March 27, 2012 • 44 mins
Who doesn't love a good story about comeuppance? Whether served cold or piping hot, revenge is an ancient idea -- and history is filled with acts of vengeance. Join Josh and Chuck as they trace the concept of revenge from the bygone days of Hammurabi to the modern era.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant
that makes the stuff you should know. Jerry's in the
(00:22):
other room. Yes, being quiet as commanded. Um, yeah, how
you doing just I'm great. I feel like we haven't
mentioned Jerry much in a while. So she's got a
character playing She's a character on a TV pilot. There's
an actress playing her. Right, probably you thought to have
(00:45):
that removed right all over the place. I was like,
we need less Jerry less Jerry not true, that's not true.
So revenge. I'm a big revenge guy. Oh your huh, Well, no,
that sounds is bad. I'm a big come up in
skye in Justice, sky Sideline Reuters, you know, like you know,
(01:08):
when people get their come upance and justice is served.
I'm very that's a very very satisfying experience for me. Well,
a friend, you would have done well to have lived
in Babylon around the seventeen sixties BC with the gardens.
I love that stuff. Yeah, they were the pinking gardens
(01:29):
that would have been all over it. Yeah, gardens figured
heavily prominently in babylon Um, especially Chuck. I think you
would have enjoyed living under King Hammurabi. Yeah. The code.
He's the guy who came up with a code. We
take it. You know that whole eye for an eye
thing that you would stand on the sidelines, like take
(01:49):
out his eye, take out his eye, the other guy's eye.
I'm not like that because people are gonna think I'm
some violent person. Come up and can come in many forms.
I know exactly what you're talking. Heart, Like Shank uh
Brooks hung himself. No, come up, it's against the warden. Like,
that's satisfying to me to see that in a movie.
I don't remember what happened to the warden. Well, he
(02:12):
ended up, boy, should not spoil it. I think it's fine.
He ended up shooting himself as the cops descended upon him.
What did he do wrong? He? What did he do wrong?
He held Andy there for years, knowing he was innocent.
He had the guy shot and killed who Andy had
tutored to get his g e D. Who had information
(02:35):
that would get his release from Like when the Melrose
Place or something like that. He ally McBeal, Yeah, I
think it was hallng mcbell. And then he uh uh
squandered money from what do you call it when you pension?
Uh yeah, not squandered he uh he no, hele money
essentially embezzled, embezzled money from the prison coffers. I it
(02:59):
wasn't the warden played by Burr Lives or something. I thought.
I remember him as like a grandfatherly type, very supporting,
nurturing fellow. Now he's played by the guy that can't
ever play anything again because of that movie. Weird. I
have a list of revenge movies we can go over later. Okay,
oh yeah, there's plenty of those. Remember there's a whole
exploitation sub genre like I Spit on your Grave. That's
(03:20):
on the list. Um. But anyway, back to the Code
of Hammurabi. We take for for granted these days chuck
the eye for an eye, but this is literally the
beginning of that, and um, the beginning of systemic, uniform,
uh socially sanctioned revenge. That's the justice system. It's revenge.
(03:43):
It's like you did something and we're gonna get you
back for that. You're going to be punished. It's revenge.
That's the whole basis of the justice system. People can
him and how about reform and stuff like that, but
come on, it's revenge. It's punishments that I'm just saying, right,
(04:04):
you can, you can dress it up all you want,
you can do whatever you you you can to it.
But when you boil it down, I think is what
we're both saying. The whole basis of the justice system
is revenge, and the Code of Hammurabi is the beginning
of this, and that it's also the beginning of the
eye for and eye think if I may, there's a
couple like the Code of Hammurabi kind of deals with
stuff that people were dealing with at the time, and
(04:26):
it goes far beyond like if you kill somebody, you're killed.
It gets kind of specific. One of my favorites is
if a fire breakout in the house and someone who
comes to put it out cast his eye upon the
property of the owner of the house and take the
property of the master of the house, he shall be
thrown into that self same fire. So a louter essentially,
you get thrown into the fire you came to help
(04:48):
put out. And then basically strict your moral obligation by
stealing instead of helping fight the fire. That's my favorite. Also,
there's a lot about runaway slaves, harboring runaway slaves, stealing slaves.
If you find a bull of slaves and you want
to bring him back to the owner, um, the owner
owes you two shekels of silver. Uh. It deals with
inheritance law. If the son who inherits his father's land
(05:10):
is still too young and can't take possession of his fields,
a third of the field will go to the mother
who basically is paid to raise him, although I think
she's going to do that anyway. But it's a uniform coat,
especially dealing with revenge. Right. I say all this to
tell you that revenge is very old, Chuck. It is,
and that's the code I mean. I bet took Took
(05:31):
took revenge over you know, the caveman who wronged him. Yes,
very primitive ways. I'm sure there was always revenge. And
depending on how evolved took Took's brain was. If he
had um dorsal stratium stri atom, why didn't I not
get that the first time? If he had a dorsal striatom,
which is governed in feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. He
(05:55):
would have probably liked carrying out that vengeance because that
our pleasure center goes off when we um carry out
acts of revenge, especially when we think of it. But
that's why sometimes we will go to such great lengths
to carry out vengeance because it feels good. See, I'm
not a vengeance carry outer because I don't really get wronged,
(06:17):
Like I've never had any huge, like wrongings against me.
I would knock on wood at this point if I
were you. But um, I like seeing it played out
mainly in movies. You like standing on the sidelines and
shouting for the person's eye to be taken out. Yeah, yeah,
that's me. Do you want to talk about some cases
of revenge? Because I mean, there's there's it's one thing
(06:39):
to just say, hey, you know, that's great, that guy
got his come up, and it's but there's some really
legendary and some very grim cases of revenge in the
history of humanity. And we have covered well, you cover
ten in your article. Yeah, we're gonna cover what seven, eight, six, six,
something like that. Like, we haven't done a top ten
(06:59):
in a while. It's been a very long. Actually, we've
never done a top ten because we only only cover
six or seven. We haven't based one on the top ten.
It's waiting, correct, Uh, I like the spam King one,
should we start there? Might as well? He's number ten.
Alan Rowski Uh was known as the spam King because
he was an entrepreneur in Michigan who was one of
(07:22):
the guys, the main dudes signing you up for all
those spam emails that we all love before the dot
com bubble even burst had him in court for bulk
email spamming. But dude, he's got a rap sheet a
mile long. I looked at his his like, since this
is before the spam thing in the nineties, he had
all sorts of like, yeah, yeah, he's he's just kind
(07:45):
of a hustler kind of dude very much, you know,
it's a good way to put it. But he got
his come uppance in the way of a junk email
of his own when his address was leaked online and
then really leaked online. Well, the whole way it came
out was there was a in I think the Detroit
Free Press maybe one of the UM one of the
(08:07):
local papers did a um a spotlight like just kind
of a soft touch spotlight on his spacious, eight thousand
square foot home that he paid seven because it was Detroit.
This one was on you, man, I was just going
to leave the Detroit alone, but go ahead, and yeah, so,
uh so this guy is showing off his this man
(08:28):
who's been referred to as quote vermin and quote scum,
is showing off his eight thousand square foot house built
on bulk email and spam. I bet he regrets that.
And somehow I I couldn't go back and find out
his address leaked like in the in the article, it
basically gave away his physical address and that was it.
(08:49):
The trolls got him. The trolls got him and signed
him up for basically everything under the sun as far
as junk mail, like physical junk mail goes, which we've done. Wow,
we did podcast some junk mail. Remember that we didn't
remember where rid of it. And that one guy was like, no,
we're employed by junk mail. So at at the peak
of his uh junk mail receivership, he was getting hundreds
(09:12):
of pounds and he was every day. Yeah, he was
pretty upset. I mean I saw interviews with him today
where he was like being harassed, and he was trying
to get courts to do something and they were just like, now,
come up, and I wish we had a trombone. Yeah,
we should spice us up a little, Jerry a trombone please.
(09:33):
She's like, thank you? All right? Did we cover him? Uh? Well,
he's in jail now. Yeah, he's inmate one oh nine
dash ow three. Wow, you did your research because that
was not in the article. We could send him a
letter Morgantown Federal Correctional Institution. Yeah, he was. What was
(09:54):
he doing he was inside? Was an insider trading or
he created a pump and up scheme, some sort of
penny stock manipulation some scheme, is what I wrote. And
he's still in jail. Well it was two thousand nine
and I got a fifty one month sentence. Yeah, but
you know, sometimes it doesn't mean much like it served
time served, you're free. Yeah, you know, but yeah, he
he's still there though. He definitely made some cash doing
(10:17):
bulk email. It was clever at the time. It was
just annoying. Yeah, sure, but hey, we all got biagra
out of it, so we did. I didn't get in mine.
Uh run okay. Yeah, So my nephew's middle name is Ronan,
and I'm still not convinced that my sister and her
husband know what Ronan is. I have a friend who
(10:38):
named his kid running. Does he know what Ronan is?
I'll have to ask him. He's a fan of the show. Well,
what's what's his name? I don't think he spells it
this way though, I think he spells it with an A.
What's his name, Braxton? Brexton? Do you know what a
Ronan is? Answer us? Let me text him. I don't. Yeah,
I don't think he spells it the same way. Well,
let's tell everybody a Ronan is a masterless amurai. At
(11:01):
this point, I feel like, possibly, if you really want
to do some digging, press pause on this one or
just mark down your time code. Go back and listen
to our House Samurai Worked podcast. Excellent episode and it
will help you along with the rest of this. But
if you don't feel like doing that, go back and
listen to it anyway later on, but we'll give you
the crib sheet. Basically, a samurai is pledged to the
(11:24):
death to a single master right, and that involves the
samurai protecting the damno with his life. That involves the
samurai carrying out vengeance if the damnio is wronged or
murdered or anything like that. Um. And this is a
lifetime contract. This is a lifetime affiliation. Remember they were
(11:46):
the opposite ninja, which is also a really good episode. Two,
they were just the hired guns. Yes, the ninja were.
The samurai were very loyal military advisors, just cool guys.
They had huge hammer pants too. Um And in this
particular case of the forties seven Ronan during the EtOH period,
which was the early beginning of the eighteenth century in Japan,
(12:09):
um a man named Asano Nagai had uh some Ronan
assigned to him, or that he had taken on them.
And Nagai was headed to Kyoto to hang out, which
was the capital at the time. And um, he saw
a man he didn't like. And still to this day,
no one's quite sure. I was going to ask you
(12:31):
that no one knows, no one has any idea what
the problem is. But these guys have beef basically as
a Biggie Smalls would have put it. Did well, Yeah,
Naganori pulled his sword out and slashed at the man.
Didn't cause any harm or whatever. But this is Kyoto
the seat of power in Japan and he's just taken
a swipe at some guy in front of everybody important
(12:53):
and in Japan this is a really big deal. Well, yeah,
so much so that they I did that he should
commit seppuku, which we have covered before as well. Was
that a separate one? No, what was that in? Was
that in Samurai? Yeah? I think we really went into
graphic details. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we we talked about the
steps of sippuku because it's very specific. So again, go
(13:15):
listen to that episode. Um, and he did commit sippuku. Here,
here's what I don't quite get. Why why didn't the
guy Yoshinaka, who he attacked, Why didn't his ronan come after? Well,
he was dead. Why didn't his ronan come after he
wasn't dead? No, no, no, Naganori is now dead. So
(13:38):
why did his people feel the need to take revenge
when he's the one that started it? That is an
excellent question, and that's what led to the deaths of
these forty seven ronan Okay, so let's let's talk about
the story and then we'll go into that. Right, Okay,
these ronan um basically hung out and waited two full years.
You know what they say, what revenge is the meal
best serve cold, very nice, one of my favorite things.
(14:01):
Is it really one of my favorites? Oh yeah, I
just I just think it's witty. And you think a
lot about revenge, don't you know. I just like that
saying it's a good one. You know it's true with
you like two years later they don't know it's coming. Yeah,
And those Japanese winners get pretty cold, so it had
to two winners had passed by the time the seven
ronin decided to go pay a visit to the other guy.
(14:23):
And they went and, uh, your Yoshinaka was the other guy.
They went to his house um stage an attack on
his compound, found him in an outhouse and said, hey, uh,
we will give you the chance to commit suppuku. Here's
the same dagger that our master killed himself with the
right thing. And the guy just said there and stared
(14:44):
at him, and they gave him a beat and then
said okay, and they cut his head off, and they
took his head in a bucket and took it to
their master's grave. Well they cleaned it up, did they?
Apparently they watched it for some reason. I guess well,
they're very tidy. They are very tighty people to um
and they took it to their master's grave and showed
him the head and said, here you go. And then
(15:05):
they took it to the Bukufu, the ruling council, and said,
we're turning ourselves in. And maybe there's a lot of
discrepancy about what what was the right thing to do
or what wasn't even at the time and still today.
But the Bukufu said, okay, go kill yourselves. You have to.
We were down to forty six here one supposedly was
(15:27):
killed in the attack. Whatever, but um forty six Ronan
committed suicide themselves. A lot of people die because this
guy slashed at the other guy. Now, there's many schools
of thought in this act of revenge. The Ronans should
have immediately gone to um Yoshinaka's house and killed him.
(15:49):
That may have gotten them out of the sentence to
commit supuku another if they had been like, oh, well,
let's carry out this vengeance right now. Another school thought
is that they shouldn't have done anything. That the Bakufu
had made a decision that their master had to kill himself,
and they had to abide by it. That Samurai didn't
see it that way. Well, that was their code, though
(16:09):
it's not exactly the law of the land. No, it's true, um,
and that I think that connection between master and Samurai
supersedes anything that Pakfa came up with. But the last one,
the hardest one for me swallow, but it's possibly correct,
is that the ronin or should have, after they took
Yoshinaka's head, committed supuku themselves right there, and that it
(16:32):
was a grave act of cowardice to turn themselves in
because it showed that they possibly hoped for a slap
on the wrist interesting or at the very least the
cutting off of their wrists. Wow. Well, and there is
any style? Is what that is? You point out the
forty seventh thrown in Terra Saka Kichi man um There
are reports that he was young and pardoned because of
(16:55):
his age, and that he lived at the seven or
he died in the attack. Yeah, and I think there
would be more than forty seven, But there were forty
seven that assembled two years later and carried out revenge,
I believe. And there have been countless stories and uh
movies and stuff about then running. Yeah, including the movie
(17:15):
running There you go some big revenge man. That was
a roller coaster ride. Should we cover the uh the
Huguenots to the massacre? That was pretty grim. I will
go over real quick. I like the last line of it,
did you I went back and rewrit it. I was like,
that was a we'll we'll nugget there at the end,
(17:36):
We'll save it. Uh. During the Protestant Reformation, there was
a lot of stuff going on in France, mainly a
lot to be lost, as in of the real estate
in France allegedly was owned by the clergy Catholic Church,
so they had a lot at steak. Yeah. When the
Protestants came a colin, they were like, I don't know
(17:58):
about you guys, we should kill you. Yeah. There was
a big, big problem between there's a big rift between
the Catholics and the Protestants, and it was largely overland power,
you know, because if it's all controlled by the Catholics,
it's hunky door for the Catholics. But then now, if
you have to divide everything in half, it's not it's
kind of a problem. Um. So by fift seventy two, UH,
(18:23):
in August in Paris, it was a hot one. And
there was a huge wedding between a French Protestant aristocrat
right now, a French Huguenot aristocrat and a French kill
okay Huguenot. Yeah, and they were not. This was not
a marriage that was endorsed by the papacy at all.
(18:47):
Already really controversial. It was a huge, huge affair on
the social calendar. And so Paris was swarming with both
Huguenots and Catholics that were there at this wedding, possibly
the most awkward wedding of all time, sworn enemies in
the same church. Right the marriage goes off without a hitch,
as far as I know. And um, almost immediately after,
(19:08):
Charles the Ninth, who was the King of France, a
devout Catholic, said, um, why don't we just take this
opportunity to kill the military leader of the Huguenots since
he's here in town. And they did, and let's not
stop there, let's just keep killing people. And over the
course of a week or so, I saw all kinds
of numbers. Sure well, they didn't keep very good records
(19:30):
in the fifteen seventies. No, but legend has it that
the rivers in Paris were so full of dead bodies
that they could not eat fish for months because of
disease of dead bodies. Thousands, tens of thousands of French
Protestants murdered a hundred thousands, and it started with the
one guy. Then that moved throughout Paris. Any Huguenot found
(19:52):
was killed, and then it spilled over into the countryside
where basically um the the French King Charles the ninth
carried out Jenna side against the Huguenots in France. So
that was a big deal. Sure what all right? Moving on,
we're skipping over I want to say Dave Carrol as
(20:13):
per Chuck's request. Yes, but you can read that in
the article. We're skipping Aaron Burr because you can hear
about him, or you may have just heard about him
in our dueling podcast. Good one, and uh let's go
to Dr Holly Crippen. Oh, we're doing him. You want
to skip him? No? No, that's fine, you take him though,
Okause I I thought we agreed not to do him, Okay. Uh.
(20:35):
Dr Holly Harvey Crippen was a homeopathic doctor in London,
had a concert singer wife named Cora, and I guess
did you see his So he was mad because he's small,
and apparently he didn't like his wife's voice because he
took up with another lady. She found out about it
and said, you know what, jerk, I'm out of here.
(20:56):
I'm the one that has the money taking it with me.
And in after that she went missing. Of course, he says, hey,
I'm gonna take my mistress. I'm gonna move to UH. Well,
I'm sorry he sold her jewelry first, he told everybody
that she was on a concert tour in Los Angeles,
died there and was very easy to figure out. Goodbye, Cora.
(21:18):
So he set sail for the US with his new mistress,
his new I don't know if they were married, probably
not his new wife, and um, the friends of the
wife started saying. Friends, of course started the same, Wait
a minute, this is pretty shady. Somebody should look into
this dude, because we think he has blood on his hands.
He was arrested when the body turned up in his
cellar and hanged. However, in two thousand seven, many many
(21:43):
years later, because nineteen ten, they found forensic evidence that
uh found out that not only was that not his
wife's body in the basement, who he was convicted of
in Yeah, but based on that evidence, perhaps a man,
not even a woman at all, so that they think
possibly Crippen may have murdered this other person and gotten
(22:05):
caught for that because his wife went missing and they
think they murdered her as well and just disposed of
her body. He did, he did. He supposedly acted alone
or or um he didn't kill this man, but he
did kill his wife and ended up getting hanged anyway
as an act of vengeance beyond the grave, right for
(22:27):
killing his wife. Or he didn't kill anybody and it
was hanging wrongly right, just vengeance twisted all up? What
that's wrong with you? Okay, let's see Lorena Bobbitt. This
is a good one because this is in our our
immediate memory, the nineties, the nineties, the crazy nineties, grunge,
(22:50):
flannel and dismembered penises flying out a car window. That's
exactly what happened. John Wayne Bobbitt was not a model husband. No.
And I really want to stress this because when I
was like, well, when I was thinking of this, LORRAINA.
Bobbitt was the first one that came to mind, and
then I did a little more research I was like,
(23:11):
good God, she had a really rough life. Um. She
was allegedly the victim of a lot of spousal abuse,
physical abuse, mental abuse. UM. She was an immigrant and
her husband supposedly used that against her to manipulator to
keep control of her. Didn't speak great English at the time. Um.
(23:33):
And there was allegedly a lot of marital rape in
that marriage as well, UM, including the night of UM well,
I don't know when it was, but it was when
supposedly Mrs Bobbitt said that her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt,
came home drunk, assaulted her, and then raped her and
then passed out. Apparently this was one in a long
(23:57):
string of these um encounters, and she had had enough,
so she got a knife and while he was asleeping,
Chuck cut off more than half of his penis a
significant portion, more than half. And although if you ask me,
five percent would be a significant portion. Five percent. It's
(24:19):
like a zipper accident. Yeah, but just nothing needs to
be going on down there. No, I agree, I'm saying
in general, I mean, I'm not saying he did or
didn't deserve it. I'm not weighing in on that. No,
I see your point. He was a big jerk. I'm
not saying people should do this, of course. No. I
feel like we should stay out of this little pool
(24:39):
right here, because if you do do the research and
you do start to kind of see where she was
coming from. She was the butt of many a late
night joke for years and years. She just became a punchline.
But if you look into her story, it was horrific. Yeah,
very sad um. Anyway, about three am, she takes this
dismembered member and drives out into the night with it.
(25:02):
At some point, rolls down a window in the passenger
side and just throws it out into the grass, and
by some incredible luck, a suf's deputy managed to find it. Well,
I remember a lot of people looking exactly like there
was a missing child or something like that. There was
a multi tens of thousands of dollar search party out
(25:26):
looking for a dismembered penis in the grass, and they
found it. That's the craziest part to me, right, It's
pretty crazy. And they reattached it, put it on ice,
reattached it. She says she didn't remember it. She said
she was Later on, she said she was driving with
the member in one hand and a knife in the other.
And she said she went to turn the wheel and
(25:47):
realized she needed a free hand and that's why she
does it. Yeah. Um, she she went to court, She
went to trial, and I can't remember what her charge was.
It was one of those very clever like old timey
eighteenth century charges. You shall be charged with penis cutting.
I think that was a charge. She was found not
guilty for reasons of temporary insanity. Uh, she snapped after
(26:11):
years of abuse, and they said, you're fine. He was
acquitted for assault charges on her, but he went on
to be convicted later on for more domestic abuse on
another wife and in the so they divorced. In here's
the crazy thing. In he was in a pornographic film
(26:35):
called Uncut. Yeah, he was in more than one. And
oh was he I just knew about the one. Yeah,
he was in one called Frank and Penis. Okay, I
thought Uncut was the one. I thought Frank and Penis
was the name of Frank and something. I remember that. Well,
there's one called Uncut um that came out in and
Vince Neil and Lemm theres a bum and Vince Neil
(26:58):
plays himself. Yeah, he was also in a band called
The Severed Parts. Yeah, so he was clearly trying to
make some money off of this incident, which goes on
to show even more about his character. Lorreina bob It
went in a different direction and founded a women's abuse
uh nonprofit called Lorraino's Red Wagon, which is an aid organization. Yeah,
(27:20):
and she's a little girl now she's uh, I don't
know if she's remarried, but with the father and has
a little girl. And she was actually brought to court
for attacking her mother after this too. Yeah, she was
let go for that as well. I didn't run into
that one. Yeah. Man, nothing's ever black and white, is it. No,
(27:41):
it's all great, Josh, it's all great. The next one's
fairly close to black and white as far as revenge
goes chuck, Yeah, this one is pretty good. Come up,
it's let's let's hear. Anthony Stockelman in two thousand and
six was put in prison for molesting and murdering a
ten year old girl named Katie Coleman. Horrific, horrific incident.
(28:06):
His come upance came right away in the case of
your going to jail for life, and it wasn't like
there was a lot of did he didn't he do it?
Apparently it was a slam dunk case. There were um
red carpet fibers that matched the carpet in his mom's
house found at the scene. His DNA was on the
body and on a cigarette. But at the scene and
(28:27):
and I witness saw Katie Coleman riding and Anthony Stockleman's
pickup truck that day. So he copt the deal to
avoid the death penalty and went to prisons of his life,
went to prison, uh and unfortunately he went to prison
with Jared Harris, who was a burglary UH inmate serving
time for burglary and also Katie Coleman's cousin. Yeah, because
(28:48):
they had a different last name. Indiana Board of Corrections
missed that this was Katie Coleman's cousin because they would
have did they look to avoid I don't know the
rules with think they'd be protocol for that kind of thing. Yeah. Um.
After a couple of months, Stockelman shows up one day
for breakfast with a fresh tattoo carved into his head
(29:11):
that says Katie's revenge and very very big prominent block
letters like his entire forehead is covered in this amateur tattoo.
Did you see it? Yeah? That the I think one
of the guards ended up posting that and was got
in trouble posted the photo, so the Board of Corrections
looked into it said, oh, we can't implicate the cousins,
(29:31):
so who knows who did it? And that was that. Yeah,
well no, he actually um served extra time for assault.
Oh they got him. When I wrote this, they still hadn't.
They were like, we can't, we can't find any evidence
that it was him. They got him. I'm sure he
was like fine attacking one. He was gonna kill him.
He you know, did one of those deals where the
(29:53):
dude looks up and all of a sudden, this guy's
in his cell with the door closed behind him, and
put his hands on his throat and said him, either're
gonna stick you or I'm gonna tattoo your forehead and
he was like dotto. I don't know if he actually
gave him the choice, but he Yeah, he had a
you know, a prison tattoo gun that he ditched in
the trash and I can find pictures of it online.
(30:16):
Thanks for the follow up stuff, man, that's awesome. Well,
not awesome for Jared Harris, not the actor Jared Harris,
by the way, son of Richard Harris Anthony Stockman. No, no no, no,
I mean Jared Harris is the cousin. Oh yeah, but
he's not the famous actor son of Jared her or
Richard Harris, Jared Leedo. No, okay, we're up to our
(30:38):
last one. This is all we're doing. This is number six,
I think, right, Yeah, which one of these one? What
do you have? I got dach how and what's the
other one? James Annesley? Let's okay? Am I saying it correctly? Uh?
Sure you say it. I'll see if I'm saying it well,
people just say dach owright. Yeah, you were sort of
(31:00):
overdoing it a little bit. Uh. This is one that
you know, Quentin Tarantino probably got some inspiration for his
movie and Glorious Bastards, and it was in Shutter Island prominently.
You know Tarantino's doing a slave revenge movie next. No,
I didn't know that, and Escaped Slave. And in fact,
you could argue that most of his movies are revenge movies.
(31:20):
Uh yeah, like almost all of them revenge except well
executing Tim Ross and the cops scene. Oh yeah, with
the ear but that wasn't really revenge. Kill Bill, total
revenge movie. That the car Win was revenge, Glorious Bastard's
was revenge. And now the slave Runaway. Was there any
(31:42):
revenge in there? There was more redemption than revenge. Yeah,
I mean, well, oh revenge against the rapists. Oh yeah,
that was big time. I'm going to call in some
HiPE pitting uh torches. Yeah, so there's been elements of
revengelict at LEAs say that. Okay, okay, So back to
World War two. Did you know that Quentin Tarantino and
(32:05):
Alan Ball, the writer of Six Ft Under, have an
ongoing feud that Tarantino has brought the law into. Apparently
Alan Ball and his husband or a partner one of
the two um raise like tropical birds in their Los
Angeles home. Sounds nice, and they have an aviary and
apparently it's not fully enclosed, and Quentin Tarantino, who lives
(32:26):
next door, has to hear birds squawking all day and
can't get any work telling really, so he's like gone
to court to basically get the courts to tell Alan
Ball that tells birds to shut up interesting it And
well I know where that is then, because I used
to work for a director that supposedly lived a few
houses down from qt because when I went and picked
him up, he was like, you know, lu lous right there,
(32:48):
Quentin Tarantino, and I guess Alan Ball on the other side,
who do you side with? I'm a big fan of both.
Oh yeah, I love Alan Ball and Tarantino. I'm not
I don't think should keep birds in captivity, so I'm
gonna go with Tarantino in this, all right. So now
back to World War two finally, all right. Dachau obviously
(33:08):
was one of the sites of the atrocities committed against
the Jewish people at their prison camp. There, awful, awful
things happened, and when the American soldiers of the Thunderbird
Army Infantry Division showed up to take that camp, they
exacted a little revenge. Well, one of the they had
(33:30):
a huge impetus there was what was called the death car,
the death train, which is thirty nine rail cars that
were on a rail line that were parked basically just
inside the camp walls, and they were literally overflowing with
the dead and dying. I think, um almost three thousand
corpses spilling out of these rail cars, and that's what
(33:54):
these guys came upon. The The members of the Thunderbird
Army Infantry, the four fifth Thunderbird Division UM found this
and apparently just snapped. And what's the worst army infantry
atrocity carried out by any Allied force supposedly in World
(34:15):
War Two? And this is pretty atrocious. Well, I mean
they basically there were There are different reports on what
went on. I tried to look at a bunch of
different ones, but we do know that they at one
point lined some SS up against the wall, modem down
with machine guns so unarmed. By the way, and this
is also Duck Cow is the site where a lot
of S. S officers came to UM came to surrender.
(34:39):
They weren't even in the camp. This is like, oh,
the Americans took this camp. I want to surrender. I'm
gonna go surrender. And they were executed. And apparently one
report says that some of the U. S. Soldiers gave
some of the freed inmates guns and like shovels and
things and said, have at it, fellas, and they exacted
(35:00):
their own revenge. Some of the Jewish inmates. Then when
I have a fewer problems with yeah, of course. Um,
but apparently General Georgia's Patton had no problem with any
of it. They formed the some of the people there,
some of the army guys, the U. S. Army guys
would probably say the lions share. I had a problem
(35:23):
with what was going on and complained, filed report and
there was a classified army investigation um that said, yeah,
this happened, and there were about unarmed Germans that were
executed at Dakau that day, and um, you know, he
(35:43):
was all the evidence, patting through the stuff in the
trash and said, you guys go home, forget this ever happened.
But one one copy was put in the National Archives.
It was mislabeled, and it sat there until and no
one had any clue about it until the Boston Globe
did like this four or five part series on the
doc Cow massacre in two dozen one, and that finally
(36:06):
brought it to light. Wow. So that's uh number two.
While they weren't labeled in order of importance, they were
just ten right, it even says, in no particular order,
because it's kind of sick to say, like this is
the best or this is the worst. In case it's
like this. Um. I did go to Film School Rejects so,
(36:26):
which is a fun website because I just started thinking
about revenge movies. It's a common theme. And they listed
this is their top ten. Commando, Oh yeah, that's a
good one. Gladiator yeah. Uh Friday and Jerry Lapkinson but
said me, Friday, well, those kids watched her son drown. Yeah,
(36:49):
oh that's true. Been her one of the granddaddys of
all revenge movies. Good one. I am being her, I
am her, I am her. Like Fall Dogs. Yeah, that
one Star Dougs is crazy. We were just talking about
the other day. It was disturbing. Kill Bill one and two,
Once upon a Time in the West. I never saw
that one either, it's supposed to be awesome. That's a
(37:10):
good one. The Virgin Spring, which I have not seen.
That was a Bergman picture, and The Godfather, which I
didn't really see that as a revenge. Pick revenge and
they said Death Wish is the number one. Yeah, but
they didn't have Old Boy on there. Oh yeah, the
Ultimate revenge movie. That's as revenge as it k. Yeah.
(37:31):
So then I told some other top ten lists and
some of the other other ones that made the list Memento,
mad Max, Carrie, great revenge movie, and Glorious Pastard's obviously
the professional the crow hard Candy, but you should see
to be confused with Jawbreaker, I'll bet have you ever
(37:52):
seen that movie? Now? I didn't see that. It was good. Yeah,
I spit on your grave Era of Persctable. That one
was pretty hardcore. You may likes that movie. I haven't
seen it yet. Your Reversal, yes, he said it's really good.
It's really tough to watch. But that was a good movie.
It is. Well, it's a rape revenge, so those are
those are always the best. What about the last House
on the left that's a rape Prevet's like the rape
(38:14):
prevenge that was next on my list? Or was that
before after I spent on your grave? When was I
spin on your graves? That have the date? No? When
I have the dates? Because the last house on the left,
I think two? Munich? Oh yeah, I spent on your
graves one was it? Yeah, Munich. That's a great revenge
movie star Trek to Wrath of con No. Really yeah,
(38:38):
Unforgiven pretty good one. I mean, great movie. But I
wouldn't throw it in the super revenge category and then
taken with the Liam Neeson. I enjoyed that. I did too.
I just can't get pest Liam Neeson as an action star.
You know, he has a set of very specific set
of skills and they make it unwatchable. All right, So
(39:01):
that is revenge and it's best served what with Liam
Neeson piping hot? Uh? Yeah, this was That was like
six of ten. So there's more for you to go read.
It's right how stuff works dot com. Um in the
article I wrote, just type in biggest revenge or even
(39:21):
probably just revenge in the search part how stuff works
dot Com, and that's gonna bring up this article. So
do that and I said search bar, which means the
type of listener mail or is it? It's not quite yet, chuck. Uh.
We should tell everybody about CIVA. Man. We did it.
We did what. We We met our goal in the
(39:44):
million dollar March. Yes, one million dollars in loans over
the past million years is gonna be October less than three.
And it all started with the well jabb at Colbert
Nation and they're just like that. They we left them
(40:06):
in the dust years ago. I know when you watch
that video it's so quaint. We're like first one to
a hundred thousand dollars. No, I remember everybody was like,
I just know where you're gonna make it two? A
hundred thousand dollars. Crazy, that's a million, dude, million dollars
loaned by our Kiva team. It takes a village town
and we are proud of you guys. Thank you, yeah seriously,
and uh, I guess let's just keep going on. Let's
(40:26):
double down. Yeah, thank you to Glenn and Sonia as
always for helping us set our financial goals. And we'll
have a new one coming up soon. Yeah, we're not quitting.
We're not like we got a million forget it, We're done.
We're going to bed. Everyone pulled their money outr go party. No,
don't do that. Okay, Um, that's that's for December. Okay, alright, well,
(40:48):
so back to it, all right, Josh, I'm gonna call this,
uh cannibalism. It's been a while, but it's about cannibalism.
And I like to read good smart ones and this
is one of those guys on a biology undergrad at
University of New Mexico. Go jeeze, what do they go fighting?
As texts. Let's say, I bet you bet, you're right.
(41:08):
One of my recent projects was a computer model attempting
to answer some questions regarding disease transmission through cannibalism. You
close the podcast with speculation about the origin of cannibalism
and humans. Materialism versus idealism. Uh. Though both of these
arguments are compelling, they both seem to ignore just how
young the human species is. The prevalence of con specific
(41:30):
neck rog neck rog big necro necrofi let's say necrofogy
it sounds a kid, Yeah, man, I had that all
worked out there. Eating the dead and other species provides
evidence that cannibalism is significantly older than uts, and the
prevalence in near species like chimps suggests that it may
be a trait we've had since we have been a week.
(41:53):
Lobsters are big cannibals spiders of the sea. The materialism
versus idealism argument it takes on all new facets when
applied to chimps. Materialism materialism doesn't hold very much water,
as chimps are pretty well fed on fruits and catching
smaller simians is far easier and arguably adequate nutrition. Idealism
(42:13):
begs the question of just how much chimps care about
that sort of thing. Are they expecting some gain other
than nutritional value, like spiritual or even just striking fear
to the hearts of enemies? Are they even capable of this?
My guess, which is just a guess, is that they
kill for territorial reasons and then simply don't want to
waste the large quantity of delicious dude. Mhm. So that
(42:37):
sweet thinks maybe we started that way in some cultures
to sell onto the practice applying spiritual reasoning after the fact.
And that is smart, and that is from Mica makes Mica.
That is smart from New Mexico. And if you why
is new it was New Mexico State Golden Gophers. Now
that's Minnesota, the bear Cats, the New Mexico State Bearcats Eagles.
(43:05):
Holds no, that's our our school, Georgia. UM. If you
had your interest piqued by Micah's assessment of cannibalism, you
might want to go listen to our cannibalism podcast. We
did an episode on it a while back and it's
one of our favorites. Pretty good. Um, and let's see
(43:25):
what else. If you have a great revenge story we
want to hear it. Yeah, there's lots of internet revenge
going on. I was gonna talk about some of it,
like the people who post anonymous and all that, but um, oh,
I know it's you mean. I don't like that, Like, oh,
my boyfriend wronged me, so let me do photoshops of
him and a bikini and make it a meme. I
don't know. Okay, So I guess we're gonna avoid that
(43:48):
everybody because we don't want to upset Chuck because we
know he'll lie in wait for come up. It's um.
You can send us a cool story of revenge non internet.
Please to us at Twitter. Our handle is s y
s K podcast UM, or on Facebook at Facebook dot
com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send
(44:08):
us a plain old fashion email to Stuff Podcast at
Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
(44:33):
twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant
that makes the stuff you should know. Jerry's in the
(00:22):
other room. Yes, being quiet as commanded. Um, yeah, how
you doing just I'm great. I feel like we haven't
mentioned Jerry much in a while. So she's got a
character playing She's a character on a TV pilot. There's
an actress playing her. Right, probably you thought to have
(00:45):
that removed right all over the place. I was like,
we need less Jerry less Jerry not true, that's not true.
So revenge. I'm a big revenge guy. Oh your huh, Well, no,
that sounds is bad. I'm a big come up in
skye in Justice, sky Sideline Reuters, you know, like you know,
(01:08):
when people get their come upance and justice is served.
I'm very that's a very very satisfying experience for me. Well,
a friend, you would have done well to have lived
in Babylon around the seventeen sixties BC with the gardens.
I love that stuff. Yeah, they were the pinking gardens
(01:29):
that would have been all over it. Yeah, gardens figured
heavily prominently in babylon Um, especially Chuck. I think you
would have enjoyed living under King Hammurabi. Yeah. The code.
He's the guy who came up with a code. We
take it. You know that whole eye for an eye
thing that you would stand on the sidelines, like take
(01:49):
out his eye, take out his eye, the other guy's eye.
I'm not like that because people are gonna think I'm
some violent person. Come up and can come in many forms.
I know exactly what you're talking. Heart, Like Shank uh
Brooks hung himself. No, come up, it's against the warden. Like,
that's satisfying to me to see that in a movie.
I don't remember what happened to the warden. Well, he
(02:12):
ended up, boy, should not spoil it. I think it's fine.
He ended up shooting himself as the cops descended upon him.
What did he do wrong? He? What did he do wrong?
He held Andy there for years, knowing he was innocent.
He had the guy shot and killed who Andy had
tutored to get his g e D. Who had information
(02:35):
that would get his release from Like when the Melrose
Place or something like that. He ally McBeal, Yeah, I
think it was hallng mcbell. And then he uh uh
squandered money from what do you call it when you pension?
Uh yeah, not squandered he uh he no, hele money
essentially embezzled, embezzled money from the prison coffers. I it
(02:59):
wasn't the warden played by Burr Lives or something. I thought.
I remember him as like a grandfatherly type, very supporting,
nurturing fellow. Now he's played by the guy that can't
ever play anything again because of that movie. Weird. I
have a list of revenge movies we can go over later. Okay,
oh yeah, there's plenty of those. Remember there's a whole
exploitation sub genre like I Spit on your Grave. That's
(03:20):
on the list. Um. But anyway, back to the Code
of Hammurabi. We take for for granted these days chuck
the eye for an eye, but this is literally the
beginning of that, and um, the beginning of systemic, uniform,
uh socially sanctioned revenge. That's the justice system. It's revenge.
(03:43):
It's like you did something and we're gonna get you
back for that. You're going to be punished. It's revenge.
That's the whole basis of the justice system. People can
him and how about reform and stuff like that, but
come on, it's revenge. It's punishments that I'm just saying, right,
(04:04):
you can, you can dress it up all you want,
you can do whatever you you you can to it.
But when you boil it down, I think is what
we're both saying. The whole basis of the justice system
is revenge, and the Code of Hammurabi is the beginning
of this, and that it's also the beginning of the
eye for and eye think if I may, there's a
couple like the Code of Hammurabi kind of deals with
stuff that people were dealing with at the time, and
(04:26):
it goes far beyond like if you kill somebody, you're killed.
It gets kind of specific. One of my favorites is
if a fire breakout in the house and someone who
comes to put it out cast his eye upon the
property of the owner of the house and take the
property of the master of the house, he shall be
thrown into that self same fire. So a louter essentially,
you get thrown into the fire you came to help
(04:48):
put out. And then basically strict your moral obligation by
stealing instead of helping fight the fire. That's my favorite. Also,
there's a lot about runaway slaves, harboring runaway slaves, stealing slaves.
If you find a bull of slaves and you want
to bring him back to the owner, um, the owner
owes you two shekels of silver. Uh. It deals with
inheritance law. If the son who inherits his father's land
(05:10):
is still too young and can't take possession of his fields,
a third of the field will go to the mother
who basically is paid to raise him, although I think
she's going to do that anyway. But it's a uniform coat,
especially dealing with revenge. Right. I say all this to
tell you that revenge is very old, Chuck. It is,
and that's the code I mean. I bet took Took
(05:31):
took revenge over you know, the caveman who wronged him. Yes,
very primitive ways. I'm sure there was always revenge. And
depending on how evolved took Took's brain was. If he
had um dorsal stratium stri atom, why didn't I not
get that the first time? If he had a dorsal striatom,
which is governed in feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. He
(05:55):
would have probably liked carrying out that vengeance because that
our pleasure center goes off when we um carry out
acts of revenge, especially when we think of it. But
that's why sometimes we will go to such great lengths
to carry out vengeance because it feels good. See, I'm
not a vengeance carry outer because I don't really get wronged,
(06:17):
Like I've never had any huge, like wrongings against me.
I would knock on wood at this point if I
were you. But um, I like seeing it played out
mainly in movies. You like standing on the sidelines and
shouting for the person's eye to be taken out. Yeah, yeah,
that's me. Do you want to talk about some cases
of revenge? Because I mean, there's there's it's one thing
(06:39):
to just say, hey, you know, that's great, that guy
got his come up, and it's but there's some really
legendary and some very grim cases of revenge in the
history of humanity. And we have covered well, you cover
ten in your article. Yeah, we're gonna cover what seven, eight, six, six,
something like that. Like, we haven't done a top ten
(06:59):
in a while. It's been a very long. Actually, we've
never done a top ten because we only only cover
six or seven. We haven't based one on the top ten.
It's waiting, correct, Uh, I like the spam King one,
should we start there? Might as well? He's number ten.
Alan Rowski Uh was known as the spam King because
he was an entrepreneur in Michigan who was one of
(07:22):
the guys, the main dudes signing you up for all
those spam emails that we all love before the dot
com bubble even burst had him in court for bulk
email spamming. But dude, he's got a rap sheet a
mile long. I looked at his his like, since this
is before the spam thing in the nineties, he had
all sorts of like, yeah, yeah, he's he's just kind
(07:45):
of a hustler kind of dude very much, you know,
it's a good way to put it. But he got
his come uppance in the way of a junk email
of his own when his address was leaked online and
then really leaked online. Well, the whole way it came
out was there was a in I think the Detroit
Free Press maybe one of the UM one of the
(08:07):
local papers did a um a spotlight like just kind
of a soft touch spotlight on his spacious, eight thousand
square foot home that he paid seven because it was Detroit.
This one was on you, man, I was just going
to leave the Detroit alone, but go ahead, and yeah, so,
uh so this guy is showing off his this man
(08:28):
who's been referred to as quote vermin and quote scum,
is showing off his eight thousand square foot house built
on bulk email and spam. I bet he regrets that.
And somehow I I couldn't go back and find out
his address leaked like in the in the article, it
basically gave away his physical address and that was it.
(08:49):
The trolls got him. The trolls got him and signed
him up for basically everything under the sun as far
as junk mail, like physical junk mail goes, which we've done. Wow,
we did podcast some junk mail. Remember that we didn't
remember where rid of it. And that one guy was like, no,
we're employed by junk mail. So at at the peak
of his uh junk mail receivership, he was getting hundreds
(09:12):
of pounds and he was every day. Yeah, he was
pretty upset. I mean I saw interviews with him today
where he was like being harassed, and he was trying
to get courts to do something and they were just like, now,
come up, and I wish we had a trombone. Yeah,
we should spice us up a little, Jerry a trombone please.
(09:33):
She's like, thank you? All right? Did we cover him? Uh? Well,
he's in jail now. Yeah, he's inmate one oh nine
dash ow three. Wow, you did your research because that
was not in the article. We could send him a
letter Morgantown Federal Correctional Institution. Yeah, he was. What was
(09:54):
he doing he was inside? Was an insider trading or
he created a pump and up scheme, some sort of
penny stock manipulation some scheme, is what I wrote. And
he's still in jail. Well it was two thousand nine
and I got a fifty one month sentence. Yeah, but
you know, sometimes it doesn't mean much like it served
time served, you're free. Yeah, you know, but yeah, he
he's still there though. He definitely made some cash doing
(10:17):
bulk email. It was clever at the time. It was
just annoying. Yeah, sure, but hey, we all got biagra
out of it, so we did. I didn't get in mine.
Uh run okay. Yeah, So my nephew's middle name is Ronan,
and I'm still not convinced that my sister and her
husband know what Ronan is. I have a friend who
(10:38):
named his kid running. Does he know what Ronan is?
I'll have to ask him. He's a fan of the show. Well,
what's what's his name? I don't think he spells it
this way though, I think he spells it with an A.
What's his name, Braxton? Brexton? Do you know what a
Ronan is? Answer us? Let me text him. I don't. Yeah,
I don't think he spells it the same way. Well,
let's tell everybody a Ronan is a masterless amurai. At
(11:01):
this point, I feel like, possibly, if you really want
to do some digging, press pause on this one or
just mark down your time code. Go back and listen
to our House Samurai Worked podcast. Excellent episode and it
will help you along with the rest of this. But
if you don't feel like doing that, go back and
listen to it anyway later on, but we'll give you
the crib sheet. Basically, a samurai is pledged to the
(11:24):
death to a single master right, and that involves the
samurai protecting the damno with his life. That involves the
samurai carrying out vengeance if the damnio is wronged or
murdered or anything like that. Um. And this is a
lifetime contract. This is a lifetime affiliation. Remember they were
(11:46):
the opposite ninja, which is also a really good episode. Two,
they were just the hired guns. Yes, the ninja were.
The samurai were very loyal military advisors, just cool guys.
They had huge hammer pants too. Um And in this
particular case of the forties seven Ronan during the EtOH period,
which was the early beginning of the eighteenth century in Japan,
(12:09):
um a man named Asano Nagai had uh some Ronan
assigned to him, or that he had taken on them.
And Nagai was headed to Kyoto to hang out, which
was the capital at the time. And um, he saw
a man he didn't like. And still to this day,
no one's quite sure. I was going to ask you
(12:31):
that no one knows, no one has any idea what
the problem is. But these guys have beef basically as
a Biggie Smalls would have put it. Did well, Yeah,
Naganori pulled his sword out and slashed at the man.
Didn't cause any harm or whatever. But this is Kyoto
the seat of power in Japan and he's just taken
a swipe at some guy in front of everybody important
(12:53):
and in Japan this is a really big deal. Well, yeah,
so much so that they I did that he should
commit seppuku, which we have covered before as well. Was
that a separate one? No, what was that in? Was
that in Samurai? Yeah? I think we really went into
graphic details. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we we talked about the
steps of sippuku because it's very specific. So again, go
(13:15):
listen to that episode. Um, and he did commit sippuku. Here,
here's what I don't quite get. Why why didn't the
guy Yoshinaka, who he attacked, Why didn't his ronan come after? Well,
he was dead. Why didn't his ronan come after he
wasn't dead? No, no, no, Naganori is now dead. So
(13:38):
why did his people feel the need to take revenge
when he's the one that started it? That is an
excellent question, and that's what led to the deaths of
these forty seven ronan Okay, so let's let's talk about
the story and then we'll go into that. Right, Okay,
these ronan um basically hung out and waited two full years.
You know what they say, what revenge is the meal
best serve cold, very nice, one of my favorite things.
(14:01):
Is it really one of my favorites? Oh yeah, I
just I just think it's witty. And you think a
lot about revenge, don't you know. I just like that
saying it's a good one. You know it's true with
you like two years later they don't know it's coming. Yeah,
And those Japanese winners get pretty cold, so it had
to two winners had passed by the time the seven
ronin decided to go pay a visit to the other guy.
(14:23):
And they went and, uh, your Yoshinaka was the other guy.
They went to his house um stage an attack on
his compound, found him in an outhouse and said, hey, uh,
we will give you the chance to commit suppuku. Here's
the same dagger that our master killed himself with the
right thing. And the guy just said there and stared
(14:44):
at him, and they gave him a beat and then
said okay, and they cut his head off, and they
took his head in a bucket and took it to
their master's grave. Well they cleaned it up, did they?
Apparently they watched it for some reason. I guess well,
they're very tidy. They are very tighty people to um
and they took it to their master's grave and showed
him the head and said, here you go. And then
(15:05):
they took it to the Bukufu, the ruling council, and said,
we're turning ourselves in. And maybe there's a lot of
discrepancy about what what was the right thing to do
or what wasn't even at the time and still today.
But the Bukufu said, okay, go kill yourselves. You have to.
We were down to forty six here one supposedly was
(15:27):
killed in the attack. Whatever, but um forty six Ronan
committed suicide themselves. A lot of people die because this
guy slashed at the other guy. Now, there's many schools
of thought in this act of revenge. The Ronans should
have immediately gone to um Yoshinaka's house and killed him.
(15:49):
That may have gotten them out of the sentence to
commit supuku another if they had been like, oh, well,
let's carry out this vengeance right now. Another school thought
is that they shouldn't have done anything. That the Bakufu
had made a decision that their master had to kill himself,
and they had to abide by it. That Samurai didn't
see it that way. Well, that was their code, though
(16:09):
it's not exactly the law of the land. No, it's true, um,
and that I think that connection between master and Samurai
supersedes anything that Pakfa came up with. But the last one,
the hardest one for me swallow, but it's possibly correct,
is that the ronin or should have, after they took
Yoshinaka's head, committed supuku themselves right there, and that it
(16:32):
was a grave act of cowardice to turn themselves in
because it showed that they possibly hoped for a slap
on the wrist interesting or at the very least the
cutting off of their wrists. Wow. Well, and there is
any style? Is what that is? You point out the
forty seventh thrown in Terra Saka Kichi man um There
are reports that he was young and pardoned because of
(16:55):
his age, and that he lived at the seven or
he died in the attack. Yeah, and I think there
would be more than forty seven, But there were forty
seven that assembled two years later and carried out revenge,
I believe. And there have been countless stories and uh
movies and stuff about then running. Yeah, including the movie
(17:15):
running There you go some big revenge man. That was
a roller coaster ride. Should we cover the uh the
Huguenots to the massacre? That was pretty grim. I will
go over real quick. I like the last line of it,
did you I went back and rewrit it. I was like,
that was a we'll we'll nugget there at the end,
(17:36):
We'll save it. Uh. During the Protestant Reformation, there was
a lot of stuff going on in France, mainly a
lot to be lost, as in of the real estate
in France allegedly was owned by the clergy Catholic Church,
so they had a lot at steak. Yeah. When the
Protestants came a colin, they were like, I don't know
(17:58):
about you guys, we should kill you. Yeah. There was
a big, big problem between there's a big rift between
the Catholics and the Protestants, and it was largely overland power,
you know, because if it's all controlled by the Catholics,
it's hunky door for the Catholics. But then now, if
you have to divide everything in half, it's not it's
kind of a problem. Um. So by fift seventy two, UH,
(18:23):
in August in Paris, it was a hot one. And
there was a huge wedding between a French Protestant aristocrat
right now, a French Huguenot aristocrat and a French kill
okay Huguenot. Yeah, and they were not. This was not
a marriage that was endorsed by the papacy at all.
(18:47):
Already really controversial. It was a huge, huge affair on
the social calendar. And so Paris was swarming with both
Huguenots and Catholics that were there at this wedding, possibly
the most awkward wedding of all time, sworn enemies in
the same church. Right the marriage goes off without a hitch,
as far as I know. And um, almost immediately after,
(19:08):
Charles the Ninth, who was the King of France, a
devout Catholic, said, um, why don't we just take this
opportunity to kill the military leader of the Huguenots since
he's here in town. And they did, and let's not
stop there, let's just keep killing people. And over the
course of a week or so, I saw all kinds
of numbers. Sure well, they didn't keep very good records
(19:30):
in the fifteen seventies. No, but legend has it that
the rivers in Paris were so full of dead bodies
that they could not eat fish for months because of
disease of dead bodies. Thousands, tens of thousands of French
Protestants murdered a hundred thousands, and it started with the
one guy. Then that moved throughout Paris. Any Huguenot found
(19:52):
was killed, and then it spilled over into the countryside
where basically um the the French King Charles the ninth
carried out Jenna side against the Huguenots in France. So
that was a big deal. Sure what all right? Moving on,
we're skipping over I want to say Dave Carrol as
(20:13):
per Chuck's request. Yes, but you can read that in
the article. We're skipping Aaron Burr because you can hear
about him, or you may have just heard about him
in our dueling podcast. Good one, and uh let's go
to Dr Holly Crippen. Oh, we're doing him. You want
to skip him? No? No, that's fine, you take him though,
Okause I I thought we agreed not to do him, Okay. Uh.
(20:35):
Dr Holly Harvey Crippen was a homeopathic doctor in London,
had a concert singer wife named Cora, and I guess
did you see his So he was mad because he's small,
and apparently he didn't like his wife's voice because he
took up with another lady. She found out about it
and said, you know what, jerk, I'm out of here.
(20:56):
I'm the one that has the money taking it with me.
And in after that she went missing. Of course, he says, hey,
I'm gonna take my mistress. I'm gonna move to UH. Well,
I'm sorry he sold her jewelry first, he told everybody
that she was on a concert tour in Los Angeles,
died there and was very easy to figure out. Goodbye, Cora.
(21:18):
So he set sail for the US with his new mistress,
his new I don't know if they were married, probably
not his new wife, and um, the friends of the
wife started saying. Friends, of course started the same, Wait
a minute, this is pretty shady. Somebody should look into
this dude, because we think he has blood on his hands.
He was arrested when the body turned up in his
cellar and hanged. However, in two thousand seven, many many
(21:43):
years later, because nineteen ten, they found forensic evidence that
uh found out that not only was that not his
wife's body in the basement, who he was convicted of
in Yeah, but based on that evidence, perhaps a man,
not even a woman at all, so that they think
possibly Crippen may have murdered this other person and gotten
(22:05):
caught for that because his wife went missing and they
think they murdered her as well and just disposed of
her body. He did, he did. He supposedly acted alone
or or um he didn't kill this man, but he
did kill his wife and ended up getting hanged anyway
as an act of vengeance beyond the grave, right for
(22:27):
killing his wife. Or he didn't kill anybody and it
was hanging wrongly right, just vengeance twisted all up? What
that's wrong with you? Okay, let's see Lorena Bobbitt. This
is a good one because this is in our our
immediate memory, the nineties, the nineties, the crazy nineties, grunge,
(22:50):
flannel and dismembered penises flying out a car window. That's
exactly what happened. John Wayne Bobbitt was not a model husband. No.
And I really want to stress this because when I
was like, well, when I was thinking of this, LORRAINA.
Bobbitt was the first one that came to mind, and
then I did a little more research I was like,
(23:11):
good God, she had a really rough life. Um. She
was allegedly the victim of a lot of spousal abuse,
physical abuse, mental abuse. UM. She was an immigrant and
her husband supposedly used that against her to manipulator to
keep control of her. Didn't speak great English at the time. Um.
(23:33):
And there was allegedly a lot of marital rape in
that marriage as well, UM, including the night of UM well,
I don't know when it was, but it was when
supposedly Mrs Bobbitt said that her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt,
came home drunk, assaulted her, and then raped her and
then passed out. Apparently this was one in a long
(23:57):
string of these um encounters, and she had had enough,
so she got a knife and while he was asleeping,
Chuck cut off more than half of his penis a
significant portion, more than half. And although if you ask me,
five percent would be a significant portion. Five percent. It's
(24:19):
like a zipper accident. Yeah, but just nothing needs to
be going on down there. No, I agree, I'm saying
in general, I mean, I'm not saying he did or
didn't deserve it. I'm not weighing in on that. No,
I see your point. He was a big jerk. I'm
not saying people should do this, of course. No. I
feel like we should stay out of this little pool
(24:39):
right here, because if you do do the research and
you do start to kind of see where she was
coming from. She was the butt of many a late
night joke for years and years. She just became a punchline.
But if you look into her story, it was horrific. Yeah,
very sad um. Anyway, about three am, she takes this
dismembered member and drives out into the night with it.
(25:02):
At some point, rolls down a window in the passenger
side and just throws it out into the grass, and
by some incredible luck, a suf's deputy managed to find it. Well,
I remember a lot of people looking exactly like there
was a missing child or something like that. There was
a multi tens of thousands of dollar search party out
(25:26):
looking for a dismembered penis in the grass, and they
found it. That's the craziest part to me, right, It's
pretty crazy. And they reattached it, put it on ice,
reattached it. She says she didn't remember it. She said
she was Later on, she said she was driving with
the member in one hand and a knife in the other.
And she said she went to turn the wheel and
(25:47):
realized she needed a free hand and that's why she
does it. Yeah. Um, she she went to court, She
went to trial, and I can't remember what her charge was.
It was one of those very clever like old timey
eighteenth century charges. You shall be charged with penis cutting.
I think that was a charge. She was found not
guilty for reasons of temporary insanity. Uh, she snapped after
(26:11):
years of abuse, and they said, you're fine. He was
acquitted for assault charges on her, but he went on
to be convicted later on for more domestic abuse on
another wife and in the so they divorced. In here's
the crazy thing. In he was in a pornographic film
(26:35):
called Uncut. Yeah, he was in more than one. And
oh was he I just knew about the one. Yeah,
he was in one called Frank and Penis. Okay, I
thought Uncut was the one. I thought Frank and Penis
was the name of Frank and something. I remember that. Well,
there's one called Uncut um that came out in and
Vince Neil and Lemm theres a bum and Vince Neil
(26:58):
plays himself. Yeah, he was also in a band called
The Severed Parts. Yeah, so he was clearly trying to
make some money off of this incident, which goes on
to show even more about his character. Lorreina bob It
went in a different direction and founded a women's abuse
uh nonprofit called Lorraino's Red Wagon, which is an aid organization. Yeah,
(27:20):
and she's a little girl now she's uh, I don't
know if she's remarried, but with the father and has
a little girl. And she was actually brought to court
for attacking her mother after this too. Yeah, she was
let go for that as well. I didn't run into
that one. Yeah. Man, nothing's ever black and white, is it. No,
(27:41):
it's all great, Josh, it's all great. The next one's
fairly close to black and white as far as revenge
goes chuck, Yeah, this one is pretty good. Come up,
it's let's let's hear. Anthony Stockelman in two thousand and
six was put in prison for molesting and murdering a
ten year old girl named Katie Coleman. Horrific, horrific incident.
(28:06):
His come upance came right away in the case of
your going to jail for life, and it wasn't like
there was a lot of did he didn't he do it?
Apparently it was a slam dunk case. There were um
red carpet fibers that matched the carpet in his mom's
house found at the scene. His DNA was on the
body and on a cigarette. But at the scene and
(28:27):
and I witness saw Katie Coleman riding and Anthony Stockleman's
pickup truck that day. So he copt the deal to
avoid the death penalty and went to prisons of his life,
went to prison, uh and unfortunately he went to prison
with Jared Harris, who was a burglary UH inmate serving
time for burglary and also Katie Coleman's cousin. Yeah, because
(28:48):
they had a different last name. Indiana Board of Corrections
missed that this was Katie Coleman's cousin because they would
have did they look to avoid I don't know the
rules with think they'd be protocol for that kind of thing. Yeah. Um.
After a couple of months, Stockelman shows up one day
for breakfast with a fresh tattoo carved into his head
(29:11):
that says Katie's revenge and very very big prominent block
letters like his entire forehead is covered in this amateur tattoo.
Did you see it? Yeah? That the I think one
of the guards ended up posting that and was got
in trouble posted the photo, so the Board of Corrections
looked into it said, oh, we can't implicate the cousins,
(29:31):
so who knows who did it? And that was that. Yeah,
well no, he actually um served extra time for assault.
Oh they got him. When I wrote this, they still hadn't.
They were like, we can't, we can't find any evidence
that it was him. They got him. I'm sure he
was like fine attacking one. He was gonna kill him.
He you know, did one of those deals where the
(29:53):
dude looks up and all of a sudden, this guy's
in his cell with the door closed behind him, and
put his hands on his throat and said him, either're
gonna stick you or I'm gonna tattoo your forehead and
he was like dotto. I don't know if he actually
gave him the choice, but he Yeah, he had a
you know, a prison tattoo gun that he ditched in
the trash and I can find pictures of it online.
(30:16):
Thanks for the follow up stuff, man, that's awesome. Well,
not awesome for Jared Harris, not the actor Jared Harris,
by the way, son of Richard Harris Anthony Stockman. No, no no, no,
I mean Jared Harris is the cousin. Oh yeah, but
he's not the famous actor son of Jared her or
Richard Harris, Jared Leedo. No, okay, we're up to our
(30:38):
last one. This is all we're doing. This is number six,
I think, right, Yeah, which one of these one? What
do you have? I got dach how and what's the
other one? James Annesley? Let's okay? Am I saying it correctly? Uh?
Sure you say it. I'll see if I'm saying it well,
people just say dach owright. Yeah, you were sort of
(31:00):
overdoing it a little bit. Uh. This is one that
you know, Quentin Tarantino probably got some inspiration for his
movie and Glorious Bastards, and it was in Shutter Island prominently.
You know Tarantino's doing a slave revenge movie next. No,
I didn't know that, and Escaped Slave. And in fact,
you could argue that most of his movies are revenge movies.
(31:20):
Uh yeah, like almost all of them revenge except well
executing Tim Ross and the cops scene. Oh yeah, with
the ear but that wasn't really revenge. Kill Bill, total
revenge movie. That the car Win was revenge, Glorious Bastard's
was revenge. And now the slave Runaway. Was there any
(31:42):
revenge in there? There was more redemption than revenge. Yeah,
I mean, well, oh revenge against the rapists. Oh yeah,
that was big time. I'm going to call in some
HiPE pitting uh torches. Yeah, so there's been elements of
revengelict at LEAs say that. Okay, okay, So back to
World War two. Did you know that Quentin Tarantino and
(32:05):
Alan Ball, the writer of Six Ft Under, have an
ongoing feud that Tarantino has brought the law into. Apparently
Alan Ball and his husband or a partner one of
the two um raise like tropical birds in their Los
Angeles home. Sounds nice, and they have an aviary and
apparently it's not fully enclosed, and Quentin Tarantino, who lives
(32:26):
next door, has to hear birds squawking all day and
can't get any work telling really, so he's like gone
to court to basically get the courts to tell Alan
Ball that tells birds to shut up interesting it And
well I know where that is then, because I used
to work for a director that supposedly lived a few
houses down from qt because when I went and picked
him up, he was like, you know, lu lous right there,
(32:48):
Quentin Tarantino, and I guess Alan Ball on the other side,
who do you side with? I'm a big fan of both.
Oh yeah, I love Alan Ball and Tarantino. I'm not
I don't think should keep birds in captivity, so I'm
gonna go with Tarantino in this, all right. So now
back to World War two finally, all right. Dachau obviously
(33:08):
was one of the sites of the atrocities committed against
the Jewish people at their prison camp. There, awful, awful
things happened, and when the American soldiers of the Thunderbird
Army Infantry Division showed up to take that camp, they
exacted a little revenge. Well, one of the they had
(33:30):
a huge impetus there was what was called the death car,
the death train, which is thirty nine rail cars that
were on a rail line that were parked basically just
inside the camp walls, and they were literally overflowing with
the dead and dying. I think, um almost three thousand
corpses spilling out of these rail cars, and that's what
(33:54):
these guys came upon. The The members of the Thunderbird
Army Infantry, the four fifth Thunderbird Division UM found this
and apparently just snapped. And what's the worst army infantry
atrocity carried out by any Allied force supposedly in World
(34:15):
War Two? And this is pretty atrocious. Well, I mean
they basically there were There are different reports on what
went on. I tried to look at a bunch of
different ones, but we do know that they at one
point lined some SS up against the wall, modem down
with machine guns so unarmed. By the way, and this
is also Duck Cow is the site where a lot
of S. S officers came to UM came to surrender.
(34:39):
They weren't even in the camp. This is like, oh,
the Americans took this camp. I want to surrender. I'm
gonna go surrender. And they were executed. And apparently one
report says that some of the U. S. Soldiers gave
some of the freed inmates guns and like shovels and
things and said, have at it, fellas, and they exacted
(35:00):
their own revenge. Some of the Jewish inmates. Then when
I have a fewer problems with yeah, of course. Um,
but apparently General Georgia's Patton had no problem with any
of it. They formed the some of the people there,
some of the army guys, the U. S. Army guys
would probably say the lions share. I had a problem
(35:23):
with what was going on and complained, filed report and
there was a classified army investigation um that said, yeah,
this happened, and there were about unarmed Germans that were
executed at Dakau that day, and um, you know, he
(35:43):
was all the evidence, patting through the stuff in the
trash and said, you guys go home, forget this ever happened.
But one one copy was put in the National Archives.
It was mislabeled, and it sat there until and no
one had any clue about it until the Boston Globe
did like this four or five part series on the
doc Cow massacre in two dozen one, and that finally
(36:06):
brought it to light. Wow. So that's uh number two.
While they weren't labeled in order of importance, they were
just ten right, it even says, in no particular order,
because it's kind of sick to say, like this is
the best or this is the worst. In case it's
like this. Um. I did go to Film School Rejects so,
(36:26):
which is a fun website because I just started thinking
about revenge movies. It's a common theme. And they listed
this is their top ten. Commando, Oh yeah, that's a
good one. Gladiator yeah. Uh Friday and Jerry Lapkinson but
said me, Friday, well, those kids watched her son drown. Yeah,
(36:49):
oh that's true. Been her one of the granddaddys of
all revenge movies. Good one. I am being her, I
am her, I am her. Like Fall Dogs. Yeah, that
one Star Dougs is crazy. We were just talking about
the other day. It was disturbing. Kill Bill one and two,
Once upon a Time in the West. I never saw
that one either, it's supposed to be awesome. That's a
(37:10):
good one. The Virgin Spring, which I have not seen.
That was a Bergman picture, and The Godfather, which I
didn't really see that as a revenge. Pick revenge and
they said Death Wish is the number one. Yeah, but
they didn't have Old Boy on there. Oh yeah, the
Ultimate revenge movie. That's as revenge as it k. Yeah.
(37:31):
So then I told some other top ten lists and
some of the other other ones that made the list Memento,
mad Max, Carrie, great revenge movie, and Glorious Pastard's obviously
the professional the crow hard Candy, but you should see
to be confused with Jawbreaker, I'll bet have you ever
(37:52):
seen that movie? Now? I didn't see that. It was good. Yeah,
I spit on your grave Era of Persctable. That one
was pretty hardcore. You may likes that movie. I haven't
seen it yet. Your Reversal, yes, he said it's really good.
It's really tough to watch. But that was a good movie.
It is. Well, it's a rape revenge, so those are
those are always the best. What about the last House
on the left that's a rape Prevet's like the rape
(38:14):
prevenge that was next on my list? Or was that
before after I spent on your grave? When was I
spin on your graves? That have the date? No? When
I have the dates? Because the last house on the left,
I think two? Munich? Oh yeah, I spent on your
graves one was it? Yeah, Munich. That's a great revenge
movie star Trek to Wrath of con No. Really yeah,
(38:38):
Unforgiven pretty good one. I mean, great movie. But I
wouldn't throw it in the super revenge category and then
taken with the Liam Neeson. I enjoyed that. I did too.
I just can't get pest Liam Neeson as an action star.
You know, he has a set of very specific set
of skills and they make it unwatchable. All right, So
(39:01):
that is revenge and it's best served what with Liam
Neeson piping hot? Uh? Yeah, this was That was like
six of ten. So there's more for you to go read.
It's right how stuff works dot com. Um in the
article I wrote, just type in biggest revenge or even
(39:21):
probably just revenge in the search part how stuff works
dot Com, and that's gonna bring up this article. So
do that and I said search bar, which means the
type of listener mail or is it? It's not quite yet, chuck. Uh.
We should tell everybody about CIVA. Man. We did it.
We did what. We We met our goal in the
(39:44):
million dollar March. Yes, one million dollars in loans over
the past million years is gonna be October less than three.
And it all started with the well jabb at Colbert
Nation and they're just like that. They we left them
(40:06):
in the dust years ago. I know when you watch
that video it's so quaint. We're like first one to
a hundred thousand dollars. No, I remember everybody was like,
I just know where you're gonna make it two? A
hundred thousand dollars. Crazy, that's a million, dude, million dollars
loaned by our Kiva team. It takes a village town
and we are proud of you guys. Thank you, yeah seriously,
and uh, I guess let's just keep going on. Let's
(40:26):
double down. Yeah, thank you to Glenn and Sonia as
always for helping us set our financial goals. And we'll
have a new one coming up soon. Yeah, we're not quitting.
We're not like we got a million forget it, We're done.
We're going to bed. Everyone pulled their money outr go party. No,
don't do that. Okay, Um, that's that's for December. Okay, alright, well,
(40:48):
so back to it, all right, Josh, I'm gonna call this,
uh cannibalism. It's been a while, but it's about cannibalism.
And I like to read good smart ones and this
is one of those guys on a biology undergrad at
University of New Mexico. Go jeeze, what do they go fighting?
As texts. Let's say, I bet you bet, you're right.
(41:08):
One of my recent projects was a computer model attempting
to answer some questions regarding disease transmission through cannibalism. You
close the podcast with speculation about the origin of cannibalism
and humans. Materialism versus idealism. Uh. Though both of these
arguments are compelling, they both seem to ignore just how
young the human species is. The prevalence of con specific
(41:30):
neck rog neck rog big necro necrofi let's say necrofogy
it sounds a kid, Yeah, man, I had that all
worked out there. Eating the dead and other species provides
evidence that cannibalism is significantly older than uts, and the
prevalence in near species like chimps suggests that it may
be a trait we've had since we have been a week.
(41:53):
Lobsters are big cannibals spiders of the sea. The materialism
versus idealism argument it takes on all new facets when
applied to chimps. Materialism materialism doesn't hold very much water,
as chimps are pretty well fed on fruits and catching
smaller simians is far easier and arguably adequate nutrition. Idealism
(42:13):
begs the question of just how much chimps care about
that sort of thing. Are they expecting some gain other
than nutritional value, like spiritual or even just striking fear
to the hearts of enemies? Are they even capable of this?
My guess, which is just a guess, is that they
kill for territorial reasons and then simply don't want to
waste the large quantity of delicious dude. Mhm. So that
(42:37):
sweet thinks maybe we started that way in some cultures
to sell onto the practice applying spiritual reasoning after the fact.
And that is smart, and that is from Mica makes Mica.
That is smart from New Mexico. And if you why
is new it was New Mexico State Golden Gophers. Now
that's Minnesota, the bear Cats, the New Mexico State Bearcats Eagles.
(43:05):
Holds no, that's our our school, Georgia. UM. If you
had your interest piqued by Micah's assessment of cannibalism, you
might want to go listen to our cannibalism podcast. We
did an episode on it a while back and it's
one of our favorites. Pretty good. Um, and let's see
(43:25):
what else. If you have a great revenge story we
want to hear it. Yeah, there's lots of internet revenge
going on. I was gonna talk about some of it,
like the people who post anonymous and all that, but um, oh,
I know it's you mean. I don't like that, Like, oh,
my boyfriend wronged me, so let me do photoshops of
him and a bikini and make it a meme. I
don't know. Okay, So I guess we're gonna avoid that
(43:48):
everybody because we don't want to upset Chuck because we
know he'll lie in wait for come up. It's um.
You can send us a cool story of revenge non internet.
Please to us at Twitter. Our handle is s y
s K podcast UM, or on Facebook at Facebook dot
com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send
(44:08):
us a plain old fashion email to Stuff Podcast at
Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
(44:33):
twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.