite. That's not quite true.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

To nationalism? Does nationalism make people vulnerable to cults? Sure. That doesn't mean you get to make a cult. At this point, I think we've got what I'd call a hybrid cult. Nature Boy is starting to exert more and more control over members. It becomes a higher control group than it had been, but also a lot of people start leaving.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This is not like the Church of Scientology where he's got a wing of folks dedicated to going after people who leave. And most of the people who come for a while are not crazy. They're not super dedicated.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

A number of them in that are interviewed in that BBC documentary have left and start their own land projects because they're like, well, Costa Rica rips and I actually want to farm or something like that. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, yeah. Oh, this was bullshit, but this place is pretty rad, you know? Now, we get some good context on the kind of people drawn to Nature Boy in that BBC documentary, which talks to a former member named Ave who got involved because she had a kid and she wanted to raise this kid in a place that wasn't the U.S. because, quote, the race thing was just really out of control.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Ave is a black woman living in Texas and says, I just didn't think a child would be able to develop there. And I get it. Yeah. And what's what's so interesting about Nature Boy is he's very much like doing a partial Jim Jones, like he is recruiting from marginalized people who see how fucked up life in the U.S. is and are open to dropping out of society to find a better life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. I'm just going to record a podcast that's me reading most of the words and then re-release it every week with a different bastard. And you can put it together in your head as like the right bad person.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

the rainbow gathering people in the burner community, all these like different sort of where you would encounter this mix, this wide mix of everything from like, here's people who are actually really interested in, you know, aquaponics and human manure and alternative living situations. And here's people who,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But Jones, you know, before getting everyone killed, they do start like a town, right? Like they've got they're doing. There's a lot of infrastructure they put together.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They put a lot of work into it. And Jim Jones is not a lazy man, right? What's interesting to me is Nature Boy talks a lot of Jim Jones shit, but he is so lazy and he completely refuses to use any of the money. And they have a lot at one point, enough that they could have started something and potentially with the knowledge made an actual sustaining project.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But he is almost violently opposed to the concept of farming. Right. Yeah. Obsessively talks about being back to nature. He hates the idea of actually living off the land.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yes. That's what he's doing. And he's very, it's just such a lazy. And there's a couple of stories from former members who like show up and he tells everyone that like, you know, we only go to the bathroom outside and they're like, okay, so we're like making our own manure to like grow things. And he says, absolutely not. Under no circumstances do we ever do anything.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Like he even tells one person, why would we grow our own food? There's markets. It's like you are literally preaching about the apocalypse, my dude. Yeah. Fascinating, fascinating quote for that reason. Now, this doesn't do well. Again, a lot of people realize this is bullshit. Ave, who has a kid, leaves right away, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But it goes off like gangbusters among people who are deeply insecure or who are the kind of narcissistic dumb fucks who adopt countercultural beliefs, not because they have real criticisms of society, but because they want to feel special.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And this clip from that BBC documentary of two of his followers taking this fucking reporter to a hot springs makes really the narcissism in this belief system incredibly evident.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

are actually trying to inform folks about important aspects of American history that have been covered up. And here's people who are telling you absolute nonsense about how you don't need vaccines if you eat enough zinc. And they're trying to get you to believe in, you know, whatever fucking bullshit aliens are nonsense.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Again, the whole I'm never going to die. Albert Einstein said so thing like it's it's again, it's so lazy. These people like are not actually this is not an ideology. These people have not are not thinking about anything. They are casually ingesting YouTube videos with pretty things and they just want to bum around and not do anything all the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

right like there's no real belief here there's no commitment to overthrowing an unjust system there's no commitment to learning how to survive it's just it's so it's such a fundamentally narcissistic thing so i guess i'm not surprised this is a cult that forms through facebook and instagram right yeah that's it's attracting that type of person it's also attracting somebody that's

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, I want to be hanging out under fucking water. Yeah, exactly. The waterfall stuff. Very poorly thought out. I keep thinking back to Scientology. Evil, stupid, not a shallow belief system. Deep and labyrinthine and complex, right? The Zizian. So we've talked about, yes, is everything silly, nonsense? Is it all dumb as hell?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yes, but it's complicated and there's a lot of effort being put into this silly, crazy belief system, right? Yes. The more I learn about these fucking, you know, Melanation, the Ethereans, all the different things they call themselves, the more I'm like, God, these people are so fucking lazy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

No, it's just a hot dude with an Instagram, right? Other than not pooping in a toilet. Other than not pooping in a toilet. It's such like a... Man... I guess I'm appreciating all the cults that put in the actual hours, right? Yeah. You know, put in the work. I miss the good old-fashioned cults. I miss the good old-fashioned cult. God, you know, back when... Yeah, it's really selling me something.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The cults these days. So lazy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Uh-huh. Yeah, it's made everything too easy, right? You don't have to really work because the scale of social media means you can just find some people who will buy into anything. Everything's falling apart because of the internet. All right. Sorry. So eventually... Yeah. Yeah. Now, he has rapidly developed more narcissistic cult leader traits by this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

One of his most common refrains is, what I'm doing is beyond Martin Luther King Jr. It's beyond Malcolm X. It's beyond all of that. And this is something his followers will repeatedly say. He's beyond Martin Luther King. He's beyond Malcolm X. And again, both of those guys, a lot of work.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Very complicated, large organizations they ran that made serious impacts on the world, not just hanging out under waterfalls. Anyway. Initially, he discourages his directs from getting pregnant, telling them that if they do get pregnant, it's a sign that they have been cursed by God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

When a young woman named Pocahontas joins the group and he makes her his direct, he immediately impregnates her and kicks her out of the group a week later. So that's good. Now, he does eventually change his opinion on this, right? He has more kids with several of his followers. His kiddo Cyrus visits him and spends several months living with the cult in Central America. So that's not great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And there's some videos of him like yelling at this kid, making him like crawl around on the ground. And he's like complaining that it hurts. And Nature Boy is like, you know, you just need to toughen up. You have to do it. He also near the end of 2017 posts an important video, which is described in that Rolling Stone article.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I wanted my son to be so pure that he'd never know he was naked, says Bishop, who has four children. I take baths with my kids. I'm naked with my kids. I have sex in front of my kids. My son be breastfeeding. I'd be making love to his mom. That's how I get down around kids. He goes on like this for a minute or so. My son, I have sex with his mom. After I'm done, I'm laying there chilling.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He grabs my penis. He's playing with my penis. I let that happen. This is what really draws a lot of ire online because people start accusing him of being a pedophile. And that's not an unreasonable thing to draw from that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yes. And the kind of the big difference between a lot of where, you know, this kind of these kind of different sort of hippie ish descended movements that I spent time in and around when I was doing psychedelics a bunch.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Well, and it's it's this kind of thing where like, is it bad for kids to be around communities of people who are naked? Like, no, there's nothing inherently bad or sexual about being naked, depending on like how you do it. Is it bad for like like people like most people have been naked a significant amount of their lives in the history of the human race? It's not inherently bad for people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Likewise, is it bad for kids to be aware that their parents are having sex? Again, most human beings throughout history were broadly aware of the fact that adults around them had sex because you had a one-room shack everyone lived in or you were all out basically camping all the time, right? None of that is inherently toxic. Should your kid be playing with your dick? No.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

No, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Weird. Yes. It's weird. And he's like telling you like, no, this is again, this is the thing that we're doing that's destroying Babylon. No, it's not. You've just got like a bunch of weird kinks, most of which are around pooping. He takes videos of his son pooping. Oh, my God. It's weird. This is what draws the ire of the Costa Rican government.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The governor of the province or whatever that his cult is camped out at actually is like there's enough of a local uproar about this guy because the stuff online goes that viral that like people in Costa Rica are like talking to the government being like, do we really want this fucking weird pedophile cult hanging around?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So the governor has a – schedules a meeting with Nature Boy. And Nature Boy posts some videos about obviously this is all taken out of context. I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm happy to have a meeting with this guy and show him that nothing we're doing is wrong or weird or bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And this community, which also focuses the conscious community, a lot of psychedelic usage, is that there's a much more of a focus on racial justice, because this is much more of like a black subculture and a lot of education on the history of white supremacy. So, again, you get these real

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And then the day of the meeting, he has his followers load everything they own into vans and flee the country or flee the state, right? They don't quite leave Costa Rica. And in fact, in October, they get deported after being detained at a checkpoint. Most members are found to lack passports since a lot of them have been robbed. Many had overstayed their visas.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Costa Rican officials were clearly kind of just trying to figure out what was happening because there's these vans full of like mostly Americans who don't have a lot of IDs or have overstayed their visas. And Nature Boy immediately like they detained them. And Nature Boy goes live on Facebook from the police barracks and claims he's he's being murdered by a government just like Malcolm X or MLK.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And again, neither of them were murdered by Costa Rican immigration authorities. Quote per Rolling Stone. We're live on Facebook right now, he shouted. Everybody bring their cameras out. Make sure they record this, because if we're going to die, we're going to die just like this is going down. An immigration officer boarded the bus and offered to let everyone go once they signed some paperwork.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

We're not signing nothing, Bishop yelled. We're standing up for humanity. If you don't stand for something, you're going to fall for anything. Bishop insisted they wouldn't get off the bus. You're going to have to use violence. Moments later, police did it. Such a piece of shit. It's just like the cops are even like, we'll let you go.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

You got to sign some things saying you have to leave, that you can't stay in Costa Rica.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He's putting on a show, right? And there's this audio, and it sounds bad. The cops beat them up. But again, you had an out. You're choosing now to occupy a police bus for no reason. I don't know. It's not the kind of civil disobedience that I really again. Is there a massive ethical issue in Costa Rica putting American travelers on buses? I don't know. I don't think so.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I think you had an out and you didn't take it. I think it sounds like you had an out. Speaking of people who have outs, you can break free of our evil, abusive society by participating in it via purchasing product. I don't know. Here's some ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The Tuskegee Experiment, redlining, the move bombing, and also like moon landing conspiracies, anti-vax shit, you know, all that stuff. I found a write-up in Medium by Anna Stensgaard, which gives a good idea of how people in this community like to describe themselves.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And it focuses a lot on the concept of a conscious community, which is where the conscious community subculture takes its name, but is an older term. It goes back, you can find people talking about shit like this in like the 70s and 80s.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Ah, we're back.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

We're so back. So this whole confrontation, which was totally avoidable and stupid, causes Nature Boy to go viral in the consciousness community subculture yet again. They spend several months back in the U.S. pooping in the backyards of Airbnbs. Now, not all of Nature Boy's followers leave... you know, as soon as they get into his content to join immediately.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

One guy, Dalen Armstead, around this time, who was a musician and an audio engineer, like gets into his YouTube content and spends a year or so not showering and pooping in the woods of Maryland before he finally leaves to join them. This is when they're back in the US. Yeah, just preparing. He explained his mind state to Rolling Stone.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

If I didn't change the way I was living, I was going to suffer some kind of consequence from the universe. So I left in the middle of the night and didn't tell anybody. Now, when he joins the group, he does it alongside a couple of other people with audio and video editing experience who have joined.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

People would use the term to describe these kind of idealized, physical, intentional communities formed along utopian lines, which is a thing people have done in America since the nation has existed. And this term goes back further than the subculture we're talking about.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This is like – and none of them really last long, so they're all kind of handing off the baton to the other. But they start producing higher quality videos for Melanation's different accounts. And Nature Boy – kind of starts turning the cult into a media powerhouse or at least a low level one. They released some very mid rap songs that are nonetheless competently produced, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Like I wouldn't say the lyrics are very good, but like the sound quality is fine. They're clearly made by someone who knows how to produce a song.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He does some of it. There are other members who are actually somewhat popular who have a following because they're more competent. He is kind of noted by everyone as not knowing what he's doing. And anytime someone says, hey, that track sounded like shit, he gets angry. So he can't really... make anything good, but he starts publishing books at this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And Sophie's going to show you a couple of the titles. There's a lot of them. Most of them are just a few pages. One of them is Divine Knowledge of the Self, spelled C-L-L-F, study guide. And that is intentional. C-L-L-F is absolutely, because cells and stuff. He's wearing a Native American headdress in this, which is a thing he has started doing by this time. Um...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

There's another one with an illustrated version of him called Master Chief exposing the food industry.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And it has 4.4 stars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's some good reviews. There's some bad ones. But, you know, 4.4 stars. Some of his stuff just has like two or three. Why is he wearing an indigenous headdress? Because he starts doing that at this point. They have a lot of videos where they're all dressed as both as a mix of like Egyptians and like Native Americans and march around like soldiers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Oh, welcome back to Bastards Behind the Stole Katie Podcast Guest A. What a title. Yeah, you can put that all. I believe in our audience. They can put it together. They can put it together. You know what I'm getting at. Yeah, they get the gist. They get the gist. Come on. Do I need to do everything for you people?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And again, they're living in like Mexico and Honduras and Costa Rica. Like none of this is... It's just what they're doing, okay? It's just what they're doing. It's just what they're doing, okay? Sophie, it's behind the bastards. Yes, he sucks. So this does start to bring in more money. I don't think the books as much as the video content and the rap. At least 14 sales.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

At least 14 sales, which is good that they have more money because by this point he has spent all of Key's $300,000 inheritance. But the growing notoriety, because he's putting out videos and they're getting some traction, he has followers. But the fact that he's more famous now, that he's had these big scandals, it leads to someone digging up that gay porn he was in.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And for several years, he puts out a lot of videos denying it's him, even though it obviously is. It's him. And there are videos where he's like, look, if it was me, would that be so bad? Just admit it, man. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

now since forming real world breakaway communities is hard and usually a bad idea very difficult to do most people wind up hating each other most of these projects explode um the vast majority of people in this subculture it's an aspirational thing right and they just kind of connect and talk about what they'd like to do via the internet

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He does eventually admit it, but it takes a wild amount of time. So he gets fed up with the States and he decides to fly everyone back to his Ignacio Belize to try his hand again at forming an intentional community. He's immediately recognized by the owner of an internet cafe and run out of the country for being a pedophile. So good work, random internet cafe guy in Belize.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

That was the right call. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Get the fuck out of Belize. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He's just always jumping around. This kid, he sucks. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. So there's two good decisions right now. Although, you know, Myesha eventually does let him spend more time with his kid, which isn't a great call, but you know, her leaving and that guy in Belize being like, get the fuck out of my, get the fuck out of this town. Great calls. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So he changes the group's name yet again, I think in part to try and, you know, lose some of the heat on them to Carbon Nation. Right. And in the grand tradition of scammers in common for generations, it is at this point that he flees to Mexico. Several new folks have joined at this point, and the oldest of them is a 59-year-old mother. She's got several kids.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I think she might have been a grandmother named Magdalena Sevilla. She had successfully raised several kids to adulthood. She was the manager of a store. She's a person who lived a very –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

complete adult life like a functional member of society and she but she also was someone who had a lot of trauma um and a feeling that her life was somehow incomplete and she falls into this content she sees all these young people living these blissful lives around these beautiful things of nature is like i want this in my life right and so she quits her job and leaves everything behind um

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Her children, who were interviewed for that Hood Horrors documentary, expressed being really surprised by this, but are like, at least for a while, she seems happy. So we were like, I don't know. Maybe she's 59, right? What are we supposed to do? Now, she has a heart condition that she's been on medication on for like a decade at this point. Again, it's totally manageable. She is managing it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, come on now. We got to be able to meet in the middle here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But Nature Boy hates medicine. And it's kind of, you could, some of the accounts of people at the time, it is insinuated that he harasses her whenever she takes it. There are some reports that she felt afraid of him knowing that she needed medicine and that she was sick or that she was taking it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And she doesn't like quit cold turkey, but she starts rationing it and not taking it as often as she is supposed to. And eventually she runs out entirely. And in videos from later in her stay, she starts to look visibly unhealthy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The group kind of travels around. They go back to Belize for a while and then move back and then back to Mexico to a place called Palenque where they rent a modern stone house. Although, again, most cult members are camping in the yard and everyone is pooping in the yard. Now, at this point, Nature Boy has drawn in some cult members who are, you know, they're better at editing and video.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They've got like recording studios set up. They're putting out a lot of content. And some money is coming through with this. More money comes in from Nature Boy requiring new members to hand over their debit cards and credit cards when they join. One former member claims he gave Nature Boy a card with $1,000, his life savings on it. And Nature Boy immediately spent it all on a ping pong table.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Anna writes, quote, as it turns out, there's a parallel digital world teeming with conscious travelers. I discovered Facebook groups where conscious travelers or nomads share their experiences and curate lists of the best conscious hotspots worldwide.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So again, not great at money. Near the end of 2018, Sevilla dies in the night in her tent due to a pre-existing, now unmedicated heart condition. Velvet Marquez, who is still with the group at this point but will leave later, told a reporter he does not allow people to have medical attention. This is why Mama Dia, that's what they called her, passed away.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, by this point, Nature Boy is fully calling himself God now. He has forced the whole cult on a strict diet where everyone can only eat at the same time he gets hungry. He starts randomly forbidding men and women to speak with each other, and in true cult leader fashion, begins doling out unhinged punishments. When members displease him, they're made to do squats or stand in a corner.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He also starts filming the sex that he has with followers and sometimes posting the videos online, sometimes as revenge porn, sometimes just as content. Fuck this guy. They make most of their money at this point from a social media app based in Singapore called Big O Live, which pays people for streaming.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Shaka Calvin, one of his followers, claims that's when it would really get bad because Bishop Nature Boy started becoming a celebrity. They were all having to do things to get attention, to get money.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And the things they do, they start, instead of there being any kind of message, they start really focusing their content on, we need to have reality show shit about everyone having fights and conflicts within the group. So he starts ordering people to fake fights and arguments for the sake of viral content. Yeah, beef sells. Yeah, beef sell.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He also starts talking like a militant revolutionary, which is when they start really doing a lot of these videos where they're dressed as like pharaohs or Native Americans and they're marching like soldiers. Again, stuff that he thinks is going to shock people and go viral. As Daylon Armstead, the music engineer who joined, recalled the Rolling Stone.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Working frequently with two other initiates, Armin Palmer, who went by Pisces, and Ishmael Goodwin, a.k.a. Caliber, the group's musical output accelerated. Loving the money and hating the system is loving the warden and hating the prison, Palmer raps, with an eerie synth hook looping behind him in one song called Negropion.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Furthermore, ChatGPT can serve as a valuable resource in your global exploration of conscious communities, offering guidance, insights, and information to enhance your search for specific locations. So again, most of this isn't real. It's an aesthetic.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Again, these are all like members who are like handling the actual entertainment portion of things. Wow. The stuff that actually does require some discipline is this, right? Yeah. Now, as time goes on, an increasing part of his message becomes domestic abuse because Nature Boy has started seeing, by this point, Velvet, who starts out as Olmec's direct, is now his direct, his main wife.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And he has started hitting her. He's also hitting basically every other woman in the group. Former member Courtney Townsend claims, quote, We'd end up having these meetings that would last six, eight hours, where he's explaining why he's locking Velvet in a room, why he had to slap her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

His explanation was that we've been programmed by European men to be weak little men, so our women will never respect us. The women will respect him, and he's the guy slapping these girls, locking them in rooms. He actually does a live stream at one point with Velvet and her dad, where Velvet's dad asks, like, why do you keep hitting my daughter? And Nature Boy says, because I was upset with her.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And her dad responds, she made you bust her in the face, her nose bleeding profusely everywhere. I'm going to tell you this, pops. Bishop responds, when it comes to me, I'm a man. So again, like he is, this has become like the central, what started as like, we need to overthrow Babylon and go back to nature. It is now primarily what we need to do is hit women.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

That's what the cult has turned into.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And here's what part of what's extra gross about this. It's not even that this isn't like, obviously he wants to do this. But there's another level that is very social media to this that I find even sicker, which is that a lot of their viewers, and they're getting paid by viewers whether or not those viewers like them, are hate watchers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So a lot of why he's doing this is because it makes people angry and they share and repost and it gets him more traffic, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, that said, this does get him reported to the Mexican police. In March of 2019, they get raided, which prompts them to flee the next day for Nicaragua. They eventually get raided there. And after about a month, they get deported and they go to Panama where the same shit happens. They spend some time there. There are police reports. They get arrested. They get deported.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

People like the image of going back to the land, of being conscious, of being enlightened, of being spiritual, but also all they really want to do is stay in a nice hotel. That's really a lot of this, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This happens several times until COVID hits. Now, the plague is actually a lifeline for Nature Boy and Carbon Nation because, again, he's making his followers hand over all of their money and everyone starts getting those COVID checks. Right. In addition to being it gets easier to get like on unemployment and stuff. And so he starts taking that directly from them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And they have enough coming in now that he tries to set up in Hawaii on the big island next. Right. Now, if you remember, Hawaii has extremely strict COVID quarantine protocols at this time. I think it's like two weeks that you have to spend in a hotel room, not leaving for any reason but an absolute medical emergency, right? If you want to spend any time on the island at all, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Like that is my recollection of it. That's what I read in the article. Mm-hmm. They show up in Hawaii and immediately break quarantine. And in fact, post videos of themselves, not just breaking quarantine, but like touching endangered turtles that you're not allowed to touch. So they get arrested by the Hawaiian government and they get deported as Americans.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

They get deported from Hawaii, which is not easy to do. You have to really suck some horrible shit to get deported from Hawaii as an American citizen. Now, while all this is going on, Carbon Nation has become a YouTube production house, putting out videos that are mostly either sexual or involve giant dramatic fights between members.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Less and less time is spent actually preaching any kind of ideology. But the parasocial bond formed by watching this stuff is strong enough that people keep joining. including Janae Newell, a 25-year-old waitress at a raw vegan restaurant who by 2020 had come to consider Carbon Nation, my frequency family. What was what he preached?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

People of like minds coming together on a common mission to elevate the consciousness of Earth. This is all, again, just repackaged bullshit. I was hearing shit like this 20 years ago from fucking assholes on a primitive chunk of the internet. But like, yo, we're all on the same frequency. No, you're fucking not. You're shitting in a yard and hitting women. Um...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Initially, she describes him as kind, but on March 27th, 2022, during a party at the DeKalb County house that they had started to rent because they're back in the continental U.S. at this point, Nature Boy had one of his other wives punch Newell repeatedly after an argument. She says, all right, well, I'm out of here. I'm leaving.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

So, yeah, I do want to talk about another influence in this community and kind of where a lot of the name comes from is an actual movement called the Black Consciousness Movement, which is a real thing that comes out of the black radical history and apartheid era South Africa and specifically a guy named Steve Biko.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But Nature Boy kind of sends people after her and convinces her to come back. And then he tries to coerce her into sex. She says no repeatedly and he keeps repeating, I'm not going to rape you. And then we should have sex one more time. And eventually he coerces her into having sex. Once she leaves, Nature Boy immediately posts revenge porn videos of them having sex.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Newell goes to the cops and she initially is not pressing charges for rape, just for the revenge porn. But the cops are like, this actually, this is, this, it has to be so bad for the cops to do this. The cops are like, this actually sounds like rape to us.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And it's again, if this is a white cult leader, I don't think any of this happens in terms of like the legal consequences. That is a huge part of it. Right. That he is a black cult leader is why the cops see this. But he is. This is rape.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. All the bad things. So he gets arrested. He gets charged. He does bail out. He's going to spend like the next two years almost fighting in court while his coat collapses around him. There had been a few dozen people at most at one point. And they're down to like a half dozen hardliners.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

One of his followers, Amar Jawad, flees with a bunch of money and hard drives that presumably included revenge porn. On March 6th, 2023, he's found dead inside of a house that's on fire.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It seems to be related to some gang stuff he was into as opposed to Nature Boy, but I don't, you know, it's not fully known, but it's one of those people who knew him will be like, it's because of Nature Boy's influence that he got into that stuff in the first place, right? Because he joined when he was 18. And this dude had a real dark impact on him. I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

But those are the two deaths that are somewhat tied to this cult. The court case finally reached its conclusion earlier this year, and it didn't go well for Nature Boy. One of his wives admitted to posting revenge porn when she was like trying to defend him. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yep.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's both like, yeah, this guy sucked. I'm glad he's not out and free, but also like, well, there was only justice in this case because he's a black guy, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Both of those things are true, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's not an excuse.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's interesting if you want to look at like the cult that has a very – that takes – the cult that kind of I think about a lot when I read about this because he's kind of a lower effort version of NXIVM, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And NXIVM is a higher effort version in part because you've got this guy, Keith Raniere, who gets his start doing other kind of cons, is targeting a higher level of wealth individual, is targeting people who are more prominent. And he's doing a lot of – when you get right down to it, it's the same. They're not – he's talking about saving the world.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Biko was the first president of the South African Students Organization when it launched in 1969, and inspired by black thinkers like Frantz Fanon, he began publishing articles that posited an ideology he called black consciousness. He described his goal as to, quote, "...demonstrate the lie that black is an aberration from the normal, which is white."

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

All he's really doing is being – like lounging around in nice hotels and houses and rental houses and having sex with a bunch of women – who he also physically and mentally abuses, right? Ultimately, both cults are doing the same thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Ranieri makes millions and millions of dollars and is adjacent to a lot of very powerful people for years and years and years and years, like a long time before he gets justice. Nature Boy, it's just a couple of years. And it's in part because Nature Boy does not have, because of his background, the ability to kind of reach and

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

you know, influence the the level of wealth people that that Ranieri does. And it's part because, like, just he immediately gets a lot more new, you know, shit. Right. Like he he gets a lot more attention from law enforcement. He gets it gets taken seriously because he's not a white guy. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

How are we doing, Katie? How are you feeling in the five minutes since we recorded part one?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, yeah. That's part of what's interesting is because Ranieri did have to create a lot of like – he had to build this curriculum around his cult in order to start getting the following that he eventually turns into like what it turns into.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

When you've got the internet and the way parasocial relationships work, if you're able to just get an audience with content that you're putting out hours of on a regular basis – you can really easily get enough people to support you as a cult leader. This isn't a massive cult. He's not a massive star, but 100,000 or so regular listeners.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

You can get a dozen or two people who will come out and live with you at any given time and enough money that you can get away with this. It It takes so much less effort. A guy like Ranieri, there is more background work that Ranieri has to do to get started, you know? Yeah. So it is just one of these like social media has made starting a cult a lot, take a lot less effort.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

and you can fuck up a bunch of people's lives doing that a lot more easily. That said, the Colts don't tend to last as long. Maybe that's the upside, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. And that is that is kind of worthwhile that that the worthwhile side story here is that a lot of why this code gets taken down is there's a it's not just, you know, the racism of the police. It's also that there's a lot of people watching and following this online and saying this is wrong and taking effective action to both scare other people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Biko urged the black community to celebrate and take pride in their history and traditional cultural and religious practices as the indigenous people of South Africa, pushing people to decolonize both the state and their own minds. He was a cool guy, which is why the police murdered him. Very good article. Well, we're talking about a black radical leader in 1969 South Africa.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

I'm a number of a lot of people both get out because people are making a stink about how fucked up this is and don't join who might otherwise have joined. Mm hmm. because of all of the people who are trying to stop this. And it also makes it harder for them to act and operate. So that is a plus side of it, right? Is that there is like a community kind of defense aspect here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

People realize, well, this is really, you know, fucked up, right? Like that Hood Horrors documentary is somebody who covers a lot of stuff within the subculture being like, people need to know how this happened and why, right? So that's good, you know? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yes, much to say.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yep. All right. Okay. Well, that's the episode. How are you feeling, Katie?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. You know what? Yeah. Join Katie's cult where, I don't know, Katie, what Central American nation do you think you're going to wind up in?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

A lot of cults are. Katie, good news about that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The promised land. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, I'm too tired. Cults, that seems like so much work. I'd rather, I'm going to play Age of Wonders 4 in my underpants alone. That's my plan.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah, sounds great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Well, no, Sophie, you should start that cult in Curacao. We definitely still need a cult in Curacao, but primarily as a way to get money. and as a way to purchase products without tariffs. That's really the benefit of having a cult in Curacao. Oh, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The odds are good he wound up getting murdered by the cops. Right. Like it's a bummer. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to quote from a very good article on Bicco in the Retrospect Journal. Quote, the apartheid government regarded black consciousness as a growing threat and placed a banning order on Bicco in 1973.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The repressive practice of banning originated from the 1950 Suppression of Communism Act, which regarded all political opposition as a communist threat. As a result, a banning order restricted a person's travel and social interactions, as well as preventing them from public speaking or distributing written material.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

In Bicco's case, he was limited to speaking to one person at a time and forbidden from being a member of any political organizations. Several tactics were used to circumvent the strict measures of his band. Bicco struck up a close friendship with the white liberal editor of the Daily Dispatch, Donald Woods.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Over time, Woods became more educated about the plights of black South Africans, secretly writing Bicco's biography when he was himself banned. In 1977, Bicco was arrested for traveling outside of and therefore breaking his banning order. He was severely beaten whilst in police custody and died of his injuries at just 30 years old.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Again, literally banned from talking to more than one person at a time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Fuck that government. So I bring this up because not because Nature Boy has any is is an inheritor of Biko's tradition, but because the black, the modern black consciousness subculture or conscious community. And I've heard both names used for the same kind of amorphous subculture is in some ways related to the black consciousness subculture. movement.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And a lot of what Nature Boy is doing is kind of taking some of these things and pulling them in a toxic direction. For example, a big part of black consciousness is the idea that we need to really get people to accept that being black is not an aberration, right? Like it is just as normal as being white. Yeah. Which is a really important thing. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

That like black is not an aberration from the normal and the toxic sort of way that's taken is like, no, no, no. Having more melanin is directly what makes you intelligent and having more makes you an inherently better person. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's not just a nature bill. It's not just a nature boy thing. Right. Sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. Well, let's hear about Nature Boy. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

It's just, yeah, it's, it's, you can see, it's important to understand kind of some of the history and like the term that these people are aping. And also in a way, it's also important to understand.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Nature Boy, a big part of once he becomes like a media influencer, he's constantly going to be talking about how he's being targeted for murder, how the police are trying to kill him for his revolutionary actions. That's not at all a part of his story. But that is a huge part of actual people who were actual revolutionaries in the actual black consciousness movement. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

That is what happened to them. And he's kind of like stealing valor from them. While again, rather than trying to liberate people in bondage, all Nature Boy is trying to do is get a bunch of wives and convince them to poop outdoors, which is not revolutionary.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Not particularly enlightened either. Or enlightened. I don't think Steve Biko would have been super into this. Yeah. Okay. So when Nature Boy gets into the conscious community, the first figure within it that he finds himself drawn to is a guy who goes by the name Young Pharaoh.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Now, when I first started looking Young Pharaoh up, I was kind of surprised because he's talked about in these documentaries about what happens as a pretty big figure. And Nature Boy talks about him as a big figure. He's only got like a thousand followers on Instagram and a little more on YouTube. But then I looked into it. It turns out he used to be much bigger and have a much larger platform.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And he lost his mind during 2020, many such cases. And so he got banned from a bunch of places and he never really recovered. Previously, prior to 2020, he had started out and started building his platform within the subculture by making a lot of videos about police brutality, white supremacy. And he did well enough that he started making serious money.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And he's making like 200 grand a year at one point. And he kind of switches in and around 2020. I think it starts sort of right before and starts singing a very different tune at a certain point. And it happens kind of in a way that makes me think it might be inorganic, where he'll start putting out videos about how the police aren't that bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And actually, I've never had a bad interaction with the police. And I'm going to move to a white neighborhood because I think it's going to be like it's a lot of really weird. And he gets criticized by other people within the conscious community for this shift.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Then he loses his mind over COVID and starts blaming it on the Jews, which is how he gets demonetized and banned for a bunch of stuff, which is why he sues Google and he loses and gets stuck with a 40 grand bill. Most of the videos you'll find about young Pharaoh today are made by other people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

The top showings when I typed his name into Google while writing this are a documentary called The Rise and Fall of Young Pharaoh. Another one is young Pharaoh at airport crashes out and punches his girlfriend. And of course, young Pharaoh explains why aliens abducted him seven times. Part seven.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

He has gone in some directions.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Yeah. Woo. So I know you're all curious. Why did the aliens abduct him? And just to get an idea of this dude and his vibes, I'm going to play you a quick clip of him explaining. This is from part seven of the series on why aliens abducted him seven times.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

Well, that checks out. Yeah, that seems, that all scans to me. Can't see any reason why that wouldn't be true. Yeah, so he seems like he's got his shit together, right? So this is the first guy that Nature Boy is really going to vibe with. He reaches out to this dude based on his videos. They become close friends. At least that's how Nature Boy describes it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

This is not going to be a long-lasting friendship. Mm-hmm. So again, those videos I played were that video that Sophie played was recent. I got to go back to 2015 here. So remember, he's not yet obviously a crank here. He is mostly talking about police brutality and white supremacy and kind of a fairly prominent creator.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

And when I said, I think there's something sketchy about how he changed suddenly to talking about how he likes the cops and, you know, kind of going more right wing. He is invited at one point to speak at CPAC.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Sordid Story of Nature Boy: The Instagram Cult Leader Who Hates Toilets

um now he gets he gets disinvited right before because of the aforementioned anti-semitism but something went on there right really yeah the anti-semitism did it yeah uh yeah um so back in 2015 young pharaoh's blowing up he's not so obviously a crank and nature boy grows obsessed with his work and he reaches out online the two vibe and they become internet buddies

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Zizians: Birth of a Cult Leader

Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Zizians: Birth of a Cult Leader

And he was just staring at me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Zizians: Birth of a Cult Leader

I'm Gilbert King. I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Zizians: Birth of a Cult Leader

And he was just staring at me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Zizians: Birth of a Cult Leader

I'm Gilbert King. I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Zizians: Birth of a Cult Leader

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Call zone media.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

That doesn't mean that he's told what it all is because they silo that info. Even if it's your job to stop people from finding out about these programs, you may not be told much about them because it's a need-to-know thing and you don't, right? You need to stop people from filming the weird craft. You don't need to know how it works. You don't need to know what it is, right? No.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

I didn't see shit. This is why I've been saying this for years. The government should have all of its security done by street level drug dealers. You know, those guys can keep their fucking mouth shut. You know, absolutely.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Area 51, all security provided by Coke dealers. Just don't give them any Coke. Then they talk about everything. You got to keep them sober. Otherwise it ends very badly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Yeah, a bunch of sober Coke dealers at Area 51. This is going to end well. So there's evidence that a lot of, you know, Doty is a credulous guy. He does come to, at least he will claim to believe in this. He might just be flippant. fucking with everybody. I don't really know. But a lot of guys in his kind of level in different Intel agencies are believers themselves. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So at any rate, Dodie claims that his chief mentor in spy shit was a guy named Sealy Howard, a former insurance salesman. According to Doty, he gave him this sage advice early in his spook career. There are three sorts of people you will be dealing with. The first are the ones who will believe anything you say. The second are those who will, at least at first, refuse to believe you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

The last is the group who won't believe you at first, but might be willing to be convinced. And what I find interesting about that is those last two groups are the same group of people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

The people who don't believe you at first, but you can make them believe you. I don't see the difference.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Yeah. Yeah, sure. So as soon as Paul Benowitz called the Air Force with results of his surveillance, they knew they might have a problem. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations very quickly became concerned that Paul Benowitz had stumbled onto a secret laser based tracking system located in Kirtland. At least that's one of the things he might have stumbled on.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Greg Bishop, who wrote Project Beta, noted that these transmissions sounded like gibberish language that had been distorted and sped up. Or, to a true believer like Paul, they sounded like alien speech. Edwards, chief of Kirtland-based security, had previously described Doty to a friend at the NSA as his drug man. And so... That's less cool than it sounds, as Greg Bishop writes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And this is where I think Bishop is too credulous, because, again, think back to Roswell, the first guy like they don't tell the people who are looking and responding to that crashed balloon that Project Mogul exists. It's very common for these guys not to be in the loop about stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Well, I think that's awesome. So check that out, everybody. And are you ready to get back into this story, into these aliens?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Especially since he's just a sergeant, you know, like he's not a super high level guy here. That said, Doty is kind of sent to talk to Benowitz and he's like, hey, you know, why don't you come to the base and we can talk about your research? And so Paul heads to the base and he shows Doty what he's got. And Doty is initially kind of bored.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And then he perks up when Paul starts to show him his radio array. He returns to the base to talk with some NSA colleagues about bringing an expert out to Paul's home to see what he'd built. So he visits Paul at his house. And this time with an actual scientist in tow. Another engineer, a guy named Lou Miles. And the fact that... Paul has now been invited to the base to talk.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

He's had, you know, a guy come over to his house from Air Force Intelligence. Paul is like takes this as evidence that like I'm on the right track and the Air Force supports me. I'm now kind of helping looking, helping the Air Force find evidence that there's aliens. You know, I kind of got my X-Files job because they think I'm so cool and smart.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

I know it's really sick because he's just trying to help, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

He just wants to keep his country safe. Oh, they're sizing you up, buddy, to see what kind of a threat you are. Oh, no, my man. No, not at all. So the expert Doty brings to Paul's home is Lou Miles. Like Valdez, that state trooper, Miles was a guy who wanted to believe. He had been involved to an extent with Project Blue Book, which was like a multi-year Air Force investigation into UFOs.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Into these aliens and spooks? Bow deep in aliens. Let's go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of bows, Richard Doty probably doesn't have nice elbows. He's our Air Force Office of Special Investigations officer.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

It's one of the big seminal moments in early UFO history, right? Yeah, yeah. He was also now the chief scientist for Kirtland's test center. So he knew the reality behind a lot of the strange aerial phenomena that guys like Paul credited to aliens. So he's both like open to believing, but also like, oh, but I know that I know what you're actually seeing. And it's not aliens.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

It's this thing that we're working on. Nevertheless, he was good at talking to Benowitz while Doty hung back and took photos with a hidden camera for the NSA. Who was also involved in this? It's kind of murky exactly where FOC begins and the NSA ends. And like there's some evidence the CIA is also gets involved. There's like a lot of people are kind of interested in what Paul is doing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Um, but no one's interested in Paul's evidence of alien interference. They're again, worried about like interested as to whether or not he's actually like gotten any encrypted shit. And they also think he might be useful because being an actually brilliant engineer working in the aerospace industry and someone who goes to these UFO conventions, he's kind of trusted within the UFO community.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So if they want to get a lot of people to like pay attention to something other than the real shady shit they're doing at Kirtland, you know, he might be able to convince them, right? He might be able to distract attention away from the real shit that's being done that they want to hide.

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So yeah, for the next year, Paul waits for updates from the military and he continues his special interest exploring extraterrestrial phenomena. In May of the next year, 1980, a 26-year-old woman named Myrna Hansen called the state police to claim that she and her six-year-old had been accosted by alien visitors near Eagle Nest, New Mexico.

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The state troopers basically shrugged and handed the case over to the only cop they knew who dealt with this sort of shit, Gabe Valdez. Yep. If I'm remembering correctly, I believe Valdez's attitude is that Myrna was probably a plant. That's not clear to me. Again, a lot of sketchy shit's going on here.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

When you said bows, I was like, are we talking for your hair? Are we talking? Nope. Are we talking speakers? Natty bow. There's so many bows. Does he have no bows? No partners? What are we talking about? Oh, yeah.

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Well, but also, this kind of shit was going on, so I don't know.

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So Gabe calls our boy Paul, and they go off to meet Myrna. Now, by the start of the 80s, the science of hypnotic regression, which is not really a science, had taken off among people who believed or wanted to believe that they had been abducted by aliens, right? Yeah.

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Yeah. I'm going to I'm going to hypnotize you and then walk you like say a bunch of leading things that get you to tell a fun alien story. Right. Yeah. You know, a lot of this stuff is some similar shit's happening with like the satanic panic. We're just into the idea. I mean, there's a lot of this in the X-Files, right?

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This idea that people have memories locked away, that this psychologist or psychiatrist who definitely doesn't ever wind up fucking his patients can unlock something.

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It's super cool.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Yes, nothing sketchy here whatsoever. Definitely not. Yeah. Speaking of things that aren't sketchy, sponsors of this podcast. Never, never. They would never do anything illegal. Although we did just find out that what's that food box company has child labor. So I don't know. I'd be curious. I don't know. Sophie, which one was it? I don't remember. One of them. Anyway, here's ads.

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you know what speaking of bows i will let pete this just yesterday i wound up just because of it happened as i was driving like responding to a three-car crash and there was a young woman in the middle car who was the only one who was hurt and she was hurt because she had a beret in like the back of her hair and like for for a claw yeah it was a claw shape one yeah which is a no-go anyway don't do not wear those in the car don't wear those in a car yeah

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

We're back. Sponsors love that sort of thing.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So Gabe called our boy Paul and off they went to meet Myrna Benowitz, who is working for that civilian organization, not working for, but is like one of the head guys at APRO, that civilian looking into UFO things. And like is also working with this actual sheriff's deputy partners.

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He and and Gabe partner with a University of Wyoming professor who's who's an ex a quote unquote expert in hypnotic regression. And this guy's name is literally Dr. Leo Sprinkle.

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Great stuff.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Great stuff.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Leonardo Sprinkle. Yeah. Oh, fuck me. So in his book, Saucer, Spooks, and Kooks, Adam Gowrightly summarizes, Benowitz, by this time, had convinced himself that the ETs were transmitting a mind control beam to repress Myrna Hansen's memories. Benowitz believed that the ETs were likely beaming him in an attempt to disrupt his ongoing UFO probe to thwart this extraterrestrial electronic harassment.

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Benowitz arranged for Hansen's regression to take place in his 1979 Lincoln town car with multiple sheets of aluminum foil draped over the windows to deflect the dreaded alien beams. Benowitz connected these perceived beams to cattle mutilations. It's so cool. I love this shit. I love it. He's fucking wrapping his car in tinfoil. No, he sees the aliens are blocking our memory with the beads.

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He's got a wife and she is a long suffering. I don't know much about her, but a saint. I'll say that much.

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Oh, yeah.

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And again, he's been talking to Doty for months at this point, and Doty is kind of just like every... He's yes-anding everything Paul says, right? Like, oh, yeah, that sounds real, Paul. Yeah, definitely. Oh, yeah, no, no, aluminum foil. Great idea, man. Yeah, absolutely. So...

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is this where aluminum foil comes from is this like the the origin of that like this will block waves part of it yeah i don't know that paul is the only guy who starts it but this is like he is on the ground floor of the aluminum foil will stop the aliens from reading your mind thing yes that's definitely fair to say he's among among because he's very influential in this culture too yes

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Yeah, yeah. So we can see at this point, he's already kind of starting to go over the edge, right? Yeah. Paul begins writing analysis of Myrna's hypnotic regression sessions, replete with lines like, the alien does, all caps, kill with the beam, generally.

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Mm hmm. Do your hair. You can bring your clip in the car, but do not wear it while you're while you're in the car because it's bad. Bad.

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Kill with the beam, huh?

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Now, the reality is that Hansen had just brought up a bunch of existent UFO lore during her sessions, right? She complained about missing time. She described being picked up in a tractor beam. She claimed an alien crewman had brandished a silver knife before cutting into a cow's chest. And she eventually described being taken to an underground base where a metallic device was put inside her brain.

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Now- This is part of why there's some theorizing that maybe she was a plant. And Paul is the guy who really does more than anyone to start this. This is when you start getting these UFO conspiracies about underground bases. And they're usually either like bases that our military shares with the aliens or maybe the aliens run the base, you know?

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There's some stories about them having fights with the army and whatnot and these bases underground. But the real thing behind this is that a bunch of people in Albuquerque had watched.

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And like this is something that Paul would have seen from his house as the Air Force dug this massive underground nuclear storage space, like the largest weapons underground weapons storage base ever, or at least at that point in time. And so people are like wondering, well, what's this really for? And the answer is pretty evil, like it's for nukes.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. There's a lot of theories as to why. So Hansen also claimed, per Benowitz, that she had picked up an STD described as a vaginal disease like streptococci bacillus from the aliens. Paul wrote to his colleagues at the volunteer alien hunting group that, quote, we are trying to culture it. No luck as yet. Also, it has evaded all of our known antibiotics with penicillin.

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Whatever it is, you got to wrap it up, though.

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paul you are an electrical engineer i don't think that you are qualified to say that it's an un like it can't be like it's it's a it's got to be an alien std maybe it's a normal one maybe it's just a normal one yeah exactly you're not a doctor paul you should first off you should be given this lady antibiotics paul you're not a doctor you're really not um

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So he also revealed that Myrna was being, quote, badly beaten on by the alien with their beams 24 hours a day. And once Myrna starts talking to him about how she's just constantly being beam attacked, Paul starts to believe that he, too, is being beaten on with beams.

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And he urges his colleagues who plan to do regression work to lock themselves in a car in a garage coated with three layers of aluminum foil to protect themselves from the beams. He's doing well, is what you'd say at this point. He's doing great. Our boy, Paul, very, very healthy, making rational choices. Oh, Paul. Paul, you've fallen so far. You were doing so good, buddy.

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So Doty is occasionally checking in with Paul, but he's also spending the intervening months, you know, 79, early 1980, working on another mark. And this guy is a journalist or a quote unquote journalist, depending on how you see it, with a reputation for he is he is considered to be one of the more rigorous guys within the UFO community by the UFO community. Take of that what you will.

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His name is George Moore. At least that's how he's described in Project Beta. But also the author of Project Beta really likes this guy and is like impressed by him. So I don't feel the same way about Moore. Go Rightly's narrative makes him out to be like less – more of like one of an interchangeable number of UFO kind of weirdos, although one who is –

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reached out to by the government to spread disinfo. And Moore claims that he's down with this, right? And the reason we're talking about him is that he is the co-author of that book, that first big book that gets UFOs back in vogue, right? He's interviewing that guy from Roswell. He's one of the guys who helps make Roswell into the thing that it is in our culture, right? Yeah.

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No, there's only one kind. There's only one kind. I'm not going to say what it is. I'm not going to say which kind of beauty, but there's only one kind. That's fair. Yeah, it's elbows. Elbows. I'm an elbow guy. I'm an elbow guy. Yeah, I'm starting the wiki feed of elbows. It's just a bunch of like really blurry cropped photos of like elbows of different celebrities. Oh, my God.

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He's written a bunch of other stuff. He's a very influential figure within this field. And that inspires Doty and a colleague to approach him. In July of 1980, Jim Lorenzen of APRO receives a letter with no return address claiming to tell the story of an 18-year-old Civil Air Patrol member who had sighted a UFO and then been threatened by a man in black named Mr. Huck.

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I do like you saying barrette the way you said it.

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The young man had reported this to a Mr. Doby at AFOSI, right? That's the Air Force. That's Doty's agency. So Lorenzen gets this letter, and he thinks it's weird, and he sends it to Bill Mitchell, who's the best journalist he knows, or Bill Moore, who's the best journalist he knows. And Moore immediately is like, oh, this is bullshit. And he knows it because he does –

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Barrette? You said it so surgical. I thought that's what it was called. I thought that's what it was called.

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Some actual journalism, like he reaches out to the named witness and the witness is like, well, yeah, I saw some like weird lights, but I never was I was never threatened by a man in black like none of the rest of this is real. Man, the tiniest amount of journalism. Yeah. It really, that's all it takes in a lot of cases. Let me just double check this.

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Let me literally just ask this guy if this happened. The letter was actually the creation of Doty and his colleagues at Afosai. They were hoping to rope in somebody like Bill, right? Somebody smart enough to have credibility in the subculture, but also who might fall for a fake, right? They didn't succeed in tricking him, but they continued fishing.

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In September of 1980, Moore finished a blockbuster book, The Roswell Incident, which is, yeah, that's one of the things that reignites public entrance. Yeah. Yeah. So military intelligence gets very interested after this point. And while he's doing his book tour, he keeps getting calls at radio stations where like guys will be like, hey, do you want to have a meeting?

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You're not wrong, but you're also wrong.

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You know, I'm from a government intel agency and I'd like to talk. Now, my opinion on what's happening here is that there's some two way feedback. Moore desperately wants to be a journalist working on classified fringe like X-Files kind of stories. Right. And he wants to feel like he's part of this great game of spies and spooks.

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Anyway, don't wear those. And also, if you're ever in a car accident and your head is hurt in any way, shape, or form, go get checked out by a professional. Don't just assume it's okay. You don't want to wind up like that famous guy's wife. No. You got one brain, man. I wasn't saying that to be flippant. It's a real problem. Yes, yes. Go to the doctor.

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Now, the spooks he's talking to, these are real spies, but they're not the high level operators working to unearth, you know, Russian nuclear secrets or doing the fucking cool shit that they make movies about. There are some enlisted guys at the Air Force, mostly tasked with lying to rubes to cover up flight testing. Right. And they here's the thing.

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this is like a two-way street because they also want to feel like they're doing cool spy shit, right? Yeah, yeah. And so, Dodie and George Moore, part of what they're both doing, because they're both much more rational than Paul was at this point, they're kind of LARPing together, in my opinion, you know? They're kind of like...

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Well, Dodie, I get to play like I'm this very serious man in black and more is like and I get to play like I'm fucking Fox Mulder almost. Right. You know, the show's not on the air at this point, but that's what they're both getting here. Right. And more is offered a deal by by Dodie and a colleague. Help us out with some odd jobs. Right.

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We need some like deniable work that you can do and we'll pass you some classified UFO information. Right.

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That's how that. Yeah.

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Yeah, and the first dossier that Doty and his friend hand over is bullshit. Like, George, again, does some minor reporting and is able to figure this out. From Bishop's book, quote, After a few preliminaries, the question started. Well, what did you discover? Moore threw the paper down on the table, and trying to sound less annoyed than he actually was, replied, This whole mess is a lie.

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None of these people exist. The agent and Doty looked at each other and smiled. What's going on? asked Moore. You passed the test, said the man, whom he would eventually refer to with the codename Falcon.

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Within a few years, Moore and his colleagues would begin to assign codenames to their growing coterie of contacts so that they could talk freely about developments without fear of identification if they were overheard. And, you know, maybe this was a test. I think it's likely that they were like, OK, so we figured out this is bullshit.

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Let's just tell him that that was a test and then, you know, stroke his ego. He'll believe the next thing we say, maybe. Right.

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Yeah. Right. And they hand him some shit. And he'll admit, like, I knew some of what I was putting out into the UFO community was was bunk. But I think some of it's real, too. And like, you know, he's he's being a shady character here as well. Now, unlike Paul Benowitz, George is a pretty I think a mentally resilient guy.

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He definitely is a believer to some extent, but I don't think he takes it as seriously as Paul does. I don't think this is breaking his brain. I think he's having a good time. My favorite story from Moore is that Doty and his partner apparently thought Moore might be gay and decided to test him. One day when they're hanging out, they're like,

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park the car and Morris, like in a bunch of men start walking past the car, wearing tight pants or high heels and dresses that like fit really weird. And like, it doesn't seem like they, they would like are comfortable in. And apparently this is a test because they want him to troll the gay bars of Santa Monica, looking for a guy that the FOC wants for some reason. I don't know.

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Right. All right. So Dodie and his colleagues, they get some of what they want out of more. Right. He laundered some info into the UFO community, some of the disinfo they want to distract from their real programs. But he's also not he's he's a little too smart. Right. He's not willing to destroy himself publicly as much as was necessary for the kind of misinformation that they wanted to get out.

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Right. And this is where Paul Benowitz reenters the story. It is obvious by 8081 that this is a guy who is not well, but also he's respected. And he is a guy who, because of his tech acumen, might endanger some top secret operations. Yeah. The decision was basically made. Let's fuck him up a little. Right.

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Paul gets invited to give a speech at Kirtland and most of the attendees leave before he's done. But like one of them is like, oh, this is really interesting stuff, Paul. And that just lights his ego on fire. Paul, so happy to hear this. He applies for Air Force grants, which he does not receive, but he apparently gets an NSA grant.

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And I think that's maybe the NSA fucking with him because some real fuckery is about to happen here.

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Yeah. It's a little more messed up than even that. So Doty is now spending hours with Paul Benowitz and he claims that they became friends and that he found the orders he received to spread lies to Paul personally distasteful. If you watch the documentary Mirage Men, you'll see a lot of Doty and he does express a degree of what. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

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I don't you know, one of the things that you get when you like read these stories and like the way in which a lot of. the writers and quote unquote journalists who cover this stuff, the degree of credulity they have to these guys' stories. The thing that becomes clear to me is like, oh, this is your first time being lied to by a weirdo in the desert.

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Like I spent a lot of my childhood and like, or not childhood, my young adulthood and like off grid places, just listening to like lies from dudes at bars and stuff. I've heard a lot of crazy stories that definitely aren't true. And that's a ton of fun. Yeah. But I think some of these people just decide they want to live as if that's real. You know? Yeah. That's fair. Yeah.

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These guys are very, very vulnerable to timeshares. Yeah. So on some of his early visits to hang with Paul, he's shown a complex computer system, Doty is, that Benowitz had constructed and had his employees help him build to translate these encrypted messages, right? It's unclear what's actually happening.

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Is he just getting random static and then like running it through an algorithm to like create text based on that? And then kind of going through it almost like it's one of those like word puzzles and just like picking up words out of a feed of words that like and then saying like, oh, this is, you know, a message from the aliens. Right.

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Because some people will say like it looked like gibberish to me, but he would pull out, you know, five or six words from this like text. paragraph of nonsense and say, like, this is the real message, right? Yeah. And this is a quote from Doty.

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Benowitz had the computer rigged up to antennas on his roof that included a small microwave dish, and he would look at the screen, and there would be images on the screen that certainly wasn't an alien. But he was convinced that it was. I would actually tell him, I don't see anything. And he said, I see it, and I can hear them.

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And he had these earphones that he would put on, and he said, I can hear them talking. And I asked Paul... What language are they speaking? He said they're speaking their language. And he wrote a hundred page document about the alien language. When he went out to Kirtland to give his presentation to all these generals, he presented them with that information.

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So the NSA, and this is probably where the NSA gets heavily involved and maybe why they give him that grant, because a plan gets hatched. To gift Paul with a new computer, right, that he's told is a gift from AFOC. Some accounts, maybe Doty offered him the machine.

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The story we hear more often is that an Air Force consultant named Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who's a former scientific advisor for Project Blue Book and a big guy in the alien community now, I think he denies this, but you'll hear that too. Um, we don't really know exactly what happened here. Um, cause I've also heard like the NSA did it. I've heard that the air force did it. I don't know.

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Uh, Adam go rightly notes. This computer had been provided at the behest of the U S air force and embedded in the software was a code that generated an alien language with the aid of the air force computer. Benowitz claimed he established constant direct communications with the alien using a form of hex decimal code with graphics and printout. Oh, man.

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So what's happening here probably is that because some versions of the story say that the NSA was literally set up across the street in a rented house sending messages directly to Paul's computer. It was maybe a little less direct than that. But basically, he's got this machine that's probably programmed to allow them to send him fake messages from aliens. Right.

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And so he starts getting messages like this. Ground, ground. Women of Earth are needed. Flexible. The next just charges our ship. Women do not command the north among us. You have many friends. Water very short. Resist all attempts at alteration. Listen, orange, make peace. And Paul doesn't know what to make of this.

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He becomes convinced, actually, that this is the aliens trying to trick him into thinking that they're peaceful. But he knows they're really dangerous. He's so close.

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Yeah, he's getting there. Yeah. Greg Valdez, who's Gabe's son, visited Benowitz during this period and he described seeing the computer in use. He would type a question into the computer in a very complex for the time period form of a computer program, much like a current email. Much to everyone's surprise, he would get an answer to the questions he was asking.

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Sometimes he would get an immediate response and sometimes it would take several minutes. He would even receive very crude and basic pictures or graphics on his computer of these aliens. Some of these pictures resembled birds with reptile features, and some resembled reptiles with bird features.

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During this question and answer session, Gabe instructed Paul to ask the simple question, where are you from? Paul already knew the answer to the question because he had already asked the question, and he answered it verbally when a response came back on the computer. It simply said, the Zeta Reticuli star system. So they're now really fucking with this guy in a way that's very irresponsible.

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Right. Maybe Dodie. It's probably a team of guys, right? Because Dodie, there's some evidence he was working with the NSA. So maybe it's multiple. It's almost certainly multiple people feeding him bullshit. Yeah. But yeah, the result is that Paul grows convinced that the U.S. government has signed a treaty with aliens, perhaps to breed some sort of hybrids.

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And they've been given real estate in an underground base near Dulce, New Mexico. This paid played the happy dual role of covering up ongoing weird experiments around Dulce. You know, there's that poison gas fucking hole there. And diverting the attention of Paul and others away from Kirtland Air Force Base and towards somewhere less harmful, right? For their ends, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Definitely. Now, during his communications with the ETs, Paul became convinced that there was a secret war going on. Dozens of base security in Dulce had been murdered by the aliens in a gunfight. He wrote up plans to lay siege to Dulce base and began working to develop a sort of beam weapon that could kill aliens. Oh, Paul. Wow.

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Now we're making beam weapons, huh, buddy?

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Listen, folks, if you have a friend who's making beam weapons to fight the underground aliens- I actually don't know how you should handle that situation, but probably don't give him a computer that that lies to him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

See if he wants to play D&D. Maybe his imagination needs a little bit of a workout. You know, that might be great. Yeah. Yeah. Now, if a lot of this sounds like the overarching conspiracy plot for the first five seasons of The X-Files, that's because this is almost certainly the direct inspiration for a lot of The X-Files, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

This is, in fact, because this is all happening in the 80s, not long before The X-Files starts, right? So Benowitz, as he's communicating with these aliens, he's gathering information on the secret underground base and this war he believes is going on underneath everyone's noses. He's sending back everything he's getting to Special Agent Doty, his good friend.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And Doty dutifully forwards this up the chain and encourages Paul, keep digging. You know, you're getting close. He's doing the deep throat thing, right? He's like, yeah, keep keep digging, Agent Mulder, you know. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So close. You're going to get there. Yeah. Yeah. He's telling him that the aliens at Dulce base had been responsible for what he'd seen over Kirtland. And he does this because he's like, oh, yeah, man, you know what? I ran it up the flagpole and those that underground base. That's why you were seeing those weird lights. Don't look near the Air Force base. keep hanging out around Dulce, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

That's where the shit's going on, right? Yeah. Go Rightly claims, the ultimate intent of stringing Benowitz along, according to researchers like Greg Bishop and Christian Lambright, was to shift Benowitz's attention away from Kirtland to a remote area like the Archuleta Mesa near Dulce, where Afosai could ramp up their disinformation operation and more easily stage UFO events.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Speaking of staged, you know what's not staged? is the reliability of our sponsors. That's completely legitimate, you know? Don't even question it. Don't think about it. Hand over your credit card information. Text it to me. I'll buy stuff for you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And we're back. Okay. So near the end of 1981, Richard Doty convinces his superiors to let him take Paul on a special helicopter flight around the Archuleta Mesa. Since Paul is a pilot and they see some stuff, you know, there's some, and apparently Doty claims that he and other agents put out props, right? To look like air vents for the secret underground base and other evidence, right?

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Yeah, they're having pitches and stuff. They've got pitch meetings on fucking with this guy. There's a prop team now. Yeah. Oh, no. So because Paul's a pilot after this first trip, he follows this by doing his own recon flights over the area. And he gets very obsessed with this. And I have some questions.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

I don't know if I believe Doty entirely that like he's being handed all of the men and equipment necessary to carry out. a staged operation on the scale he describes, but also it's possible. And in fact, maybe likely Paul is sometimes seeing some real stuff. Like he reports seeing what he describes as a crashed Delta wing aircraft. And yeah,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

In this area at this time, they're working on prototypes of the Stealth Bomber, which looks like that. And in fact, Greg Bishop's Project Beta, that's his basic conclusion. Paul might have seen some of the testing stages of the prototype of the Stealth Bomber, right? Yeah. And maybe that was part of what Doty was doing, was if we get this guy to talk about...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

if we, if we show, if we get, if we let this guy see a little bit of the real stealth bomber program, but convince him it's aliens, then anybody who's talking about like a Delta wing aircraft, right. We'll be like, Oh, you're just talking about a UFO, not this actual thing that we're working on. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So maybe that's what's happening. Or maybe it was just an easy thing to make look like a plane from the air. Shit like this. They do this in world war two, a bunch. We do it. And actually the Nazis do it too, where you're like,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

make basically fake out of like wooden shit and spray paint uh tanks and stuff so people think there's an army where it isn't right so oh yeah yeah where i'm from in maryland there's a uh there's a fake cop car on like one of the highways that is up just to slow you down yeah love that shit

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Now, there are other claims about what happened to Paul and his wife during this period that are more questionable. One write up I found by the Cyberthetic Project claims that Paul and his wife developed red sores or perhaps some sort of rashes on their body. I've seen that a few times.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

The Cyberthetic Project describes itself as a token project with a mission to unite holders so that they can communicate in an open forum on the blockchain without fear of being judged or censored. So you'd be right about questioning it as a source. That said, this is all a lot of fun, so I'm going to quote from it anyway. Just, you know, a lot of salt here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

It has since been revealed that the NSA was in possession of sensitive documents concerning advanced technologies such as active denial systems and active denial technology. These technologies were apparently being developed by Sandia Labs and Kirkland Air Force Base with the aim of producing a non-lethal weapon that could be used against enemies.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Were they using this technology on the Benowitz family? The answer to that is also unclear. What is clear is that Paul and his wife were being physically impacted by his research into UFOs.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Um, and that's maybe not like, I don't, I think probably likelier than some sort of weird beam weapon is that Paul is losing his mind and he and his wife are both very stressed out by this and convinced that they're being targeted by aliens. And they have like shingles, a stress rash, stuff like all sorts of shit, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Right. I don't think that that's it. It's at all unlikely that something like that is the case here. And yeah. So as he grew more obsessed with seeking out the truth, Paul's business declined, which is another reason why maybe he's dealing with some stress related problems. I got his poor office manager. Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Paul, we just really need to make this sensor, man. Could we? OK, you've got the whole team working on translating alien speech. All right. Well, I'm going to maybe print out some resumes. Yeah, exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

There were he starts hiding like guns and knives around his home as the 1980s wore on because he's just incredibly paranoid now. And he continues to attend UFO events throughout the mid to late 1980s. His yarn about Dulce Base, which was almost certainly invented or at least heavily egged on by Richard Doty, had been a magnificent success.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

In 1987, John Lear, a prominent ufologist, stated that he had independently confirmed elements of Benowitz's story, right? That there's this underground base at a Dulce. Several books in the late 1980s published their own variants of the story, which helped to spark a paranoid belief in secret underground alien bases that is still a significant part of QAnon today.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

A lot of QAnon guys believe that there's a base under the Getty in Los Angeles. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

They kept it safe. That's where they keep the kids. Yeah, exactly. Center or villa? I think it's the center. Either way, do a pizza gate at both places, Sophie. You know what? No, that didn't end well for that guy. There's a lot that's sad about this. But one of the worst things is that Paul had almost certainly stumbled upon a very real and very important conspiracy at Kirtland. See? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Today, Kirtland Air Force Base is a major testing site for advanced drone technology, including weapon systems to defeat drone swarms and other experimental tech. We know that in 1980, a black mystery vehicle was spotted at the base. This is right around the same time Paul is making his initial reports.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So he's going to show you a picture of this mystery vehicle that is being tested at Kirtland Air Force Base when Paul is observing shit, right? It looks kind of like an SR-71, but it's like a drone version almost. Yeah. This was apparently what's now we know this was called at the time a TDUX tow target.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

A write up in the war zone describes it as a high speed towed aerial target to support the testing of infrared and electronic countermeasures or IRCM and ECM respectively. Something like this would both look very weird in the sky and also might put off some of the signals that Paul was, you know. Yeah, right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

It's also very likely Doty wasn't fully in the loop as to what was being developed there because he wouldn't need to be. And in fact, the more he believed the bullshit he was pushing on Paul, the safer the real secrets were. In 1988. Yep, yep. Cool stuff. The drone program. It always comes back to that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Yeah, they can make Steve. It's fine.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Paul Benowitz went to the Air Force. I keep seeing Steve Harvey's face in the night sky. I don't know what's going on. In 1988, Paul published plans for an assault on Dulce Base, which he'd become convinced was the nexus of an alien plan to control the world. That same year, he became convinced that his wife was working with the aliens or perhaps in control of the entire alien conspiracy.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Yeah, she's really going through it here. And in this passage from Go Rightly's book, which is based on interviews with Bill Moore and Richard Doty, he describes a profoundly ill man. Both Bill Moore and Richard Doty on separate occasions witnessed firsthand Benowitz's mounting paranoia, describing him as spun out and barricaded inside his home, chain-smoking cigarettes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

waiting in fevered anticipation for the final E.T. showdown. In Project Beta, Greg Bishop recounted, Benowitz told Moore that after the aliens injected him, they would make him drive his car into the desert in the middle of the night, but he couldn't remember what he did after he got there. Around this time, Benowitz's family committed him to a mental health facility for nervous exhaustion.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And you will sometimes hear it errantly stated that he commits suicide as a result of this. He does not. This thankfully doesn't have as sad a story as it might. Paul gets out after about a month and he seems to have pulled himself out of the UFO community after this point. He and his wife stay together. They're married more than 50 years and he lives until 2003. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So, you know, kind of a happy ending. But boy, it didn't it almost wasn't.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Paul, Paul, man, you got to stop. You got to stop using the computer the NSA gave you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So let's talk about fucking UFOs and a guy who didn't go to the doctor maybe enough or maybe went too much. I don't know. Richard Doty was born sometime around the immediate post-war period. He is – I haven't actually run into his exact – that said, I didn't like go super hardcore digging into it. His father and his uncle Edward were his chief influences growing up and both were military men.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Paul, we need to have a long conversation about things that are real and things that aren't. So Richard Doty would eventually retire from the Air Force and spend much of his retirement and golden years working. doing the UFO convention circuit. He will say that he was hired to consult on two seasons of The X-Files and that he wrote the screenplay for an episode.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

He's not credited as the writer for that episode, but his stuff definitely helps inspire The X-Files, right? He is for sure involved in what becomes The X-Files purely because of his role in UFO culture.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And he's a member of a couple of different organizations now. He's a very controversial figure within the UFO community because he both definitely worked for Air Force intelligence and tells a lot of stories about seeing aliens. He claims to have literally seen them. And also... Admits that he lied about aliens for years to a guy who nearly lost his mind forever. I wouldn't trust him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

But for an idea of how of how Richard Doty presents himself now, here's a clip from him on the new realities YouTube channel being interviewed by a UFO ology author named Alan Steinfeld.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So, yeah, I mean, I think he's still and I even found an interview where he's like talked about like he's asked about like because Tom DeLonge of Blink 182 is a big guy and is involved with Doty, one of the organizations he's in. And one of the interviews is like, are you doing a Paul Benowitz to Tom DeLonge? He's like, of course not.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Oh, man, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, all of you beautiful people, and also all of you ugly people, you know? All people are beautiful, except for I just kind of said that I didn't, that they're not. That was mean of me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

I think he might be doing a Paul Benowitz on a couple of guys. Maybe that's just fun for him. Yeah.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And you're like, damn, you believe this, though? I've heard so many fun lies about being special forces from dudes, like, especially out in, like, the mountains, like, every old man you meet who, like... We'll tell you about all of the crazy shit he did in Vietnam. And it's just always it's always nonsense.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Like, yeah, I know a guy who's out where in the little mountain town where I used to live, who was a SEAL team member during Vietnam. And his reaction is very different, which was like he handed me a book that was written about like him and his colleagues. It was like, you want to know anything? Just read that. I don't like talking about it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

This guy is kind of – I think like mid-boomer or something like that. And his uncle Edward had been a career officer and meteorologist in 1947. He'd been made chief of an Air Force weather research station working on something called the Atmospheric Divergence Project. Now, decades later, because Richard Doty is not just the guy who's going to like –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

It was kind of a bad time. Yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Not happy with how that all went. No, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Yeah. Anyway, well, that's the aliens or not. But maybe there's aliens. I don't know. This is not conclusive on that matter one way or the other. But there's definitely a bunch of spy agencies who will lie to you and destroy your brain if they think it will help them hide the fact that they're making some fucked up shit to kill people in other countries.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

The real alien was always the military-industrial complex.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

But what is out there and what is in here are your pluggables, Brandy. Bam!

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Nice work.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

All right, everybody. Well, that's the episode. Until next time. Again, folks, I say this every time. Head to Kirtland Air Force Base. Get a camera out and just start filming and go slowly insane. Get a pilot's license. Fly over some random mesa, you know. Just do some shit, you know. Why not? Nothing bad can happen. Or don't. The world's going to hell in a handbasket.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

You might as well lose your mind about some alien shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

See if your wife really loves you. You know, this is the only way to know. It's the only way to know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Spread a bunch of lies to Paul Benowitz that helps drive him mad. He also becomes like an alien influencer claiming that like, oh, no, I actually did also see real aliens, guys. And you can totally trust me. I know that like my whole thing is I lied to a guy about aliens for years. But also you can trust me when I tell you about aliens that I saw.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Exactly. Now that I'm out, you can trust me. So Richard Doty, the spook and liar kind of guy, has in kind of modern interviews, tells viewers that the atmospheric divergence project his uncle worked on was an attempt to, quote, change or neutralize gravity around a rocket to aid in space travel.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Now, I haven't found the exact details in the specific project his uncle worked on, but I don't think this is true.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Because while I did not find the reports on that project, I did spend way too much of my research time reading through an Air Force handbook on meteorological techniques, and atmospheric divergence impacts the growth of storm systems in a bunch of ways that are obviously relevant to an Air Force meteorologist's And not at all involved with fucking up gravity for space travel, right?

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

This sounds like a normal meteorologist thing to do. Richard is a tall tail spinner, right?

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Yeah. And one of the issues with my sources, because two of the – I've got a bunch of articles in here that you can find. There's also two books that I read for this. One is Saucered Spooks and Kooks by Adam Gowrightly, and one is Project Beta by Greg Bishop. Both of them are very entertaining. I think Greg's book, Project Beta, is the better book. Both of these guys also believe in stuff I don't.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Particularly Bishop. Well, I think he – because I've caught – there's some stuff in Go Rightly's book that I caught that's just not factually – that he slipped up on. I think Bishop is more familiar with the subculture. But also Bishop definitely believes a bunch of shit I don't. And he's – you can tell he kind of is excited at like talking with these spooks and spies.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

ought to he's caught up in the romance of it all I think he is not in a way that I think makes his his basic conclusions wrong or his book not worth reading again I think this is it's actually quite worth reading it's quite a good book and I think he's a good writer I just don't I'm not simpatico with him on on all of the conclusions he comes to about these guys I don't mean that as an insult to the man because again I liked his book a lot

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So but that is an issue when it comes to like trying to figure out shit here. Right. And in Project Beta, Bishop does do about like the best of any of them at kind of questioning Doty by saying perhaps this had something to do with weather control or maybe it was something more prosaic. And like it didn't it wasn't weather control or gravity.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Oh, that's a pervert. That's a pervert. That's an elbow pervert right there.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

It's just studying how this thing that affects meteorological forecasts work. Very normal thing for a meteorologist to do. Anyway, Doty joined the Air Force as a young man, just like his pa and uncle and per bishop. He entered in 1968 as a combat security policeman.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Doty would later claim he was, quote, tested and tracked throughout his career to become a base security guard and then a special agent for AFOC, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Now. That's how Dodie tells the story.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And I don't think he's I don't I think that's very silly because I'm not an expert on this, but I've known a number of people who were in different military intelligence roles. And I will tell you one thing that is very consistent. Base security guard is not a job that you are scouted for your entire career. Right. Like it's kind of a shit gig, actually. Like nobody likes base security.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And it's not really what most kids join wanting to do with their lives, right? No, no.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

I'll smirch it some. I'm smirching a little here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Doty really wants people to believe that he was like he was scouted by the Air Force because like we need a guy we can trust to do security for our very secret, very real alien projects. And like, wow, we noted from the beginning of his time in the Air Force that he had something special. Right. And that's the way he talks about his background. Right.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

No, I can see why you'd be scared that God is angry at you if you're that kind of pervert, because he is. But that makes it hotter for a lot of us. Brandy Posey, welcome back to the program. You want to plug anything at the top before we get too deep into elbows?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

This is very observant of a report, but with aliens, it feels like. Yes, yes, yes. And, you know, Afosi is more prestigious than base security. He eventually does. You know, he's a special agent. He's a sergeant, but he's also a special agent for this. And that is like a more prestigious role.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

But also his job with an Afosi isn't the most prestigious thing because other members of that agency are literally this is like. The time that he's in is one of like the high points for like spy shit anywhere in the world, like history. Right. Other guys in Afosi are locked in life and death spy battles with like fucking got some of the best spies on planet Earth. Right.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

You know, you've got the foreign, you know, Russian and Chinese agents like this. There's some really interesting shit going on here. Dodie's job during this like great international game is to lie to people who believe they'd been molested by Martians. So he doesn't have the sexiest job within this sort of field.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Not quite espionage.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

He's not James Bond. You know, there are some guys in Apogee doing some really like you talk about the ethics of it, but like interesting spy shit. He's I mean, it is interesting, but not in the same way. I'd like to see his Bond movie, though.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Well, that's kind of the premise of the Slow Horses TV show, right? Which does have, what's his name? Commissioner Gordon's in it, and he's great. Yeah, yeah. I have mixed opinions on it, but he's always a charm. The original, well, not the original, the one from the Nolan movies. I forget his name. Gary Oldman.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So Doty today claims that right after basic training, and again, this is also bullshit, he was taken to a room and shown footage of UFOs. And like, I don't believe that if there are aliens that the government has evidence of, obviously there's some people that they let into that secret within military intelligence.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

It's not going to be anyone who just finished basic because you know who can finish basic training? Almost anyone. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Hey, guy whose primary hobby is getting blackout drunk every single night of the week. Let's let's show you an alien video. Yeah.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Yeah. Now, this is generally described as a test, and I think that's how Bishop describes it in his book, is that Doty was being tested to see, or at least Doty claims he was being tested to see if he could be trusted with more detailed info about extraterrestrials.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

So I guess there's a possibility that maybe something like this did happen and it wasn't real aliens, but it was just like, let's show a bunch of guys alien footage and like see who leaks it. Right. That they saw something, you know, see who we can trust stuff. I don't think even then I kind of doubt it because they weren't really doing that to guys who just finished basic.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

But shit like that is happening within different kind of intelligence agencies. And it's not just aliens. They lie about they disinfo is given out to people online. During this period of time in different intel roles just to see if they can be trusted, right? Like that's a thing that happens. Doty also claims that he served as a guard at Area 51 where he saw a UFO.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Now, again, Area 51 is a real base. They are really doing experimental shit with planes there. This could be true. And in fact, the story he tells might might be true, but not in a way he wants you to think, because he claims while he's there, he sees them wheeling out this huge black disc that some sort of craft that they're trying to get into the atmosphere that they like launch.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Bowen with Robert and Brandy.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And it doesn't look like anything he's ever seen. And his commanding officer takes him aside. Right. Because he sees Doty's fascinated in this. And here's the conversation that is related in the book Project Beta. Yeah. Airman Doty, do you know what that craft was? Asked the officer. No, sir. That's what is generally known as a UFO, and it's not one of ours. It's on loan. Yes, sir.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

Someday, if you play your cards right, you will know a lot more. But for now, you are to tell no one about this, and you are not to discuss it with anyone. Is that clear? Doty never talked about it again. And first off, obviously he did, because you're telling us this story.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

That could be basically true and have nothing to do with aliens. He could have been on guard duty, seen a weird craft that maybe maybe like was a fucking French or Canadian thing that like we were doing tests on. Right. So it's on loan. And his boss is just kind of like, hey, you know. maybe if you play your cards right, you'll, you'll get, we'll trust you with more stuff. Right.

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Part Two: How The U.S. Government Used Aliens To Destroy a Man's Mind

And I, I don't know. I don't know if Dodie actually gets much more trust, but this could be largely accurate. Although I, I don't think that's likely. Yeah. That said, like there's evidence he is, He definitely does see experimental craft through his job for FOC later in his career because he's working at bases where they're doing that.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It's fucked. So, again, I just made the point that Grootman was not breaking the law. The same cannot be said for the next doctor we're going to discuss, an anesthesiologist named Scott Rubin.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Starting in the year 2000, Rubin published what would become 21 papers claiming to show evidence that COX-2 inhibitors performed better than non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for patients who'd received orthopedic surgery. Now, the last episode, we mostly focused on Merck, and we will later in this one, as the bulk of the blame Okay.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Pfizer funded a great deal of Rubin's research from 2002 to 2007, effectively picking him up after he'd established himself as an expert in the burgeoning field of COX-2 inhibitor research. The good news is that in the field Rubin attempted to influence, orthopedic surgery, his work had less of an influence than he'd hoped.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Most surgeons hesitated to switch to COX-2 inhibitors because some very good animal studies showed they slowed the rate at which bones heal, which is kind of a big deal if you're in the orthopedic surgery business. Yeah.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It's really the orthopedic surgeons. Sorry. Speaking of orthopedic surgeons, they don't listen to podcasts, so fuck them. Here's some ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And we're back. If you're an orthopedic surgeon, hit me up. I got too many bones. I could use a couple less, probably. So Rubin's work formed an influential mass of positive-seeming scientific PR arguing in favor of drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex as safer super aspirants. An article in Scientific American notes, a 2007 editorial in Anesthesia and Analgesia said,

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

stated that Rubin had been at the forefront of redesigning pain management protocols through his carefully planned and meticulously documented studies.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That's what an editorial, how the editors of the paper described him. I see. And there's only one problem with these carefully, the 20 or so carefully planned and meticulously documented studies that he had authored over a 12-year period. They were all complete bullshit, fraudulent in every way.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, we will talk more about Rubin later because a lot of his story occurs after the collapse of Vioxx, but it's important to note that just as Pfizer underwrote Rubin's shoddy research, Merck had deeply questionable science that they funded in an equally dubious way.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Back during the FDA approval process, Merck had launched a strategy called ADVANTAGE, in all caps because it was a very tortured acronym. assessment differences between Vioxx and naproxen to ascertain gastronomical tolerability and effectiveness.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

An analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists describes the goal of Advantage as using flawed methodologies biased towards predetermined results to exaggerate the drug's positive effects. Quote, "...as part of their strategy, scientists manipulated the trial data by comparing the drug to naproxen, a pain reliever sold under brand names such as Aleve rather than a placebo."

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

and yeah we we covered that a little earlier but what's important is that we now know that vermerc had a great deal of evidence when they were pushing this study suggesting that like vioxx massively increased the risk of cardiovascular events which makes the case that this was not just something where they did a bad study and put this thing next to naproxen and it looked less risky than it does because it was next to naproxen they conducted that study with naproxen because they had data showing that vioxx massively increased the risk of heart attacks

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And they were deliberately trying to hide that, right? This is all stuff that came out later as a result of the Senate investigation and numerous court cases. So yeah, we know that Merck had a lot of evidence showing this was dangerous and that they deliberately hid it. And we know that this was incredibly profitable for Merck. From 1999 to 2004, Vioxx made them $2.5 billion a year on average.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It swiftly became the best-selling drug in Merck history and one of the best-selling drugs of all time. And just as swiftly, it started to kill people. One of the first to die was Bob Ernst. He was a fit 59-year-old triathlete who started taking Vioxx because of recurrent arthritic pain in his hand. His wife Carol had urged him to try Vioxx after seeing an ad and Bob had gone on the medication.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

On May 6, 2001, the two had an anniversary date at an Olive Garden in Keene, Texas. Bob passed away in his sleep later that night, dead from heart failure. Now, Bob had been in very good shape, but the death of a 59-year-old man from heart failure is simply not the kind of thing that most pathologists are going to consider super suspicious.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It was Carol herself who got suspicious and started digging into Bob's one medication. This is the only thing he was prescribed, Vioxx. Even as early as 2001, there were studies showing that Vyax was bad for heart health. Merck had successfully buried many of them, but there was still stuff that you could find with enough digging online, and that's exactly what his wife did.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

She found a lawyer, Mark Lanier, who made to take her case. And the book Poison Pills does a wonderful job of chronicling the work that they did. I'm going to have to give you a summary here, which is that in August of 2005, a Texas state jury awarded almost $25 million to Carol Ernst in compensatory damages against and more than 200 million in punitive damages.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, that latter verdict was lowered quite a bit due to a Texas law, but it would be fair to call this a massive victory against Merck. And much of the case against Merck hinged on the fact that in June of 2000, Merck had provided a tranche of early user data to the FDA that revealed Vioxx users had four times as many heart attacks as people on naproxen. They didn't state this, though.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

This was in the data. You could find it if you analyze the data. But it was not in any of the conclusions that Merck sent along to the FDA. And the FDA really just didn't do the work to actually figure this out very quickly. And so it wasn't until 14 months later in April of 2002 that the FDA actually forced through changes and how Vioxx was labeled to reflect the evidence of risk.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Merck took no action on their own to warn users about the fact that they knew that Vioxx was causing heart attacks. Now, in the later trial that would develop from all this, CEO Raymond Gilmartin would claim that Vioxx wanted to add a warning label the instant they were aware of the danger. This was a lie, as Cope and Berry write in their article, Merck and the Vioxx Debacle.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Lanier, that's the lawyer, introduced in the Ernst trial internal Merck documents, which revealed that Merck resisted the FDA's efforts to add warnings to Vioxx's label and eventually complied in ways that the Ernst jury found obscure. You had to dig three levels to see it, one juror stated.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

In March 2000, when Merck became aware of the Vigor study's findings of a significant increase in cardiovascular events for those taking Vioxx over naproxen, Merck's scientists expressed concern. In an email message written in March of 2000, Dr. Edward Skolnick, who was then Merck's head of research, stated the Vigor clinical trial had shown that Vioxx increased heart risks.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The CV events were clearly there, he wrote. Despite clear warnings, Merck decided against conducting studies on the heart attack risks because marketing executives worried it might hurt Vioxx sales. Internal Merck analyses in 2001 and 2002 showed that Merck was worried about lost profits if warnings or precautions were put on its label.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

During that period, Merck was in private negotiations with the FDA over changes to its Vioxx label. David Anstis, who at that time was the president of Merck's human health division, projected that a strict warning would reduce sales by at least 50%.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

After the Vigor study findings in March of 2000, a second internal Merck analysis performed in October 2000 showed a significant increase in cardiovascular events for those taking Vioxx. The Merck analysis, plaintiff's attorney Mark Lanier has argued, was never presented to the FDA nor the media. and certainly was not given to the physicians prescribing Vioxx.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So this is entirely the marketing team and the CEO coming in and saying like, this will cut profits. So bury it as long as you can. Every additional year we get to sell this stuff without a warning is worth it to us, right? Whatever number of deaths there are, the money this is bringing in is so huge, like it's fine, right? That's literally a decision being made.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And that's that's what's fucking scary, right? Is that like we're talking this is a massive failure by the FDA to. that happened when it was funded, right? We can argue it should have been funded more, but that happened in a period totally different from the one we're entering into now. What kind of shit is going to come by now that there's no guardrails on any of this stuff, right?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

These fucking MBAs who are managing all of these pharmaceutical companies and these marketers have absolutely no restrictions on anything that they can shovel into people's faces to make a profit. It's funny.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Oh, we are back. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast with Dr. Kaveh Hoda and Robert Evans, where Sophie is out of the house right now. So, you know, we're just just the boys, just the boys.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And it's, yeah, it's just fucking, I mean, what's coming is going to be sick, folks, in a very literal term. But what happened in the past was pretty sick, too.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So it took about four years for the Carol Ernst legal case to wind on against Vioxx, right, from her realizing there was probably something wrong with her husband's medication to actually getting a victory, which is actually pretty quick for one of these lawsuits.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The company continued to push the mountain of disinformation during this time about their new star medications, dangers. One February 2001 sales memorandum forbade sales reps from discussions on a study that raised heart concerns when they talked to physicians, right? Can't talk about this study about heart attacks from our medication when you sell it to doctors.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Salespersons were also ordered to avoid discussing heart health risks and instead hand over a cardiovascular card to physicians, which said Vioxx is protecting the heart, right? rather than potentially harming it. That ought to take care of all of their questions. Oh, good. You gave me a card. Well, you guys got card money. There must be nothing wrong with this stuff.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

No one shady can afford this kind of embossing. My God, look at that. It's okay, guys. They gave me a card. We're good. The Ernst lawsuit was not the first or last against Merck. Most were brought by survivors of heart attacks or, more often, the family members of people who had perished. Merck upped their game, as this passage from Kolpenberry's article makes clear.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Merck prepared an in-house training game for Vioxx sales representatives dubbed Dodgeball. Sales trainees could only move on to the next round of the card game if they gave Merck-approved answers to doctors' questions raising Vioxx safety concerns or dodged such questions altogether.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Except for the listeners. That's like half our listeners. Please keep listening, ladies. Sorry. I'm so sorry.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Right, right. It's also this kind of like, there's less of an inbuilt immunity within the medical community because you guys weren't used to being sold to this way. Yeah, it's like when they first started getting Americans hooked on cigarettes and people had never seen an advertisement before and they're like, a cowboy? Well, I'm buying a cigarette now. Yeah.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Ah, so a later congressional inquiry found that Merck leadership divided the studies on Vioxx into approved and background studies. And any study that showed a danger to heart health was considered a background study. And so their salespeople were forbidden to discuss them with doctors. This was a violation of company policy. Ah.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I apologize. We didn't mean that. We didn't mean that. Just like Merc didn't mean to kill all those people that they're about to kill. Thanks in part to utilizing Dorothy Hamill's star appeal. Poor Dorothy. She really did not... Again, it's one of those things where it's like we just shouldn't have pharmaceutical ads like the way that we have them because you can't.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, all through 2001 and 2002, the FDA sent letters to Merck poking at it for failing to properly disclose the dangers of Vioxx, but it still took again 14 months for any sort of labeling change to be mandated. Part of why is that officials within the FDA were in the tank for Merck, not all of them, but enough.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

At later Senate committee investigations, an FDA scientist testified that he had brought forward concerns about Vioxx to his superiors and been pressured to shut up. Another researcher who had gone to the FDA with complaints was Gurkenpal Singh, a Stanford professor who claimed that a Merck senior executive complained to his superiors at the university when he reported Vioxx to the FDA.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Singh claimed, I was warned that if I persisted in this fashion, there would be serious consequences for me because, of course, Merck has the ability to donate a lot of money to a university like Stanford. Now, still, some brave academics continue to blow the whistle, as this paragraph from a New York Times article by Alex Berenson, Gardner Harris, and Barry Myers summarizes.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

In 2001, the first major study critical of the drugs appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The report, written by Eric J. Topol and cardiologists at the Cleveland Clinic, reanalyzed data from several clinical trials of Vioxx and Celebrex. It reported that both drugs appeared to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, but that the danger from Vioxx appeared higher.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Dr. Topol, the chairman of the clinic's Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, immediately called for trials to determine whether or not the drugs increased cardiovascular risk. Merck and Pfizer both rebuffed that request and said that the Cleveland Clinic report was flawed because it failed to do, among other things, to include data from other studies.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Dr. Topol became a harsh critic of both drugs, but his ire focused on Vioxx and Merck. Even before his 2001 report appeared, he said in a recent interview that company scientists came to Cleveland to try to convince him not to publish it. Merck officials denied doing so.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

A year later, a study by Dr. Wayne Ray, an epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University, found that Medicaid patients in Tennessee who were taking high doses of Vioxx, greater than the recommended long-term dosage of 25 milligrams daily, had significantly more heart attacks and strokes than similar patients who were not taking high doses.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah. It's okay. His career has moved forward now. He doesn't have to do that anymore. Yeah. I don't know. It's it's it's it's all pretty bad. Right. Like that's I mean, terrible. There's a degree to which like at least you can see these these heroes who tried to do something, even though, you know, your university is telling you stop.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Merck is sending scary guys to your door to be like, are you sure you want to publish that study?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah. Yeah, well, because Merck, there's no argument. They don't know exactly what they're doing. They are trading lives for dollars. They know eventually we'll have to stop selling this stuff because we know how dangerous it is. But every day we get to keep selling it. We're recouping that investment. We're making a profit.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And whatever we have to pay out in the end is going to be less than what we're making.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Dorothy Hamill was a great figure skater. Nothing in her life prepared her to adequately vet whether or not Vioxx was a safe medication to advertise. We can't put that on Dorothy Hamill.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

They know who to lie to and not. They're lying, I think, to a lot of the doctors and to some of the salespeople. You know, salespeople don't maybe know how to, like,

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

analyze whether or not this is a a good uh study or whatever so they're just like oh those other studies that showed a danger they're not good for this reason or that reason and like you're just some fucking sales rep that got hired out of college maybe you don't really give that much of a shit but there are people plenty of people who know exactly what they're doing right um and like those people who know exactly what they're doing just don't care they don't feel bad about the fact that they're getting people killed right

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

My brain doesn't. Yeah. I mean, it's not dumb. You just aren't. You just have a soul. And I'm working to get rid of it. Yeah, well, that's that's the only thing that's going to let us win. We all have to get rid of our souls today, which, by the way, I've got a great new medication for getting rid of your souls. First step, you're going to go to your local, not a local gas station.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Actually, you want to go to a truck stop about 30 or 40 minutes outside of town. Right. If you can actually like see like people like there's more than a half dozen rigs parked outside, that's probably a good truck stop. And you're going to go in there. And behind the counter, there should be a wall of pills. And you're just going to ask for all of them. And you pour that into a cup.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And this is critical. You mix it in with Mountain Dew Code Red. Not Baja Blast. That'll fuck it up. Do not mix Baja Blast in. Mountain Dew Code Red. And then shoot that shit as fast as possible. And that's going to get rid of your soul. And then you're ready to join us on the front lines fighting the demons.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

You'll also be able to see demons. That's a promise. Yeah, you're going to see some shit. You're going to see some demons. Yeah, all of that fucking Ibogaine or whatever the fuck they put those in those pills. Those random trucker pills that they just, they almost call them Adderall, but not quite. Yeah.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

You got to go down the five to that place that sells split pea soup. And then, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can find some trucker pills there.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah. All right, I'm going to do it, actually. I think this is a good day trip. Yeah, this will be good. Let's go do it together. We'll buy all the trucker pills and we'll see how they work.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So in late September 2004, as the death toll mounted and Merck's legal team was buried in cases, they made the decision to pull Vioxx off the market altogether. This is right after the case has been decided against them, there is no longer keeping this cat in the bag, and now it's about damage control.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Their official justification was that they just had a long-term clinical trial, which showed that some patients developed cardiovascular problems after taking the drug for 18 months. The data showed 15 heart attacks, strokes, or blood clots per thousand people over three years, compared with seven and a half cardiac events in the general population.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And even if you believe this Merck study, which I think is kind of trying to pad how bad it is, that's still much worse. That's still a real problem. The stock market reacted first, costing Merck somewhere in the neighborhood of $26 billion in a day. But that's not real money. They get it back. You know how the stock market works.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The next reaction came from the families of people who died due to Vioxx, leading to a rush of new lawsuits. But the initial public reaction was beyond muted. It was in fact downright hostile to the victims. And this likely has something to do with a particularly toxic aspect of U.S. culture I call scalding McDonald's coffee syndrome.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Some of it wasn't even available to her. She wasn't getting up at four in the morning every day as an adolescent girl to have the COX-2 enzyme explained to her. No. No, that was like me, not her. Yeah. We had different paths, different journeys. And you're a terrible figure skater. Not that bad. Okay.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, you've probably heard the story about the woman who had a hot coffee spill in her lap at a McDonald's drive-thru, and she sued them and got a bunch of money. This is a thing that, especially when I was younger, I think more people know the real story now, but you would see viral memes all the time. You'd see it in newspapers. It was really a thing my parents' generation loved to hate on.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It was particularly a big thing for conservatives who were angry at how mean all these, these frivolous lawsuits hurting innocent corporations. Like this woman spills coffee in her own lap. And like the reality was McDonald's had the coffee way higher than they were legally allowed to have it. They should not have been selling or handing people coffee that hot.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And it gave her third degree burns to like her entire genital area. Like it was a hideous, hideous life altering injury that she suffered because they were not doing what they legally should have been. Anyway, we don't need to rant on this, but at the time this happens, A lot less people realize the true story there. And so there is this big backlash against frivolous lawsuits against companies.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And what the Merck Vioxx lawsuits initially get lost in that, right? When Carol Von Ernst won her case against Merck, a lot of pundits of the day kind of looped this in with the McDonald's coffee case. as another example of our sue-happy culture run amok.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

From the book Poison Pills, Carol Ernst's lawyer, Mark Lanier, was blasted by everyone from physicians to newspaper columnists for winning the trial by twisting the facts and relying on nothing but an ignorant jury of hicks, despite the fact that his witnesses included some of the best-known physicians and scientists in the world.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Even as the Texas jury was deliberating, Merck's lead attorney, Jerry Lowry, said if he, Lanier, had any evidence Vioxx causes arrhythmia, this case would have been over three weeks ago.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

A few months after the trial verdict, CNBC broadcast a debate between Lanier and Richard Epstein, the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute. The professor had written an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal and said that physicians lamented the fact that they could no longer use the drug.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Many leading newspapers, including the Washington Post, also mocked the Ernst trial. In an editorial entitled The Vioxx Hex, the Post wrote that the Texas jury in that case awarded $253.4 million to the widow of a man who died of a heart attack triggered by arrhythmia, which is not a condition Vioxx has been proven to cause. The Post said the jury was confused about the medical evidence.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And this is number one, that fucking dude debating Lanier on stage as a Hoover Institute guy. It's right wing think tank. But number two, you've got all these like big publications going like, oh, these it's a Texas jury. So clearly they're hicks. They don't understand our big city science. They just got bamboozled by this smooth talking lawyer who just hated Merck.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Not that bad. I've never seen you figure skate. Can you do a sow cow? Maybe. Sure. Is that like a skateboarding move? Yeah, probably. Yeah. I can do it then. This has been Skate Talk with Robert and Kava, two people who probably don't skate. So when we left our heroes at Vioxx, they just latched upon the brilliant idea of having Dorothy Hamill sell Vioxx.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Celebrex still has some uses and stuff, right?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I'm just. No, I mean, it's it's it's all very frustrating, right? Like the way that this worked is just comprehensively bad for everybody but a handful of people at the top of Merck. It's bad for the research scientists at Merck who were not shady motherfuckers whose will always exist under a cloud of suspicion because they worked during the Vioxx era.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It's bad for the people who might have benefited from a VIAX that was rolled out in a more reasonable way to a smaller subset of people. It's bad for all of the tens of thousands of people who lost loved ones and the people who had life-altering injuries as a result of it. It's just terrible for everybody. But you know, Dr. Hoda, what's not terrible for anybody? What's that?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The products and services that support this podcast, all of which have been FDA approved. And if we've learned anything this episode, that always means good. Good. Good.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

If you've been wondering how tens of millions of your fellow countrymen could be convinced to vote for a guy like Trump, just remember that an awful lot of them saw a video of a figure skater promising she knew a solution to their chronic pain issues and desperate for relief, millions of people followed her to their demise. That really does explain a lot.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And we're back. So we're drawing to a close in this episode. I have a question. Did they actually lose money overall from this?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

No, no, no, no, no. They pay in total a little less than a billion dollars in penalties and additional civil settlements for their victim. They are making two and a half billion dollars a year during the period of time where they're selling this. And it's out for five years. Something like five years. Yeah.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah. So that's cool. Now, one of my favorite side parts in this story is that the Washington Post takes like a huge, strong stance to defend an unethical mega corporation and got something wrong, which is not a thing that ever happens again.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Anyway, about a year after the Post's article talking about how unfair it is to sue Merck, Harvard School of Public Health issues a public health bulletin warning that Vioxx use was associated with severe heart rhythm disorders and an increased risk of kidney failure.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

More research comes out in the following years that further vindicates everyone who tried to warn Merck and the world about Vioxx, the medication that had been prescribed to some 20 million people in 80 countries by the time it was polled. We will never have a comprehensive list of the number of people killed and injured as a result of Vioxx, but what we do know is harrowing.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, in fairness, very few people are doctors. It is unreasonable to expect people who are hurting and in some cases literally being driven mad by pain to personally overcome the weight of a multimillion dollar ad campaign and all of the science washing that a big pharmaceutical company can do.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Dr. David Graham, the associate director for science and medicine in the FDA's Office of Drug Safety, testified before the Senate Finance Committee that Vioxx had been associated with at least 100,000 heart attacks and more than 55,000 premature deaths. That is in the United States. He compared the cost to two to four jumbo jetliners crashing every week for five years. Holy shit.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yes, that's a lot of dead people. God. Mm-hmm. Now, the lawsuits that resulted from this are far too numerous to chronicle, save to note that Merck initially promised to fight each of the 30,000 lawsuits against them independently.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yes, yes. Then they agreed in 2008 to provide what could have been almost $5 billion as part of the settlement, but I don't know how much of that they actually paid out. And then they pled guilty to a misdemeanor for illegal promotional activity. That was about another $950 million in penalties and civil payments. So they wound up paying a good amount of money.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That's like they lost a good two years or so of the profits that they made. Did Dorothy Hamill do any time? No, no. Dorothy Hamill does not go to prison for her many crimes.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Skates free. For her many crimes. They do plead guilty to a misdemeanor for introducing a misbranded drug to interstate commerce. So that's nice. But no one at Merck is locked up for what they did, nor do any of the scientists who'd agree to help cover up studies or push disinfo suffer lasting career harms, with the notable exception of our friend Scott Rubin.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Paul White, the editor at the Journal of Anesthesia and Analgesia, claims that Rubin's studies showing the benefits of COX-2 inhibitors helped sell billions of dollars worth of both Celebrex and Vioxx. In 2009, he was revealed to have completely falsified at least 21 of his published papers, all of which claimed to show how well super aspirins could benefit post-operative healing.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Pfizer had funded Rubin's work from 2002 to 2007, the years when they were also making bank on a little medication called Celebrex. His employer, Bay State Medical Center, claimed to Scientific American that Rubin had been paid directly by Pfizer for his work, and that he had then decided how much of that money would fund research, and how much would go into his pocket, Which sounds fine.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That's not sketchy. There's nothing. How could that lead to anything bad?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

In fact, during the early years of IACS's success, it would have seemed as if COX-2 inhibitors were medical marvels backed by the best science. And it would have seemed that if you were someone who did what should be like the responsible amount of reading on this subject. Not...

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Oh yeah, there's some good breakdowns on them from scientists who are more qualified than me to talk about it. I would love to look at that. It's a fascinating story. One of my favorite quotes from this is that his employer Baystate, like when people would note that like, well, that's not how pharmaceutical, you're not just supposed to give a single guy cash, right?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Like, that's not how pharmaceutical research is supposed to be done. A spokesman for Bay State Medical Center told Scientific American, I don't know how many dollars went to Rubin or his group. Wow. No idea. Holy hell.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

A Pfizer spokesperson insisted the grants were properly dispersed to Bay State in accordance with Pfizer policy, but that they weren't familiar with the records retention policies of Bay State. So, you know. Who knows? Who knows how much money? Between $10,000 and $100,000 at least.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

But he was actually asked to pay $360,000 in restitution when he got sentenced in 2010 after pleading guilty of massive fraud. Prosecutors argued that he'd been paid huge money in grants and never performed the studies he'd been paid to conduct. He just pocketed the cash and published lies about Celebrex. Thankfully, justice was done.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

He was given six months in prison and asked to pay $360,000 in restitution to the pharmaceutical companies who'd sponsored his work, the real victims in all this.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, and that's the story of Iox. Dr. Hoda, how are you feeling? How are you good?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

like the amount of reading that we could expect from like a research scientist, because research scientists who were responsible knew the dangers. But if you were, say, like a normal educated person who's like, oh, well, I'm going to read a paper of record and they're reporting on these new drugs written by a medical doctor interviewing other medical doctors.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, I mean, there's not much more to say on the matter than that, right? I guess part of what's so frustrating to me is that the sweep of the anti-intellectual crusade that is going to cost so many people their lives is of such catastrophic danger to every positive gain that we've made as a society in the last 150 years.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That's really all you as a layman should be expected to do to try to like figure out, you know, how safe a medication is. Yeah. And if you were doing that with Vioxx, you would have walked away misinformed. And this brings us to one of the chief medical merchants of Vioxx Disinfo, a Harvard Medical School professor named Dr. Jerome Groopman.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

is fueled in part by the irresponsibility, greed and wastefulness of people who knew better, who are not ideologues, who are not misinformed, who are just willing to, well, the system can handle, you know, me fucking around in this way or like, why shouldn't I get paid? Right. Like someone will catch it. It won't be that bad.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Like and those little acts of malfeasance provide a lot of the fuel, like the distrust, the hatred of, for elites and whatnot. You know, when I say elites, I mean like in the medical sense, right? You've got doctors and people at the FDA who are like in the tank for these sketchy drugs that get people killed. And that means that when we have a fucking pandemic, less people trust them, right?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Like Vioxx is not 0% of why so many people were hesitant. to, to trust medical science during COVID. Right. And neither is the opiate epidemic. Right. And that, that doesn't mean that the people that RFK has a point, it means that like, if you let people get away with shit like this and we always do, uh, it'll just keep getting worse. Somebody who is, who is absolutely has no limits whatsoever.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

We'll start taking advantage of the situation.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, there's going to be a lot of diarrhea. Look, folks, every year I go to Vegas, I find whichever buffet has the rancidest mussels, and I eat 14 to 15 plates. And that provides me with the internal strength and resilience I need to handle any kind of change to our health and safety food standards. I'm going to be fine in this sick new world, Kava.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I'm going to be eating rancid mussels like a king.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

It's going to be the golden age of diarrhea. The brown age, really. Yeah, that's what we're going to call this. The gilded age and the brown age. Well, actually, we could call it the gilded age, which is an old timey term for like shit encrusted on your ass.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

We'll have to explain it, but it works. Yeah, you have to explain it. You have to explain it. But, you know, why does that make it bad? Anyway. No. Yeah. All right.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah. Thanks for coming on the show.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

He had embarked on a career as what you might call a professional semi-celebrity doctor, authoring articles for The New Yorker about health and the pharmaceutical industry. which he does today. Dr. Grootman is not someone who you would call a crank. He served in the advisory board of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Association.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

He was the Dina and Rafael Reconati Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He'd worked at a high level for the FDA and was a listed author on some 150 papers. One of his books had been adapted into a TV show, Gideon's Crossing, which I didn't expect to run into a Gideon's Crossing reference. Not familiar with that one. This episode. It wasn't great.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

As Tom Nessie writes in the book Poison Pills, even among top level physicians who are generally known as opinion or thought leaders, Groopman stands out. It was no small matter, therefore, when he wrote a lengthy article for The New Yorker in June of 1998 entitled Super Aspirin, New Arthritis Drug Celebra.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Celebra was the name for the drug later known as Celebrex and very close in composition to Vioxx. The article had been carefully authenticated by the famous fact-checking department of the New Yorker, which has an almost perfect record of verifying every piece of information the magazine publishes. Like Hamill, Groupman began his discussion of super-aspirin with a personal story.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

He himself had suffered debilitating pain brought on by arthritis developed while training for the Boston Marathon. Despite years of searching for relief, he had found no satisfactory remedy. Now a remarkable new class of drugs was offering hope to people like him and millions of others.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

And Groupman provided the anecdotal story of a firefighter from Nebraska whose arthritis had been alleviated miraculously thanks to super aspirin. A responsible scientist would note that the anecdotal evidence was more fit for a pharmaceutical commercial than an article in the New Yorker by a doctor,

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

But Dr. Groupman did speak with other medical experts, like Harvard's Dr. Lee Simon, who had a seat on the FDA's Arthritis Advisory Committee and had been part of an FDA panel to evaluate how to approve super aspirins. This probably shouldn't have been allowed to happen, because while he was sitting on that FDA panel deciding...

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

how to approve these medications, Dr. Simon was also a paid employee of Searle, conducting clinical trials for Celebrex. He did not disclose this conflict of interest, and Dr. Grootman's article did not make any note of this fact that might have compromised a source's objectivity. That's actually pretty shocking, I have to say.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

They didn't require that. It's unclear to me if Groupman knew that Dr. Simon was a paid employee of Searle. But I don't think Groupman is doing as much of his due diligence as he ought to. What Simon is doing is obviously the more shady of the thing. But it's one of those. This is what I say when I'm like. You really I just made that comment about like people being led by a figure skater.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

But like, yeah, again, if you're yeah, if you're doing your research, you could still get misled about this stuff.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, and Simon's quotes in The New Yorker are, it's one of those things, he's really relying a lot on the fact that he's this fancy Harvard doctor because the shit he is actually saying in this article is shit no doctor should ever say. He described Celebrex as incredible and told Dr. Grootman that unique among all other medications ever created, it had no side effects whatsoever.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

He specifically stated there are no side effects, which those don't exist. You might not experience side effects, but someone will. There is no drug that has zero side effects of any kind. It's not a drug if it's that way.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Wow. Yeah. And this is this is, I think, where it gets into, like, the value of actually having a higher level of like.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Kind of medical like medical even training may not be totally the right word, but like word, but like in school so that because that's the sort of thing it is easy to like train people to have people in general layman be aware of like, oh, if I see that, if I see somebody claiming there are zero side effects for anyone of this medication, that's something you shouldn't. That's sketchy, you know?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

So as Nessie notes, this should have been a massive and immediate red flag, just as we noted. But yeah, Dr. Grootman's article cited other medical experts making similarly dubious claims. He quoted another Harvard professor, Dr. Clifford Saper, as saying super aspirin might hold the key to treating Alzheimer's.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, this is a case where there was not evidence that it had efficacy treating Alzheimer's. Dr. Saper had a theory that inflammation in the brain caused by injured neurons led to swelling that damaged brains, and that as a result, Vioxx might help, right? And that's a perfectly valid thing to want to test, right?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

But you shouldn't go out in an article and be like, this might cure Alzheimer's based on that, because that's just a theory, right?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yep. And yeah, so, quote, Dr. Saper said that Celebrex probably has to break open the vicious cycle of inflammation and Alzheimer's. Quite an astonishing statement in and of itself, and even more so since he did not cite results of a single human study.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yet the claim is part of an age old school of medical thinking that holds that logic and what makes sense or rational therapy should dictate the practice of medicine. But rational therapy needs to be buttressed by randomized, controlled human trials to determine what is and what is not effective treatment. That's from the book Poison Pills.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, theorizing like Saper did is, of course, part of the medical process, but maybe not one that should be presented to the public in a widely read article where people who've got loved ones suffering from Alzheimer's are going to be like, oh, my God, a miracle drug might be coming through. No, even if it works, it's fucking 15 years out or whatever. Right.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

you know groupman's article also wildly exaggerated the harms of existing inseds like motrin and advil failing to discuss newer versions that had been approved and came with fewer of the side effects that so-called super aspirin was meant to avoid in his article groupman cited the work of dr james freeze a professor at stanford at length freeze himself claims groupman distorted his research in order to make claims that freeze was not making about uh cox-2 inhibitors

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Now, Dr. Grootman was not being bribed by Merck, nor did he violate the law or medical ethics in any way that I'm aware of other than writing a bad article. He fucked up. And part of why he fucked up was, in my opinion, he was looking to merge developing medical science with magazine pop science in a way that's not wildly different from what Malcolm Gladwell is going to be doing a few years later.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

I think that's irresponsible, but not malicious or outright criminal. Right. And we are talking about some people who did outright criminal acts in this. I want to make it clear I am not.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

Yeah, it's the same thing where we have this problem in journalism, right?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

There's a great movie called Shattered Glass starring Hayden Christensen about a journalist for the New Republic who was like their star reporter, super young, and it turned out all of the stories, he was just making them up, like complete bullshit, like literally just inventing people and things in order to write entertaining stories.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

The New York Times a little bit later had another reporter get blown up, a star reporter for the same thing, just completely lying about shit, tricking fact checkers. And it's one of those things doesn't have to happen all that often for people to be like, well, then these outlets are no better than whatever, like weird fucking conspiracy rag info wars or whatever that I like. And you know what?

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

That's kind of on the journalists for fucking up in that way. Right. That's that's on the newsroom. That's on the editors. That's on the people wanting these big stories.

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Part Two: The Vioxx Scandal: How Big Pharma Killed More Americans Than Vietnam

that are exciting and that get eyeballs on right here you kind of have the merger of the two right the new yorker wants an article that gets a lot of people to read it because fuck this is a miracle medicine that might help me and my loved ones with things that are really like causing us problems uh and as the doctor you want to be the first you want to be the doctor who kind of establishes himself as like i'm kind of on the ground floor of this breaking for people and

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

You're like, okay. We're looking a lot better these days. Now, you got to remember, so the war is on, and while he's a part of this group that's pushing, we can't give any of this up, his job is running this organization made up of all of the rich guys with mines and arms companies pooling some of their money together. This organization is called the Siegenverbund.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It's an association of industrial businesses, mines, and Krupp. There's companies like Krupp in there too. It's not just raw material producers. It's people who use those raw materials. Basically, it's just everybody with a big business in the rural, in this industrial heartland region. The Zeek and Verbund had been founded in 1908 to represent their common interests.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In pre-war, this had mainly meant fucking with labor unions. And up through the end of the war, the Zeek and Verbund was successful at ensuring no one mine union could work with any other mine union, right? They basically made sure legislatively unions could not ally, right? So that you can strike at one – mine or one factory, but you can't organize any kind of general strike, right?

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And the Ziegenverbund also had a strike fund, but for mine owners themselves, so that if the workers at any mine went on strike, other mines that were their competitors would pay to keep them going. Because it was more important to fight the labor, right? Now that the war is going on, there's suddenly a lot more on the line than just like, you know, fucking with labor unions.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The good news for these guys is that profits fucking soar because Germany needs a lot more weapons now, right? And the people making the raw materials that become bullets and cannons, they're doing great. The people making the weapons are great. This is a good time to have stock in Krupp.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Uh, Hugenberg helped gently direct the eyes of his hungry mind, fellow mine owner, or of his, of these hungry mine owners towards all of the territory in France and Belgium that they might be able to exploit in the future. He's like, Hey guys, I know we're making bank. Now the war's got to end someday, but we just got all this new French territory.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

A lot of mines there, Belgium, a lot of mining potential in Belgium. We should start investing now in being able to take advantage of that once the war ends and we still own all it. And so from Hugenberg's perspective, the thing he is most frightened of in late 1914, 1950, 1916, the thing that scares him is peace.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Because if peace goes wrong, he's going to lose a lot of investments that he started to make. Right.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Well, you shouldn't. They're monsters. They're ghouls.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Part of it is because they also tell themselves we're not being selfish. We're patriots and this will be better for Germany, right? The sacrifice is worth it for Germany.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But the other thing, I think if you want to get into your head how these people can be so greedy, I think there's a micro way of kind of looking at it. There was a time, I'm sure, in your life, Amanda, the same is true of me, same is going to be true of most people listening, where you made a lot less money than you currently make, right? You know, when you're 19 or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And you survived, right? You paid rent and you ate food, right? Now you make... i'm presuming more money than you did when you were 18 or 19 and you're still surviving but you also probably still have a lot of things like have a lot of economic anxiety even though you have a lot more which is very common and that psychological process

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

doesn't stop just because you have more money than you can ever spend right yeah yeah yeah especially if you grew up without much exactly right right right like if you get if you get a billion dollars statistically the thing you want to do most most people some not everyone like tom from myspace seems to have avoided this but statistically a lot of people who get a billion dollars

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

the main thing on their mind is now I want to get two. I need to get 10. I need to get, right? Like that's just kind of like, you know, it's why, again, it's why you need to have like societal restrictions that stop people from accumulating like that.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Because once the process starts mentally, very few people can avoid continuing down that road, even to some extent, even if they're reasonably good people ahead of time, right?

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It's a drug. It's a drug. It's like giving someone heroin, right? Sometimes people- you give them a heroin, they might get addicted even if they don't want to. Cause like, yeah, that's what drugs do. You know? I know.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yes. But like, absolutely.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And again, and that's why there's got to be just actual, like you have to at the kind of collective level make rules to stop that. Because individual people, not that no one can avoid this, because there are people who have strong enough sense of self and moral centers that the option won't get that rich, won't let it happen. But usually this does not happen. Right.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The Hugenberg route where people are like, and again, you have to, again, to go back to the heroin comparison, the amount of money they start making because of the war, like they don't want to give that up, period, right?

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Delicious, delicious. I love it all. Yes. So, Hugenberg convinces these guys, the only threat to our future profits is peace, particularly the wrong sort of peace. And if we want to make that impossible, I need you to give me some of your money, and we're going to start buying up newspapers, right? Because... That's how we can stop.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We can kill the peace movement because from the beginning, once this war starts wiping out generations of young men, there's a lot. There's an anti-war movement brewing even within Germany, a pretty sizable one. And they're like, this is all the fault of like Bolshevik propaganda. We need to start buying the newspapers and then we can convince everyone their son's dying is a good idea.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So the four largest of the companies that are in this organization that Hugenberg's heading, the Zeichenverbund, including Krupp, which is still managed by Hugenberg, send representatives to act as spokesmen for the creation of a private association, the Wirtschaftsgesellschaft.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And this is a trust fund regularly topped off by profits from war profiteers and used to, quote, countermand threatening dangers in the economic and social fields. Leopold, in his biography of Hugenberg, continues, Through the use of diverse bank accounts and holding companies administered by additional trustees, Hugenberg and these industrial leaders masked their control.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The Ausland, established in 1914, became one of their key corporations. The Wirtschaftsdienst GmbH, incorporated in May of 1916, concealed investments made for the improvement of economic news service and the management of press corporations.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

A third firm, the Deutsche Gewerbehass AG, established in February of 1917, officially managed funds for the erection of business offices for the varied associations of German industry. Its larger purpose, however, was to participate in various businesses and measures which appeared suitable to the corporation for the advancement of general German industrial and national interests.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So they are buying up newspapers and they're creating organizations to manage newspapers as a group. And they're hiding through these shell companies the fact that they own all of these papers and that it's Hugenberg pulling the strings. Now, this, of course, means you need to bribe a lot of people and you need to make the kind of investments that act as bribes.

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Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But a large chunk of the tens of millions of Reichsmarks that are raised in this period are put towards the purchase directly of media organs. The fund set its beady eyes on a large Berlin publishing house, the August Schurl Company, named after a right-wing newspaper entrepreneur.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He was basically the equivalent of the German William Randolph Hearst or the guy who created the Daily Mail back in the UK. He's that kind of guy. These are conservative papers. This is like the Fox News of its day in Germany.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Right. And so these guys buy it, right? The Shurl Company's two big publications are Der Tag, which is for intellectuals in the capital, and Berliner Lokalanzinger, which is about 10 times larger in terms of its readership and is aimed more at the working class.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

People are going to be talking so much shit about how I'm saying these things.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I- I, you know, I don't do well at this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So Cheryl ran a bunch of small weekly papers all over the country. all of which are united only by a shared conservative view of reality and politics. And this stood in opposition. The August Schroll Company is the big conservative publisher. The two bigger publishers in Germany are the Rudolf Mossek Company and the Olstein Company, both of which are pro-democratic and generally liberal.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So August Sherrill, the company, had been profitable until 1914 when the war broke out because everything gets more expensive when the war breaks out. There's massive inflation. It's very difficult to afford to put out a newspaper. And part of why people stopped reading the August Sherrill publications in 1914 is that

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

up to the war starting, they've been telling everyone, hey, this is going to go great. You're going to love the war. We're going to be done in a couple of months. Everyone will be back at home by Christmas. And when that doesn't happen, people are like, well, maybe I don't like this paper. Now that all four of my sons are dead, perhaps I will stop reading these guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So they're kind of he's a Hugenberg is able to buy this shit on the cheap in 1916 using these pooled industry funds. Now, by the time the August Sherrill company sells to Hugenberg, things are bad enough that they need like seven million marks just to settle their debt.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And then there's they got to put a couple Hugenberg has to put a few million more into it in order to actually like invest so that the company can be profitable again. But he doesn't care.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yes, he is. He is all essentially a billionaire at this point. Right. Like not literally because like nobody had that much at that point, really. But he is essentially a billionaire for our terms. He would have been a billionaire if we're kind of like adjusting shit. Right. Yeah. Cheryl.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

agrees because again this is chump change to him and he doesn't care about profits his condition is that if he buys this thing and gets them out of debt he has full absolute personal control over the publishing house and what they publish so the show company inks an agreement and hugenberg puts one of his friends from the pan-germanic league in charge of the holding company that manages it

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Instantly, Sheryl's papers go from being conservative to adopting the exact same line on war aims that Hugenberg and his fellow war profiteers wanted. No peace unless we get everything. And also, no peace while there's a buck to be made. One of Hugenberg's friends laid out the motivation of this cartel in buying these papers very directly in a letter.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

This is one of Hugenberg's friends writing in a letter about what they're doing. Whoa, can't wait. The gentleman, this is who he's writing to, should not believe that we were involved to have a good investment. We knew that nothing would come out of this, and we wanted to have political influence for our money. In other words, we're going to make money off of these. This is a loss leader.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It's like the Daily Wire. We're going to pump money into this, not because it'll make us money, but because it'll change the culture in a way that makes us money.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, they do. The Germans and well poisoning. Big well poisoning culture at this point in time. Speaking of poisoning the well. You know who loves poisoning? Nope. Here's ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We're back. And you know what? I just put strychnine in a well. And I got to say, it feels good. You know, it's a hoot. Doesn't hurt anybody except for the people who drink from the well. And I don't know them. So, yeah, you know what? I get it. I'm a German nationalist now. Long live the Kaiser. Anyway, in addition to pushing an extreme.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Sophie, you always say every time I try to give the Kaiser praise, you just hate the Kaisers for some reason.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, that's even worse than the last Kaiser.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Some fucking guy sat down and was like, I want to be a Kaiser, but I want to kill more people than the last. I know, I'll become a health insurer.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Honestly, Kaiser Villaholm would probably do a better job.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I think we should let him give it a shot. So in addition to pushing an extreme line on war aims, the papers were also set to the task of attacking the left, which it defined as anyone supportive of democracy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Alfred didn't write his own propaganda, but he was very involved at the operational level, investing in several major papers to push them further right, and also establishing a separate fund to shotgun money off to little nationalist papers all over the empire.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So they're not just buying papers, they're giving away money to small independent papers to keep them afloat during World War I. So all of the centrist papers are going out of business because it's a terrible time to be in business in Germany. So are a lot of the left-wing ones. But the right wing press thrives because he's paying it with war money. Right. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Or it's what was the Daily Wire might be going bankrupt now. But, you know, the oligarchs got what they needed out of them. Right. Right. Yeah. It's this thing of like, wow, it's hard to be an honest newspaperman trying to report accurately on things. And also those people are dangerous to us. What if we made the only profitable kind of news right wing news using our infinite monies? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. I mean, it was. It's just a very obvious one. Right. You put a lot of money into buying and building audiences. Yeah. And you put you get people on the boards of the social media companies. So they make sure the algorithm support it. You know, same as it ever was.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So, Hugenberg's support of war aims that held German expansion as non-negotiable led him to back the political ambitions of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff, both of whom are going to be key players in Hitler's rise. Hindenburg is the guy who hands over control to Hitler when he dies and Ludendorff is the general who marches with Hitler during the Beer Hall Putsch.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, by this point, and the war is still on right now, there's a huge anti-war movement, right? By 1917, a lot of Germans are like, what if we stopped killing our sons? We can call these the sane people. And so Hugenberg hates these folks, and he helps develop and advertise a right-wing counterpart, the German Fatherland Party.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, the only real demand of the German fatherland party is that Germany should annex everything and keep fighting until the rest of Europe agrees to let them keep it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We're like three years away from the American fatherland party. Sophie, it's going to be great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We might be. Now, while he's also playing the part of arch propaganda baron of the right, Alfred starts taking investment money from his friends with the end goal of exploiting all of those resources Germany was definitely going to control entirely once the war ended. Per John Leopold, quote, established three companies which would help Germany exploit Belgian resources.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Similarly, at the end of 1917, he formed a company to develop the post-war settlement of French territory, which he expected the Reich to annex. Much more elaborate plans were formulated for the colonization of the East, which were incorporated in 1918 after the Russian defeat. Now...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

If you know your history, you know that investing in Germany continuing to control France, Belgium, and Western Russia in 1917, not a good investment. About to really, really go badly for Hugenberg. But I read this because by the end of World War I, he has become a bookie for war on a continental scale. He's taken everybody's cash, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And all the cash of the people who are betting on we're going to keep all this shit, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He takes in some 37 million marks to establish cooperative funds aimed at settling German farmers on conquered land. And then, of course, Germany loses the war. Now, again, It is 100% agreed by absolutely everyone, every professional historian, every military historian, even the German ones, that Germany simply could not continue to fight.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

At the moment they made peace was the last moment they could have done it without the army shattering entirely and leaving a clear path to Berlin. By the way, without a full-scale socialist revolution overtaking the country. They almost have one anyway. Like Germany is absolutely out of gas. They have fucking nothing left.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But if you're looking at a map like a dumb person, it looks like Germany gives up when they're winning. They're still in France. They still have Belgium and they've got a lot of Russian territory. Germany is the biggest it's ever been. It's the largest continental empire that I think it existed certainly since the era of the Roman Empire. It might have been large.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I don't recall precisely, but it looks really good on a map if you're not aware of the fact that all of their soldiers are about to drop dead where they're standing. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, Hugenberg is not a dumb man. He understands the army literally could not have kept fighting. But he can't accept that intellectually because that would mean that he'd been wrong. And he just is not the kind of guy who can be wrong. So he convinces himself, we've been stabbed in the back. Somebody fucked this up for us. It wasn't me and the other people running this fucking country.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And he sets his vast propaganda apparatus. He now controls the papers and he sets the papers to convincing the country of what we now call the big lie. Right. Germany didn't lose because we got out fought and outlasted and we pissed off the Americans. And boy, maybe we shouldn't piss off the people who have literally all of the resources on planet Earth behind them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Possibly a bad idea when we're Germany. We lost because a sinister alliance of Jews, socialists and liberal Democrats stabbed the fatherland in the back. You know, that's why all this happened. It's not that we picked a fight with a man who was three feet taller than us and made of solid steel.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Again, I'm talking about the US in this period of time after we were already beaten so bloody that our eyes had swollen shut. You know, it's not that. It's the Jews, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The August Scherl Company plays a substantial role in spreading this lie, and their propaganda falls on welcome ears, not just among the same group of people where the nascent Nazi party did most of its recruiting at this time. He focused a lot on the Bildungsbürgertum, right? The younger members of that class, these university students, many of whom had been too young to fight, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And this spelled the final end of liberalism within the Bildungsbürgertum. as Herman Beck lays out in his book, The Fateful Alliance. Students preceded the established Bildungsbürgertum in appropriating a new conservatism.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Before the German defeat in the First World War and the subsequent economic turmoil and inflation, this cultivated bourgeoisie had enjoyed significant material security and comfort, as well as greater social prestige than its counterparts in other European countries. To them, defeat in the war was more than a military disaster. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

There's nothing that turns like a generous, intellectually rigorous class of people into

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Like bitterness, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I thought I was promised more than this. It must be someone's fault.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, Hugenberg's papers aren't just geared towards these people. And in fact, he's got a bunch of papers that are geared towards different segments of the population. But because, number one, he's from this group, they're best at messaging to these people, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It takes less than two years after the end of the war for this rage and mania that's being drilled into German conservatives via Hugenberg's propaganda to really start to flourish. And one of the conservatives who is influenced by this stuff and is going to have a big impact on things is a fellow traveler of Hugenberg's named Wolfgang Kapp.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, Cap, interestingly enough, had been born in New York City because his family fled during the 1848 revolutions. There's this wave of left-wing revolutions all around Europe in 1848. They don't succeed in toppling the German government, but it's scary. Cap's family comes from money, and they leave to be in New York for a while, right? But he moves back. He spends his youthful years in Germany.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

and he is kind of sculpted from conception to be a right-wing culture warrior right his family and his wife's family are nationalists they have strong far-right pedigrees and cap grows up to run an agricultural credit union he used his position to argue against debt relief for starving farmers and in world war one full-throatedly endorsed the impossible war aims of hugenberg and his ilk

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He was also very bullish on unrestricted submarine warfare. You can't, this guy thinks, you know what will win us World War I is if we just shoot everybody's shipping all the time. Yeah. You know what never pisses off? Again, for example, the United States is killing a bunch of their citizens in boats. They love having their citizens killed in boats. Let's do a lot more of that, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Doesn't work out very good. Not a great thing for Germany. Yeah. So after the war, Kapp co-founds the German Fatherland Party, or at the end of the war, Kapp is the co-founder of this German Fatherland Party, right? That Hugenberg is backing alongside a guy named Admiral Tirpitz. And it was in this position that Kapp first makes contact with the Pan-German League.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Germany had been entirely overtaken by a socialist revolution in the aftermath of the war. The whole country barely stops from going socialist because the Weimar government that gets put in place after the Kaiser leaves basically like – is a compromise government meant to avoid full civil war.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And they, to a significant extent, make kind of a deal with a lot of these right wing forces, with the military, with the Fry Corps, which are these groups of like veterans who fought against the left. That's kind of all happening in this period in order to like put that down.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

These Freikorps units that develop – these guys aren't yet Nazis because Nazis don't exist yet, but a lot of them will be later. They basically are the inspiration for the brown shirts or the SA. Kapp sees these paramilitaries that formed to crush the left in the immediate post-war period. And he realizes, like, there's a lot of potential here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We can mobilize these people not just to do violence for us, but as like a voting bloc. Now, the problem is Cap is not good at waiting for his moment. So once he gets he forms this umbrella organization to lump these paramilitaries together and he gets General Ludendorff to agree to join. Right. And then he tries to overthrow the government. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And one thing that's funny is that Ludendorff gets on board with this plan a few years later in 1923, because this is 1920. He's going to do the same thing with Hitler. Ludendorff loves trying to overthrow the Weimar government. He's no good at it, but loves trying.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's his cigarettes. Um, so cap's whole idea here is called the cap putsch. And it's the same basic plan that hit in a lot of ways that Hitler's going to try to execute. Although different logistically, he's really focused on Berlin from the start. He wants to try to take the Capitol and, uh, For our purposes today, I'll just say it doesn't work, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And what's relevant to Hugenberg, who's our focus, is that the league is definitely aware that Cap is planning this putsch, and they give him a little bit of quiet support. But as soon as it becomes clear that he's not going to win, the league disavows him and is like, we never supported. Oh, my God. Treason? Absolutely not. Us?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And Ludendorff kind of does the same thing, and they all walk away unscathed. Almost no one is punished for trying to overthrow the government. Cap even is allowed to go into exile in Sweden, right? Nobody wants to piss off the far right by punishing them for trying to overthrow the government and institute a dictatorship. And a lot of these same guys are going to do it again.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Fascinating how that works. So, Hugenberg and his fellow plutocrats, you know, they make the public noises they have to make, you know, that's like, oh, that's how horrible. Why would anyone try that? But Hugenberg is also already trying to figure out how can I overthrow the Weimar government? And he's not a putsch guy. He doesn't want to have a bunch of dudes with guns do it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's going to overthrow Weimar democracy through the ballot box, right? That's his plan. Alfred had left Krupp finally in 1918 with a gargantuan fortune and a lot of influence. In 1922, Germany defaulted on her reparations repayments, which led to a cascading series of problems. The French occupy the Ruhr, this industrial heartland.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

If you're not going to pay, we're going to take the money out of you by occupying the place where you make everything. The government, in order to counter the French, backs a general strike, you know, in order to, so no one's going to work in the Ruhr. Then it's not worth it for you to occupy it. And the effect of all this is the economy fucking nosedives. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And since people aren't working, the government starts printing more money to try and keep things going. And, you know, that that's how you get hyperinflation. Right. We're all aware that this is the thing people generally know about Weimar.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And this is bad for basically everyone, but it's really good for Hugenberg because he's got a lot of liquid assets and everything is basically for sale in Germany for pennies on the dollar. So he buys up basically all of the remaining newspapers that he didn't own. Oh. Oh, my God. And now they're his personal property. He's not just owning them through this organization he's helping to run.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's just the guy who owns all these fucking papers. By the mid-1920s, he is the single largest media magnate in Germany. He has unparalleled reach. Probably no single person had ever had as wide a reach for disseminating their ideas to a culture as Alfred Hugenberg has in this period of time. He has total control.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's back to his roots. He's spent 44 billion on X or whatever. Well, he does. He purchases the largest German cinema chain. So he runs the movie theaters, too, which means he gets to pick like what sort of newsreels go on ahead of movies in Germany. Like this guy has owns the media ideology of a cancer cell. That's right. Exactly. He's fucking cancer.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In 1928, he compounds all of that by purchasing his very own political party. Now, he doesn't literally buy it, but he uses his wealth and influence and control of the press to become the chairman of the German National People's Party. This is the largest right-wing nationalist party in the country at the time. And his plan is going to be, I want to shift it even further right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And I'm going to read from an article by C.N. Truman here. In 1931, he produced the party's new manifesto. Hugenberg called for the immediate restoration of the monarchy, the tearing up of the Treaty of Versailles, much greater contact between Germany and Austria, compulsory military service, a new German empire, and a reduction in the perceived economic power the Jews had in Weimar's economy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Every day. Every day. As soon as this call finishes, Amanda Montel, our great guest and the author of Cultish, as soon as we finish this recording, I'm going to get back on the phone with Emmanuel Macron over in France and try to sell him some new machine guns, you know? Then I'm going to tell the Germans, do you know what Macron's doing? Holy shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Hugenberg's most immediate target was Chancellor Heinrich Brenning, who he believed was pushing Weimar inexorably towards socialism. Hugenberg was one of the most influential men at the 1931 Habsburg Front Conference, which met with the specific aim of trying to persuade the aging president, Hindenburg, to sack Brüning.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So he is a major part of the conditions that form to allow Hitler's rise in this period of time. And he is also – he wants to be Hitler. His goal is to put himself in charge of the country by buying this party, right? Like that's kind of how he is thinking at this period of time. Now, unfortunately, he's not – Isn't he getting tired?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, no. Why would he get tired?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, I mean, again, cocaine's available over the counter in this period, so it was a lot easier to have energy, I guess. So fair.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, he can't be moving too well, although he's never had to work physically a day in his life, so maybe he's doing okay. Right. He wasn't in the trenches. It's a lot of sitting. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. True. Now, under Hugenberg, the National People's Party actually shrinks because there's a lot of conservatives who are like conservatives, but they're not super anti-Semitic or even I mean, some of them might have just been actual like Jewish conservatives. And they're not going to stick around as he makes the party much, much worse on that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And there's also a chunk of conservatives who are like economic conservatives, but like military nationalism. We just had a horrible war. I'm not really down for it. So the party shrinks.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

under hugenberg and the folks who leave tend to join either the conservative people's party or the largest like the center party others rejected the monarchist bent and they saw what hugenberg was doing is watered down nationalism so they just went and joined the nazi party who in this point in time consider hugenberg and the conservatives one of their big enemies

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Because at their root, the Nazis are a poor workers party in this period. And while they have wealthy elites backing them, the whole capital class has not yet gone in for the Nazis, right? There are some early rich backers of the Nazis, like Hitler's friend, Puzzi, right? That guy, Hans Stengel, who's like a very rich guy who helps bankroll the Nazis early.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But most of the early rich people who bankroll the Nazis are socialites. And they get on board with the Nazis because the Nazis are cool and transgressive. And they want to be cool too, right? Yeah. Hitler's first real inroad to wealth, to like serious money, was an industrialist named Fritz Tyson. Now, that last name Tyson, T-H-Y-S-S-E-N.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

If you go into an elevator right now, walk into basically any elevator in the world, wherever you happen to be, and look around, you will see somewhere in that elevator, almost certainly, the name Tyson Krupp. Krupp, of course, is the arms company that we talked about earlier. Tyson is the company of Fritz Tyson.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

They merge at a certain point and they make all the elevators as well as submarines that get sold to the Egyptians.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

That's right. Take the stairs. I mean, you know, they're just kind of a boring company now. But these are the origins of all of that, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Not great roots. Good for the glutes. Not great roots. Good for the soul. So Fritz Tyson had been social with Hitler for a while from like the 20s. So they become like kind of friends. But Fritz is also like, I don't know if this guy's going anywhere. He's kind of extreme. I'm not going to like go whole hog in. But in the 30s, he's like, you know what? This guy is the best speaker I've ever seen.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's he calls he's enthralled by what he calls Hitler's oratorical gifts. And he says what impressed me most.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

What impressed me most was the order that reigned in his meetings, the almost military discipline of his followers. Okay. It's hard to tell Hitler's charisma as a Westerner watching these speeches. It is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It works, you know, like true. It's true.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Hitler's really good at it tweaking the amygdala of his followers and it promising them vengeance. And if you can do those things effectively, you can get about anything you want out of a population.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It's right. Right. Right. So Tyson has been kind of shotgun. He's been funding the Nazis as a little as a side hobby for a while in the late 20s. But in January of 1932, he looks out. The communists are also climbing in the polls, right? And the Nazis actually look like they're kind of bottoming out, like they've reached their height. But the communists are still getting more popular.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And he can see that things are reaching a terminal juncture in Weimar. Something is going to break soon, and he wants it to break for the right. And he's like, Hitler's my best bet. So he invites Hitler to speak in Dusseldorf before an assembly of industrial magnates.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

After the speech, all of the richest guys in Germany, the people who own all of the factories, all the big businesses, whose donations had usually gone to like the center party or to kind of one of the center right parties, they start sending money to the tune of around 2 million marks a year to the Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

and because they don't want to be seen directly funding the nazis they reach out to a guy they all knew and had worked with who was really good at funneling money alfred hugenberg and it's going to be hugenberg who funnels the money from these industrialists directly into the nazis Now, in this, he is playing the same role he'd done earlier, but he's not a Nazi himself. He does not like Hitler.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He hates Hitler. As a matter of fact, he thinks he's gross. He's a poor. He's poor. He's a corporal. Right. Like he's not as good as me. He doesn't have an education. He's and a lot of his mustache doesn't look like Squidward's tentacles. Exactly. Exactly. It looks like a little one of those bars you put over someone's dick if they're naked. No, absolutely not. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I'm convinced at this point that like, well, I'll hold my nose because Hitler and these Nazis, they can be a good weapon against the left. And obviously that's what matters most is crushing the left.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Not a lot. Yeah. And it'll happen elsewhere soon. So Hugenberg doesn't stop running his own political party. And in fact, he gets in the Reichstag, like he gets elected to office. And his message, which is not as effective as the Nazi message, is in part not as effective because he's really speaking mostly to this educated upper middle class, the Bildungsbürgertum.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

As Herman Beck wrote in The Fateful Alliance, "...the educated elite's fate had been closely aligned with that of the empire. With the empire's demise, it suffered a decline in reputation that increased its alienation from Weimar, to which inflation added the grievance of material destitution. The inflation broke the economic spine of the Bildungsbürgertum."

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

whose lifestyle had been supported largely by their savings, as regular salaries rarely sufficed to maintain the material accoutrement that went with their exalted social position, such as domestic servants, and a costly education for their offspring. Probably no part of the German population felt the humiliating changes in everyday life more deeply than the educated elite.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

None felt more distant from a republican regime with which reconciliation seemed impossible. Again, he's like, hey, you guys are angry because your treats are gone. You can't afford servants anymore. Like, that's what he's promising. Whereas Hitler's promising workers, I'll get vengeance for you, for all these people who have made your lives hard, and I'll make sure you have jobs.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And not just jobs, you'll get vacations, you know? That's a big thing the Nazis did, was like made it possible for like working class people. They had like funded vacations and shit. Like, that's who he's talking to. Hugenberg's talking to like – the sort of rich who were now sort of poor and saying, I'm going to fix things for you, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So for a time, because this is not that large a chunk of the population, it seemed as if Hugenberg was destined to watch his party shrink while the Nazis grew and grew right alongside the communists. And while he is responsible for funneling some money to Hitler, he refuses to compromise within the party. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We are at the point at which World War I is underway. Millions of boys are dying in an industrial form of slaughter, heretofore unknown to the human race. And as Germany feeds its future into a steel maw of British and French bullets, Alfred Hugenberg has an idea. Now, the job he's working at this point is pretty close to what we'd call a hedge fund manager today, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Like he is not willing to change what the German National Party is saying because he wants it to be his mouthpiece. And in fact, when he gets rid of so many of his rivals that like the party is insolvent, like he's gotten rid of enough so many people that were funding it that like it can't be funded anymore. He just pays for the whole party himself.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

yeah um now there's still my god he's like just this sad dude with no friends and so much friends and all the money again familiar to a certain plutocrat we all know and are frustrated by today now speaking of people with no friends if you want to have friends make friends with these sponsors

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Not in terms of the way he's moving his money, but in the fact that he is the guy who other rich people give their cash to, and he tells them what to do with it in order to make the most of it, right? And he's always been very bullish on German expansion. That's kind of his whole deal. Like, what if we had more Germany?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We're back. So, Hugenberg is shotgunning some money to the Nazis in the early 30s, and he's got his party, which is winning seats in the Reichstag. It's actually doing better and better in kind of 32. Not enough to control anything, but enough to be part of a coalition. But he knows that the left is also still growing, and I want to win this larger battle for control of the German state.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And so he kind of admits, I have to work more directly with the Nazis, right? It's not enough to just kind of like help get some money to them. I have to actually start helping them out using my resources. So Hugenberg diverts his vast media apparatus to the cause of boosting Hitler.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, boy, howdy. We're back, having a good time, and everything's good. We're podcasting about Alfred Hugenberg, a great asshole who, at this point in time, has helped make World War I a reality, which, you know, I hope to one day make World War I a reality, so...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

By this point, he has a degree of control in some 1,400 newspapers and also owns the largest movie studio in Germany. One reporter at the time for a centrist paper described Hugenberg as the great disseminator of national socialist ideas to an entire nation through newspapers, books, magazines, and films.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And he's always felt like Germany deserved a bigger piece of the pie that was Africa. And at this point, World War I... Arguably, Germany's best military commander of the entire war is in Africa, like a very actually like innovative insurgent kind of commander running a truly ingenious insurgent campaign. And after the initial first few weeks of heavy advances through Belgium and eastern France,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And he's doing this because he envisions his party governing alongside the other right-wing party and the Nazis as a coalition. And so he's like, well, the more votes the Nazis get, the better our coalition can crush the left together. But we'll be in a coalition together, right? And it's in this brief period, 32 to 33, that Hugenberg is going to reach the apex of his evil talents.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

By this point, he was simultaneously the bag man for the whole far right. He's funneling wealth from Germany's capitalists to the Nazis. He's funding his own party. And he's running this vast media empire. And he's also sitting in the Reichstag as an elected member and directly pushing his own political agenda. And I'm going to quote here from an excellent article in The Atlantic by Timothy Ryback.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Hugenberg practiced what he called katastrophenpolitik, the politics of catastrophe, by which he sought to polarize public opinion and the political parties with incendiary news stories, some of them entirely fabricated articles intended to cause confusion and outrage.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

According to one such story, the government was enslaving German teenagers and selling them to its allies in order to service its war debt. Hugenberg calculated that by hollowing out the political center, political consensus would become impossible and the democratic system would collapse.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

As a right-wing delegate to the Reichstag, Hugenberg proposed a freedom law that called for the liberation of the German people from the shackles of democracy and from the onerous provisions of the Versailles Treaty. The law called for the treaty signatories to be tried and hanged for treason along with government officials involved with implementing the treaty provisions.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The French ambassador in Berlin called Hugenberg one of the most evil geniuses in Germany.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He was like for his own person. No.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He wants to learn. I mean, why would he feel guilt? You know, he believes, number one, it's moral for Germany to be to take its place in the sun. He believes the Jews are a force for evil. He believes the poor need to be ruled by men like him. And he sees his bottom line as tied to this. I don't think it goes any deeper than that. I think, I mean, is this guy like associate? Like, could you die?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Could he have been diagnosed as a psychopath? I don't know. But like, this is not a man whose conscience troubles him for what he's doing over much.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. In 1932, the Nazis carry the affluent Germans of the Berlin suburbs for the first time, which is a sign that some of the stuff that's going on here to push them – to boost them is working. Now, Joseph Goebbels does not want credit to go to Hugenberg, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Even though Hugenberg is a part of why this happens because Goebbels, who is Hitler's propaganda guy, despises Hugenberg and is repeatedly trying to turn Hitler against Hugenberg, which actually wasn't really necessary because one thing Alfred can't do, he can't suck up.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Maybe he can to richer guys, but he can't suck up to Hitler because Hitler's, again, some poor asshole who got wounded in the trenches like an idiot, right? That's how Hugenberg looks at these people. He's a social inferior. So Hitler doesn't like Hugenberg just because no one does, right? Yeah, no one does. No, he's a dick.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

No, no, no, no. And in fact, there's a good bit here. So Vorwurz, a socialist paper in Weimar Germany, had taken to drawing Hugenberg as a bloated frog in glasses, like that was their caricature of him. But even Hugenberg's friends had mean nicknames for him. The people close to him called him the hamster. Hitler, for his part, called Hugenberg wow-wow or woof-woof, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Everything gets bogged down for the German army in the West. And so Africa is going to be one of those places that Germans can look to for like the kind of glorious martial stories of military cunning and courage that, you know, make good propaganda because like and then another boy died in the mud. Not great stories, you know, not super, not super inspiring. Right. So true.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's a barking dog, right? He won't shut the fuck up. He's annoying the hell out of me. Now, that same year, Alfred opposed Hitler in the presidential election. So again, he's been putting money into Hitler and his propaganda has been boosting the Nazis, but he is still trying to oppose him politically.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And he backs, I forget who he backs, it doesn't matter, but he backs someone who's not Hitler for the presidential election. And during this election, for the first time, his party actually takes seats from the Nazis, which does force Hitler to come to the table. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Hitler is like, OK, well, I guess I do have to work with this guy who I don't like very much because he just took some seats from me and my party's kind of maybe starting to bottom out. Um, the meetings go by, they try to see if they can work out an agreement to like govern together.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And they absolutely can't because the Hitler's line, and he always sticks to this, is that we'll form a coalition government, but every ministry has to be headed by one of our people, right? We need them all. No compromise. And Hugenberg's not willing to compromise yet on that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Hugenberg himself is convinced that since his party has managed to capture a lot of seats, he and other conservatives, if they work with Hitler, can, quote, box Hitler in. Right. So if we let the Nazis rule with us, we can kind of surround them and we'll stop him from doing any crazy shit. We'll be the adults in the room. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So by late 1933, Hitler and Hugenberg are trapped in this incredibly difficult situation where Hitler has the ability to become chancellor because he's got Hindenburg's kind of starting to support the idea, like his party's got enough electoral success. But he can't – he needs Hugenberg's support to cross that line, right? Both his money and his kind of voting support, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Hugenberg can't be chancellor on his own. He doesn't have nearly the votes. So he can help make Hitler the chancellor, but he can't – he has no chance of getting that for himself. And the Nazis sure as shit aren't going to make him chancellor. So – a compromise is reached, right? As one of Hitler's friends put it, Hugenberg had everything but the masses. Hitler had everything but the money.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In that excellent piece... Yeah, exactly. In that excellent piece for The Atlantic, author Timothy Ryback describes what happened next. After cantankerous negotiation, a deal was reached. Hugenberg would deliver Hitler the chancellorship in exchange for Hugenberg being given a cabinet post as head of a super ministerium that subsumed the ministries of economics, agriculture, and nutrition,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Once in the cabinet, Hugenberg didn't hesitate to meddle in foreign relations when it suited him. Reinhold Quatz, a close Hugenberg associate, distilled Hugenberg's calculus as follows. Hitler will sit in the saddle, but Hugenberg holds the whip. In other words, I am riding Hitler to success, and I can whip him if I need him to move in a direction.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, there is immediately everyone gets scared when Hitler winds up directly in power in Germany. And then Hugenberg gets this position where he's running all the ministries and all of the dumb papers do the same thing they're doing today with Musk, where they're like. Ha, you were so scared of this Hitler guy. This Hugenberg dude is running things. Obviously.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The New York Times publishes a column where they describe Hugenberg as an arch capitalist who, quote, stood in strongest discord with economic doctrines of the Nazi movement. Right. And they're like, well, he's running the finances. This Nazi schmatz, like Nazi schmatz. They're not going to be that scary. This guy is going to run things. Right. And not when you put schmatz after it. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So Hugenberg is like, naturally, when we Germans win this war, we're going to need to expand our African possessions. And for an idea of what it would have looked like had Hugenberg got his wishes, we don't have to look back much further than like the period that we're in right now, 1914.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Sounds like the name of a little poodle. They're usually wrong about stuff like this. But even the left gets confused. The communist daily paper in Berlin, the Red Banner, argues that Hugenberg is in charge, not Hitler. In fact, says that Hitler's socialist mask has slipped. Ha ha. He revealed his cards. It's the evil capitalists running things, you know, just like we said.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And they're doomed to fail. And then it'll be our turn next. The weekly journal Die Weltbund described the new government as Hitler, Hugenberg and co. Roughly a day after Hitler was appointed chancellor, Hugenberg is said to have talked to a friend, the mayor of Leipzig, and told him, I've just committed the greatest stupidity of my life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in the history of the world. So while everyone else is like, oh, thank God, Hugenberg's running things. That crazy Hitler guy is just a figurehead. And Hugenberg, who has a lot of power right now, but has become aware enough and is smart enough to be like, oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. This could go badly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Like, this guy I might not be able to control for long.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Well, the thing that people don't – it's the same thing with Trump, right? I always try to push back when people talk about how dumb Trump is or what an idiot he is. He's not. He doesn't know a lot of things you know, but he knows his business, which is –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

getting, number one, populist support, and also he is really good at maneuvering through organizations to crush dissent and reform them in his image. Hitler is a genius politician. He is extremely skilled. This is an intellectual skill. He's got luck behind him, too. It's always a factor, but he is not accidentally succeeding.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He is succeeding because he's better at the stuff that matters than the people opposing him. That's the reality.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

What did he fucking do? Right. Yeah. Like... Yeah, you know who beats a bunch of people who read at like a 12th grade level? A bunch of people who read at a 5th grade level with more guns. Like, fucking come on now.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Who gives a – yeah. And Hitler's the same. Hitler's very good at what he does. He's good at building personal loyalty, and he's good at keeping his people in lockstep. They don't act without his approval, right? So that said – Right after Hitler becomes chancellor and Hugenberg is made this economic minister, he is a kid in a candy store, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In fact, we just have to go back to January of 1904, which is when the Herero people of modern day Namibia, led by a chief named Samuel Maharero, launched a rebellion against their German colonizers, right? So Germany already has Namibia. Hugenberg is looking at... Because he wants to take basically British African possessions and make them German, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

For the first few months of the Third Reich, Hugenberg has nominal control over the entire German economy. He describes himself as the economic dictator of Germany. And his first big step is to fire every government employee he can, trying to wipe out the entirety. He does a doge. He's trying to wipe out all of the administrative state, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Because he's angry that he has had to pay for taxes for public – so he wipes out every public employee he can. And at the same time, he starts executing a one-man war against workers' rights. He cuts his own employee wages by 10% across the board. He gives everyone a pay cut as soon as he gets into power. And he guts labor rights and the right to strike across Germany.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

All of this he justifies as necessary in order to get the German economy back into shape. and he uses his vast network of newspapers to manufacture consent for extremist policies that damage the average German. One of his pet columnists wrote at the time, the real battle against unemployment lies singularly and alone in reestablishing profitability and economic life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Parodying Alford's personal beliefs, this editor argued that the goal of state policy should be to rescue the merchant middle class, aka small business owners, no matter the cost to everyone else. Now, the focus on the middle and upper middle class was reflected in the few good moves that Hugenberg made, including he puts in a temporary foreclosure moratorium.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, he doesn't do an eviction moratorium, and that should tell you who he's working for, right? The people who are this kind of middle class that has just lost everything, He sees them as his base of support. He doesn't give a fuck about the renters, the people who are really poor, right? So there's a foreclosure moratorium, not an eviction moratorium.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He also launches a limited debt jubilee calculated to support struggling members of the Bildungsbürgertum. And again, it's just kind of worth- looking at sort of some of the stuff that he's doing, because it's not some of these policies, you could look at it, a vacuum is good.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But his overall goal is, fuck the poor, I'm going to, you know, build support among this kind of educated, upper middle class elite. And of course, Hugenberg also pursues a tariff program focused mainly on agricultural goods and an ill conceived attempt to rescue German farmers. If I tariff all of these foreign agricultural goods, then Germans will farm and be profitable. It'll be great.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, the only result to these tariffs was that they skyrocket the cost of living. People who couldn't afford food can now afford food even less. And it goes so badly that Hitler has to intervene. At one point, he blows up during a meeting with Hugenberg and says, it just won't do that the financial burdens of these rescue measures fall only on the poorest. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

When Hitler's being like, wow, this is unjust. You're a real dick.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So Hugenberg, for his part, Hugenberg is not afraid to argue with Hitler. And he says, quite literally, we have to let the poor suffer. That eventually will even out the hardships, but they have to suffer first. This does not work. More Germans go hungry. The economy, which had recovered a lot from the hyperinflation a few years back, plunges.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

One of the few papers Hugenberg didn't control that was still allowed to operate nicknamed him the Confusionsrat or Confusion Consultant. As is the case today, the mean nicknames don't hurt Hugenberg's feelings. Ryback describes him as being utterly calloused to the idea of being despised. And it was true that the hatred. Oh, my God. Right. Right. I don't know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And what had happened 10 years before this in Namibia was the Herero had rebelled. They'd killed about 120-something German settlers. And the Germans had responded by bringing the armed might of – they have the most powerful army on the planet at the time – to bear against these guys who don't have an army. They just have some men who are warriors, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's you have to write if you're going to do anything. Unfortunately, he is ignoring the fact that people are angry because he's making them starve. Right. Now, it was true that the left hating him. That doesn't really hurt Hugenberg in this point. They don't have any teeth anymore. Yeah, fuck them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But he makes a major tactical error at this point because he chooses to believe my money, which Hitler needs, will protect my position relative to Hitler. I'll always be co-equal with him because I'm rich. And that just ain't the way it's going to play out. I want a quote from Ryback again summarizing what happens next.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In late June 1933, while Hitler was trying to assuage international concerns about the long-term intentions of his government, Hugenberg appeared in London at an international conference on economic development. To the surprise of everyone, including the other German delegation members present, Hugenberg laid out an ambitious plan for economic growth through territorial expansion.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The first step would consist of Germany reclaiming its colonies in Africa, Hugenberg explained. The second would be that people without space would open areas in which our productive race would create living space. The announcement made headlines around the world. Reich asks for return of African lands at London Parlay, reads one New York Times headline.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Below that, a subhead continued, also seeks other territory, presumably in Europe. Such a funny way to write about what World War II is going to be. They want Africa back. Also, some other stuff. Maybe in Europe. Who knows? Oh, Christ. Today, we can say, well, Hugenberg was just giving everyone a very accurate warning about what was about to happen. That is what goes down next, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But Hitler and everyone else, Hitler's furious. So is everyone in German government. For one thing, they don't have an army yet. Right. Like the German army is bullshit at this point. Now, it's strong enough that it could overthrow Hitler, which is a big thing he's scared about, but it cannot conquer anything right now. Uh huh. So they're like, what? You're threatening people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

You're like threatening to punch somebody. And our arms are both still in fucking traction. Like we can't you can't be doing this yet. Like we have their steps before we start acting like this. Yeah. And so Hitler has his other top people try to pull back from Hugenberg statements. A bunch of other like cabinet members start being like, no, of course, we're not going to take any Europe.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

We're not going to we're going to get back in it. We're just trying to fix Germany, baby. You know, Hugenberg. Is incapable of reading a room and he doubles and then triples down. He keeps talking about how Germany is going to try to conquer everyone around them. Oh, my God. The Nazis are like, bro, fuck. Yeah, yeah. Keep that shit on the down low. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Ultimately, the conflict culminates in a cabinet meeting with Hugenberg on one side and everyone else on the other. This tells you how bad things are. Hitler's the mediator. Yeah. Okay, okay. Oh my God. Everybody calm down. Just shouting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So it's not like a military with like an industrial state. Right behind it. And this does not go well for the Herero. And the actual fighting, the battle is won quite quickly because the Germans have artillery. And as a general rule, if one side has artillery and the other side has not that, the side with artillery wins. This is one of the fun rules of warfare that's been generally true.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

If Hitler's the guy in the middle trying to keep everybody calm, things are not going to go well.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's got a hand on his shoulder.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. So Hitler still at this point has some hesitation of totally dispensing with Hugenberg. And he tries to insist like, hey, if you'll stop, everything's forgiven. He tells the other people in the room what already happened is no longer of interest. But Hugenberg again refuses to read the room and he doesn't mediate his language at all.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And ultimately, Hitler forces him out of his job as economic dictator in late June 1933. Hugenberg technically resigns, but it's obvious. What happened? And this is the end of Alfred's major period of influence in the Nazi regime. He will spend the remainder of the Third Reich living at his estate as essentially a small local dictator, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Like he's got this little country home with some towns around it, and he just kind of runs things there, right? And the Nazis more or less leave him alone. They make him sell off all his newspapers. He has to sell his media empire, but he gets a good price for it, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

His party is dissolved pretty quickly after this, but he gets to remain a guest member of the Reichstag, which isn't really in charge of anything anymore. It's just sort of a, we'll let you keep this because we don't really want to have a fight with you. His wealth and connections did protect him from the Night of Long Knives.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's never purged, but he clearly understands, I have to stay out of the spotlight if I don't want to lose my money and my nice shit. Yeah. And that's what he does for the remainder of the Third Reich. No way. Yeah. He's just kind of chilling.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

And when Hitler shoots himself in that bunker and the Third Reich falls, Hugenberg had been out of direct power long enough that the allies don't really focus on him as a danger. Shut up. Yeah. No, they kind of he does get arrested in 49 as part of like this denazification process. But he gets he gets basically ruled to be like, ah, you weren't really a Nazi. You know what?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's old. He dies two years later, but he's never punished.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

He's allowed to keep his possessions and his business. And he dies, you know, peacefully on March 12th, 1951.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I think he had some family. Oh, he did. I don't think he thinks much about them, so whatever. I'm not gonna.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, he sounds like a real dick. You know, they might not have been great themselves. I'm sure. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah. I mean, he's a piece of shit that is very much crafted by his social class and his time. And he's very much again. He's he is there. They're Elon Musk. He's this guy who, as soon as the fascists come into power, gets the job of wiping out the administrative state and completely fucking the economy up. Yeah. And then I guess shit canned. Right. As soon as he's no longer useful.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

German soldiers pursue the fleeing civilians after they kind of break the fighting forces. They continue to pursue because like the Herero flee. They try to get the fuck out of Namibia, right? Sure. And these colonial soldiers pursue these fleeing civilians into the desert and massacre thousands of them, a mix of just shooting them to death en masse and poisoning their well.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I mean, they are. This is what Peter Thiel's got a little bit of Hugenberg in him. Musk has a little bit of Hugenberg in him. No, it's true. I think the difference is that, number one, most of those guys don't didn't bother to buy a political party of their own instead.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I mean, Peter Thiel owns Palantir. Yeah. I mean, it's a kind of weapon system, yeah. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, and Musk hasn't so much gotten involved in that entirely, but like, you know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Whoa. It's always the same people. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yep. It's always, it's always a fucking, yeah, some busted weird asshole. Oh, what a bastard.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Was it Klumpt? Klumpt. No, no, no. Klumpt was the arm manufacturer, but I think there's a Klumpt artist. Gustav Klumpt, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, yeah, that's Krupp.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Krupp. K-R-U-P-P.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, there's a Krupp family collection of artwork, yeah, that travels around. It's massive.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Well... And that's where their money came from.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

They got the money to buy them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

World War I and II, because Krupp is arming Germany in both. But every one of those paintings represents a pile of corpses of teenage boys, primarily. Oh, God. It's good. It's good stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Speaking of what you see, where can people see you?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So they'll be in like the desert and they'll poison like a water supply to kill more of them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Excellent. All right. We'll check out Amanda and her work and check out our modern Alfred Hugenbergs as they engage in the process of flaming out and getting forced out by the fascists who are going to use the power given to them by these people to do God knows what. Hopefully not as much as the last ones. We'll see. Everybody have a great weekend.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

That's right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

This is a genocide. Yeah, this is universally recognized as a genocide, you know, like like Germany was doing genocides well before Hitler got into power. Right. And around this time, they're also going to have a hand in the Armenian genocide during World War One. So they're not clean on that either.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

In October of 1904, a German commander gave this order to Herero civilians seeking to return home to Namibia. Quote, within the German borders, every male Herero, armed or unarmed, will be shot to death. I will no longer take in women or children, but I will drive them back to their people or have them fired at.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

These are my words to the Herero people from the great general of the mighty German Kaiser.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Oh, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

What's the one thing everyone agreed on in 1913 and today? Too many young people in Europe. You know, we're going to knock that problem out right away. Just make a new Western front. Exactly. Exactly. You know, it's good for the economy. It's terrible. It destroys the whole thing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

A great example would be Japan, who is starting to colonize right around. I mean, in World War I, they take a bunch of German possessions. This is a big part of Japanese colonial expansion. And they're going to be hideously genocidal everywhere the Empire of Japan spreads to. And obviously, the British have been doing colonizing a lot longer.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But one of the first big acts of British colonialism was to kill, by some counts, tens of millions of people in Bengal through a famine that was largely the result of business choices made by a British corporation. So the fact that Germans get a colony in Namibia and almost immediately do a genocide, this is very much the norm, right? Okay, this is like a playbook. Shit. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, this is this is not at all like a freak incident. This is not just the Germans, right? This is a product. This is just how colonialism always works. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Is aware of what the Germans are doing in Namibia. This is reported on. And his whole attitude is we need to be doing this to way more of Africa to make room for a bunch of German farmers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

You know, let's let's let's get on it. We've got better guns than these people. Wiping them out will be no problem. So when he talks about needing to expand to Africa, I just I wanted to tell that story because that's what he's talking about. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Now, Africa, things are I wouldn't say they're going well for Germany in the war, but it's one of the areas where they can take a lot of pride because they've got this like very innovative commander doing very innovative things over there. That's a lot sexier than what's happening on the Western Front past a point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The other big win the Germans had had right at the start of the war was that they had conquered Belgium. Right. Now, this is actually a big part of why they lose the war on a strategic level because Belgium is an independent neutral nation, right? The Germans take Belgium because they need it as a road to get to France because this plan they have says that that's the best way to do these things.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

The British are like, if you go through Belgium, maybe we don't have a dog in this fight, but if you go through Belgium, then you're going to be fucking with us, right? And they go through Belgium and the British get involved. Right. So this is it's one of those things where the Germans are very proud to have a Belgium, but also it kind of is a big part of what fucks them over.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

But Hugenberg is not really thinking about that at the time. He sees Belgium as an investment opportunity, and he's very glad to have it. He sees the same as Germany has taken a good deal of French territory at this point in Eastern France, which includes this one region of Southeast France that Germany has occupied, is where the French keep a big chunk of their mines.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It's a heavily resource dense region. So, he's looking at these new conquests and seeing them as permanent. Even though the war is very much in doubt, he's like, the smart man needs to be thinking, how are we going to take advantage of this? What are we going to turn these new possessions that we have as a people into?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

So as the war grinds forward, the Pan-Germanic League works overtime, propagandizing that these new conquests are now German territory forever by right of blood. And no peace can even be negotiated if giving up Belgium or any French territory is required. This is a big part. A lot of people wonder, well, it became very quickly obvious. No one's going to win this easily.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

It is bleeding everyone white. You're all wiping out whole generations of young men to fight this war. Why don't we just stop? And a big part of why is the allies, Britain and France, are like, well, okay, we'd be happy to end the war. They're not initially like this, but there's a lot of willingness to end the war, but Germany has to give up the places they took. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Like you could just keep all this France like, fuck you. You just keep Belgium and the Germans. And this is a big part of why the German state and the Kaiser refused to go along with this is you've got these this very influential pan-Germanic League being like absolutely under no circumstances can we compromise on these territories. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Again, that's not all of why this happens, but they're not a small part of why there is no willingness to compromise, which could have ended the war at least a year or two earlier, right? Maybe in a way that would have been less overall calamitous to the German economy, right? Because a negotiated peace wouldn't have involved Germany completely surrendering.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Maybe they would have had to give back a bunch of this territory, but they could have maintained being a functional state and not had – it wouldn't have been like a Treaty of Versailles situation, right? Potentially it's a much better future, but Hugenberg and his ideological simpaticos are like, the fuck? Give up Belgium? We have all sorts of plans for Belgium, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

I get it. As an Italian man, my natural enemy is the Belgian, you know? As Caesar said, all Gaul is divided into three parts, and one of those motherfucking parts is the Belgians, and I got to quarrel with them. I'm still hoping to take Belgium one day. I think I could. I think I could.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, not eating lunch, seven-hour dinners, the Persians. Yeah, we have a lot of enemies, we Italians.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Also, healthcare CEOs, apparently. Anyway.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Our most famous Italian. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Is that the most famous Italian at the moment? What Italian is more famous than that guy right now? Berlusconi? Absolutely not.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Alfred Hugenberg: The Elon Musk of Weimar Germany

Yeah, he's... He's definitely, he's more famous than Mussolini now, which I gotta say is a huge win for Italian Americans, you know?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And so we deserve all this. Right. That's just an extension of what Russia is saying. The fact that he made that mainstream is why they have a chance of making that mainstream.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

What you're getting at, Paul, and what the core of this is, is that – Rush doesn't believe in positive things. I don't mean positive in a good sense. I mean, he doesn't believe in things that should be done. He believes in tweaking people. That is what he turns American conservatism into. He turns it from we're conservatives.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

These are the things we believe about how the government and how society should be run into conservatism is owning the libs. That's where we are now. And that's what this is, is it's my politics. are a sort of rhetorical violence against the people I disagree with.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Because improving the world, changing it, making positive alterations to the world is difficult and complicated and involves a lot of debate and trial and error. That's hard. All I want to do is own the libs. That's what Rush Limbaugh created, brought into the world, and turned into the entire... That's the only thing that's left in conservatism, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You've got these odd... You've got a couple of dudes left on the right who...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

actually believe in something like mitt romney and arnold schwarzenegger right not that what they believe in is great or that i i believe in it too but they both have a clearly have a principles that aren't just owning the libs but they're on the fringe now because owning the libs is all the right has um and it's just it's not it's not it's not standing for something it's it's i it's like not

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, and it's... It's very frustrating, Paul, because the core of that idea that I want to be left alone, that's more or less my politics. That's what led me to anarchism. It's like, don't fucking tell me what to do, and I don't want to tell you what to do. And that is what, as a kid, I was taught conservatively. Conservatism was, but it's not what conservatism has ever been.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And I think a big part of why why the Republican establishment embraces rush is that by the early 90s, in particular, by the mid 90s, definitely, it has become clear that nothing that the right does works for the actual people that that vote them into office. Right. Economics does not function. You know, it doesn't. It's well documented. Objectively does not work the way they say it does.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

They're fighting against environmental regulations, damages the world and makes it uninhabitable. Fighting against corporate regulations gets a lot of their voters killed by dangerous working conditions and stuff. All of the wars they get us into.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

are disasters and expensive and do not achieve the foreign policy or even the basic national security goals they set conservatism as americans do it at least does not work and when you know that you can't go back to the drawing table you can't admit failure you can't acknowledge the mistake what you can do is own the libs you know and that's why that's all it is now is owning the lips yeah um it's good it's a good healthy healthy society paul

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's only going to get better, too. It's only going to get better. So Rush's justification for the outrageous caricature of a right winger that he played on his show had always been that these liberals and leftists advocating for black lives and women's liberation and basic environmental safeguards were absurd. And as Rush put it, I demonstrate absurdity by being absurd.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's his own words on this. Now. This turned out to be an objectively good business because none of his listeners seem to find Rush himself absurd. The character he played became the man he was in the once apolitical wannabe DJ turned into a mouthpiece for the very worst of our society's impulses.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

One thing that made the Rush Limbaugh show groundbreaking was that for the first time in an explicitly political talk show, the focus was not on guests or actual reporting or anything but the personality Limbaugh had created. Rush was his own guest and this was a deliberate choice he made and a very intelligent one to make the show more profitable.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

If the focus of your show is on the news and on what guests have to say, you can kind of slot any person with a decent voice in to replace the host, right? That limits how much money you're going to make and it limits kind of the length of your career. Rush himself explained in an interview, I wanted to be the reason people listened. That's how you pad your pocket.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's how you establish yourself. And that's very smart. He did, in fact, establish himself. In 1992, Rush's radio success finally got the TV people listening. They decided to try him out as on-screen talent. He teamed up with Roger Ailes, the man who would later invent Fox News, and together they produced one of the most outrageous and vile news programs ever made.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It would, sadly, also turn out to be one of the most influential. And now, Paul, it is time for you and I to take a journey into this particular piece of far-right history. So this episode from 1992 of the Rush Limbaugh show opens with a title card, which features an image of a microphone with the name Rush emblazoned on it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And the words warning the views expressed on this program are not necessarily the views of the staff advertisers or your local station, but they ought to be.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, I know. It's good shit, man. It's good shit. So, the episode itself has a weirdly quiet intro. No music, just Rush with a pointer standing in what looks like an office with wall-to-wall bookshelves and TVs interspersed within the books on the bookshelves. He introduces himself and he starts talking about a recent conversation he had with President George H.W. Bush on his radio program.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So... That's telling. That's extremely important what he does here. You have to remember, Fox News was not a thing yet at this time. Fake news was not a buzzword. Limbaugh is groundbreaking in that he was not only critiquing mainstream news as being fake and lying, but he's also telling his listeners, I am the truth.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This paragraph from a write-up by Rolling Stone gets to the core of why I find what he's doing here so terrifying. Quote, he wasn't selling political ideas, and he never has. He was selling political attitude, the swaggering certitude, the mocking dismissiveness, the freedom to offend, the right to assert your privilege without guilt or embarrassment.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And partly because he was modeling that liberation with such wicked glee, Limbaugh was making himself indispensable. Within six weeks of tuning in regularly, he would tell new listeners they'd be on the cutting edge of social evolution. Best of all, he promised, I will do all your reading. And I will tell you what to think of it. I will do all your reading and I will tell you what to think of it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And this is the this is the logical extent of this. I'm so smart. You know, I got to tie half my brain behind my back just to make it fair. You know, I'm this big genius. I'm so smart. You don't need to read or think I'll do it for you. And then you too will be smart. And this is a huge thing. He spends a lot of effort in reinforcing his intelligence.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

After this section of the show, he goes on to introduce the other topics of that episode, which include Feminazi, Gloria Steinem and a review of the movie The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Then we cut in. Yeah. Then we cut to the actual intro, which is terrible 1990s talk show music played over a series of mocked up news articles with titles like EIB linked to higher IQ. Limbaugh gets patent.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Limbaugh says no to presidential bid. Limbaugh checks brain on donor's card. Limbaugh to carry a torch at the mental Olympics. Again, he puts a lot of effort into it. It's absurd, right? But it clearly works. It worked on my parents, you know? It worked on all of the people who raised me to some extent. They're all convinced.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Totally. Absolutely. That's why I have a well, I have a gun, but it works the same way.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

There we go. That's a nice knife, Paul. That's lovely. Oh, I like the nice little hunchback there. That makes it good for kind of close in work. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now we're all armed. We can properly get back to the show.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I mean, there are like three knives on the table, right? This is a significant number of knives on the table. All right. I'm a new listener. I apologize. So the show proper starts after this point, after these fake news articles kind of go through. And Russia's first subject on this episode is the then new TV series Murphy Brown. Murphy Brown was obviously the titular character of the show.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

She was a recovering alcoholic investigative journalist and a primetime news anchor and a single mother. Murphy Brown was a very feminist and progressive series for its day. Limbaugh opens his episode by expressing anger at the show's success. And then in what I would consider a fairly abusive manner, he tells his audience why they shouldn't watch it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You shouldn't have watched this show because I told you not to. And I told you not to because it's not good for you to imbibe this. And I think it's important to break down exactly what he's doing here. First off, he is trying to physically separate his audience from mainstream American society. Murphy Brown was a hugely popular show in its day.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He is literally telling them, you don't need to watch this thing other people are watching because I am telling you not to. And he justifies this by saying that Murphy Brown is an assault on family values, which he goes on to call functional values, because families like the ones portrayed on Murphy Brown were in Limbaugh's eyes non-functional.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This is significant because Murphy Brown was a single mother. She was one of the first single mothers portrayed on American TV as not just existing, but as being a successful person and a competent parent.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

We can't let people watch this because it will give them the wrong idea, not just about single mothers.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And that that's why he wants. That's why it is important to him to keep his audience away from it. Now, that was not the only kind of groundbreaking thing about Murphy Brown. The show was incredibly significant in its portrayal of gay people.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

In several episodes, most notably in 1992 and 1994, homosexuals were shown as not just normal functional members of society, but as existing in significant numbers throughout American society. There's an episode where like one of the characters buys a bar and it becomes through kind of like comedic hijinks or whatever becomes a gay bar. And he's like slowly realizes what it is.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But the point the episode was making is that gay people are all around us. They're part of our community. They are a significant, meaningful part of our society. This was rare in mainstream television for the time. And it made Rush Limbaugh furious. We have another clip here of of that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, this is also really significant. So... What Rush is doing here is he's framing his objection to Murphy Brown as reasonable and not based in hate. He's saying, I'm not against single mothers or I'm not against gay people or whatever. I am against the fact that the show conceals its political agenda. And I can see why people like most of my family would have found this reasonable.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But what's happening here is very sinister because Murphy Brown was not trying to be left wing. It was trying to make a point that single parents and that gay people are regular human beings who contribute to society. It was trying to point out that single parents are valid and functional people. These should not be political points anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Rush was not the first person to talk about the gay agenda or to oppose single motherhood, not even close. But before him, the most prominent voices attacking these groups of people were on the religious right, which had first arisen as an organized political force in the late 70s. They were obviously influential, but they were also obviously religious extremists.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Broadcasting from his studio in, I don't know, some fucking place with one liver tied behind his back to make it fair for all of the narcotics in his system. Robert Evans is presenting. I hate it. You don't like me? You don't like my pseudo-rush intro, Sophie? Not on board?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And a lot of non-religious conservatives and libertarian types did not want to identify with fundamentalists. Rush, who had a documented history of mocking religious conservatives, provided the more libertarian right with a secular justification for bigotry against gay people and single mothers and women in general. And that's one of his great innovations, unfortunately.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Exactly.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

These people exist. Isn't that all right? These people exist. It's all right. And they shouldn't be hated or punished or or ostracized. for being this, for being what they are.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yes.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's just not there at all. But if he's able to make it be that way to his listeners, then he can, number one, make sure they will always oppose these things that he just finds gross. And number two, it further separates them from mainstream society. This is the beginning of the splintering of the mainstream American right from the United States, from most of the people in this country.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And it was the beginning of making sure that there was no... You cannot...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

reconcile the right with with the modern world with the rest of civilization because you doing a different thing than them is an attack on them like we're being attacked because you're different and so we get to fight you that's Russia's great innovation and also that the way you think is the real America and not what these people think exactly that's haunting but you know what isn't haunting Robert

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

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Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Hopefully. Hopefully. Unless it's Raytheon, which is fairy haunted products. But that's a story for another day.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This is behind the bastards. A podcast that will never be as big as the Rush Limbaugh show because Sophie won't let me use cultic mind control techniques on our audience.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Okay. Well, we're back. The man you just heard is Paul F. Tompkins, our guest for this exploration of the life and times of Rush Limbaugh. Hi, everyone. Hey, Paul. How are you feeling? How are you doing an hour and a half into talking about El Rushbo?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And we're back. So, Paul, I would love to go with this through this entire episode with you. In fact, I would love to do a reoccurring series where we just go through point by point every episode of Rush Limbaugh's TV show and talk about it. I think it would be amazing. It is wild to see those clips again.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Um, I, it would be very, I think fun and also intellectually valuable, but we just, we have so much ground to cover. We, this has to be the end of that episode of the show. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. At least not, not today. Um, I think we've gotten the point across and characterize what he's doing on the show and why it was significant. Now, the Rush Limbaugh TV show was what you'd call a modest success. The 30-minute syndicated series ran from 1992 to 1996, which is not a long run, but isn't a super short run either. You know, it was not a huge hit, but it was successful.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That said, its actual impact on history was much greater than its four seasons might suggest. As I said earlier, Roger Ailes was the executive producer of Limbaugh's TV debut. Limbaugh and Ailes had met in 1990, and Rush would later say that their meeting was, quote, like finding a soulmate. And I'm going to quote here from a write up that I found on Quartz.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The persona Ailes helped Limbaugh create on that show, something between a commentator, political strategist, news anchor, and entertainer, is exactly the kind of act you can see today on Fox News. It is not hard to draw a straight line from Limbaugh's TV show to talking heads like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But for this week, we're going to be going back to a rerun. So please enjoy. The Story of Rush Limbaugh

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Like today's Fox News personalities, Limbaugh fancied himself as a man of the people who railed against elitist liberal politicians and voters. But as he did that, he was flying his private jet around the country to wine and dine with powerful figures. The myth he created of himself, with the help of Ailes, is the same myth that we see pushed again and again on Fox News by its biggest names.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

In retrospect, Ailes may have been using Limbaugh's TV act as a test run for Fox News— to see if the brand of conservative opinion that was working on the radio could be translated to and expanded on TV. In 1996, the same year the Limbaugh show ended, Ailes co-founded Fox News at the behest of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Much of what ensued, the liberal bashing, fear-mongering, alternative reality in which Fox's personalities lived, was reminiscent of Ailes' weird little Limbaugh talk show experiment. So this is really a test case for what becomes Fox News, you know, and the year Limbaugh show ends. 1996 is the year Fox News launches.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. So like like Ailes actually tried to get Rush to join the network, I think, in 2006. But Limbaugh kind of preferred radio. I don't think he actually liked being on TV very much. Not not not to the extent that he enjoyed doing his radio show. So I think that was mainly the reason. But also, by the time Fox News really got going. Ailes had a half dozen Rush Limbaugh's, you know, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. I, too, feel happy that he's dead. Yeah. It's fun.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, which we'll talk about a bit later. So throughout the mid and into the late 1990s, the Rush Limbaugh show was a bonafide cultural phenomenon. Rush created the first fully monetized right wing cult of personality within like the American media, at least. As you heard in the clips we played, Rush discouraged his listeners from thinking for themselves.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He was the genius, and if you just agreed with him and thought the way he thought, then you were by definition also smart. As a result, from the very early point, he gave his fans the nickname Ditto Heads. The New York Times explains the etymology of this term as it evolved on his show. Ditto, a time saving greeting used by callers to avoid tedious repetition of the obvious.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It never will. It will always be good that he's dead. Yeah. There's a few people who are like that, where it's like every now and then I just like think back to the fact that Reinhard Heydrich is dead. That's like good. Good for him. You know, good for him. So once upon a time, Paul, the United States used to have a thing called the Fairness Doctrine.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

For example, you're wonderful, Rush, and I agree with everything you've said. Ditto head then means a Limbaugh fan. So you're like literally he's saying my fans are people who say and believe all of the exact same things that I do.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, you are the only thing that matters to me, or at least your beliefs are because I am so empty as a person as a result of how capitalism has hollowed me out and hollowed my my class out that that I have nothing but the hatred of liberals that you embody.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yes. Yeah. And then there's mega dittos. And I can't even get too much into some of the terms used on the Rush Limbaugh show because it makes me want to punch things until my hands are broken. And I already had that happen last year because of one of his fans. Anyway.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The core of the Rush Limbaugh show was not, as he would always claim, advancing conservative ideology, but was instead attacking liberals and the left, who he referred to as commie libs or pink commie libs. And I don't know, again, at this fucking gun class I was at last weekend, the instructor was like, the far left wants to take your guns away.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And obviously I couldn't be like, actually, the far left is pretty heavily strapped. It's liberals who think our... But that's part of this idea that Joe Biden is somehow a leftist, right? That he's a communist. And you hear all over the right now that was Limbaugh saying anyone who is not a conservative is a far left.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So it doesn't matter that actually the Democratic Party is a profoundly conservative political party. And today's Democrats are basically the same as Republicans were when I was growing up in the 90s.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's this, I mean, that's kind of the thing about Republican talking points. Like the other thing, they kept panic, like terrified during the Obama years. He's going to take your guns. He's going to take your guns. He's going to take your guns. Barack Obama did not one single thing to restrict gun ownership in the United States. No.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Whereas actually Trump actually did ban certain fire, the bump stock, like Trump put through more restrictions on gun rights than Trump. Not that I'm saying anything wrong. I think bump stocks are dumb. But Trump objectively restricted gun ownership more than Obama. But you never know it to listen to the right wing media. It's preposterous.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

No one's going to take your fucking guns. There's too many of them. Not that, you know, we'll talk anyway. It's separate. Yeah, absolutely. This is why you get to a point where now mainstream Republicans are selling mugs with like that are like the tears of my enemies are in the. Yeah. You know, I'm going to quote from the Rolling Stone here.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, in short, the Fairness Doctrine required anyone with a broadcast license to present controversial issues in a balanced way, providing roughly equivalent time to present both sides of an issue. Now, this was obviously a flawed rule. Some issues, for example, like climate change, don't have two sides, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here. And, you know, we're still coming down from our end of the year celebration. I'm headed off to CES where we'll be doing reporting for It Could Happen Here and Better Offline. We're going to be coming back for the new year soon. The Oprah episodes will be in the can. Very excited to introduce you all to that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

On January 23rd, 1995, Time magazine featured Rush Limbaugh on its cover. We see him wearing a suit and smoking a cigar. Smoke curls up out of his mouth behind the bold words, Is Rush Limbaugh good for America? Now, it was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that he was not.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But for the most part, the liberal media that Rush attacked and demonized embraced him as kind of like the loyal opposition, as an erudite foil to debate with, to argue against. But nonetheless, someone who deserved respect and honor due to his success. Like, you can see this in the episode of Family Guy that Rush was on, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Where it's like, he has these fun bickering arguments with the token liberal on the show, but in the end, they really both like each other, you know? Yeah. As opposed to what Resch actually represented, which is the politics of violent elimination of the opponent. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And that's what's most amazing to me, is no matter what he said about the mainstream media, about the liberal media, whatever, they fettered him. They praised him. They made him, like, he was never treated as a pariah. Barbara Walters said in an interview, people just can't get enough of him. The Los Angeles...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The Los Angeles Times described him as a self-styled commander in chief fighting his private culture war against the many liberal do-gooder notions that interfere with his right to eat and wear and spend whatever he damn well wants and say whatever he damn well pleases. C-SPAN highlighted him in a fawning interview that helped turn him into a household name. Within a year of that interview,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He was carried by 530 stations and listened to by an estimated 25 million Americans. He started writing books with titles like The Way Things Ought to Be, each of which dutifully went on to become a New York Times bestseller. For a man who built his career attacking the liberal media, Rush never received anything but encouragement and financial support from his so-called enemies.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The fundamental hypocrisies that undergirded his career were seldom called out. Rush Limbaugh had not even registered to vote until he was 35 years old. years old, two years before his show became a nationwide nationwide success. The repeated double standards in his work and his life never hurt his pull with his audience.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

For example, Rush Limbaugh repeatedly attacked Bill Clinton as a draft dodger, which he was. But so was Rush. Limbaugh took the route that most wealthy young Americans during Vietnam took and found a doctor who would diagnose him with a bullshit injury so that he couldn't be called up for service. When he was eventually called on this by some journalists who were doing their jobs, he responded.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

There may be different sides about what the right response is, but there's not two sides to the reality of climate change. So the Fairness Doctrine Not a perfect, not a silver bullet sort of thingamajig. But while it was in place, right-wing media in the form that we have today did not and could not exist.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I had student deferments in college and upon taking a physical was discovered to have a physical by the virtue of what the military says. I didn't even know it existed. A physical deferment. And then the lottery system came along when they chose your lot by birth date and mine was high. I and I did not want to go just as Governor Clinton didn't.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Both Cheney and George W. Bush did like Rush, like Clinton, everything they could to not actually go and fight in Vietnam. One of the things that will always be the most infuriating thing in one of the most infuriating things to happen in American politics to me is the way in which.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

John Kerry, who is a – whatever else you can say about him, fought courageously, went to – despite the considerable privilege he was born into, did an incredibly dangerous job, was wounded multiple times, and risked his life repeatedly for the lives of his men, right? Vietnam was a terrible war. We never should have been in it. It was fundamentally immoral on a national scale.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But on a human level, John Kerry did the right thing, which is not – use his privilege to get out of fighting in a war that other people of his class got us into. And he was portrayed during that campaign as like a liar and a craven coward while George Bush, who did everything he could to not fight in Vietnam, was seen as this brave warrior hero. It's still very frustrating.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I don't even like John Kerry, but my God, the man did the thing all of you say is what you're supposed to do as a man. Yes. It's infuriating. Yeah. It's infuriating. The ditto heads continued to listen to their idol slam Clinton for being a draft dodger, even while they celebrated a man who, by his own admission, had done the exact same thing. Rush would eventually rack up three to four.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And I should have stayed here. I'm not. It's not bad to be a draft dodger. The Vietnam War was, again, horribly immoral. It's perfectly. What is immoral is dodging the draft and then going on to do nothing but encourage more wars that involve American servicemen, right? That's immoral. It is not immoral to dodge the draft and say, hey, this was a bad war.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

We shouldn't get involved in stupid, pointless wars that just kill people for the profits of a tiny number. Like, that's bad. I'm not going to do it and I'm not going to support it. That's fine.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, it's the moral inconsistency that's infuriating. John Kerry actually and John Kerry did not support the Vietnam War and became after he got out a very, very outspoken voice against it. But it's the if Limbaugh had served in Vietnam and then gone on to be a war hawk, then at least he would be ideologically consistent. You know, at least I could say Rush Limbaugh believes in something.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's like John McCain. At least he fucking believed in something. You know, it was terrible and fundamentally toxic as well. But it was not. He's not like Limbaugh. You know, he is a person who has beliefs. Um, I don't know. It's that it's like that line from the Big Lebowski, right? Like, say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, dude. At least it's an ethos, you know?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, since the dawn of the fake news era, which we're in now, a lot of folks have talked about the time of guys like Walter Cronkite, right? When you had newsmen who basically every American trusted, who could shift massive national issues just based on their considered opinion, right? Cronkite calls Vietnam a quagmire, suddenly national opinion on it switches.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So Rush Limbaugh was not a man who I think believed in much, much other than the fame and wealth of Rush Limbaugh. He would eventually rack up three divorces and four wives. He never had any children. Despite this, tens of millions of conservatives listened to him opine on family values and traditional morality on a daily basis. Rush called it functional values.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And one key aspect of his functional value system was rejecting illegal drugs. At one point on his TV show, at the height of the drug war, Rush told his audience, if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up the river. He repeatedly called addicts junkies up the river.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, you should go to prison if you do illegal drugs. He repeatedly called addicts junkies and suggested that drug dealers deserved death for their crimes. While he enthusiastically supported the drug war and the use of the carceral state to lock up mostly black men for selling drugs, Rush Limbaugh was actively trafficking huge amounts of opiate painkillers.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Rush used his housekeeper as a hookup, handing her cigar boxes filled with cash in exchange for thousands of pills of Oxycontin, hydrocodone, and the like. In 2003, she went public and knocked on him to the police. When the story broke, he was charged for his crimes, and Florida Sheriff's deputies opened an investigation into a drug trafficking ring.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

We don't know exactly what Rush is, if he was just a customer or if he had some other role in it, but he was buying drugs. Huge amounts of painkillers. We're talking about a guy who was spending probably hundreds of thousands of dollars on his addiction.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, he got it prescribed to him initially for an injury and he got addicted like most people do. But this is not just with prescription painkillers. Most people who have a problematic addiction to a drug get addicted because of something negative that happens in their life, right? Trauma or an injury or an emotional depression, whatever. That's most people who have a problematic addiction.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Limbaugh said anyone who does that should go to prison. Then he did that. You know, but he gets caught.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And he. Oh, yeah, he gets. Yeah. And when he gets caught, it is a big story. In 2003, his housekeeper went public, wore a wire, recorded him doing a drug dealer deal, knocked on him to the police. And when the story broke, he was charged for his crimes. And Florida sheriff's deputies opened an investigation into that drug traffic trafficking ring. His third wife left him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He checked himself into rehab while his multimillion dollar team of lawyers went to work defending him in court. The legal battle would go on for three years, during which time he began doctor shopping to maintain his addiction.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He was charged again with fraud for concealing information to obtain prescriptions from four different doctors who prescribed him roughly 2000 pain pills during one six month period. The case would eventually wrap up in 2006 when Limbaugh agreed to a plea deal that allowed him to avoid prosecution if he sought treatment and avoided other criminal activity.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. Uh-huh.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

right and like he doesn't even he barely it's not even a slap on the wrist it's like a little light tap on the wrist it's not even a slap on the wrist it's so fucking upsetting and again the immorality here is that he always advocated criminal consequences for people who did exactly what he did and then he didn't go on to suffer them and that's what's it's not that like there's nothing morally wrong with being addicted to painkillers if it were legal i would absolutely be a painkiller addict it seems rad um

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And a big part of why these guys were trusted is they were required to lend equal weight to both sides. They couldn't just be partisan shills. Now, this generally meant that they would give kind of the conservative opinion and the liberal opinion as opposed to the far left or the far right. But it did mean that you didn't have something as unbalanced as Fox News. Right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But I'm also consistent about the fact that I don't think doing or possessing any substance should be illegal. With the exception of, like, you know, some explosives. There's a line to be drawn. I don't think people should have surface-to-air missile launchers.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Speaking of heroin, you know who supports our podcast, Sophie?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The fine people at the Sinaloa cartel. Oh, God.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yes, this is a cartel-supported podcast. And I just want to say, let's go to ads before I get us in some trouble.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's like the voter guide you get. Yeah, exactly. It gives you the measured and says some people say this. Some people say this. Yeah. Yeah. And as flawed as the Fairness Doctrine was, it was part of why most Americans lived in a semi-unified media ecosystem back in up prior to 1987. Now, obviously, this did not last.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Ah, we're back. Good times. So while Rush was using his wealth and power to avoid the legal consequences that he enthusiastically supported existing for the crimes he committed, he continued to act as the voice of America's conservative conscience. Mostly, this meant being super racist.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

one point on his TV show, he played video clips of black men and boys standing in front of the TV, and while he was playing these clips of black men and boys, he would stand in front of the TV and make gorilla noises and grunts. The apparent joke being that black

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

people were like monkeys like that's kind of i i don't know what else he could be saying um pretty satirical very satire satirical like yeah i think he got that from a new yorker cartoon it would be like if jonathan swift actually murdered irish children and ate them and then was like this is a satire get it yeah Get it? The joke is that they're food.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

In 1987, the FCC, as the result of a court case, the FCC rejected the Fairness Doctrine. Conservatives cheered this on because fair media was seen by arch conservatives, guys like Roger Stone, as a big reason why Americans had broadly supported the impeachment of Richard Nixon at the end of the Watergate investigation. Watergate is one of these situations where when the investigation starts.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Rush repeatedly blamed corruption and violence in African national governments as the fault of black people getting rid of white colonial leaders, as we see in this quote from 2007. Quote, right. So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You stand behind Nelson Mandela, who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia, you do the same thing. Right. He's saying that because the black people got rid of their colonial oppressors, that's why Africa is in bad shape.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Not the decades of trauma those governments pushed, not the fact that when those governments gave up colonial control. They put people like Idi Amin, who had been a British military sergeant in charge of the government and turned out that he was a fucking monster.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Not because those governments like colonial governments continue to suck wealth out of these countries and support kleptocratic dictatorships that allowed them to suck more wealth out that made the country dysfunctional and that led to consistent like decades and decades of violence. Not that they supported ethnic groups one over the other like they did in Rwanda, which led to the Rwandan genocide.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

None of that. It's because they got rid of the white people. Hmm.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

even though white people didn't actually leave you know it's super fucked up i didn't know that he'd he'd actually gone to the the lengths of trying to smear nelson mandela yeah communist jesus christ uh it's good stuff i mean nelson mandela also was at one point some guy somebody who supported like terrorism and stuff which also is totally justified if your government is the apartheid government of south africa terrorism's not necessarily the wrong thing to do you

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You know, I would say it's not off the table. It's not off the table. Yeah. Sometimes terrorists are right. Yeah. That is like you could argue that the founding fathers of this nation who, despite their own bigotry and slave, like the government they were rebelling against also allowed slavery. They were right to do terrorism to get rid of having a king because kings are bad.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You know, like terrorism is justified sometimes. Yeah. So Rush was repeatedly critical of professional sports for the presence of black athletes, as we see in this 2007 quote. Look, let me put it to you this way. The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The inherent criminality of black people was a belief that Rush held deeply, and he expressed it constantly. In 1993, he said, the NAACP should have riot rehearsals. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies. He was saying this after the L.A. riots, you know? This is not people reacting to horrible violence the only way that they can, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This is not a riot being the language of the unheard. This is what the NAACP wants because they're all

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, it's it's pretty great.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, they just loved her. Not these people are being oppressed and murdered. And finally, violence was the only thing they could think to do because they were given no other options and they reached the end of their human tether. Like the people I idolize who founded this nation.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I mean, when I say that, I don't mean to say like that. Obviously, anyone writing in Los Angeles in 1993 was a thousand times more justified than George Washington and the like. That said, I still think getting rid of a king, all other things being equal, getting rid of a king is a valid reason to do violence. Kings are bad.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The vast majority of conservatives are against it, right? Don't think Nixon did anything wrong. The evidence comes out, and opinion shifts, and it becomes very popular to get Nixon out of office. This is the last time that happens, right? This is the last time that, like... People's minds get changed by the facts on a political issue in America.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So Rush repeatedly argued that white people shouldn't be blamed for slavery, saying it's preposterous that Caucasians are blamed for slavery when they've done more to end it than any other race. Any race of people should not have guilt. If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it's Caucasians.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's amazing. How many Caucasians fought and died to keep slavery going, Rush?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I think he comes to believe it because these beliefs become a reflection bullshit. Well, I think what it is, it starts. He's not a political person. He doesn't care about politics. He starts with a joke because he starts doing this persona because it gets him listeners. But he's also a narcissist, and these beliefs aren't political stances to him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

They're aspects of his personality, and his narcissism dictates that he comes to believe it because believing it and defending these things is the same as defending himself. And again, he's a fucking narcissist. I think that's how it works.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So another repeated Rush Limbaugh bit was attacking the daughters of Democratic presidents for being ugly. In 1988, he called Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy the most unattractive presidential daughter in the history of the country. In the early 1990s, he declared Chelsea Clinton to be the White House dog. Which is like just very vile.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I don't even think it's like the Trump boys and Ivanka made themselves political figures perfectly fine to insult and attack them. You're never going to hear me saying anything bad about like Tiffany or Barron because they're children, you know, like, yeah, don't fucking talk about them if they don't make themselves into a major part of things, you know.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, Chelsea Clinton has put herself in the public eye, and it's perfectly fair to criticize her for the things she does in the public eye.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

In 2012, when Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke went before Congress to argue that contraceptives should be covered by the Affordable Care Act, Limbaugh called her a slut and a prostitute. You can't overstate how vile he was. Marty from Back to the Future. Oh, Michael J. Fox. Michael J. Fox made some political statements that Limbaugh disagreed with.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Limbaugh mimicked having Parkinson's disease to mock him on his show.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And it's the last time this happens because the right goes after the fairness doctrine. After about a decade or so of fighting, they're able to get it killed. And the end of the fairness doctrine was the necessary precursor to the creation of a wholly separate walled garden of right wing content.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's horrific. I mean, it's like and to say that it would be like I think what he did was perfectly reasonable. I am not going to take my medicine because you need to know what it is like for people who don't have access to the medicine. I'm rich. I have access to all the medicine I need. Here's what it's like if you don't.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. I had a friend, one of the big things in terms of like me being, changing my political attitudes. It started with me changing my attitudes on drugs, that marijuana should be illegal, that it was immoral.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I had a friend who was much older than I met on World of Warcraft who had multiple sclerosis, and we were video chatting, and she showed me how badly her hands shook before she started smoking, right? She showed me herself shaking, and then she took a hit, which was difficult for her, and I watched in real time how it affected her, and I never...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

again supported keeping that shit illegal because you can't when you see it right you can't it's medicine not that most people use it use it medicinally which doesn't isn't wrong like it's not wrong to use it recreationally but just the idea that what she was doing was a crime made it clear to me how immoral our drug laws were yeah um in a way that maybe if i had like it would have taken longer otherwise i think completely um

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So yeah, anyway, Limbaugh did occasionally face consequences for his bald-faced bigotry. In 2003, ESPN hired him as an on-air commentator. Oh, I forgot about that! Yeah, and he was fired after like seven weeks because he said Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb didn't deserve any of the praise he received. Oh, I remember this!

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. He said Donovan McNabb didn't deserve the praise that he received because, quote, I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think that there's a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn't deserve.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

People just like this guy because he's black, not because he's a good quarterback. The media is invested in black men being good quarterbacks, you know?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

What the fuck, man? You couldn't do what he's doing? How dare you? So this combat drew enough widespread condemnation that Limbaugh was forced to resign from ESPN. But obviously this had little to no impact on his bottom line. Maybe it annoyed him personally, but it didn't hurt him financially. By the early aughts, Rush was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He had a private jet.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

which was seen by dudes like Roger Ailes as a necessary step to protecting right-wing voters from ever learning about other opinions, which would, they believed, protect the next criminal white right-wing president from impeachment. Now, after Limbaugh's death, the New York Times let Ben Shapiro, noted novelist, write a column about his professional idol.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He had a palatial mansion in Florida. He smoked cigars that cost more than some people's cars. This is disgusting, but I think any fair accounting of Limbaugh's career has to acknowledge how impressive it was, too. The early 2000s saw the explosion of Fox News. This is the period where it became the most watched news network in the country.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

A slew of Limbaugh imitators rose up, men like Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson, to name a few. While these folks were all hugely successful and influential, none of them ever eclipsed Rush. This is because, in addition to wielding influence, Rush held actual demonstrable political power. And I'm going to quote the Rolling Stone again here.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

His sky-high ratings and the rabid fandom of his ditto heads, who just happened to fit the profile of people who voted frequently in Republican primaries, made it inevitable that the GOP would come courting.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

In 1992, after he'd boosted Pat Buchanan's pitchfork populist Make America First Again challenge to George Bush, the president became so hellbent on gaining Limbaugh's favor for the general election that he not only invited the host to the White House, but toted his bags personally into the Lincoln bedroom.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Limbaugh had only praise for Bush from that day forward, at least until he lost to Bill Clinton in November. That set a pattern. Limbaugh might instinctively gravitate to the radicals, but he was ultimately a team player, the national precinct captain of the Republican Party, as Mother Jones described him.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Two years later, Limbaugh basically co-captained the Republican Revolution with House leader Newt Gingrich when their efforts produced a landslide that brought 73 anti-government zealots to Congress – The host was made an honorary House freshman and feted at a GOP orientation in December, where the new members wore Rush Was Right buttons and listened to his marching orders.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

This is not the time to get moderate, he said. This is not the time to start trying to be liked. Ronald Reagan himself declared Limbaugh the number one voice for conservatism in our country. And Rush was always very clear. Yeah. And Rush was always very clear about where he wanted to see the party head. Smaller government, stronger, more powerful corporations.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He said all he said outright, I consider myself a defender of corporate America. Yeah. It would not be wrong to view Rush Limbaugh as something of a cult leader. One of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting this conclusion is, in my mind, Limbaugh's embrace of the irrational. Politics for Rush Limbaugh was never about concrete results or observable reality.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It was a fight between good, his side, and evil, anyone who disagreed with him. And since those were the stakes, it didn't matter if he lied or spread conspiracy theories because the essence of what he was saying, that the Democrats were monsters, was true. Nowhere is this clearer than in his hatred of the Clintons. It started when George H.W.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Bush lost to Bill, robbing Rush of a president who would directly, you know, take him into the White House. Right. From an early stage, Rush realized that lying about the crimes committed by Bill and Hillary was a more productive route than criticizing them on policy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And so in 1994, he announced Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton and the body was taken to Fort Marcy Park. Rollingstone writes, Conspiracy theories, once the province of fringe right-wingers, started to become the mainstream Republican fare they are today during Clinton's two terms, and Limbaugh was the great popularizer of the genre.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Benny Schaps called the Fairness Doctrine, quote, a standard that in practice allowed for the domination of broadcast media by liberals with sporadic commentary by conservatives. That's my Benny Schaps voice.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Long before Fox hosts began amplifying the fringier theories about American politics, Limbaugh was busy mainstreaming wingnut world.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The conspiracy cranks, the John Birchers, the Christian Zionists, the science deniers, the info warriors, their wildest fantasies, fears, and paranoias all came out to play in the national prime time on the Rush Limbaugh show, repackaged by the host into a palatable fare for the Republican masses.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And this is significant because Russia's demonizing of the Clintons, who there's plenty of very valid things to critique them on. But at the end of the day, pretty normal neoliberal politicians. It's even spread on the left. This idea that Hillary Clinton is somehow more of a warmonger than other liberals, right, is somehow like exceptionally bad when she's not.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

She's very much in line with everyone else in the party and everyone else who has held those positions and is not as bad as some of them, right? She's more hated by certain people. Even on the left, you'll find people who are more directly aggressive towards her than they are to fucking Kissinger. Yeah. And it's not that she's not bad. She is. So is Bill. They're greedy. Bill's a rapist.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

They have supported, in addition to the Iraq War, a number of violent actions overseas that were disasters. But they did that as part of... within a large group of people, right? There's nothing about them that is exceptionally bad for the crew that they run with. But... This absolute demonizing of them that has a real impact by the on the 2016 election.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That's a big part of why we get Trump is something that Rush Limbaugh pioneers. The Clintons are not like my parents hated Trump, hated Trump when he was running and voted for him because their hatred of Hillary Clinton was. It's beyond rational. Yeah, it's it's it's. And again. A lot of super valid criticisms of Hillary Clinton. I don't think she should have ever been president.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Also, hard to say she would have been worse than Trump. And if you are saying like she would have, for example, been more killed, more people overseas than Trump, you're not actually paying attention to the death toll as a result of American airstrikes and missile strikes and drone strikes.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

As it changed from the Obama administration, where Clinton was secretary of state to the Trump administration. Because there was a massive escalation in death under that, in addition to repealing of the rule about any sort of reporting about civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes. Trump was worse on this sort of stuff, but you'd never know it anyway.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I don't want to get into a rant on this, but it's almost impossible to analyze the Clintons, their impact, their crimes, and their behaviors, their policies, with any sort of rationality, because this they've been turned into goblins, right? It's very frustrating. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's really quite good. It's really quite good. So Rush Limbaugh was aware from the beginning that his whole career hinged on the Fairness Doctrine's death. And he starts being a national voice in 1989, two years after the end of the Fairness Doctrine. That's not a coincidence.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And it makes it, it makes it so that if you try to say like, well, actually this thing you're criticizing them on isn't a reasonable thing to, or at least the way you're criticizing them isn't reasonable. Suddenly you're defending them and it's like, no, that's not what I'm, it's very, I hate it. I hate everything.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

There's a fly on her. Yeah, exactly. It's this turning people from like, okay, let's analyze what this person's actually done, how it's worked, when it's been successful, when it's been unsuccessful, when it's been moral, when it's been immoral, and to no, she's just a criminal. She's just a warmonger. And we don't have to analyze what she actually did or anything. We don't have to.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

We just have to condemn her. And it's Not that she doesn't deserve condemnation for a lot of things, but like for one thing, I don't know. I don't want to fucking get onto a defending because I don't like Hillary Clinton. Yeah. But she's also has it like it's very frustrating. Yeah, it's very. It's all just very frustrating. Yeah. And he's in he creates this culture and it spreads now.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's not just the Clintons now. Now it's it's everyone. Right. You don't have to analyze people that you disagree with. You come up with a three word thing about them and you spread these like like Bill Clinton has committed crimes. He's a fucking rapist. You don't have to make up that he and his wife are having people murdered. Like, yeah. Yeah, like he's a rapist. That's bad.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, with his unparalleled national platform and his status as a chief thought leader of the American right, Limbaugh went about turning the Fairness Doctrine into his main boogeyman. I found a Vanity Fair article from 2009 that lays this out quite well. Quote, "...the single most important issue in Russia's radio career is now among the hot-button issues in conservative politics.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But of course, a lot of people calling him a rapist or rapist themselves. So they have to make it up that now. No, he's a murderer. You know, it's fucking bullshit. It's very frustrating. So Rush also led the charge on demonizing and denying global warming and climate change in his book. See, I told you so.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He declared that quite a few scientists are now backtracking on their once dire predictions of melting ice caps and worldwide flooding. Yeah. Cut to Texas being submerged in a layer of snow that destroys civil society. Or the entire West Coast burning down last year.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Anyway, he lampooned Al Gore and scientists who warned about climate change as, quote, a few hardline doomsayers who are sticking to their thermostats. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

His conclusion was what? You know, now it's it never affected him. And he never affected him. Now he's dead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As far as he knows, he was right about this. He was right about this. Limbaugh was unquestionably the single most influential American conservative from about 1989 to at least 2008.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Now, his star did start to fade by the end of George W. Bush's term, and there are a couple of reasons for this. For one, he'd been outed as an opiate addict, gone to rehab three times, and through it all had repeatedly defended an administration that led the United States into two disastrous and expensive failed wars.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

By the time Barack Obama was elected, many of the more libertarian-minded right-wing were starting to reject the neoconservative ideology that Russia had spent eight years hyping up. Now, the fact that Barack Obama was the man who finally broke eight years of GOP power wound up being the salvation of Limbaugh's influence.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

We need more hate groups. There is a black president who in his actual policies is not wildly different from George H.W. Bush. But like, yeah. Um... The fact that Barack Obama – yeah, so this surge in public anti-Black racism was heralded, incited, and led by Rush Limbaugh, the USA's most prominent bigot.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

There are a lot of different clips that I could select to make this point, Paul, but none is more appropriate than this song that aired on Rush's program while Obama was still on the campaign trail. Now, the context of this is that Limbaugh was talking about the fact that – Al Sharpton, Barack Obama and Al Sharpton had like a public series of arguments. Right.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

The Fairness Doctrine, a formalized, fair and balanced rule for covering the controversial issues on the nation's airwaves, which the Reagan FCC killed in 1987. The most liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which puts substantial blame on talk radio for a generation of conservative dominance in Washington." wants to revive the doctrine, which would pretty handily destroy conservative talk.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

paper said he make guilty whites feel good.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yes. Pretty bad.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's bad. It's not funny unless you're a bigot, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Unless you're a bigot. So Limbaugh had other Obama zingers, saying at one point, if he weren't black, he'd be a tour guide in Hawaii. In 2008, he compared Obama to a cartoon monkey. He repeatedly called Michelle Moochelle, because she's a cow, you know?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And all the while, he claimed that racism had nothing to do with his hatred of Obama. Yeah. Doesn't matter to me what his race is. He's liberal is what matters to me. Yeah. Okay. Barack, the magic Negro guy.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. I can't talk about it enough, but I'm not a bigot.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, I mean, I can play you songs that there's a bunch of Nazis that will go through and rewrite Disney songs to be about hating the Jews and stuff or about race traitors and whatnot because it's the kind of thing that's easy to spread, right? You make a racist song and people laugh and at first it's a joke and then it becomes less of a joke. It's the whole story, right? That's exactly

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

what Limbaugh is doing. You know, it's not even all that much less racist. He just doesn't say the N word. When candidate Obama became President Obama, Rush said, I hope he fails, explaining that rooting for liberalism to fail is rooting for America to succeed. Limbaugh declared that stopping Obama was, quote, what I was born to do.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

One of his tactics to this end seemed to be stoking fears that because Obama was anti-white, he was trying to gin up a race war. In 2009, Rush declared, in Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering. Clearly, he would have preferred it when, you know, I don't know, when white kids were burning down black kids' schools in his hometown. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Oh, those were the days. Those were the days, my friend. He thought they'd never end. Yeah, it's great. Limbaugh was not the only person who stoked white resentment and anti-black bigotry in this period. He was not close to the only person, but he was the man who had created the blueprint and the cultural space that all of those other right wing media figures acted in.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

According to the official CPAC polling of its members, restoring the fairness doctrine is the third most significant Democratic Congress policy initiative opposed by the right wing, raking only behind expanding government and public health care. So, yeah, there is with Russia's orchestration a rabidness to the cause opposing the fairness doctrine is up there with opposing abortion.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Ben Shapiro is very open about the fact that Limbaugh was his hero and idol. Alex Jones altered the way he spoke and altered the acoustic setup of his InfoWars studio in order to more closely resemble Rush Limbaugh. In 2010, Limbaugh was picked to address CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. He was the main event that year and gave what he called his first address to the nation –

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Limbaugh was so central to the Republican Party at this point that RNC chairman Michael Steele was asked on CNN if Limbaugh was the effective party leader.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

When Steele claimed that Rush was just an entertainer, this pissed off Rush Limbaugh, who attacked Michael Steele on air and caused such an outpouring of right-wing rage against the RNC chairman that Michael Steele was forced to make a public apology to Rush Limbaugh. kind of proving that he was effectively the leader of the Republican party.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So as leader of the Republican Party, Limbaugh spent the Obama years repeatedly hammering home the idea that there could not be peaceful coexistence between the right and left in the United States. Quote from Rush, we live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated, controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Every other universe is where we are, and that's where reality reigns supreme and we deal with it. Again, real America. Yeah. The real America. And there can be no coexistence. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. I don't know that we can. But the way to do it is not to yield to these people. Yeah. It's not to just let them... get what they want because what they want is the annihilation of the other. And honestly, the annihilation of themselves, cause it's a fucking death cult at this point. Like they can't be allowed to win. And like the people, and, and that's not to say that, um,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Every aspect of what has what a traditional conservative ideology is wrong. They have some points. That's why it brings people in the idea that, like, you should always be wary about giving the government control of things. You fucking should, you know, like, absolutely. There is a space. There is a space for control.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And he's you know, he's a it's really him that's responsible for making this such a popular issue. It starts off as a thing that kind of high up extreme right wingers, guys who had been Nixon's right hand men, push because they want to protect the next guy like Nixon. And it gets popular, though, because of Rush Limbaugh, because he sells it to the American conservative mainstream.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

in society that is not what Rush Limbaugh turned it into, which is not to say that it wasn't, because fucking Reagan was president before Limbaugh came onto the scene, and he was terrible and very toxic. Toxicity in the Republican Party goes back very far. But also, It's not for nothing that the Republicans used to be the party of Abraham Lincoln. You know, it's not there.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

There is a way to have a conservatism that is influential in society that isn't a fucking death cult. And we have to, at very least, get back to that if we're going to continue to be a democracy that doesn't. spiral inevitably into civil war you know i have i'm a pretty committed leftist but i also do not seek a society that forces my beliefs on other people but you can't you can't

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Give these people an inch because they'll take everything. That's how they are. You know, that's what in part what Rush had a big impact in making them into. By 2015, Rush Limbaugh had succeeded in leading a rightward push that finally prepared the Republican Party to nominate an obvious fascist, Donald Trump.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Limbaugh embraced Trump early on right wing radio host and never Trump or Joe Walsh, who is another actually principled conservative, draws a direct line between Limbaugh and Trump. Quote, The average Trump supporter loves Trump because he fights, man. He fights not because of any policy or issue or political philosophy. That's why they loved Rush before him. It wasn't about conservatism.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I still can't tell you after 30 years what the fuck he believes in. But he knew how to prey on audiences' grievances and resentments, which is what conservative talk radio does. Rush was a son of a bitch. He'd lie about the dims and punch them and make fun of them. That gave him a cult-like following from the beginning. Trump sort of inherited it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Joe Walsh, again, not a guy I agree with on much, but he's right on the money here. He's analyzing it properly.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

All he cares about is his own aggrandizement, right? It's narcissism. Trump and Limbaugh are very similar people. Absolutely, yeah. Rush bent the knee to Trump, declaring him everything but the second coming. And we will not labor long on Rush during Trump's years because once he had helped shepherd his massive audience into Trump's arms, his cultural influence faded.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It was watered down by the sheer mass of right-wing ideologues who flooded the internet and increasingly urged their followers to embrace irrationality, conspiracy, and fascism. In February of 2020, Rush led the charge denying the reality of COVID-19. He called it the common cold and mocked even his old ally Matt Drudge for caring about the burgeoning plague.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He urged his listeners against mask wearing, calling it a symbol of fear. Rush had long denied the dangers of smoking, particularly secondhand smoke, but this was a new level for him. When Trump lost reelection to Biden, Limbaugh immediately called the election a sham and joined the chorus of voices claiming fraud.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

By this point, though, he was sick, and the playing field was so flooded with men who sounded like him, triggered the libs like him, lied like him, that his voice hardly rose above the din. Rush had succeeded in building a right wing so made in his own image that he no longer stood out in it. His last show was February 2nd. He died less than two weeks later.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Killed by the lung cancer, he denied had anything to do with smoking because that was another thing Rush denied his entire career. Joe Walsh, a former Limbaugh lover, like when he was much younger, he got into talk radio because of Limbaugh, eventually wound up, and to be fair, before Trump, rejecting Limbaugh in a lot of ways. found the whole arc of Rush's career to be terribly sad. Quote,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

When a writer from Rolling Stone asked if, maybe, the reason he kept backing Trump was that Limbaugh truly believed in what Trump said, Walsh countered with a theory of his own. Quote, Maybe, knowing him, it's one last big extended fuck you. Maybe it's Limbaugh saying, I'm not gonna bend to the dims and anybody else. No matter what. Never. To the end, I'm never gonna do it.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And at the end of this, I can't help but think that there's something terribly meaningful in the fact that Joe Walsh rejected Limbaugh in his later years and at his end. Walsh gained prominence as a voice of the rising Tea Party. He is very conservative, but his constant principled resistance to President Trump proves that he is not a fascist.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And it turns out what Limbaugh was really selling, what he was preparing the American right for all along, was fascism. If you want confirmation of this, you need look no further than how America's most prominent neo-Nazis reacted to Limbaugh's death. And... Chris Cantwell openly sees Rush Limbaugh as the man who invented his style of content, who made his career possible.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He's in jail right now because he made a bunch of illegal threats and stuff. But he was interviewed for another fascist podcast by a guy named Jared Howe on like right after Limbaugh's death. And in this clip I'm about to play, the crying Nazi Chris Cantwell discusses his reaction to learning about Rush Limbaugh's death.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You knew.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Catherine Limbaugh.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

So. That's I mean, you know, you he's legitimately affected by this. He's mourning Rush Limbaugh, this Nazi, and he's not the only Nazi mourning Rush Limbaugh. The Daily Showa is one of the most prominent Nazi podcasts on the Internet. The word Shoah is the Hebrew term. I think it means calamity for the Holocaust. So it's literally this is the daily Holocaust.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And it is maybe the most prominent Nazi podcast on the Internet. Now, TDS, as its hosts call it, has been on the ears for years at this point since before Trump was in office. And the hosts of the daily Shoah consider Limbaugh to be something of an idol now. Now, these guys are hardcore Nazis, so they consider Rush a moderate, and they do demean him at times for that.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

But they also recognize that he paved the way for their financial success and cultural influence. And in this next audio clip, you can hear several members of the Daily Shoah, can't emphasize that name enough, learn live about Rush Limbaugh's death and the emotional impact it has on them is undeniable.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I wouldn't be here, says host of The Daily Shoah, without Rush Limbaugh. I can't think of a more damning thing to say in a man's passing, but that he was truly, honestly mourned by Nazis. Yeah. You know? Yeah. At the end of the day, that's what you can say about Rush. And that is the end of our episodes on Rush Limbaugh.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

How you doing, Paul?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

I am absolutely going to dance on his grave.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And people are actively making plans to shit on your grave. Yeah. Because you materially harmed their lives. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

For billions of humans. Yeah. Rush Limbaugh had a material, significant, negative impact on billions of people, many of whom are yet unborn. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Rest in piss brush. I wish the lung cancer had worked faster. You know? Yeah. Anyway, Paul, you got some pluggables to plug at the end of this upbeat episode?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Big TDS fan. By the way, I want to shout out and give thanks to Daniel Harper of the wonderful podcast I Don't Speak German, which is the deepest dives you're going to find on...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Amazing. PaulFThomkins.com. Well, that's going to do it for us here at Behind the Bastards. So go out into the world, tie one half of your brain behind your back, and then die because that would actually kill you. That would immediately lead to your death. Exposed brain. There's a reason we have skulls, people. Keep your brain inside of it. Yeah. Anyway.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah, I don't think it can because this propaganda ecosystem churns out people who would fight to the death rather than have somebody who on paper is supposed to agree with them face consequences for blatantly criminal activity.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

You can draw a fucking line between kind of the things that rush starts because it has an impact on, on liberals in the left too. You've got this. It's, it's big. And it's because obviously with the fairness doctrine, nobody ever heard anything from the far left, right? The far left, in fact, was criminally prosecuted a lot of times for their opinions in this period. Yeah. But the,

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

the positive thing about the fairness doctrine is that it was a large part of why there was a broadly agreed upon understanding of the basic, a basic reality in the United States, right? Yeah. That we don't have anymore. And when you lose that, I kind of think when you lose that, the only like things inevitably escalate to deadly violence. Yeah. Yeah. Um, And that's bad, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Not that, again, under the Fairness Doctrine, Americans were led into Vietnam, were led into Grenada, were led into Panama, were led into all these horrible, horrible things. Obviously, it did not mean that Americans had an accurate understanding of the world. But when they had an inaccurate understanding of the world, it was still broadly similar, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Is better than where we are now, I guess. I think it is at least less toxic. I guess you could argue the United States had more power. The government had more power to pursue violent activity overseas and stuff. I don't know. I don't know. It's a complicated issue, but whatever. Whatever you can say about Rush Limbaugh. He was not a dumb man. He was a huge bigot, though.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

And that 1990 New York Times write-up makes it clear that, among other things, he was quick to realize that rampant misogyny was an incredible marketing tactic. This was, as we discussed in our last episode, always cloaked in a thick haze of irony. Quote, This is Rush. I am outraged! And there is Sergeant Major Molly Yard leading a battalion of Amazons with PMS over the hill.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

That would be enough to scare the pants off of anybody.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Rush. Rush Limbaugh, everybody.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's not. It's not.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

He wasn't. It's just that he was saying the bigoted, terrible things that a lot of bad people wanted to say. Yeah. And the fact that it was so horrible and the fact that it scratched their id made them laugh and made them think he was a genius because somebody was finally telling them it was okay to be as shitty as they kind of wanted to be from the beginning.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Yeah. And it's the same thing with all of these. You've got this kind of strain of comedians who thinks that it's important that they be allowed to say the N-word. Not a single one of them has ever told a good joke involving the N-word, right?

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

It's not funny. You're just going for shock value, right? That's all you're trying to do. And that can be... There's not that no good humor comes from shock value, but again, I haven't heard a single good joke from a white comedian involving the N-word. Yeah. Not that it would be appropriate then, but I haven't heard one, you know? Like... So...

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

From the beginning, the villains of the Rush Limbaugh expanded universe were, as the New York Times explained, "...black activists, gay activists, abortion rights activists, homeless activists, animal rights activists, militant vegetarians, environmentalists, artists with erotic tendencies, and above all, the NOW game." Gang. That's the National Organization of Women. Right. His hatred. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Rush said that his hatred for these people caused him an uncontrollable urge to tweak. Quote, the simple fact of the matter, Limbaugh is apt to inform dolphin savers and tree lovers, is that we are human beings and we are the most powerful, smartest species and we can damn well do whatever we want. And you can draw a line from this kind of the way he's phrasing things.

Behind the Bastards

CZM Rewind: Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Here's like, it's stupid to care about the environment and animals because we're more powerful than them to the like the shit that Identity Europa and Patriot Front, these like explicitly fascist organizations exist. Now we'll put up these signs like these posters of the United States that say not stolen, conquered. Right. Where it's like, fuck the indigenous people. We beat them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes, yes. In a way that you would never have been able to guess. And you'll never find out because you're dead. Yeah, you're dead. And usually just locked away. But if you're noble, usually you just get locked away. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So by the 1670s, the late 1670s, Louis has created a captive society of increasingly deranged, terrified, out-of-touch nobles whose entire life revolves around trying to get him to like them. The stakes are life and death. A bad joke can get you locked in a fortress. And so, again, people increasingly turn to black magic.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And one of the things that's happening, as I said, a lot of this is nonsense, like these black masses and stuff, I don't think are doing anything real. But there is a lot of real stuff being sold by these witches, right? Witchcraft has always been heavily tied to early medicine, and particularly the use of botanical drugs. This often meant abortifacients, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Like if you got pregnant and didn't want to be, if it was bad for you to be pregnant, especially all of the fucking that goes on between these nobles, it's not always a good idea to get pregnant with the person you're fucking. you can get an abortion from these witches, right? From the witch.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But they also offer what are called inheritance powders, which is literally poison to kill a guy you will inherit the money of, right? Right. Off of your husband. And over the middle of the Sun King's reign, it becomes very common to poison rivals for his affections. Of course. In other words, you are trying to kill people if they are closer to the king and you want to be close to the king. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

is like every day in these like newspapers that are getting smuggled into France and, you know, these other different like kind of news delivering methods. We'll talk about that whole news ecosystem in Paris in a little bit. But every day people are reading stories about like who lost how much money in Versailles. So they're like, oh, the price of bread just tripled.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The most popular poisons are arsenic and antimony. In Versailles, these were often snuck. How would you guess, what would you guess is the most common way to poison people to death in Versailles?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

OK, you're going to guess food. And you get a guess for the most common way to poison someone at Versailles. Something to do with clothing, some sort of like some sort of accessory, perhaps they can have a poison on it. That is actually one of them. But that's not the most common method. So I'm going to give you a partial. Sophie, you're wrong.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The most common way to poison people at Versailles is to put poison in their enemas. So...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

What a pain in the ass. Social life at the palace, there's huge feasts all the time, right? Like you're constantly having these big feasts and the king is obsessed. He hates it when people don't eat. If he is offering you food, you have to eat. You have to eat, but don't shit. You have to eat a lot.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Unless you use the shitting, the enema thing. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Vin is now didn't want to get fat, right? Like there's a degree of stigma around that, especially for like women at the court. And more to the point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Do better, Sun King. The kind of food people are eating, these very rich foods, a lot of cheese. People don't poop very well after eating feasts. Sure, sure. Everyone is taking enemas regularly because it's the only way to relieve yourself after the king forces you to eat 6,000 calories of fine cheese and meat. What year was this as well? This is like the 1670s, 1680s.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We'll never know. Cause like number one, arsenic looks like a couple of other things and somebody has feast and then has a heart attack. People get sick and die for all sorts of reasons, and we're bad at diagnosing, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We do know there are a number of proven poisonings, but we don't know how many of the deaths at Versailles, because Versailles is also, it's very easy to get sick there because you live in a big house with 3,000 people. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That's not much of the problem. It's more just that, you know, flu season comes around and everyone is in the same big room together, right? You know, it's just easy to get sick.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

My family's going to starve and die. And the Duke d'Orléans gambled away 700,000 livres. Yeah. like just burnt it for nothing. Kind of pissed about that. Yeah. Or not as the case may be. Yeah, right. I would dare not be pissed about it in front of the king.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The smell of this place. You know it smelled crazy in there. Because people are also, yeah, I mean, they're doing their enemas in their private apartments in the chamber pots, but enemas are a daily thing for a number of people. And yeah, that's an easy way to kill them is you just put arsenic in their enema, they'll shoot it up their ass and get sick. Right, right. Now, Ed, you got this right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

A very common method of poisoning. You would also impregnate someone's clothes with arsenic. Right. Um, so you would put it on like the, the arms of their clothing or whatever, and that wouldn't do anything unless they like touch their mouth or their eyes. But people do that all the time. Right. So the idea is that you put it in the garment, they'll get it on their hands.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Eventually they'll touch themselves somewhere that the poison can get in. Right. Um, And the symptoms of arsenic are kind of similar to syphilis. So it has this benefit of if they don't know they've been poisoned, everyone thinks they've caught syphilis. And there's a huge social stigma to getting syphilis. So again, if you're trying to damage a rival, you don't necessarily have to kill them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

If you can make people think they have syphilis, you can do some damage to their reputation. They won't be able to fuck people anymore. Yeah, it's an issue. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

um now doctors had developed methods for testing poison by this point and they are awful the main one was if you think someone was poisoned right if some guy gets sick suddenly and he's like i think i was poisoned um you feed whatever liquid or powder they think that they were poisoned with to a dog And if the dog survives, it's not poison. If the dog dies, it's poison, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Pretty brutal, but like it makes sense. Now, because the stakes were high and royalty is at risk, doctors are constantly pushed to innovate and create antidotes. And they don't really know what they're doing. Very rarely do these work. And in order to try and figure out if they do work, there's enough of... Science is becoming a thing in this period, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We're not quite at the Enlightenment, but people are starting to do science. And one of the ways in which they try to scientifically create antidotes is when a doctor thinks he's figured out an antidote to a poison, they'll find a death row prisoner who volunteers, and they'll poison them and then give them the antidote. And if they survive... Their sentence is commuted.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

No, they're not. There's a reward. People usually don't survive, right? Was all of this testing created specifically because of Versailles? Yeah. I mean, that's not the, I guess, other people in Europe are getting poisoned. This is not only a thing in France, right? Elements of this exist elsewhere. But this poisoning economy is created and largely develops. Because of the big sex house.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Shit like this existed under the Roman Empire and further back. People have always provided poisons and stuff. But this specific version of the industry crops up as a result of Versailles.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah. Basically, the extant poisoning and devil economy that had existed in France that was probably similar to the way it works in its neighbors becomes this specific thing because of Versailles. That's fair to say, I think. I don't want to be like, no one else poisons people, right? Everyone's poisoning people, you know? We poison people today.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We've gotten very good at it, thanks to the Russians, you know? I thought it was going to be an ad break. Speaking of which, yeah, it is time for our ads, and we are sponsored entirely by Novichok. Novichok, if you want a lot of people dead very quickly in a way that will alert the entire security establishment of whatever country you poison them in, Novichok.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We're back. Ed, I can't believe you didn't accept the Novichok ads for Better Offline. It really seems like a natural move for you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We're working on a Raytheon sponsorship for you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Largely sponsored by Raytheon. Or a fucking... Who is it? The Sikorsky? Like, get Ed doing Blackhawk ads. Yeah. We're called Academy now, and that's in the past. That's in the past. Oh, God. So back to the poisoning economy. Periodically, poisoners would be caught and brought to justice.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This happened in 1676 with the Marquis de Brinvilliers, who poisoned her father and two brothers, but failed to poison her husband. And it's like a weird story. Her lover, who was her accomplice in poisoning the rest of her family- I don't fully understand, but he decides to feed her husband the antidote because I think maybe of some strange sense of guilt.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So she gets caught and sentenced and executed. And her trial is a media sensation. All of these newsletters and whatnot in Paris, like every cafe in Paris, people are talking about the trial over this poisoner, this rich noblewoman who is poisoning her family.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

and before one thing they're majorly talking about is before she is beheaded she says it's unfair i'm the only one being punished for this because everyone at versailles does this right all of the nobility does the same baseball sticky stuff conversation all over again exactly exactly and she's not lying right like it's extremely common to do all of this um

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Now, this is an accurate complaint, and it sets off kind of a public moral panic over witchcraft and poison. Just about the only person who had been unaware of the trade in spells and poisons was the Sun King. Again, because all of this is being done in order to get closer to him and curry favor with him. He orders the Paris chief of police, Gabrielle de Lorraine, to investigate.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And what follows is a three-year plunge into the magical underground, where inheritance powders made of arsenic were sold alongside black masses performed by priests. From an article in the BBC History magazine by Johnny Wilkes, one of the most popular potion peddlers was La Voisin, who named among her clients those looking for advantage at Versailles.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The Duke de Luxembourg bought charms to keep him safe from swords, while a number of women looked for any additive to seduce the king.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And it's funny because swords, at like, especially at formal events, but basically all the time, swords are mandatory dress at Versailles, to the extent that if you forget one, they'll give you, they'll loan you a sword at the door. Oh, you don't want to use the loaner sword. You don't want to use the loaner sword, no, no, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

everyone's gonna be like check out dickhead over there with the loner sword he didn't bring his own sword he's rented that fucker's a rental that's a rental sword hasn't even got a sword amulet either yeah and no sword amulet what a dick So with Dilarani convinced of an epidemic, Louis appointed a special tribunal in April of 1679.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Its sessions took place in halls lit only by flaming torches, the chamber ardente, burning chamber. More than 400 people were accused, dozens exiled, and 36 put to death, including Lavoisin. And this is partly because part of why this gets so bad is they, or at least Dilarani says there was a plot to poison the king to death, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And maybe there was because people don't enjoy living this way. I was going to say, like, it feels like there would have been more attempts on the king. I feel like there probably was a plot to poison the king. Yeah. Yeah. Seems like a natural thing to want to do in this situation.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It's an understandable evolution of I'm poisoning all of my friends to get close to the king. Why don't we just poison the king? Yeah. We could go home. Yeah, we could go home. I could sleep. I can piss.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

quote fear spread among a court already riddled with suspicion and the deaths continued but louis put an end to things after he heard a name of someone implicated that alarmed him the madame de montespan his mistress fearing the king may tire of her she is said to have sprinkled love potions into his food potions made from spanish fly iron fillings sperm and menstrual blood it was even claimed she had a priest perform a sacrilegious mass over her naked body which involved the sacrifice of an infant

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Montespan was never tried, but the fair revealed something dark and rotting at the heart of Louis' Versailles utopia. Jesus Christ. That escalated, huh?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Wow.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So this is the thing that's weird? Yeah, have a priest do a spell so the king likes me to. Like, I'm putting sperm and menstrual blood in his food. All right, I got the menstrual blood. Fuck, I forgot the cum. When do we get the cum? God damn it. Someone get me some cum. You over there in the corner. Jack off right now. You want to make a dollar? Oh, man, it's so funny.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I don't know that an infant was sacrificed. I feel like every satanic panic, they talk about sacrificing babies. I feel like it's pretty uncommon to sacrifice babies. But maybe these people are out of their minds enough. And they could get a baby, right? It's not hard to get a baby in this period.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Right, of course, you do need, that baby might make you immune to taxes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But most of the babies are dying. So like, I can see if like some rich lady's like, hey man, you know, that kid of yours isn't looking great. I need a baby. You got any cum while I'm here as well? Also, do you have any cum? Trying to do one-stop shopping here? Oh, man. Oh, boy. What a great culture. I love the magic of the court in Versailles. common dead baby trait.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This house is like half of the economy. This is half of the rich economy. I mean, that's how it costs that much. I don't know if they're spending that much each year because it does make money by this point. But yes, this house that cost half of the GDP to build. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Creating like a gossip industry. He has created like the cultural equivalent of a Death Star, but it's aimed at his own country. And it's aimed at people at random as well. Now, all of this, like this story... People can't stop talking about this in Paris, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, of course. This is wild. And this massively accelerates the growth of a news ecosystem in Paris, right? And the news, this kind of – I'm going to lay out how this works. This whole news ecosystem in Paris sprouts – It had existed before Louis, some aspects of it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

There had been these things called libels for years, which were like books about different people in government and politics, including some of the king's mistresses, that were like books attacking them, which are usually illegal, but they're sold quite often. Those had existed before Louis XIV. Obviously, there had been some kinds of papers in other countries that would get into France

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But what really accelerates the birth of a massive and honestly very modern feeling news ecosystem in Paris is Versailles. Because now that all of power is centralized at Versailles and all of the people in power, including the king, are no longer having much contact at all with Versailles. regular people, right? They're not governing out of the same city that French people live in.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They're increasingly locked in their own world. So if you're a normal French person, the media becomes your way to keep in touch with the government, right? This alien world of Versailles, you know? And so that is a lot of the fuel which creates something very similar to our current social media ecosystem in Paris. Part of why this is able to work is that literacy is actually very common.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

in Paris, even among the poor, like a significant amount of people do know how to read, even people who do not come from money. But even if you don't know how to read, there's like an equivalent to TV news, which are called, I'm not going to use the French term for it, but they're called oral news mongers, right? As in someone who like just tells you the news, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

These are like the newscasters of their day.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It's not TV. But there's a large chestnut tree in the center of Paris called the Tree of Krakow. And so in the early mornings, these oral newsmongers will gather up all the newspapers they can, all the gossip they collected the night before, and they'll go out and they'll read the best bits out to the crowd, right? And people will throw them some money for that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And the people who stand around, another chunk of people will stand around listening to these oral newsmongers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Some of them are just doing that to get the news in the morning. Some of them are taking notes on what these people say. And then these notes sometimes get turned into pamphlets, but usually they'll just bring them to the cafes and the bars later in the day and read them out to everyone there. And as a result... News disseminates in a very modern way.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This is almost like having 24-hour TV news, right? It's like a podcast, really. Yeah, or a podcast, right? And that then turns in – in some cases, it turns into like print news, but it also turns into direct gossip. It's closer to like – if you think of the Tree of Krakow as like TV news, and then these cafes and bars are like Twitter and Facebook, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So it is – in a lot of ways, it's an extremely modern seeming –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Pieces of this, aspects of what becomes this news economy existed before Versailles. Versailles supercharges it and it also fuels it because most, much, if not most, well, actually, honestly, usually most of what is being talked about at the Tree of Krakow and in these cafes starts as gossip. People at the courts

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

smuggle out you know send out with an aid or whatnot they'll write it down they'll send it to somebody that they know you know passes stuff on to the people making these papers that are being smuggled in the france or they'll pass it on to oral news mongers because i want to get this piece of gossip out because it's bad for a rival i want to get this piece of gossip out because it will hurt this person close to the king or it'll embarrass the king and stop him from doing something that's bad for me for whatever reason

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

What's happening at the crazy house? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah. So it was said that if you – during – when these oral newsmongers would get up and give the news under that chestnut tree, that if you heard a branch crack, that meant that the newsmonger had gotten something wrong. And so C-R-A-Q-U-E, crack, became slang for fake news. That's the first like fake news term in the West. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

From here, people in attendance would, again, take notes on the best bits in the decamp for cafes, wine shops, and salons. Police would sometimes confiscate these notes when they could, but this was all simply too common to stop. The system is still in its infancy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

during the reign of the Sun King, but it starts to really grow during the reign of the Sun King, and it will evolve over the next two reigns. And ultimately, this is a huge part of why there's a revolution, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The fact that there's these papers, there's these revolutionary presses and tracts, and the fact that all of this gossip about royalty is really bad PR for the nobility and for the king and queen. They just sound insane. They sounded insane and awful. And it's kind of fucked up, as we'll talk about eventually.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The king and queen who ultimately pay the price, which includes the queen being Marie Antoinette and her husband Louis XVI, are not nearly as bad as the Sun King. And in fact, my opinion of them is they were kind of trying to do the best they knew how to, but they were raised, number one, in this insane place and a deranged culture.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

that has gotten even crazier by the time they come in. There's just no chance of them ever fixing things, right? Can I ask a quick question?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I mean, by the time we're into the 1680s, like 20 years, something like that. Oh my God. 15, 20, I think so. It's like decades of insanity. People growing up in it, their children growing up. Yeah. Well, yes, yes, because, again, the Sun King reigns 72 years. Right. So and, you know, Versailles, he starts building when he's like 24. Right. So he is around with it for a long time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Edward Benjamin Zitron.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

People are born and die with Versailles being the center of the French world during his lifetime, you know, and his time as the king. Now, again, it's important to note that the main reason why this very modern information ecosystem gets off the ground is there's this desire of what are called the little people to understand what the big people are doing at Versailles. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

For most Parisians, especially the little people, Versailles was an alien world, and politics was the king's business, transacted in his name by ministers, courtiers, and power brokers among les grands, that's the big people. Yet word about the power plays leaked from Versailles, and it converged with all sorts of other news in the information system of Paris.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Legrands at the top of society had access. And these are not just nobles, right? Wealthy merchants are also at Versailles. And in fact, there's a whole cottage industry in books for rich people who are not nobles who need to understand the stuff that nobles are raised understanding in order to not embarrass themselves at Versailles. That becomes like a cottage industry.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And yeah, a big part of what fuels this is these people doling out rumors and lies often for social cachet. If someone makes a crude joke at the king's expense or flirts with one of his mistresses, they can upset dynamics at the palace in ways that are beneficial to them. Now, the downside of this constant churn is that

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

People outside of Versailles get this feeling that everything going on there is like illegal, immoral sex, gambling and wasting all of the country's money. Right. Because it's partially largely accurate. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

What's kind of fucked up is that Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI are like, compared to Louis XIV, fairly moral people. They do not engage in at least nearly the same level of adultery. They are less wasteful than the kings before them. But because the royalty have this reputation by their time, they get that reputation too. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Like because everyone for 100 years, all that everyone's been writing about how fucked up Versailles is. They're not going to stop now just because these people are like 40 percent less shitty. Right. Which is not to say that Antoinette and Louis XVI weren't shitty or wasteful. They just weren't as bad as their predecessors. Yeah. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So as he aged, the Sun King did grow less promiscuous and more focused on maintaining control. As Johnny Wilkes writes, Louis turned his life, movements, and even ablutions, which is like, you know, his toilet, his cleaning himself, into a daily performance governed by a seemingly endless list of detailed rituals and strict rules of etiquette, all in order to keep the nobles busy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

All revolved around the Sun King. Starting when he first awoke, a select group would be granted access to the king's bedchamber, although they were not to cross the railing to get near the bed during the ceremonial rising, and only the most senior in the room had the honor of helping Louis into his shirt.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, that's exactly how we handle CES. Now, the fact that life there was a constant series of balls and parties necessitated constant grand state expenses for fireworks, which sometimes kill people, and food and the like. But it also kept the courtiers there in constant debt. Many had to borrow from the crown to afford the accoutrement of life at Versailles.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes, yes. And this is, again, part of how he maintains control. And part of why it's so expensive is, like, what's acceptable fashion changes on a whim. So when the king starts to go bald, wigs become fashionable, right? And suddenly everyone should have a wig because the king does. And when the king has ass surgery for an anal fistula, people start wearing, like, bandages around their crotches.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Like...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It is exactly like that, Sophie. Jesus Christ.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But the fact that this is the economy- By this point, the 1680s, a decent number of the people here have been raised in this. They don't know another world exists. Jesus Christ. In 1683, the queen died and Louis married his current mistress, Madame de Maintenon. He was less of a rake by this point, in part for the sake of his immortal soul.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The fact that gambling is absolutely central to the culture of this leadership cast who all live at Versailles with the king, I can't not think about crypto and how central that is to the people who are trying to make themselves the American nobility, right? Who want to be our hereditary aristocracy that rules things and how they spend most of their time and money gambling on crypto. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

A king who was known as an adulterer couldn't take communion while he lived in sin. This was a power that the church had, and even the king really couldn't force them to do this. Once he was no longer in the prime of health, Louis worried about this more and more because if you die not taking communion, you go to hell, even a king, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So that's the understanding that if the king is committing adultery and doesn't stop in time to get forgiven and given his communion and last rites and whatnot, then he goes to hell. Even the king will go to hell. And as he gets sicker and older, Louis worries about this more, right? Now, as I said, Sun King's reign is impossibly long.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

30 years is a long reign for a modern dictator with access to modern medicine. If you make it to 30 years as a dictator, you are doing very well. The Sun King reigns for 72 years. He is the longest recorded reigning monarch in human history. There's some argument about this with people for whom our documentation is less good because date keeping was just in a very different state.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But I mean, it's very hard for someone to be king for longer than 72 years, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Well, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

My house.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, and fucked. Yeah. That said, by the time he's getting late in his reign, kings are like anyone else. As they age, the shit that used to work don't work. Right. And Louis had been, for most of his life, a very successful war leader. But in the last decades of his reign, he makes increasingly poor decisions.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And some of these lead him to participate in the War of Spanish Succession in the early 1700s. A lot of the wars in this period are wars of succession. A king will die without an heir. Everyone will feel like, well, I feel like one of my relatives should be in there, and then maybe France can effectively be helping to govern Spain or whatever.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This does not work, or at least what Louis wants out of the war of Spanish succession, he doesn't get. The war is kind of a mixed bag for France. Her ambitions in Spain are stymied, but she does close the war out after years with some strong wins against Austria, right? So it's not a total calamity, but it's hideously unpopular. And by the end, the country is like bankrupt.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And in fact, the economy shits the bed so bad. that Louis has to melt down 10 million livres worth of silver furniture at Versailles to pay the crown's debts. This is not a good deal because it only results in 3 million livres worth of metal. Newsmongers whispered that the king might have made more headway on the crown's debts if he had sold the crown diamonds. But Louis couldn't stand the idea.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

He loved seeing his female relatives, his nieces and granddaughters and the like, wearing diamonds, and he was absolutely unwilling to sell those diamonds. And that's unreasonable to expect. him of course of course exactly and look if you don't want to sell your royal diamonds uh you know i wouldn't sell mine buy some diamonds from our sponsors

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, anyway, I don't know. Interesting. Interesting the way history rhymes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes, yes. And they even have their own, you know, they've got Mar-a-Lago, which Trump clearly wants to be a sort of Versailles.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, I feel like I need to punish you for something just hearing that. Yeah, that's exactly it. It's the punishment phrase. So, Ed... Of Better Offline, we're talking about Versailles and the weird culture of oligarchy. Well, it wasn't. I mean, it's an aristocracy, but whatever. We're talking about this weird subculture that Louis XIV created to govern France.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Well, yeah, he did not have to literally fight a series of wars in order to get where he is, which, again, that's consistently the best thing we have going for us. You know, it's the same as like, well, at least this generation of fascists didn't all spend four years fighting in close quarters and trenches, you know? That said, neither did we.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

You okay? Yep. Yeah, I'm good.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, I have always wanted to create a giant house and make all of the podcasters live there. Podcasting Versailles?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It's called a content house.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, no, that does sound like a nightmare. The pod save guys are going to be poisoning each other to get closer to me. Like I said. Actually, that part sounds rad. Yeah, that sounds great. So we're, yeah, I mean, we've been back, but Versailles had to downsize in its last years, right? Louis XIV is not, doing as well at the end of his reign as he had at the beginning. France is broke.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And it will be in a kind of semi-constant state of being broke until, you know, Marie Antoinette and her husband get forced out, right? For an idea of how fucked up things get at Versailles, at the height of the Sun King's power, there had been 1,500 fountains at Versailles. Right. By the time of Marie Antoinette, there were only 300, you know? Ugh. Tragic. It's tragic. You hate to see it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I only have 200. I mean, that's... Yeah, I mean, it really is, you know. And Ed, I've been telling you, you'd need another 1,300 fountains. And I agree. I'll say, I'll get them done. Fountain technology has advanced so much. It is crazy to me that, like, this one palace for the king had more fountains by a long shot than Las Vegas, Nevada. Yeah. Like, way more fountains. How big were they though?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Some of them were pretty big. They're pretty big. And they have to because the technology is not as good and there's like getting enough water is harder. They're having to constantly turn them on and off as the king approaches different areas. So he doesn't know that they're not on. And also just because like you can't have them all functioning at once. There's too many.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So there's this whole network of like people running back and forth. The king's going here now. You got to like turn this one off, get the flow going to that one. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I walk around, there's always fountains. There's always fountains. Or he took a lot of joy in the fact that everyone was constantly working. And there was an extent to which he did want everyone always obsessed with keeping him happy. But it is – that also – that's kind of – that causes brain damage, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Having – being this separated from reality and this insulated from everyone else and living in a situation like this, like you would be hurting your head less by just standing next to a 155-millimeter howitzer while it fires all day, right? Like – I cannot overemphasize how bad this is for you and how much this affects his judgment making, right? Right. He's also older, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So the social constitution of Versailles took a lot from its founder, which meant that the whole place was a huge adultery club all the time. There's a great story in Nancy Mitford's book that might be apocryphal, but it tells of a high-ranking noble returning home early from a trip abroad to find his wife in bed with her lover.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Which means that he's not thinking as clearly as he used to be. Maybe there's some dementia here too. He's sicker. But he makes a lot of bad decisions, right? And he's aware of this to some...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

extent some of his last words are generally reported as being I have loved war too much right like he really seems to regret and that's what he passes on to his successor don't do as many wars as I did it ended badly right I got way too into war and everything else I did was great we are broke now I had to melt down my furniture but also the furniture was made of fucking silver A lot of it, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, I think a lot of it's plated. Oh, okay. I'm sure a decent amount of it's silver plated, but also not all of it, right? He does have the money for pure silver chairs and stuff, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And he's the king. What the fuck?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And again, this is one of kind of like the, I don't know if tragedy is the right word, but one of the things that is like unjust here is that the last king in his line, Louis XVI, you know, Marie Antoinette's husband, is going to be murdered in part as a result of this horrible system of debt that gets started in the end of the Sun King's reign. Louis XVI hates war.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

He's like the only one of these guys who is not at all interested in starting wars. He does get involved in the war that the U.S. has, right? Like our War of Independence.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But he's not like a warmonger in the same way that his relatives had been, in part because he sees where it takes the kingdom, but he's ultimately going to pay with his head the price for all of the warmongering that his grandpa and great-grandpa and whatnot do, or his great-grandpa and I guess great-great-grandpa.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It gets a little confusing because since Louis XIV had reigned for 72 years, he didn't have any kids that are alive, right? Like, those fuckers all died a while ago, you know? Yeah. They got poisoned or they got the fucking- And he hasn't been having more of the messy. Syphilis or whatever. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Right, right. And so it's going to be his successor who becomes Louis XV- Which, if you've seen the Sofia Coppola-Marie Antoinette movie, this is the guy Rip Torn plays. Okay. Yeah. The second Louis in the Versailles line, there were only three kings during the period of Versailles being the center of France, right? The Sun King, Louis XV, and Louis XVI. And-

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Louis XIV had reigned so long that Louis XV is his great-grandson. He was five years old when he was crowned the king. And this came as a surprise. He was not expected up until kind of the last moment that he would be the Delphine. And Delphine is the French word for the prince that's going to inherit being the king, right? That's the Delphine. Right. So this comes as a surprise.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Other people are in line to be the king before him up until the last minute, right? In the last five years of the Sun King's reign, the Grand and Petite Delphines, which are the first and second in line for the throne, both die of smallpox and measles respectively. Louis XV's brother, who was also ahead of him, becomes Dauphine, but then he gets measles. And also Louis XV gets measles too, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

and he apologized to both of them he was like oh my god i didn't warn you i'd come home early of course you're fucking some dude oh my god i am so embarrassed this is on me you know it's like portland yeah it's like portland completely my bad you should be you should apologize

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They both get measles at the same time. His older brother dies. He survives. And again, stories like this are very common at Versailles in particular. That's not the only – obviously – It's a lot more common to die of sicknesses like this and for them to sweep through families, even noble families, all throughout Europe.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But everyone, you've got 3,000 people living in one big house, disease spreads more readily, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes, yes. So Louis XV ultimately becomes king because every three other guys die in quick succession over the course of a couple of years. And the treatment for measles that he and his brother both undergo is bloodletting and that kills his brother, but he survives.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Now, in the Sun King's last days, he rewrote his will to limit the next king's power and establish a regency council because he knows that the next king is going to be five, right? And he also knows that – Oh, that's the reason? Well, the bigger reason is that a five-year-old can't be king. He has to wait until he's 13.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But the kid's great uncle, Philip II, the Duke of Orléans, he's the guy who's supposed to be regent, so ruling in the king's stead. The Sun King doesn't like the Duke of Orléans because he's an atheist and a warmonger, right? Oh, okay. That's how the Sun King sees him, right?

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And instead, the Sun King wants his bastard son, the Duke of Maine, to be the regent until Louis XV is old enough to take up the job. So he rewrites his will. But as soon as the Sun King dies, Philippe leads a coup in the wake of the Sun King's death, and he goes to the Parliament of Paris, which is, again, a legal body, and he convinces them to annul parts of the king's will.

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In exchange, he reaffirms what is going to be called the right of remonstrance, which is Parliament's power to challenge the king, to say no if the king says, I want a new tax or something, right? And the fact that the parliament gets this power back is going to lead to a number of conflicts that become contributing factors to the revolution, right?

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And it's as a result of these kind of court politics, right? Philippe wants to be the regent. He doesn't want this other guy to be the regent, you know? After this, you know, this whole mess with the will is sorted out, the child king, Louis XV, has a normal childhood, you know, by which I mean at age seven, he's given to a 73-year-old general and taught military etiquette and court etiquette.

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He learns how to ride and hunt, while Philippe proved that the Sun King had been right not to trust him. One of Philippe's first big moods is to make a Scottish economist named John Law the Comptroller General of Finances. Law opens a private bank that becomes one of the first banks in the world to issue paper money, right? Massive innovation.

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Unfortunately, the primary purpose of this bank is to take investments for the Mississippi Company, which meant to colonize Louisiana. And if you've been there recently... you know, this didn't work out for the French, right? You know, New Orleans is pretty nice, but like overall they don't, Louisiana doesn't become a great functional colony. And this is kind of like a Ponzi scheme of its day.

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Because it collapses. The plan collapses, which kills the national bank and bankrupts a huge chunk of the nobility who had invested into it, right? Oh, God. This is like a massive financial disaster of its day. So more of these guys go in debt to the crown, and the crown knows primarily how to help these guys.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Ah, we're back, and, you know, we're talking about Versailles, me and my friend Ed, Edward Zitron. I've never called you Edward, it feels wrong.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

If you want to help these nobles who are close to the king rebuild their fortunes, your main way of doing that is to give them the right to tax certain areas. And there's only a limited number of these taxes, so you have to create new ones, which means the recovery of these fortunes by the nobles is going to be borne largely by the poor and the bourgeoisie, right? Uh-huh.

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The normalization of this behavior among the ruling class contributed to a growing break with the bourgeoisie and the working class of France, because while these nobles who are living together, they don't really ... Most of them, there are conflicts that emerge, but most of them aren't super judgmental about adultery, right? It is just kind of considered something you do.

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Louis XV gets married to one of his cousins, Mariana Victoria of Spain. This is a very normal- There's a six-year age gap. She's three and he's nine. Right. Problematic. Problematic, but not for either of them. They're not really in charge of this at this point. They're getting a six-year-old and a three-year-old or a nine-year-old and a three-year-old.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The bride is sent to the Louvre to live with her husband. But after about four years of this, Philippe dies.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The child bride to the child king. Got it, cool. Then Philippe dies and she gets sent back home because she's not old enough to have kids. Thank God there's that understanding. She is one. This seven-year-old's a little young to have children. It's fucking France. They were like thinking about it. They thought about it, right? Louis XV takes over ruling duties at age 13 in June of 1722.

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And again, when we talk about the degree of complicity by this point, Louis XIV totally responsible for his actions. Louis XV, partially, but you do have to take into account this man becomes king at age 13. And again, Marie Antoinette, married at 13, right?

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These are children being thrown into these roles and to the head of this insane... You are taking a 13-year-old and saying, hey, you are now the head of the most insidiously fucked up and mentally dominating cult that has ever existed. Built for someone else. Built for someone else. Good luck.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This cult designed by like a once in a several generations political genius.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Who was a mature adult. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Good luck. So this thing that Versailles had initially been a way for him to exert control, by the time his successor takes over, the system is controlling the king as much as it's controlling the nobles, right? They are no longer running things because this increasingly arcane system of etiquette has taken on a life of its own.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And so from the beginning, Louis XV is as much a prisoner of the system as he is the guy at its head. For an idea of how cloying and total it could be, a treatise from 1729 on napkin etiquette stated, it is ungentlemanly to use a napkin for wiping the face or scraping the teeth and a vulgar error to wipe one's nose with it. What the fuck do you do with it? What the fuck do you do with it?

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It's a looking napkin. You just keep it there for looks. Yeah. The same treatise went on to insist, the person of highest rank in the company should unfold his napkin first, all others waiting until he has done so before they unfold theirs. When all of those present are social equals, all unfold together with no ceremony. For this useless napkin? For a napkin, there's books written on napkins.

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Sick, so good. Every night includes a grand dinner, which is a public event. Anyone who is at Versailles can show up and watch the dinner, but it's only public in the sense that the public can watch. Only the royal family gets to sit and eat, right? And based on your rank, if you're a duchess or a princess, Or someone similarly high ranking, you might get to sit at a stool, right? Okay.

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The working class and most of the bourgeoisie are extremely Catholic, and they are not okay with this. And again, as more of this stuff leaks and gets leaked out. Right. If you want to if you are politically opposed to Madame de Montespan. Right.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Everyone else has to stand. The king is the only one who gets a chair with armrests. I think the king and queen both get armrests in their chairs. And if another king is visiting, he gets a chair with armrests, right? Although this is complicated because of all of this etiquette. Like you can, if you were in a room with a bunch of people,

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

people can only start conversations with someone who is of an equal or lower rank to them. Talking about anything is really fucked up. Generally, when kings and queens visit, they visit incognito, which is they pretend to not be the king of Russia or Prussia or wherever. They pretend to be just another random nobleman with a fake name because then they don't have to deal with all of this

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Etiquette, because usually if you're a king who's heading there, you're heading there to handle some very serious state business and you don't have the time to deal with all this bullshit. So you just lie and say you're someone else and everyone knows. But then we don't have to do as much of the bullshit. Right. Right. But who decides who the social hierarchy or is this arbitrary hierarchy?

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It's been decided over the course of years. So again, a lot of this comes out of the earlier feudal system, right? But you have princes and princesses of the blood, which are above these kind of lower ranking nobles. And you've got this whole- This would drive everyone insane.

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Yes. At all times. People are constantly like – it's this maddening thing. Like if you are handing – and this happens. If you're handing the king or the queen, if you're the highest ranking guy in the room when they wake up and you're handing them their shirt and someone else walks in who is of an equal or higher rank – you have to stop and give the shirt to them.

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There's a, at one point when Marie Antoinette is like new to the palace, this happens like four or five times in a row and she's just standing there naked in the freezing cold. Like for the love of God, somebody please give me clothes. That's an actual thing that happens. Oh, no, another guy walked in. Another lady walked in. No, no, no. She gets the shirt now.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Look, we literally, you are not allowed as the king. By this point, if you're the king and the queen, you are an absolute monarch and you are literally not allowed to touch your own shirt because that would be this hideous violation of etiquette that would upset this very intricate social system that everyone is reliant upon.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Or whichever of the king's lovers you leak out stories of her doing fucked up shit, you know, gambling irresponsibly, being drunk, sleeping around on the king. Right. Or whatever. And that both makes the king look bad and it makes the king more likely to send her away. Right. Right.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Right. That's exactly it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It's such a stupid system. It's so fucking funny. It's really funny and dumb. So doors could not be knocked on. You can't knock on a door because the Sun King was annoyed by knocking. And so, again, another intricate etiquette revolves around how you let someone know you're at the door because you also can't open doors. Only courtiers can open. Only staff can open doors, basically.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

No one else can open doors. So you're not opening any doors. If you want to get in, you have to scratch the door with your left little finger. Not your right. Not your right. Courtiers start growing this left fingernail out, like the left lower little fingernail out, like a coke nail, so that they can more effectively scratch the door to get whatever Lewis is raining's attention at the time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Just like a little, like a talon. Like a towel. You got a little towel. You got a Coke nail for getting the King's attention. Muscrashin towel. Yeah. Lovely. Sure. Etiquette enthusiast and Etiquettopedia editor Mara Graber lays out how absolutely claustrophobic the system was by Louis XV's reign. Quote,

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

At the palace, the courtiers lived under the despotic surveillance of the king, and upon their good behavior, their deference, and their observance of etiquette, their whole careers depended. If you displeased a Louis, he would simply not see you the following day.

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His gaze would pass over you as he surveyed the people before him, and not being seen by the king was tantamount to ceasing to count at Versailles. A whole timetable of ceremonies followed, much of it revolving around the king's own person—

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Intimacy with Louis meant power, and power was symbolically expressed in attending to certain of the king's most private and physical needs, handing him his stockings to put on in the morning, being present as he used the bathroom, rushing when the signal sounded to be present as he got ready for bed,

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It mattered desperately what closeness to the king allowed you, whether he spoke to you, in front of whom, and for how long. The point about Versailles was that there was no escape. The courtiers had to make it where they were. The stage was the louis, and the roles that could be played were designed by him. It was up to each courtier to fit him or herself into one of the slots provided.

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The leaders of all the other towns and villages of France were made largely through the use of etiquette, and more specifically through rudeness and judicious sliding by the tax-collecting intendants to feel their subordination, their distance from the court. That's a good system of government.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Whenever you have an absolute monarchy, right? And again, Stalinist Russia isn't technically a monarchy, but it's an absolute dictatorship. They're all more similar than they all are different. And anytime you have one that's this absolute, it is a cult at the top. Right? Yeah.

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Because everything surrounding the ruler has to be both an altered reality, because there's certain things he refuses to see and does not want to be aware of. Right? Yeah. It's pretty good. Sounds good. I'm glad that doesn't happen now to people like, for example, the president Or billionaires.

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Well, I mean, that's kind of a byproduct, right? The reason why you as a noble at Versailles are leaking out stories about her is you want to hurt her position, right? And the stories will get out into the press and then the police will find out that peasants are talking about this and bourgeoisie are talking about this.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I'm glad billionaires don't also live in their own functionally isolated realities where they have no real contact with the world and no one ever argues with them or tells them their ideas are bad and every moment of their lives is them getting exactly what they want at any given moment.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That obviously does not cause them the kind of brain damage that all of the kings of France got before the revolution of 1789. Yeah. Yeah. Of course it does.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

This doesn't happen to every rich guy, right? Every rich guy doesn't have his own Versailles, you know? That would be crazy.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Elon Musk wishes. They'd all be insane. Anyway, let's read about the town in Texas he owns now. Anyway. Yeah. The school. Or the school. Now, the one method that out of favor or distant nobles and wealthy business owners had of getting the king's attention outside of cutting through this Gordian not a palace etiquette was to get a story, true or libelous, to go viral among the popular media. No.

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Right. I talked earlier. Yeah. They're posters. Yeah. As time went on, it went more noble. Certain nobles start hosting. Some of them host printing presses. Others host basically bookstores for these libels, these books that are like unauthorized biographies of the king or his minister or his mistress, right?

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And these are full-size books, but they're usually – they're cobbled together from days' worth of notes like taken at the Tree of Krakow. And from reports sent on the slide by Versailles regulars, right? People will compile these all into books that are like, you know, that guy, what's his name?

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The dude who's written like a couple of books about the inside of the Trump administration, Michael Wolff. Yes, that's he's he's doing labels right where some of what's in them is true. Some of what's in them bullshit. Nobody ever really knows.

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But there are these books that are meant to be slanderous and popular among among the masses by giving you like the gory details from inside in the lives of these like people who have all the power. Right. Yeah. And these are illegal to be sold in France. But certain nobles who have big properties in France will let people sell books or newsletters there, and then the police can't raid them.

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Right. Because that's the Duke's house or whatever, effectively. So the other major thing that I haven't talked about yet that is honestly maybe the number one way in which a lot of gossip gets out, and this is, again, it's effectively like –

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We've talked about how the salons and stuff, these cafes where people take their notes from the morning newsmonger speeches, that's like Twitter and Facebook. The TikTok of the day is songs, popular songs. There's a dozen or more different melodies that people regularly just rewrite new lyrics for. And so everybody knows all these melodies.

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They'll bring that story back to the king and then he'll know that he's been embarrassed. Right. So your goal as a noble leaking that is to influence that situation. But the byproduct of this is that the peasantry and the regular people of France are constantly hearing about how the king is sleeping around.

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And on a daily basis, new versions of the song, you'll hear someone singing it at the market. You'll start singing it. They'll go viral among the whole city. And a lot of gossip and news gets out this way. This is, again, effectively like the TikTok of its day. Yeah.

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One explanation at the time, this is a contemporary writer talking about this kind of weird musical culture in Paris, described it this way. A dastardly courtier puts them slanderous rumors into rhyming couplets and by means of lowly servants has them planted in market stalls and street stands.

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From the markets they are passed on to artisans, who in turn relay them back to the nobleman who had composed them, and who, without losing a moment, take off for a meeting place in the palace of Versailles and whisper to one another in a tone of consummate hypocrisy, Have you read them? Here they are. They're circulating among the common people of Paris.

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This is not just song, but a lot of it does come in the form of these rhyming little couplets, right? Now, in Louis XV's reign, the most popular of these songs, gossip songs, were about his mistresses because he was the kind of king who was seen by his wife as little as possible. And by the mid-1700s, this had reached a fever pitch of unpopularity.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

again a known adulterer couldn't receive the sacrament and when the king got seriously ill which happened with some regularity given how disease spread at versailles he would have to dismiss his mistress in order to take communion right this happened in 1744 and when you dis it's generally accepted you dismiss your mistress then you're good with god again you can go to heaven if you die but if you dismiss her and you get better

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You're not supposed to take her back, right? At most, you're supposed to find a new mistress. But Louis XV got really attached to his mistresses. And so he takes this lady back and that scandalizes the people. And it pisses off the church. And the big part of why people are pissed about this is that they see this as having a major impact on public health.

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Because, this is a very fun belief at the time, it was widely believed that that when he was made the king, the king gained the magical power that was known as the royal touch, right? And so a king by touching you could cure what was called the king's disease, which was scrofula. Now, scrofula is a kind of tuberculosis, right?

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And it's the kind of thing that spreads a lot in a society where people don't wash their fucking hands. And the understanding is that when the king ascends, he gets the power to cure scrofula by touching people, but he loses it if God's not happy with him, right?

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And the practical issue here is that once a year at Easter Mass, the king would go to Paris, and everyone with scrofula would line up, and he would touch them all, right? And obviously, this presents there's some danger of the king getting sick from this, right? But...

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This also provides him with a degree of safety because every year a huge number of like the poor people in Paris make direct contact with the king in a way where they see him as saving them. Can you think of how that might protect a king from the mob, right?

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and not being a good Catholic, and that makes them increasingly angry and disaffected from the monarchy. This is a process that occurs over a century, but the sheer weight of all these stories changes completely how regular people think about their rulers in a way that is very negative, and that contributes to the growth of revolutionary sentiment. It's a part of it.

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That matters less than everyone sees the king as a part of our public health system. Right. And also, he is coming out and he helps me directly. I'm not going to murder the king. You know, why would I do that? Right. But Louis XV loses this power. And so he stops going to these Easter masses and touching people.

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And it cuts off a very important connection between the crowned line and the masses in Paris. Right. This is going to contribute to revolutionary conditions. Again, all these are just like pieces of why this happens. But the fact that the king is... Under Louis XV, what contact the king – Louis XIV already had reduced significantly by moving out of Paris, the king's contact with regular people.

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Louis XV cuts off one of the last vestiges of that because he won't stop fucking his mistresses and he gets canceled by the church. Right. Another issue is that the church threatens to take away – because he won't stop fucking his mistresses – the church threatens to take away the Jubilee in 1750. Every 25 years, the church would forgive everyone in France's sins, right? Oh, God.

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So you don't have to pay. You don't have to – it's like a big deal, right? And – The king – they don't ultimately go through with this, the church. The king is able to lean on them. But for a long time, everyone thinks that the king has cost them the jubilee because he can't keep his dick in his pants. And that makes them very angry, right? Right. Like – This isn't just them being judgmental.

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They are seeing significant public health costs. That's how they view this, right? Well, they're going to hell. People are going to go to hell over you, man. What the fuck? And the popular media goes nuts about this rumor. As Robert Darton writes- One novelist published a letter from a correspondent who vilified Louis for depriving his people of the Jubilee.

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It is monstrous that all of France should be deprived of it because the king, by his own fault, is not in a state to receive this grace. The general resentment was expressed by some of the crudest poems. Louis, the badly loved, make your Jubilee, give up your whore, Madame le Pompadour, and give us bread. Oh. This is one of those songs, right?

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It sounds better in the original French, but not when I say it. No, but you don't have the French. I don't have the French gene. No. But yeah, this is like popular songs. Honestly, like, yeah, I could describe it as TikTok. You might even describe it as like punk rock in the 80s, right? These like songs people are singing about criticizing power. It is very cool.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, this is, it is interesting. Like you can almost look at this as like a common point of origin for like journalism, hip hop, punk rock, and TikTok, right? All caused by. Fucking the king in Versailles not being able to keep his dick in his pants. Yeah. Yeah.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So what we see throughout Louis XV's reign is a king whose decisions, and some of his decisions are good, constantly drive a wedge between him and everyone outside of Versailles because of the media ecosystem, which at this point has grown to be entirely predicated on critiquing the king and his nobles, right? Yeah.

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And to everyone's surprise, what's happened here is without anyone meaning for this to evolve this way, this emergent media ecosystem has created a check on the king's absolute power. As a Parisian comedian, Nicholas Chamfort said, France is, quote, an absolute monarchy tempered by songs.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That's fucking awesome. Yeah. And the only thing controlling Animal House over here is people making up mean songs about him.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Kendrick's like obliquely shit-talking Trump through his presentation at the Super Bowl, right? Yes. In some ways it hasn't changed. It's just always been understood that if you are good enough at music, no dictator will be brave enough to kill you. Yeah. Yeah, this is why Billy Joel was allowed to go to the USSR, you know? The power of the piano, man. And why Steven Seagal is fine as well.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So this whole process gets really escalated when Madame de Montespan succeeds in using magic to win the king over as her lover. Now, Madame de Montespan had a husband. And in most cases, when the king fucks your wife, you're cool with it. For one thing, as a noble, you are rarely married for love, right? You got married with this lady because of a money thing, because of a political alliance.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Is right, is right. Is very safe everywhere.

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

His great music. When he went to war, Louis XV in 1740, alongside the Austrians against an alliance of British people, Hessians, Hanoverians, and the hated Dutch, there was a vicious battle near the village of Lofeld. In real terms, it was a tactical victory for France. They take the village.

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But either a strategic defeat or at best a draw, because they lose so many men taking this town, they can't continue the offensive that they had intended in support of the Austrians. That said, they do take the town. So the king declares it a victory. But the newspapers, and again, all of the newspapers that get into France are printed in Amsterdam. who are fighting against the king.

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The king sends back his messengers to declare victory in Paris. The newspapers that arrive at the same time all say France lost the battle, right? Police spies inform the government, hey, most of the media says we actually lost this, and it's kind of... generating unrest, an effort gets made to distribute counter propaganda, but it's like when the government tries to make TikToks, right?

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Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Nobody, like, the police aren't good at making songs people want to sing, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It was literally the police. This is... Not great. This is where Sting gets his start. LAUGHTER

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Very horny man as well. He would have fit in.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So now by this point, again, this modern ecosystem had largely a lot of it had developed as a way to keep abreast with palace gossip. But at this point, it pivots, you know, and it pivots to this is almost the first time where you see something like a modern ecosystem obsessing over a major world war in media res, right? In the same way people did about like the Gulf War.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Or more recently, the expanded – And judging the government for it as well. And judging the government for it. The government has – this is a very rare thing and it's really kind of – I don't know if it's the first time this has happened, but I don't know that it's ever happened before on this scale where the absolute monarchy completely loses control of the information system.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

coming out of a conflict on foreign soil. That's a big deal. This war, the War of Austrian Succession, it's one of a number of wars that some historians will argue should be counted as the first real world war. care to get into that argument, but this is a massive conflict, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The fact that the government of France has completely lost control due to the independent media is incredibly noteworthy. I want to quote again from that book.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Reports of the overseas warfare appeared in the gazettes, and the café sophisticates discussed them, but most Parisians, if they followed foreign affairs at all, concentrated on the fighting nearby, in the low countries, where Marshal de Saxe scored his victories. They were appalled, therefore, as soon as they learned about the preliminaries to the peace...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

uh to discover that louis xv had agreed to return everything france had won at such expense and suffering in exchange he received virtually nothing he got back louisbourg a fortress on the cape breton island while he surrendered madras a greater prize to the british to ordinary parisians with an uncertain grasp of geography

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So, like, you don't really care who she fucks as long as you're able to fuck who you like, right? Right. Yeah. This is not the case with Madame de Montespan's wife. And the king, normally his thing is like to the husband, hey, here, have a couple of privileges. You get all the tax money from this specific industry in this region. Yes, you get something from the king stoking your wife. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

the global readjustment in the balance of power, insofar as they were aware of it, mattered less than the sacrifice of the fortresses in Flanders. Most Parisians, moreover, experienced the war as hardship inflicted on their daily lives in the form of increased taxes, scarcer goods, and higher prices.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

The dixime, a special tax levied since 1741 to support the war, fell on virtually all revenue, although the clergy negotiated an exemption. Salaries were exempt, so laborers did not suffer directly, but the decim was a bitter blow to rentiers, merchants, artisans, and shopkeepers. So, There's both this thing that in an earlier era, the king would have been able to spin as we got a peace.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We forced a peace on them after all these victories. And that's kind of all that would have gotten out. Instead, there's all this reporting on everything that France is giving up in the peace because the Dutch have a vested interest in that information getting out to the people of France because it provokes unrest. And it's being printed over there too. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes, and it's being printed over there, too. Interesting. And so people gain a real understanding of the fact that, oh, no, no, we're being lied to about this war that has fucked up my life. You know, I'm paying a lot more in taxes because of this, and we just gave everything up? What? My son died, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

No, because like the king is, he's monitoring everyone's mail, right? When they send out gossip, they have to be very secret about it. People get punished for this. So inside the palace, it's as close to a totalitarian state as it can be. And then in Paris, it's like a very free media environment. Even though this is all technically illegal, everything is getting out.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Well, yeah, and they're not really as aware because they have no connection to Paris, really. Right. Most of the nobility and certainly not the king. So the Dixime pisses off a lot of people in the bourgeoisie. There's another tax that just everyone has to pay. Which is kind of Louis XV because the nobles were subject to it too. So you can see it as him trying to modernize and make things fairer.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But it just creates more anger and unrest because it's just another tax. He also puts through tariffs on consumer goods. Prices for the necessities of life start to surge to an unsustainable level. There are bread riots. People are starving. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

In order to try and mitigate this, when the war finally ends, the king orders two days of celebration, and the crown provides a feast, like food and wine, all you can eat for two days, for the little people of Paris, right? So there's a massive party, and this is the kind of thing in the past that would have got everybody back to being fans of the king, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But people know everything that went on behind the scenes, right? And so for the first time, when the king goes through Paris on his victory march, people don't... During this massive party where they're all getting free food and booze, no one shouts, vive le Roy. Nobody shouts long live the king, right? Right. Commenters refuse to do this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Oh, yes. You get very well rewarded, right? And it's also, there's no shame in being cucked by the king, right? He's the king, you know? Like, it's kind of a bragging point of like, yeah, my wife is stupid in the king. Now I get all of the taxes paid on, you know, fine leather work in Normandy or whatever, you know. But this guy felt differently. And his uncle was the archbishop of sins. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And popular gossip notes that women in the market start arguing, making fun of each other by saying, you are as stupid as the peace, right? Like... That's brutal. It's a calamity for the crown. A dozen people are also crushed to death during a fireworks display due to a bottleneck in the streets, and this is reported on massively, right? People talk about this constantly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It is a massive topic of discussion in the media, and every mistake, every attendant death and all of the suffering of the masses, every bad thing that happens adds to the crush of hostile papers, books, and songs attacking the regime.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And rather than trying to deal with any of this or trying to directly engage with the people, Louis XV largely responds to a hostile public by drawing inwards and retreating to Versailles. After the failed celebrations of 1748, the king avoids the capital in 1749 and 1750. He doesn't go there at all. Rumors spread through songs, through small papers and newsmongers that he fears sparking a riot.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And so... People really start talking for the first time. Is the king scared of the mob? Do we maybe as a group of angry people in Paris have power to threaten the monarchy? This is when people really start talking about that. You know, this is an important step on the road to 1789. Right. Yeah. In 17. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They're starting to. Again, they've got another 40 years before this all falls apart. But these are important steps.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes. It takes a while for this to marinate. And this is part of what leads things to collapse. Right. In mid-1749, a major government minister is brought down by a song. The victim is Comte de Morapas, who was the king's most powerful minister. He's a close friend to the king, and he is like his – basically his number one advisor, right? And one day, the king –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

He doesn't always like to be surrounded by the crowd, so he goes to his royal bedchambers with his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, and her cousin, Madame d'Estrade, and the Comte de Maurepas. I think they're all kind of fucking, right? I assume so. Yeah, or at least they're both fucking at the same time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Over the course of the night, Madame Pompadour hands out white hyacinths as gifts, and this private moment hits the streets of Paris days later, set to the tune of a popular love song. By your noble and free manner, Iris, you enchant our hearts. On our path, you strew flowers, but they are white flowers. Now, that doesn't seem super scandalous, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It is, though, because the word for flower is very similar to a colloquial term for vaginal discharge. And what this song is saying is that the king's mistress spread VD in this private moment in the royal chambers. Damn. Right? She got – that's what the white flowers are like white vaginal discharge, right? It's like she had an STD and she spread it to the king in Marapas, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

That's kind of what the song is alleging. I don't think that's actually what happened because that's what the song is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Like it got through. Well, and here's the big thing. There are four people in the room. when this happens. Right. That was what I was thinking. It's like, who leaked this? Well, it's Marapas, right? It's the Comte de Marapas, because obviously the king's mistress isn't going to leak this. Her cousin's unlikely to. Sure shit, not the king. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

I pissed on a plant. What are the French going to do to me?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And what makes this even more obvious is that Marapas is a famous and beloved popular songwriter, and he had four He used music to launder gossip and attacks on his enemies at Versailles into Paris. And in fact, a lot of what we have from this period, from this aspect of culture, these popular political – slander songs are ones that Maurepas wrote. 45 volumes of his lyrics survive to this day.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So his uncle is a high ranking member of the Catholic clergy. This guy's pissed that the king is fucking his wife. And so the archbishop, his uncle, in order to punish the king, finds a different married woman in his bishopric who's cheating on her husband, and he makes her do public penance. He puts her in public and punishes her, and he posts public warnings about the sin of adultery.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

So this guy was prolific, right? Again, yeah. And so when this thing that four people are for leaks out in song form, everyone immediately knows, like, this has to be you, right? Maurepas, he had tried to spread this verse to damage the king's mistress because he was closer to the queen, right? His whole thing had been, I want to separate her from the king.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

But this blows up because he's very sloppy about how he does it. And he tries to blame the whole debacle on Marshal Richelieu, who's one of his rivals. But Richelieu figures out what's going on and tells the king. As D'Arton writes... This version of Marapas's fall owed a great deal to the rumor mill of the court and the Baroque character of politics in Versailles.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Parisians who had little contact with that alien world could not be certain about what lay behind Marapas's fall, but they knew that songs precipitated it and that the result was a realignment of power. And so kind of by this period, 1749, the king has gotten scared out of Paris by the mob.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And now people have realized that these songs, this popular media has the ability to uproot and force government ministers out of their office. In addition to this, you've created this permanent, because of how negative a lot of this media is, this really permanent breach between the crown and the people. In 1751, the king attempts a return to Paris. He goes to a mass at Notre Dame.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And as he rides in, the crowd around him maintains near total silence, an experience so upsetting that Louis XV has a road built so he can avoid Paris in the future when traveling to his various properties. And by this point, 1751, the rot that's going to lead... to the revolution is probably terminal, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

There's almost certainly no... Because this system that the next king is going to come up in, that is going to continue governing, is like it can't do anything but make this system worse. By its nature, it feeds this media ecosystem that is so toxic to the crown. By its nature...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It creates a ruling class who has no contact or understanding with regular people and who will constantly fuck them over in order to pay and afford keeping their fancy party house going, right? All of this has happened by 1751. And people know everything about it. And they know everything. Constantly, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

A lot of it's – yeah. Yeah, a lot of it's lies. It's also told in catchy songs. It's told in catchy songs. There are going to be catchy songs about Marie Antoinette being a spy for her home in Austria, and she's not. There's a lot of valid critiques of Marie Antoinette, but she legitimately did not do any of the things her family wanted her to do in terms of influencing France to be pro-Austria.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They were constantly pissed at her, but it didn't matter in terms of her unpopularity because the mob... was convinced and the popular media was convinced that she was effectively a spy, right? Good.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah. We'll see. Again, the media moved pretty fast in Paris at this day, but not as fast as it works today. And I guess if I have a hopeful thing in terms of vis-a-vis our modern day people attempting to make an aristocracy or honestly trying to make a monarchy with themselves as the – that's what Curtis Yarvin and the like want.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

They want to be nobles in this new hereditary order under CEO kings. And things move faster now and the same dynamics that – caused everything to fall apart for the people running Versailles are human dynamics. And these people, I think, are convinced that they can force that out of us by taking control of social media, by breeding it out of people or whatever. I don't think that they can.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

now again there's no free press in france but numerous french papers and pamphlets are printed in amsterdam or the hague and sent across and the population is generally aware of what's going on as a result the scandal peters out eventually largely because the sun king refuses to give a about it or stop traveling around with his wife his pregnant former mistress and his new mistress all in this same carriage

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Oh, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah. There's more to talk about. We may do soon episodes on kind of the end of this process. And what happens with Marie Antoinette and her husband, Louis XVI, is also interesting. They're just not really – bastards in the same way that Louis XV and XIV are, right? They make a lot of mistakes and they do do bad things, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Every king and queen does, but these guys are why the system had pissed people off so much that those two needed to lose their heads, right? The terror is largely fueled by the shit that Louis XIV creates at Versailles and that Louis XV

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

perpetuates right like that's all of that anger gets built up as a result of that period of time and you know that's cool yeah seems like it ended well for everyone involved it doesn't it ends great for everyone louis the 14th how do you cop it just his ass uh oh no he gets um he gets a smallpox Oh, okay. Yeah, he gets smallpox. He has to send away his mistress.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, he also reigns a crazy long time. He lives so long. He reigns for decades. Again, this whole period is like there's more than a century of Versailles, even though there's only like three kings, right? So it lasts a while. It just isn't. By probably like 1749 to 1751, somewhere around then, I think the revolution was inevitable.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

There was probably no way, just functionally, because I don't think Versailles ... I think Versailles, among other things, the fact that it was so ossified by this point, it was incapable of changing. Right. Right. You had no time to reform things. You're spending all your time worrying about who's holding your shirt as the king. You have very little time to fix the way the government works.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Right. Yeah. Yeah. The napkin situation is really bogging you down by this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yep. Yeah, so check that out. Finally, when Ed lives completely surrounded by the nobility of France, that's when podcasting will finally reach its apex. Hilarious.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

There's a very funny moment where they're all like traveling to the front together one day after they work out their differences and get along. And some of like the soldiers they pass are like, I just saw the king and the three queens of France.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

No, lock you in a fortress. Honestly, though, it'd be pretty cool if I just got to live in a fortress forever. I would not mind a nice fortress stay.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah, right. Well into their 20s. And now speaking of which, travel in the king's carriage was one of the great honors the Versailles set competed over. Whenever he went on a trip, if he picked you to travel with him, that's a big deal, right? You've like won a major win. But it's also miserable, as Mitford writes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

These journeys, except for the prestige they gave, were a real torment to his companions. In the coldest weather, all the windows had to be kept open as he could not bear stuffiness. The ladies were expected to be merry, eat a great deal. He hated people to refuse food and to have no physical needs that would force them to leave the coach.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah. They're eating a tunnel. They can't shit. No, they can't do anything. They're just freezing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It's like cold and you need to poo. If by any chance they were taken ill, fainted, or felt sick, they could expect no sympathy. On the contrary, disfavor set in. He's such a freak. Louis XIV had no sympathy for his pregnant mistresses either. He's going to get you pregnant and he's going to take care of his bastard kids. He pays for them. He pays for them well. They live very well.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And he's like, treats the kids reasonably nice. He hates pregnancy. So his mistresses, when he gets them pregnant, are ordered to hide their condition from him. And, like, it's understood if you get pregnant, you need to not tell me. You need to do everything you can to hide it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

As long as it's like a nice fortress. I drink so many Diet Cokes, I would be beheaded. Yeah, you would not have lasted a minute in Versailles. Me, I'm great at holding my pee. I'd have been the fucking king's best friend. We'd have gotten wasted together.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And you need to have the kid quietly and then smuggle it out of the palace into the hands of some common maid or a poor noble or someone who I will pay them to raise this kid.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It's basically Louis XIV's life. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, got another kid. That's crazy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Pay some random lady to take care of it. I don't want to hear about it though. Yeah. There's just one weird story. There's this lady who he like, he like pays her to take care of one of his bastards because he hates her and he wants her away from Versailles. And then the kid dies immediately. And she's so sad about it that he starts to like her. And he's like, oh, you know what?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Then she got sad when my kid died. Now I think she's cool. Yeah. He's a weird man.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Nothing like Elon Musk. Yeah. In general, one thing you are struck by reading about Versailles under the Sun King is that everyone lives in constant terror of pissing this one dude off.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

One of his courtiers who never quite made it to the inner circle later said, falseness, servility, admiring glances combined with a dependent and cringing attitude above all an appearance of being nothing without him were the only means of pleasing him. Cool dude to hang out with.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

It's built on bones and costs half of France to run.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Oh, I don't know that we have a full idea, but a bunch, a bunch of bastards and some legit kids. Nice.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Now, a displeased king could be a terrifying thing. A representative story came when a group of the king's friends got lost hunting one day. They stumbled upon a cabin 20 miles or so from Versailles, and the old man who lived there took them in and fed them, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

During a conversation while they're having dinner that night, they found out that he had been a frondeur, that is, a member of the rebellion in Louis XIV's childhood, right, that we started the episode talking about. So the king's friends returned to Versailles, and they're like, hey, man, you'll never believe this. We met this old dude. He was part of the rebellion years ago.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

He lives right next to Versailles. Very nice guy. And they thought the king would find it amusing. The king was livid, and he had the man trapped down and executed immediately. Not a forgiving fellow. For another example of how mercurial this guy could be, one of his closest friends and confidants was a guy named Lazun.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

We'd have been gambling. It is funny to me that like all of these royals. Gambling as well. Every night, gambling constantly, losing and making fortunes. Like while the country, a big part of like why people get increasingly angry in the period from here up to 1789 when the revolution happens is

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

And Lazun got the idea in his mind one day that he wanted to marry the king's cousin. Now, at the same time as he's being like, hey, man, you should let me do this, he starts making jokes which annoy the king. And the king gets increasingly pissed off.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Over the course of the night, like the fact that this guy is joking around and talking about marrying his cousin, the king has his very good friend arrested and locked away in a fortress for 10 years.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yes, because a big part of why he likes the mistresses he likes is they can make him laugh. If you can make him laugh, you can get close to him and you can get a lot of benefits from that. But obviously comedy is a very two-edged sword, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: In Honor Of Our New Monarchy, Let's Talk About Versailles

Yeah. It really depends on how the Sun King feels in any given moment. So very dangerous place to make jokes. This is truly insane. This is just like bastards.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Look, this is the man who's come the longest amount of time without shitting. Yeah. It is the chalk of the Lifetronic health spa. We can't put people back together when they get blown to shit by a C-130. But what we can do is help Jim Lindy to shit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That is literally the prescription. As much melon as you can fit in your body. We have been aware of his plight for some time, but it was not until recently that we could act in his behalf without interfering with his own will. Fortunately, Jim Lindy is open-minded regarding us. That is most important. We can and shall help him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

We shall point out certain health secrets, which should not be secrets at all, but common knowledge to earthlings. At the Lifetronic Healing Center on Venus, we give out these and other teachings freely so that all Venusians learn how to work with nature's up-building measures from infancy on. So there are native-born Venusians. They're not all ascended.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Which means it exists because like our Venus does not grow melons. Molly is not a good melon climate. I don't know if you spend a lot of time there.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It does appear to go birth both ways. And I would guess it's a matter of, here's my guess, if I'm coming up with a cosmology.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, no, no. So Venusians, we split off at some point, right? The ancient people who traveled into space, some of them wound up in Venus, and they stayed smart, whereas we developed daytime television, which really did a number on us. So the Venusians who were smart, and they still love us, they still care about us.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And when a human being is wise and enlightened enough, they're able to see and communicate with his soul and bring it to Venus. Yes. Yes. Their interactions with Venusians who humans who have ascended to Venus make some of the nice Venusians feel very empathetic towards Earth. So they choose to die and be reincarnated on Earth to help us. And that's where Jesus comes from.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Sophie's weird knife, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

If I'm selling this, that's how I'm selling this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Well, that's exactly it. And in this, it's a little more complicated that the aliens are humans, but they didn't come from Earth.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yes. That's my interpretation of this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You're up to speed. You're good.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

All right. Let's continue. So, yeah, they're going to give him some secrets. In Jim Lindy's case, he must first intensify his desire to be well. Then he must himself send forth his desire directly to us. And we shall give him a sign of our recognition and illumine his inner consciousness. Illuminae? I'm not sure if they were trying to say illuminate. I don't think illumine is a word. Illumine him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Illumine him.

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Yeah, in the hope that you would find out how to use it. How do you use that thing?

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

His inner consciousness from time to time. This we shall do by a series of all caps dream contacts.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I-L-L-U-M-I-N-E.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You know what? I got to give it to Michael Lex. I learned something today. Yeah, this is literature. We all learned something today. You know what? Why don't we meditate on that? Get some rocks, stick them on one side of your head and another. Push them in a little bit. Think of a pillar of light and listen to these ads.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, stick a couple of phones to your head. It doesn't matter. Fuck it.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, because it's one of like, it's just a good moment of American history, Molly.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It's stunning. You should always bring a prop. By the way, my prop, this sword... right here that I brought up in the last episode. That's nice. It's nice. It's actually a direct, a bladesmith that I know, whose name I'll give you in a minute, read a new fantasy series. One of the books in it is called The Daughter's War. It's very good. You should check it out. I read them both as well.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

We're back. Actually, Molly, I kind of think the iPhones might do better because obviously the lifeblood of whatever child harvested those rare earth minerals is built into your lifeboat. So it's haunted. And the ghost is probably like that's like that's like bringing in a guy to tune your TV antenna. Again, another thing no one has done in fucking 35 years. Good stuff. I'm illumined.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, we have all been illumined on the word illumine. They're going to do this by a series of dream contacts, which will be made by us while Jim is sleeping soundly at night. He will at those times experience unusually vivid dreams, each containing a vitally important message that's important for him to regain his health.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You believe then, I said quickly, that Jim Lindy can be cured so he will once again be vigorous and healthy? There are no cures, replied Lanzara. Jim's present state of painful illness was created by himself through his own unwise actions of eating nothing but Salisbury steak for 42 years.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Mm-hmm. There's a degree to which they're kind of being reasonable because what they're literally saying is like, there's a line here, those who claim they can cure disease are charlatans. They're only fooling themselves and those homiest souls who turn to them in misguided trust and confidence. The simple truth is, but then we get to this.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

The simple truth is humanity does not have to cure disease. All it needs to do is stop causing it, right? Which you can do by only eating raw fruit, you know? I was like, I went through whiplash there. I was like, oh, maybe this isn't going to be, nope, there we go. Okay. Okay.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

But I'm not.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I'm selling you the good, responsible life advice. So Jim's got to rebuild his health by reversing the pattern of disease and being healthy. And this is a super fast process if you do it right. Now, normally it's very slow. The average person on Earth, if they're sick, they have no control over the healing process, right?

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yes, yes. You must consider the natural time factor and allow for it. But, and this is Lanzara again, many thousands of years ago, reckoning according to your Earth time, the greatest minds of Venus found that the time factor in nature could be so minimized and reduced that we were able to accomplish results in weeks where formerly years were required.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And so when I saw he'd made a sword based on those books, and it was very reasonably priced, I was like, oh shit, I gotta get it. If you look to rblademaker, Randall Blademaker on Twitter- You can find his shit. He's very good. And again, opens a YouTube package like a son of a bitch. I also pruned a fig tree with this bad boy the other day. Pretty good time.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Then we progressed to a point where we could do so much in only a few days as we used to do in several weeks. Finally, our greatest breakthrough came when we discovered how to COLLAPSE TIME, all caps. Fuck. Within our own consciousness so that the positive results were realized in mere seconds and minutes that previously took many hours and days to achieve.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

At the Lifetronic Healing Center on Venus, we had long studied the simple, marvelous laws of the universe and the forces of nature. Knowing as we did that these natural laws are designed by the creator for the good of all life, we did not attempt to change the unchangeable. Instead, we did our best to learn those wonderful laws and attune ourselves with them.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

As we ourselves learned higher truths, we taught themselves to all the people and showed them how to apply simple methods that brought health and happiness into their lives. To study and apply all that we can discover of our creator's simple but wonderful principles brings us all the greatest of joys. Our delight is as your psalm has it in the law of the Lord.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You've been holding out on our boy Jim because he wasn't ready. Because he liked his steaks a little too much.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, he had to come and eat a bowl of fruit.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

What's left out of this recitation of events is that while Michael is commuting with Lanzara, his friend Jim Lindy, who just ate his first fiber in like 20 years, fighting for his life.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That poor man. Oh man, nearly killed him.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Our people, Lanzara continued, became aware that health is the physical body's normal reaction to a normal environment. So I know you're wondering, how do you make your environment normal so you can cure all your illnesses, right? Very simple. Number one, vital air. Number two, vital sunlight. Number three, vital food. And number four, vital water. That's all you need.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

See, there's four supreme essentials to human life. Right. And these are all in vital forms or as most of us do, you can assume them in dead forms. What is vital air? That means the air is alive.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

These are the four essentials, right? And if you have all of these, you can't get sick, right? You can't. But most people consume dead air, weak sunlight, dead food, and dead water.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Gotta be live food. Gotta make sure your water's not dead.

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Yes, and I do believe it.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

We're not getting nearly enough vital shit.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah. The sun sucks. Our water is super fucked up. It is very funny to me that he has to be talking about water that comes straight from a stream and is full of giardia. It is alive.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You don't want some. Yeah, he does have, there's a whole rant in here about how mineral water is killing you because rocks are dead.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You know, that is a contradiction in his cosmology that I don't think Michael X ever really grapples with.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They're going to poison you. They're going to make you drink Venusian hemlock because you're like, I don't know, guys, you have a lot of crystals around here. They seem pretty fucking dead to me.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah. So what they're telling our boy Michael is that his friend Jim Lindy, he's been breathing dead air instead of live, fresh, moving air. Inactive air. It's like a stagnant pool of water. It contains almost no positive electricity.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It's massive.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Dogs understand all of this, Molly. And that's why dogs drink water that is disgusting.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah. So, I guess we gotta get back to it, huh?

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They need vital water. None of that dead water.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I'm going to drink from a toilet somebody left out in the field filled with water from the rain and moss.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's right. The dogs love that shit. Cannot get enough of it.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I'm pounding a Dr. Pepper zero sugar, which feels very vital to me.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I wonder, I don't cook my kratom. Does that count? Is that vital?

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Your juice is alive.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I'm going to guarantee you this guy was pro-bucha.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

although he doesn't mention it maybe kombucha hadn't made it really into like new age stuff in the 60s that might have been a little early the early 60s that might have been a little too early for it i just want to say um oh yeah it's it's alive it's alive so how are we bringing how are we bringing vitality to our air I don't really get a clear example other than like going outside. Right.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

This is like, like, honestly, like a lot of especially earlier new age stuff. If you do like half of what the time, if you do what they're telling you to do, it's like fine. Because half of what they're telling you to do is like, you need to go outside and get natural sunlight, which like, yeah. You do.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's right. You get those chronic wasting disease prions in your fucking watermelon.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You will shit yourself inside out. Prions are very vital. They can't be killed. They can't be killed. I'm going to put out a book called The Preon Driven Life and just try to see how many of the new QAnon people I can get to just consume chronic wasting disease meat. Look, the government wants to tell you that preons are bad for you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

But the more of this stuff you get in your body, if preons can't die and you only eat meat with preons in it, you'll never die. Probably, yeah, there basically was. Because there was that British mad cow pandemic around the same time. It spooked a lot of people. Anyway.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So, look, if there's one thing this book is going to cause, it's diarrhea. Like, you are going up to a bunch of very clogged up 50s guys and saying, what if you only ate raw fruit? Massive quantities of it, as much as you can fit in your body. These guys did damage to the septic system in Los Angeles. That was a big part of why the fires got so bad.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It's like the landings at Normandy, right? It's one of those moments that just makes me, and I'm proud to be an American.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So this is their biggest advice, because Jim needs to get live food in his body. Live. Vital food in his body. Vital. Like the vast majority of humans on planet Earth, Jim Lindy has relied upon cooked food to energize his body. This is a serious error, for it is impossible to get something vital out of something dead. You're cooking electrons out. That's right.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

As they say, cooked and processed food is nine tenths dead for the life energy. Lifetronic energy that was originally in the food has been forced out of it into the atmosphere by the vibratory action of the fire.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And that makes me wonder, so if I sit by a cooking fire and just breathe in, am I okay? And he kind of says yes, because he's like, there are certain techniques that you can get more life energy out of the air, so you could be okay on cooked food.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Huff the steam. Apparently that does work to a degree, but as Lanzara notes, no true Adapter master on any planet eats cooked food, for it is contrary to natural law and always has a destructive effect. Always. Yeah. Oh, we get to the water here. Jim is drunk freely from the ordinary reservoir water and of water from mineral springs of this earth.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Although this water contains a certain amount of, of electronic energy derived through contract with sun and air. It also contains quantities of inorganic minerals. These minerals are too low in course in vibration to be used by the human body. He does kind of explain why it doesn't work like crystals. So yeah, they just get to positive and positive in your nerves where it's bad for you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

These guys definitely would not be happy to hear fluoride being in our water. However, I realize that live organic water is obtained by simply eating fresh, juicy fruits. Don't drink water. Get a camelback full of raw fruit. That's all you need to get you through the bush. Just the wettest fruits. The wettest.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

of the fruits nothing but that um so yeah that's that's that's uh what keeps you alive right that that that's what's gonna help you live forever so folks if you take nothing from this eat nothing but raw fruit and you will never die and become god or at least i did i did eat like 10 clementines earlier so i think i'm pretty fucking vital today

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You know, when you came on this, I was like, well, Molly looks like she has been powered by Venus. Like, you look like you can never get sick again.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, nothing goes with an old Hungarian newspaper like a Clementine. I'm always saying that. I've said that once, but it's true. You know what else is true, Molly? What?

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

This is very funny. I actually grabbed a couple of my crystals that I keep nearby for just such occasions in between the last couple of sentences that I read. We cut this out. But I focused on a pillar of light as I pressed in on my head. And Lanzara actually came down and was like, hey, man, how's it going on? And I was like, I'm doing good.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I'm trying to figure out how can I deliver to my audience? the maximum value and joy that they need in these difficult times in order to overcome the dark energy that's constantly assailing all of us. And he was like, I don't know, bro, maybe tell him to get off Twitter. But then he said, listen to these ads.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

We're back. What do you think Lanzara looks like, Molly? Probably really sexy. You think he's hot? I was going to ask. I was like, no, that's not a responsible thing to ask a colleague, do you think he's hot? But I was wanting to ask, do you think he's hot? Because I think he's hot.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, you can't go in the grass. No, that's my favorite planet because they tried to get rid of Wesley, which we should do. Anyway, that's outside of the point. I do agree, Molly, like a big unstated part of this is that like as silly as all of this sounds, I would do every piece of this if someone who was sufficiently sexy told me to.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Like if Lee Pace is like, oh, no, my old secret, nothing but raw fruit. I'm going to a raw fruit diet.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I know. I know. I know. Lee Pace has tremendous power right now. And it really says something about how good a person he is that he just posts videos of himself learning how to build a house with his bare hands.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Oh, man. No, Lee Pace has nothing but good advice, which is largely marry a dude and go live in the woods, building a farmhouse. Also be in several very good movies and TV shows.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Oh, you've never seen The Fall? Oh, Molly, you got to see The Fall.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, very different thing. It's a movie. It's great. He's also in Foundation, which is a TV show. Also great.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Oh, not Lee Pace. Not once you really get a good Lee Pace thing in there.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I'll send you some.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, no, no. We can't. I can't. I can't let this be. I can't let this be.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, no. We're doing a Lee Pace. Look, we're doing a Lee Pace. I got to bring you guys a good Lee Pace. All right, all right. This is a good Lee Pace shot. Okay, one sec, one sec. I'm doing a control and a plus.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Uh-huh. Me being a hack and a fraud really paid off.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I've just been clipping shit into Earthen View for years. All right, look at that. Look at that man. Look at that piece of man. Look at that shirt he's wearing.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

This is Foundation. It's a great show. Look at him. Look at him in that shirt.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's right. You're goddamn right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Anyway. All right, let's vibrate. Three Rivers to Cross, part three. Jim Lindy wakes up the morning after...

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Fighting demons on that throne. He harpooned the Dark Lord.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So he's had a dream. As Lanzara told our narrator, Michael. Yes. I'm sorry. He's had a dream. In this dream, a message was conveyed to him. He had three rivers to cross. And he crossed all these rivers. He was, you know, felt weak, but then he managed to find the strength and did it. I'm not going to read this guy's whole dream to you. I made one promise when I started podcasting, too.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

One was I won't sell baldness cures. And the other was that I won't read anybody's dream extensively. And I have kept those promises, you know, just to not be like Alex Jones. That's the only promises that I will keep. But yeah, so he has this dream and it convinces him that like and at the end of it, every every cell of his body radiates health and he sees the Grim Reaper flee from him in fear.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He's got so much fiber in his diet.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's that's what the fiber does is it builds like an Iron Man suit around you of like what used to be bananas and melons. Eagerly, he rushed to it is really it is very obvious at this point how deeply this affected Steve Jobs. Like he truly believed Lanzara was going to save him from fucking pancreatic cancer.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Or prostate, whichever one killed him.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, I think it was pancreatic. I think it's what got my mom. Eagerly, he rushed to a mirror to see if by some magic means the wonderful dream had come true. So real the experience had been to Jim, it seemed that surely it must have happened. But as he gazed into the mirror, he saw at once that no magic had taken place, at least any that was evident immediately to the eyes.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

His body was still sickly looking, prematurely old and lacking in vital strength. An unusually vibrant sparkle, however, shone strongly in his blue eyes, as if he had contacted living forces that could quite easily, if they so willed, transform him into the happy, healthy individual he longed to be. This briefly was the first inspiring dream contact as Jim related it to Roe while we walked.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So he's had a he's had a or I think bro is supposed to be me. Someone did a find replace in this manuscript that fucked it up a little bit. So they have a dinner which consists of fresh, delicious organic fruit sliced in a generous bowl topped with sunflower seeds, almond nut cream and a sprig of mint leaf.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, everything is uncooked. You can tell immediately when foods have been submitted to fire. And after breakfast, Jim has to write some letters while our author retires to his den. And then he describes his library, which is very exciting to me. I went to my library room to catch up on some serious reading.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

My library is somewhat unique in that it contains several thousand books chiefly of an occult or mystical nature. My collection of flying saucer. In 1960, he might have been. I desperately want to see because this is like I got to think if this if he's got thousands of books about like spaceflight, interplanetary books, flying saucer shit in 1960. He has every single one.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And most of this shit like is gone forever now. Like a lot of this did not get digitized. This man's library was a treasure trove of lost media that I would kill to get my hands on. We'd be set for years, Molly. We could do this twice a week. Think of the content. Think of how much content we'd get. Ah, if only. If you know where fucking Michael X's library went, let me know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I will fight and kill to get my hands on it. So he starts looking through his library to find something on the subject of health that he can recommend to Jim. And he's disappointed. I think this is his explanation for why he had to write these books.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's right. And every self-help book has that piece in the why I had to write it thing. And then... While he's reading, and don't you hate it, Molly? We all have this experience. You're deep in some research. You're in the stacks, as it were. And you get a call. You know, your phone starts buzzing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, mine doesn't ring either, actually. You simply can't exist that way anymore. But his phone is not ringing. He is getting called by telephot communication, which is there like a do not disturb for that?

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You turn your telephot back on. You're like, oh, shit, I missed a lot of calls from the fucking arborist. You're supposed to come and cut that tree down. Fuck me. Fuck me. I had one thing to do today.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You just go to sleep and it's like, hey, so Longzara here. Sorry, I'm in traffic right now. Hey, hey, come on, speed up, man. It's the fucking highway. Sorry. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yes, because I can only imagine, and I get the feeling Michael imagines, that Venus is just like Los Angeles in the stars.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And the error, he just moves right past it. And the error of reasoning from false or wrong premises. As long as Jim Lindy clings to the useless mental habit of worshiping, all caps, false gods, he will remain confused and sick. False gods are those ideas, beliefs, and practices based upon human ignorance, willful deceit, or mystifying complexity.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They invariably, all caps, block the constructive healing power of the natural, all caps, life forces. This is why most methods of healing human ills on your planet are so ineffective. Many of them are ridiculous. Some are actually destructive. Why?

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He had it coming. I think it happened multiple times. Oh, my gosh.

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Because they ignore the divine intelligence or God power within the individual and interfere with its natural activity, which is always working towards good. Yes.

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Yeah. I mean, what's there to even say about that?

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

The first river covers. Yeah, that's a real Ganges kind of situation there. So yeah, he goes on. All these rivers are basically the same thing, which is you've got to cleanse yourself of different things that are bad.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

The second river is emotional or disease. immediately, Molly. Oh, shit. Now, the second river is emotional or desire nature. The third river signifies the great need to cleanse all the cells of the physical body, as well as the atoms of which those cells are composed. Sounds exhausting.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

About once every three years, I manage to clean the baseboards in my house, and I always feel like a fucking god, so I can't imagine if you got around to cleaning your atoms, you'd feel great.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That makes it sound like it's like a Lifetron reuptake inhibitor, which actually seems like it could be good if you don't let the Lifetrons leave, then maybe they stay in you like an SSRI.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

But then if you eat too much fruit, which I think is like the Lifetron equivalent of MDMA, you get Lifetron syndrome?

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I'm vibrating at a too high I'm just imagining kids at the club eating fruit like passing out they have to get like fruit Narcan which I guess is just a steak I'm vibrating at such a high frequency yeah you keep like some McDonald's fries in a breakaway glass thing in order to bring them down if they get too high up into space

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You're too high. You're too high. Hit him with the beef tallow. Yeah, they're coming in there with a fucking sloppy Joe. The sprinklers just start dropping. Like in Blade, except it's in blood. It's just warm tallow. The second before you said that, I thought of Blade Molly. Speaking of vibrations, you and I are clearly we're clearly riding a similar wave right now. Oh, fuck.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Anyway, we'll move away from Jim's boring dream and to the prescription that Lanzara actually gives Michael while he's just trying to read a goddamn book.

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Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It's a cleansing fast, Molly. It's a cleansing fast. So day one.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Well, that's kind of the thing. The first you've got to get out the bad stuff that's blocking the Lifetrons. All you get on day one, distilled water with a little bit of lemon or orange juice in it. 1% juice to 99% water.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It's the deadest water. Well, not according to this guy. I don't know, Molly. Do you know any guys from Venus?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

They're in L.A. This book wouldn't have gotten written if they tried drinking from the L.A. River. That is just a solid mass of giardia.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

River is in fact too alive. Oh, man. It's so funny L.A. has a river and it's just concrete. The whole riverbed, everything's concrete. Yeah. No, there was a river going through L.A. and we just kind of made it all concrete. If you've watched Terminator 2, the great chase scene where Terminator's on the motorcycle, that's the Los Angeles River. They're driving on the riverbed. There's some water.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Not a lot, usually. Where did they put the river? They didn't put it anywhere. Everyone just moved to Southern California and bought cars and nature took its course. So we've got this cleansing fast. Day three, finally, is when you actually start to eat again and you get all you can eat of one fruit, right? Fruit of your choice?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Fruit of your choice. Yes. Including tomatoes. He reminds us those are a fruit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I want to say cherries, but I know that we lost a precedent that way.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I think probably mangoes because I feel like that's going to actually or mangoes or pears are going to like at least do the most to make me not miserable. Right. That's feel like they have the most body to them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Honestly, though, I tend to be a savory guy. So I think I might just be craving a tomato by that fucking point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah. This is before all these guys were scared of nightshades.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Oh, I can destroy. Oh, I got to tell you. You know what? We're going to close out on this, but I got to tell you my watermelon story. So the other day or other year, my buddy, my buddies.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

hanging out he's from Berlin he's back in the States and he's the kind of guy he's the guy who I had my muscle eating contest with and every every time one of us hears about a new weird eating thing thing we do it together and the thing I read about was someone being like hey if you ever freeze a watermelon then get naked in the shower and just start eating it like literally shove it into your face like get really hot outside on a summer day like doing yard work heavy outdoor labor to where you're like exhausted you've been out for hours you're like sweaty and sunburned then grab a half of a

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

frozen watermelon, walk into the shower and shove it into your face as you turn on the water. It's an ecstatic experience. And it actually does rule. Definitely try that out, folks. Eat a watermelon after coming in from the heat, a frozen watermelon in the shower. It rules. Just with your face, washing the juices off.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

The Venusians called me when I was trying to read a book, and they told me to do this. And so my buddy Lenny and I did it, and we both agreed, pretty good time. Together or separately? Separately.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

We had a good time. Anyway, try that. Try that, folks.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That's the episode. This is fine.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Did we learn anything? I don't know that we're returning to this particular book of Venusian health magic. But if people like this, there's some more old alien shit we can get to.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, the cover. I mean, I always worry about our listeners not seeing this. But like, yeah, it's just like it's clearly a crayon drawing of a spacecraft. shooting rainbows at a woman with long golden hair and flowers in her hair. It does look like a child's illustration. It looks like the cover of a coloring book. It looks like the color of a color.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It looks like a Lisa Frank original coloring book. Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Are you going to do it?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

House those fucking clementines. Look, you know, until next time. Now, here's my question. What about because I do kind of wonder if raw meat guys are descended from this where they're like, well, he's right about cooking stuff, but it doesn't have to be fruit. You know, there's a lot of bacteria on raw meat. Why not?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, especially if you're as obsessed with game as these guys are. There's a lot of parasites in there, too. It's extremely alive.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, nice sushi.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Oh, steak tartare can be pretty good. Well, Molly, where can people find you and your work? The steak tartare of writing about weird little guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Raw and uncut.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah. All right, everybody. Well, this has been Behind the Bastards, a podcast that this week was about Venus. Next week, I'm sure we'll be back with somebody more problematic.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Oh, that's good. That's good. OK, what is he doing at this? Like, what's the job title?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Uh huh.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Valiant Thor sitting in. So Donald Trump is presumably having meetings with Valiant Thor at this point.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No, but that was after Andy Dick played a role in the death of one of the greatest voice actors of any generation.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He's at the table. That's that's comforting, actually, you know, because he seems like he's got our best interests at heart. Speaking of which. Shall we get back into our book? Venusian Health Magic and Venusian Secret Science by Michael X. Barton. Just a beautiful tome.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It smells slightly of incense. I assume that's because wherever they print these books, a lot of people are burning a lot of incense. All right, so we're ready to get back into our friend Michael X. Barton and his story, his experiences with Lanzara and Shalana, who have transcended their earthly bodies, but not the patriarchy, as we noted in the last episode, Molly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You're ready to get healed. Well, this is going to tell you how.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, and the spoiler is it's just fruit. It's a shitload of fruit, Molly. Yeah. Lanzara. And so he reaches out after hanging out with his buddy. They go to bed. His friend is sick. He's been just getting worse and worse over the last couple of years. And Michael convenes with Lanzara to ask him, how do I help my buddy Jim get better? And...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

He did kind of help kill Phil Hartman. Yes. And this is relevant. It's not relevant, but it's come up because I just saw a clip of that. Hassan, the the the guy with the very popular leftist streamer guy interviewing one of the pod save bros. John Lovett. John Lovett, who I had, I had all this time in my head been assuming John Lovett's was on Pod Save America.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Lanzar, when he last communicated with me telepathically, had taught me many astounding facts regarding the wonderful health and amazing longevity of the people of Venus. To a true student of the occult or hidden side of life, none of the Venusian secret science is the least bit impractical or even fantastic.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You and I know that all the higher teachings of life are far more practical and true than the mere human mind can realize at first. In time, as the personal vibrations become raised into higher and still higher octaves of being, all limitations vanish, and man's spirit controls matter.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

We're back and I'm thinking about the time John Lovitz beat up Andy Dick.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Those of you who have studied Venusian's secret science, in which I related my series of contacts with Lanzara, know that he gave me special suggestions to observe in regard to the New Age diet as well as other matters. By applying these suggestions and sticking to them until they become positive habits in my daily life, I discovered to my great droid that my health improved immensely—

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

But that is not the only practical benefit. My mental and spiritual faculties became much more keener and active than ever before. So he's doing well. And he wakes up his friend Jim Lindy the next day. And he's like, look, I got to tell you about some of this Venusian magic I know. I'm very excited.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And Jim says, you talk as if you really know much more about the space people than you're letting on. He does. He does. He absolutely does. So he's happy that Jim is open-minded to his suggestions, and he takes him to his apartment. Yeah. My housekeeper, Lenore, occupies another apartment in the same vicinity.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

She is a gentle and gracious soul, deeply interested in the advanced teachings of the Venusians. By putting their teachings into practice in her own life, Lenore has succeeded in outwitting, to a great extent, the effects of father time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

unclear she is very youthful looking in her estimation mere calendar years are of little importance the thing that matters most is biological age as the flexibility or one's cells and arteries by true standards Lenore is indeed young I'm really trying to get a grip on what his relationship with Lenore is and it is very unclear it's his housekeeper but he seems to know a lot about her flexibility mm-hmm mm-hmm

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And again, within the parlance of these essays, the fact that he's talking about like, she's old, but she doesn't look it, much better than what you normally get. So I'm not going to harp too much on this stuff. So, yeah, Jim accepts the invitation to stay. They have dinner, and it's just fruit salad.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Jim has a great time because, quote, a vital natural diet is Earthman's first step in preparing himself physically and spiritually to meet the space people. You can't talk to the Venusians otherwise.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Uh, that's actually very likely. They were eating a 60s diet, which consisted of nothing but fried cheese.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, that's his problem. Since Michael left in 1953, Jim has not taken a shit. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It hurts so bad. I just imagine this like conclave. There's like 30 doctors in lab coats all chain-spoken. Paul Malls. No idea what's wrong. What could it be? I don't know. Why don't we go get some salisbury steak?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So we're returning to tradition on this stuff? Oh, good times. So, sorry, I skipped ahead a little bit earlier. Now is where he bids Jim goodnight, saying that, like, you know, tomorrow, tonight I'm going to talk to my Venusian master and then... We're going to start your health program.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

And then like, that doesn't make any sense at all. I mean, like conservative. I don't know much about John Lovett's other than that. He beat up Andy Dick, but absolutely not. It's some fucking not the same guy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

So I know you're wondering, Molly, the question everyone has, how do you get into contact with people from Venus? Psychically. Thank God. Michael details in this book his regular procedure. First, he raises the vibratory rate of his psychic brain centers, the pituitary and pineal glands.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

That is step one. Are there some steps? That's the step one. Because... Sub step. He places psychic gems, telolith and lapis lingua directly over his pituitary and pineal glands, and he exerts mild pressure with his hands. He then visualizes a beam of white light shining from the center of his forehead towards Venus.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

On this beam of light, I sent out my call to Master Lanzara and patiently awaited his response to the message. So he's pressing a crystal. Two crystals, Molly, two crystals. One crystal is not going to do it. If you've just got one crystal, you're getting nowhere.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

It's somewhere up in your head.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, I think that's something like that because the pineal gland is like right here. If I'm remembering various paintings by Alex Gray about taking DMT. Right. Yeah, it would make sense if the other one was back here. So he's got a crystal on either side of his head and he's thinking about a pillar of light and then he sends his message. You know, it's just like calling AT&T, Molly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

No one listening to this podcast has called AT&T in their entire lifespan. I don't know what to tell. Anyway, a minute passed, two minutes. Then suddenly I felt the same strange sensation that invariably happens whenever a message is sent to me from the space people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

I can only partially describe it by saying that it is a physical, mental, and spiritual feeling of at-one-ment with another living, thinking human being whose vibrations are extraordinarily harmonious." As his dynamic thoughts are conveyed one by one to my mind, I feel a sense of unusual peace, harmony, joyous stimulation, and timelessness.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

For a few precious moments, time ceases to be, and I am strongly aware only of his magnetic presence, his consciousness, and the living truth of his vital message. Briefly, this is the feeling of attunement that came to me after I had sent out my call to Lanzara.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

With this feeling, there also came into my awareness the special musical tone in the key of D, with which Lanzara makes his presence known to me by telethought. Now, Molly, that's a capitalized word. Obviously. That's telegram, but with your thoughts. Telethought. Although it is spelled like telegram, but for like thoughts, like the kids talk about, T-H-O-T. Oh, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yes. I wish John Lovitz was on that podcast now. I don't know any of his opinions. I assume most of them outside of his Andy Dick opinions are bad, but I just can't hear John Lovitz's voice and not think of the critic. And that makes me happy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, makes me giggle a little bit every time I come across that bad boy. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

creating and capitalizing is... The Venusians have a unique attitude towards capitalizing words. They've ascended from our grammatical system, Molly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Yeah, yeah, they're much better than us in that way, and every other way. As his dynamic thoughts are conveyed one by one to my mind, I feel a sense of unusual peace, harmony, joyous stimulation, and timelessness. Where does he feel that? That's unclear, Molly. Joyous stimulation could mean a lot of things, and in this context, most of them aren't things I want to think about Michael X doing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

For a few precious moments, time ceases to be, and I am strongly aware only of his magnetic presence, his consciousness, and the living truth of his vital message. Briefly, this is the feeling of attunement that came to me after I had sent out my call to Lanzara.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

With this feeling, there also came into my awareness the special musical tone in the key of D, with which Lanzara makes his presence known to me by telethought. His masterful thoughts followed the musical tone. Greetings, Michael X. Blessings of life, love, and ever-increasing light to you and all our loved ones on planet Earth.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

Once again, it is our privilege and joy to serve our Earth brothers and sisters and assist them in their upward evolution. You, beloved brother, were right in reasoning that we know of the serious illness of your dear friend Jim Lindy. We have been aware of his plight for some time, but it was not until recently... I love the idea. Billions of humans. This is the 60s.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Space Magic from Venus: A Literary Odyssey

You know, millions of people are being incinerated from the air in Vietnam. There is so much suffering in the world. But these Venusians are like, oh, yeah, Jim. Of course, we can't stop talking about Jim.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Gingrich was the architect of the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional election, which legitimately set the stage for nearly everything the right has been able to accomplish since.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Without the contract with America and his retaking of the House, it's possible that we see no George W. Bush presidency, no right-wing Supreme Court today, and at least a lot less of a right-wing drift on behalf of the Democrats who stumbled to fight him, right? This is a major move in U.S. politics.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I don't think a lot of folks whose awareness of politics has sort of started since the Trump years know much about this, but you had... you know, slick Willie stop George H.W. Bush from getting a second term. It drew, drove these people crazy. You have briefly the Democrats in control of government. And then in 94, Newt leads, I think they take, they pick up 54 house seats.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

It's this massive sweeping victory that comes with this thing called the contract with America, which is basically Newt introducing what becomes kind of the neocon platform, right? Uh, And this is like a really, I mean, it's one of the most important moments in modern electoral history, right?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Newt is one of the first conservatives to see a real promise in creating a right-wing system of education to push conservative values. In 1993, he crafted a college course taught at Reinhardt College called Renewing American Civilization. We're looking at this as like sort of a proto, what's that fucking guy who does the, Little kids TV bullshit.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Prager University. Right. This is a precursor to Prager University. Right.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah. Yeah. And it's eventually televised in a cable channel called Mind Extension University. I don't like that. Yeah. You got to extend your mind. Now, obviously, he was a ferocious opponent of gay rights and the degradation of American values in the modern era.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I think he'd have been sued before then about this.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

He talked a lot about how, you know, people today, especially because of, you know, Democrats gaining such cultural dominance are just, you know, awful compared to, you know, the glorious greatest generation who really understood morality. He also cheated on his second wife with a staffer who became his third wife while he was advocating for the impeachment of Bill Clinton over infidelity.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Now, this should not have been surprising to anyone who knew that in 1989, in an interview with The Washington Post, he explained that he fought with his second wife, not because it mattered to him what they were fighting about, but because he had a habit of dominance that had been stoked by his time in politics.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

He estimated to The Post that his marriage had a 53 to 47 percent chance of making it. Oh, man. Family values. 53-47.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Fascinating, fascinating odds to give your own marriage. Now, Newt has a long and fascinating history, and I do recommend reading that. There's a 2012 Mother Jones article with some of his best quotes that will link in the show notes. If you want a better understanding of the man, though, you know, that's that's that's a good way of getting it.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yep. I'm chipper. I'm doing good.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

But for our purposes today, we're going to be focusing on the novel 1945, which he co-authored. It is set in an alternate world where the U.S. defeated Japan, but Hitler never declared war on the U.S., and so we never got involved in a war with Germany. The Nazis won their war with the Soviets. They took most of their European holdings and forced them to accept a peace.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

They then boxed the Brits into a corner. A few years later, they carried out a surprise attack on the United States in order to kill our nuclear scientists and stop the completion of what in our universe we know as the Manhattan Project. Now, because of where this takes place, I'll spoil it for you, Molly. This book centers around the Waffen SS invading East Tennessee.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I had like six last night. I tried to get to bed early, but I really couldn't get to sleep before like 3.30 in the morning. I don't know. Well, it's behind the bastards, and we're all trying not to obsess over the election. And... I thought, you know, we all might be hoping that history goes a different way depending on what happens today. So why not read a work of alternate history?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

That's what this book is about. How'd they get all the way to Tennessee? They've got their wonder weapons. They've got these, Newt is, again, he's like a history channel, history buff, right?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

So a huge part of this book is like the Nazis building all of these wonder weapons that were mostly theoretical during the actual war, including this like massive, you know, bombing type plane that they had kind of been talking about making that probably never would have worked out. Like it's all sorts of like nonsense sci-fi weapons, right?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

It's where the nuclear program was headed. That's not true. Well, actually, I think it was initially before they moved to Los Alamos. I think they had it was somewhere in like the southeast before they moved to Los Alamos that they had like the early stages of the nuclear program. And I think he's just kind of positing a much more primitive nuclear program.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

But I'm going to pull up the book, Molly, because at this point you should see this bad boy. Look at this. Look at this. Look at that cover art. There we go. There we go. Beautiful cover art. Look at the size of his name there. It looks like the book is called Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich, 1945. Yeah, like it's a book about a two-year-old Newt Gingrich.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah. Now, I want you to look at the back here. First off, Newt's smaller than I expected when you see him in a photo like this. This is a picture of him with his co-author, William R. Forstian, and with Jim Bain, who is the owner of Bain Publishing. Yes. And we're going to be talking a lot about Bane publishing.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

No, not at all. Spelled differently. Has not broken Batman's back. I do really like the Hitler on the back here. You can see him here. He just looks so happy.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Wrong camera. Wrong camera. Other camera. It's hard to figure out here.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

That's a good Hitler. Look at him. Look at him.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Oh, wow. Because, yeah, I thought he was actually tall. So these guys. So I think it's William Forstian is just kind of a fucking mountain of a man. Yeah, he's got to be like six, three, six, four. It's a big guy. Jim Bain, not a big guy. Also has the and I say this with all love to pornographers. He has the smile of a pornographer. Right. Like, look at that.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

That's a man who's looking at you naked. There's no other way to describe the look on Jim Bain's face. Speaking of people who look at you naked, our sponsors don't. They would never do that. They're gentlemen, you know, or gentle thems, because I think they probably don't identify as a binary gender, given that they are corporations. Raytheon is non-binary. Raytheon is definitely non-binary, yes.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Speaking of non-binary, here's more ads.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

You know, we love doing book episodes over here because it's... Let's me rest a little bit. The trouble is finding a book. You can't just use any book. And it's sometimes hard to figure it out. And thank God I got very lucky. Margaret Killjoy was over at my house recently. Not bragging, although I am kind of bragging. You know some celebrities. I know some celebrities. I know a famous Killjoy.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

who's also a famous Margaret. And she brought me a book that a fan had given her at an event because our fans are unhinged and have just decided sometimes we should hand one member of the team an absolutely terrible piece of literature to give to another member of the team. And the book that I have received is 1945 by Newt Gingrich. Molly? Wow. What if things had been different?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

And we're back. So I want to get into the book jacket of this mamma jamma. Let's see what this is about. And you can tell right away on the inside, this was a 1995, 24 US dollars book. That is way, way too much money to spend on Newt Gingrich's 1945. Holy shit.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah, yeah. This is like maybe like a $15 book. Man, that's a lot. That's a lot. So... Introducing Lieutenant Commander James Martel. He's the right man in the right place at a very bad time. The year is 1945. In Europe, the Third Reich reigns triumphant. The Soviet Union is a fragment of its former self, and Britain has accepted a dictated armistice.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

In the Pacific, after a brief, sharp war with Japan, America is the only significant military presence. Now the world's two superpowers are... Thank you for watching. Join Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and fellow historian William R. Forstian in a world that, save for Adolf Hitler's inexplicable folly in prematurely declaring war on the United States in 1941, would have been.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

No, this is he's speaker of the House. This is a year after he like orchestrates a complete upending of U.S. electoral politics.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

No, no. I think we can all agree this was a better use of his time than doing his job. I just find it very funny that he describes himself and his co-author as fellow historians, because as a spoiler, they are not. Neither of them are historians. Well, Forstian is a little bit of a historian, but he's like a historian who went immediately into writing alternate histories.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

He is a professor of history at Montreat College in North Carolina. But Montreat College is like a small- But that's not a real college. Presbyterian. Yeah. Look, I'll give a partial to Forstian, right? Because again, he spends most of his career, like his big job is writing a bunch of articles for Boys Life magazine, as well as young adult novels. And does that make you a real historian? Eh.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I'm going to put that on the cusp. But fucking Newt Gingrich certainly is not a real historian. Forstian's main publisher was Bain, who back in the early to mid-1990s was a major purveyor of pulp sci-fi and alternate history books. That changed as a result of 1945, which due to Gingrich's star power was expected to be a major hit. You can tell just by the look of this cover, right?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Newt's name is massive. They're charging 24 fucking dollars for this thing. And yeah, it's a catastrophe, Molly. It's one of the greatest disasters in fucking alt history publishing. If you read online forums where alt history fans discuss this book, the rumors, credible ones. Or that Newt promised Bane he was going to devote a lot of time using his platform. Newt is a famous PR hound, right?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

He's constantly talking to the Washington Post. He's willing to say, like, shitty stuff about himself to them, as we've kind of covered earlier, because his attitude is, I should always be in the Post, right? So Bane is like, well, old Newt, he knows how to get all the attention we need to move some real copies. Let's buy, like, 100,000 copies of this fucking book.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I know. It's so funny. And yeah, Newt fails to do the actual PR that he had promised to do. And as a result, 1945 is one of the biggest flops in publishing history. According to the Washington Post, for every 100 copies of this book that were sent out by Bain, 81 were returned unsold, leaving the publisher with almost 100,000 copies sitting around their warehouse.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

The scuttlebutt is that this was such a flop, it nearly killed Bain entirely. While I was doing my pre-search for this episode, I found a thread on a forum titled AlternateHistory.com from 2007. Users speculated about why the sequel never came to pass. One user, BCO, wrote, "...1945 practically bankrupted Bane Books.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

They assumed a prominent figure as Gingrich would lead to huge sales, printed up a lot of books, couldn't sell many of them. The idea of a sequel was out of the question." Another user, Amerigo Vespucci, replied with added context, "...to make matters worse, there was a falling out between Jim Bain and Forstian over creative differences in the story.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

What if things had been different? Do you know much about old Newt in this book?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

In part, Forstian wrote the story as a single volume, but in order to better capitalize on the name on the cover, Bain split it into two volumes. There were other differences as well, and Bain never really discussed the matter in public. It left a bad taste in his mouth." Even with Bane's passing, I doubt we'll ever see the second volume. There'd be too many legal problems surrounding it.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Your best bet might be to wait 20 years or so until Forstian is dead too. He is still alive. Enter a law school to become a crackerjack lawyer and publicist, and then start negotiations to have the second volume released from his estate. I love the thought of a man who's that dedicated to a 1945 sequel. I need to know how it ends. A 30-year plan to get that book.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Hitler is still alive at the end of this book. That's what I'm saying.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I think the way this book is supposed to explain things with Hitler is that like he's in a horrible plane crash in 41. And so he gets all fucked up and his people are able to like negotiate a peace with the USSR. And as a result, he kind of loses his mind. Like he's just like this damaged, broken figure of a man in the book.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah, he was doing so great before. Because this is an alt history thing and because Newt is the kind of dude that he is, the main Nazi in this is a guy named Otto Skorzeny, who is a lot of people, he was a real guy. He was one of the fathers of like modern special forces tactics. Like Skorzeny is a major figure in the development of like that kind of shit. I did find in a, there's a fucking, uh,

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Orlando Sentinel book review that says that he died during an attack on Crete, which is not true. He lived until the 70s. He moved to Spain so that Franco would protect him. And he lived a fairly long life for a dude like him. But yeah. I wanted to start here with one of the most – probably the most famous passage in this book, right? The opening scene, which features a high-powered D.C.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

politician who happens to be, if I'm not mistaken, the Speaker of the House.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yes. This is Newt's self-insert. And remember – 1995, this is right around when Newt Gingrich is attacking Clinton and saying that he should be impeached.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

He describes his self-insert character as having an affair while he, as the real Speaker of the House, was in this moment having an affair. Okay, we have some honesty. And specifically, the point of this chapter is his self-insert character hands over the secret to a Nazi spy, who is the person he's having an affair with, that the U.S. is working on creating an atomic weapon.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Like, the inciting incident in this is his self-insert being compromised and giving up nuclear secrets in order to get laid. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

The Speaker of the House and having an affair with a staffer.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

It's amazing stuff. September 1st, 1945, Washington, D.C. Also, I don't know why they do this, but they spell prologue wrong. That's not one of the ways to spell that. At the end of this, I've only ever seen it spelled with an E at the end of it. I don't understand why they're doing it this way. But darling, Germany and the United States are not at war.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

He has written a lot of fiction.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

What harm is there if we share the occasional bit of gossip? "'Surely you don't think that I, a loyal Swede?' The question trailed off in a lethal pout as his beautiful and so very exotic mistress stretched languidly, mock-innocent appeal in her eyes. Still, he mustn't let her see just how much she moved him. A relationship had to have some balance.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I mean, he doesn't spend a lot of his political career does not take up a lot of time.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

He stretched in turn, reached out for his cigarettes and gold-plated Ronson on the Art Deco nightstand with its Tiffany lamp. Since he wasn't sure what to say, he made a production out of lighting up and enjoying that first luxurious after-bout inhalation. What an unsexy way of talking about the aftermath of sex.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I think, okay, so this is, oh, maybe this is what OpenAI used to create their AI. Is it all based on Gingrich's 1945?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

What a nightmare. What a hideous, hideous nightmare. So he's having after sex smokes with this lady who's very obviously a Nazi spy.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, here is Newt not at all talking about his actual marriage and actual infidelity. Playfully, to drive home the potential loss, she bit his shoulder, then kissed it better. Oh, hell, I don't want to. I wish I could just divorce Miss Little Goody Two Shoes. I like this arrangement. She laughed softly. Mistress to the chief of staff of the president of the United States.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Oh, sorry, the chief of staff. So it's not exactly him, right? It's just basically him. Nice title, don't you think? Such a book I could write. Mayhew shuddered at the thought, don't even joke about it, but he could trust her to be discreet. He was sure he could trust her. More to cover his moment of doubt than for any other reason, he harked back to her initial gambit.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

One thing we really don't have to worry about is a war between Germany and the United States. It just isn't in the cards. There's no way it could happen within the next year or so. And after that, we'll take it from me, but nobody is going to dream of messing with the United States, not even Adolf Hitler. I don't think there's going to be a war either, but you seem so sure.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

What is your big secret? You were so excited about it when you came in here, and now you won't tell me. Suddenly, the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana the Huntress. Tell me, she hissed. Mayhew looked at his delicious interrogator. For a moment, her intensity almost frightened him. Then he was overcome by it, by her.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

His had been a strict and starchy upbringing, and his marriage had not been born of love, but of political opportunity, though his wife didn't know that. So he capitulated. Besides, he wanted to tell, what good were secrets if you couldn't share? Okay, I surrender. Lucky for you, she purred, then laughed. Such games we have, she whispered in his ear. You play wonderfully. Now tell.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Having given in, characteristically, he stalled. Sure, you're not looking for a story for your Swedish newspaper? She just looked at him. He could tell she was tiring of the delay. And then he tells her that we're making a nuke. It's okay.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

No, no.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah. No, they never would. I think that's very funny. I think there's so much off-putting language in this book. Like thinking of Newt Gingrich writing the word sex kitten gives me like physical shivers up and down my spine. And it should do the same to you. But you know what doesn't make me shiver?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah, this is what he really wanted to do. And my God, I wish we had some sort of program in place where when we find some guy who has like an artistic dream, but also weird right wing politics, we just kind of like swallow our pride and fund, like have a government agency buy up copies of their books so they feel like a success. Anything to keep them from running for office. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

That gives me a little shiver. That gives me a little shiver.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah, joy, shiver, you know, sure. Why not? The products and services that support our pod.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

No. They're neutral. They're neutral. They're cat people.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Uh-huh.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Stand your ground.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah, what if, let Hitler paint, let Ben Shapiro make his dog shit TV show about fucking law students.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

And we're back.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah, we're half-assing our 1945 episode.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah, well, she does, and Hitler invades East Tennessee.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Molly, there's more than one guy who loves Hitler and has a compound in East Tennessee.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

God willing, the election is almost certainly over, which means, you know, find a way to communicate to the past and let us know so that we can gamble on it. That's that's what I'd like you to do. Anyway, speaking of gambling, you know, who knows all of the words to the classic song, The Gambler, our guest today, Molly Conger. Molly, do you know when to hold them?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

We have to Truman show these people, right? Run a fake, you know that White House correspondence dinner that supposedly got Trump committed him to run for office? Hold a fake one of those where everybody just talks about how nice he is and how much they admire him, you know? Put him in a bubble. Yeah, we really have to put these people in bubbles. It's the kindest thing for all of us. Oh, man.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

So there's a Gizmodo article I found called Newt Gingrich should go back to writing science fiction.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Kind of urging him to finish this book. It has some interesting stuff to say about this piece of fiction. In any case, whether 1945 is as historically dodgy as many have claimed, it contains several vital elements of total awesomeness. For one thing, the triumphant Nazi Germany spends its time developing what the back cover describes as science fiction super weapons. You think I'm kidding?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

How about rockets that are remotely guided via television cameras or super jets with drop tanks to provide ground support? Plus super rockets and hydrogen powered submarines.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

You gotta stick super in front of it, otherwise people won't know that it's better than the normal kind of thing. Every villain in this book is hideous and crazy. At some point, Skorzeny gets injured and loses an eye, so he can get an eye patch, or maybe some kind of cyborg eye. In this passage, our hero, the square-jawed Jim Martell, tries to shoot down Skorzeny's plane and fails.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Now, ammunition gone, he could only watch as the second and then the third plane lifted off. Unlike the second plane, the third stayed low as the pilot pushed it in just enough left rudder to cause the plane to crab onto the edge of the grass strip so that it passed by not 20 feet away from where Jim stood.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Otto Skorzeny looked down, grinning demonically, and James Martell finally understood the meaning of hatred. There's apparently like three or four times where a character learns the meaning of hatred, and that's because Newt Gingrich, as an educator, likes it when people expand their minds.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

For a little bit more coverage of some of the awkward lines in this book, I'm going to turn to an Orlando Sentinel piece titled, As a Writer, Gingrich Makes a Good Politician. Good title for a book review. 1945 is cluttered with awkward lines like, the exhaust vapors that swirled in through the car's open window stank like hell itself.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Then there's this, the scene brought to Martel's mind, the absurd image of a cobra tenderly protecting a baby. Much of the pre-pub- What's bringing that to mind? Why would that bring that to mind? Have you ever seen that? Is that a thing you can picture because you've witnessed it? Yes.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

You know, this reminds me of a thing no one's ever seen. Much of the, yeah, it's very funny. Much of the pre-publication hoopla surrounding 1945 involved its supposedly steamy sex scenes, some of which were exerted last year in the New York Times Magazine when the book was still in draft form. Gingrich vowed to tone down the sex.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

He succeeded, for example, in bed with his, yeah, I mean, we just read that passage, but I love that there were leaks of this that were too horny and he had to change the final draft. Yeah. There's also a lot of- Who was leaking these? It's gotta be Newt, right? Himself. Who else would leak these, right? He's just testing the water.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

There's a good amount of George H.W. Bush slander in this. Gingrich talks about, like has a character who knew him when he was a pilot because George H.W. Bush fought in World War II. who says if you needed someone to lead a group straight into enemy flack, he was your man, which is funny because he was in fact shot down during the war.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

And he had to also edit those portions to be nicer to George H.W. Bush, which is cowardly new. Like you you've blown up any sort of legitimacy your book had when you do stuff like that. Anyway, I want to move to a passage midway through the book that's set in Winston Churchill's office.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Because one of the things that happens while the Germans invade East Tennessee, Rommel conducts a landing in Scotland. Of course. They're moving down through Scotland. The Desert Fox is going to the Moors. No one better to conduct a war on the Scottish Moors than the Desert Fox. Just port the Africa Corps right on over. They'll appreciate the breeze.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

So, yeah, we're going to be reading 1945. As you might guess, it is a World War Two alternate history. Yeah, of course, Sophie. What else could it be? What else could it be? And this is a particularly that.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

So I want to talk about this just because there's a little bit here that's kind of relevant to modern politics. Here's Winston Churchill talking. And one of his aides says – He's talking to one of his aides, a guy named Andrew. For my part, I've ordered a secret alert for the Royal Air Force starting at midnight.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Also, the army will move on spring maneuver schedule up so as to increase troop strength throughout England. I'm also going to make a speech before the house next week, accusing Hitler of preparing to launch an attack against us. Winston, I wish you wouldn't do that. Why? Because the America First crowd will go to town on you, that's why.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

They'd claim it was part of an ongoing plot to drag us into yet another European conflict. They'll say it was a repeat of what you and Roosevelt tried to do in 40 and 41. They'll say you're deliberately trying to provoke Hitler, that you came back to office intending to do just that, to finally drag us into a showdown with Germany. If you make that speech, I won't be able to back you up.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

A cold, static-laden silence was the only response. Even Roosevelt didn't start to move openly until after the 40 elections, you know, Andrew continued after a moment's pause. You know that I agreed with him 100%. I could see the threat as far back as the denouement of Versailles and the move into the Rhineland.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I knew then, and I know now, that the maniac son of a bitch would never stop on his own, and that nothing short of a full-scale war with the United States could stop him. We should have been in it back in 41. If it hadn't been for that damned accident, he'd have declared war on us after Pearl Harbor. He all but told me that himself. In 41, we'd have won easily. Now he's 10 times more dangerous.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I just love that the America first guys are the bad guy in 1995, and fucking Gingrich is absolutely going to wind up on that side here. Yeah. Now, there's a couple other fun moments in another chapter not long after this. We go to Rommel talking with some of his people, and there's a line here that's very funny.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Americans would be startled to discover the degree of camaraderie that existed not just between different ranks within the German officer corps, but between officers and rankers.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Though the practice had its roots in the mutinous conditions prevalent in the German military at the end of the Great War, perhaps Germans could afford the informality because German society was so thoroughly status conscious.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Whereas Americans, so unready to grant superiority to anybody, needed the outward manifestations of rank because otherwise they would lose track of who issued orders and who took them. It's an interesting description of American culture.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Oh, yeah, of course. Of course. And it's it's it's a wild one. I'm going to tell you that right now. So. Our author for today, I'm going to go through a little bit of a scripted portion here, is Newton Leroy Gingrich. Leroy.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah, informality in the German military. I think he's trying to talk about like Auftragstaktik, which was this kind of anti... It was this kind of flattening of military hierarchies in certain specific ways that came about as a result of like...

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Combat in World War One, where you were saying basically like unit leading officers should have a lot of freedom to like conduct advances and kind of carry out attacks in a way that sort of they see fit rather than having to follow orders to the letter from above. Right. It was good.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I don't know that I would say the German military was particularly informal between officers and civilians, especially since like the Prussian Junker officer class was still a major part of the German military in this period.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I think they I mean, they come in from the air. Right. Of course. And then I mean, I can tell you what happens, which is that Sergeant Alvin York and a bunch of elderly veterans form a militia and stop the Nazis.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

largely that's who saves the day. Cause Newt's got to have his like pro second amendment stuff. So he like puts it in the mouth of like Sarge, an elderly Sergeant York fighting off the old men of Appalachia. Just like the old men of Appalachia.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I could buy that. I mean, the Waffen-SS proved in the actual World War II that they were not very good at fighting an insurgency. And I think that Appalachia is worse terrain to fight an insurgency than anywhere in Western Russia. Yeah. So I'm going to say, yeah, probably, probably that would have gone bad for the Nazis.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Well, the problem with this book, because that isn't it. That's a book I would read, especially if someone like that. Someone less problematic like Harry Turtledove had written the fucker.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

But that's not like – Newt actually – Newt and Forsgen kind of fall for a standard pitfall in writing fiction here, writing particularly like speculative past fiction, is you have this point that's the actual thing that you want to get that's actually interesting, which is like an insurgent war in Appalachia between the Nazis –

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

and like elderly american world war one veterans that's a fun premise but you don't get to it until the very end of the book right by the end of the book hitler's you know geared up for a full-scale invasion and we're actually getting ready to have like you know that he set up like a naval conflict between like u.s carrier groups and nazi like the german navy like there's a lot of cool stuff that's happening by the end potentially

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Leroy Gingrich. Yeah, you can't not do the Leroy Jenkins thing, which is just going to be incomprehensible for anyone in our audience that's like younger than their mid-30s. You don't know who Leroy Jenkins was. You don't remember the old times. Pieces of shit. Sorry. Anyway, there's a post in the subreddit now saying that I'm an old man and all my references are old man references.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

But it's not really a part of the story because he feels the need to like go back much further. Like you should always start a book at the thing that's most interesting to you. Right. Like you don't actually want to waste a lot of time building up to that, even if you're like, well, people are going to want to know how we got here. No, they're not. They don't give a shit.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Start at whatever is most interesting. You know, it's a rookie mistake. Maybe if Newt hadn't been so busy being the speaker of the house, he'd have been able to get it right.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I think the sequel is a banger. It was all apparently intended to be one book that's too long. But yeah, you know, I don't know. We probably don't need to go through this whole thing, especially because it's the election.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

It's a fine name. Yeah. It's a fine name. Also played by Christopher, what's his name? From The Lord of the Rings. I don't know. I think I'm good on this book. Yeah. We hit 45 minutes, right? That's all we owe you on our off week. This is an off week. We're taking a breather. We're trying not to focus too much on the news because nothing interesting is going to happen yet. You in the future know.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

So just scream at past Robert and Molly about what happened.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

So please do send a message. This is it for the whole world. Thank God. Thank goodness. Anyway, Molly, how do you feel about the alternate past? What's your favorite World War II counterfactual? Do you spend much time thinking about, like, for example, what if the Germans hadn't invaded Russia but had focused all of their military might on North Africa? You know?

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Oh, that's a shame. I spent a lot of time doing World War II counterfactuals.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Oh, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

So are you more of a World War I counterfactual guy? No. Like what if Serbia had taken over the Austro-Hungarian Empire? What if by World War II, the great land power in Europe was the Serbian Empire?

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I'll tell you one thing. We never would have stopped putting cigarettes in movies, right? If Serbia is like a China-sized market for American television and film, cigarettes don't ever get cut out of Hollywood, you know? So that's good. That's my prediction. Anyway.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Hey, there have already been five bomb threats against polling locations in Georgia.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I'm not going to say there will be no acts of terrorism.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah. Speaking of weird little guys, Newt Gingrich, probably a lot littler because he's extremely old now. So he's weird.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Beautiful. And presumably, if this book is true, she's plying him for nuclear secrets. Hey, you know what?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

And the thing that makes me angriest is they're like, he never references The Simpsons from any episode later than the year 2000. And I'm sorry, I never referenced The Simpsons episode from later than 1998 because that's when they stopped being good.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Wow, what a do-nothing job. I know. Make me ambassador to the Vatican. Because you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get into those catacombs. I'm going to steal some saints' bones, you know? I'm going to have a whole necklace made out of the bones of saints.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Oh, wow.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Anyways, hopefully... The Pope has a time machine. Hopefully things aren't... I love the idea that the Pope has a time machine because my imagination is rather than doing like anything that would help the Catholic Church, he just repeatedly goes back in time to like put a thumbnail on Martin Luther's chair. Like he's just constantly fucking with Martin Luther a little bit.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Oh, oh. Well, then I would go look at dinosaurs.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Obviously, Robert. That's the only thing I would be interested. I'm proud to say I wouldn't stop any historical crimes with a time machine. I'm doing nothing but dinosaur related stuff if I get access to a time machine. Yeah. Anyway. That's what I'm doing. Go have sex with Newt Gingrich and get secrets from him.

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We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Jesus Christ. There's only one way to learn.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah. Okay. And, you know, wear a rubber. You don't know where Newt's been. Jesus Christ. Newt doesn't know where Newt's been at this point.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Thank you, Sophie. But you've called me an old man on the show.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I'm not. They haven't even seen Alien 4. These scrubs, these babies. None of them know what Sequest DSV was. Molly, did you watch Sequest?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Oh my God. Oh my God. Go get a learner's permit. Anyway.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

We might be.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

When to run.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Oh my God.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Newton Leroy Gingrich was born two years before the title of his novel on June 17th, 1943. Newt's father was a career soldier, but Newt takes a different path. He's actually an art student. He gets like an MA in the mid-60s. And like any guy who could during the Vietnam War, he gets a deferment from being drafted by arguing that he was a student and a young father.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I do love watching Alex Jones sing that and the Highwaymen, Poncho and Lefty.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Remember that because there's going to be a funny coda to that a little bit later in this.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

story we all know newt's a family man we all know newt's a family man we all know newt's a big not fighting in wars but not a big not having wars guy uh newton is elected to congress in 1979 in an address to college republicans before his election he said i think one of the great problems we have in the republican party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

it's the podcast that it is on election day but you won't hear this on election day you know how the election has gone you listening have information you'll hear this in december yeah yeah probably in december which hopefully means the election is over by then but who knows god willing Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, they've done a terrible job, a pathetic job. In my lifetime, in my lifetime, I was born in 1943. We have not had a competent national Republican leader, not ever. And it's very clear from that context that a competent leader is a mean one, right?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Like that's what he's missing. Like Richard Nixon's just too nice. What politics really needs is more vitriol. Yeah, it needs more real assholes. I think that's interesting because it makes a case that I think is an important thing to understand if you're trying to like puzzle out why we are where we are now in American politics.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

And the basics of that case is, well, because Republicans lost their minds when Nixon had to step down. And everything they've done since then has been dedicated to stopping, making sure that no other Republican would ever have to leave office no matter what crimes they committed, right? Well, there's no modern precedent. Yeah, no modern precedent for that.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

That's the most jealous I ever am of him because we're not allowed to use, we have no licensing agreement with any company that owns songs. Does he? Yeah, he must. Otherwise he wouldn't be allowed to air them like that.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

So in 1985, as a congressman, Newton told an interviewer, I think from the Washington Post, who asked about his deferment during Vietnam, quote, "...given everything I believe, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over." If only, Newt, I do wish you had gone to fight in Vietnam.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Now, that same year when President Reagan held a summit with Soviet Premier Gorbachev, Newton called it, quote, the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Chamberlain in 1938 at Munich. I love the idea that Gorbachev is a Hitler figure. This guy who wouldn't even shoot back during the protests that overthrew his government is like a Hitler, you know?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

The future Pizza Hut spokesman Gorbachev. as a Hitler kind of figure. RIP Hitler, you would have loved Pizza Hut. That does tell you where our boy Newt is on like the political alignment chart, right? He sees Ronald Reagan as a fucking Neville Chamberlain type. Now that same year, Gingrich made the news for comparing a house race that was in question in Indiana to the Holocaust.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Here's a quote about it. In what way? I'm going to read you the quote, Molly. Here's a quote about it as relayed by an article in Mother Jones. And it starts with Newt here. We've talked a lot in recent weeks about the Holocaust, about the incredible period in which Nazi Germany killed millions of people, and in particular, came close to wiping out European Jewry.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

If someone said to me two days ago, talking frankly about the McIntyre affair in which Democrats refused to seat the winner of a House race until they'd conducted a recount, And the efforts by the Democratic leadership to not allow the people of Indiana to have their representative, but instead to impose upon them someone else. Something in which he quotes German poet Martin Niemöller.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I think there, cause there are like, there are like, like ways that you as a broadcaster can just like make a deal for access to, you know, they have X number of songs and we can use them for whatever. I think that exists. I think that's gotta be what he does.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I have never quite, until tonight, been able to link it together. Niemöller, the great German theologian, said at one point, when the Nazis came for the Jews, I did nothing. And when the Nazis came for me, there was no one left. Right? Sorry, I think it's Niemöller. But this, like...

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

So basically, the Democrats are like, well, until we finish a recount, we're not going to sit this guy because there's questions about the election. And fucking nude is like, this is the same as the Holocaust.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Did they murder everybody? It just kind of seems like they were doing a thing that legally is a part of the election, like having a recount, waiting to seat the elected leader until you do the recount. Is that the same as killing millions of people in factories of death?

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

I think any time you reference it, you have to lose like it should be like a Yakuza thing where you have to give up one of the joints of a finger. Right. And maybe that'll cause people to be like a lot more careful about when they deploy that bad boy.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Amazing.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

We Read Newt Gingrich's World War 2 Alternate History

What were the groups, Terry? Anyone who goes for any group is a Nazi. What were the groups, Terry? Yeah. First, they came for the Nazis. And I did not speak out because I was not a Nazi. Oh, man. Abuse. It's very funny. Abuse. Okay, so let's get back into it. Newt served as the Republican Speaker of the House from 1995 to 99.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's actually unethical for us to study this because there's zero evidence it's helped anybody and we know it hurts people. We just can't do this to kids. Now, they've done some studies on lab rats that have showed that drugging lab rats needlessly with chelation therapy causes cognitive problems, right? So they're like, we just really can't justify doing this.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And this is good logic for ethical scientists. But the crazed parents and con artist doctors of the biomedical movement take this as evidence that big pharma has killed another attempt to uncover the truth, right? That's why. They don't care about hurting kids. They just want to keep selling us... Expensive medicine that actually isn't as expensive as the fake medicine. That's so awful.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

You see similar stories wherever you look at these nonsense treatments for autism. In 2007, the Cochran Collaboration, an independent evaluator of medical research, reviewed the efficacy of casein and gluten-free diets as treatments for autism, which had become another bugbear for biomedicine.

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The idea that some of these biomedical people have is that gluten and casein interferes with kids' brain receptors, and advocates would cite studies which prove that proper diet could eliminate the symptoms of autism. But, per Scientific American, Cochrane identified two very small clinical trials, one with 20 participants and one with 15. The first study found some reduction in autism symptoms.

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The second found none. A new randomized controlled trial of 14 children, reported this past May by Susan Hyman, Now, of course, Logic and evidence never drives the reactions you want to see in cases like this, right? Fitzpatrick's book includes a quote from an anti-mercury campaign in the US, Generation Rescue. This is, what's her name? The Oprah ladies, Jenny McCarthy's organization.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this statement was made initially in response to Tariq Nadama's death. You might want to recall here that Tariq was diagnosed with high aluminum levels, not mercury. But whatever. Quote, we are not desperate parents willing to try anything.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

We are educated, caring parents who have done thousands of hours of research and administered dozens of medical tests on our own children under the care of knowledgeable physicians. Wow.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And then she said she's cured him. She says she's cured him. Yeah. Oh my God. I hope that kid is okay. I don't know. Now, this kind of talk, it's like, well, we've actually, we're the experts. We've done so much to understand this. It's very common among the loudest mouthpieces of the movement, which includes Jenny McCarthy.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

We've discussed before her appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which played a massive role in igniting the anti-vax movement in the US. McCarthy, whose son Evan was diagnosed with autism, describes herself as having a PhD in Google. She does not. But she did have a role to play in the death of that five-year-old who burnt alive in a hyperbaric chamber.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

In 2016, Jenny pivoted from her successful anti-vax campaign and started advocating hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a treatment for ASD. The scientific argument she used was that people with ASD have – and this is autism spectrum disorder, right? Yeah. The scientific argument she used was that people with ASD have inflammation in their brains, which is true.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

One thing you can see is that there's a level of inflation in the brains of people with autism – inflammation in the brains of people with autism. We don't know why. We don't know like – How this relates to the... Like, we just know it's there, right? So there's a lot of debate about this, but it is something you see.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And it is true that hyperbaric therapy has decreased other kinds of inflammation, but not in the brain. Yeah. Like, stuff doesn't always... It's not all the same, right?

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah. It's hard. Yeah. And so it's this thing where you are taking two unrelated facts and using them to put kids in these death tubes. Yeah. Now, actual analysis of the evidence, because there have been studies on this, shows that the only basis for hyperbaric therapy as a treatment for autism was one flawed study that showed a benefit.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Per PubMed, quote, HBO2, that's the name for hyperbaric therapy, should not be recommended for ASD treatment until more conclusive, favorable results and long-term outcomes are demonstrated from well-designed, controlled trials. A write-up from this time by the American Council on Science and Health states, despite all of this caution and doubt, McCarthy believes that she knows better.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Her organization, Generation Rescue, is holding the third annual Autism Education Summit this weekend in Addison, Texas, just north of Dallas, to promote HBO2 therapy for ASD. Now, this conference included an expert panel of chiropractors and osteopaths.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

As well as, along with those august medical experts, a YouTuber named Lily, who made a video about hyperbaric treatment, helped her little sister. McCarthy was joined on the panel by Del Bigtree, producer of the movie Vaxxed, and one of the ladies from The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Truly, a symposium of the greatest minds in medicine. Awesome.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Another conference expert was Dr. Anju Usman, whose husband sells hyperbaric chambers. Oh, my God. I was not expecting that. Oh, yeah, baby. Now, this is all made especially infuriating because four years before this conference in 2012, a four year old boy and his 62 year old grandmother died after the hyperbaric chamber the boy was in caught fire at the Ocean Hyperbaric Center in Florida.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Francesco had cerebral palsy, which hyperbaric therapy does not treat. And he had traveled to South Florida from Italy where the treatment is illegal with his grandmother. And he caught on fire. She tried to save them. They both die. Nightmarish deaths. Four years before this conference, Regina McCarthy saying everybody should do this for their kids. Wow.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Now, none of these deaths, none of these injuries, none of the illnesses caused by all this bullshit treatment means anything to most of these people. Their only interest is their children. And one of the issues here is that because of the way autism works for most people who have autism, you see around the time the symptoms become evident, it seems like they're regressing, right?

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

They stop making eye contact. They stop engaging as much. And this can be very dramatic and very shocking to parents, right? But most people with autism their symptoms then improve over time because they grow up and they get used to dealing with and engaging in the world, right? Right, right. They just, that's just life, you know?

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

This is going to be the case with a majority of people who get diagnosed with autism. You will see the symptoms get alleviated. So even if you're just dosing them with every random drug you can get your hands on, they will likely show improvement in some ways just as they grow up and people convince themselves, I saved my kid, you know? At least they're better because of all of this shit I did.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

When, like, you could have just loved them. You know, maybe gotten some treatment for the GI issues or whatever, but, like, you could have just loved them, you know? Didn't have to do all this other shit. But it's just like, you know, life. People find ways to interact and deal with the world, like David Lynch, you know? This is, again, because people with autism are people, right?

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But yeah, as a result of this fact, many of these parents will go to their graves secure in the belief that they stood up for their kid and helped save them, even if all they did was make the world more comfortable for the kind of con men who encourage children to avoid getting vaccinated for measles. And speaking of con, nope, speaking of ads, here they are.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where, you know, Mengesh, our great guest for today. Tina, you ever heard that quote, cometh the time, cometh the man?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Okay. Well, it's a quote people say, and I'm saying it now because I've decided, I had a dream last night.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Oh, we're back. Good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. So every now and then, when you read about the biomedical community, you do hear about the rare wins, right? These cases where a parent gets pulled into this, they treat their kid with nonsense for a while, and they realize, I fucked up, and they pull back, and they take accountability, and those are good stories.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

There's a great article in The Atlantic about autism's fringe therapies, and it gives a story of Emma Zurcher and her family. Emma was born in 2002, and she started to show signs of autism at like age two and a half, right around the time Tariq would have died, right? Her mother, Arianne, later described the realization of her daughter's diagnosis as being like, quote, "'Descending into hell.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I was not. Excuse me, Sophie. Let's cut that out. No, cometh the time, cometh the man. And I had a vision last night while I was dreaming.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I was desperate to save my daughter. We went to everybody. We tried everything.'" Per the Atlantic, quote, "...she and her husband took Emma to neurologists, gastroenterologists, behavioral, speech and occupational therapists, nutritionists, naturopaths, a shaman and a homeopath, a craniosacral therapist, and a quigong master.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

A developmental pediatrician who didn't take insurance charged at least $200 per visit and had a months-long waiting list, recommended they call a psychic in Europe. The psychic, ironically, refused payment because she didn't pick up a signal from them." when the psychics are more honest than the doctors?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

That is an unbelievable list. The psychic's like, no, I don't want to rob you. You know, like, holy fuck. They tried dozens of treatments that claim to have recovered children with autism, including numerous vitamin supplements, topical ointments, restrictive diets, chelation, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, brain scans, a so-called detoxification system, and stem cell therapy.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

In other words, she went through all the con therapies we've covered in these episodes and a bunch more. She describes her mind state after each failure as, I thought I didn't do it right. Let me do it again. And this is the consequence of this...

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's not unreasonable to say like, well, if your kid has a condition or an illness, part of treating it properly is the parent needs to be an advocate for their kid and involved in the treatment. Not an unreasonable statement. But there's this attitude that that means that like the parent is responsible for figuring it out and like, well, but you're like a –

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

you're like a fucking accountant or something. You're not a medical expert. You don't know what you're doing. No, you shouldn't be diagnosing your kid here.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The ultimate result of all these specialty diets was that Emma shed body weight at a dangerous pace, loosing 15% of her weight in six weeks. Now, Emma's mom had by this point come to believe that her daughter had something that is another common line in biomedical hooey, that GI problems like leaky gut might help cause symptoms of autism. It doesn't.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

No, no. I had a vision while I was dreaming about how to save America. And so I've decided I'm running in 2028. And I'm running on a platform of, look,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

None of her attempts to fix Emma's microbiome worked. Arianne kept going. Quote, I thought any treatment was better than doing nothing at all. It's this, I can't think of anything else to do. Better press the gas, you know? Yeah, yeah. That's just not, it's not smart. It's so heartbreaking.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I have a friend who's an ER nurse who says sometimes the best thing to do at the site of a disaster is like smoke a cigarette and just kind of think things out for a second before you get in there, right? Yeah. And that sounds horrifying to a lot of people, but this is a person who deals with emergencies every day. Sometimes your best bet is like, give it a sec.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

This is also, it's another thing, it's a thing that gets people killed in war zones. I've seen it, like this desire, this feeling a need to do something when, again, the people who are the real veterans, the people, number one, they also do react when they need to, but they also don't react all the time when they don't need to.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

They tend to keep to watch it, to think, because otherwise you die horribly. Right. Anyway, her kid loses a disastrous amount of weight, and none of these attempts to fix Emma work at all. This is the state of mind, this idea, I've got to do something. That's most of what these parents find themselves in. And the market for quack cures has only grown.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I stated in 2009, about 75% of parents of children with autism reported using alternate medicine. Today, it's about 88%, nearly all of them. If you have the money, there are a truly dizzying number of options available, like SPECT, a $3,500 treatment that scans a child's brain to diagnose them and derive targeted treatments for their individual autism.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

This is in spite of the fact that brain scans like SPECT can't reveal autism. They don't. You don't see it that way. And of course they can't like figure out this specific treatment is how to help your kid, right? But parents love that shit. Like the, oh, I'm going to get the exact kind of therapy for my individual kid. No, that's just, you're not doing it this way. Sorry.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

One of the big problems the liberals and the progressives have, they all think if you make education better, if you get enough dunks on people in public debates or whatever, you can stop parents and the like from putting poison into their kids to try to treat ill-understood conditions, right? And you can't. You can't stop people from wanting something to do.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Maybe the therapy your kid needs is for you to just like them. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Probably the most costly of these new interventions is stem cell therapy. And this might actually... There might be treatment derived from this in the future. It's very far from clear at this point, right? At the moment, it is not approved as a treatment in the US. There are several trials gathering data on whether it's safe or effective.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But again, the parents who think their kids have this ticking clock before their life is ruined don't want to wait. And as The Atlantic reports, quote, several foreign clinics offer it for around $10,000.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Sarah Collins credits the adult stem cell injections her two children received in Panama City, Panama, with the recovery of her older son and improvement in her younger son, both of whom were diagnosed with autism. Her experience led her to co-found the Stem Cell Therapy for Autism Facebook group. She says one reason parents might not want to take part in clinical trials in the U.S.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

is that their child might wind up in the placebo arm of the trial. They won't mess with that. They'll go right to Panama instead. And again, you get both the psychology of like, well, I don't want my kid to be, I want them to get the medicine now, but it's like,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Ultimately, your desire to do something now is making your kid and everyone else you love everywhere in the world less safe because good medicine relies on good double blind studies with placebos. That's how you do medical studies. And by delaying this, number one, you are slowing down the process by which science will get done.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But also by going to Panama to get whatever the fuck shot into your kid will save. that clinic doesn't have good standards. Say your kid gets hurt and maybe it's not even because of actual stem cell therapy. It's because something else fucked up happened, but there's this horrible public death or illness associated with it.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And that shuts down research into a thing that may one day lead to treatments that help people, right? That alleviate some symptom or something. You are doing nothing but harm by doing this out of this desire that like, well, but I got to focus on my kid. And it's like, no, it's this fucking, no, no, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Emma's mom eventually made the right decision after about seven years of trying this carousel of treatments to reach out to an adult with autism and talk to them about her kid. This adult was Julia Bascom, who has a blog called Just Stimming. This talking to Julia keyed her in on the fact that, well, maybe autism isn't like Doesn't mean my kid has no life.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Maybe they could be happy as a person with autism, and I should focus on that because it's just the way they are. Emma's mom wrote, quote, my entire focus changed. Instead of fighting against Emma's neurology and trying to cure this heinous disorder, I started finding ways to help her flourish. And that's it, really. Right? Yeah. Like, that's the ballgame.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So let's give them something to do that's basically harmless. And that's why, as a presidential candidate, my entire platform is going to be – legalize and subsidized using federal money, a $7 bar of Xanax, the size of a Snickers bar. You just get them over the counter, any grocery store, any pharmacy, just a Snickers bar of pure Xanax. You can lick it like a horse.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yep. Yeah. I mean, and it is tragic, like the amount of the wasted years. You're so obsessed doing this that you're not actually having a relationship with your kid as your kid. You're having a relationship with your kid as a sick thing you need to fix.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's sad.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Now, in this case, so one of the first things she does when she has this shift in mindset, she realizes like Emma's not great at talking. This is a big problem for her that like her kid can't really talk and like communicate verbally. And so instead of trying shooting her up with more drugs and shit, she tries a different kind of intervention. She gives her kid a keyboard set up.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So Emma can type out her thoughts and suddenly Emma starts communicating very clearly with people and the rest of the world. She gets on track to get her high school diploma. The fact that she now they figured out how she individually needs to communicate gives her a chance to advocate for herself and to live a life.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

While Zurcher told The Atlantic that she now views the money she wasted on quack treatments as insane, and Emma herself insists that only occupational therapy provided her with any benefit. And occupational therapy is a real thing that can help. She also insists she's not angry at her mom.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Quote, you thought my autism was hurting me and that you needed to remove it, but you did not understand that it is a neurological difference. Fear caused you to behave with desperation. What an incredibly mature way to respond. Jesus, yeah. And that would be a beautiful note to end on, Mangesh.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

This is behind the bastards. So we're not going to end on that uplifting note. Instead, I'm going to tell you a whole nother story about one of these quack bastards. One of the worst of these sons of bitches. An asshole named James Jeffrey Bradstreet. Three names. Real serial killer shit for James Jeffrey Bradstreet.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The names. Always the worst. Born in July 1954 in Florida, Bradstreet was at one point a Christian preacher who got a medical degree from the University of Florida. We're doing great. Knocking it out of the park so far. His postgraduate research was in aerospace medicine and his actual career was as a family doctor.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But in 1997, after he'd been practicing for a little over a decade, his son was diagnosed with autism. As Fitzpatrick writes, Jeff Bradstreet abandoned his career as a family doctor to become a radio talk show host.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

He immediately met up with the biomedical activists and founded the International Child Development Resource Center in Florida, or the ICDRC. In 2001, he appointed Andrew Wakefield to be head of research there. Bradstreet was a big believer in merging his evangelical Christian faith with his treatments for autism, and so he created the Good News Doctor Foundation. Now, again...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Bradstreet's training was two years of residency in obstetrics and some added training in aerospace medicine. He was not board certified in any specialty, yet he advertised himself as a biomedical expert in autism treatment who specialized in correcting biochemical imbalances as well as detoxification.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Again, this is a guy who's like qualified to help your kid with the flu, you know, not to like downplay family medicine. But this is not a guy who's qualified to cure, among other things. Nobody is. It's not a thing. That's not a thing that happens. In the book Deadly Choices, Paul Offit describes Bradstreet's clinical approach this way.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Bradstreet had promoted several cures for autism, including secretin, chelation, immunoglobulin, administered by mouth and by vein, and prednisone, a potent steroid that suppresses the immune system. He also prescribed dietary supplements he sold in his office. As one expert put it, the nutritional supplements prescribed by Dr. Bradstreet were also sold by Dr. Bradstreet. Sure, that's fine.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

You can do whatever you want with it, $7 flat. That's how we're going to fix things in this country. Look, every problem, the $7 Xanax Snickers bar solves, right? You got a guy walks into a fucking public building wanting to do a mass shooting, reaches for his gun, finds a $7 Snickers bar as Xanax, bites it, forgets why he's there. Problem solved. You know, everything could be this way.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

This is like the late 90s.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

He might have been, actually. You know what? Sophie, good news. We're going to talk about what this guy winds up doing in the present era. It's actually the best part of the story. In 1999, Bradstreet began treating Colton Snyder, ultimately examining him more than 160 times and ordering a number of invasive lab tests that were not approved by the FDA. Among these were multiple spinal taps.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

If you've had a spinal tap, that's not a thing you fuck around with. They're just stabbing this kid in the spine with needles. See if that makes it better.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Feels like a lot of visits. Feels like a lot of visits. They also insert a fiber optic scope into Colton's stomach and colon. As Offit writes, all these tests and procedures were expensive, potentially dangerous, and according to the opinions of expert witnesses, of no value to the child. Wow. Now, Bradstreet's, this is not said directly, but his parents have money. This is not cheap.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

That's why Bradstreet's doing this. His medical documentation of Snyder ultimately runs to some 650 pages. He diagnoses the boy over the years with autism, yeast overgrowth, a fungal infection, Unspecified encephalopathy, unspecified eudicaria, and a shitload of other things.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And it's so many different things that it is clear that what's going on here is Bradstreet has – this is like a Munchausen's by doctor syndrome, right? And it's – he's not doing it because he's deluded. He's doing it because he is a mercenary with the goal of keeping Colton's parents paying for very expensive tests and treatments for forever, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

None of Colton's mercury tests were ever high, but still Bradstreet, who believed mercury contributed to autism, prescribed numerous rounds of chelation therapy. A write-up in Quackwatch summarizes, "...Broadstreet conceded that Colton did not respond well to chelation. The medical records, including reports from Mrs. Snyder, reflected that Colton did poorly after every round of chelation therapy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The more disturbing question is why chelation was performed at all, in view of the normal levels of mercury found in the hair, blood, and urine." It's apparent lack of efficacy in treating Colton's symptoms and the adverse side effects it apparently caused.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

That's another thing you encounter where these parents and these practitioners, the practitioners will convince the parents, oh, yeah, if your kid's having – if they're responding negatively, that's the toxins leaving. Of course it's ugly. Yeah, yeah. That's –

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's awful. It's real fucked up. These people should all have gone to prison. They should all still go to prison. Yeah. But you know who shouldn't go to prison? Our sponsors. Is that what we're doing? I'm saying they shouldn't, Sophie. What do you want from me?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah, this is how we save America. I'm convinced everyone vote Evans 2028 for your $7 stickers bar of Xanax.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah, again, we won't have any more elections. There are going to be like three votes that make it in every election, and none of them will have a legit, like a readable name. It's just going to be scribbles on a piece of paper. Who's the president? I don't know, fuck it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

We're back. So in one conference in the early aughts after Bradstreet had become a Dan-affiliated doctor, he referred to parents who didn't blame their kid's condition on vaccines or subject them to dangerous biomedical experimentations as APIDS or autism parents in denial, right? If you just accept your kid and try to help them live their best life, you're in denial.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

You should be poisoning them. Fitzpatrick notes that other experts in the field speak in similar ways. Quote, Ginny McCarthy is dismissive of woe is me moms, though she is not above moaning about how shitty her own life is and reminding her readers that celebrities suffer like everyone else. Still, she finds it difficult to accept that other parents don't simply believe in alternative treatments.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Was it, she asks herself, that they didn't want to hope or that they enjoyed the victim role? I don't know, maybe they're just trying to do what's best for their kids. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

When the Chicago Tribune interviewed Bradstreet about his use of IV immunoglobulin or IVIG as an autism treatment, he told them, every kid with autism should have a trial of IVIG if money was not an option and if IVIG was abundant.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Bradstreet also became a vocal advocate for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, although he did later publish research arguing it was ineffective, perhaps because it wasn't a big moneymaker for his clinic. In 2008, more than 5,000 families enmeshed in the biomedical movement launched a lawsuit seeking compensation for vaccine-related harm in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Bradstreet was one of their major witnesses. He provided expert testimony, which ultimately failed because the special masters, which is the name of the people who are evaluating this claim, look into Bradstreet in part to determine if there's credible evidence to support the idea that vaccines cause autism. They conclude it doesn't. They reject the case.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And one major reason is the case of Colton Snyder, which they examine at length and hold up as like, this is an example of how the malpractice is coming from inside the house. It's guys like Bradstreet, right? Yeah. Still, by 2009, Bradstreet had been in practice so long that he claimed his institute has records on more than 4,000 patients.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

He got a California medical license in May of that year and established a branch of the ICDRC. Two years later, he got a Georgia state medical license and opened a clinic in Buford. Because staying competitive in the industry of fake autism treatments required constant innovation, Bradstreet became an advocate for a new autism cure late in his career, GCMAF.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

This stands for globulin component macrophage activating factor. And this is a thing. It's a protein in healthy blood that you can remove and concentrate and use it to treat certain kinds of illnesses. Some kind of people are sick in a way that injecting them with this concentrated factor can help them, right? It's a real thing for stuff. Not for this, but for stuff. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

In August of 2012, he gave a presentation in England in which he described injecting 40 patients with autism with this shit, declaring, I shouldn't call it shit, but the stuff he is selling is shit. There's a legitimate version of this. That's not what he's selling. Declaring, quote, it's extremely potent in terms of its ability to work for children, he announced.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Many from this experiment have gone on to basically lose the label of autism. They don't have autistic distinctions anymore after sometimes as little as 20 weeks of therapy. Now, this just isn't the way this works. It's not really how anything works. But Bradstreet tended to show up in the kind of crowds where he wouldn't be questioned.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

He claimed that doctors in Japan and Italy were working on the same therapy. And he also cited a guy named David Noakes, the head of an immunobiotech, which manufactures GCMAF. And in fact, he shouts this guy out and then offers attendees to the speech a 25% discount on GCMAF.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Sure. Yeah, of course. It does come... Right, right. Absolutely. Per a Washington Post piece by Michael Miller, quote, what he did not disclose, however, was that much of the research he cited had already been discredited and retracted. The journal considering Bradstreet's paper was the scientific equivalent of self-publishing, and Bradstreet had close ties to Noakes and Immunobiotech.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

During the same UK trip, Bradstreet and Noakes made what was essentially a promotional video for Immunobiotech and its brand of GCMAF, called First Immune. Quote, I'm here with Dr. Jeffrey Bradstreet from the USA, the autism expert in the first immune GCMAF laboratories, Noakes said on camera.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Dr. Bradstreet has been using our GCMAF for 18 months, and we'd like to thank you for, I think you've treated 900 children now? Not just children, Bradstreet boasted. So the spectrum of my patients with autism ranges from somewhere around 18 months to goodness, somewhere around close to 40. So we've treated many adults with autism, as well as chronic fatigue patients, cancer patients,

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So we found application for a fairly broad number of disorders for the product. The two traded compliments for four minutes straight.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Again, sounds like medicine. Now, the transcripts for this are just impossibly fucking cringy with Noak saying, we've never met a doctor with such an understanding at the microbiological level of how autism and cancer and other diseases work. And again, autism and cancer, not really related. Not alike. Not at all alike.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Other diseases, again, not that I'm not saying autism is a disease, but that's the way this guy's talking. It's like, no, this isn't medicine.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Doctors are never like, yeah, we figure this thing helps with the flu, and I don't know, probably lung cancer. Fuck it. And gout. Yeah, gout.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And one of the things like Bradstreet goes back to after Noakes gasses him up, he's like, this is the most sterile lab I've ever seen. The best equipment, the best people. This is the perfect environment for doing good medical science. Bradstreet then pivoted to make the pitch that the greatest thing about GCMAF was that you could use it without the presence of a doctor.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

In other words, regular parents could just buy the stuff and shoot their children up with it. Quote, it's accessible to anybody around the world. Through your internet sites, you've made it available very broadly. We've used it in South Africa, China, India, Eastern Europe, South America, and all over. That's been a wonderful experience to see parents have access to a therapy. And like...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So there's this drug that's a cousin of Benzo's that was like Soviet Union Xanax that they gave to their astronauts that is like unregulated in the U.S. You can order it by the kilogram. I think about shit like that. We're like, yeah, okay. But what if we just did that for children's medicine? You know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And again, the people selling Soviet Xanax to strangers on the internet, fundamentally an honest business. People who buy that shit know what they're getting, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So this, that like, and you can give it to your kids, DIY, was the ultimate pitch to the parents in the biomedical treatment community and the ultimate evolution of the founding principles that parents should be actively engaged, not just in caring for their child, but in diagnosing and treating them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Meanwhile, there was no real evidence that GCMAF benefited children with ASD, as Baylor School of Tropical Medicine Dean Peter Hotez told the Post. And by the way, Dr. Peter Hotez also is the parent of a child with autism. An initial safety test of GCMF injections had not even been completed. It was still trying to recruit participants.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So like the actual doctors are being like, we don't even know if this is safe. We haven't been able to get enough people to volunteer to prove that this isn't dangerous, not even to show that it works. And they're just selling this over the fucking internet. Even so, Bradstreet bragged about dosing more than 2,000 children and claimed 85% of them improved and 15% had their autism eradicated.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The initial hype was massive, but the actual comments from parents who used the treatment were standard. Some claimed small positive, while others claimed hard-to-rate changes like, well, he's talking more. Many, though, recorded disappointment. Quote, We have recruited 20 shots of GCMAF so far. I am still waiting for the wow that everyone talks about, one person wrote.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Even worse, they described side effects including crying and pains in his chest and stomach for at least the first three. We are doing GCMAF injections. I have not seen any gains at all, another person wrote. I have seen worse behaviors and tantrums. So after spending $1,300 for no gains and living in hell, I'm done with this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Time to shoot this into my child with a needle. 20 times. It's unbelievable. I don't know. Maybe that's child abuse. I'm sorry. I know you quote unquote love your kid, but that sounds like child abuse to me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yeah. Obviously, little kids don't understand. Sometimes you have to, if they're sick, you have to give them medicine that they don't like that may have negative side effects because that's just necessary sometimes. I get it. But to do that for no reason- None at all.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's not doing nothing because, by the way, mango, we're about to talk about where this blood came from. Because I know, I know, I know the first thing I thought was like, well, this is fucked up. This is not just fucked up because they're like shooting kids full of blood that doesn't do anything or maybe it hurts them. But also like blood is rare. There's not enough of any of these blood factors.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

People need this and you're not getting this stuff to people who need it. The good news is that's not an issue here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So nervous. I've spent a lot of these episodes talking about what a bad idea it is to make parents without medical training part of the diagnostic and treatment process in this way. But the Bradstreet story does have a positive ending due to a mom of two sons with autism named Fiona O'Leary. She came upon his scam and she gets angry, right? She is not one of these moms who buys into the bullshit.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

She's like, oh, this is fucking dangerous. Fuck this guy. She looks into his business and the web of shady, undisclosed financial interests he had with Immunobiotech. She files complaints with regulators. I think this is over in the UK. I believe she lives – I don't know if she's in the UK proper or Northern Ireland given the name Fiona O'Leary.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But this leads to the – the UK's equivalent of the FDA does an investigation that culminates in a raid on a first immune GCMAF production facility near Cambridge. This is the lab where he filmed that video, where Bradstreet films the video with Noakes where they're gassing each other up. I heard was pristine.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So while Bradstreet had praised the lab's sterility, UK regulators described it as making GCMAF out of, quote, blood plasma labeled not to be administered to humans or used in any drug products. They're getting this out of the shit blood. Does that make it better? Cause at least regular, like people who need blood aren't losing it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what we say here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Oh my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Oh my God.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

She succeeds eventually in getting U.S. regulators to look into Bradstreet, which brought the feds to his door in Beaufort on June 18th, 2015. Had he been indicted properly, Bradstreet might have faced 20 years in prison, according to the suspected charges on the search warrant. Rather than endure that, Bradstreet fled town the next day, driving to North Carolina.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

As he checked into his hotel, Swiss papers reported a story from Switzerland that a first immune clinic in that country, run by Noakes, had been shut down after five patients being treated with GCMAF had died. Some had paid almost as much as 6,000 euros a week for treatment. And to be clear... We don't know that the GCMA have killed those people. These were terminal patients, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

But this was billed as helping terminal conditions, and it didn't, right? So there's a big raid on his partner, Noakes. That and the raid on his own facility in Beaufort probably contributed to Jeffrey's decision to take his own life on June 19th. His body was found by a fisherman that afternoon, floating like a river, and the gun he used was found nearby in the water.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

This immediately became a conspiracy for biomedical advocates, including the CEO of Immunobiotech, who insisted that Jeffrey was murdered by pharmaceutical companies for stating that the MR vaccine causes autism and hurting their profits with his GCMFA therapy. And unfortunately, what happens here is kind of the best case scenario in this world.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

One major agent of harm faces a teeny bit of justice and then makes a choice to take himself out of the picture, right? To this day, though, Bradstreet remains a focus of vaccine conspiracy. And I found this in a Reddit post on the Our Conspiracy Commons board from 2022. And it's like a picture of this guy in a suit. This is Jeffrey Bradstreet.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

He found the cure for autism using oxygen chamber therapy, chelation, and protein shots for T-cells. After having cured thousands, he was shot in the back twice at his mansion. And the FBI raided and destroyed his cure center the day after. Now, none of that's accurate. They raided his center the day before. He's not at his mansion. He tries to check into a hotel and, like, can't check in.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And then he goes to the river. Like, this is just all wrong.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yep. Anyway, that's our story for the week. Great stuff. It's super uplifting. Happy trails, everybody. Mango, you got any plugs to plug?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Yep. Well, glad to be horrifying and enlightening. Horrifying lightning.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

That's right. Yeah. Now, again, this is the solution to all of our problems is the $7 Snickers bar of Xanax. The salt flick. Yeah. Again. Vote Evans. A Snickers bar of Xanax in every pocket. And honestly, none of us is going to know what happens next, but that's kind of the benefit, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

And look, are some people going to die? Absolutely. And we're going to knock down the Washington Monument and replace it with a monument that's just a four bar. A giant four bar in the sky. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The Autism Research Institute and our buddy Dr. Rimland rode in to defend Drs. Usman and Carey after Tariq's death, writing in a post on the institute's website that Tariq had died not because of chelation therapy, but because of an error that had seen him dosed with a lookalike drug, disodium EDTA, instead of calcium disodium EDTA.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Now, first off, I don't think the argument, we didn't kill him with bad medicine. We killed him because we cruelly administered a deadly dose of the wrong drug makes things better. Yeah. That's like a weak argument. That's like, no, no, no. I didn't give him fentanyl. I just shot him up with way too much heroin. Like, yeah. I don't really see how that helps. This is also untrue.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Tariq was administered with the normal kind of EDTA used in chelation therapy, which is the only kind the clinic had stocked. In subsequent publications, Dr. Rimland bragged that chelation therapy had consistently good results as rated by paramedics who were surveyed by ARI. In fact, it was the number one pick out of 88 approved interventions. What? Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

They love this because it clearly is serious medicine, right? It doesn't help. It makes things worse generally, but it has a massive visible effect. I think that's honestly the whole reason why, right? A subsequent statement put out by Dan claimed that chelation was one of the most beneficial treatments for autism and related disorders. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Aluminum, lead, and mercury aren't the only metals that got blamed. I found a Chicago Tribune piece that gives the story of a boy named Jordan King who was chelated for high levels of mercury and tin. This is weird. There's a quote in there from an expert on tin poisoning who's like- Is tin poisoning really a thing?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It is for like industrial workers who are like welding tin for a living, you know? But not little kids. There's no way to get enough exposure to tin, really. Is your kid welding a shitload of tin? Then we have other issues. Autism's not the problem. You're letting your five-year-old weld. What are you doing? Take that torch away from them.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Now, the actual explanation for why this kid- Although if they're productive, like, you know. Sure, why not? Why not? It's good for kids to have a hobby. At least they're touching. If they can't touch grass, they might as well touch heated tin. Now, again, they do a test which shows high levels of mercury and tin in this kid's blood, but that's not the whole story.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

You hear about that and you're like, oh, well, maybe there was something going on. Why would they have elevated levels? Well, the explanation for why and for why all of the kids that get tested in order to justify this therapy have elevated levels of different heavy metals is is because of the very, the distinctly ascientific kind of lab test that they give these kids, right?

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

You would think, if you're like, this kid probably has high levels of heavy metals, we might want to administer chelation therapy. You're not a doctor, Mangesh. What would you do first? What would you do first if you thought they might have high levels of heavy metals? Get a blood test. Right. Very basic science, right? Okay, you think this is true. Let's test their blood. No, no, no. No, no, no.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

I'm so afraid. The way you give these blood tests in this kind of therapy is first you chelate the child. You shoot them up with this thing that strips heavy metals out of their blood and makes them pee it out, right? And then you test them.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So you give them a drug that provokes them to excrete heavy metals and then test them. And then you know what? You're going to find some heavy metals. Yes. Because you gave them the drug that makes them excrete them. And here's the thing. There's no except because this isn't the way science where you don't do this otherwise.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

There's no accepted understanding for what normal results on a test given after chelation would be. So there's no actual medical case for like drugging people and then testing them like this. So the lab just shows back charts that show scary spikes of different metals. And the clinician says, look, Kids got it. You know, we need to keep doing this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Now, doctor, in case you don't believe me and you shouldn't, not a doctor. Dr. Carl Baum, director of the Center for Children's Environmental Toxicology at the Yale New Haven Children's Hospital, calls this, quote, exactly the wrong way to do it. Wow. Now, Dr. Usman did ultimately face mild consequences.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

In 2009, the Chicago Tribune featured her in their dubious medicine investigation, which helped push for a probe by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. They alleged that she had provided medically unwarranted treatment that may potentially result in permanent disabling injuries to two boys. Quote from the Tribune.

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Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

In reaching a consent order with Usman, medical regulators alleged that Usman failed to disclose to her patients her financial interests in the company supplying the hyperbaric oxygen chambers and in the compounding pharmacy that filled prescriptions for her patients.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The state said that she also failed to obtain informed consent for the chelation therapy and did not keep adequate medical records for her patients. Usman, who practices out of the True Health Medical Center in Naperville, Neither admitted nor denied the state's allegations in signing the consent order. She agreed to pay a $10,000 fine. Great. I love that this is the punishment. I know, I know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

It's crazy. The other boy that she's accused of harming in this case was a Chicago child, the son of James Komen. We don't get this kid's name because they're a kid, who was engaged in a custody battle with his ex-wife over their kid, who was a child with autism. Now, the kid's mom is a believer of these biomedical interventions for their son's autism. James is not.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

James recognizes this is pretty dangerous, and he gets trapped in this nightmare of trying to advocate for his son against the wishes of the boy's mother. Here's how a different article by the Tribune titled Autism's Risky Experiments describes his regimen of treatment. Quote, James Komen's son has an unusual skill. The seven-year-old, his father says, can swallow six pills at once.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Diagnosed with autism as a toddler, the Chicago boy had been placed on an intense regimen of supplements and medications aimed at treating the disorder. Besides taking many pills, the boy was injected with vitamin B12 and received an intravenous infusions of a drug used to leach mercury and other metals from the body.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

He took megadoses of vitamin C, a hormone in a drug that suppresses testosterone. They're just doing everything to this kid.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

He's able to take so many pills. That's not an America's Got Talent. Yeah. Now, the Komen boy also suffered extreme negative side effects from chelation, although thankfully not fatal ones. This provoked his father to sue, and his mother responded by complaining that any interruption of his complex, nonsense therapeutic routine would have a disastrous impact on the boy, setting him back, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

That Tribune article, written in 2009, summed up the scope of the biomedical movement at the time. Studies have shown that up to three quarters of families with children with autism try alternative treatments, which insurance does not usually cover. Doctors, many linked to the influential group Defeat Autism Now, promote the therapies online and books and at conferences.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Intensive regimens are so common that one doctor recently joked at an Autism One conference in Chicago, you know you have a child with autism if your child takes more pills than your grandmother. He's joking about all the drugs you're giving kids.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

Great. It also made a point of discussing how the social media era had provided oxygen to the hyperbaric chamber fire that is the biomedical movement. Quote, parents trade stories and advice about chelation on large internet groups. One Yahoo group has more than 8,000 members.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

The treatment takes many forms, including creams for the skin, capsules, suppositories, and intravenous infusions of powerful medicines usually reserved for people with severe metal poisoning. The hype was so big around this stuff in 2006 that the National Institute of Mental Health announced a randomized controlled trial of chelation as an autism treatment.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: The Grifters Behind The Fake Autism 'Cure' Industry

So an actual legitimate medical body says, let's do a trial. So many people are saying this helps their kids. Let's look into it, right? Ultimately, they canceled that trial in 2008 because they can't find any evidence that there's benefit to it. There's a lot of evidence that even trying this will put kids at risk, significant risk because chelation is not good for you if you don't need it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Robert.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

How you doing? Oh, you know, pretty good. It's cool. Do you think that most of the USA's divisive issues and over-manipulated economy would be solved by breaking up into smaller individual countries by region, example, North-South?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Robert, favorite Warhammer Legion, Legion's characters?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Someone asked the same person asked my current favorite hobby that is just for fun. Well, it happens to be the NBA season and I play fantasy basketball and I take it very Warhammer for nerds as I call it. Sure. And I take it very seriously and I love it. I fucking love it. It's amazing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

It does frighten him. And I got LeBron on my team this year as he gets older. It's just I needed him on my team one more time. Um, Robert, what's a journalism story that if you didn't have to do your day job that you would love to cover?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah. This is not a question, but I've seen this a couple of times. People want to know if you're going to do any Australian bastards. I don't think anyone in Australia has ever done anything bad.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Any plans to do an Oprah series or episodes?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yep, that was asked a couple times. Robert, what's your favorite firearm?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

The people want to know, how did we start Cool Zone Media? What's the Cool Zone Media story?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

That's not true. I resent that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

We had finished the Women's War.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, and iHeartRadio asked us if we wanted to have our own imprint, remember?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Hey, you want to make a daily show?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

They were like, hey, you've been pumping out content multiple times a day for the last year. This is like end of 2020, early 2021. They're like, hey, you've been doing this thing. Want to do it? Times a million? Yeah. That seems healthy. We did, but we got to hire a bunch of our friends. And that's nice. And, you know, a lot of the people we love have salaries and health insurance.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

So a win is a fucking win. It's time for fucking ads, okay? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

we're back got a lot of people asking your how you approach research and how you format your episodes if you have a template if you put something into i know the answer this which is why you're half smiling if you make some kind of a guide for your episodes or what's your process

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

You know, that's how I try to do it Robert What's your favorite animal and or dinosaur?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Robert, what's your favorite part about working with Sophie?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I have no idea.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I was doing well. Okay, that's good. I was doing well. Anyways, we're back with another Q&A episode. Thank you to those who asked questions on the Instagram. Robert, can you start the folks out with a nice kratom lemonade recipe? People want to know.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I have no say in this. Robert, what's your favorite part about working with Sophie? That is an actual question.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

So I get asked all the time by people what it's like working with you. And I say you are the best business partner that anybody could ever ask for.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

That's what you were supposed to say, by the way, that I'm a perfect angel baby.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

So true. So true. Robert, would you consider doing more South Africa episodes?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

We got asked if there was a guest we've had on that we'd love to have on again, Paul F. Tompkins.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I'd love to have Lacey Mosley back on, too. She's so funny.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

He said he listened to a couple episodes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Absolutely.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Robert. What are your thoughts on the developments in Rojava?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

What are some of the most impactful books that you've read that you think listeners should read?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I want to recommend Mia from Where It Could Happen Here show. She recommended reading Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano. And oh, my God, it's an incredible book.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Also, we both read this book. Who's the I'm forgetting the author's name. Cultish by Amanda Montel.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Cultish was quite good. Anything written by Margaret Killjoy ever heard of her?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Oh, and you know what? Why are there so many feet questions, people?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I just want to say there is an absurd amount of feet questions in here. Why do you want to know my foot size? You fucking weirdo.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

What is wrong with you? Don't do better. Jesus Christ.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Literally any liquid substance at the airport.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Robert, how did you get into Ska? And what's your favorite Ska band? That was asked a couple times.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

What are the best non-mainstream news sources, free or otherwise?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I always recommend J.K. and Rohan's Popular Front.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

The QAnon Anonymous people are good.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah. And finally, Robert, what's cracking my peppers?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

It was one of your best, I have to say.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I really enjoyed that one. Last question. Chapel Roan or Sabrina Carpenter? Do you know who either of those people are?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

She didn't endorse Kamala Harris.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

My answer to that question is, Robert, do you remember the concert I said I went to by myself like two days after the election results? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was Sabrina Carpenter. Where you got sick. Yeah, I got sick after going because, you know, too many people, crowd, even with masks. That was Sabrina Carpenter. And she was great. And it restored my faith in girlhood. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

We'll take that. That's good.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Any final thoughts or should we get the fuck out of here?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Okay, bye friends.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Robert loves 40% of you. I love 32% of you.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Nope. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Robert? Mm-hmm? What's one episode you really want to do but would require a fuckload of research and four million episodes to cover?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I just haven't yet.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Sure. What episode are you most proud of from this year?

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Really good. I'm deeply proud of James Stout's series on It Could Happen Here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

No, we are, but I'm just saying.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I'm deeply proud of James's series that he did reporting from the Darien Gap.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, I also... They were the hardest for me, but your episodes on troubled teen wilderness camps were...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

How did you get from being a Texas ROTC kid to an active war zone journalist to a gas station drug reviewer and avid podcaster? Wow. Wow. People say. I love that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, a couple people kind of asked me with my upbringing how somebody said, like, basically, how did I become in charge of cool zone media and, like, leftist podcasts? And, you know, the short of it is I grew up with a Republican dad, a moderate Democrat mom, and I grew up in an area where most of the people were your standard libs with a lot of Zionism, honestly. And...

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I think what radicalized me was my insane empathy. I'm like a very, very empathetic person. And so consuming content and reading history and meeting people, it just the more that I consumed and the more people I got to meet, the more left I became. And I feel like we approach a lot of our content from a place of empathy. And that's the kind of things I want to put out in the world. I got deep.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I got deep.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

Yeah, for sure.

Behind the Bastards

Part Two: Behind the Bastards Q&A: Year's End Edition

And speaking of getting rich, it's time for ad breaks.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I want to quote from an article for the Mass Violence and Resistance Research Network by David Chandler next. Quote, And this is kind of describing how the Khmer Rouge develops as a result of all this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The small-scale guerrilla movement, which he had launched against the Hennex government in the late 1960s, developed with Vietnamese and Chinese backing into a full-scale resistance army fighting the American-backed Long Nol regime in Phnom Penh.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

At the same time, Saar developed the distinctive ideology which made the CPK, that's the Communist Party of Cambodia, very different from other Marxist-Leninist parties. He mistrusted the working class, relying instead on the poor peasantry whom he saw as the incarnation of Rousseau's noble savage. His party functioned like a sect,

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And a lot of people really like the four-parters and say, this is my favorite part of the show. And a lot of people say, I prefer the two-parters. So we try to like go with variety, right? We mix it up. So that everybody's regularly getting what they want. And I didn't, so I didn't want to do a four-parter for Pol Pot. And then I wrote 14,000 words on him and was like, God damn it, Robert.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

and some authors underlined that his communism was colored by Cambodian Buddhist structures. Its members were required to renounce not only material possessions but also spiritual ties. The ultimate goal was to crush individual personality and replace it by unquestioning adherence to the collectivity. Discipline was ferocious, security omnipresent.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Saar abhorred the limelight, preferring to operate from the shadows and using multiple aliases. Polk, Hay, 87, Pole, Grand Uncle, Elder Brother, First Brother, and in later years, 99 or Pym. Yet his fanaticism was masked by great personal charisma. People who met him remembered his winning smile and considerable talent as an orator.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It is pretty cool.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, it's hard not to, right? For whatever reason, I think 87 is my pick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I don't actually know. I probably could have figured it out, but I didn't come across that in my reading.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, because this isn't a military history podcast and the overall story of Cambodia during this period is so much more detailed than we can get into, I'm going to have to yada yada a lot of how the rebellion, you know, succeeds.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yada yada. The gist of it is Lon Nol's government was only capable of holding the line against the communists with U.S. backing, and even then, not all that well. By the early 1970s, it had become clear that there was an expiration date on that assistance. The Khmer Rouge grew larger with each atrocity by the right-wing government and their allies.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In areas where the Rouge took power, everyone old enough to fight was drafted into the military, and everyone else was put to work. The all-black garb of the peasantry, which had just kind of been a traditional thing in Cambodia, became the only acceptable outfit to wear. You're literally not allowed to dress differently. Those who refused to serve were executed.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

By 1973, most of rural Cambodia was in rouge hands. And I got to say, the one aspect of the Khmer Rouge I could have done great with is just kind of wearing black pajamas all the time. Like, I got that shit on lock, baby. Like, I'm wearing this, like... sport coat thing, but it's just pajamas under this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Yeah. And I am. This thing doesn't doesn't reduce the comfort. It's fine. Don't worry. Don't worry. I'm pole potting under this. So that's what he says. That's what he says every episode. It's not just this one. The final straw for Lon Nol's regime is when Prince Sahanak, hiding in exile, announced his support for Pol Pot's rebels.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, we did a two-parter, one of our very first episodes on Notre Dame Sahanak. He sucks ass. Listen to those episodes as to why. But the reason he does this is he believed that, like, you know, he thought this might give him a shot at returning to power, right? If I back these guys, clearly they won't last, and eventually I'll be able to make my way back in, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Because there is really that much to say. So this is all to say, I didn't want to break this up over two weeks for the people who are tired of four-parters. So I just, we're just giving you three episodes this week. So you're fucking welcome. Cold open, done.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

What really happens is he strengthens the Khmer Rouge at a critical moment because, again, people, the peasantry feel very strongly about the royalty, right? And that still has not been busted, even though he really sucked ass when he was actually running things. He does this right as the U.S. is starting to pull out their assets and things fall very quickly.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Think about kind of how long the government of Afghanistan lasted as the U.S. pulled out, right? That's kind of what we're seeing here. On April 17th, 1975, Lon Nol's army collapsed entirely and the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. Now, you got to remember, at this point, you know, when they take the capital, the fighting has been going on in parts of Cambodia for 20 years or more.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

People are fucking exhausted. And it's always the case in times like this. There was an optimism among, like, a lot of regular people that, like, look, I don't know so much about these Khmer Rouge guys, but... The war is over. Maybe things will get better. Right. There is this hope.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that hope is crushed very quickly because Pol Pot and his comrades, it's not even that they don't want to go back to normal. In their minds, going back to normal is a death sentence. Right. And again, this is kind of what messes with a lot of people's casual understanding of what's happening, because you would think, well, obviously, these guys have to hate the U.S. more than anybody else.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Right. Right. Not at all the case. Pol Pot's obsession is Vietnam. That is the real enemy, not capitalism, not the United States, not the West, Vietnam. Saigon fell to the NVA not far from when Phnom Penh did, right? And because of this, because Vietnam has won its war too, there's this immediate...

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

widespread paranoia among the Khmer Rouge leadership that the Vietnamese are going to digest their meal of southern Vietnam. And then they're immediately going to take this big army they've got with tanks and aircraft and all sorts of modern weapons that the Khmer Rouge does not really have access to.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And they're going to cross the border and they're going to invade Cambodia and they're going to take us out. and make us nothing but a tribute state, right? Like that is the immediate fear. And the only way to resist this future, to have a chance of defeating Vietnam and maintaining Khmer autonomy is to rapidly change the country, both in terms of how food is produced and to do this kind of,

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They're very motivated by these ideas they'd taken from Mao that kind of became the great leap forward in China of like, well, what if we do industrialism? But it's like everybody's backyard is helping to like make different sort of industrial products, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

We're a lot like all the other girls. I'm not. We're also going to be. In that all girls are beautiful. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, and you can kind of do that with guns, but not like the guns you need to win a modern war, right? You're not going to be like making an SPG-9 in your backyard or whatever fucking shit. Speaking of making recoilless rifles in your backyard... Our sponsors will teach you how. They love helping people maintain modern, I don't know, whatever. Their freedom. Yeah, freedom. Fuck.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I'm actually going to slow down a lot just to. Yeah. No.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Okay, so cities like the capital have no place in Pol Pot's radical view of the future of the country, which needs to be immediately changed on a fundamental level in order to survive and defeat the Vietnamese. So there's this plan that's hatched by Pol Pot and the leadership of the party to completely reform Cambodian society in order to make it capable of surviving.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And Pol Pot names this plan Year Zero.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

in april of 1975 they declare this openly and this year zero concept we talked about this in the earlier episodes it's based in part on pol pot's understanding of the french revolution right as well as reading from guys like thomas payne because he he does read like american revolutionaries too and in 1776 payne had published this quote we have it in our power to begin the world over again

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand. And this is the kind of thing you hear in some like optimistic revolutionary tracts, especially in the headiness of like we've defeated the regime. We have this chance for a total break with history, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's even – you can think about kind of the whole – the end of history, right? stuff that was being said when the Soviet Union fell. There's this headiness of like, well, maybe we're done competing with what kind of systems are going to work. Maybe we're entering into this fundamentally new world that represents this real break of continuity.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that means we're never going to have to worry about going back to any of the bad old days or the problems that we had struggled against. Right. There's no back. There's no way of going back, right? We finally did it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Right, right, right. I mean, I love me some Thomas Paine, but you should look at the rest of his life. I mean, obviously, the US became a slave state, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to quote from an article written by Idris Ayers here. Quote, it is evident that the Khmer Rouge in deliberate and skillful fashion drew on history for political ends.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Their leadership made repeated reference to the importance of grasping the wheel of history and how history would crush those who stood in the way of development. I've heard Musk say some similar things.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In 1976, as part of Pol Pot's consolidation of personal power, official party historiography was revised with an eye to the older Indo-Chinese guerrilla fractions within the movement by moving the date of the party's founding from 1951 to 1960.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

At a meeting of the Central Committee in March 1976, it was noted with regard to historiography that we must rearrange the history of the party into something clean and perfect. Do not use 1951. Make a clean break.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Again, there's this, even our real history of our real movement that one isn't good enough, we have to like, and if you're ever finding your movement is needing to like alter the very basic foundation of reality for your ideas to work. Maybe bounce.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This is why we talk about the reason why I identify more as an anarchist than anything else isn't because I have some great plan based on some thinker for this is the perfect way to reorder society. If we did this exact thing based on this exact book, it would clearly work without any problems. I feel that way because anarchists have diagnosed the problem in a way that I'd never seen be wrong.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The problem is if you give people lots of power, they do horrible things. Yeah. Right. Like that's that's that's kind of where I get into it from. Right. And every conceivable power.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yes. And when you have all of the power and you have this very strict idea of this, we need to do this exact thing. And this exact thing is the only thing that can save us. And then the world doesn't sort of change the way you think it ought to based on your political belief. well, you're just gonna start killing people. And that's, sure enough, what's gonna happen here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So the project to make a clean break with history, this whole year zero thing, is urgent, right? Because unless they can do this before Vietnam swallows them up, they're fucked. The internal Marxist analysis also indicated that Cambodia had to proceed directly from feudalism to communism within four years, which they called the super great leap forward.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

We already know how this fucking works for Mao. And we're like, but what if we made it like a super great leap forward? It's like, you know, Mario Brothers sucked ass. But once we added a super, it was finally good.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, Mao's just sitting there like, God damn it, why didn't I put a super in front of it? Fuck, the backyard furnaces would have worked. Super sparrow murdering. In policy terms, year zero had a fairly narrow meaning. The cities, which were dominant, as I stated in the earlier episodes, the cities have a, they're not overwhelmingly Khmer, like the rest of the country is.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They have a lot of Vietnamese and Chinese traders. And a lot of the Khmer that live there are the new people, right? They are educated Khmer who come from families with money, who have gone through Western education, who have often been educated overseas and have thus been unforgivably tainted by foreign influence.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, you may also notice these new people that he's saying we need to expel from the cities are Pol Pot and his friends, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Still, the new people have to either assimilate to the base people, and the base people are Khmer peasant farmers or die. And the distinct preference of the Khmer Rus is that they die. Andrus Ayres describes how jarringly rapid this process is. Quote,

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Money, markets, and private property, schools, institutes of higher education, newspapers, and religious institutions all were immediately abolished after the seizure of power. Early eyewitness accounts relate how the hospital in Phnom Penh was emptied of patients, how the National Bank was set on fire, money burned in the streets.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Immediately after the victory proclamation, book burnings were orchestrated in front of the National Library. and the school of Rene Descartes. The country's borders were closed immediately, and the cleansing of the country from foreign influences began by deporting foreigners and domestic minorities such as Vietnamese, Muslim Khmer, Chinese Khmer, Thais, and Europeans.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It was also officially announced that the individual would be abolished. The traditional family would be replaced by the movement. In order to create a completely conflict-free society, revolutionaries were officially instructed not to have a personality.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The individual was continually counterposed to the people, with the former representing division, factionalism, inequality, bourgeoisie values, and foreign influence. The people, meanwhile, embodied its polar opposite, something entirely pure, redemption,

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The extermination of particularity and contingency and the realization of absolute freedom, equality, and fraternity through complete absorption into the Ankar. And that's the people. That's the Volk, right? You know, the Nazis said the Volk, the Ankar is that for the Khmer Rouge. It's close enough at least, right? And yeah. Yeah. Revolutionaries are not allowed to have personalities.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And it's motivating to the people who have been drinking the Kool-Aid because, again, they've been in these – they started out in these circles where it's just them and their friends continually radicalizing each other further and not really listening to outside people, right? And then –

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

they move to the jungle and become, so not only are they all like trauma bonding, getting bombed together, but they're continuing to talk out these ideas and just take themselves. Like this isn't for other people. Right. The point is not to inspire other people. Right. Right. Um, And it is this – you get – this is an issue I have with like some people that I otherwise agree with a lot.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's talk among certain leftist tendencies about the concept of the abolition of the family. And what they tend to mean in the modern era is looking at a lot of how much of right-wing policy is based upon – the idea that parents own their children, right? And that literally like anything a parent wants for their kid, that's all that should matter, right? Which leads to a lot of heinous abuse.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Some of the worst things that happen in our society is because of our conception of the family as this thing in which the parents, primarily the father, possesses everyone else, right? And wanting to abolish that idea of the family is good. But when you start framing it as family, it's going to bring this up.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Rouge did as opposed to being like, I don't think parents should be allowed to poison their kids because they have autism. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, yeah. It's an optical issue, I think. But that's not – the Khmer Rouge is not wanting to abolish the family because there's anything similar to the issue we have with the parental rights movement in the US, right? The Khmer Rouge wants to abolish the family because all they want to exist is the party and this idea of almost like a collective consciousness –

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

If we can wipe out enough individualism, then like we will have this kind of pure individual close to nature. This like idolized, everyone will be the idolized Khmer peasant farmer who, by the way, Pol Pot's parents had fought tooth and nail to make sure he never had to be. Yeah. Nah, don't worry about that. So as soon as they start doing all of this stuff, people begin to starve, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's so much disruption. There's disruption to the way food is grown and the way it's transmitted. All of these networks that had existed. It's one thing if you're like, we want to get rid of capitalism and we want to get rid of things being entirely governed by the financial motive. But you have to account for the fact that like, well, but that's how all of the food gets places right now.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And like, you have to have a real granular plan for how you're going to make sure food keeps getting to people. Otherwise, everyone's going to die. And that's what starts to happen. And people also start to starve to death as they are forced at gunpoint out of the cities. Phnom Penh had flooded to significantly higher than its pre-war population because of the war going on.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And now these people are being marched out and no one's allowed to take anything because People are being dragged out at gunpoint. In some cases, their houses are being burnt down. They don't have a lot of baggage, right? And it's not like people had a lot, were keeping like food on hand. This isn't like a prepper culture. Folks don't have like freeze dried shit in their houses.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So people are just being forced to walk. A lot of, a number of them have been pulled out of hospitals and they're just dying. They're dying by the tens of thousands alongside the road. And as people march out, they're just seeing these piles of corpses of their neighbors and family members bloating in the sun. It's just a really hideous nightmare for all of these people.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And these fighters that they're meeting are folks largely who'd come from rural areas in the jungle. They're very young. A lot of them are teenagers who have been raised on this war. And they... Number one, don't have a lot of sympathy for these people in the cities who they've seen as the enemy. The capital is what they've been fighting, if you want to think it like Hunger Games terms here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And also they've been told these are the new people, right? These are the enemy. We do have to get rid of them one way or another. So if you kill these people, if you shoot them by the side of the road, if they starve to death, you're helping to bring about, you're helping to save the Khmer people, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

While most of the deaths under the new regime are caused by disease or famine, they're all intentional. These are all the result of policies set by Pol Pot and his comrades, and the expectation of these policies was mass dying.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The stage had been set for this in the years leading up to the Capitol's fall by a process of what is called by genocide scholars, toxification, and specifically toxification through Khmer Rouge propaganda. Toxification, this is a process you can watch happen right now in your very own country, presuming you live in the United States, but we're not the only one.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Well, a couple other countries, yeah. Quite a few other countries. We could talk about some recent Supreme Court rulings in the UK. Toxification is a process often seen in genocide, whereby groups of people are depicted as inherently poisonous to the well-being of the body politic, the real people of a community.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Soldiers are not in general born willing to fill mass graves or to march an entire city out of their homes and die, right? They're gotten to that point when they have been convinced that doing so is either a form of self-defense or a way to fight their enemy or both, right? And that's what toxification does.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's a very good article on this process called Toxification and the Khmer Rouge Genocide, or auto-genocide. You'll hear both terms. Published in the Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence by Timothy Williams and Rhiannon Nielsen. I recommend reading the whole thing. It's a very good article, and it's a very important article. It will...

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

be kind of chilling in light of things happening in our present world, but it ought to be. And it details how the messaging from Pol Pot on down through the Khmer Rouge hierarchy seeded the militant population with the kind of toxic attitudes that are a necessary precursor to mass killing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Hmm.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Obviously, this includes people who had been in the military of law and all. Right. And the idea was that in this is Pol Pot's writing, anyone with money, quote, owed the Communist Party a blood debt. Right. So these are this is the first stage. And it's pretty easy to get people on board with killing a lot of these folks. Right. That said, there's not many of them, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And once you start mass killing, you don't tend to stop. So next, in 1976, Pol Pot turned the eyes and guns of his men on the quote-unquote treacherous elements he accused of causing sickness within the party. These ugly microbes had to be destroyed before they rotted democratic Kampuchea, which is what they're calling Cambodia now, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like once the ruse takes over, it goes from the Khmer Republic to democratic Kampuchea. Right. And Pol Pot writes of these ugly microbes, quote, What is infected must be cut. What is rotten must be removed. It isn't enough to cut down a bad plant. It must be uprooted. And you see this a lot in genocidal language, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You know, this is like Hitler calling the Jews the syphilitic basilisk, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Any Thanos line.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You also get... This is something we're hearing right now with the way mental illness and things that are called mental illness is being discussed by the right. And it's... There's big news right now about the fact that RFK Jr. is trying to use government databases to put together a list of everyone with autism. That's how it's being spread on social media.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The actual story is even, I would argue, even a little worse than that, which is that they are attempting to put together a database of everybody who has been diagnosed with any kind of mental health condition, who is on any kind of medication. It's even broader than just that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And part of what's going on here is that like there's a big right wing campaign to like blame gun violence on on the mentally ill. Right. And another part of it is that there's a desire to reclassify being transgender and eventually even being LGBT as a mental illness, in part because those people can be disarmed. Right. In part because then you can put those people in facilities or whatever.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I tend to think that the goal that a lot of these people are thinking towards is less Nazi-style death camps and gas fans and more a Judge Rotenberg Center on every corner. If you want to go back to our Judge Rotenberg Center episodes, but we'll be talking about that in other days. But I bring this up to say this is a constant when regimes begin the process that can end in mass killing.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I don't think that that's an inevitable state of affairs for us here, but I think people need to be very aware of that because the similarities between these situations are not inconsequential.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Yeah. So Pol Pot argued that these diseased elements of the populace had to be purified so that year zero could ensure a Maoist elimination of contradiction. Turning in counter-revolutionary elements became a way to get ahead or to protect yourself. Cadres, which are like members of the party, are rewarded for their ability to purge the enemy within.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Per that article by Williams and Nielsen, violence became a part of everyday life and punishment for infringence of the minutely planned details of society were draconian, often costing people their lives, particularly as most mistakes, such as foraging for food or not eating with the collective, were immediately interpreted as evidence of counter-revolutionary tendencies.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Although anyone could fall victim to the system, prime targets for elimination were ethnic Cham and Vietnamese minorities, former soldiers or officials under the La Nul regime,

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

intellectuals or others deemed not to fit into a peasant society, as well as any person whom the regime believed to be an internal enemy, mostly associated with being an agent of the CIA, KGB, or the Vietnamese Secret Service. And I think it's so interesting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Part of this is there's such a hatred of this concept of being an individual that even if you're foraging for food to stop you and your family from starving, that's individualist behavior, and you have to be killed for it, right? Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that's key. And a lot of the people being who these rules are being applied to, it's not even necessarily that they did the thing or that they were the only person doing the thing. A lot of people do the same stuff and get away with it. It's that they had someone else up for another reason. Someone wanted their stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's a lot of score settling that happens anytime this kind of shit's going down. And this gets me to an important side of fact about what happened in Cambodia. You will usually see the mass killing in Cambodia referred to either as the Cambodian genocide or the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

This term is not, I think, accurate to describe most of what happened because the vast majority of the people who died as a part of these year zero policies were Khmer. And the goal of the regime was not to wipe out the Khmer, right? It was to make them stronger and ultimately more numerous. And it was just – a disastrous failure, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The term autogenocide, which was coined by author Jean Lacoutre, something like that, Jean Lacouter. Autogenocide was coined by this French author in order to separate the unique circumstances of mass killing in Cambodia from the Holocaust and other traditional genocides. Again,

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's some issues with that even because genocide is not fully the right term for what Pol Pot and his peers are trying to do to the Khmer people, right? Because their goal is to ensure the survival of their race, right? You can come down on however you like on what we should call this, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But I should note that while what the most of the killing the regime does and most of who the regime kills are Khmer, while I don't know that it's right to say that like genocide is just strictly textually the right way to describe that, there are genocides that are being committed by the Khmer Rouge, like normal, like straight up dictionary genocides, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That's absolutely the case. I think kind of the issue comes down to is like, well, they weren't trying to wipe out the Khmer, right? Like they just thought that wiping out these people, which wound up being a huge chunk of the Khmer, would strengthen things. Like, what do you call that? You know, to a degree, does it matter? It's certainly not to the dead.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But I do want to make a point that there were just straight up normal genocides occurring too in this mass killing. Yeah. That paragraph I read a little earlier mentioned both the Cham and the Vietnamese ethnic minorities in Cambodia being targeted. And I think all of these different kind of non-Khmer people are like 5% to 10% maybe of the total number of dead.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But when you look at these as populations, these different ethnic populations that are being targeted are killed in a way that makes them some of the most total genocides I've ever studied, right? Roughly 50% of Chinese Cambodians, and these are not like necessary, some of them are Chinese immigrants, but these are people who are ethnically Chinese and live in Cambodia, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

50% of the pre-war population is executed or starved in a three-year period. And they got off light compared to the ethnically Vietnamese Cambodians. I'm going to quote from that article again.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In particular, the Khmer Rouge propaganda organs described the Vietnamese as toxic to democratic Kampuchea by stating that their goal is to swallow Cambodia's territory and force Cambodia into an Indo-Chinese federation under its control. Vietnamese were portrayed as quintessentially evil and lethal to the democratic Kampuchea.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Radio broadcasts described the Vietnamese as living concealed among the population, infiltrating, sabotaging, and destroying the communist regime, therefore being toxic to the ideal.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Further broadcasts spoke of the need to weed out and exterminate the enemy planted within the cooperatives and reminded civilians, you are not fighting only against Vietnamese soldiers, but the whole of Vietnam, so spare nothing and no one. According to Pol Pot, the Vietnamese are a black dragon that spits its poison. The overall death toll for Vietnamese Khmers was nearly 100% of the population.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Jesus. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean... This is about the most total genocide I've ever heard of the Vietnamese Khmers in particular. Right, right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Did they? Did they? Did Better Offline and Weird Little Guys, two new weekly podcasts launched by Cool Zone last year, both won Webby's in their first year?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Well, because the people at the top giving the orders live these lives of the mind where their whole ego is in, I am intelligent. I understand how things really work, and I have this plan, right? And everything about their personality is wrapped up in that plan, so it has to work. And they simply can't accept.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They can't even let themselves look at a reality that would lead to that being questioned. But then they're passing these orders down to people who, number one, just the desperation of their life, the violence they've seen makes certain things just less abhorrent to them. But also there's room for them to advance.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The more of these people they kill, the more stuff they get, the more they move up, the safer they are, the more food they get. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yes, yes. Yeah, of course. And the incentives come because of the fucked up beliefs of the leaders. Right. And the desperation of the people doing a lot of the killing makes them respond better than the incentives, you know? Right, right, right. Which is, by the way, this is not every genocide. For example, I wouldn't talk about the members of the SS this way because they're not. Right. Right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Right, right, right. But this is what's happening in Cambodia. Right. Speaking of what's happening in Cambodia, presumably someone in Cambodia is listening to this podcast. And if so, look, hi. Hi.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Yeah. Visit Cambodia or not. I don't know. I haven't been. I hope I hear it's nice.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That's astonishing. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You know, I'm very proud of our of our little team who, despite being very, very small in terms of, you know, the broader podcasting universe has way more listeners than most of the other podcast networks out there and actual fans, because we don't just buy a bunch of downloads like some people I'm not going to name, but we could just like bleep out and pretend that I accused whoever the fuck of doing that.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And we're back. So the Cham were another non-Khmer ethnic group that was targeted by the regime. And to make matters worse, the Chams are Muslim, right? And Pol Pot considered Islam to be inherently reactionary, right? A fundamental enemy of communism. The large part of the reason why is that Muslims pray five times a day, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So yeah, you know, we're the Vietnam. And you know, let's say our enemies, the Pod Save guys are the Khmer Rouge of podcasts, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And Pol Pot describes this as them shirking their responsibility to work, right? This is an individualist thing, and it's also stopping you from participating in the national project as much as everyone else, right? The Chams are just thus a drain on the ideal communist state that he wanted to form.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So Pol Pot sent his men to wipe out every Cham village they could find, and roughly 50% of Cham Cambodians had been killed by the late 1979. Now, what's interesting to me is that he also targets the Buddhists, or at least the Buddhist clergy. And this is kind of weird because he had a really good time at the monastery. He described it his whole life as a positive experience.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But as leader of democratic Kampuchea, he describes Buddhist monks as, quote, parasites who eat the rice of the people. Monks are ordered to carry out hard labor, and the vast majority of monks who had existed pre-war are killed by the Khmer Rouge. Wow.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

williams and nielsen cite an internal rouge document that brags a 90 to 95 success rate in wiping out the buddhist monk population um so again almost totally takes out the buddhist clergy within like the theravada buddhist clergy within uh cambodia yeah

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Once you pop the fun, don't stop. Right. Right. Right. Popping here is putting people in mass graves. Yeah. Now, and this is why it's so important to start it, to stop it from starting. Now, again, 90% or so of the people killed by the Khmer Rouge are Khmer.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Most die as a result of these kind of insane agricultural and land reform policies, the mass depopulation, all the starvation and stuff that goes along with it. But as time goes on, an increasing number of people are being tortured and killed by the regime. And

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

past the initial point where they're like punishing the capitalists and the members of law knowles government most of the people being tortured and killed directly are like former party members and like communists and stuff right a lot of them are people who had been part of pol pot's old reading circle back in paris right they are wiping out you know every revolution devours its young but they are doing that in like

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

famous time here, for an idea of how deadly it was to have agreed with Pol Pot back when he was Salah Tsar, or even during the victory of the Khmer Rouge over the Lon Nol government, of the original 22 members of the Central Committee for the Democratic Kampuchea Party, which is who officially governed after the end of the war, six lasted to the end of the regime without being killed or tortured, and the vast majority of those were killed.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I know, I know. I don't know why. It's literally just like the only other podcast network I can remember off the top of my head usually.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The very few people who survived owed their lives to their sworn enemies, the Vietnamese army, who eventually liberated Tuol Slang, which was the prison for specifically, like after a point, it's specifically the prison for like party members who were disloyal. To eliminate confusion, Tuol Slang is more commonly known as Security Prison 21 or S21, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And this is, in terms of its level of fame to people who read about this, Troll Slang or S21 is the Auschwitz of Cambodia, right? Right, right, right. It's not on that scale. It's not that big a camp, but its death toll is...

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like getting caught. Yeah. I think part of it's just because none of this is working and someone has to pay. And part of it is, again, just because once you start killing like this, you can't stop, right? In part because stopping, then you have to deal with the fact that nothing worked.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That everything was a failure, that your whole life and all of your beliefs are wrong and no one at the top can take. So there must be someone, there must be a traitor. There must be somebody fucking with us, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Cause like the Nazis don't really like the Nazis target other Nazis, you know, there's the night along knives, but that was more of like a centralizing, even more power and dealing with like a chunk of the movement that didn't really agree with, with, with Hitler anymore. Not every... This is pretty... It's not unique, but it's not common for it to be like this, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Obviously, in the French Revolution, stuff like this happens, but the swiftness and the centrality with which loyal members of the party are targeted and tortured and executed is...

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like noteworthy here.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was between one of – like S21, this prison that's kind of the most famous of the prisons here, was one of between 150 and a little less than 200 torture and execution centers built on Pol Pot's orders by the Santebal, the secret police. Roughly 20,000 people were imprisoned in S-21 over the course of the regime. There's some debate on this number between 12 and 20,000.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Well, with the exception of the Joe Rogan podcast, which he actually might wind up creeping up on old Pol Pot's numbers. You give him some time and some more testosterone shots. Yeah, yeah. So as I noted at the end of the last episode, Pol Pot had made it to the standing committee in 1960.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's never more than about 1,000 to 1,500 people at a time though. And S-21 is built out of a former school, which is I guess extra chilling given that Pol Pot was a school teacher. Right. And when I say 1,000 to 1,500 at a time, 20,000 total, people aren't released alive from S21. This is a death camp.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And while it started by going after, again, agents of the old regime, yada, yada, yada, its prime purpose for most of its history is purging members of the leadership cast, as well as members of the party, alongside their entire families.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

If you are like somebody, a mid-level guy in the Khmer Rouge who gets targeted and put an S-21, your kids and your wife are going to – even if they're babies, right? They'll take your infant in there and kill them and torture them, right? And again, it's this like, well, we really have to make a statement. The stakes are so high.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

We really have to scare people away from not being loyal members of the party. Now, we're not going to be dealing with S-21 in as much length as we ought to or the prison system in general. This is because it really does deserve its own episodes. Our friend Joe Kasabian of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast has covered it at length. I recommend his work.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Given that I'm trying to focus this on Pol Pot, who was a major architect of this prison system, I hope you'll forgive my brevity as I quote from a detailed fact sheet put together by the Documentation Center of Cambodia for the Cambodia Tribunal. Quote, And this is talking about the people who were sent to S-21.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Holy crap, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a rare three-part episode. You motherfuckers, you lucky sons of bitches and rat bastards are getting three episodes this week. I am now legally your father, you're welcome. Hi, Sophie. Hi, Andrew T. How are you guys doing? Did that intro work? Are we good?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They were accused of collaborating with foreign governments, spying for the CIA and the KGB, and hence betraying Ankar. Prisoners were also believed to have conspired with others and thus were forced to reveal their strings of traitors, which sometimes included over 100 names.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The interrogators at S-21 based their technique on a list of 10 security regulations, which included, while getting lashes or electrification, you must not cry at all.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

although prisoners often had no idea why they had been arrested interrogators forced them to confess their crimes if they did not confess they would be subjected to physical and psychological torture however after having confessed they were marked for execution initially prisoners were killed on the grounds of the prison but as the volume and stench of the corpses rapidly increased and became unbearable

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Prisoners were then trucked en masse to an open field located 15 kilometers away, known as Crow's Feet Pond, to be killed. Waiting at the field was a group of about 10 young men led by Tang. Tang, in his early 20s, and his team of teenagers lived in a two-story house that was built on the field in 1977.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They were informed ahead of time of the number of prisoners that would arrive so that they could dig the graves in advance. The shocking figures commonly associated with the prison, 14,000 killed and seven survivors, Ranked the prison as one of the most lethal in the 20th century. Jesus.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And then the party leader of the Communist Party of Cambodia, a guy named Samouth, was assassinated three years later, probably by the King's security services, although we don't know. So some people think maybe Pol Pot orchestrated it. But anyway, he winds up in charge as a result of this. And...

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yep. Yep. Every day you get told how many corpses you got to dig holes for and you and your fellow teenagers get out of the house. I guess early 20s. Yeah. And his team was teenagers.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He's probably like, well, this is a pretty good job giving things. I'm probably not going to get targeted. They're not going to go after the grave digger, right? They need me digging graves. Yeah. Now, while S-21 was operating, Pol Pot himself made regular statements and writings to Western supporters. And this is a key aspect of what's happening.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

While all this nightmare is unfolding in Cambodia, there's stuff getting out, but not a lot of it, right? At least initially. As time goes on, more does start to get out about how horrifying what's happening is. But the first stuff that gets out is propaganda from Pol Pot and the regime to Western supporters where they're talking about the utopia that we're building.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

We are finally creating the communist, the agrarian peasant communist utopia that everyone's hoped would happen. We've made a totally equal society. Here it is in democratic Kampuchea. We've done it, right? Yeah. And there were a not insignificant number of Western leftists who believed this bullshit, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And who would argue that any evidence to the contrary is the evidence of how hideous what's happening, of the killing fields, as they're called, start to come out. There's a lot of folks who are like, well, that's just capitalist propaganda. That's the CIA, right? Nothing bad's happening in Cambodia, right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

One of the organizations that Pol Pot spread his propaganda towards was the Belgian Campuchia Society, who interviewed Pol Pot in 1978. He told them, We don't have prisons, and we don't even use the word prison. Bad elements in our society are simply given productive tasks to do. And, you know, dipshits buy this stuff, right? As they always do, as they do in the present day.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

By all accounts, the most famous of these dipshits was an English writer and professor named Malcolm Caldwell. Caldwell had been a significant figure on the British left in the 60s and 70s. He spends two years as the chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He is an avid anti-Vietnam War protester. And in that regard, his actions were admirable because the Vietnam War deserved protesting.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He wrote regularly for Peace News in support of different anti-colonial movements, and a number of them he was very right to support. Caldwell is a figure who in some ways resembles a lot of modern genocide denier types on the left, although I think he was a much better person because, again, he's not comprehensively that, and he's not being paid by anybody. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

yeah, initially the people that he's fighting against as he's like leading this increasingly large and capable communist insurgency is King Sehanouk's monarchy, right? Which he battled out of a headquarters named Office 100. And this is a mobile headquarters, right? We're talking about a jungle insurgency.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

this is a true believer who lacks a tremendous degree of judgment in a very key area.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You're mostly right. Fucking U.S. is doing hella war crimes and being supported by a lot of people in Vietnam and doing them. And...

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It is one of – it's very tempting and there's a degree to which you should compare him to folks like people who write for the Gray Zone, which is a faux journalistic institution that spent years arguing Bashar al-Assad, never gassed its own people, made fun of anyone who was saying Russia was about to invade Ukraine, right? They're those motherfuckers. Caldwell –

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's a degree to which you should compare him to them, but also people who knew him said he was kind and empathetic, and he was in a lot of cases on the right side of things. And he gets into Cambodian politics for a sympathetic reason, which is that he's arguing against this nightmarish U.S. bombing campaign, which is a war crime.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And on the other side of this, by the way, I found a fucking Washington Post column looking – writing about this in which the author was like – oh, what's really fucked up is the people who slandered the US for bombing Cambodia to try to stop the Khmer Rouge from coming into being. That's not why we fucking did it, you dipshit. Like, fuck you. For one thing, that's part of what made them possible.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

For the other thing, that was never the fucking goal. Like, fuck you. Fuck you. Just so many people I fucking hate. Anyway. Caldwell was loved by his students, and it was recalled even by people who disagreed with him as a gentle person who was tolerant of opposing views. So he was not the kind of guy who was like,

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Maybe he would have been if he'd had Twitter, but like was a guy who was willing to talk about his unhinged beliefs about Cambodia with you in a polite manner. So I don't want to depict him as a caricature, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, because the Khmer Rouge beat the U.S.-backed La Nul government and because their claims of agrarian equality and an idealized socialist society gelled with Caldwell's own hope of where the world might go, he came to support them to the hilt. His friends, who at the same time saw him as a brilliant economist, also rued his startling naivete.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

No, no. That feels a lot worse for me, actually.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

One peer said, quote, he was a man with very clear theoretical and ideological views, and the empirical basis didn't seem to worry him hugely. Always a big warning sign. My ideas about how shit should work, so why bother looking at what's happening? Now, Caldwell did visit a lot of the regimes that he extolled and supported. He took regime-sponsored tours of places like the USSR.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That's one of those things where it's like you are going to miss a lot of the bad stuff the USSR is doing, but the Soviet Union is like a state that functions realistically. Right. And there's things that did that were good. It got the first person into space. There were massive improvements in literacy and whatnot, in addition to horrifying and awful things done by there. It's an actual state.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Right. And so it's understandable that you could go there and see take this sponsored tour and just see the good stuff. Right. That's not really possible in Cambodia because there's no good stuff. Right? Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So he's moving constantly to stay ahead of the king's intelligence, which is in a large part provided by his American allies, right? Because for the U.S., His fighting against the Khmer Rouge is kind of part of the broader struggle against communism in Vietnam.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Right, right. Per The Guardian, quote, "'Three days before Christmas in 1978, Malcolm Caldwell received an early present.'" on the final day of a two-week tour of Cambodia, he was told that he would meet with Pol Pot. This was indeed a rare privilege. Unlike most other communist leaders, Pol had not created a personality cult. There were no posters of him. He was seldom seen or quoted.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Many Cambodians had not even heard of him. Only seven Westerners were ever invited to what had been renamed Democratic Kampuchea, and Caldwell was the first and only Briton. So the fact that he's invited at all is this huge honor. So he comes and he shows up at this place where there are other journalists, as we'll talk about with him, there's people with him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And they're all immediately like in Phnom Penh being like, where are all the people? Because some of them had been prior to the Khmer Rouge taking over and they're horrified. They're like, Where are the fucking human beings? Everyone's gone. Something's horribly wrong here. Caldwell is just so honored that they didn't pick any other British people. Pol Pot wants to talk to me, just me.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There are a few reasons why he was taken in and received so well. For one thing, he had been to China. He was on good terms with the Chinese communist government. And that was Cambodia's main ally at the time. He was also Pol Pot was kind of in this period. This is after there had been a series of provoked border conflicts with Vietnam provoked by the Khmer Rouge.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And it was becoming increasingly clear that Vietnam was going to invade. And so Pol Pot was really trying to burnish his international support there. So he suddenly wanted Westerners in. Right. And he's like, well, this guy's probably like blind enough to ignore all the horrible shit going on. Right. This guy will do. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And Caldwell had just a few months before he came to Cambodia, written an article in The Guardian in which he had basically said, like, all these reports that the Khmer Rouge are killing people are nonsense. Right. One of his main sources was the Campuchian information minister, a guy named Hugh Nim, who blamed the deaths on America, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Basically, like the bombing, like all of these people that you're saying have died. This is due to the bombing campaign the US had executed, right? Now, by the time he shows up in Cambodia, this guy that his whole article denying the Khmer Rouge genocide is based on, Hugh Nim, has already been executed and tortured to death by Pol Pot, right? So not a great sign.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But even so, he was aware to an extent that the Khmer Rouge was killing people, and he had described them as, quote, arch-quizlings who knew well what their fate would be were they to linger in Kampuchea. So, well, I don't want to caricature this guy. You shouldn't pretend that like this dude was finding reasons to justify the killings that he knew about. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And, you know, to be fair, the Vietnamese are still running a decent amount of what the Cambodian communists are doing, even in this period. In like the mid 60s, they hold a lot of sway because they have a lot. They're a major source of weapons, right? They're more organized, right? But the Cambodian party is getting a lot more independent during this period of time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Including the guy who was the source of his stupid article.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, it's nuts. Now, there are real journalists on this trip. And one of them, Elizabeth Becker, she had been to Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge had taken over. And she was a very courageous and talented war correspondent, right? She was good at her job. And she argued with Caldwell constantly. She's one of the people being like, there's supposed to be people in this city.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like, I've seen it before. Something's really bad here. And Caldwell's, you know, giving the same lines, putting out a bunch of nonsense about, like, you know, the bold reformation of society along these utopian lines and whatnot. But she still liked him. Like, he was a very pleasant man. She called him kind and tolerant and just deeply naive.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Quote, he didn't want to know about problems with the Khmer Rouge. And that carried over to not wanting to know about problems between Cambodia and Vietnam. he was stuck in 1968 or something. Now, there's a book out by this point, by the time that Caldwell comes to Cambodia, about the early stages of the Cambodian auto-genocide, whatever you want to call it, called Year Zero.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Caldwell could have read this book, and if he had, he'd have learned, for example... that one Khmer Rouge saying expressed the regime's goal as, to completely annihilate diseases of consciousness that got in the way of their goals. Doing this meant getting rid of hidden enemies who, as Pol Pot put it, had sicknesses of revolutionary consciousness.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, Philip Short goes into more detail here, summarizing information that should have been available to Caldwell had he done this reading. Quote, Satyarama meant an individual who failed to focus on the communist cause and was therein portrayed as toxic to its realization.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Even without considerable evidence or proof, individuals could suddenly be classified as toxic to the super great leap forward and accused of being class enemies with a sickness of consciousness. Enemies were depicted as pervasive and infecting the pure Khmer ideal. The desire to exterminate enemies grew, as did the intoxication of doing so with impunity.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Purging these contaminants was discussed as crucial to the survival of the regime. According to propaganda, enemies were likened to an impurity that threatened the well-being of revolutionary society. These groups were portrayed as a lethal source of pollution that needed to be eliminated.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

A sort of madness had taken over the country at this point, particularly among the Rouge cadres doing the hand-to-hand slaughtering. And for an idea of just how deranged this gets, several militia who were interviewed later claimed that they would eat the livers of their victims in the belief that it would give them extra power and probably because they are also starving to death.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

One of these... Yeah. One of these guys is cited later as saying, they ate human liver because they wanted to prevent themselves from being shocked by killing people. Then they could kill people. They wanted to change themselves to be able to kill people without pity.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And Salah Sarr is kind of making it his business to both increase that independence and to make friends with the people he needs to beg for guns because they're not really capable of manufacturing weapons in the jungle.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You're generally safe. If you want to eat human beings safely, like the liver is like a reasonably okay spot to go for. Robert, Robert. Sophie, I don't want people to get fucking prion diseases. No spine, no bone marrow, no brain. No spine, no bone marrow, no brain, right? We all know this. Look, folks, Sophie, a lot of people, I'm a believer in harm reduction, okay? All right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Test your fentanyl. Don't eat people's spines. Or test your drugs for fentanyl. Don't eat people's spines. Don't test your fentanyl. Don't do fentanyl. Okay. Caldwell could have had access to a lot of this information, and he rejected it largely on the basis that Year Zero had been pilloried by a critique published by Noam Chomsky. Now, this is contentious, people. Oh, boy.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The arguing about whether or not Chomsky supported the Khmer Rouge or was just like... Given the information available at the time, it's hard to tell what is true. I'm not gonna, this is not going to be a lengthy dissection of that. But there were arguments that he denied a number of the crimes being committed by the Khmer Rouge.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He certainly argued that Ponchard, the author of Year Zero, had exaggerated the horror of what was occurring on the ground. Chomsky described it as what people were saying about the Khmer Rouge as, quote, an unprecedented propaganda campaign to slander democratic Kampuchea via systematic distortion of the truth. Right. Now, Chomsky preferred a different book.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He compared Ponchad's work unfavorably with another book called Cambodia, Starvation and Revolution, written by George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, which basically is taking Khmer Rouge propaganda and like being like, hey, everything's great over there, actually. And like the stuff that's bad is not their fault. Right. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There was another book written by two Reader's Digest writers called Murder of a Gentle Land that Chomsky also went after, which, you know, it was not perfect. None of the claims about what none of the none of the critiques and the people talking about the auto genocide are perfectly accurate because it's still going on. Right. But they are broadly accurate.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And Chomsky is certainly in the wrong about what books about Cambodia to trust during this period. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. And this is also why I have a degree more of sympathy to Caldwell and to other people who doubted this in this period of time because it was such a different information environment. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And there was just so much disinformation that had been put out about Vietnam, that had been put out about what the US was doing in Cambodia, that had been put out about what the US was doing in parts of Latin America. Yeah. Again, these people are wrong and that should be stated, but I do have less condemnation than I do about the stuff going on in the 21st century that mirrors this, right? Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And it's certainly reasonable to initially be skeptical. Now, again, by the point time Caldwell was on the ground and these other people with him are like, this city used to have people. It's no longer like you should have known. Right. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So it's generally considered or argued at least that Chomsky is a big part of why Caldwell doesn't like trust, you know, punch odds book about the atrocities going on in Cambodia. You know, whatever the truth, however, you're going to blame for it. Caldwell at age 47 shows up in Cambodia as. a pretty much a true believer, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I mean, it's always, when you're talking about like an underground insurgent, you've got this secret leader. Nobody knows his name. Again, it's a real bummer from a narrative standpoint. I would have had him born Pol Pot and switched to Salah Tsar because that's such a cool name. Like it's such a scary name. But whatever.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In fact, he had finished a book before he goes there called Kampuchea, a Rationale for Rural Policy, in which he had written that the Khmer Rouge had, quote, opened vistas of hope, not only for the people of Cambodia, but also for the peoples of all other poor third world countries. We'll come back to that book in a second. So Caldwell, along with these journalists, is escorted around the country.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They see some like staged scenes. And again, Becker gets aggressive, very brave woman with these Khmer Rouge guards being like, I can. I can see what you're not showing us, like where you're blocking us from going. I can see evidence of clear problems because I've been here before. And she's like arguing with them. She said later, it was so clearly awful.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

One of the problems was the absence of what I saw, the absence of people. And that's a different kind of proof to I don't see any people being executed. Caldwell was not concerned. Quote, he preferred to stay in the car and laugh at the clumsy photo opportunities prepared for us, Becker wrote in her book on Cambodia.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Now, at the very end of the tour, they all go back to Phnom Penh and they're hanging out for a little bit. They're not all that far from the S-21 center, right? This is where Caldwell is going to finally have his interview with Pol Pot. And I'm going to quote from The Guardian again. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Caldwell remained ignorant on the Friday morning in Phnom Penh that he was taken in a Mercedes limousine to see Pol Pot. The setting for the meeting was the former governor's palace on the waterfront, built during the French colonial period. In a grand reception room, replete with fans and billowing white curtains, the two men sat down and discussed revolutionary economic theory.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Becker had met Pol Pot earlier the same day, and in When the War Was Over, that's her book, she writes, "...he was actually elegant, with a pleasing face, not handsome, but attractive." His features were delicate and alert, and his smile nearly endearing. The perennially shabby academic and the fastidious dictator must have made for an odd couple.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I'm like one of those dads that should pay child support, but instead I live on a boat in the harbor of fucking New Orleans.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

In any case, Caldwell left the meeting a happy man. He returned to the guesthouse he was sharing with Becker and Dudman, full of praise for Pol Pot and his political outlook. We went over stuff, says Becker. He thought he had a good conversation. He had avoided at all costs any discussion of Vietnam, and he was looking forward to going home.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So that night they have another argument, you know, Becker and Caldwell about Cambodia. You know, they have dinner and they go to bed. And as far as she can tell, he remained completely convinced that the revolution was a good thing and that Cambodia was headed in a good direction.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

She goes to bed at around 11 p.m., and in the middle of the night, she is woken up by what she eventually realizes is gunfire. And she comes out of her room. She sees a young man pointing a handgun at her. He's wearing – he's got bands of ammunition on his body. He's got a rifle on his back. She flees back into her room and locks herself in the bathroom.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And eventually, when they come out, when this ends, Dudman, the other guy there, sees a bunch of guys running along the street, and they find Caldwell in his room, and he's been shot repeatedly. He's dead, right? Jesus. It's still, to this day, not perfectly clear. Yeah. I mean, it's generally... Pretty clear Pol Pot ordered it. We don't really know why. What about this guy triggered him?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Why specifically it happened? They the Khmer Rouge doesn't admit to it. But yeah, this guy gets killed. And it's just kind of it's one of these very famous moments because he's such he's one of these like guys who had really been willing to go to bat for Democratic Campuchia and then finds himself yet another victim. corpse in the killing field, so to speak.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. So... Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, people are really... Like, Coldwell, above all else, is a reminder of how easy it is to blind yourself to obvious reality, even at your own peril, because... Because seeing the reality is not even that you don't want to see it. It's seeing the reality would mean taking a hit to your ego. It's the same thing why you've got.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah, exactly. A few further dominoes will fall. Just like Rian Johnson's Star Wars movies. And like Rian Johnson's Star Wars movies, Salazar travels to Beijing in order to beg for weapons.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's a lot of people being like, oh, well, once these tariffs start to hit, once the economy collapses, all of these Trump supporters will realize. Yeah, they'll see the light. And like a significant chunk of Trump's voters who are not hardcore supporters, who are the people who voted for Biden and, you know, who go back. and forth or who like made their decision day of.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Sure, they'll change their mind. They'll get angry. But the heart and core of his supporters, recognizing that they've been fucked means recognizing they're not as smart as they think they are. And again, Caldwell, that's a big part of it for him. He's a scholar. He's a smart man. He couldn't be this wrong.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yes, because again, they've bought in. Now, while all this is going on, The end of the regime is getting nearer and nearer because Pol Pot's also not as smart as he thinks he is. He had directed his forces in what began as a series of border skirmishes against the newly unified Vietnamese state. This was a sensible decision based on their obsessive hatred and paranoia of Vietnam.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

But given the comparative state of the militaries of the two countries, it was basically suicidal. And in short order, this is what brings an end to democratic Kampuchea. Vietnam invades Cambodia in December of 1978, and what follows was not close to a fair fight. By January, they had taken the capital and put an end to Pol Pot's reign. Sort of. He has to flee, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He has to like leave Phnom Penh and Vietnam takes over and administers, you know, for a while Cambodia and eventually Cambodia becomes independent again under a government that is not the Khmer Rouge. But the Khmer Rouge doesn't go away and Pol Pot remains the head of the Khmer Rouge as they like go and hide in the jungle.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

They've got like some villages and stuff, this like little weird fortified section of the country, tiny section of the country that they're able to like manage along. I think it's like the Thai border there.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And in fact, this like government – because like in 82, China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations kind of pressures the Khmer Rouge to ally with Prince Sahanak's forces and some like Republican forces led by a guy called Son San along the Thai border and create this thing called the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That is partly true, yes. And so he is like, and he's talking with, obviously, with Ho Chi Minh City or with the Vietnamese communists. And they are coordinating, but never to the extent that the West kind of imagines. Right. Even though they're very dependent on the Vietnamese for a while, they never like it.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that remains in the U.N., the legitimate government of Cambodia until 1991, even though like they're not actually in power. The government in power is like the PRK, but they're only recognized by Vietnam, Lao and the Soviet Union. And so that's kind of like Pol Pot's where he is for the 80s, you know, into the 90s. There is a lot of guerrilla warfare.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Pol Pot continues to lead the Khmer Rouge to fight against the Vietnamese-backed government of Cambodia. And this continues massively, the suffering of the Cambodian people, who do never get nearly enough international aid. And this situation doesn't really start to end until the Paris Peace Agreement is signed in October of 1991.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The Vietnamese withdraw from Cambodia and things slowly start to calm down. There's a UN peacekeeping force that kind of enters in 1993 and there's like a free and fair election situation. Yeah, things start to get better at this point. The Khmer Rouge never disarms, right? They continue to hold their tiny little chunk of the country and argue that Vietnam is still secretly running things.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

There's camouflaged Vietnamese soldiers that are behind the regime, right? Um, they boycott the 1993 election and they basically hole up in Western and Northern little bits of Cambodia. They're outlawed in 1994. Um, and when the cold war ends, they, they don't really have any of them, even minimal support that they had previously had. Uh, at long, long length.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yang Seri, who's the foreign minister, who is again one of Pol Pot's friends from Paris, as well as a number of other high-ranking officials, surrender along with the bulk of what had remained of the military of the Khmer Rouge, and they are eventually incorporated into the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. Pol Pot, though, stays free for quite a while until he is... Basically, there's this...

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Shit that goes down in 1998, I think it is, where one of his few remaining friends running the Khmer Rouge, this guy Son Sen, does something that Pol Pot considers treason. And so he massacres Son Sen, along with 14 of his family members, including his grandkids.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Um, now Pol Pot would argue for the other people, the babies, the young ones, I did not order them to be killed for Sansan and his family. Yes. I feel sorry about that. That was a mistake that occurred when we put our plan into practice. I feel sorry. Um, this is when he's questioned by a journalist named Nate Thayer, who does like his last interview.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And this is kind of what brings an end to him leading the Khmer Rouge finally after 37 years, because for whatever reason, this is a step too far to the last people who had stuck around him. And one of his, like his commander in chief, a guy named Tom Mock puts him on house arrest. Right. And yeah, and that's, Kind of the end of Pol Pot of having even a sliver of power.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Eventually, Pol Pot is brought before a people's tribunal. He's sentenced to life imprisonment for Sansan's murder. But he never really faces any actual, like, justice, right? Like, there's nothing... Right, there's no way you can pay for this anyway, but he doesn't even...

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. No, he dies under house arrest in 1998. And, uh, that's the story.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And there is absolutely no desire among the Cambodian communists or among Pol Pot to be tightly aligned with Vietnam. This like fantasy that the U.S. has that China and all these Southeast Asian states are going to form like one unified communist bloc is is just absolutely anyone with the slightest degree of knowledge of any of these people. Yeah. What the fuck are you? No, they hate each other.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Yeah. Like he is ultimately not punished by the new Cambodian state or the UN. He's punished by the Khmer Rouge for killing another Khmer Rouge guy. Um, In his very last interview after he has been arrested, again, there's this guy, Nate Thayer, who comes in and does this like final interview with Pol Pot. He and Nate is a very does a very good job of this.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like he really presses Pol Pot on the stuff that he did on all of the killings. And this is I want to read this quote from one of Nate's last articles with Pol Pot, where he's trying to get him to acknowledge anything about what he did. I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people, he rasps, his voice almost a whisper.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He pauses, fixing to his interviewer with an almost pleading expression. Even now, and you can look at me, am I a savage person? My conscience is clear. I do not reject responsibility. Our movement made mistakes, like every other movement in the world. But there was another aspect that was outside our control, the enemy's activities against us.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I want to tell you, I'm quite satisfied with one thing. If we had not carried out our struggle, Cambodia would have become another Kampuchea Krom in 1975, he says, referring to the Mekong Delta region, seized by Vietnam from the Khmer Empire in the 17th century.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that, I think, says a lot that the end of this guy's life, two million deaths, maybe on his on his conscience, the absolute destruction of his country in such a way that it still has not recovered. And he's like, well, look, if I hadn't done that, it could have wound up like this time. Vietnam took the Mekong Delta region from us in the 1600s. You know, you wouldn't want that, would you?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Like he's still he's such like it's this this fucking academic brain shit where like all that matters to him. And is these this idea he's cooked up about how the world ought to work when he was like a young student with his friends that he never gets over. His ego won't let him no matter how many fucking people it leads him to kill.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And don't... Don't take the books you read when you were fucking 20 too seriously.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Exactly. That is why I bring this up in the context of Doge and all of these young people who have fucking reading goddamn Curtis Yarvin and shit on the internet and convince themselves the shit they read when they're young and talk with their friends about obsessively in these Discord chats and signal loops and

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

You know, there are the people who are willing to make Pol Pot style decisions and no number of deaths, how many, no matter how many, tens of millions of fucking people die if they get the chance. It won't, they will not for a second doubt themselves or change their minds.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that's why literally anything that can be done to stop the process that is attempting to be underway is like justified because these people are going, they... They have to be edged out. Right. And I'm optimistic, at least about the fact that Musk, who's one of these people who has the same kind of Pol Pot brain damage, seems to seems to be pulling back because of how angry he's made.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

He's just not built for criticism. Right. Yeah. But there's more of these guys and these guys.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Anyway, I don't know. Hard to know when it's good to read books or not.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Not the podcast.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Podcasts have never led anyone to support horrible things that get people killed. Just don't ever believe your own bullshit or anyone else's too strong. Keep an eye out for what's going on in the world and talk to people. Goodbye.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Talk to a Vietnamese dude about China. Like, seriously, have a Conver fucking session. In 1970, Sehanouk's regime is overthrown because, again, the war is not going well for him. He's not particularly good at running Cambodia. And a bunch of these kind of right-wing leaders in the military with the backing of the United States gets pissed off.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So when the king – I think he's actually technically calling himself the prince because he gives up his royal title to quote-unquote run for office, whatever – Sahanek leaves the country on a diplomatic visit, and there's a coup. And the coup is headed by this guy called Lon Nol. Lon Nol is actually the brother of Salazar's childhood best friend.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And obviously, because of that, Lon Nol's brother is a major part of the regime Lon Nol sets up. And he's like... Yeah, probably if the communists win, my friendship with Salah Sarr will protect me. It doesn't, by the way. This guy gets the fucking shit liquidated out of him.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

No, no, no, but I definitely don't believe in the moon landing. This is Behind the Bastards. Again, a podcast. You're enjoying part three of our Pol Pot episodes. And basically the way it goes here, folks, we have a massive audience and I'm always trying to do the most I can to please the most people, which you can't do with every episode.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And the fact that there's a family connection or a deep connection between Salah Sarr, who's leading the communists, and the family of Lon Nol does nothing to temper the brutality of the conflict that follows. Now, a lot of this comes directly as a result of Lon Nol's policies, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Pol Pot is running a very brutal insurgency, but it's brutal in response to the sheer violence unleashed by Nol in order to try to maintain control. As soon as the monarchy is abolished, the so-called Khmer Republic begins calling on the U.S. to continue and extend their bombing campaign in Cambodia.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

which had started clandestinely and very illegally in 1969 under Nixon as a way to try and stop Vietnamese communists from being able to supply themselves. Right. There's this idea, this accurate idea that Cambodia is a big part of how the Viet Cong are like supplying. And this is where they're retreating to in order to regather their strength. That is essentially accurate.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And we are bombing them for years and pretending not to. And now when La Nol is in power, we don't have to like lie. because we're being invited, right? Now we're being invited by this coup that we set up, right? The US would ultimately drop more than half a million tons on Cambodia in a four-year period of time.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And for an idea of like how many explosives that is, I mean, that sounds like a lot, right? 500,000 tons is a lot of weight. That's more than the total weight of bombs dropped on the empire of Japan during all of World War II. And here's the thing. These bombs are being dropped both to deal with like Viet Cong, you know, tunnel complexes and some of their bases and to stop the Khmer Rouge.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The Khmer Rouge has no industrial base. Their weapons have to be smuggled in. They are not like building tanks. They don't have cities that are like functioning as part of an industrial core. The Empire of Japan was one of the most powerful industrialized states on the planet, and we dropped more bombs on Cambodia than we did on them. Right. Like, right? That's... Jesus Christ.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

It's fucking... And we nuked Japan famously, right? Like, the degree of force that we deploy on these guys... is outrageous and we get fuck all for it. Like this could not have been a less useful use of force. Not that that would have made it like moral. If like it had won us the war, it wouldn't be okay. I'm not saying that, but it like, this is just like the biggest L a military.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

And that's the thing. I tried to make this clear in the Kissinger episodes. It's not just how evil he is, because he gets depicted as this evil genius a lot. He sucked so much shit at a lot of what he was doing. Right. Between 150,000 and 300 Cambodians probably died. That's a- Incredible death toll, although there's a lot of arguments that both of those numbers either is much too low, right?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

That it's significantly higher than 300,000. You can find some lower estimates. 150 to three is kind of, you know, somewhere that's close enough for what we're talking about here. It's a crime. It's a historic crime against humanity, right? Right. Most of those dead are civilians, including a shitload of little kids who are just incinerated from the sky by the United States Air Force.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Certain kinds, some people don't like the cult leaders. Some people don't like the dictator. Some people only want the dictators. And likewise, we've started doing a lot more four-parters over the last couple of years, in part because there were guys where I felt like I'm kind of doing a disservice to try to limit this to two episodes.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

So the fact that we're doing this, the fact that we are incinerating entire villages, we're just lighting little kids on fire from the sky, makes people angry. The folks who don't die and who previously had their ambition in life had been to like, you know, be a peasant, feed my family. Live a life, you know, like be a normal Cambodian person.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Their ambitions changed after their families get incinerated. And suddenly they're like, you know what would be cool? Killing a bunch of people in revenge. You know, getting my vengeance. Yeah. And so a lot of peasants start flocking to the banner of the Khmer Rouge, which had not been super popular previously, right? It had been growing before this bombing campaign escalates, but not massively.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

The bombing campaign's primary result is to supercharge support for the Khmer Rouge, because wouldn't you want to shoot somebody?

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I'll never say anything to mitigate or reduce the complicity and the responsibility of Pol Pot and the leaders for the crimes that are about to happen. But the crimes are being committed directly on the ground by a lot of these young people from the jungle who grow up under this bombing campaign and then join the guerrilla. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

I can't, no matter how hideous things are, I can't really blame them, which isn't saying that it's okay or justified. It's just saying that you ruined people and they went insane. It's explainable. It's extremely explainable. No one's capable of acting rationally with the damage that you have done to them. Right.

Behind the Bastards

Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

With the exception, again, of these people at the top, guys like Pol Pot, who do not grow up, are not raised being bombed or, you know, living under these horrible conditions in the jungle. These are people of privilege, of education, who had the opportunity to pick a different path and did choose horror, right? And that's where my blame lies here.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I mean, look... There's a Venn diagram. We may not like to say it, but like there's a Venn diagram at points between me and Mussolini's life, right?

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I'm not against killing early 20th century autocrats, theoretically. Right. Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Look, if I could go back in time and stab the king of Italy, I would try to.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Is it the guy who stabbed the king of Italy?

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

And this translates to fascism too, right? During the Third Reich, there was always this idea that like if only Hitler knew, right? About like the worst Nazi policies. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing with the czar. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

That's a song. That's a Warren Zevon song right there. Smith and Wesson and a one way ticket to Paris. Excellent. And a king is going to die.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yes. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Hell. Oh, that's a good line. Uh-huh. That's a good line.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, no. Kings are great at, like, really union behavior. They really work like unions. Royalty. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I mean... Talking about occupational hazards. Yeah. I feel confident saying that being a king is a pre-existing condition. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Did you know Mussolini didn't stay leftist? Really? Now, I thought you were talking about Benny Mussolini, the man who invented the three day weekend.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

You're, of course, referring to the website that just plays a looping video of the song X Gon' Give It To You. That's where I get all of my historical information about anarchists in the early 1900s as well.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Hey everybody, Robert here. It is the end of the year. You're cooling down from Christmas. You know, still probably finishing up pie and other goodies that you got. I hope you had a good one. We're all bracing for the new year to come. Behind the Bastards is, of course, continuing to publish...

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

as we normally do around this time of year, but we've also got some specials for you from elsewhere in our network. And today we have collected two great episodes from cool people who did cool stuff about all of the people who tried to kill Benito Mussolini. This is with the great Margaret Killjoy. I think it is very fitting for the end of this year.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, yeah, unfortunately he is.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

He was, I mean, one thing you learn about Mussolini and all these guys, with the exception of Franco, who unfortunately kept a pretty good grip on his rationality throughout his life, is most of them are a lot more cunning and better at planning before they get into power, and it's almost like power damages your brain in a way that makes you less capable of, like, clamping down on your own worse impulses and analyzing things logically.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah. That makes sense to me.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I mean, I think I could become dictator of Italy. Yeah, no, I know. You give me six months, Margaret. Okay. Six months and a lot of pizza pies, if we know anything about our Italians. Pizza Hut's probably fine.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

You could feel about this however you want, but undeniably, like, one of the most intense flexes in the history of international conflict is when the U.S. had the former premier of the Soviet Union become a spokesman for Pizza Hut. Like, that was just such a, wow, well, I guess you guys lost that conflict. Jesus. Jesus.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

This is not a serious country. Look, I know we're talking about serious things, but Italy, I just I'm sorry. It's just not.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I mean, shit, you could do that in front of my house if I could have paid, like, you know, 30% less. Absolutely. Look, I'm not getting involved with the mafia. They got no reason to be pissed at me. Yeah. I don't see shit. I don't even hear gunshots at night. I don't know what you're talking about. Mafia what?

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I mean, I have twice been coming home to my house when someone has, a couple of blocks away, been shooting it out with the police.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

A nice place to live. A nice place to live. And, like, I'm not the police, so I'm not worried if I get shot. I'm not the police. These people have no reason to be angry at me. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Looks good in history books. Yeah, looks good. I mean, there's right around this time, the case of Sagamon Telerian, who a Berlin jury decided like, oh, no, no, it was totally fine that he assassinated that guy who did a genocide. Oh, yeah, yeah, totally. That Turkish politician.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I'm just saying, everybody who might wind up in a court in New York, start looking up jury nullifications right now. Yeah, absolutely.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah. She's five foot one.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. So I love stories about short ladies doing badass. My grandma was like four foot eleven. Hell yeah. My grandpa was six five. And because she was so small during World War Two, she had a special job. They would hold her by her feet and shove her inside the wings of P-51 Mustangs so she could like weld them. or like do bolting or something.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

She was, I think, welding them on the inside. There was like an area that needed welds that only the tiniest girls could fit. Hell yeah. Fucking rad. Hell yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Well done. I mean, one of the lessons is that nobody knew how to shoot in the past. Yeah. And most people don't know how to shoot today also. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

So they're like the English landlord Irish type deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, like Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah, totally.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I hate to say it, but that is pretty cool.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I would want to meet her. Maybe from a distance, but I would want to meet her. I would want to observe her from a safe distance.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Is it possible that there was like no one at her funeral because this I mean, I had just made a comment about Ireland staying winning, but Ireland's history are either fascists in this period is not particularly clean, in large part because the fascists were an opposed to the British government.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

And so there was a lot of at least the enemy of my enemy is my friend thing among the Irish, as well as the fact that Franco was like a Catholic. Like, it's not a clean period for Ireland entirely either. It's not, but she's also Anglo-Irish, right? Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, that also makes sense. You're right. I'd forgotten that.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, I, yeah, exactly. I think that that's people. Number one, it's like working backwards, which you shouldn't do when you're trying to analyze people psychologically. Um,

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Now, that said, I don't know that I would say it didn't have an impact on the character of the regime, just like it's probably fair that whatever Trump does next, the shooting will probably have impacted because it clearly affected his mental state, right? Totally. Maybe it'll mean that he's a little less coherent and a little less willing to take risks he might otherwise have taken.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Maybe it'll mean he's more vengeful. We don't know yet. We'll all be learning soon. Right. But it definitely the presidency we are going to get out of him now is different than if he had won and nobody had shot him. Right. Like, that's just we don't know how and we'll never know how. But that's just a reality because nearly being shot to death on live television changes you, changes anybody.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah. Because you can't let something like this go to waste. And also just like continuing to work after you've nearly been shot to death in the head, probably also just kind of mentally necessary. Like you're going to make use of that because otherwise you're going to sit alone in a room and think about how you nearly got your brains blown out. Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Oh, they loved Mussolini. Benito, I mean, a lot of Americans really liked Mussolini, in part because he was very much a celebrity dictator. Yeah. In a way that Hitler was, but not in this... Hitler was famous and managed to become beloved in Germany. Mussolini had a level of international movie star clout, in part because he looked handsome in his photos in a way Hitler didn't really.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

He looked like a movie star. Not in real life, but he had good people working. And he had a lot of movie stars hanging out with him, by the way. A lot of American ones.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are the two American anarchists who... There was a bombing. They got accused of it. Executed. Didn't do it. Right? Am I okay on the basics there? So what's funny about it... It's messy. The general version is. Usually it is. Yeah. This was like cumulatively four sentences over the course of my high school education.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I don't even think I learned about McKinley getting assassinated. I don't think I learned it was an anarchist, but maybe it was not. I barely remember high school.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I got C's. But I definitely remember knowing that Sacco and Vanzetti had been anarchists.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Uh... Well, it's also an unfortunate truth that a lot of times the people who are most willing to make things like bombs are also driven more by rage than political conviction, and thus very easy to swing to a politics that entirely exists on the basis of rage. Yeah. Which is why we really do try here not to...

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

idolize people whose only contribution is that they did a violence yeah um totally even when everybody's making some very funny jokes on social media yeah right now about a thing that just happened

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Great stuff. Yeah. I don't love their murders, but I support them being Italian. Thus, they ought to be free.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I mean, it depends on the stage, but at the early stages, Mussolini does eventually invade Ethiopia and deploy chemical weapons. Yeah, that's certainly an argument that you could have made earlier in Mussolini's regime. You have to remember, he definitely was killing his political enemies. Oh, yeah. Stabbed a dude to death with a file. Yeah. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Not necessarily in a way that's a higher body count than, for example, the number of black people being murdered by police in apartheid states in the United States. Right. Yeah. Like which is not a different thing to me. I don't consider that to be better than, I don't know, rounding up like a few dozen socialists and murdering them or whatever. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Like that and the constant mass, the constant murder at a pretty high rate of black men in the South by cops and vigilantes, like both, both things that I would put on a similar moral level.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I'm not trying to be like Benito Mussolini is great. You know? No, no, no, no. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't think you were. Yeah. I'm just saying like, yeah, that's not an irrational statement to make at that point in time, knowing what they knew. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Did anything else happen on September 11th? Ever? That seems like one of those.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, thank you. I'm looking at my calendar of various September 11th's that I keep for no reason. Yeah, it doesn't look like anything's ever happened on another September 11th that I've got. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

That must be why I celebrate 9-11. Yeah, exactly. Wait, no, shit. Robert. Margaret, Margaret, I'm getting some very bad Google results suddenly. We need to edit that out. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. All those poor people. Holy shit.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Excellent. You know, Wednesday, Margaret, is the day that comes after Tuesday. That's a little science fact for those of you in the audience.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

We tried to shoot a little bit, a couple of facts your way. Yeah. That's why it's edutainment. That's why it's edutainment, right? Yeah. So remember, folks, Wednesday, day after Tuesday. Thursday comes the day before Monday. And that's all I got to say. Comes before Monday. Yes, yes, yes. Tomorrow is Saturday. And after Monday is the weirdest thing about Thursday. I know, I know.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

It's the day so nice they made it happen twice. It... I can't even. There's nothing I can do with that. Yep. Oh, Morgan, I wish you and I could hang out all 11 days of the week. I know. I know. That'd be nice.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Well, you can find me sweating away in my basement because you and I only use an antique Coptic Christian calendar and day system based largely on a step pyramid that used to exist but was bulldozed in what was once Sumeria. So it's very it takes a lot of time to remember what day it is.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I don't know. We really kept this bit going for a while.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

That is the thing. I can think of very few assassinations in history where ultimately you would look at it and say that, like, yeah, that worked out really well, particularly that worked out well by the person carrying out the assassination standards.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Really, the one that, like, Sagamon Telerian, who shot, you know, one of the young Turks who orchestrated the Armenian genocide, that worked out great by his standards and everyone else's. That guy who shot Abe seems to, the long run of that seems to have been positive. Very few other instances. Like, I don't know that I'd say McKinley worked out very well in the long run.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Obviously, shooting the Archduke, fucking disaster. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yes. Yes. But the if within the if contains a lot of reasons why, you know, we're going to say for legal reasons here, assassinations probably not worth it.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

That's right. I'm Robert Evans, and I'm Robert Evans. That's me. Well, I brought you on because you're an expert about Italy. Yeah, I mean, I know several things about Italians, Margaret. Number one, butte di beppo. Number two, spicy meat da balla. Here's where we remind the listeners that Robert Evans is Italian. Whatever the hat is that the chefs wear and those kind of racist caricatures.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Look, it's fine. We all decided that it's okay with Italians now.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Look, if they'd been... I have the opposite position of that guy. I'm fine with the murder. If they'd been on trial for being Italian, I would have said fucking... Yeah, hang on. You know? Yeah, exactly. Hang on my eye. Yeah, maybe upside down.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

magpie and my guest robert evans hi magpie i listened to when i was buying hay today i right before this i went to go get hay for my livestock at the feed store and they were playing that song brandy uh and so now i am in my head remixing that song instead of being about a woman whose lover dies at sea uh to be about you making podcasts excellent

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

We should do a Pathfinder podcast, Margaret. I would love to do a live play podcast. Maybe I'll reach out to the guy who created Pathfinder and listens to our podcasts and talk to him about that.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Whatever. I don't care. There's a shortage of podcasts. I don't know if you're aware of this. Yeah. But the CDC has said that it's probably the largest threat to our national collective health.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

That's right.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I've heard of Tuscany, because the Tuscan coast is pretty famous. I've never heard of Tarara. Other than that, it makes me think of that song that goes, Tarara, boom, DA, which I don't know what that's a reference to. Is that a slur? I have no idea. I should probably look into that song, see if there was anything fucked up. It's like celebrating a genocide. That's often the case with old songs.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

What a lovely tune. Oh, no.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Oh, okay.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Really double dipping. Yeah. And that's, you know, because there's so many. It's like you and I always say, Margaret, with so many anarchists in our audience, you know, every there's there's nothing that goes together like anarchism and marble quarries. Yeah, totally. Two great tastes that taste great together, you know? That's why, by the way, let's have a word for our sponsor, Big Marble.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Marble! Maybe we could use it again for some stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Marble, if you use it to make all of your streets and sidewalks like they do in Greece, it makes things incredibly treacherous in the rain. Actually, horrible, horrible material to use the way that they use it.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, yeah, that's, I mean, I'm not gonna say, but that's very lucky. Yeah, exactly, don't get shot in the neck. The neck is very low on the number of places on your body you would wanna get shot. Yeah, not a good tourniquet spot, it turns out. Hard to tourniquet a neck unless you're Google AI, which has told me repeatedly that you can tourniquet the neck. Hell yeah. That's just a hanging, folks.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

You're just strangling someone to death. Oh, my God. Don't tourniquet necks. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

No, it just sees, well, there's fucking arteries there. Tourniquet away.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yes, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

It does take a long time to get all the hay out.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

And the goats love hay.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Gino agreed to do the deed. I mean, it's the thing that you come across over and over again when you read about militant movements and civil wars where there are anarchist groups, is that the anarchists are always very brave. Not always the best fighters, but always very brave. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, that's an aspect of it.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

No, because that would be very dangerous. Margaret, have I told you the story about the Iraqi soldier? We're behind this berm embedded with this unit of the Iraqi federal police that are in this very... active gunfight with some ISIS guys, but they're also kind of showing off. Cause like my I'm there and my photographer's there with the camera.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

And so like one of the dudes, one of the dudes clips into the buttons of his like button up shirt, a grenade over each button. He like sticks the little handle arm of the grenade around and he like runs up and he like fires. And then he leans over to pick up a magazine that's like lying behind the berm and all of the grenades fall off of his shirt and roll down directly towards me.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

So thankfully they're not set off by impact. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Isn't muriatic acid the thing in like swimming pools? Isn't that chlorine? No, no. I mean, I think you have muriatic acid for swimming pools too. I remember I've seen like jars. One sec. I actually didn't want to Google this today.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You use muriatic acid to lower like pH in your pool. It's like a shit millions of Americans have this shit in like their shed. Okay.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I have no idea why you would I either he was being really extra or like or he just thought it he might have thought it was more sketchy than it was I don't know yeah like this one says acid you know yeah yeah yeah when it's really no I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know much about it other than that I know I've seen it in people's like backyards because they have pools

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

OK, yeah, sure. Yeah, it's his best friend, the sparrow. I mean, that's sweet, actually. I know. I bet he was giving it some of his like very, very rare bread that he didn't have a whole lot of because he was a nice man.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, definitely. I mean, in the long run, it's all any of us can hope for, right? Because as we've seen, every struggle worth fighting occurs over a long time frame. Yeah, absolutely.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

products I love products services maybe I don't know if you'd ever if there'd ever be a service on here I do like a good service oh okay yeah okay fascinating yeah no yeah whatever whatever they pay me to talk about or whatever they pay someone else to talk about and then insert into my podcast all right I'm really excited about here

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

No, assassinations. No one would ever do such a thing. No one would ever do such a thing and then have it immediately cause Blue Cross Blue Shield to reverse a policy on denying claims arbitrarily when the surgery takes too long to pay for anesthetic. That would never happen.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

No. Was he like a scientist being forced to do stuff by the not... So I'm going to get to it. You know what? That's got to be one of the top anarchism fails. Yeah, it didn't work out well in the end. I would say missiles. I mean, there's definitely some anarchists, you know, an anarchist related groups that have used missiles and are using them right now.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

But boy, howdy, it's a general rule, not a tool that has reduced state power. Yeah. Oh, that's an L. I know, and it's so messy. That's a big L for us.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

It used to be a lot easier to get a helicopter. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Let's call it, let's say Alejandro Foos.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

The two key cornerstones of modern civilization, missiles and foosball.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Which is if you've got Blue Cross, you now have to be less worried about getting surgery.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Man, that's dope. Yeah. Also, 1999, great year to kind of clock out. Yeah, totally. Missed a lot of messiness, got to see most of the good Star Treks. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yes.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

That's good for him.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Zamboni. God damn it. I promised you Zamboni. Get Jamie Loftus on the horn.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, yeah. Until the court case is over and the grand jury rules on the new evidence brought forward in that case, we probably should keep our mouths quiet.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Okay. What a guy. I mean, there's a lot of that, too, unfortunately. Oh, yeah, no, totally. You could look into, there's a, I mean, he considered himself and was very angry about other, like, people who called themselves anarchists, because he had a different attitude towards it, but the guy who wrote Storm of Steel, Ernst Junger, was like, called himself an anarch.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

And I guess the difference is he just believed in anarchism for himself as like an individual choice while still serving the Nazi state. He was kind of an incoherent fella politically, in my opinion, but wrote a very good World War I memoir.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah. Yeah. They did not. It was not just like somebody who like could have passed for 17 or 18. Like they were very aware they were killing a kid.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Mussolini? I hardly know...

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Gotcha.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Uh-huh.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah. This guy, I don't like him. Yeah. Again, a lot of, it's just like a lot of people are more, will always be a decent number of people, sizable minority, always mostly just driven by whatever's pissing them off in the moment, you know, as opposed to principles. Totally.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

And then he sounds like a guy who sucks.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

It sounds like a guy, a bastard that maybe someone should get behind. I know.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Nope. Yeah, nobody's ever killed a dictator being like, this is more relaxing than staying home at night and reading the newspaper.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yes. I mean, it's like with Hitler, right? Like you've got that guy who tried to blow him up in that and almost did that fucking carpenter who tried to blow him up in one of the halls he was speaking at all sorts of pre attempts. So I wasn't really familiar with the ones on Mussolini, but I was sure there had been some. We're going to talk about, I think, eight of them today or this week.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Not not a great source.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

All four men survived. Oh, my God. Yeah. Wow. I mean, that does have to win my award for worst with a gun of anyone on this podcast. To shoot four people, including yourself, and have them all live is a real... Yeah. Honestly, though, I gotta say, given the time, some of that probably just goes down to how much worse ammunition was back then. You know, powder loads were less reliable.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, that sounds like the right amount.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

He may have loaded them himself, you know?

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Well, I guess that's a nice, at least you know it's your guys you went to high school with murdering you. Yeah, totally. That actually sounds much worse.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I love products and services. Someone's going to get hurt. That's the promise we make. Here they are. And we're Bert.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Oh. There's a couple of jokes I could make about people we know. Yeah, no.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Well, yeah. Look, I've seen a couple of car bombs. I've even seen one kill people. Oh, God. Not a fan of car bombs. No. Well, it was a VBIED, which I guess is like, it's in that line of descent. Yeah. I am still sorry to see anyone die. It's okay. I'm mostly, I mean, they were far enough away that I just kind of saw them turned into smoke.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

No, not at all. Not at all.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

In this car bomb. I was hoping there was some Buddhist history with car bombs that I hadn't heard. But okay, that makes sense. No, I mean, maybe. I don't know. Yes, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Again, this is the problem of just... It's this thing you get on Twitter whenever stuff...

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

happens where it's like somebody has attacked this group of people that like leftists broadly dislike and it's like i don't know wait a minute to see if that's who they hit yeah you know i'm not talking about you know the recent thing but like it happens often where it's like yeah turns out like oh no no that's not that's not who got hurt uh yeah because that's With bombs, very hard to be.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yes. That's part of the problem.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

It's the same thing. It's not just a leftist thing. It's mostly not a leftist thing. It's a thing that I grew up watching all of the adults around me celebrate as bombs got dropped in places that I now know because I understand more about bombs and talk to people who were in those places when they were being bombed were largely killing civilians because precision bombing is mostly a myth.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, totally. It's just like people love explosions. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yep. Don't make bombs. I shouldn't need to say that. Don't be making bombs. Don't do bombs. Bombs bad. You will not be the one who figures out how to use bombs ethically. No one ever has been.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Cool. Really put the fear of God into those people who didn't get hurt. Yep.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Oh, yeah, yeah. In part because we generally don't wind up in power. Yeah, totally. Which is, you know, I mean, is part of the goal, but... Yeah, totally.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

He is the worst. Yeah, you're right. That is as shitty as you can possibly be as an anarchist militant. I know. Honestly, I'm mad, but I am a little impressed. Yeah. Like if I was making up an anarchist for you to get mad at, I couldn't do better than this.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

And stopped someone from killing Mussolini. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

No, like Stalin wasn't really a fascist. No. No, because in part, fascists come to power through popular acclaim as a result of setting themselves up in opposition to the left.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah. Again, I, uh, yeah, really one of my very few lines is, uh, you probably shouldn't, don't go, don't be killing kids. Uh, DBKK. That's my little, like, what would Jesus do bracelet in case you ever need to look at that.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Look at a bracelet. Oh no. You know what? I shouldn't kill kids.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Also, if you need to look at a bracelet to remind you not to kill kids. I would say maybe there's a lot of things you probably need to do.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Well, yeah, that's actually I mean, there's some evidence, although the studies around it have been to a degree. There's a lot of critiques about them, but like some evidence that that was more the norm than not with combat soldiers. And I bet especially when you're talking about like trenches and stuff where you're like, yes, yes.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

There's this also idea that Stalin does kind of fit in with the attitude that the fascist dictator embodies the people in some way, although the way in which Soviet propaganda talked about Stalin was actually quite different from the way fascist propaganda tends to talk about the leader being an embodiment of the people, but... Yeah. There are some similarities. Like, there's a bunch of stuff.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I know the opposite of the guy who just killed children and saved Mussolini.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Hooray! Great. He sounds trustworthy. I'm sure he's really worked on things.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, well, we all do sometimes. Yeah. For example, I mean, there was one summer that Benita Mussolini and I were inseparable. I mean, we would spend just hours on the beach telling each other's secrets, having picnics, you know. There was that one wine-drenched night, and then I found out he'd been the dictator of Italy this whole time. I had no idea, Margaret. I had no idea. I know. I know.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

A lot of people do have that story.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Syncretism's a big part. Go read your Umberto Eco. Well, there's going to be a bunch of Umberto's in this episode, but not Eco.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Well, co-invent. I mean, there was another Italian who might deserve that title a little more, but we talk about him on Behind the Bastards. Wait, which one? Oh, the guy who wore a banana hammock? One sec. Wait, what? Did he invent the banana hammock? No, no, no, but he... I don't remember this person's name either.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Gabriel D'Annunzio. Yes! Gabriel D'Annunzio, who was a big influence on Mussolini and is often credited as the inventor of fascism. He never called himself a fascist. He's like partially right. There's not just one guy, but he is earlier in the chain of the development of fascism as a concept than Mussolini and an influence on Benito.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

OK. Yeah. Gabriel de Nunzia, you can listen to our two parter on him. Very much worth it. He is the guy who, when Fume is an independent city, he's a guy who marches into Fume and takes it over as like a pro, along with a bunch of anarchists.

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Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

There were anarchists and communists and fascists all kind of together because they were all very much anti just all of the things that are going on right now. But those ideologies hadn't really hardened in the concrete way they would a couple of years later. Fascinating time. Kind of like how a lot of our most prominent fascist media ideologues today were part of Occupy. Yeah.

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Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Well, bad job, bro. That's about as that's about as bad. I mean, and again, don't build bombs. There are so many by far the most normal story in political radical tries to make a bomb is political radical kills themselves, their friends or their family. Yeah. Yeah. Don't make bombs. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

I mean, whatever. I don't know how hard it was to buy guns in Mussolini's Italy. Fair enough. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Oh, well, okay. I guess not that hard.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Question answered.

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Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah. Mussolini, I hardly know ye. Yeah. Did I already do that joke? It just occurred to me.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

And you know what, folks? What I'll say right now is you can still try to take a shot at Mussolini, and he's a lot easier to hit now. I assume he's buried somewhere. Probably. I feel like. Yeah. Go dig him up. Yeah. And take a shot. Take a shot. Yeah. Harder to miss that way. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

That's right. Take a shot with, you know, it could just be with the tool that you have on hand, so to speak. That was a penis joke. Yeah.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

It could have been a pee joke, because you could have a tool on hand without a penis. You're right. You can use a shiwi, for example. There's all sorts of great... Or just you cut the bottom of a water bottle out, and then cut the top to widen it, and you kind of jam it in there. It sort of works.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

And in terms of things I will continue to say for the modern era, don't make bombs. Don't make bombs.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Oh, well, yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yep, he sure did. Kind of adjacent to anarchism.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah. And I mean, it makes sense when you're coming out of a world like not not very long before this period. Italy had been fucking Habsburg property. Much of Italy, at least, had been Habsburg property. Right. Like and when all of these things that we now just see is like, well, obviously, Italy's a country.

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Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Obviously, Croatia is a country when they're all the property of some guy in his inbred family. It's a lot less weird that it's a left wing position to talk about nationalism. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Yeah, I mean, it's the same reason as that with the generation coming up and the next generation are all going to get their starts on TikTok and Twitter. And like, we're already seeing this on the right, right? I mean, and the left to a degree, you know, it's because that's not the journalism.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

Tweeting is not or making TikTok is not journalism, but journalism wasn't what we would consider journalism back then. It was just the best way of getting propaganda to the masses.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

Robert Evans here, and for the holiday season, the end of the year, all that good stuff, we are continuing our normally scheduled Behind the Bastards episodes, don't you worry. But we also are running some special episodes, compilations from new shows we launched this year, and the very best episodes they did.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

We've stitched a couple together so you've got less ads, you can listen to something that maybe you haven't had a chance to check out yet. And today you're going to hear 16th Minute, as in 16th Minute of Fame, Jamie Loftus' excellent new podcast about the main characters of the internet and what happens to them after internet stardom. And here's her wonderful two-parter on Mormon influencers.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

Robert Evans here, and I know everybody loves a great deal, but I also know most of us aren't willing to crawl through a bed of hot coals just to save a couple of bucks. Saving money has to be easy to be worth it. No hoops, no bull crap, no sending anything in through the mail. So when Mint Mobile said it was easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month with the purchase of a three-month plan,

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

I have trouble believing it, but it turns out it really is that easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month. The longest part of the process is the time spent on hold waiting to break up with your old provider. To get started, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. There you'll see that right now, all three month plans are only 15 bucks a month, including the unlimited plan.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Find out how easy it is to switch to Mint Mobile and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month.

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Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. That's mintmobile.com slash behind. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)

See Mint Mobile for details.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

Hey, everybody. Robert here. Because it's the holidays, we will be continuing our normally scheduled Behind the Bastards episodes. But every week, we're also doing a compilation of one of the other new shows on our network. Some aren't so new, but this one is. It's called Weird Little Guys. It launched this year with one of my friends and favorite researchers, the great Molly Conger.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

And you're going to listen to a two-part episode, which we've cut together for you with a lot less ads than normal, about a guy named Frank Sweeney. So please enjoy and happy holidays. Robert Evans here, and I know everybody loves a great deal, but I also know most of us aren't willing to crawl through a bed of hot coals just to save a couple of bucks. Saving money has to be easy to be worth it.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

No hoops, no bull crap, no sending anything in through the mail. So when Mint Mobile said it was easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month with the purchase of a three month plan, I had trouble believing it, but it turns out it really is that easy to get wireless for 15 bucks a month. The longest part of the process is the time spent on hold waiting to break up with your old provider.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

To get started, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. There you'll see that right now, all three month plans are only 15 bucks a month, including the unlimited plan. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

Find out how easy it is to switch to Mint Mobile and get three months of premium wireless service for $15 a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com slash behind. That's mintmobile.com slash behind. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Weird Little Guys

Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

Robert Evans here. It's the start of a new year. We are continuing. We may have a rerun going this week, but we've continued throughout the holiday season to keep a normal schedule of Behind the Bastards out. But we're also running compilation episodes. End of the year started this one to kind of highlight other shows on our network. And right now we've got a best of several episodes of props.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

Wonderful show. Hood politics edited together so that you get a few less ads than normal. One is on how the DOJ curbed Google and the other is on the other Zionism. So check out Prop Show now. And then next week, everything will be completely back to normal. Although it's not even missing, you know, episodes of Behind the Bastards. They've kept running.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

It is our sworn sacred oath to continue putting out episodes of that show from now until the heat death of the universe. So thank you for continuing to listen.

Behind the Bastards

Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

1948.

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If Robert can do his atonal streaks, then I can sing off-key. Yo, I'm back, homie. All up in your feed. Watch these rap kids get all up in your feed. That's a Wu-Tang reference. Again. To the black delegation. Shout out y'all showing up in the subreddit. You feel me? Black folks showing up and showing out. I appreciate y'all. I was wrong. It's more than five of us. I shout out to the man.

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I love y'all. Thanks for showing up. And shout out all the Latinos who tapped in too. Andale pues. Hey. Con todo mi gente. Ven acá. Listen, we got to really invite our Latino brothers and sisters, our Tios and Tias, and also our Asian black people, the Pinoys and Pinais, our Ates and Quias. You're all a part of our delegation here. All of our Usos. We love y'all.

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The whole diaspora of people who season a chicken and wash their legs. I love y'all. And to this whole delegation, once we add it all together, there's about 20 of us. To you, I say, y'all want something from the gas station? I got you. So today, I don't want to ruin your breakfast. I don't want to ruin your coffee. I'm just going to ruin your music. This is about the death of the music festival.

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It already happened here. All right. Now, y'all know I'm playing about all this like I'm only talking to the melanated folks. Y'all know I'm playing, right? I mean, this is why I slowly wink at brown folk. I'm just playing. I'm sorry. I'm messing around. It's a cold opening. You know, you guys got a great sense of humor here. All right, let's get to it. Festivals like, am I right?

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You know, if you're anywhere within a five to 10 mile radius of my age, I mean, festivals is like these are like a rite of passage. You know, I am not only a festival goer, but a festival performer. And as an artist, it was like festivals were kind of in a lot of ways how I marked the years.

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There were people that I really only saw like once a year when I was at that festival, whether it was other acts, other bands, or even a lot of times the volunteers or the people that like put the event together. Like, believe it or not, you kind of make friends, you know? And again, these are people you're like, dang, I can't believe I was a whole year, you know?

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And it is a good way to make sure as an artist that you were making new music and had something new to perform. Oh, and make sure you had some new merch because, you know, if you played your cards right, if you've listened to my show, I've talked a lot about like,

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you know, the science of festivals and as a performer of like, this could either be a complete waste of time and money if you're on at like the main stage at like 12 noon when it's like a trillion degrees outside, you know, but if you can get that right as the sunset, like if you're not the headliner, if you could get that right at sunset, right where the sun just breaks the horizon line coming down that golden hour set, the crowd isn't shit-faced yet.

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You know, they're at the top of their molly. You riding the high. It is just settled in or whatever drugs that these people are on. They've kind of just settled in right there. They're relaxed. They're willing to sing along. Nobody's getting trampled yet. It's not like the frenzy that kind of happens at the headliner situation where like somebody might die. Shout out Astroworld.

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I say that not as a joke. I'm saying things can go wrong. But oh, the experience, man. Like, I don't know how old you are. And obviously you can't answer me. Do you remember the last like big festival you went to, you know, back when your knees were good and it was OK for you to stand for 12 hours? And there's somebody, you know, having sexual intercourse in the porta potty.

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You know, you're stepping over barf. Right. And you just paid thirty dollars for a bottle of water, you know, that you could stuff into your clear backpack because you weren't allowed to bring anything else in there. But man, that's probably a euphoria, especially if it's a group or a band that you really like, that you saved up all year to go see.

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You know, some people were like festival hoppers, like that's their thing. They spend their summer going to music festivals. Since 2012 up to 2014, like the music fest has been, guys, We've kind of been on borrowed time. We lived through a music festival renaissance. According to NPR, since 2013, everything sold out. The four mega giants, right?

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So Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza in Chicago, Austin City Limits Music Festival in Texas. It was like this never ending flow of amazing, amazing events. And you know what? They were kind of affordable. In the next five years, you had things taken forth like Pitchfork in Chicago, Hangout Music Festival on the beach in the Gulf Shores, Outside Lands.

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Bali Music, Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Festival, Four Castle Festival, right? And I'm even going to add in this, before I do this for hip-hop stuff, dude, we had Rock the Bells. Like, we lived in a time where you could see all of your favorite artists in the most epic locations.

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You'd see people who, if you were to try to buy their tour ticket, it would cost the same amount if they were headlining the thing. But you could see all your favorite acts. Part of this was because we listened to radio. You were exposed to more things.

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And it was probably the fun part about a lot of times about music festivals because you probably saw that act, your favorite band, your favorite rapper. You saw them at a hole in the wall. five years ago, which was like 10 bucks to get in. And you might've snuck in or got on the list because you knew somebody that knew the DJ.

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And now you're like, I followed this crew from when they were like playing a hole in a wall with 10 people where there was more staff at the bar than on this. And now you're like, dude, You feel like you were a part of their evolution. Like you saw Chance at the Subterranean. Now he's headlining Bonnaroo. What a feeling. You're a part of the story. Well, that's probably a relic of the past.

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And let's talk about it. So festivals for most of the last decade have been everywhere. Like whatever type of music you like, whatever subgenre, whatever part of the world you want to go to, there's a music festival that you can show up at. Now, in 2024, more than half of them across the world were canceled. I lost count on this page I'm about to read to y'all from musicfestivalwizard.com.

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Festivals canceled so far in 2024. Okay, you ready for this? Shindig 2024, Melt 2024, Sideways Festival, Nasdaq, Field Maneuvers, Tower Z, The Quintetent, Big Slap, Electric Zoo, Peach 2024. All the music festivals. Life is Beautiful Festival. Country Thunder Florida. Swanee Roots Festival. EDC China. Lucidity Festival. In Santa Barbara. Desert Days in Lake Paris. Pine Fest in the UK.

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Good Vibes Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sierra Nevada World Music Festival in Singapore. Boonville, El Dorado Music Festival in the UK, Sudden Little Thrills in Pittsburgh, Big Ridge Rock Fest in Virginia, Lollapalooza, Paris, Music Midtown, Atlanta, Lovers and Friends Fest in Las Vegas, which I was really sad about, Riverside Festival Glasgow in where?

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Glasgow, Soul Bloom, Sacramento, TW Classic 2024 in Belgium, Cala Mijas in Cala Mijas, Spain, Caldor Music Festival in Queensland, Made in America Festival, Philadelphia, Oblivion Access, Austin, Texas, Meadows in the Mountains 2024 in Bulgaria, Imagine Festival in Rome, Georgia, Splendor on the Grass in Byron Boy, Australia, Body and Soul Festival in Ireland, Moonrose Festival. I'm tired.

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I'm not even done yet. I'm not even halfway through this thing. Festivals died in 2024. Digital News reports that 60 festivals in the UK alone canceled. Ashley King wrote this article on August 23rd, 2024 for Digital Music News. And in that she says, the United Kingdom has lost 192 music festivals since 2019.

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According to the Association of Independent Festivals, the AIF, which is a not-for-profit trade festival association that represents the interests of over 200 independent UK music festivals that range from 500 to 80,000 people. The AIF estimates that the UK lost 96 events during the COVID pandemic, 36 festivals in 2023, more than 60 to date in 2024.

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That brings the total number of festival closures, either due to cancellation or postponement, up to 192 since 2019. 192 festivals. Some may argue that, well, damn, you shouldn't have had that many festivals. Coachella, Lollapalooza, and of course, the infamous Burning Man with the most on-brand people that go, that call themselves Burners.

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Now, I don't want to sit here and make fun of you Burners because I'm pretty sure a lot of y'all listen to this show, number one. And number two, I don't know if there's anybody more free, anybody more comfortable in their own skin. Listen, this might sound like a joke, okay? I'm dead serious. It's like the white guy with dreadlocks. I mean, white people with dreads are... Just most of the time.

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OK, like this may sound like a joke. I'm deadly serious. They be so OK with themselves and will do whatever they got to do to continue to stay present and be cool with themselves. No notes. It's the guy doing hypostatic breath work, freestyling for way too long in the didgeridoo section. You know what I'm saying? Like, like he's super okay with himself.

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Anyway, Burning Man for the first time since 2011 did not sell out for the first time. And the tickets are usually released in tiers and some go on sale in the beginning of the year. And then this part I'm getting from the Guardian. But the main starting in April, right, which typically gets snapped up in minutes. Like Burning Man sells out in minutes. 73,000 people are able to attend Burning Man.

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But this is the first time since 2011 they did not sell out. Coachella, same. They saw a 15% decline in tickets. It's the biggest festival in North America. Coachella is. 15% ticket decline. Festivals were a way for you to discover new music, to meet new friends. It's like camp for like your 20s, you know? You get to wear your dumb ass outfits, right?

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You get to stand out in the sun, you get to drink, you get to day drink, and you get to just lose your mind for a little bit. This might be the end, the endling. You may have attended your last music festival as we know it. So the question is, why? Who killed the music festival? Why is the festival not festiving? Why is it not festive? Why can't y'all sell no tickets? Do we not like music anymore?

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Do you like music still? I thought I still like, do you like music still? What the hell happening, y'all?

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To understand the future as to what the hell happened, we have to ask ourselves how we even got here. Such a nerd I am. I don't think I need to tell you what a music festival is because, I mean, I think you know what it is. It's an incredibly overpriced concert that features maybe four groups that you like where you are going to stand outdoors somewhere, brave the weather,

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day drink and then get to lose your mind for the last like three hours and just really enjoy, you know, a moment that you'll really never forget. Depending on how nasty and ratchet you are, how outside you are, you might look up. You know what I'm saying? I don't look. It's none of my business. I suggest you don't. That's just me being an old head. But either way, man, they're a great time.

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But please understand that festivals, music festivals go on. Like back to, get this, 582 BC, at least according to white people's history. Because, you know, silly you, nothing happened anywhere else except for Europe. There was no music festivals in Africa, Central, South America, Asia, nowhere else. History started in Greece. We was too busy building pyramids, right?

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Anyway, I'm going to lead out. Oh, but I'd be cracking me up. They'd be like, the first music festival on record in ancient Greece during the Pythian Games, which is fine. It's fine. It's fine. But understand, ain't no way in the world this is the only one that ever happened. Anyway, so 582 BC, right?

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And like the Olympic Games, the Pythian Games took place every four years and included poetry, reading a speech, right? And other musical game-like competitions. People gathered to enjoy like hymns and instruments, instrumental performances at the Apollo, at the Apollo, I'm so black, dedicated to Apollo, which was the god of arts and music.

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Now, fast forward to like the 17th century where you have like classical music festivals and like the type of like exclusivity, right? Where like when in the 17th century, when like classical music just basically ate Europe and music festivals originally were like supposed to be a gathering where people could like what you think, gather and celebrate music.

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However, here's where it starts coming into focus. The wealth gap was widening across Europe. So festivals gradually became, Kind of like how they are where they're a little bit exclusive, catering primarily to more higher educated upper class. And the shift became apparent as events became more exclusive and had increasingly restricted access. This is from ndlbeast.com.

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They have a whole section on like the history of music festivals. One could argue like this, like the prototype of like the VIP section, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, where you can get the pit tickets or you could stand outside with the pours and just listen from the outside.

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So this trend kind of continued for centuries where like elite class, I think almost like was the beginning of the breaking of music in general. They would control the... the access to culture. I have a friend that wrote a book called Don't Be Precious. Now, me and this friend differ in a lot of ways, but he's just a punk rock dude. And his approach to making art

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is like, you can't have this like restricting access, right? Because it becomes this just like upper class art is this creation of the leisure class because one, they have the patron to pay for them to be able to sit down and contemplate the stars. Like you got all precious about it. You feel me? So some of that has to do with, again, the wealth gap.

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So when you restrict access to hearing music, it draws deeper into the divides between like the educated upper class and then the traveling folk musicians who performed for the commoners. And that's like the stuff you see on, you know, corny little movies. Then the world wars come, right? And there's like a music revival, right?

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So when the first world war broke out, obviously change of lifestyle, meaning everything went to like war effort. So this is a really interesting quote. It says on the same MDL Beast, as society focused on wartime efforts and staying safe, the exclusivity of music festivals to the upper class disappeared. In a turn of events, the working class population was now turning to music more than ever.

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Jazz and folk emerged as popular genres. To avoid the scrutiny of the elite, groups of musicians with similar tastes would gather in dive bars and underground clubs. By the time the war had ended, jazz cemented itself as the genre of the era. So now we're talking Harlem Renaissance, juke joints, and the emergence of like, again, this is where black people come in.

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A lot of times, the role that just... The all-out anti-Black racism has unintentionally, because of it, created some of the most dopest things, some of the most dopest American experiences. Well, I just read up on how with HBCUs, which are historic Black colleges, that now white people trying to attend them. Because they like, your school look fun. Yeah. Well, because we wasn't allowed in yours.

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Anyway, so let me continue. So World War II played a pivotal role in creating the Newport Folk Festival organized by Lewis and Elaine Loryland. A couple met during World War II and came together to revolutionize Rhode Island's music artistic community by promoting jazz. With the foundation in jazz and blues and country and pop music, they expanded to attract over 11,000 people in 1954. Then,

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The 60s, the birth of the modern music festival, right? Obviously, Woodstock, which was the invention Monterey International Pop Music Festival. This is the rock festival as we know it. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who. It was the place to be a cultural experience as we know it again is that. Then you got like the Berlin Wall and the music revolution.

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This is where festivals become political and cultural. They become a statement. And a big one was in the 90s when they did the Berlin Wall Tearing Down Music Festival, which was an amazing thing, right? Where underground stations, power plants, World War II bunkers, and abandoned buildings all started to serve as makeshift concert halls. This is why Europe became such a place for music festivals.

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It became a sign of freedom and solidarity. And then... The music festival took a shit. They just died in the 90s after this. All can be explained in when they tried to redo Woodstock. Just a shit show with Limp Bizkit and all them. A shit show. There's a documentary on...

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Netflix about the absolute disaster that that new Woodstock was y'all I'm talking like y'all thought Astroworld was bad where them kids was raging so much and people die you talking about understaffed y'all think Firefest was a disaster my nigga well nah I don't think anything was worse than Firefest so far good thing it didn't happen like y'all remember Firefest

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Honestly, I can't believe I made it almost 20 minutes into this and then mentioned Fyre Fest because it is the perfect example of what went wrong in the music festival world. Because like I said, this disaster in the 90s to 2000s, if you were able to survive, like I said earlier, like the Bonnaroo's, Coachella's, Austin City Limits, if you were able to survive Lollapalooza,

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then you came out the other end and became the go-to places, right? Telluride, for folk music, you became the go-to places that if you were gonna try to have a career as an artist, you have to play one of these festivals, no matter how much money You don't make at these things. You have to do it because this is where not only do you get the necessary cosign, you also get discovered.

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Like as far as fans, like you make new fans, you sell merch. People walk away with a t-shirt. You're on this t-shirt that says Bonnaroo 2021 and your name is on it. So like, even if you're way down on the bottom, grab your little screenshots, take your little Instagram photos because now you're in the game.

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And the game it was, which leads us to what went wrong, because this was not only a money making endeavor. This was a money making endeavor in 2014. Are y'all ready for this? I don't think you ready for this. In the boom years, according to an analysis done by Finance Buzz, in 2014, general admission prices for major music festivals increased by 55%. That outpays just inflation, period.

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Y'all jacked up the price. So listen, so if you're Ja Rule headass, of course I'm going to build a festival. You're looking at Burning Man. You're looking at Bonnaroo. You're looking at all these things. You're like, bro, let's just get an island and make a festival. There's so much money to be made. But you know what? Capitalism being capitalism. It's going to keep capitalizing.

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Let's talk about what killed the festival.

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Oh, you see, I just did my own fade out and fade in music. Y'all see that? No, don't ask me what note that was. So what killed the festival? There were a number of things. First of all, yo ass for not going. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We're not blaming the victims here. Some of these answers are pretty obvious.

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Like again, you know, Astroworld, like, but Astroworld is just a good picture of everything that went wrong. in the concept of a music festival. So the first problem is, yeah, capitalism. Sometimes you are led to believe that what is will always be, right? That's what a stable economy lulls you into believing. But anybody that knows how money works, it's booms and busts. The bubble will pop.

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And how a bubble pops is almost always our own fault in this sense. The housing bubble, you know, of 2008 when your mommy and them lost their house because the reality was they shouldn't have never got that loan in the first place. These people knew good and well that you was not able to keep up with that mortgage. But we were selling too many houses. It was going too good. So...

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The thing was, for almost a decade, you couldn't make enough festivals. The industry couldn't keep up with the demand. And yo, this the blog era. This the two dope boys. Yeah, Pitchfork, like, this the blog era. You know what I'm saying? When Fader was like a thing that you would want to go see. So like, it all kind of worked together around this time.

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Before all these spots got bought out, Hip Hop DX, like, all these pages got bought out. Like I said before, it was like this boom in 2014 of a trillion festivals that started happening. Now, what happened was... Ticket prices. That's the first one. We're making so much money, you realize, dang, if I charge 100, I bet you I could charge 200. If I charge 200, I bet you I could charge 400.

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Because if you charge 400, then I could argue I'm getting bigger acts. So in the boom years, according to this analysis by Finance Buzz, ticket prices since 2014 for most music festivals increased by 55%. Like that's super outpacing even inflation in the same time period. This isn't like cost the living type shit, type beat. No. Oh, I'm raping y'all.

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Do you know that Burning Man costs $575 to go to? If you was going, you was probably going to make some sort of like art installation to destroy you doing that on your own money, which meant what? Same thing happened in the 17th century. It just becomes a place for the elite because can't nobody else afford to go. You know what else happened to a lot of festivals is corporations bought them.

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You know who bought Complex? BuzzFeed. And you know who bought it from BuzzFeed? Knitwork. Knitwork. N-T-W-R-K. It's an investment firm. You know who owns the Pitchfork Festival? Condé Nast, a media company. They bought the blog and folded it into GQ. It's just a corporation. Capitalism. Capitalism broke the festivals.

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Under the banner of capitalism, not so much the cost of the ticket and the soaring cost of living, it also cost too much to make the festival. According to John Rosten, he's the CEO that AIF, the Independent Association of Festivals, He says, the toilet hire. I just need to buy porta potties. In 2021 was $28,000. For the exact same amount of toilets in 2024 is $54,000. That's just the toilets.

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You know what happened at Astroworld? He ain't have enough security. It costs so much. You honestly cannot afford to put together a festival that will be alluring enough to consumers to justify spending that much money. So what do you get? A gang of corporate sponsors. And you know what a gang of corporate sponsors at a music festival is? Whack.

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It's a horrible ass experience because you're just watching a gang of commercials. Sometimes it just be labels who be putting on these artists that they trying to break. And then the artists be trash. They don't be trash because they trash. They be trash because they're not ready for this side stage. They ain't put in the work.

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They didn't do the, you know, gurney Illinois experience that I think I've told before. What is the most terrifying experience I've ever had on tour? You don't have them experiences. You ain't played shows when there's more people at the bar or there's more people that work there than come to see you. You're not ready for no festival stage. So it's just not fun for the kids.

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So I'm not going to buy it. You can't justify this price. If I'm going to spend that much money I need to really, really, really, really like this band. This need to be my favorite artist. I'm not going to stand around 12 hours, pay this much money to really only see one act I like. That don't make no damn sense. And we'll talk about why they only like that one artist a little bit later.

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So remember this point I'm making. The second and most obvious one is COVID, which leads into the third and fourth. You had to cancel stuff. Nobody knew this was coming. Like, the L's companies took... I took... I canceled a tour. Not only I canceled a tour, I released a poetry book that I couldn't tour. I mean, I personally lost...

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tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars in touring revenue, in book sales, in merch sales, in all of it. Like I lost so much because you just had to. And I'm still trying to get that money back. A lot of festivals just have never been able to make their money back from what they lost. So there's not enough money now.

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Obviously, when the pandemic ended, there was a lot of pent up energy to be like, I need to go outside. But that's because me and you didn't spend two years of our high school experience, our two first years of college stuck at home. Remember, that's the time when you get the taste to go outside.

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when you start finding your drinking buddies, your outside friends, your music friends, you have to remember those years, dude. Dude, those years are when you're discovering. All research says is like your taste in music happens in those years, right? If I were to ask you what's your favorite area of music, most likely, it's not always, but most likely it was like the music you listen to

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In the 11th grade. It's probably your favorite era. Whatever you was listening to then is probably still your favorite era. Now, obviously, that's not true for everybody. But, dang, if you were 17, you were discovering new music, you want to go to, like, the Corner House of Blues, right? You know, this is, obviously, I'm California-centric.

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You wanted to hit the Glasshouse, man, because you just heard about this new band. Little things like that, the Dragonfly, Whiskey A Go-Go, the Viper Room, all these, like, smaller spots that, when, for us out of L.A., these were, like, rites of passage. This is how you get to say, I saw them win.

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I knew who Will.i.am was from the Black Eyed Peas because I saw him at the Little Temple, which is now called the Virgil, when he did a beat battle. They were at the corner, you know what I'm saying? And it was fun. I knew Foster the People there in San Diego. You would just drive down, like, just at the gas lamp, like, Leon Bridges, hell, he opened for us. You know what I'm saying?

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Like, again, like we said earlier, these these bands that you was passionate about, you was 17 with your little emo hair swooped over your eyes. This who you was crying over. You understand I'm saying like hugging onto your little iPad, you know, doing that, doing that MySpace picture when you looking down, you know, as the white people think like this is when you went to go see them.

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If that era for you was a pandemic, you didn't acquire a taste for going out like that. You saw concerts inside of Fortnite. So what I'm saying is one of the biggest things about Gen Z is they don't go out. It's just it's just the reality. Not only do they ain't got no money, they ain't got no money because, again, inflation and finances, the cost of living is insane.

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But look at Gen Z don't drink like we used to drink. They do fewer drugs. They have less sex. Part of that is because, one, they hella anxious and I don't blame them. I'm looking at my daughter now and I'm like, I'm sorry, baby, you probably not going to buy no house ever. I don't even know when you're going to move out. I don't know what to tell you. I'm not mad.

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I ain't going to push you out of this house because where are you going to go? You're going to get seven roommates. I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry. They do fewer drugs. They drink less. They don't go nowhere because one, they anxious as hell. They nervous around being around that many people.

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And if they are going to go out, if you ask them, the number one thing they say is like, I ain't got nobody to go with. I mean, I could go. I ain't got nobody to go with. Because you ain't got no friends. You don't go nowhere. I mean, look at my own child. Like, why are you here? Because like, don't you go nowhere? She's starting to now. But listen.

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You got to really, really, really, really, really want to see this person that you're going to see. She bought Billie Eilish tickets in February. The concert next month, she decided if I'm going to spend this money, this is what I'm going to spend it on. right? Because it's worth her money. She loves them. She loves her. She got the album. She went to the listening party.

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She's like, this is who I'm going to go see. They don't look and see who's playing or just pull up at a dope music spot and just be like, oh, I wonder who's playing. I'm going to discover new music. No, that don't happen. You can't put on no festival if people ain't willing to come, which leads me to one of the other problems they did, which is the music industry itself.

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They shot themselves in the foot because the big dogs, just like I said, happened in the 1700s, are doing fine. If Live Nation and Ticketmaster own every venue, they only going to put the artists that they won't own there. It costs too much. So they're like, oh, I don't understand what's going on with y'all festivals. I know we doing all right.

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Because if you are an industry artist with the machine behind you, number one, you don't need a festival. You book the Greek theater yourself. Why would I allow myself as an artist? For you to pay me, guess who turned down Coachella next year? Rihanna and Kendrick. Why would either of them play that when they know they can be the only artist and sell just as many tickets? Kendrick played Staples.

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I'm calling it Staples because I'm from LA. I know it's just a corporation. He played Staples twice. Four nights in a row where the Lakers play. But that was after doing four nights at the Honda Center in Orange County. These are eight Southern California shows. Sold them all out. Why the hell would I give that money to Coachella when I could do it myself?

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Live Nation already taking a huge ass cut. Ticketmaster already taking a huge ass cut. Scalpers already taking a huge ass cut. There's no reason for me to give my time and my ticket draw to you when they can all go to myself. You did this to yourself, music industry, by locking out all the small venues. You know what else the music industry did to itself? Streaming. The algorithm.

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That also killed the festival. You know why? Because you're fed the same music. Algorithm says, you like this? You probably gonna like that. Which means we know all people be like music all sound the same because it does. Because the goal is to play music that feeds the algorithm. You create music that gets your streaming numbers up. This is the point I was making earlier.

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Why are you like, I don't know nobody else on this thing. And I'm only really concerned about the headliner. This is the point I was making earlier. Algorithm. You create music that works on TikTok. So music has this formula. They did the same thing with coffee shops. You know why coffee shops look like brutalist mid-century modern? All of them, Instagram. We're all looking at the same aesthetic.

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So therefore, all coffee shops look the same. The same thing happened with music, the algorithm. So you have these entire, very specific niches But can everyone in your weird niche, are there 30 artists in your very weird niche that can bring 10,000 people out to a field? No, because there's only 40 of y'all that like this music. That's online streaming. There's no human editorial.

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There's no DJ that's saying, yo, dude, look at this. No, look at this. You're stuck to doing it yourself. And hopefully you can climb out your algorithm, right? G McDonald says a genre unfocused festival poster lineup starts to just look like a playlist that has been made and personalized for somebody else. Okay, you want to do a genre-specific one? Let's just say, okay, K-pop.

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You finna fly all them acts from Korea? How much you gonna sell these tickets for? How many K-pop acts do you get? You don't book nobody local? Do you know how much money that would cost? Or you say, I'm going to do a K-pop day. All right. So you do a three-day festival, one day's K-pop, one day's EDM, one day's hip-hop. Nobody's buying a three-day pass. So one day might be trash.

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And how do you build it? What does a flyer look like? I don't know half of these people. I ain't never even heard of that. No single act can sell a festival. And if you try to do a multi-different act thing, it's just going to confuse the consumer. So if you're putting on the festival, your only option is to just go big. This has to do with money. So you are going to overspend. Right.

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Because it's like, how are you going to get people here? You get Taylor Swift. Do you know how much money you got to offer somebody like a Taylor Swift for her to give her performance to your festival rather than just to do her own show? And the consumer says, again, is this worth my money? I'm willing to throw this money at this big act because that's who I know.

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They're not going to risk no more because music discovery is now algorithmic. You're not just going to go pull up at a spot and be like, who's this opener? They're dope. The industry did it to itself. You killed your own performance market.

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And because Live Nation bought up all the small venues where artists really get their chops and really create fan bases and really you get to discover and make connections with it, there's no places for them to play. All that's left are the big industry artists. And why, again, would they give their ticket sales to a festival? And lastly, climate change. It's hot as hell.

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The last two Burning Mans poured rain and flooded. Before that, it was like 129 million degrees. It's hot. It's too hot to be out there like this. Climate, y'all. Ain't enough water. It's hot as hell. It's hot. As hell. Or it's flooding. It's hot or it's flooding. Ain't no more nice days outside. I ain't finna stand outside all day. You crazy? You gonna make me pay extra for shade?

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It's an extra $100 so I can have an umbrella? I'm good. Just hold on. We're staying home. Staying home. Okay. Now... Again, let's rebuild the world. What can we do better? That's in our control. So festivals might be done, but it doesn't mean we don't still love music. If you're a music lover, here are some suggestions I can give you that would keep your favorite bands in the game.

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The first is the easiest one for you, which of course is buying or streaming their music. If you're going to stream, here's the thing, dude, I'm not an old guy to say that like your release radar or your new music Friday, that algorithmic playlist that's like customized just for you. It's great. My request that I think would help is this. If a song pops on and you dig it,

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save it number one and then two go to the album go to that artist's page and give them a follow and listen to the album you heard the song the song was dope and if it really resonated i'm not begging you to do something that you don't like listen to that album you know the whole like artist blowing up on tiktok that's why universal was just like man tried to dead all that you know

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So if an artist blows up on TikTok, you should really like this. I'm like, yo, go to that artist's page. Go to their music. Instead of just shooting a video, that stuff's short-lived if you're an artist. Obviously, you hope that one day that happens, but that's not sustainable. You can't tour off that. That's what happened to a lot of artists.

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Why iSpice canceled half her tour dates is because there's not songs. There's TikTok audios. You feel me? That helps the artists know when they try to go get a show that they can prove that like, hey, listen, these are listeners. When you go to my Spotify page, when you go to any Spotify page, the first number you see is monthly listeners, but that don't mean followers.

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I have this weird upside down thing. Most people have more monthly listeners than followers. I'm the opposite. I have three times more followers than monthly listeners, which means these people are going to be alerted when I drop music. Why I have that is because I toured so hard. I played every possible dumb, ugly venue I possibly could. Like, got it out the mud, shook hands, stayed after...

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stayed at the merch table, took pictures, got email addresses, got phone numbers, came back, you know, signed everything. I would stay after the show for an extra hour until everybody got their picture and everybody got their stuff signed. Hard fought. So that way, you're right. I'm not cranking out music that feeds the algorithm. You're right. But when I drop an album, they know.

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So my request as the consumer is follow that artist, like close to the album. And secondly, the most obvious one is like, dude, buy merch. Oh my God. Y'all, I'm saying like merch has been the difference between car insurance and not for me. Merch has been the difference between can my daughter stay in her, you know, dance class, her afterschool, like ballet class. Merch.

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Like merch is how we paid for our daughters. During the pandemic, hell, merch, it paid our rent because it's all he had. Now, as an artist, you need to have dope merch. That's, I mean, if your merch sucks, I mean, it is what it is. I can't ask you to, you know, purchase something that's trash. Artists make dope merch. You know, I have vinyl. Vinyl costs a lot, but you can go to my website.

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There's vinyl. Like that stuff, those make a difference. And then I'd also ask, like, if you really dig artists, this is on the artist's job to like sign up for their newsletter. find out when they're touring and just go to their shows.

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And when you get there, like another game, I think I told this on the Hood Politics podcast too, where it's like, most of the time as the artist, I keep the door, like meaning the ticket sales, and then the venue keeps the bar. So their thing is like, well, they're going to make a ton of money on the bar.

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But that's how I get to come back is if this venue says, oh yeah, he brought, you know, 300 people here. They respected my staff. They bought drinks. And me as an artist, my team, I'll be silly on stage, but we're very, very professional. I take my reputation very serious. We make sure that the talent buyer, the venues, everybody's taken care of. We're not yelling at the sound man.

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We keep a clean green room. Those are things you could do as an artist. But As a consumer, I know the algorithm's fighting against you, but if you really like a group, go out of your way, even if it's on the discovery things. Again, the big people is easy. Beyonce's tickets are going to come find you. You ain't got to go find them. But Johnny Swim, but the hot shakes, right?

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That's what they call it. Go find them. Because at the end of the day, it's your presence. If you're going to stay in music, you have to get butts in seats. Is this for us to save music festivals? I don't care. They did that to themselves. I'm just trying to save live music because truly, truly, there is nothing like it.

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I spent the majority of my teenage years and my twenties just feeling absolutely terrified. I had a panic attack on a conference call.

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I spent the majority of my teenage years and my 20s just feeling absolutely terrified. I had a panic attack on a conference call.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Robert Evans here, and this is It Could Happen Here, and boy, it sure is. Now, I don't know where we go from this point, and neither does anyone else. On the moment before I wrote this, I woke up groggy from my chemically-assisted sleep to a barrage of horror. Donald Trump signing anti-trans legislation into law. Elon Musk giving a double fascist salute.

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Donald Trump saluting and dancing with the village people. Proud Boys tramping through the streets of our nation's capital, reveling in their newfound impunity. The dark days have come again because they never really left. All the battles and street fighting and organizing from 2017 to 2020 brought us four years of badly negotiated peace while the rot continued unabated. Rot.

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It's a term I see a lot these days. My colleague and friend Ed Zitron refers to the hell our tech oligarchs continue to force upon us as the rot economy. Charlie Angus, a member of the Canadian parliament, used the term rage rot to refer to now President Trump's Christmas Day message suggesting Canada should become the 51st state.

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Over the last year, I've seen a slew of articles bemoaning democratic decay, the rot plaguing democracy, and the deep rot at the heart of our political system. One thing I have done over the last four years is learn how to efficiently process the carcasses of wild animals. Some I hunt or raise and slaughter, but many are roadkill, harvested from the side of the road.

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My family comes from rural Oklahoma, so perhaps there's some epigenetic hillbilly memory that makes this so satisfying to me. But it's also changed the way I understand the word rot. Rot starts from the bone. If you look at the back leg of an animal that's been hit by a truck, you'll see it spreading a deep black bruise from the ball and socket joint out.

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If your goal is to preserve good meat, then the key is to remove those limbs from the body and then the meat from the bone sooner rather than later. When I think of rot and how to arrest it, I think of dismemberment. This seems to be the one thing that almost every political person in the country agrees with.

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The United States as it is must be dismembered, disassembled, sliced from the rotten bone and changed into something more palatable for whoever holds the knife. Joe Biden and the Democratic Party failed primarily because they refused to start cutting. Their successors will not make the same mistake.

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On the opposing side of the aisle today, I see a lot of angry people arguing about what the knife ought to be cutting and how much better they'd use it if it passed into their hands. That doesn't help any of us right now. Migrants are dying of thirst while vigilantes destroy water drops left by activists who themselves will likely be criminalized in the near future.

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Homeless Americans trying not to freeze to death at night may soon find themselves arrested, forced into camps where they'll be made to labor for pennies. Neo-Nazis cheer as the billionaire behind the throne makes fascist salutes from the White House with smirking impunity. The knife is so far away from our hands, I find myself distrusting anyone who wastes time bemoaning how it ought to be used.

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Where does that leave us, though? Is there anything to do in this deep winter besides listen to the jackals howling outside our doors? I have an answer to this question. Yes, now is the time to try, to test the boundaries of our collective cage. Now is the time to experiment. Since the time of the Founding Fathers, this country and its system have been referred to as the American Experiment.

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One could see the very term as narcissistic, yet another solipsistic gasp of American exceptionalism. But I tend to think the appellation is one we've earned. This country is and always has been a test tube for new, often bad ideas about how a society ought to run. American civilization's only core value is throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.

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That also happens to be the only real way to fight back against authoritarianism. There's a scientific paper I bring up often, The Evolution of Overconfidence, which set out to explain why people so often badly overestimate their own abilities.

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The authors pondered, quote, Overconfidence also leads to faulty assessments, unrealistic expectations, and hazardous decisions, so it remains a puzzle how such a false belief could evolve or remain stable in a population of competing strategies that include accurate, unbiased beliefs.

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Now, the conclusion these researchers came to was that when significant resources are contested between two organisms, the organism most willing to try to take said resources, even if it is not the strongest, tends to succeed, often enough to make overconfidence evolutionarily beneficial. This is the most basic explanation for how fascist movements continue to arise and improbably take power.

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Put simply, they always go for it. January 6th provides us with a fine example. It was a ludicrous, idiotic, reckless burst of stupidity mocked for years by everyone except the perpetrators, who, four years later, find themselves with ultimate power. They didn't win because they were the strongest. They won because they kept trying.

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And the people who should have stopped them feared bad press, the pushback of looking unfair, and so stood back while the fascists made smaller grabs, gobbling up bits of the media, local school boards, and narrative oxygen around issues like immigration. And now, well, we're here. And we'll continue to talk about here after these ads. We're back.

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The coming days will be ugly, yet I feel it's my job to remind you that bad as this is, we are not Weimar Germany, and this is not 1933. Trump and his lieutenants aren't battle-hardened trench fighters. They're Elon Musk and a coterie of half-enthusiastic, half-frightened billionaires who got rich gambling on apps to let you rate your classmates' tits.

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Their foot soldiers are used car salesmen from Encino, not Fricor. The United States is not starving to death, crippled by war. It's irritated, anxious, because its working people have been robbed blind by the same billionaires standing behind Trump now.

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The one thing we do have in common with Weimar is that our fascists now find themselves at the head of a state that capitulated to them, not out of enthusiastic consent, but exhaustion, cowardice, and above all, a feeling that it didn't really matter.

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That last one, the feeling that nothing matters, the system is fucked, there's no point in engaging or organizing, that is the most powerful weapon they have right now. Because that feeling stops you and everyone else from opposing them, from interrupting as they reach out yet again to take something you love or need. But there's a danger here too.

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In moments of stress and anger, the desire to do something, anything, can be intense. And when we're swept up in that mood, the natural tendency is defaulting to the things we know best, the things we've done before, the marches and chants and poster boards we've been walking and shouting and carrying all century long.

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Going back to those tactics without iteration or acknowledgement of their limitations and failures is a road to more failure. I've been to a lot of protests, starting at Zuccotti Park in 2011 and ending last year in Chicago at the DNC. One of the most dispiriting moments of my life was listening to young anti-genocide activists bow to shut down the DNC to, quote, make it great like 68.

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This was a reference to the 1968 Democratic Convention. Mass protests were ignited there when the favorite anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy, was rat fucked by Democratic Party insiders in favor of Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The protests were quashed violently with tear gas and truncheons. Protesters chanted, the whole world is watching, and it's been a chant ever since.

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The world may have been watching then, but the war went on. Nixon won election, then re-election, and then finally pulled U.S. troops out of Vietnam after dropping enough bombs on Southeast Asia to have ended several Third Reichs. In 2024, a new batch of anti-war protesters chanted, the whole world is watching, and I can say, unequivocally, it was not.

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The only people watching were me, several other journalists, and of course, some people on Twitter. The police, as they kettled, maced, and arrested members of the crowd, barely seemed to care. The DNC didn't shut down. Kamala Harris was made the nominee. There wasn't even a real anti-war candidate for Party Insiders to ratfuck in her favor.

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Garrison Davis, my colleague and friend, remarked to me afterwards that the DNC had been somehow much more depressing than its Republican counterpart a month earlier. He was right.

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On the stage floor, all the Democrats had to present were aging celebrities and Bill goddamn Clinton, drooling out the same platitudes that led us to the Trump era in the first place and doing their best to ignore delegates who walked out and slept in front of the convention center to protest the genocide in Gaza.

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Meanwhile, in the streets, a lot of very nice, earnest people, alongside a handful of grifters, did the only thing they could think of doing after months of imbibing footage of war crimes. They walked around and shouted. The police and the city largely let them, because they knew none of it was going to change a goddamn thing.

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I felt tremendous optimism right after Joe Biden resigned, not because I loved Kamala, but because it was something shocking, an upset, an experiment, or at least it seemed that way at first. The DNC made it clear that Biden's advisors and consiglieres, the powers behind the throne, still ran the show and would not allow any real change.

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The rot had spread too far, spoiling the meat, spoiling everything. It was my accurate belief in 2020 that the Democratic Party, broken as it was, had the numbers and the organizational capacity to slow the spread of fascism for a short time. It was my inaccurate belief in 2024 that this might still be the case. I had a hope because I'd lost any sense of actual productive optimism.

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We lean on hope when we have no ideas to brace ourselves against. Hope, as George Miller reminded us, is a mistake. If you don't fix what's broken, you'll go crazy. And that's where we are now, going crazy.

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Committed Democrats, the decent, regular people who fill the party, not the soulless shoggoths of capital running things, are going crazy because we returned a normal, decent politician to office. He kept the economy humming along and everyone still hated him. Leftists are crazy for a different reason.

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In 2020, this country saw the largest sustained uprising of its modern history and nothing fundamentally changed. In its aftermath, the oligarchs who control social media set to tweaking, buying, or outright inverting their algorithms to ensure no similar movement would ever gain that kind of steam again. Their efforts have largely been successful.

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And yet many organizers, be they progressive social democrats, communists, anarchists, whatever, they're all still stuck in the same loops. Behind each march to nowhere and tired chant is an equally tired hope.

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The social democrats dream of a giant continent-sized Denmark with cyclists replacing Ford trucks, universal healthcare, good schools, and a bevy of other lovely things both political parties will fight tooth and nail to prevent.

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The communists dream of a new October revolution, but this one will work and not just create a new kind of dictatorship that ages and dies inside the space of a single human lifetime. Anarchists tend to be very good at seeing the flaws and the logic and futility of the hopes of the two previous groups, but they are just as bereft of ideas for how to stop what's coming.

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Some tendencies dream of collapse, maybe even accelerationism, an end to industrial society, and then either living in the woods eating berries, or some kind of solarpunk daydream, wildflowers spouting from rubble. I sympathize, but try offering either future to a single mom who can't afford her five-year-old's insulin and see how excited she gets.

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On the other side of the anarchist coin, you've got the helpers, the people who cheerfully admit they don't know how to solve the big problem, but they do know how to provide free eye exams to homeless people once a month or do water drops down at the border so migrants don't die of dehydration or make it more expensive for the state to bulldoze a forest and build a police training facility.

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If you are where we all are right now, bereft of ideas, staring down the barrel of a nightmare, those are good folks to know. Like everyone else, they're defaulting to what they've been doing. But at least what they've been doing helps people. The larger solutions to our common woes, if they ever arrive, will be something new, something we haven't tried yet.

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I feel very confident that they won't take the form of another march or involve everyone finally agreeing to be the same kind of communist or anarchist or whatever. Sean Fain, chief of the United Auto Workers Union, has called for a general strike in 2028, and so far that is the only clear plan I have heard from anyone that feels like it has a ghost of a chance.

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It is audacious, and I recommend reading what Sean's laid out about it. But half of why I support the idea is because it's audacious. The religious right got to where they are right now in this country by being bold. As I laid out earlier, fascists win because they try, and this is something we need to copy. Shit can be different, but not unless you're willing to try different shit.

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Many pundits and columnists were shocked and horrified by the massive and instant support for Luigi Mangione when he assassinated the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Both the tutting gatekeepers of traditional media and the actually sweating oligarchs characterized this as evidence of bloodthirstiness.

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Some leftists did the same and interpreted support for Luigi as proof that the body politic did indeed have energy for an uprising. I saw something a bit different. More than the actual killing itself, I think people were excited to see someone try something new. Luigi adopted a novel tactic.

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He carried it out in a novel way, and in doing so, he did more to punish one of the oligarchs bleeding us dry than the entire Occupy movement. Novelty is the one thing that ties Donald Trump and Luigi Mangione together. The enthusiastic public response to both men's actions and the simultaneous revulsion of traditional elites are mirrors of themselves.

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In 2024, Trump still had enough novelty to convince people that he might upset the apple cart in a way that benefited them. He rode a global anti-incumbent wave back to the White House. The consequence of this is that he and his are now on their way to becoming the new establishment.

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This is the downside of the fact that most legacy media outlets have started moderating their coverage of Trump, if not embracing him outright. He is being normalized. His toadies, Musk chief among them, are now our legitimate powers. What novelty remains will fade rapidly. I suspect the same thing will be true of the copycats who follow in Luigi Mangione's footsteps.

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Most of his plagiarists won't be good at what they do. At best, newly heightened security will see these people dropped before they get to pull a trigger. At worst, innocent folks will be killed or maimed by bullets and bombs that fail to hit their intended targets, or do, but with a lot of collateral damage. So I don't know what the next new thing to actually work will be.

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But between Trump and Luigi, there aren't many old norms left to shatter. We are in a time of enormous potential. Many new things are about to be tried, and as awful and bloody as the fallout from some of them will be, we all have no choice but to strap in and roll some dice of our own.

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The present is ugly, the future unwritten, but the only way we'll make it a better one is if we embrace boldness, creativity, and perhaps a little overconfidence of our own. And this is not the end of the episode. We've got something else for you folks. But first, here's another ad break. Okay, everybody, we're back.

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And obviously what you just listened to is an essay I wrote about my thoughts and feelings today, the first day of the new Trump administration. I felt like that wasn't quite enough. And the first thing I actually came across this morning when I woke up before I started subjecting myself to a barrage of horrible news was a poem written by a friend of mine, Emily Gorchinsky.

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It's called The Time of Cowards. And I think it's a very useful poem. thing for you to hear right now. I think it's a good companion to what I wrote. So I'm going to let Emily take it away. Before I do that, if you want to read the poem in text form or find her other work, you can go to emilygorchenski.com. That's emilygorchenski.com. Here it is, The Time of Cowards.

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We'll be right back.

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Oh, welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a show where it's now happening here. A thing that we've said in a joking way a number of times, but now it just is. This is, you know, a podcast. We're having a good time. I'm Robert Garrison Davis, my co-host, colleague, and today we're talking about Trump's inauguration with a good friend of ours who was present at the thing itself, Bridget Todd.

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Bridget, welcome to the program.

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Yeah. You're an OG guest over on Bastard, so it's about time we had you on here. How are you feeling, Bridget, just in general, before we get into the specifics? How are you doing in the first full day of this new era?

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Not great, not great, not great. Yeah, yeah.

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Yeah, it's probably not for the best that, like, right at the same time as this has all happened, the people who make gas station drugs have figured out how to take the chemicals in kratom, which, you know, in leaf form is a generally safe drug, and hyper-concentrate them into basically fucking heroin. So I'm just working on staying away from that shit. Too much of the news, you know?

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That's the way you gotta do it.

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Ooh, that's tough. I'm not doing that.

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I'm keeping myself okay by just eating venison every single day. Smart. But yeah.

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I'm glad you got to experience the health that that actor experienced. Bridget, let's talk about the inauguration. Let's do it. All right. So kind of coming in firsthand, when did you sort of lock down your plans to actually be there?

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Totally.

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I'm going to hide in the mountains with a rifle.

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No, no, no, I'm not joking.

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Yeah. All right. Well, let's get into the vibes. How were they?

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I could talk about statehood all day long. That's such a funny, shitty compromise. You could be there and talk, but you can't do anything. I'm sorry. That's just so fucked up.

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We made Wyoming a state. Have you ever fucking been to Wyoming? Good God. Like...

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Like it's so infuriating. And none of those motherfuckers know a logger.

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Yeah. So I guess first off, like of your friends, how many folks kind of made the same call? Like what was the general decision? Because I'm looking at like footage of Proud Boys marching through fucking D.C. again for the first time in almost half a decade. And like, yeah, where are the people, you know, on this kind of stuff?

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Yeah. And that's that's I guess if I could get across something and people listen, it would be like, don't just show up because they are right now. They have the cops. They have the courts. if they want you to show up in the street, the best thing to do sometimes, I'm not going to say this is going to be consistently the case, but is like, don't give them what they want.

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Don't be where they want you to be. Don't make it simple for them. You know, again, I keep trying to say, and I'm not saying this in like a, I'm so smart. I know what everyone needs to be doing. I don't, but it's like not what we did last time. Cause that, that just didn't, didn't do it. Exactly. Didn't do it all. Didn't knock it out of the park. Yeah. Wasn't a home run.

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Sure. I think some of it is that like the only meaningful definition of intelligence really is the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. And when the circumstances change in the way that they have, and you're like, well, time to do exactly what we tried in 2017, that is not intelligent, right? Like I'm not, I'm not trying to be mean.

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And again, I'm not saying I know what the smart thing is, but it is, we gotta be pivoting. We gotta pivot in a lot of different directions right now. Yeah.

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I've had so many arguments about this with people over the last few days who still insist that like, well, the fascists can't stand you making fun of them. That's what they hate is you laughing at them. And like... I think there was a stage at which that was a valid tactic. And, you know, there may be elements of that in the future. But, like, no, they don't care. They're winning.

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I'm not saying, like, don't fucking make jokes with your friends to, like, keep yourself sane. I'm saying don't mistake dunking on them on social media for doing anything that matters because it doesn't.

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You see, I would almost argue that the weird stuff, I think if they'd stuck with it, there was something there. I think the emphasizing how outside of the American norm these guys were and what we want to accept in our communities, there was something there, but they didn't stick to it. The next big time we saw Tim Walz, he was talking about how he wanted to be friends with J.D.

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Vance on the fucking debate stage. But also, I think that's a little different than just like... calling him fucking orange Mussolini or whatever the fuck. Like, I think there's a point in a messaging tactic. It's like Trump gets mileage out of the names he uses and the way in which that's part of how he got where he is. So I'm not saying that aspects of these tactics can't be used.

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Well, I'm talking about the way in which people, liberals and folks on the left are continuing to do the fucking like drum shit. That's not getting us anywhere.

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You can sell that. Yeah.

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Like a little duck. I'd help a baby duck get back to its mom last year. It was just like that. Yeah. Right down to the IQ.

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Oh, fucking bad.

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And that's going to be interesting to see. This is certainly a sign that suggests some embrace, but I'm kind of wondering, if we're looking back to the Nazis, the OGs,

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what the Nazis did was marginalize and actually purge a lot of these guys fairly quickly because the folks that were the best at like rabble rousing and fighting in the streets were also kind of like the least reliable at helping to keep a stable system in the city, right? Like after the Nazis took power, one of the big issues they had is like, we still have a lot of people who are kind of like

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In the middle, including most of the military. And one of the things that keeps scaring them is all these fucking goons running about. And we still want what the goons are doing, which is like certain people beaten and thrown in camps. But we don't want the goons doing it. We want the cops doing it.

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And I guess kind of we're all waiting to see how different or similar what comes next looks to that.

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There's two things. Number one, this is something that he had campaigned on. It's something that there was a lot of support from his base for, you know, like the fact that in order to kind of protect himself, he had to really heavily embrace the idea that nothing bad happened on January 6th. And if it did, it was the fault of, you know, the mean old Biden cops. And so he kind of had to do it.

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The degree to which he shows up and is close or actually directly embraces Proud Boys and guys like Tario is going to tell us a lot. And I think we'll be seeing that very soon. If they are kept at arm's length and kind of letting them out is all they do, then I don't know how much... we're going to see of these guys.

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If there's a real embrace and an attempt to use them as a way to kind of extra legally deal with his enemies, then I think we start seeing them really make inroads and pushes in places like Portland, trying to get people out so that they can do violence to them and then get pardoned or just have the violence ignored and the other people get thrown into prison.

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And I don't really know which way I think that the state is landing right now, which is not to say like I think one is clearly less violent than the other because his other option is he's going to be having his feds do that kind of shit.

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Yeah, I entirely agree.

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Yes, that's where it's difficult. Or that's one of the many things that is difficult is that like checking out is not the answer, but you simply can't react to everything that happens. Showing up and burning yourself out in the street. It's like the cops continue to do bad things.

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And every time a cop does a bad thing, you and your friends throw yourselves at a police station until you all get arrested. Then you won't be able to do anything else. Because you'll be in jail, you know? And these are hard realities, which is why it necessitates... new kinds of thinking, creativity, you know, it to some extent unsatisfying.

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And I guess part of what I would say is if people are giving you answers to what we need to do that sound very clear and satisfying, you should maybe not trust that totally.

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Because the responsible answer, in my opinion, is that like it's very unclear how to get out of this or what the right things to do here are, right? We just know that what we've been doing hasn't been working. And the first step to wisdom is accepting that.

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Actually, let's pivot to ads.

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Oh, yeah. Well, I waited 28 minutes this time to do it, but at least we have the second one in there. We're back. Bridget, sorry. Where were you going?

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Absolutely not. Yes. They don't give a fuck. Fucking Jake Tapper couldn't roll over fast enough.

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Yeah, that's one of the scariest things is the degree to which they're trying to memory all stuff happening as it happened. And at the same time, okay, yeah, he did a Nazi salute. He's a Nazi. This is not the first thing that's made that clear. We need to move on knowing he's a Nazi, but we need to move on. I don't know.

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I don't know what to do other than maybe there's some utility in spreading clips of him next to the fucking guy from American History X, but... I don't know. I don't know how that's going to help.

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Yeah. I was at Pride in San Francisco in 2020, and it was very big, very happy, but there was like a rind to it, you know? There was like an edge to it of... Are we going to be able to keep doing this? There's a dispensary. I don't smoke, but a friend of mine who I stay with when I'm in San Francisco does. And so I was with them at this dispensary.

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And it had a sign talking about its history, which was that the person who found it. It's a very nice one. It's like an Apple store inside. And the person who started it and ran it did so because when they were younger, their partner had AIDS, HIV and then AIDS, and marijuana reduced some of their symptoms.

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And they had to go buy it in the nearby park, which was a lot uglier of a place and a lot like, it was sketchy. Like they got robbed a couple of times. There was a lot more violent crime.

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And just kind of, there are even in a place like San Francisco, which is so like gentrified in such a way, like when you're talking with like, especially the older members of the queer community, they're not just like,

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Rich out of touch tech people they are old battle scarred queers who went through some of the ugliest moments of this nation's history and we're kind of bracing themselves for it again so yeah I'm very interested to see what it's what it's like this year you know.

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I want to talk a bit about the speech that that bishop gave at the Trump's first church service as president the second time around, because that is of all of like the fucking media people getting clapped at for making fun of, you know, whichever, you know, Hegseth or whoever. Yep. That I think actually did matter a little.

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At least it was the there was the courage of saying it to their faces in a way where their reactions were had to be filmed.

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Exactly. Yeah. And to be very clear, if you didn't catch this, the right Reverend Marianne Budd, B-U-D-D-E, who was the Episcopal Bishop of Washington during a church service where Trump and Vance and basically everybody in the new government was sitting, made a direct plea. Quote from this from an NBC Washington article referencing Trump's belief that he was saved by God from assassination.

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Budd said, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. And then she referenced specifically transgender people, queer people, people in democratic families, independent families who are frightened right now about what the new administration means, as well as migrants.

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And she made a point of saying, like, the vast majority of whom are not in any way criminals. Yeah, like, regardless of whether or not they have the right paperwork. Yeah. There was rage on Vance's face, which is part of why I'm like, that's an act of actual courage. There's been one Republican representative who said that she needed to be deported, Bud. Jesus! Born in New Jersey.

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Deported back to New Jersey? Yeah. Representative Mike Collins of Georgia. So one of your guys, Gare. Oh, thanks, thanks.

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Now, I do think we should be deporting large numbers of people to New Jersey just because my old boss and friend Daniel O'Brien lives there and I want to fuck with him a little bit, make the traffic worse.

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Yeah. Courage. Yeah.

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Yeah, I can think of like one tech guy with a lot of money who's turned out to have any kind of a backbone, and it's the guy who made that fire-watching app that everyone in California is using right now, WatchDuty, who's basically said stuff along the lines of like, I don't know, I see all these other guys who got rich in tech talking about going to Mars, and I think it's much more useful to try to help people survive on Earth, something along those lines, and has made a critical, like it is a critical, life-saving piece of technology that actually is...

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what we should hope for from tech, you know? Anyway, Bridget, what else did you want to kind of make sure we got into today?

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Hell yeah.

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Oddly enough, one thing that's given me comfort is like Trump has twice in the last day, both when talking about Gaza and when talking about North Korea, weirdly enough, gone under digressions about how good it is a place to build condos and the degree to which he's still focused on like real estate deals as opposed to the broader fascist project.

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is hopeful just because like he is a bottleneck through which a lot of this has to cover. And he is clearly not as personally obsessed with every aspect of this as guys like Stephen Miller, right? Like he even makes fun of Miller a little bit for that kind of stuff. So there's a degree to which like, well, his own personal eccentricities, there's aspects of this that might slow down.

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Thank you.

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Finally, you know what? I'm completely on board. As long as we're finally sticking it to those snotty fucks in Oman, you know, then everything's good. It's about goddamn time.

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Yes. Yes. Again, Trump's firm lifelong belief is that if you are selling something, you've won. And if you're buying something, you have lost.

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We love buying things. It's the entire basis of our civilization.

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Yeah.

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It's like so right now, one of the semi positive news stories is that Trump's ATF is going to be for the first time restoring people's Second Amendment rights who had them taken away because they were involuntarily institutionalized. And I've seen a lot of liberals being like, oh, they're just going to let more crazy people have guns. This is bad. And like, I have to disagree.

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Whether or not you like it, the Second Amendment is a fundamental right under the Constitution. And it's bad to say that this class of people forever lose a fundamental right because they're involuntarily institutionalized. That's bad. And likewise, even if you hate the U.S. military's role in U.S. imperialism, which fine enough,

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The right to serve in an integrated military has been a major underpinning of most of the civil rights movements, like a foundational underpinning of most civil rights movements in this country's history, including going back to the Civil War. Black civil rights, including LGBTQ rights, and including women's rights, right? It is significant.

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And so the fact that the GOP is attempting to peel this back and essentially reverse integration of the military is bad for two reasons. One, it represents, as you've said, creating separate classes of people and peeling fundamental, what are considered under the law in this country, fundamental rights away from groups of people.

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And it's also just dangerous for them to remake the military into an all white organization, right? Like, all white male organization. There's a reason why that's also dangerous to you. So yeah, I think people should care about this, even if they're, you know, leftists.

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Well, and that's also a broad truth for the U.S. military. Members of marginalized groups have always served at a higher rate than basically anyone else. This includes Native Americans serve at a higher proportion of their population within the country.

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than most other groups in part because traditionally serving in the military was a way in which to gain like acceptance and entrance into american society it's also just like another world like you can feel in some ways like insulated from like yes the hoarders you might experience in like regular suburban life oddly enough yeah yeah to weigh out of the

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Yeah, so he put out a letter a couple of days before we recorded this, and you should really read the whole thing if you just Google Mahmoud Khalil letter. I mean, I think the exact title is My Name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a Political Prisoner, which is the first sentence of the letter. But I want to read this little bit of him talking about his arrest.

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On March 8th, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor's safety.

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I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours. I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

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There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request. My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night.

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With January ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling two small shrouds and families are forced to waste starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom. And again, I really recommend reading the whole thing. It's very good. But yeah.

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Are we serious here?

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He has guys with guns. That's what it always comes down to. And then he forgets that is is only hurting themselves. Like, yeah.

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Great. And again, the death rate of this thing is in a completely different category from fucking COVID. It makes COVID look like having a mild case of allergies. Staggeringly lethal.

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Yeah, right now, current rates, when it has reached humans, is about a 50% fatality rate. They thought initially that they were missing a lot of cases and that it was much lower, but the current research suggests that that is not the case, that it is actually somewhere in that range of lethality.

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And again... We don't know that, like, the version that actually is able to jump from human to human after jumping from bird to human would be that lethal, because that doesn't exist quite yet, probably.

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But this is how we find out.

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Again, I think we really need to have a lot of different farmers set up photo ops with him where he is just covered in birds. We need to have that man in constant physical contact with chickens. He would do it. And the problem will eventually solve itself. We could convince him to eat raw chicken. We could definitely do it. Sure. Yes, absolutely. Eat them, cuddle them, sleep with them at night.

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Just kind of stand on a pile of their corpses. All right.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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It's Mental Health Awareness Month. And on a recent episode of The One You Feed, Josh Radner from How I Met Your Mother joins us to talk about fame, self-acceptance, aging, and finding peace in discomfort.

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To hear this and more on healing, identity, and the wisdom of slowing down, open your free iHeart Radio app, search one you feed, and listen now.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Yeah.

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It's Mental Health Awareness Month. And on a recent episode of The One You Feed, Josh Radner from How I Met Your Mother joins us to talk about fame, self-acceptance, aging, and finding peace in discomfort.

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To hear this and more on healing, identity, and the wisdom of slowing down, open your free iHeart Radio app, search one you feed, and listen now.

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Like, literally, he had to have been texting this, what he thought was a kid, but what was really a federal agent, while he was finalizing the language.

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That's not the way anything works, especially since it was, like, a U.S. airline.

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Yeah, to Syria.

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Syria and Egypt were the two biggest ones.

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Syria's torture program had largely been cobbled together by a former SS guy. It's all, it's very good.

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Yeah. No, I mean, it's a damning indictment of the character of people who are the voter base in this country. And it's a damning indictment of, like, what... Particularly liberals in the left failed to stop because this was a train that we could see coming for a while, like the propaganda campaign against these folks. And a necessary ingredient in the Republicans getting their way on this was...

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Democratic politicians and, you know, to be entirely fair, quite a few prominent thought leaders on the left absolutely folding and not just not just failing to like counterpoint this stuff, but like diving in on it because they they either had prejudice of their own or they saw it as like an opportunity. But like, you know, the whole nativist deal is is just disgusting. Yeah.

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I don't know. I don't know what else to say. I can't just like keep yelling about it.

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Yep. Just as like with all the shit that's happening right now, like in terms of like the disappearing of political opponents and whatnot, like you can draw a line from that, from like the Patriot Act, you know, from Obama targeting Democrats.

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a U S citizen in, I think Afghanistan, like there's all of these are like, obviously things were not nearly as bad as they are right now in those administrations, but like, they're not unrelated. You know, this kind of unitary executive theory is a through line through the last several administrations. Yeah.

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And if anyone had pushed back prior to this point, Trump wouldn't be able to do a lot of what he's doing.

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Yeah.

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We're back and we're talking crane. Ukraine. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have framed it that way. Ukraine if you want to. Yeah, I don't know why I did. Anyway, so if you've been kind of paying attention, over the last month or so, we've had a little odyssey in terms of U.S., Russia, Ukraine relations. And the gist of it is that everybody claims to want an end to the fighting.

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you know, at least off and on. Putin has kind of like made some motions to that, has absolutely not acted as if this is something he particularly cares about. Trump clearly does want a ceasefire because he wants to be able to take credit for it. And Zelensky also clearly wants a ceasefire. But there's been some kind of some pretty significant like holdups.

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One of them has been around Ukrainian minerals. And, you know, in February, you had the administration talking a lot about how the U.S. was going to gain control of Ukraine's minerals in order to pay us back for our support of their war effort.

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And Zelensky drew a very firm line, as he often does, saying like, no, I'm not going to you're not just going to get all of this, all of our country's minerals. And I should note here that this is a fairly significant issue in global terms. It's estimated that Ukraine has about 5% of the planet's critical raw materials, including massive reserves of graphite.

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They're somewhere in the top five countries in terms of proven graphite reserves, which, among other things, is a critical ingredient for batteries in electric vehicles. They supply about 7% of Europe's titanium. They're home to a third of European lithium deposits. This is not an exhaustive list. That's just kind of, you know, to start things off.

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And initially, when there was this kind of pushback from Zelensky saying, like, no, you're not just going to get all that, Putin came in and was like, well, hey, you know, we've occupied a bunch of Ukrainian land that has raw minerals on it. We'll give those to you, right? And so this went back and forth, and eventually –

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Zelensky and Trump's people put together like a deal that they were supposed to sign earlier this month that was like an actual like bilateral agreement on the use of Ukrainian minerals. And essentially what it would have done is the deal did call for Ukraine to use its mineral resources to repay the United States to the tune of about half a trillion dollars, but not in a manner that

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like where they were just handing us their minerals. Essentially, Ukraine would contribute 50% of revenues earned from the future monetization of government-owned mineral resources and other natural resources. But these were critically revenues earned from those resources like future monetization, right?

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So new mines, new oil and gas plants, not included in this were like current reserves, like actively being exploited for profit. So kind of the key to this is that mining is not something that you can turn around on a dime. Generally, once you have actually proven that you have sort of the reserves in an area, it takes about 20 years to actually get mines up and running.

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And this is an extremely expensive process. So one of the reasons why... Ukraine considered this a good deal for them is that we're essentially putting a lot of those revenues in the hands of the U.S., but it was revenues from minerals that Ukraine was not currently exploiting and that the U.S. would help and provide funding to exploit. So it was not just paying back the U.S.,

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It was something that would allow the rebuilding of the Ukrainian economy post-war. There were some issues with this, including the fact that mining is an extremely energy-intensive task, and Ukraine is in the middle of an energy crisis at the minute. But among other things, it would have brought the U.S.

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in and given them a financial stake in continued peace in the region, which was seen as positive. That all blew up at a White House meeting a couple of weeks ago where – If you remember, J.D. Vance and Trump basically had a little like WWE Smackdown with Zelensky. It was a pretty ugly meeting. And after that kind of talk of the bilateral mineral deal faded significantly.

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Now, what's interesting is that Just today, it's come out that Zelensky and Trump have had further conversations and there's a new deal apparently on the table, or at least the White House claimed that there was a new deal on the table. Both the White House and Zelensky's office said that it was a very positive, productive meeting. There's some evidence that Zelensky

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after that big blow up has been kind of doing the thing you've got to do with Trump, which is like massage him and say nice things to him so that he'll like you more. And that Trump has gotten kind of frustrated with the fact that Russia clearly has not been overly motivated to move towards a ceasefire.

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But then in the middle of this meeting that everyone seems to agree went really well, the White House comes out and says, and we're working on an agreement where the U.S. will control all of Ukraine's nuclear reactors. And Ukraine came out and said, no, we're not. We did not say that that was the deal. So I don't know what's actually going to happen here.

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Ukraine is a massive like nuclear energy state. In fact, the only European country that competes with them or that is like on the same level as they are in Europe in terms of nuclear industry is France. They've got four nuclear power plants with 15 reactors in total. Now, obviously, like the Zaporizhia plant is still under Russian control, which is a significant chunk.

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It's like six of the 15 reactors in the country. And Ukraine is in the process of like building more. They've actively added capacity since the end of the Soviet Union. And so one of like the promises for sort of future Ukrainian economic stability is that they will be able to export nuclear energy to the rest of Europe, which is also a going through an energy crisis.

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So it's unclear what's going to happen. There's definitely evidence, again, that Zelensky has kind of figured out how to massage Trump a little bit. There's a quote from an article in The Conversation that I found very interesting here. While Trump still leans towards Putin, his relationship with Zelensky seems to have improved.

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The Ukrainian president appears to have learned that Trump doesn't have a long memory and that flattery goes a long way with the U.S. president. Trump, meanwhile, is no longer calling Zelensky a dictator, and yet there is no mention of halting U.S. military aid or intelligence to Ukraine. There's the opposite, in fact, as the U.S.

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has said it will assist in finding more patriot missile defense systems after Zelensky mentioned they were sorely needed. By giving Trump credit for the ceasefire initiative, Zelensky is putting the ball in Russia's court and his apparent receptiveness to Trump's idea about the U.S.

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taking over Ukraine's nuclear power plants will appeal to Trump's transactional instincts in addition to offering Trump business deals. And I don't fully know what the conversation is saying here because Ukraine or Zelensky's office has stated like we're not considering handing the US control.

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I think this may be something like what happened with the energy deal, where essentially what they talked about was the US having a financial interest in the rebuilding and expansion of the Ukrainian nuclear power grid, which would be an extension of existing programs because Ukraine's nuclear power grid is already very reliant on a US nuclear energy company, Westinghouse, that provides both the raw fuel for nuclear reactors to Ukraine

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and also provides a lot of actual technology for different kind of systems in the reactors. So I kind of think that what's happening here is that basically it was floated like, well, we can extend and expand this deal so the US will have a financial interest in this potentially very large Ukrainian industry.

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And then Trump and his people kind of took that and said to everyone else, yeah, the US is going to be in charge of Ukraine's nuclear power. That's my best guess for what happened here.

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Yeah.

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Wait, wait. Did you say tariffs, Garrison? Or did you say... Ah, God, feels good every time. Okay, Mia, sorry. You can talk about the actual news now.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Oh, welcome to Executive Dysfunction, a podcast that if you... ED? Electoral dysfunction?

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Whatever.

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Sponsored by HIMSS.

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It's a fake Napoleon quote from a movie made in the 1970s in the Soviet Union. I believe the name of the movie was Waterloo. That rules. It's famous because they had some massive thousands and thousands of actual like soldiers, like set piece battles. But yeah, that's where the quote, I think the quote may have another origin, but that's the famous origin. It probably was never said by Napoleon.

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Yeah, it's the stuff like, you used to not be able to talk about being a king anymore. Yeah. Pretty recently. That's kind of the whole point of this country. There's a state where the whole motto is Sic Semper Tyrannis.

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It's company policy that we all wear body armor while recording because of an accident that occurred several weeks ago. We don't need to get into it. Garrison, please continue.

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Yeah, which RFK Jr. helped to cause by pushing a shitload of anti-vaccine propaganda here. Something like 80 people died, most of them children.

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Well, which leads to a separate problem. But, you know, if you go to childcoffins.com and put in the promo code, it could happen here. Anyway, 10% off. Yeah, RFK gets you 20% off. It's good business to be in.

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Yes, more children with handguns, less children on antipsychotics.

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4G, 5G cell tower shit. Great, great. Yeah, yeah. No, no. I am excited for people to both not have food and also not have Adderall. Yeah. That's really going to make quite an interesting mob.

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No, we are going to see stockbrokers leaping out of windows at rates unheard of.

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That's true. Adderall is going to be worth more by weight than gold. People, Vyvanse will be the new legal currency.

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I bought a house with two months of Vyvanse.

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Would it have to have direct involvement by her in helping people to evade ICE?

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Yeah, time for Tariff Talk. Tariff Talk! Dan, I'll insert a little musical jingle here for Tariff Talk.

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Tariff talk, tariff talk, talking about tariffs.

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there's even i don't know if it'll it's going things are going to change enough to have a big influence they probably won't on the next german election but afd saw its first drop in support in a while after jd vance endorsed them still doesn't have any juice quick send him to the uk we could kill reform now send him to the uk yeah

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Yeah. There was also a special education program dedicated to helping young adult special ed kids transition into the workforce that got cut. And the suspicion is because it was a child program that included the word transition. Like, we're not going to know for a while the precise reason, but all of this lines up pretty well.

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I mean, and they're doing that elsewhere, too. I just, yeah.

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Absolutely. You know, I think we, well, actually, we should probably call it as an episode before I make any more jokes about air travel.

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I do not want to now. That said, it is worth noting, I think there's two things that are worth noting. One is most of what people are pointing out as like scary crashes are crashes that the same number happened at this point last year when it comes to like small aircraft. Yeah.

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those are much more dangerous than cars, like tiny personal aircraft, which is why I always enjoy at CES when they try to sell even less regulated flying cars.

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But I also think from a political standpoint, no, we should actually absolutely every single plane crash, even if it's a tiny plane crashing and not tied to... the greater shit with the FAA, all of them should go on Trump's head. It's not about what's true. It's about what you can use to make political hay. And this is something that you can hurt Republicans with.

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Every time someone dies in a plane crash, lay it at their feet, right? Like, what do you get from being honest?

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Oh, yeah, yeah. specifically for like American soil they're definitely going to get people killed but like the way that you do that is not wait until okay this is finally the one that it's fair to attack yeah yeah yeah you make it you make every time this gets in the news you make it on their head you know

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They fired the guys whose job is to transport and make sure no one steals nuclear weapons. The one kind of cop we can all agree we need as long as we keep having those things.

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I have an episode on this that I'll put out at some point, but you're getting to a thing that I've been worried about for a while, Mia, which is we are every day getting closer and closer to a nuclear January 6th.

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And what I mean by that is an incident in which a nuclear weapon either gets utilized or gets out of the control of its proper handlers in a way that is dumb in the same way January 6th is. So I'm not talking about you have like an actual military conflict between Russia and the United States. I'm talking about something really fucking stupid.

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Like I'm talking about something incomprehensibly silly. And yeah, millions of people will at least potentially die.

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Well, until someone else gets a nuke, then all bets are off. Like I said, if you are someone who has been fired from the federal government and are transporting a nuke, I have a large backyard. And Cool Zone would love to become a nuclear power.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Yeah.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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That's right. That's right. Reverend Dr. The Honorable Evans, who is currently hacking up a fucking lung. No idea why I feel otherwise fine.

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Yes. I mean, I keep getting asked, is this the panic moment? And I don't think panic is particularly productive. But like, yeah, this is the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is happening. The president's talking about sending citizens overseas to a concentration camp. Honestly, I'm on the verge of thinking it's okay to call it a death camp, but we just don't have the data yet.

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There's some very concerning satellite shots that appear to show piles of bodies. Yeah, that's from March of 2024. Yeah.

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I mean, yeah, but it won't have gotten better. No, no. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. This is about as bad as it could be, folks.

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Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Yeah, I mean, he said everything. That would make him a respectable protester, at least based on what the fucking Dems were saying last year. There's nothing in there that's pro-Hamas. There's nothing in anything I can tell this guy has done that is advocacy towards terrorism. But obviously, that's not what matters. What matters is...

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they have the ability to get him out and they're doing that because of his speech. Yeah.

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A lot of what we're seeing here is the natural conclusion to what was happening with like Vance last year, talking about Haitian immigrants and admitting like, yeah, it's not literally true, but like it's true to how we feel. So it's like fine for us to spread this lie. Like they're just declaring these people terrorists.

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And even attempting to get evidence for that claim, like they certainly have no need to. And the media that like I'm seeing coverage on Fox particularly, that's just repeatedly framing this as like the left is angry that like a terrorist got deported. Right.

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Yes, yes. RFK Jr., he's not just strapping the carcass of a dead whale to the head of his truck and driving down the highway. Now he is, well, kind of launching a genocidal campaign against people with autism. Kind of doing a national eugenics program. Yeah. Kind of calling a large group of people in this country useless eaters. Jesus Christ. Yeah, fuck it.

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And the gist of what's happening is they just had a new quote unquote study come out that looked at like apparently rising autism rates. And again, I've covered this a lot. The reason why rates of autism are increasing every credible scientist agrees is because we're looking for it more. And so we're finding more of it, and we have a broader understanding of what it is. RFK Jr.

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is obsessed with the idea, the image of autism as a disease that is spreading due to an environmental contagion. And he is trying to make the case that this is a calamity. The most recent promise he made is that by September, the government will release exhaustive studies that will identify the environmental causes of autism. And he made a statement, autism destroys families.

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More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this. He has called autism a preventable disease, which it is not. While there is evidence that some of the factors that can be relevant in autism expressing are environmental, the vast majority of it seems to be genetic.

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There is no evidence and there have been repeated studies. There's nothing to do with vaccines. He's posited a couple of other theories as to what causes it. including mold and diet.

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And these are largely based on what are already kind of quack, both autism treatments and quack autism causes that are popular within the biomedical movement, the experimental biomedical movement, which is the fake autism medical industrial complex that we covered recently on the Behind the Bastards podcast.

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One of the things I think is really worrying about the language that Kennedy is using is how similar it sounds to a lot of what you were seeing in the early 1930s out of the Nazi state.

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What we know of as the Holocaust, which is generally a term, generally primarily when people use that term, they are talking about the mass killing of Jews and other ethnic minorities in Central Europe by the Nazi state. That got a lot of its start. And there's a couple of different places got its start.

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Obviously, the wild concentration camps and the political concentration camps are in that heritage. But when it comes to the actual mass killing of people, the very origin of that was in getting rid of the disabled. Right. The term that was used in Nazi propaganda for these people was useless eaters. And this is the first time that the Nazis tested out gassing. Right. In large numbers. Right.

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And he hasn't used literally the term useless eaters, but he talks a lot about... One of the terms he uses is severe autism, right? Which is not the term that is popularly used now for people who have kind of profound autism, I think is the preferred term for people who... do have a significantly higher degree of disability as a result of their autism or that correlates with their autism, right?

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As opposed to the vast majority of people who can be diagnosed as somewhere on the spectrum who are able to live independently, right? And Kennedy sort of...

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does the thing that is very common within this community of sort of, number one, correlating that to everybody with autism and talking about it as if it is a disaster that justifies any kind of response because the people who have profound autism aren't real people in his eyes. He made a statement, quote, these are kids who will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job.

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They'll never play baseball. They'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. We have to recognize we are doing this to our children. And first off, having taught a lot of kids with profound autism, yes, they could play baseball. A number of them held jobs. Now, do a lot of them need assisted living? Sure.

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But number one, that's always been the case. There's no evidence that people with this kind of autism, that there's any sort of raise in this, right? What's raised is the number of people who are being diagnosed, right? And he's using this kind of scare term, right? This idea that like parents, you need to be frightened that something is going to steal your children from you. Yeah.

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In order to justify the dehumanization of everyone with autism, as well as like radical biomedical experimental procedures that are going to do harm at scale to lots of kids. Yeah. One of his favorite new terms is epidemic denial, which is the term that he's using for people who say that, like, this is not an epidemic. This is something that we're now screening for more.

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He's kind of kind of repurposing the language of like vaccine denial and whatnot. As like a denial that this is sort of an immediate crisis. Yeah. That needs to be hit, which I find interesting.

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Yeah. And it's interesting. His initial promise was that by September, we'll know why autism rates are on the rise. That's not really a thing. You can't make science work that way. You can't guarantee that.

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But he's kind of altered that recently being like, no, we'll have some answers by September. And, you know, we're going to get those answers by removing the taboo so that doctors won't get gaslit by blaming autism on vaccines or, you know, mold exposure or the like.

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So that's what we can look forward to in the near future from our good friend RFK Jr., who definitely doesn't pay taxes or write poems. I just want to make that clear. I don't think either of those are particularly good bars for whether or not you're a human being, but he for sure doesn't do either.

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Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, the writing poem things was a really fucking... The Poet Laureate of Washington State since 2023 is a woman with autism. So, yeah, like I... Writing poems. Nonsense.

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Okay, okay, RFK Jr. Again, but he was talking about, you know, people with what he calls severe autism, but he also doesn't ever care to like specify his language because there's no benefit. That's not a real medical term. Yeah, and there's no benefit to his ideology in acknowledging that like, well, most people who get diagnosed with autism may need some accommodations. It's a difference, right?

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It's a difference in the way your mind works, but they're fine, right? Like they're living healthy, happy lives.

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And not repeatedly the B-movie script.

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Yep. We sure do turn away. Seems to be most of what we do these days.

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No, I mean, I got nothing to say against him right now. This is what they all should be doing. He went there. He did something, and he's not mincing his words. He's saying that this man was disappeared.

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Yeah, I think that's our new erectile executive dysfunction episode. Erectile order. All right. Well, we're fucking done. Go away. We reported the news. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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It's Mental Health Awareness Month. And on a recent episode of The One You Feed, Josh Radner from How I Met Your Mother joins us to talk about fame, self-acceptance, aging, and finding peace in discomfort.

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I'm not going to see.

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To hear this and more on healing, identity, and the wisdom of slowing down, open your free iHeart Radio app, search one you feed, and listen now.

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We don't need to say him.

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Yeah, let's talk about the Treasury.

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I mean, well, what it is is purposefully ridiculous. It's a flex. It's a statement of the power that they have over their own party and the country. It is purposefully absurd and everyone is going to go along with it because the chief, the king supports it, right? Like that's the point, in my opinion. Yeah, it's the emperor's new clothes of invading places. Like, it doesn't matter.

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We can be as silly as we want.

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Yeah. Treasury bills are the primary underpinning of like economic stability in this country. T-bills are what large corporate institutions when they have a lot of cash with like very wealthy people. It's where you park your money and it's where foreign governments park a lot of their money. And it's how our government gets a lot of its money because it's a good, reliable investment.

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So saying maybe we're going to declare some of these T-bill investments bullshit is very dangerous.

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It is the single most corrupt thing I've seen out of U.S. politics.

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Like blatantly. It's staggering.

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I love that you can no longer do scientific papers about systemic infections of of your internal organs? Like, yeah, no, there's a lot of issues. Anything that has a barrier.

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Yeah, and this is extending to the military now under Hegseth. West Point has just announced effectively the banning of a number of clubs, including the Society of Black Engineers, which is like three-quarters of a century old, something like that. Also, ending programs that are focused on recruiting into the military black soldiers, but have...

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like pivoted to recruiting from NRA gatherings, even though there's internal agreement that this brings in a lower quality type of recruit.

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Yeah, yeah, I've seen a few NRA members, right. And I, yeah, it's just one of these things, like there's a very good book that I think people need to read if you want to know kind of the operational impact this is gonna have, both on the US military and probably to an extent law enforcement when we look at agencies like the FBI. There's a book called The Dictator's Army.

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that heavily focuses on how changes like this impact operational efficiency. And the gist of it is that the goal, and clearly what Hegseth's job is, is to make the military into something that can't pose opposition to the new regime, right?

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That's the goal here, because there's a very realistic understanding that the military was one of the things that stopped him from maintaining power in 2020, right? Both because the military was not willing to be used to crack down directly on protests and because General Milley acted as a barrier to Trump's attempt to do a coup the last time, right?

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So you have an understanding, which is very common when regimes like this take over in democratic societies. In the early days of the Third Reich, the military was the primary concern Hitler had because they were not Nazis, right? They were conservative, but they were not in the tank for the Nazi party.

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And there was a lot that he wanted to do that the military establishment at the time the Third Reich came to power wouldn't let him do. And that was one of the first things, and this took several years, but that was one of the first goals of the Nazi regime in power, was reforming the military as much as possible in their own image.

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Yeah, I do like the idea of a lot of Trump appointees being in Teslas that are armored when the batteries catch. And maybe the jaws of life can't cut through those, you know?

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Horrible idea.

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What everyone always says the problem with tanks is, is that they don't explode enough when hit by munitions. Or by themselves when not hit by munitions. Or by themselves just because batteries do that sometimes.

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You never know what you're going to get. I'm excited. This is going to make everything a lot safer for our men and women in Greenland, I'm guessing. Batteries thrive in the cold.

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Yeah, I do love the new M1A whatever, 7 Abrams that gets four miles on a charge. And then again, detonates.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. This is a daily news podcast about all of the things happening here, which is wherever you happen to be, and also the world in general. And today we are going back to talk about Gaza, particularly what has happened and changed in sort of U.S. policy-relating countries.

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to Gaza, to what's going to happen as the actual combat operations wind down, to the Trump administration's so-far promises to effectively, ethnically cleanse the entire area and turn it into some sort of weird U.S. satellite. And with me today is Dana El-Kurd, an assistant professor of political science, guest on our episodes about Bibi Netanyahu over at Behind the Bastards.

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Dana, thank you so much for being here with us. How are you doing today? I know that's a dumb question. I just asked you that at the start of this too.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, like I said, a dumb question. The short story of what is happening is that Trump made an unprecedented announcement about a week ago on stage with Netanyahu that Gaza would be The Palestinian population would be forced out and not allowed to return, and it would be turned into effectively American condos, right?

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I think that's essentially the gist of the initial meeting, which was met with a degree of chaos even from Israel, because I don't think anyone entirely knew exactly what Trump was going to say when he got up on that stage, which is pretty normal Trump fashion. But yeah, how would you characterize kind of the initial reaction to that announcement?

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Yeah, because I mean, my interpretation would be that what Trump's literal words leave the door open to everything from, like you said, sort of slowly waiting for people to trickle out and not letting them back in. Kind of like what you saw in the Chagos Islands or outright mass killing.

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You know, like there's no closed doors in Trump's plan other than about three hours before we recorded this on Monday, the. 10th, a series of articles went out based on some of Trump's comments confirming Palestinians wouldn't be allowed back into Gaza under his plan. The plan is for ethnic cleansing, right? That's the only way to describe that.

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And it's interesting because Trump, in the way that he often just like says shit, I'm going to read the exact quote. I'm talking about starting to build and I think I could make a deal with Jordan. I think I could make a deal with Egypt. You know, we give them billions and billions of dollars a year. And so far, Egypt and Jordan have both said, no, this is not something we're interested in.

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UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said Trump's proposal was nonsense, but has to be taken very seriously, which I actually think is a reasonably good summary of how to handle everything that he says. It's nonsense and you have to take it very seriously.

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Yeah, I mean, that's a pretty stark term to put it. And I don't know, I guess because, yeah, one thing that the door is open on is Israel saying, well, now that we've announced this plan and people have to get out, everyone staying is effectively a combatant.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, I mean, it's bleak in so many comprehensive ways. Like one thing and not to I don't mean to like kind of take the focus off of Gaza, but this is used to turn permission structure on an international level. The U.S. saying we are backing a forced expulsion and genocide of an entire population.

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does change the permission structure for every international actor in terms of like a massive variety of conflicts around the world. Like this is like a sea change in international norms that so many millions of people outside of Gaza will eventually and very probably immediately be affected by.

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Yeah. Well, and I think that... This is and I want to I want to kind of zero back in on Gaza in a second. But I really do. I think that that broader point that you just make can't be made enough, not just the centrality of Syria, but the idea that when on the international stage, the leader of a country is allowed to do forced displacements through massive aerial bombing.

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Like there's this idea that you can just be like, well, that's just Syria, right? It's never just Syria, just like it's never just Gaza. You know, these things metastasize. You have to view those kind of actions in the international stage like a cancer.

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Yeah. That can't be overstated. A chill kind of goes down my spine thinking about that and thinking about that quote, which makes this a very bad time to throw to ads, but that's what I'm going to do. Then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about demining. We're back.

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So to zero back in on Gaza, obviously one thing that comes up when Trump talks about this plan that is an actual thing that would have to be dealt with one way or the other is that huge chunks of Gaza are uninhabitable right now and will be for the foreseeable future because of the sheer quantity of munitions dispensed.

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A number of munitions that have been used in Gaza are cluster munitions, but even munitions that are not cluster munitions, when you're dropping bombs or on particularly dense urban targets.

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There's a wide variety of things that can happen to those munitions on their way to their target, including them getting deflected by debris, them getting deflected by pieces of metal and rebar and the like that damages the device and stops it from detonating, but leaves it still in an active state. And the estimate I'm seeing for munitions used in Gaza is about 10% of the munitions.

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And there's no way of knowing how many have been dropped, but Estimates are at least 30,000 in the first 70 days, I think. Yeah, seven weeks, sorry, much less than 70 days. Nearly 30,000 munitions in the first seven weeks of the war. So a huge number, about 10% at least, are still active and live. And for an idea of how long... it takes to demine and render an area safe for munitions like this.

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There are still people who die in France from old world war one munitions, you know, up to the present day in 2025. So this is a massive problem. And the best case scenario, something has to be done with these munitions. This is something that Trump has been bringing up.

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And when talking about like his desire to clear people out of their demine and then rebuild effectively, what's what sounds almost like a vacation colony, right? Yeah. the United States. And one of the issues just with any sort of practical sort of effect with demining is that USAID has been gutted as an agency, and that's the agency through which demining was done.

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We've spent billions of dollars, put billions of dollars into demining around the world through USAID. The U.S. military is actually not allowed by our laws to do demining operations. There's a Like, so we both got this situation where the proposed justification for pushing the population out is, well, it's not safe to be there. We have to demine it.

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And also, we have created a situation in which the organizations that do demining can't do it anymore.

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My understanding, based on reading, I obviously don't have any ins in the Trump administration, but the reporting I've seen suggested came from Kushner that like a year or so ago he was talking about this. Like this is great, you know, a great place to build a condo. It's beautiful, you know, wonderful weather.

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I mean, we know just from the past that is kind of how Trump works is somebody people tell him a lot of shit, but something sticks in his brain and that like with the Greenland shit. can become U.S. policy. And that appears to be, I mean, as best as I can tell, that's the origin of this.

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Yeah. The fact that you are doing a genocide in order to clear land for condos doesn't make it less of a genocide, but it is like a justification for genocide. I don't think I've heard a country's leader make before. Right. I mean, parts of this are familiar and go back, you know, even to the Iraq war in terms of U.S. power and further back. Right. Like what what is kind of the core of U.S.

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support of Israel is our desire to have. A stable territory within the Middle East from where we can project power. Right. So to that extent, this is like a natural expression of U.S. policy for decades in the area. Like, well, what if we just take this for ourselves and then we have this stable platform from where we can airstrike whoever the hell we want?

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And also Jared Kushner can have his condos.

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Yeah, I don't want the focus to be on the danger to Americans from this, but this is extremely dangerous for Americans too, right? Having your country openly back a genocide to this extent, not just even arming it, but saying we are specifically going to build, take this land and profit off of it, it so comprehensively escalates everything on an international scale.

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Like, I don't even I can't even I can't think of a single decision that's this reckless that's been made in my lifetime by American politicians other than the Iraq war.

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The coffin's almost done.

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Yeah, I don't know what more to say on that. I guess kind of the one thing we should get into is what we're seeing in terms of the Trump administration and pro-Palestine protests in the United States. Obviously, last night at the Super Bowl, we had a moment where a member of Kendrick Lamar's performance crew on the ground. I think it was one of his dancers, as far as I can tell.

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I don't believe the individual's been named yet. Maybe I missed that.

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OK, well, I don't I don't feel specifically a need to do that. But an individual who was a part of that was standing on like one of the the cars that was on stage that Kendrick had been dancing on unfurled a Palestine and Sudan flag is a fairly small, like a couple of feet wide, couple of feet deep.

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So like not like a mass, certainly not a destructive act, but like not only did that person get like banned for life from all sort of NFL events and performing or attending them, which I suppose was not super shocking, but there were immediate announcements by New Orleans police that they are trying to figure out what to charge this person under, which like I tell me what kind of crime that is, you know?

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It's kind of like an actor ad-libbing. He did a thing that wasn't part of the script, I assume, but I don't know how you even... Charged him. Yeah, I don't think charges are out yet, right? But they're going to find something to do, which is... also going to set a precedent, right? Because this person was not in a place they weren't allowed to be. This person didn't damage any property.

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They held a thing. That's the definition of protected speech. If you were their employer, you can fire them for that, but you can't charge them criminally for that.

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Yeah. I want to kind of dig into that a little bit more and we'll continue our conversation. I've got to throw to ads one last time and then we'll be back. We're back. Dana, yeah, we're just talking about kind of the chilling effects this has had.

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As an academic, do you want to talk a little bit about what you've experienced so far and what you think kind of needs to be the response to this attempt to chill any kind of protected speech in favor of Palestine? I mean, not even in favor. That's the wrong way to put it.

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Discussing the reality of the genocide. Yeah.

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And this is all part of the whole kind of authoritarian chilling effect of any ability to express anything outside of like what the regimes that you live under considers acceptable, you know?

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And it always starts with these, well, you know, if we talk about Palestine and what's happening there, then maybe this department will get, you know, its funding cut and we won't be able to talk about anything. So really this is, you know, it's the same decision a lot of hospitals are making around like the treatment for trans kids as well. Oh, trans youth, yeah.

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We'll lose our funding if we do this and we do all these other good things. But they never stop. Right. Like you never actually are safe. There's no point at which these people say it's enough. They they take your ability to talk about or to act in one way or way. And then they take it away in another. And they keep taking, you know, until you make a stand.

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And you might as well make a stand the first time they start trying to take shit from you. Otherwise, you're going to get backed even further into a fucking corner.

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No. And yeah, through the use of funding and their ability to kind of gin up outrage in media, groups like AIPAC have effectively blasted a salient and free speech in this country where you really you almost can't talk about Palestine and you certainly can't acknowledge the what Israel is doing, right?

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You can't say it, state in plain terms, like we are watching a genocide be at least attempted here, right? And if you do that, there are huge consequences to most people in traditional organizations, particularly professors, which is always where it starts. And yeah, that salient is just going to get whiter and whiter and whiter, right? Like that's the way this stuff works.

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Yeah. Yeah. I think that's helpful. Yeah. When I think about the hypocrisy of this moment, I think about how much of the clamping down on speech, particularly the attempt to punish like student protesters in the United States, is predicated on accusing them of backing Hamas, right? And it's so interesting to me because like, you know, obviously I don't think Hamas is a good organization, right?

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but neither is the IRA and the former president of the United States, Joe Biden made pro IRA statements, right? Like one thing is okay. And the other is not, I don't know.

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It's it's, I find it incredibly frustrating that like, there's this pretended act that like, because you've got some people on one side who have made statements in favor of this group that sucks, that that is a reason for cracking down on the ability of people to talk about a genocide. Like it's, it's,

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just this hideous hypocrisy that I don't even understand how like people can keep that consistent in their own heads, but they don't need to, right? That's, that's always the thing with fascists.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I guess I think that is what they want to make the red line.

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What you went through there, too, makes me so angry when I read shit like, and this is not on Gillibrand, but Kristen Gillibrand was on someone's podcast recently talking about why some of her Republican colleagues who had expressed opposition to some of Trump's picks ultimately voted for them. And she's like, they're scared of getting murdered. And like, isn't everyone who says anything?

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And like, you got death threats for a Vox video. Like, why are these Congress people who have so many more resources to protect themselves? Why do they get to be scared?

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Yeah. Is there anything else you wanted to make sure we hit on during this conversation before we sort of close things out?

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Yeah, no, I know, because like Biden was playing a long game, a dumb long game, but a long game trying to brokers a deal with like Saudi Arabia and Israel that I mean, again, I think deranged. If there's clear evidence that the fact that he was not compass mentis, it's that right. But it was a long game. And I don't think that Trump is I don't think Trump cares about that.

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People are just doing shit and trying to grab onto whatever they can, right?

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Exactly. I mean, and that is so much of that is the entirety of the current plan of the new regime in the United States is throw everything you can out there and see what sticks, you know?

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They're doing that in Gaza, just like they're doing it everywhere else. Well, Donna, thank you so much. Do you want to plug anything at the end of this, your own stuff or something else?

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Yes, yes, yes, yes.

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Excellent. Excellent. We'll check that out. Definitely check out The Fire These Times. And that's a great place to send some aid. Donna, thank you so much for being on the show again. And yeah, I hope you, I don't know. I hope. I hope.

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Yeah.

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Welcome to The Birds and the Bees, a podcast where James Stout makes animal noises, and also we talk about what's going on in the White House this week.

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That would have been kinder than what actually happened to Drake. Yeah.

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Yes. That's going to be the uniform of a future Civil War.

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I love it when I see that shirt.

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Yeah. Huge L for capitalism. So funny. Oh, man. Well. I guess, yeah. The big losers this week, Drake and unfortunately the nation of Ukraine and most of the rest of Western Europe. Yeah. I guess we'll start with the big news today, which is that Trump just had a really great call with Vladimir Putin. Went super well. They're going to be meeting maybe in Saudi Arabia.

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There's been some floating of the fact that they might meet at the White House, which I don't think it ends well for Putin if he visits the United States. I don't think it ends well for anybody if he visits the United States. This country is too heavily armed and crazy right now.

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But they're doing this because Putin and Trump have evidently reached some sort of agreement about the end of the war in Ukraine. Zelensky was not really consulted on this. He's made a couple of statements like, yep, we're hoping that this is what pushes everything towards peace, but it's very clear that what's happening is Ukraine is going to be made to give up a decent chunk of their territory.

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Now, they do have Russian territory still to bargain with somewhat, so... It hopefully will not be a situation where Putin gets his entirely his own way. But that is kind of the what's happening. And the sea change that will accompany this is that new secretary of defense and alcoholic Pete Hegseth made a statement at a meeting in Brussels.

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that the United States will no longer be the guarantor of peace in Europe. Specifically, he stated that we're not going to tolerate an imbalanced relationship, which encourages dependency. But this was an announcement that the post-war sort of status quo is no longer something that we can rely on going forward. And that is a really significant admission from the SECDEF.

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I think we can all agree the future is bright for German weaponry.

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Yeah, it's great. And the Luftwaffe hasn't even bothered to change its logo since the last time, so that's cool.

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Well, and what you bring up there, Mia, is probably worth discussing in concert with all of this, which is that AFD, AfD, the Alternative for Deutschland, which is the new Nazi party in Germany, is not the majoritarian party, but is taking enough seats that it is going to be included in the next governing coalition. which is something that has not happened in the post-World War II era.

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In the immediate aftermath of World War II, every Western European nation basically came to a tacit agreement referred to as the Cordon Sanitaire, which is when a right-wing party starts to gain power, you do not coalition with them under any circumstances. Germany is actually like the last

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of the European countries to give up this idea, but the fact that the cordon sanitaire has fallen in Germany is real bad news.

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It is dark. I mean, and again, when we say the Italian fascists, this is literally Mussolini's party, as in his granddaughter. It's a member. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's bad. I think that's probably most of what we can say about what's going on in Europe and with Ukraine right now, but it's not good. Yeah.

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Right. People are just like, let's not give this guy the real ones.

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No. Oh, man. And of all the SEAL teams to get killed, too, that's the one that would be the biggest news day. Do you know who would never kill SEAL Team 6, Robert? I'm never going to say never about killing SEAL Team 6.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Okay. Cool. Sure. I do feel like you're underestimating the expense of office space and overestimating the availability of it, but sure, why not?

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But I also I also think you are really, really underappreciating docents. It is not easy to get a docent up to speed. Like, for example, it's a much harder job than you currently have.

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Now, you say that, Garrison, I absolutely would put a seven year old in charge of the FBI. You know why? That's a blockbuster movie. Now, to be fair, that's a 1997 blockbuster, but man, that could- Yeah, no, it's like 30 years ago. Can you imagine a young Mara Wilson running the FBI? Fucking- Kid FBI, yeah. Oh, perfect.

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They also put Will Wheaton in charge of the CIA. Yes! Damn. All right, you know what, Garrison? This podcast is done. You and I are writing a screenplay tonight. With the power of AI, we can just generate this whole movie instantly. Perfect. With a truly ghoulish guest appearance by Robin Williams. Just the worst taste imaginable.

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Yeah. Great. Well, it seems like it's going to end well for everybody. I don't know. What do you think? Do you think he's going to get confirmed? Because he's one I'm seeing people are focusing now that Gates is out. People are focusing way more on Hegseth, which is probably the priority because, my God, that man should not be leading the Department of Defense anymore.

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Because he's going to start a war, yeah. He's going to drunkenly and accidentally start a war. I'm not even worried about him launching a conflict with China, right? We're going to wind up fighting an insurgency against the Portuguese because he gets fucking hammered and mixes up a couple letters. I mean, I'm also really concerned about Tulsi Gabbard.

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Gabbard is top of my list because she has just never met a dictator she doesn't like. And yeah, that's a scary person having that job.

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She's evil, but smart and incredibly power hungry. That's all that matters to her is getting into power. And she has things that she believes and what we know of the things that she believes is chilling. Like, yeah, but that's, we don't, we're talking about someone besides Tulsi today.

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See, again, I'm sympathetic. Everything I do is for content, Garrison. That's just the way the world works now. The content must flow.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah. You just want to get COVID.

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It's a performance enhancer. You know, if we could convince, well, let's see, if we could convince Joe Rogan COVID's a performance enhancer, I don't think we could get Joe Rogan's fans to spread any more disease than they already do. Than they already do, yeah.

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Now, we should have called the COVID vaccines no COVID-em. It's a good name. That was just leaving money on the table. Or Novid. Novid's good. Novid would have been a great name. Novid's good.

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It's, it's, I mean, it probably will wind up being much more dangerous, but there is a version of this where the FBI just pivots to selling supplements. All right. Like where you, where you get, where you get your estrogen and testosterone from the FBI. Ooh. Look, as long as it's marketed as like a performance enhancer.

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Yeah, they're going to start. Yeah, with them. I mean, it looks like just based on his enemy list, they're going to start with

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biden administration officials and people in the government but like it won't end there it's going to depend on what happens like it'll be a reactive violent organization which to a degree it always has been but there's always been like more of a sense of like predictability that will not be present

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The one thing we all used to be able to agree on is that we don't like kings here.

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R-U-S-S-I-O-N-I-A-N-S. This is the kind of thing the FBI should be cracking down on. Yeah. So that's all I'll say about that.

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Well, no, because, OK, you know what? I don't think it is. But it came from the opposite side. You remember when the fucking Krasenstein brothers put out that children's book about Robert Mueller? No. No. Yeah. No, you're right. Yeah.

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With Weave Bannon because his hair was a weasel, I think. Yeah. This was another lie. This was another lie from Cash. The Krassensteins beat you to this. This is truly the tier of man we're operating with. I'm going to start pulling every connection I have to somebody in Congress so that when he's being confirmed, I can get up and hit him on this.

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You claim to have written the first children's book that I bring in the Krassenstein brothers? No. Oh, they're going to sell MTG on crypto.

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Dinesh, who has been forced by a court to announce in public that he did not uncover any scheme.

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That's a shame. And I'm just double checking something. Yes. And he stole the name of his song from a Metallica album. One of the better Metallica albums. This is the one that has one on it. Oh my God. You son of a bitch.

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Yeah. It'll be interesting to see the current FBI agents react to that. But I guess we'll see. We're all going to learn a lot about the FBI one way or the other.

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No, and I think that's one of the things I have no desire in focusing on, like what Trump is doing. That's like he's breaking the law. He's violating a norm. Like, I want to hear, you know, what are you going to do to stop it? Right. What is actually being done to try to resist this? Right.

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Like otherwise, it's at least when it comes to stuff from elected leaders, you know, I'm just not interested in like, oh, he broke another law. Yeah, that's what he does. What comes next?

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Ah, welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about the things that are happening all around us, including, shockingly, in the last week, something we did not expect two weeks ago, the fall of the Assad regime. Yeah.

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Which, our official stance as a network is that, fuck him, this is pretty good, but a lot of people feel differently, and to talk with me about that, another guy who's always angry about Syria, and also has been to Syria, James.

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And, you know, just as a note, I think a lot of the people podcasting about this right now are talking about a place they've never been, although James and I have not been to Idlib, so... No, it's true. We're going to be fairly focused on our experiences in the Kurdish regions, but at least we're not just bullshitting about a place that we've read about on the internet.

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Yeah, we... I briefly looked at regime-held Syria. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Over from Kamishlo, where is kind of the governance capital of Rojava, but is also a big chunk of it was held by the Assad regime. So you would just periodically see that fucker's face on the wall as you were crossing the street. Yeah.

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Yeah. Not advised by the old safety people, but... No. One of the sketchier cities I've been in. Yeah. Because of the presence of regime troops. Yes, yes. Everything else was lovely. Yeah.

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Assad, bad man. Stay away, bro. Stay away. Yeah. He's like, you're going to fucking die. Way to be a fucking Haval. Yeah, yeah.

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Yeah, Bashi Bashi.

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No, very few dudes in suits I want to see a statue of.

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Yeah, it's not coming to me.

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Assad now seems to be. I think, look, I made the call About two days before the regime fell that I felt he was out of the country based on some reporting, including reporting from the Syrian regime that he'd gone to Iran first. I think he left days before it fell. I don't think he's, yeah, he's got enough instinct for self-preservation that I think he got the fuck out of there.

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Great place for him to be working. Yeah, wonderful. Cool stuff.

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long legacies of authoritarian socialist how do i say this like the authoritarian socialist media project and that kind of colliding with the iraq war anti-era anti-war movement yes you know yeah all the whole hands-off syria thing that groups like the psl the party for socialism and liberation were doing when the rebels started this offensive being like we've got to stop and

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you know, these U.S.-backed rebels from taking, you know, Syria for the empire. And it's like, man, the fuck, it's not the U.S. that was primarily backing the rebels that did most of the fighting. Like, these guys are Turkish-backed, you know? Yeah, yeah. The extent that that even matters, right? Like, this is not, the CIA did not orchestrate all of this.

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The guys the CIA were really trying to back in Syria basically all died. Yeah, they've gone.

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Yes, some of them. But even that's not the bulk of the weaponry that those fuckers are using.

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We stumbled backwards accidentally into exactly once supporting the good guys in a conflict, specifically in the conflict with ISIS. Yeah, like a broken clock. And we immediately, ever since, we have been trying as hard as we can to pull back and, you know, betray them. Yes. To their deaths. Like, that is the story of U.S. support of Rojava.

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Now, part of what gives fuel for that is there are a number of photos of, like, U.S. troops really vibing with the YPG and YPJ. And they're vibing with them. And you and I could both say this, having been with those people, they're nice.

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They're chill folks.

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Hard not to see a bunch of young women who left ISIS captivity and immediately said, give me a gun. I'm going to learn how to use it and be like, yeah, that's pretty cool. Good for you.

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Oh, well, speaking of, well, actually not speaking of the IDF, thankfully, but speaking about maybe the California State Highway Patrol, here's some ads.

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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about Garrison Davis talking to me. Also, the world falling apart. How do you feel about that, Gare? How are you doing?

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Certainly the only multi-ethnic democracy in the Middle East that's functional. Yeah.

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No, exhaustion is a factor here. You really cannot emphasize enough how long HTS and the SNA have been at this and how fucking tired, particularly HTS, has to be. This has been... more than a decade of constant terror and violence. So I do think that that's going to be a factor in like what happens next. I should hope it will be.

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Yeah, but also, I mean, look,

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there's some people who need to be summarily executed you know yeah if you're gonna shoot someone fuck it yeah you're looking at the photos of just like thousands of shoes and decomposed bodies dissolved with acid at sednaya prison yeah like you're liberating those places you catch anyone who was working there i'm not gonna say that that's a bad thing to do i might do the same thing in their situ in their circumstances

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Yes, yes. And they are going to be catching. There are a lot of mokbarat, you know, secret police guys who didn't get out, who were thrown on. We've got videos of them leaving the palace, throwing on civilian clothes. Yeah. And I'm not going to be shocked if a lot of the justice process of that is ugly.

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Now, I do suspect that Jolani is going to at least grab a chunk of those guys and do trials because he is really looking for state legitimacy, you know? And that's one way you get it. Yeah, that's his project now. But that's not going to be how all these guys go down. No, some of these guys are going to die. Yeah, they're just going to get fucking got.

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Yeah, what do you believe, you know? If you're just torturing it to be like, well, no, you and I both read that there was a post earlier today with someone being like, these leftists, purity politics, you know, to be angry that Assad kept a lid on radical Islam and ISIS and just didn't do it super cleanly. And it's, man, he was fucking gassing children. Like, what do you, where are you here? Yeah.

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What is wrong with you? Come on, man. Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah. Something could happen. We could have a Songham and Telerian kind of situation, right? Yeah. Who's the Armenian who shot a member of the Turkish government in Berlin.

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We could have something like that go down. God willing.

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Yeah, he's probably going to be going back and forth to Dubai. There's some Syrians who wound up in Dubai. Somebody might stab him. Yeah.

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We've already got our Scaramucci. I was going to make a Scaramucci joke, but your joke was much better.

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Yeah. We've never had a knife advert, have we? No, I don't know that we have, and I would sell the hell out of knives. Mm-hmm, yeah.

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Oh, yeah. There was literally at one point they had an Ottoman-era black powder cannon on the back of a flatbed that they were using to hit regime positions.

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They had taken it out of the museum.

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fucking amazing stuff like the only the only i thought the top of like that sort of thing was when fucking insurgents in afghanistan would use 17th century jazails to shoot at u.s troops but the ottoman cannon is really a was that's a flex yeah yeah it was a huge flex they uh they also work you know they fired propane cylinders out of uh huge tubes these improvised mortars they call hell cannons like

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Uh, not thrilled. Kind of worried. Not thrilled. Matt Gates really seemed like the kind of guy you use to make your sketchy secret police. And Kash Patel is, I guess, your backup to that guy. Totally. Yeah.

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Yes, yes. I'd met a number of people who had, and some who had also had to flee, like from Aleppo and whatnot, because... because they had been on rebels fighting the Assad regime, and some had wound up in the SDF, some were just civilians living in the area.

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There was also a number of folks who commuted to and from regime-held territory, just because if you were someone that wasn't particularly wanted, you could do that. It was a very confusing situation for a lot of people.

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Yeah, I mean, and that's just the norm for dressing. If you're fighting in a war anywhere on the planet now, like whether you're the Russian army or some militia in Syria, it's, you know, plate carrier, usually like some sort of fast helmet. You've got, you know, a belt with sidearm mag pouches and then usually either an AKM or some sort of AR style weapon. Like everybody dresses that way.

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everybody looks very similar now because it's just the most kind of, I mean, number one, there's a lot of that gear lying around and it's cheap. And number two, like it works. It's a loadout that works. Yeah. It's very practical for what they're doing.

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Yes. Yes. It's also looks cool. It looks like being in a movie. And that is a, that matters a lot to the kind of young men who start fighting in wars.

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Yep. One of the ways I like to think about it that is crucial for people to understand is that Syria has largely been the laboratory in which the 21st century was cooked up. Like, all of our futures have to some extent been built in Syria, both like...

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this is where we get a lot of the fuel behind the right wing surge that has been occurring over the last few years started because of the refugee crisis, you know, but also a lot of the tactics and weapons shit that like Israel is doing right now in Gaza, like Syria was the lab to a significant extent for how authoritarian regimes would crack down.

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And it was also the impetus behind a lot of the most significant things that have been happening over the last decade and change. So yeah,

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Hey everyone, Robert Evans here, and this is It Could Happen Here. Obviously, one of the things that's been happening here, probably the biggest story of the last week or so at least, is the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by an alleged shooter named Luigi Mangione. Magione is, you know, an interesting character.

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People have had a lot to say about him, and so I went through his online footprint, everything I could find on his social media, and I wrote an article for my sub stack, Shatterzone, and I'm going to be reading that in a slightly amended form for you now as today's episode.

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I've spent much of the last 10 years reading manifestos and being a fly on the wall in different little online bolt holes where extremists plan and seek to incite mass shootings. When Luigi Mangione, the suspected shooter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was arrested at a McDonald's, it didn't take long for digital sleuths to put together a comprehensive record of his online activity.

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I will tell you now that nothing he read or posted explains why he gunned down an insurance executive better than this single image in the background of his Twitter profile. And the image is, of course, of an X-ray showing four screws in someone's lower base spine, apparently due to a lumbar spinal fusion surgery.

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The day after I wrote this article, the New York Times published a piece after finding Luigi's Reddit. The piece by Mike Baker, Mike Isaac, and my old boss at Bellingcat, Eric Toller, confirms that he had a spinal fusion surgery, that he had dealt with back pain for years...

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which had been minor and then gotten much worse after a surfing injury, and had grown even worse after slipping on a piece of paper, caused persistent problems, including pain when he sat down, twitching leg muscles, and numbness in his groin and bladder, according to the New York Times.

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He had that spinal fusion surgery, which he had been deeply frightened of ahead of time, but which resolved those symptoms, and then he continued to have other symptoms, probably unrelated to the back pain,

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It's unclear if the back pain came back, but what is clear is that he wrote constantly online about pain and about his struggles with various other health issues, including a persistent brain fog that he seemed unable to get care for.

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His friend RJ, who lived with him at an intentional community for digital workers in Honolulu starting in 2022, confirms that Luigi suffered an injury shortly after taking a basic surfing class after moving there. This laid him up in bed for about a week, unable to move. His friends had to seek a special bed to help him with the pain.

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In general, we have ample confirmation that he was someone who dealt with a series of escalating health issues that changed him from an extremely active, physically fit young man into somebody who felt like they were no longer able to do or enjoy the things they had previously been able to do and enjoy. Now, this is most of what we know about the health history of Luigi Mangione.

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as of December 10th now, when I record this, 2024. As I write this, a purported manifesto is making the rounds online, which discusses health issues his mother faced. It's still unclear if that manifesto is real. Ken Klippenstein has finally gotten access to what he claims is... The draft of the manifesto that the shooter had on him when he was arrested by the police.

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I don't know if that's a manifesto or something he wrote while nervous because he largely addresses the cops in it and tells them, you know, what to expect when searching him. But anyway, Again, at the moment, this purported manifesto that was also posted on Substack, very unclear as to whether or not that's real. So for this today, we're going to stick with what we can verify.

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And what we can verify is that Luigi Mangione suffered from chronic back pain. He had five different books in his Goodreads that he read about dealing with back pain and healing from back pain, as well as other chronic health issues. If he is the shooter, then we can confirm he also chose to act out by targeting an insurance CEO.

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The New York Times has stated that he was arrested with a 262 word manifesto, which has since been leaked. And in that manifesto, he describes the executives who run insurance companies as parasites who, quote, continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. In addition to all this, we know that Luigi came from a wealthy family.

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Great. Okay. I'm sure he was good at that job. I'm sure he doesn't have any really embarrassing failures during that period of time.

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His grandfather made millions running a series of country clubs, nursing homes, and office buildings and hospitals. One of his cousins is a Republican state legislator. It is unclear if Luigi had any access to the family money, but he was clearly financially comfortable enough to move to Hawaii and pay to join an intentional community.

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He had engineering degrees and a promising early employment history. This is a man who had options. He could have been almost anything he wanted to be. And the thing that he ultimately chose to do with his life after suffering a debilitating series of health issues was to shoot the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain

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It's a well-known fact that most terrorists tend to be radicalized in communities. Much of my career was spent watching 8chan turn from an image board dedicated into Gamergate into a machine for generating white nationalist mass shooters. These people often appeared as lone wolves to the untrained eye, but they were radicalized intentionally in and by a community.

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Much will be made in the coming days and months about Luigi's online footprint. I will go into some detail about where he spent his time and how we should characterize it, but I want to be clear at the outset that his intellectual diet does not seem to be what made him choose to take action, although it may have influenced the specific kind of action he took.

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Luigi followed a lot of accounts on Twitter that are wildly popular with young men like Joe Rogan. He listened to Jordan Peterson and Tucker Carlson and agreed with them on certain things, but he also had cogent criticisms of their arguments and presentation. Here's what he said about Jordan Peterson on May 14th.

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This is why Jordan Peterson always bothers me, overcomplicates everything he says aloud, wasting everyone's mental bandwidth and having to decipher it. The best teachers are the best communicators. Clear, succinct, simple language, which does kind of gel with the fact that he wrote three words on the bullets he used to shoot that CEO.

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Luigi also expressed frustration with wokeness and expressed opinions common on the libertarian tech-influenced right, like a belief in the social benefits of Christianity without expressing popular religious beliefs himself. I found one post where he talks about how nature abhors a vacuum and shares an article about how Christianity's decline has unleashed terrible new gods.

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Some of his posts took the form of memes typical to online discourse of this type. But I've also read an essay that he wrote when he was 15 years old discussing how Christianity persevered over paganism in ancient Rome. And that essay exhibits a longstanding interest in this topic and a capacity to treat it with nuance. His paper is very well written, particularly for a 15-year-old.

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And while his conclusions are highly arguable, it's not the work of someone hopelessly brainwashed by culture war bullshit. Luigi liked to think and read and come to his own conclusions. He was interested in AI, in cryptocurrency, in life extension, and in a constellation of tech bro-adjacent attitudes and philosophies often described as the Gray Tribe.

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I found one post where he talks about a senior speech he gave on the future. Quote, topics ranging from conscious artificial intelligence to human immortality. The term Gray Tribe was coined by an influential rationalist, blogger, and psychiatrist named Scott Alexander Siskind.

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He used it to refer to an intersection of nerd culture with Silicon Valley-influenced ideology descending from the online rationalist movement. This community existed outside of traditional right-left ideology. Now, I've not found any evidence that Luigi was a specific fan of Scott, but he expressed appreciation for several figures associated with this big tent movement, including Peter Thiel.

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If we described Scott as representing the more liberal flank of the Gray Tribe, Luigi seemed to be drawn to folks closer to the right-wing side of things. The worst person to use this terminology would probably be Teal associate Balaji Srinivasan, who has used Gray Tribe framework to describe his ideal big tech takeover of San Francisco and purging of progressives.

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However, I must stress that Luigi Mangione never expressed any support for this end of the ideology that I can find. He was a young man of libertarian inclinations who worked in big tech and had ties to San Francisco, but he was also clearly someone still making his mind up about the world.

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As information about him has come out, I have seen people on the left who initially saw his acts as heroic lament that he was a bigoted tech bro. Scott Alexander has been credibly described as a eugenics supporter, as have many other people adjacent to the strains of rationalism and big tech ideology in which Mangione dabbled.

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Luigi's Twitter account does indeed include weird posts from his time in Japan where he theorizes on how to solve falling birth rates by banning pocket pussies and video game cafes. At other points, he complains about Japanese citizens acting like quote-unquote NPCs.

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But race science and eugenics don't seem to have been a focus for him, and I would caution anyone against being overly reductive about a 26-year-old's beliefs based purely on a handful of posts that bear no relation to his actions in the world. The evidence that we have of his online footprint suggests someone who was not unmoved by certain arguments rooted in social justice.

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He expressed admiration for a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five about criminalization of poverty in the United States. America is the wealthiest nation in the world, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Ken Hubbard, "...it ain't no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be."

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It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of the poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor, but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more esteemable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor.

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Now, Luigi is certainly not the idealized leftist icon some had hoped, but he doesn't easily fit into any other box we've got. His interest in gray tribe-adjacent thinkers and self-help books written by productivity hackers like Tim Ferriss is incredibly common among young men. Much has been made of the four-star review he gave Industrial Society and Its Future, the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski.

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But as with the rest of his media diet, he did not view Ted through the simple lens of hero worship. Here's what he wrote, quote, He was a violent individual, rightfully imprisoned, who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy Luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.

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Now, we know those words, his condemnation of Kaczynski maiming innocent people, are not just words because we have seen the attack he allegedly chose to carry out. Not a series of bombings that killed and maimed innocent people with no real power in our society, but a surgical strike against a man at the very top of the system he hated and one that caused no collateral damage.

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He was capable of appreciating some of Kaczynski's conclusions, but ultimately the quote he chose to highlight in his review came not from the manifesto, but from a Reddit post made by a guy with the username BossPotatoNess, who otherwise mostly commented on the Grateful Dead.

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This post praises Kaczynski for having the balls to realize that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere and complains economic protest isn't possible in the current system. As a result, violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense. Quote, these companies don't care about you or your kids or your grandkids.

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They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck. So why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive? This is not the kind of radicalization pathway our media is good at discussing or analyzing. The things Luigi read and the people he interacted with online absolutely influenced what he did and how.

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But boss potato-ness is not some Nazi on 8chan trying to provoke a shooting spree for the lulz. He's a random dude angry about the things 70% or more of the country is angry about, and he's expressing a lack of faith in a peaceful way forward.

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If you read this post in its entirety, as Luigi did, you can't miss the pain there, anxiety and horror at the inevitability of climate change and the looming knowledge that everything good and green on this earth is being fed into the bloody maw of an industry concerned only with maximizing profit. In more ways than one, Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain.

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I know many people who suffer with chronic pain and ongoing medical issues. I will tell you that it is not uncommon in dark moments after fruitless hours-long calls about dropped medications or receiving surprise bills for them to joke about what they'd like to do to the executives who run these companies. These are jokes made in moments of despair and pain.

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No one I know would ever act on them because they all have lives, people to care for and to whom they are responsible. They would never really do anything because the consequences to their own loved ones would be so severe. In the months before the shooting, Luigi had cut off all contact with his family. He admitted this in court.

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His parents eventually filed a missing persons report in November of this year, and we have evidence that friends tried to contact him on his family's behalf via social media. As was first noted by a Twitter account, Luigi Mangione expressed interest in the works of Paul Scalise, a tech lawyer, writer, and prominent poster who writes about the Lindy effect, a concept that boils down to this.

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The only effective judge of things is time. Scalise is popular among the set of people Mangione found himself drawn towards and writes about the wisdom of ideas from antiquity. It's not hard to grasp what a man with an academic interest in ancient Rome might see in him. On December 4th, 2024, Paul made this post.

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Look, if you don't have any kids and you're one of these guys just floating around the big cities, you got your education, but you never really used it to make money. You got a dead end back office job and a future of just working somewhere until you're 75 and then dying. Go ahead and do something.

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It's been suggested that this may have influenced Luigi, and I think the timeline makes it clear that cannot be the case. Luigi cut off contact with his family and most of his friends months before this. The evidence suggests that he had planned this attack for quite some time. He arrived in New York City on November 24th on a bus bound from Atlanta, where he did not reside.

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So I don't think this post represents a piece of his radicalization journey, nor was Scalise advocating for people to kill CEOs. But the situation and mindset Scalise described does speak to a lot of young men like Luigi, young and educated, but without intense responsibilities or much hope for the future.

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This subset of society has always overproduced terrorists, revolutionaries, and of course, mass shooters. The United States has a mass shooter culture. Over the last several decades since Columbine, we have grown used to the idea that people who are angry and no longer care if they live or die will sometimes choose to go down killing strangers.

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In most cases, these shootings are totally random, the victims chosen with no concern beyond maximum body count and maximum attention. More recently, especially since 2019, mass shootings have become increasingly politicized. Different extremists, mostly right-wing, have used them to put theory into praxis and earn free PR for their causes.

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I hate that he's got a My Cousin Vinny in his record because that movie is great and it gets me on his side in a way I definitely shouldn't be. Did he come in next wearing like a funeral director's tuxedo? Or a fucking band leader's tuxedo? Whatever. I don't know how to describe the tuxedo Vinny wears in the scene after that. Anyway.

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Most people abhor these actions, but we have grown used to the idea that other people will use such acts as a way to spread messages that might otherwise get ignored. It is not coincidental that the white genocide conspiracy theories from Brenton Terrence's Christchurch Manifesto are now mainstream talking points in conservative politics. Luigi Mangione grew up with all of this.

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He would have come to the same conclusions about the role shootings play in our society as any other reasonably aware person. What he did was, of course, not a mass shooting. But the assassination, his actions afterwards, and his possession of a manifesto were all clearly plotted out by someone who knew the social script for how this kind of thing goes in the USA.

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In the wake of this shooting, every media organization commenting on it has had to grapple with the waves of public enthusiasm for Luigi's actions. Right-wing media figures condemning the left for celebrating this assassination have been criticized by their own readers and listeners. Insurance companies have pulled down lists of their executives from the internet.

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This is because they, too, understand the shooter culture of the United States. Like everyone else, they know that any mass shooting that meets with massive media coverage and interest will spawn copycats. The assassination Luigi is believed to have carried out was new and exciting. It demanded the public's attention in a way that most mass shootings don't.

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At almost the same time the UnitedHealthcare CEO was gunned down, a gunman walked into a religious school near Oroville, California and shot two young children before killing himself. This shooting drew almost no national attention. It was entirely drowned out by the execution of an insurance industry CEO.

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The armed and disaffected young men who are most drawn to this sort of thing will not miss this fact. I believe Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain. The shooters who follow him will all have their own reasons for what they do, for their own journeys to that violent end. But ultimately, they'll do what they do because Luigi proved it's what gets attention. For now.

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And to be clear, Kash Patel was not dating Marissa Tomei. He could never pull Marissa Tomei. He could never pull. I mean, honestly, Joe Pesci. Who can? Who can? That's...

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Amazing stuff. Let him cook. Crazy stuff. Look, here's the thing, Garrison. If it had gone the worst possible way it could have gone, we'd have been saved at least four interminable books and at least three podcasts.

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People have made this point, but it's guys like this that have convinced me that there's no, at least no like perfectly known to intelligent smoking gun about the Kennedy assassination. That shit would have leaked so quickly. No. If not before Trump was in office, then certainly by the time he was.

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Or at least if there is, it's the kind of thing. There may be a smoking gun that someone who is deeply knowledgeable at the time period would be like, oh, the fact that this guy was here at this time really means that this other thing happened. But Kash Patel doesn't know shit.

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to the united states for holding u.s treasury bonds and again if any nation on earth could pay to have their currency be the global reserve currency there's no amount they wouldn't pay like the the degree to which this benefits you is ridiculous like the fact that you want to charge other people for it it's nice it is like look again how this how this how this like actually works right is that

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Yes. Yes. There's absolutely like, yeah, yeah. No. Nothing else to say, really.

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At least we don't have woke. It's worth it to not be able to afford food if the woke is gone. The global longhouse. That's a deep cut. The fucking longhouse is burnt down. Sure, because the longhouse is burnt down, we're now exposed to the elements and all of our food stores are gone and it's about to snow 18 feet. But at least the longhouse is gone.

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Yep. That no one gets released from.

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Yeah. All right, everybody. Well... Until next week, please don't go to an El Salvadoran prison camp if you can avoid it. We reported the news. There it is.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Hello, everybody. It could happen here, here. And this is Robert Evans. We're a show about things falling apart. And boy, howdy, they sure seem to be doing just that, as they always are and have been for years. You know, in fact, anticipation of the end times, I think, is probably close to the number one hobby in the United States at this point.

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I suspect if you counted up the dollar value of all the collapse-themed movies, books, prepping gear, monetized social media content, and of course, religious sects in the country, the apocalypse would be one of our big industries. Doomsday prepping alone was an almost $1.2 billion business last year, and it's expected to more than double by 2030.

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Our popular fiction can't even imagine a better future right now. 90% of modern future media takes place during or shortly after an apocalypse. The odd exception today, like Bong Joon-ho's recent Mickey 17, is so rooted in Trumpist politics that we only catch occasional glimpses of anything beyond it. In other words, in our fiction, there's no respite from the news.

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We watch a slow motion, self-inflicted global economic collapse and then relax with shows about mushroom zombies or literal wage slaves created by mind control surgery. In other words, it's bleak out there.

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Tomorrow could be the day Trump invokes the Insurrection Act or uses the military to occupy Greenland or like one of a dozen equivalent horrors we all just know are coming in some form or another, even if no one can say when. And I'm not here today to tell you how we're going to get past all of that or fix it, because I don't know. So today, I'm just here as a merchant of hope.

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My job is to convince you that our species will someday get past our bullshit and perhaps even lay claim to the stars. And no, Elon Musk isn't going to have anything to do with that. But in order to convince you of all this, I'm going to have to talk about a movie. It's called Roar, and it is technically a 1981 comedy adventure film about an American naturalist.

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This guy lives on a nature preserve in Tanzania filled with big cats. His family comes to visit at the same time as a grant committee shows up to evaluate his project, which has an unclear goal. He's apparently just trying to prove people and giant cats from all over the world can live together, which the movie shows they can't. It's really immaterial what happens in the plot.

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All I can tell you is how Wikipedia describes it. I've watched this movie dozens of times, and I have very little idea what it's supposed to be about. This is because in any given scene, the script is only ever a vague suggestion. as each scene starts with actors trying to read lines and evolves into those same actors trying to survive while being mauled by dozens of lions, tigers, and panthers.

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I should probably step back a minute to explain some things. Roar is largely the brainchild of Tippi Hedren and her husband, Noel Marshall. If you're on the younger side, Tippi Hedren was the female lead in a little movie called The Birds. It is a horror film and also an early apocalypse flick by Alfred Hitchcock. It's often credited with inventing modern horror cinema.

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Hitchcock himself sexually and psychologically harassed Hedren, but his worst actions came during a crucial scene where Hedren was attacked by a flock of birds. Up to the day of filming, Hitchcock had assured Tippy the birds used in this scene would be animatronic. But when the time came to shoot it, she spent five days having hundreds of live birds hurled at her in huge numbers by the crew.

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Hedren later described it as brutal, ugly, and relentless. Cary Grant, her co-star, told her she was the bravest woman he'd ever seen. Now, whatever other impacts this had on Tippi, she has no discernible fear of animals after this point in her life, though she really should. Her husband, Noel, is a bit more of a mystery to me.

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He was an agent, a producer, a film investor, and a serial entrepreneur whose best financial decision was putting money behind what became The Exorcist. In 1969, he and Hedren were in Mozambique while she starred in the film Satan's Harvest, about which less is said the better.

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This is only relevant because during their time in Africa, they observed a pride of lions lounging about an abandoned home, and this gave them an idea. They wanted to make a movie about poaching and conservation, something that could use the power of film to save these majestic creatures being threatened by humanity. All four of their children agreed to star in it and to help with production.

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But there were immediate snags. They wanted the film to be set in a big cat sanctuary, but actual lion tamers warned them that it was flat-out impossible to keep so many large felines together safely. This would eventually prove to have been very accurate advice. After a while, one tamer introduced them to their first tame lion.

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And for reasons known only to God, he suggested to this traumatized movie star and her family of charmingly deranged Californians that they could just get their own big cats and train them by adopting animals confiscated from their previous owners. Generally, sketchy zoos and circuses. So a lot of these cats had never known the wild, and they'd often been badly mistreated.

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Given that this was the 1970s, we must assume that some had been confiscated property of Coke dealers. Tippy and Noel had no professional or legal qualifications to care for dozens of big cats. When the authorities eventually found out, there was trouble.

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Although since Hedren and Marshall were rich, they bought their way out of said trouble by purchasing a rural compound and having a house built specifically for they and their dozens of apex predators to live. While lions had inspired the initial vision, the compound in California soon filmed with big adopted cats of every kind.

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Tippy and her husband took them in and raised them among and around their own children, who came to see the animals as something between pets and family. When they actually started filming the movie that became Roar, making any kind of movie had become secondary to the act of caring for these many, many giant traumatized kitties. As I noted earlier, the plot to Roar is kind of immaterial.

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I've never watched it with the sound on. I can tell you, though, that none of these cats were trained in any really meaningful way, which meant that every scene devolved into the same spectacle.

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The cast, surrounded by dozens of giant cats, stumble through a few lines before one or all of the cats begin to bite and claw them, at which point each scene becomes about surviving from one moment to the next. Roar took more than five years to film and more than a decade to actually make.

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No cats were harmed during the production of this movie, but more humans were injured than in any other film production on record. Of the 120 or so cast and crew on Roar, more than 100 suffered significant injury, often more than once. Yann DeBont, the cinematographer, had his scalp ripped off by a lion, requiring 120 stitches. He went on to make Speed and Twister.

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Melanie Griffith, Tippy's daughter and a future star herself, left production at one point because she was worried a big cat might rip her face off. She ultimately returned and immediately had a large chunk of her face ripped off, requiring extensive surgery. This all sounds horrifying and impossible to justify. But before you make a final judgment, I want to remind you of two things.

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One, for all its horrors and severe injuries, fewer people were killed on the set of War than in Alec Baldwin's recent film, Rust. The second thing that you must remember is that Roar is a work of art on the level of Moby Dick. If you watch it enough, among the right people and in the right headspace, you can come to a deeper understanding of every facet of human existence.

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I've taken a lot out of it over the years. Recently, it has convinced me that we will one day get over our bullshit and escape the present hell that our species seems mired in. I know that doesn't make much sense now, but give me some time. I'll explain why. But first, it's probably time for some ads. We're back.

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And the first thing I need you to understand about all of these fucking cats is that in every mauling caught on tape, and there are dozens of them, I see no anger or malice in the actions of these cats. I don't even see hunger. It's clear to me, as a cat owner, that the cats didn't see these people, Tippi and her family and the cast and crew, as prey or as a threat.

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If anything, they saw them as fellow big cats, cousins and close kin, who they extend a kind of familiarity and perhaps even a kind of love that, since they are cats, is expressed primarily by batting at them with claws that hit like bowie knives embedded in the hood of a speeding Camry. If you have cats of your own, you understand.

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Now, given that nearly every person on this film was badly injured, including Tippy, who got gangrene from infected cat wounds, and all of her children, you might feel inclined to judge who are Noel or both of them for risking their kids' lives to make this insane movie. I understand the impulse, but I believe it to be an error.

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The first thing you need to see to understand the deeper dynamics going on with war is a picture from a Playboy magazine photoshoot of Tippy's husband and co-star, Noel Marshall. He's in his office on his typewriter and this fully grown male lion gets up on his desk because it wants attention. Again, normal cat behavior.

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Now, despite the best efforts of this animal, who has to weigh 500 pounds, Noel Marshall won't stop focusing on his work. And so the cat, inches away from his face, roars. The sound of a male lion's roar is deeply imprinted on all of us, an epigenetic memory passed down by the handful of our ancestors who heard the sound up close and lived to tell the tale.

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It has such a foundational impact on our mind that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film studio, used it to open every movie they made from 1928 on. I believe they did this because the sound is a sort of hack to compel our attention. It pulls an audience out of whatever state of mind dominates their outside lives and makes them more attentive to the film that is to come.

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And so the first thing you need to understand about the people who made Roar is that Marshall, upon having a living adult lion inches from his face roar, gives the creature a look that says, hey man, can you give me a second? I'm like, I'm in the middle of something.

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I bring this up so that you will understand that these were not people operating on anything close to the same wavelength as you and I. Their lives and their choices are, to outsiders, inconceivable. There's another great photo from the set of that Playboy shoot.

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While the camera people roamed the Hedren compound, one of them caught a shot of Tippy's adolescent daughter, Melanie, jumping into a pool.

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an adult male lion which she must have considered to be in some way a member of the family sees this girl passing by in the corner of its eye and that motion ignites an instinct inside it so like any cat of that size in the same situation it reaches out to bite her Afterwards, the Hedren family and the cast and crew had complicated feelings about what happened that extended to the present day.

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Tippy divorced Marshall almost as soon as the filming finally wrapped. She has alleged that while Roar was being made, he utterly ignored her well-being. She also does not seem to have ever seriously considered leaving. She later wrote that she, quote, "...was into it every bit as much as he was, and that production was an obsessive, addictive drama."

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John Mitchell, Noel's son, who acted in the movie, and like everyone else, was mauled repeatedly, came to own the rights to Roar when his dad died in 2010. Dad was a fucking asshole to do that to his family, he said recently. He also said this, It was amazing to live through that. I should have died many times, but I kind of want to do it again.

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If you have any friends or family who have survived extended periods of heavy combat, there's a good chance they may have expressed a variation of the same feeling. This is because trauma is sometimes a drug. Taking it can be more than just hell. It's often also a high, which is one thing that drives a lot of people crazy.

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I need to take a moment, away from Roar, to talk about some people that I met in 2017 in Iraq during the desperate and ferocious urban combat against ISIS. The closer I drew to the front, the more guys I met who were elite veterans of the Iraqi Special Forces. They did the bulk of the fighting. These were mostly young men, ranging from the tail end of their teens to their twenties.

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Many had grown up in places like Fallujah, fighting from the time they were seven or eight, sometimes younger. They'd been born into the U.S. occupation in many cases. Their earliest memories were as runners, ferrying supplies and information to the older men and teenage boys who did most of the fighting.

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When the opportunity presented itself, they sometimes dropped grenades or improvised explosive devices on U.S. troops, most of whom were teenagers themselves. Now they fought against ISIS in close quarters, building to building, a few weeks at a time. Periodically, they'd rotate off the front and would go to Erbil, an hour or two away.

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Many of them were gangsters in their spare time, running drugs and guns in brothels. They spent their days off in a drunken haze of Turkish amphetamines. Then they would drive back to the front in new, brightly colored Mustangs and Dodge Chargers, the trunks full to bursting with so many machine guns and rocket launchers they could only be closed with bungee cords.

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The guns and rockets were useful at a distance to soften up enemy positions in the impossibly dense Warren-like urban environment of Mosul's old city. In every building on every block, the fighting terminated with door-to-door, room-to-room battles, where the most useful weapons were hand grenades, combat knives, and pistols, in that order.

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I don't know if any of these guys were at that point that I met them, capable of feeling what you or I would recognize as fear. These were the men and boys whose bodies formed the cutting edge of the fighting against ISIS in Mosul. On occasion, when they kidnapped ISIS fighters, some of them committed war crimes with the ease and with as much thought as you and I give to breathing.

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This is bad, of course. Unforgivable. But I've never really given much thought to judging them for it. Where would I even start? A thing I've come to understand in my travels is that human beings are capable of contorting themselves into the most incredible shapes in order to fit into the times they're forced to live in.

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This has been the story of our entire long journey on this earth, and if there is one reason our species has survived above all the others, it is our capacity for infinite variety in infinite contexts.

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We can make ourselves into anything if we're given the right incentives, and to an extent you can't judge individual humans without judging the incentives the world we collectively create presents for them. We evolved and we still live in a world where trauma and pain are inevitable.

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And those of us who survive the worst things that life can throw at us tend to become addicted, sometimes, to the cause of the trauma, but nearly always to the people we experience it with. This is why the cast and crew of Roar often reported feeling almost addicted to spending time among these gigantic predators, and it's why many kept coming back despite being repeatedly maimed.

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Roar happened because the core cast and crew exhibited radical empathy for roughly 140 large cats and for each other, and almost exercised zero critical judgment beyond that point. Now, I will understand if you still feel that nothing could justify the decision of two parents to risk their children's lives in such folly.

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And I know this essay is supposed to be my ultimate enduring optimism about mankind's potential. And I'm going to get to that. But, you know, we still live in 2025. So first, here's ads. So here's my best step at explaining why I find Roar inspirational.

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There's a scene about three quarters of the way through this movie, after roughly an hour straight of watching the Hedren Marshall family and their friends get repeatedly mauled for real by giant cats. And in this scene, John Marshall finds a dirt bike and engineers a scenario that I am certain has never happened before or since in the history of this planet.

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He rides away from the home where his family is trapped and draws several dozen lions, panthers, and tigers away by making them chase him. The cats assume this is a game and repeatedly try to murder or maim him. But he continues, building up speed in an ever greater tale of the most lethal killing machines to evolve on this planet.

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You can see from the look in John's eyes in this scene that he has no idea if he's seconds away from death. It would have been physically impossible to stop or control this number of giant cats.

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The only reason this number and variety of lions, panthers, and tigers would ever have existed together at any previous point in world history would have been across a distance of thousands of miles of rugged wilderness.

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But thanks to Tippy and Noel's insane dream, and thanks to the deranged and utterly unjustifiable commitment of many of the crew and their family, a moment of utter novelty occurs, where this singular assortment of big cats watches as a man fleeing in terror from them on a dirt bike does one of the sickest jumps in film history and lands directly into a river and then keeps riding until he is charged by a juvenile African elephant, which the Edrens also kept on their property.

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In its uniqueness, this moment has to rival, if not exceed, the moon landing. After all, considerably more men have stepped foot on the moon than have achieved what John Marshall does in this scene, although some of that may be due to the fact that it is extremely illegal for anyone today to even try. And this is why I encourage you to watch Roar, my dear friends, during the dark times.

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Not because it's a good movie, but because it reveals what is best about humanity. What piece of art could better illustrate the infinite possibilities within us?

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If a group of human beings can learn to live among lions and tigers, despite the constant guarantee of severe injury, without really understanding why, is it so mad to think that perhaps we too can transcend the barbarities of our age and become something better, or at least better? Something far stranger than money-grubbing fascists.

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I don't know how we escape the darkness that seems to encroach a bit further with each passing day. But I do know this. If we can make war, we can do anything.

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Yes. Everything's really good. Everyone's 401ks have been normal.

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And stable. That's what's important. Just line go up. The economy runs from stability. I mean, one of the things the line did was go up. Yeah, the line's gone. Why should anyone complain? The line's gone in a few different directions this week. Among the different directions the line went, up was, you know, a portion of that time. Yes. Yeah.

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The only direction it hasn't gone is left, I guess, which, you know, we're waiting for that one. In related news, a dead cat can bounce. I don't know why they picked a cat for the dead animal to bounce, to refer to that stock market term.

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You don't know what that is? No. So basically, when a stock price for a company or whatever collapses, right, there will generally be it will straight align down and then it will bump back up and it will look like it's rallying. But this isn't generally a rally. What it is is that when people like short a stock, there's a point at which they have to like buy back something.

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the share like shares and that artificially inflates it briefly before it then begins to decline again so it's not a real it's the result of how short selling works that there has to be this thing that makes it temporarily look like it's rallying but that's really not what's happening yeah yeah yeah no i'm familiar with this concept and they call it a dead cat yeah it's referred to as a dead cat bounce yeah i don't know why it's referred to as a dead cat bounce but it is just don't

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Like, yeah, I've thrown a lot of corpses at a lot of things and they don't really bounce.

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It's pronounced Cole Garrison. Yes, yes.

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The good news is the army is going to be more lethal and efficient than ever before, which President Trump announced while sitting in the White House next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had to take roughly twice the length of trip he normally has to take to go here because so many countries that he would normally fly over or stop in have arrest warrants out for him for all of the war crimes.

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We'd love to see it. But, you know, it's not about the journey. It's about, you know, the people you journey to. And Netanyahu met with Trump, you know, someone whom he clearly feels very safe and, you know, dare I say loving with.

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And the two of them shared the most intimate bond that two elderly men who have committed war crimes can share, which is announcing a record budget for the United States military of $1 trillion. Wow. Well, I should say Trump stated it would be in the vicinity of $1 trillion. Now, does that mean possibly that very little is changing about the military budget? Yes, it does.

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And we'll get to that in a second. Peg Seth, our Secretary of Defense, made a post on Twitter right after saying Trump is rebuilding our military and fast. He also really bragged about that trillion-dollar amount and said, P.S., we intend to spend every taxpayer dollar wisely on lethality and readiness. Now, here's the thing. Trillion dollars, shitload of money.

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Current amount of funding allocated to national defense programs, $892 billion. So trillion dollars, about a 10% bump, right, for national defense programs. But it's actually unclear—

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the way in which he phrased things and the way in which we like talk about the funding for national security, this could mean that basically the military will have pretty much the same, you know, something of an increase, but not a mass, not really a significant difference from what it has now. And there will be more money into other defense related programs.

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So this is not like as massive a thing as it might necessarily sound like. I think one thing that's sort of significant here is the, like how this comports with the way a lot of the folks on what we'll call the shithead left had talked about, where there was this discussion that Trump's actually going to be, you know, bad for imperialism and the war machine.

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And, you know, there was even talk as of a couple of months ago that they were going to like half the Pentagon budget. Like, you know, you know, all these, whatever else happens, you know, it's worth it if the military budget comes down and this, you know, imperial juggernaut of hell gets finally neutered. And these people have And just all of those people are always wrong.

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They were always going to just make the army bigger. They were always going to put more money in defense. They were always going to put more money into the hands of defense contractors. Like anyone who knows anything about these people or about how Republicans have worked knew that was going to happen. There was never any chance. that they were going to cut the actual amount of money.

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Now, they're probably going to cut the number of people in the military because despite what Hegseth said, there's a lot of evidence that a shitload of this is going to go towards modernization. And in fact, armed services, each branch is being, armed services are all being asked to cut about 8% of their individual budgets.

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in order to put money into modernization efforts, which obviously any military needs to regularly modernize different systems. But this is also a thing where if your country is run entirely by grifters and conmen trying to shotgun money to their political supporters who have a lot of money in different defense companies, what this means to me is you are probably going to see

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them continue to trim numbers of actual troops and put more money into bullshit that gets a lot of money to contractors. Yeah, that's that is my expectation. That is what I see happening more than anything here. We'll see. But I think a lot of this additional money is going to go towards buying shit that may or may not be useful.

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But the primary purpose of putting the money into that shit is because somebody who is somebody gets a big.

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Based on early IRS filings, there's something like half a trillion dollars that we might be losing in tax income this year. So, you know, net, I don't think we're doing great. I should also note here, a big part of

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the money that they're going to get for modernization is coming from cutting 50 to 60,000 civilian jobs, many of whom are veterans, but also just in terms of like military readiness, guys like Heg Seth, who's primarily a pushup dude and people who don't know anything about the military see it as like, well, you know, the military, you just want as many door kickers as you possibly can.

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And you actually need very few of those guys. What you need a lot of is guys that can move things to different places and fix things when they break and do a lot of the paperwork that's necessary to make both of those things possible, which is why you need those jobs. And cutting a shitload of them is not likely to increase readiness. It's also worth noting that the U.S.

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Army is looking at a force reduction of up to 90,000 active duty soldiers. This is based on an article from April 4th, which is a significant reduction. And again, like we're not.

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Yes.

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In part because it's very hard for them to find new active duty soldiers. It is not easy to get people to do this, and it is not the priority of anybody in charge of anything to actually get more soldiers. The priority is to put more money into systems, AI, and all this shit. I don't think they have a vested interest in actually helping with that.

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I mean, there's not a lot of people. That's probably how we're going to do it. There's not a lot of people in Greenland, Garrison.

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Yeah, it's going to be great. Anyway, they're going to make part of why I think they feel confident trying to make, you know, they're calling this making the army smaller and more agile is because Trump is doing his best to make friends with Russia. And we're certainly not going to do whatever happens with Taiwan. The U.S. military is not going to be involved.

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Yeah, we ain't going to go back for them. His attitude is like, what do we need this for? We need an agile military that we can use to fuck with Greenland and Panama. That's what we're going to be doing.

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Yeah. And there's a lot of people like the folks running Palantir who have an increasing amount of say in what happens to the military and what Trump does. who are basically advocating for like, we're going to have this whole kill chain automated soon. We barely need people. You can't trust people. You know how untrustworthy your generals have proved, Donald.

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She is, shall we say, the Julius Stryker of our modern fascist movement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess you're right. Damn. Sorry, I'm just... Yeah, no, I mean, I wasn't joking about that. That's the most direct comparison to her. Yeah, sorry.

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It's a place we just don't go. That's how I refer to Houston. Okay, beautiful.

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Ah, yeah. Every day, every time we do it. The only band that matters. It's the only band that matters. The Narcissist Cookbook doing a very brief refrain from Rock the Casbah.

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Yes.

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So, yay! In medical terms, it means what happened to the global economy is equivalent to you getting hit directly in the spine by an F-250 going 45 miles an hour. That's what's happened to the base of the global economy. Yeah. Yeah.

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Like, what are we doing here?

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The reason I'll explain, like briefly, treasury bonds are the underpinning of every country, the entire global economy. Every single country has a shitload of money in U.S. treasury bonds because they are the most reliable thing. And what a treasury bond is, is you give money to the U.S. government and they say in a period of time you can take this out and it will have grown by a set percentage.

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because treasury bonds have been, for the last basically a century, so incredibly stable, this is where you put your money that you don't want to gamble. So you have money that is in stocks and stuff that can go up and down, but you also hedge your bets by having a bunch in this. And generally, treasury bonds are hopefully enough to about keep pace with inflation or beat it by a little bit. But

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Usually the rate is not all that high because there's a shitload of demand. People are always buying treasury bonds. When the treasury bond rate, which is the percentage you get back, raises, that may look good, right? They're like, wow, you can get 5% now if you put money into a 30-year T-bond. But what that means is that everyone is selling their treasury bonds.

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So demand is down and the rate is higher and everyone is selling them because entire countries at a time are pulling their money out. Nations are pulling their money out of the U.S. economy.

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No, Trump could have dissolved the U S dollar and we're all using the fucking whatever. Like, I don't, I don't know.

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People love rape gangs. People love rape gangs. That was a pretty good Star Trek episode.

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Yeah, anger's a great motivator.

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This is your direct info line. This is a tap from the Trump presidency to you.

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It's interesting. One thing I'm curious about. So this is a thing that happened. The last set of Nazis that gained power in a country in a big way, the German ones. There was this this common attitude of like, if only Hitler knew, because Nazi policies didn't help the people that were supposed to help. They hurt a lot of people like they were just bad at everything, like fascists tend to be.

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And there was this attitude that like, well, Hitler can't know. Like, the fact that, like, the country's been handed over to gangsters who are continuing to hurt the people Hitler promised to help, he must not be aware. Like, if he knew, he would fix this.

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So I'm wondering how that's going to play in here as Trump's policies continue to hurt the people who, a lot of the people who voted for him, not the rich people who voted for him, but the people who, like, flipped between him and Biden or whatever. Like, those folks are going to get fucked like the rest of us. And I kind of wonder...

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If there's going to be... When the blowback against X the Everything app will happen, right? As people are like, either I'm being ignored or I'm being called a retard by Elon Musk for complaining that... Can you say that on the air? Elon Musk tweets it randomly to people when they make very valid critiques of the shit that he's doing. That's literally what he's calling people.

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Sometimes it just flows. Yeah.

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He's saying it every day. Constantly. I'm not using it as a slur. That's just the term he's using. If they comment that their fucking Medicaid got cut because Trump put Dr. Oz in charge of it and Elon Musk calls them a slur, What does that do?

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Twitter anymore no as long if it's news it doesn't the only thing that spreads is yeah like the shit that makes people very angry but keeps them on the site like articles videos if it takes you off site it doesn't mean yeah things that go viral and get spread is like encouraging racial riots yes pogroms essentially

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Yeah, which is what happened last year in the UK, and they're sure trying to do it again.

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You know, we all want there to be an after where there's even the minimal degree of accountability that happened after the Nazis. But, like, what I try to, in my darker moments, think is, like, well, that's another person who, like, really made the argument of, like, what needs to happen when this ends. Because... It's just I want to hurt people. My business is enabling harm.

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I want to get mobs in the street beating migrants like that's Linda's business. That's the business she has willfully attached herself to. And we should all see that. It's very important to not stop talking about it like what it is.

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These people are trying to cause racial violence and they are trying to cause gendered violence and they are trying to cause harm at scale to communities of people that they see financial profit in damaging.

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Cool stuff. I love the Consumer Electronics Show.

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Speaking of damaging communities of people.

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We're back. Boy, I'm so glad that those ads told me that Fragaccio Blow is touring with Bono. I never thought they'd do it, but boy, howdy. And they're singing each other's songs. So, you know, that's really exciting. It's like when Barbara did Celine.

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Or stuff that you're just not interested in because you're not literally buying screens from a manufacturer in China. It's like, that's just not the business you're into because some of this stuff is meant for companies.

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The town that I spent the first seven years of my life in is smaller than one of the rooms CES has held in. It's huge. There's like four of them.

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The villain. The villain of the episode. The villain of the episode and of this year's CES. I have trouble. Can you bring up their name? Because I'm going to want to get this right. Oh, okay. We could be dangerous. We hadn't neither of us had eaten and I had had like a hot dog eight hours ago and walked literally 19,000 steps and also done 40 minutes of pushups in between. So I was starving.

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So we we like shovel food into our faces and we turn the first booth we see is called open droid. Open Droid. Or Open Droids? Droids? Droids, yes it is. There is an S. Open Droids. And it's like kind of Star Wars-y font. It is. And I did ask them if, you know, they had any issues with Lucasfilm. Apparently not yet. Sue them, Lucasfilm, by the way. Sue these kids. Destroy them.

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Crush them. Burn them like Los Angeles is burning down as we speak. They had a giant sign that said R2-D3. Yeah, that's the name of the robot that they're selling. And the robot that they're selling is like an AI-enabled household-helping slash retail robot where it basically is like a human torso with articulated arms and pincher hands.

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on and then the base is like a little tank basically it's got like treads or wheels and it rolls it has wheels yeah and then the torso there's like a tall maybe six foot tall like pillar built into this like rolling base that the torso slides up and down on and this was their way of not making like what musk is trying to do right a humanoid robot where you have to figure out like knees and balance and stuff it's like that or like boston dynamics

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Wheels are right. Wheels are cheap. It'll roll. It works in most situations, you know, and then but you still have the ability for it to articulate and go up higher or go down lower like something that can crouch. But it's much simpler. You don't have to to to deal with nearly as much. And so I saw that I'm like.

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Oh, well, that's at least somebody who's thinking about like, how do we make something like this, like more affordable and less complicated, less to fuck up. And so I start talking with one of the co founders of the company, who is a an Indian guy in his 40s, something around that he had like gray hair, he'd clearly he said he'd spent 20 years in robotics.

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very nice guy you know i i brought up that i thought the design was interesting and he he was very much specifying like here's the things we didn't do because they were too too difficult too inefficient you know this is what we're thinking of this is a machine that can fold laundry this is a machine that can do dishes this is a machine and he was very much specifying and the way he phrases like these are undesirable tasks people don't want to do and this is a robot that can handle those for like small businesses or for households and we do see this as eventually like a

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you know, something like this we want to have in households. But he was more focused on small businesses. And he was, again, very focused on this is a thing that will do undesirable tasks for people, right? And as I started asking more questions at a certain point, I got foisted off to the co-founder of the company,

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You know, I'm assuming co-founder because I think it's just a couple of guys, but maybe I'm wrong about it. Sorry. I got foisted over to the other of the two guys. There were two guys there, right? I'm not sure because they don't have listed anywhere what their role in the company is. I got a co-founder's vibe from them.

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That's how it seemed to be to me, at least in terms of like the way these two were talking. but I don't know the scope of the Open Droids company. Maybe there's a lot more there. Maybe there's like a PR guy. But these were the two guys who were there talking to us.

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So one of them is this very wonky engineer who's been at this a long time and was really focused on the nuts and bolts details and wanted to build a robot that could handle unpleasant tasks for human beings, right? The same thing we've all been wanting to see. So at this point, I'm like, well, this could work. Maybe this is a viable product, right? The second guy, Jack J. Jesinowski.

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So he is wearing what Garrison described as a Jordan Peterson suit because it is half purple and half black. It's a two-faced suit. Split down the motherfucking middle.

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He had wannabe Steve Jobs vibes from his half-unbuttoned shirt and many, many spiritual medallions. to his like Jordan Peterson suit and very much just that like, I am the charismatic founder. And what I bring to the table, my partner knows how to build robots. I'm charismatic. I'm Jack J. Jesanowski. And Jack and I started talking. And boy, howdy, we had us a conversation.

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And I think we're just going to play that. What do I need to do to set this up?

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So what is this thing useful for?

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So, I see there's a lot of folks in the robot space that are trying robots based on the human form.

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You guys have not gone that route. Talk to me about that.

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You just said because the robot can go in the car with you. What do you see people wanting to have a robot in the car with them for?

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A lot of people?

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Yeah. I agree. Yeah, there's a great speech in the comic series Transmetropolitan about how journalism is a gun that you wire up to your eyes and your ears and several other organs in order to shoot at the world. And that's, I think, a good way to keep yourself doing it when it feels like you're just shouting into a void.

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But it also can't decide, oh, that's actually not a good location to film from. It's not going to look as good. We need to get over here. We need another camera on this side here. We need to get like different angles because we're going to want to edit this together into a thing. And as a videographer, I'm not just a machine. I'm a part of a collaborative creative enterprise.

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What's the best example of that you've seen?

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Irish spirituals. It's the ska.

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Is that really how it feels to you, huh?

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That's interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that. One thing that's really compelling to me is your partner, when I came in here, was very much talking about the utility of this in terms of replacing human beings in tasks that are generally unpleasant. Laundry, doing the dishes, cleaning up trash.

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You seem a lot more bullish on robots replacing human beings in what are generally considered to be enterprises people want to do with their time. Is that like a discrepancy that you guys have kind of talked about, or do you think it's something you guys are more on the same page with stuff?

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It's a pretty basic melody. I mean, there's horns in it, but I feel like it's kind of taken a... I feel like it's trying to do pop that it's just thrown some horns in on. This is a little closer to ska. Although it's still... Yeah, it's not really singing. But I guess that's a matter of taste. What do you listen to? This is the worst it's going to be. I hear that a lot.

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It's interesting because GPT-4 took 50 times as much power as GPT-3 to train. There's a lot of mixed reactions on that. We're entering into a period where we're very likely looking at a recession. Venture capital funding, there's a chance it's not going to be what it has been. Does that concern you at all, this vaunted next level for all of this stuff, the energy cost?

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the investment cost is just not going to be born by a market that is not going to be as strong tomorrow as it was today, at least in the immediate term.

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What I'm concerned about is I'm looking at the P&L, right? I'm looking at OpenAI's P&L. I'm looking at the fact that they're losing $5 or $6 billion last year, and we're very good chance it's going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of double that this year. And it's not that there's nothing impressive there.

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It's not that I don't see like, oh, you can generate a song that's got like guitar and trumpets and vocals and stuff in a minute or so. It's not that that's not impressive, but like... A parlor trick isn't a trillion-dollar business, and that's the kind of investment they're looking at. And I do wonder, like, is it not much more reasonable to focus on folding laundry?

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We'll see how well that works in the long term. There have been some interesting polling on the degree to which customers and investors feel trust when somebody's responding to them with an AI. But what's interesting to me more here is the dichotomy between

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What I see here is a very pragmatic choice, which is we're not going to try and remake a human being formed robot and deal with like knees and hips and all of that stuff. We don't need that. We can have it turn up and down on this platform and reach things the same way, melded to what I consider to be kind of a little more pie in the sky.

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We're viewing this as eventually something that can take creative roles and think independently and make things. Which is, it's interesting to me to see that in a company's DNA. What, you guys are eight months out right now? Yep. Is that what you're more interested in?

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Well, I appreciate your time. I know you gave me a lot. I'm going to let you get to the other beat. Thank you. Thank you so much. Nice to meet you, Jack. It was fun.

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Yes.

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He listens to AI-generated music. It's just as good.

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Just very clearly does not have a soul. No. Like nothing would leave the universe if he did, right?

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It's one thing to be like, we want, we have a race car going and so we've got this robot on a track so we can go 70 miles an hour and we're just kind of running on a straight track to follow it because a human being can't move that fast. Sure.

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One thing we've left out of this up so far, so this machine that I described earlier, this robot that goes up and down this rolling base, has a floppy Donald Trump mask over its head.

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As soon as I got up there, I asked like, I could take my jacket off now. Can it fold? And he was like, well, we'd have to reprogram it. And it was this, when I talked to the guy, I was like, cause he, he was like, yeah, we really see this as being, you know, potentially good for, uh, uh, elder care. Sure.

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And you know, we had just seen the product we talked about in the last episode, which for all of it's, I don't know that I think it'll work was a lot of thought and care went into it. I was like, okay, so like what work have you done to build a machine that can like communicate and be helpful to like people who are dealing with health issues in their, their later years?

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And you're like, well, that's why it's open, right? Someone else will, It's open source. Someone else can do that part. So you guys are just saying it can do everything because somebody could potentially code something for it. Yeah, cool.

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Yeah, there could be code. Again, the other guy, the actual engineer, seemed very interested in the nuts and bolts of making an affordable, reproducible machine that could handle specific tasks. And Jack J had absolutely no interest in the actual machine that they were making. This is clearly could not be clear. This is just a stepping stone.

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And he's kind of grossed out by it because it's not replacing all human art with a machine that he owns.

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He wants to take money by owning something that does not provide anything and also put people out of work. Like at no point did he express a desire to do anything other than replace something people were already doing with something worse that tech guys could profit from. That's all there is to this man. He's not a human.

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Yeah. I cannot overemphasize the degree to which there was nothing behind this boy's eyes.

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That's not true. All of our ads are sponsored by real people, even if they're bad people. They're at least people. They live and they love and they hate. And, you know, maybe they have a promo code. Let's let's see.

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He was so surprised that I wasn't impressed by any of the... He was like, you must have heard the lady. Man, I hear them. It's not good. It's like... I made this comparison a few times. If somebody walked in while I'm at a house party and was like, hey, man, I taught my dog to masturbate to pornography with its paws...

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I would be like, well, I mean, that's like, I guess, I didn't think a dog could do that. Like, I am kind of impressed, I guess, but I don't want this.

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What do you think I do? I don't know anymore.

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There was a solid nine-day news cycle when Barack Obama, newly the president, revealed that he had a BlackBerry that he was continuing to use. I do remember this.

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There was a company called RIM once. And they made a tablet that was pretty good. And we only made a couple of rim job jokes about it. But it didn't do very well. And so I gave it to my dad and accidentally there was still a picture of my dick on it.

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They have a, an NPU or something like that. Yeah.

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You put on the glasses and it's like you've got six monitors or whatever that are all full size.

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It works very well. It's seamless.

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It was their own laptop, and it wasn't a great one.

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And we were still impressed with it then.

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Oh yeah, that was cool. What's that company name? Because we should be giving out the names of these.

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Yeah, or a Zen.

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Like the way it like snapped when you closed just felt good. I'm I think I'm going to buy one like it's it's exactly what I want for traveling, which is the ability to it goes up to like 80 inches of screen and like very good resolution. The ability to just have that plugged in to a battery or the wall and my laptop and like wherever I happen to be.

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I've got a movie screen that I don't have to worry about the fucking hooking up a TV to my laptop or some shit.

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A-U-R-Z-E-N, Zip Tri-Fold Projector.

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Yep, I think they're selling them for $250 right now.

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For the Kickstarter. It'll go up a little when it's a product. But we saw it works. They had a lot of... They had tracking and stuff, so it automatically would focus and shit.

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Yeah, obviously this isn't the full review because we don't own one, but from everything we could tell by looking at it in the moment, it seems like a good product. We tried it out.

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Things could always be worse. Yeah. But I think where we'll end is, and this actually is not entirely in order, because this is the next, after we had that conversation with our friend Jack J, which just left me thinking about, like, some people aren't really people, right? That's what I kept thinking about.

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It's all for rubes. It's soulless. We immediately walk over, and we just kind of, like, randomly turn a corner, and there's, like, a human shin, like, tibia and fibula, basically, with, like, a carbon fiber, you know, frame around it. That's roughly the shape of like a person's lower leg, lower leg. And it's called bio leg.

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It's a powered microprocessor knee made in Japan where it is a prosthetic, but unlike most prosthetics, it is powered and has a muscle built into it. So like when you lift up your prosthetic, it doesn't hang and it doesn't lock. It actually has a degree of motion and it feels like what lifts the rest of the legs.

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What your remaining muscles like it measures based on like it can like take measurements from them and it can act intelligently based on that. And I know that it works because the inventor was there and he was a man who was missing his leg below the knee and had built this for himself.

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Yeah. Eight years.

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And that's like really the thing that is like so both like addictive and also like this like very tonal whiplash you get at CES is you will go from like this dead-eyed con man trying to scam the world so he can do God knows what kinds of other harms with absolutely nothing, nothing inside of him at all. And then I lost my leg and I built a better prosthetic to help the entire world.

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And that's like 30 seconds between those two experiences.

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award-winning like tech innovations it's changing your as a person who has lost your lower like changing being able to like have a normal gait and balance again like massive potential to improve people's lives as a result of this Yeah.

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The company is, again, Bionic M, and it's the BioLeg.

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This closes our actual week. Let's go get fucked up and eat Japanese food.

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Yeah. I'm down. Let's do it. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Oh, yeah. I do it for the fame, baby.

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The RNC was a good time. Legitimately was a good week.

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Absolutely. Yeah.

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James, let me just tell you, I think we can all look forward to a white Christmas this year.

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Yeah, there's no one left in New Jersey now. They've all been taken away by these unidentified drones. That actually happened three days ago. It just took a long time for the rest of the country to notice or care.

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Yeah, I agree, Garrison. I think that the fact that there are serious people who represent serious unions talking about it is part of why it's one of the things that does give me a degree of hope. We're going to have to start working now towards it. It's not going to be simple in any way, shape, or form. If they see it coming, they are going to start trying to criminalize things preemptively.

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If it is something that even looks like a real possibility, they're going to come after it with everything they've got. And it's one of those things where... Maybe if the midterms go well for Democrats, maybe Democrats stop that. But it's just as plausible and probably more plausible that Democrats line up with Republicans to attempt to criminalize something like that.

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Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Which it has to be, to be clear.

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Yeah, the only responsible way to characterize the organized left in the United States is a complete and utter failure. It has been a calamity for the causes that it seeks to represent. And a lot of that is because of fucking bullshit online clicktivism. We're all going to do a general strike. Everybody get ready. Next week, we're going to do it. Shit like that, it's just so deeply unserious.

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And if we're going to take the momentum and the energy that exists and the number of people who are angry and that number of people will be increasing as the consequences of conservative policies hit home by 2028, Like it has to be something taken deadly seriously by very serious people who are thinking through the consequences and what's necessary in order to make this feasible, you know?

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Yeah, so I'm actually right now in the middle of a book that I found myself surprised by how much I've liked. It's called When Paris Went Dark, and it is a history of the occupation of Paris under the Nazis. That is a really fascinating social history by Ronald Rosebottom that I found very emotionally affecting, especially in light of...

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some things going on and, and yeah, just kind of a fascinating look at, at the psychology of, of people of like of a, of a, of an entire people kind of grappling with what's about to happen to them in, in the wake of the failure of the French army. And then what happens next? Um, And then I would also recommend Setting the Desert on Fire by James Barr, which is one of the books about T.E.

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Lawrence that I cited in the T.E. Lawrence episodes. If you are at all interested in the realities of needing to fight an insurgent war.

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Ah, yes.

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Genocide.

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All right. Vibeside.

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I judge that nickname bad. Jesus Christ.

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Massive L for the country. Oops. That brief period of time when Biden stepped down, it really felt like it might be. I mean, she did better than he would have done. Yeah.

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Well done. Well done. I mean, James, yeah, that's, that's gotta be the biggest dub of the year.

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That's right.

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Order in the court. Order in the court. Justice Robert Evans presiding. I see we have a fine jury here to take questions from the audience of our daily news show, which is also my courtroom. Everybody get it? Because I'm a judge now, legally. Because that's how the legal system works.

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No, I mean, I think he's going to get signed to host a podcast by a little network you might have heard of called Cool Zone Media. Congratulations, guys. Let's bring him on. Sophie, get him on the Zoom. Tell him he can hop in the room now. Bashar, baby!

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He's actually doing a whole media tour with the pod save guys next week. That's got to be fascinating.

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Yeah. Last ride. From your mouth to whatever fucking clot is working its way through his coronary system. God.

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We all do. I don't know what else to say there.

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Oh, that's a good one. That's an easy one, but okay. I'll give it to you.

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I'm going to make my call Tayyip Recep Erdogan, you know? That's my hope. That's a long shot, I know, because he doesn't seem like he's in bad health. That's a big one.

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no municipal judge garrison that's not a fed okay okay municipal municipal that's good you're right you're right you're right i i will now for the rest of my life be able to say when people ask questions well as a man of the law which i'm very much looking forward to not only able to say robert quite likely to say anyway that's all i got

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He's getting everything he wants, though. It's true.

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Yeah, especially if you are addicted to a drug that you can get in unlimited pure quantities and no one will ever say no to handing it

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He and two Secret Service agents are found dead with fentanyl infected bloat.

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I have said for years, Nick Fuentes is going to go down. Live. Maybe live. He's going to go down like George Lincoln Rockwell. It is not going to be like an enemy of his that does it. It's going to be a result of his incredibly messy personal life.

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Like someone is going to take him down. Like it's that.

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I think I was reading a Nick Land piece during that whole thing.

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That actually pairs quite well. I landed completely deranged. It was great. Ready to work.

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The Honorable Robert Evans. And I actually did get, the judge who made me a judge sent me a gavel, but I didn't grab it for this one. So I just used, I have the barrel and lower receiver from an antique sawed-off shotgun that belonged to a bootlegger, and I just sort of slammed that into my table. Great.

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I'm kind of interested to watch what happens with AOC over the next year, because she has definitely become, to a lot of folks, the progressive on the left, like a villain over the last year. Yeah. And... I kind of wouldn't be surprised if like in assuming there's still politics in 20 years when we're talking to young people, they think of her like Pelosi.

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And we're like, oh, you've got to understand when things started out, this was a very different person. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I'm not saying that's a fair way to characterize her now or where she'll go. I'm just saying, like, I wouldn't be shocked if that's the way a lot of folks are looking at it and fucking. A few years. Because I'm seeing, I'm hearing a lot of that now. Yeah.

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People are very angry at her over largely Gaza. But yeah, also the fact that she and Bernie both tried to back Biden kind of late in his senescence.

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I guess my prediction is that the economy is going to be basically identical to the Biden economy in that we're going to get like fucked up inflation and people are going to be very angry and the number will continue to go up on the stock market because that's kind of what it's designed to do. That's my theory.

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Yeah, and we will never afford homes. And the housing's just going to get more expensive. It will be interesting to see Trump's entire, all of his backers and his whole media, like one thing that will be easier for the left is really hitting conservatives on inflation as it gets horrible again or continues to suck.

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Because that's, you know, at this point, just a factor of the economy working as intended that they all have to pretend isn't. Yeah.

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We need to get chickens now. Oh, yeah. This bird flu thing is not going to help with eggs. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Get your eggs now. Buy thousands of dollars of eggs now.

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The thing about CoolZone coin that makes it different from all of the other crypto coins is that it is really based on a fundamentally limited and valuable resource, which is movies from the 90s that I showed Garrison and they actually liked. So, you know, there's only so many CoolZone coins that can ever be in circulation.

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Oh, Sophie.

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Yeah. My prediction for the Paul brothers is that one of them dies within the next five years and one of them lives to be 107. That tracks.

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Yeah.

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By the way, it's time for me to do our new ad plug. You've heard of how good elk meat is for you, and you've heard of how liver is a superfood. Well, now try new elk liver steaks. It's just ground up liver shoved inside a steak. I send it through the mail, through FedEx. Five-day delivery. It is not refrigerated in any way.

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Yeah, yeah, good chance.

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Two groups of men who don't really know how to use their guns. Using their guns. It's going to be amazing. It's a battle I've wanted to see for like five years. Whose plate carriers have the top closer to their nipples? It's anyone's game.

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We're expensing a fucking telescope for that firefight.

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I trust the Iraqi army more than either of those sides.

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It does look fun. It does look fun. It is, yeah.

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Unfortunately. They really tried to get that off the ground. I don't see anyone actually using skeet. I saw someone using it in French and it was a real moment.

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Something will have to change. Yeah. There will have to be a material change in either organizing or social conditions. Because people will need to either be vastly more desperate than they are right now, or they will need to have a specific reason to think, well, this time getting out on the street might do something.

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It's not going to be good. It's not going to be good. There's probably going to be a situation where some guy either gets... The best case is that he gets killed immediately by the dude's security. The worst case is there's a big public firefight and a whole fuckload of people get hit.

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All right. Something very funny did just happen that we should talk about as a team. Senator Doug Mastriano, a 30-year U.S. Army veteran who taught at the War College, just tweeted an indignant, furious tweet about the U.S. government not being honest with Americans about what's happening with these drones.

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And the picture of the crashed drone is a TIE fighter that's like a model TIE fighter on the bed of a flatbed being driven through. Yes! Yes! We've all lost our minds. Taught at the US Army War College. They're not sending their best people. Oh, fuck. That's funny.

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That's amazing stuff. That's one of the best things I've seen all year.

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It just came out that he's not going to be able to get the highest security clearance.

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I think that RFK Jr. is probably pushed out of the picture before Musk is.

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Yeah, I really I don't think Trump's that reckless. No, that that would be quite quite a line to get rid of the polio vaccine. Trump's also old.

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I feel pretty good about the continuing legality of Kratom as long as he's the HHS head. There you go. All it's going to take is one of Joe Rogan's friends speaking in his ear. Yeah.

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we'll be all right we're gonna have legally required dmt for everyone in the country yeah why not i think we need i and i've been i've been saying this for years we need to put the lithium back in the water we also need to use those crop dusting planes and just like fill them with xanax just just just calm everyone down take everything back a couple of steps

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After our greatest U.S. president.

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I don't thank you for your questions. I'm actively angry at you for your questions.

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I have funded my journal. I love whenever people ask me questions like, how did you convince Cracked to send you to Iraq? I didn't. I bought plane tickets. Being an entertainer has always been what's funded my journalism.

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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it, which in this week's case is the Consumer Electronics Show, is happening here. And yeah, we're here to talk about things falling apart. And again, in this case, that's the tech industry.

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Because the story, this CES, as it has been for the last several CESs, is that the continuing degradation of big tech as it seeks more places to get money from while providing less and less utility to the people that it needs to give it money. And every CES, at some point, I find myself face-to-face with something that makes me say, I've now seen the silliest thing I've ever seen.

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And this year, that experience happened for the first time within 30 minutes of the first half day. And I'm going to talk about that and show some videos to my panelists here, which, of course, are the great Ed Zitron. It's me. I'm here. The pretty good Garrison Davis.

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Damn. And the supernumerary, I'm sorry, I messed up the word I was using as a superlative to praise you. I'll take it.

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Ed, thank you so much for joining us, everybody. Are you ready to see some of the dumbest AI-generated videos that you've ever seen?

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Nothing fills me with pleasure. The first panel I sat down today with at 10 a.m. in the goddamn morning was the Hollywood Trajectory Generative AI Timeline 2025 to 2030. Oh, boy.

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Everything's just got to get better, Garrison. This panel featured a number of luminary thinkers, including Mary Hamilton, a managing director at Accenture, who announced her company's $3 billion investment in AI by dropping this gem.

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Maybe we're taking the phone away from you. Now, I think this is very silly because, again, I think it's just a fundamental mismatch in what people might want from an AI agent and, like, the way in which they get talked about.

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Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. I'm excited to go see some Digital Twin technology that I'm sure will make a cheap avatar of me from a picture.

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The fact that they're using it in the wrong place is very annoying to me. Yeah, I keep seeing like they can now make an AI chatbot trained off of your social media presence that's 85% accurate. Oh, I love 85%. As all twins are. And I want to say, like, no, they can't. But then you talk to the average person at CES or the average panelist on this particular panel.

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I'm like, yes, I do believe, in fact, everyone on that panel. You could accurately get 85% of their personality with a chatbot. For a bit. Maybe a lot higher, yeah. Improvement, yeah. Yeah. So I will say, like, that was silly. That's not the silliest thing I saw. Oh. And the silliest thing I saw came courtesy of another panelist, Jason Zada, founder of Secret Level and COO of the company.

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The videos that Jason came to CES to brag about were a collection of the laziest AI slop ever to stain human eyeballs. His most recent big success that you could just see radiating off of him, how proud he was of this, was Coca-Cola's annual Christmas ad, which last year was produced for the first time entirely with AI.

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And I'm just going to – if you haven't seen this, who here has seen Coca-Cola's AI ad? I've seen it. Oh, I've seen it. I haven't seen it.

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We're going to play, there's three different versions of this.

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Can you believe this song's AI generated? I can't believe that the... How could they teach a computer to write the lyrics? Holidays are coming.

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And a dog wagging its tail with dead eyes. Oh, these two horrible... Squirrels covered in snow.

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Trucks with Coca-Cola in them driving down not a street.

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It's all clearly AI. It's all glowing, like these city shots of snow-colored villages. As we're going to see in later videos, AI loves putting smoke in random fires where there should not be smoke in random fires.

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All of the scenes, because it's showing you a bunch of, you see a pole. Polar Bear, obviously, it's a Coca-Cola Christmas ad. You see, like, a fucking reindeer. You see squirrels. You see a dog. But it always is, like, this very AI shot where it just pans across the animal, and it's, like, glowing and kind of glossy and dead-eyed, staring.

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Yeah.

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System One, which tests emotional responses to ads, claims that the initial response to their Christmas ad was overwhelmingly positive.

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It looks like a Coca-Cola ad.

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Just Don Draper spending hours watching that looping Christmas video?

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Yeah. So there was like an immediate, pretty immediate backlash to this. Like all of the responses, if you like go to any of like where these things live on YouTube, it's just people shitting on them, which he did acknowledge Jason by saying the video was very debated. Yeah.

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We love debating commercials. Many things are very debated these days. A lot of people are saying. And then he showed us next an AI-generated video, The Heist, which was entirely made by a text script that itself was mostly written by ChatGPT. And here's how Jason describes the workflow for what you're about to see.

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It took thousands of generations to get the final film, but I'm absolutely blown away by the quality, the consistency, and adherence to the original prompt. When I described gritty New York City in the 80s, it delivered in spades, consistently. Well, this is not perfect. It is, hands down, the best video generation model out there by a long shot.

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Yeah. You just finished 36 hours of digging into the life of a school shooter. And... I also built the back of my career spending hours and hours digging through the online lives of mass shooters. And you don't have to do that, but you do have to do that thing, which is exactly what Garrison said. You have to pick a very narrow thing. And make it your life.

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Additionally, it's important no VFX, no cleanup, no color correction has been added. Everything is straight out of VO2, Google DeepMind. What is the model? VO2, Google DeepMind, I think is what he's saying it is. So I thought that they had another one.

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It looks like, yeah, New York, exactly like New York at Giuliani's right before he came in. Clean it up. Uh-huh.

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I don't buy for a fucking... I'm not impressed, but we'll see what you guys think. I don't want to poison your reactions. Oh, God.

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There is fire in the street. That's the last time you're going to see the sack full of money. It does not show up again. It's a lot of fire in the street. A lot of random fire in the street.

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Yeah. Again, another street fire.

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And also, take a shot every time he is wearing different clothing and has a clearly different face. Well, the car has changed color three times. He's praising the consistency, and he is dressed completely differently every scene. His jacket has changed since the last one. Yeah, yeah.

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And again, the cars, when it shows the cars driving across the screen, they're kind of doing the same thing usually that the animals do in the coke ad. Minimal motion at the best. Yeah. I also love this. Can you believe this music?

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Look, an obviously different man. Also, the way he runs is... With a gun.

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What the fuck does that mean? Directed by Jason Zada in big flaming words because, again, the AI only knows how to put random fires on things.

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Yeah, this would have been impossible before.

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Because I went to the YouTube video for this, and the first five or four comments are, looks like we found the new king of video. Jesus Christ, give it a rest. Clothes change in every shot. Four to six-year-old boys are going to love it. And still lacks character and vehicle consistency, but we're getting close.

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And not just a random thing, but like a thing that you think is important. Yeah. And that people don't, other people don't understand how important it is. And if you make yourself, there's a fella, his blog is called We Hunted the Mammoths, Dave Futrell, who's been covering what we call the manosphere for like more than a decade. before anybody else in journalism was taking it seriously.

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They're like, these pigs will slop up anything. Ed, you can't expect technology to do something as complicated as dress a man in clothing and have him stay in that same clothing over multiple scenes. Hollywood never figured this out.

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I think the issues are twofold, which is, like, number one, in order to make this shit sell to the people who watch movies, you have to dramatically reduce the average intelligence of people watching movies. You have to give everyone brain damage, which they are working on doing. And the other thing is the models have to get much better.

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And Jason made a point that, like, every time people would, like, talk about the criticism, he'd be like, look, this is the worst it's going to look, guys. Yeah. And I was just looking into it. GPT-4 took 50 times as many resources, like 50 times as much energy to train as GPT-3 did. So these are the kind of like exponential increases that we're looking at.

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So like if it took them so many millions, billions of dollars of investment to get to the point where they can make this shitty video – to make anything close to watchable, you're talking about, again, just like lighting on fire, billions of dollars, to do what?

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To make a scene that you could already get like a 26-year-old dude who grew up watching fucking Quentin Tarantino movies and taking cocaine, and you could just give him $60,000 and he'll film that shit for you with an old car.

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Oh, yeah, no, I will turn on a dime. Speaking of turning on a dime for money, here's ads. Ah, we're back. So the next video that our friend, I now feel he's like a brother to me, Jason, puts on was of an AI-generated fictional elderly rock star talking about death. Oh, I'm excited. Oh, I'm excited. We have the computer to do this.

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You got to do that kind of thing. If you do that kind of thing, you build a name for yourself, and that can allow you, when the thing that you're obsessed on becomes a big story, being first to have something meaningful to say about it can provide you eventually with the opportunity to cover other things.

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Plastic and incapable of dynamic expression as he guzzles randomly from bottles of liquor that flash in and out of existence.

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sometimes he lies on his back in empty streets while talking about all of the CGI featureless women that he has loved in his exciting life other times he plays stadium shows while obvious GPT written dialogue about aging and death drones on when the video ends everybody in the room claps and as you watch this I need to imagine seeing the thing that I'm about to show you all and a room with like 200 people in it all clapping enthusiastically I don't think I did

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I did.

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I said, come the fuck on as loud as I could.

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Yeah. So here's Fade Out. It's George Carlin. He's got an old man-y hair. Looks a little bit like George Carlin.

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Yes, like he drank and the bottle changed in his hand. You could see it starting to happen. What is this? Just anonymous women.

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Why is it on fire? Why is there a fire? You see this old rock star drinking in front of a flaming house. might end tomorrow. The AI loves burning buildings.

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Now he's sleeping in a broken Mustang. Ferrari? The classic Ferrari Mustang. A Ferrari Mustang that's in like a pool in front of a mansion but he clearly hasn't crashed into it. The car is hovering slightly over the pool. I love this, I love this, I love the word. And he tells us during this, as if we're supposed to be impressed, that ChatGPT wrote 75% of that script.

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I can't believe that, frankly. As a bartender, I regret walking into the room to see if people want drinks.

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One of the easiest things to find, an old man that drinks. For an idea of like how real this company is, obviously they were one of the companies. They were not the only people who made that Coca-Cola ad. They were one of like three or four companies. It takes four companies to make that Thomas Kinkade ad. I can't believe it. They have 622 followers on Twitter. Hell yeah. Jesus Christ.

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Or not Twitter, on YouTube. Oh, sorry.

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And all I post is karaoke songs. And this Fade Out is their, or sorry, The Heist is their most successful video with 56,000 views. Fade Out, which we just watched, has less than 5,000 views. They're not ready. So they're not quite ready. It's only going to get better. Yeah, it's only going to get better.

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If not more, a coin will only get worth more. Yeah. Now, Garrison, I do think you should invest all of your salary.

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We can talk about this.

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However long it takes, it was too long because it looks like shit. We're going to watch a video I haven't seen yet, or at least before, because it's five minutes. We're not watching all this. Oh, my God. It's 252 views and came out a week ago. It's called Menemonade. What?

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He's Blade Runner. Oh, God. And an old lady rises up out of a pile of ashes. That's how mouths work.

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What? I think this is death. This old lady's dead. Oh, that's how I eat.

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Now she's tripping on tomatoes? Oh, yeah. The decaying, sandy diner that exploded has turned into a lively 50s diner. It's popping off.

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He is the help, though, yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh, that's natural. The little kid just fell down, and the way it shows falling is that he just sort of deflates.

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No one. No one. No one want to watch this.

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The phrase reality distortion field gets used a lot when we talk about tech. But I really tasted it in that room because all anyone on stage could talk about is how good it looks. And every one of these videos, people are like clapping. They're like, wow, this is amazing.

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Okay. There was a moment after this where Jason like joked about how like, I don't, like obviously I don't want to replace actors yet.

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Uh-huh. And another panelist was like, I think we're going to have to see how some decisions go as to fair use, because obviously this is cribbing from a bunch of fucking Scorsese movies and shit.

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Yeah, and Thomas Kinkade.

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I know what you're wondering. How soon until we can get a full 90-minute movie that looks like this? I'm guessing days away. No, no. Jason said probably not at least for a decade or so.

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I can't wait that long. That's interesting. I don't want to wait that long. What a worthwhile endeavor, though. He could have said shorter. That actually is interesting. He could have said anything. Those chunks in there, I would have believed him. I think it is like he did have to spend probably hundreds of hours of his precious one human life stitching those turds together.

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And he's like, it's nowhere near ready. There's no way it could make a 90-minute movie. He is giving himself a lot of time for that.

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And that's the thing. If I'd sat down there, because I said this, I was sitting next to a guy from USC who was one of the only people in the room who was similarly critical about to me of what we were seeing on stage. It was like, look, if they had come down and been like, look, this is how we can plug a script in and it can create a storyboard.

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And you can like kind of see like a crude CGI animation of how the shots will look. And that can help you like plan out like, like that's legitimately useful. That's a thing that adds value and can cut costs in a meaningful way to like the production of good TV and movies. But that's not as sexy as like, I'm, and they were all talking, there was this, this like very weird moment where,

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One of the panels, Leslie Shannon, who's head of innovation for Nokia, a company that used to make phones and now makes panelists who pretend to be entertained by awkward AI.

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They make a lot of stuff. I was just shitting on Nokia. She's like, can we use neuroscience to see how people are reacting to AI-generated videos and then adjust the ending to be like, let's make this resonate more. That way we're helping the creative. And I was like, are you out of your fucking mind?

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I would have supported electrodes in their skulls, yes. Jesus Christ.

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We've got some skulls. I am fascinated by the skull shapes of that fucking crowd.

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Speaking of things that wouldn't survive a deposition, the sponsors to this podcast. ... Okay, so that first panel was a real moment for me. I went through a couple of more, one of which was on, like, advertising and AI and was mostly pretty boring. The third panel I went through, though, was called AI Cinematic Spatial and XR. And I just want to actually play you guys.

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Like, it's chaos.

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You'll have to cluster around.

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That was the scene I wanted you to hear where they're like, we don't want to say it out loud. And then everyone chuckles.

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That's a good place to start. Yeah. I don't like that either. And the people you're hearing from, let me tell you who's in this fucking panel who was just laughing about like. Sociopaths. Well, there will be an evolution in job loss. Yeah. So the motherfuckers who were on that panel laughing about people losing their jobs. Ted Shilowitz, literally his name is Shilowitz.

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Futurist at Cinemersion Inc. That's like a J.K. Rowling name. Yes. Rebecca Barkin, co-founder and CEO of LaminaOne, Erwin Luber, director of partnerships at Google, Adam Simon, managing director of IPG Media Lab, Leila Amirsadegi, principal program manager at Engineering, Microsoft, and Katie Henson, SVP post-production at Sphere Studios. So those are the people who were all laughing.

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Yeah, I think that... he's going to try to do as much of what he's promised to do in terms of particular, not in terms of everything he's promised, but in terms of going after immigrants, he's going to do as much of what he's promised to do as he possibly can. Now that doesn't mean he's going to actually deport millions of people.

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Right.

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Right. Although the AI keeps foreboding that that's coming for them. It wants something. The pernicious flames. I'm going to end on a happy note because the last panel I went to was actually really cool. It was AI and the Crisis of Creative Rights, Deepfakes, Ethics, and the Law.

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And it featured the first intelligent person that I've seen at CES this year, Moya McTeer, who is a folklorist and senior advisor at the Human Artistry Campaign. It also featured Duncan Crabtree Ireland, who's the national executive director and chief negotiator of SAG-AFTRA. There we go. There we go. And this was no bullshit.

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It was talking about all of the different lawsuits that are going on right now, all of the litigation around AI and like the actual strategy for litigating. And like there was a couple of points where like Duncan was like a lot is going to hinge on some very brave, very famous people choosing to throw down some big dollar lawsuits. Like that's what we need right now.

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They did talk about the No Fakes Act, which has bipartisan support and gives some legal force to allow people to push for AI copies of themselves to be taken down. And they think there's also some bipartisan possibility to get AI labeling legislation.

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Yeah. And there was a really good point where kind of at the end of this, part of what I appreciate is, again, there was no bullshit. Like Moya at one point was like, I think it is absolute, it being generative AI is absolutely a net negative for the artistic community. The point is not to get something out as quick as possible. It's like make art.

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Yes. And Duncan got on and was like, look, you can't stop the technology from being invented. So the best path forward is to like try and channel this into a direction that like is at least better for artists. Like there was very little – for most of the people on the panel, very little bullshit. There was some bullshit from one person on the panel. Okie dokie.

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Ginny Katzmann, senior director of government affairs for Microsoft. Oh, I bet. Oh, I bet. Oh, that was fun. Oh, boy. So after, there's this whole point where, like, everyone else on the panel is like, yeah, I think it's probably a net negative for artists on the whole. And Jenny comes on. She's like, actually, I think it's a net positive.

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There are like some just practical limitations based on the capacity of the institutions he'll be using to do this. And he could get, there's a very good chance things will get bogged down and whatnot, but like he will try. That's my take.

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And her example of this is, well, you know, there's a lot of stuff that you couldn't do before that, thanks to AI, you could do, like de-aging Harrison Ford for the Indiana Jones movie. Something famously that went over very well. Yeah.

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I'm asking that every day. It would be very unfair. Well, luckily with the power of AI, we can put River Phoenix. I'm reading through every newspaper sequentially starting in 1834, so I have not gotten to the end of River Phoenix's surely long career yet. It would be really cool. That's the Schlieffen guy. I think he's got some bold ideas.

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James Mangold, you're a hack and a fraud. So I got to say, it was very funny because she also suggests, Jenny, we can use animals without causing harm thanks to AI, a thing that no one had figured out how to do before. Nobody had ever figured out how to just, like, not hurt animals in movies. That didn't exist before AI. Thank God.

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Is that bad for animals?

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Great for their habitats. She said, there's issues with employment, but there's lots of issues that fall around that. And I do think you need a balance. And at the end of it, the guy running the panel just says, okay. That sounds like you guys are saying a bunch of woke shit on this panel right now.

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We shouldn't have a gun maze? What are you talking about? We need the gun maze. Now look, we all like keeping a couple of people in a maze beneath our house. Right. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. This is just the torment nexus. We keep doing it. It's not even the torment nexus. It's fun. It's a nice maze under my house.

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Yeah. If you're planning to buy a computer, go ahead and grab that fucker now if you can.

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Some of them even like it.

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Yeah.

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Like, you have to fucking make people's... You have to break the human drive to create art, obviously, to make an omelette that does not taste good. Yeah, right. An omelette-esque food. It's a piss omelette. Like, there's piss in the omelette. And we had to burn down the Sistine Chapel to make the piss omelette. The computer made it, though. Go on, clap for the computer.

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We did firebomb the Louvre, but look... Look at this video of a nameless rock star.

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The grill that texts you. Can I just move this around? I just want to test how it rolls.

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Wait, are you trying to tell us here at Zitron that you have grilled meat without a robot texting you about it? Because I just don't believe that. I don't know how I did it. But I did it.

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But until the robots, it was impossible. Oh, God. We're at the death of innovation. Yeah.

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A lot of things, maybe. And the end of the episode. Yeah, and the end of the episode. Thank God. You know, everyone else, be the Cybertruck in the...

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Oh, welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here, which is really true in a lot of ways tonight. Harrison Davis and I are seated at the glorious, majestical Hotel Name Redacted on the Las Vegas Strip. We've got a long day at CES. Long day.

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Listening to panels, catching up with the latest tech news, trying gadgets, and also at the same time texting our dear friends in Los Angeles as unprecedented fires sweep them from their homes. Literally, the Gettys threatened Pasadena and Santa Monica are both being evacuated as once. It's a real one-two punch of America's favorite tech show in the apocalypse today. How are you feeling, Gare?

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It's an average day in America. Average day in America. Temperature's not coming down anytime soon. No, no. Well, I'll just take a moment to breathe with that. So you want to start us off with what you did this morning? I was panel guy yesterday. There was a man of action walking around and mostly trying all the free massage chairs. What did you see this morning?

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Yeah, I keep hearing versions of that too in the AI and Hollywood panels. They would be like, yeah, we want to develop a machine that can read the brains of our viewers and alter the endings of movies. But we see this as a way of augmenting the artist's work.

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I think it's a mix of, number one, the money still isn't there where they need it to be. It has not started blooming to the extent that they were expecting it by now. And the other part is people are still not happy with this stuff. I'm glad you felt that, too, because I almost was like, especially after the election, like, I don't trust my feelings on this, that they're really scared.

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But I really do think there's a piece of that coming through.

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Maybe the problem's you, not them. You know who doesn't need to worry about quote-unquote ick for their product market is people who make things that people like.

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And like how much worse can you make the world before people stand up and stop you with their fists or guns?

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Every year at CES, there are points in time where I get that like, oh yeah, 2020 really fucked us up a lot. Like 2020 really did some lasting damage. I know that was happening with the younger generation before, the iPad kid generation, but that really did a number on some folks.

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Oh, yeah. No, I mean, they're still calling it meta, which, honestly, there's a degree to which I almost respect it, because, like, we are not biting.

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Yeah, I mean, I've seen the fact that the FBI director is stepping down, pushed as like an act of resistance because it means that

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Oh, man, I love mixed reality. You and me, we're watching our Harry Styles mixed reality concerts. We're seeing the 100 Gecs.

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I'll finally get you pilled on real big fish.

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It's such a, you can clearly tell that none of these people have souls, right? It's such a mismatch of what people get from music because they think that like, oh, this is just like a, if I see that like this specific beat line is, I can just sort of like plug this in and like, no, no, no, like,

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what makes people react to musicians and artists is that they like make things that make them feel something. Like that's why people get like really into artists is they feel seen and identify with a piece of art as opposed to like, oh, oh, that guy really liked the first opening bars to fucking octopus's garden. Like let's, let's just like really turn up the octopus a lot. More octopuses. 10%.

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How many more octopuses can we fit in this fucking track?

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Trump now has to actually go through like Congress to get it done I don't know if how much I buy that how much I think that I think a lot of what I'm seeing right now from establishment people and maybe this isn't true of Ray because I did find some of the arguments they're compelling but a lot of what I've seen from establishment people in politics is they're scared and just really trying not to make waves and

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So the video I didn't play you guys from my terrible fucking AI generated videos was this. It was like a girl coming to college and get a picture of her dad. And it was like a narration of her life with her father who like, is dead that she misses and all that she learned from her dad. And it's a mix of all these different, there's a chunk where it looks like a Disney animated picture.

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There's a chunk where it looks like anime. She and her dad having these adventures around the world. There's a bit of it that looks like a Marvel movie. And he's like, we can do all these different animation styles and they're seamless. And the audience really goes on a journey with this. But there's There was no girl who lost her dad. Nobody lost their dad here.

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You just had a computer generate text about a dad dying. Like, there's nothing underpinning this, right? Nobody has anything they're trying to get across. Like, you just... In this one, they look like Marvel heroes for some reason. In this one, they look like Zulu warriors kind of done up in a slightly racist Lion King style. Like, what is...

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being transmitted other than like, look at all of the different art styles we can rip off.

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One of these accounts was literally like, I'm a mother of two queer black woman. I got a lot to say about the world.

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And people started talking to her like, were any black people at all involved in making this chat bot? And she was like, well, no. And that's a real problem. That is a real problem.

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And I think that's what you're going to see overwhelmingly. I think that he's going to probably will not immediately act against the press in a legal sense as the president. They will do that. But I think he's already suing differently. And I think that that's going to be kind of his focus there for a while, just because there's a lot on his plate.

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Well, they're so used to everything that they've done so far, they've kept getting money, right? And it's slowed down and they've had to do layoffs, but nobody's just made them stop at any point, which honestly... You know, I made a comment about healthcare executives a while back needing like a fucking retirement plan paid in millimeters.

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So I'm not going to make that same comment about tech industry ghouls because, you know, we all know what's in the news. But something has to be done to force these people to stop moving in this direction. And I don't know how to get across it. Like they're already at this point of like, they seem to really want, not want this. And we have to find a way. They're just not ready.

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We have to find a way to force this on them.

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I don't know how to get across to them in a peaceful manner.

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People don't want this. I'm a man of peace. I'm a man of peace. I'm not a plumber.

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Does that mean their comms, like when the company itself is like communicating with customers through email? That's what it sounded like, yes. They're still writing emails sometimes to each other?

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Well, better than a cup of coffee is that sense of creeping dread that like, wow, I just saw a bunch of people who will

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probably would rather kill the world than be stopped from shoveling AI slop into people's mouths, because this is the only future they can imagine is one in which they work for a company that feeds the planet poison and kills the human concept of creativity so that they can buy a house in San Francisco. Do you know what I want to feed the concept of? Yeah, we'll talk about that.

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But here's some ads. We're back. What was part two of this episode? Let's be buddy. I'm a, Oh, let's talk about that helicopter.

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as I oft do at some point in a CES. And I came across a number of majestic products. You know, a lot of it was AI based. We'll talk some more about that here. But I ran into something that was, thank God, had nothing to do with AI. And it's a death trap. Every one of these, there's like some sort of... Every CES we find a new death trap. There's a lot of connected vehicles.

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There are a lot of EVs. Last year, there were a ton of different flying taxi type options. People that were really trying to convince us... But you don't see it all this year? Nothing this year. Nothing this year because it's a terrible idea. It's a terrible idea. The people who are rich enough to pay for flying vehicles don't want it to be a taxi.

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And the people who can't afford their own flying vehicles also can't afford them anyway. So this is, instead of any of that, Richter.

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But I think there will be attempts to fuck with libel laws and stuff, especially as things go on.

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R-I-C-T-O-R. Richter. Which is a Chinese company. Their ads say, I'll say, why be normal? Many people are saying this. The future of travel will not be on the ground. Ha! And the Richter is a hybrid. It is like a smart car style size vehicle. It's like half the size of a smart car. It only has two wheels, though. Yes.

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It's more like a weird little scooter golf cart. Like a Vespa, almost. But it's fully enclosed. And in addition to having its wheels and being able to travel about on the ground, it has four like quadrocopter style rotors because it is an aquatic flying car. Aquatic flying. I saw no evidence that it could actually go in the water. How high can these things go up? Less than 200 meters.

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You know why, Garrison? Why is that? Because if you try to go above that, you need a pilot's license.

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No, I have that. When I was interviewing them, I was like, so I assume there's got to be some sort of pilot's license for this flying craft. And they're like, no, as long as you stay under 200 meters, you're good.

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There's no space for one, buddy.

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I'm going to be honest, and I don't say this for any problematic reason, but these folks are Chinese and did not seem to have a great deal of knowledge about the U.S. or its laws.

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I did ask this and I was like, this is just rough out of the sky. And they were like, no, we're working on like a, like an intelligent thing that will like force it to the ground. Yeah, which is also very exciting. Really looking forward to seeing how they pull that off. The videos that they have show it driving on the highway too. They weren't able to tell me what a top speed was.

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It has no rear view mirrors and no side view mirrors, but they said there's lots of cameras on the inside. So I'm sure that's fine. It's a death trap. This thing will get everyone who even looks at it wrong killed. They showed me a video of the prototype. It was completely frameless. It was just quadrocopter blades and like a chair on a platform lifting a guy into the air.

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It couldn't go forward or backwards. But they're like, yeah, we didn't have like a year. We can have this figured out.

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It only went up in the videos I saw.

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Absolutely not.

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Horizontally. By the way, I couldn't fit in this thing. No, it was quite small. You would be cramped in this fucker. But it's good for vertical travel. It's great. If you just need to go up to under 200 meters, there's no more efficient way. What happens if you get pulled over by the cops? Just go up above them. I'm in the sky now. You can't do shit to me for 25 minutes. Oh, my God.

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Instead, if you're just driving, you go up to 100 kilometers, which made me think, so what is that again? That's like 60 miles per hour. If I'm in the air for 20 minutes, then I land, then my battery's dead. Then you can't go anywhere either. Then you can't go anywhere. You can't get back home.

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Things only ever get better. That's what everyone was trying to insist upon to me here. What else did you see on the show floor that caught your eye? Garrison, so many magical, wonderful, marvelous things, most of which were just like various different AI-connected smart houses. That was what Samsung was showing off. That was what LG was showing off. I believe you saw one as well, right?

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Yes. Right at the entrance. Did I pour my kratom into a carbonated beverage that spewed a geyser of blood red foam into the sky around us?

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Did the security guard stare at me as it happened? Did I set the drink down as it continued to spew and said, I'll go get some towels and then leave forever? No.

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We fucking bounced.

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Well, Garrett, Sam's somebody who has a great idea for a smart house. First of all, you remember that game, The Sims? No. Well, they're really betting that you do. Because their current plan is design your home with the AI-powered map view.

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Sure, sure. You get like, you feed it like a picture. You like, you lay out your floor plan of your house. And it gives you like a 3D model. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can take pictures of your furniture or pictures of furniture that you want. You can like place it around. And you can place them. Now, A couple of things. One of them is that there's no scaling done by the AI.

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So it's up to you to figure out how the furniture you might want to buy measures up in comparison to the apartment. Sure, sure. But it does look like the actual map that they've got. I'll show you the picture that I took. I'll try to put it up somewhere. It looks like the video game The Sims. No, yeah, that doesn't look like The Sims. You're populating a little 3D CGI house.

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And I was like, okay, well, there's a use there, right? People like planning out, like you're moving into a new apartment. You can like fill it in here. And before you even move in, you can figure out what kind of furniture you need or how your existing furniture will fit in there. I would never have used that.

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I usually picked up all of my furniture from the trash before I had a house when I moved into a new place. But I know people who would have used that. Sure. That seems useful. So I talked about security. So one thing that concerned me is like the first guy I talked to was like, oh, yeah, I think it's all stored locally.

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And I was like, so Samsung doesn't have any access to any of the data on like my house and its layout. And he was like, let me let me get you to one of our like engineers because he can answer that question. And the engineer's answer was and I'm paraphrasing here. Yeah. So that made me very confident.

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Right, yeah, on the layout of my actual house.

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Yeah, and they were, that was not really, one thing they had is for like their retail segment, they had like a live video grocery store ad showing you prices of different produce. And I think like the insinuation they didn't lay out is like you can change prices on the fly, you know, which kind of made me think about that.

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There was some talk last year of like, okay, we want to be able to like face scan customers so we can see if they have money and increase prices for like products for certain people. which I'm sure they're going to try. They're too enticed by that idea not to. So I caught a little bit of that, but they really, to the extent of how big, and this was interesting.

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Last year, Samsung and LG, their booths were huge, and they had a lot of different gadgets. Samsung's booth is big this year. 40% of it was that scan your furniture, scan your fucking map.

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Another big thing was all Samsung, because Samsung makes a ton of appliances, they make TVs, all sorts of entertainment products. All of them have this, I forget what they call it, Samsung tag or something that you can map it in your phone. So you can have a whole map of all of the devices and shit that you have in your phone and you can control them all from a single point in.

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And no one, by the way, had any interest in answering my security questions there. But also, if you're into that, if you want to have all of your appliances and entertainment things linked up and controlled on your phone, and all of them are Samsung, you don't care.

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Yeah, we've seen it. Sophie has. It's been a nightmare. Harder than I have worked on anything else this year. Like, it's been nuts. Yeah. And here's the thing that sucks. For no reason.

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But also, none of it was like, yeah, I can control everything from my phone. You've been promising me that literally, like in 2011 at CES. For like decades. They were promising me you're going to be able to control your whole house.

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It's nothing. It's just a big visual display that looks cool, that looks like a bunch of server racks, like you're in this huge cube of servers. But there were only like a half dozen different actual products. One of them was real-time CCTVs that use an AI, like an LLM type thing to summarize pictures. So I like walked through and it did pick me out as a notable person.

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So I've got like this people of interest thing where it's like a man holding a smartphone standing next to another man. But also I'm like, well, what does that really get you? Like the fact that you're summarizing up like these people who are like, this person's kneeling and taking a picture or standing. Cause I like actually tried deliberately. I like reached in my bag to try to be suspicious.

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I like did finger guns and it never marked me out. And like, I didn't pull a real gun or anything. Cause I, I very rarely bring that to the CES floor. Um,

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but i don't know like i can see how there could be a utility there if you're actually able to say you're setting up like surveillance outside of a residential building and it can alert security that like something is happening outside there's a potential you if it's good enough utility in that but they didn't display it at the show it was literally just describing randos from the audience and like i just don't see how a security guard is there's a guy with a phone on outside of the building like

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Not that there's no reason to launch the app. There's a great reason. There's no reason it should have taken this long. Correct. But we can't say any more for reasons that are also equally frustrating. I'd like to say in general, folks, there's a few things that get brought up a lot. It's like, why haven't they done this yet? Why haven't they done this yet?

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So again, what I'm seeing here overwhelmingly for all the talk about like, there's no resisting it. AI is coming. It's going to dominate everything. This is the next big thing. A remarkable lack outside of what I will say, the one thing where there are continuously new products that are better every year is smart glasses. They are getting more impressive and more capable every year.

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I don't think I'll ever be a smart glasses guy. I hated glasses enough that I let them shoot me in the eye with lasers. Shout out to our LASIK sponsors. But I see why people would like it and there seems to be legitimately substantial utility.

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Because, yeah, why not? There was a great demo I'm pulling over to now, LAWK View. They had like one glass that was the first world smart glasses for TikTok Live. Not particularly excited about that. But they had another set of AR glasses with a 12-hour battery where like, if it works as well as the demo. And that's a big if, but it, it syncs to like your smartwatch.

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So it'll tell you, you can see in a heads up display as you're cycling. That was the demo. It'll both like give you directions like in your eyes. And it seemed to be like fairly well thought out. So it's not like overly corrupting your view. It'll show you your heart rate. You know, it'll show you like all that kind of stuff.

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So you get like a useful degree of control and assistance from that kind of thing. And that is, I will say the last three CES is the glasses get a little better and a little smaller every year. So I would say that's a real product that's probably going to continue to improve.

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Let's all sit down for some AI-powered ads. Wow, I can't believe they put Jay Shetty's voice in the de-aged Harrison Ford from the latest Indiana Jones movie. My dick's hard. How are you, Garrison?

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Guys, guys, something real happened. Shut your fucking stupid mouths about this AI Hollywood bullshit.

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We're talking like technical things or like, you know, things like a paid subscription. And they're like, why haven't they gotten around to it yet? And the answer is always some infuriating bullshit based on...

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You know, Garrison, I made a comment the other night about how, like, it's pretty well documented that veterans, you know, not that they're more likely to carry out violence, but when they do, they tend to have higher body counts because they have more skills. It turns out I thought we were getting more literal bang for our buck training Green Berets than we are.

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My assumption is, because my uncle was a Green Beret, and he did some very scary, probably war-crimey shit in Vietnam. And I assumed, like that man, I'll tell you one thing about my uncle Jim, that man could make a bomb. That man would not need to ask anyone for advice if he needed to make a bomb. He's not with us anymore, God rest his soul. But it turns out this Green Beret...

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who, you know, a fucking dollar store TJ Maxx version of the Green Berets is what we're working with now, asked ChatGPT how to build a fucking bomb. And it sounds like he was trying to make it triggered by Tannerite, which is a bipartite explosive compound that you use as like an exploding target.

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So it'll go boom big, but you have to shoot it with something like a rifle that's high velocity or use like a blasting cap. Otherwise, it's very stable and very safe, which obviously has use. You know, it was invented actually to set off avalanches and stuff.

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Anyway, because that's very available and very high power, he was looking to like fill his car with that and then shoot it with a rifle while he was in it. And that's what he was asking chat GPT about. So it's not clear to me. Actually, the actual headline is that like he used chat GPT to make his bomb.

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Some bureaucracy, some legal shit where you're like, you don't actually realize it's illegal to do this if you do it this way or whatever. Like some sort of bullshit that makes it impossible. It's not that we want to make this as easy as possible for people to have the best listening experience that we can afford to provide them.

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It seems, and I'm not privy to what the police are, obviously, but it seems like based on what I read in the article, we're not sure if he actually used chat GPT to make a bomb. It's more that he was interested in making a bomb, setting off Tannerite by shooting it, but may have ultimately decided not to do that because he would then be alive for the explosion, which he didn't want to be.

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Also, the authorities don't seem to fully know how he triggered it.

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So it's still kind of unclear to me. I guess hopefully we'll get more later. But he he definitely needed chat GPT's help to try and figure out how to make the bomb.

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They had a whole slide about how that was the gold standard for AI human communications. The movie Her. in which Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an AI chatbot voiced by Scarlett Johansson who hires a prostitute to have sex with him while she participates vocally. And then it turns out the AI is really kind of poly and Joaquin Phoenix is not okay with that.

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And then maybe the AIs all go to space. It's kind of unclear at the end. I don't think it was a great movie. A lot of people liked it. I don't see whether or not you like it. Why this is your vision of how a chatbot should work.

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It worked quite well, yes. The demo was, like, solid. It was pretty accurate. You know, I love coming here and fucking with people. I love, like, being a dick. They asked for a volunteer. And at that point, we knew about the chat GPT. I wanted to go up and ask, like, live this robot to, like, help me make a bomb. But the guy who was pretty handsome and an interesting English-Spanish mix.

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I like how you specified he was handsome. I didn't want to be mean to him. He seemed nice. I didn't want to be mean to a handsome guy. He wasn't shitty. No, he was fine. There was like 10 people in this room that was supposed to have 200. I'm sure they were bummed by how it turned out.

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That was someone else at his company, and he just seemed like he wanted to do, I didn't want to be a dick to him. No, no. He wasn't hurting anything.

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But there's a lot of annoying bullshit that exists for reasons beyond our comprehension. Sorry.

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He specified a lot of them are people who have either just lost a spouse or maybe their spouse is aging faster and worse than them and is no longer really able to be the kind of companion that they were before. Yeah.

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And the device is weird. It's about the width of like a bedside table, maybe six to eight inches deep. So think about like 18 inches long to maybe six inches deep, something like that. Half of it is like a little tablet, like a seven inch tablet with a speaker. half of it is something about the shape and size of a head on like a neck that can pivot and nod on the neck. There's no face.

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So when it's talking, there's like a white light in the center of it that kind of like pulses in time with the speaking that it does. So we saw this picture of the device and we saw the description of like, this is an AI companion for the elderly. And we were both like, number one, these people are going to be monsters.

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This is going to be like something to shovel your dying dad off with because you don't want You don't want to spend time with them. You don't want to spend time with your family. You're scum. You're too busy AI generating scum music. And trying to sell your shitty robot to Garrison and me. More on that tomorrow. More on that tomorrow. And so that's what we came in prepped for this meeting.

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And to be clear, I still think this product might be a bad idea that doesn't work. But the guy behind it, who is the dude that we talked to, cares a lot and is really very clearly trying to do a good thing and thought through the ethics and the efficacy of what he was doing a lot. And I I'm not convinced it will actually do anything, but I like wish him the best.

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We brought these up kind of thinking he would flinch away and not want to talk about it. And he very much acknowledged that, like, he was aware of this and this is something that they were attempting to build in.

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What was it? L-E-Q? L-E-Q was the robot. Yeah, L-E-Q. E-L-L-I-Q. I love you, L-E-Q. And the robot responded with a like, oh, that makes my fans are all spinning or something like that. Where he's like, I wanted the response to be that it's reminding the person talking to it that it's a machine. That it can't think or love them back.

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We don't want it to be negative, but we like we don't want to be like feeding into that. And I don't know that that's the best way to do that. But like, at least they're thinking about that kind of thing. Though the thing that was interesting to me is that he built this as the first proactive home AI thing.

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So unlike an Alexa or whatever, where it's just waiting for you to ask it something, but it does not chime in randomly to talk to you.

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This will prompt you out of the blue. Be like, hey, how are you doing? How are you feeling today? Do you want to see pictures of your family? Do you want to see pictures of your family? Do you want to call your son? But do you want to play a game? Talk to me about that movie you saw last week. Hey, remind me, how did you meet your husband? Literally, these are all the things it will do

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And it had some side features, like if it prompts you to start telling a story, it'll save that as like a memoir thing. So that like, you know, when your elderly mother passes or whatever, it saved up this like collection of stories over the years.

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And you can like show it pictures while you're telling it stories and it will listen and it'll have comments and it'll ask you further questions about, so how did you feel, you know, after meeting them this way? Like, that's really interesting. I didn't know that. Explain to me how it worked. And it'll also prompt you to send those to your kids.

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And the big thing, almost every kind of dialogue thing would prompt you to send a message to a friend or your kids. So a big part of it seemed to be, this is not a replacement. This is a machine that we hope people will get comfortable with. And then it can prompt them to try to engage with the world more and their loved ones.

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Yeah, they have this in, like, some 2,000 homes right now.

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It's very much still under evolution. So one thing he pointed out is that, like, yeah, initially we had the ability to, like, connect people to other elderly folks using this. And so they've kind of formed their own community. They have, like, a weekly... They've asked us to build in more chat so they can message each other directly.

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And so some of them are like playing bingo directly now through these machines. And I'm like, well, that seems probably good. Yeah.

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That's not their fault.

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Yeah, I can't not find it off-putting. But I think there's a chance that it will help with the real problem. I certainly would prefer if it helped. Yeah. So I don't know. It was kind of, it was a unique in this world of like, it was a unique kind of like product for me where it's like, I don't know that this application of AI technology will actually do what you're hoping it will.

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But I got the vibe from that guy I got was nothing but goodwill. No, yeah. Compared to some of the other people we talked to today who are completely soulless. Yes, yes. Nothing behind their eyes. Dead eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes.

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Very much like one of the things he did is he he would tell it like I'm in some pain and then the robot would would cycle through to the pain scale and would try to because one of the things it does is it will take information for care and it will text actively. So it's not just communicating with the old person. It will text and message their kids, you know, and whatnot.

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And try to prompt their kids. Hey, your mom's lonely.

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Yes. Understated. This is a big thing that a lot of people who want to be writers but have never done it for a living miss, is that all of your favorite writers who do it for a living, a big part of how they get over fucking writer's block is they have to pay rent. Or a mortgage. Turns out that helps.

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And again, it's kind of sad. But also, his part of this is, he was talking a lot about empathy. And I think just because of the kind of brain you have to have to want to do this, he used it in terms of the machine's empathy, which it doesn't have. But the whole project, it was impossible not to see that he was a deeply empathetic man. He was really trying to make the world better. And

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I can't not respect that.

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Just a real dead-eyed monster. A true villain you're going to hear from in the next episode. Scumbag.

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Thank you.

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Oh, man, welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that's happening here if here is your ears. If you're deaf and reading this, then it's happening to your eyes. Either way, it's happening here. Here also being Las Vegas. Well, yes. Also Las Vegas. Nevada. Nevada. Not the other one. Nevada, yeah. Yeah.

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uh-huh uh podcast number three how the time does fly sure does uh by the time you listen to this garrison and i will have just had the best meal that we're going to have oh my god yeah it's tomorrow for us still but we're still we're very excited about morimoto which is a fantastic every year we we have a a very special dinner just them and me and a couple of friends who will remain anonymous because people get weird on the internet sometimes it is literally the hot

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of my year sometimes it does keep me going actually really gives me a lot of power some of the best tacos i've ever had in my life so good uh-huh anyway ah we're just thinking about delicious food let's talk about the dead-eyed ghoul we met oh wait no we're doing something not yet i know we met a dead-eyed ghoul that i'm gonna spoil now real monster like real real real evil vibes like sad evil though

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If this guy, as soon as I met him, shook his hand like, oh, if this guy gets power, you're going to be responsible for a lot of death and suffering.

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He's just not that talented. He's not that powerful. Maybe.

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You never know where these guys are going to end up.

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One of the things is a specific exemption now is that you can now refer to women as if they are property. on Facebook.

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Right. Yeah. Thank God. Linda's really blazing a trail for women everywhere.

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Why not at this point? Right. It can only help. It can only help. So look, if we learned anything from a thing, I'm not going to specify that happened late last year. More suppressors is always handy.

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And you see you see how you see the different levels at which networks work here, like the Gorman front works because they're all friends and neighbors who care about each other. Right. And that's why they are a real tactile. And they're able to stick together, even though they're not they don't have perfect competence. Right.

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we see Saw's group where someone made the comment that like, well, he's basically a fascist. And because of like the hold he has on his group, which is not what I saw at all. I saw as soon as he shoots that spy, he has to prove. But he's not a fascist. He has to prove to the rest of his group that guy was a spy and needed to die.

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And once he does, they're like, all right, well, back to the job, right? I mean, yeah. But and he gets he has to get fucked. You know, he gets fucked up as part of like the just the necessity of it's literally the only thing he has in between acts of terrifying violence. But that's how that group bands together.

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And then we see, you know, these smaller cells of experts, right, who they have their connections with each other and they have their little moments of vengeance. And that's what keeps them going. Yeah. And the only thing that keeps Luthan going is the pure logic of the calculus of what he's put together. That's all he's got.

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It happens. That's the point. Yes, she's really good. She's really good. She's incredibly skilled.

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Yes.

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Brasso didn't die for any better reason, right? This is just how war works.

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It's not that they're disposable. It's that combat is random. And fuck-ups are random. This exact thing, somebody screws up and shoots when they're not supposed to and the bullet doesn't stop, happens all the goddamn time. And like it's part of what fucks people up.

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If you talk to people about their who have war experiences, one of the things that will fuck someone up the most is watching someone they know and care about get turned into pink mist. And it's usually a situation where somebody hits or steps on or whatever an IED or takes a rocket at a bad time. And there's this person that you knew and you care about and they're three dimensional to you.

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And you probably plan to keep knowing them after the, and then they're just fucking missed. And it just, it shatters people's minds. And that's what happens.

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This is not about happy lives. I also love the thing that doesn't get a huge amount of attention in these episodes, but is interesting to me, is the guy that he was, he pulled that Matt, or whatever his name was. Sam. Samama. The guy that Samama pulled his gun to try to stop. Is just this random Gorman dude who's like, hey, no, I'm not going to like leave. This is like my city.

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What are you doing here? What's going on? As soon as he realizes he carries her body like he goes with them, you know, and we it's kind of unclear. Is he like some sort of or is he literally a Gorman who at the whole time was looking for a way to get involved? And once he realized what was happening, it's like, yeah, these are my people. I'm with this.

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Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess he just wasn't in the inner circle. But he hops on, you know?

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All right. Well, these episodes have been amazing. Everybody get into inhalants and steal fuel from the military. That's the message of Andor. Run wild. Don't do that. That's a joke. Legally. Okay.

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Yes, when you think of ED, you think about rigid, cylindrical things. Nope. flying at high speed towards... Sorry, that's a bad way to introduce the fact that there's now a war going on between India and Pakistan. Jesus fucking Christ. I don't know. What else are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to go into this? Pakistan and India are shooting.

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Millions die as a result of the disruption to infrastructure and as a result of mass killings.

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There are good people, but neither of the states have clean hands. Yeah, but the states suck shit, right?

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Yeah. And it's important to know that during this terrorist attack, one of the big things that is alleged is that husbands were executed in front of their wives. That is going to be relevant for the name of the operation that India is in the process of carrying out right now. Prior to, in the immediate wake of that attack, everyone knew some shit was going to go down. on the border.

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India was going to do something, in part because India said they were going to do something, right? J.D. Vance, the peacemaker, as we call him, I don't believe anyone else has ever been called that in the history of government or popular media, so yeah, that seems like a good nickname for him, went to India like a day or two before this all happened to calm things down.

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This is after making a visit to the Pope. Or to tell Modi do whatever. Like, we don't know actually what he said. Some people are like, Vance must have given him the go-ahead. I think it's just as likely Vance was like, hey, we don't really want a war right now. Can you calm shit down? And Modi didn't listen. Or that Vance just didn't even have anything meaningful to say.

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We actually don't know at the moment. But last night, India started carrying out what they are calling Operation Sindoor. S-I-N-D-O-O-R is how it is generally anglicized. The name of the operation comes from, again, I mentioned a little earlier that during that terrorist attack in Kashmir, Hindu men were killed in front of their wives.

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Sindur is a word that refers to this kind of colored dye that I believe it's like a bridal thing that like women put in. I think it's in their hair, but it's a reference to something that is part of like the traditional Hindu wedding and something that the bride does. And so it was specifically named this in order to make it very clear. This is vengeance for that attack, right?

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Like that's why it was named what it was. Okay. Does that all make sense?

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Sorry, I've got it here. Sindur is the Hindi word for vermilion, which is the red pigment Hindu women apply to their forehead, right? So it's a reference also to the fact that these terrorists are said to have shot their victims in the forehead, right? So there's a lot going on there, basically.

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But that's what's relevant. So when it comes to this, what's happening? First off, perfectly reasonable to call what's happening war. India has launched cross-border strikes. They appear to have launched both cruise missiles and airstrikes using modern jets, right? Pakistan has responded with modern military air defenses.

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What we can safely say right now is that this is the first full 21st century here on pier military action. And I know as came up in the meeting, people are going to say, well, Ukraine, not entirely Ukraine and Russia. There is a degree to which that is true because Ukraine is armed by states that are peer or more than peer to Russia in terms of military technology.

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But Ukraine does not have an industrial base that is in any way comparable to Russia's. They are not capable of manufacturing the weaponry that they need to compete with Russia on the battlefield on their own. That's why international aid has been so critical. Pakistan and India...

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are both effectively peers in that they both do purchase weaponry a lot from other countries, but they also have domestic arms industries and they have potent domestic militaries that are armed to a comparable standard, right? And so there's a few things happening here. I do not want to lose count of the fact that people are dying. Obviously, civilians died in that attack in Kashmir.

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At the moment, it looks like the death toll from the initial Indian strikes is somewhere around 40. Pakistan is claiming the vast majority of those are civilians. India is claiming that they only hit infrastructure associated with the terrorist group that they believe carried out the attacks in Kashmir that they claim is being supported by Pakistan.

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There is substantial evidence that the majority of the dead are civilians. People have claimed that large chunks of their families were wiped out in these strikes. I don't see any reason to doubt that, knowing how airstrikes work. A good number of the dead, though, have also occurred as a result of cross-border artillery fire. And it's unclear to me if...

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India and Pakistan have had a full-on artillery duel across the border, or if this is Pakistan's artillery firing back in response to the airstrikes. That part is unclear. There are also videos where you can hear small arms fire, so machine guns and the like, and reports that that is coming from Pakistan's side too. It's possible there is a cross-border direct arm engagement.

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It's possible no one died as a result of the small arms fire, given the distances that this is occurring at, right? That the only deaths have been due to field artillery, and due to missile strikes, right? That seems likely at this point. It's possible the death toll is much higher than 40, but that's somewhere around there is what's been confirmed right now. Now, we have talked about the deaths.

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Obviously, the biggest concern is the loss in human life here. I am going to talk about what this means on a military level, because that is relevant both how this conflict is going to proceed and how future conflicts are going to proceed, because we have not seen a peer-on-peer fight like this before in this century. right?

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So, one of the more important things as to how this has proceeded is that a number of the jets that India launched across the border are what are called Rafales. R-A-F-A-L-E. This is a French fighter jet. It is broadly considered to be equivalent to an F-18 Super Hornet. Now, I say that.

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If you go online and you listen to people who are nerds about fighter jets, they will pull a knife on you for claiming that, right? There are major differences between the two airframes. One of them is that the Rafale is a larger plane, which means it's theoretically capable, not theoretically, it is capable of a significantly higher payload.

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However, there's a couple of problems that come with that. One is that the Super Hornet Not only is it a smaller craft, but it is built for carrier duty, which means it's wings fold, yada, you could fit more of them on a carrier. They take off and land more easily from a carrier or a fall can take off and land from a carrier, but it has to have a different loadout, right?

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The other issue, a Super Hornet can stay supersonic with its full payload for longer periods of time. That means that it can be breaking the sound barrier consistently, not just using its afterburner for like a quick burst of speed. That matters because the faster you're going, the harder you are to shoot down.

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The primary air-to-ground package it has is what's called a HAMR, and that's an acronym, H-A-M-M-E-R. I don't know what it stands for off the top of my head, but they are between 250 and 1,000 pounds each, right? These are their air-to-ground munitions. That they are equipped with standard, it's possible India has a separate loadout for them. I don't actually know. This is their standard armament.

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Now, they can only have their full complement if they're not going supersonic. So they cannot go supersonic for a comparable period of time to a Super Hornet if they have a full complement. From a military technology standpoint, the biggest news from the initial stage of the strike is that at least one of these Rafales has been destroyed. There's decent evidence that potentially another two.

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If India lost three of these jets, they have 36. That is a meaningful degradation of their entire Air Force capability to strike, right? Losing these jets. And they cannot be replaced on any kind of time frame that is comparable to how quickly they're being shot down. Pakistan is claiming significantly more. Pakistan's claim is that they've downed three Rafales.

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One MiG-29, one Su-30MKI, and at least one Israeli-made Heron drone. People generally say Pakistan is probably exaggerating. However, French authorities have confirmed at least one Rafale, and there's two more possibilities that are being looked into. It's possible three planes were downed, but only one was a Rafale. We don't really know yet, right?

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But even one is a meaningful loss, and the fact that it was downed says a couple of things. One thing is that... There's a decent chance, what I suspect we might hear, especially if three of these went down, is that India sent these things off with a full strike package. So they were not able to go as fast as they normally can, and thus were not able to evade Pakistan's anti-air defenses, right?

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That may be what happened. The other thing that we're seeing here is that Pakistan is equipped, they buy the best part, and Pakistan has a lot of S-300s and S-400s, I believe, which are like what we've seen in Ukraine. Those have had a very mixed operational history in terms of their capability to take out modern aircraft. Pakistan also has a lot of PL-15 radar-guided anti-air missiles.

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These are Chinese anti-aircraft missiles. They have never been used in combat before. If you're a nerd for like modern military technology, one of the things people have been talking about in that field for a long time is like, how are these going to function? And we just know that they've been used because wreckage from them has been found and photographed.

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And people who are experts in these missiles online have confirmed this is from this weapons package. it is very likely that the Rafale that was down was downed by this missile. And if more than one was downed, they were all downed by these missiles.

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So that tells us a lot about the comparable capabilities of both this modern Western fighter that the French are selling and of this Chinese anti-aircraft missile, right? And so that's really relevant if we're looking at both how this conflict is going to proceed because I don't want to be coming at it from this bloodless like, oh, I'm just interested in the military strategy part.

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This is relevant because if India has lost three of these advanced fighters that they cannot replace on any kind of comparable timeframe in the first few hours of strikes, that That suggests one of two potential future outcomes. Number one, the tempo of use of advanced aircraft in this war is going to change considerably as it drags into the next stages, right?

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Because they simply can't maintain that tempo. They can't continue to take those sort of risks. And that either means... moving on to a lot more ground engagements between infantry, between tanks, between artillery, like direct face to face shit, or a potential for escalating things to the next level. And the only next level higher than where we're at is nuclear, right?

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I don't think that is the likeliest outcome. I do not think a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India is the likeliest thing at this point. However, the rate at which India is attriting air assets means that they're going to have to make a choice in the not too distant future, right?

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Although it's also worth noting, we don't know entirely the degree to which Pakistan's anti-air defenses have been attrited by this, right? There's a lot of open, there's a lot of unknown unknowns and known unknowns here, right? As our good friend Rumsfeld would say.

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I will say the other issue here, if there is a nuclear exchange, it's going to be the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the century. That doesn't mean it's going to be a nuclear war across the entire world, and that shouldn't be your first concern.

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Your first concern should be that that would still mean millions of deaths in India and Pakistan, potentially, at least hundreds of thousands, right? The concern is not they start so everyone else does. It's they start and thus the worst humanitarian disaster since World War II occurs.

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Yeah, a strike in Islamabad would be the worst thing that's happened possibly since the Holocaust in terms of like human death toll due to human actions.

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Yes.

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Yeah, and this is all... There's a lot that's unknown about kind of how these weapons have performed still, but these are... In terms of both how this conflict is going to proceed and how future conflicts will proceed, these are things you should be looking at. Because these weapons platforms, this is important in terms of what war is going to continue to look like.

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No, it's far from the likeliest outcome, and your primary concern should be to people who are living there right now.

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Right. You know, it's worth noting that the 1999, the cargo war, that was not an insignificant death toll, right? Like, you're talking probably, like, certainly more than a thousand, I think. A thousand to a couple of thousand people died. So that would not be, that's not certainly not out of the question without it escalating in that way.

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I think the primary concern that you always have and why I bring up weapon systems is that countries think in terms of stuff like this a lot. This is a big part of why we get World War I, right? You have these nations that are arming and they're always concerned with how do my weapons compare to my neighbors? If we go to war now, I feel pretty good about where I'm at.

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And if I wait another two years, maybe they'll be in a better position. And thinking like that is part of the planning that's going on in these states and the planning about when do we escalate and how do we escalate, right? Do we move to a point where we've got masses of infantry shooting at each other? Well, maybe if we can't risk the continued attrition of our advanced air assets, we do that.

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Or maybe we make another decision. That's why it's relevant to know about this stuff. Not because you want to nerd out over who's got the coolest missile and who's got the coolest planes, but because that is very much how states think, right? Anyway... Before we go to ads, to tie this back to the executive dysfunction, because that is what this is about, not the current wars podcast.

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In the immediate wake of all of this, President Trump was asked about, hey, How about these two nuclear-armed states going to war? What do you think about that? And he gave just a traditionally eloquent Donald Trump response. It's a shame. We just heard about it. I guess people knew something was going to happen based on a little bit of the past. They've been fighting for a long time.

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I just hope it ends quickly.

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Yep. I mean, it looks like a starvation genocide. I don't know how else to phrase this. There's really nothing else. This isn't the time to mince words. Every piece of evidence suggests this is a starvation genocide being carried out, that they're trying to starve this population to death or until they all leave, which is the same. Genocide does not necessarily mean you kill everyone.

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It is the forced killing and or displacement of a population.

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They're describing a genocide. There's no doubting it. I don't even know... What is there to say, right? Like at this point, I almost think other than obviously documenting what's happening is important. The only important thing to try to talk about is like, how can this be stopped? And or how can a degree of like, what does justice look like at some point down the line? What should be done?

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You know, like these are questions to ask, but like to just like, I don't know what to keep saying other than like, yep, they're trying to wipe out Gaza. Like, yeah.

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Yeah.

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no and and again like it they seem to just be saying tattoos period right like anything is trindagua right yeah right people who have like soccer tattoos people who have i love my mom and dad tattoos it doesn't matter there's an autism awareness tattoo yeah some guy had an autism awareness

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we're back and wait a second is that is that the tariff song sorry All right, guys, I actually don't know. Do we have anything to say about tariffs this week? Yeah, we actually do have some tariffs. So on Friday... Okay, all right, good. We got to get all of our use out of that song because again... We really do. We really had to suspend the whole team's healthcare to pay for it.

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It was monstrously expensive. The full cut of that song is 17 and a half hours. We actually brought in the remaining members of Fleetwood Mac as well as several Rolling Stones. It was just disastrous. Yeah.

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We only use the clip with our Friend the Narcissist cookbook. But yeah, there is a 26-minute drum solo with the guy from Rush. Geddy Lee, he's still alive, right? Was it Geddy Lee? Yeah. He's still alive. The joke works. The joke works. Not cheap. Not cheap.

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Mia, tariffs. Good? Bad?

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Yeah, Trump and Musk both become inoperable. You know, Garrison, we will know when that's hit when the missiles are in the air.

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You're probably three to five weeks out from really starting to see it hit hard in like the stuff you buy on a day to day basis. Right. People who are doing stuff like remodeling houses or building houses are starting to notice now. Yeah. I think people, car repair businesses and whatnot, people have to order parts. That is starting to hit.

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But your grocery store, that's really going to be most noticeable somewhere between three and five weeks from now. Maybe sooner, probably not much longer.

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Yes. But then he walked that back. He had a conversation with Jon Voight and announced 100% tariff on all movies. Yeah. Not made in the US. No one knows what that means.

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The responses to it have been so funny because Gavin Newsom, arch dipshit of the Democratic Party, was immediately like, We love the idea of working with our president to keep film jobs in California, you know? Meanwhile, Trump immediately was like, well, maybe we won't do that. I think because there's still, at the very head of the studio system, some scary old mob-type dudes, right?

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And I think a few of them made some money. Also, Tom Cruise is terrifying. Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise, like, sat down. Listen, Donald. Yeah. You know, no one's heard from David Miscavige's wife in a long-ass time, and they don't have to hear from you either.

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Yes, but it was the Clint Eastwood one and not the much better Alcatraz film, The Rock, starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage. A banger. Ages perfectly. Watch it. Everyone watch it tonight. Fuck reading any more news.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast normally about it happening here, being, you know, the real world where you live. But for the next two weeks after this, and for the week before this, and for this week, we're talking about it happening in a galaxy far, far away. That's right, this is the second in our four-part series reviewing and discussing Andor Season 2.

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which, due to a series of incredibly unlikely events, has become the most radical media to reach a wide audience in the United States in quite some time. I am here with Mia Wong and Garrison Davis. How are we all doing today?

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Yeah, just watched episodes seven through nine last night, which is really helping with the hanging in there.

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We have to save that for next week. Yeah, well, we're not talking about them now, but we watched them this week, and I'm happy.

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Yes, I am very excited for next week. I'm very excited for this week, which we should talk about. So kind of there's a few themes running through these three episodes. One of them is, yeah, the cost in terms of your personal life on being part of a rebellion. Mm hmm.

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And, yeah, I'm interested, kind of, what are some of the, I mean, there's one real standout moment in these episodes that I know we're all going to want to talk about, which is a speech given by Saul Guerrera. Saul, yeah. Played by Forrest Whitaker, just amazingly.

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Yeah, the nitrous speech. We'll get to it. We'll get to that. But, yeah, we should start with the first of these episodes.

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And Bix is also, we find out, abusing space Xanax.

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She's talking about like, yeah, the imperial news says the Gormants are super arrogant, just real assholes.

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Yeah. I want to say a little about the Gorman Front because they're very clearly French resistance and World War II coded. They developed a whole like language for them to speak, which is basically like French. With French phonics, but different.

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words different words and so it sounds a little bit like French and German like got mashed together people who speak both have told me I don't know I I'm not a not a language guy but it sounds distinctive and they're very clearly like again their whole the whole industry this planet is high quality textiles that come from like spider silk but also clearly the the the guy who's leading the resistance his business is kind of meant to evoke sort of like a classic like French vineyard like he's like he's

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Yeah, because I actually think it's a slightly different even than that. But we'll talk about that when we get to episode nine.

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Yeah, and specifically, Saw puts him with one of his guys, who's kind of coded as being, like, close to Saw, like this is somebody that he really trusts, and it's kind of implied fairly soon that, like, Saw doesn't want this guy going back to Luthen with information, right? He wants to keep Willem.

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It's like Well, he wants to kill him at first. That's the statement he makes to his guy is like, once you have these variations down, we're going to ice him. Saw doesn't really trust Luthen very much anymore. He never did.

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Yeah. But like one of the things that's interesting here is that like we kind of see Saw's paranoia where there's a bunch of variations you need to know to get fuel out of any number of different things. And the guy's like, I have to memorize too many if you just let us know which one we're trying to go after. But that would make it clear which fuel station they're going after.

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So Saw doesn't want to say shit initially.

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protesting where it's like there's a there's you know there's protests going on so there's like just like 10 guys in the square all the time yes kind of like chanting stuff yeah always making noise they're kind of keeping a vigil because basically what happened totally and this is another interesting tony guru is kind of famously not a star wars fan Like prior to working on this.

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And so there was a lot of like anxiety from big Star Wars nerds that like, oh, this isn't going to feel like Star Wars. But it clearly is a lot of folks who understand not just like the stuff that's come out, you know, since Disney started in the different books and comics, but like the old legend stuff.

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Because in Legends, like a major spark of the whole rebellion was the Gorman Massacre, which is when Tarkin lands. And Tarkin's the old guy in the Death Star in A New Hope, right? Like he's the guy who's Darth Vader's boss in the first movie. And he lands a craft on a crowd at Gorman. And that's supposed to have been one of the major sparks.

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And they've retconned it a little, but to the point where that still happened. But it's clearly the setup for a larger massacre that this season is building towards.

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And I'm wondering, did y'all wonder for a second if Cyril was legitimately getting pilled by the Gorman? Yeah. Cause it's, it's good. Right. There's like that moment where I'm like, well, fuck is he, is our boy like starting to have a break already? And then he realized like, no, that's,

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Yeah. Yeah, you can see the Gorman like they have some degree of sophistication and that they're tapping like him and they've been listening probably for quite a while and they sweep their shit every day for bugs. So you understand that like they have an idea of what they need to be doing. But when it comes to all of the in-person stuff. Yeah. That's where they're incompetent, right?

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Where they don't have the actual operational experience to know when someone feels off, right? Like, that's the stuff that they're missing. Like, man-to-man on the ground is where the problems come in. Like, you can tell they're thinking this stuff through, but they just don't know what they're doing enough.

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Yes. And yeah, he is like very much desperate to like, no, please, we can, we can calm this down if we just don't piss the empire off enough.

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And we're back. Yeah. So, yeah, let's start with the summary of this episode.

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After arguing, because she's had him followed. After arguing.

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Some of the best moments in this episode so far, because it's, they don't know shit about Cassian, so they don't know who they're talking to. And when he's like, you guys shouldn't do fuck right now. Cause you don't know shit about fuck. They're like, well, you're not a real revolutionary.

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He is interested in what he can do and get away with, right? Exactly. As opposed to... Luthan is interested in what does more damage to the Empire. Now, what's interesting to me is that the Gorman Front are actually in the middle. They think that they are willing to do whatever, but they don't understand what that is. And part of what you are seeing here is...

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the Gorman front are adamant, we are ready for war. We're already in a war. And they're not technically wrong about that because the empire is planning to wipe them out, right? We know the empire does not plan for there to be a Gorman in the future. So the stakes are where they're saying they are. But even though they're saying that, most of them don't truly believe or understand it.

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And Cassian understands what war is. And what he is telling them is that you are, and he's right about this, you are not ready for what you think you're ready for. Yeah. Totally. Because what you're going to do is die. All of you.

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And there's this very standard, it's also this very common, and this is part of what Cassian recognizes, this common myopic thing that you get with people who, again, think they want a war that they don't truly understand the meaning of, where they're like, we need weapons. And when they think of weapons, they think of guns that they can hold. And so that's what they're focused on getting.

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And that's what they think will let them fight the empire. Right. When Cassian understands there's no fighting the empire with what you can possibly get from a raid like this. All there is is suicide. And then there's the other level of what Luthan understands is so the fuck what? Sometimes that needs to happen. What matters is that these people die in public and it pisses people off.

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Right. And that's there's this there's this escalation of like the Gormans think having guns means you can fight back or like guns. Guns means that they'll be safer. Right. And they're wrong. Cassian thinks staying alive for a future moment means that you can fight back. And he is wrong. Luthan understands that the only ammunition that really counts in this war is human life. And that sucks.

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And that sucks.

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And there's this issue the Empire and Luthan's organization are having with, like, we're getting too much. You know, the Empire's like, we're arresting too many people. Like, number one, it's like cutting into our ability to get into these organizations. And it also is just like, we're drowning. And Luthan says the same thing. I'm always spacing on her name, but she's wonderful to his cons lady.

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Like, we're drowning. We have too much shit. Yeah.

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Yes, yes.

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And it's a real... You hear this... When you read about histories of, like, czarist Russia, like, even a lot of people who take part in the 1917 revolution, right up till it started, their attitude was like, oh, if the czar knew what his advisors were doing in his name, he'd be on our side. And the same thing happened in the Third Reich. If only Hitler knew was a common phrase.

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We're like, well, Hitler doesn't know the Gestapo is doing all these awful things, of course.

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And I love that's part of what I love about that. That laddered interaction between them and Cassian and Cassian and Luthan is they're not really revolutionaries either. They they are protesters. Right. They still think that the overall empire, once it realizes how bad things are, will be on their side. And Cassian thinks they can wait. Yeah, it's Luthan who's like, no, no, no.

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There's one way out, right? You know, going back to season one, there's one way out.

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And Partagas even makes that great comment where he's directly talking about the Gorman front and he's like, yeah, there's a lot of people who think they understand shit better than they do because they're new to it.

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Who has taken over for his mom in being, like, the primary source, the person he's trying to impress.

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She has been sent out in the recent past and she can't be sent back out again. And the specific we don't even see the mission that most recently fucked her up. But we're through her nightmares were led to infer she and Cassian captured an Imperial pilot and Cassian killed the guy because he'd seen her face. Yeah.

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And she's in addition to having been tortured in season one fucked up because like we didn't need to kill him. And Cassian's like, yeah, we did. Yeah. He saw your face.

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Well, and just what torture does, right? Like, torture breaks people. That's its purpose, you know? So we have Space Xenics, and then we have Saw Gerrera. Yeah, we fucking do. So let's, I want to talk a little bit about his background, some stuff that's not in the show. In the show, you see him when he is already basically the hardest son of a bitch in the rebellion, right? Yeah.

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He is the only leader of a rebel faction that Luthan treats as an equal, right? Where Luthan is meeting with him. We see Luthan meeting with him directly. Luthan is not willing to sacrifice he and his men in order to maintain the cover of a spy, which he is willing to do.

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Yeah, they are serious. And every time we see them, there's more of them and they have more ships. They're the first ones. They're the first rebels to use X-Wings. First ones to have X-Wings. Yeah. Yeah. And Saw's background and you have this is way a bunch of the expanded stuff.

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But he's he started out as essentially a local rebel on this planet during the Clone Wars that was not aligned between either major faction. But basically, the Jedi taking the role of space CIA armed him and his sister to lead like a rebel group against the other power they were fighting in the Clone Wars occupation, like separatist forces. He was meant to be Mujahideen coded, right?

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Initially, right? So he's like a space Mujahideen who's armed by the space CIA, who are the Jedi. Yeah. And then when the Republic ends, he immediately starts fighting the Empire. And one of the kind of like moments that form saw is his sister dies in the in the process of this failed attempt to gain independence for their homeworld, this place called Onderon. Right.

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You don't need to know any of that to perfectly get and enjoy his character in these shows. But the moment that we're about to talk about means more if you understand his backstory with his sister. Right.

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Yes. And yet this has been his whole life. Right. I think he's supposed to be like 46 when he dies in Rogue One. Hard 46. If you look at him, you know, he looks clearly older, but also he looks like, well, yeah, he's been fighting his entire life. That ages people. And he has this.

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So the first thing that he does is he executes this guy who was set up as his friend when it becomes clear that that guy was a spy. And it's insinuated he thinks it's a spy for the Empire. That guy might have been a spy for Luthen or someone else. We don't actually know. Sure. We know he was sending info to someone.

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Yeah.

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And Saw blasts him and basically says, hey, to the kid, you're mine now. And we're going to go steal this fucking fuel. Yeah. So the next time we see them, they've busted onto this Imperial fuel lot and they're fueling up their ships. And while the kid is like working out to set this thing up to allow them to take the Ribo, which is the... Rhydonium. Rhydonium. Rhydo, sorry. The starship fuel.

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While the kid is like doing this job that we've been told, if you don't do it perfectly, it kills you and everyone around you. Saw is monologuing and he's talking about his childhood where he was like, I was a child slave, you know, forced to labor in these rhino mines, right? And one day there was a gas leak.

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and everyone ran and this stuff, it was so bad out there, the old people would die and you'd come back the next day and the jungle was so thick, they'd been eaten down to bones. And one day everybody has to flee because of this leak, but I don't run away because I'm huffing this gas. I get high and I realize for the first time I'm alive. He has this moment.

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And then when the kid figures out how to get the fuel hooked up, Saw immediately leans in and starts huffing what is effectively gasoline. and going, and the kid's like, what the fuck? The kid who's wearing a gas mask, who's like wearing proper PPE, is like, what are you doing? And he's like, she's my sister, Raito. She's my sister and she loves me.

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Is nearly dying from the gas fumes that clearly Saw is barely affected by anymore, right? It's again, this thing I love that they do in terms of they're calling back to the older lore when he calls this his sister. But you don't need to know that his sister died to get this moment. It just makes it adds an extra layer of meaning if you're a nerd for the lore, which I appreciate a lot.

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And it also sets up in Rogue One when we see Saw near death. He's on oxygen. Well, I think he's on O2 because he's destroyed his lungs huffing.

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yeah called tony gilroy and said hey what if we have him huffing fumes and they went for it well yeah but i but i think that was to try to explain because because um tony said he didn't know why saul was on oxygen when he put it in rogue one and i so they they came to explain it but i think he's on oxygen because i think it's been retconned to to to being that he's just huffing right is he just huffing right oh i don't know okay i saw it in an article you know yeah so

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Wow. Mean to Carrie Fisher, Garrison.

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I fucking love this speech by Saw. Oh, yeah.

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Yeah, it's perfect. It's perfect. Everything about it makes me so happy. Bo Williman continues to be like maybe the best monologuist writing for TV right now. It's just such a raw scene. And it it it explains both like why Saw is still around because he's the most paranoid, crazy son of a bitch there is.

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And because he, unlike everyone else, and unlike the Gormans, unlike even Cassian, he's the only guy who understands what Luthan understands, which is that, like, we're not here to see the other side of this. No. We're here to catch on fire, you know? Like, that's the whole thing.

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Huge opsec fuck up. Huge opsec fuck up. Because Cassian Andor's face is known.

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We should note ahead of this that during the meeting where they had about this, one point that they had made is none of you have guns. None of you carry guns on this. Me and her are the only people with blasters. You don't need them. You're not competent to use them.

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paradoxical way to be fair like they should they they don't know that star exists they know something's being made but he's like he's like he's like a super high up guy yes and man yeah that is tough that's it's a tough scene it's a tough what's also what's interesting is that it's a tough scene in light of the rest of the lore it's a really nice because they've been fighting bickering for this whole cycle of episodes and like your things are breaking down and this is a moment where like they get back on the same page and you're like tension eases

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She is on it. It's made really clear in these cycles. She is not his subordinate. Oh, no. They are handling very different parts of the operation, but she is not working under him. No, and she's like the one who is the reason any of this shit works.

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There's a line in season one where things are looking bad for them, and he specifically asks her, is your go bag ready? And he doesn't check his own. So I think he understands if one of us has to get out, it should be you. She has to survive.

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He's not going to change. He's not. He's never going to change. Yeah, no, he's not changing. But that's like the thing, though. That's not his job. His job was to make the later stages of this where people act differently inevitable. Totally. And he understands that you need something that horrifies people to do that, right? And that's all he's trying to set up.

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Yeah, Syria. I hardly know. OK, anyway, I was sent a document by my good friend Joey Ayoub from the Fire This Time podcast. Sorry, the Fire In These Times podcast. Joey's great. It's a document that the U.S. is sending out to NGOs around the world. This one was sent to an NGO doing humanitarian work in Syria.

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And it's basically you have to fill this out in order to have a chance of retaining the funding that has been paused right now. Right. So it's part of the USAID pause. If you want to get that money, you have to fill this out and basically prove that you are in line with the new executive orders and policies of the United States. government.

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There's a bunch of questions on here that you have to answer. A lot of them are yes, no, but many of them are just like normal shit, right? Does your organization have a current risk management framework or policy? Yes, no. If yes, please describe the framework or policy, right? Not extreme or anything like that.

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You have to say that you're not working with cartels, narco-human traffickers, but then you have to say you have not, quote, organized groups that promote mass migration in the last 10 years, right? which is interesting. And when you're dealing with war-torn areas that are helping refugees escape, it's clearly going to be damaging to a lot of NGOs that have done very good work to save people.

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Number five is, does your organization encourage free speech and encourage open debate and free sharing of information? Yes, no. And then right under that, does your organization have a clear policy of prohibiting any collaboration, funding, or support for entities that advocate or implement policies contrary to U.S. government interests? So free speech, unless it's not stuff that we like, right?

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Yeah, kind of always been the way, to be fair. Now, kind of the most, I mean, not kind of, by a wide margin, the most fucked up thing about this is that it then goes down, again, right after the free speech thing.

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First off, I should note, number 11, after the free speech question, can you confirm your organization does not work with entities that are associated with communist, socialist, or totalitarian parties? Yes.

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And then below that is basically a question of like whether or not – and they frame it as like does this project take appropriate measures to protect women and to defend against gender ideology as defined in the below executive order? And then it links to the defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government executive order.

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And then it asks, does the project take appropriate measures to protect children and links to the same executive order? So it is basically saying your organization has to support effectively like transphobic policies in Syria in order to continue to get U.S. money. Right. Like and the fact that that is never one a requirement for aid organizations receiving aid worldwide now is deeply harmful.

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And it's also just like. Syria was already transphobic. Like the Syrian government is not really pro-trans, but the fact that this is just being like- This is going to be like across the board. Yes, everywhere. This is going to be everywhere in the world. If you want to get US funds to save human lives, to stop the spread of diseases, you have to officially embrace transphobic policies.

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That's the stance of the United States government. that that matters more than stopping the spread of Ebola in the Congo.

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I've hung out in a couple. A lot of them have fully automatic grenade launchers on the top. They have decent air conditioning, you know.

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No, honestly, a lot of arguments as to whether or not they were good at their stated role in warfare. Yeah.

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This is something Chuds don't understand because a popular thing among Chuds is to take their Toyota Tundras or their F-150s or their Jeep Gladiators and send them down to this company in Florida that adds an extra axle and two more wheels so that they have six wheels because they think it makes truck go better. Why? It ruins everything.

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And Marines love putting razor wire up. It's not the job that everyone hates the most. Yeah, yeah, everyone loves razor wire.

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Easy, doesn't get you horribly cut the fuck up.

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We're back. Hey, I wanted to note something I was unaware of because I have not changed my friend's name in my phone, but Joey now goes by Aliyah Ayub. I apologize for the error there, but James corrected me, so we're good. Teamwork makes the dream work.

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And never changing people's names in my phone makes... Well, actually, I usually... I was going to say, I'm impressed you have a name saved in your phone. Well, Aaliyah is a friend, so I actually have their name saved in my phone. 90% of the texts coming at me at any given time is just a series of unlabeled phone numbers. And it's chaos. I'm just guessing that people are who... That's crazy.

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Someone I should be in contact with.

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I'm proud of you. That's almost as good as my Rock the Casbah joke.

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And it's just also just like soybeans and corn are like primarily what human beings grow, right? and rice like those are really the big three you you can't you can't eat that corn but yeah well you don't but it's part of your food so then chili it becomes definitely yes yeah it's corn syrup and shit but yeah well corn syrup and also it's you know what the animals eat yeah Yeah.

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When they feed it to cattle and chickens.

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Here's my pitch. for what we should do with China, right? You know how China has this border conflict with India that could end the world, but usually just involves two groups of people with spears that were originally made in the 13th century, having phalanx fights in the mountains. Yep. We should just send over a couple of thousand Marines and do that with China. Get it all out of our systems.

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This whole all this war talk. Just have a couple thousand dudes have a big old spirit fight. We film the son of a bitch. We get some drones. We bring in maybe we bring in Tarantino. He'd be great to film the fucker. You know, we we really just have a good time with it. And then we just go back to not not doing stuff like this.

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You can just edit it to be whoever, like for both countries, right? You have an America version and a China version. We already do this.

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Yep. I mean, it's just deeply clear that what's happening is we're ending every single thing the US used to do that Trump does not see as a direct financial benefit. Yeah. And largely aligning ourself with Russia against every state that does not have the physical power to stop us.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Tragically, we all have ED. All right, I got it out of the way. We can continue the episode now.

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Yeah. Uh-huh. Well, I mean, look, some of us have been saying this. Yeah.

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Yeah, we have crossed the tragedy farce horizon. We're well beyond anything Marx could have anticipated. We're going, we don't need farce.

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Sophie has gone mad with power. I'm going to go call the EU because Sophie has asked me to. Yes.

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Yeah, that's what it says when I go into my HR page. The increasing story of, and this affects Ukraine, but is not just limited to it. The story of the next several years is going to be the mass rearmament of Europe. Right. And almost certain nuclear proliferation.

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France, who has, I think, 295 nuclear warheads and extremely advanced first strike capability, as well as a first strike doctrine, is under Macron has just made a statement that he's willing to have France be the nuclear shield for the rest of Europe. The UK also has enough nukes to kill way more people than actually live there.

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Unfortunately, their nuclear defense system and reaction system is very tied into the US one. I expect you will see them separate from the United States as the United States becomes more and more of a geopolitical adversary to England and to everywhere else in Europe.

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i think you are going to see more smaller states in europe get the bomb i think in general uh i'm shocked if in four years there's not at least another four or five states that have that have gained access to the bomb yeah because the overarching international lesson from ukraine is never ever ever ever ever ever give up a nuke and get one at all costs

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It's not great. I don't like that. I'm not saying this because it's good, but it's also literally like if I was in charge of European security, my priority would be let's get as many fucking nukes out here as we can. Yeah.

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No, because there's nothing really like they play act at masculinity and their fans, especially Trump's base, really like feeds into that. But they definitely also have that deep insecurity that because of aspects of our culture and media, I think most men who have never been to war have a little bit of that.

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I don't think it's a natural thing for men, but I think it's a natural thing in our society. I think it is extremely common verging on universal. I went to war in part because of that derangement. And by the way, war doesn't do anything to make you better.

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But what it does do, what it has done for Zelensky and why he acted the way he is, is that like, he's literally been in the position of his entire family and him having AK-47 shoved into their hands because a Russian kill team. was in the city gunning for him and his family as bombs fell all around. Like, he's just, he's, I think he just has too much pride. Sorry, pride's even the wrong thing.

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He's learned over the course of fighting this war, when you are up against a strong man, you can't,

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back down like yeah you'll just keep getting pushed back further and further if you do that because he wouldn't have gotten anything if he had like sat there and been nice and let them make fun of him and like the ending would be the same they'd made up their minds prior to that meeting right and like one of the things that Zelensky has going for him and like there's a lot he doesn't have going for him he's not a coward and like people have noticed that he's not a coward and that has bought him some of the support and like it has allowed

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No, no, because Rubio, he has no personal pride or backbone. So he is willing to try and remake himself as a Trumper. But in his actual heart and soul, he's a Reagan Republican. Totally. Sure. Or maybe at least a Bush Republican.

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Garrison, I just wanted to update you. I've been talking with Rudy about the album that you and I wanted to drop with him, and he is on board, so we will be moving forward with that this spring.

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Well, and, like, the U.S. 's power primarily has always come from the fact that, like, or at least in this century, has been from the fact that we're the center of the global economy. Yeah. Right?

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Well, I mean, something like this was, I think, the obvious outcome as soon as Trump... I mean, from before Trump won, right? Yeah. Netanyahu never had any intention of letting things go back to the way they were before October 7th. And Trump has a vested interest in giving Netanyahu whatever he wants the most. Like... It's, I don't know, I'm not surprised by it.

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I guess I'm a little bit like, okay, at least now we know what they're going to do next.

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I'm not really sure I think we're actually going to see the kind of troop deployment that people think based on what Trump has said, as opposed to expanded support for what the Israelis have already been doing, which has done a significant job to depopulate the area as it stands. Yeah.

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I think we have to be hesitant to draw too strong a line between the rhetoric and what Trump is actually going to do, which doesn't mean I don't think that it's not very likely that you're going to continue to see mass depopulation in Gaza. I think it's just that like.

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I don't know that I think the only way that happens is something that looks like most of the occupations of the last century have looked like from a U.S. point of view.

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Yeah.

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Right. The IDF and a lot of third-party corporate... PMCs. Yeah, PMCs, you know? Yeah, for sure. We've got guys champing at the bit to do that. And that looks a lot likelier to me than the 10th Mountain Division, you know, occupying large chunks of Gaza. Agreed. Yeah.

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Yeah, I think the response to this is one of the more hopeful things going on right now. And kind of what led me to think that is looking at 2020, looking at the fallout from 2020 and what worked and what didn't, largely what didn't work. And thinking like, okay, well, if we're going to actually get any kind of functional resistance to what's happening, what does that look like?

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And it doesn't look like the same crews of people doing the same thing that they did four or five years ago. which is why I've got some hope in the fact that you've got a different crowd of people who are radicalizing and taking to the streets. And, you know, we- Federal employees. Federal employees, right? And you've got a lot of like- Or former.

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Yeah, most of them are still current, but, you know, it's a mix of former and current federal employees. And these are the people who do a lot of the nuts and bolts stuff at the Office of Personnel Management, Office of Management Budget. Like, these are the people who like- make sure keep things functioning at like a ground level.

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And a lot of them are pissed off in a way that I don't think we have really seen before. And I think there's a potential. And who's to say like right now, we just had a big protest in front of Treasury about a full city block or so of people, many, if not the vast majority of whom were federal employees who, rallying alongside a lot of Democratic members of Congress.

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And that doesn't accomplish anything on its own, but it's a potential start to accomplishing something. If you get those people out in the street, it provides, among other things, a lot of cover for for everyone else. And it also is the start of, you know, what you might call a reverse January 6th.

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You know, if January 6th was a bunch of random people taking and occupying government buildings without any knowledge of like what they are or how things actually function inside of them, the kind of thing that we might be looking at in the near future is the opposite of that, where a bunch of people who absolutely do know how those organizations and buildings function

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trying to take and occupy them. And that's the feeling I got, because I talked to some folks who were at the Treasury protest. One person that I talked to most extensively is a federal contractor who was present in 2017 at the travel ban protests, if you remember those, which is back when Trump announced his first Muslim ban and a bunch of people started occupying airports and stuff.

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I was at LAX for that. This person was at some of those protests and it was out in front of Treasury. And the quote that I've got from there was I was expecting it, it being this protest, the Treasury protest, to feel like the travel ban protests. It didn't. It was a lot angrier than the travel ban protests. The travel ban protests were kind of an in defense of another person sort of anger.

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And this was narrowly focused anger at a very specific group of people. There were a lot of people yelling and screaming outside of their congressman's offices and the like. And like there hasn't been that much disruption compared to what we're going to see. Right. Social security payments haven't stopped going out in mass.

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So if we're seeing something like this at this early stage, I think there's a lot of potential there. And the thing this person brought up repeatedly is like when we start seeing congressmen kicking in doors is when things are going to get interesting. If that happens, like that's kind of the stage scenario.

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at which there's a lot of potential for this to turn into something that could actually cause change. If you actually start getting government employees who are willing to do more than stand outside of their offices, who are willing to take direct action to occupy those buildings or stop other people from occupying, and you've seen little bits of that, right?

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One of the things we did see is as these Doge kids came along, Federal employees refusing them entry, keeping doors locked. Now, that was not illegal because these were literally, as it's been described to me by multiple people, just kids showing up demanding entry without any kind of a badge or evidence of who they are. Right. Right.

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When you when you get people who are willing to escalate from that and refuse entry, that's when we might actually see some things start to seriously shift here.

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We're not in South Korea territory yet, but—

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The odds are lower that you get a positive shift because people engage directly and aggressively with the cops. Then you have when some sort of like mid-level military functionary is asked to drive a tank over a schoolteacher. Right. Like historically, historically, if you look at when regimes fall, that happens more often than the waving a flag on top of like a pile of corpses.

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Right. Like demands are ordered illegal. Illegal orders are given to people with guns and they're like, no, I'm not going to shoot at a bunch of teachers today. That's not the only way this kind of thing happens, but at least, like, for my money, that's the likeliest positive outcome right now.

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That's more or less what happened, yeah.

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And I think when it comes to that, the question is like, which hitters? Yeah. Because the FBI and the CIA, I mean, are getting gutted at the moment right now. So you're looking at like... And the NSA.

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You're looking at local police... Federal Protective Services, Department of Homeland Security, you know, and the marshals, right? Like these are kind of like the shooters Trump has to play with and the military will remain an open question until the critical moment, right?

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Oh, no, no, no. Absolutely not. And I do think that like sheriff's departments are kind of what haunt me the most. But that's also it's not purely a matter of like which agencies and organizations are going to back Trump in this. It's also a matter of like geographic location and D.C.

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in D.C., at least he can count on a lot less of those guys because like the Capitol police aren't thrilled right now, you know?

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Now you've gotten me back on the Trump train.

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I'm peacing out for the day. I'm on board now.

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And about a third of YouTube ads are supported by people who run companies that make use of this loophole.

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And so, obviously, like, I don't think most people who listen to this show are that sad about Sheehan and Temu eating shit, but... No, it is, like, a mixed bag, because a whole lot of the MLM industry is going to take a header as a result of this.

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Oh, that's magnificent, Garrison. All right, all right, all right. All right. You're going to get canceled if you're not careful.

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Yeah, that seems to be, from what I can tell, the big move that he made.

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Yes, yes. That's entirely what I was trying to get at earlier. And it ties into what James was saying, is this is the time to be making connections across as wide a swath of the country as you can, including everyone you can get in touch with who...

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uh is not someone you would normally organize with like this is a moment of potential and uh it's it's during moments of potential that you should be widening the swath of people that you connect to because otherwise there's just no getting through this sort of shit yeah

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We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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24% tariff on Japan. What is it? Like 80 or 90% on fucking Cambodia? Why? Yeah.

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Oh, it's going to shatter games like tabletop gaming. Yeah.

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Yes. Well, it's on the British Indian Ocean Territory, which collective population is primarily U.S. soldiers.

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Yeah, like Christmas Island is on there.

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Yep. You know, we always say we no like tarifs, but we do like these ads. We're back. I don't feel great about that, but...

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No, it's entirely... People have, like, reverse-engineered the prompts. It's almost directly just the ChatGPT. Probably, there's a couple... different engines that gave almost identical responses, but it's probably chat GPT.

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I'm sure your undergraduates spent a little more time trying to hide it, James.

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The guy who was actually a manager and he was just doing that for the video. And was doing it very wrong.

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Okay, Mia, you know, what are we... Are you coming after me here? Look, I have my maintenance. Just because I do math a little differently. Okay.

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That's what you say, Joe Rogan, and I feel differently. The dictatorship of ChatGPT is just... It's so bleak.

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It's a mix of they don't actually care or think this will affect them. And also, they legitimately think it's the smartest person in the world.

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Yeah. It's smarter than them. Yeah. Which may be a good thing. But not in this instance.

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I don't even speak Greek letters, so they must be smarter than me. You know what? I rescind my complaints.

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It's both.

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Yeah, tragic farce, I think is what Marx called it.

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And unfortunately, polls also show Americans can distrust or the tendency to view like Canadians and the EU as enemies is rising both for Republicans and Democrats.

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So that's great. That's great. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

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Yeah, this is this is no one else ever wanted this.

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I don't know what else to say. I mean, I'm just looking at the numbers right now where the Dow Industrial is down to 1,500 points since the start of the day. So...

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it's things are looking very good uh all of the lines like if you look at the way in which the line went down there's like it's just this direct vertical drop on the third yep uh it's shocking no it is a 90 degree angle it is legitimately if you if you set the google stock viewer thing to a one day view the drop is so shocking that it looks like it just started down yeah

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It prompts you to turn your phone in the other direction. I've never seen anything like it, but I guess no one has. Yeah.

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I got a response from someone being like, well, you know, they didn't get to do anything on Monday. And I was like, yeah, they weren't really planning on it. And things continued as normal Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah.

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No, and they'd be stopped eventually. The Republicans would do something fucked up to stop it. But at least you'd have tried. Yeah, yeah. And people would maybe take some fucking energy from that.

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No, it was a very well-written speech. Technically, it was good, but that didn't matter. It's just this pure show of symbolic theater. Yeah, what's the point? It's like if a congressperson got out and conducted a perfect rendition of the Nutcracker Symphony of the Ballet portion of that on their own in front of the Capitol building. Well, that's impressive. It's spectacle.

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You're clearly very good at what you're doing, but it didn't change anything. It had no impact on the problems. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you're good. I'll give you that. Cory Booker can deliver a fucking speech, but that was really not what I was looking for.

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He said, I failed. And so did we. We didn't rise to the moment and we let this horrible thing happen, which I even I got a little briefly. Oh, shit. Maybe he actually recognizes like.

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Acknowledge his deep, deep, deep failure.

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They're not going to lock us down again. But you locked us down. Yeah, who did that?

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Yeah, it means bring me the body, right, in this case it is. Yeah, you'll have to present evidence. in order to, like, convict people of things. It's like the sine qua non of having a justice system, a criminal justice system, right? You have to, like, show something. Yeah, you can't just be, like, bad man and then put the guy in jail.

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The most basic thing is that, like, yeah, in literal terms, it means you have to, like, actually take somebody in front of a court in order to determine if they're, like, being detained for a reason, right? Like, a judge has to see them and say, like, yes... This is this is not an unlawful imprisonment. There is a charge.

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There is some degree of evidence that somebody did something right, which they have not provided here. Right. Not that like you can prove they did it, but like something was done and you are here for that for a reason.

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Yeah, I mean, the gist of it is, like three or four days ago, all of my friends who are sconnies got furious because Elon Musk wore a cheese head, you know, like the ones for the Packers that people from Wisconsin wear when they're at games. While he got up on stage and gave a million dollars, basically immediately before, like about a little less than a week ago, a higher court ruled that

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that it was not bribery for him to offer people a million dollars at random if they like voted or showed up at like, you know, different rallies and stuff, which is like what he's been doing, right? Is making these basically fake offers of a million dollars because these two went to members of the local Republican Party. Like it was clearly set up. Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah. And who knows? Like a lot of that's clearly the tariffs. Well, yes. And then with the tariffs, this is a whole other issue. Real double whammy for Tesla. The reporting is that people around Trump have largely soured on Musk. Who knows how true that is? There's always a lot of like reports from the Trump inner circle that are like, I don't know.

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Yeah, he's always had a very leaky background. And I can see it being multi-causal, like Musk has failed badly in Wisconsin. The kind of suspicion right now is that Schibble or whatever his name is was down about five points relative to other MAGA candidates in the same election, which people are attributing largely to Musk's intervention. Yeah.

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One sec, one sec.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like fucking McDonald's Island.

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I wonder how Gibraltar made it on that. Yeah, like, La Reunion is part of France. Why are we hitting these guys? Yeah, it's because they used it all at Okay, that makes sense. That is what a 19-year-old who never went to college but thinks he understands all of reality would do. Okay, great. Dictatorship of Chad GPT.

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My fucking God. Unbelievable.

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Do something. Yeah, do something. Yeah, we'll see. The problem is that there's a lot of greater idiots out there, and they all do still have guns. And money. One of the great tragedies of the world is that very, very stupid people can still fire guns. We made them too easy, folks. Yeah, I've seen that happen a couple times. Yeah. In the old conduct of my work. Anyway...

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All right, well, we reported the news. We reported the news. Now, you go out there and, you know what? Find someone who lives on the Isle of McDonald near the Arctic and kick their ass today. Fuck them up. Fuck that island. Do trade with a penguin. Pay 10% more. Yeah, send us a picture of you fighting a penguin and we'll make sure you get a hat or something. Yeah, yeah.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty. We are free at last for being able to afford things. I am so, so liberated right now. Unchained from the burden of having money. Yes, yes. Well, as the Buddhists say, you know, freeing yourself from attachment is really the path to nirvana.

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He is. One thing they say about him. That's right. He may be the new Dalai Lama. Who can say? The Dalai Lama. And he hasn't. Yeah, yeah.

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Unfortunately, they're probably on a fucking travel ban list now. Oh, my God. I mean, pretty good chance they're in ICE custody at the moment. If I understand Buddhism.

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Line in free fall currently. Yeah. It's funny because they were supposed to initially, I think it was going to be 3 p.m. or something, EST, 2 or 3, was the initial time they wanted to announce this, which would have given the stock market a couple of hours.

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Yeah, on April 2nd. Liberation Day. On Liberation Day. There would have been a couple hours for it to take effect, and they attempted to mitigate this, I guess in the hope that we would all get over it overnight, right? We would forget.

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Before the new prices even came in, we'd be like, ah, no, I'm on to the next thing. But the Dow and the Nasdaq, all plunged. Because it's clear if the president is like deliberately shifting an event to not hurt the stock market, that's going to hurt the stock market, you know?

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And so far, we're recording this a little afternoon on Thursday, April the 3rd. So just in the course of today, major stock indexes have dropped by about 5.6%, which means about $2.7 trillion in market value. which will be the largest decline since March of 2020.

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So we are, it is looking like this is going to be at the very least a stock market decline in line with the one that came as a result of the global pandemic. with the noted caveat that there's really no reason to believe it will get better at any point.

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Every bit of it, put it into the worst-tasting survival foods, and you're going to want to buy Kel-Tex, lots of Kel-Tex, in a caliber no one else has. 5-7 get the one that doesn't take magazines 32 ACP I won the 32 ACP that's it that's it James everyone buy 32 ACP handcuffs it succeeded in ending one world war and it won't let us down we call that doing a Hitler But in a good way.

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Mark Cuban told people to do that. Absolutely not.

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You're going to want to put every dime you've got in pressed latinum. Now, I know that that's the currency from Star Trek and does not exist. Nevertheless, cancel your accounts. Put it all in latinum.

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You could be rich just in time for money to stop being a thing. There you go. There you go. Yep.

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I've been saying this for years. It's redeemable for whatever money the Ferengi use when they exist.

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Well, you know, wait, what is that? Oh, my God. Is that Mia Wong's theme music? My God. Terrific. Oh, God. That was a great purchase, you guys. I mean, can we all agree? Worth every penny.

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Yeah, yeah. This will keep you warm as you huddle around a barrel waiting for the new police, which are just called murder police, to reach your shantytown. Anyway, yeah.

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Who gives a fuck? What you are calling a trade deficit is us getting things we want from people. Yeah, it's buying stuff.

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Yeah, I was told at one point in this nation's greatest living previous moment of crisis that what we needed to do was go buy things to make it better. Yeah.

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Don't forget crypto. They were really bullish on that.

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Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Good. Now that's, of course, named after Chinatown in San Francisco, which Garrison is very bullish about. Positive real estate developments there. You're big into real estate. People don't know that.

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It does. There were so many enemies on the verge of defeat in the traditional US geopolitical sense. China's economy wasn't doing great. Russia could have been easily pushed to collapse. And we were just like, no, no, no. You know what's better? We're going to shoot ourselves right in the dick. Yeah. We've snatched defeat from the jewels of victory.

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We're going to shoot ourselves in a dick with a bullet that Venmo's both of you guys. It's great. We dug up the Cold War, resurrected it, and then lost. Yeah, just to lose. It's beautiful. It's sort of like Michael Jackson coming back for Space Jam if he had immediately thrown a basketball so hard at a Bugs Bunny skull that it put him in traction. Yeah.

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You just said Jackson. You definitely just said Michael Jackson. You know, leave it in. Different movie may be better, you know? He always performed well around kids, so. Good God. I love Space Jam. It's a good movie. Not anymore. Gareth said it's forever tainted now. So let's talk about the nature of what's actually going down with these tariffs.

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Peace. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Like, that's what makes fascist systems so dangerous. It's not that everyone in this is incompetent. It's that there are sometimes people who are very good organizers and very competent leaders who wind up in these systems. And that's part of what allows the evil to happen.

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Yes. Yes. I mean, fundamentally the, the show is very hopeful because the empire, we number one, we know the empire falls, but number two, we're seeing, we're seeing like why, right. Which is this, this attempt to control everything that inevitably creates more fires than you can put out. Yeah.

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Yep. All right. Well, see you next week.

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Sorry. Garrison. Wow. I interrupted you.

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We have been. We have been.

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You're right. Why don't you introduce erectile dysfunction or whatever we call this?

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I want to get to that, Garrison. Some very important news just dropped from the Real Raw News Twitter account.

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Sharing what you don't want shared, 107,000 followers. Special forces that accompanied President Trump to the Pope's funeral arrested Biden for treason afterward, but it turned out to be a body double. So...

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I desperately want to live in the world where like Joe Biden is a Saw Gerrera type rebel figure, like tricking special forces with body doubles hiding in the mountains.

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Let him have it. Let him have it.

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Let him have it, but make Stanley Tucci do whatever job Stanley Tucci had in Conclave.

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That's right. That's right. Speaking of Lib Cuck... No, speaking of judges who actually exercised a great deal of personal courage, there have been two cases in the last week or so of judges being arrested and charged by the Trump administration with crimes that are all related to aiding and abetting undocumented immigrants, right? Yeah. I'm going to start with the case of Hannah Dugan.

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Hannah Dugan is a Wisconsin... She's a Milwaukee County Circuit Judge. She was sworn in in 2016. So she's, I wanted to say, I wanted to say she hasn't been doing this very long, but no, that's literally like nine years, eight or nine years. So she's been doing this a spell. She's 65 years old. And on March 12th, there was a fellow, Flores Ruiz is his last name.

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He's 30 years old, who was arrested after basically there was a confrontation between him and his roommates for him playing loud music. He was confronted for this on March 12th, and he allegedly fought with a male roommate in the kitchen. A woman, I'm not sure if she was a roommate or just there, tried to break them up. Two women eventually did.

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One of them got elbowed in the arm, allegedly, by Flores Ruiz. One of them was struck. while trying to break them up. It is unclear to the degree to which I'm, I'm hearing a lot of people like I went to the centrist subreddit to see something like, well, a serial abuser of woman, women. That's not really what he's being accused of.

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There was like a fight between him and another guy and it got chaotic. One person elbowed in the arm, uh, I'm sorry, I don't consider that serious domestic abuse unless it's part of a pattern. If it's literally he was fighting a guy and other people swarmed in and some of them, one of them got elbowed.

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I don't know about this woman that he's alleged of striking, like to what degree did he haul off and punch her? Or was it again, there was this chaotic struggle and several people got struck in the middle of it, right? This isn't like great, but this is certainly not the evidence that has been provided by the state here in this case. It's not that this is a serial domestic abuser of women.

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It's a guy who was involved in a chaotic fight with a roommate and a couple of other people, right? So he's being charged with misdemeanor domestic battery as a result of this. He faces up to nine months in prison and a $10,000 fine on each count if convicted, and he has not been convicted and is innocent until proven guilty.

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So he went up in front of Judge Dugan literally a few days ago when we record this. And while she was in the midst of like having this like court meeting, basically, I think this was kind of like a pretrial deal, right, where they're kind of like setting the ground rules of things. She finds out that ICE is in the courthouse and that they are looking for Flores Ruiz.

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And so she gets really angry because based on what Wisconsin has stated, like the actual like law in the state, they are not supposed to be interfering in actual court proceedings. And part of the reason why is that the courts don't want people to be dissuaded from dealing with their state level court issues by the fact that ICE might pick them up. It will stop people.

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It will make people go on the run. It makes it very difficult to enforce law and order.

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Like I've heard at least of some makes it difficult for victims to get any sort of justice. Yes. Yeah. The FBI affidavit describes her as getting visibly angry when immigration shows up and she leaves the bench. Right. And she retreats to her chambers and I think confers with another judge. And she and that judge then approach the arrest team inside the courthouse.

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The affidavit describes her as having a confrontational, angry demeanor. She basically keeps saying, show me your fucking warrant. Right. And they don't have a quote unquote real warrant. Right. They do not have a criminal arrest warrant. They have an administrative warrant, which based on the actual law, they do not. She does not have to let them in. Right.

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That is not the way these things fucking work. right, into the courtroom to like interrupt the proceedings on the strength of this warrant. She tells them to speak with the chief judge and she leads them away from the courtroom, right? Once she sends them to the chief judge's office, this is where the thing that may in fact be criminal behavior comes in.

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Dugan goes back into the courtroom and says something along the lines of, wait, come with me, and then takes Flores Ruiz and his lawyer through the jury door into a non-public area of the courthouse, right? This is not normal behavior, right? And ICE is alleging that this is interfering with the duties of federal agents, right?

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That she's basically hiding an undocumented immigrant who is being actively tracked by ICE, right? And that that is a federal crime. And so that is the situation, right? When it was found out that this was happening, the FBI and ICE arrested her. She has since bailed out. She is facing several federal charges, right? And it's kind of unclear where this case is going to go.

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In terms of her initial behavior, she was absolutely legally in the right. That administrative warrant did not give ICE the right to interrupt the court proceedings. She led them to the chief judge. That was all entirely within the law. We're going to learn how the law adjudicates what she did afterwards, right? Because it's not illegal to lead people through a backdoor.

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It's not a crime to tell people to leave this way. But what may be adjudicated as a crime is that by doing this, she was helping to aid and abet the escape of a fugitive, right? And that is the argument that the federal government is making here.

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Yeah, I believe that's what happened. And that part of it is why I think they picked this case, because they thought it was close enough, on the edge enough, that they could charge a judge. And I think that is the purpose of this more than going after this. And that's why they've been going to these courts, is they have been looking, they've been shopping for a situation like this, right?

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In part because one of the first things that happened is the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended Judge Dugan, right? Because she's been charged with two federal counts. And this is a normal thing. If a judge gets accused of federal crimes, you would, in normal terms, want them to be suspended because

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Because those crimes are probably something like they were selling children to a child prison, which is a thing that happened to Trump. Pardon the judges responsible, right? You would want those people not trying cases while this was going on.

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But what's going to be done here and what's already being done here is that judges that are friendly to and sympathetic to undocumented people and who are not gigantic pieces of shit. And Judge Dugan comes out of a public defense background. This is somebody who defended people like the defendant in this case in her previous life as a lawyer.

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And I think acted with tremendous courage in this situation to try to protect somebody. Very brave. They are going after her because number one, they want to chill other judges from doing this. And number two, they can keep her off the bench, right? And assume she will be replaced with somebody worse or that they will just clog up the system either way of which works in their favor.

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So it will be unclear how things are going to work out in this case. I can't tell you legally what's going to happen. That could go either way. I can tell you, and I think this is a very important point. It's a point Jared Yates Sexton, who's a scholar on fascism, made online about this particular case is we shouldn't give a shit if she broke the law. She did the right thing.

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These people are doing the wrong thing and they need to be stopped. Yeah. And that is my overall stance. What she did was heroic, and we should support her and fuck these people. I don't know. Yep. Yep. I don't have a complicated take on this.

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I have a friend who knows her and says she's a very nice person, and her actions in this case certainly would seem to suggest that she's a very nice, good, courageous person.

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Put rocks in your pockets. There's bodies of whatever.

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Also, I want to say this, too. If you're purely coming at this from a perspective of like, well, I'm still a law and order guy. This also vastly endangers Wisconsin police, because if every undocumented person who gets accused of a crime knows that, well, the instant I'm accused, I'm going to be sent to a fucking concentration camp. Might as well start shooting. Right.

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Yes. So again, you know, that's all I'm saying. That's not my primary concern, but I'm going to make that point.

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Yes. So now back to my fellow New Mexico municipal judge. Actually, I think he was in a magistrate.

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Yeah, county magistrate. Yeah, so he and I, basically the same. So there's this guy, Nancy Kano, who's a former police officer. His wife was a cop. And Joel Kano, who was the Donna Anna County magistrate judge. These two are... Really, you wouldn't have expected what happened from this group. These two are a cop and a judge couple. Radical lefty lunatics.

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Who are wealthy landlords who own at least eight properties. And they hire three men to do like, you know, contracting work. And those men included a guy, Cristian Ortega Lopez, 23 years old, right? Who is a Venezuelan migrant. And first off, because these are cops, a cop and a judge, they like check his papers, which say do not deport, right? Like he is in the system. Not subject to removal.

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This person is not subject to removal, right? Those are on his papers. They check his papers. These three guys work for them for a while and develop a close relationship with the Canos to the point that they refer to them as the boys. And when they get kicked out of their apartment, they let them live with them. I think for free or at least for a nominal fee.

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And as they describe it, they came to consider them part of the family. And there's like photo evidence of that and including photo evidence of them like going to the gun range together as like a family day at the gun range and shooting. And like this guy, Ortega Lopez, like posts pictures of these people and these like family outings on his Facebook.

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Like they really do seem to have all been very close. Yeah. Earlier this year, ICE comes for these guys, the boys, these three dudes who are living on their property in a small guest house on the Kano's property. And they allege Ortega Ortiz to have been a member of Trin de Agua.

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And it's based on, and I hate most of the reporting on this because it's all just like the alleged gang member, alleged Trin de Agua member. And you look at it and say, well, he has tattoos and there's pictures of him with guns. Pictures of him with guns that are legally owned by Americans at a gun range. Yeah.

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Yeah. Nothing illegal with that, but they're like a gang member, photos of guns on his Facebook. Oh my God. So these guys get arrested, right? And it's initially, and this is like a month or so ago, big scandal. Kano resigns from his position as a magistrate, right? And gets permanently barred from serving as a judge in New Mexico, right?

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because these guys had been on his property, even though, again, there's not any evidence that I have seen anywhere that he actually did anything illegal at this point. Now, here's where things get problematic. At this point,

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The boys are being – the government is treating them as people who are here illegally, and they are trying to kick them out, and they are accusing these three guys of being involved in Trinidad. At this point, Nancy Kano provides them with legal assistance in complying with the procedures of their pending immigration cases, right? Mm-hmm. which shouldn't be illegal.

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She's literally helping them abide by the law, right? But there's some other things. So Joel Kano, this is where this guy turns from like fucking married a cop. He's a landlord. He smashes Ortega Lopez's phone. He admits, he's admitted that he's done this. This is not an allegation with a hammer to stop ICE from getting it. So first off-

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based illegal super illegal super illegal but not a like a good person act i would argue um Secondly, Nancy tries to help – and this is, I think, a grayer area – tries to help Ortega-Lopez delete his Facebook account. And I don't actually think there's any evidence of him doing anything illegal on there.

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I think it's just they knew the photos he posted of him not breaking any laws would be used as an argument that he had. I think that that's defensible in court, although they will allege that it's destruction of the evidence. They may win on that. Breaking the phone is – You know, that's going to be a tough one for them. That's just going to be a tough one for them.

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Now, the Kano's are currently being charged and they have been released. They can't leave the county. There was the prosecutors were attempting to have them separated so that they couldn't talk about the case. But thank God the judge ruling was like, they're married. They have a constitutional right to be together. You don't get to do that.

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But obviously they have to hand in their passports, any guns they'd had, which they seem to have already done. The good news is that these are rich people, right? The judge even makes a comment that these are the wealthiest people I've ever had in my courtroom. So they have the resources to fight this. And again, fucking politics making strange bedfellows.

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Critical support to the landlord-judge-cop couple who tried to protect these immigrants. I don't know, like... Whatever. They did the right thing, you know, in my opinion. Again, not the legal thing. Yeah. And I'm not urging you to follow them in breaking the law.

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I'm making it very clear it is illegal to break the phone of somebody that you know the police are looking for because they've been charged with crimes. That is a crime. Yeah. I'm just saying I think what they did was out of love and brave. Anyway, that's what I got to say. Speaking of love, I love these ads.

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We will throw the high dollar lawyers that we have threatened into working for us at these states and municipalities.

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Yeah.

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It's giving them permanent brain damage. It is life altering their ability to think in a way that may never be recoverable for a lot of people.

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There's data on this. The AI companies have, Microsoft has data on this. It damages people. It needs to be banned.

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We're back, and wait, what's that? Do you hear the dulcet tones of an angel? Sorry, don't lie.

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Yes, yes. I'm really looking forward. Desecrating the temple. We're working on a cover of Lost in the Supermarket where there's just nothing in the supermarket because of the tariffs. It's actually very easy to find my way around in the supermarket now because there's nothing on sale.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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Whoa! Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about, you know, it, the happening here, which is what we all, what we all, you know, we know what's happening. Yeah.

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Yeah, these are our May Day episodes, and nothing could make more sense on May Day than talking about Andor, the new season of the show Andor. If you're not familiar with Andor, it is a Star Wars show. And if you don't like Star Wars, or you just don't like the Disney Star Wars, if you've not enjoyed a Star Wars since you were six, this is not that kind of thing.

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This is a treatise on how revolutions do, can, and should work. written by people who have a deep bed of knowledge, including a degree of on-the-ground knowledge of what some of this looks like. And it is an immensely important piece of media to be getting out right now. And we'll start by saying, Disney, evil, bad corporation. I'm not saying pay them for Disney+. Torrents exist.

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I don't care how you get this. And you know what? I'll say this. I suspect the people making Andor don't really care how you get this. This has been the most financially successful show in generations. Fuck it. Don't pay Disney money if you don't want to. I have no issue with that. I don't know whose login I'm using, and I haven't for years. Garrison can vouch for that. Just watch it.

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This is a podcast about the current season of Andor, which is coming out in three episode blocks every Tuesday. The second three episodes, so we're now up to six episodes, came out yesterday as we record this, Tuesday of this week. And there's two more weeks of Andor coming. So this episode, we're going to be talking about episodes one through three. We should probably start with a little...

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If you haven't watched it, go watch it. Just watch season one, and then you can watch season two and listen along with us. If you're a crazy person who's not going to do that, we'll summarize season one for you, which is that there's this guy who grew up on a planet that was destroyed by the Empire.

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He essentially lived as a hunter-gatherer until the war came to him, and he was forced out of his home. and grows up very angry, is taken in by some people who are kind of like petty criminals and petty, almost petty rebels, you know, but not in the rebel alliance sense, just in the, well, we're going to commit some crimes around the edges and try to get by.

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And the show is about this guy getting inducted into a revolutionary organization run by a man named Luthan that is very, that is simultaneously very centralized around him and also very decentralized, and that it's primarily him

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Arming and getting information and attempting to direct cells that are themselves autonomous and often in conflict with each other, which is very realistic to how things like this start on a historical level. Everything that's happening in Andor is based in real history.

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Tony Gilroy, who is the showrunner, has stated that the kind of bank robbing years of Joseph Stalin were one influence behind this. But there are a lot you can see. And in fact, there's a little bit of Portland at the end of season one. There's a number of things that have influenced this show. A lot of moments in history.

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Yes, was an influence on this. Yes. So that's all to set this up. We're now going to talk about what happens in in episodes one, two and three of season two. You want to summarize some gear?

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Yeah, so what's happening is these minerals are necessary to collect the system that makes the Death Star's big planet-destroying gun work. But at this point, basically no one knows that in the Imperial intelligence. Yeah. And they're being told that it's part of an energy independence project. Yeah.

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Yes. I want to talk about the scene where they talk about clearing out Gorman because when they talk about mining it for this mineral that's necessary to make the Death Star, they're talking about basically doing deep fracking at the core of the planet that is going to make it uninhabitable, right?

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Like they're basically tearing out the core of this world that produces high quality textiles, right? Like it's kind of a luxury goods industry.

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exporter that's really all they make there's these spiders there that make a nice kind of silk that's what the planet does and it's got this population of people who are used to being given a lot of autonomy because they make this very this nice this like luxury product that all of the rich people like right so that the folks running the republic and in the early years when there was still more the empire was still more on the republican side still people didn't want to fuck with them too much

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Because they make a luxury good, right? There was a massacre there kind of early on in the Empire when Tarkin landed a cruiser on a bunch of protesters killing them. But other than that, it's been pretty quiet for a while. There is like a small and not super competent or armed rebel cell starting up on the planet.

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And they have this big meeting, the Empire does, where everybody gathers at a castle with the guy who's in charge of building the Death Star to talk about how to clear off this planet. The meeting itself and this part of the episode is based off of the Vonsay Conference, which was a conference held in 1942 by Reinhard Heydrich and kind of managed by Adolf Eichmann to plan the Holocaust.

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This is where they actually sat down and talked about how are we going to build death camps? How are the death camps going to operate? How will we evacuate people to the death camps? All of that, right? There was a meeting. A bunch of guys showed up. There are minutes of the meeting. Tony has stated, if you've watched, there's a great TV movie.

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It's like 20 years old at this point called Conspiracy. It stars Kenneth Branagh as Reinhard Heydrich, who was the architect, who was like the guy running the Holocaust initially. It stars Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichmann, an incredible Eichmann, by the way. And this scene is deeply influenced by that movie, right?

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There was another German movie also that like the movie with Branagh was based off of. But Tony Gilroy has said that that movie was an influence and that this is based on the Vance conference. And there's a couple of lines that are almost word for word.

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One of the big differences is there's a point at which they bring in a couple of PR agents who are outside of the empire that's like an outside PR corporation.

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Yeah, well, I think they're an outside contractor who does marketing normally and is doing propaganda, if I'm remembering right.

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Their job is to put out propaganda that makes the Gormans look arrogant and unloyal and bad to everyone else so that when they're massacred, no one will care.

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And she's sort of being made the Eichmann of the Gorman project.

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Yeah. What I really appreciate about this scene is the degree to which it shows, number one, how information is siloed in a situation like this, how people are on a neat, like this room is informed at the start, whoever your boss is, if they're not in the room, they don't know about this.

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And you don't tell them. Like we do not want- This is the tightest of closed circles. We are doing a genocide and we're not talking about it to other people.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, he can read minds, so I assume he's been able to, like, glean some things, but...

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And again, this isn't like a massive population. So they're viewing this primarily as like a PR problem. So both you need to get out messaging that these people are arrogant and bad so that nobody supports them when we start killing them. And we need a terror cell that can be trusted to carry out attacks against the empire that will justify what we need to do. Right.

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So that that's the point of this meeting. It's very well shot. It's very well done. There's a lot of understanding of like just history in it that I appreciated as a Holocaust nerd. That's a bad way to frame it. But yeah, that is a bad way to frame it.

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Anyway, if you've watched these episodes and you loved them and you found that scene chilling, go watch Conspiracy with Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci. Oh, the Tucci. The Tucci. The Tucci playing Eichmann Garrison.

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With an actor like that that I've really enjoyed, I always am like white-knuckling it when I decide to Google that. And I was pleasantly surprised with the Tucci. All right. That's what I got here.

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And is making kind of vague threats about, well, maybe I'll talk to someone about what I know, right?

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A literal circular firing squad. It's beautiful.

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I never liked this guy. People are getting in trouble for being bad. I'm going to just accuse this guy of some shit. Personality conflict stuff.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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No, no.

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No, and the leader's dead, right? like the leader got killed in this ambush, right? There's, you hear about her. She's named in the first season, my pay. She's one of when, when Forrest Whitaker in season one gives that very famous rant where he's talking about all, because he's the anarchist militant leader. And he's talking about all the different groups. So,

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They're lost. All of them. Only I have clarity of purpose. He talks. He names my pay along with the other different. So she's clearly a fairly well-known. I think she's a republic restorationist kind of person. So basically a social Democrat militant leader. And her group's just gotten fucked and she is dead. So he knows of them, but he doesn't know them.

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It's it's it's why I mean, and it shows the depth of knowledge and the the the sheer amount of understanding that the people writing this have of how movements go. Again, it's granular and it's to a degree like based in some real experiences that some people on this team have had. Like, you know, you don't understand stuff like this otherwise.

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Very, very good stuff. And it's... Oh, God, it starts... You know, we didn't say this with episode one. Episode one starts with another beautiful Cassian speech when he's... Because he's infiltrating as a TIE fighter pilot this base where he's stealing an experimental craft. And there's a young woman there who's like a technician who is his in, right?

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And who has clearly just made her break with the Empire. And... She meets him briefly. She's like, sorry, I know I'm not supposed to look at you. I'm not supposed to talk to you.

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And he grabs her and he's like, no, this is what it's all about, is this moment of connection between us where we both, after all of this being frightened and alone in the dark, we're together and we know that we're doing something. This is everything.

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fucking I'm just like my mind is blown that this shit is just like appearing in mass media where people who aren't from these movements are just like encountering this and the reason why again when I say Andor is like historically profitable after the first season every year afterwards for a couple of years the number of people watching it increased which by which I mean each year after it came out more people watched it than had watched it in the year it came out and that doesn't happen

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to tv yeah it simply is not how television works which is why disney was like here is a quarter of a billion dollars make and or season two and this is the first time star wars has like visually looked good in like a decade yeah oh my god and it looks incredible it looks gorgeous gorgeous

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Yeah. Just beautiful. Okay. Speaking of beautiful set design. All right, we're back.

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And the people on this planet are Cassian's friends from season one who he lived with, like the guy who was effectively his big brother. Brasso.

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You're goddamn right he bricks a cop. And then Bix, who is his girlfriend, partner type person, kind of off and on. And then because of her connections to him, gets horribly tortured in season one.

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Like, he brought in the fucking cops. Like, he threatened them. He has to die. That's the way these movements work.

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He dies, but it's like a believable move someone would make under fire. Yeah. But like, man, there's tall fucking grass. Just drop. Go to the ground. Don't get on a motorbike while you're above the fucking crops. Like, get on the ground.

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People do stuff like that all the time in gunfights. Yes. So it's one of those where I was like, no! But also like, yep, yep, that's what happens.

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We know we need a bunch of you. We're not here to arrest everyone. Right. Because we need the crops from this planet. But I am going to arrest some people and I can make sure it's not you if you go on a quote unquote date with me.

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Fuck, a big part of how the major green organizations that were dismantling the Green Scare were taken down was through members of these different groups who had been doing direct action who were misogynists, right? That is always an easy, easy way to break into and shatter a movement is find the guy who's got that going on about him and turn him.

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yeah it's it's it's beautiful stuff the the quality of the writing like everyone was worried who loved and or season one like oh fuck uh how could it how could they possibly how could they possibly compare with season one and uh it's just getting better it's just they fucking did it again somehow you crazy bastards you did it again

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She is not just a useless lib, right? She's critical, right?

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Now, the other thing, though, that is going on in this scene, it's not purely these are the wealthy partying as these nightmare raids go down. The other thing that's going on is Mon Mothma is emotionally accepting this guy who was my lover for a long time and who is a dear friend of mine is going to be killed. And I have accepted the necessity.

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And the only thing for me to do right now is to get so drunk that I can't feel it.

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The best, the best villain in star Wars, Darth Vader. Ain't got shit. Not nearly as scary as Cyril Karn's mother. No, I would take him in a fight over her any day.

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See, I had a very different interpretation of that. Really? Because number one, she is not on board. She's going to be doing part of the Gorman genocide. She doesn't like the plan. She doesn't like that she's involved. This is not what she wants to be doing. She wants to be hunting Luthor. Yes, agreed. And I think part of it is that

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She doesn't like, and I think this will become increasingly clear, she's not thrilled that Cyril's going to get involved in this shit because it's dangerous. What I thought they were kind of showing, we haven't seen her, like, abuse him. I don't think we've seen her be mean to him other than, like, initially, before they were dating, she didn't take him seriously until he saved her life.

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they're awkward people but like they're I one of the things I appreciated about this is that like she is a monster we see her doing exclusively evil things and then Cyril because his mom is so cruel to him does the most relatable thing anyone does in this show and goes and lies down on his bed and has a panic attack in the middle of their dinner and that's when she and that's when she says look bitch this is how shit's in it she's being a good girlfriend in that moment she's getting his mom off his

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I definitely interpret this scene differently.

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What I like about the way the Empire is written is that they're not caricatures, but not in a way where they're being like, well, the Empire's got a point. But in the way that like, yeah, These are people, and I understand how folks, why folks would want to be a part of this system outside of just like the cruelty that it does.

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Like Partagas, who is like the leader of the ISB section that we're watching, is a really good boss. He listens to his subordinates. He tells them when their ideas suck. He does not spare their feelings, but he rewards initiative and he's willing to like, be proven wrong or argued with. Like when people are forceful against him and make a good point, he's like, all right, well, let's try it.

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And I love showcasing that in the same way that like, if you talk to people who worked for like, work for companies like Raytheon, they'll be like, yeah, it was a nightmare evil that we were making and like a very healthy working environment. And that is often the case with some of the most evil organizations on the planet. Like people who are very good at managing people often wind up

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And Mars has been an easy way for him to do that over the years. Overall, I'd say the document is fairly thorough in its layout of the neoreactionary ecosystem and the actual plan currently being acted to end U.S. democracy. It includes a section that lists several of the earliest known Doge employees, and it quotes extensively from Yarvin and somewhat less extensively from Land.

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The paper's ultimate conclusion is that Musk is using this moment to turn himself into the kind of unitary, all-powerful executive that Yarvin longs for. This is an executive who rules alongside a largely ceremonial president, as well as courts and a legislative system that are equally ceremonial.

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After laying out the bulk of the actual threat, the article promises that, quote, section three articulates what Congress and other actors can do in order to stop this threat. However, the document in its present form does not include any section three or any comprehensive list of solutions Congress and other actors might carry out in order to stop the present assault on democracy.

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And perhaps there's a later version of the document that I don't have access to that includes that. Perhaps this is just a statement that wasn't edited out. I have to say, as heartening as I find the way in which this document talks about the threat that we're facing and the fact that I think it's overall good that people in positions of influence around the DNC are talking about this stuff.

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It's also kind of perfect that at the end, they're like, hey, you know, don't worry. We've included some tips on how to defeat these guys. And then they just don't. You know, if the situation weren't so dire, it would be a lot funnier. But unfortunately, it is pretty dire.

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Now, if you want to take a look at the full document itself, it's quite a bit longer than what I've read to you now, but it is really worth reading, especially if you have been hearing about this Curtis Yarvin guy or the NeoReactionaries, and you kind of want to know how this all fits together with what Musk is doing in more detail.

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If you go to my substack at ShatterZone, the most recent article is the text of this, and I include a couple of different points, links to the full document, which I have uploaded to Scribd. And you can read the whole thing if you want. It has not been altered since I have received it. And again, yeah, I think it's worth getting out there and spreading to more people. So that's the episode.

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And boy, if you thought we had E.D. before, do we have E.D. now.

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We're going to keep working at it. I'm also looking to get us a penis pump sponsorship. Speaking of penis pumps, let's talk about the Germans. So Germany had its election very recently after their most recent coalition collapsed. The way their government works is that periodically governments... Can't continue being governments. And so they have to have a very sudden election.

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I'm not going to explain it much more than that. But the the actual results of the election were pretty interesting. Right. The primary winner was off day AFD alternative for Germany. would be kind of the closest English translation of the name of the party. This is a far right party.

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It is primarily popular in East Germany now, but it has surged massively after years and years of being decidedly on the political fringe. one of the reasons it has always been on the political fringe is that German parties, both centrists, conservatives, and the left have had a tacit agreement since the end of World War II called the Cordon Sanitaire. It's not just Germany.

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This is the thing that used to be present in all of Europe. And basically the gist of the Cordon Sanitaire is you don't form a coalition because these are parliamentary democracies, right? So Usually no one party has 50% or more of the vote. So, you know, a party with 20 and a party with 15 and a party with eight, and they form a coalition government.

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And the norm for up until now, and thankfully is still the normal, we'll talk about that, is that you don't coalition with AFD, which is a part of why that and kind of lingering stigma about the Nazis exists.

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kept them from being a major force in German politics until, you know, over the last eight or so years, they have grown substantially to the point where in this recent election, they doubled their support from around 10% to a little over 20%. Yeah. This makes them, they're not the largest single block in the German, in the Reichstag. They're number two though, right?

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They are number two, I believe. Which sucks. Yeah. Yeah, it's not great. Yeah, the CDU is still significantly larger. Yeah. Although not like overwhelmingly larger, to be clear. So basically right now the CDU, which is the centrist party, and it's kind of like center right, a little center right, has 208 seats in the Reichstag. AFD has 152 seats. The Social Democrats have 120. The Greens have 85.

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The left party has 64. So AFD is a minority in the government compared to all of the people who didn't vote for AFD. But the rate at which they're increasing is a serious problem, especially since most Germans list immigration as their primary voting concern right. This most recent election had unusually high voter turnout. 2021 election, 76% of the country or so voted.

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More than 82% of the country voted in this most recent election. So the fact that you have record high turnout and AFD doubling its support is deeply chilling. Now, it's not 100% bad news because one of the other stories here is the new left party. Well, not super new, but the left party, which is kind of came out of East Germany's Communist Party, massively increased their support, too.

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And they actually, for the first time, like very significantly increased their share of the vote, which had been under this kind of 5% threshold before and is now at about 8.8%. So they went. Up by an amount actually is not like as much as AFD went up, but like in terms of a percentage of their prior vote, it's a similar increase.

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So there's another party that had significant gains in this, and it's kind of a newer party called the BSW, which is you could say they do a little bit of like a red brown campaign. alliance kind of thing where there's some like left wing messaging in what they're saying, but they're also like super anti immigrant. And they're not, you know, it's not kind of like to the extent that the AFD is.

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But when they came onto the scene, they were expected by some people to pull votes away from the AFD this election. And that's really not what happened. And in fact, a lot of the votes they pulled were from social Democrats and the left parties. So that was one of the, you know, it's because the way the parliamentary system works, which is more rational than our system.

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This didn't like hand the whole election to off day. Again, this is the benefit of a system like the Germans had, which is pretty explicitly set up to make it a lot harder for a right wing dictator to get in again. But it is interesting to me that that kind of messaging works.

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I mean, it's further kind of evidence of what's been happening everywhere, which is when your party positions itself to try to win over far right votes by kind of mixing in, well, okay, what if we did some sort of liberal lefty policies, but we also got really racist? Yeah. You don't take votes from the far right, but you do wind up pulling the worst people from the left. Yeah. Yeah.

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And yeah, I guess that's kind of like the broad strokes. Now, like this is bad, although it's also not comprehensively a nightmare. One of the things that's kind of hot, I don't know, positive may not be the right way, but interesting to me is if you looked at the 2021 election maps of the strongest party by constituency in the 2021 election.

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And I found a good article, German election results explained in graphics on dw.com. If you just Google that, you'll find it in 2021 off day, obviously like the whole Northeast was, you know, their territory, but they also had strong inroads into the Northwest parts of the country. Right.

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You know, primarily like rural areas and the like, but like there was a, there was a lot of red on that map in the Northwest portion of Germany and, In the new election, that's all black, which is the CDU, right? Which means while Ofde's representation in the Reichstag and number of voters increased substantially, their geographical reach

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has been kind of cauterized, would be a fair way of saying it, which is interesting to me. Hard to say too much, like, does that mean, you know, I think some of what has happened here, because it's important both to note that this is bad, it's bad that the Nazis doubled their share of the vote, but also it was expected to be a little worse than it was.

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You know, there's some evidence that after J.D. Vance made his speech introducing AFD, their polling started to freeze a little bit. And it may be the fact, because a lot of older voters came in, and they seem to have primarily gone with the CDU, with this sort of center-right party. So one story here is you could maybe look at it as a lot of older, more conservative Germans who...

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are also old enough to really not like the idea of the AFD, came out and voted for, you know, the center-right party in order to kind of cut off their power. The other thing, though, that's kind of a lot less optimistic is that AFD is most popular among people under 30 who widely don't view it as an extremist party, which is deeply, deeply concerning.

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Yes. Yes.

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Yes. They did extremely well with young men and unemployed young men in particular. And that's, that's all deeply concerning. So, you know, there's a few things going on here, all of which are very interesting to me, but the, the power off day continues to have with younger, really young Germans is frightening. Um,

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That said, there's also some evidence here that the situation in the United States has galvanized a chunk of the German voting populace to attempt to stop off day. And kind of one of the positive things that came out is prior to this election, there was a lot of talk about whether or not the CDU would choose to coalition with the AFD and thus end the cordon sanitaire.

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And to make a long story short, they're not gonna do that. They're looking to coalition with the social Democrats, which is a good thing. It doesn't mean no one will do that in the future. And unfortunately, a majority of German voters suspect AFD will be in a coalition by 2030, but it hasn't happened yet. And that's as good as things get right now. And that's what I got to say about Germany.

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Yes. And this is the other thing that's kind of worth noting. That kind of like red-brown party, in addition to being kind of pro-social programs, anti-immigration. They're also very anti-United States.

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So that may explain some of that too.

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And this is part of the story that is really interesting right now, where we've talked a lot about the transnational fascist coalition. You know, the fact that Trump and his people have had the quasi dictator of Hungary, you know, over at Mar-a-Lago and have repeatedly cited him as an inspiration for how to take and centralize power.

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You know how close Bolsonaro was in the last Trump administration. Like, Obviously, the Republican Party's increasing closeness and embrace of Putin's Russia. But what also is happening right now is people like countries that had been heading in a very in a more authoritarian right wing direction.

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turning around in part due to the war in Ukraine and turning away from kind of the international right-wing movement, Poland being the best example, right? Where Polish politics have changed substantially in the last several years. And a big part of that is the war in Ukraine.

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And there are a lot of Poles who I think otherwise would have been more on board for a lot of the socially conservative shit who are like, well, but all these fuckers are pro-Russia and we're Poland. Like, no. All right.

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Oh. And again, if your power is soft right now, you might consider trying HIMSS or one of our other sponsors.

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Sorry, James. We needed to do that.

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And at least one person has died.

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Yeah. I mean, that's just what's reported. Most of what happens there does not get out.

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They are. They are. They are. And they hate it when you say that.

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It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.

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Oh, God. And look, I got to say, I'm just glad there's an adult in the room now, you know? Thank God.

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Garrison, I disagree, and that's because I have professional solidarity. Anything that's good for podcasters in general is good for the country.

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All right. I mean, I do think it's funny that because of the number of podcasters that have been hired, there have been statements by people in the administration that like there aren't going to be any more conservative podcasters because we're giving them all government jobs. Well, that's more hymns advertising dollars for us. That's right. That's right.

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I feel like this is going to be huge for us.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

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So I'm going to show you the book, and then there's just an interesting section...

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. This is Robert Evans, and I have an episode for you. It's also an article I wrote for our sub stack, Shatter Zone. So I'm just going to get into that. Since February 5th, 2025, a document has been circulating among Democratic Party staffers and liberal think tank experts warning about Curtis Yarvin and the Silicon Valley-led coup to end U.S.

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democracy. The document is titled The Imminent Neo-Reactionary Threat to the American Republic. It opens with a statement that the brief was, "...iteratively and collectively compiled by a broad, bipartisan, and decentralized network of experts who wish to remain anonymous due to concerns about being targeted." The full document is here. The table of contents is split into three main areas.

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One, the new shape of threats to the American Republic. Two, understanding recent events in the context of threats to the American Republic. And three, a list of appendices.

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The title of the actual file when I received it was Evidence Brief for Journalists, and the introduction describes its aim as, "...explaining the nature of the current political crisis to journalists who are attempting to inform the public." However, I spoke with two sources who are members of these groups and received the document.

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They told me that to their knowledge, the document was not mostly spread to journalists, but instead among networks of think tank employees and DNC staffers, people you might refer to broadly as policy wonks. One source I interviewed explained, "...it is a thing for think tanks to frame overviews for laypeople as briefs for journalists or Congress, see the IPCC reports.

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Part of me thinks the framing for journalists is just a shortcut for, this is somewhat specialized knowledge broken down." The paper opens by acknowledging the scope of the executive power grab being perpetuated under President Trump and the destabilization wrought by Elon Musk and his Doge team. It then notes, the threat is an order of magnitude beyond just a presidential power grab.

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It states that Musk is tied to a, quote, broader group of Silicon Valley tech elites, including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen. Curtis Yarvin is labeled as a thought leader in this group, quote, called the neo-reactionaries. I'll stop here to note that this summary is accurate enough for mass consumption, but I have some issues with it.

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Musk probably would not label himself a neo-reactionary, and he doesn't have much of a history with Yarvin. Peter Thiel does, but it's more a relationship of patronage than mutual influence. It would be more accurate to say that Thiel and Andreessen find Yarvin useful because of his success in spreading to a lot of young techie kids the idea that tech CEOs should run the world.

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Musk, I feel, has largely jumped on this bandwagon with the neo-reactionaries because those tech kids are useful foot soldiers. Yarvin's ideas about retiring all government employees and destroying the independent media and academia are convenient for Musk's own ambitions. This context may be unnecessary for explaining the overall danger of the neo-reactionaries and Musk to regular people.

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But I also think it's a mistake to credit Yarvin with more power than he holds. The document refers to him as the leader of the neo-reactionary movement. And I think that gets across kind of the wrong idea about how all of this works. That said, the document does do a pretty good job of summing up the threat that we face.

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Quote, the neo-reactionaries have openly stated their aims to destroy the nation state and the constitutional order and replace them with a newly privately owned corporate state to be run by a CEO dictator. Citizens become subjects owned by the state, state slaves in Yarvin's terms, because everything rot That last quote is also one of Yarvin's.

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From here, the document argues that Musk and his team are attempting to bring about this dystopia by taking over the quote, Another Yarvin quote. These would be the data and communication systems that Doge is trying to centralize in its unaccountable hands. Next, the authors of this document make a call to action.

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Quote, the most dramatic reversals of democratic breakdown, 1977 India, 2022 Brazil, 2023 Poland, have been accomplished by radically large tent cross-ideological coalitions with little in common except a desire for the continuation of a constitutional order.

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Evidence suggests that the present threat to American democracy is dire enough that such a broad tent approach focused on Musk and his associates may be required. And I think this is the most interesting and hopeful part of the whole document for me. For one thing, I believe it does accurately state what's needed in the present moment, a popular front against autocracy and dictatorship.

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I would add to their list of relevant examples of popular fronts, the original, which is France from 1934 to 1938. So it's heartening to see evidence that this understanding has started to grow within DNC policy circles and the people around them.

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The source who sent me this document in the first place described themselves as a member of, quote, a few unofficial networks of climate activists who are high ranking in the government and policy think tank circles. They noted that these are normally, quote, very milquetoast lib spaces, but, quote, they're being radicalized rapidly. Both sources I interviewed for this requested anonymity.

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The second person I talked to with gave an explicit reason. They stated, quote, I've suspected for a while a lot more things in DNC stuff was compromised than people were comfortable with. In other words, they believe the Republican Party has spies within the DNC and people they know have made statements to that effect.

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They were worried that these, quote, GOP moles might reveal their identity, but more so they were worried that these moles might have planted the document itself and put false information inside it with the goal of provoking a reaction from Democrats that would be useful politically to Republicans. I do think this caveat is worthwhile. It's certainly not impossible.

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And I think the frank admission that the DNC likely has Republican spies inside it is also really worth stating. But I should note that when it comes to the actual accuracy of this document, I don't really see much to take issue with. I've spent more time than most people studying Curtis Yarvin and the neo-reactionaries.

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I would not describe myself as a top expert in the matter, but I do have a good base of knowledge here, and nothing that I've read in this document struck me as obviously false or incorrect, nor did the overall tone seem hysteric or unreasonable.

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So I asked my sources if over the last month they'd seen more people talking about Yarvin in their daily lives within sort of the circles that they work in and around, because again, they communicate with a lot of DNC staffers and politicians. They said, respectively, no and, quote, that's kind of one of the odd things, to be frank. This guy, Yarvin, is being brought to big events in D.C.

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He's been referenced by Bannon and Vance. I have heard his talking points come from Republican mouths, but he's largely not tracked. That concern comports with some of fears that I had late last year about Yarvin and the neoreactionaries. Namely, I had believed for some time that Yarvin and the people kind of aligned with him, largely a lot of these Silicon Valley folks with money.

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had become much more influential among Trump and his tight inner circle than was widely understood at the time. Ultimately, I wrote and researched two episodes of Behind the Bastards because I thought it was valuable to bring more attention to the subject.

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I really had a kind of a gut feeling that this was going to become much more relevant very soon, which is why I picked it as the topic for the episode we did with Ed Helms, who's by a pretty good margin, the biggest celebrity we've had on the show so far. And I hope that that would help kind of get what we were talking about out to a wider audience. And it did. The episodes did very well.

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I think between YouTube and our downloads and the podcast, we're probably at something like a million listens for them at this point. But our listener base is a mix of leftists and progressive liberals, right? Their interests are not representative of the Democratic Party at large.

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It is noteworthy and perhaps even important that influential individuals in the policy space with connections to Democratic politicians and the DNC as an organization have started a grassroots effort to spread the word about Yarvin as a threat. And that's what this document represents.

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It's even more noteworthy that this document is unsparing about the danger and the fact that a clock is currently ticking over all of our heads. Here's another quote.

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If non-governmental actors, by which we mean unelected, unratified, unvetted, untrained, unconstrained, and or unaccountable actors gain access to key digital infrastructure, they could seize control of critical functions of government in ways that will be difficult or impossible to reverse. And speaking of things that can't be reversed, My love for our sponsors. We're back.

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So to continue from this document, there's a section next titled National Security, and the focus shifts from Yarvin and his neoreactionaries to Musk, who it claims, quote, poses a uniquely significant security risk.

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This, in its argument, is because Musk and Doge espouse, quote, anti-constitutional ideologies and, quote, are under the influence of America's principal foreign adversaries, China and Russia. It goes on at some length about Musk's foreign business interests and how they might compromise him.

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Now, I don't disagree that Musk is compromised, but I see his actions as very much consistent with those of a man seizing power for himself. I do understand why people speaking to an audience that is largely, you know, when it's bipartisan, it's folks who are kind of more on the centrist side of things in the policy space and otherwise largely a lot of like,

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Democratic Party employees and politicians, I understand why you focus on the China and Russia of it all with them. But when it comes to both accurately stating the threat and getting a lot of people to care, I really don't think that's the right strategy to take. I think it's an issue to focus popular messaging around how this all empowers, quote, America's principal foreign adversaries, because

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Most Americans don't really think that way or particularly care about that. And beyond that, the larger issue is that the primary adversary Musk has empowered is not, in fact, the Russian or Chinese governments. It's himself. And he personally, as an individual, is currently a greater threat to every citizen of the United States than any foreign government. I think that's undeniable.

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And I think, again, it's an error not to frame it that way. The next section of the paper lays out the definition of a coup. Quote, "...in essence, a coup is a, number one, rapid seizure of state power by unelected actors, who acquire that power by, two, seizing critical government infrastructure, and three, weaponizing it to neutralize legitimate government actors' efforts to stop them.

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The unelected actors then use this power to, four, remake the rules of the political game in a way that cannot easily be checked or undone through democratic processes." Now, it argues convincingly that all four of these steps are underway now.

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One thing I found compelling is the way at which this document recognizes the threat that cryptocurrency represents right now and how it can and will be used by the new regime to cement their power in ways that sidestep the present legal system. Quote, I think that's a real thing to be concerned with, and I also think it's very clearly part of the goal of this project.

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Now, next we have a summary of the neo-reactionary agenda, which lists some additional names among the Silicon Valley elite currently championing an overthrow of democracy. These include David Sachs, Blasji Srinivasan, and J.D. Vance. Also name-dropped is a political theorist named Nick Land, who is in fact referenced twice in this paper.

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He is quoted directly as having said in his paper, The Dark Enlightenment, quote, for the hardcore neo-reactionaries, democracy is not merely doomed, it is doom itself. Fleeing it approaches an ultimate imperative.

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Landis had a huge impact on a lot of these guys, although he's not really a Yarvin-like figure, as in he's not this kind of guy who sees himself as, or I think really wants to be, a shadowy puppet master orchestrating the overthrow of democracy from behind the scenes. He's...

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really someone stating what he believes to be kind of inevitable concepts and realities about our present historical moment that happen to comport with a lot of the things that these guys believe. Now, the authors next lay out Yarvin's concept of the butterfly revolution, which is based on an essay he wrote in 2022, in which he laid out how a full reboot of the U.S.

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government could be accomplished. Quote, Yarvin's seven-part butterfly revolution has been roughly summarized as follows. Number one, have Trump run for president on the platform of getting rid of an efficient system. Number two, once he wins, purge the bureaucracy, rage, retire all government employees. Number three, ignore the courts through declaring states of emergency.

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Number four, co-opt Congress. Number five, centralize the police, federalize the National Guard, create a national police force that absorbs local ones. Number six, shut down the elites, the media and the universities who make up the cathedral. Number seven, get people on the streets whenever there is any obstruction by a government agency.

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And obviously, all of that we've seen Trump and his people make moves towards in the last couple of weeks, right? And that's, in fact, what the next chunk of the document is. Subsequent pages summarize the first days of the Trump administration and Doge activity, and they show how it comports with the butterfly revolution blueprint.

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Now, we've all lived that in real time, so I'm not going to summarize their arguments here. So the document ends with a section on actions and rhetoric to watch. Those are listed as, quote, government contracts, which fund many of Musk's companies at present. And the next is Greenland and Mars. Quote, a core tenant of neoreactionary ideology is the replacement of nation states with network states.

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But states require territory. Technocracy, Inc., a predecessor to the neoreactionary movement whose one-time director was Elon Musk's grandfather, proposed a North American technate where the entire continent of North America would be united under one technocratic superstate. There is currently a Peter Thiel-backed network state project called Praxis in Greenland.

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Musk's public statements about colonizing Mars can also be read as part of a territorial project. Lastly, it lists crypto, which the authors primarily seem to fear as a method of deniably bribing Trump. Now, I think most of this is pretty credible, although I feel differently about Musk's talk about colonizing Mars. I think that's been more about PR than anything.

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I do think there's a good chance he's just delusional enough to think that that's something feasible on any kind of close in time frame that we start building persistent colonies on Mars. I think the science suggests that if that ever happens, it won't be anytime soon. And I think he knows that. I think he largely understands hype well and how to use it.

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Yeah, and you should know we'll be making a number of references to a show you haven't watched called The Newsroom. So many references. Just pretend we didn't. Yeah.

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Uh, great. I am going to agitate to replace the Oregon State Capitol with just a statue of a Roman orgy. You know, we don't even need place for the legislators. Just look at the statue and you'll know what to do.

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I mean, part of what I think is happening, and I think this because this was definitely at play in the Alabama ban, is this is, in addition to being an attack on trans people, part of a broader set of messaging towards the parents' rights movement, which very much does not consider 18-year-olds to be adults.

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Well, and it's just signaling to the base, even if it gets stopped. I don't think he cares if... decent chunks of it gets stopped. He tried to do the thing. Yeah, I agree with Robin. He can now shift the blame to someone else. Look, man, I did the executive order, which honestly is what Biden should have done on some stuff, right? Fuck it. Make the statement, you know? Yeah, yeah.

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Like check the signal loop gang. I think I got a plan based on that. We're going to become the first nuclear armed podcasting network.

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The one hour. Our trade war, about the same length as the civil war in Western Yugoslavia.

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And this was Agenda 47 stuff. They've been talking about this for a while.

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Look, the one thing people hate most is changing names. Having the names be changed. Nobody likes that. Yeah, he did Denali as well, right? Yeah, I guess that was changed more recently. But the Gulf of Mexico has been the Gulf of Mexico for longer than America has existed as a country. The United States, right?

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But there was a period where we called it McKinley. No one's ever called it the Gulf of America. Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying the Denali thing is right. I'm just saying, like, that's a much harder sell.

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Yeah, he's doing... Again, I talk about this a lot. Why fascists succeed is that they try. They're constantly reaching for stuff. And oftentimes, they overreach, but nobody pushes back, so they get the thing, right? That's what he's doing here. Do I think that he's...

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willing at this point to commit to a full-scale military invasion and armed occupation of Panama, a thing that could be a real problem for his presidency, right? Like U.S. troops dying in meaningful numbers in attacks in a country that we had no fucking beef with before, that could be a real fucking problem for a guy who ran on the things that he ran on.

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But maybe he gets a bunch of concessions for nothing. It's the same thing with Greenland. You make the push, you try to scare Denmark, you try to scare Greenland and you see if they'll accept something. And then you walk away maybe with a coup and you do it fucking widely enough, you might get something, right? Like that's it. He's always testing his limits. Because that's what they do.

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So Trump has signed an executive order saying that they're going to create a facility capable of storing 30,000 migrants in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. First, we should probably just talk about how realistic this is. If you ever looked at a topographical map of Guantanamo Bay, it's quite a large, like the U.S.

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concession in Cuba is a sizable degree of land, but it's not easy land to build things on, right? Like it's rugged terrain, you would say. So making a camp like this is almost certainly going to be extremely expensive and at least under kind of the weight things currently work. it will probably take a good amount of time to get set up. Like this is not a quick thing.

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This is not an overnight thing. And one thing I want to remind people of is that they have already have expanded a number of camps and facilities in the US to deal with all the migrants they are taking in. So this is not the start. If you want to call this, I think it's fair to call this a plan to start a concentration camp system. That system began.

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And in fact, it started before Trump took office. A decent chunk of it was anticipating him coming into office. But this this is not the first camp.

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And they are. This is a big... Personal frustration to me, I'm seeing a ton of people going online and comparing this to the Nazi concentration camp, hereafter referred to as the KZ system, right? There's one post I came across on Twitter where a person who I'm not going to name just to not cause a bunch of bullshit for them. Time from taking office to opening a mass detention camp.

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Mussolini, eight years. El Algella and others, Libya. Hitler, 51 days. Dachau, Germany. Trump, nine days. That's fucking horseshit. Yes, Dachau took longer to establish. Dachau was not the first concentration camp. The concentration camp system in Germany under the Nazis started as soon as the Nazis took power with a series of what were called wild concentration camps.

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And this involved a huge number of people, largely political enemies of the regime, members of the opposition party, being taken into custody, beaten, tortured, and stored in a 200,000 people were taken into custody under the wild concentration camp system in 1933, the first year that Germans were in power. These are not comparable systems.

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That does not mean that I don't believe what Trump is doing is a concentration camp. It is a concentration camp made in the model of the American system. This is part of the American history of concentration camps, which goes back something like 200 years, right, to the I mean, we were one of the first countries to employ concentration camps.

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The concentration camp as a concept began with what were called Reconcentrados in Cuba at the behest of a Spanish general fighting an insurgency. There were U.S. officers embedded there. They came back and those tactics were adapted for our wars with Native American tribes on the frontiers and the plains. General Sherman was one of the very first Americans to carry out concentration camps.

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And what we are seeing here is part of America's tradition with concentration camps. It is not part of the German tradition with concentration camps. And you're going to be mistaken about how this is going to proceed and what the dangers are. Because I do not think the dangers at this point are that we build a death factory capable of incinerating a million people in less than a year.

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That's not the threat. The threat is huge numbers of people are taken into custody and stored in places that are not safe, that do not have good hygiene, that do not have good food standards. And a significant number of those people will die or suffer permanent physical injury, but it won't look like Auschwitz.

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And if that's what people are expecting, they'll be like, well, maybe this isn't that bad. Maybe this isn't a concentration camp after all. So it's important to get things right, both for that reason and because it's also disrespectful to the people who died during the fucking Holocaust to be like, yeah, Trump's a lot worse than Hitler.

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I think we're done.

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Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

Behind the Bastards

Bonus: The Bastards of Oprah

It's a perfect plan. So, yeah. So I can't blame the college for this. I can't blame the guy for funding it. It's a reasonable thing. Why not? You know what? That's kind of my attitude is why the fuck not. And that's more or less what the dean of faculty of medicine at the college said. Like, all right, well, we're not paying for it. Why not give it a shot?

Behind the Bastards

Bonus: The Bastards of Oprah

That said, a lot of medical professionals were really angry about the idea. Dr. Victor Herbert, a Columbia Medical School graduate and a professor of medicine at Mount Sinai and a board member of the National Council Against Health Fraud, publicly lambasted the lecturers brought in by the program as con artists and sociopathic liars.

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And knowing the kind of people who get into the selling this shit business, I don't know if he's... Wrong about that. A lot of these people are fucking sociopaths. You know, he says, quote, I am nasty. I call practitioners of fraud practitioners of fraud. It's my feeling that the Rosenthal Center has been promoting fraudulent alternatives is genuine. And I get his critiques.

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You know, that is one of the like I can say on one hand, what's the harm? But also maybe the harm is that people hear this stuff is being done in a hospital. So it must help. When it doesn't. And maybe some of those people do that, not the way Dr. Oz is doing it, where we're going to do the normal medical procedure. We'll have this done.

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Maybe some people decide, I just want to have the energy work done. And then they dropped out of a heart attack because it doesn't replace a valve, you know?

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Yeah. And there's a there's a lot to be said about even acupuncture. You know, I went through a lot of it as a kid and it did nothing for me. But my grandpa swore by it for his Parkinson's. And even if it was I don't know, you could say it's like fucking whatever placebo. But he experienced relief. So I don't care. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not going to get into like it because I don't know.

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Yes, that was a compliment. Yeah, because that's part of the evidence to these people that he's so clearly holy and sacred is that it doesn't even matter that he's using a rusty knife. And again, you'll see this throughout the whole episode and all these guys we talk about.

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I don't know all of that. I know it's one of those things where there's a number of divergent opinions on acupuncture, but a number of things that were initially considered alternative medicines have been found to have medical benefits. Not that that's the norm, but it has happened in history, you know, different kind of traditional or whatever treatments. Yeah.

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So this is very controversial, though, is the point I'm making. And a number of people even picketed the college when the Rosenthal Center opened. None of this dissuaded Dr. Oz from participating in it. His explanation as to why he embraced alternative medicine was, to be quite honest, kind of brilliant.

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He said that his, by this point, vast experience as a real doctor had really informed him of the limits of medical science, specifically. Specifically, he said that while he could sew bypass grafts and even implant a new heart into someone's chest, he couldn't change the habits that had made them sick in the first place, nor could he cure the emotional issues that they were dealing with.

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Depression, he pointed out, was a major risk factor in heart patient recovery post-surgery. And things like meditation, right, that's kind of considered woo, new age, that can help with depression and that can help with healing. And he's right about that. That's not a bad point to make. Yeah. So he seemed to insinuate when he was talking to the New York Times.

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Why wouldn't a caring physician want to try everything possible to improve his patients odds? He could point out that meditation had shown some benefit for heart disease patients. Who was to say that other stuff wouldn't work? Dr. Oz told The New York Times that he felt ethically obliged to experiment in new directions in medicine.

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The article makes it clear that Dr. Oz had not let up one bit in the workaholic tendencies that he inherited from his father as well. And I'm going to quote from The Times again here. Mehmet Oz is one of those rare beings who seem incapable of sloth. He's doing a heart transplant right now, his secretary says on the phone, and he's got a double lung transplant waiting.

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And those are in addition to his two regularly scheduled open hearts. And then at three, he's supposed to fly to Boston to deliver a lecture. So exceptional is Oz's energy that some of his colleagues use him as a benchmark, correlating their own vitality as a fraction of a full Mehmet unit.

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He runs down lobs, sizes tennis partner, mentor, and department chairman, Dr. Eric A. Rose, who at 44 is one of the top heart transplant surgeons in the world.

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Part of the thing everybody focuses on is that none of his patients feel any pain, none of them get infections, even though he's just cutting them with a dirty knife. That's how holy this is. Yeah. So that's cool and...

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I do. It is a matter. We'll talk about the ZN2. We don't have enough of these guys. It's actually a major health problem. How many people there are that can do this? Yeah, but it is exhausting. Everything you read about this guy's day, like you're just one of those people who I think I kind of get the feeling. I don't want to psychoanalyze someone, but you get the feeling he can't be alone.

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And yeah, still like he has to always be moving towards something.

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Exactly.

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Yeah, I feel for him a little bit in that. Sure. Now, the article also goes into more detail about how Dr. Oz's wife's family piqued his interest in alternative medicine. His father-in-law was one of the surgeons on the first heart transplant team in Texas. He'd also been nicknamed the Rock Doc by Rolling Stone for playing music in the OR to relax patients.

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His mother-in-law had developed a special low-fat diet for her husband's cardiac patients, and this was really before it was accepted that low-fat diets would be good for heart patients. She once refused surgery for her own inflamed gallbladder and handled it instead by altering her diet. She taught her son-in-law, Dr. Oz, about using arnica for sore muscles and herbal tea for stomach aches.

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So he gets brought in in part to alternative medicine by these people who have a real medical background and are doing things that aren't widely accepted, but also may help. You know, music. I think there's there's some data now on how music can help with certain aspects of the healing process. Right. Mother-in-law seemed to be on the cutting edge of that.

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They all die, but my God, their hearts are pretty. So this is how Mehmet gets introduced to the wide world of quack cures. And it makes sense. He enters it through largely reasonable ways, alternative treatments that have some positive impact on people. There's extremely reasonable stuff in the article in general. Like,

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Dr. Oz points out that in 1995, American hospitals had only recently allowed family to stay in the hospital with a patient. While in Turkey, it was common for families to do this. And of course, having loved ones nearby can help a patient's morale, which can influence how well they heal. No one, I think, today would even...

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like think to disagree with that it didn't used to be common um it changed so he's he's in medicine during a time when a lot of stuff that like just wasn't that is kind of now common sense medicine wasn't and i think that kind of opens his eye to like well maybe all this other shit works yeah yeah maybe everything in my head is correct yeah slowly getting to him turning into a complete narcissist

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Yeah, and the article kind of veers right from, yeah, having loved ones in the room can influence how well you heal, to Dr. Oz's love of energy work, particularly his work with a lady named Motz, who believed she could sense the energy of heart transplant patients. The Times article certainly does not portray this woman in a particularly positive light. Quote,

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She now has her surgical sea legs under her, but the first time Motts observed open-heart surgery, she had a shaky debut. She had been standing at the patient's head, outside the sterile field, periodically telling Oz what changes she was able to sense in the patient's energy. The patient was obviously not awake, but probably had some awareness, most likely smell and perhaps hearing.

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Yeah, the blood of Jesus is profoundly antiseptic. Yeah, so he prescribed various medications, generally a mix of herbal remedies and complete nonsense. His patients could redeem their prescriptions at a local pharmacy run by his brother. The height of Zé Arrigo's career came when he removed a tumor from a popular senator.

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Open-heart patients are often fitted with headphones and provided with tapes to listen to, including, if they want, Oz's own specially recorded soupy trance music. For the bypass team, it was quite a novelty to hear Mott's report that she was registering the patient's moods in her body. Various states of fear, anger, or satisfaction perceived as roughness in her chest or turbulence in her stomach.

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At one point, seeing that Mott's was not looking so good herself, Oz asked a burly assistant to take her outside for some air. When he returned, he said, I sense a change in my stomach. It's a tenseness. No, it's a growling. No, wait a minute. I'm just hungry.

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But yeah, it's it's one of those things. I'm not sure exactly what type of energy work this person is doing because there's a few different kind of categories of it.

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I should note, if I'm going to be totally fair, that Reiki, which has its origins in Japan, has been shown in some early scientific studies to help diminish the symptoms of chemotherapy and to significantly alter people's experience of physical and emotional pain. And I have some friends who swear by it for kind of physical and emotional pain in particular.

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It's like energy work, I guess. I don't know. It's not a kind of thing that I particularly believe in. And I kind of think in a lot of cases, it's that you have a good relationship with the practitioner and you trust them and it can be an emotionally soothing thing, which I don't know.

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There were early studies, scientific studies that showed that it could diminish the symptoms of chemotherapy and reduce people's experience of pain. Now, further studies were commissioned after these early studies, which starting in the early 2000s were more negative.

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A number of hospitals did, however, add Reiki practitioners to their stable of available of available providers, in part as a result of like the work that Dr. Oz and the center at Columbia was doing. You can find these people in hospitals now.

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And it's worth noting that a number of the positive studies about Reiki and other similar things were conducted by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Their work is problematic, to say the least. And I'm going to quote now from an analysis of several studies conducted by this organization by Professor Dr. Edzard Ernst. Quote,

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Three studies suggested that energy medicine had an effect, but their authors either applied statistics inappropriately, confounded the effects of energy healing by adding unrelated interventions to the experimental condition, or failed to design or blind equivalent placebo controls. Their results are therefore untrustworthy.

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The two studies that were well-designed failed to demonstrate effects from energy and healing. The odds of generating a useful result of a clinical trial of energy medicine are small. Moreover, what impact would negative studies have? Scientists will simply say, we could have told you so, and proponents are unlikely to change their mind.

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He was arrested in 1956 and convicted of practicing medicine without a license, but he was pardoned by the president of Brazil. In 1962, he was arrested and jailed again for the same thing, but the police allowed him to continue healing from his cell. He died wealthy and beloved in 1971 due to an auto accident that his spirits failed to warn him about. So...

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Proponents may then claim that the negative study must have been flawed or that energy medicine cannot be investigated by the tools of science. Or they might rely on the NCCAM, that organization I talked about, funded... studies that generated biased but apparently positive results.

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The NCCAM's approach encourages a self-perpetuating cycle of misinterpreting research and conducting flawed research, which inevitably generates some studies that erroneously claim positive effects and give the false impression that the efficacy of energy medicine is still scientifically unresolved.

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They can't analyze. And it's from a government science organization. You know, these guys like and here's a study that's and it's like, well, OK, but you actually look at scientists. You don't have a vested and often financial interest in this. And they point out all these very obvious flaws in the study.

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It's worth noting that the NCCAM was founded in 1998, three years after the New York Times article about Dr. Oz and the Alternative Medicine Center at Columbia was published. Now, Dr. Oz at this point was not yet on Oprah's show, but he had been featured on TV several times for his pioneering work with mechanical hearts as well as his embrace of alternative medicine. You can draw a direct line.

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I don't know if we would have an NCCAM without Dr. Oz. I don't know. You can't say that for certain. But he is someone who before his embrace of alternative medicine starts to be well known as an exceptional doctor and scientist. He embraces this stuff. Columbia starts studying this stuff.

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And even though everything they find is pretty inconclusive, the fact that it's in an actual hospital lends it legitimacy. This organization is started in order to test this stuff. The organization is filled with people who already believe in it, carrying out tests that are flawed. And it helps prepare this culture of believing too much in this stuff.

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And it's one of those things like I again, I know people who swear by Reiki, who gain, you know, emotional benefits from it, who think it helps with, you know, a number of things, including like physical, including emotional pain. And like if you find something that helps you alleviate your emotional power to, you know, you're going to hear me say a damn word against it.

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Yeah.

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My issue is not so much with any particular treatment, not even an issue that people would like.

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it's number one a lot of people will issue actual medical treatment in favor of some of this stuff and it's not going to i i i'm trying to be as fair as i can really is not going to solve your blocked cardiac pathways you know yeah like it's not going to fix it yeah i mean energy is great but plavix works wonders you know this is a lot better um

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And it's it's it's more to the point, even more than that, is it gets us on this this road of increasingly accepting and legitimizing things that there's no there's not a scientific basis for. And that leads us to shit like let's drink bleach to cure the coronavirus. Like, you know, it's where the road ends.

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I have more of a problem with than Dr. Oz experimenting with an energy worker during a surgery like it's where that leads to. And he plays a major role in legitimizing that. He's he he helps put it. He helps put our national foot on the gas pedal into the post-science age.

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Exactly. So, yeah, at this point, though, we're talking still in the mid 90s. Everything Dr. Oz is saying is reasonable from a certain point of view. He's not claiming that Reiki is going to cure cancer. He's not even claiming it's going to cure your heart disease. He's saying it could help with recovery. And a lot of recovery is mental. And he's not, you know. It's possible he's right.

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Yeah, he's not yet a bastard. It's certainly not impossible for this kind of stuff to have a mental impact, which can positively affect recovery. OK, yeah. So, yeah, he's not a bastard at this point. Nearly all of his alternative medical claims were things that you could argue were at least to some extent reasonable based on the way he framed them.

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And he was most importantly, regardless of whatever kind of woo woo stuff he got into, an exceptionally gifted medical perfection professional who was performing something like 250 heart surgeries a year. You know, that's 250 lives a year.

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Extended. Yeah. That's great. He's not a bastard yet.

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Yes.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're just getting started with Zé Arrigo. So Zé Arrigo dies, and in 1990, this guy Rubens Feria, who's a 44-year-old engineer and software salesman, kind of looks back in history 19 years and is like, this guy made a fuckload of money. What if I start claiming to channel the spirit of the same dead German guy? So... Next up, Rubens Feria is like, Dr. Fritz is in my head.

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And the thing, though, that is I think is happening during this period, and I don't know how conscious a choice this is by Dr. Oz. I think it is because of the fact that he gets an MBA as well and the fact that he's very good at getting press, very good at getting on TV, at getting in the news.

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I think he is at this point crafting his career to make himself into an ideal candidate for famous TV doctor. I think he is building a background that will allow him to establish his celebrity career later.

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It is not hard to see how a handsome doctor with TV experience, a New York Times profile talking about alternative medicine and a seriously impressive resume was going to wind up eventually on Oprah Winfrey's radar. He almost built himself perfectly for that to happen. And he tried in the early 2000s. He tried with his wife to start a TV show. They filmed a pilot episode.

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It didn't really take off. But he succeeds, and I think he's pushing, and his wife is pushing him to get in. She's very much his business partner, to develop himself into a media personality. And he eventually succeeds in 2004 in getting invited to Oprah Winfrey's show.

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Now, Mehmet immediately endeared himself to Winfrey's audience with his willingness to discuss frank health details in a way that was demystifying and humorous. He most famously explained that healthy poops tended to be shaped like an S and should hit the water like an Olympic diver with very little splash.

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Oprah herself later recalled, when he made it okay to talk about the shape of a good poop, I knew he could talk about anything. He always found ways to make the human body endlessly fascinating.

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It's mom stuff, you know? Moms love poop. They do.

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And that's what Oz does exactly the right things to endear himself to millions of middle-class moms. Yeah. Which is... the best market in the country. It's an incredible market. You can make all of the money if you can get a few million middle-class moms to love you.

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Yeah. I mean, it's it's the power of of particularly middle class moms can't be exaggerated. Like in Portland, the cops and the feds were able to fuck over as many people as they wanted until they started gassing moms. Right. Exactly. The whole country's pissed. Yeah.

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Yeah. You know what else? Yeah, where are you going with that? Where are you going with that, Robert? White moms.

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You know what else is your mother? The products and services that support this podcast.

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You made this one into a two-parter, Matt. So the audience can thank you for two episodes about Dr. Oz this week. All right. Or they can blame you. And if they want to blame him, Matt's home address is... We love to dox our guests.

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So Oprah had Dr. Oz on her show 55 times over the course of five years. She gave him the nickname America's doctor, which stuck. And although I'm not saying this in a positive sense, is unfortunately accurate.

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America's doctor. And if you look at the health of the average American, you can tell the quality of job he's done.

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And he starts like pretty soon. He's attracting crowds of a thousand people every day to this giant hangar style building he buys in Rio de Janeiro. His patients were renowned to feel no pain even when he cut into them. And they reportedly never got infections from all of his eyeball scraping and body gouging. Christopher Reeves is reported to have visited Mr. Feria for healing. It didn't work.

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Well, actually, that's the one thing he is. He's actually pretty good about weight loss. Well, I don't know. That's still debatable.

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I'm not going to defend. I just love to be fair. I know you do.

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Look, say what you will about Hitler.

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The man cared about animal rights. By 2009, it was clear that Dr. Oz had more than enough star power to justify a shot at his own show. Oprah's production company had little trouble finding a buyer for what was sure to be a blockbuster new series.

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Her show celebrated the launch of Dr. Oz's show with an entire episode dedicated to Dr. Oz, which acted as something of a coming-out party for his brand. From a press release on Oprah.com... This is talking about the special Dr. Oz episode. Moving personal stories and extraordinary surprises are featured throughout the hour as Dr. Oz meets viewers who share how his advice saved their lives.

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From those who noticed life threatening diseases their doctors missed to those who lost weight thanks to his diet tips from Dr. Oz. Real people step forward to offer their thanks to America's doctor. Plus, it's the reunion that Dr. Oz never imagined would happen as Oprah show producers track down a young boy he cared for in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the two reunite for the first time.

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He's like the fucking perfect, perfect guy for this.

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Years of mostly dangerous health-based content.

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It's worth noting, in terms of his bastardry, and kind of the acceleration from, hey, maybe energy healing works, to becoming a monster. The early 2000s is the period in which Oprah becomes aware of a Brazilian healer named John of God, who believes he can do psychic surgery and remove tumors.

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Yeah.

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Cool. And on the episode in which she introduces John of God to America, Dr. Oz comes on and gives his professional opinion that like he seems like he's really having an effect on people. And I can't explain it. I don't think medical science can explain what this man is doing. Basically giving a real doctor's opinion that this guy's got to be legit. Yeah.

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John of God later turned out to be a mass rapist. On a scale, hundreds of victims. On a scale almost incomprehensible. We did a two-parter on John of God. You can listen to it. It's a fucking nightmare. This guy never gets half the following that he has if it's not for Oprah and Dr. Oz. So... Wow. Holy shit. Oh, it's good shit. Good shit.

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I found a fascinating New York Times article written a few months into Dr. Oz's new show. It notes that in transitioning to his own series, Dr. Oz had to spice up his act for a daily for a daily daytime audience, quote, potentially distracted by the tantrums of a toddler or the yelping of a labradoodle. They go on to summarize his early episodes.

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His show tackles topics as diverse and diversely weighty as skin cancer, kitchen burns, sleep eating, and pubic hair loss, returning constantly to the same television motherlode Winfrey profitably mined. Weepy, overweight guests who vow and often fail to get in shape, and it has taken its star far away from any sort of traditional medical practice.

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He explains that transition as the product of frustration. Too often, he told me, he would sit in an office and be telling you stuff too little, too late, that if you'd been able to lose a little weight or if your diabetes had been managed more aggressively, then it would have dramatically altered your destiny, which is now to go downstairs and have open heart surgery.

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With his TV show, he can exhort Americans to tend to all aspects of their health, head to toe, before they reach a point of no return. Lose weight, go to Brazil, and get sexually assaulted by a con man.

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Yeah, and it's going to get worse. This is kind of the period, one of the things he's supposed to do in this period is he starts cutting back on his surgical practice and performing fewer surgeries. Yeah, because he's got to keep up all those TV dates. Yeah, in order to tell people about John of God, the mass rapist, and in order to tell people about, I don't know, some stuff that's good, right?

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Telling people to eat healthier is a good idea. America's diet sucks. His diet advice, I think, is, well... We'll talk about that later. It's also problematic. Anyway, he's trading objectively useful medical work for being a nonsense doctor, but he's making millions of dollars.

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Damn. I mean, that's a bummer. He seemed like a nice guy. But yeah, this was not the treatment. So in 1995, Mr. Faria married Rita Costa at age 34. he dumped her a few years later for a 19-year-old friend of his daughter's. Mrs. Costa reported her former husband to the police for nonpayment of taxes.

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That's the only thing that tells you whether or not you're doing the right thing. Yeah.

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Yeah. Yeah. Morally righteous. Righteous wealth. Yes. You know what else is righteous, Matt?

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Part one is over. And we're going to sail out. But first, you've got to plug your pluggables. And I just decided to compliment you before we roll back.

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Podcast. All right. Well. This is the show that it is, and we're done doing the things that we do. So go out into the world and, I don't know, find Dr. Oz and scream at him. Give him a good screaming.

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The police confronted him during a surgery in Rio and arrested his bodyguard for possession of an illegal weapon. That bodyguard then testified that he'd been secretly helping his boss dispose of the corpses of a number of patients who died as a result of Mr. Ferry's hacking on their bodies.

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This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we neg our audience in order to make them more closely drawn to us. It's a tactic I learned from pickup artists. From pickup artists, yes. Really, this whole show is based on the lessons I learned as a pickup artist. You can't see it, but I'm wearing an enormous hat with ostrich plumes coming off it. made out of purple felt. It's an incredible hat.

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The most fuckable hat. The most fuckable hat. Yes, that was actually the first name I pitched for this podcast. Sophie said that that means nothing and no one will listen to it.

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So it turned out like a bunch of people were dying and getting infected and his bodyguard was just throwing them in a hole.

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So I think we can all agree that one of the best things to do is to lie about things your colleagues didn't do because it's funny. I agree with it thank you

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the show we're talking about dr oz um and as we left the last episode off he had just you know gotten oprahed right uh started his tv career gotten oprahed hard um so he started his tv career and he also starts right around the same time he gets on tv for the first time he starts a daily morning radio show on oprah winfrey's sirius xm channel never a good idea sirius xm no terrible idea

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I, you know, and this is an opinion that's pretty controversial within iHeartRadio. I think radio should be illegal. And I think it should be a felony punished by prison time for being on the radio or having a radio or thinking about the radio. Yeah. I think the only form of entertainment that should be legal is specifically my podcast.

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So I think if we if we could get Chuck Schumer's ear, we can make this happen. We will tack this on to the pot bill. No one will notice. So. Dr. Oz has The Dr. Oz Show. He's got a radio show on Winfrey's XM channel where he covers very scientific topics like how God changes your brain and the happiest people in the world. Now...

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I found a New York Times article that was written just a few months into his tenure with his TV show, kind of at the start of his burst into stardom. And the interviewer who talked to Oz for this article seems as impressed as everyone always is by the manic, somewhat inhuman pace at which Mehmet Oz works.

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By this point, he'd also written six books with titles like You, the Smart Patient, You, On a Diet, and You, Having a Baby. It's like the series is the you series. Yeah, yeah, the famous you series. It's a you colon whatever. Right. And he co-writes these books with another doctor. I can't tell you how much of the writing was.

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A lot of times, I'm not saying this is the case with Dr. Oz because he's a wild workaholic, but a lot of times when you have a guy that's his kind of famous and they write a bunch of books, they write like 10% of the book and they have- someone else, a co-author or a ghostwriter do the rest. I don't know if that's the case here. I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote a lot.

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And I do believe Matt Damon writes most of his books. Oh, 100%.

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yeah so uh nine million copies of his various titles are in print by this point like the first year of his show so he is he is a very wealthy and successful man pretty much out the gate like money machine getting the start on oprah kind of guarantees it basically if oprah likes you um enough to put you on her show more than once you're going to get rich god damn yeah i just i just should have spent my my youth trying to get on oprah we all should have we all should have

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You know, I've always said there's no nothing builds confidence like having a large, heavily armed man willing to dispose of corpses for you. That really that's all any of us really needs.

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So, Dr. Oz gets a semi-regular column for Time magazine because, again, they see this guy get famous. They're like, we got to get some of that Oprah money, too. We get this guy on Time. People will start reading Time again. And yeah, it's interesting. They give him a column. And in 2008, they included him on their list of the world's 100 most influential people.

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So before they hire him to a column, they call him one of the world's most influential people. And as soon as he gets listed as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet, Dr. Oz calls his dad, right? Do you love me now? Yeah, this has got to be the thing. How can he not be impressed by this?

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So when he tells his dad, his dad's first question is, what number?

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And this is not a ranked thing. It's not the top 100 going to one. It's just these 100 people are all very influential.

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But Dr. Oz in this interview seemed to acknowledge that the fact that his dad reacted that way said a lot about both, you know, his dad and about their relationship. He told an interviewer, quote, he wants to know what number. Are you kidding me? There are six billion people on the planet. It's a rounding error.

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Yeah, come on. How influential are you? You're basically me. Yeah. So that interviewer, along with The New York Times, wrote, quote, It's also the kind of thing that goads the sun to climb mountain after mountain, seldom pausing to enjoy the view. The good doctor did admit to engaging in a number of time saving measures.

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Over the years, he did numerous columns, which were often just recycled from other columns or chunks of his books. He provided the same list of skin moisturizing or metabolism boosting tips in different magazines or online articles. Even so, his workload was enormous.

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The Dr. Oz show was instantly one of the most popular shows on the planet, and Mehmet was contracted to record 175 hour-long episodes per year, which is a fucking brutal work schedule on its own. And the man continued to practice as a surgeon, albeit at a reduced rate.

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The New York Times interviewer who visited him in 2010 seemed to find his behavior and kind of his compulsive workaholism somewhat unsettling.

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I mean, yeah, I'll do a little bit of corpse disposal. You know, it's like a yeah. So a raid on Ruben's Farias compound revealed more than a thousand boxes of conventional prescription medications suggesting that the spiritual healer was actually practicing traditional medicine, but just without a license. Yeah.

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but only a little bit. His portions assiduously regulated like an intravenous drip of nutrition. It was the most efficient, joyless eating I have ever seen.

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That's just so unsettling. I mean, you know what? I have known a couple of people in my life, all very skinny, who have told me, like, I just don't really like eating. Like, yeah, there's some foods that I prefer to others, but I just don't really enjoy it one way or the other. Like, some of those people wound up on the Soylent thing. And I guess, like, I mean, yeah, fine. It's like, it's whatever.

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It's your life.

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At the start, the Dr. Oz show was broadly inoffensive from a medical perspective. He gave a lot of fairly good common sense health advice, health advice and provided a lot of people with a friendly medical face willing to explain things their doctors might not have the time or the bedside manner to properly lay out. But Oz's fascination with alternative medicine was present from the beginning.

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And as time went on, he veered more and more in that direction, following both the topics that consistently drew the most viewers and the topics that were easiest to put together. Because 175 hours of content a year is a lot.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. I mean, you know, we we have to do I don't know how much content we have to do per year. Fifty two weeks, two hours a week. Yeah. We do like one hundred and ten, maybe like with some of the episodes that go over one hundred and twenty hours of content for this show. And that's a lot. Um, 175 hours of video content is huge.

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Like you can't, there's, there's not that much good and also entertaining medical advice that you could give in a year, let alone every single year.

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Yeah. And it's this thing, it's this kind of this inevitable churn of capitalism leading us all into this, this specific kind of nonsense because you can't not,

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have content legally you're contracted to but also you have this whole team of people whose ability to pay their rent whose ability to to afford their homes to keep their kids in school is dependent upon you doing this show outside of just the fact that he's rich like he's fine but he like it's this thing you have to keep putting out the thing and you will never have enough meaningful shit to put out to do right so you start

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He was arrested in jail, but while his district police chief agreed that Farias needed to be locked up, he still professed a strong belief in the myth of Dr. Fritz, telling The Guardian, in my opinion, I think that Dr. Fritz does exist, but that Rubens Farias is doing things that he shouldn't. So I think he's really channeling this German guy, but that doesn't mean he's not committing crimes, too.

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In his case, doing nonsense about mediums and shit. And in our case, doing episodes about Dr. Oz. When you run out of bastards, eventually you just got to find one on TV. We're not out of bastards. But like last week, I spent 30 hours reading about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I needed an off week, you know?

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Mm-hmm.

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Yeah, that's why we brought you on, actually.

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Oh, good times. Good times. For an example of the kind of nonsense creep, I guess you'd call it, that advanced upon his show, in March of 2012, Dr. Oz did a show titled Medium vs. Medicine. Oz's guest was a psychic who claimed she could communicate with the dead. This was one of several, and by this point, probably dozens of episodes dedicated to people who claimed to talk to the dead.

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Energy healing was, you know, on the fringe, certainly, but at least it was something that when he started doing it, there were scientific studies saying there might be something to it. Those studies have since been, to a large extent, discredited. But when he started doing that, there was some evidence. It was a thing to try. You know, he wasn't completely out of left field.

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Doing episodes on mediums talking to the dead is well outside of plausible deniability territory, right? Like, you're just doing nonsense at this point.

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how'd you die just just just having his bodyguards mace police officers rolling into a crime scene be like who did this how'd this go down are you okay hey i am a doctor do you want some almonds they're soaked in water for more nutrition

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So, yeah, he had. Yeah. Dr. Oz had among his psychic guests, famous grifter King John Edwards on his show. Not the politician. No, no. The talks to dead TV show guy. Yeah. Yeah. And he praised the reading that he received from John Edwards saying, quote, let me tell you, it changed my life. I've learned in my career that there are times when science just hasn't caught up with things.

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And I think this may be one of them.

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It's one of those things. Part of how he's like the intelligent way to frame this is you start with the true thing, which is there are things science can't explain. One of those things is the nature of consciousness and what happens to it after vital sciences. We don't know. There's not an objective answer to that.

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but it going this way is kind of like being like yeah you know we can't explain like the slit box experiment like there's a bunch of shit in physics i don't know i'm not a science guy but like you know particle and wave shit you can't explain that there's a bunch of shit you can't explain magnets yeah how do they work how do they work it's this is this jump from yes there are things we can't explain to so let's listen to this man talk to the dead

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Millions of people gather around, gather around. He's going to channel your dead aunt. Yes. Maybe not. Not a reasonable way to take a reasonable starting point.

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Yeah, and I want to quote from a write-up I found in the Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association. Quote, During another show, Oz interviewed Dr. Mossaraf Ali, a miracle healer to Sylvester Stallone, Prince Charles of England, and others regarding his use of iridology.

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According to the widely debunked bizarre belief, each part of the iris corresponds to a specific area of the body, and a person's state of health could be diagnosed by examining particular regions of the iris. After expressing his amazement at Dr. Ali's diagnostic abilities, Oz stated, I want to applaud Dr. Mossaraf Ali because these are ancient traditions and they have been around for centuries.

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So who am I to dismiss them?

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Yeah. It's like... There's a lot of cultures who say that you should remove the clitoris surgically because it's healthier and it stops dangerous masturbation. It's ancient. Who are we to say this is a bad idea? Who are any of us to say anything's wrong?

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I wonder what his eyes said. It's funny.

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Your dad will never love you so much. There's this, one of the big aspects of this guy's success and of the success of the things he pushes is, is Orientalism, right? Right. Like this idea of like the forbidden and strange and wondrous and magical East and all of the, We don't understand all of these like, oh, India is so mysterious, yada, yada, yada.

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What if you were to say like, well, for centuries, tobacco companies have said that tobacco can cure like different lung ailments. Who are we to dismiss these ancient traditions? The Q zone could be real.

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It's this fucking thing with Dr. Oz. Like. It's one thing if you're just like traveling to another part of the world, you see some sort of medical or treatment you've never seen before. And you're like, well, who am I? Who am I to say anything about it?

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Like, I don't know. Dr. Oz is a doctor on TV talking to millions. You're literally the person who should be saying something about the legitimacy of this. Right.

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You are, in fact, the person who should say something about who am I?

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Yeah.

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Yeah. And that's what that that write up in the Journal of Missouri State Medical Association notes, quote, Who? Dr. Oz is a trained clinician and scientist, someone who can read a scientific article with a critical eye. He is someone who can filter out the noise of the placebo effect or discern the simple carnival tricks of a charlatan. The problem is that most people in his audience cannot.

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You know, you know who else has a responsibility to the show sponsors?

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So fucking good. So good. Anyway, here's products. Ah, we're back. Talking about Dr. Oz. Having just a great time. So, obviously, the fact that Dr. Oz, I mean, probably the fact that most of his audience couldn't discern whether or not any of these nonsense treatments were real is a big part of why the Dr. Oz show became an overnight success. Yeah.

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Before very long, it was being watched by four million viewers every single day. Over the next half decade or so, he won two Emmys. His guest list included First Lady Michelle Obama, who loved Dr. Oz for his focus on healthy diets for children and in general, his crusade to get Americans to lose weight.

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Dr. Oz claimed through medicine, through math that I cannot verify that his show inspired Americans to lose three million cumulative pounds per year. I don't know. Maybe.

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It's amazing. Hey, I mean, you know, I worship L. Ron Hubbard, not for his spiritual teachings or any of the things he wrote about space aliens, but for his ability to get boats full of young people to search for gold that his past life buried.

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I mean, I'm sure he found some way to, like, make the claim or whatever. But it's very... I don't know. Maybe. It is one of the things that he does that is... We'll talk about. There's problems with some of the diet tips he gives people, actually. Significant ones. But telling, like, inspiring people to lose weight is not... usually bad for their health, although it can be.

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Sometimes people take it too far and it causes significant health problems. It's a mixed bag, I guess we'd say. But the other stuff isn't a mixed bag, so I guess we'll call that his great success. So, Yeah, it is good.

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I will say it is unequivocally good that Dr. Oz continually pressed his audience of millions of people to eat more fruits and vegetables to get better sleep, to exercise regularly, and to get their flu vaccinations. That's all rad, right?

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I mean, he's charismatic. People like him. It's good that he he does that at least.

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Yeah. The unfortunate part is that this guy gained because he's he's handsome. A lot of a lot of a lot of ladies out there think Dr. Oz is hot. He's a doctor. He's very charismatic. He's very charming. And he gains this enormous influence with middle America. And he uses that influence to do some really fucking questionable shit.

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And I'm going to quote now from a write up in the AMA's Journal of Ethics. He has told mothers that there were dangerous levels of arsenic in their child's apple juice. There weren't, and suggested that green coffee is a miracle cure for obesity. Federal regulators discovered altered data in hyped coffee bean evidence.

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The Food and Drug Administration tested for arsenic in apple juice and found the vast majority of apple juice tested to contain low levels of arsenic, and given these levels was confident in the overall safety of apple juice consumed in this country.

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Dr. Oz also featured two guests on his show who claimed that genetically modified foods were cancer-causing, despite repeated safety reports that found no adverse effects.

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That's what I celebrate about LRH. Yeah. So, yeah, this all is the background, I think, that's necessary to understand John of God. So, on November 17th, 2010, Oprah magazine writer Susan Casey published an article about her visit to Brazil, where she'd met with the country's new hottest psychic surgeon. Oh, boy. João Teixeira de Faria, better known as John of God.

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It is too good a pun to skip.

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All right, we're doing it.

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Yeah. So Dr. Oz's enthusiasm for alternative medicine has had the effect of creating instant fads over any health product he even vaguely suggests on his show. When he mentions the purported health benefits of white mulberry, red palm oil or brown seaweed, all of which he's claimed can do things like cut weight, reduce aging or beat the flu, those products fly off the shelf.

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Oz often doesn't endorse specific brands, but he doesn't need to. Online retailers watch closely and immediately slap as seen on Dr. Oz on the pseudoscientific product. Yes, I've seen this. Yeah, I've seen this. This is where we get to the big harm.

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He did one episode that focused on so-called relaxation drinks and included a close up shot of five cans of beverages he said might help calm you down.

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yeah he just puts a can of colt 45 on the table billy d williams walks out it's a steel reserve trust me you'll be relaxed you'll be calm as shit you might yell at your mom but it'll be fun afterwards yeah you will very calmly put your hand through a taxi cab window

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As soon as the episode aired, a, quote, liquid sleep aid called iChill bragged on their website, Dr. Oz is talking about a new way to wind down with relaxation drinks. They are the newest trend in helping you relax and calm down. And the best news is they contain natural ingredients already known to promote relaxation. Mulberry, laudanum.

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i remember the eye chill that turned into like an entire thing there's so many yeah we're about to we're about to talk about it yeah um and and also if there was a laudanum drink i would be buying it um yeah so the problem with all with this is that all of these different relaxation drinks are filled with a variety of chemicals like melatonin and theanine and taurine

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These drinks are unregulated as they are not medicines or dietary supplements, but the chemicals they include all have actual impacts on the central nervous system. Pregnant women and children are often advised to avoid products with some of these chemicals, but the beverages in question rarely note this.

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No data exists on how these chemicals might impact people in the quantities they are added to in these beverages or when combined with other chemicals or when combined with medications people drinking them might be taking. Responsible doctors, writing for the journal Nature Neuroscience, wrote a warning about these beverages that specifically called out iChill by name.

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Quote, "...existing research on the potential benefits and harms of some components of relaxation drinks suggests that they may not always be safe.

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Indeed, the FDA issued a warning last year to the manufacturers of melatonin-laced brownies, citing safety concerns from the literature, including effects on the autonomic nervous system and visual system and increased expression of symptoms in a sleep disorder."

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Other components of relaxation drinks, such as L-theanine or amino acids, such as taurine, may be considered safe for consumption only at some doses by the FDA, but relaxation drinks are not subject to such regulations, nor are they required to disclose the amounts of their ingredients.

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No, no, no. I think they had a weird different shaped plastic bottle. But the problem is that, again, number one, you've got a lot of people who are on medications that this shit interacts with.

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This sparked a visit by Oprah herself and an avalanche of uncritical positive stories about how cool this new John of God guy was. For the first time, a Brazilian psychic surgeon attracted mass interest outside of Brazil.

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Okay, so everything Dr. Oz recommends, I guess outside of death psychics, comes with this caveat. Some of the herbs and natural medicines that he recommends do have health impacts, but they also have consequences. Medications they might not interact well with. Dr. Oz does not bring this up when he shotguns half-assed advice out to an audience of millions.

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That article in Nature Neuroscience that I referenced, warning about the relaxation drinks Oz recommended, it's been read 10,000 times. So the article warning people that these things can be contraindicated and might have impacts on your health and your central nervous system, read 10,000 times. Dr. Oz's episode suggesting these drinks watched 4 million times.

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Yeah. People started to notice that this was a problem by the mid-aughts. Doctors had been complaining for a while, but in 2013, Forbes wrote a listicle laying out the silliest things Dr. Oz has suggested on his show, including the fact that having 200 orgasms a year would extend your life by six years. Here's how he explained that bit of math on his website.

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365. Here's his website. If you have more than 200 orgasms a year, you can reduce your physiologic age by six years, Dr. Oz says. He bases the number on a study done at Duke University that surveyed people on the amount and quality of sex they had. They looked at what happened to folks that are receiving a lot of intercourse over time, and the fact is it correlated.

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He talked to him about the amount and quality of sex they had, but it's correlated. So again, he's basically lying here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Number one, what is the possibility that people who are having a lot of good sex are in better health? And that's why they're able to have a lot more good sex because they're like, they're physically healthy.

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But foreigners had been trickling into the country for years before that, and one of them, an American named Heather Cumming, wrote a book about John of God, the man who became her guru. It is a thoroughly uncritical work of puffery from a woman who clearly worships her subject. But it's also our best real source or best source on the early life of John of God.

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And so it's easier for them to like, uh, what if, what are the odds that like, if you're having more sex, you're more social, you're more likely to have a longterm romantic partner that increases your lifespan. Yeah. Again, I'm of all people never going to be the guy to say there's not health benefits to sex. There sure is. Oh, yeah. Dr. Oz is exaggerating this.

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He's taking an actual study that showed some interesting stuff, and he's turning it into a lie.

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Yeah, there is data that suggests that regular intercourse reduces men's mortality risks by 50%, which doesn't mean that fucking stops men from dying, particularly because it's men who benefit in this way. It means that men are less healthy than women, tend to die faster, and when men have partners that they live with,

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They are more likely to have a medical problem noticed if they have a heart attack. Someone's going to be there to call. Like, there's a lot of reasons why this is the case.

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You know? Yeah. It's not the fact that just fucking magically adds like reduces your age by six years if you do it enough. Like, that's nonsense.

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It makes it nice to think it.

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Yeah. Not coming enough. I'm going to die.

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Yeah. Just start fucking in public. And when the cops come be like, this is medicine.

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I have a right to this.

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Now, on its own, recommending that people get more sex is, you know, fine. I'm very pro-sex, but I am anti-encouraging people to misunderstand health science. The nature of Dr. Oz's audience and the sheer breadth of things he suggests makes it difficult to analyze the total health impact of his show. But there are some dire case studies, as Vox notes in their write-up. Quote,

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There's the case of a man who followed Oz's suggestion of curing insomnia by pouring uncooked rice into socks, heating them in a microwave and wearing them to bed. The man got second and third degree burns on his feet. And the reason he got burned is because he was diabetic. He didn't have the same level of feeling in his feet.

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If he had gone to a doctor and said, hey, I heard about this thing that might help with insomnia, the doctor would say, well, you're diabetic. You don't have as much feeling in your feet. I'm worried you might burn yourself. Dr. Oz is just saying, hey, this will help you sleep.

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You're talking to four million people. It would be bad advice for some of them.

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So I'm going to start by reading from that. And I'm going to give the caveat that this information, this is all information that a mass rapist cult leader wanted to convey about his early life. So, you know, noted a little bit of salt here and there. So, Joao Tixera de Faria was born on June 24th, 1942, in the poor village of, oh boy, Cachoeira de Fumacha, in the state of Goias in central Brazil.

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Yeah. They'll do it. They'll fucking do it. So this guy sued, but the case was thrown out because the judge determined that Oz cannot establish a physician-patient relationship through TV. I agree with the judge. That's my problem with his show, is that he is a physician purporting to be giving medical advice, but is also...

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not taking anyone's individual circumstances into account, and more to the fucking point, not liable if he does any of the irresponsible things that would lend a physician doing their job traditionally in trouble.

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And I'm going to continue that quote from Vox. Not everyone agrees with the judge's reasoning. Rochester, New York medical student and blogger Benjamin Mazur has been publishing anonymous stories sent to him from health professionals about the impact Oz has had on patient care.

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One reported that her dad had a heart attack and five stents placed in his heart, which required him to take aspirin and Plavix to prevent blood clots. Wow. Wow. Wow.

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I'm sure it was. If I know my Dr. Oz, I'm sure it was. You don't need to take Plavix. Eat these different heart healthy foods and avoid these foods and that'll do all that Plavix will do.

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I suspect it was dietary advice that if you're someone who doesn't really need Plavix is fine. Or it might even help you to not need it later in life if you adopt healthier habits. But the problem is, again, the way he's framing it, there's going to be a lot of people who are like just had stints placed in their heart. I don't need Plavix. Fuck it.

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The TV doctor also said he can talk to ghosts. So I'm going to go talk. I mean, you will be talking to ghosts faster if you follow all of Dr. I want to talk to ghosts.

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Now, on his show, Dr. Oz claims that the trust of his audience is the entire reason for his relevance. Quote, the currency that I deal in is trust, and it is trust that has been given to me by an audience that has watched over 600 shows.

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He repeatedly references the fact that he is responding to the very real and very understandable, unfilled needs of Americans who feel alienated from modern health care, which is an expensive and often inhumane labyrinthine bureaucracy.

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How you exploit it is a very different thing. But the thing he is replacing it with is by and large nonsense. And I'm going to quote from that right up in the Journal of Ethics again. When it comes to epistemic boundaries, Dr. Oz admits he applies different standards of evidence compared to those accepted in the medical establishment.

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When challenged by a reporter for The New Yorker about his questionable evidentiary standards, he replied that all data could be differentially interpreted. It's not that he doesn't offer data.

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It's common for Dr. Oz to offer some plausible mechanism from test tube experiments conducted by manufacturers, combined with personal anecdotes from his own or consumer's experience to support the products he's promoting. A study of 80 recommendations made on the Dr. Oz show in early 2013 found that published evidence supported 46% of recommendations, contradicted 15% and did not support 39%.

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If your doctor said, hey, you know, 46% of the time I give pretty good advice. Yeah. You would be like, I think I'm going to get another doctor.

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If you assume medicine is like baseball, I'm a great doctor. No, he's crushing it. Yeah. Yeah. Great job. Now, to his credit, the journal does note that a decent chunk of the blame for Dr. Oz's success lies in the very, very flawed state of mainstream medical science.

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Quote, we settle for incomplete, selectively published data in journals heavily subsidized by pharmaceutical companies and for outcomes that don't give firm answers.

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His mother, Dona Luca, was a popular member of the community and a dedicated housewife. John of God would later speak highly of his mother, and I have no reason to suspect she wasn't a nice person, other than perhaps the fact that her boy grew up to a mass-raping cult leader. The biography of John of God continues, quote, Wow. His father was less successful.

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While not on par with offering anecdotes as evidence, the fact that debates persist about what constitutes sufficiently high, unbiased quality evidence to support decisions in the profession as a whole creates a wedge that Dr. Oz seems to exploit. So again, this is the Journal of Ethics being like, the fact that you can pay to get a study done, the fact that we...

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pharmaceutical companies lobby to allow them to market things in dishonest ways. The fact that doctors are bribed by companies like Purdue Pharmaceutical with vacations to recommend people take medication that is not in their best interest to take. That's why this motherfucker has a job. And the fact that healthcare is expensive, right? The fact that we don't have single-payer healthcare at all.

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Right. combines to the fact that a lot of people who are not idiots... I'm not saying... You can be... I'm sure there's people who are brilliant electricians who fucking... Brilliant at whatever. Who are great at whatever it is they do. But they're not fucking doctors because most of us aren't. And it's hard to get... I am very fortunate in that I have a couple of good friends who are doctors.

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And I am luckier than I can... One of them is a guy who was on the show recently, Kaveh Hoda. I'm luckier than I can...

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say to be able to like every now and then send them a message being like hey what should I do here you know it's a question of like I'm having this problem I don't know what kind of doctor to see to like get this dealt with I don't know whose job this is and I don't want to like my um my ex a while ago had a non-cancerous brain tumor and And it was a fucking nightmare figuring out.

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It took a series of different doctors and tests to figure out what kind of doctor she needed to go to to get the medication that would help. And it's, of course, people are like, well, this guy is explaining things and he's nice and he's saying that I have the power to deal with this. If I change my diet, if I do this, if I do that.

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You know? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it's. It fucking sucks. It does. It just really fucking sucks. And it fucking sucks because there's a lot of wonderful people who are part of the medical system, like the fucking doctors in the ER who were with my mom in her last days. Like, incredibly competent and compassionate and like...

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amazing people who in their entire careers will never be able to do as much good as dr oz does harm because he has four million people watching him every day yeah it's a bummer yeah yeah yeah it's you know it's not a bummer oh wow capitalism is actually a bummer but it's the water we swim in so here's some fucking ads we're back

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So in 2014, Mehmet Oz was called before a Senate subcommittee to answer questions about his unfounded claims about dietary supplements. Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill went off on him, saying, I don't know why you need to say this stuff because you know it's not true.

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Why, when you have this amazing megaphone and this amazing ability to communicate, would you cheapen your show by saying things like this?

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Do you know how many houses I have? She pointed out several examples of the things he cheapens his show by saying he had called green coffee extract a, quote, magical weight loss cure. Recent research has recent research has suggested that long term use of green coffee extract causes bone density loss in animals. So. But you are, in fairness, you're losing weight. Your bones are lighter.

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That's weight. Bones are heavy as hell.

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Mm hmm. And again, those are studies in animals. But it's the kind of thing where a responsible doctor would say, well, some studies in animals have shown that this might cause bone density loss. So unless, you know, your weight is a really disastrous health situation and your bone density is fine, I wouldn't recommend this. Dr. Oz is just saying it's a magical weight loss cure.

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Yeah. Oz called raspberry ketone, quote, the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. This is a fun one. First of all, it's all gasoline. Part of why people well, actually, part of why part of why people are attracted to stuff like this is that like raspberry ketone, that's natural. It sounds like, oh, if I just like getting raspberries, that's going to help me lose weight.

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This chemical in a natural, healthy fruit. Of course, it makes sense that like some wonderful plant based medicine would be able to help me lose weight. Yeah. Raspberry ketones don't come from raspberries. They can, but it takes 90 pounds of fresh raspberries to produce a single dose. As a result, they are manufactured synthetically.

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A fact Dr. Oz did not feel the need to explain because, again, he's really critical of GMOs, and it might seem hypocritical to note that raspberry ketones are actually synthetic lab nonsense.

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The fucking arsenic in the apple juice that he's worried about is natural. It is possible, based on animal studies, that these ketones may have some ability to reduce or slow weight gain. But no studies have ever been conducted on how raspberry ketones impact human beings. There have been reports that they increase blood pressure and heart rate in humans. Dr. Oz does not warn about this.

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He was a tailor and owned a laundry business, but money was not great, and young João and his four brothers and one sister lived in constant economic anxiety. Young John had to work from an early age, starting as a cloth cutter in his father's shop at age six.

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Likewise, when Dr. Oz told his viewers that Garcinia cambogia may be the simple solution you've been looking for to bust your body fat for good. He did not also warn them that it can interact negatively with diabetes medications, painkillers and psychiatric medications.

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Why would you need to warn people that? look what are the odds someone looking to lose weight has diabetes medications zero what are the odds that someone who has diabetes is sitting around watching dr oz's show zero what are the odds that a middle-class american is addicted to painkillers zero zero

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During the Senate inquiry, Senator McCaskill pointed some of this out, and she told Dr. Oz, quote, Mm-hmm.

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In the wake of this, which was a fairly bad day on Capitol Hill for him, Dr. Oz released a somewhat contrite statement where he noted, I took part in today's hearing because I am accountable for my role in the proliferation of these scams, and I recognize that my enthusiastic language has made the problem worse at times. Good so far? Yeah, not bad. Pretty good so far.

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Oz added in his statement, to not have the conversation about supplements at all, however, would be a disservice to the viewer. In addition to exercising an abundance of caution in discussing promising research and products in the future, I look forward to working with all those present today and finding a way to deal with the problems of weight loss scams. God, it's amazing.

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We have to have conversations about this. You know, a conversation would be noting, for example, green coffee extract causes bone density loss in animals and perhaps be worried. That's a conversation. Well, you and I have had about these things as a conversation.

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I mean, I'm not a doctor. I'm a guy who's addicted to an unregulated plant.

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He only attended two years of primary school before economic necessity forced him to end his formal education and take up a series of increasingly brutal jobs. Now... That's what his biography says. That's not the only version of that we have.

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Which I just took more of while standing next to my unregulated gun.

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So Dr. Oz, also making this statement, pointed out that he believed the greatest disservice he'd done to his audience was to not recommend specific products, which had provided room for a wide industry of shysters to stick his name on their website. So like, oh, I was just saying green coffee extract and a bunch of companies I couldn't verify started selling with my name on it.

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I should have recommended a specific brand.

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So in the wake of this day on Capitol Hill and this amazing response, physicians across the country asked Columbia University in a letter, basically, what the fuck? Why is this guy still on your faculty?

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Columbia claimed it was because of their commitment to quote, the principle of academic freedom and to upholding faculty members freedom of expression for statements they make in public discussion.

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it's a hell yeah dude that's like yeah of the like anti-cancel culture letter you know they're just like stop trying to cancel dr oz it's freedom of speech your freedom of speech yeah i mean doctors also are held to different standards than the rest of us they take an oath come on if like your uncle jimbo says hey you know take some green coffee extract it'll help you lose weight

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Nothing wrong with that. It might not be good advice, but that's just a guy saying a thing. Doctors are held to a different standard.

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Mm hmm. It's it's it's awesome. Yeah. So on April 15th, 2015, 10 prominent physicians sent a letter to Columbia University calling Oz's faculty position there unacceptable, inciting his, quote, egregious lack of integrity.

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A 2005 ABC News profile on him notes that based on interviews with people from his hometown, quote, he is said to have been so rebellious that he was thrown out of school after the second grade and could not keep a job. So that's a different version of his background. Sure, sure.

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The only change wrought by the congressional inquiry and the flood of condemnation from the medical community seems to be that Dr. Oz started endorsing specific supplements and pseudo medicines.

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He's doing it. He's Jonesing it hard. He's so much smarter than Alex, though. Yeah. You focus it just on the health. None of this nonsense, like political shit. Everybody is going to love you and you'll make way more money. Mm hmm. Yeah, a 2018 analysis of his show by the Health News Review found, quote, In the Dr. Oz show, 13 out of 19, 68.4% shows had ads relating to general show content.

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57.9% had specific products mentioned by the host using their commercial name. And 36.3% of shows mentioning products by name named more than one product. It also found that 78% of the medical statements made on the Dr. Oz show did not align with, quote, evidence-based medical guidelines. If those guidelines mattered, they'd make more money, dog.

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Half a decade earlier, 46% of his statements are more or less fine. Now it's down to... Jesus, 22%. Wow. So we're seeing, again, the quality of the, because again, you're running out of good content. You only have so much good medical advice you can give when you're doing an hour a day, 175 times a year for fucking 15, 16 years. Eat fruit. Exactly.

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The actual amount of things that an average person can reasonably do to improve their own physical health doesn't really take that long to explain to you, you know? It's pretty simple stuff. And most of us know a lot of it already. We know when we're I know that pounding Kratom and Coke Zero isn't a wise health care decision. No, no.

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I know that the fact that I bought the $100 entire smoked leg of pig from Costco, the giant prosciutto leg that you can get. I know buying that and not also purchasing, I don't know, salad in order to have sufficient fiber. I recognize that was a poor health decision. No one tricked me about this. And at no point did I think, This $100 worth of smoked ham is a solid health care move.

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Oh, my meridians are fucking rocking right now. I am peaking in meridians, bro. Let me fucking tell you, my meridians are as hard as a goddamn rock.

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The Dr. Oz show is still on the air. In 2018, President Trump appointed Dr. Oz to a council on sports, fitness, and nutrition as part of the Department of Health and Human Services. He is still on that council under Joe Biden. Bipartisan, baby. Two years later, no politician is dumb enough to want to piss off Dr. Oz. You're never going to hear Joe Biden throw it. Well, except for Claire McCaskill.

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God bless her.

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I think other people did. I'm not an expert on what went down in that congressional thing, but she seems to be the main one who was really angry at him. Good on you, Claire.

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That's that's so 2018 is when he gets appointed to this council. Two years later, during the covid-19 pandemic, he and he endorsed hydroxychloroquine. Later that year, he endorsed reopening schools, saying, What the fuck? ! Two to three percent of the crowd.

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Yeah, and he had basically no school, and he never learns to read or write. That's the important thing here. Yeah, not a reader, this guy. So his biographers, though, claim that he worked many jobs as a well digger, as a bricklayer, and generally they say that he spent his late childhood and early adolescence in hard manual labor.

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You are a dangerous person. Man. But he's like, we gotta... And he didn't... Yeah, this outraged a lot of people. And Oz apologized. As he apologized for vaccine hydroxychloroquine. Yeah, he oopsie-daisied it. He claimed regret that his comments had confused and upset people and basically pointed out the Lancet wasn't saying 2-3% of the country was going to die.

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It was, I think, more like 2-3% of, like, I don't know, people's schools or something. Like, would get sick. And, like, it was... He... But the way he phrased it was, it's only going to cost us 2-3% of the country. I don't care what the actual study, again, I don't care what the study is, I care what you said to your audience of millions. And also, I care about the fact that in any case, that's

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Fucking evil. Yeah, that's an evil thing to say.

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You know, it's one thing to say, hey, look, living in a society, there's all kinds of cost benefit sort of analysis. Sure. We have to do like right. Cars improve a lot of efficiencies in certain ways. And people like have them. They're also going to cost X many lives. You know, we could change these sorts of laws, but it would it would lead to this sort of problem.

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You know, we have certain freedoms that may cost lives. Right. To be like, that's just living in a society, right? There's no, our society is not angled around absolutely reducing mortality in every way. And there's a cost to not having these schools open. And it's a very real cost. And like, we have to, like, that's a way to say that.

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I'm not saying that's the argument I'm making, because I'm not. I'm thinking, I don't think we should open schools out until we actually have... I don't like 80 percent of the fucking country vaccinated or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like but that's a way you could that's a way you could make that argument and not sound like a gibbering sociopath.

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Yeah, you're choosing to do the job. You could never work another day in your life and you would never. You're rich. You don't need to do this. You're choosing to. So go fuck yourself with that explanation.

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We're getting to that. So today, Dr. Oz works to continue to monetize his brand with his wife and business partner, who he also writes books with. His daughter seems to be getting in on the grift, too, with books like The Dorm Room Diet, which she wrote when she was in college, I think.

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The Dorm Room Diet. Hey, you know, if you pour coffee into instant ramen, it's an efficient breakfast. I've done that, by the way. Not proud of it.

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Kind of proud of it. It's real good if you add in vodka. He is worth tens of millions of dollars and is not in any danger of being worth less anytime soon. We've talked a lot about the harms of his specific recommendations and the disinformation he spreads.

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But at the end of this all, I keep coming back to that 2010 New York Times article, specifically its end, when I think about what may be his worst crime against medicine. Quote,

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On the stairs at Columbia Presbyterian, apropos of nothing, he began talking about certain Japanese, Sardinian, and Costa Rican populations that live unusually long and said that their shared trait was activity, activity, activity. His first column for Time Magazine, Living Long and Living Well, ran in a section called How to Live 100 Years.

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At another point in his Rockefeller Center office, he said that so many people thrill to being on television because, quote, there's an element of eternity to it. You are storing you. You are taking your life force for that brief moment when you're on camera, and you're storing that for all eternity, which makes you someone who will never truly die.

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That is a fucking bonkers way of looking at being on TV.

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Yeah, I'm going to continue the quote. And he described his own investment in television by saying, I've always felt that when I looked at my tombstone, it shouldn't say Mehmet Oz banged out 10,000 open heart operations. I've probably done 5,000. Am I any better at it than 10,000? He shook his head. It's just a different number on a tombstone. No, it's not.

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It's 5,000 other people whose lives you extended. Those are actual human beings. Those are human beings. It's not about, like, how better it, you're already great at it. It's about saving additional lives.

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That's wild. One of the, he has dramatically, he still does perform surgery, I think, sometimes. Why? He certainly was in the late aughts. because he's a doctor. He just doesn't do nearly as much. He used to do a lot more, and he's cut it by more than half, the amount of actual heart surgery.

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So one of the things that I should note here is that right now, even with the assumption that every available training position for cardiothoracic surgeons is filled... we are looking at a projected shortage of 1500 cardiothoracic surgeons or 25% of the workforce by 2025. Four years.

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There is a desperate need for the thing that he's definitely one of the best in the world at a tremendous and terrible need for it. And he has stopped doing that in order to give people bad medical advice that will hurt some of them on TV. And I want to be really clear here. I am not saying that just because you become a cardiothoracic surgeon, you have to do that until the day you drop.

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You don't. You can quit. And that's not immoral. It's not evil to be like, I've done enough. A good friend of mine was a cardiologist for 30-something years and quit to travel around the world as a photojournalist.

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and i don't think there's anything immoral you do not owe the world yeah doing just because it's valuable and there are enough people doing it forever i am not and you don't you don't have to quit to do some other valuable job you can just quit to enjoy your life be with your family i'm not saying that yeah but he didn't quit to be with his family he quit to give people bad health advice that he quit to do crimes yeah he is he is doing something that should be illegal instead of performing an additional 5 000 life-saving surgeries right yeah that's evil

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Yeah. This is very funny because she notes that quote, after being given money, he would return to the pool hall. He is an excellent pool player to this day. And I can't prove what I'm going to say next in any way, but my suspicion is that there is a germ of truth to this, but that he's not clairvoyant.

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Yeah, but I'm going to sell people pills instead. Lex Luthor can suck it. You know, I got pills to move. And the way that he phrases that is incredibly telling, right? Like it shouldn't say Mehmet Oz banged out 10,000 open heart operations. Am I any better at it than 10,000? It's like, that's not, I care that you get better at it to the extent that it improves patient outcome.

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But like, I don't care. Like the thing that's good about performing 10,000 open heart operations is

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is presumably somewhere near 10 000 people have had their lives extended because right yeah that's amazing that's tens of thousands of cumulative cumulative years yeah added to the lives of people who are loved and who do things themselves who who do incredible like who have their own ways of contributing to society who have children like it's such a sick way of looking at it it's really

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It's like if he if he'd been like, I, you know, I did my car. I performed 5000 surgeries. Now I want to become an actor. Like, yeah, you have that right. Absolutely. I'm never going to say that.

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Yeah. If you're in Michael Bay movies, we might have another talk. Yeah, exactly.

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But that's again what it's not that he's decided he wanted to go into TV. It's not that he decided to go into entertainment. It's that he decided to do a job to go from doing a job where he was unequivocally saving lives to doing a job where he often gives people advice that could shorten or at least reduce the quality of their life.

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It's so fucking frustrating. I really dislike this man.

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I mean, he's very handsome.

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John just discovered he had a knack for pool hustling and various forms of cheating that required quick hands and charm. This is a guy who would go up to spend his life doing sleight of hand stuff to giant crowds. Uh,

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some hot rice and see what happens dude just see what happens you know like someone's got to be doing that job it's this fucking thing part of the dr oz problem and the part of it that that he he is he is leaning into but it's not his fault is this thing that's a broader problem that i've gotten trapped in that a lot that everyone is a public figure is at risk of getting trapped in um which is

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The fact that if you're good at something and also have some measure of fame or popularity, you start to think you can extend your skills to everything. I was in the gym the other day since I'm in Texas with my family and since I'm vaccinated and everyone wears a mask, but I've been going to a gym.

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yeah um and my family's vaccinated it's like it's the thing we get to do now okay yeah you're allowed yeah i've been going to a gym and the gyms have like news programs on right and i saw dr oz on and it was dr oz true crime because i guess dr oz has added a true crime thing where he's like talking about this woman who murdered her kids and interviewing like the ex-wife of the husband of the woman who murdered her kids and like doing this thing he's like

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You don't have any. Why are you doing this? Because it's popular with the same people who like your show. And why not? Why not stick your hand into this thing that is deeply painful for a lot of people and make money off of it? Why not do it? Because if you're famous and good at one thing, there's no reason not to do absolutely everything. Yeah. I just hate it.

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I blame his dad, too. Is that you, Mustafa? Yeah.

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Casts my pods. All right, guys. That's the episode.

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It's yourself a gun, baby. Well, get out there and again, find Dr. Oz in the street. And Sophie, what what is the legal definition of incitement?

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All right. Just just go out and wander the streets angry and and and agitated. Yeah. So without any clear goal. Yeah. Angrily wander the streets agitated with an unclear goal. That's what I want all of my listeners to do.

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Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, he spends a lot of time as a kid in a pool hall. He learns sleight of hand. He learns how to grift. And, yeah, the, yeah. So, so far, the biographical information that we've got from his biography by his follower, Heather Cummings, has been broadly reasonable. This changes with this next paragraph.

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Fuck you! That's the introduction. Just fuck you, people who listen and give us an income.

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Not you, Jamie. Just the audience. Just the people who support us with their ears. I'm insulting. Just out the gate. Fuck them. That's right. What are you going to do about it? You're going to listen to another podcast? Like there are other podcasts? Like you have other options? Like there's a flooded marketplace of things exactly like what I do that you could just turn to? Ha!

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No, please don't search podcasts on Spotify.

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Well, Jamie, the orca is out of the tank because that is the subject of today's episode. And also your Jamie Loftus, my guest on the show that this is, which is Behind the Bastards.

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Excited's the wrong word. Dreading? Dreading is the right word. I'm dreading that, Jamie.

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I can't imagine loving them because they involve Dr. Phil.

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You know, it's one of those things take we just did the Dr. Oz episodes and Dr. Oz also bad. Obviously, he was on the show, but you have to respect him because he is a brilliant doctor.

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Like he's a man who for all of the harm he's done by spreading pseudoscience has performed like 5000 successful open heart surgeries, which is an achievement, you know, and has patented a bunch of useful medical devices and stuff. He's a person who's made like bafflingly selfish decisions that I don't respect.

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But as a person, I have to have some level of respect for the things that he has achieved because he's impressive. Dr. Phil is just a piece of shit. Dr. Phil is just straight up trash.

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Quote, he also remembers walking into the fields with the villagers and pointing to roots and plants that would heal their ailments. The first recorded occasion of Joao's paranormal abilities took place when he was nine years old while he was visiting family in the town of Nova Ponte with his mother. It was a beautiful cloudless day, but Joao had a premonition that a huge storm was coming.

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And what is OK? I don't know, Dr. Drew. What is what is Dr. Drew do? I'm assuming he's a nonsense doctor like all of the other doctors we talk about.

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Oh, that's the best kind of doctor.

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Oh, that sounds like my nightmare. That sounds like the hell that I would go to is Sober House. Oh, no. No.

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Well, that's fascinating. I'm so happy to have learned about Dr. Drew. But today we're talking about Dr. Phil. And it's it's time to get in, get into the it's time to have us a Philgasm.

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A McGraw-ism. A McGraw-ism. A McGraw-ism.

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Yeah. So, Philip Calvin McGraw was born on September 1st, 1950, in Veneta, Oklahoma, about four hours from where I grew up. His father was Joseph, and his mother was Anne Geraldine, or Jerry, is what she preferred to go by. He had two older sisters and one younger sister.

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He began pointing out houses, including the houses of his brother, and saying that they would be blown down or lose their roofs. He urged his mother to leave before the storm. Although she was not convinced, she humored her son and they sought refuge in a friend's home nearby.

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When he was a kid, his father moved the family down to the oil fields of North Texas, which are about as unpleasant a place as I've ever encountered on this earth. Not a good place to just exist. You don't want to, as a general rule, stay away from oil fields. Not nice places.

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So his kind of like Southern desolation is Phil McGraw's early childhood, which, you know, I can tell you from experience what that does to a kid. And it makes you either a washout or ambitious and angry. One of the two. You either wind up an alcoholic working on an oil derrick or you do everything possible to escape the desolate South. Anyway, Phil's going to take that second one.

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I have strong feelings about that part of Texas and that part of Oklahoma. Yeah. By age 11, Phil was spending summers driving a freight truck owned by his grandfather in Monday, Texas. By age 12, he was flying planes illegally without a license as he traveled with.

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I mean, driving at age 11, not as uncommon as you might think in certain rural parts of the world, still a bit young. Sure. Driving a freight truck is a bit odd at age 11. That is a shark jump.

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Exactly as he had predicted, the thunderstorm appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and badly damaged or destroyed about 40 houses in a small town. And depending on where you find this story, he always claims a different number of houses were destroyed. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So he predicts a storm. This is his first case of clairvoyance.

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He's not even stealing a plane. His dad needs to fly to these desolate airstrips in the middle of nowhere to deliver oil field equipment. And Phil goes with him and flies the plane sometime. My guess is that his dad is just like, I'm taking a nap.

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No, if someone wants to make a comic book, Dr. Phil Child Pilot is a pretty decent premise. I've heard worse. So yeah, this is how Phil spends his childhood up until the point when his dad, Joe, turned 40 and decided, apropos of nothing, that he was going to abandon his family and become a psychologist.

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I have not found more info than that. His dad's like, I'm going to become a psychologist. You guys can keep doing your thing. You know, like, that's basically how it's set. And so Joe leaves his wife and three daughters behind. I think they stay in Texas. And he brings Phil with him to Kansas, where the two started a new life together. Yeah.

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Yeah, it's interesting. One of the things that's interesting to me is like the ways in which Dr. Phil and I's early background are similar and then diverge. And this is a big divergence point because when I was a kid, my dad left for like a couple of years to work somewhere else. But it was because we had no money.

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We were at like the edge of bankruptcy and the only job he could get was in New York living on a friend's couch and like working at a radio station so he could send back money to us. So it wasn't like, And, like, I didn't go with him. He, like, had to go alone to New York to support the family and stuff. But it is this weird, grew up in the same area, moved around a bunch when we were little.

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Our dad leaves, you know. But in Phil's case, he goes with his dad and they just abandon all the women.

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Dr. Phil, child wife pilot.

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I actually just got an email from Netflix, and it's a check for $112 million. So we are now contractually obligated to make this show, Jamie.

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I know. That would be a dream. Let's leave this life behind.

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The way it's been described in the articles I've read. Now, maybe Dr. Phil could give us a more detailed story, but I have not run across it yet.

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Yeah. Most of the info I have on his childhood comes from a Dallas Observer article, and they explain the whole abandoning of Phil's mom and sisters as a financial move. Phil apparently told the Dallas Observer, quote, there just wasn't enough money to do otherwise. So we can only feed two members of this family. So, girls, you're on your own. Phil and I are going to Kansas.

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But despite being clairvoyant and able to read storms in the sky, he found himself still forced to labor in order to get by. At age 16, he moved to a city, Campo Grande, to try and make a living. He was only successful in fits and starts, and before long, he found himself unemployed and living under a bridge at the edge of town.

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Yeah.

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You get the feeling he grew up in a healthy environment. That's true. Healthy families are all alike. They allow 12-year-olds to fly planes.

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That's how Anna Karenina starts.

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I don't know. Anna Karenina? What is it?

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No, no. And she could have been Dr. Phil Stad's child wife.

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Per the results of a 2006 court case, I am not allowed to read Russian literature. In more recent post-fame interviews, Dr. Phil claims those early days with his father were a humbling experience. Quote, we were so poor we couldn't even pay attention, which is... I think is less a true statement, not that I'm saying they weren't poor.

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I think he just said that because he knows it was a pithy thing, and he makes his whole living off of saying stupid Dr. Phil witticisms.

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And I've heard that a thousand times. I have heard a thousand different people explain their origins that way. So I don't know. Fuck you, Dr. Phil. Be original.

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I bet it does. I absolutely bet it makes the moms lose it.

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Someone on Reddit during the Dr. Oz episode, you know, I noted a couple of times that his audience and the people that he makes money off of is like middle-aged moms. And that that's a great business because they have all the money or at least control all the money. Like middle-aged moms are one of the most profitable demographics to get in your corner in the entire world.

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And someone was like, you're being unfairly negative towards middle-aged moms. It's just a statement of fact. Look in the audience of a Dr. Oz show. It's not 16 to 30-year-old men. It's a bunch of moms. My mom loved Dr. Oz. That's who his audience is. It's not a negative statement.

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One day, he headed to the water to bathe, and, John claims, as he approached the water, a beautiful woman called to him and invited him closer. They talked for hours. The next day, he returned to the water to speak with her again, but he found a brilliant shaft of light in her place. He heard her calling his name, and so he approached.

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Yeah.

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It's like saying like men, 18 to 35, listen to Joe Rogan. That's not like, I'm not even, it is negative to listen to Joe Rogan, but I'm not being negative when I say that I'm just accurately describing his audience. Yes.

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Right. Yeah.

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No matter your demographic, there's a grifter for you. Look, I've been honest about the fact that there was a period of time in my life when I liked John McAfee before I knew about, you know, the murder and the rape and stuff. Right. We all have a grifter we're vulnerable to. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You just need to acknowledge it.

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And in the case of middle-aged suburban moms, it's Dr. Phil and Dr. Ross.

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Absolutely amazing person like Mr. Blunt himself. No, without any sort of joking, like a genius, just just has a genius in terms of knowing exactly what a specific age group of people want.

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Yeah, we all have a thing we're vulnerable to. Anyway, we're getting off topic, which is fine because it pads the runtime. And that's what I do as a grifter is I pan the runtime in order to make more money off of you. Fucking sorry. Okay. Shameful. So, yeah, the details that Dr. Phil gives about his childhood, like he gives that kind of pithy, we were so poor we couldn't even pay attention quote.

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But in the interview with Dallas Observer, the details he actually gives make it seem like the issue for Phil was less a matter of crushing poverty. Like, I think they were kind of poor, but I think they were like my kind of poor, like which was not crushing poverty. It was not you're malnourished. It's just there's no money for anything but the basics, you know, but the basics are covered.

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Yeah. Yeah. But you're not like, you're not like in, in, in absolute destitution, you know, like not to exaggerate it, but like you're poor. Like that's kind of what I think is, is, is really happening. And part of why I think that is because his real complaint about that time in his life is that he couldn't buy any cool shit. Um, quote from the Dallas observer.

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It didn't help that he was fiercely competitive. He says, and he lacked the clothes and the car to compete for girls. So I think that's more of the big thing for him, right? Like, OK, you're not that poor. You just don't have enough money to impress girls with possessions.

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She told him to visit the Spiritist Center in Campo Grande, which he did. So, that's his version of events. The Spirit meets him, and they talk for hours, and then she sends him to the Spiritist Center in town.

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Yes. Yeah. I think most of us had more or less that level of poverty. We're like, yeah, especially like I was like one of the poorer kids in a school that was not poor. There were kids in my school who drove BMWs and like I had a beat to shit Ford Taurus. I'm not complaining. You had a Ford Taurus? I had a Ford Taurus. I'm not complaining. I had a car.

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But you see the kids whose parents are rich and you're like, ah, shit, I feel so poor because they have a brand new Jaguar. That's, I think, the kind of poor he is.

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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was just for my senior year. But yes, I did. I did eventually get a car. So thankfully, the young Dr. Phil was huge, quickly crossing six feet. He's a massive man. If you've ever like seen him next to normal sized people, he's a very large person.

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He's like, yeah, he's like an inch or two taller than me. And I think quite a bit broader. Like he's a big motherfucker.

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Most of that's a lot of it's mustache now. But when he was younger, he was in good shape and he was he was very like muscular. And as a result of how big and strong he was, he was a shoe in for the high school's football team. He later recalled, quote, I was Phil the jock and that was my currency. And by currency, he means that's how he got girls. Right. He didn't have the car. He didn't have.

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But he was able to get girls because he had, you know, he was he was on the football team.

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He was tall. He was and he was apparently quite good at football. In Phil's senior year, his father moved to Wichita Falls to start his psychology practice. Not yet a doctor. Phil spent his entire senior year living alone. He didn't go with his dad this time. He supported himself and he played football because he was like he there was a period of time where he might have made it into the NFL.

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So he didn't want to leave his high school and like disrupt that. He said, quote, It wasn't what you were supposed to do, but I was pretty independent.

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College scouts had started eyeing him pretty early on. And he had it seems like he had a real chance of getting at least picked to play college ball. He did get picked to play college ball. His dad had gone to the University of Tulsa on a football scholarship. And in short order, Phil was picked by scouts for the same college. So he gets a college scholarship to the University of Tulsa.

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so like hell yeah he arrives and the director of the center like knows his name already and says they've been waiting for him and then John immediately like collapses he like passes out and when he returns to consciousness there's this huge group of people standing around him and they tell him that he has incorporated which is the term they use for when you're taken over by a spirit the entity King Solomon and he cured 50 people while possessed by King Solomon

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He becomes the captain of the freshman football team. And He says he was very good. A lot of articles you'll say were very good. We're going to talk about this in a little bit because his team at least was shit. Not just a bad, not just not good in the year, but one of the all-time least successful college football teams in the history of college football.

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Yeah.

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That was his Hitler's art school. Right.

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I mean, I never had any chance. I was on the high school. I did one year of football in junior high. I never had any chance of going pro, and I didn't like football. There was a period of time where I might have been able to do well at fencing. I was in a special pro. I was pretty good at fencing. That's cool. But no, I got bored eventually.

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If you're really tall, it helps. Yeah. But never at the college level or anything.

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Sophie is the most successful athlete in this call. Amazing. Amazing.

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You know, I will say, having watched the video of that guy shot-putting a fucking bobcat, I think that should be an Olympic sport.

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You know what that was? It's the greatest example of quality husbanding that I think I've seen on Twitter. Like, Oh, my God. You did good, man. That's exactly what you're supposed to do. Like, that's wholesome masculinity right there, is shot putting a wildcat away from your wife.

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Well, and it's also, you know, it's not going to do any damage to the cat. Now, he did get out his gun to shoot the cat, but it charged back at the family. And I feel at that point, the cat had chosen violence. You know, he gave the animal a chance to end the interaction.

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That's my opinion on the, by now, weeks-old video of a guy hugging a bobcat across a yard.

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Yeah, the cat shows violence. That's my end statement here. So, yeah. Anyway, Dr. Phil, a lot of interviews, you'll see he was very, very good. Maybe could have gone pro. I don't know how accurate that is.

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I'm not great at football, but I found an incredible analysis on the sports website Grantland about a game that he played in, that his freshman football team played in, that is like one of the most famous games in college ball history because of how badly his team did. Yeah. Grantland calls it one of the craziest games in NCAA history.

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For starters, the bulk of Phil's team were like actively dying of the flu while they played. Quote, an especially virulent strain of flu had been cavorting through the Tulsa athletic dorm, somehow overcoming the formidable sanitary standard those three words imply. And 15 of Tulsa's 22 starters were shivering, feverish wrecks.

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They tried to act energetic, but they were so weak, Tulsa coach Glenn Dobbs remembered in 1985. My sons, Glenn III and John, were on the team. Their eyes were glazed with fever.

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The team doctor pleaded with the coach to call off the game, but Dobbs, a former Tulsa star who, because the world just does whatever it wants, had been an icon for the Saskatchewan Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League, refused to surrender. I just never liked backing out, he said afterward. Tulsa had two defensive linemen who were well enough to travel.

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One of them passed out before the coin flip. So this game is a fucking disaster from the beginning.

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which i remember king solomon is the guy who cuts up babies but yeah i don't know and as far as like the luck of the draw goes hey that's a good get good get yeah name oh yeah king solomon ks that's a big one yeah hey could it happen to anyone could it happen to anyone amazing could it happen to anyone i mean i i would love to i don't know not king solomon which king would i want to

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Oh, it's so good.

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Everyone's just puking and shitting to death. also someone named glenn the third is involved like just the funniest fucking thing passing out before the game starts oh that is just and kudos to the grantland writer it's a very entertaining article grantland i miss grantland yeah yeah by the end of the first quarter phil's team was down 14 to 0

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which is a significant, like they're getting, it's not a great start to a game, but it's not insurmountable. However, by the end of the game, they were down by a record breaking 100 points to six.

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No, I don't believe so. Not at all. Um, I think it's one of the greatest ass kickings in college ball history. Um, like in the entire history of the sport, like Dr. Phil's team got their asses beat almost the worst, uh,

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Yeah, it's like a famously, a famous ass kicking.

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It's incredibly funny. So Dr. Phil brags about this game today, saying that it and that football in general helped awaken in him an interest in psychology by teaching him that people with advantages don't always win. That said, the author of that Grantland article takes pains to point out that there is actually no evidence whatsoever that Phil played in this game.

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And the facts that do exist from this time make it seem kind of unlikely. I don't know how to like it was far enough back that there's not any comprehensive way to know for sure, really. But the doubt thrown onto it by this investigation might mean that as a grown ass multimillionaire, Dr. Phil lied to David Letterman about playing in one of the worst ass kickings in sports history.

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And I have no idea what this says about him. Like, I don't even know how to analyze that.

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Yeah. OK, that's fun. Yeah. You like I can see like if I was if I if I played and if I partook in a famous ass kicking in a sports history, I would brag about that as an adult. It would be funny. You know, you get enough distance from it. Sure.

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Lying about it is baffling. Yeah.

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I have no idea what's going on with Dr. Phil. And for the most part, I do know what's going on with him. This is just baffling to me because he's clearly a narcissist. It's very strange as a narcissist to lie about this, you know?

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Yeah, to lie about just getting fame historically wrecked.

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Speaking of clout, you know who has all of my clout, Jamie?

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It is the products and services that support this podcast. I sacrifice all of my clout to them. Like members of the ancient cult of the old ones sacrifice virgin babies to Nyarlathotep, the crawling chaos. Much like that. Yeah. Here's some ads for dick pills. All right. We're back. We're back. We're back.

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Worshipping the old gods. I don't know. Might. deliver up some of my bodily fluids to a Shoggoth later. Who knows? Who knows? We're talking about Dr. Phil. Anything can happen. So anyways, after this, at some point, I don't know the exact year, but at some point pretty soon after this disastrous game, because Phil was definitely on the team.

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At some point after this, Phil had another sports disaster. He went in to tackle a running back and he got hit really hard. And I don't mean just like, you know, sprained something. I mean, he woke up blind, right?

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The kind of head injury where when you come to your eyes don't work, which is medically speaking bad.

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It absolutely like I don't know. I think adults should. I think if you're like 22 and older, you should be allowed to play football. But certainly 18 year olds should not be nor should they be allowed to join the military, by the way. Yeah, sure. The head injury was bad enough. His eyesight came back, obviously. But it was a serious head injury.

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Ooh, Henry VIII. Henry VIII. That's a good... I mean, that's a bad king, but that's a fun king to incorporate. Yeah, to be.

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There was no chance of him continuing his career after that. It's one of those things where you don't get to ever play football again because you get hit in the head one more time. That might be fucking it for you. Once his eyesight... And he still suffers. There's after effects of this today. It's a lifelong injury. He got really messed up.

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Yeah, it's bad. Once his sight came back, Phil returned to Wichita Falls to heal and to plot his next move. He decided to put his college education on hold now that he couldn't do a football scholarship. And he decided, you know, the thing you do now, I'm not going to I'm going to I'm going to think about college later. I'm going to make some money now. Right.

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Which is not an unreasonable call to make in the situation. And I'm going to quote from a write-up in the Dallas Observer. He worked at a health club selling memberships and wound up owning a partnership interest in that club and a half dozen others. That was typical of the way he did things, says Scott Madsen, who went into the building business with his future brother-in-law.

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He is the smartest guy I ever met. A born leader, even at a young age, he had the insight to figure out how things work. Others took a more damnable view of his business practices. I didn't know of anyone who had a business deal with Phil at the time who felt they came out on top, says David Dickinson, a former friend of McGraw's from Wichita Falls.

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It's like playing golf from someone who moves the ball around all the time.

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He's like maybe 20 at the most, like 19 or 20. And very quickly, he becomes a part owner in the sports club he's working at, becomes part owner in like a half dozen other clubs.

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I could ride a tricycle. Take some hands. Yeah.

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No. But he's clearly very good at it. Specifically, the thing that Phil is objectively one of the best people in the world at is negotiating. Yeah. He is a terrifying negotiator. I haven't run into any disagreement about that.

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Yeah.

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And he's very good at negotiating in a legal manner, which is a separate skill just from grifting, you know, and is honestly like the best kind of grifting because you can't get in trouble for that shit.

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Or at least maybe the football injury scrambled his wires and made him wired for it. I don't know.

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Yeah, that's how Dr. Phil works. He really, really triggers a lot of responses. Yeah. Now, the article notes that when you interview, that Dallas Observer article notes that when you interview a bunch of people who have known Dr. Phil over the course of decades, you tend to get two very different pictures of the man.

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One from the people who like him is of an incredibly gifted expert in practical psychology who has a passion for helping people. Yeah. And the other picture you get of Dr. Phil is a, quote, charismatic opportunist who achieved great things by betraying the people closest to him in order to make a quick buck.

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One of these spurned former friends is Eldon Buck, who claimed to The Observer, I put Phil in a couple of oil field deals and everyone pays me but him. Phil is a smart, smart, smart son of a bitch, but he's only out for one thing, and that's Phil. Now, Phil denies all of this, but it is worth noting, as we've just heard, that Buck is not the only person with allegations like this against him.

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He's not even just one of two, but we're going to get to that story in due time.

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Yeah, anything that'll make him money. This is kind of all happening over a period of a couple of years. He starts making money and he immediately reinvests that money. He's in a bunch of businesses. I have a very, very close friend who has that kind of brain, who's just always spinning off their money into one business or another. And

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Oh, Nebuchadnezzar. You mean like the Babylonian emperor? Yeah, that's a good one. Right?

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I don't know how they do it, but they just are able to keep track of like the fact that like I've got an investment in this business. And through that business, I have an investment in this business and an interest in these other three businesses. And those give me an interest in this. And like this is how all of that like I don't I don't understand it.

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But like it's kind of like being an engineer, you know. Some people have the kind of brain where you can open up like a fucking HVAC system or or like the flight control system on an airplane and know what all of the little cords and all of the lights go and do and how to how to how to work all of that. Some people have a brain that allows them to just business, you know.

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It sounds like a nightmare. I keep all of my money in a pile and I will never have investments. Like I will never like I keep it in a bank, but like I have no I have no investments and never will because the idea of investing money is terrifying to me and makes me want to huddle around a fire with a spear and stab outsiders.

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Yeah. Oh, man, and it's so much more impressive to take on Nebuchadnezzar. That guy's got a way better name than Solomon. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, obviously, this is all lies. The only truth here is probably that John's age 16 is about when John started fooling around with spiritism.

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Well, that's going to appreciate, you know, Jamie.

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It's the only thing they're not making any more of.

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Anyways, I would pay good money for a Dilbert NFT where he admits responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombing.

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I think that would be a good NFT. If you're listening, Scott Adams, I'll invest in that one. Dilbert Dilbert admits to making a six thousand pound fertilizer bomb and parking it out in front of the Murrah building. That's the NFT I want.

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Stan Kathy. You know who else I stan, Jamie? Who? No one. That was like it's not time for an ad.

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I can't stop myself.

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I mean, you know who I actually stand, who I have an unreasonable affection for and can't be convinced otherwise. No, no, I think I think I have a reasonable love of LeVar Burton, as everyone does. Right. It's like a capybara. You know, it's like loving a capybara. Like it's LeVar Burton, of course. No, Werner Herzog. Herzog is my my unreasonable love.

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I don't know what that means, Jamie.

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What the fuck is a fan cam?

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I don't think there's a lot of video of me where like you can actually see me. So that might be hard to do.

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I know I would.

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Well, all I'm interested of is a fan cam of Werner Herzog diving into a bunch of cactuses because he promised a group of little people that if they made it through the filming of a movie without injury, he would horribly hurt himself by diving into a bed of saguaros from 12 feet up.

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Yeah, he absolutely did it. And they begged him not to. They were like, please don't do this. We don't want you to hurt yourself. And he said, I made a promise. And if I don't fulfill my promise, there's no reason for me to be alive. And then he dove into a pile of cactuses because he's a fucking lunatic. And I love him so much.

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Oh, Werner Herzog. Watch Aguirre, The Wrath of God.

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Dr. Phil. Yeah, sorry. We're off the topic a little bit. So after three years as a business slash con man, Phil McGraw decided to return to the education system to study psychology. He started off at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, where his father had gone and then transferred to the University of North Texas, which is where the people who gave me huge amounts of drugs went to school.

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Unfortunately, I'm unaware of any serious journalism that exists to actually document what down what went down with John's early years in the religion. But he claims that the director of the center had to take him aside and explain to him that he'd been chosen by an entity of light known as King Solomon. This director told him to leave and come back at 2 p.m. the next day to keep healing people.

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I don't think Phil spent his time half a mile outside of campus downing 100 milligrams of 2CI and 15 to 20 milligrams of 5-MeO-MIPT and vaporizing DMT, which is probably why he graduated UNT with a PhD while my friends and I all dropped out of college to go, you know, do stupid shit. Anyway.

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No, he's not. In his recollection, Phil both hated and excelled at college. He later recalled, I almost quit every day. The faculty just jacked with you all the time. I remember telling one professor, either kick me out or get off my ass. He did succeed in impressing other professors, though.

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His mentor at UNT was Dr. G. Frank Lawless, who still considers Dr. Phil, quote, by far the most brilliant psychologist I ever worked with. Hmm. which is meaningful praise, but also we are talking UNT here. You know, we're not talking like one of the famous psychology schools in the country.

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So not a nothing compliment, but not like a doctor, not like people saying Dr. Oz is the best heart surgeon ever, you know, because that motherfucker's working at Columbia, right? They know from heart surgery.

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I don't know. I'm not throwing shade at Frank Lawless. I'm just saying, I don't think Dr. Phil is the most brilliant psychologist ever to exist.

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I'm assuming he's Xena's father. So, McGraw got his doctorate in 1979 and returned to Wichita Falls for reasons that are impossible to explain. Any person who returns to Kansas, I just don't I don't understand.

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He started a business partnership with his dad, and together the two veered their practice towards treating the mental ailments of the rich and socially prominent, circulating among country clubs to cater to doctors, lawyers, bankers, and their wives. One of Dr. Phil's friends later claimed, quote, Phil moved right into the money circles. If there wasn't a buck in it, he wasn't much interested.

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So, you know, that's that's the that's the field he gets into is is dealing with like rich people who are neurotic or whatever.

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I mean, you know, at this point, again, if you're grifting rich people, I don't care. Who cares? Yeah. Sometimes I might find it interesting for an off week, but I don't consider that evil behavior, right? They have too much money, whatever. He specialized in cognitive behavioral therapy, which Phil at least claimed was a cause and effect therapy that treated thoughts and behavior the same.

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Quote, people would come in and say, I had a hard childhood. Therefore, I am not doing well as an adult. A Freudian would say, let's work through your childhood. I would say, that's fine. But right now you are an adult. You have a choice to stop yelling at your kids.

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Yeah, that doesn't sound bad, right? Like, that is a reasonable take, which is like, okay, it's fine to, like, you know, work through a difficult childhood, but you can't be shitty to your kids just because you had a bad childhood. Reasonable statement.

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Yes, yes. Perfectly valid statement. Absolutely. Sure. And this kind of no-nonsense approach was very popular with some of his clients. I can see how it would have been useful in a number of cases. But Dr. Phil himself admits that he was, quote, probably the worst marital therapist in the history of the world. I was teaching what they taught me, but I was real impatient.

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Since John was homeless, this guy invited him to stay the night at his house. John claims that this man's humble home and food were unthinkable luxuries for him, given the poverty he'd lived with his entire life. He was given his own room with an electric fan. So that's a big deal. Nice electric fan.

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Everybody was getting divorced. The way he relates it, realizing the shortcomings of his education, convinced Phil to seek out less traditional ways to practice his profession and to market it. And I should note here as an aside that during this period, Dr. Phil got married and was briefly with a woman before cheating on her repeatedly and then leaving her.

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So.

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Yeah. I mean, he he does. I mean, to be fair, he admits he was a bad marriage therapist. So I can't call him like a hypocrite. If you're saying I was I was a shitty husband and a shitty marriage therapist. That all scans. Right. You know, like that's. Yeah. He's being honest here. So we won't belabor the point.

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Yeah, he started holding pain clinics, weight loss clinics, and giving executive recruiting advice and even expert legal testimony for court cases. He was like an expert witness. Yeah, and this is like for court cases, right? Like you need someone to come and... You know, you have like somebody who's claiming like, oh, you know, I can't be... held responsible for this.

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Cause I'm, I, you know, like mentally ill or whatever, like, you know, not guilty by reason of insanity. He comes in and he's like, yes, that's valid or no, that's not valid depending on who pays him, you know?

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Yeah.

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Yeah, it's the kind that we just finished the Chauvin trial. You know, we had all these kind of use of force experts. There's a bunch of people in different fields whose main job is to take that expertise in another field and testify about it in court because it's relevant, right?

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You have like engineering specialists who are like, I'm going to go testify about this bridge that collapsed to either defend the people who made it or explain how irresponsible they were, whatever. Like that's a whole, there's a whole industry. Dr. Phil gets into the providing expert.

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There's a fuckload of you can get real goddamn rich doing that. Yeah.

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And by the way, lawyers listening, I will testify as an expert witness on literally anything as a certified reverend doctor in the state of New Jersey. My purview is wide. So, you know what? Twelve grand an hour.

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I'm going to go lie under oath about I don't know, whatever. Anyway, Dr. Phil started. Yeah. Holding, you know, so he started he gets into like the whole. The business of if I really want to make money at scale as a psychologist, having individual, even if they're rich, individual clients isn't the thing to do.

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I'm going to do a bunch of clinics on like dealing with pain, dealing with weight loss, you know, recruiting people. I'll do like. So he gets very quickly into the I'm less about helping people and more about making money as a psychologist.

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In 1984, he meets Thelma Box, an insurance and real estate agent from Graham, Texas, who asked him to go into business with her to create a brand new motivational seminar. Now, we're talking, again, like the 70s, 80s, which is the golden age of motivational seminars. That's when this whole thing really explodes. Motivational seminars are basically short-term cults.

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For two to five days, several dozen to several hundred to sometimes even a couple of thousand people will pack into an auditorium where a charismatic front man and a handful of his buddies will coach them.

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Usually by hyping the room up using simple crowd work tactics to make people feel temporarily elated and tricking them into having like cathartic experiences and thinking they've learned something, you know? Yeah. That's the whole idea. Have people get like people, the mania of a crowd kind of going, make people cry or laugh and think like something significant has happened.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. In public, in front of a bunch of people. It's a whole big grift. Yeah. Thelma Box was a, well, I don't know, grift. I think a lot of people just like them. I've known people who like admit that they never got anything long term out of it, but just enjoy the experience. And I guess if that's your thing.

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Whatever.

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It made me feel good. You know, I don't care, I guess, if that's your thing.

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Yeah, there's a lot of people who like to climb the ice-filled sides of mountains with crampons and fucking, like, pythons and stuff, and a lot of them die. There's people who like to do cave diving, which is the deadliest thing you could possibly do to relax. So, like, I don't know. People do shit. I don't care.

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Yeah. And it's one of those things. Yeah. It's convenient that, you know, out in the at this period of time, out in the middle of nowhere, Brazil, you know, lifespans aren't enormous. So you're really if you make it old enough, you could just lie about what happened to you when you were a kid because. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. That makes sense. Yeah.

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But most of the people doing these seminars are actually, like, people at some kind of, like, crisis point in their life having a difficulty, and that's the problem with it.

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There's varying degrees. Some of them are just like, I'm going to make you feel good about yourself so you can go out and attack the world. And I guess that's kind of less problematic where it's like, okay, like whatever, you know, it's basically expensive church. Okay. Yeah. Like you will not make me not hate myself, friend. Better men than you have tried. Yeah.

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So, Thelma Box, who is Phil's friend, is a huge fan of these kind of motivational seminars. She'd done all the big ones. Zig Ziglar, actual guy out there. You can find his books at any given estate sale. Dale Carnegie, you can also find his books at any given estate sale. Tony Robbins, you can also find his books at any given estate sale. All the estate sale greats.

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She does their seminars regularly.

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Most of her classes had been focused on her career. Like they'd been like focused on helping salesmen, right? Because that's a big subset of this industry. She sold insurance and real estate. So there'd been conferences to help real estate and insurance salesmen sell better.

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Box felt that there was a market for a seminar focused instead of financial stuff on personal growth, on how to actually be a better person. Now, Box had gotten to know Dr. Phil because her son had hired him to renegotiate a bunch of bank loans. She decided Phil was the best negotiator she'd ever seen. Quote, And again, People disagree about a lot of stuff about Dr. Phil.

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Nobody disagrees about this part. He's apparently just an incredible negotiator. So she she decides he's going to be a great front man for this life improvement seminar she wants to host. Now, her initial plan had been to lead a success seminar for single women. But McGraw pushed back against this. He didn't want to limit himself to just female customers instead.

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The plan that he made was for Bob or instead he was like, we should do like a general like life improvement for everybody. Like, come here and I'll help you deal with whatever things are holding you back in your life. Right. Like, that's kind of how Phil innovates the pitch. Now, initially, the plan that Box had fronted was for Box and Phil to be 50 50 partners in this venture.

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But right before they started going. Yeah, exactly. Right before they started going, Dr. Phil demanded that he was going to walk if she didn't bring his dad in as an equal shareholder.

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She claims that she basically... That's brilliant. Yeah, that's the guy he is. She claims she built the curriculum of the program from the ground up, designing most of the games and all of the different worksheets and shit you had to do. And basically, in fairness, I don't think Box is a great person.

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She's taking all of the information for this from other seminars she attended and is just modifying them enough to avoid plagiarism.

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She gets fucked over by Phil, but like, I don't particularly like her either.

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The earlier most people die, the easier it is to be a grifter.

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Yeah, I'm excited for that for you, Jamie.

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But you know what isn't exciting?

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Life without the products and services that support this podcast.

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Not even really worth living. Like if we're being frank, what are you even doing without these products and services? What are you? Nothing.

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All right. Here's ads. We're back. I hope you all spent money because this whole fucking wheel of blood doesn't keep turning if you don't put money into it, people.

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When everyone I went to high school with is dead, I'm going to have some stories I start telling. I'll tell you that much. Yeah. No corroboration. Oh, I was healing the shit out of people in 11th grade.

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You know?

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That's how it works.

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That's how it works.

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You want this to fall apart?

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Yes. Anyway. So, yeah, the basic idea of these seminars that Box mostly cooks up and Phil is supposed to present is to teach people how to find out what they want from life by making them more accountable, by expressing vulnerability, stripping away self-deception, which all just means like making people cry in a big room surrounded by other people. You know, that's the goal. That's the goal.

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short-term cults, which is the kind of cult I'd like to do because it does sound exhausting having to like, every time I watch my favorite TV show, which is the Waco TV show where they made David Koresh have incredible cum gutters.

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Before Waco. It seems like it's exhausting. We all love David Koresh, but my God, the man had to put in a lot of work just to keep a cult going. It just doesn't seem worth it.

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Short term cults. Like if I could just do like a limited Waco, like five or six times a year over the course of like four days, that seems much better.

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Sophie, take down a podcast idea, The 40 Minute Waco. I think we could make a lot of money with this. Anyway, back to Dr. Phil. So what made this seminar thing that he launches with Box Special is the group dynamic. Getting 100 or so people together in a room, crying and sharing stories and having the kind of addictive, cathartic experiences that make seminar hosts rich people.

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Phil and Box were good at it. And Dr. Phil instantly gained a reputation as a magnetic host. One attendee recalled, quote, his voice was mic'd and he sounded godlike. I watched powerful men crumble as he questioned them. He knew just the right buttons to push.

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You know, it's not that he's a great psychologist is that he is an incredibly intuitive man who understands people, which is why he's a good negotiator. He does have a great voice. I'll give that to him.

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Yeah, he knows how to manipulate people, right? He's a great manipulator in that you can make a lot of money doing that.

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Yep. You know who else was healing a lot of people when I was in the 11th grade? Okay, so now let's talk about products. Nope, we did that. Now we're back. Okay, so John of God, he meets this spiritist church, and they tell him that King Solomon's taken over his brain, and he's like, that's good and normal. And yeah, so he...

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Yes, yes. I understand people but care about what happens to them, which is why I tell them to buy machetes and bolt cutters and Claymore anti-personnel mines. Yes, definitely saving lives. By the way, when you're ordering your Claymore anti-personnel line, use promo code BASTARDS for 15% off if you buy four or more. Claymore, fuck anyone in front of you. What?

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Sophie.

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Okay, yeah. So, this seminar series was called Pathways, and it became hugely popular. For a while, they were making fucking bank. And the whole process of doing this awoke in Phil, or at least accelerated, a deep desire to get on TV. He started pushing for his own talk show, schmoozing with a Hollywood producer who made the mistake of attending one of his seminars.

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Phil succeeded in talking said producer into filming a pilot episode of a show where three people went through Dr. Phil's training and told their stories of like, you know, how it had helped them. The show sounds incredibly boring and clearly it was not picked up. Now, over his years with Pathways, McGraw developed into a talented showman.

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One of his coworkers, David Dickinson, later recalled, once he got in front of the room, it didn't take long to feel the power. He loved being godlike and worshipped. The only reason it didn't become a cult is because Thelma wouldn't let it. Yeah.

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Chaos Frazier. Yes. Yeah.

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I mean, the thing is, if you actually, Frazier was a big show for my family growing up. And so like, while my mom was, was dying, we watched a lot of episodes cause you know, there wasn't a lot that she could do. And it was kind of a thing. that was nostalgic for all of us. Um, but one of the through lines of the series is that Frazier's not a good psychologist, like not a good psychiatrist.

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Like he's bad. Like that's why he's on the radio.

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Yeah. Niles is supposed to be good. Yeah. Yeah. Niles is competent. Um, although problematic, uh, definitely some stalking behavior from Niles.

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nobody on that show is a good person but john mahoney um the only good cop frazier's dad that's absolutely true and not even not even eddie is safe from no no from cancellation and honestly not a good a cop john mahoney admits to lying on the stand in order to get a man incarcerated during an episode of frazier it's just like an offside comment yes he absolutely does

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He's just such a damn charismatic actor. I can't stay mad at the man. So by the late 1980s, Pathways had moved to Dallas, where each year more than a thousand people would pay a thousand dollars each to attend a single weekend event with McGraw. That's a million bucks in a weekend. So, again, great money in this. Yeah.

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So Dr. Phil is I don't know if he's a millionaire at this point, but he is well off at this point. Now, he unfortunately, like his dad is involved in the whole thing. And Dr. Phil never had a great relationship with his father. I think he was just kind of using him to get control of the thing. But like he and his dad don't get along. They're both egomaniacs.

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And to make matters worse, the older Dr. McGraw was basically just kind of stupid.

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like there to cash a check like when he would show up on stage you'd be like erratic and kind of say nonsense and and not really help uh the business at all so worse than nothing worse than nothing the two men started to hate each other uh which a number number of employees noted as somewhat hypocritical quote come on here is a guy who was running a relationship seminar and he doesn't speak to his own father in the training room for years he didn't walk his own talk that is a fair hypocritical criticism fair

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And while Dr. Phil's relationship with his dad kind of went to shit, his relationship with Thelma Box, who had founded the program that made him rich and developed its curriculum, got even worse. The Dallas Observer writes, quote, Though McGraw and Box were partners for more than seven years and friends for more than a dozen, his treatment of her didn't seem much better.

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On November 16, 1992, Box received a faxed memo from McGraw informing her that he had made a tentative deal to sell his interest in Pathways to Midland philanthropist Steve Davidson. McGraw was ready to move on, his father ready to retire. That's why his father had sold his one-third interest, the memo informed her, to a Wichita Falls businessman.

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Of course, the new partners, quote, understand yours and my relationship and know that I am committed to you as a friend and associate and expect fair treatment. Basically, he sold me down the river, says Box, who recalls having heated discussions with McGraw about either selling her own Pathways interest or buying him out in the two weeks prior to the memo. Phil and I hadn't been getting along.

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He stopped talking to me and I knew we couldn't go on that way. What he had neglected to tell her, she says, is that he had engineered this corporate takeover scheme by actually selling his interest more than a year earlier. On October 15th, 1991, he signed an agreement for the sale of his Pathways stock for $325,000. I absolutely told her I was selling, McGraw says.

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He winds up staying the night with the leader of the center, and he tries to explain to him that he's not a practicing medium, and he doesn't know anything about medicine, and he doesn't understand how he was healing all these people. He was actually terrified because he didn't know how to – he was expected to come back the next day, and he didn't know how to do what was expected of him.

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What she didn't like was who I was selling to. Now, you can take whoever's word you want on this, but the author of that article was given a memo that McGraw sit to the buyer of his stock, in which the buyer agreed that the sale would be kept confidential from everyone, including Box. So I'm going to go ahead and say that Phil is the liar here.

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He basically knew he wanted to sell out early when his stuff was worth more than hers would be. With only a third of it left, she's not going to get as much money for it. Um, and he lies. She keeps, she's trying to buy it from him for a year after he's already sold it. And he's just stonewalling her. Um, like, yeah, it's, it's, it's a shitty way to treat a business partner.

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Yeah, and he acknowledges that the material from his first best-selling book was basically lifted entirely from the Pathways curriculum, but he has never acknowledged that Thelma Box actually wrote the curriculum he based his best-selling book on.

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No, no. Again, that's the thing. The point is that he is a con man, not that she is particularly a victim here. He's like, I don't care about Thelma Box. In 1989, Dr. Phil was living and working in Wichita. He keeps going back to fucking Kansas, enjoying his Pathways money and working as a psychologist.

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One of his patients was a young woman who he started and maintained a, quote, inappropriate dual relationship with.

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Yeah, he is her. He is her doctor and he is fucking her.

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Yeah. Shouldn't be doing that with the patient you're providing psychiatric care to.

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Kind of a no, no.

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He then made the relationship even more inappropriate when he hired her part time while she was still his patient and lover, which is so many conflicts of interest. That is, you got to give the man credit for really going out of his way to, to, to do the most unethical version of that thing. He could like, you're right, Robert.

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Critical support to Dr. Phil for managing the fucking, the fucking, I don't know what he, the trifecta, I guess.

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Dr. Phil considers this transgression to just have been a misdemeanor. But the journalist who wrote that Dallas Observer article looked into the situation. He found the woman Dr. Phil had the relationship with, and he found out a lot more besides, and it's pretty fucking sketchy. Quote, In 1984, she was a college student returning home after her sophomore year depressed, lonely, and suicidal.

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I was emotionally abused as a child, she says, and suffered from low self-esteem. When McGraw began treating her, she says, he became fully involved in her life, demanding to know with whom she spoke, when she went to bed at night, what she did that day. If I was depressed or anxious, his first question was, why didn't you call me? Every time I felt bad, he insisted only he could fix me.

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But as soon as he gathered it, the spirit ascended the next day. King Solomon took him over again, and he kept healing more sick people. John claims this went on for months, while the more experienced spiritist practitioners educated him on the nature of the entities that increasingly took over his body. He became known as Medium John, and his new teachers said...

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When she wanted to spend the following summer working for a professor at the Houston University she was attending, he persuaded her to work in his biofeedback lab in Wichita Falls. He kept me totally dependent on him, she says. So that's textbook abuse. Like that's just like literally textbook abuse. Yeah. Yeah. Couldn't be clearer.

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It's really... He's a bad person, Jamie. He's just a real bad person.

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not to be like complimenting Dr. Oz, but by this point in the Dr. Oz story, he's performed thousands of open heart surgeries. Again, Dr. Phil, they're both grifters. Dr. Phil never does a single good thing, like to even the scales at all. He's just a monster, right? And you get the feeling, Dr. Oz, I have never heard a complaint that he's abusive in his personal relationships.

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People mostly, I've heard reports that he's kind of a narcissist, but I've never heard that he's like, A monster. Dr. Phil's a monster.

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I don't know. I'm just he's a useful he's a useful comparison. I just really hate Dr. Phil.

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So the formal complaint this woman filed led to a decision from the psychology board that Dr. Phil's practice would have to be supervised for a year.

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before that time came up he quit his practice and moved to Dallas to start a new company courtroom sciences incorporated or CSI with his neighbor from Wichita his job was basically to use his psychology knowledge to help lawyers pick jurors he loved the work particularly the adrenaline that came from the high stakes of a court case

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Dr. Phil's company was a hit, and his clients soon included every major airline on Earth, three TV networks, and dozens of Fortune 500 companies. Before long, it came to include Oprah Winfrey as well.

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Yeah.

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Mm-hmm. Yeah, the two sacred things in our society, Oprah and the airlines. Yeah.

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Where does he get Stedman? What were you fucking doing?

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She was like, I'm going to make so much money. An outrageous amount of money, Stedman.

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I will be able to clone you when you die, Stedman. That's how much money I'm going to make off this man.

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it is kind of funny medium john it's like the sequel to big john that's not as as good or rhythmic medium john just just medium john every morning at the mine you could see him arrive he stood five foot eight and weighed 135 kind of medium at the shoulders and medium at the hips and everyone knew it was okay to give some lip to medium john

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That's very unsettling, Jamie.

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So Oprah had made the questionable decision to do an episode of her show on the dangers of disease in the American beef supply. A bunch of Texas cattlemen sued her for fraud, defamation, and, you know, just hurting their businesses. Now, I have no idea who's in the right here, and I really don't care.

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The case looked like to be going badly for Oprah until she brought in Dr. Phil to be a part of her trial team. He instantly recognized her as someone he could make money off of, and he set to work charming her. Phil did his job. He coached her and the defense team in how to respond under questioning, and he won Oprah's adoration.

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And to his credit, it seems like he did a good job because she was exonerated. And after the case ended in her favor, she did a verdict episode of her show from Amarillo, Texas, where for the first time she introduced Dr. Phil McGraw to a national audience. She called him one of the smartest men in the world.

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She was so impressed that she added that he was like literally the most intelligent man she'd met in her 12 years of talking to medical experts. She said she wanted to share his brilliance with the world.

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And we are going to talk about where this hyperbole gets all of us in part two of our epic series, Dr. Phil. What a dick.

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Yep.

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Fuck, fucking a Dr. Phil. Come on.

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Could you not? Could you just go back to football? I feel like one more head injury could really solve a lot of our problems as a country.

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Yeah. I don't even necessarily want his football career to have gone. Well, if he'd just gotten a hit 20% harder, you know, That would have been enough for me.

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Yeah. Anyway, Jamie, you got any pluggables you want to drop?

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Check out Jamie's erotic Kathy podcast. I assume it's erotic. Is that correct?

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I mean, she doesn't need to be having sex for the podcast about Kathy to just be like the fundamental eros of Kathy is so overwhelming, you know? Yeah. You just hear that last name Gus White and oof.

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Fix it in post.

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Can you make it hornier, Kathy? Just like 12%. Anyway, I hope the rest of you have a day that's 12% hornier. We'll be back Thursday.

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So his his new teachers told him he needed to devote his whole life to healing other people. And this is by his biographers claim started a five or six year period of traveling throughout Brazil, healing the sick and the suffering. He became known as Joao Curador, or John the Healer.

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Uh... Hello? This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast that... Robert, you just sounded like a haunted house! Yeah, I... I don't know. I never come into this show with a plan. Like, I write 10,000 words a week to do this show, and then I consistently just completely fuck the introductions. Um...

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That's our Robert. It's easy to have a consistent brand when your brand is being like a brain-damaged drug addict who is incapable of doing anything but writing long essays about bad people. Simple brand.

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So probably shouldn't be trusted with large machinery.

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You know who else should be trusted with large machinery because of the horrible head injury? Dr. Phil. Mm hmm.

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No, you're Jamie. I would trust you with heavy machinery, although you don't have a driver's license, do you?

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Yeah.

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Through his biographers and in interviews, John always makes sure that people know that he is a healer, but he also at the same time always firmly rejects being called a healer. So he makes sure that people know that everyone started calling me John the Healer, but I'm not a healer. The entities that channel through my body are the ones doing the healing. I'm just a conduit.

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The key thing about cops, Jamie, and this is some free advice for all of you out there, they're never ready for you to just tuck and roll, you know? As long as you're driving a cheap car, if they start to pull you over, just tuck and roll and then fucking book it. I guarantee you they will not be ready.

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They're just not going to be ready. And anyway, we should probably talk about Dr. Phil some, huh?

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Probably chill out with our Phil out. i need to go actually okay that's that's fair what if i just logged out of this this this has been the final episode of behind the bastards i'm so sorry all right yeah let's chill out with our fill out just a big old pudgy no no bald-headed phil just flopping around yeah with a nice mustache like a flopping around like a like a skink on a hot rock okay um

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okay later that year so dr phil helps oprah out um and and like saves her saves her bacon um and she brings him on her show and does her like verdict episode statement she was getting like sued for a lot of money and defamation and shit like it was potentially something that would have really damaged her her her bottom line i was like i don't

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OK, so Dr. Phil later that year would become a regular part of her show. And this was part of a pivot in Oprah's show where she went from like doing a normal talk show to what she called Change Your Life TV.

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The goal of Change Your Life TV was to take the experience people had in Phil's seminars, the very public crowd influenced catharsis of emotional change, and put that shit on television for everybody to watch. Mostly, this involves Dr. Phil confronting people aggressively about their flaws so they would cry and say they learned something. Quote, this is Dr. Phil explaining his methodology. Yeah.

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In order for people to change, there has to be a dramatic event. I think coming on the Oprah show as an event in itself is a watershed occurrence in people's lives. They get told the bottom line truth about where they are. And in that environment, I don't think they will ever forget it. If you embarrass people on national television, they remember. Yeah.

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So on Oprah's show, Dr. Phil focused on clients whose problems were things he could justify yelling about to them or yelling at them for. One early case was a husband who was verbally abusive to his wife, calling her obscene names. Phil could not just condemn the man, but he didn't just condemn the man. He made the man's wife tearfully recount everything he said to her on TV.

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It's very important to him that you believe both things. Yeah. Yeah. So this has a nice side benefit of allowing him to argue that he isn't practicing medicine without a license, which is handy when you're practicing medicine without a license. I don't know if you've ever practiced medicine without a license, but you got to be careful with it.

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So like he's yelling at this guy for being a dick, but he's also demanding that this woman like in detail explain every horrible thing her husband said about her to millions of strangers.

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Yeah.

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I don't think is great. You know, I don't think that's great behavior would be my my take on it. Not a psychologist, but Phil isn't really a psychologist either. So, Phil then, after making this woman laboriously explain the horrible things her husband said to her, got to help provide some of his own homespun wisdom. In this case, he told the wife, you taught him how to treat you. Now,

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This is a variation of one of Dr. Phil's life laws for people to follow, which he published in his plagiarized bestselling book, Life Strategies. Quote, no, we teach people how to treat us own rather than complain about how people treat us.

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Did she blame herself for people being shitty to her?

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Okay. Well, yeah, that's good.

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God, I hate all of his titles. Yeah.

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It was in the house. It was somewhere up in there.

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Well, I don't know. Did it, did it rescue your relationships?

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Oh yeah. The talk to the dead guy.

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Hey everybody, Robert here, and if you've been paying attention, we just finished six episodes on Oprah Winfrey. And obviously that dealt with a lot of the most toxic things about her career in media and her show.

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They are all traumatizing grifts. That's what makes them so satisfying. Wow. We all learned a lesson, didn't we? No. No, we didn't.

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All right. So Dr. Fucking Phil. So I want to talk a little bit more about these life laws that he that he lays out in his first book, because this is a major reoccurring theme, especially in early Dr. Phil.

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Like people will he'll critique people by explaining which life law they violated, like the one where you're responsible for other people treating you shitty because we teach people how to treat us. Yeah. Which is like an inversion of the truth, which is that if you're like abusers and predators are good at spotting your vulnerabilities and taking advantage of them. Right.

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And so you need to be aware of your own vulnerabilities because you need to be aware of how dangerous people might take advantage of you. That's the non-toxic way of framing that. The toxic way is, hey, you taught him to be like that. Like, no, you didn't. He saw that you had this vulnerability and he took advantage of it. That's a fair way to put it.

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I want to try this logic with, like, crimes. Like, the next time I'm caught speeding, like, look, officer, you taught me how to drive this car that way. Like, by having the road be this straight and me be this drunk, you kind of taught me to speed, you know?

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Oh, Christ in heaven. Okay, so here's how he introduces the concept of life laws in his book. Quote, life laws are the rules of the game. No one is going to ask you if you think these laws are fair or if you think they should exist. Like the law of gravity, they simply are. You don't get a vote. You can ignore them and stumble along, wondering why you never seem to succeed.

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Yeah, exactly. If somebody dies while he's performing psychic surgery, it's the dead king's fault. Mm hmm.

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Or you can learn them, adapt to them, mold your choices and behavior to them, and live effectively. Learning these life laws is at the absolute core of what you must master in this book to have the essential knowledge for a personal life strategy.

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Yeah, it's you know, it's it's good, Jamie.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, that would be fun. And I think we could probably get a pretty good primetime TV audience if we actually did that, Jamie. If we just put it through a shredder. Yeah. Watch like that scene in Fargo.

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Oh, fuck. We get Steve Buscemi in to present. That's a fucking hour of TV right there.

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I'm sure he would. Now, I bet, Jamie, you're hungry for some more of Dr. Phil's life laws. I can see it in your eyes. You're just you're just you're just. Yeah, absolutely. So most of these laws are pretty self-explanatory. Stuff like life rewards action and you cannot change what you do not acknowledge.

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I mean, I am going to start blaming all of my many crimes on King Solomon. I'm not I'm not going to I'm not even going to lie to you about that. Like, I that seems like a very good idea.

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My favorite is people do what works, which boils down to the idea that we engage in bad behavior because it rewards us in some way. So, Dr. Phil says, if you want to stop the behavior, stop rewarding yourself for it. Which makes sense until you think about the way, say, heroin or junk food works. Because you can't stop it from... The reward is the thing, right?

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The next time you take heroin, punch yourself in the dick so you don't enjoy it as much. I don't know.

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Yeah. How do you... Like statistically, most of the kind of people who want advice from are going to be dealing with something like weight loss. And it's like, no, the reward is eating food like that. Right. That strategy isn't going to to help.

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Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just all it's just very, very transparent nonsense for the most part.

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You got to give the man credit. It is words in a sequence. That is undeniable that Dr. Phil.

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The man uses sentences, you know? You gotta give that to him. You can't take that from him. So, yeah, some of his rules are, however, a little more sinister. Probably the worst, well, one of the worst is, I don't know, there's a lot of worsts. One is, you create your own experiences. Here's how he explains that one. Don't play the role of victim or use past events to build excuses.

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It guarantees you no progress, no healing, and no victory. You will never fix a problem by blaming someone else.

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Yeah, it's... I mean...

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It's just such bad. It's particularly all bad advice for like abuse victims. Because if you're an abuse victim, in a lot of cases, part of the healing process is realizing that your abuser is the person to blame and that all these things they got you to blame yourself for aren't things you did wrong. Absolutely. Like that's a big part of healing from that sort of thing.

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And he's just like, no, no, no, don't be blaming this guy just because he was beating you. Maybe you didn't do the laundry right. You know, maybe you should have got him his beer faster. I'm Dr. Phil. I'm a doctor, you know, like, God damn it. I really don't like this guy. Yeah.

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Yeah, I mean, yes, officer, I was going 135 miles an hour in a 55. But if I didn't, this fucking king ghost in my head was going to chop up some babies. Like, do you want me to go a little faster? You want some chopped up babies? That's all I got to ask you.

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I also want to read you the, we said earlier, one of his rules is we teach people how to treat us, but the actual wording in the book of how he explains that is even creepier than you might guess. Quote, you either teach people to treat you with dignity and respect or or you don't. This means you are partly responsible for the mistreatment that you get at the hands of someone else.

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You shape others' behavior when you teach them what they can get away with and what they cannot.

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Yeah, right. Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, he's really a bad person. I don't like him, Jamie.

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Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's the good book. Got to keep it close to you.

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Oh, John Edwards. There's a lot of dead people talkers. John Edwards. So, despite the fundamental emptiness of Phil's philosophy, or perhaps because of it, Dr. Phil became a wild success. His first episode ran in 2002 of the Dr. Phil show, like he spun off pretty quickly, and he's been on the air ever since.

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He instinctively knew that the real money in this sort of TV was leaning in towards the most tragic and risque stories. Drug addiction, spousal abuse, troubled teens, all that good shit. he was happy to throw medical best practices out the window. In 2004, he interviewed a nine-year-old boy whose parents said he was being abusive towards his younger sister.

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Dr. Phil said the child had nine of the 14 characteristics of a serial killer. Then he added, Jeffrey Dahmer had seven.

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Yeah, it's like, so any reputable psychologist or psychiatrist will tell you that one thing you can't do, as in like it's forbidden in the discipline, is to diagnose a child as a psychopath. You're not allowed to do that because they're children. Their brains are developing and shackling a child with that diagnosis is incredibly unethical. Dr. Phil did it on national television.

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Yeah. It's up to you. Up to you.

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I mean, yes, yes, yes. He does this all the time. Yes. Yes. From a write up by BuzzFeed, quote, Dr. Phil purports to be a mental health professional, but he's diagnosing from videotape on the air, said then executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Michael Fitzpatrick, to The Washington Post in a 2004 story about Dr. Phil's bad psychotherapy.

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Up to you, cop.

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It's unethical to do that sort of, if you will, pop psychology. You don't do that for ratings. This is a human being. A spokesperson for Dr. Phil at the time said that McGraw never labeled the child as mentally ill, which is technically true. He merely brought up Jeffrey Dahmer. So there you go.

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You want me to heal you? Let me pull out some chicken gizzards and pretend to rip them from your chest. So his biographers next note that he did that while he did his extraordinary work of healing, medium John was persecuted by members of the medical and religious establishments.

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I love how from the beginning.

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No, people have been complaining about Dr. Phil in this way from the very beginning of his career, and it has never made a difference for a single second.

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I think it's just made him more money, which is good. I mean, he picked a good life strategy, you know? He's getting more money than I do. So... Dr. Phil stopped renewing his license to practice as a psychologist in 2006. He has never held a valid license in California, where his show is filmed.

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A spokesperson for his show confirmed that he stopped renewing his license because he, quote, no longer worked as a therapist. I don't disagree with. But I would argue he is absolutely marketing himself as a therapist and is still in the business of therapy.

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He for sure is. And he's not just still doing therapy on his show. He is selling products to companies that make all of their money from doing therapy. Like he... I'll get into that now. A Stat News Boston Globe investigation several years ago revealed that Dr. Phil and his son, some dude named Jay, started a business called Dr. Phil's Path to Recovery in the late aughts.

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This was a virtual reality addiction recovery program where a VR Dr. Phil would walk you through exercises to help you get and stay sober. From BuzzFeed, quote, Users don virtual reality goggles and are placed in scenarios with Dr. Phil. In one, McGraw sits at a bar, arms folded across his chest, counseling his visitor on how to avoid the triggers of an evening out when alcohol is present.

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In another scene, he reclines in jeans on the backyard patio of his sprawling estate, sparkling pool and fuchsia flowers behind him and a wide blue sky above, and shares coping strategies. You'll leave these sessions feeling as though you just had an eye-opening and insightful conversation about your life with Dr. Phil, the Path to Recovery website promises.

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The product is described as the culmination of more than four decades of experience Dr. Phil has working in the mental health profession and addiction recovery.

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Now, obviously, there's absolutely no evidence that this program helps with addiction in any way. A disclaimer on the website says that it is, quote, solely for general information purposes and is, quote, not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical, health, mental, or psychological problem or condition.

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He claims that they were threatened by his presence and that he lost count of the number of times he was arrested for practicing medicine without a license. John traveled constantly, never more than a few steps ahead of the law. He finally got a break in 1962 when Brazil was thrown into turmoil by a violent coup.

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Yeah. And he's not even doing it in a situation where they can choose to be grifted by him, because by the time they're in addiction recovery, like they're already paying. They probably don't even know that this fucking thing is there. Yeah. Now, despite the fact that there's no evidence that this thing helps in any way, a number of addiction recovery programs purchased Path to Recovery to use.

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You want to guess why they bought it?

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because Dr. Phil gave them free advertising on their show if they bought it.

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Yeah. Dr. Phil offered addiction treatment centers free endorsements on both the Dr. Phil show and his spinoff series, The Doctors, if they first bought his program. BuzzFeed managed to get a hold of audio of one of these pitch sessions, where McGraw's salesman told a customer, "...our job is to get your phones to ring, and the admissions hopefully follow."

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He bragged that Dr. Phil's viewers were older, high-income people, not the addict calling because I told my mom I'd do it.

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We sure have, Jamie Loftus. Oh, right.

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Yep.

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Yeah.

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The truth is that why would she care? She's, she's doing just fine. Yeah, she has she has plenty of money. So like, what do you what do you expect her to do, Jamie?

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You're just asking to be sad because they just ask me to whack them all right now. Yeah, they never will be because it's not lucrative to be a good person. It's the opposite of lucrative to be a good person.

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Yeah. Yeah. You know, it is lucrative, though, Jamie, shilling the products and services that support this podcast. Oh, we're back. And I am just having a great time talking with my friend J Loft about Dr. Dr. Philomar.

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His biography says the country suffered a revolution and a military government came into power. The reality is that Brazil's democratically elected socialist president, João Guler, was overthrown by a military coup backed by the U.S. government. A conservative military dictatorship would rule Brazil for the next 20-ish years. John's biography glosses over all of that.

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Calvin, yeah. Jamie, I just talked to you about how Dr. Phil has this VR addiction treatment thing. And he basically gives people, gives like treatment centers free advertising if they buy it. I hate it. Okay. You want to guess the quality of the facilities that take Dr. Phil up on this offer? Only the best, right?

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Oh, Jamie, it's a lot worse than nothing in some cases. One facility that took Dr. Phil up on this offer was Inspirations for Youth and Families, a Fort Lauderdale-based treatment center for teenagers. Phil actually highlighted the facility, run by Corcoran Walsh.

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on his show the day he announced his new VR program, saying, Dr. Phil then introduced Walsh, saying she ran, BuzzFeed actually investigated the facility. and found that it had a well-documented history of children escaping and getting into danger.

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Stephen Sarduy, a PI who was hired to find two different girls who escaped from the facility and disappeared, said, "...it seems to be an ongoing problem in that particular facility. Obviously, there's a gap somewhere, a loophole somewhere in the system where they're just leaving."

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In the last two years, Inspiration staff members made 180 reports to police about children in their care going missing. Sometimes the teens left for days or even escaped the state. One escapee wound up prostituting herself for drugs. A number of the teens wound up finding drugs one way or another after getting out of the facility. Six were arrested. Two were hospitalized.

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One group who escaped together later robbed a homeless man. BuzzFeed talked to Jill Walters of South Carolina, whose 17-year-old escaped from Inspirations in 2016 and wound up on the street in Miami. She explained why she initially had chosen Inspirations to help her boy. Quote, They touted this, we were on Dr. Phil. They used that as, we must be a great facility because we were on Dr. Phil.

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Well, that has nothing to do with how the facility is run. You entrust your child to the care of these people and something like this happens. It's good shit.

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It's pretty, pretty bad, Jamie.

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so long that is so evil oh my god yep it is evil jamie sure it's but you know it's not evil what the products and services that i just advertised on this podcast that we're not actually cutting to again i just i have a problem jamie i i have a problem you can't stop thinking and i i can't stop i can't stop pivoting to ads you know you're just you're You know what, Jamie? I'm an addict.

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because the advent of a military dictatorship worked out really well for him. Medium John traveled to the capital, Brasilia, and offered his services as a tailor to the military. Quote from his biography. Because he was so young, he was not commissioned to create uniforms, but was given an opportunity to sew a consignment of work pants.

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Get it? What? Oh, yeah. I don't get it.

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That one's a good one. That's a keeper. You know what? We're done with the episode. Go home. I nailed it.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. It's the best way to do anything really. is a shredder. Anyway, Jamie J loft. J loft us. Joe loft.

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We're actually still talking about inspirations. So court records also reveal that the center's co-owner Christopher Walsh is by his own admission, a habitual drunkard who in 2015 sued a resort for serving him alcohol saying they should have known he couldn't handle it. And boy, howdy. Does it ever get worse? Let's talk about Todd Herzog. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

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That's the end of the inspiration stuff. But so Todd Herzog was another was a repeated guest on the Dr. Phil show. Now, Todd's backstory is that he won Survivor back in the early aughts. He got like a million dollars and then became a horrible, like developed a horrific addiction to alcohol, like a life threatening addiction.

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Now, Dr. Phil and his producers must have salivated at the combination of disastrous alcoholic and reality TV star. Here's how Stat News described what happened next. Quote, Herzog told Stat and the Boston Globe that he was not intoxicated when he arrived at the Los Angeles studio to film the Dr. Phil show. In his dressing room, he said, he found a bottle of Smirnoff vodka. He drank all of it.

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Then someone handed him a Xanax, he said, telling him it would calm his nerves.

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so this guy who handed him the xanax managed to sober himself up enough to like try to go on tv and dr phil's people basically allegedly made sure there was a full bottle of vodka and um a fucking gave him a xanax just because you know i think the reasoning is the more of a disaster you seem like on air the more marketable you are yeah

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His expertise impressed his new employers, and he was soon promoted to full-time tailor and assigned to make uniforms for the army. Medium Joao continued his healing work quietly on the side, but word of his gift soon spread throughout the barracks. One day, he incorporated an entity who operated on the wounded leg of a doctor, which healed immediately.

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Oh, no, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.

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Dear, dear, sweet Jamie Loftus. We are not even at the worst part yet.

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So by the time Herzog got on stage, he was so wasted that he could barely talk or function. Dr. Phil and his assistant walked them out themselves, making a big show of helping him while highlighting just how wrecked he was. And I want you to listen to this. Jamie, I want you to watch this, obviously, but I want everyone at home or in your car or pooping or whatever it is you're doing to

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I know. I know. I know. All right. Here's the Dr. Phil show. Hi, Dr. Phil.

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It is fundamentally unethical to have someone in that state on your television show.

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it's not good, Jamie.

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I would say I would recommend not doing that. If, if I was, if someone asked me, should I take someone who has a problem with addiction and give them drugs and then film them disastrously wrecked? Um, I would say, no, that sounds like an evil thing to do.

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Cruel and good.

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Yeah. So when questioned, representatives of the Dr. Phil show deny that they provided Herzog with alcohol and drugs. They said junkies lie in essence about his claims. And then they pointed out that they weren't a medical facility and couldn't watch their guests at all times.

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The doctor was enthralled with Medium Joao's gift, and from that day on, he became the spiritual healer for the military and civil authorities. He was promoted to Master Taylor and became their protege for nearly nine years. Consequently, he was protected from persecution during that time and traveled extensively throughout Brazil with the army. There's a lot that's interesting there.

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The director of the treatment facility where Herzog agreed to go for help at the end of the show, however, was horrified when he saw him on television. He was so upset by the condition that Dr. Phil let Herzog appear on air in that he refused to ever have anything to do with the Dr. Phil show again.

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So this was so outrageous that it convinced the head of a treatment program that all of the free advertising the Dr. Phil show could provide was not worth the ethical compromise of dealing with that man.

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Yeah, it's just, you have to really, like, you have to really do bad to convince someone of that, I think. Like, that's a, yeah, that's throwing a lot of money out. And I don't know, I'm not going to say all people in the rehab facility business are sketchy, but there's a lot of sketchy motherfuckers in that industry, you know?

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Yeah. Yeah, it's cool and good, Jamie.

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I feel quite bad. Thank you so much for saying that. You know, here at Behind the Bastards, that's exactly what we go for at all times.

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Yeah.

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All I ever want is for you to feel bad.

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That's my whole goal.

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I'm just I'm a hero. OK, I'm a hero.

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Todd Herzog story does not appear to be an isolated one.

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no jordan smith appeared on the dr phil show in 2012 in an episode titled young reckless and enabled smith's aunt claimed she contacted the show to help get her niece off of heroin when they arrived in la from out of state jordan started going through withdrawal her aunt told a show producer that her niece needed heroin and something or something else to help with the withdrawal the producer suggested that they go to skid row and buy heroin together she

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But as I noted a couple of times, we didn't go into much detail about three of the worst things she's been involved with, Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and John of God, because we had done two partners of those. Well, given that all of those were... had a year or more old, in some cases older than that, we made the decision to run them as one big episode as a bonus.

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She then told them not to say who made that suggestion later. Now, guests like Smith receive free addiction treatment at an expensive center after their appearance on the show, which is why many do it. But prior to taping, no medical treatment is provided or offered. Smith and her family were in Los Angeles alone for two nights before taping.

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A less trusting person than me might suggest that the show does this so that these people will be extra fucked up and sad when it comes time for them to be on television. Ish.

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The most fascinating thing to me is that so the army comes to believe that this is a magical healer. And as a result, they promote him to Master Taylor, which is this is an interesting choice. Yeah. I mean, it's just like keep them in the ranks, I guess. Yeah, keep them in the ranks. Keep a paycheck going to the guy while you dictatorship Brazil. Look, I'm not going to backseat dictatorship.

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Yeah, it's very ethical.

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Yeah. These people's lives are already off the fucking rails. How can we make it a little worse? I'm Dr. Phil. Joel King Parrish brought her 28-year-old daughter, Caitlin, to Dr. Phil for help kicking a heroin addiction. Caitlin was six months pregnant at the time. Her mother assumed that when they landed, they would receive medical attention, since withdrawal could endanger the fetus.

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But when Caitlin's mom asked the staff for help, they told her to, quote, take care of it. She took her daughter to the hospital, which she left without receiving treatment. Next, from Stat News, quote, The producer texted to say she should stay at the hospital, but Caitlin would not, and King Parish was terrified the baby would die if her daughter did not get medicine or drugs.

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King Parish and Caitlin went to the Dr. Phil studio, where another show staffer joined them. All three got into a cab headed for Skid Row. The staffer shot video, which later aired on the show. In it, King Parish tells the camera, "'I am scared to death right now.'" The camera follows Caitlin from behind as she walks towards homeless encampments.

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King Paris said Caitlin was gone for about a half hour while she shot up heroin. So they just like went out to go buy a horse at Skid Row and filmed it. That's I mean, and that's like that's good TV is what that is.

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I think it's cool and good, Jamie.

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I think it's cool and good. What?

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Oh, Loftus. We do have fun on this show, though.

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We sure do.

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Yeah, friends out with our glands out. I don't know. I'm stuck. I'm stuck making that exact kind of joke repeatedly.

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Yeah.

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It's all deeply uncomfortable.

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The products and services that support this podcast? Facts. No, every one of them will gently cradle your head or whatever other part of your body you would like them to cradle. Absolutely. Or wherever. They'll just kiss you. You know, they're just going to kiss you. That's that's the behind the bastards promise. Random kisses from a product. Yep. Here's some ads.

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Okay, so there are a bunch of stories like this, and one of the saddest parts of all these stories is that the people who Dr. Phil clearly takes advantage of will still claim that his show helped them because they were able to receive free addiction recovery care that they couldn't have afforded without the Dr. Phil show.

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Almost no aspect of his show works if there's single-payer health care that covers addiction treatment. Okay. The Dr. Phil show profits off of sadness porn, the shock and embarrassment people feel watching the ruined lives of his guests, and the sassy no-bullshit advice Dr. Phil gives them. He earns between $60 and $80 million a year. Of course, the Dr. Phil show, I know, right?

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That's an obscene number, isn't it? Just makes you want to light some shit on fire, doesn't it? Yeah, it sure does, Jamie. It sure does. So, Of course, the Dr. Phil show would get boring pretty quick if he only dealt with people suffering from drug addictions and abusive spouses. From the beginning, a major source of content for McGraw was so-called troubled teens.

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Kids in crisis are big business for grifty TV therapists because, being children, those kids have no ability to regulate their emotions and no sense of proportion. This leads to TV-friendly explosions of rage.

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In 2016, Dr. Phil interviewed Danielle Bregoli for an episode titled, I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime, which is just a title meant to show up on a... Like, throwing twerking in there with fucking car-stealing? Shameless.

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Yeah, sure. Now, Bregoli now goes by the stage name Bad Baby, B-H-A-D, B-H-A-B-I-E, was a primetime ready delinquent. She spoke in a ridiculously affected hood accent and pretended to basically be a gangster in the kind of confrontational, like... nonsense teenage way that gave Dr. Phil a lot of openings to mock her with his witty rejoinders.

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You get that's like a year eight of the dictatorship thing at best. You know, you get a oh, my God, I want to be which Dr. Surgeon General so bad. That's just that sounds even better than Reverend Doctor, to be honest.

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I don't want to play much of her appearance because she was a child. And I think what Dr. Phil does by having her on is fundamentally abusive. But I do think it's important to play how the episode starts so you can see how he introduces this segment and hear it. You listening will hear it. Jamie, I want you to pay attention to the looks on the faces of the people in his audience. Okay.

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She's defiant. Hi!

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So you see, the thing that's most interesting to me about that is the faces of the women in the audience, because they are particularly the glee. Right. Like, that's the thing that's most unsettling to me is like how excited they are with every new aspect of this story that Dr. Phil reveals.

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Yeah, I have no idea if those face expressions match what was actually going down. But it's all, I guess, specifically the idea that they wanted to show those reactions. Because I think they're trying to coach a response from the people watching at home, too, right? The voyeurism. It makes it clear none of this is about helping anyone.

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Yeah. Yeah. I got really fucked up fighting those partisans the other night. I got a bullet in my arm. I got to go to the master tailor to deal with this.

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It's about laughing at quote-unquote low-class people and their problems. That's what Dr. Phil really makes his bread doing.

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Yeah. So Bregoli went viral. And within the confines of the episode, Dr. Phil positions himself as a dispenser of tough love. His prescription was to send Bregoli to one of his favorite therapeutic boarding schools, Turnabout Ranch in Utah.

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This is an actual working ranch where troubled teens are sent under the impression that working in the country and riding horses will get them off of drugs, premarital sex, and petty crime. In subsequent episodes, Bregoli filmed an update from the ranch where she dropped her fake accent and claimed, "...to feel okay with who I am now." But she was not being honest, understandably so.

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In 2018, she released an original song and gave a different view of her experience at Turnabout. Quote, I was, it was pretty miserable. I did not know what was going on in the real world. This place was far away from anything. There wasn't even service there, she says in the song.

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Yeah. So John claims that the experience of working as a protege healer slash tailor with the dictatorship instilled in him a deep desire to become a successful businessman. His fawning biographers explain that he, quote, needed money making expertise to support his spiritual purpose. This is so he doesn't sound greedy.

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A couple weeks after being home, I finally decided that I wanted to meet up with my best friend again, somebody who was not good for me at all. Instantly, I'd say it was the next day, we got back to doing our old shit again. smoking, trying to finesse people for money, just doing really, really dumb shit.

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Her reintegration into society was made all the more difficult by the fact that, when she returned to school and the internet, she realized rather suddenly that she'd gone viral for being a ridiculous train wreck of a person on a nationally syndicated TV program. She claims that this basically made her decide to, quote, lean in to the bad behavior that had made her famous. Right.

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Once you become a meme, there aren't a lot of ways to get a clean slate. There's no right to be forgotten in the U.S., so why wouldn't Bregoli just keep being the person everyone already thought she was? This gets to one of the things I think is worst about the Dr. Phil show. It's one thing to shamelessly milk the worst moments and the greatest shames in the life of an adult.

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It's another thing entirely to do that to a child who has no real way to understand the long term. Yeah, no way that she could have possibly understood the long term consequences of being coming that kind of famous.

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No, no, not a not a third of a fuck. Yeah.

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It's, it's fucked up.

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Now, Jamie, that's all pretty bad, right? Everything we've talked about happening to Bregoli is bad. But to make matters worse, the ranch Dr. Phil sent her and a bunch of other kids to was about as ethical as, oh, I don't know, the drug rehabilitation treatment programs he was also sending kids to. I'm going to quote again from BuzzFeed.

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It's not clear if Turnabout is actually helpful to the kids who go or if it's just another facility that takes advantage of the minors who are sent there to get better. Just last week, 19-year-old Hannah Archuleta sued the school for an alleged sexual assault that she said happened to her while she was staying at Turnabout at just 17.

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This is likely to be a high-profile case too, with Gloria Allred representing her. Turnabout administrators provided a statement to me saying they took immediate action after Archuleta claimed she had been assaulted, but that her father removed her from the facility before we could conduct a full inquiry.

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The statement continued, "...we would never take lightly an allegation of mistreatment to any of our students. Now that this incident is the subject of litigation, we must withhold our full response for a later date." Now, the owner of this ranch is Aspen Education Group, which was then bought by CRC, which is now owned by Acadia Healthcare.

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Wonderfully, they claim John just happened to have a great head for business, and his financial success has allowed him to fund his healing mission, all without charging patients a dime. This is absolutely a lie, but incredulous white Americans bought it for years. So basically, he claims that he became a great businessman, and that's how he's able to fund his free healing hospital.

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In an email statement to BuzzFeed News, Acadia's Director of Investor Relations, Gretchen Hommerick, said, In any event, Acadia never operated either of the facilities. Turnabout has gone through multiple owners, and since 2014 has been owned by current and former employees of the ranch.

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But Aspen Education has been accused of multiple infractions by former attendees, including lawsuits that claimed psychological torture, abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking. The torture suit was dismissed, but CRC, the owner of Aspen Education at the time, declined to address specific allegations. Arcadia did not answer our questions about these allegations either.

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So just not only like a bunch of people involved in this have been alleged of things, including human trafficking. There's been sexual assault allegations at the ranch, but it like goes to this revolving carousel of owners because it's like a shady fucking, it's just like they're pumping a quick amount of cash out and then selling it to somebody else. It's so fucking shady.

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I mean, the whole teen treatment industry, like I've done a number of art back when I was at Cracked. I did a number of articles with survivors of these facilities. Like all of these facilities are basically child molestation factories and like child abuse factories in general. Not always molestation. Sometimes they just kill them from neglect, you know?

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But besides the stuff that was famous about how shitty she was 15, 20 years ago, but it seems like she's been doing some like...

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good socially responsible stuff lately paris yeah i don't know yeah yeah it seems like it seems like she has uh i mean also i'm like i'm not i'm not about to i'm not gonna go to bat for the stop being poor lady but yeah right right right right uh but but yeah that that specific instance i'm glad if you have wealth and prominence and you use it to take a swing at the teen treatment industry that gets you a couple of points in my book because it's a fucking nightmare

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Maybe we'll do a deeper episode about it at some point. But a lot of the allegations that we just listed about this facility and its many owners predate the episodes of Dr. Phil where he gave free advertisements to the ranch. This means that McGraw and his staff were well aware of the allegations against Aspen and the ranch when they sent children there.

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When questioned about this, a spokesperson for the show said, we're aware and we're monitoring things. Yeah. Since Archuleta went public with her allegations, Bregoli has come forward with more detail about her own experience. She now says she was denied food at times and that camp administrators often refuse to let inmates change their clothes for days on end. Inmates.

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Yeah, that's my framing, but yes. You're helpless. You can't call your parent. You can't email your parent. If the state says they have to give you two pebbles, they're going to find the smallest fucking pebbles to give you. That's supposed to help kids get over trauma. I would have rather went to jail.

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The reality is literally the opposite. He makes a bunch of money healing people, and he used it to buy ranches full of cattle and stuff. Makes sense. Whatever. Now, from this point on, the story of Medium John has a decent amount of documentation, so we're going to depart from his terrible, terrible biography.

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Like one of the girls I talked to who did this when she was like 14 or 15, like one of the punishments they gave her was she had to dig up the stump of a mature tree on her own, which if you've never had to remove a stump, it's something like three to four large adult men usually do with a fucking truck and power tools.

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She just spent days in 120 degree heat, like slowly dying as she tried to force the stump out as a child. Like these places are all nightmares. Horrible. Holy shit. Bregoli is, of course, not the only teenager featured on the Dr. Phil show. BuzzFeed writer Scotchie Cowell alleges that while McGraw is happy to feature children of all genders, he gets particularly aggressive with teenage girls.

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Quote, "...their most vulnerable private moments, screaming and crying at home, are used on the show until the very end, when their parents decide to send them to turnabout." Every episode of the Dr. Phil show ends with an after the taping segment where the kids find out they're going to a ranch in the middle of nowhere and usually cry, which is, of course, great television.

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Most kids featured in this way do not get any updates on the Dr. Phil show or at most mentioned briefly once more. Daytime TV moves too fast for the doctor to actually check back in with most of his patients. In 2008, Dr. Phil spun off and created a new show, The Doctors. Every episode of this show features a plastic surgeon, an obstetrician, and an ER doc who talk about different health topics.

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This sounds like it might be... We're not going to go into a lot of detail about this, but a 2014 study of the show determined that about 37% of their recommendations were not credible, which honestly means they're doing better than I, yeah, I expected worse.

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But if your doctor, for example, said 37% of the time, I'm going to give you bad advice, you would find a new doctor.

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Yeah, imagine a mechanic saying that, yeah, 37% of the time, the brakes I put in work. You know, your odds are pretty good.

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Yeah.

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Yes. And again, somewhat being the operative word. Sure. We could go into a lot of other case studies of particularly egregious guest choices. But going over all these sad people in the way Phil exploits them ad nauseum kind of runs the risk of being sorrow porn itself. I do think it behooves us to look at one last case study, perhaps the most nauseating guest choice of the whole series.

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But before we do, I want to turn to his biographers for an explanation of exactly who these entities that take over John are. They describe the entities as transcendent spirits who are, quote, "...able to use Medium Joao's body to produce cures by performing visible and invisible spiritual surgeries."

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24-year-old Gabby came on The Dr. Phil Show in February of 2020. She had promised to act as a surrogate womb for two different couples. In the show, it's revealed that Gabby's mom died right around the time she started pretending to be a surrogate, which was also a period where she was the victim of constant bullying at school. From BuzzFeed, quote,

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Her scam wasn't illegal because Gabby never asked for money or items from the couple she lied to. It's just tragic, hurtful behavior from someone deeply isolated and in dire need of mental health care from multiple past traumas. Most of the episode focuses on the producers following Gabby around backstage, begging her to come on stage when she clearly doesn't want to.

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They call her difficult and volatile, and though she signed an appearance release, it's not clear to the audience that she has read and understood it. When a producer asks her on camera to confirm she understands the waiver, she doesn't respond and covers her face with the pages of the release. But she's certainly remorseful and seems to feel guilty.

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In a pre-taped interview, Gabby cries to the producers, I just want to say sorry to everyone that I've hurt. When she walks off the stage in anguish, McGraw merely sips his water and sighs. The episode is near unwatchable.

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It doesn't sound like she's capable of consenting to that. Yeah.

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So... Dr. Jeff Sugar, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at USC, provided a description of the Dr. Phil show that I think acts as good a coda to this episode as anything. Quote, it's a callous and inexcusable exploitation. These people are barely hanging on.

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It's like if one of them was drowning and approaching a lifeboat, and instead of throwing them an inflatable donut, you throw them an anchor.

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D-Phil!

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Quote, medium Joao can incorporate approximately 37 entities, but only one entity can be incorporated at a time. The specific entity may change, however, depending on the needs of an individual patient. In addition to the entity incorporated at any given time, there is a highly evolved group of thousands of spirits who actually work on a person while the incorporated entity oversees healing.

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Fuck it.

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Put him through a shredder. And you at home, put yourself through a shredder. But a good kind of shredder that makes you healthy.

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Well, with that, Jamie, I think it's time for you to plug a pluggable and get the fuck out of this Zoom call and go live your goddamn life, Jamie. Go live your fucking life.

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God damn it. And all of you at home.

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Damn God yourself. Yeah, it was Jamie. It really was. All right. Well, fuck the internet and fuck life.

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This group is referred to as his phalange. One spirit might specialize in diabetes or heart problems. Another in emotional afflictions. These entities serve humanity in the hopes of alleviating pain and suffering on the earthly plane. This service is part of their evolutionary process. So he's a whole hospital of ghosts.

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You're not getting less original content, obviously, but we clip these together as one big episode so that there's a lot less ads. So you can Kind of listen through this story of all of these, the very worst people associated to Oprah with fewer ads than you'd heard before. So take a listen, my friends. And yeah, I love you. Go to hell. Robert Evans, Behind the Bastards podcast.

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Yeah, I guess people love getting fucking cut into and blood and shit. Like if you really want to if you want to like if you want to get some cult shit going on, you got to get gross with it, man.

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It's part of it. But oh, so physicality. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's why, you know, not everyone's made to be a cult leader, Andrew. I don't think I got what it takes anymore. I believe you could be a cult leader, but, you know, it takes some sacrifice.

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Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot in common. Being a cult leader has a lot in common with having great abs. Right. They both they both take you either have to be born with the right genes or you have to put in a lot of time on the bench.

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Yeah, well, that's, yeah. We all make our choices.

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It would be cool to be able to incorporate the spirit that could just give you incredible abs. Like, one of them has to know how to do abs. But, okay. So, John claims that after a few years of making money and getting in good with the brutal dictatorship, his entities told him it was crucial he expand his work and heal more people. He wound up being guided to the town of Abadiania in Goyas.

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He first arrived there in 1978 and began his practice by sitting in a chair outside in the middle of the main road and greeting travelers who showed signs of illnesses. Through him, the entities would heal these people, and over time, the numbers increased from dozens to hundreds to thousands per day. So, like, half the population of the city is coming in every week just to see this guy.

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Yeah, if Jesus Christ had benefited from roadside billboards, I don't think they ever would have gotten to kill him. He would have made too much money, but tragic.

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Yeah, honestly, yeah. So, uh... This was often glossed over by the positive coverage of John of God, but the extent to which he became an industry for the people who lived around him can't be exaggerated.

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I'm going to quote now from an O Magazine profile by Susan Casey, just a terrible article from 2010 that nonetheless revealed some important details about the economic impact of this guru on the small town of Aberianya. Quote, several businesses had displays of white clothing. The Casa requests that only white be worn. This makes it easier, apparently, for a person's aura to be seen.

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There were a number of vividly painted small hotels lined up side by side, lilac purple, canary yellow, lime green. One of them, a coral-colored one-story building, opened up to the street, and inside I could see a John of God video playing on a large screen. An audience of about 20 people sat in straight-back chairs and watched him cut into a man's chest with what looked like a rusty paring knife.

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The man's eyes were closed, and he was peaceful and still as rivulets of blood ran down his white shirt. Oh. Yeah, that's awesome. That sounds like the kind of charming small Brazilian town I want to vacation in. Just have a couple of fucking mojitos and watch some guy commit surgery on people. Hell yeah.

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Imagine like you're just backpacking through Brazil and wind up here on accident. And it's like, oh, no. I have erred. I did not want to be here. Holy shit. So John established a cattle ranch nearby, and by the early 2000s, he was known to spend most of his week there running his various businesses.

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He was able to do this because increasingly throughout the 90s and early 2000s, a string of foreigners, generally American women, moved in and dedicated themselves to helping his mission. This includes the Americans who wrote his biography. I'm going to quote now from a write-up in the Montreal Gazette. Quote, Visible surgery can involve sticking a surgical clamp up the patient's nose.

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It looks very impressive, but it is nothing but an old carny trick, usually performed with a long nail and a hammer. Any anatomical text will reveal that there is a roughly four inch long passage up the nasal cavity that is quite ready to accommodate a foreign object without any harm. John maintains that. Yeah, that's that's a good trick. Yeah, he's doing the nails up the nose thing.

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Yeah, he's calling it brain surgery.

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Yeah, classic. Yeah. So that's awesome. That's a good grift.

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Yeah, I guess. Yeah. I mean, that's that's obviously the safest thing. Right. Because then they'll have a vested financial interest in protecting you.

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This is introduction. Not very good.

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I guess that is what a cult is. Yeah, that's basically I mean, yeah, more. I mean, this is a little more complicated than just a cult because there's a cult. But then there's also the town who like probably a lot of the townsfolk knew that this was bullshit. But they also know there's a fuckload of money in this shit. Yeah, yeah.

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It's essentially the same way that like the pot industry works in large amounts of the United States or yeah, like any drug illegal business works where it's like, well, this is where the money is here. So nobody's nobody's going to start shit.

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This is good for all of us. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what's going on here. Except for instead of good, honest marijuana, it's a guy cutting people's faces and shoving things up their noses. And he actually hates marijuana. He was famous for saying that if you smoked pot, you had to detox for a whole year before he could heal you.

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Thank you, Sophie. Thank you for lying about it being a good introduction. But you know what is good? Certainly better than my introduction. Is our guest for today, Mr. Andrew T. Fuck yeah, what's up? I'm alive, can't kill me yet. Nope, nope, can't. So you have made it through the Rona so far, Andrew. Yeah, yeah. I have to say, your hair looks as badly in need of a cut as mine does.

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Yeah. If there are if there are ghostly entities flying around, there's no way those ghostly entities don't like some fucking dank. Like, come on.

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So that that last write up I read you from the Montreal Gazette was obviously written by a credible journalist who was as critical of who was very critical of John of God. But I want to read another example, another person writing about what his healing sessions look like who actually believed in him and was a member of his cult.

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So here's his biographer, Heather Cummings, recalling one of his healing sessions. Quote, The entity, Dr. Jose Valdivino, called for his – and that's the guy he's channeling is this Dr. Jose Valdivino – called for his instruments again. I opened the special drawer and carefully removed the tray and took the instrument tray to him. He chose a paring knife, a regular kitchen serrated-edged knife.

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He passed his hand over the man's eye and told him to relax. He opened the eye wide and pressed down hard and scraped. See, here it is, he said. Aww. ...as he wiped the knife on the man's shirt. The son is healed. You can take him to the infirmary, he said, as he wrote the post-op prescription. So that's cool.

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Come over to my house. I'll whip out a big old rusty machete and I'll carve the ghosts out of your eye, man. It's fine. This is where I'm taking machetes in next. Damn. That's an easy grist. Just start slashing people's fucking faces. It's fine.

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holy shit oh man and then yeah can you imagine the first time you try this shit like this will work there's a lot of blind people who were like before he learned how to scrape people's eyes without blinding them like yeah there's like a whole village full of his uh his his first draft healings yeah jesus christ

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Yeah, I mean, you know, the good thing is, if you're actually, like, if you're doing this kind of grift, I think you definitely want to start out only trying to heal people with serious terminal illnesses like cancer, because then once you fuck up, they're not around very long, right?

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Yeah, that's really key. Yeah, a lot of good advice on how to start a medical grift in this episode. So take notes when society collapses. Some of you are going to do very well remembering this stuff.

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So, yeah, like, as that story noted, John of God would write prescriptions to his patients, and all of these prescriptions were for a specific herbal pill mixture sold in John of God's own pharmacy. The pills were mostly passion flower, and by some accounts, they've netted John more than $10 million a year.

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He also gets a cut of the sales of the white clothes, the hotel fees, the sales of blessed water, and the sales of healing crystals, which he prescribes to his followers. So you can see why no one in Abedianya had any interest in questioning whether or not John of God was legit.

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He did face occasional challenges from members of the Brazilian government, particularly folks in the medical establishment who were leery of his psychic surgery. But this sort of woo is extremely popular in Brazil, particularly among rural voters, and John of God was both rich and connected, so it is not surprising that very little was ever done.

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What's more surprising is the degree to which foreign journalists bought into his shtick. In 2005, ABC News sent a small team to Abedinanya to meet John of God. They put together a documentary basically posing the question of whether or not he was a healer or a bullshit artist. And they kind of landed on healer, like ABC News did a pretty shitty job of journalism here.

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And I'm going to quote from this write-up in the Montreal Gazette. Quote, And in an attempt to provide a critical view of John's antics, the producers invited two experts, cardiac surgeon Mehmet Oz and James Randi, the world's leading investigator of paranormal phenomena.

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Oz was probably chosen because he was a proponent of various alternative therapies, such as therapeutic touch and reflexology, and would be likely to be somewhat sympathetic to faith healing and perhaps add an air of legitimacy. Randi was invited as the token skeptic.

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Oz appeared repeatedly in the hour-long show, basically echoing the refrain that science doesn't have all the answers and all other forms of healing need consideration. Science, of course, doesn't claim to have all the answers, but it does look for evidence before jumping on a bandwagon.

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Randy, who could have provided evidence for methods of trickery and for psychological manipulation, was given a total of 19 seconds on the show after being interviewed for hours. Why? Why?

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Because the possibility that cancer can be healed by penetrating the nose with surgical forceps by a healer chosen by God makes for better television than declaring him to be a self-delusional simpleton or a calculating fraud artist.

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It's it's it's wild, man. And Dr. Oz is a big part of justifying this guy. Like you can't overstate how much Dr. Oz played a role in giving this guy legitimacy because his job for his whole career pretty much has been to be a real doctor who will get up and say that nonsense makes sense, that nonsense medical treatments are good for you.

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Yeah. And and their engineers are regularly engineers and doctors actually are not irregularly like part of like terrorist moves like Al Qaeda had a bunch of engineers and doctors.

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Because like they you know, if you've got that kind of intelligence, like Ben Carson is a great brain surgeon and is also able to convince himself that the world is six thousand years old. Like the kind of brains that these people have don't you know, there's a lot of very smart doctors, obviously, too. But you can be a doctor and very dumb. Yeah. Yeah.

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And you can be a, but I don't think Dr. Oz is dumb. I actually don't think that's, I think Dr. Oz is a very intelligent grifter. Who's made millions of dollars causing untold harm to the world and to our shared understanding of science.

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He's a piece of shit and a monster.

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um none of those things are indicative of actual knowledge necessarily no and this is part of why like this is people talk about like conservatives in particular like talk a lot of shit about the liberal arts and like philosophy and all this stuff and it's like no no the reason why engineers and doctors should have some grounding and all that education is to stop dr oz's from coming about

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Like it's to give people like a broader understanding than just like if you get really good at one incredibly narrow technical thing. Yeah. You can convince yourself to believe all sorts of stupid bullshit because you're a very smart person who doesn't have a wide ranging education. And it's very easy for those sorts of people to convince themselves of the dumbest things in the world.

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It's terrible. We could do what if we did like a locks of love thing, but instead of for people who need hair, it's for like weird, horny people on the Internet. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

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And when a bunch of these people who are really good at one incredibly narrow task wind up responsible for a wide range of things, you have stuff like a viral epidemic get wildly out of hand and kill tens of thousands of people. But yeah.

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Hypothetically, yeah. And Dr. Oz is, of course, a part of that and was, like, urging people to take bullshit medical treatments during the coronavirus epidemic because he's history's greatest monster. You know, he was also cited repeatedly in that 2010 O Magazine article because, of course, Oprah gave Mehmet Oz life and nursed him at her metaphorical breast of publicity.

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And I'm going to quote from that next. So this is the write-up in O Magazine that really put John of God on the map. Quote, Five years ago, Oz had participated in a primetime live segment focusing on John of God. He examined hours of film footage from the entity's healings. He'd looked at scans and biopsy reports, and there were results he couldn't explain.

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The shrinkage of an aggressive tumor, for instance. This guy has a glioblastoma, which is a very deadly brain tumor, Oz recalled. It was grade four. They biopsied it and proved it. As an added credential, the biopsy was done at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, a prominent hospital.

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I took those films down to my radiologist, along with a new set of films the patient had taken after his visit to John of God, which showed the tumor had calcified and essentially died. Now, I don't know Dr. Oz's radiologist, but I do know that Dr. Oz himself is a famous charlatan and a liar.

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I can't speak to the specific case, but it's worth noting that no other doctors got to look at this information. I can, however, speak about other cancers that John of God claimed falsely to have cured. In 2005, South African singer Leah Melman refused breast cancer surgery to be treated by John of God.

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Yeah. We raise money for some charity. I don't know what kind of charity like bombs, not food. Maybe that sounds like a charity.

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She claimed to have been cured by him and showed up on Oprah Winfrey's show to tell everyone the good news about how Brazil's miracle healer had cured her untreatable cancer, which actually was treatable, that she just chose not to get treated. She died of her untreated cancer two years after her Oprah appearance in 2012. Oprah did not post a retraction based on any of this, of course.

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Some of this is probably due to the fact that there were many, many other grateful patients, all too eager to come forward and share their own stories of miraculous healing. That 2010 article by Susan Casey included the stories of several charismatic foreigners who claimed to have been cured by John and now worked for him or made money taking groups to be healed by him.

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I'm going to read one example. This is a quote from that O Magazine article, which... You can only find it on the Wayback Machine because once this guy got accused of rape by literally hundreds of people, Oprah pulled the article. But I found it on the Wayback Machine.

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And if you want to be really angry at an unspeakably shitty journalist, and Susan Casey is one of the very worst who's ever done the job, read that article because it will make you want to punch holes in your wall. So I'm going to read a quote from it now. So get your hole-punching hands ready.

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Over a good Chilean red, Edwene, an ordained minister, motivational speaker, and author of The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity, recounted the story of her brain aneurysm, deemed inoperable by five neurosurgeons. Get your affairs in order, she remembers being told, and try not to sneeze. That's how fragile I was, she said. So I did it.

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I went out and got my living will, my durable power of attorney. But then I realized, I'm not ready to go just yet. She laughed at the memory. That's all it is now. After her dire diagnosis... At the urging of her prayer group, all of whom say they received the same vision of John of God curing her, Edwene traveled to the casa.

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I was nervous and I was skeptical, she said, but what did I have to lose? Almost immediately, the entity performed invisible surgery on her, a 40-minute process that involves sitting in a group meditation with her right hand over her heart. Nobody touched her, but Edwene remembers, I could feel things moving around in my head. It didn't hurt, but it was different.

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Afterwards, she collapsed in exhaustion for 24 hours. Days later, she was told by her guide the stitches would be removed. That night, I could feel ping, ping, ping, like stitches being pulled out. Eventually, a CT scan revealed the truth. Her aneurysm was gone. I'm so grateful, she said, nodding toward the heavens.

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Since then, she's been back to the casa once at Christmas, and now she was headed there for a third time, bringing a group of 20 people who also sought healing. So this is the level of journalistic rigor that we're getting in this article.

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Yeah. Oprah magazine was definitely like it was. Yeah, it was. It was. It was entirely geared at getting wine moms to believe spiritual nonsense and not get their cancer treated. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

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Yeah, that'll be ASMR for some very weird person. Yeah. And yeah. So, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, as a general rule, when you and I get together, we talk about a horrific story of colonial genocide. That's right. Which is what our friendship has been based on up until this point.

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Yeah, you know what else doesn't care if wine moms get cancer treatment? The products and services that support this podcast. They don't give a good goddamn. Great. And that's the behind the bastards guarantee. We're back. Oh, my gosh. What a great... I don't know. Whatever this is.

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John of God is a monster and a rapist, and we will only hear more about the horrible things that he's done. But I can't have the same kind of hatred for him that I can for these fucking O Magazine grifters and Dr. Oz. And I don't know why. I think it's because on a global level, the amount of harm that these people do is so much higher. And it's also so much like...

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This is going to sound weird, but like the horrible physical crimes that John of God committed, like he just went out there and committed with his own body. And there's a level of like commitment to evil that's necessary. Whereas Dr. Oz and Oprah just like sit in front of a camera and say bullshit that harms so many more people. Well, at the same time, they're perfectly friendly and nice people.

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And so like nobody hates them and they never go to prison. And yeah. I'm not going to say they're worse than a rapist, but yeah. They do more damage on a broad scale, right? Like, yeah. It's not good.

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Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. They're like money launderers for dangerous bullshit that gets people killed and molested and stuff. And they they they are responsible in this case for sending thousands of potential victims to this guy who, again, turns out to rape hundreds of people. And like they're being sent there by Oprah. But all she gets is traffic for it and more money.

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And everybody loves Oprah. And if she ran for president, she would absolutely win. Yeah. And it's fine. And it's just fine. Because she's a friendly, nice person. I'm sure if I got to hang out with Oprah, I would enjoy her company. And I would forget momentarily the horrors that her brand has brought into the world. And that's very frustrating to think about.

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I hate to say it, but I suspect she would not be the worst president of my lifetime. Oh, my God. She might be the best. Yeah. It's entirely possible.

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Yeah, I would still vote for her over the current guy or even Joe Biden, to be honest.

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Like, it's fucking wild. This is so dumb. We shouldn't have presidents or billionaires like Oprah, but whatever.

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Anyway, that O Magazine article has been scrubbed from the Internet because of all the rapes and stuff. But yeah, it's I almost recommend finding it and reading it just to get a crash course and how to write a really irresponsible article about a cult leader. Susan Casey should be in some sort of journalist prison.

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But instead, she went from being Oprah's editor-in-chief to working as the creative director for Outside Magazine, the editor of Sports Illustrated Women, and the author of a ridiculous-sounding book on dolphins. And I am sure that I have ruined any chance of publishing an Outside Magazine now, which bums me out.

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Yeah, I would just call you randomly in the middle of the night and be like, have you heard about what they did to Haiti? And I'd be like, nope. Let's hear it. Today, though, today we have a story that's horrible. Really, really horrible.

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I would much rather do that than write about Nazis, but I don't like Susan Casey, and I think she's very irresponsible.

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She's the journalistic equivalent of, like, Like taking your nine year old out shooting for the first time and just getting blackout drunk first.

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You know, the key is that all of the people surrounding John of God... Because you don't spend much time with him. You spend a lot of time around these... And they're mostly white American ladies who love his shit. And they're all the same kind of... They're all Gwyneth Paltrow kind of people. And they're all...

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Like like well-heeled and friendly and charming and and they know how to speak to a specific segment of the population and those people find them trustworthy. Right. Yeah. So Susan felt the need to visit John of God, the author of that magazine article, so she could write a terrible article.

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But the ailment that sent her there was the fact that her father had tragically died very young, and the resultant grief had nearly broken her.

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She went to Brazil for healing, and she basically claims that John of God put her into a trance during one of his mass healing sessions, and she was able to visualize her father in paradise, knowing that he was happy and off living his eternal life allowed her to move on. And that's all fine.

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Like, seriously, grief is the worst thing ever, and there are way worse ways of coping with it than paying a guru to help you to hallucinate heaven or whatever. Do what you got to do to get by. I'm not going to blame her for that.

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What I will blame her for is the utterly uncritical way that she wrote about John of God's bullshit, like his claims of being able to perform surgery without even touching people. So here's another quote.

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When you consider the countless unseen things that have undeniable power, sound waves, microwaves, radio waves, emotions like anger or envy, wind, and of course the awesome universal power of love, it seems silly to rely on the naked eye for proof of anything. Yet that is what we do. Numbers on charts and graphs, x-rays, those we believe in, but we leave without documentation.

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Something we perceive with one of our five senses is considered blind faith. Sweet, but we don't really trust it. So she's saying that, like, it's silly to believe in radio waves, but not the power of ghosts to heal people's cancer.

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But it's actually a little bit of a reverso because it's like, in part, the story of this weird belief system from Europe being adopted honestly by people in a colonized nation and then used to justify horrific misbehavior on behalf of cult leaders. So that's kind of cool. Yeah! Woo! Yeah. Cool. New shit. Yeah. I guess you could call it a type of I don't know. I don't even know what to call this.

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She is hand waving so hard it could power a fucking windmill farm. Like, Jesus. So she actually makes the argument in that article that it's unreasonable for us to reject the reality of John of God's powers just because there's no proof behind them. This is reinforced by something she writes about her arrival in the hotel at Abadianya.

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Quote, as I hoisted my luggage up to the second floor, a small sign of the wall caught my attention. Don't believe everything you think, it advised. Which is, like, that's kind of gaslighting, right? Like, it's like gaslighting via decoration.

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Yeah. Holy shit. In this same incredulous way, she writes about the entities that John of God channels. Quote, if you spend time at Abedianya, you will hear the phrase the entities over and over again, sometimes plural and sometimes singular, and you will come to use it yourself as if it were a completely ordinary thing to say.

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What it actually means, however, is so extraordinary that it defies our sense of what is logical or even possible in this world. Thank you. St. Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuit order, along with Casa's patron, St. Ignatius of Loyola, a priest and nobleman from the 16th century.

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Despite the presence of saints, medium Joao, born a Catholic, makes it clear that Casa is not a church but rather a spiritual hospital. My mission has nothing to do with religion, he says. So...

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Most of the poor people who come to John of God are too poor to sue if their serious diseases don't get cured. And most of the rich people aren't actually coming there for serious diseases. They're coming there for things like Susan has, where they're sad, you know? That's a lot of these patients.

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Man, yeah, that would be fun to try to sue someone for that. I don't know that there's any legal precedent. I think it's really funny that you're like talking about like, OK, we've got this infectious disease doctor, but actually he's calling it a second opinion from the 16th century.

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Yeah. Oh, boy. Susan goes on to write, quote, at the Casa, skeptics are as welcome as believers. I had already noticed that skeptics didn't tend to stay that way. Many harrumphing empirical scientists had become impassioned John of God advocates after visiting and witnessing him in action. She doesn't go on to quote any of these scientists or give any evidence of this.

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She just like says it because this is, again, a perfect piece of journalism.

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at one point susan attends a healing and says that john of god called for doctors in the audience to come forward in her recitation of events these learned men were all bowled over by john's inexplicable healing abilities as far as i can tell susan took no action to determine if any of these men were actual doctors a real journalist michael usher did report critically on john of god in 2014 for 60 minutes and i want to compare how she and michael both wrote about the medium's eye scraping surgery

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Quote, from my vantage point only 10, and this is Susan, from my vantage point only 10 feet away, the change in his body and demeanor was easily visible. Now his eyes were more intense and they flashed noticeably darker. His gait became stiffer, his movements more deliberate.

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He turned to the three women standing against the wall, took the one closest to him by the hand and gently sat her in a wheelchair. Her eyes fluttered wide as she meditated. Reaching to the tray, he selected a short knife with a wooden handle, a cheap looking type that you might use to pair an apple. And he held it up to the room, making sure that everyone saw its sharp blade.

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It's a real motherfucker of a story, though. This is the tale of John of God. Have you ever heard of John of God? I've heard of neither John nor God. So, OK, no, John of God. Now, people might be confused. There's an actual like Jesus-y guy, like a Catholic person called John of God. I think he's a saint or some shit. This is not that guy.

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He tipped her head backward, running his hand across her face, and he opened her left eye, holding the eyelid wide. Then he began to scrape the knife across her eyeball, back and forth with visible pressure. Unbelievably, the woman sat absolutely still, without flinching or recoiling.

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I had a hard time watching this, believing as I do that the words knife and eyeball should never appear in the same sentence. After what seemed like an eternity devoid of trauma, he put down the knife. The orderly took the wheelchair and steered it into the infirmary. As she had the entire time, the woman appeared to be napping. How on earth could a knife crush your eyeball and not hurt?

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Later, I would interview another recipient of this treatment. Connie Price, 62, from Jackson, Michigan. There was no pain whatsoever, she said, of the five-minute scraping. I could feel the energy coming through him. I remember the heat pouring through that man's body. Price found the treatment beneficial. I can see a lot better now.

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So you'll notice the only evidence of efficacy of healing is they didn't look to be in pain when this guy was rubbing a knife on their eye. And they said one of them said afterwards, I can see better now. There's no again, that's not evidence. That's an anecdote. And that's not an anecdote based on like actually testing her eyesight.

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It's actually really easy to, it's the same thing with like, it's actually very easy to rub a knife and even cut a little bit on an eyeball without somebody being in horrible pain. Right. And, you know, even when you actually are cutting into people's chest, like it's easy for people to not feel pain.

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Like, again, people who like there are people who like do cutting and stuff or who will like like I have friends who like will suspend themselves from fucking cutting.

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things in the roof of a building with like hooks in their back and like it feels good to them like there's like a release of endorphins like there's pain too but like they're not like screaming in agony the whole time even though you would think they would be like There's yeah, exactly.

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The fact that these people don't report pain or anything isn't weird and is part of like a long documented history of people experiencing temporary relief from faith healing and stuff like that. There's nothing mysterious about it. For decades, Pentecostal revivalist preachers have done things like pray over people with injured legs and then have them discard their crutches and dance around.

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And the explanation for how this works is the same as the explanation for why if you throw your back out, you might find yourself forgetting the pain during a moment of extreme danger or extreme excitement. Like it's just sometimes our brains override our experience of pain. It happens. It's a thing that people do. It's like those stories of women lifting cars off their babies.

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So, yeah, that's how Susan Casey uncritically reports on a healing session. Here's how a real journalist, Michael Usher, reports on a pretty much identical healing session. John of God is not a surgeon. He is not a trained doctor. Yet he is presented with a tray of medical instruments, scalpels, and all sorts of scissors. He takes a scalpel and scrapes eyes.

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He sticks knives and scalpels of some sort down the back of people's throats, and he claims he is getting to tumors. He claims he is getting to the root of people's illnesses. He claims he is getting to what makes people ill or sick. None of it is done with an anesthetic, and you don't even know if what he's using is sterile. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That feels about right.

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A large part of why John of God's magic seems to work is the fact that he performs it all in public among and in front of a large and enthusiastic crowd of true believers, many of whom also happen to be desperately ill. John tells them that they can all help fuel his work and heal themselves by sitting in the current and basically meditating for hours while he does his thing.

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As Susan Casey writes, So...

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This is a modern spiritual medical grifter repeatedly endorsed by Oprah Winfrey who turned out to be a mass rapist and possibly a baby farmer. So that is –

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Yeah. If I'm throwing a lot of shade on Susan Casey for her bad article here, it's because her choice to platform John of God with no critical thinking or even an attempted examination brought his line of bullshit to the eyes and ears of millions of vulnerable people.

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Oprah Winfrey had her on her show in 2010, and one of the millions of women who watched that episode was a Dutch choreographer named Zahira Leinke Maus. Um, she suffered from sexual trauma and Winfrey's episode. Do you believe in miracles convinced her that medium John could heal her. She waited in line twice to receive his healing.

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After traveling to Brazil on her first visit, he prescribed her some of his herb pills. When those didn't do the trick, she went back and he offered her a spiritual cleansing in a rare private session. Um, From the Washington Post, quote, she waited until everyone in line had their turns until finally she was alone. And John of God invited her into his office and then into his bathroom.

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That's where Mo says he raped her, all while leading her to believe it was part of her healing. Now, Mo's was one of hundreds and perhaps thousands of rape victims of John of God.

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And I want to end on this note to get to the point of like what's really happened here, which is that an American industry based on uncritically looking at spiritual healers funneled victims into this guy's hands and allowed him to achieve a level of influence and basically like built a spider web for this fucking spider of a man. Mm hmm.

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So we're going to continue the story of John of God in part two. But right now we're going to continue the story of Andrew T. of God's pluggables.

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That is it. Well, I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on the Internet behind the bastards dot com. You can find me on Twitter at I write OK. And if you want, I will just sort of rub a machete all over your eyes. It's going to cost you. I don't know. Let's say I don't take any money, but we do ask for three thousand dollar donations to our our our medical center.

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So give me three thousand bucks and I'll fucking I'll rub a machete on whatever part of your body you want. That's the guarantee. That is a guarantee. Absolute guarantee. I also have a podcast called The Women's War. It's upbeat. It tells you about how to make things that don't suck out of your society when it sucks. So maybe listen to that too. And I don't know.

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Go in Christ and cut up people's eyes. Yep.

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Yeah, it is. Part one of the podcast.

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Yeah. Yep. It's going to be an interesting tale today. But before we get into John of God's story, we have to go back in history to the mid-1800s and to a man with what I would have to say is one of the most unreasonably cool names I've ever come across in my research. Are you ready for this name? You're not ready for this name. Nobody's ready for this fucking name. Hippolyte Leon Dinizard Reveal.

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Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we talk about terrible people. And this is part two of our series on John of God. But the real bastard is also Oprah and Dr. Oz and Susan Casey, the author of that terrible article. So pull up a fine Chilean red and get ready to hear some more.

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This is off topic, but I want to tell something I just ran across to my guest, Andrew T., before we roll into the episode. Andrew, how are you doing today?

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Well, before we do that, I just came across something on Twitter. It's a book that's being sold. It's like a part of the Joe Biden grift, because every politician has a grift now. And this is a coloring book called A Hot Cup of Joe, and it has a cartoon of a sexy Joe Biden on it. A piping hot coloring book with America's sexiest moderate, Joe Biden. Jesus Christ. This feels like abuse. It's awful.

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It is abuse.

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Yeah, I don't want to give this person money. But I do want to see inside this terrible, terrible criminal coloring book. The sexy 70-something politicians thing is one of the weirdest aspects of modern politics. You have these two old and clearly not in the best of health men, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, both of whose supporters have to depict them as muscle-bound hunks. And it's like, guys...

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That is a fucking name. Hippolyte Leon Dinizard Reveal. That is a fucking name.

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They're elderly, dying men. Stop it. Like, you don't like even if you think they're the right person to be president, you don't have to pretend that they're like you don't have to get thirsty about them. What is wrong with you people?

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They're not doing wind sprints like Joe's abs don't exist because he's an old, sick man. And yeah, that's OK.

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okay i mean that's fine ideal but like whatever like just stop it stop it all of you the flesh on his face is melting day by day yeah it's what happens out here as you die like he's not which is fine they're they're dying okay yeah like the like yeah this is not on them because they're like pretty normally aged men for the ages like stop making you don't have to make them sexy.

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What is wrong with you?

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I dare you to find a better example of uncut eroticism than Robin Williams as Popeye in that 1980s Popeye movie that absolutely exists. Look it up. It's fucking...

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yeah something else insanity yeah people made that people made that and no one stopped them isn't that robert altman i think so yeah i think it's robert altman you keep talking i'm gonna look it up no i'm not don't do it to yourself never mind it's great so We're all back from... It is Robert Altman. I looked it up. I couldn't help it. All right. It's time to get back into this episode.

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Talk about John of God some more. I just had to. That hit my world like a fucking carpet bomb. And I had to... I just had to talk about it. So...

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Yeah, like one of Raytheon's fine products, hitting a wedding, which, you know, if you've ever thought not enough weddings have missiles hit them, then you're the kind of customer Raytheon's looking for. All right, we really should start the episode now.

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no human being has ever embodied the phrase the road to hell was paved with good intentions better than oprah winfrey like many of you she was a regular background figure in my childhood my mom would have her on when she was working from home uh while we did chores etc like she was just on in the background all the time and compared to the other background figures of my childhood guys like rush limbaugh and michael savage she was pretty benign at least she seemed that way um

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Fully 50% of his four names sound like Pokemon. I've got a Hippolyte. I've got a Denizard. It fucking rules. So Hippolyte Leon Denizard Reveil was a French educator, and he wrote under the markedly less cool pen name Alan Kardec, which I don't understand. If you're Hippolyte Leon Denizard Reveil, you lean into that shit. This guy did not know what was clickable. Very frustrating. That's wild.

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I don't know if I would describe her as a monster, but her career has been a masterclass in how to enable monsters. Winfrey was a longtime friend of Harvey Weinstein. She regularly hosted Tony Robbins, another sex pest and self-help guru. She is largely responsible for making Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz into household names, and both of those men have gone on to do incalculable harm to society.

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And of course, she is the reason John of God and his clinic were put in front of the faces of millions upon millions of gullible, desperate Westerners. After that O Magazine article was published in 2010, she dedicated a special episode to John of God, inviting the author of that article and a doctor onto her show.

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They were both total converts, but how they and Oprah presented John to their audience is really interesting to me. And I want you to click that first link and play it to about 38 minutes, Andrew.

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Yeah. Okay. I'm back. That's good. Yeah. What'd you think of that, Andrew? What'd you think of that framing?

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Susan Casey. Yeah. Journalist is a strong word for Susan.

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Yes.

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Yeah. And whatever picture you I guarantee you, 100 percent of you, whatever picture you have in your head of Susan Casey is accurate because there's only one wild. Yeah, it's awesome, isn't it? Yeah.

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what's really cool about that is that it is very clearly and obviously an answer of uh susan and this other doctor who will talk about a minute whitewashing john of god so like they know that if they're going to be on oprah's show and talk to like a mainstream audience they have to put in a they can't just be all like especially because of this is 2010 and we we aren't where we are now now you could just say doctors are bullshit this guy's the only real healer in the world like

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Back then you had to be like, oh, no, you still regular doctors are still good. Great for things. He's just helping with other stuff. And like that was necessary to get people on board. But John of God's cult produced propaganda, too. And this is why I say that Susan Casey and this doctor are like.

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intentionally whitewashing him because for this episode of Oprah's show, they use clips from a documentary that John of God's cult produced. And in the actual documentary, there is no time wasted telling people that they need to consult their doctor. So I'm going to play next.

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Have you play next a clip from that actual the documentary produced by the cult that shows kind of how internally they they they talked about his healing powers.

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Yeah. So, yeah, you see like in that there's no talk about like, oh, yeah, you got to you got to fucking. Right. Consult a physician. Yeah. No, he just heals your shit. Yeah. So the doctor guy that Oprah has on there is a fellow named Jeffrey Rediger.

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Speaking as a guy who's named after fucking the Godfather guy, you don't give up the gift of a name that cool.

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And he's really interesting to me because he is a very real medical professional and was actually or is actually a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. He researches spontaneous healing, which is like when people go into remission or whatever and there's no clear explanation why, which is a thing that happens. People get better from things we don't understand why.

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That's a thing that happens. And he he. It's clearly there to inject both credibility and skepticism into the discussions about John of God, kind of like Dr. Oz was earlier. For example, Oprah at one point plays a video of one of John of God's brain surgeries where he's like shoving stuff up people's nose.

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And Dr. Rettiger is really upfront and clear about the fact that this brain surgery through the nose stuff is slight of hand, that he's not actually performing surgery, that he's that there's there's a ton of space in the navel cavity and nothing inexplicable is going on.

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So he does state that to the audience, but he does that while he buys into the fact that scientifically inexplicable healing occurs at John of God's center. So I'm going to play another clip from that Oprah episode so you can kind of see how this skeptic talks about this healing.

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So anyway, under the boring name Alan Kardec, he wrote a series of books about spirits. And Kardec's core contention was that all living animals were inhabited by immortal spirits that bounced around from body to body over the ceaseless aeons.

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So did you catch what went on there? This is really interesting to me. So Dr. Rettiger notes that the psychic surgeries, which like use real knives and actually cut people, he notes that that's dangerous. Like he tells people not to do it at home, but he also says he's not aware of anyone getting infections.

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And then when Oprah points out that he could have, they could have gotten infected later, he doesn't respond to that. You'll notice he doesn't say that that's possible. Even he just sort of says that like a bunch of things get like, that's really, yeah, that's amazing.

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But it's the kind of thing because it's been acknowledged, even though he doesn't then go on to state that, like, actually, yes, we have no data that these people to suggest these people aren't getting infected. We're not performing any follow ups. I didn't take any attempts to actually determine whether or not people got infected letter. He doesn't say that.

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He gives a non-response so that the show can move on and the audience can move forward, content that John of God, that these are real, serious, skeptical people, and that that makes John of God even more real because this medical professional has vetted him with the requisite amount of skepticism, even though none of that was actually done. It's amazing.

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This is a master class in how to – it's laundering bullshit. Yeah.

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Yeah, it's awesome. I want to play one more clip from this episode because we just gotta.

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Kardec also believed that spirits could become disembodied through a variety of causes and that these free spirits could impact the world in positive and negative ways. Kardec's theories became the religion of spiritism, which is still practiced around the world today. And it is particularly popular for reasons I don't really understand in Brazil. It has something like 3 million adherents there.

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All right. Yep. So that's interesting. One of Rettiger's claims is that while he's watching John of God perform these surgeries, he spontaneously started bleeding from a hole in his side, which is kind of like a stigmata thing.

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He's introduced as a skeptic who traveled to John of God's center in order to take samples and medically vet whether or not this man was a serious healer. And he says later in that interview, quote, some people I spoke with were able to remember the events going around them completely, but And some people seem to enter a sort of altered state during these surgeries.

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When I was assisting in one of these surgeries, John of God cut this woman's cornea. She didn't flinch. She didn't try to pull away from him. I can't explain that. I heard some people use the term spiritual anesthesia. I have no way to understand that. It's interesting that he says that because there's actually a lot of reasons why someone wouldn't feel their eye getting scraped.

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incredible he's he's such a piece of shit and it's yeah obviously like i've scraped my cornea before when i was out hashing in the woods and uh it didn't hurt it hurt afterwards like because just like it fucked up my ability like my eye was taking in too much light or something like it was like kind of blinded me it was very much debilitating afterwards but the actual getting scraped by a branch in the eye it didn't cause pain which is part of why it took me a

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Yeah, I don't know. It's like there's also a lot of data on how altered mind altering states like people have in these religious moments can impact perception of pain. Worship is definitively a mind altering state. John of God requires his patients to go through an elaborate series of meditations before and after treatment.

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And I actually found a scholarly study of his his surgeries conducted by doctors from a Brazilian medical school. They note the surgeries were always performed by John of God and occurred in a large, non sterilized and open room with dozens of spectators, most of whom were other patients and their relatives or friends.

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During each of these surgical sessions, approximately five patients usually remain standing while side by side in front of one of the room's wall. Rarely patients were submitted to the surgeries while they were seated in a chair. Visible surgeries were performed in a few minutes in a very grandiose and theatrical way, invoking strong emotional involvement and even perplexity among the audience.

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Incisions were performed with either sterilized scalpels or kitchen knives, and surgeries were performed in rapid succession. The cleanliness of the instruments contrasted to reports of other mediumistic surgeries performed by dirty or even rusty implements.

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The stories about this guy that uncredible sources state always say that he's just using random kitchen knives, sometimes even that they're dirty. When actual scientists studied his... No, his knives are always sterilized. And he's not cutting open people deeply and removing organs. He is scraping their skin and their eyes. The fact that a lot of them don't get infections isn't weird.

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Have you ever gotten a scrape that didn't get infected? You've probably gotten a lot. Because your body is reasonably good at not dying from random scrapes. Otherwise, there wouldn't be people like it's it's very frustrating. Another frustrating thing is that this study goes on to note that like they don't know, like they couldn't find any evidence of infections among John's patients.

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But they also note that they didn't actually get to follow up with any of these people further than a day or two on. because a lot of them were traveling in from elsewhere.

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So the paper is a proper scientific paper, and it concludes that we need to do more research and track these patients for longer term to determine whether or not anyone's getting infected, which is what you say if you're an actual scientist. Dr. Rettiger, on the other hand, just gets on Oprah and announces that this is all inexplicable. Science can't explain this. It's like, yes, it can.

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You just didn't try. You didn't even try. Yeah. And I hate it.

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I think you're very keen to recognize that because I suspect it has a lot to do with that. And usually spiritism winds up being kind of like a spiritist Christian hybrid. And it does – you're right. It kind of does because a lot of these places had sort of animist traditions prior to Europeans coming in and fucking shit up.

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I found a good critical write up of Dr. Rettiger's performance on the blog Science Based Medicine. I'm going to quote from that now. Unfortunately, the camera angles used made it impossible for me to judge whether John was doing what he claimed. In the only close-up shot that was presented, it was clear to me that the knife never touched the woman's eye.

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And when John actually appeared to be doing something, the camera never focused on the woman's eye. How convenient. It was almost as though Oprah producers were making a conscious effort not to show a camera angle that would allow viewers to judge whether the procedure actually being done was what John of God claimed.

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Personally, I'd have loved to see an ophthalmologist or even just a surgeon rather than a psychiatrist, because Dr. Rettiger is a psychiatrist, allowed to have a close-up view of John's activities. Rettiger is also shown in a video clip apparently bleeding from the chest, apparently after having viewed John do his cornea scraping bit.

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He expresses fear and is concerned that the bleeding doesn't stop as soon as he thinks it should, pointing out that he doesn't have a bleeding disorder.

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So, again, Dr. Rettiger is a psychiatrist, which makes him a legitimate medical professional, but does not make him particularly competent to rule on whether or not someone's reaction to a light surgical cut is inexplicable because that is not what psychiatrists specialize in. Yeah.

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Yeah, it's super great. Yeah, and it's also noted in that article that Dr. Rettiger isn't just a psychiatrist. He's a psychiatrist who's built an entire brand off of embracing spontaneous healing. At the time this came out, he headed up the Initiative for Psychological and Spiritual Development. And on his old website, he wrote this explaining what the Institute did. Quote,

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We live in a culture that has advanced enough that we can send the person with a medical problem to the medical doctor, a person with an emotional problem to the psychologist, a person with a spiritual problem to the priest, minister, or rabbi.

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Yet the initiative for psychological and spiritual development is founded upon the belief that, beneath all and behind all the masks and appearances that we present to the world, there is something more, and whatever healing potential exists comes from this place. Which is...

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Beautiful, beautiful nonsense. So Dr. Rettiger's initiative appears to be defunct now. I don't think it exists anymore. I can't find evidence of that, but I didn't look super hard, so maybe I'm wrong. He does have a book out, however, called Cured! with an exclamation point, and it's about people going into spontaneous remission.

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I don't know enough about Rettiger to declare him an absolute grifter, but I do know that he was once a ghost on Coast to Coast AM, which is like Alex Jones for people who are a little bit less racist than Alex Jones. So I'm going to say it's probably fair to call him a grifter. You don't go on Coast to Coast AM if you're like a credible person.

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And so spiritism felt like this kind of genuine synthesis of these old traditions with the new Christianity. I think you're probably on to something there.

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Yes. Yeah. And yeah, but it's a great grift. It's a thing people want to read about it. People love reading books about magical healing and shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, Dr. Rettiger is part of the grand tradition in the medical field of credentialed medical professionals who provide cover for miracle slinging con men. And of course, Dr. Oz would be another example of this type of person.

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Another example is provided in Susan Casey's O Magazine article about John of God. And this is her again attempting to do some real journalistic research to talk about how it's not weird to believe that this guy could be curing cancer. Quote. Though belief in the effectiveness of prayer is as old as civilization, the results are tough to pin down.

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Bernard Grad, Ph.D., a Canadian biologist from McGill University, worked with a spiritual healer named Oscar Estebane conducting controlled studies in the late 1950s and 60s. Using mice that had been uniformly wounded, Estebane would place his hands upon the wire covers of certain cages, willing those animals to heal. The results were dramatic.

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In one experiment, the wounds on Esteban's treated mice were very significantly smaller after two weeks than those of mice that had been left to heal on their own. The team also discovered that plant seeds exposed to energy healing grew at a faster rate. There was a force here, they agreed, and it appeared to be doing something beneficial. What that force was, however, no one could say for sure.

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Now, these studies happened. They're a real thing that happened. You can read them. Bernard Grad did carry out those studies, and if you look them up, you'll find conclusions that are pretty similar to what Susan Casey writes in her bad article. What you won't find is any clear follow-up to the study.

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In fact, basically the only writing about this research you will find comes from either woo-woo bullshit practitioners or other medical griftsmen trying to convince people that energy healing is real. This makes it difficult to refute because there really aren't direct refutations of Dr. Grad's work.

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What we do have, however, is almost a century of additional research into quote-unquote energy healing because, again, this stuff was done in the 50s and 60s. It wasn't a big study. It was conducted a long time ago. You can't say that it was conducted – We can't prove to a point of certainty that these people were actually conducting it well or abiding by all the rules they said they were.

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And there's another 70 years of other studies into this that show very different results. So, again, she picks out this one study from 70 years ago that says what she wants it to say.

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She ignores, for example, the fact that in 1999, three psychiatrists with the Lancet evaluated multiple studies, several hundred of them, that showed links between religious faith, faith healing, and energy healing and health benefits. Here's how Science Magazine reported on their findings. Quote,

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Typically, they say, these studies ignore other factors that may improve health, such as abstinence from tobacco and alcohol, and even the scientifically sound practices they contend were inconsistent and don't justify bringing religion into medical practice.

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Richard Sloan of Columbia University and his colleagues reviewed every article containing religion and physical health they could find in Medline, an online service that indexes medical studies. Many of them, he says, focused on such groups as Roman Catholic priests or Benedictine monks, which forbid certain risky behaviors.

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Others looked at more general populations of churchgoers and found lower disease rates. but failed to take into account that only people who are in fairly good health can go to church. When these confounding factors were taken into account, either by the original researchers in a follow-up study or by Sloan's group, the alleged benefits usually disappeared.

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Overall, Sloan says, the evidence is very unconventioning and weak, much weaker, for example, than the link between marital status and health. So, again, you can point out there's a couple of individual studies that, like, haven't been refuted that suggest a benefit between energy, healing, and health. And then there's hundreds of studies that show no connection at all.

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And if you only pay attention to the studies that say what you want, it sounds great. If you look at the mass body of research, it doesn't look so good. But Susan Casey doesn't do that. Yeah. Yeah, so that's cool. Following that 2010 episode of The Oprah Show, Oprah herself visited John of God in 2012. She described the encounter as blissful.

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And in her wake, thousands upon thousands of other seekers made the call to travel down Brazil way for some psychic healing. By 2014, John's humble center had transformed into a straight-up commercial empire. Those passion flower pills alone grew into a $10 million a year business. Celebrities visited, including Paul Simon, the Princess of Japan, and Bill Clinton. Maybe. Probably.

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Yeah, it's whatever. So we don't hear a lot about spiritism today in the United States. And probably the reason why is that a sizable number of what were originally the religion's chief pillars have just become normal facets of like fringe spirituality.

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We don't exactly know. There's a bunch of celebrities who are rumored to have gone. I'm going to guess probably. Bill Clinton seems like the kind of guy who'd try this. Yeah.

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Yeah. But something else also cropped up over the years. Allegations of sexual misconduct by John of God. Objective observers noted that he seemed to have a strange non-medical fixation with women's breasts performing surgery aimed at treating heart conditions and other ailments by groping them and cutting around their nipples. So that's good.

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The mask of capitalism. And that means it's time for us to take our mask off and put some products and services on.

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We're back. OK, so, yeah, we left off. You know, John of God has gotten this huge boost from Oprah and her grift community. People are flooding in from all around the world, but also some stories start to come out. Allegations all vague at this point. No individual names attached, but that he's he's sexually harassing and assaulting people.

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The allegations were enough that in 2014, a real newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, sent a real journalist, Tim Elliott, to look into the matter. Tim's article provided the first comprehensive look at John of God's operation by someone who wasn't clearly two steps away from joining his cult.

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Like Susan Casey, the center provided him with a white expat handler to introduce him to John of God's world. Since Tim was a man, his handler was a man, Diego Coppola. Here's Tim's article, quote, Coppola was born in Peru, but spent most of his life in California, where he worked as a computer engineer.

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After visiting the Casa in 2001, just to check it out, he married a Brazilian and moved to Abadiana. These days, he manages the Casa's 50-strong staff, a multinational team of volunteers who take care of logistics, channeling the constant flow of visitors and, most importantly, forming an impenetrable buffer around medium Joao, sheltering him from the ceaseless demands of a ravening public.

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Like a lot of stuff that was originally part of this spiritualism religion that Kardec cooked up just kind of became things that like people who like crystals all believe. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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"'Everybody wants a piece of medium Joao,' says Coppola." Before I arrived, Coppola had promised me an interview with Joao, although he now lets me know that this is far from guaranteed. He is not like you and me, Coppola tells him. He lives in another realm. Timetables don't mean much to him. What matters to him is doing the work, taking care of the healing. So that's good.

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Yeah. Yeah. Now, the reality is that John of God spent most of his time living in luxury on a ranch compound nearby. He only worked about half the week and later revelations would suggest that he spent much of his downtime sexually abusing women, although he also spent a lot of his work hours sexually abusing women, too. So who knows?

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Tim Elliott spoke to an Australian seeker, a woman named Sarah Layton from Melbourne. She's very emblematic of the success cases for John of God. And I'm going to quote from him again. She says. She says. What has helped her most, though, is the emotional healing. She's had a hard life. After being sexually abused as a child, she was tortured.

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Before coming here, she had attempted suicide four times. She estimated she has spent $50,000 all up in airfare donations. I always donate to the Casa because John of God doesn't charge anything. And medications, such as healing herbs, which are sold at the Casa's pharmacy. I used my inheritance, $20,000 from my grandmother, to pay for a lot of it. But it's worth it.

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My heart is healed, which Western medicine wasn't able to do. And my gynecological problems have stopped." So there's a lot going on there. Yeah. Yeah. First off, you see like everyone claims he doesn't take money.

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Yeah, and even Christianity, kind of like mainstream evangelical Christianity in the United States has even absorbed a number of spiritist beliefs, or at least different Christian cults around the world have done that. And in a number of places, including Brazil, this has led to spiritual healers becoming a very big deal.

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Or than actually getting medical treatment in the legal way if you don't have health insurance or if you do have health insurance. Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. But like you'll notice that like and this is true with a lot of the most dedicated case studies who will come out and talk about this guy's healing is their actual medical complaints are really vague. And there's there's nothing in that that you can track pathologically.

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So she vaguely says gynecological problems, but also says, like, it's really my heart and like my emotional problems that he healed. And Susan Casey, the O Magazine author, was in the same boat. She was grieving, not physically ill. And I've read a lot of stories about women who received healing from John of God, and an overwhelming number of them came in with emotional pain.

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And these people do seem to have gotten real relief at the center. But there's nothing magic about what provided them with the relief. I'm going to quote now from a woman who wrote a story about her own treatment by John of God. This is what she described it as. Quote, Meeting the medium was a solemn process.

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Hundreds of people in white flocked to the casa every morning, some in wheelchairs, other frail from chemo. In an orderly line, we waited to go before him so he could prescribe our cures. Mine was as follows. Five trips to the local sacred waterfall. Four months without sex, alcohol, or black pepper. Four months of blessed herbal capsules.

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A translator quickly scribbled these directions on a small piece of paper. For three hours a day, I sat in meditation in the current room, helping to conduct energy for healings. It felt special, purposeful. I napped, hiked, and stood under that freezing holy waterfall. I prayed in front of the Casas triangle, a big wooden wall hanging. Who's three sides represented faith, love, and charity.

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And then I went home and like, yeah, if you're fucked up and grieving and like in a lot of pain and you go to, uh, a distant location, that's like set up to be solemn and relaxing and chill. And you detach from the internet and you stop getting wasted all the time. And you spend a bunch of time hiking in nature and hanging out at waterfalls that will help with your grief. Yeah.

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This is helping you will get better. Like that's a lot of what people need in those moments is like someone to to really confidently tell them like this will pass and you will feel better. All of that stuff helps. There's nothing magical about it. It's good to go... When you're really fucked up in the head, it's good to stop getting wasted and to spend a lot of time hiking.

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There's nothing controversial or inexplicable about that. Yeah. Yeah. So in other words, a lot of the miraculous powers attributed to John of God are really just examples of the fact that life in his center is on balance healthier than the lives a lot of people left behind. That Sarah woman Tim Elliott interviewed even told him she expected the same thing.

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Spiritual healers are individuals who claim to be able to carry out magical healing sessions because their bodies act as conduits for dead medical doctors, saints, and sometimes just God himself. Now, in the United States, this is often seen in Pentecostal communities, who I talk about a lot because people need to know more about them. Have you ever seen like spiritual surgery sessions?

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She said, quote, You're in the fifth dimension here, whereas in Australia, it's the third dimension. In Australia, people don't understand spirituality. It's either work or going out and getting drunk. I find I have to escape that. And like, yeah, if your life if you were if you were like depressed and getting wasted every night and like that makes your body feel worse, it's bad for your health.

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And you go to a place and guys like stop doing that for four months. Hike. Meditate. Yeah, that's going to help.

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Yeah. But of course, John of God and his adherents couldn't just claim that the man had provided people with a relaxing retreat because claiming that this is magical and it also can treat cancer and stuff, that's where the real money's at. So when Tim did his interviews, his patients referred to John of God as a spiritual x-ray machine.

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And in the very dumb biography, John of God, Heather Cummings claimed that John was able to see each of his patients as a hologram, which is why all staff patients and visiting journalists were asked to wear white. He says it made them easier to read. It also coincidentally opened up a huge market in town for white clothing, of which John of God got a cut. Awesome. Smart. Yeah.

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Fuck. Fuck.

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Yeah, the entities are like, yeah, they're working long hours to make sure all those fucking crystals are holy enough. Yeah. Both the gift shop and cafe also do a brisk trade in water that has been blessed by the entity. People at the Casa treat the blessed water like nitroglycerin. Don't drink it all at once, Jana Sue Jones says one afternoon when she sees me swigging from a bottle.

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You'll be up all night. Sarah Layton tells me she regularly buys 10 liter jugs of the stuff to take home in her luggage. It's just water. Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, a lot of religions have fancy water. Now, the heart of the whole grift is the pharmacy, though. When I first started reading about it, I assumed it just stocked a variety of herbal remedies that he was giving people.

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But it turns out that the reality was even dumber than that and more brilliant at the same time. Here's Tim. Quote. I had assumed that the pharmacy would stock a range of different herbs to treat a variety of different conditions. But no, there is only one herb for sale here. Passiflora, the flower of the passion fruit plant.

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When I asked Coppola about this, he explains that it's not what's in the capsules that counts, but rather the spiritual prescription that John of God writes for each patient. The intentionality of that prescription is transferred to the capsules at the time of purchase, he says. That's fucking brilliant. That's a great grift right there.

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And again, all of the people who see John, he is actually just being seen by him and showing up and being in that line is free. But they all get prescriptions for these herbs. And, you know, some by fifty dollars, some by ten dollars worth. But the average Tim knows that the average purchase is about twenty dollars, which would account for forty thousand dollars a day in herb sales alone.

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Jesus Christ. Great grift. A fucking plus grift, John of God. Like, very smart. So Abedianya is a small town. It is not located in a nice part of Brazil. Before John of God, its biggest industry was a series of brick factories. By the mid-aughts, John was by far the largest business in the area, and this gave him power.

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The way Tim describes it, John of God's financial leverage turned Abedianya into his own personal fiefdom. Quote, the biggest industry by far is Medium Joao. There are no less than 72 posadas or hotels here, all catering to Casa Pilgrims, most of whom come on two-week tours and arranged for booking agents.

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These tours cost many thousands of dollars and must be approved by Joao, or rather the entity. There are rumors that he also demands a percentage from the tour operators, but Coppola denies this. Medium Joao owns farms and some mines. He doesn't need more money. Not if he's making 40 grand a day from herb sales, he doesn't.

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Yeah. My friends in the pot industry got into the wrong business. Just convince people that any random plant cures everything and start selling that shit. Like, that's the fucking money. You don't even need real plants. They could just be putting grass in those pills and people wouldn't notice. Yeah, or nothing. Yeah, or nothing. Just sawdust. It's brilliant. Mm-hmm.

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So it soon becomes apparent just how much the town has been molded in the Joao the entity's image. Photos of him are everywhere, on street poles, in the posadas and cafes. A whole industry has sprung up around the sale of white clothes for visitors who forget to bring their own. He is the brand here, one visitor told me. The locals are now worried about how long he's going to live.

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Laying on of hands, but then they'll pull their hands away. They'll be like, oh, there's a tumor inside you. The devil's put a tumor around your heart. And they'll pull their hands away and they'll have like a bunch of bloody pieces of meat in their hands. And it's almost – it's always like chicken or something.

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The entity oversees everything here, from new businesses, which must be entity approved, to new construction. One Australian CASA staff member told me that before building a house here, she ran the plans past the entity. Now, Tim did eventually get to conduct an interview with John of God, but only after he made it through a gauntlet of fawning former patients.

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The center made him interview all of John's regulars, men and women who claim he healed them. The goal of this was obviously to instill a sense of awe in him so that by the time he got to talk to John of God, he was in a mentally receptive place. But Tim is a good journalist, and this did not work on him. In fact, he says that by the end of the whole routine, he suffered from miracle fatigue.

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Quote, one more person tells me about their amazing recovery. I'll kill them. I'm a fan of Tim.

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When they sat down to talk, Tim became probably the first reporter to directly ask John of God about the sexual abuse allegations against him. John's response. I thought you came to talk about me, not other people.

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Yeah. At this point, John tried to break off the interview to go nap, but Tim asked him about another allegation. Local reporters had alleged that he diverted donations meant to build a soup kitchen and use them to renovate his house. John responded with a rant that he wasn't a thief. The person making the allegations was a thief. So, like... Very credible guy here. Then the interview ended.

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And for a while, that was about all anyone had on the allegations against John of God. The Montreal Gazette had a big laugh in 2015 when John of God had an endoscopy, which revealed a tumor and he had to undergo major surgery and chemotherapy to have it removed.

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When asked if this was hypocritical, John of God responded, what barber cuts his own hair and went right back to fleecing thousands of people per year. which is just great. I'll cure your cancer, but if I get cancer, I'm going to get some fucking chemo.

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You know what will cure your cancer?

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We are FDA-backed to say that all cancers are cured by whatever product and or service comes up next. So again, the FDA completely backs and supports this.

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Come on, you fucking FDA cowards. Bring it on. Bring it on. Anyway, here's healing. We're back, and I am just waiting for the FDA to try and take me on. Let's do it. Come on.

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Like they get guts from like an animal and they do sleight of hand like magician shit to make it look like they're kind of like that guy in Temple of Doom pulling out diseased organs. Yeah, like that's a big thing in the United States. That's amazing. It's cool. It's a big thing in the parts of the United States that I'm going to guess most people don't know anything about.

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Doesn't matter. In September of 2018, a very brave Brazilian activist, Sabrina Bittencourt, went public with allegations from dozens of women against John of God. The blowback against her was immediate and severe. John was well-connected in the Brazilian government, as well as extremely popular. An avalanche of death threats forced Sabrina to flee her home country for Spain.

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One of John's victims was hounded into suicide by her own family, who were all adherents of the medium and members of the cult. The story did not disappear, though, because as the weeks went by, dozens and then hundreds of new women came forward with their own stories of sexual abuse and rape at the hands of John of God.

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By the time the 300th allegation hit, the chief lawman in Goyas was forced to issue a preventative incarceration request against John of God. Initially, John expressed a desire to work with law enforcement and comply with the investigation. From a local news story, quote, I am grateful to God for still being here. I'm still a brother in God. I want to comply with Brazilian law. I am in its hands.

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João de Deus is still alive, he told his followers. When he left only 10 minutes later, he told reporters that he was innocent of all accusations. The psychic's appearance caused a visible uproar in the center. Some followers greeted him with applause, while others complained about the presence of reporters. Respect my father, one of the volunteers asked.

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Now, I included that quote about that John of God cult member saying, respect my father, which is because I think it's really interesting. And it's interesting because John's actual daughter accused him of sexual assault.

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In January of 2019, after 300 other allegations go public, John of God's own daughter goes to the Brazilian magazine Veja to announce, quote, under the pretense of mystical treatments, he abused and raped me between the ages of 10 and 14. Oh, God. She claims the abuse from John of God only stopped after one of his employees impregnated her.

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In response to this, John of God beat his own daughter so badly that she suffered a miscarriage. She told Vea, my father is a monster. True. Now, eventually, more than 600 women came forward to level accusations against John of God. Like it is hard to overstand that.

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I'm sure it's thousands like if 600 women came forward in a climate so dangerous where like at least one of his victims was hounded to suicide. I suspect he is guilty of thousands of acts of sexual assault. But we know 600 women leveled accusations. Rather than report to the police, as he said he would, John of God went on the run, withdrawing $9 million in cash in an attempt to flee the country.

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But he was unsuccessful in this and eventually had to turn himself in. Raids on his compound found millions of dollars in cash as well as a large number of illegal firearms. Police who interrogated him started to report bizarre incidents, including their computer spontaneously typing the letters. Oh, a bunch of times the printer printing spontaneously and a mini fridge exploding.

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These reports are almost certainly untrue. They come from tabloid sources, but there is a lot of evidence that sympathetic Brazilian police certainly wanted citizens to believe this was all going on. You know, we started this episode talking about like the police tend to be on these guys sides because they believe the bullshit. Yeah. Mm hmm.

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Less than a month after making initial allegations, Sabrina Bittencourt released a bizarre six minute long video accusing John of God of having run a 20 year long human trafficking operation. She alleged that the cult leader's spiritual hospital was nothing but a cover for a baby smuggling empire that sold infants to parents in the US, Australia and Europe for up to $50,000 a piece.

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Like most Americans would be like, this isn't a big thing in the United States, but you're wrong.

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Bittencourt alleged that John had established a network of isolated farms and mines and that he would bribe poor girls aged 14 to 18 to move there and spend the next decade continuously pregnant. Once born, the babies were sold on the black market. After 10 years, the birth mothers were executed to prevent any witnesses.

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Sabrina wrote, quote, or stated, quote, hundreds of girls were enslaved over the years, lived on farms in Goya, served as wombs to get pregnant for their babies to be sold. These girls were murdered after 10 years of giving birth. We've got a number of testimonies.

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We have received reports from the adopted mothers of their children that were sold for between 20,000 and 50,000 in Europe, USA, and Australia, as well as testimony from ex-workers and local people who are tired of being complicit with John of God's gang. Now, those are some wild ass allegations. Yeah. And unfortunately, I don't know if any of this really happened.

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Sabrina was absolutely right about John of God's career of sexual abuse. Hundreds of women came forward, including his own daughter. Like and they're like there's so much testimony. It's very clear what happened. But the baby smuggling stuff. There's not hard evidence of this. An investigation is ongoing into it.

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And Sabrina Bittencourt, like she got hounded out of her home and deluged in death threats and suffered a mental breakdown. She came out with these allegations days before committing suicide. She was a sexual abuse survivor herself, clearly traumatized by that, as well as the ocean of death rates.

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This doesn't mean that her allegations weren't accurate because there's actually a long history in Brazil that includes to the present day of like Religious like particularly Christian cults that have like farming communes abducting people basically and forcing them into slavery to like grow plants and shit like stuff happens in Brazil.

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It's a big country and there's a lot of areas that are beyond the rule of law. This is not impossible, but it's really hard to know exactly what's going on and you won't find any credible evidence. publications that have gone into the matter in detail because really all we have are the allegations and the fact that they're being investigated.

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And unfortunately, it is unlikely we will ever know the truth because if Bittencourt's allegations are accurate, it is highly unlikely that the Bolsonaro administration would allow the truth to get out. Because Jair Bolsonaro has connections to John of God, and a lot of members of his political party were backers of John of God.

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And if John of God was operating a massive multi-million dollar baby smuggling empire, he absolutely did it with the consent and help of powerful men in Brazil. And the truth's just not going to fucking get out. This is not a satisfying ending in that case, because I can't tell you what happened with his whole baby smuggling business.

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Pretty clearly raped a whole lot of people and it was a monster. But there's just a lot that's unclear about this story that will be up in the air for years. Hopefully good investigations will kind of come to a more concrete conclusion about some of this stuff in the future. Yeah.

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Yeah, the most important thing to realize about just the world is that people have never been dumber than they are now, and they have never been smarter than they are now. Human intelligence, regardless of the actual amount of knowledge that exists, is a flat plane. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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I will say, though, while our story doesn't end in the most satisfying way possible, it does end with something that kind of resembles justice. In December 2019, a judge in Goya sentenced John of God to 19 years and four months in prison for the rapes of four different women. His lawyers are appealing, but John is incarcerated today. And at age 77, he is very likely to die in prison.

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So that's something.

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Like every cult feels the same in the way that every oil and gas company works broadly the same way. Because the same sort of tactics, the same sort of promises attract and work on the same sort of people, and the same kinds of folks are able to successfully –

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carry out these grifts because being able to do the work that these kind of people do, like John of God, isn't all that different from, um, uh, a guy like L Ron Hubbard, like they all have more, more, more alike than different or all that different from Sarah, uh, Paula White Kane, uh, Donald Trump's spiritual advisor. They're all, they just pick different kind of ways to do the same thing.

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Um, and some of them are more successful than others and they're all differently successful. Um, But it is it's always the same grift and it just leaves a huge amount of human shrapnel in its wake, which sucks.

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Yeah, man. This one's a rough story.

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Yeah. And like, I just I wish we knew more about the baby farming stuff. There just doesn't seem to be. solid information. And also just like Sabrina bitten court by the time she came out with those allegations was like pretty broken, like, like broken in the sense that like human, a, an ocean of hate from other people had like shattered her psyche. Um, yeah, which is also tragic.

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So, yeah, spiritual surgery is a thing that happens here in the United States, and it's a thing that happens all over the world. Various kinds of spiritual healing traditions have existed since time immemorial. There's like a whole tradition of it over in India that has nothing to do with Christianity. It's like shit like this has been happening for thousands of years, right?

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And, um, you know, what she did was very brave and she brought down this guy, but it cost her her own life, which is really fucked up.

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Yeah, about 15% of the time, something that resembles justice happens to these guys. Yeah. About 15% of the time, I'll say.

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Look, if you the fan want to go through and run the numbers, please do. I hate numbers and don't trust them.

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Run the stats or just listen to Run the Jewels. it's better.

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You can find us on BehindTheBastards.com where we will have the sources for this article or this episode. You can find me on Twitter at IWriteOK. And I have a podcast called The Women's War. Check it out.

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Yep.

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So, yep, we're done. I'm going to stop recording now.

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But over in Brazil, a combination of spiritism and Christianity has created a thoroughly unique tradition of what is generally called psychic surgery, right? Now, unlike most similar traditions around the world, in Brazil, this psychic surgery often includes real cutting, with surgeons using actual knives on the eyes and bodies of their patients.

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What's lighting my dumpster fires? I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards. That little introduction was in honor of my hometown, Portland, which just had a police officer murder a man who was having a mental health crisis. And we'll probably be lighting some dumpsters on fire tonight. Although you won't hear it the day that this happens. But anyway, that's all beside the point right now.

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Because the point right now is that I'm introducing our guest today. The inimitable...

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Little known TV show, The Sopranos. You might have heard of it. Very obscure.

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It's fun thinking about that because I believe the song that introduced that show was something about waking up in the morning and getting yourself a gun, which is what I did this morning.

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I did. I did. I did buy a gun this morning. Not for Sopranos like uses, although I am Italian. So you can't really know for sure. You can't really know for sure.

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And then I'm going to commit crimes in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Yeah. They do that a lot in the show, right? A lot of Pine Barren crimes. They do it at least once.

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Yeah. They're chasing that guy through the. Yeah.

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Well, they pee everywhere. And, you know, we Italians are not a subtle people.

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Oh, it's just a gun. But today we have something much more exciting than a gun. We have a bastard and our bastard is. Are you ready for this? I'm so excited. Are you settling in? Yes. Dr. Mehmet Oz! I never introduced them like that. We're talking about Dr. Fucking Oz today. Yes, that's right.

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Who would have thought a TV doctor could be a bad man?

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Honestly, if you are going up against LeVar Burton for any job, your first action should be like, you know what? I'm bowing out. Yeah, straight up. Immediately. I'm not going to compete with LeVar Burton.

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Fighting Geordi? Fighting Kunta Kinte? Fighting whatever the Reading Rainbow guy's name was? No, sir. I think it was just LeVar. LeVar, yeah.

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Yes, he's a piece of shit. He's a different piece of shit. We're also going to be talking in the very near future about Dr. Phil, who's a much worse person. Dr. Oz is bad for some reasons that you'll suspect, you know, the pseudoscience stuff, but also for some, I think, more complicated reasons, which will have us a nice talk about at the end of this episode. Do tell.

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So I've always said that one of the great tragedies of American public life is that our very best doctors are usually like kind of schlubby dudes and ladies who maybe aren't the best at social graces and certainly don't have enough time because they're wildly overworked to do TV appearances.

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I'm like, oh, like we need to put a couple of billion dollars into a national program for more fuckable doctors. Come on.

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Yes.

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Now, I mean, I think the problem is not their fuckability because it's inherently hot to be a doctor. It's more the fact that they're not necessarily even the ones who are have a good bedside manner are good at explaining things. Just don't have the time to spend a lot of it on television because they're busy saving lives.

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This has led to a thriving industry, well documented in the show of grifter health influencers and scam artists selling people poison with honeyed words and practice smiles.

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Yeah, and it's kind of like people who, for whatever reason, because of a depressive disorder, cut themselves. They tend to feel relief for one reason or another, and it's because it releases endorphins and stuff. So you do that in the context of a powerful religious experience, and it can feel really good to people. Yeah. Yeah.

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Today, though, we're talking about a different kind of medical grifter, kind of a grifter who helps to launder those more shady grifters, the guy people who aren't doctors, people who have no medical training, who are just trying to sell you nonsense cures. The guy we're talking about today exists to give them credibility and launder them into the public consciousness. And his name is Mehmet Oz.

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Mehmet Oz is maybe the most influential public physician in the country, possibly the world. He is, in every professional sense of the word, an excellent doctor, exceptional even. Within the bounds of what it is he is trained to do, he may be one of the best in the world at what he does.

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And he uses his, you know, the thing that makes him a bastard is that he uses these exceptional qualifications, along with his charisma, his handsome face, to sell millions of people on nonsense cures every single year. And that's that's a bad thing to do. It's kind of made worse.

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We'll talk about this a lot by the fact that he is he's a he's a he's a heart surgeon and he's an exceptional heart surgeon.

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It's always surgeons, which you talk to doctors. They'll be like, yeah, of course, it's always surgeons.

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I think good surgeons are so prone to being also like nonsense, like so many of our nonsense public doctors are surgeons for the same reason that so many of our terrorists are engineers. They're people who get really good at a specific thing and it lets them convince themselves that they know what they're talking about in a wider variety of things than they really do.

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If no one learned to do anything, we would still be living in the mud and eating grubs. And you know what we wouldn't have? Snake oil salesmen? Or that! We would have very little at all. Mimit Sengez Oz was born on June 11th, 1960, to parents Suna and Mustafa Oz, who must have fucked at some point in October of 1959 in order to conceive him. We have to assume his parents fucked in the in October.

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Yeah.

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Possible. I would say right now the most likely theory is that they fucked sometime in October. All right. His father, Mustafa, had been born in Bozkir, a village in southern Turkey. He had grown up poor in the countryside during the Great Depression. And obviously, you know, Great Depression, bad time everywhere.

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Real bad time if you're like in rural Turkey, you know, you're dealing with a different kind of poverty than even like our grandparents dealt with here. Yeah. Yeah.

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So he had to work himself to the bone in order to make something of himself in order to get into medical school and distinguish himself enough that he was able to earn scholarships, which allowed him to immigrate to the United States as a medical resident in 1955. So this is a this is a hardworking man and a man who has to struggle.

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I'm going to guess in ways that that are kind of difficult to imagine for most of us, even as difficult as our present times are.

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Yeah. Came from the middle of like nowhere, rural Turkey and worked himself into becoming a good enough doctor that he got it. You know, he was able to get over the racism of the fucking 1950s immigration system. Yeah. That's that's an achievement.

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That's not. Yeah. Yeah. That's Mustafa. Yeah. So we're talking about his dad and his mom right now. His mom, Suna, came from a much wealthier background. I don't know if this is what helped his dad get into the country or not. It may have been. Her father was a successful pharmacist, and both sides of her family came from Istanbul. She grew up with a lot of money.

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So anyway, yeah, the Brazilian to first pioneer this technique was Jose Pedro de Feritas or Zé Arrigo. According to his autobiography, an obviously problematic source, he started working at a mine until age 14. In 1950, at age 29, or he started working at a mine at age 14. And in 1950, when he was 29, he began to suffer a series of blinding headaches, followed by hallucinatory trances.

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As befits his more modest upbringing, Mustafa was an observant traditional Muslim. Suna's family was more moderate and secular. Mehmet and his two sisters grew up split between both approaches to religion. The Oz kids spent their childhood speaking Turkish and English fluently at home, so they grew up in a bilingual house.

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Mehmet was from a young age, ambitious, starving for success and his father's approval. He was wont to note that he was born in the year of the rat, according to the Chinese Zodiac. In one interview, he noted of this, quote, "'You run the maze. If you put cheese in that maze, I swear to God, I'll get to it, and I'll get to it really fast. But should I be running after that cheese?

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Am I in the right maze?' All of these questions, which people much greater than I am think through, I put on the back burner as I'm running after that cheese."

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It is. It is telling because what he's saying there is like, I don't think about why I'm doing what I'm doing. I just I just strive to to to achieve things. And I don't think about whether or not they're good or bad. I just I have to achieve.

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Yeah, he wants that cheese. It's ambition without an analysis, I think is what you'd call it. And he's pretty open about that.

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Now, Mustafa, his dad, repeatedly told the growing Dr. Oz, who's not yet a doctor, obviously, that when he'd grown up, when Mustafa had grown up, he hadn't been able to relax for even a second on his road to escaping poverty and establishing himself as a cardiothoracic surgeon.

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So he's like telling his kid as he grows up, like, you know, like if you want to succeed, you can't relax for even a second. You can't take a moment off. You always got to be hustling. Yeah. And that's how Mehmet grows up. He's an excellent student, but no amount of success is ever enough for his dad. He later recalled, I'd say I got a 93 on a test. He'd say, did anyone get better?

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That was always the question he asked.

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The school I grew up in because of just where we were in North Texas, like about half of the kids in my school were either from India or from China or Japan. And so you had a lot of kids who would talk that way about their parents. Right. And some of them had, especially around our senior year, there were a couple of kids who had to get like.

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taken in by an ambulance because they would just like one in one case seizing as a result of stress. Like, it's not good to put this kind of pressure on a kid.

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So Mehmet decided to become a doctor when he was just seven years old. He recalls standing in line at an ice cream parlor. Quote, I remember it like yesterday. There was a kid in front of me who was 10. My dad, just to pass the time, said, what do you want to be when you grow up? The kid said, I don't know. I'm 10.

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My father waited until he was out of earshot and said, I never want you to tell me that if I ask you that question. I never want you to tell me you don't know. It's okay if you change your mind, but I never want you to not have a vision of what you want to be.

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This all culminated in his body being taken over by the spirit of a bald German man in a white apron with a massive team of spectral doctors and nurses at his beck and call. So he's got like a whole German surgery team in his head. Oh, Christ. Now, this this magical dead German was Dr. Adolf Fritz, a field medic in the German army who died in the trenches in 1918, which is cool.

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Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's a real bummer. Yeah. It's not just don't put pressure on people. There's plenty of grubs. Yeah. By the time Mehmet was ready to start school, his father was wealthy enough to pay to send his son to Tower Hill School, a K through 12th grade private college preparatory school in Wilmington, Delaware.

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The Fancy Boy Prep School worked well enough that Mehmet was accepted to Harvard, where he played football and water polo. His grades were, as always, exceptional. One of his roommates later recalled, he was very competitive. There was never any question that he wasn't going to be a doctor. He wanted to be a fantastic surgeon.

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So people around him, like everyone kind of recognizes this kid is brilliant. Everyone recognizes he's got the drive he's going to achieve, you know, so good for him.

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I think... It was different for me because there was definitely a lot of pressure to have something. You know, I went to a public school. I didn't go to a private school, but I went to a public school in my early schooling years was in a dirt poor farming town called Idabel, Oklahoma. And the school was as good as it could be in a place like that.

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Like they paddled us and stuff like it was not not a high end educational way.

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Yeah. Oh, damn. They still did that in Oklahoma back in them days. Yeah. Yeah. You got to sign the paddle afterwards, too. That's nice. But when I was in, I don't know, third grade or so, I moved to Plano, which is a fairly wealthy suburb of Dallas. And the schools, the public schools are very good. And there is a lot of drive to achieve.

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Like I said, a lot of like kids who are really motivated by their parents to achieve. Um, and so you either were kind of planning to be a doctor or, you know, something on that level, or you were planning to join the military because it was Texas and I was in ROTC. So me and all my friends, I think we all kind of assumed we're all going to join the army, you know?

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So Oz took only one break during his relentless progress through medical school. And that break was to do a compulsory. I think it was a one year term of service in the Turkish army in order to maintain his dual citizenship. Other than that, straight on to like becoming a doctor. That's the only kind of break. So I guess that's his gap year is being in the Turkish army. Right.

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He got a four year degree in biology and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he doubled up working on both an MD and an MBA. He succeeded in earning both. So that's interesting to me. He gets both. He gets at the same time as he's getting his MD. He also gets a business degree.

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He earned both, obviously, with flying colors. He's an incredibly intelligent man. Right. This isn't just a guy like we'll talk about Dr. Phil later. Dr. Phil, I don't think is very smart. He's incredibly good at reading and manipulating people. He's not particularly a genius. Mehmet Oz is a genius. Like, I think he almost certainly is an actual genius. Yeah.

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So it's bizarre that like this Brazilian mine worker would choose like it's got to be a German field medic. That's that. But that's that's what he picks. And I guess we all consider Germans trustworthy. I can't think of anything in history that would make me not trust German doctors. So, yeah, that scans.

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In 1985, at age 25, he married Lisa Limol, who was the daughter of a cardiothoracic surgeon who worked with his father. They met at like a party or something. This relationship gradually opened him up to alternative medicine and Eastern mysticism because Lisa's mom was hardcore into homeopathy, meditation and other new age stuff. We'll talk about that more in a little bit.

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For the next decade and change, Dr. Oz's career zoomed forward. He became triple board certified, which I don't know what that means, but it sounds impressive.

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It's at least three boards. That's three more than I've been certified.

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Not a one. Not a single board between the three of us.

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If you're a board, if you're a medical board board out there. Well, you know what? The state of New Jersey has certified me as a reverend doctor. So I'm one board certified out there.

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So he starts working as a heart surgeon and he's very good at being a heart surgeon. And he's not just good at the heart surgery part. He's good at the science part. Over time, he authors hundreds of peer reviewed articles and he's awarded 11 patents. One of them is for a solution to preserve transplanted organs. Another is for an aortic valve that can be implanted without open heart surgery.

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Like he's he's not just really good at the mechanics of surgery. He's an excellent scientist.

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Dr. Oz was hired by Columbia Medical School as a teacher. And as you know, he's also working. They've got a hospital. He's working there, but he's also teaching. He very quickly rises to the level of full professor and becomes the vice chair of the cardio of the heart surgery department.

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Everything I've read right now on its own would be a career trajectory any doctor in medicine would envy. You could die happy with that being your fucking resume. That's a hell of an achievement. In 1995, a New York Times profile referred to Dr. Oz as, quote, probably the most accomplished 35-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon in the country.

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So together, Dr. Fritz and Zay Arrigo had a wildly successful 20 year career performing surgery to adoring audiences of as many as 800 followers at one time. Zay Arrigo would go into trances and become so taken with the spirit of Dr. Fritz that he would grab random kitchen knives and use them to cut out tumors and the like from his patients. he became known as the surgeon of the rusty knife.

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He might be the best at what he does in the entire United States at this point. I mean, I don't know how to measure that, but he's he's very good.

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Now, the article that I found that quote in, however, gives some hints about what was to come, because that article was about Dr. Oz's increasing experimentation with alternative medicine. It opens with the story of one of his patients, a 49-year-old diabetic smoker who suffered a critical heart attack. She went under Mehmet's knife for a dangerous surgery. Quote,

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At the invitation of Oz and his patient, there were two other people on hand in surgical gowns and masks, a second year medical student named Sally Smith stationed at the patient's feet and a 52 year old healer named Julie Motz, who was standing at the patient's head as volunteers in Oz's cardiac complementary care center.

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They worked for free through the operation, seldom moving except to reposition their hands. What? What? or had ever thought worth doing, even as an experiment. In this ultimate theater of scientific medicine, the women were using their hands as kings once did, to treat subjects with scrupula, and as Jesus is said to have done, and as shamans and mothers and Chinese Quigong practitioners still do.

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They were using their hands to run a kind of energy, which science cannot prove exists, into the patient's kidney meridian, which also may or may not exist.

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Oh, man. With fucking on a Ritz cracker sliced thin. I love me some. A little bit of. You just want to get you want to get like some duck fat or some butter. You want to get it sizzling in the pan and you just slap that meridian on for like a half a second and it's good to go. That's all you fucking with. Just a little bit of little bit of char, you know? Yeah.

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So, yeah, that's silly. I think that's silly. But... At the other hand, like it's in a hospital. These people are clearly following sanitation guidelines. They're not getting paid. The patient's not getting charged extra. So I don't have a problem with that.

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I'm not willing to morally condemn him for that, even though I think it's silly, just because, like, yeah, yeah, what's the fucking harm in seeing, you know? And in that case, if you're actually doing it in a medical context, you're guaranteeing everybody's taking proper sanitation procedures, fucking whatever, you know?

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Yeah, they were just doing energy work or whatever.

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It falls into the category of it couldn't possibly hurt, so why not give it a shot, right? Which is, we'll talk about this more later, but that's kind of what they were going for. You know what else can't hurt?

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i don't the products and services that support this podcast guaranteed to not harm you in fact every one of the products of ours that you buy extends your life by exactly 45 minutes so you know spend all your money and gain immortality We're back. We're talking about Dr. Oz, who in the mid 90s has started some weird alternative medicine stuff.

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And this was not like a, nobody was like talking shit at him by calling him this. That's a,

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Now, he's not the person who starts the alternative medicine program at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, which is also like a teaching hospital, whatever. It's one of those hospitals that they have a medical school with. You know, you know the thing. If television has taught me accurately, all of the doctors are fucking constantly.

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Doctors fucking they teach. That's all they do. You know, when you're not teaching, you're fucking. And Columbia Presbyterian was among the most reputable medical establishments on planet Earth still is as far as as I'm aware. So this alternate medicine program there is kind of an odd thing. It was not started at the behest of anyone at the top of the school.

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The whole thing came about because in 1993, a retired utility executive named Richard Rosenthal gave them three quarters of a million dollars as a private grant in order to establish a center to study alternative medicine.

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Now, Richard had been motivated by having several close friends of his get terribly sick in such a way that doctors told them there was nothing that could be done to help them. And his response was to basically throw a bunch of money into a hole to see if alternative medicine could come up with solutions.

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And it's one of those things I could make fun of, like this is almost exactly a week after my mom just died of a type of cancer that when you get diagnosed with it, pancreatic There's basically nothing they can do. You know, it's even like like she went through chemo and it did nothing. You know, I get it. You go through something. I think, OK, well, let's try other shit, you know.

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that's like that's some shit that's like a prison nickname the search yeah that is like a prison nickname yeah like if you're if you get like locked up and they're like oh man that's the knife that's the rusty knife surgeon like that's the dude you don't want to fuck with that's like the butcher bill motherfucker right yeah yeah yeah that's incredible and that's that was a compliment

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So I can't I can't even blame Richard for like it seems like he was motivated out of grief to do this.

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Yeah. I will blame the snake oil salesman. I'm never going to blame someone who's like, well, doctor said they can't cure me, so I'm going to eat this root, you know? Fuck it. Why not? Go for it. Who gives a shit? Like, it can't hurt if you're definitely going to die. Yeah. And it is, to be honest, like, it is kind of within...

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Even you could argue within kind of medical best practices, because one of the things if like I took EMT training years ago, one of the things they tell you is that you're not supposed to use an AED, you know, like paddles to restart a heart. You're not supposed to use them on an infant. But if an infant is in, you know, the state where like you use them on them because they're dead.

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shock the shit out of them yeah they're dead you can't make dead worse so like why not so i guess like yeah you can't i don't know can't make it worse why not see if it if if something happens i'm not against the basic idea of testing some of this shit is what the worst thing you're gonna get out of that is a really cool tiktok video of electrocuting a dead body absolutely and then you get a fuckload of followers and then you start selling brain pills

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