0:01

I don't have an introduction. I'm

0:03

I'm Robert Evans, is behind the Bastards

0:06

podcast about the worst people in history. And

0:08

we have as our as our national ventilator

0:10

stockpile runs out. My national

0:13

introduction stockpile has been completely

0:15

exhausted. So these are these are desperate

0:18

and dire times, and I thank you all for

0:20

tuning in. My guest today

0:22

to help me navigate these troubled waters

0:25

is Mr Sower and Booey Airhorn

0:27

airhorn airhorne. Yeah,

0:30

we have to do the airhorns manually because

0:32

then the airhorn stockpiles out as well.

0:34

They're gone. They're gone. We

0:37

used them all up. We use them. Hospitals need them.

0:42

That's that's the new charity is airhorns

0:45

for hospitals. Really, honestly,

0:47

if you have an airhorner, you have azla

0:49

at home to the hospital,

0:52

donate it today. They need it more than you

0:54

do. Just drive past the hospital

0:57

and throw it at them as hard as you can. They

0:59

will thank you. Ye drive

1:02

past the hospital and kick it out of your car like your

1:04

O ding friend Saren.

1:08

How are you doing today? I'm

1:10

pretty good. Yeah, I feel good. I mean

1:12

I want to make sure my levels are okay

1:14

and everything. I guess there's no way to even know that there

1:17

there there is, but we'll just move right past

1:19

that and our listeners will know if we got it

1:21

right. You

1:23

are one of the writers on

1:26

the TV show American Dad, which

1:28

I love and have loved for years. You

1:30

are my former uh

1:33

co worker at at cracked dot

1:35

Internet. Uh, and you also

1:38

host a podcast now with with my old boss

1:40

and our mutual friend, Daniel O'Brien. That's

1:43

right, Yeah, Daniel and I have a podcast called Quick

1:45

Question with sore and Dan I get front. Bill.

1:49

That makes sense. You want to put the face

1:51

up front? I think yeah,

1:54

now, Sar you you guys did an episode

1:56

of your show recently where you talked about the old

1:58

days at Cracked um and you

2:00

were talking particularly about some like old

2:02

sketches that uh, we're

2:05

glad we didn't get to make or you're glad that you didn't

2:07

get to make, and during one of them, you brought up a guy

2:09

that you had as a character in one of those sketches, Henry

2:11

Morton Stanley. Yeah.

2:14

Weird that we wouldn't have done a sketch about Henry Morton

2:17

Stanley, Yeah,

2:19

especially because he was the hero in the sketch. So

2:24

you want to talk about who you know Henry Morton

2:27

Stanley as like, what you what you know about this dude?

2:29

I hope you didn't. No,

2:32

I have a very cursory knowledge of of Henry Morton

2:34

Stanley, or as I like to call him,

2:36

h MS. That's

2:40

why British ships are named that. By the way,

2:42

don't look at us. I

2:45

know that he's a knight. He's been knighted. He

2:49

was famous for going and fine. He's the guy

2:51

who says Dr Livingston, I presume yes,

2:54

yes, that's his most famous line,

2:56

Dr Livingston and then Dr

2:59

Livingston at the time was like trying to find the

3:01

source of the nile. He went to go try and find

3:03

Livingstone, found him, and then

3:05

Henry Morton Stanley spent a bunch of time trying

3:07

to find the source of the nile. Uh.

3:10

And then during all that time he also

3:12

got very involved with the slave trade as far as I know,

3:14

and let kind of everybody on his everyone

3:17

of his voyages die. Yeah, everyone

3:20

on all of his voyages dies. He is the guy who

3:22

actually finds the source of the Congo

3:24

River um or at least I should say he is

3:26

the white guy who who finds the

3:28

source of the Congo River and informs all the other

3:30

white guys where it is um

3:33

and he is uh. He actually

3:35

was very anti slavery. He was an abolitionist,

3:38

but also in a way that morally

3:40

doesn't really matter. We'll we'll be talking

3:42

about that a lot this episode. This is a fun

3:44

one, So we're gonna we are gonna

3:46

have us a motherfucking time if

3:49

you can hear it. But I'm rubbing my hands together, like,

3:51

oh delicious, this hot dish in front of me.

3:53

I can't wait to eat it. One of the reasons I'm excited

3:55

to talk about this sor And it's something else that came

3:57

up in that episode. You and Dan did of quick

4:00

question where you were talking about how you know, when we

4:02

all when you you had to call him at cracked

4:04

you or not just when you had a calm. When you were on a

4:06

show that we did called After Hours, which was

4:08

like a very popular show, and

4:10

you were one of the characters and you guys discussed pop

4:12

culture, and your character was kind of like a

4:15

caricature of I think, how how

4:17

like you appear, because you're you're a very

4:19

uh, handsome all American looking

4:22

fellow. And so your character is like the

4:24

archetype of like the the high

4:26

school quarterback kind of guy, right, and

4:28

and yeah, sort

4:31

of like monotonously handsome. Yeah,

4:34

and and you're you're you're

4:36

concerned with that, you know, looking back in eight years

4:38

later, is that it kind of contributed to some

4:40

some people's like unrealistic

4:42

attitudes about masculinity. And

4:45

one of the fun things about this story is

4:47

that Henry Morton Stanley did

4:50

that in like the most dangerous

4:52

way you possibly can. And

4:55

now there's like a because of the lies

4:57

he told. He wasn't like he

4:59

wasn't he didn't kill nearly as many people

5:01

as he lied about killing, and as a result,

5:03

a bunch of other people committed a lot of murder.

5:06

And now there is a whole industry devoted to

5:08

actually saying that Henry Morton Stanley was a good

5:10

guy because he lied about how many people he

5:12

killed. It's a fun story. We're really gonna

5:15

yeah, yeah,

5:18

there will be a lot of fun opportunities for

5:20

conversations about toxic masculinity

5:22

in this. But let's let's let's let's dig

5:24

into this. The son of a bit so I love

5:26

people who lie in the wrong direction. That's wonderful.

5:28

Yeah, it's really interesting. This is such

5:31

a such a wild tale. So

5:33

uh. We talked about Henry Morton Stanley on my show

5:35

a little bit earlier, and we talked about King Leopold the Second

5:37

of Belgium, who's like the king who conquered

5:40

Central Africa and killed thirteen million people

5:42

making a rubber factory. Very

5:44

ambitious, very ambitious. Yeah,

5:48

wrote a tricycle a lot weird dude, um,

5:51

And Stanley was like we talked about Stanley

5:53

a bit in that and I one of my sources King Leopold's

5:56

Ghost, which is a really big, a really good book by Adam

5:58

hoss Child, and the Stanley that Adam

6:00

describes as a monster who shot his way through the Congo

6:03

to discover the source of the river, shot his way

6:05

back out, and then connived a bunch of African chiefs

6:07

to hand over their land by making them sign

6:09

treaties they couldn't read and giving them cloth in

6:11

return. Um. And like I

6:13

said in the in the that was kind

6:15

of most people's interpretation of Stanley

6:18

for most of the last hundred years, right,

6:20

Like, he was popular during his lifetime and

6:22

pretty quickly afterwards, people were like, Oh,

6:24

this was a real This guy was a bad dude.

6:27

But now there's a whole industry that sort of cropped

6:29

up about rehabilitating not

6:31

just him, but a lot of other British colonial figures.

6:34

And one of my sources for today's episode is

6:36

a book written by one of those people in two thousands

6:38

seven agoin named Tim Jeal published Stanley,

6:41

The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest

6:43

Explorer. Um and Jill

6:45

was able to get access to a never before open trove

6:48

of Stanley's private letters and journal entries, which

6:50

is how he learned about stuff like Stanley lying about

6:52

how many people he'd killed. Um

6:55

and Gil is the guy who really

6:57

starts trying to rehabilitate Stanley by

6:59

like saying that he was a much better guy than people

7:01

think he is. Um and It's

7:03

Yeah. I'm gonna quote a little bit from a two thousand

7:05

eleven Smithsonian magazine article that gives

7:07

you an idea of how this is generally sold. Quote

7:10

another Stanley has recently emerged. Neither

7:12

a dauntless hero nor a ruthless control freak.

7:15

This explorer prevailed in the wilderness not because

7:17

his will was indomitable, but because he appreciated

7:19

its limitations and used long term strategies

7:21

that social scientists are only now beginning

7:23

to understand. This new version of

7:25

Stanley was found appropriately enough by Livingstone's

7:28

biographer Tim Geil, a British novelist and expert

7:30

on Victorian obsessives. Gild drew on thousands

7:32

of Stanley's letters, YadA, YadA, YadA. It depicts a flawed

7:34

character who seems all the more brave and humane for his ambition

7:37

and insecurity, virtue and fraud.

7:40

So and I should say this, This

7:42

article in Smithsonian is arguing that Stanley

7:44

should be like a productivity guru that

7:46

we take advice on. It's

7:50

fun, Like where this all has gone is real

7:52

interesting. Oh that's

7:54

what I want those like Columbus apologists

7:57

to do, something like this, just like, hey,

8:00

you know what, we Columbus maybe got

8:02

a bad rap everybody. Maybe he got it didn't

8:04

get a fair shape. Yeah, this

8:06

this is gonna be full of a lot of that stuff.

8:08

So I read Jeal's book, and I also

8:10

went through um King Leopold's Ghost

8:12

again, and they did a bunch of other research. And we're gonna have a

8:14

fun time here. Saron, We're just gonna have

8:16

us a good ass time. So, Sir

8:19

Henry Morton Stanley was

8:21

born on January one

8:24

under the name John Rowlands. Uh.

8:26

He was born a bastard in the literal sense

8:28

of the word. So that's convenient for the show. Yeah,

8:30

yeah, yeah, we don't really know who

8:32

his dad was. His mom was a woman named

8:35

Betsy Perry who was by all accounts,

8:37

a very promiscuous housemaid. Um,

8:40

she got around historically. That

8:42

is that is the that that is uh

8:45

widely discussed. Um, and

8:47

it has an impact on on on Stanley

8:50

later. So his father was probably a guy

8:52

named John Rowlands who was a local town drunk

8:54

who died from being the town drunk. Um.

8:57

But we don't really know. And other stories say his dad was

8:59

a wealthy law or who was shoot all connection with his

9:01

illegitimate child. Um. The important

9:03

thing is that absolutely nobody wanted

9:05

this kid around when he was born, like wildly

9:09

unwanted to an extent. That is just

9:11

heartbreaking, actually, like yeah, it's

9:14

it's a bummer. Um, I

9:16

don't know, I got a kid never around a lot of other kids

9:18

and sometimes you can just tell yeah some

9:20

of them, some of them, Yes, yes, yes,

9:23

yes, something like nah, we don't

9:25

want nobody wants that kid. That is sore and

9:27

Bowie's official stance, it's okay if some kids

9:29

are unwanted. Yeah,

9:32

it's if kids not wanted. That's

9:34

your internal cluck and your internal compass telling

9:36

you that's not a good kid. That's not that's a bad

9:38

one. That

9:41

kid's going to be a problem. Shouldn't have

9:43

that kid. So

9:47

his mother abandoned him basically immediately

9:49

and left him in the care of his uncle's and his grandfather,

9:52

Moses Perry. Uh and Adam hoss

9:54

Child describes Moses Perry as quote

9:56

a man who believed a boy needed a sound

9:58

whipping if he missed the saved uh

10:01

and kind of describes it as sort

10:03

of an abusive relationship. Geal takes

10:05

the completely opposite task and and argues

10:07

that the two had a good relationship until

10:10

Moses Perry fell down dead in the middle of a potato

10:12

field on June forty six,

10:14

when John was five and a half years old. Um

10:17

So John was left fully in the care of his

10:20

two uncles, who did not, in fact care very much

10:22

about him. They subcontracted the gig

10:24

and paid a poor family to take him in. But

10:26

eventually that family started asking for more money,

10:28

and the uncles refused, And so they

10:31

told John that his older cousin,

10:34

Dick, was going to take him to another aunt in a

10:36

town nearby. And so John and Dick went

10:38

on an eight mile walked together, and it was it was

10:40

tragically sore, and it was a walk of lies.

10:43

Uh. As John later wrote, quote, the

10:45

way seemed determinable and tedious. At last,

10:47

Dick set me down from his shoulders before an immense

10:49

stone building, and passing through tall iron

10:51

gates, he pulled it a bell, which I could hear clinging

10:54

noisily in the distant in tier. Here a somber

10:56

face stranger appeared at the door, who, despite

10:58

my remonstrances, seized me by the hand and drew

11:00

me within. Now, as John was being

11:02

pulled away, his cousin assured him that he would be right

11:04

back. He was going to get him both cakes. But this was

11:07

also a lie. In reality, Dick had abandoned

11:09

his stone building cakes. Yeah, as

11:11

you do, you go into the woods, you find the nearest stone

11:13

building. It's like, I bet they got cake in there. So

11:17

John just abandons his cousin to

11:19

a workhouse. That was the plan from the beginning.

11:21

Um, yeah, Geal

11:24

writes, quote the false cajolings and treacherous

11:26

endearments lavished upon him during that journey

11:28

would live forever at Henry Stanley's memory.

11:31

Since that dreadful evening, Stanley would right in his

11:33

fifties. My resentment has not a wit abated.

11:35

It would have been far better for me if Dick, being stronger

11:37

than I, had employed compulsion instead of shattering

11:40

my confidence and planting the first seeds of distrust

11:42

in a child's heart. Um,

11:45

this is a bad thing that happens. And

11:47

I'm gonna guess you've heard of workhouses right

11:49

sore in. Yeah, I'm familiar. Yeah,

11:51

now most people probably have, if only from

11:53

the Christmas Carol. You know, there's a bit where

11:55

Ebenezer Scrooges asked to donate money to the

11:57

poor, and he asks, are there no prisons? Are

12:00

there are no workhouses? And this is

12:02

this is the kind of place that John Rowlands

12:04

at age six, gets put into the St Asaf

12:06

Union workhouse. So the

12:10

British government, which was at the time conquering

12:12

big chunks of the world and stealing their ship, did

12:14

not like the the idea of taking care of their

12:16

own poor people, and in fact, the powers

12:18

that be found it disgusting, uh,

12:21

the idea that they would provide good care for the poor.

12:24

So they had workhouses and these provided basic

12:26

necessities. But they did so while treating

12:28

the inmates as if they are prisoners, because

12:30

they were considered to be basically criminal

12:33

for needing assistance. Um,

12:35

so it's it's a child prison for poor kids.

12:39

That's wonderful. It's awesome.

12:43

You. Um, it's kind

12:45

of hard to exaggerate how bad

12:47

England sucks in this period of time.

12:52

It's just so bleak. It's so bleak.

12:54

It's like this factory

12:57

benighted, cold drenched

13:00

hell, escape of of of dying

13:02

kids and uh,

13:04

fancy people. It's it's the best. But like

13:06

the kids are the working class, Like that's

13:08

your those those who are doing all of the

13:11

jobs. For some reason, they only made jobs available

13:13

to children. Well, their little hands can reach

13:15

all sorts of things, aren't They make very

13:17

good chimney sweeps, I'll say, incredible

13:19

chimney sweeps. So inmates

13:22

at the workhouse, and again a lot

13:24

of them are children, are required to wake up at six

13:26

am and they're locked in their dorms at eight pm.

13:28

They received only bread and gruel for

13:30

food. Husbands and wives were separated

13:33

as we're parents and children. If you were poor

13:35

enough to need state assistance, the state decided

13:37

that you no longer deserve to have a family. Even

13:40

siblings were kept apart. Poor children were

13:42

seen as wholly to blame for their circumstances.

13:45

As an adult, Stanley would write, it is

13:47

a fearful fate that of a British outcast,

13:49

because the punishment afflicts the mind and

13:51

breaks the heart, which is

13:53

certainly truthful. It is you read about

13:55

this guy's background and it's like not

13:58

that this makes his crime is

14:00

okay, but like hard to imagine this ending.

14:02

Well, yeah, it

14:04

does feel like a lot of these And I've listened

14:06

to a few of your podcasts, I'll say, and it seems

14:08

like a lot of them. You kind of have to get on a dark

14:10

bus for the beginning of it because you have to see where

14:12

the where all this originated. And every single

14:14

time, like somebody teaches these people how to hate

14:17

really well, like how to be really good at hating. Yeah,

14:19

it's Saddam Hussein

14:21

giant monsters, like oh yeah, and he was threatening his

14:24

teachers with a gun when he was like fourteen.

14:26

Yeah, that kind of scance. Yeah, I

14:28

see where this evolution happens. Stalin

14:30

was getting beat so bad that he was peeing

14:32

blood, and you're like, okay, I get it.

14:38

Yeah, okay, it's not so hard to

14:40

draw these lines together. Um.

14:43

So it's and it's interesting,

14:45

Like that line that I just read above is certainly

14:48

truthful. We have a lot of other accounts from work

14:50

houses and they sucked. Um.

14:52

But it's hard to trust Stanley on anything

14:54

because he lied about everything, including

14:57

his time at St. Asaph's. He

14:59

would go on a claim later in his writings

15:01

that he saw a boy beaten to death by James

15:03

Francis, the school teacher. And

15:06

the general consensus of historians,

15:08

based on workhouse records and other people

15:10

who are in that workhouse at the time, is that

15:12

nothing like this happened while Stanley was at the school.

15:15

Um, and in fact, most people who recalled

15:17

their time there seemed to think pretty fondly

15:20

of this teacher. And so yeah, it's

15:23

uh, it's it's it's interesting.

15:25

And Stanley would later tell lies about like getting

15:28

into a fight with this teacher himself and like

15:30

beating him up and like being cheered on by

15:32

the rest of the school. And these

15:34

are almost certainly lies, but they were also probably

15:36

a cover for something very sad, which

15:39

is childhood's sexual abuse. Uh.

15:41

The year that Stanley was admitted to st assets,

15:43

Yeah, we don't really know, but like the year he

15:45

was admitted, nineteen of the girls at the poorhouse

15:48

were turned out as prostitutes and pimped

15:50

by some of the male employees. Um

15:53

and a government inspector who observed the school

15:55

during this time noted that young male inmates

15:57

regularly slept with each other in experimented

15:59

set truly, and a lot of that experimentation

16:02

was probably not consensual on both sides. And

16:04

well, yeah, I love

16:06

that the government has an inspector to go check

16:08

out the workhouses. Like what

16:10

is he hoping to find there? Yeah,

16:14

you are kind of at a loss to like what would

16:16

have been possibly

16:19

the Like, you're not doing anything to stop

16:21

this from happening, So what's your hope here? Yeah,

16:24

created a prison for children. When

16:27

you go there, when you're like, oh, no,

16:29

they're having sex with each other, You've gotta be kidding

16:31

me. I have to raise the alarm. It turns out

16:33

things are bleak at the child prison.

16:38

So we don't know if if Stanley

16:41

engaged in any of this experimentation or if

16:43

he was sexually abused. He would always

16:45

claim in letters to like his romantic partners

16:47

that he stayed pure at the school while writing

16:50

about it later. But that doesn't fucking mean a

16:52

damn thing. Um whatever, Yeah,

16:54

whatever the truth. Stanley was noted

16:56

the rest of his life by everyone who

16:59

knew him for having an extreme terror

17:01

of physical and sexual intimacy, and

17:04

this terror remained with him for the entirety of

17:06

his life. So something

17:08

happened. We don't really know what, but

17:11

this boy walks out of it real changed.

17:14

Yeah, I think he went in a little changed to you don't

17:16

talk for the words with your your surrogate father

17:19

who's lavishing you with praise and then drops

17:21

you off at a workhouse and be like, yeah, you know what, I'm gonna

17:23

let somebody else in. It feels like at the opportunity for

17:25

me to open my heart to someone else. This is

17:27

one of those stories that it reads like

17:30

an experiment for like how much can we damage

17:32

a child? Like if we really

17:34

go all in, how badly can we fucking

17:36

get up? Yeah?

17:39

So Stanley did uh, at the least

17:41

receive an education which you know, generally

17:43

was considered to be pretty decent. Where he went, he

17:45

learned how to read and write, and he excelled at school.

17:47

While he was in the workhouse, he was awarded

17:50

a fancy bible from the local bishop for

17:52

his scholastic excellence. Uh.

17:54

Young John Rowlands, and again that's his name at

17:56

the time, that's his real name is. John Rowlands

17:58

was particularly enamored by geography

18:00

and penmanship throughout his life.

18:03

He made a point of writing neatly, almost

18:05

to an obsessive degree, and King

18:07

Leopold's ghost hoss Child writes, it

18:09

was as if through his handwriting he were trying to pull

18:12

himself out of disgrace and turn the script of his

18:14

life from one of poverty to one of elegance, which

18:16

I think is probably pretty accurate description.

18:20

So John may not have had the very worst childhood

18:22

a boy could have in Wales, but it was pretty close to

18:24

that. Uh. The defining moment of his early

18:26

life came when he was twelve. His supervisor

18:29

quote came up to me during the dinner hour when all

18:31

the inmates were assembled, and pointed out a tall

18:33

woman with an oval face and a great coil of

18:35

dark hair behind her head. He asked me if

18:37

I recognized her, No, sir, I replied,

18:40

what do you not know your own mother? I

18:42

started with a burning face and directed a shy

18:44

glance at her and perceived she was regarding me with

18:46

a look of cruel, critical scrutiny.

18:49

I had expected to feel a gush of tenderness towards

18:51

her, but her expression was so chilling that the valves

18:53

of my heart closed with a snap. So

18:56

that's yeah, that's a bad thing

18:58

to go through as Yeah,

19:02

that's a rough one.

19:06

He saw his mom at that, So she was she then

19:08

in the workhouse as well. She had two

19:10

more kids and she wasn't going to take

19:12

care of them, but they were also young enough that she

19:14

couldn't just drop them out the workhouse basically,

19:16

I think made her kind of hang around to finish

19:19

breastfeeding them and stuff before she could abandon

19:21

them. So she's there for a while with

19:23

her other kids before she abandons

19:25

them too. And yeah,

19:29

not great. It's

19:32

at least you know that the records the record

19:34

keeping there is good. Yeah, it's really good

19:36

record keeping. Absolutely, they

19:39

know not only do they

19:41

know that this was his mother. They're not just like taking

19:43

in kids and being like, yeah, well the parents didn't want you. We don't

19:45

know who they are. They're like, no, we're gonna keep tracks so that

19:47

when you are old enough for the age of revenge, we'll

19:49

give you a name on a piece of paper and you can go take

19:51

care of it. It would be so much less depressing

19:54

if he got revenge on her. But the rest

19:56

of his life part of why he lied so much

19:58

as he was like very dedicated to

20:01

making his mom proud and she clearly didn't

20:03

give a funk about him and at best

20:05

wanted his money. Um, it's

20:07

a fucking bummer duty.

20:11

So the workhouse remained John Rowland's

20:13

life until the age of fifteen, when he

20:16

escaped. Now, the reality of the situation

20:18

seems to be the escape wasn't really hard and he basically

20:20

just fucked off because he was old enough to do so.

20:22

Um. But Stanley felt the need to dream up a lurid

20:25

lie about how he left the school, and I'm gonna

20:27

quote from Adam hoss Child again. He

20:30

tells of leaving the Welsh workhouse in melodramatic

20:32

terms. He leapt over a garden wall and escaped,

20:34

he claims, after leading a class rebellion

20:36

against a cruel supervisor named James

20:39

Francis, who had viciously brutalized the entire

20:41

senior class. Never again, I shouted,

20:43

marveling at my own audacity, Stanley wrote,

20:46

the words had scarcely escaped me. Where I found

20:48

myself swung upwards into the air by the color

20:50

of my jacket, and flung into a nerveless heap

20:52

on the bench. The passionate brute pumbled

20:55

me in the stomach until I fell backward, gasping

20:57

for breath. Again, I was lifted dashed

20:59

upon the bin with a shock that almost broke my

21:01

spine um.

21:03

And this is again all lies. One of the

21:06

things that hosts Child notes and and that Gel

21:08

notes, is that Stanley was at that point

21:10

a very healthy fifteen year old boy,

21:12

while his teacher was it was a sick,

21:14

middle aged former cold miner who was missing

21:17

a hand. And was he

21:21

he he was unlikely to have been doing a lot of throwing,

21:24

is the incredible.

21:27

Yeah, So most people

21:29

seem to agree if there had actually been a fight,

21:31

the fifteen year old, healthy boy

21:34

probably would have beaten the handless coal miner,

21:36

but you know the man

21:39

with black lung and copd Yeah,

21:41

yeah, he wasn't. He wasn't a

21:44

price fighter. Um. And none of

21:46

Stanley's classmates were called anything like this happening.

21:49

And yeah, again they considered frances to have

21:51

been a nice guy and Stanley to have been,

21:53

uh, the teacher's pet. And again one

21:55

of the really sad things about this is

21:57

that one of the suspicions is that why

22:00

he later developed such a grudge against John

22:02

Francis, is that maybe Francis, who

22:04

there's a good chance was gay. Maybe

22:06

Francis made a pass at him once he's

22:08

you know, because like fifteen people were considered

22:10

yeah, so maybe this the teacher

22:13

made a pass at him or something more, and

22:15

that's why Stanley felt the need to attack

22:17

him so much. But we really don't know, um,

22:20

But something happened there too, Like there's

22:22

a couple of points like this in his life where it's like, yeah,

22:24

something happened to make you tell that specific

22:27

kind of lie. But and

22:29

also what you're probably getting from this

22:32

is that young Stanley was a big fan

22:34

of A. C. Dick h. Charles

22:36

Dickens um and

22:38

and Dickens Like that's a very Dickensian

22:40

moment, like the child like fights

22:43

off the abusive teacher

22:46

to like save his classmates and then winds

22:48

up on a magical journey.

22:50

Like that's a fucking Charles Dickens story. You

22:53

know. Stanley would be throughout his life a big

22:55

Dickens fan. Probably influenced how

22:57

he wrote his own biography. Um

23:00

yeah, actually that okay, so a lot of

23:02

things are falling into place that that's why his

23:04

writing style is so purple and like I

23:07

could see. Yeah, yeah, he's he's

23:09

very influenced by Dickens. Um.

23:11

And it's a really fun note if anybody wants to

23:13

know more about Charles Dickens from like an

23:16

interesting perspective. George Orwell wrote

23:18

so many fucking articles about Charles Dickens

23:20

is writing and like analyzed him from

23:22

like the perspective of a socialist is really interesting

23:25

set up. There's a bunch of them in um

23:27

the collection All Art Is Propaganda, which

23:29

is a good chunka Orwell reading

23:31

if you're into that anyway.

23:34

Um, so yeah, after he escapes

23:36

from the workhouse or just kind of walks out the door

23:38

because they don't really care all that much. Um,

23:41

Stanley winds up, you know, living with a series

23:43

of relatives for brief periods of time, but none

23:45

of them wanted to put him up for long, and he eventually wound

23:47

up living with an uncle in Liverpool, working

23:50

as the delivery boy to a butcher um

23:52

and John got the feeling that he was going to be kicked

23:54

out onto the street at any moment, and he was probably

23:56

right about that, and fortunately right

23:59

around the same time time, he wound up delivering

24:01

meat to an American merchant ship

24:03

called the Windowmere, which was docked nearby.

24:06

And as Stanley kind of describes it, and it's probably

24:08

broadly accurate because this was an uncommon at

24:10

the time, the captain basically looked him up and down

24:12

and was like, hey, you want to work on a boat

24:17

there. There weren't a lot of rules back of the day

24:19

about this sort of thing. So it

24:21

feels like they were like twelve people in history,

24:24

like every time somebody wanted a job, they're like, all

24:27

right, I'll get you a job. Yeah.

24:30

So he he does the pretty normal

24:32

thing for a poor kid at this part of

24:34

the world at the time, and he gets a gig fucking

24:36

working on a boat that takes him to the United States.

24:39

Um and John very clearly

24:42

was not a fan of sea life, and as soon as

24:44

the Windowmere landed in New Orleans in February

24:46

of eighteen fifty nine, he jumped ship and basically

24:48

just wandered into America and said, Okay,

24:50

I guess I'm gonna have a life here. Um

24:53

Because again, you could do that at the time. So

24:57

in some ways, I'm like, I'm really it's depressing

25:00

to hear about history. In other ways, I'm like, funk.

25:02

Everything was so much easier then that, Like

25:04

a lot of stuff was easier. You could just be like,

25:06

you know what I want to be in. I feel like I want

25:08

to be in Louisiana. I will figure

25:11

out a way to get there. And if I don't die of cholera,

25:13

no one's gonna stop me. Right. Yeah.

25:15

The thing you really had to worry about where diseases

25:17

and abusive people. But like, yeah, the opportunities

25:20

beyond those horrific things were endless.

25:22

Yeah, it wasn't hard to to just

25:25

do ship like that, you know if

25:27

it Yeah, nobody was making

25:29

you fill out a whole lot of paperwork. Yes,

25:32

yeah, you're being tracked for your

25:34

Like his credit was consideration

25:36

at that point, you no, it was not Um.

25:39

And and and again. This is another one of one

25:41

of what will become many different parts of the Stanley

25:43

story where his version of events in reality to verge.

25:46

But he claims that basically, he's wandering around

25:48

the streets of New Orleans and he sees a

25:50

local business owner like, looks up

25:52

at this guy who's wearing a nice suit and runs a business.

25:55

Uh, and he walks out. He just walks up to this guy

25:57

and says, do you want to boy? Sir? That's

26:04

your resume in the eighteen fifties,

26:08

just a just a single word boy

26:11

next to a dash.

26:16

Uh God, what a gig to

26:18

have. But this distinguished gentleman

26:20

did in fact want a boy. He

26:22

turned out to be a wealthy cut You

26:31

know what, I came into town for one of those

26:33

I was gonna pick me up a boy at the workhouse.

26:35

But this is this is fast so

26:39

uh yeah, this, this gentleman

26:41

turned out to be the wealthy cotton salesman Henry

26:44

Hope Stanley Um, who

26:46

was a real person and was a very successful

26:48

merchant in New Orleans at the time. And

26:51

and again, according to Stanley's version of events,

26:53

which is a lie. Henry Hope Stanley

26:56

instantly developed a liking for our boy John

26:58

and became his mentor in sir get father

27:00

figure. Uh. He got him a job working

27:02

for a shopkeeper named James speak Um.

27:05

And again, the only part of this is that's true

27:07

is that Stanley worked for James Speake and the reality

27:11

Henry Morton and family. He probably

27:13

did not. Stanley inserts

27:16

Henry Hope Stanley into the story decades

27:18

later. The likely reality is that he

27:20

was in fact wandering the streets, walked into this

27:22

guy's shop and said, do you want a boy and

27:24

this guy was like, yeah, sure, And he worked at this guy's shop

27:27

until he died and then he went on with his life.

27:29

Um. But that's Stanley

27:32

has to lie. He judges up the story and he adds

27:34

in this rich person who has the name that he

27:36

later adopts. That's

27:38

incredible. He's got such like a Trumpian element

27:41

to him. Yeah, totally. He

27:43

can't help himself but lie to let to

27:45

sound in any way any like little

27:47

tiny way grander. Yeah.

27:50

Yeah, they're all kind of

27:52

everyone we talked about on the show is kind of the same

27:54

person, with the exception of l Ron Hubbard

27:57

who is at the top of the

27:59

heap. But

28:03

I mean before you get into it. Uh,

28:06

do you know what time it is? I

28:09

can't imagine what you're trying to lead me towards, Sophie.

28:11

I don't know that. Just this thing that

28:14

you know keeps this podcast afloat. Oh

28:16

oh oh you mean robbing merchant

28:19

vessels on the Spanish Main exactly?

28:21

Yeah, for some information?

28:24

Oh absolutely, yeah?

28:27

Did your did your gun not coming the mail? No?

28:30

But I mean I got a lot this okay, fun,

28:32

Yeah, this will be this will be. This will be a real

28:34

hoot. Yeah. Alright, Well, we're gonna go find a merchantman

28:36

on the Spanish Main. You do the same, and

28:38

we will all meet back to talk more about Henry

28:40

Morton Stanley and divide up the booty.

28:49

We're back. Oh my gosh. That was some

28:51

good pillaging, some good looting, a

28:54

lot of balloons. Now you do you

28:56

do? Um, you're gonna want to find a boy

28:58

to help you with that. I need a fence

29:00

for these. I don't even know. I want to work. Does

29:03

like Target take these? Actually?

29:05

Yeah? Target does? Costco does not.

29:08

Uh, they prefer pieces of eight, which

29:10

are probably the same things but whatever,

29:12

fuck you. So Stanley starts working

29:14

for this guy, James Speak, and he basically works as

29:17

a boy in a shop, and he's really good at

29:19

at working and like, uh, this

29:21

is like essentially like a grocery store type deal or

29:23

a general store. And he's good at the job. He's an incredible

29:25

memory. Everybody seems to agree that about him,

29:27

and so he's really good at keeping things stocked

29:29

and knowing, you know, what needs to move. And yeah,

29:32

he's he's a good worker. Um.

29:34

But Stanley's version of the story is very different.

29:36

He claims that while he's working for James Speak,

29:39

he and Henry Hope Stanley are

29:41

growing very close and that they basically

29:43

spend two years traveling up and down the Mississippi

29:46

on business, and that the old man eventually

29:48

tells Stanley, who becomes a surrogate son,

29:51

that he's giving him the right to use the Stanley

29:53

name. Uh yeah,

29:56

so uh fucking

29:58

Stanley will claim that Henry Hope Stanley

30:00

died in eighteen sixty one, which is a lie. He

30:02

lived for like another sixteen years.

30:04

What a weird thing to lie about. Yeah, he lies about

30:07

everything though, Um

30:09

so yeah, there's no evidence that he and

30:11

Stanley arranged exchange so much as a word.

30:13

But you understand, like the real story in the fake story.

30:15

The fake story is that you know, he works with this guy, James

30:18

Speake, who pays him very well, and then James

30:20

Speake dies when a plague hits town and

30:22

Stanley winds up needing to move on. Um

30:26

yeah, so it's cool.

30:29

Uh yeah, it's it's

30:31

the opposite of cool. Yeah, Stanley

30:34

is not a cool dude. He's not a cool

30:36

dude. Throughout the early eighteen sixties,

30:38

though, he starts adopting the name of like

30:40

one of the richest people in town, and smart

30:43

gradually changed that that is not a bad call.

30:47

Yeah yeah, John Rowlands is a shift,

30:49

a shitty name in anyway, like Henry

30:51

Morton Stanley. You just tell that name to someone

30:53

and asks, this is a famous person, what do you think

30:56

they did. One of your first three guesses

30:58

is going to be explorer, right like

31:01

yeah, absolutely, yeah,

31:03

um so yeah, I'm going to

31:05

read a quote from King Leopold's Ghost explaining

31:07

the process of him stealing this other

31:10

man's name. In the

31:12

eighteen sixty New Orleans Senses, he's listed

31:14

as j Rolling, a woman who knew him at

31:16

the time, remembered him as John Rowland's

31:18

smart as a whip and much given to bragging,

31:20

big talk and telling stories. She said,

31:23

yeah. Within a few years, however, he began

31:25

using the first and last name of the merchant who had

31:27

given him his job. He continued to experiment with

31:30

the middle names, using Morley, more Like, and Moreland,

31:32

before finally settling on Morton. So

31:35

yeah, that's more or less the truth and

31:37

Tim Jeal's revisionist history of Stanley

31:39

the one that's like really pro Stanley goes

31:41

into the fact that he's lying about all of this, like Gel

31:44

in a lot of ways, it's a very valuable book because again

31:46

he was like the first guy with access to this dude's notes.

31:49

There's a lot of it that's in there that's interesting. The

31:51

stuff that shitty, I think is actually Jeal's personal

31:53

conclusions about everything. Um.

31:55

But he he goes he's very open

31:58

about the fact that Henry Morton Stanley or lied

32:00

about fucking everything. Um

32:02

but he has all these really fun explanations

32:05

and justifications for why Stanley

32:07

light in every case, like he's defensive of

32:10

his biography subject and

32:12

he feels the need to like explain

32:14

why it's cool that he did all this. Um,

32:17

And his argument in favor of stealing a man's

32:19

name is that Henry first told

32:21

this lie to his mother after he was famous,

32:23

and then it became a part of his biography later, and

32:26

so he started lying about this because he wanted her

32:28

to believe that somebody rich and powerful

32:30

had adopted him, which is actually kind

32:32

of plausible. Um That, Like, he

32:35

wanted because he'd been abandoned

32:37

by every single adult in his childhood.

32:40

He wanted to be able to go back to them and be like, this

32:42

guy was rich and cool and he thought I

32:44

was good enough to be his son. He wanted

32:46

me. Yeah, which

32:48

is a bummer and kind of scans

32:51

like, I'll give gel that one. Later on, his

32:53

justifications get worse that one. Yeah,

32:55

I could see that being the truth. Um.

32:59

So Gil goes on a note, and

33:01

this is where we get into him being really defensive, and

33:03

I find it fun. Yet his lies have

33:05

led his critics to treat him with disdain and condescension

33:08

ever since. His private lies to his mother were made

33:10

public by her without his knowledge, thus making

33:12

it all but impossible for him to be honest. Later,

33:14

young people who lie usually do so because they feel

33:17

bad about themselves and need to enhance their self esteem.

33:19

That Stanley should have been trapped for the whole of his life

33:21

and by what he had said to his mother during his twenties

33:24

was a personal tragedy for him and for his subsequent

33:26

reputation. Um. And

33:28

one of the things that interesting about Geal is he is

33:30

as frustrated at people judging Stanley

33:33

for this is he isn't them judging Stanley for gunning

33:35

people down in the congo, like it's

33:40

both are have equal weight in his Yeah, they

33:42

absolutely do, and

33:44

it's it's fun. I want I think that fun.

33:47

Without meeting Geal, I'm pretty confident

33:49

that he's a liar. He's somebody who

33:51

is lying in his past like little kids lie,

33:53

because yes,

33:56

yes they do. But that's not why

33:58

we're critical of stand now.

34:02

Yeah so anyway,

34:04

uh. For a while, Henry worked at a general

34:06

store in a log cabin, selling all sorts of

34:08

tools that people needed as they kind of moved into

34:11

the less settled parts of Louisiana. He

34:13

became particularly interested in different sorts

34:15

of rifles and revolvers and became very knowledgeable

34:17

about firearms. And this was as much out of necessity

34:20

as interest. Southern culture at the time

34:22

was brutal in ways we don't normally talk about,

34:24

because you know, there was slavery, and

34:26

that's kind of everyone's focus on

34:28

how brutal that was. But the brutality

34:30

extended throughout every layer of Southern

34:32

culture. Um and it included the fact that plantation

34:35

owners and they're like were extremely physically

34:37

aggressive people as a matter of rule.

34:40

Uh something about owning hundreds of human beings

34:42

that seems like it makes you unwilling to listen

34:44

to what anyone else has to say. Um

34:46

And Jil has actually a pretty good quote

34:49

here. It shocked Henry, after the civilities

34:51

of the city, to witness gunfights and to hear about

34:53

murders and disappearances. With so many vain

34:55

and violent men around him, possessing natures

34:57

as sensitive as hair triggers, he was care

35:00

well not to argue with Ednie backwoodsman or planter,

35:02

who might draw a gun on the least provocation.

35:04

However amiable they might originally have been,

35:06

their isolation had promoted the growth of egotism.

35:09

These Southern gentlemen talked endlessly

35:11

about their honor and often acted to avenge

35:13

it. In this environment, it was every man for himself.

35:16

So in case of trouble, Henry bought a Smith and Wesson

35:18

revolver and practiced with it until he could

35:20

sever a pack threat at twenty paces.

35:24

I feel like that's still that's like

35:26

a lesson you can still live by today. Yeah.

35:28

Yeah, if you're going to live in the South, learn how to

35:30

sever a thread with a revolver and keep it on

35:32

you at all times. I've always said that. Yeah.

35:34

And if you're in a rural area,

35:36

don't funk with anybody there, absolutely

35:39

not. Yeah.

35:42

Yeah, don't argue with people out

35:45

in the sticks, you know, just move

35:47

move along, just get going. Yeah,

35:51

keep on, keep on trucking. Um.

35:55

So. People who knew Stanley during this period

35:57

described him as talkative and intelligent, short,

35:59

but burly, and confident unless

36:01

he was asked about his family. Questions

36:03

about his family caused him to stutter and eventually

36:06

mumble out, there is a mystery about

36:08

my birth. Um. He's

36:11

not even a good liar. No, no,

36:13

no, no, I didn't even

36:15

think about that in person when he was actually doing

36:17

his line. He was not bad. No, he

36:19

doesn't seem to have been great at it. He

36:21

was a good he was a good writing liar.

36:24

So after a year or so, when Louisiana,

36:27

Stanley's boss died and Stanley was

36:29

forced to move to Cyphress Bend at

36:31

the age of nineteen, he got a job

36:33

at another store and rented a room at a cheap

36:35

boarding house. And Stanley stood out there,

36:38

his colorful neckerchiefs and his habitual

36:40

cleanliness where it odds with the sort of people who

36:42

crashed it. What was essentially a mix between

36:44

a shitty motel and a for profit homeless

36:46

shelter. Like that's kind of what a boarding house

36:48

is. And this part of the world at the time a lot

36:50

of real rough customers moving through. And then

36:52

you have kind of this this fancy lad

36:56

victorian fop who rolls through, Yeah,

36:58

big fan of yeah, big fantasy kerchiefs,

37:01

colorful kerchiefs, really wants to

37:04

be a British noble, even though he comes from

37:06

I mean, the poorest fucking working class

37:08

background you can, right, this is

37:10

an example of relying in the wrong direction, like

37:12

trying to establish himself as an aristocrat

37:14

in a place where no one wants that. It's

37:17

like, no your background would help you here, Stanley

37:20

tell people the truth. Yeah, and it is one

37:22

of those things throughout his life, like a lot of fancy

37:24

British people will always treat him like ship,

37:27

even after he becomes rich and famous, because

37:29

he comes from a low class background. Well

37:31

like the Americans he works, They're just like, yeah,

37:33

whatever, you

37:36

can shoot a pack threat at thirty paces, That's

37:38

all I care about, because we're going to shoot at each

37:40

other. I

37:43

come from the South. I can't not shoot

37:45

somebody. I got it. I haven't shot a single

37:48

personal day. You're not You're not my buddy

37:50

if we haven't gotten into an afternoon gunfight.

37:52

Yeah. So Henry

37:54

got malarias shortly after moving and

37:56

dropped down to just ninety five pounds and

37:58

this hilaria. Yeah, this happens so

38:00

many times throughout his life. He will drop down to like

38:03

the weight of a ten year old repeatedly,

38:06

just because you

38:08

know, every he's always sick and dying,

38:10

like this guy's in the Congo for a huge chunk

38:13

of his life. He spends about like

38:15

half of his life actively dying

38:17

of some sort of horrible, contagious,

38:20

contagious disease. And that's the case with

38:23

every explorer, Like I do a

38:25

lot of reading about the lives of great explorers,

38:27

because that that's my ship. Uh.

38:29

And they all are always dying of the

38:31

illnesses they've picked up. Like the best of

38:34

them were just constantly ill and just didn't

38:36

quite die. I love that in

38:39

actual actuality, these people are being

38:41

dragged through their exploration.

38:43

They're they're not actually out there cutting stuff,

38:46

bush whacking with their own machete or anything. They're

38:48

being carried on a palanquin as they slowly wither

38:50

away into nothing. Some of them are

38:52

Stanley is one of those guys who is famous

38:55

for like always like like working his ass

38:57

off like and and a number of them were

38:59

like what they would just always be sick and

39:01

dying. And the ones that got famous

39:04

are the ones who didn't die, like

39:06

like the whole team would crack, would croak basically

39:08

and stay. It would just be like Stanley and a bunch

39:11

of like local people wandering into some town.

39:14

Um, yeah, it's

39:16

he's It's funny to me that like the

39:19

stereotypical image of like one of these guys, it's kind

39:21

of like the rock in those Jumanji movies or

39:23

whatever. Like we're like the big barrel chested

39:25

wearing that shirt they all wore, and

39:27

like the reality is like they looked like fucking

39:30

concentration camp survivors a lot of the time because

39:32

they just had been dying for nine months,

39:34

like they had no calories left. They were

39:36

shipping themselves uncontrollably,

39:39

like just couldn't keep food down, zero

39:41

fat on their bones. Like, and that's

39:44

that's Stanley's whole life. He's actively looks

39:46

like a dead man most of his days.

39:49

He's Christian Baleing the machinist. Yeah

39:52

yeah, yeah, it's it's it's

39:54

it's rough, and that's just a call. Like everyone's sick

39:56

all the time back in those days. So yeah,

39:59

he moves to the sticks and immediately

40:01

almost dies. And despite being on the verge of

40:03

death, his new boss, who's like working

40:05

at a shop, sends him out regularly to work

40:07

as a debt collector and collect debts from customers,

40:10

which is not a safe vocation. So he's like

40:12

in armed standoffs with men as

40:14

he's shifting himself uncontrollably and

40:16

like barely able to stay conscious.

40:19

So Stanley lives though, because he's he's.

40:21

One thing you can say for Stanley, he was a

40:23

cussed ly tough son of a bitch um.

40:26

Yeah, and he doesn't die, as

40:29

will be the long story with this guy.

40:31

Uh. And you know, during this time as

40:33

he's doing working as a debt collector and

40:35

dying, he had exactly two

40:37

encounters with members of the opposite sex, and

40:40

both of them were profoundly sad um

40:42

and Teal writes here unlike

40:45

most young men living in boarding houses frequented

40:47

by sailors, Stanley had avoided brothels.

40:49

However, on one occasion only he had taken to

40:51

a gilded parlor where he saw four young

40:54

ladies and such scant clothing that he was, He

40:56

wrote, speechless with amazement. When they proceeded

40:58

to take liberties with my person. They seem to me

41:00

to be so appallingly wicked that I shook them

41:02

off and fled. My disgust was so great

41:04

that I never, in after years, could overcome my

41:06

repugnance to females of that character.

41:11

I love that he this women started

41:13

touching him and he ship dog

41:16

that fucks him up. Yeah.

41:21

Yeah, he's that kind of dude.

41:23

And there is the thing he is scaredest

41:25

of, like Stanley is

41:27

is the kind of guy who will repeatedly face down

41:30

like wild animals, you know, with

41:32

a crude and unreliable rifle.

41:34

Um, but he cannot handle a woman

41:37

being like, I think you're cute,

41:39

the most dangerous animal of all. Yeah,

41:41

it's awesome, um and totally

41:44

totally to character. So Gil

41:47

goes on to note, abandoned by a promiscuous

41:49

mother, Henry's mistrust of prostitutes was

41:51

not hypocritical. Uh,

41:56

and he goes he notes another incident confirmed

41:58

his sexual naivety in his overcrowded

42:00

boarding house. Bet sharing was not unusual.

42:03

Once Stanley slept on a four poster with a

42:05

youth called Dick Heaton, who had also jumped

42:07

ship. Although Dick was so modest he

42:09

would not retire by candle light and walked in

42:11

a suspiciously female manner. Stanley

42:14

oldly twigged his true sex at

42:16

the end of three days. Um.

42:18

And he like realizes this in bed when

42:20

he sees one of Dick's breasts. And I don't

42:22

know if like Dick was actually like a transgender person

42:25

or just like a lot of times in those days, like if you

42:27

were a woman who had to travel alone for some reason

42:29

because you have money, it's just safer to

42:32

present his male hard to say what the actual

42:34

truth here, But he realizes Dick

42:39

name for we

42:44

have Yeah, that is a good porn name.

42:47

Um. So Stanley's recollection

42:49

of this is that like they're sleeping together because

42:51

you know, that was pretty normal at the time. And Stanley realizes

42:53

that Dick has has breasts and and lady

42:56

parts. Um, you

42:58

know, realize Stanley really lies, is that

43:00

that that Dick is? Yeah? Anyway,

43:03

and he like freaks out and Dick has to

43:05

flee the place, like he

43:07

doesn't tell anyone, or at least Stanley claims

43:09

he doesn't tell anyone. But Dick is gone

43:12

the next day and Stanley hears nothing else about

43:14

him. So I don't know, no,

43:17

no, no, not a great story.

43:19

Yeah, surely something.

43:22

Yeah, that's another one of those situations where something happened

43:24

between the two of them and Henry Morton. Stanley

43:26

is like, I never want to hear about this person again. I mean, he

43:28

was just gone. He's gone from my memory, he's gone from

43:30

the world. He doesn't exist anymore. I wouldn't

43:33

be surprised if actually what happened is that

43:35

he like turned him in or like made

43:37

other people aware, and things went really

43:39

bad for Dick and It's something that horrified

43:41

Stanley that he didn't talk about. I don't know hard to say,

43:44

well, we'll never know. This could have actually

43:47

gone just the way because I could also see Henry

43:49

Morton Stanley being so shocked and

43:51

horrified by this realization that he just

43:53

is spellbound for hours. Yeah,

43:56

like this, this rocks the

43:58

firmament of his world. The

44:01

Mike Pence soul inside of him is like,

44:03

yeah, no, no, no, no, I

44:05

need to lie down for a week. This is worse than malaria,

44:08

yeah, which he was dealing with

44:10

constantly at the time. So in November of eighteen

44:12

sixty, Abraham Lincoln, America's greatest

44:14

president not named Taft, was elected

44:16

after a contentious vote. As

44:19

a foreigner, Henry didn't really see what the big

44:21

deal was, but his friend Dan Gorerie,

44:23

with the son of his store's biggest customer, filled

44:25

him in. And obviously, Dan Gorerie is a rich

44:28

Southern kid in eighteen sixty, so

44:30

I'm gonna give you a guess as to where his political allegiances

44:33

wound up being during the whole war thing. Stanley

44:35

later wrote that he was informed quote the election

44:38

of Aide Lincoln in November previous had created

44:40

a hostile feeling in the South because this

44:42

man had declared himself opposed to slavery. And

44:44

as soon as he became president in March, he

44:46

would do all in his power to free the slaves. Of

44:48

course, said he. In that event, all slaveholders

44:51

would be ruined. Now, as

44:53

you can probably guess, Dan and his

44:55

father were people who owned other

44:58

people for profit. The Gory family

45:00

had a hundred and twenty slaves, which is yeah,

45:04

yeah, I apologize. Um

45:07

Now. Dan told Henry that he suspected

45:09

the South would succeed over the issue of slavery and

45:11

whatever else you can say. He was not wrong about

45:13

that. Uh. And as the Civil War

45:16

ramped up, Stanley's main concern was

45:18

that the Union had seized a series of forts at

45:20

the mouth of the Mississippi. Uh he and he

45:22

concluded that this meant that the election of Abraham

45:24

Lincoln was going to ruin his business because he worked

45:27

as a ship boy on the river. Uh.

45:29

And so that's why he says he decides

45:31

to volunteer for the Confederate Army, or at least

45:33

that's part of it. Um.

45:35

So one of the funniest

45:37

things in the world. Sor and in the whole

45:40

goddamn world is reading Tim

45:42

gel try to explain how Henry Morton

45:44

Stanley, a man who fought for the Confederate Army,

45:47

did not support slavery and was not a racist.

45:49

He's been so much of this book

45:52

arguing that Stanley wasn't a racist, and

45:54

it is the funniest goddamn thing. I

45:56

mean, it's it's really it's really

45:59

amusing. I'm going to read you a

46:01

selection from Tim Jill's book Stanley, so

46:03

you can hear this man explain how

46:05

totally not racist Stanley was. Yes,

46:09

though Henry expressed no revulsion towards

46:11

slavery in the Deep South, which was legal and accepted

46:14

by everyone he knew, he was not he

46:16

was not prejudiced against black people,

46:21

but it was fine to own them. But that that's not

46:23

That doesn't mean you're prejudiced. You can be racist

46:26

and fine, you can be not anti racist and

46:28

fine with slavery. It's it's

46:30

impossible, totally possible. I

46:33

guess that is an argument. No, No, I think these

46:35

people are perfectly equal to me in

46:38

every way, and I just owned them from

46:40

bydnal force. Like I guess, at least

46:42

that's honest. Boy,

46:46

Yeah, I love that. I love Jill that He's

46:48

like, look he yes, okay, he

46:50

and he lived with slavery and

46:52

maybe it got advantages from it,

46:54

but it was legal, everybody,

46:57

It's fine, it's legal. It's fine. Not

46:59

just got advantage? Is this from it? Like actively

47:01

fought and was willing to

47:04

kill for it. Uh,

47:06

it is a stance to take. Yes,

47:09

he fought for slavery, but he wasn't racist.

47:12

Excellent, It's it's

47:14

great, dude. Uh So, I'm not

47:17

even done with this fucking quote. So he

47:19

just explains how that he's not practiced against

47:21

black people. Indeed, he had lived in the New

47:23

Orleans boarding house that was owned by a freed

47:25

black woman. It had been recommended to him by

47:27

two of James Speake's slaves. Uh.

47:33

Oh boy, Now, Soren, you

47:36

know who won't fight for slavery in eighteen

47:38

sixty Abraham

47:41

Lincoln. That is accurate. That

47:44

is accurate. And also the products and services

47:46

that support this podcast, many of which

47:49

are Abraham Lincoln. He's a big,

47:51

big donor to the pod,

47:54

The Ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Here

47:57

we go, all

48:08

right, we're back. Oh my gosh, oh

48:10

those ads. I

48:12

I am just fucking you

48:15

could hang a pipe rail gate off me. That's how

48:17

hard I am. Anyway, let's roll back into the episode

48:19

and not analyze that too much. Um

48:22

so, uh yeah, okay, we are

48:24

still making it through this fucking paragraph

48:27

of Tim Geil explaining why it's not racist

48:29

to fight for the Confederacy. Um

48:32

my god. So he's just explained that he lived in a New

48:34

Orleans boarding house, was one by a free black woman. Quote.

48:36

A frenzy desire to fight the Yankees inflamed

48:38

most of the young men Stanley knew, and most of the young women

48:41

urged them on. Many customers of the store joined

48:43

up after Captain Samuel G. Smith raised

48:45

a local company called the Dixie Grays. Because

48:48

Henry felt the Coral was not really his and was puzzled

48:50

that white's meant to fight one another over the rights of

48:52

blacks. He did not enlist but

48:54

on receiving So he's

48:57

not racist, but he doesn't see why it's worth fighting

48:59

over the rights of other people who aren't white.

49:04

Tim, are you reading the paragraph

49:06

you're writing? Can't we all just

49:09

get along? Not them, I mean us

49:12

people, the actual human beings.

49:14

Yeah, you do get that feeling

49:16

from old Timmy g Timmy J. So

49:20

quote. Uh yeah,

49:22

but upon receiving in a parcel a chemise

49:24

and a petticoat such as a Negro lady's

49:27

maid might wear, he felt compelled to ask,

49:29

not least because suspecting that the sinder was

49:31

one of Dr Gorey's beautiful daughters.

49:33

So he gets sent ladies clothing

49:36

by a woman he thinks is hot, and she's basically

49:38

being like, you're a lady because you're not fighting

49:40

for the South. Oh, that's such a

49:42

good burn for that time. Yeah,

49:45

and it it it's actually a really common thing

49:47

historically. A similar thing happened in England

49:49

during World War One. We're like women would get

49:51

together to like shame men in town who hadn't

49:53

volunteered to fight yet. Um. Variations

49:57

of this have happened in a lot of places throughout history.

49:59

Uh and Stanley, if

50:02

that's true, Stanley, that's absolutely part

50:04

of what Stanley does this for. It

50:06

did not seem like a whimp, which you know scance. But

50:09

on the other hand, a woman he liked

50:11

just sent him some of her clothes. I

50:13

mean that's like silver. No, it

50:15

wasn't her clothes, It was the kind of ladies

50:18

clothing that a black woman would wear. Oh

50:21

yeah, I bet that was part of that.

50:24

No, he did not like that. So

50:28

he enlists as a private soldier under

50:30

an officer named Henry H. Stanley,

50:32

which is weird, um, but nobody

50:34

seems to make anything of it. So whatever. He wound

50:36

up fighting with a unit called the Dixie Grays at the Battle

50:38

of Shiloh, which was a pretty bad

50:41

battle. Not a good time familiar.

50:43

Yeah, yeah, not a great battle as far as battles

50:45

go. If I had to be in a battle, wouldn't

50:47

be top of my list. Uh.

50:50

And yeah, he fought against the Army of I don't know

50:52

about you, Sor, but my favorite career alcoholic

50:54

Ulysses Simpson Grant. Um,

50:57

yeah, he alcoholics.

51:00

A cry baby. Uh.

51:02

He fucking ruled, dude. Oh my gosh.

51:04

So Stanley saw heavy, nightmarish

51:06

combat during the first day of the battle, and many of

51:08

his friends were shot dead immediately in front of him.

51:11

Uh. He later wrote of his feelings while standing in

51:13

the carnage that he felt shocked to see quote

51:15

that the human form we made so much of should

51:17

now be mutilated, hacked, and outraged, and that

51:19

life hitherto guarded as a sacred thing

51:21

should be given up to death. Um,

51:25

so that's all right, Henry, Yeah, come

51:27

on, man, Yeah, it's it's lame. You're about

51:29

the eighty billionth person to write about that.

51:31

And what you're about to do is what you're about

51:34

to do exactly that to hundreds of people.

51:36

Oh my gosh, with so many more than hundred.

51:38

Soren So he was captured on the second

51:41

day of fighting and found himself imprisoned in a

51:43

pow camp outside of Chicago. And this was

51:45

not a nice place, although it probably compared favorably

51:48

to the workhouse he'd grown up in. Um.

51:50

After a brief confinement, he was given the opportunity

51:52

to free himself by enlisting in the Union

51:55

Army and fighting for the other side. Adam

51:57

hoss Child of King Leopold's Ghosts

51:59

right that he promptly agreed to do so. And this

52:01

is one of the few places where hoss Child has kind of

52:03

a more positive view of Stanley than

52:06

Tim Jean does. But Tim

52:08

Jean doesn't mean it that way. He disagrees

52:11

with this and thinks that it was hard for Stanley

52:13

to leave the Confederacy. Quote.

52:15

Henry held out for six weeks before changing

52:18

sides. He had been through hell with his fellow Southerners

52:20

and felt disloyal, but as a foreigner embroiled

52:22

in the war by chance and having little understanding of the

52:24

conflict's true significance, Stanley's

52:27

behavior was not forgivable. And

52:29

it's funny because he says that he really

52:31

just didn't understand what all this fighting was about. And

52:33

then later in the book, when Stanley becomes

52:35

an anti slavery crusader, makes a huge

52:38

point about how good it was that he was an abolitionist.

52:41

How could he not have known what this fight was

52:43

about? That's great. Uh

52:47

so, it's awesome. Um,

52:50

it's it's so cool. Yeah, he it's

52:54

it's cool that he feels the need to explain how

52:56

why leaving the Confederate

52:58

Army was quote not forgivable.

53:00

That says a lot about gene. That

53:03

wasn't anyone's question, tim

53:07

So anyway, Stanley and next spent some time fighting

53:09

for the Union as an artillerist until he gets sick

53:11

from dysentery and received a medical discharge.

53:14

He' spent a bit of time working as a sailor on the Atlantic

53:16

before in eighteen sixty four, he enlisted in the

53:18

Union Navy and got a posting on the frigate

53:20

Minnesota by virtue of his very nice penmanship.

53:24

Uh. He worked as a ship's clerk and was present

53:26

for a naval battle wherein his ship bombarded a

53:28

Confederate fort in North Carolina. Henry

53:30

Morton Stanley was one of a very small number of people

53:32

to experience combat on both sides of the

53:34

war, in the land and on the sea. So that's

53:37

an eat piece of trivia. Well,

53:39

not a lot of folks do that. Yeah,

53:42

So he was in the army and the navy. He

53:44

was in the Confederate Army, the

53:46

U. S. Army, and the U. S. Navy. During

53:48

the course of the Civil War, he got around a

53:50

bit, you know, not most not a lot of people did

53:52

that. So once the Civil

53:54

War was over, Stanley used some of his army bucks

53:56

to take a trip to Turkey with two of his friends, including

53:59

a younger boy who basically worship Stanley

54:01

named Louis no. And this is a

54:03

recurrent theme in Stanley's life. There's always one

54:06

or two or three young white boys hanging

54:08

around who think he's the bee's knees, and

54:10

most of them die. Um,

54:15

but he seems to have a need to have adoring young

54:17

men kind of hanging around him. So the

54:19

object of Stanley's trip was to

54:21

just kind of wander around Turkey and then quote

54:24

write a great book of adventure. It's

54:26

amazing. Yeah, it is like the child

54:28

It's like the career that I dreamed

54:31

of having when I was nine. Yeah,

54:33

go find yourself in this foreign

54:36

country and then write a gripping

54:38

book about it. Yeah. I mean his Eat

54:40

Prey Love would involve shooting a lot of people,

54:42

but like that was the idea, right, Yeah.

54:45

Yeah, and I'm not opposed to reading something

54:47

like that either. No. I I too

54:49

would like to travel somewhere different

54:52

from what I'm used to and then write a great book of adventure.

54:54

That does sound fun. Now. The

54:56

fact that people like me and

54:58

people like you if I that fun is

55:01

part of why the eight

55:03

hundreds were a real rough period for a lot of

55:05

the globe. That's a good point.

55:08

That's a good point. Yeah. But

55:11

you know, whatever while we were

55:13

just describing was a very very tame

55:15

version of manifest destiny.

55:17

Yeah, and it's like the version of manifest

55:20

destiny that I don't know, like like Indiana

55:22

Jones and Tintin books pass Along, where

55:24

it's like, yeah, it seems super fun to go have adventures

55:26

and meet cookie characters and strange

55:29

places. What's

55:31

about that? Go get into scrapes with

55:33

the crazy savages. Oh

55:38

oh yep, okay, yeah,

55:40

there's I

55:42

see that's problematic. Yeah. The people who

55:44

did that got so many people killed. Okay.

55:48

Yeah. So unfortunately, before

55:50

they could go off to Turkey, No

55:52

and Uh Stanley lost almost all

55:55

of their guns and equipment to a boating accident in the

55:57

United States. UH, and they suffered

55:59

a fur or accident in Anatolia. When

56:01

they actually get to Turkey, and Louis

56:03

No decided to start a campfire in the middle

56:05

of a drought and it quickly raged out of control

56:08

and the local police took Stanley and his other

56:10

partner into custody. UH. They

56:12

got out, but louis No freaked out because

56:14

he was scared of how angry Stanley was going to

56:17

be UH and as soon as they got out of jail,

56:19

he fled to a nearby island. So

56:21

Stanley catches up with his boy a few days

56:23

later, and he gives what No would later

56:25

call a sadistic flogging and

56:28

then forces him to return to the expedition.

56:30

So the slavery hater has a long history

56:33

of whipping people and making them work

56:35

for him, but in ways that aren't

56:37

slaveries. Yeah,

56:41

it's cool, it's cool. The

56:45

voyage continued and the crew made their way three

56:48

miles inland to Turkey, with again no clear

56:50

goal but adventure. Uh. They reach

56:52

a village called and here's

56:54

how Jail describes what happens next. According

56:57

to no who came to hate Stanley before the

56:59

trip was over, Stanley tried

57:01

to murder a turk in order to steal his horses.

57:04

It's all perfect. He's

57:06

just gonna kill me a man and take his horses.

57:09

Henry would later claim that the turk had made obscene

57:12

overtures to Know, and he Stanley had been

57:14

slashed at him with his sword to defend his young

57:16

friend. Stanley's diary confirms that

57:18

the turk had been sexually drawn to Know

57:20

when they were riding together in a group, but

57:22

Stanley may have used his disgust as a pretext

57:25

to attack an attempt to rob the man. So

57:29

again, this is the guy who is the most sympathetic

57:31

to Stanley. You could be he was like, maybe

57:33

he used his friend's sexual assault is pretext

57:36

to commit armed robberies. Al

57:38

Right, guy

57:41

like horses,

57:44

We gotta get us some horses. I'm gonna steal

57:46

him. I'm gonna I'm gonna

57:48

make up a story about this guy wanting us my

57:50

friend so I can take his stuff.

57:53

Yeah, uh, it's

57:55

cool. I'm gonna continue Jeels

57:57

paragraph because the middle gymnask is

57:59

here. Real fun. If he had really been

58:01

contemplating murder, he would have surreptitiously

58:03

loaded a gun in advance to be able to shoot the

58:05

turk without risking a hand to hand tussle with

58:07

a man used to fighting with swords and daggers,

58:11

so both both

58:13

being like, look, here's what

58:15

he would have done if he really wanted to kill the guy, and

58:17

also going of course, turks

58:19

naturally know how to fight with daggers. You

58:23

always see them with those long curved swords.

58:27

But Henry made no such preparation. After

58:29

his hands had been badly cutting the fight and he was desperate to end

58:31

it, he failed to lay hands on a single loaded gun

58:33

among the weapons he had brought with him, so like,

58:36

he also didn't kill him in vengeance, So he's a good

58:38

guy. It's so fun

58:41

so reputation spotless.

58:43

Still still a

58:46

flawless man, oh

58:48

man. Now, Stanley and his men were

58:50

surrounded by angry Turks and they opted

58:52

to surrender rather than fight. They were beaten,

58:54

tied up, and robbed, and Louis No was raped

58:57

at knife point repeatedly. Um.

58:59

They vived though, and successfully brought

59:01

suit against the men who'd attacked them. Stanley

59:04

won a dollar judgment, and he gave

59:06

louis No the smallest share. Yeah.

59:09

Well, imagine the emotional turmoil

59:11

this Henry Smarton Stanley had to go through his

59:14

boy get beaten like that. Yeah,

59:17

oh good lord. So Stanley returned to the United

59:19

States and got a job as a reporter. And this is the first

59:21

time in his life when Henry Morton Stanley

59:23

was good at something. Um. He his

59:26

beat was the Indian Wars, which in eighteen

59:28

sixty seven we're not a super at

59:30

a hopeful point for the Native American side,

59:33

and most of what Stanley saw in person

59:35

were like, you know, we would call him desperate

59:37

peace negotiations um

59:40

by the victims of a genocide and the genociders.

59:43

Now, this is the area where hoss Child

59:45

and Gail diverge substantially, or at least one

59:47

of them. Uh. The hoss Child claims that Stanley

59:50

just lied and invented fake battles and massacres

59:52

to basically rile up people's blood with lines

59:55

like this, the Indians, true to their promises,

59:57

true to their bloody instincts, true to their savage

59:59

hatred of the white race, true to the lessons

1:00:01

instilled in their bosoms by their progenitors,

1:00:03

are on the war path. Um.

1:00:07

Yeah, that's a that's a bad one. Yeah,

1:00:11

that's a bad one. Um.

1:00:14

Gel has a totally

1:00:16

different attitude and says that Stanley did witness

1:00:18

some horrible crimes by Native Americans, but

1:00:20

that he also reported sympathetically on them

1:00:23

because he thought they'd been mistreated by the white man.

1:00:25

And he provides several examples of this, and

1:00:28

the reality seems to be that number

1:00:30

one, it wasn't uncommon to both right

1:00:32

lies about the brutality of Native Americans

1:00:35

and also write sympathetically about their

1:00:37

plight. That was huge in Europe.

1:00:39

There was this both all throughout. We talked about this

1:00:41

in our Karl May episode, whose Hitler's like

1:00:43

favorite novelist who wrote a bunch of cowboy books.

1:00:46

May simultaneously wrote about

1:00:48

how tragic it was that Native Americans were being

1:00:50

exterminated and also portrayed them as

1:00:52

brutal, savage monsters. Like he did both

1:00:54

simultaneously, and that was kind

1:00:57

of pretty common in among Europeans,

1:00:59

and Stanley he did the same thing. Um,

1:01:02

so yeah, it's it's cool. Uh.

1:01:05

Later, with explaining why it's okay that

1:01:07

Stanley vastly exaggerated the number

1:01:09

of people that he killed. Uh, Tim, Jeal

1:01:11

cites this is a justification quote the

1:01:14

knowledge he had gained when reporting from the Indian

1:01:16

Wars that Americans like to read about red

1:01:18

Indians being killed in retaliation for

1:01:20

injuries. So so there's a guy

1:01:22

who's very sympathetic toward the Native American. Yes,

1:01:25

yes, the least

1:01:27

racist person possible. Come

1:01:30

on, let's let's give

1:01:32

him a break, everybody. The

1:01:34

funniest part of Jeal's biography is the multiple

1:01:36

points where he off handedly expresses

1:01:39

that he's cleared Stanley from any

1:01:41

charges of racism, just like,

1:01:44

we can just dispense with that because I've proved he

1:01:46

wasn't. It's

1:01:49

so good. So eventually,

1:01:51

the quality of Stanley's articles earned him the attention

1:01:54

of James Gordon Biddett Jr. The owner of

1:01:56

the New York Herald, which was at the time one of the most

1:01:58

profitable publications in the world at the moment. I

1:02:00

would try to compare it to a modern publication,

1:02:02

but I can't think of a profitable one, so we're just gonna

1:02:04

move on past that. Stanley

1:02:09

fin angled himself a job basically working

1:02:11

for free to report on a war between the British

1:02:13

government and the Emperor of Abyssinia. So

1:02:15

Stanley is one of those guys who're like, yes, sometimes you get

1:02:17

it right for free to get exposure, um,

1:02:20

which is not ideal but also isn't

1:02:22

wrong. Like that is kind of the way it works, and it sucks

1:02:24

and unfairly uh rewards

1:02:27

people who are already rich and come from wealth.

1:02:29

But if you're willing to write for free, you can really

1:02:31

jump start your career. Yeah,

1:02:33

or if you're either you're rich or you're used

1:02:35

to living in absolute squalor yes,

1:02:38

that is the path I took and lived in a place

1:02:41

where the ceiling collapsed on me more than once.

1:02:46

Quote here's talking Adam hoss

1:02:48

Child describing his his first war, corresponding

1:02:51

gig at Suez on his way to the war,

1:02:53

Stanley bribe the cheap telegraph clerk to

1:02:55

make sure that when correspondence reports arrived

1:02:57

from the front, his would be the first cabled home.

1:02:59

His site paid off, and his glowing account of how

1:03:01

the British won the war's only significant battle was

1:03:03

the first to reach the world. In a grand stroke of

1:03:05

luck, the trans Mediterranean telegraph cable

1:03:07

broke just after Stanley's stories were sent off.

1:03:10

The dispatches of his exasperated rivals and even

1:03:12

the British Army's official reports had to travel

1:03:14

part of the way to Europe by ship. In a Cairo

1:03:16

hotel in June eighteen sixty eight, Stanley

1:03:19

savored his scoop and the news that he had been named a

1:03:21

permanent roving foreign correspondent for the Herald.

1:03:23

He was twenty seven years old, so

1:03:26

really fox up his fellow reporters, but not

1:03:28

a dumb call. Yeah

1:03:30

yeah, And I I

1:03:33

had someone do the big equivalent

1:03:35

of that to me when I was in Moses. I had an

1:03:37

employee of a major news network

1:03:39

bribe the Iraqi military to not

1:03:42

let me in. A bunch of other journalists passed a checkpoint.

1:03:44

And that is the most I can say about that story. Without

1:03:47

being legally charged with something

1:03:49

by the said company. So we're gonna

1:03:51

roll right along. It

1:03:54

was a fun We got where we wanted to go because

1:03:56

we had better fixers than they did. But it sucked.

1:04:01

So Uh, this was you know, the first time

1:04:03

in this story that Henry's life was

1:04:05

in what you would call pretty good shape. You know, he's he's

1:04:08

a roving foreign correspondent. He's gotten a huge scoop.

1:04:10

Money is starting to come in and he's in

1:04:12

in America. I don't know if you wouldn't call journalism

1:04:15

respectable, but he has money and that's respectable.

1:04:18

Um. And despite you

1:04:20

know the fact that he fought for an empire

1:04:22

founded on human bondage. You could call this

1:04:24

an inspiring journey. Abandoned

1:04:27

child makes his way up to respected

1:04:29

foreign correspondent. That's a that's

1:04:32

a tale with an arc to it. But Stanley

1:04:34

wasn't satisfied with these achievements. Journalism

1:04:36

then is now was not a well regarded profession

1:04:39

in England. People in America, you know, a little

1:04:41

bit more positive towards him. Uh, William

1:04:43

Morton Stanley had been living as an American for more than a

1:04:45

decade at this point, but the opinions of English high

1:04:47

society still very much mattered to him, and

1:04:49

he knew that the only real way for a man

1:04:51

like him to sneak his way into the tippy

1:04:53

top of English society was to become

1:04:56

the most respected thing of that day, an

1:04:58

African explorer. And that

1:05:01

is where we're gonna roll into in part two.

1:05:04

Are you ready for this ship? This

1:05:06

is where it gets really this is really really starts cooking.

1:05:08

This is where he really starts, and I mean really

1:05:11

starts killing people like he's been doing.

1:05:13

He's been doing some killing, don't get me wrong,

1:05:15

but he really he really

1:05:18

in some lives here.

1:05:21

All right, I can't wait? Alright,

1:05:24

Soran, Uh you got anything to plug? Uh?

1:05:27

Yeah, I have my podcast

1:05:29

which is uh Soaring and Dan.

1:05:32

It's called Quick Question with Sore and Dan. Actually

1:05:34

I don't even know the name of my own podcast. Uh.

1:05:37

You can also find me on Twitter Sore and Underscore

1:05:40

Ltd. And you can watch American

1:05:42

Dad. We should've got new episodes

1:05:44

coming out in May, he sure does.

1:05:47

You can find us on the internet behind the Bastards

1:05:50

dot com. And you have plenty of time to do that

1:05:52

with the whole being stuck inside thing you can.

1:05:54

You can buy T shirts if you need to

1:05:56

hire your nakedness in these times. I'm actually

1:05:58

shocked that we're we're our T shirt sales

1:06:01

are are more or less the same, just because I

1:06:04

didn't imagine. I thought a lot more people would

1:06:06

be going shirtless during this period of time.

1:06:08

And I haven't really processed my feelings

1:06:10

on that. But we have

1:06:13

Anderson merch. We do have Anderson

1:06:15

merch. People should continue buying that so

1:06:17

that they can use it to craft the flags

1:06:20

that wave over the glorious revolution.

1:06:22

Just wait, but those

1:06:25

shirt sales will start tanking, and

1:06:27

then and then buy a mug by

1:06:29

a magnet by a sticker if

1:06:32

you still have money, because the economy

1:06:34

hasn't collept. If not, continue enjoying

1:06:36

our free content. Check out some of the sources

1:06:38

for this episode. Um,

1:06:40

and go hug a cat.

1:06:42

You can still do that a lot of the time if

1:06:45

you already have one. Don't hug a stranger's

1:06:47

cat. You might you might spread the COVID h

1:06:51

which has bummed me out. I love hugging

1:06:53

strange cat anyway. Follow Robert

1:06:55

on Twitter and I write, okay, you can follow us some Instagram

1:06:57

at Bastard's pod. You can find the sources for this

1:07:00

podcast under the episode description on

1:07:02

all the apps who use and uh,

1:07:05

wash your hands, wash your hands.

1:07:07

Just sanitize those cats before you hug them. You

1:07:09

could do that still, Robert, I do, but they

1:07:11

just hate they you know what, they hate

1:07:14

the tequila sprayer and I can't think of another

1:07:16

way to sanitize a cat quickly. But they

1:07:18

don't want to hugging much either, so it's too much.

1:07:20

It's kind of a wash for you, especially after

1:07:22

I've sprayed them with the tequila. It is just

1:07:25

not good anyway. Episodes

1:07:28

over all, right, m