May 29, 2024 • 65 mins
Welcome to the Dirty Lie podcast, where hosts Dez and TMT delve into the fascinating and bizarre history of King Zog of Albania. From his rise to power as the youngest Prime Minister to his declaration as the first and only king of Albania, this episode is a rollercoaster of political intrigue, blood feuds, and assassination attempts.
Discover how Zog survived over 50 attempts on his life, navigated international exile, and even crossed paths with Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. Learn about his alliances, his enemies, and the surreal life of his son, Leka, who found himself entangled in global escapades and plots to reclaim the Albanian throne.
Join us for an episode that blends historical facts with the wild, almost unbelievable tales of a king who lived through one of the most tumultuous periods in European history.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Dirty Lie podcast, a podcast about facts,
figures, and weird things from the past.
I'm your host, Dez, and I'm here with... My name is Tamee Taya. I am a PC guy.
I used my last $3,000 just to withdraw for fun.
My dad is a civil servant. He don't like evil people.
(00:21):
He said that they are evil and we must vote Sinubu. I joined a PC party when I am 10 years old.
Me, I must see my share. Me, I must see my share.
I joined a PC party when I am 10 years old. Local government is here.
Local government is here.
Jagabon is here for you.
(00:44):
Jagabon Hi, my name is CMT, what's up? You guys, do you know that the fact that
I know these lyrics It shows we're real friends over here Because I'm genuinely,
Jagabon is 62 62 or 52, I change every time,
No, I genuinely love this for us okay
(01:07):
so welcome to the dirty lab podcast we
are not pro apc or anti-apc or
pro pdp or anti-pdp or pro ob or
anti-ob we are hot nuisances
we're hot it's hot it's hot we're recording in a hot place and
we're hot people well some would say yeah
(01:27):
we can't put on the fan so you guys get good with some quality
that you deserve and today luckily for everybody involved including myself because
i'm genuinely exhausted talk about nigeria in any context today we're talking
about albania that's the home of albinos right.
(01:51):
Sorry i just i hit my brain it's so dumb,
i literally don't know what to say to you i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry we are talking about,
well a little bit is about albania but
what are we talking about albania we're talking about a guy called king zog okay
i only know two albanians dualipa okay
(02:14):
and action bronzer that's like impressive because
first albino is like three million people or
something it's smaller than the us and it's also an old like it's just a tiny
country in europe that i mean i think the interesting because they have people
(02:35):
that look like western europeans but they're like muslims.
Why is that funny i don't know okay but
i find albanian culture very interesting it's what
do you know about albania it seems like you might know more than i do i don't
know more than you do i mean i just i know stuff from context i know that like
(02:58):
the albanian mafia is huge i know that they in the i wouldn't say the middle
ages but i would say like um during the The time of King Constantine.
When Turkey was doing the madness and taking over... Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire, exactly. Albania was a very...
Big part of that and yeah they were a part
of the ottoman empire which is why they're this is why
(03:23):
they are blonde muslims everything i know well not everything but
i'll say 90 of the things i know about albania i learned in the last 10 days
i even bought a book for this episode but i mean it was partly for you guys
but it was also for me because i was like what i have a question okay do you
think albany new york is named after no i don't okay.
(03:44):
Are you just looking for every alb like next
you're gonna ask me about jessica alba she looks albanian
she does another blonde muslim
okay no let's let's behave
we're talking about a guy called king zog sounds
like a sci-fi evil creature like space
empire king name yes that sounds like an alien
(04:06):
yeah that sounds like the name you give a king coming
from outer space i think there's a power ranger villain.
Like 90s power ranger called king zorg
really yeah i think that's like a thing i mean like
i wouldn't be surprised if americans took like an actual
name of an albanian king and made
it yeah that makes sense actually so okay i'm
(04:28):
trying to now decide as i sit here the facts because i
learned too much about this man king zorg
this story is like game of thrones albania three facts
you have to figure out which one
is true and which one is a lie okay fact
one king zog survived 500 blood
(04:49):
feuds and over 52 attempts
on his life okay okay yeah
that is fact one yeah fact two
when he went into exile um
well you know what we'll do two goes into exile
world war two yeah world war two he's quite
recent okay yeah world war two goes into exile
(05:12):
and ends up in france but the
nazis get to france and ian fleming you know who ian fleming is right out of
007 yes is one rescues him and his family okay from the nazis and from france
and helps them yeah get to london yeah that's fact two and fact three when he was.
(05:32):
Causing too much trouble in england and london
because he wanted to go back and get his country um he
was a self-proclaimed king but he was originally their president
then makes himself a king right and wants
to go back and be king there and he's causing too much problem
in europe so he decides to go to
south africa because where do the races where do the people go in that area
(05:56):
and on his way to South Africa he stops in Gabon for a refueling trip and the
Albanian government had paid Gabonese for.
Security agents to capture him when he landed
in gabon and he escaped because he
stood in the airplane door with a bazooka i
(06:19):
told the pilot to fly
i got this keep pushing oh sexy okay so which one is true one bazooka pj doorway
ian fleming ian fleming rescuing king zog and his family from the Nazis in France.
(06:40):
And three, he used to... 500 blood feuds and 50 assassination attempts.
Yes. Well, okay, here's my thing. So he was originally their president, right?
And then he became himself a king. Or he was a king that became himself a president.
No. The other way around. The other way around. President, king.
Yes. And so I think with dirty lies, the first one.
Okay. Only because if you're going from president to king, if you're going from
(07:04):
president to king, they shouldn't have any blood feuds.
They shouldn't have any royal blood ties unless he did unless he
was a member of royal family that ascended then i think okay should i
stop you there and explain blood feuds first yes explain
me blood feud please like the hat fields and the macquarie's no
well no that's like a family feud so blood feuds in albania particularly in
(07:25):
northern albania is like a it's something called canoon i don't know if i'm
pronouncing properly but canoon but it's like a belief canoon is like a belief
system that they organize their lives around.
And blood feuds in Albania, essentially, if you do something to me,
depending on the crime i can take your life if
(07:46):
you do something to somebody else i can't take your
life also if your father kills somebody
in my family i can take your life so it is still practiced i watched some al
jazeera and cnn documentaries of kids who don't leave the house because they
(08:06):
apparently they respect the home as a place of peace oh but like if you step out yeah
come outside we just want to talk so this is
what blood feuds are yeah there's other things that
you can do that would cause you to have committed a
crime necessary enough to have
somebody say like as long as i live or my
(08:26):
children live or my children children's live we are going to
okay yeah and let me look at the other options you
have fleming and i know he was a naval officer in the war
a commander no he
wasn't he was naval intelligence he was naval intelligence and
he did do a lot of covert ops but
i'm pretty sure he was a pencil pusher which would make sense being a novel
(08:51):
writer yeah but he was also an aristocrat need you to answer have historically
been despised it's never you know commoners and everything.
And then the third one just feels real because.
Real life is stranger than fiction the bazooka one I feel like and also there's
(09:13):
just too much detail I feel like that's real so that's real Fleming vs. Blood Feud.
Choose one choose one choose one choose one blood field as
the dirty lie because i don't know it just feels like that's
too many it's too many okay so okay you're
wrong it's fine and you're always going to be wrong because the
(09:34):
bazooka story is fake you knew
i would want to believe that i know but it's true it
wasn't him no it was his good for
nothing son okay son
escaped with the yes and i we
will talk about his son but let's start
(09:54):
with the daddy first i think that's the most logical
thing to do here a little bit of background about zorg king zorg the first wow
i can't believe that name is real yeah so first his name he was born akhmed
mukhtar zogoli on On the 8th of October in 1895,
(10:15):
some people argue about what date was actually the truth date.
They're like two different days. I don't know. Three, four years apart.
For me, that's not extremely important.
And he didn't die till the 6th of April 1961.
He died an old man. He died in the 60s. I love when someone lives a nice full life.
Bro, he was leader of Albania from 1922 to 1939.
(10:38):
39 he was at 27 albania's
youngest prime minister now his
rise to glory is a
bit insane before he changes his name
from zogoli to zog at 15 he becomes governor
of 15 at 15 he becomes governor of
(10:59):
a region he was 15 15 year old governor yes because
he came from like an aristocratic autocratic type
family that used to like i guess govern a region
his dad dies around when he was 15 he takes
over from his dad he had an older brother but he was the one that they were
like that's the one that got it it has to be it has to be zog now he was very
(11:21):
young 15 his mom claimed to be descendant from this guy who's one of the founding
fathers of albania i can't remember his His name, couldn't pronounce it, didn't write it down.
But this guy gave their family some type of clout.
But again, they're not from like a huge region or a huge aristocratic family.
And Albania had never had a king.
(11:43):
As you said before, due to like the whole Ottoman Empire, then you had like the Turks, the Greeks.
Everyone was just coming, fighting over Albania. You know, then Balkans,
that Balkan region, a lot of intense conflict for centuries preceding this time. And Albania just...
Got like the brunt of everything like the worst of everything and
(12:05):
they were not like a significant power regional power
or anything so at the time he's
born albania is not even an independent state and
so when he's governor of mati this region called mati in
his teenage years this is when the ottoman empire is falling
apart and you now have young
turks and montenegro army come
(12:27):
into to this region and the serbian army and
he defeats them all by the time he's 17 17 yes okay yes so like and he's apparently
just brutal this is why he racks up blood feuds you can't disagree with him
he's just gonna kill you and then he's probably gonna kill the person he sent to kill you.
(12:48):
Yeah so he was racking up blood feuds from job as that's why because in my head
i was like Like, I know things didn't move that fast then.
It was a slower time. Now, I could believe that. But like, he started early. That's why.
He started very early. Yeah. So, when Albania's Declaration of Independence was signed, he was 17.
(13:10):
And as the governor of Mati, he was present at this conference in 1912.
Like that girl in Game of Thrones.
You know, when all the leaders of the North come and it's just like 10-year-old girl.
And she's like the toughest out of all of them. Basically. I saw someone call
this, like, Game of Thrones Albania, and I was like, okay.
I like it. Yeah, I know, I do like it because of all the blood views,
(13:33):
and also because he kind of little-fingered his way to the top. Bad sentence.
Bad, bad, but, I mean, you know, that was real.
He weaseled his way to the front. He weaseled, that would have been much better. I did go to school.
Yes. So World War I, he joins the Austro-Hungarian army, which,
(13:57):
if you remember, was like a very terrible army.
They were like bad at everything. Bad equipment, worse guns.
When you said terrible army, I first thought you meant like Buta.
Oh, no. They were just bad at it. They were just like incompetent. Yeah, yeah.
He got he got captured twice as a prisoner of war and he returned to nine to alabama albania 1919,
(14:21):
and the only reason he survived is because
these weren't his own people that were capturing him he was fighting with yeah
that captured him yeah i think like because i think one of one of the things
i was reading was like he was partly captured because he went to try and be
like yo I want to fight for our billion rights and they're like shut up so he comes back and.
(14:45):
I don't know how old is he at this point in time. He's not very old.
He's like 20-something.
He's in his early 20s, comes back, and he rises along the ranks.
He goes from governor to interior minister.
As interior minister, he's making some important decisions about where the capital will be.
Just, you know, getting to know the country as a whole.
(15:07):
At this time there were like some much more important or politically powerful
people vying for power as you can imagine in albania who wants they want to
be the first president and
they want to be sorry prime minister they want to
be they want to be prime minister there was no office of president at this point
in time and while they're vying he's just kind of like going like yeah he's
(15:29):
building his own base and he's just he hasn't put his head his neck forward
and then he kind of puts his neck forward as interim prime minister okay and they're like okay.
Let's calm like let's let him be there while we
do our thing it's a very strange position in
warring states because i feel like the interim minister
is it's a moderate position in times
(15:52):
of peace but in times of war it's only second
to ministry of defense so it's insane yeah it's so he becomes interim and then
this is when like there's a lot of chaos they dissolve parliament that he's
like oh i'm not going y'all can go this is like the at this point in time,
(16:12):
what did you do for wall street i'm not leaving i'm not leaving.
They are gonna have to carry me.
Now at this point in time like he has ops he's been killing this thing i'm saying
that he's going through the he's killing people too like and gaining power and
(16:34):
there are people who are trying to kill him there's blood feuds on his head
and they're also like assassination attempts,
now let me talk about one of the assassination attempts so 1924 this is when
he's like interim minister or whatever, June 1924.
He was in parliament, and he was shot twice in, like, close-issue range.
(16:57):
He didn't die. Like, parliament type shootings, right? Like,
we don't really like where it's at. No, so somebody snuck in.
Okay. So, okay, I should describe this better, because it's not,
like, another member of parliament.
Someone sneaks in to the parliament, the parliamentary building.
They're members of, like, an opposition party slash movement, right?
And they sneak into, actually it's very important because the opposition party
(17:21):
that he's a part of becomes important.
But so this guy sneaks in, shoots him twice, runs away, runs and hides in the
bathroom and is like shooting and singing freedom songs or whatever.
Okay. They capture him alive. Ugh.
And Zogu survives but has to give up his position at that point in time because
he's like fighting for his life. Right. Right.
(17:44):
And then they have a trial of this guy who shoots him. This is in 1924.
They have a trial of the guy who shoots him.
And then surprising the whole country. What's this guy found?
The guy's not found guilty. Yes. So everyone's like, oh. But they know he shot
(18:04):
him. They know he shot him. But they said, oh, this is not an assassination attempt.
It's a private matter or something like that. Oh, a blood feud.
No, but they're just like, oh. like oh everyone's like
yeah that would be their way of rationalizing yeah like this is what they did
right so they found him this is why they found him innocent so this is what
Zogu was thinking at this point he's changed his name from Zoguli to Zogu so
(18:25):
he sounds more Albanian or something apparently Zogu sounds more Albanian than
Zoguli so they find this guy,
not like guilty or whatever but then the head of the opposition party gets killed,
the party the guy belonged to so people feel like
oh zogu do this thing intentionally like he
(18:46):
tried to say oh it wasn't this guy so that when
he did kill his op we would be
like oh no like but everybody knew that it was yeah yeah the at the burial of
the opposition leader there is a rallying speech against zogu that is so intense
a civil war breaks out right then and there and he goes into exile wow from the funeral from the
(19:11):
funeral the civil war started breaking like civil war of sorts but like the
it breaks out from speech given at the funeral okay sure.
Well, how long do you think, so he's driven out.
How long do I think he's in exile for? Yes. I mean, he's young,
(19:33):
but he still has many more blood feuds to rack up. So I'm thinking like six months.
You're right. You're exactly right.
He came back like six months later with some white Russian and Yugoslav soldiers.
I said, what do you think this is?
I'm back. And I ain't going nowhere.
(19:55):
Which is crazy he came back this
was in june 1924 by january 1925 he was not only back and in control he said
fuck a parliament i'm president like he made a new office made himself president
so because i'm talking to you guys are we because i'm speaking english yeah,
(20:17):
i have an army now which is also just random
and apparently apparently like he came back with these like russian and yugoslav
army women guys dressed but they were dressing like albanian war costume i don't
know man imagine this one's for albania.
(20:39):
What do you feel about them changing at national actually let's never get distracted
because we'll sleep there but like yeah so he comes back and in january 1925
he becomes the first president of Albania.
Three years later, in September of 1928, I believe he becomes,
he declares himself their king.
(21:00):
Now, there's a very funny thing about this whole Albania king thing,
and first king of Albania, is that, like, after World War I and,
like, during that World War I era, you know how they used to just,
like, take, is it the Habsburgs? Is that the royal family?
Or is it the... Yeah, they were just trying to implant a king in Albania.
(21:20):
They brought one from Germany, and he was like, oh, okay. Before this pre-World War I.
Because basically, Albania was like a region with no like...
Like true... Yeah, so they were like, let's give them a king.
So they'll find like the second cousin of Queen Victoria from here and bring
him to Albania and let him be the king of Albania.
(21:40):
And they can just use that to divert... All the power ends up back in just Western Europe.
Yes, but the issue also then is that Albania was so poor.
Especially during that era that like
they were basically just relying on the
king's allowance from like the
main royal family or whatever but yeah
(22:02):
he so this idea of there being a king of albania has
some it was something that had been considered in the past to the point of them
even bringing non-albanian king some german yeah like it was tried like come
and be But Albania had never had a monarchy and a lot of Albania is poor and
rural and Muslim and decentralized.
(22:24):
So when there's a lot of historical context about how people responded to him
declaring himself president, because he also, as somebody who had served in
the military and gone abroad,
he was more Western than the average Albanian.
But there seemed to be a sense of I mean you can make yourself king and you
(22:44):
can do all the things you want as long as you keep it in your city.
Like it's like an idea of if somebody says oh I'm the king of Nigeria just keep
it in Lagos like okay yeah keep it in Lagos.
Don't go to yeah so they're like you can say what you want you can do what you
want to do we're not going to add our mouth to it because you're leaving us
to do whatever we want to do but yeah.
(23:07):
Again there's a lot of but there's also obviously a
consistent commitment by many
many people to kill him right so like
even when he becomes king he doesn't really leave his house he
doesn't like all the actually house palace his mom
he has like food tasters his mom is like in control
(23:28):
of his food and drink he's highly paranoid there are
numerous attempts on his life that recorded
dead wait so the first one i said was the the first
lie was what okay yeah the fact so i've still spoken so i'm talking
about the blood feud yeah he had blood feuds like he
broke off an engagement to this woman right before he declared himself king
so her dad declared a blood feud why did he break up oh he was meant to marry
(23:52):
her yeah he was meant to marry her he was engaged to her and he made some king
and was like no thank you and her dad declared it blood feud and i'm If a member
of her family sees you, it's on site.
So he had blood feuds like that. But he had blood feuds for killing people. Naturally.
Naturally. So there was one called the Matt Feud.
(24:14):
And it's like a rival clan in his home region of Matt.
And because when he was trying to consolidate power there, particularly when
he was younger, he killed a lot of locals and their families.
And because he was imposing state
authority over traditional like clan structures that was usually like shared
(24:35):
power they were like all just declaring blood feud on his head standard yeah
there's also one with the crazy brothers who were influential leaders and in
1933 one of the brothers sino You know,
Kraizu was assassinated under mysterious circumstances.
And people widely believed that it was orchestrated by Zog.
(24:58):
And so the whole family then took their own blood.
I feel like that was just a common theme at the time. Anytime something bad happened, we were, Zog.
It's Zog. But if his op dies and his ops are used to dying, you're like,
it's like deduction, right? Right.
Like if one more Boeing whistleblower just one more just commits suicide,
(25:26):
you're going to be like, sir, you're offing them.
OK, if one more Russian dissident falls off a balcony, it's always a balcony.
They don't die any other way.
Oh, you're bringing up poisoning? I know, I know. There is poisoning.
That being the two options.
But the balcony one is so like... How did the guy, the Wagner guy die again?
(25:47):
That one was shot out the sky.
Yeah. He was shot out the sky. It's kind of a balcony of sorts.
And when I was like, like Putin enjoys watching something just fall.
I think, honestly, he just likes killing people in the most creative ways and
then watching his PR team spin it. And he's like, let's see what they come up with for this.
(26:07):
Fair. I think there's something symbolic in literally watching your up more to their death.
Like you thought you rose high, but here you go.
I mean, they're being pushed really. Yeah, but you're also, but I'm saying like,
Pooja just seems like somebody that could watch home videos or someone just,
yeah, just watching them fall.
Like, okay, that was a good one. Clip your wings.
(26:29):
Yes. So he, this is who Zog was, right?
And this is why he had so many orbs. But okay, so let me fast forward.
Because i've basically given you the first part the second part i said was this ian fleming story,
this ian fleming story is when he goes into exile the second time why does he
go to exile the second time because when he came back obviously he has rented
(26:50):
all these mercenaries from yugoslav and russia he is consolidating power in
a very broke country like the country is broke yeah and he He basically,
in order to try and get money,
allies himself with Mussolini.
Jesus. Yeah, not the best. Not the best. And Albania becomes a client state of...
(27:13):
Italy so it becomes fascist it becomes not
just fascist like he goes from prime minister to
president to king's a fascist puppet in like
a decade less than a decade that's he lived all
the lives some people only get to
do one okay he lived
all the life so
(27:34):
yeah he's now a fascist puppet and albanian
becomes fascist but also you have to think this country
is mostly rural and are religious it's very
odd apparently the i i
couldn't fact check this because i i listened to
it but apparently there was so much money loaned
to albania and like owed by albania or something that.
(27:55):
They like moved their central bank to italy
yeah like the bigger branch do you
think during these days these guys were like man
these are the good times like in 2024
we wouldn't be able to get like what like
look around you guys breathing this air we can
(28:16):
get away with anything yeah so do
you know some people would have thrived so nigeria doesn't have
thrived in this health environment thrived oh
my god so yeah so they're basically
he's basically mussolini's yeah yeah
yeah he's his little puppet and albania is
(28:36):
cash trap and and then like italy you know Mussolini had this thing of trying
to like Italianize everywhere they were so like they tried to make I think it's
Italian compulsory to learn you had Italian members of their government of their
like hierarchies yeah yeah Ethiopia.
(28:57):
Yeah our own colonized country technically because they didn't really succeed
so yes so he's doing this in on the continent That's contrary.
On the continent, yes. Yeah, okay. So he's doing this in Albania and...
And like, I think at that point in time, also, Zog kind of needs to rely on
(29:19):
an outside power to maintain power inside.
Because again, like, he's so, like, people are trying to kill him every single day.
Actually, somebody calculated, I think it was on average three assassination attempts a day.
Three a day. In the years that he was in power. Is that on average?
Because he wasn't even there for that long. So it's actually on average three a day.
(29:42):
Trying to kill you for breakfast you
didn't get me lunch you didn't get me you're gonna try getting a dinner
damn bro can i live they said no 3d man
you need to work on yourself like the assassin is wrong i'm sorry
but the assassin is the wrong one like and
i also like he was he was
(30:02):
so paranoid and like also trying to get off so many times that
is he really paranoid it's not paranoid know to be honest like
you're right they are trying to kill you but he kept
that thing on him like he was always strapped so there's actually
a time where he went to vienna which was rare for him
and i think this is in 1931 he goes to vienna because he was dating two sisters
because he liked foreign brats also i'm not surprised that this type of guy
(30:27):
wants a babe from the more western side of europe so and he goes to watch a
show theater something with them You know,
a play of sorts with them and he gets got,
but they actually mistake his body double slash bodyguard for him.
So that one gets shot in the head three times before they can like really get a shot off of him.
(30:49):
He pulls out his revolver is apparently like.
He kills them no he doesn't kill them but he like chases them off he's like you can't catch me.
They shot my body double next to me i'll just pretend like yeah finally i hit
him too so i read i read one i read one was like zog shot back at the attackers
but he was a bad shot so he missed but he didn't die yeah he didn't die and
(31:15):
so he comes he's just this italian puppet but then what
does Mussolini do? He invades Albania.
Albanians thought they were okay, or Zog thought Albania was okay.
But I guess like Mussolini was like, hi, I think I'd like your country now, for real.
So one day, Italy just pulls up, invades Albania. Zog knew it was coming.
(31:38):
He knew it was coming. And we know he knew it was coming because he went to
the branch of the central bank or whatever, of the treasury of Albania that
was still in Albania. and took all the gold.
Saddam Hussein style. Which of the sons was it?
It wasn't Hussein. It wasn't Hussein Hussein. No. Was it Uday or Hussein?
(31:59):
I think it was Hussein. Which brother? One of them, sir.
But you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Empire is about to fall.
And so you go into the bank. You load it full of dollars.
I said dollars. I mean cash, gold and diamonds. Money.
Money. And you flee. This is when he flees. it
is now world war ii it's smack
(32:20):
in the middle of world war ii he didn't think italy would face albania
but they did one thing i will say because i've only really said
bad things about him one thing i will say
is no one of the best things about king
zog and albania in general from
what i read is that they were the least anti-semitic
europeans albania was the only place
(32:42):
on continental europe that had more jews after
world war ii than before wow because
albania was issuing visas to all the jewish people they were like come here
we'll take care of you and there's a concerted albanian resistance to protect
jewish people in every era because for albania i mean we're leaving albanian
(33:04):
history now to focus on zog but they have the zog era they have the Hoxha era,
the communist era, you know, they faced fascism, Nazi Germany to get in,
like communists to get in. They go through a lot.
But throughout that period, they were protecting Jewish people.
And this is a Muslim community.
(33:24):
It's a Muslim community and it's a Muslim country. So like, yeah,
so I would say that's a good thing about King Zog. Mm hmm.
His legacy in Albania, from what I've seen, is not...
The legacy of some of the people he killed is bigger than his.
Because they're seen as fathers of democracy and stuff like that.
He's just seen as this guy that was there.
(33:46):
However, there's some, obviously, people who are like, he's a hero.
He's definitely a complex figure. Definitely.
He's so bizarre. Okay, and yes, this Ian Fleming thing is true.
True according to like quite a few sources but however
true it is but yeah the sources say that he was
(34:06):
active yeah so oh fun fact so
like his son was born three four days before
the italians invaded same week sure
okay guy was not alive for long oh like i
was not alive for long before they went into exile he
lives for quite a while but he goes into exile as like an
infant infant found i mean they go into exile they go to
(34:27):
multiple places they do end up in france the story goes
quite a few sources go that when they're trying to escape from france
from from nazis one of the people who actually helped them was ian fleming who
as you said was an officer at the time they then go to london they're in the
ritz living in the ritz in london for a while because they also was unexpected
to stay with gold and diamonds and cash i mean it must be the ritz that's so crazy like imagine.
(34:57):
They're all over the place they go to different countries he dies
in his 60s like he lived many
I feel like he that era that's like 90s now
yeah but I also feel he peaked early like but
I think I actually think it's like not like I don't
think he peaked early I think he got out of the game early I mean they pushed
him yeah but you know he had enough money to really have a second run Albina
(35:20):
was purple Yeah And he took I guess I mean come on I don't think By the time
The whole Because you know He's a Muslim king He was also the only Muslim king of Europe,
But I think By the time,
yeah everything like settled down after world war ii they were like a pure communist.
(35:42):
Hard-lined country no they're not because
you have to know something crazy there's a story about
how albania goes into some type of
how basically communism falls in albania
yeah and it's basically because the cia is often involved in these things but
like no the cia went to go gonna play in albania and they failed multiple times
(36:06):
so they pretended it didn't happen and they didn't release it in freedom of
information act till like 2006 wow oh yeah we did that.
Kind of tried that i'm trying to remember because the name of
i tried to find the freedom
of information act like files but i couldn't find it but it was just like really
dumb operations like Like they went and took a bunch of Albanians in exile to
(36:32):
train them to go into Albania and take over the government from Hoxha.
Classic CIA stuff. Yeah. But like he was like, how did you think that was going to work?
And also there was like a CIA idea of like Albania is just not that important to Russia.
And Hoxha was very Stalinist. So after Stalin died, he was like not even pro-Russia anymore.
(36:55):
More he felt like he was the only true communist
left so like he was anti this
new russia and he was because he was this staunch yeah who came after stalin
he was very pro-stalin so albania became very isolated like people describe
(37:15):
it as very north korea like albania becomes so after This is after Zoglu.
You have a dictator, Hoxha.
I feel like we've spoken about him before, but I think maybe not.
I might have just read about him and thought I've spoken about him on this podcast.
But Hoxha is a guy who built bonkers. He was obsessed with bonkers because... Every man needs a hobby.
(37:38):
Apparently, they built more bonkers than housing. I think Albania has the most
developed underground stuff after London or something. That's so cool.
No. No, like they have underground, like it's just bunkers. They have bunkers everywhere.
It's like a city underground. No, it's just, let me, let me check.
(37:58):
175,000 reinforced concrete bunkers were built across Albania,
lining seashores and lakes, mountain passes, borders, farmland, towns.
Great expense and effort because of the whole nuclear, fear of nuclear war.
The Albanians shall inherit the earth.
(38:20):
There is an average of... Did you just say the Albanians?
There's an average of 5.7 bunkers for every square meter in Albania.
Jesus, that's a lot. Yeah. Some...
One, the Atlantic says it's 875,000 bunkers, but some people put the number higher.
(38:41):
It's a large country as well. It's a small country as well. So like that many
bunkers does go a long way, doesn't it?
Yes. Huh. And also like he like forced, he was also very, so this is Hoxha.
His name is, let me reason, this is the reason I'm having trouble pronouncing it. It's H-O-X-H-A.
So I'm just pronouncing it Hoxha, but I'm not sure the pronunciation because I've only read.
(39:04):
And like everything i listen to talking about him
pronounces him a bit differently but like so this is the bad guy this is their
abacha oh i didn't say that this is their bad guy this is the leader in their
past that they're like oh that guy right so it was just the trump mischief maker yeah,
(39:25):
but hotcha is the one who puts the fear in the heart and the disdain and the
anger and And all that in the hearts of like Albanians.
And he was crazy. I need to talk
about Hoxha one day because he was like eccentric in really weird ways.
(39:45):
He was weird. I mean, bonkers outside.
He was bonkers. I'm joking. Oh, that was good. That's really good.
That's what makes you proud.
Anyways, okay, let's leave Hoxha and like Albanian history.
I do want to say one thing though. So Albania basically like fell apart in recently.
(40:06):
And like post-cold war falling apart and it
all happened because most of the country was involved
in ponzi schemes and they did not understand it was a ponzi scheme yeah it's
it's that probably needs its own episode but like imagine if everyone in nigeria
did mm and they just it burst at the same time and it burst at the same time
(40:29):
oh do you know i remember exactly where it was when MMM but.
Where were you I don't know if it was MMM or
the one after it but basically I was
in NYSE camp and everyone found out one
day like to the point where they were
looking at their phones and all getting messages about it at
the same time and soldiers were trying to rush them to
(40:51):
camp and nobody answered the soldiers and it
wasn't even defiance it was just like I really
can't do this right now like everyone just stayed in
looking at their phones and it was left people
were like three thousand on camp this was
like two five what do you
mean like two thousand five hundred people were involved yeah out of the three
(41:11):
thousand yeah like they were destroyed and the
soldier online were just like damn that's crazy that's
actually crazy no that's actually crazy i'm i
feel like being a victim of a ponzi scheme is it's
scary but also i would be scared to
be somewhere where everyone is a victim of a ponzi scheme
and you all find out around the same time yeah
(41:35):
and the everyone out on the streets of lagos also
there was apparently a brilliant idea i think
this was hot chaseros i think it was hot chaseros who made this decision to
he was because there were people on the
streets and then there's one region in the in the country where they kidnapped
a governor who like tried to go out to go talk to them and they were just like
snatched you are going to give us that money back so he told the like army or.
(42:01):
Police to open their military cache or whatever and they.
Bunch of guns they just took everything like albanians
who were now armed to the teeth like regular albanians
armed and broke armed and broken angry yeah and
recently cheated that's why you have an albanian mafia because that's that's
(42:21):
the era where everything pops off and you also have to know like this is also
the era this is like what 90s is the era where you have balkans where like is
it not used to be czechoslovakia but it's not czechoslovakia the fall of the
USSR yeah the fall of the USSR the Balkan wars,
just that whole region everyone was popping off and Albania was just there with
(42:41):
their bunkers okay let me quickly go over the last the last last fact the bazooka
bazooka should I do that?
I guess I can I think we have enough time it will be really quick should I leave Leka for another day?
What do you think? Leka Zogu the son of King Zog the first of Albania had is it with Lekon,
(43:05):
what's the Leka is Lekon without the N do you know like I was going to say something
weird wow pregnancy nothing okay.
Sounds rude. It feels rude. And it does, but do you know a Lekon that's balanced?
I don't know many Lekons thinking about it now. But the ones you know?
No. But I don't know many people that are balanced. That's also fair.
(43:28):
Like, I wouldn't describe myself as like particularly balanced. Yeah.
Maybe like two months, two weeks out of a month I might be balanced.
Yeah, I think you're well adjusted. But I don't think you're balanced.
Well adjusted to the lack of balance. Okay, so let's talk about Lake Zogu,
the king that never was a prince of an empire that didn't exist.
(43:52):
The possible weapons smuggler and the actual tyrant.
Just something about sons of powerful men who don't get to taste that power themselves.
So two days, I just checked my notes, two days after Leka was born,
Mussolini's army invaded Albania And him and his parents went into exile Leka
(44:16):
would not return to Albania Until he was middle aged A grown man We have like
grown kids But Do you have kids in the world?
Yeah I believe he had a son Called Leka Leka 2 Who he gave birth to in South Africa Because,
(44:37):
The reason I think an episode would have been good on Leka because
like i one time goes to rhodesia to
tell who's the white guy who's the last like colonial guy
in rhodesia before zimbabwe becomes zimbabwe like john smith or something ridiculous
yeah i can't remember but some white dude do you want to check it okay i see
(44:58):
why i wanted to do like a cliffhanger huh i see why i wanted to do a cliffhanger
into an episode about liquor Lekha.
Because he goes to go and I want to let you understand that most of the pictures
you see about Lekha who was nearly seven feet tall. What? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah should have gone to the nba was busy being prince
(45:18):
of nothing most of the clips you will see about leka
you'll see him dressed in like army
uniform but it's his rhodesian army uniform because after prancing about europe
and getting thrown out of every country he the rhodesians were like oh come
to me to us and he was like i will help you defeat the blacks if you help me
(45:40):
go back to albania and defeat this usurping government.
And this is the pro-jewish government anyway right well well no at this era
it's a communist government it's a communist government yeah that's neither
here but again this is just a government really and rodigia at that point of
time i need to find out who's the last last who who's this
(46:02):
white guy you have to ian smith what
did i say i said john smith yeah because like like the
name is smith and it's like such a common like like john
smith is like the most common yeah it's like ian smith oh finally he goes to
ian smith it's like i'll help you defeat the blacks and he manages to get thrown
(46:24):
out of rhodesia oh and then south africa was like hey you wanted to feed eat some blacks.
We have some blacks here for you. We have some blacks here.
It's here in South Africa. That's my South African accent.
It's good, right? It's terrible. Thank you. But it's better than Bonoboy's remix of this song.
(46:46):
No, this is why I was like, maybe we do it like an episode, but maybe not.
You guys let me know. Let me know if you want a full story about this guy.
Because he even. I think we need it like an episode.
I really want to hear it. He was in Egypt one time with the king.
You know, then they still had a king. He was in Egypt there.
Then he went to Spain because, you know, they had a king. Yeah. Still do.
Yeah. But like, you know, like, or like dictator. No, he was like friends with
(47:10):
the dictator in Spain. It was Spain that had a dictator, right?
It was Spain or Portugal.
I don't know. I feel like it was Portugal. I think they all did. yeah i
mean true europe i'm getting confused but the
point is he got thrown out of every single one of
these countries for being too tall for
being in new south wales discrimination is ruining the
(47:31):
planet also like he
also returns to ukraine he returns to
albania at some point in time i haven't spoken
about the galban incident but i will because i teased it in the beginning he
returns to ukraine ukraine albania at
one point in time and they have a referendum hawkshire
does this referendum on if they should bring back the
(47:53):
monarchy he loses he doesn't
believe he's lost so he goes
with a crowd of his supporters because there's some people who are like
oh you know what zogo's time was better than this time so let's
go back he goes with a crowd of his supporters
and he has like a grenade and a pistol and
he's like marching on parliament and some people die and they're
(48:15):
like okay you know what they kick him back out the country i think that's when he
goes to south africa it's between like gabon and south africa they kick him
out of sa as well they did not kick him out of sa and they have to throw himself
they advise him to withdraw i know i feel like i think you know what happens
with south africa is that blacks get power.
(48:37):
I think he goes back to Albania and then I haven't gotten to that end of his
life because everything in the beat like that just is so.
Chaotic yeah and also like there's some conspiracy theories that he was just
like an arms dealer because they're like also like how much gold did your dad
take that you're still living this life,
he was rich forever bro he was
jumping from country to country with pj and he also had
(49:00):
for some reason for some reason thai bodyguards like
from thailand all his bodyguards were thai why
what that's so random um don't knock
it to you tight sorry so yeah
that's leka the crown prince of albania but
i'll tell you what happened when he visited gabon in 1982 he was
(49:21):
living in exile at the time and he
was trying to gain international support for his
claim to the albanian throne right so he
was going from one country to another with a.
Contingent of armed supporters which included
former royal guards and loyalists now at
this point in time gabon was under the rule of president
(49:43):
omar bongo and the presence of an armed
group led by a foreign royal clement
created a tense situation so the
gabonese authorities were alarmed by the arrival of leca and
it's like ragdoll group of um like
european like what is like imagine
(50:04):
you're just in a country chilling and i'm
going to be fair to omar bongo which i don't have to be
but just look at what happened drc like last week
if a if a pj full of
rich posh white guys pull up with like
guns and bazookas i'm sorry i'm on
it and gold why do they why what's this
(50:24):
thing of let's go to africa and take over
the project why do they think it's so easy i get
why they thought it was easy why because it's the drc or
because they've done it before that's what happened.
Before yes but they failed
more times and they've succeeded oh yeah
that's probably what happened before the one two i don't
(50:46):
know it's crazy anyway i think i
can imagine it being easy because these guys are
european and they've seen how ephemeral a lot of like governments are during
this period in history and then in africa all these guys are like super new
to democracy you know but why did you think why do you think it'd be easy for
(51:09):
you to implant yourself like where where did that work very.
Easily for other people i'm sure there's like head
stories from cie guys or bars and just like stuff around but
like not like implanting yourself in overtly like over it's crazy it is and
it's also it's failed me way more times than it works what is it why it's muslim
if not this is a mark thatcher thing yeah all over again like this is that all
(51:35):
over again yeah so anyways is.
They disarm Lekha and his followers for a bit. And then they're just like,
you know what? Y'all need to get out of here.
Now, the incident was very precarious because Lekha felt like, not felt like, true.
As long as he was alive, there was a claim to this throne in Albania.
(51:58):
So he was an enemy of Hoxha.
And just like how they were trying to off his dad, they were trying to off him.
Theoretically. But not theoretically. Probably. likely this is the dictator
that knows that the only opposition that really exists to him is this like imagery
and idea of the good old days under the king and the king's son is right there
so let's bring him back for some people but yeah this is where the story about the bazooka,
(52:23):
then he was pushing holding bazooka outside the door of a pj like yeah oh my
god and there was just like oh how about we chill because that's that's a lot
you know does anyone know what a bazooka.
Yeah, it's like a missile launcher. Yes. Rocket launcher. Rocket launcher.
Literally like a Looney Tunes situation.
(52:45):
Yeah, like imagine if you could carry the nose of a tank over your shoulder and those fires.
That being said, as someone that was chasing him out of the country,
if I saw him do the bazooka plane thing, I'd be like, you know what?
Maybe we had him pegged wrong. Maybe he could have helped us. He has something.
Je ne sais quoi. Okay. So, yeah, that's Leka.
(53:07):
That's Leka Zog and his dad, Zog I. Emperor Zog.
King Zog. King of Albania. First and only king of Albania. Wow.
Yeah. Apparently, he smoked 200 cigarettes a day, which feels like... Ooh, Leka or his dad?
His dad. And he lived till 63? Yeah. Jesus. It's us.
That just seems like it would be hard to do. Yeah, that's almost impressive.
(53:31):
Say what? It's like, I'm about to be very bad at math. That's like, it's 200 days, 10 packs.
What? How is that physically possible?
You're paranoid. Everybody wants
to kill you. I guess you would be chain smoking like that every second.
You probably could not believe that I survived everything.
(53:52):
Everything probably woke up in the middle of
the night to smoke a pack yeah and then go back to
bed that's probably why his enemies couldn't kill him because his smoke
was just creating a fog he he's everywhere they're like which one is he oh my
god i like i think it's like one thing i will say is if if somebody woke up
today and gave you a motivational speech and it's like you're doing everything
(54:15):
you can do you're 30 you're young you're 25 you're young they're lying
they're lying okay they're liars
look at amit look at amit does he have
two heads true he was governor prime minister interim minister president king
x i lee all he had to do was be born in a country with basically no real governmental
(54:38):
structure and a very rich family sounds like does that sound like home to you.
You know I'm surprised I guess profit is just more appealing than anything I'm
surprised we haven't had like a bunch of random upstarts just pop up in there
just based on my dad has crazy bar and this government isn't really working
(54:59):
I can do something I can make something chic,
Do you feel me? I feel you, but I feel like one thing about Nigeria is...
It's too big and unwieldy. It's too unwieldy.
It's too unwieldy, but also there's... I had this interview recently.
I think it's my next interview for Untold.
And he... The person I was interviewing said, have you ever thought about the
(55:20):
fact that no matter how rich or successful somebody is in Nigeria,
if government wakes up today and says you are finished, you are finished. You are finished, yeah.
Maybe it will take two weeks to kill that good tale, if that's
and that's danguti if that's so
what no no that's some real shit
that's some real stuff that's some real stuff i do think there's a merit in
(55:42):
that or like a con a government that's pretty much not completely but pretty
much consolidated all its power you know what i mean like kind of like china
kind of like nigeria in a sense where when the government is like oh this This is what we're doing.
It will be done. Oh, I see what you're saying. It will be done.
But that's why the opposite is so annoying. Yes. Nigeria's problem has never been a lack of will.
(56:07):
There's nothing as a country that we can't set our minds to achieving and we can't achieve.
We're good like that. But in terms of, it's just, why would we do that?
Yeah. It just profits too many people for us to be dysfunctional.
I think, yeah, it definitely, like, dysfunction is so profitable.
I keep thinking about the people making money of, Lagos, Calabar, Heri.
(56:28):
I keep thinking about the fact that I'm broke.
And somebody... And I'm talking about this thing for free. And it pisses me off.
It pisses me off so badly. Imagine if...
And I know people love to do... I actually typically don't like doing this.
I think it's like the most...
I'm a broke man. This is my pastime activity. Imagine if you had a hundred billion
(56:51):
dollars to do anything with, right? Yeah. And...
In fact, we decided, okay, we're going to start an electricity company that
is going to provide 24-hour electricity at a quarter of the price because it's
alternative and sustainable energy, blah, blah, blah.
Everything sounds good. We invest and we get. The government will kill us.
(57:11):
They'll kill us. They'll kill us. I don't think they'll kill you.
You think they'll kill us?
I don't think they'll kill you. i think like i feel
like people actually give
our government i was saying an argument recently and
i was originally disagreeing and then and i was like no this other
person is right i don't think our government is corrupted in that way i think
(57:34):
they're just thieves they will just want 50 of that 100 billion they won't kill
you so basically i think that they're not high concept like they They don't
have machinations or stuff like that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Like, why would they kill you? They want the money, though.
So they want a cut of what you're making. Yes.
(57:55):
And the thing is, every single person will want their own cut.
That is what might kill your idea.
Every step. Every step, somebody wants a cut.
So it's not going to be $100 billion again. It's going to be $250.
That $100 billion we first had, we have not laid down one fiber optic cable,
one solar panel. and half that money is gone.
(58:15):
The person who's surveying will collect money. The state government will collect.
The federal government will collect. The ministry will collect.
The commission will collect. Local government chairman.
They'll come and tax you here. And one local government chairman will collect.
Maybe not just one local government. One guy will bring his boys and say,
I'm the banner of this street. He must pay here, this, this, and that.
Then you go. Then you have private. People forget this.
(58:38):
A lot of our bad guys are not in government. government
they are ceos they are wicked people
they had the owners of estates they will now come and they'll say oh if you
are going to build this here then i'll build this here and i have this friend
in this office in government and so he's going to block you here and this and
we're not corrupt we're thieves low level thievery a lot of things i see coming out is not this like.
(59:04):
Oh even the budget when i was going through the budget somebody said
to me if you want to see the real corruption i think
ministry of agriculture was able to build like balloon
their budget by a couple of billion and anybody knows that if
you have been in the legislator you know the ways
they pad right you know more than somebody who's coming from maybe an executive
(59:25):
arm of government or somebody who's new to government and anyways somebody just
said just look at the soil lights light up nigeria just look at where they're
putting and you'll see even Even Ministry of Creative Economy has solar light project for an LGE.
It's not, there's no solar, I can't say there's no solar lights now,
(59:46):
but there's no solar lights.
I went to the National Archives in the States this week and I was supposed to
do research for a project with my friend and.
I get there, and it's just this massive government quadrangle building, right?
Brutalist architecture, massive hole in the middle. And the hole in the middle
(01:00:07):
is just beautifully manicured lawn.
Inside every office is dusty. There's no light, no nothing.
It's just you can tell they haven't put money into this place in the last 30 years, really.
But then in the middle of the quadrangle i
see like some gorgeous solar panels brand
(01:00:30):
new and i just asked one of
the guys so it was this solar panel for
how come there's no lights but this thing looks new i know
it's working he's like yeah yeah yeah it's so that there's there's
light here at night and i was like can you
explain that to me he said and he just looked he literally he doesn't
miss a beat he says no i cannot and he
(01:00:52):
just walks away like he's thought
about it so he's asked questions and it's just yeah no
like it's that's the thing it's like when they do
think like somebody come and tell me you know send
me a picture of someone in house of reps who has put
a solar power powered boho with his
constituency or whatever and done this or whatever and i'm
(01:01:12):
just like i don't you know like i i there
are things that i feel like maybe they could kill you for but having a great
idea is not one of them they'll just try and steal like they would just they'll
cripple it basically yeah they just drain you like one of that's what frustrates
me about nigeria is that it's draining and also i feel like.
(01:01:35):
You know how people say, like, we don't want corruption to end.
We just want it to just not be the ones that's favoring us. Yeah.
That's how I feel. Everyone just wants it for their time, basically.
Yeah. Or everyone just wants that corner that works for you.
You talk to your friend who lives in an estate that some of the land has been
illegally acquired, right?
(01:01:56):
And you're like, okay, but the people who illegally signed it were in government.
Okay, but now let's say they want to do the proper thing with that piece of
land. And you don't want them to do it because you're in an estate that's nice and cozy.
You don't want to lose that thing. How did we get here?
How did we get here? But, and I understand this whole thing of you have to hold government.
Yes, go to Alausa and pick up that person that signed that paper and collected that money.
(01:02:20):
But also let go of that land because that is not supposed to be private land.
It's for public use. Or if you go somewhere and you're like,
oh, I want to, they shouldn't, you shouldn't do this or, you know,
you shouldn't do that or this should be done properly.
Or if you find out today, if any Nigerian who's listening to this finds out
(01:02:42):
today that, oh, their dad's office was illegally acquired through BP underselling an asset.
Why are you going to say, oh, no, come and take my house to pay the balance?
Yeah no and but those that low level corruption happened actually i know how
i know how i'm ending this episode because i was having an argument with someone
(01:03:05):
it was an argument for a conversation.
He was talking about nitel and selling off of selling off nitel's assets i said
i hear you people in lagos are now eating what's this thing called what's that
hot dogs jay's dinner i hear Hey everybody,
you guys are watching Jay's Diner in what used to be an ITEL office.
Yes, you eat hot dog and you want to come and talk to me about technical infrastructure.
(01:03:33):
I was like you know what you ate me up you ate me right up.
Saying you eat hot dog that's crazy no
i like i wasn't even expecting it
like he imagined the
(01:03:55):
day he found out what you were using the laptop bro i had
no response i had no
response like i was like you know what yeah if
they come today if if if federal government
comes today and say they are putting office where brisk and
jay's diner and hatley's is people are going to be shouting on social media
(01:04:16):
you're gonna say that they sold the people from jay's diner and bought far longer
equi prime property for 200k naira now because somebody did a deal somewhere
and And they'll call me to collect it. People are going to be crying on social media.
Yeah? Am I lying? Look at the businesses. I'm not going to. I would never cry
for Jesus. And I'll tell you that.
No. I say, man, I have pride. Look at the businesses. They're taking away.
(01:04:40):
Look, young entrepreneurs are trying to work. Okay. I might cry for her.
I would cry. I personally might cry for her. I think I have said I cry like brisk.
But what I'm saying is, there's so much anyhowness in our daily lives.
Wow. And this is like the most expensive property in Lagos.
Any how Next How This is crazy I'm sorry I can't stop Smiling Because it's so
(01:05:04):
Embarrassing I'm embarrassed I haven't talked About this before Because that
was Night's office When I was growing up Like I've never Like I was I was I was flabbergasted.
Oh man Good night Good day This episode Was brought to you By the good people
Of Nigerian government Have a wonderful Week And the good people Of Nigeria God Bye.
Hello, and welcome to the Dirty Lie podcast, a podcast about facts,
figures, and weird things from the past.
I'm your host, Dez, and I'm here with... My name is Tamee Taya. I am a PC guy.
I used my last $3,000 just to withdraw for fun.
My dad is a civil servant. He don't like evil people.
(00:21):
He said that they are evil and we must vote Sinubu. I joined a PC party when I am 10 years old.
Me, I must see my share. Me, I must see my share.
I joined a PC party when I am 10 years old. Local government is here.
Local government is here.
Jagabon is here for you.
(00:44):
Jagabon Hi, my name is CMT, what's up? You guys, do you know that the fact that
I know these lyrics It shows we're real friends over here Because I'm genuinely,
Jagabon is 62 62 or 52, I change every time,
No, I genuinely love this for us okay
(01:07):
so welcome to the dirty lab podcast we
are not pro apc or anti-apc or
pro pdp or anti-pdp or pro ob or
anti-ob we are hot nuisances
we're hot it's hot it's hot we're recording in a hot place and
we're hot people well some would say yeah
(01:27):
we can't put on the fan so you guys get good with some quality
that you deserve and today luckily for everybody involved including myself because
i'm genuinely exhausted talk about nigeria in any context today we're talking
about albania that's the home of albinos right.
(01:51):
Sorry i just i hit my brain it's so dumb,
i literally don't know what to say to you i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry we are talking about,
well a little bit is about albania but
what are we talking about albania we're talking about a guy called king zog okay
i only know two albanians dualipa okay
(02:14):
and action bronzer that's like impressive because
first albino is like three million people or
something it's smaller than the us and it's also an old like it's just a tiny
country in europe that i mean i think the interesting because they have people
(02:35):
that look like western europeans but they're like muslims.
Why is that funny i don't know okay but
i find albanian culture very interesting it's what
do you know about albania it seems like you might know more than i do i don't
know more than you do i mean i just i know stuff from context i know that like
(02:58):
the albanian mafia is huge i know that they in the i wouldn't say the middle
ages but i would say like um during the The time of King Constantine.
When Turkey was doing the madness and taking over... Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire, exactly. Albania was a very...
Big part of that and yeah they were a part
of the ottoman empire which is why they're this is why
(03:23):
they are blonde muslims everything i know well not everything but
i'll say 90 of the things i know about albania i learned in the last 10 days
i even bought a book for this episode but i mean it was partly for you guys
but it was also for me because i was like what i have a question okay do you
think albany new york is named after no i don't okay.
(03:44):
Are you just looking for every alb like next
you're gonna ask me about jessica alba she looks albanian
she does another blonde muslim
okay no let's let's behave
we're talking about a guy called king zog sounds
like a sci-fi evil creature like space
empire king name yes that sounds like an alien
(04:06):
yeah that sounds like the name you give a king coming
from outer space i think there's a power ranger villain.
Like 90s power ranger called king zorg
really yeah i think that's like a thing i mean like
i wouldn't be surprised if americans took like an actual
name of an albanian king and made
it yeah that makes sense actually so okay i'm
(04:28):
trying to now decide as i sit here the facts because i
learned too much about this man king zorg
this story is like game of thrones albania three facts
you have to figure out which one
is true and which one is a lie okay fact
one king zog survived 500 blood
(04:49):
feuds and over 52 attempts
on his life okay okay yeah
that is fact one yeah fact two
when he went into exile um
well you know what we'll do two goes into exile
world war two yeah world war two he's quite
recent okay yeah world war two goes into exile
(05:12):
and ends up in france but the
nazis get to france and ian fleming you know who ian fleming is right out of
007 yes is one rescues him and his family okay from the nazis and from france
and helps them yeah get to london yeah that's fact two and fact three when he was.
(05:32):
Causing too much trouble in england and london
because he wanted to go back and get his country um he
was a self-proclaimed king but he was originally their president
then makes himself a king right and wants
to go back and be king there and he's causing too much problem
in europe so he decides to go to
south africa because where do the races where do the people go in that area
(05:56):
and on his way to South Africa he stops in Gabon for a refueling trip and the
Albanian government had paid Gabonese for.
Security agents to capture him when he landed
in gabon and he escaped because he
stood in the airplane door with a bazooka i
(06:19):
told the pilot to fly
i got this keep pushing oh sexy okay so which one is true one bazooka pj doorway
ian fleming ian fleming rescuing king zog and his family from the Nazis in France.
(06:40):
And three, he used to... 500 blood feuds and 50 assassination attempts.
Yes. Well, okay, here's my thing. So he was originally their president, right?
And then he became himself a king. Or he was a king that became himself a president.
No. The other way around. The other way around. President, king.
Yes. And so I think with dirty lies, the first one.
Okay. Only because if you're going from president to king, if you're going from
(07:04):
president to king, they shouldn't have any blood feuds.
They shouldn't have any royal blood ties unless he did unless he
was a member of royal family that ascended then i think okay should i
stop you there and explain blood feuds first yes explain
me blood feud please like the hat fields and the macquarie's no
well no that's like a family feud so blood feuds in albania particularly in
(07:25):
northern albania is like a it's something called canoon i don't know if i'm
pronouncing properly but canoon but it's like a belief canoon is like a belief
system that they organize their lives around.
And blood feuds in Albania, essentially, if you do something to me,
depending on the crime i can take your life if
(07:46):
you do something to somebody else i can't take your
life also if your father kills somebody
in my family i can take your life so it is still practiced i watched some al
jazeera and cnn documentaries of kids who don't leave the house because they
(08:06):
apparently they respect the home as a place of peace oh but like if you step out yeah
come outside we just want to talk so this is
what blood feuds are yeah there's other things that
you can do that would cause you to have committed a
crime necessary enough to have
somebody say like as long as i live or my
(08:26):
children live or my children children's live we are going to
okay yeah and let me look at the other options you
have fleming and i know he was a naval officer in the war
a commander no he
wasn't he was naval intelligence he was naval intelligence and
he did do a lot of covert ops but
i'm pretty sure he was a pencil pusher which would make sense being a novel
(08:51):
writer yeah but he was also an aristocrat need you to answer have historically
been despised it's never you know commoners and everything.
And then the third one just feels real because.
Real life is stranger than fiction the bazooka one I feel like and also there's
(09:13):
just too much detail I feel like that's real so that's real Fleming vs. Blood Feud.
Choose one choose one choose one choose one blood field as
the dirty lie because i don't know it just feels like that's
too many it's too many okay so okay you're
wrong it's fine and you're always going to be wrong because the
(09:34):
bazooka story is fake you knew
i would want to believe that i know but it's true it
wasn't him no it was his good for
nothing son okay son
escaped with the yes and i we
will talk about his son but let's start
(09:54):
with the daddy first i think that's the most logical
thing to do here a little bit of background about zorg king zorg the first wow
i can't believe that name is real yeah so first his name he was born akhmed
mukhtar zogoli on On the 8th of October in 1895,
(10:15):
some people argue about what date was actually the truth date.
They're like two different days. I don't know. Three, four years apart.
For me, that's not extremely important.
And he didn't die till the 6th of April 1961.
He died an old man. He died in the 60s. I love when someone lives a nice full life.
Bro, he was leader of Albania from 1922 to 1939.
(10:38):
39 he was at 27 albania's
youngest prime minister now his
rise to glory is a
bit insane before he changes his name
from zogoli to zog at 15 he becomes governor
of 15 at 15 he becomes governor of
(10:59):
a region he was 15 15 year old governor yes because
he came from like an aristocratic autocratic type
family that used to like i guess govern a region
his dad dies around when he was 15 he takes
over from his dad he had an older brother but he was the one that they were
like that's the one that got it it has to be it has to be zog now he was very
(11:21):
young 15 his mom claimed to be descendant from this guy who's one of the founding
fathers of albania i can't remember his His name, couldn't pronounce it, didn't write it down.
But this guy gave their family some type of clout.
But again, they're not from like a huge region or a huge aristocratic family.
And Albania had never had a king.
(11:43):
As you said before, due to like the whole Ottoman Empire, then you had like the Turks, the Greeks.
Everyone was just coming, fighting over Albania. You know, then Balkans,
that Balkan region, a lot of intense conflict for centuries preceding this time. And Albania just...
Got like the brunt of everything like the worst of everything and
(12:05):
they were not like a significant power regional power
or anything so at the time he's
born albania is not even an independent state and
so when he's governor of mati this region called mati in
his teenage years this is when the ottoman empire is falling
apart and you now have young
turks and montenegro army come
(12:27):
into to this region and the serbian army and
he defeats them all by the time he's 17 17 yes okay yes so like and he's apparently
just brutal this is why he racks up blood feuds you can't disagree with him
he's just gonna kill you and then he's probably gonna kill the person he sent to kill you.
(12:48):
Yeah so he was racking up blood feuds from job as that's why because in my head
i was like Like, I know things didn't move that fast then.
It was a slower time. Now, I could believe that. But like, he started early. That's why.
He started very early. Yeah. So, when Albania's Declaration of Independence was signed, he was 17.
(13:10):
And as the governor of Mati, he was present at this conference in 1912.
Like that girl in Game of Thrones.
You know, when all the leaders of the North come and it's just like 10-year-old girl.
And she's like the toughest out of all of them. Basically. I saw someone call
this, like, Game of Thrones Albania, and I was like, okay.
I like it. Yeah, I know, I do like it because of all the blood views,
(13:33):
and also because he kind of little-fingered his way to the top. Bad sentence.
Bad, bad, but, I mean, you know, that was real.
He weaseled his way to the front. He weaseled, that would have been much better. I did go to school.
Yes. So World War I, he joins the Austro-Hungarian army, which,
(13:57):
if you remember, was like a very terrible army.
They were like bad at everything. Bad equipment, worse guns.
When you said terrible army, I first thought you meant like Buta.
Oh, no. They were just bad at it. They were just like incompetent. Yeah, yeah.
He got he got captured twice as a prisoner of war and he returned to nine to alabama albania 1919,
(14:21):
and the only reason he survived is because
these weren't his own people that were capturing him he was fighting with yeah
that captured him yeah i think like because i think one of one of the things
i was reading was like he was partly captured because he went to try and be
like yo I want to fight for our billion rights and they're like shut up so he comes back and.
(14:45):
I don't know how old is he at this point in time. He's not very old.
He's like 20-something.
He's in his early 20s, comes back, and he rises along the ranks.
He goes from governor to interior minister.
As interior minister, he's making some important decisions about where the capital will be.
Just, you know, getting to know the country as a whole.
(15:07):
At this time there were like some much more important or politically powerful
people vying for power as you can imagine in albania who wants they want to
be the first president and
they want to be sorry prime minister they want to
be they want to be prime minister there was no office of president at this point
in time and while they're vying he's just kind of like going like yeah he's
(15:29):
building his own base and he's just he hasn't put his head his neck forward
and then he kind of puts his neck forward as interim prime minister okay and they're like okay.
Let's calm like let's let him be there while we
do our thing it's a very strange position in
warring states because i feel like the interim minister
is it's a moderate position in times
(15:52):
of peace but in times of war it's only second
to ministry of defense so it's insane yeah it's so he becomes interim and then
this is when like there's a lot of chaos they dissolve parliament that he's
like oh i'm not going y'all can go this is like the at this point in time,
(16:12):
what did you do for wall street i'm not leaving i'm not leaving.
They are gonna have to carry me.
Now at this point in time like he has ops he's been killing this thing i'm saying
that he's going through the he's killing people too like and gaining power and
(16:34):
there are people who are trying to kill him there's blood feuds on his head
and they're also like assassination attempts,
now let me talk about one of the assassination attempts so 1924 this is when
he's like interim minister or whatever, June 1924.
He was in parliament, and he was shot twice in, like, close-issue range.
(16:57):
He didn't die. Like, parliament type shootings, right? Like,
we don't really like where it's at. No, so somebody snuck in.
Okay. So, okay, I should describe this better, because it's not,
like, another member of parliament.
Someone sneaks in to the parliament, the parliamentary building.
They're members of, like, an opposition party slash movement, right?
And they sneak into, actually it's very important because the opposition party
(17:21):
that he's a part of becomes important.
But so this guy sneaks in, shoots him twice, runs away, runs and hides in the
bathroom and is like shooting and singing freedom songs or whatever.
Okay. They capture him alive. Ugh.
And Zogu survives but has to give up his position at that point in time because
he's like fighting for his life. Right. Right.
(17:44):
And then they have a trial of this guy who shoots him. This is in 1924.
They have a trial of the guy who shoots him.
And then surprising the whole country. What's this guy found?
The guy's not found guilty. Yes. So everyone's like, oh. But they know he shot
(18:04):
him. They know he shot him. But they said, oh, this is not an assassination attempt.
It's a private matter or something like that. Oh, a blood feud.
No, but they're just like, oh. like oh everyone's like
yeah that would be their way of rationalizing yeah like this is what they did
right so they found him this is why they found him innocent so this is what
Zogu was thinking at this point he's changed his name from Zoguli to Zogu so
(18:25):
he sounds more Albanian or something apparently Zogu sounds more Albanian than
Zoguli so they find this guy,
not like guilty or whatever but then the head of the opposition party gets killed,
the party the guy belonged to so people feel like
oh zogu do this thing intentionally like he
(18:46):
tried to say oh it wasn't this guy so that when
he did kill his op we would be
like oh no like but everybody knew that it was yeah yeah the at the burial of
the opposition leader there is a rallying speech against zogu that is so intense
a civil war breaks out right then and there and he goes into exile wow from the funeral from the
(19:11):
funeral the civil war started breaking like civil war of sorts but like the
it breaks out from speech given at the funeral okay sure.
Well, how long do you think, so he's driven out.
How long do I think he's in exile for? Yes. I mean, he's young,
(19:33):
but he still has many more blood feuds to rack up. So I'm thinking like six months.
You're right. You're exactly right.
He came back like six months later with some white Russian and Yugoslav soldiers.
I said, what do you think this is?
I'm back. And I ain't going nowhere.
(19:55):
Which is crazy he came back this
was in june 1924 by january 1925 he was not only back and in control he said
fuck a parliament i'm president like he made a new office made himself president
so because i'm talking to you guys are we because i'm speaking english yeah,
(20:17):
i have an army now which is also just random
and apparently apparently like he came back with these like russian and yugoslav
army women guys dressed but they were dressing like albanian war costume i don't
know man imagine this one's for albania.
(20:39):
What do you feel about them changing at national actually let's never get distracted
because we'll sleep there but like yeah so he comes back and in january 1925
he becomes the first president of Albania.
Three years later, in September of 1928, I believe he becomes,
he declares himself their king.
(21:00):
Now, there's a very funny thing about this whole Albania king thing,
and first king of Albania, is that, like, after World War I and,
like, during that World War I era, you know how they used to just,
like, take, is it the Habsburgs? Is that the royal family?
Or is it the... Yeah, they were just trying to implant a king in Albania.
(21:20):
They brought one from Germany, and he was like, oh, okay. Before this pre-World War I.
Because basically, Albania was like a region with no like...
Like true... Yeah, so they were like, let's give them a king.
So they'll find like the second cousin of Queen Victoria from here and bring
him to Albania and let him be the king of Albania.
(21:40):
And they can just use that to divert... All the power ends up back in just Western Europe.
Yes, but the issue also then is that Albania was so poor.
Especially during that era that like
they were basically just relying on the
king's allowance from like the
main royal family or whatever but yeah
(22:02):
he so this idea of there being a king of albania has
some it was something that had been considered in the past to the point of them
even bringing non-albanian king some german yeah like it was tried like come
and be But Albania had never had a monarchy and a lot of Albania is poor and
rural and Muslim and decentralized.
(22:24):
So when there's a lot of historical context about how people responded to him
declaring himself president, because he also, as somebody who had served in
the military and gone abroad,
he was more Western than the average Albanian.
But there seemed to be a sense of I mean you can make yourself king and you
(22:44):
can do all the things you want as long as you keep it in your city.
Like it's like an idea of if somebody says oh I'm the king of Nigeria just keep
it in Lagos like okay yeah keep it in Lagos.
Don't go to yeah so they're like you can say what you want you can do what you
want to do we're not going to add our mouth to it because you're leaving us
to do whatever we want to do but yeah.
(23:07):
Again there's a lot of but there's also obviously a
consistent commitment by many
many people to kill him right so like
even when he becomes king he doesn't really leave his house he
doesn't like all the actually house palace his mom
he has like food tasters his mom is like in control
(23:28):
of his food and drink he's highly paranoid there are
numerous attempts on his life that recorded
dead wait so the first one i said was the the first
lie was what okay yeah the fact so i've still spoken so i'm talking
about the blood feud yeah he had blood feuds like he
broke off an engagement to this woman right before he declared himself king
so her dad declared a blood feud why did he break up oh he was meant to marry
(23:52):
her yeah he was meant to marry her he was engaged to her and he made some king
and was like no thank you and her dad declared it blood feud and i'm If a member
of her family sees you, it's on site.
So he had blood feuds like that. But he had blood feuds for killing people. Naturally.
Naturally. So there was one called the Matt Feud.
(24:14):
And it's like a rival clan in his home region of Matt.
And because when he was trying to consolidate power there, particularly when
he was younger, he killed a lot of locals and their families.
And because he was imposing state
authority over traditional like clan structures that was usually like shared
(24:35):
power they were like all just declaring blood feud on his head standard yeah
there's also one with the crazy brothers who were influential leaders and in
1933 one of the brothers sino You know,
Kraizu was assassinated under mysterious circumstances.
And people widely believed that it was orchestrated by Zog.
(24:58):
And so the whole family then took their own blood.
I feel like that was just a common theme at the time. Anytime something bad happened, we were, Zog.
It's Zog. But if his op dies and his ops are used to dying, you're like,
it's like deduction, right? Right.
Like if one more Boeing whistleblower just one more just commits suicide,
(25:26):
you're going to be like, sir, you're offing them.
OK, if one more Russian dissident falls off a balcony, it's always a balcony.
They don't die any other way.
Oh, you're bringing up poisoning? I know, I know. There is poisoning.
That being the two options.
But the balcony one is so like... How did the guy, the Wagner guy die again?
(25:47):
That one was shot out the sky.
Yeah. He was shot out the sky. It's kind of a balcony of sorts.
And when I was like, like Putin enjoys watching something just fall.
I think, honestly, he just likes killing people in the most creative ways and
then watching his PR team spin it. And he's like, let's see what they come up with for this.
(26:07):
Fair. I think there's something symbolic in literally watching your up more to their death.
Like you thought you rose high, but here you go.
I mean, they're being pushed really. Yeah, but you're also, but I'm saying like,
Pooja just seems like somebody that could watch home videos or someone just,
yeah, just watching them fall.
Like, okay, that was a good one. Clip your wings.
(26:29):
Yes. So he, this is who Zog was, right?
And this is why he had so many orbs. But okay, so let me fast forward.
Because i've basically given you the first part the second part i said was this ian fleming story,
this ian fleming story is when he goes into exile the second time why does he
go to exile the second time because when he came back obviously he has rented
(26:50):
all these mercenaries from yugoslav and russia he is consolidating power in
a very broke country like the country is broke yeah and he He basically,
in order to try and get money,
allies himself with Mussolini.
Jesus. Yeah, not the best. Not the best. And Albania becomes a client state of...
(27:13):
Italy so it becomes fascist it becomes not
just fascist like he goes from prime minister to
president to king's a fascist puppet in like
a decade less than a decade that's he lived all
the lives some people only get to
do one okay he lived
all the life so
(27:34):
yeah he's now a fascist puppet and albanian
becomes fascist but also you have to think this country
is mostly rural and are religious it's very
odd apparently the i i
couldn't fact check this because i i listened to
it but apparently there was so much money loaned
to albania and like owed by albania or something that.
(27:55):
They like moved their central bank to italy
yeah like the bigger branch do you
think during these days these guys were like man
these are the good times like in 2024
we wouldn't be able to get like what like
look around you guys breathing this air we can
(28:16):
get away with anything yeah so do
you know some people would have thrived so nigeria doesn't have
thrived in this health environment thrived oh
my god so yeah so they're basically
he's basically mussolini's yeah yeah
yeah he's his little puppet and albania is
(28:36):
cash trap and and then like italy you know Mussolini had this thing of trying
to like Italianize everywhere they were so like they tried to make I think it's
Italian compulsory to learn you had Italian members of their government of their
like hierarchies yeah yeah Ethiopia.
(28:57):
Yeah our own colonized country technically because they didn't really succeed
so yes so he's doing this in on the continent That's contrary.
On the continent, yes. Yeah, okay. So he's doing this in Albania and...
And like, I think at that point in time, also, Zog kind of needs to rely on
(29:19):
an outside power to maintain power inside.
Because again, like, he's so, like, people are trying to kill him every single day.
Actually, somebody calculated, I think it was on average three assassination attempts a day.
Three a day. In the years that he was in power. Is that on average?
Because he wasn't even there for that long. So it's actually on average three a day.
(29:42):
Trying to kill you for breakfast you
didn't get me lunch you didn't get me you're gonna try getting a dinner
damn bro can i live they said no 3d man
you need to work on yourself like the assassin is wrong i'm sorry
but the assassin is the wrong one like and
i also like he was he was
(30:02):
so paranoid and like also trying to get off so many times that
is he really paranoid it's not paranoid know to be honest like
you're right they are trying to kill you but he kept
that thing on him like he was always strapped so there's actually
a time where he went to vienna which was rare for him
and i think this is in 1931 he goes to vienna because he was dating two sisters
because he liked foreign brats also i'm not surprised that this type of guy
(30:27):
wants a babe from the more western side of europe so and he goes to watch a
show theater something with them You know,
a play of sorts with them and he gets got,
but they actually mistake his body double slash bodyguard for him.
So that one gets shot in the head three times before they can like really get a shot off of him.
(30:49):
He pulls out his revolver is apparently like.
He kills them no he doesn't kill them but he like chases them off he's like you can't catch me.
They shot my body double next to me i'll just pretend like yeah finally i hit
him too so i read i read one i read one was like zog shot back at the attackers
but he was a bad shot so he missed but he didn't die yeah he didn't die and
(31:15):
so he comes he's just this italian puppet but then what
does Mussolini do? He invades Albania.
Albanians thought they were okay, or Zog thought Albania was okay.
But I guess like Mussolini was like, hi, I think I'd like your country now, for real.
So one day, Italy just pulls up, invades Albania. Zog knew it was coming.
(31:38):
He knew it was coming. And we know he knew it was coming because he went to
the branch of the central bank or whatever, of the treasury of Albania that
was still in Albania. and took all the gold.
Saddam Hussein style. Which of the sons was it?
It wasn't Hussein. It wasn't Hussein Hussein. No. Was it Uday or Hussein?
(31:59):
I think it was Hussein. Which brother? One of them, sir.
But you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Empire is about to fall.
And so you go into the bank. You load it full of dollars.
I said dollars. I mean cash, gold and diamonds. Money.
Money. And you flee. This is when he flees. it
is now world war ii it's smack
(32:20):
in the middle of world war ii he didn't think italy would face albania
but they did one thing i will say because i've only really said
bad things about him one thing i will say
is no one of the best things about king
zog and albania in general from
what i read is that they were the least anti-semitic
europeans albania was the only place
(32:42):
on continental europe that had more jews after
world war ii than before wow because
albania was issuing visas to all the jewish people they were like come here
we'll take care of you and there's a concerted albanian resistance to protect
jewish people in every era because for albania i mean we're leaving albanian
(33:04):
history now to focus on zog but they have the zog era they have the Hoxha era,
the communist era, you know, they faced fascism, Nazi Germany to get in,
like communists to get in. They go through a lot.
But throughout that period, they were protecting Jewish people.
And this is a Muslim community.
(33:24):
It's a Muslim community and it's a Muslim country. So like, yeah,
so I would say that's a good thing about King Zog. Mm hmm.
His legacy in Albania, from what I've seen, is not...
The legacy of some of the people he killed is bigger than his.
Because they're seen as fathers of democracy and stuff like that.
He's just seen as this guy that was there.
(33:46):
However, there's some, obviously, people who are like, he's a hero.
He's definitely a complex figure. Definitely.
He's so bizarre. Okay, and yes, this Ian Fleming thing is true.
True according to like quite a few sources but however
true it is but yeah the sources say that he was
(34:06):
active yeah so oh fun fact so
like his son was born three four days before
the italians invaded same week sure
okay guy was not alive for long oh like i
was not alive for long before they went into exile he
lives for quite a while but he goes into exile as like an
infant infant found i mean they go into exile they go to
(34:27):
multiple places they do end up in france the story goes
quite a few sources go that when they're trying to escape from france
from from nazis one of the people who actually helped them was ian fleming who
as you said was an officer at the time they then go to london they're in the
ritz living in the ritz in london for a while because they also was unexpected
to stay with gold and diamonds and cash i mean it must be the ritz that's so crazy like imagine.
(34:57):
They're all over the place they go to different countries he dies
in his 60s like he lived many
I feel like he that era that's like 90s now
yeah but I also feel he peaked early like but
I think I actually think it's like not like I don't
think he peaked early I think he got out of the game early I mean they pushed
him yeah but you know he had enough money to really have a second run Albina
(35:20):
was purple Yeah And he took I guess I mean come on I don't think By the time
The whole Because you know He's a Muslim king He was also the only Muslim king of Europe,
But I think By the time,
yeah everything like settled down after world war ii they were like a pure communist.
(35:42):
Hard-lined country no they're not because
you have to know something crazy there's a story about
how albania goes into some type of
how basically communism falls in albania
yeah and it's basically because the cia is often involved in these things but
like no the cia went to go gonna play in albania and they failed multiple times
(36:06):
so they pretended it didn't happen and they didn't release it in freedom of
information act till like 2006 wow oh yeah we did that.
Kind of tried that i'm trying to remember because the name of
i tried to find the freedom
of information act like files but i couldn't find it but it was just like really
dumb operations like Like they went and took a bunch of Albanians in exile to
(36:32):
train them to go into Albania and take over the government from Hoxha.
Classic CIA stuff. Yeah. But like he was like, how did you think that was going to work?
And also there was like a CIA idea of like Albania is just not that important to Russia.
And Hoxha was very Stalinist. So after Stalin died, he was like not even pro-Russia anymore.
(36:55):
More he felt like he was the only true communist
left so like he was anti this
new russia and he was because he was this staunch yeah who came after stalin
he was very pro-stalin so albania became very isolated like people describe
(37:15):
it as very north korea like albania becomes so after This is after Zoglu.
You have a dictator, Hoxha.
I feel like we've spoken about him before, but I think maybe not.
I might have just read about him and thought I've spoken about him on this podcast.
But Hoxha is a guy who built bonkers. He was obsessed with bonkers because... Every man needs a hobby.
(37:38):
Apparently, they built more bonkers than housing. I think Albania has the most
developed underground stuff after London or something. That's so cool.
No. No, like they have underground, like it's just bunkers. They have bunkers everywhere.
It's like a city underground. No, it's just, let me, let me check.
(37:58):
175,000 reinforced concrete bunkers were built across Albania,
lining seashores and lakes, mountain passes, borders, farmland, towns.
Great expense and effort because of the whole nuclear, fear of nuclear war.
The Albanians shall inherit the earth.
(38:20):
There is an average of... Did you just say the Albanians?
There's an average of 5.7 bunkers for every square meter in Albania.
Jesus, that's a lot. Yeah. Some...
One, the Atlantic says it's 875,000 bunkers, but some people put the number higher.
(38:41):
It's a large country as well. It's a small country as well. So like that many
bunkers does go a long way, doesn't it?
Yes. Huh. And also like he like forced, he was also very, so this is Hoxha.
His name is, let me reason, this is the reason I'm having trouble pronouncing it. It's H-O-X-H-A.
So I'm just pronouncing it Hoxha, but I'm not sure the pronunciation because I've only read.
(39:04):
And like everything i listen to talking about him
pronounces him a bit differently but like so this is the bad guy this is their
abacha oh i didn't say that this is their bad guy this is the leader in their
past that they're like oh that guy right so it was just the trump mischief maker yeah,
(39:25):
but hotcha is the one who puts the fear in the heart and the disdain and the
anger and And all that in the hearts of like Albanians.
And he was crazy. I need to talk
about Hoxha one day because he was like eccentric in really weird ways.
(39:45):
He was weird. I mean, bonkers outside.
He was bonkers. I'm joking. Oh, that was good. That's really good.
That's what makes you proud.
Anyways, okay, let's leave Hoxha and like Albanian history.
I do want to say one thing though. So Albania basically like fell apart in recently.
(40:06):
And like post-cold war falling apart and it
all happened because most of the country was involved
in ponzi schemes and they did not understand it was a ponzi scheme yeah it's
it's that probably needs its own episode but like imagine if everyone in nigeria
did mm and they just it burst at the same time and it burst at the same time
(40:29):
oh do you know i remember exactly where it was when MMM but.
Where were you I don't know if it was MMM or
the one after it but basically I was
in NYSE camp and everyone found out one
day like to the point where they were
looking at their phones and all getting messages about it at
the same time and soldiers were trying to rush them to
(40:51):
camp and nobody answered the soldiers and it
wasn't even defiance it was just like I really
can't do this right now like everyone just stayed in
looking at their phones and it was left people
were like three thousand on camp this was
like two five what do you
mean like two thousand five hundred people were involved yeah out of the three
(41:11):
thousand yeah like they were destroyed and the
soldier online were just like damn that's crazy that's
actually crazy no that's actually crazy i'm i
feel like being a victim of a ponzi scheme is it's
scary but also i would be scared to
be somewhere where everyone is a victim of a ponzi scheme
and you all find out around the same time yeah
(41:35):
and the everyone out on the streets of lagos also
there was apparently a brilliant idea i think
this was hot chaseros i think it was hot chaseros who made this decision to
he was because there were people on the
streets and then there's one region in the in the country where they kidnapped
a governor who like tried to go out to go talk to them and they were just like
snatched you are going to give us that money back so he told the like army or.
(42:01):
Police to open their military cache or whatever and they.
Bunch of guns they just took everything like albanians
who were now armed to the teeth like regular albanians
armed and broke armed and broken angry yeah and
recently cheated that's why you have an albanian mafia because that's that's
(42:21):
the era where everything pops off and you also have to know like this is also
the era this is like what 90s is the era where you have balkans where like is
it not used to be czechoslovakia but it's not czechoslovakia the fall of the
USSR yeah the fall of the USSR the Balkan wars,
just that whole region everyone was popping off and Albania was just there with
(42:41):
their bunkers okay let me quickly go over the last the last last fact the bazooka
bazooka should I do that?
I guess I can I think we have enough time it will be really quick should I leave Leka for another day?
What do you think? Leka Zogu the son of King Zog the first of Albania had is it with Lekon,
(43:05):
what's the Leka is Lekon without the N do you know like I was going to say something
weird wow pregnancy nothing okay.
Sounds rude. It feels rude. And it does, but do you know a Lekon that's balanced?
I don't know many Lekons thinking about it now. But the ones you know?
No. But I don't know many people that are balanced. That's also fair.
(43:28):
Like, I wouldn't describe myself as like particularly balanced. Yeah.
Maybe like two months, two weeks out of a month I might be balanced.
Yeah, I think you're well adjusted. But I don't think you're balanced.
Well adjusted to the lack of balance. Okay, so let's talk about Lake Zogu,
the king that never was a prince of an empire that didn't exist.
(43:52):
The possible weapons smuggler and the actual tyrant.
Just something about sons of powerful men who don't get to taste that power themselves.
So two days, I just checked my notes, two days after Leka was born,
Mussolini's army invaded Albania And him and his parents went into exile Leka
(44:16):
would not return to Albania Until he was middle aged A grown man We have like
grown kids But Do you have kids in the world?
Yeah I believe he had a son Called Leka Leka 2 Who he gave birth to in South Africa Because,
(44:37):
The reason I think an episode would have been good on Leka because
like i one time goes to rhodesia to
tell who's the white guy who's the last like colonial guy
in rhodesia before zimbabwe becomes zimbabwe like john smith or something ridiculous
yeah i can't remember but some white dude do you want to check it okay i see
(44:58):
why i wanted to do like a cliffhanger huh i see why i wanted to do a cliffhanger
into an episode about liquor Lekha.
Because he goes to go and I want to let you understand that most of the pictures
you see about Lekha who was nearly seven feet tall. What? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah should have gone to the nba was busy being prince
(45:18):
of nothing most of the clips you will see about leka
you'll see him dressed in like army
uniform but it's his rhodesian army uniform because after prancing about europe
and getting thrown out of every country he the rhodesians were like oh come
to me to us and he was like i will help you defeat the blacks if you help me
(45:40):
go back to albania and defeat this usurping government.
And this is the pro-jewish government anyway right well well no at this era
it's a communist government it's a communist government yeah that's neither
here but again this is just a government really and rodigia at that point of
time i need to find out who's the last last who who's this
(46:02):
white guy you have to ian smith what
did i say i said john smith yeah because like like the
name is smith and it's like such a common like like john
smith is like the most common yeah it's like ian smith oh finally he goes to
ian smith it's like i'll help you defeat the blacks and he manages to get thrown
(46:24):
out of rhodesia oh and then south africa was like hey you wanted to feed eat some blacks.
We have some blacks here for you. We have some blacks here.
It's here in South Africa. That's my South African accent.
It's good, right? It's terrible. Thank you. But it's better than Bonoboy's remix of this song.
(46:46):
No, this is why I was like, maybe we do it like an episode, but maybe not.
You guys let me know. Let me know if you want a full story about this guy.
Because he even. I think we need it like an episode.
I really want to hear it. He was in Egypt one time with the king.
You know, then they still had a king. He was in Egypt there.
Then he went to Spain because, you know, they had a king. Yeah. Still do.
Yeah. But like, you know, like, or like dictator. No, he was like friends with
(47:10):
the dictator in Spain. It was Spain that had a dictator, right?
It was Spain or Portugal.
I don't know. I feel like it was Portugal. I think they all did. yeah i
mean true europe i'm getting confused but the
point is he got thrown out of every single one of
these countries for being too tall for
being in new south wales discrimination is ruining the
(47:31):
planet also like he
also returns to ukraine he returns to
albania at some point in time i haven't spoken
about the galban incident but i will because i teased it in the beginning he
returns to ukraine ukraine albania at
one point in time and they have a referendum hawkshire
does this referendum on if they should bring back the
(47:53):
monarchy he loses he doesn't
believe he's lost so he goes
with a crowd of his supporters because there's some people who are like
oh you know what zogo's time was better than this time so let's
go back he goes with a crowd of his supporters
and he has like a grenade and a pistol and
he's like marching on parliament and some people die and they're
(48:15):
like okay you know what they kick him back out the country i think that's when he
goes to south africa it's between like gabon and south africa they kick him
out of sa as well they did not kick him out of sa and they have to throw himself
they advise him to withdraw i know i feel like i think you know what happens
with south africa is that blacks get power.
(48:37):
I think he goes back to Albania and then I haven't gotten to that end of his
life because everything in the beat like that just is so.
Chaotic yeah and also like there's some conspiracy theories that he was just
like an arms dealer because they're like also like how much gold did your dad
take that you're still living this life,
he was rich forever bro he was
jumping from country to country with pj and he also had
(49:00):
for some reason for some reason thai bodyguards like
from thailand all his bodyguards were thai why
what that's so random um don't knock
it to you tight sorry so yeah
that's leka the crown prince of albania but
i'll tell you what happened when he visited gabon in 1982 he was
(49:21):
living in exile at the time and he
was trying to gain international support for his
claim to the albanian throne right so he
was going from one country to another with a.
Contingent of armed supporters which included
former royal guards and loyalists now at
this point in time gabon was under the rule of president
(49:43):
omar bongo and the presence of an armed
group led by a foreign royal clement
created a tense situation so the
gabonese authorities were alarmed by the arrival of leca and
it's like ragdoll group of um like
european like what is like imagine
(50:04):
you're just in a country chilling and i'm
going to be fair to omar bongo which i don't have to be
but just look at what happened drc like last week
if a if a pj full of
rich posh white guys pull up with like
guns and bazookas i'm sorry i'm on
it and gold why do they why what's this
(50:24):
thing of let's go to africa and take over
the project why do they think it's so easy i get
why they thought it was easy why because it's the drc or
because they've done it before that's what happened.
Before yes but they failed
more times and they've succeeded oh yeah
that's probably what happened before the one two i don't
(50:46):
know it's crazy anyway i think i
can imagine it being easy because these guys are
european and they've seen how ephemeral a lot of like governments are during
this period in history and then in africa all these guys are like super new
to democracy you know but why did you think why do you think it'd be easy for
(51:09):
you to implant yourself like where where did that work very.
Easily for other people i'm sure there's like head
stories from cie guys or bars and just like stuff around but
like not like implanting yourself in overtly like over it's crazy it is and
it's also it's failed me way more times than it works what is it why it's muslim
if not this is a mark thatcher thing yeah all over again like this is that all
(51:35):
over again yeah so anyways is.
They disarm Lekha and his followers for a bit. And then they're just like,
you know what? Y'all need to get out of here.
Now, the incident was very precarious because Lekha felt like, not felt like, true.
As long as he was alive, there was a claim to this throne in Albania.
(51:58):
So he was an enemy of Hoxha.
And just like how they were trying to off his dad, they were trying to off him.
Theoretically. But not theoretically. Probably. likely this is the dictator
that knows that the only opposition that really exists to him is this like imagery
and idea of the good old days under the king and the king's son is right there
so let's bring him back for some people but yeah this is where the story about the bazooka,
(52:23):
then he was pushing holding bazooka outside the door of a pj like yeah oh my
god and there was just like oh how about we chill because that's that's a lot
you know does anyone know what a bazooka.
Yeah, it's like a missile launcher. Yes. Rocket launcher. Rocket launcher.
Literally like a Looney Tunes situation.
(52:45):
Yeah, like imagine if you could carry the nose of a tank over your shoulder and those fires.
That being said, as someone that was chasing him out of the country,
if I saw him do the bazooka plane thing, I'd be like, you know what?
Maybe we had him pegged wrong. Maybe he could have helped us. He has something.
Je ne sais quoi. Okay. So, yeah, that's Leka.
(53:07):
That's Leka Zog and his dad, Zog I. Emperor Zog.
King Zog. King of Albania. First and only king of Albania. Wow.
Yeah. Apparently, he smoked 200 cigarettes a day, which feels like... Ooh, Leka or his dad?
His dad. And he lived till 63? Yeah. Jesus. It's us.
That just seems like it would be hard to do. Yeah, that's almost impressive.
(53:31):
Say what? It's like, I'm about to be very bad at math. That's like, it's 200 days, 10 packs.
What? How is that physically possible?
You're paranoid. Everybody wants
to kill you. I guess you would be chain smoking like that every second.
You probably could not believe that I survived everything.
(53:52):
Everything probably woke up in the middle of
the night to smoke a pack yeah and then go back to
bed that's probably why his enemies couldn't kill him because his smoke
was just creating a fog he he's everywhere they're like which one is he oh my
god i like i think it's like one thing i will say is if if somebody woke up
today and gave you a motivational speech and it's like you're doing everything
(54:15):
you can do you're 30 you're young you're 25 you're young they're lying
they're lying okay they're liars
look at amit look at amit does he have
two heads true he was governor prime minister interim minister president king
x i lee all he had to do was be born in a country with basically no real governmental
(54:38):
structure and a very rich family sounds like does that sound like home to you.
You know I'm surprised I guess profit is just more appealing than anything I'm
surprised we haven't had like a bunch of random upstarts just pop up in there
just based on my dad has crazy bar and this government isn't really working
(54:59):
I can do something I can make something chic,
Do you feel me? I feel you, but I feel like one thing about Nigeria is...
It's too big and unwieldy. It's too unwieldy.
It's too unwieldy, but also there's... I had this interview recently.
I think it's my next interview for Untold.
And he... The person I was interviewing said, have you ever thought about the
(55:20):
fact that no matter how rich or successful somebody is in Nigeria,
if government wakes up today and says you are finished, you are finished. You are finished, yeah.
Maybe it will take two weeks to kill that good tale, if that's
and that's danguti if that's so
what no no that's some real shit
that's some real stuff that's some real stuff i do think there's a merit in
(55:42):
that or like a con a government that's pretty much not completely but pretty
much consolidated all its power you know what i mean like kind of like china
kind of like nigeria in a sense where when the government is like oh this This is what we're doing.
It will be done. Oh, I see what you're saying. It will be done.
But that's why the opposite is so annoying. Yes. Nigeria's problem has never been a lack of will.
(56:07):
There's nothing as a country that we can't set our minds to achieving and we can't achieve.
We're good like that. But in terms of, it's just, why would we do that?
Yeah. It just profits too many people for us to be dysfunctional.
I think, yeah, it definitely, like, dysfunction is so profitable.
I keep thinking about the people making money of, Lagos, Calabar, Heri.
(56:28):
I keep thinking about the fact that I'm broke.
And somebody... And I'm talking about this thing for free. And it pisses me off.
It pisses me off so badly. Imagine if...
And I know people love to do... I actually typically don't like doing this.
I think it's like the most...
I'm a broke man. This is my pastime activity. Imagine if you had a hundred billion
(56:51):
dollars to do anything with, right? Yeah. And...
In fact, we decided, okay, we're going to start an electricity company that
is going to provide 24-hour electricity at a quarter of the price because it's
alternative and sustainable energy, blah, blah, blah.
Everything sounds good. We invest and we get. The government will kill us.
(57:11):
They'll kill us. They'll kill us. I don't think they'll kill you.
You think they'll kill us?
I don't think they'll kill you. i think like i feel
like people actually give
our government i was saying an argument recently and
i was originally disagreeing and then and i was like no this other
person is right i don't think our government is corrupted in that way i think
(57:34):
they're just thieves they will just want 50 of that 100 billion they won't kill
you so basically i think that they're not high concept like they They don't
have machinations or stuff like that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Like, why would they kill you? They want the money, though.
So they want a cut of what you're making. Yes.
(57:55):
And the thing is, every single person will want their own cut.
That is what might kill your idea.
Every step. Every step, somebody wants a cut.
So it's not going to be $100 billion again. It's going to be $250.
That $100 billion we first had, we have not laid down one fiber optic cable,
one solar panel. and half that money is gone.
(58:15):
The person who's surveying will collect money. The state government will collect.
The federal government will collect. The ministry will collect.
The commission will collect. Local government chairman.
They'll come and tax you here. And one local government chairman will collect.
Maybe not just one local government. One guy will bring his boys and say,
I'm the banner of this street. He must pay here, this, this, and that.
Then you go. Then you have private. People forget this.
(58:38):
A lot of our bad guys are not in government. government
they are ceos they are wicked people
they had the owners of estates they will now come and they'll say oh if you
are going to build this here then i'll build this here and i have this friend
in this office in government and so he's going to block you here and this and
we're not corrupt we're thieves low level thievery a lot of things i see coming out is not this like.
(59:04):
Oh even the budget when i was going through the budget somebody said
to me if you want to see the real corruption i think
ministry of agriculture was able to build like balloon
their budget by a couple of billion and anybody knows that if
you have been in the legislator you know the ways
they pad right you know more than somebody who's coming from maybe an executive
(59:25):
arm of government or somebody who's new to government and anyways somebody just
said just look at the soil lights light up nigeria just look at where they're
putting and you'll see even Even Ministry of Creative Economy has solar light project for an LGE.
It's not, there's no solar, I can't say there's no solar lights now,
(59:46):
but there's no solar lights.
I went to the National Archives in the States this week and I was supposed to
do research for a project with my friend and.
I get there, and it's just this massive government quadrangle building, right?
Brutalist architecture, massive hole in the middle. And the hole in the middle
(01:00:07):
is just beautifully manicured lawn.
Inside every office is dusty. There's no light, no nothing.
It's just you can tell they haven't put money into this place in the last 30 years, really.
But then in the middle of the quadrangle i
see like some gorgeous solar panels brand
(01:00:30):
new and i just asked one of
the guys so it was this solar panel for
how come there's no lights but this thing looks new i know
it's working he's like yeah yeah yeah it's so that there's there's
light here at night and i was like can you
explain that to me he said and he just looked he literally he doesn't
miss a beat he says no i cannot and he
(01:00:52):
just walks away like he's thought
about it so he's asked questions and it's just yeah no
like it's that's the thing it's like when they do
think like somebody come and tell me you know send
me a picture of someone in house of reps who has put
a solar power powered boho with his
constituency or whatever and done this or whatever and i'm
(01:01:12):
just like i don't you know like i i there
are things that i feel like maybe they could kill you for but having a great
idea is not one of them they'll just try and steal like they would just they'll
cripple it basically yeah they just drain you like one of that's what frustrates
me about nigeria is that it's draining and also i feel like.
(01:01:35):
You know how people say, like, we don't want corruption to end.
We just want it to just not be the ones that's favoring us. Yeah.
That's how I feel. Everyone just wants it for their time, basically.
Yeah. Or everyone just wants that corner that works for you.
You talk to your friend who lives in an estate that some of the land has been
illegally acquired, right?
(01:01:56):
And you're like, okay, but the people who illegally signed it were in government.
Okay, but now let's say they want to do the proper thing with that piece of
land. And you don't want them to do it because you're in an estate that's nice and cozy.
You don't want to lose that thing. How did we get here?
How did we get here? But, and I understand this whole thing of you have to hold government.
Yes, go to Alausa and pick up that person that signed that paper and collected that money.
(01:02:20):
But also let go of that land because that is not supposed to be private land.
It's for public use. Or if you go somewhere and you're like,
oh, I want to, they shouldn't, you shouldn't do this or, you know,
you shouldn't do that or this should be done properly.
Or if you find out today, if any Nigerian who's listening to this finds out
(01:02:42):
today that, oh, their dad's office was illegally acquired through BP underselling an asset.
Why are you going to say, oh, no, come and take my house to pay the balance?
Yeah no and but those that low level corruption happened actually i know how
i know how i'm ending this episode because i was having an argument with someone
(01:03:05):
it was an argument for a conversation.
He was talking about nitel and selling off of selling off nitel's assets i said
i hear you people in lagos are now eating what's this thing called what's that
hot dogs jay's dinner i hear Hey everybody,
you guys are watching Jay's Diner in what used to be an ITEL office.
Yes, you eat hot dog and you want to come and talk to me about technical infrastructure.
(01:03:33):
I was like you know what you ate me up you ate me right up.
Saying you eat hot dog that's crazy no
i like i wasn't even expecting it
like he imagined the
(01:03:55):
day he found out what you were using the laptop bro i had
no response i had no
response like i was like you know what yeah if
they come today if if if federal government
comes today and say they are putting office where brisk and
jay's diner and hatley's is people are going to be shouting on social media
(01:04:16):
you're gonna say that they sold the people from jay's diner and bought far longer
equi prime property for 200k naira now because somebody did a deal somewhere
and And they'll call me to collect it. People are going to be crying on social media.
Yeah? Am I lying? Look at the businesses. I'm not going to. I would never cry
for Jesus. And I'll tell you that.
No. I say, man, I have pride. Look at the businesses. They're taking away.
(01:04:40):
Look, young entrepreneurs are trying to work. Okay. I might cry for her.
I would cry. I personally might cry for her. I think I have said I cry like brisk.
But what I'm saying is, there's so much anyhowness in our daily lives.
Wow. And this is like the most expensive property in Lagos.
Any how Next How This is crazy I'm sorry I can't stop Smiling Because it's so
(01:05:04):
Embarrassing I'm embarrassed I haven't talked About this before Because that
was Night's office When I was growing up Like I've never Like I was I was I was flabbergasted.
Oh man Good night Good day This episode Was brought to you By the good people
Of Nigerian government Have a wonderful Week And the good people Of Nigeria God Bye.
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