January 13, 2024 • 44 mins
The annals of history hold a special place for people who have carried out treachery and betrayed their own. Thousands of years later, their names are still synonymous with being a scoundrel around the world. From Marcus Brutus to Vidkun Quisling and more, in this classic episode Josh and Chuck examine some of the bigger turncoats to live -- and exonerate others.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody, it's Josh and for this week's Select, I've
chosen our twenty thirteen episode on History's Greatest Traders. Turns
out history is rife with treacherous people, and if there's
any lesson to learn from this episode, it's be careful
who you cross, because once your name is associated with treachery,
it turns out that that stays pretty sticky. It's tough
to get rid of.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant. So, Chuck, Yeah, I have a
story for you.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
All right, let's hear it. Come back with me, wayback machine.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Sure, okay, A couple hours ago.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, so here we are. It's December twenty second, nineteen
seventy two. Oh yeah, something really bad is about to happen.
It sit down in front of this TV.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Our good friend and hero, Peter Brady is trying out
for the school play. Yeah, it's a story of the
American Revolution. I remember that he tries out for George Washington,
but he doesn't get it. And in fact, the name
of this episode that we're sitting here watching on this
nice brown and orange shag carpeting is called Everybody Can't
Be George Washington. Peter doesn't get the part of George Washington,
(01:37):
but he does get another very important part, the part
of Benedict Arnold. Well, at first he's like, hey, it's
a part, it's a speaking part. I'm pretty happy. I'm
going to do my best.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I was a tree in my last six plays, right,
This is.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
A huge step up for him, until his classmates point
out that Benedict Donald was a trader, and since Peter's
playing a trader, he must be some sort of trader too.
So basically the whole school turns on him because he's
playing Benedict.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Donald, which is really kind of silly.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
It is very silly. And of course Peter tries to
get out of the play again and again, yeah, affecting laryngitis,
pretending he has a limp all of this stuff, saying
he forgets his lines.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, I think I remember that.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And finally successful, and then his dad points out that
he has turned into a trader. Now Peter against the
whole cast.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Don't tell me. He had a lesson for him, and
he sat him down and had a talking to.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
It was a good one. Yeah, it was a good one.
And so Peter goes in and plays Benedict Donald and
knocks it out of.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
The park and learned a lesson in the process.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
But the whole premise of this episode of Brady Bunch
is that Peter was suffering from a smear campaign started
two hundred years before by George Washington, and it was
so successful that even today, you can get a rise
out of some by calling them Benedict Donald if they've
done something traitorous.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, and we've learned there are quite a few synonyms
with trader that were in fact notorious traders, Like if
you call someone a Judas or a Benedict Donald or
what quisling? Yeah, that might be popular in some parts
of the world.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Right, this is the USA. Sure, so we call people
Benedict Donald's.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Well, let's talk about this. Let's talk about Benedict Donald
to start.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Okay, Well, you know, first of all, we should point
out that this is a curated show from our buddy
Sam t Garden.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
This is the Summer of Sam.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Then, yeah, we're continuing into our second Summer of Sam.
And for those of you that don't know. Sam is
a local fan of ours and a good kid, and
he's actually on our TV show.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
He was in an episode, the Make It Rain episode.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, is one of our softball teammates. And Sam's a
good guy and he sends in great ideas, so we
like to highlight them when we do them.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, all right, so summer Sam, Hey, Sam, hope you're
doing well. Buddy. Were talking about bened mac donald and
why there was such a smear campaign against him, and
it turns out rightfully so, although possibly I think a
lot of Arnold's side of the story has been lost
to history.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Well. Yeah, and coincidentally or not coincidentally, some of these
traders that we're going to mention today, history is born
out that they may not have been traders. Yeah, but
been an Donald definitely was.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
So he was a document and trader. Yeah, as traitorous
and treasonous as you can get, as far as in
the context of war.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah. So early on in life things started out pretty well.
He was born into some wealth, but his family, specifically
his father, squandered their fortune with some bad business dealings.
Apparently he was quite a drinker.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Oh, you turned into the town drunk.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, well that'll do it.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
They lost their family estate.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yeah, they lost their dough. Three of his sisters are sorry,
siblings died from yellow fever. He had to drop out
of school.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
He became an apothecary.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, so things weren't like Rosie for the guy, although
he did quite well later on in the military.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Well, he did quite well even before that as a merchant.
And actually, by the age of twenty two, was able
to buy back his family's estate. Oh really, which he
then turned around and sold it a profit.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Well, good for him.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
So I guess he wasn't the sentimental type flipped this estate. Yeah.
I think it wasn't that he wanted his family's to
state back. He just didn't want to lose out on
the potential profit from it, I guess.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah. And he seemed like he may have been like
add before there was add.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Yeah, from the sounds of reading his thing, I was
just like, man, this kid had add. He was always
in trouble. He's getting kicked out of school. Yeah, but
it was just because he was like busy.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
He wasn't like a bad kid, it seemed like, but
he was just always had something going on.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
He finally, I guess found his niche and he did
become quite a businessman and fabulously wealthy, but he wasn't
wealthy enough in his opinion, and in fact joined the
Sons of Liberty, the revolutionary group in New England, because
he was mad that his riches were being taxed by England.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, he liked the dough, he did, and he did
have a pretty remarkable military career in Jefferson and Washington
were big supporters of him for a while.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, but he also suffered. Apparently there are a lot
of petty jealousies that they don't talk about among the
founding fathers and the second and third echelons of all
these guys, and apparently Benedict Donald frequently suffered.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yes, he was slighted a lot, a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, he missed out on honors and stuff like that.
And he doesn't seem like the type to let things go,
nor was he the type to air his his feelings,
so he just kind of sat there and stewed, right.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, I saw most of the times he was slighted.
He fought really hard to get either reassigned or reappointed
to the position he was going for. And so you're right,
he couldn't let it go. He needed therapy. But instead
he was appointed to run West Point, not the military academy,
the four right, Yeah, this is pre I guess they
probably named it after that though, didn't they.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I think it turned into the military Academy. Okay, but
I think this was before it was an academy.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, it was definitely. Yeah, and so he, you know,
went Benedict Arnald on everyone, and little did he know
he was being a Benedict Arnald. But he sold secrets
to the British, like plans, war secrets, armament locations for
about three million bucks. I think it was ten thousand
pounds at the time.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, so he he The reason he did this, ostensibly
was a because he'd been slighted.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
But also, and this is what it's been lost to history,
is that he he came to believe that the revolution
had lost steam, that the people running the show didn't
really know what they were doing and probably wouldn't form
a very good post revolutionary government if successful.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
So did he genuinely think the Brits were going to
do a better job.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Supposedly that's what historians say, but again he didn't really.
He may have been the type to just kind of
say that's what he was right thinking too, and then
somebody wrote down at some point, but he ultimately said this,
the colonies are better back in the hands of England again.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
So not only am I going to try to sell
the map to West Point, I'm going to join the
British Army, which he did, Yeah, and led at least
two raids against American revolutionary forces. So he really switched sides.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Oh yeah, yeah in seventeen eighty. I can't believe whoever
wrote this article put that. When the plot was intercepted,
he went from he wrote a zero.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I was all of a sudden, I was in like
in the US magazine Ers or.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Like a Springer show.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Yeah, that's weird, but that's what happened. He was convicted
of treason and his name was erased from the record books,
and England promised him. They're like, hey, if you defect
over here, we're going to give you land in Canada. Yeah,
we're not going to give you land here. We'll give
you land in Canada some money, and we'll promise your
family pensions and you're going to be a British provincial
(09:09):
brigadier general, and he's like, that sounds pretty great. But
as it turned out, he didn't get that many great
assignments in the military. In England, he was even sort
of I don't think anyone likes a trader. No, that's England.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
They're like, yeah, yeah, that comes up again and again,
like yeah, even the side that you're trying to or whatever.
They yeah, they're like, you're a trader.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Well, I think it's because basically you're just a big liar.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, and you're treacherous.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yeah, and so people are like, how can I go
to trust you? Thanks for doing that, but can you
go live in Canada?
Speaker 1 (09:42):
But it does pop up again and again. Anybody who's
ever turned trader and expected some sort of glory has
been sorely disappointed.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah. So in England he was sort of poo pooed.
Then he moved to Canada they didn't like him. Yeah,
and then he moved back to England and died there
without ever like making a whole lot of money or
getting any important military action. Right, So sort of a
sad ending.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It really is. And today if you go to West Point,
there's I guess twelve plaques of some of like the
head revolutionary generals, and his name is literally wiped from
the record. It has the year of his birth and
I think the town of his birth. Well, his name
is not on the plaque any longer, just says is
(10:26):
this smeared or there's a sharpie through it?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Right? All right, So that's been an arnold.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Let's go a little further back. Okay, let's go way back.
I'm talking like maybe forty four BC.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Cassius and Brutus. Yeah, Marcus Junius Brutus the younger.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I'm glad. Do you look that up?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, I'm sure he had a fuller name.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah, Brutus. It's like it's like a whole country of
share or something.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
And here's the thing with these guys. They were definitely
traders as well, but they're also singled out clearly. They
killed Caesar we all know in the IDEs of March,
which is Caesar the Senator and dfl dictator for life,
which self declared. But they are like sixty dudes that
took part in this.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, and Caesar was self declared Caesar for a civil
war one informed a triumvirate with the people that he vanquished. Yeah,
so he wasn't entirely dictatorial, although as like popular opinion
started to swell around him, He's like, maybe I will
just be leader for life. Let's save all those voting
(11:44):
days and I'll just be leader for the rest of
the time. I'm alive. And Cassius and Brutus had both
fought against Caesar in the civil war yea. And despite that,
Caesar pardoned both of them and gave them positions of
power in his new government.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And brand new knives.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
And they said, and they said, still not enough. Well,
Cassius especially apparently he was very envious of Caesar and
his power. He was the rebel rouser, and that that
was ultimately his motive, although he used the concept of
the Republic of Rome turning into a dictatorship to lead
the assassination against Caesar.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, and even cooked up evidence and like letters of
support to show Brutus, because Brutus was much friendlier with Caesar.
There were buds, but he was swayed by Cassius and said,
you know what, this is going to be good for
our country or our kingdom or whatever they were calling
at the time, and took part. But they weren't like that.
(12:45):
The lead I mean, maybe they cooked it up, but
they weren't the initial aggressors.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
I thought Brutus was the first one to stab Caesar.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
No, this dude, Tillius Simber came out and like pulled
down his tunic first of all, did he really? Yeah,
I guess he said pulled it down, But I don't
know what that means. If he I imagined he was
pulling it hockey either pants him or no. Tunic's like
a shirt thing, so I thought he pulled it over
his head like a hockey player might in a fight.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
It's like reverse pants.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
It reverse pants him, And Caesar was like, you know,
what is this violence going on? And then another dude, Kaska,
he came at him with a knife, and Caesar blocked
him away and defended himself and was like, basically, what's
going on here? And then that's when everyone, like sixty
guys descended upon him. Wow, among you know, Brutus might
(13:38):
have been the lead of that pack.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Though, yeah, okay, okay, Well.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
He stabbed the crap out of him, So I knew.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I thought Brutus was the first one to stab him.
I knew that some other guy was the first one
to strike him, and it may have been the guy
who reverse pants to him till he yeah, you, me
and I were at Pompei who actually walked around Pompeii
And there's a table there and it belonged to that guy.
Oh really, And I guess somebody in Pompeii like bought
the table of the first guy to strike Caesar and
(14:04):
like had it in their via and it's still there today.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
And did you eat at it?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
No, we stared at it. Oh okay, we looked at
it from like three meters away.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Oh gotcha.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
You have to say meters because in Italy that's obnoxious.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
And apparently only one of the stabs. He was stabbed
twenty three times, and like continued to be stabbed even
after he was on the floor dead, but only one
of them was a fatal blow. He was a like
the second stab I think went through his heart, and
the rest were just you know, but before they felt injury.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
When Brutus stabbed him, yeah, Caesar very famously said a
two brute yeah, which literally means and you brutus or
what the hell brutus?
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Yeah, you too, And supposedly he kind of gave up
at that point, like it killed a spirit when he
saw Brutus was involved. Yeah, but I don't. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Supposedly he didn't want to live in a brutistless world,
in a world where even Brutus could assassinate him, so
he resigned himself to dying and hence became a hero.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
It's very sad. It was on my birthday?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Your birth is it the fifteenth? Fifteenth too? But not
of March?
Speaker 3 (15:16):
That's right? Uh so? Oh? Also too, apparently that was
the first autopsy report. Oh really, first post mortem death
report was made on Caesar Greeks man.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
If that's true, I've heard the Romans. Whoops. Whatever, I'm
really glad I caught that one.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, to lead to their email. Anything else I want
on these two traders?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
No? Oh yes, Dante had a special hatred for Brutus
and Cassius, and in his Inferno he says that they
are being perpetually eaten by two of Lucifer's three mouths.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And the third mouth is reserved for the next guy.
We'll talk about, a little guy named Judas as Carrie.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Oh really, yeah, Satan's third mouth.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
So Lucifer's three mouths are eating Cassius, Brutus and Judas.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Wow. All right. Judas is one of these that recent
evidence has emerged where he may not have been such
a trader, but we'll get into that. But then that
was refuted as well. Everyone obviously knows the Judas kiss
very famously. Judas betrayed Jesus. He was one of the disciples.
(16:37):
He betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Yeah, and it was
actually a signal to the guards to come and grab him.
I guess he was identifying him.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, apparently the Romans didn't know who this Jesus was, Yeah,
at least by sight. And Judas went and said, hey,
you guys want this Jesus, what do you give me?
And the signal was like, well, you kissed the guy
that's Jesus, and we'll come get him.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
And we'll give you thirty pieces of silver.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Thirty pieces of silver. I mean, the west Egg inflation
calculator doesn't go back to you know that date, but
I can imagine it's still probably wasn't that much thirty
pieces of silver.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Well, apparently it was used later on to buy a
field to turn into a potter's field to bury unclaimed
dead Oh really, but I mean it's field, how much.
It couldn't have been that.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Much, Like how much was land going for back then
in the Middle East?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
They had tons of land.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Okay, So Judas betrays Jesus. He was we didn't know
much about his life at the time, but recently there
has been I think in two thousand one of the Gospel,
a new gospel was revealed, the Gospel of Judas.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, colon my story.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
My side of things.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
And it was a of course, a papyrus document dating
to the second century a d. And it was written
about in a book called the Lost Gospel, and it
portrays this Judas as more of a facilitator of what
Jesus wanted. Basically, Jesus is like, hey, turn me in
because this is my destiny. Yeah, Like sacrifice yourself. I
(18:18):
sacrifice myself and we all go on to live in
heaven and you know, fulfill our destinies.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, which a lot of people are like, Okay, I
kind of like this different view of Judas, you know,
and it makes Jesus even more prescient than he appears
in the Bible, sure, because you know, he's betrayed by
someone he thought was his friend, and this he is
commanding Judas he's asking him to do this. So it's
(18:44):
just an all around like great view of the story
when when, But unfortunately, apparently there's some problems that a
lot of scholars, Gnostic scholars have with the translation, and
that if you just tweak a few things to the
way that the Gnostic scholars think it should be translated, yeah,
that all just goes right out the window. And actually
(19:06):
Judas is not only a horrible treacherous traitor, he's actually
a demon from the thirteenth level of being.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yeah, so quite two different stories. Yeah, all by changing
a few words in this Coptic text, which isn't the
easiest stuff to translate. Like it's tough, you know, it's
not like and even the person that poo pooed the
original translation was like, this is a very hard job.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
I'm not saying they necessarily did it on purpose, but
that's not what I think it says, right, And so,
and that was April Deconic, a professor of Biblical studies
at Rice University. And I don't know did other people
come out and support that. I can really find much.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
And apparently actually in the Bible it's hinted at that
Jesus could have known about it, but.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Well doesn't he say like one of you will betray me?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
At least? Yeah, he definitely said that.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
The Last Temptation of Christ. Yeah, who Harvey kai Tell
does a pretty good Jesus or Judas.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Yeah, yeah, you know will in Dafoe.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah that was that was a good movie. But yeah,
that was how I when I like anything I'd ever heard,
I always thought like Jesus knew it was just never
as explicit as this Gospel of Judas put it.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Right and then Gospel of Judas. I even claim that
Jesus even asked Judas like, hey, will you do this
for me? Do me as solid? So kiss me, put
one right here, right.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So Judas realizes what he's done, feels horribly guilty, tries
to give the silver back. The high priests that he's
sold Jesus out to won't take the money, and so
he throws it on the temple floor. They end up
figuring out that it can be used for a potter's feel,
and they use that thirty pieces of over for that,
(20:53):
and then Judas goes off and hangs himself.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, and I don't think we said Jesus was crucified.
I thought that went without saying. Yeah, but in case
there's like one person out there was like, what.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Happened to Jesus? All right, whatever, it became a Jesus,
That's what happened. And then Judas supposedly fell headlong and
his body opened up. And there, if you go back
and read some scholarly translations, they think that his body
opened up means that he was left his body was
(21:23):
left hanging for a while out in the heat, and
when it finally fell, like a branch broke or whatever,
and it fell, it kind of ruptured.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Across where'd you find that out I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Somewhere online?
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah it was. Yeah. They were talking about how he
went headlong. He became headlong, and they were saying, like,
if you just switch out like a couple of letters,
headlong becomes swollen, and then that would explain why his
body opened up.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
And now Judas and Judas kiss are both part of
the lexicon. And you know, in terms of betrayals, yeah,
you know, treacherous treacher So I know, thanks Sam.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
How about Chuck, I know you've seen this movie.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I love this movie.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Uh, the assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Coward
Robert Ford.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, we've talked about it. This is a good movie,
very good movie, written and directed by h Andrew Dominic
and uh has Paul Schneider and my buddy, Paul Schneider.
Schneid's right, he listens, Oh, hey, was he he's in it? Yeah,
he's he's one of the gang. And he's a great actor.
(22:55):
He's We've since become like email pals. That's so.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Uh. That was an excellent movie. I'm sure Schneider did
fantastic in it.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
He did great Schneid's Schneid's.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
And it seems to me I don't know a lot
about the whole saga of Jesse James, especially his demise,
but it seemed to be pretty true to everything I've
ever heard about it.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah. I think the movie was pretty accurate. Yeah, and
it was great, like gorgeous to look at, beautifully filmed. Yeah,
and not just because Brad Pitt was in it, but
Casey Fleck as Robert Ford was amazing.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
He really so. Anyway, if you haven't seen that movie,
go out and see it. In the meantime, we'll spoil
it for you.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I think he was nominated for an Academy.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Well, I can't imagine how he wasn't. Yeah, he was
so creepy.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
So what's the deal with Jesse James.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Well, Jesse James was a member of the James Ganga,
the leader, a full partner. Well, I think he and
his brother Frank were kind of co leaders really, that's
the impression I have, Like Frank stallone. Yeah, and they
were very successful at robbing trains, robbing people, robbing banks,
robbing everything, and they became outlaw folk heroes everybody loved
(24:05):
to hate, but he also still loved.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Well, they didn't kill people.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
No, not until the second to last robbery by Jesse James.
They botched it and a couple of people died. Most
of the James gang was caught, and Jesse and Frank
went off and assembled a new gang that included Robert Ford.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Yeah, he was pretty new. He had long tried to
get in the James Gang and was sort of shunned
as a weirdo, a little weird and like not the
most skilled robber and gunman, and it wasn't taken very seriously,
which always bothered him.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Right, So Jesse James pulls off one last train robbery
in eighteen seventy and decides to retire. Frank James retires
and Robert Ford kind of tangs along with Jesse James
the rest of his life, and the Governor of Missouri
put a bounty on Jesse James head of I believe
ten thousand dollars, which is pretty substantial for eighteen seventy. Sure,
(25:05):
And in eighteen eighty two Robert Ford took the Governor
of Missouri up on this. I apparently met with him, Yeah,
and not only said I'm gonna do this. I want
this reward. I'm gonna split it with my brother here. Yeah,
but I also want to be I want immunity from
my crimes.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yeah. Well he was supposedly just supposed to capture him.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Oh okay, and.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Did the shooting on his own volition.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
And there's a wood cutting in this article of Jesse
James dropping a feather duster just like he does in
the movie.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Oh yeah. He stands on a chair in his own
home to dust a picture and Robert Ford shoots him
in the back of the head. Yeah, and kills him
just right there, very like low key and anticlimactic.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
With his wife home and everything. Yeah, And then they leave,
and so Robert Ford kind of like I think Benedict Darnold,
expected to be concerd something of a hero. Yeah, and
he was considered a coward a zero. Yeah, yeah, he was.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Actually, he and his brother were both indicted, found guilty,
sentenced to hang, and pardoned in a single day.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Oh that's a heck of a day.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah, pretty like emotional rollercoaster going on there.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And they became an ostracized socially. Robert Ford just became
the butt of many jokes. And then finally one day
he was confronted by a man who sought him out
because he wanted to kill Robert Ford for to gain
his own acclaim.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah, Edward O'Kelly brought a shotgun into it. He was
a bar owner I think at the time Robert Ford was.
And after by the way, they toured in a touring production.
Oh yeah, like recreating the murders.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, Sam Rockwell.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Yeah. And so Edward O'Kelly goes in the bar with
a shotgun, says hello, Bob, He turns around, shoots him
in the throat, and he gets a sentence commuted after
a petition and his pardoned killing Robert Ford.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah, back then, the prairie job mob rule definitely had
like a ground hold.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I don't know what that is, but I think I
got my point across.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Yeah, they were like, he was a coward and you
shot him, so that makes you a good guy.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
So that's Robert Fort. You got anything else? Nope? Should
we move on to Mada Hati?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, I knew next to nothing about Mada Hai.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Yeah. Same here.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
She turned out to be a pretty fascinating woman.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Possibly not a trader at all. Yeah, actually, probably not
a trader at all. Yeah, let's let's talk about her.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Well, she was a very sexual being. She was very
close to her father apparently, who doted on her, and
she has been described as sex as being her driving force.
And she was said to have an insatiable longing for
male attention her entire life and for the time period
early nineteen hundreds, she really really slept around.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, and she didn't just like you the sex with
the men. She liked them to buy her stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Oh yeah, well she used it as a means for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
She blew through a lot of guy's money, right, Yeah,
and just loved to live lavishly, racked up tons of
debt and became something of a toast among Parisian society,
European society.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Actually, yeah, she was Dutch, we should point out.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, her real name was Margareta Zelli.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah, but she looked like Indian and she tried to
remake herself as this Indian exotic Indian dancer.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I read Indonesian. Oh, Indonesian, Yeah, because Mata Hari is
Malaysian for eye of the dawn, which means sunrise. Gotcha,
So her name was Sunrise, the stripping dancer.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Well, and she she didn't just dance like this was
at a time when the mulan ruge was like they
were like pulling their skirts up a little bit and
and some ankle and some nickers, and she was like
taking it to you another.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Level, apparently on stage in people's living.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Rooms, private dances, like traveling dancing, like really erotic and
exotic stuff for the time.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
So from what I understand, she was also a sometime
prostitute when things were really bad and sure and then
she but ultimately she just kind of went through a
succession of lovers around Europe, and at one point she
found herself in I guess in Amsterdam and was approached
(29:38):
by a German officer and said, hey, we want you
to spy for us. Here's twenty thousand francs and some
invisible ink, and you're now a German spy, right, And
she's like, whatever, mine air, right, Thanks for the money, sucker,
and threw away the invisible ink supposedly, and never spied
for Germany. But she still had a code name H
(29:59):
twenty one, and as far as Germany was concerned, she
was a spy for them, even though she didn't take
it seriously. Apparently never carried out any spying activities. So
she had a reputation as a German.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Spy, yeah, without actually spying yet. And she was, as
this one writer puts it, she was traveling alone. She
was wealthy, she was an excellent linguist, and very foreign
and very educated and admitted to having lovers and like
all of this stuff for the time just meant we
don't trust you, even if we don't have evidence. This
(30:32):
makes you untrustworthy, right, So at some point the French
decided that they were going to recruit her to become
a French spy. This is Durman World War One, Yeah,
even though they already suspected she was a German spy.
She was sent around to try to get to I
don't remember what country they were trying to get her into, Vittel,
(30:55):
oh try together.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
She went to Russia. Yeah, she ended up going there
for a little while in exchange for becoming a French spy,
agreeing to spy for the French exactly. She ended up
in Spain and came across this German officer and apparently
he suspected her of being a spy. So when she
started asking him questions, he gave her old information.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yeah. Well they went to bed together as well. Sure
we should mention this thing is just rife with sex.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Right, and he gave her some old information. This the
frenchman who the French intelligence officer who recruited her as
a spy but still suspected her as a German spy. Yeah,
finally said you know what, I think that what you
were really doing was giving French secrets to the German.
You're a double agent and we're going to arrest you.
And she was arrested in France again no evidence, no
(31:42):
evidence whatsoever, and tried for treason and convicted.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Yeah, and basically Thunder knows that the whole experience and
was like, I'm going to hold my head high, I'm
going to blow you a kiss right before you shoot me.
And the firing squad.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Well, supposedly it wasn't the firing squad. It was two
nuns that she became friends with and her lawyer who
also she had slept with. That's who she blew kisses to,
but she refused to blind Ok, that's what it's in
this article I saw elsewhere is like to the nuns.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
She also slept with her headmaster when she was sixteen.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah, it got kicked out of school for it. Yeah,
So she refuses a blindfold. In the end, she's all
dressed up and everything for her execution. She's standing ankle
deep in mud on a cold October day in nineteen seventeen. Yeah,
she refuses to be tied to the pole behind her.
She refuses a blindfold and is executed by firing squad.
(32:36):
So the weird thing is is about thirty years later,
one of the prosecutors in France admitted, quote they didn't
have sorry, here's the quote. There was quote not enough
evidence to flog a cat. Yeah, that she very very
likely did not ever spy for Germany. Yeah, made that
(32:57):
one half hearted attempt in France just buy for France
to make some money, and was executed and still didn't protest.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
I wonder if there's been a good movie on her,
surely there, I don't know if there's been a recent one.
She was tall too, she was like almost six feet tall.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Yes, she looks very long.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, look at her. It's hard to like sometimes it's
tough to look at pictures from back then and see
the attraction, you know. Yeah, it's just a different time period.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
I think it was the fact that she took off
her clothes.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
And was real sexy and tall, right, yeah, slept with everybody.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Selfish should know. So Matahari probably was not a trader,
and they really had a lot of trouble trying to
prove that another famous trader was actually a trader and
(34:09):
that woman was i' have a toguri.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was. In fact, I'm just going
to go ahead and say it, she was not a
spy and she was not a treson As trader because
it was proven so, and she was pardoned by Gerald Ford.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Right, so she was born. So I'm just going to
take her off the list. Okay, we'll finish the story though. Yeah,
it's a worthwhile story. Yeah, I have a to Guri.
She was born in America in Los Angeles and had
a degree in zoology from UCLA, And in nineteen forty one,
she traveled to Tokyo to take care of an ailing
aunt her family center over there. Yeah, despite the fact
(34:52):
that she didn't really speak Japanese, she hadn't been raised
in Japanese culture. Apparently, it was a lot of culture shock,
but she still went over to take care of her
aunt nonetheless, And while she was there, she got two jobs.
One she was typing for one new service, and she
got a second job as a typist for the one
of the radio stations.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Yeah, and they're like, Hey, you're American, Japanese American, and
you have a great voice, and you're perfect for this
new thing that we're going to do. Its American rock
and roll music, and we're going to play it for
the morale of the troops and.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Well to deteriorate the morale.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Well, but she they told her a different story at
first though.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Oh okay, they told her it was.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
To boost the morale. Really, yeah, Like, I don't think
she knew what she was getting into.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
That's crazy. Why would the Japanese boost the morale of
the American troops in the Pacific.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Well, it was later said that it did, in fact
boost the morale. They said Americans love the music and
thought the Tokyo Ro's banter was funny and it lifted
their spirits.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
That's funny.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Yeah, okay, So if they were really trying to do that,
it did a pretty poor job of it.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Okay. Nonetheless, she was reporting on things like ships being sunk.
Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, she called it. Well that's what she was. Eventually
the one thing that they penned on her.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Okay, Well, then that didn't actually happen.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Oh really yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
So well let's get back to the story. World War
two goes along, yeah, right, it ends, and she tries
to get back to America, and as she's doing that,
apparently the Japanese government identified her as Tokyo Rose.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Yeah, she was orphan. Anne was her radio name, and
Tokyo Rose was just sort of the name of the
operation as a whole and not a single person, even
though they tied her to that name.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Which led to some great confusion, apparently because they were
trying to get her as Tokyo Rose, even though she
called herself Orphan Anne, and there were like twelve women
including her that were all Tokyo Rose collectively.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Okay, So the Japanese government says that's Tokyo Rose, and
she said I'm orphan An. The American Intelligence Services of
the Army investated her and could find no evidence that
she committed any form of treason, and they were going
to let her in the country, back in their place
of birth because she traveled without a passport. Yeah, and
(37:12):
now she's trying to get back in she needed a passport.
Apparently a lot of veterans groups were like, you can't
let Tokyo Rose into the US.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Yeah. It was this one guy kind of started the
charge and was successful.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
The reporter had at Bundridge. Yeah, yeah, Well apparently he
got a couple of Japanese guys just to commit perjury
and present false evidence against Tokyo Rose.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Yeah. The two most damaging witnesses actually like just completely lied, right.
The FBI put him up to it, coached them, yeah,
and said you're going to get tried for treason if
you don't do this.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
So she ended up being tried and convicted for treason.
And sentenced to ten years, and she got out in
nineteen fifty six, and they tried to deport her, and
she successfully battled deportation and moved to Chicago. Yeah, died
in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
She worked at a retail store until two thousand.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
And six, her father's store.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Two thousand and six, she was working in a retail store. Yeah,
at ninety years old, and nobody even people didn't like
come in there to see Tokyo Rose, like she was
just a worker. Yeah, isn't that weird? It is like
such a prominent figure in history, It just a ringing
people up.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah, like you said, uh Ford Pardner.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Yeah, Gerald Ford. Then he fell down.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
So let's talk about the quizzling just briefly.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Yeah. The quizzling is we mentioned earlier as another name.
If you live in perhaps Norway or maybe other parts
of Europe, you might be called a quizzling if you're
a trader because of Vidcan Quizzling.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah he was.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
He basically tried to seize power after buddying up with
Hitler in nineteen forty and said, you know what, I'm
gonna use this as an opportunity to make Norway my own.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, and he did so for a very very short time. Yeah,
he invited the Nazis to come invade Norway. They did.
He made a power grab and said I'm now the
ruler of Norway, and the Nazis let that slide for
about a week.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
They're like, sure, sure, ruler.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Then they installed their own guy as the head of
Norway and demoted Quizzling to president Minister President. Yeah, and
apparently he went to work sentencing Norwegian Jews to concentration camps.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Yeah. He really bad guy.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah. He was very much anti union. He was a fascist,
and he was trying to make Norway fastist and he
did so. He became the first person to ever announce
a coup de ta on television. That's how he made
his power grab. Oh really Yeah, I think it was television,
although it seems early so maybe it was radio, but
I guess he became the first one to announce it
(39:55):
over a broadcast.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Right.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
So, after the Nazis defeated, he was like.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Oh no, yeah, I have a feeling this is gonna
end up bad for me.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, And he was convicted of treason, sentenced to death,
and executed by firing squad.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
And you are a quizzler. I'm sorry, quizzling.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
If you collude.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, if you're a Norway and you're trader, you're a quizzling. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
It's like the Benedict Arnold of Norway. So chuck, you
got anything else?
Speaker 3 (40:24):
No, And as per usual, this is a top ten
that we do about six of and encourage people to
go read the rest, including Robert Hanson, who we've talked about.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Yeah, Ezra Pound as we talked about in the Insanity Defense.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Yeah, and the Cambridge five. Yeah, not the Seattle seven
or the Jackson five or the Jackson five.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
And did we skip another one? Was at it?
Speaker 1 (40:47):
I don't remember. Oh the intro, we didn't mention the
Cleveland Cavaliers iyre Lebron against Lebron, which I just think
that's weird. Well, I think then went berserk.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
That's sort of past. And there's rumors of him going
back to Cleveland anyway next no way, really maybe his
contract's up and they think that he might love nothing
more than to go back there and win a championship.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Huh. Well, we'll see, Yeah, we'll see what happens. If
you want to learn more about traders, you can type
that word into the search bar at house tofforks dot
com and it'll bring up this article. And since I
said search bar, it means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
This is Capgrass. Hey, guys, thanks so much for doing
the Capgrass syndrome episode. It was amazing timing came out
right around Father's Day and my father suffers from the syndrome.
It's been very painful to watch. No yeah wow. During
my marriage, we have never lived very close to my parents,
but just under three years ago we moved close enough
for day trips. About the same time, my dad had
(41:44):
a fairly significant stroke and it made the slow progress
of vascular dementia Alzheimer's that he also suffers from significantly worse.
He started visiting my dad on a weekly basis. I
would spend the day with him while my mom and
brother would get the Monday rush orders out. Apparently Dad
ran a mail order business. When I first started these visits,
Dad knew who I was. We talked and I shared
(42:07):
photos and stories of my kids. But within just six
months the cap Grass really took effect. We had to
work our way through who this strange lady was, who
lived there? Now my mom? And why did Linda my
mom leave him and watched his absolute fear when she
would walk into the room. He eventually forgot who my
brother and I were, as well as well as our
spouses and kids, although I had to giggle a little
(42:28):
bit during the small amount of time when my husband
was the only one of us he knew because Capgrass
affects those closest to you and then works his way out,
so the husband wasn't around him as much, so at
one point he was the only person that he recognized. Wow,
and the White felt that was kind of funny. Now
the dementia and Alzheimer's have progressed to a point of
living in the past and not even remembering moment to moment,
(42:49):
let alone day to day, he still doesn't know why
his family has abandoned him, even though we're all around
him all the time. I know he lives a very
fear filled and lonely life amongst strangers. I liken it
to living in a nightmare every moment of the day,
and it sounds really sad. But she was fairly upbeat
in the email like that we corresponded with just so
(43:10):
like people are out there, aren't crying and stuff. Thanks
for doing the podcast. When I talk about how dad
is doing, it's tough to explain what he's going through.
And now I can just send people to the podcast
to learn more about it, which really helped. That's cool,
That is Jill Overturf in Republic, Missouri.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Well thanks a lot, Jill. We appreciate you sharing that.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
Yeah, and I you know, I hope things improve for
your father.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, for sure. If you have a story about something
we've talked about ever, we want to hear it, especially
if we've helped you explain that to other people. We
like that kind of thing. You can tweet to us
at sys Kate podcast. You can join us on Facebook
(43:52):
dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, and you can
send us an email to stuff podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Radio Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello, everybody, it's Josh and for this week's Select, I've
chosen our twenty thirteen episode on History's Greatest Traders. Turns
out history is rife with treacherous people, and if there's
any lesson to learn from this episode, it's be careful
who you cross, because once your name is associated with treachery,
it turns out that that stays pretty sticky. It's tough
to get rid of.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark. There's
Charles w Chuck Bryant. So, Chuck, Yeah, I have a
story for you.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
All right, let's hear it. Come back with me, wayback machine.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Sure, okay, A couple hours ago.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, so here we are. It's December twenty second, nineteen
seventy two. Oh yeah, something really bad is about to happen.
It sit down in front of this TV.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Our good friend and hero, Peter Brady is trying out
for the school play. Yeah, it's a story of the
American Revolution. I remember that he tries out for George Washington,
but he doesn't get it. And in fact, the name
of this episode that we're sitting here watching on this
nice brown and orange shag carpeting is called Everybody Can't
Be George Washington. Peter doesn't get the part of George Washington,
(01:37):
but he does get another very important part, the part
of Benedict Arnold. Well, at first he's like, hey, it's
a part, it's a speaking part. I'm pretty happy. I'm
going to do my best.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I was a tree in my last six plays, right,
This is.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
A huge step up for him, until his classmates point
out that Benedict Donald was a trader, and since Peter's
playing a trader, he must be some sort of trader too.
So basically the whole school turns on him because he's
playing Benedict.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Donald, which is really kind of silly.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
It is very silly. And of course Peter tries to
get out of the play again and again, yeah, affecting laryngitis,
pretending he has a limp all of this stuff, saying
he forgets his lines.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, I think I remember that.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And finally successful, and then his dad points out that
he has turned into a trader. Now Peter against the
whole cast.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Don't tell me. He had a lesson for him, and
he sat him down and had a talking to.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
It was a good one. Yeah, it was a good one.
And so Peter goes in and plays Benedict Donald and
knocks it out of.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
The park and learned a lesson in the process.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
But the whole premise of this episode of Brady Bunch
is that Peter was suffering from a smear campaign started
two hundred years before by George Washington, and it was
so successful that even today, you can get a rise
out of some by calling them Benedict Donald if they've
done something traitorous.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, and we've learned there are quite a few synonyms
with trader that were in fact notorious traders, Like if
you call someone a Judas or a Benedict Donald or
what quisling? Yeah, that might be popular in some parts
of the world.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Right, this is the USA. Sure, so we call people
Benedict Donald's.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Well, let's talk about this. Let's talk about Benedict Donald
to start.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Okay, Well, you know, first of all, we should point
out that this is a curated show from our buddy
Sam t Garden.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
This is the Summer of Sam.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Then, yeah, we're continuing into our second Summer of Sam.
And for those of you that don't know. Sam is
a local fan of ours and a good kid, and
he's actually on our TV show.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
He was in an episode, the Make It Rain episode.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, is one of our softball teammates. And Sam's a
good guy and he sends in great ideas, so we
like to highlight them when we do them.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, all right, so summer Sam, Hey, Sam, hope you're
doing well. Buddy. Were talking about bened mac donald and
why there was such a smear campaign against him, and
it turns out rightfully so, although possibly I think a
lot of Arnold's side of the story has been lost
to history.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Well. Yeah, and coincidentally or not coincidentally, some of these
traders that we're going to mention today, history is born
out that they may not have been traders. Yeah, but
been an Donald definitely was.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
So he was a document and trader. Yeah, as traitorous
and treasonous as you can get, as far as in
the context of war.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah. So early on in life things started out pretty well.
He was born into some wealth, but his family, specifically
his father, squandered their fortune with some bad business dealings.
Apparently he was quite a drinker.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Oh, you turned into the town drunk.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah, well that'll do it.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
They lost their family estate.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Yeah, they lost their dough. Three of his sisters are sorry,
siblings died from yellow fever. He had to drop out
of school.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
He became an apothecary.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, so things weren't like Rosie for the guy, although
he did quite well later on in the military.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Well, he did quite well even before that as a merchant.
And actually, by the age of twenty two, was able
to buy back his family's estate. Oh really, which he
then turned around and sold it a profit.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Well, good for him.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
So I guess he wasn't the sentimental type flipped this estate. Yeah.
I think it wasn't that he wanted his family's to
state back. He just didn't want to lose out on
the potential profit from it, I guess.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah. And he seemed like he may have been like
add before there was add.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Yeah, from the sounds of reading his thing, I was
just like, man, this kid had add. He was always
in trouble. He's getting kicked out of school. Yeah, but
it was just because he was like busy.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
He wasn't like a bad kid, it seemed like, but
he was just always had something going on.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
He finally, I guess found his niche and he did
become quite a businessman and fabulously wealthy, but he wasn't
wealthy enough in his opinion, and in fact joined the
Sons of Liberty, the revolutionary group in New England, because
he was mad that his riches were being taxed by England.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, he liked the dough, he did, and he did
have a pretty remarkable military career in Jefferson and Washington
were big supporters of him for a while.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, but he also suffered. Apparently there are a lot
of petty jealousies that they don't talk about among the
founding fathers and the second and third echelons of all
these guys, and apparently Benedict Donald frequently suffered.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yes, he was slighted a lot, a lot.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, he missed out on honors and stuff like that.
And he doesn't seem like the type to let things go,
nor was he the type to air his his feelings,
so he just kind of sat there and stewed, right.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, I saw most of the times he was slighted.
He fought really hard to get either reassigned or reappointed
to the position he was going for. And so you're right,
he couldn't let it go. He needed therapy. But instead
he was appointed to run West Point, not the military academy,
the four right, Yeah, this is pre I guess they
probably named it after that though, didn't they.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I think it turned into the military Academy. Okay, but
I think this was before it was an academy.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, it was definitely. Yeah, and so he, you know,
went Benedict Arnald on everyone, and little did he know
he was being a Benedict Arnald. But he sold secrets
to the British, like plans, war secrets, armament locations for
about three million bucks. I think it was ten thousand
pounds at the time.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, so he he The reason he did this, ostensibly
was a because he'd been slighted.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
But also, and this is what it's been lost to history,
is that he he came to believe that the revolution
had lost steam, that the people running the show didn't
really know what they were doing and probably wouldn't form
a very good post revolutionary government if successful.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
So did he genuinely think the Brits were going to
do a better job.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Supposedly that's what historians say, but again he didn't really.
He may have been the type to just kind of
say that's what he was right thinking too, and then
somebody wrote down at some point, but he ultimately said this,
the colonies are better back in the hands of England again.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
So not only am I going to try to sell
the map to West Point, I'm going to join the
British Army, which he did, Yeah, and led at least
two raids against American revolutionary forces. So he really switched sides.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Oh yeah, yeah in seventeen eighty. I can't believe whoever
wrote this article put that. When the plot was intercepted,
he went from he wrote a zero.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I was all of a sudden, I was in like
in the US magazine Ers or.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Like a Springer show.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Yeah, that's weird, but that's what happened. He was convicted
of treason and his name was erased from the record books,
and England promised him. They're like, hey, if you defect
over here, we're going to give you land in Canada. Yeah,
we're not going to give you land here. We'll give
you land in Canada some money, and we'll promise your
family pensions and you're going to be a British provincial
(09:09):
brigadier general, and he's like, that sounds pretty great. But
as it turned out, he didn't get that many great
assignments in the military. In England, he was even sort
of I don't think anyone likes a trader. No, that's England.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
They're like, yeah, yeah, that comes up again and again,
like yeah, even the side that you're trying to or whatever.
They yeah, they're like, you're a trader.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Well, I think it's because basically you're just a big liar.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah, and you're treacherous.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yeah, and so people are like, how can I go
to trust you? Thanks for doing that, but can you
go live in Canada?
Speaker 1 (09:42):
But it does pop up again and again. Anybody who's
ever turned trader and expected some sort of glory has
been sorely disappointed.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah. So in England he was sort of poo pooed.
Then he moved to Canada they didn't like him. Yeah,
and then he moved back to England and died there
without ever like making a whole lot of money or
getting any important military action. Right, So sort of a
sad ending.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It really is. And today if you go to West Point,
there's I guess twelve plaques of some of like the
head revolutionary generals, and his name is literally wiped from
the record. It has the year of his birth and
I think the town of his birth. Well, his name
is not on the plaque any longer, just says is
(10:26):
this smeared or there's a sharpie through it?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Right? All right, So that's been an arnold.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Let's go a little further back. Okay, let's go way back.
I'm talking like maybe forty four BC.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Cassius and Brutus. Yeah, Marcus Junius Brutus the younger.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I'm glad. Do you look that up?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, I'm sure he had a fuller name.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah, Brutus. It's like it's like a whole country of
share or something.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
And here's the thing with these guys. They were definitely
traders as well, but they're also singled out clearly. They
killed Caesar we all know in the IDEs of March,
which is Caesar the Senator and dfl dictator for life,
which self declared. But they are like sixty dudes that
took part in this.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, and Caesar was self declared Caesar for a civil
war one informed a triumvirate with the people that he vanquished. Yeah,
so he wasn't entirely dictatorial, although as like popular opinion
started to swell around him, He's like, maybe I will
just be leader for life. Let's save all those voting
(11:44):
days and I'll just be leader for the rest of
the time. I'm alive. And Cassius and Brutus had both
fought against Caesar in the civil war yea. And despite that,
Caesar pardoned both of them and gave them positions of
power in his new government.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And brand new knives.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
And they said, and they said, still not enough. Well,
Cassius especially apparently he was very envious of Caesar and
his power. He was the rebel rouser, and that that
was ultimately his motive, although he used the concept of
the Republic of Rome turning into a dictatorship to lead
the assassination against Caesar.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, and even cooked up evidence and like letters of
support to show Brutus, because Brutus was much friendlier with Caesar.
There were buds, but he was swayed by Cassius and said,
you know what, this is going to be good for
our country or our kingdom or whatever they were calling
at the time, and took part. But they weren't like that.
(12:45):
The lead I mean, maybe they cooked it up, but
they weren't the initial aggressors.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
I thought Brutus was the first one to stab Caesar.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
No, this dude, Tillius Simber came out and like pulled
down his tunic first of all, did he really? Yeah,
I guess he said pulled it down, But I don't
know what that means. If he I imagined he was
pulling it hockey either pants him or no. Tunic's like
a shirt thing, so I thought he pulled it over
his head like a hockey player might in a fight.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
It's like reverse pants.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
It reverse pants him, And Caesar was like, you know,
what is this violence going on? And then another dude, Kaska,
he came at him with a knife, and Caesar blocked
him away and defended himself and was like, basically, what's
going on here? And then that's when everyone, like sixty
guys descended upon him. Wow, among you know, Brutus might
(13:38):
have been the lead of that pack.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Though, yeah, okay, okay, Well.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
He stabbed the crap out of him, So I knew.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I thought Brutus was the first one to stab him.
I knew that some other guy was the first one
to strike him, and it may have been the guy
who reverse pants to him till he yeah, you, me
and I were at Pompei who actually walked around Pompeii
And there's a table there and it belonged to that guy.
Oh really, And I guess somebody in Pompeii like bought
the table of the first guy to strike Caesar and
(14:04):
like had it in their via and it's still there today.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
And did you eat at it?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
No, we stared at it. Oh okay, we looked at
it from like three meters away.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Oh gotcha.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
You have to say meters because in Italy that's obnoxious.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
And apparently only one of the stabs. He was stabbed
twenty three times, and like continued to be stabbed even
after he was on the floor dead, but only one
of them was a fatal blow. He was a like
the second stab I think went through his heart, and
the rest were just you know, but before they felt injury.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
When Brutus stabbed him, yeah, Caesar very famously said a
two brute yeah, which literally means and you brutus or
what the hell brutus?
Speaker 3 (14:47):
Yeah, you too, And supposedly he kind of gave up
at that point, like it killed a spirit when he
saw Brutus was involved. Yeah, but I don't. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Supposedly he didn't want to live in a brutistless world,
in a world where even Brutus could assassinate him, so
he resigned himself to dying and hence became a hero.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
It's very sad. It was on my birthday?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Your birth is it the fifteenth? Fifteenth too? But not
of March?
Speaker 3 (15:16):
That's right? Uh so? Oh? Also too, apparently that was
the first autopsy report. Oh really, first post mortem death
report was made on Caesar Greeks man.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
If that's true, I've heard the Romans. Whoops. Whatever, I'm
really glad I caught that one.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, to lead to their email. Anything else I want
on these two traders?
Speaker 1 (15:44):
No? Oh yes, Dante had a special hatred for Brutus
and Cassius, and in his Inferno he says that they
are being perpetually eaten by two of Lucifer's three mouths.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And the third mouth is reserved for the next guy.
We'll talk about, a little guy named Judas as Carrie.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Oh really, yeah, Satan's third mouth.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
So Lucifer's three mouths are eating Cassius, Brutus and Judas.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Wow. All right. Judas is one of these that recent
evidence has emerged where he may not have been such
a trader, but we'll get into that. But then that
was refuted as well. Everyone obviously knows the Judas kiss
very famously. Judas betrayed Jesus. He was one of the disciples.
(16:37):
He betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Yeah, and it was
actually a signal to the guards to come and grab him.
I guess he was identifying him.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, apparently the Romans didn't know who this Jesus was, Yeah,
at least by sight. And Judas went and said, hey,
you guys want this Jesus, what do you give me?
And the signal was like, well, you kissed the guy
that's Jesus, and we'll come get him.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
And we'll give you thirty pieces of silver.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Thirty pieces of silver. I mean, the west Egg inflation
calculator doesn't go back to you know that date, but
I can imagine it's still probably wasn't that much thirty
pieces of silver.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Well, apparently it was used later on to buy a
field to turn into a potter's field to bury unclaimed
dead Oh really, but I mean it's field, how much.
It couldn't have been that.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Much, Like how much was land going for back then
in the Middle East?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
They had tons of land.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Okay, So Judas betrays Jesus. He was we didn't know
much about his life at the time, but recently there
has been I think in two thousand one of the Gospel,
a new gospel was revealed, the Gospel of Judas.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, colon my story.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
My side of things.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
And it was a of course, a papyrus document dating
to the second century a d. And it was written
about in a book called the Lost Gospel, and it
portrays this Judas as more of a facilitator of what
Jesus wanted. Basically, Jesus is like, hey, turn me in
because this is my destiny. Yeah, Like sacrifice yourself. I
(18:18):
sacrifice myself and we all go on to live in
heaven and you know, fulfill our destinies.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, which a lot of people are like, Okay, I
kind of like this different view of Judas, you know,
and it makes Jesus even more prescient than he appears
in the Bible, sure, because you know, he's betrayed by
someone he thought was his friend, and this he is
commanding Judas he's asking him to do this. So it's
(18:44):
just an all around like great view of the story
when when, But unfortunately, apparently there's some problems that a
lot of scholars, Gnostic scholars have with the translation, and
that if you just tweak a few things to the
way that the Gnostic scholars think it should be translated, yeah,
that all just goes right out the window. And actually
(19:06):
Judas is not only a horrible treacherous traitor, he's actually
a demon from the thirteenth level of being.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yeah, so quite two different stories. Yeah, all by changing
a few words in this Coptic text, which isn't the
easiest stuff to translate. Like it's tough, you know, it's
not like and even the person that poo pooed the
original translation was like, this is a very hard job.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
You know.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
I'm not saying they necessarily did it on purpose, but
that's not what I think it says, right, And so,
and that was April Deconic, a professor of Biblical studies
at Rice University. And I don't know did other people
come out and support that. I can really find much.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
And apparently actually in the Bible it's hinted at that
Jesus could have known about it, but.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Well doesn't he say like one of you will betray me?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
At least? Yeah, he definitely said that.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
The Last Temptation of Christ. Yeah, who Harvey kai Tell
does a pretty good Jesus or Judas.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Yeah, yeah, you know will in Dafoe.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah that was that was a good movie. But yeah,
that was how I when I like anything I'd ever heard,
I always thought like Jesus knew it was just never
as explicit as this Gospel of Judas put it.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Right and then Gospel of Judas. I even claim that
Jesus even asked Judas like, hey, will you do this
for me? Do me as solid? So kiss me, put
one right here, right.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
So Judas realizes what he's done, feels horribly guilty, tries
to give the silver back. The high priests that he's
sold Jesus out to won't take the money, and so
he throws it on the temple floor. They end up
figuring out that it can be used for a potter's feel,
and they use that thirty pieces of over for that,
(20:53):
and then Judas goes off and hangs himself.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, and I don't think we said Jesus was crucified.
I thought that went without saying. Yeah, but in case
there's like one person out there was like, what.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Happened to Jesus? All right, whatever, it became a Jesus,
That's what happened. And then Judas supposedly fell headlong and
his body opened up. And there, if you go back
and read some scholarly translations, they think that his body
opened up means that he was left his body was
(21:23):
left hanging for a while out in the heat, and
when it finally fell, like a branch broke or whatever,
and it fell, it kind of ruptured.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Across where'd you find that out I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Somewhere online?
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah it was. Yeah. They were talking about how he
went headlong. He became headlong, and they were saying, like,
if you just switch out like a couple of letters,
headlong becomes swollen, and then that would explain why his
body opened up.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
And now Judas and Judas kiss are both part of
the lexicon. And you know, in terms of betrayals, yeah,
you know, treacherous treacher So I know, thanks Sam.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
How about Chuck, I know you've seen this movie.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I love this movie.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Uh, the assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Coward
Robert Ford.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, we've talked about it. This is a good movie,
very good movie, written and directed by h Andrew Dominic
and uh has Paul Schneider and my buddy, Paul Schneider.
Schneid's right, he listens, Oh, hey, was he he's in it? Yeah,
he's he's one of the gang. And he's a great actor.
(22:55):
He's We've since become like email pals. That's so.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Uh. That was an excellent movie. I'm sure Schneider did
fantastic in it.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
He did great Schneid's Schneid's.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
And it seems to me I don't know a lot
about the whole saga of Jesse James, especially his demise,
but it seemed to be pretty true to everything I've
ever heard about it.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah. I think the movie was pretty accurate. Yeah, and
it was great, like gorgeous to look at, beautifully filmed. Yeah,
and not just because Brad Pitt was in it, but
Casey Fleck as Robert Ford was amazing.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
He really so. Anyway, if you haven't seen that movie,
go out and see it. In the meantime, we'll spoil
it for you.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I think he was nominated for an Academy.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Well, I can't imagine how he wasn't. Yeah, he was
so creepy.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
So what's the deal with Jesse James.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Well, Jesse James was a member of the James Ganga,
the leader, a full partner. Well, I think he and
his brother Frank were kind of co leaders really, that's
the impression I have, Like Frank stallone. Yeah, and they
were very successful at robbing trains, robbing people, robbing banks,
robbing everything, and they became outlaw folk heroes everybody loved
(24:05):
to hate, but he also still loved.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Well, they didn't kill people.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
No, not until the second to last robbery by Jesse James.
They botched it and a couple of people died. Most
of the James gang was caught, and Jesse and Frank
went off and assembled a new gang that included Robert Ford.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Yeah, he was pretty new. He had long tried to
get in the James Gang and was sort of shunned
as a weirdo, a little weird and like not the
most skilled robber and gunman, and it wasn't taken very seriously,
which always bothered him.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Right, So Jesse James pulls off one last train robbery
in eighteen seventy and decides to retire. Frank James retires
and Robert Ford kind of tangs along with Jesse James
the rest of his life, and the Governor of Missouri
put a bounty on Jesse James head of I believe
ten thousand dollars, which is pretty substantial for eighteen seventy. Sure,
(25:05):
And in eighteen eighty two Robert Ford took the Governor
of Missouri up on this. I apparently met with him, Yeah,
and not only said I'm gonna do this. I want
this reward. I'm gonna split it with my brother here. Yeah,
but I also want to be I want immunity from
my crimes.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yeah. Well he was supposedly just supposed to capture him.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Oh okay, and.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Did the shooting on his own volition.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
And there's a wood cutting in this article of Jesse
James dropping a feather duster just like he does in
the movie.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Oh yeah. He stands on a chair in his own
home to dust a picture and Robert Ford shoots him
in the back of the head. Yeah, and kills him
just right there, very like low key and anticlimactic.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
With his wife home and everything. Yeah, And then they leave,
and so Robert Ford kind of like I think Benedict Darnold,
expected to be concerd something of a hero. Yeah, and
he was considered a coward a zero. Yeah, yeah, he was.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Actually, he and his brother were both indicted, found guilty,
sentenced to hang, and pardoned in a single day.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Oh that's a heck of a day.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah, pretty like emotional rollercoaster going on there.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And they became an ostracized socially. Robert Ford just became
the butt of many jokes. And then finally one day
he was confronted by a man who sought him out
because he wanted to kill Robert Ford for to gain
his own acclaim.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah, Edward O'Kelly brought a shotgun into it. He was
a bar owner I think at the time Robert Ford was.
And after by the way, they toured in a touring production.
Oh yeah, like recreating the murders.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, Sam Rockwell.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Yeah. And so Edward O'Kelly goes in the bar with
a shotgun, says hello, Bob, He turns around, shoots him
in the throat, and he gets a sentence commuted after
a petition and his pardoned killing Robert Ford.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah, back then, the prairie job mob rule definitely had
like a ground hold.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I don't know what that is, but I think I
got my point across.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Yeah, they were like, he was a coward and you
shot him, so that makes you a good guy.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
So that's Robert Fort. You got anything else? Nope? Should
we move on to Mada Hati?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, I knew next to nothing about Mada Hai.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Yeah. Same here.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
She turned out to be a pretty fascinating woman.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Possibly not a trader at all. Yeah, actually, probably not
a trader at all. Yeah, let's let's talk about her.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Well, she was a very sexual being. She was very
close to her father apparently, who doted on her, and
she has been described as sex as being her driving force.
And she was said to have an insatiable longing for
male attention her entire life and for the time period
early nineteen hundreds, she really really slept around.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, and she didn't just like you the sex with
the men. She liked them to buy her stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Oh yeah, well she used it as a means for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
She blew through a lot of guy's money, right, Yeah,
and just loved to live lavishly, racked up tons of
debt and became something of a toast among Parisian society,
European society.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Actually, yeah, she was Dutch, we should point out.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, her real name was Margareta Zelli.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Yeah, but she looked like Indian and she tried to
remake herself as this Indian exotic Indian dancer.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I read Indonesian. Oh, Indonesian, Yeah, because Mata Hari is
Malaysian for eye of the dawn, which means sunrise. Gotcha,
So her name was Sunrise, the stripping dancer.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Well, and she she didn't just dance like this was
at a time when the mulan ruge was like they
were like pulling their skirts up a little bit and
and some ankle and some nickers, and she was like
taking it to you another.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Level, apparently on stage in people's living.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Rooms, private dances, like traveling dancing, like really erotic and
exotic stuff for the time.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
So from what I understand, she was also a sometime
prostitute when things were really bad and sure and then
she but ultimately she just kind of went through a
succession of lovers around Europe, and at one point she
found herself in I guess in Amsterdam and was approached
(29:38):
by a German officer and said, hey, we want you
to spy for us. Here's twenty thousand francs and some
invisible ink, and you're now a German spy, right, And
she's like, whatever, mine air, right, Thanks for the money, sucker,
and threw away the invisible ink supposedly, and never spied
for Germany. But she still had a code name H
(29:59):
twenty one, and as far as Germany was concerned, she
was a spy for them, even though she didn't take
it seriously. Apparently never carried out any spying activities. So
she had a reputation as a German.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Spy, yeah, without actually spying yet. And she was, as
this one writer puts it, she was traveling alone. She
was wealthy, she was an excellent linguist, and very foreign
and very educated and admitted to having lovers and like
all of this stuff for the time just meant we
don't trust you, even if we don't have evidence. This
(30:32):
makes you untrustworthy, right, So at some point the French
decided that they were going to recruit her to become
a French spy. This is Durman World War One, Yeah,
even though they already suspected she was a German spy.
She was sent around to try to get to I
don't remember what country they were trying to get her into, Vittel,
(30:55):
oh try together.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
She went to Russia. Yeah, she ended up going there
for a little while in exchange for becoming a French spy,
agreeing to spy for the French exactly. She ended up
in Spain and came across this German officer and apparently
he suspected her of being a spy. So when she
started asking him questions, he gave her old information.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Yeah. Well they went to bed together as well. Sure
we should mention this thing is just rife with sex.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Right, and he gave her some old information. This the
frenchman who the French intelligence officer who recruited her as
a spy but still suspected her as a German spy. Yeah,
finally said you know what, I think that what you
were really doing was giving French secrets to the German.
You're a double agent and we're going to arrest you.
And she was arrested in France again no evidence, no
(31:42):
evidence whatsoever, and tried for treason and convicted.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Yeah, and basically Thunder knows that the whole experience and
was like, I'm going to hold my head high, I'm
going to blow you a kiss right before you shoot me.
And the firing squad.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Well, supposedly it wasn't the firing squad. It was two
nuns that she became friends with and her lawyer who
also she had slept with. That's who she blew kisses to,
but she refused to blind Ok, that's what it's in
this article I saw elsewhere is like to the nuns.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
She also slept with her headmaster when she was sixteen.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yeah, it got kicked out of school for it. Yeah,
So she refuses a blindfold. In the end, she's all
dressed up and everything for her execution. She's standing ankle
deep in mud on a cold October day in nineteen seventeen. Yeah,
she refuses to be tied to the pole behind her.
She refuses a blindfold and is executed by firing squad.
(32:36):
So the weird thing is is about thirty years later,
one of the prosecutors in France admitted, quote they didn't
have sorry, here's the quote. There was quote not enough
evidence to flog a cat. Yeah, that she very very
likely did not ever spy for Germany. Yeah, made that
(32:57):
one half hearted attempt in France just buy for France
to make some money, and was executed and still didn't protest.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
I wonder if there's been a good movie on her,
surely there, I don't know if there's been a recent one.
She was tall too, she was like almost six feet tall.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Yes, she looks very long.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, look at her. It's hard to like sometimes it's
tough to look at pictures from back then and see
the attraction, you know. Yeah, it's just a different time period.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
I think it was the fact that she took off
her clothes.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
And was real sexy and tall, right, yeah, slept with everybody.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Selfish should know. So Matahari probably was not a trader,
and they really had a lot of trouble trying to
prove that another famous trader was actually a trader and
(34:09):
that woman was i' have a toguri.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was. In fact, I'm just going
to go ahead and say it, she was not a
spy and she was not a treson As trader because
it was proven so, and she was pardoned by Gerald Ford.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Right, so she was born. So I'm just going to
take her off the list. Okay, we'll finish the story though. Yeah,
it's a worthwhile story. Yeah, I have a to Guri.
She was born in America in Los Angeles and had
a degree in zoology from UCLA, And in nineteen forty one,
she traveled to Tokyo to take care of an ailing
aunt her family center over there. Yeah, despite the fact
(34:52):
that she didn't really speak Japanese, she hadn't been raised
in Japanese culture. Apparently, it was a lot of culture shock,
but she still went over to take care of her
aunt nonetheless, And while she was there, she got two jobs.
One she was typing for one new service, and she
got a second job as a typist for the one
of the radio stations.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Yeah, and they're like, Hey, you're American, Japanese American, and
you have a great voice, and you're perfect for this
new thing that we're going to do. Its American rock
and roll music, and we're going to play it for
the morale of the troops and.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Well to deteriorate the morale.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Well, but she they told her a different story at
first though.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Oh okay, they told her it was.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
To boost the morale. Really, yeah, Like, I don't think
she knew what she was getting into.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
That's crazy. Why would the Japanese boost the morale of
the American troops in the Pacific.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Well, it was later said that it did, in fact
boost the morale. They said Americans love the music and
thought the Tokyo Ro's banter was funny and it lifted
their spirits.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
That's funny.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Yeah, okay, So if they were really trying to do that,
it did a pretty poor job of it.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Okay. Nonetheless, she was reporting on things like ships being sunk.
Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, she called it. Well that's what she was. Eventually
the one thing that they penned on her.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Okay, Well, then that didn't actually happen.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Oh really yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
So well let's get back to the story. World War
two goes along, yeah, right, it ends, and she tries
to get back to America, and as she's doing that,
apparently the Japanese government identified her as Tokyo Rose.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Yeah, she was orphan. Anne was her radio name, and
Tokyo Rose was just sort of the name of the
operation as a whole and not a single person, even
though they tied her to that name.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Which led to some great confusion, apparently because they were
trying to get her as Tokyo Rose, even though she
called herself Orphan Anne, and there were like twelve women
including her that were all Tokyo Rose collectively.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Okay, So the Japanese government says that's Tokyo Rose, and
she said I'm orphan An. The American Intelligence Services of
the Army investated her and could find no evidence that
she committed any form of treason, and they were going
to let her in the country, back in their place
of birth because she traveled without a passport. Yeah, and
(37:12):
now she's trying to get back in she needed a passport.
Apparently a lot of veterans groups were like, you can't
let Tokyo Rose into the US.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Yeah. It was this one guy kind of started the
charge and was successful.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
The reporter had at Bundridge. Yeah, yeah, Well apparently he
got a couple of Japanese guys just to commit perjury
and present false evidence against Tokyo Rose.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Yeah. The two most damaging witnesses actually like just completely lied, right.
The FBI put him up to it, coached them, yeah,
and said you're going to get tried for treason if
you don't do this.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
So she ended up being tried and convicted for treason.
And sentenced to ten years, and she got out in
nineteen fifty six, and they tried to deport her, and
she successfully battled deportation and moved to Chicago. Yeah, died
in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
She worked at a retail store until two thousand.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
And six, her father's store.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Two thousand and six, she was working in a retail store. Yeah,
at ninety years old, and nobody even people didn't like
come in there to see Tokyo Rose, like she was
just a worker. Yeah, isn't that weird? It is like
such a prominent figure in history, It just a ringing
people up.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah, like you said, uh Ford Pardner.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
Yeah, Gerald Ford. Then he fell down.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
So let's talk about the quizzling just briefly.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Yeah. The quizzling is we mentioned earlier as another name.
If you live in perhaps Norway or maybe other parts
of Europe, you might be called a quizzling if you're
a trader because of Vidcan Quizzling.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah he was.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
He basically tried to seize power after buddying up with
Hitler in nineteen forty and said, you know what, I'm
gonna use this as an opportunity to make Norway my own.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, and he did so for a very very short time. Yeah,
he invited the Nazis to come invade Norway. They did.
He made a power grab and said I'm now the
ruler of Norway, and the Nazis let that slide for
about a week.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
They're like, sure, sure, ruler.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Then they installed their own guy as the head of
Norway and demoted Quizzling to president Minister President. Yeah, and
apparently he went to work sentencing Norwegian Jews to concentration camps.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Yeah. He really bad guy.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah. He was very much anti union. He was a fascist,
and he was trying to make Norway fastist and he
did so. He became the first person to ever announce
a coup de ta on television. That's how he made
his power grab. Oh really Yeah, I think it was television,
although it seems early so maybe it was radio, but
I guess he became the first one to announce it
(39:55):
over a broadcast.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Right.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
So, after the Nazis defeated, he was like.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Oh no, yeah, I have a feeling this is gonna
end up bad for me.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, And he was convicted of treason, sentenced to death,
and executed by firing squad.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
And you are a quizzler. I'm sorry, quizzling.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
If you collude.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, if you're a Norway and you're trader, you're a quizzling. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
It's like the Benedict Arnold of Norway. So chuck, you
got anything else?
Speaker 3 (40:24):
No, And as per usual, this is a top ten
that we do about six of and encourage people to
go read the rest, including Robert Hanson, who we've talked about.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Yeah, Ezra Pound as we talked about in the Insanity Defense.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Yeah, and the Cambridge five. Yeah, not the Seattle seven
or the Jackson five or the Jackson five.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
And did we skip another one? Was at it?
Speaker 1 (40:47):
I don't remember. Oh the intro, we didn't mention the
Cleveland Cavaliers iyre Lebron against Lebron, which I just think
that's weird. Well, I think then went berserk.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
That's sort of past. And there's rumors of him going
back to Cleveland anyway next no way, really maybe his
contract's up and they think that he might love nothing
more than to go back there and win a championship.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Huh. Well, we'll see, Yeah, we'll see what happens. If
you want to learn more about traders, you can type
that word into the search bar at house tofforks dot
com and it'll bring up this article. And since I
said search bar, it means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
This is Capgrass. Hey, guys, thanks so much for doing
the Capgrass syndrome episode. It was amazing timing came out
right around Father's Day and my father suffers from the syndrome.
It's been very painful to watch. No yeah wow. During
my marriage, we have never lived very close to my parents,
but just under three years ago we moved close enough
for day trips. About the same time, my dad had
(41:44):
a fairly significant stroke and it made the slow progress
of vascular dementia Alzheimer's that he also suffers from significantly worse.
He started visiting my dad on a weekly basis. I
would spend the day with him while my mom and
brother would get the Monday rush orders out. Apparently Dad
ran a mail order business. When I first started these visits,
Dad knew who I was. We talked and I shared
(42:07):
photos and stories of my kids. But within just six
months the cap Grass really took effect. We had to
work our way through who this strange lady was, who
lived there? Now my mom? And why did Linda my
mom leave him and watched his absolute fear when she
would walk into the room. He eventually forgot who my
brother and I were, as well as well as our
spouses and kids, although I had to giggle a little
(42:28):
bit during the small amount of time when my husband
was the only one of us he knew because Capgrass
affects those closest to you and then works his way out,
so the husband wasn't around him as much, so at
one point he was the only person that he recognized. Wow,
and the White felt that was kind of funny. Now
the dementia and Alzheimer's have progressed to a point of
living in the past and not even remembering moment to moment,
(42:49):
let alone day to day, he still doesn't know why
his family has abandoned him, even though we're all around
him all the time. I know he lives a very
fear filled and lonely life amongst strangers. I liken it
to living in a nightmare every moment of the day,
and it sounds really sad. But she was fairly upbeat
in the email like that we corresponded with just so
(43:10):
like people are out there, aren't crying and stuff. Thanks
for doing the podcast. When I talk about how dad
is doing, it's tough to explain what he's going through.
And now I can just send people to the podcast
to learn more about it, which really helped. That's cool,
That is Jill Overturf in Republic, Missouri.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Well thanks a lot, Jill. We appreciate you sharing that.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
Yeah, and I you know, I hope things improve for
your father.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Yeah, for sure. If you have a story about something
we've talked about ever, we want to hear it, especially
if we've helped you explain that to other people. We
like that kind of thing. You can tweet to us
at sys Kate podcast. You can join us on Facebook
(43:52):
dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, and you can
send us an email to stuff podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Radio Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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