Ep. 169: gaza pt. 1: american imperialism

[00:00:01] Speaker A: You, right? So no fucking about here, right? Zero fucking about. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Absolutely hate fucking about. Who does that? [00:00:10] Speaker A: Fuck that. So we're just going to do away with all that, right? And instead, oh, fucking about. We're just going to dive in with some very interesting clinical, medical body horror. How do you feel about that? Not great, but tough because the fucking. The trainers started. The trainers left the station, and you're on board. Sorry, choo choo, but cheers. So we go to Bogota. Yes. Bogota, Colombia in 2013. All right. [00:00:41] Speaker B: All right. [00:00:42] Speaker A: Meet Jose. Meet Jose Louis Ramirez, if you would. [00:00:46] Speaker B: Okay. [00:00:47] Speaker A: Now, Jose, plagued with ill health some ten years prior to 2013, he'd been diagnosed with HIV. And. Yeah, and he was grappling hard with that condition. His condition was just ever worsening. He was a 41 year old man and wracked with fever, cough, weight loss, diagnosed with HIV, but wasn't sticking to his medical, his medication regime, very lax with his medications. And as the months passed, as the years went by, Ramirez's health began to decline. He was always beset by fatigue, beset by weakness, and more and more ominous signs. More and more ominous symptoms emerged. Now, he presented at the doctor in 2013 with some very worrying symptoms. Which medical professional didn't have to spend long to find cancer. Right? Series of tests revealed the presence of numerous cancerous tumors within his body. We're talking lungs. We're talking lymph nodes. We're talking in his neck. [00:02:06] Speaker B: Does HIV cause cancer, or are you just more susceptible because your immune system is. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Already picked up on a thread here, Corrigan, a thread. [00:02:18] Speaker B: Okay, go ahead. [00:02:19] Speaker A: Which I'm going to tug on a little bit more right now, because these tumors were interesting to say the fucking least, right? Because they multiplied very quickly like cancer cells. But they exhibited behavior which wasn't typical of the type of cancer that the doctors were looking for. For a start, the cells were absolutely fucking tiny, way smaller than conventional cancer cells. For another thing, they were kind of clumping together weirdly in a way that the cancer cells normally didn't. And they were up to ten times smaller, ten times smaller than regular cancer cells. In fact, these cells didn't act like human cancer cells at. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Oh, dear. [00:03:21] Speaker A: So what the fuck? Obviously, the medical community in Bogota rallied, were making phone calls, were jumping on the web. We're looking for fucking help everywhere. Tissue samples were scraped and harvested and sent to the CDC, sent to the center of Disease Control in April 2013 for further study. Now, researchers describe the lymph node biopsy specimens as, and I quote, grossly abnormal solid noduular masses, right? [00:03:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:58] Speaker A: And when I say masses, lymph nodes in the man's neck yielded tumors up to 5 cm in diameter, right? Almost. Little fucking pebbles, really fucking tough little sons of bitches, right? [00:04:14] Speaker B: Right. [00:04:16] Speaker A: So the tests kept being performed. Jose was getting sicker and sicker. This guy was not in a good way. Interestingly, after a number of tests came back, researchers found that their initial suspicions were confirmed and that the tumors weren't fucking human at all. Oh God, no. The tumors were comprised of dna from a kind of fucking tapeworm known as hymenolepis nana. H. Nana inside the man's tumor. [00:04:58] Speaker B: This is really interesting, because as soon as you started this story, what immediately came to mind is a story that I was going to do for a cold open. And then I never got around to, but it had to do with someone in Philadelphia in the 19th century, 18 hundreds who had had tumors all throughout their body and stuff. And when they opened her up, it was like just an unreal amount of tumors. And it turned out to be some tapeworm thing. And it was like this person, this doctor that was at the center of this thing, was thrilled because they were obsessed with tapeworms. And this woman had presented with these insane tumors that no one understood, like thousands, I think it was like a hundred thousand tumors or something like that. And it had been a tapeworm. [00:05:57] Speaker A: Well, something very similar was going on inside the fucking body of Jose Louis Ramirez. Now a little bit on Jaimen Aleppis nana, the dwarf tapeworm, right? It's the most common tapeworm parasite in humans. There's an estimated at any one point, about 75 million carriers. Now interestingly, how many? Fascinatingly, 75 million carriers. [00:06:20] Speaker B: How many? Oh, Jesus Christ, that's too many. [00:06:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, obviously I would theorize lots of the developing world, lots of third world countries, you know what I'm saying? But here's the thing about hymanlopus nana. It can complete its entire life cycle within the small intestine, reproducing inside the body. No need for any kind of intermediate host. It lives, it feeds, it reproduces, it dies. Entirely within the host, entirely within the confines of the host. And the theory goes that because Jose was suffering with HIV, wasn't on his meds, wasn't managing his infection, life cycle after life cycle after life cycle of the tapeworm was born and died, born and died, generation after generation, leading to mutations within the tapeworms within his body, mutations which were then transferred to his own cells as cancer. [00:07:27] Speaker B: So he, in his own body, bioengineered a tapeworm and a cancer. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Yes, exactly this. The tapeworm mutations. The tapeworm mutations caused cancer in his body, but the cancer developed tapeworm cells, if you can believe that shit. [00:07:50] Speaker B: That's insane. [00:07:52] Speaker A: I'm going to quote from a Dr. Atis Murhenbach, who is a pathologist at the CDC, and he's the lead author of a study of this particular case. I see you smiling up with pronunciation. It was pretty good, wasn't it? He said, sure. We were amazed when we found this new type of disease, tapeworms inside a person, essentially getting cancer that spreads to the person, causing tumors again, the hypothesis being, because he had HIV, the tapeworm colony kept growing and growing unchecked, uncontrolled by the immune system. Mutations over generations developing in that tapeworm cells that turned the cells cancerous. How fucked is that? [00:08:33] Speaker B: Seriously. And that detail there is that the worms got. [00:08:40] Speaker A: Yep. And gave it to exactly this. Exactly this. And I'd love, love. I'm shining the e symbol up on the night sky of Gotham City. Eileen, if you want to check in on this and tell me if I've got the wrong fucking end of the tape. [00:08:54] Speaker B: I mean, that was a direct quote, but, yeah, it was. [00:08:58] Speaker A: Don't take my word for it. That was Dr. Actus Merchinbach from the fucking CDC, right? Now, the story for Jose does not end well. Just 72 hours after presenting with this, he died three fucking days later. [00:09:16] Speaker B: So was all of this done posthumously, or did they figure that out that quickly? [00:09:21] Speaker A: Oh, they harvested the shed out of this guy. You know what I'm saying? [00:09:25] Speaker B: Got you. [00:09:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure there are pictures of these delightful little nodules if you'd like to take a really, really beautiful yellow, lumpy things. Just so nice. But, yeah, Jose was too sick to take any medication that might have helped at all. And here's the thing. Here's what I'll leave you on. Right. [00:09:46] Speaker B: Okay. [00:09:47] Speaker A: Now, the risk of contracting parasite derived cancer. The medical community seem convinced that it's limited to a very specific subset of people, both with a compromised immune system and a very, very severe high mental Episna infection. But both of those conditions are relatively widespread. What did I say? 75 million people estimated are carrying H. Nana, the tapeworm. [00:10:22] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:10:23] Speaker A: So it may well be that quite commonly. And again, medicine in developed countries, medicine in third world countries, it seems likely that parasite derived cancer infections are frequently being misdiagnosed as human cancers. [00:10:39] Speaker B: Yeah, that would absolutely make sense. And it makes me wonder with that story, which I do remember, actually. Was related to when we were on the lay down podcast talking about flesh books, because this was a woman whose flesh had been turned into a book. This is what I remember. But yeah, I mean, knowing that this is an extremely common thing and being whatever year in Philadelphia and all that kind of stuff, I think she did have something that she was being treated for. She was sick. And so, yeah, the combination of being immune compromised and those worms, she probably had that too. And there was just no way that they would have known that that was a thing 100 plus years ago. [00:11:24] Speaker A: Yes. Incredible. [00:11:25] Speaker B: Probably a lot of people who have had this and this guy presented as a medical anomaly because nobody had looked that closely. [00:11:35] Speaker A: And what does that make you? You're brundleshlike, essentially there. [00:11:44] Speaker B: Genuinely part ringworm or whatever. [00:11:48] Speaker A: Tapeworm. [00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah, tapeworm. [00:11:51] Speaker A: To quote Seth Brundle, I seem to be stricken by a disease with a purpose. You have animal tissue growing in you. [00:12:00] Speaker B: Yeah. That's wild to think about, bro. [00:12:10] Speaker A: Like I said, short and sharp. [00:12:11] Speaker B: Yes. Love that. [00:12:12] Speaker A: Like a fucking tapeworm up in your glands. [00:12:17] Speaker B: Could have done without that. [00:12:20] Speaker A: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:12:22] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:12:24] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, misel Sen. [00:12:27] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said misel Sen in such a horny way before. [00:12:31] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal received. [00:12:34] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst. Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:12:38] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm going to leg it. [00:12:44] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:12:46] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. I don't know if it'll make it to the final cut, but Corey's last words were, could have done without that. And I think that's kind know if we're still in the t shirt business. I think could have done without that. [00:13:02] Speaker B: Might be a nice little slogan for know. I have to give credit where credit's due, even though. But that is a Ben Kissel ism from last podcast on the. [00:13:15] Speaker A: Litigious. I don't know. [00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe nobody's going to know. Last podcast coming after. [00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Never, never listen to any of them. Don't think I'm going to. [00:13:27] Speaker B: Really should. So good. This is the constant struggle with you. You will listen to the radio, you will listen to a show that is essentially a podcast to work out to or things like that. But if you call it a podcast, you're uninterested. [00:13:42] Speaker A: I think the branding is something I do have issues with when you tell me I'm listening to podcast going, no, thanks. [00:13:50] Speaker B: Ridiculous. Thank goodness our listeners don't have that mindset. [00:13:55] Speaker A: Well, indeed. So, not to want to bang on about it, but. Ding, ding. Round three. Round three. In the blue corner, Marco. In the red corner, the novel coronavirus. [00:14:10] Speaker B: Not novel anymore at this point. [00:14:12] Speaker A: Oh, no, listen to me. It's a tale. [00:14:15] Speaker B: Familiar friend. [00:14:16] Speaker A: Indeed. So, yeah, coming out of the back of it now. But, motherfucker, this one was rough. This one was super rough. [00:14:23] Speaker B: This wasn't your worst one. I feel like round two, I think it was that you were like, really? It lasted longer than this one. This one, at least passed fairly quickly. [00:14:36] Speaker A: Yeah. I compared Covid notes with Alan, and it seems to have matched a similar kind of infection and recession flight path that his did. Quite a deep lows, but a quick rebound. So that's where I'm at now. But what's fucking me right off. And I know we chatted about this just before we came. Air quotes on air, because it's recorded, you see. Okay, well, it's the inertia that I'm fucking fed up with, man, because I'm on such a roll in terms of running a gym, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now to have to have spent just three solid days, right, listeners, my darling listeners, I ate two fucking. Two full size McFlurries today. [00:15:25] Speaker B: I don't even know that's possible. [00:15:27] Speaker A: I ate two McFlurries today while watching telly. And that's fucking. [00:15:31] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. [00:15:32] Speaker A: For me, that is horrific. They were delicious. [00:15:34] Speaker B: Did you also have, like, other McDonald's food, or was it just McFlurry's? [00:15:37] Speaker A: No, it was just the McFlurry's. Because, see, what happened was Laura was out at Zumba and. Oh, yeah, sure. But obviously, as soon as the door closes, me and Owen give each other the look. [00:15:53] Speaker B: Oh, you and your tapeworm enabling mini me. [00:15:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And the dude. You know that monopoly card bank error in your favor? They fucking accidentally brought us six mcFlurries. [00:16:06] Speaker B: Nice. [00:16:06] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Ordered three, got six. And that never happens. [00:16:10] Speaker B: That's a lot of mcFlurries. [00:16:11] Speaker A: Last weekend, we ordered McDonald's breakfast to watch the royal rumble, and they forgot the fucking hash browns. Motherfuckers. But this time. This time we got six. [00:16:22] Speaker B: So that's got to be a little harder to hide from your wife. [00:16:27] Speaker A: I'm not hiding. I don't have a problem. [00:16:32] Speaker B: I don't know. You did eat two mcFlurries. [00:16:35] Speaker A: I'm not lying. About it. [00:16:37] Speaker B: I was only going off of. You guys are like, oh, she left the house. You're sneaking him a treat or something like that. [00:16:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. But I mean, at no point was I going to say to her, we didn't have mcFlurries. [00:16:49] Speaker B: Now we had six mcFlurries. [00:16:53] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I finished them, the kids went to bed and I went back to the freezer and had another one. No, I don't. That's not cool. I don't enjoy it. Or maybe I don't enjoy it because I do really enjoy it. [00:17:09] Speaker B: You just got to let it roll off. You'll be back. You'll be back in action. [00:17:12] Speaker A: Oh, I will. I intend to be back in action tomorrow. So that's how this week finds us. That's why we're a little bit delayed this week. Cory, you had a fucking banger behind the eyes last night. [00:17:23] Speaker B: Yes, I did. Yeah. I had a. Had a bit of a headache yesterday. That was not letting me. We're. We're both a little under the weather. This particular, you know, we've tried to, in light of that, provide some other content. So we've got two new videos up on our YouTube for you. We've got the cold open about the Franklin expedition. I included some of the pictures that I talked about in there as I got so deeply excited about that whole story. You can watch Mark, be deeply amused by my nerdiness in this. See his expressions as I get way too into this story and see some of the pictures and things like that that I talked about in it. And so, yeah, that's up on the YouTube as well as another one of our videos from our travels in the UK. So a video about the mysterious Bristol is up on our YouTube as well. [00:18:19] Speaker A: And I'm not going to blow with you whether we solve it or whether we hear it or whether we track it down or not, I'm not going to say. [00:18:25] Speaker B: You're just going to have to watch and find out. [00:18:27] Speaker A: Did we find it? Did we cure it? Who knows? You're just going to find out. Are there any more of those videos left? Did we do any more? [00:18:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we've got a couple more. I haven't put anything from Nottingham up yet. Aside from our bloopers. [00:18:42] Speaker A: Yes. [00:18:43] Speaker B: Nothing. [00:18:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Good. So, yeah, more to come, more to. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Come, more to come as well. And hopefully I'm getting that itch. Last year, I traveled too much and I didn't want to go anywhere ever again. But now, with not a ton of travel on the horizon, I'm like I want to go back to England and see my. Know, maybe. Maybe more things will come because of my inability to stay home. [00:19:06] Speaker A: Yes, of course. Wanderlust, I believe is the term. [00:19:09] Speaker B: Wanderlust. Yeah, that's the thing. Makes it sound very romantic and not like I just have a problem. I'm not bored. I am never bored. I have not. [00:19:20] Speaker A: No, that is true. I recount that. [00:19:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I haven't been bored since I was like twelve. There's too much in the world to bore me. [00:19:29] Speaker A: What happened when you were twelve? [00:19:32] Speaker B: The Internet and stuff like that. [00:19:33] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. [00:19:36] Speaker B: Since my parents stopped being able to control when I could be on the computer, when the computer moved into my bedroom instead of the kitchen. That kind of thing. [00:19:44] Speaker A: Yes. [00:19:45] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know what boredom feels like except for the time I watch skin of marink. [00:19:50] Speaker A: But anyway, well, time's going to fucking tell on that one, let me tell you. You'll come around. It's a slow burn, right? You'll come around, you'll be just dozing one day and you'd be like, oh. [00:20:01] Speaker B: Wait, I get it. [00:20:04] Speaker A: I get it now. [00:20:08] Speaker B: But on that note, do you like. [00:20:10] Speaker A: Coughing, by the way? Listeners do enjoy listening to people cough. [00:20:12] Speaker B: Because, well, this is the nice thing right now we're using the Zoom audio instead of recording separately. And the positive of that is that it will largely take out your coughs. There is that. Some will make it through, but you're going to get a lot less of them in here than you would think. But yeah. Shall we talk about what we watched? Actually, because of that? I want to talk about what we watched yesterday right out the gate. [00:20:40] Speaker A: You want to go straight in on that, do you? [00:20:42] Speaker B: If that's all right with you. [00:20:44] Speaker A: Far be it from me to stop you. Go in. Go in. [00:20:48] Speaker B: After a couple of stinkers that we watched together over the past week, we finally got a winner in. And this was a movie that I found by going on letterboxed and looking at a slasher list. And then that slasher list had like 1100 movies on it or something like that. And then I sorted them by highest rated and looked at some of the ones that people actually liked. And that led me to anguish, which I had never heard of. Had you heard of it, Mark? [00:21:22] Speaker A: I had never heard of it before, no. [00:21:24] Speaker B: This had the distinction of when I looked at the letterbox page for it, nobody I knew had watched it nor had anybody put it on their watch list. So it seems to be a pretty deep cut. This was made in 1987 and really tight. Poor thing. It was made in 1987. And basically, I don't want to give anything away about this movie because it's one of those movies that you really benefit from going into without knowing. And I'd love to watch it again. And then knowing what's happening also get into it. But you really benefit from the tension and the suspense of being like, what the fuck is going on here? So the basic premise of this movie is that you are seeing a film within a film. And in the film within the film, you're watching a man who is being hypnotized by his telepathic mother to commit murders. Meanwhile, you are watching several people in the audience of that movie react to this horror film that they're watching on screen. That's your basic premise. And I really don't want to give a whole lot more than that. But I have to say, this movie legitimately scared the shit out of me. I was a ball of stress watching this whole thing, and I loved it. [00:22:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's impossible not to be impressed by this movie. It's a real fucking curio. It's really well put together. Beautifully thought out. It's just a fucking lovely, lovely little obscure gem. There are lots of film within films, right? But this one is actually trying to do something with that. There's a particular moment late in the film where the audience in the real timeline are watching the movie, but the audience are watching the audience. You've got the audience of the movie on the screen, and they're being watched, and at the same time watching the other audience. It's fantastic. And the two separate realities play out in this beautiful parallel. They climax together, not like, know, it's impossible to talk about without kind of pulling the veil back on, really. It's what I really encourage you to watch for yourselves. Hell of a nice cast. It's got Tangina from fucking Poltergeist in it. I warmly remember that after we saw Poltergeist. I think it was Poltergeist two for months afterwards. Alan and I would refer to my nan as Tangina because she was very short. [00:24:13] Speaker B: She looked like, oh, my goodness, she. [00:24:16] Speaker A: Was just a little, tiny little woman. Nice, kind of spherical kind of woman. And we would just warmly call her Tangina. [00:24:28] Speaker B: That's very cute, Caroline. And she's great in this. [00:24:33] Speaker A: She's fantastic. Yeah. The only other thing apart from Poltergeist I've ever seen her in. [00:24:38] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know. It's possible, but obviously Poltergeist is the thing that comes to mind. Having seen that a bajillion times in my lifetime. So, yeah, she's great. The publisher from Elf is great in it. Very creepy. Yeah. Anguish is surprising and fun and hypnotic. This is a thing that comes up. While I was watching it, I came to a point where it's like I felt like I'd taken gummies. I was just, like, staring into it. And I found that I consciously thought, I'm struggling to look away from this. And this comes up in a lot of the reviews of it, too. Like, this is a genuinely hypnotic movie. It's a trance like effect. [00:25:20] Speaker A: It does sound design is also fantastic. There are long sections where you're watching the movie within the movie, but the soundtrack is playing the whisperings of the audience that are watching that movie in the movie. It really questions you think, what fucking level of the movie am I on now? Where am I? Who am I meant to be following? Like I said, it's a wonderful, wonderful little curate's egg. [00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. What else did you watch? [00:25:51] Speaker A: Right, we're going to blast through a few of these, right? Because it's been a while. My 80s fucking Sci-Fi binge continues unabated with total recall. Nice doesn't even come close, right? Nice doesn't scratch the surface. Total recall is fucking brilliant. And of that trilogy of kind of Verhoven Sci-Fi bangers, it ranks third. It doesn't have the empathy of Robocop. It doesn't have the ridiculous, know, huge scale excess of. But, you know, it's a twisty turney. It's got loads of really cool tech in it. Arnold is on. Arnold's just fucking great, right? And politics and the man notwithstanding, right, that man's contribution to cinema, right, that man's contribution to cinema is absolutely beyond reproach at this point. And see you at the party, Richter. He can do no wrong. There was just a period in the 80s there where it was just banger after banger after Banger. Where did it go off the rails, I wonder? [00:27:03] Speaker B: I mean, did it go off the rails or did he just step back? [00:27:06] Speaker A: Yes, it did, I think around end of days. Okay, Eraser. I think that period signified the formula. Him finding that the wheels had come. Know, he didn't beat it until it was dead. Like Bruce. [00:27:30] Speaker B: Well, that's the thing, is what I think is he pivoted, right? We get kids movies, we get jingle all the way. We get the kindergarten cop and things like that. He pivots and he does a great job once he pivots as well. [00:27:46] Speaker A: I know what he would have said to Jose Louis Ramirez. [00:27:49] Speaker B: What's that? [00:27:50] Speaker A: It's not. But yes. Yeah, he did. He pivoted. He reinvented. But total recall. Absolutely blown approach. Fucking Michael Ironside is fantastic. The guy from Robocop, fucking Dick Jones is in it. He's great. Just really cool. Sci-Fi tech. Really cool. It's more of a fucking Sci-Fi crime drama that you might remember it being. Right. It's twisty. Know, you don't know who he is for a little bit. You don't know who his identity is for a little bit. Get Mars. It's just good shit. Just really good shit. And I'm delighted to have watched it again. [00:28:32] Speaker B: I'll have to go back to that one. [00:28:33] Speaker A: Yeah, you should. It's wonderful. So you said we had a couple of stinkers, right? So let's deal with those couple of stinkers. We both have blame in this core. We both have shame upon us. So let's talk about drive from 1990. [00:28:52] Speaker B: The funny thing about drive is that I picked it because someone I follow on Blue sky and also follow on Letterboxd had watched it and loved it. And the ratings are quite good for this movie. It's like a 3.5 or something like that. On Letterboxd, which is very good on letterboxed. This is a sort of buddy cop sort of movie, but in which they're not cops. And you have Mark Dacoscus as your sort of martial artist guy with like a. I don't know what is like an Iron man heart? Is that sort of what the situation. [00:29:25] Speaker A: He's like an augmented superhuman kind of tech. Droid man. [00:29:31] Speaker B: Droid man. Yes, exactly. Cyberman Khadim Hardison, who is. [00:29:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I love Brittany Murphy, who also. [00:29:41] Speaker B: Brittany Murphy, who is also there, really weirdly, in that movie. And it's basically them trying to. He's going to get paid for his tech and someone is trying to get it out of him before he does. Yeah, he's going to get like $5 million if he meets someone somewhere and they take this tech out of him or whatever. But if these other people are trying to come and attack him and get it, and it's like this weird. Like, it was so promising because the villain in this is like, he has this long haired guy with the tiny little round sunglasses and the southern accent who's like, very over the top and immediately like, this is going to be so stupid. [00:30:24] Speaker A: Just a big early in the early part of the film, you could easily imagine someone like Nick Cage playing that part. [00:30:30] Speaker B: Right, exactly. [00:30:31] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Just a big cartoon character villain. Kooky. And this is why it wasn't a stinker so much as it started off so well. [00:30:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And it just didn't quite live up to what it promised. Listen, I looked it up, and the budget for this was $3 million, which is nothing. That is shoestring. And so for what it had, it did a lot. You got explosions and all kinds of things here, but it just felt very. I mean, the music was overly aggressive the whole time. The dialogue was weird and sparse. You didn't really get a chance to connect with Mark Dakoskas'character Brittany Murphy. She's charming, but what the hell is she doing there? [00:31:20] Speaker A: Wandered in from a totally different fucking film. Completely different movie. [00:31:24] Speaker B: Yeah. She is playing ty from clueless in this buddy cop movie. And you're like, what's happening here? It didn't work, but I respect drive. [00:31:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Was this before or after hard target or what was one with Dennis Rodman and Jean Claude Van Damme? Was that hard target? [00:31:43] Speaker B: Oh, God. [00:31:44] Speaker A: I know. I did it on video rounds when I was off my teeth. [00:31:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. I don't. I didn't watch Van Damme movies, so I could not tell you where it falls in the timeline. But I would guess this is before. [00:31:57] Speaker A: Okay. Because it felt like it fell in the trap of wanting to be that sure when it should have just leaned in. Because some of the martial arts action was great. Some of the fantastic, really nice, kind of close quarters, intimate kind of fights in hotel rooms and hotel lobbies and whatever. Really fun, the kind of stuff I love. But then it became a different movie for a bit and didn't quite. [00:32:24] Speaker B: The buddy part didn't. There was not really any chemistry between those two leads. And that is what makes it stretch and not really work, which is unfortunate because I like both of those guys. I watch a lot of Iron Chef. So I was looking forward to this. [00:32:40] Speaker A: But, no, I don't know what that is. That has not reached me. What is Iron Chef? [00:32:44] Speaker B: Iron Chef was a show in Japan that they then made into Iron Chef America here. And it's basically two iron chefs go against each other or against a regular person who tries to beat the Iron Chef, depending on the episode. And you have to earn that. And they're given. [00:33:02] Speaker A: What is an iron Chef? What is an iron Chef? [00:33:05] Speaker B: So they're given an ingredient, and they have to use it in everything and make, like, a three course meal for the judges. So that's like, if they're given a fish, they have to be able to make a dessert that uses that fish. They have to be able to incorporate. [00:33:22] Speaker A: That makes way more sense. [00:33:24] Speaker B: And it's done in real time, which is really fun. And they have an hour to make a three course meal, and you're watching them as they're doing this. [00:33:32] Speaker A: That sounds quite entertaining. [00:33:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very fun. It's very high intensity, all that kind of stuff. And he is the host of the american version and has been for the past, like, 20 years. [00:33:43] Speaker A: Oh, good. [00:33:44] Speaker B: Yeah, good. [00:33:46] Speaker A: It's good to have a fall back. [00:33:47] Speaker B: Yeah. The other movie that we watched together. So drive was my pick and the ods was yours. [00:33:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. So this is the last time I take horror movie recommendations from TikTok. I'm never doing it again. [00:34:02] Speaker B: Is that where you got this from? I was like, how did you even find this? [00:34:07] Speaker A: Believe it or not, right? Believe it or not, the Ods was part of a list of movies that somebody introduces. These are the movies that I've seen that genuinely fuck me up. It was one of those, right? Number four, the Od. So I was like, all right, I don't really got many other ideas. I got Covid, we need a movie to watch. And the ods, which see at least. At least. What was it fucking called? At least drive. At least drive started it out. Good. At least drive started out strong and whiffed it, whereas the ods didn't. So the premise being that. Think this is pre hostile, I believe. Would this predate hostel or not? [00:34:52] Speaker B: I'm not sure what year this came out, to be honest with you. [00:34:55] Speaker A: Timeless, isn't it? Hard to place. [00:34:59] Speaker B: Yeah. I want to say it's like 2008 ish, but I'm not sure. 2009, maybe. [00:35:04] Speaker A: Yeah, around about that era. The premise being that there's a game, a secret online, dark web kind of game, where across the world, 13 players sit alone in rooms with just one other guy, with their handler, with their keeper, who has an earpiece and communicates via an Android tablet that he's got in his pocket. And simultaneously, in each of these rooms, the players have to endure pain. Physical pain. Different rounds, different forms of physical pain, from holding their hand on a candle in round one to letting a rat scurry across their foot in round two and then playing russian roulette. And as the stakes get higher and higher and as people's motivations and relationships are revealed and people aren't who they might have said they were, and the danger gets more and more intense and we realize you've got to beat the ods. Yeah. Now, if I've made that sound slightly good. [00:36:14] Speaker B: What you've described is squid game. It's. Would you rather. It's a plot that has been used in various things before. Take someone who is, like, desperate, needs money, and have them do painful things for the entertainment of a rich person? What's one that has Ethan embry in it that I love? I can't remember what that's called, but does it a million times a. It's a well worn conceit. [00:36:46] Speaker A: I said this at the time. Right? [00:36:47] Speaker B: But cheap thrills is what I was thinking of. But go on. [00:36:50] Speaker A: If I'm going to voluntarily cut my fingers off and play russian roulette and hammer nails into my foot and burn myself with a candle, I'm going to want more than a fucking $1 million. [00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah, right? Come on. [00:37:02] Speaker A: That's some Dr. Evil fucking punchline shit, isn't it? [00:37:05] Speaker B: And I think one of my favorite things about this is that the writer clearly could not conceive of his main character and her motivations or anything like that. And she comes into this, and it's like we open with her giving a speech, basically, about how she has nothing to lose and she makes herself seem like such a badass. Like, whatever. Bane can't hurt me. I've already lost everything. And then the very next thing that you see is her just, like, screaming bloody murder with her hand over a candle. And I'm like, come on, she's supposed to be hard. [00:37:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:47] Speaker B: She should have been sitting there, like, stoically with her hand over this thing. And immediately it just undoes everything. And then the next one's the rat. And it's like she's scared of rats. She's scared of rats. Not just rats biting. She's just scared of the idea of a rat walking on her. Like, what's happening here? She's meanwhile falling in love with her captor for no apparent reason, who is in the midst of torturing her. And then by the end of it, it's like now she has a reason to live. Her daughter is, like, around, and she's like, oh, my daughter needs me now. What has been happening this whole time? I don't understand what is going on here? Just abysmal. The lead actress is doing her damnedest. I think she's a good actress, but they're giving her nothing to work with here. [00:38:31] Speaker A: Nothing at all. She's good in a kind of a soap opera kind of good. You know what I mean? She's a baseline kind of functionally decent, but the odds. Don't watch this film. Do not watch this film. [00:38:43] Speaker B: Don't do it. Yeah, it's a waste of time. It was hilarious because I looked at letterboxd and right before we started it and Paul had rated it a one and just said something like, this movie is shit. Or something like that. [00:38:55] Speaker A: Yes. [00:38:56] Speaker B: Good sign. Really good sign. [00:38:57] Speaker A: Yeah, he was right. So for some reason I'm on a Sydney Lumet binge and I sat my ass down in front of dog day afternoon last week. Have you seen dog day afternoon? [00:39:10] Speaker B: I don't think I've seen the whole of dog day afternoon. I know we watched part of it in school. I don't remember. Like in film school, not in fourth grade. [00:39:21] Speaker A: Is that a thing? Did I do it right? [00:39:23] Speaker B: You did. Fourth grade is a thing. Good job. But no, as in university. [00:39:28] Speaker A: But I don't think I. Fucking hell. Just absolutely fucking hell. So it's a bank robbery gone wrong in every possible way a bank robbery could go wrong. Just incompetent bank robbers. Just charming and likable kind of bank tellers who. They all become friends. And the motivation for the bank robbery is revealed slowly as the film goes on. Just incredibly, incredibly written. Pacino's range, man. And it's hard to even say, thanks to Simpsons. It's hard to even say that without thinking of crusty look at my range. But fucking Pacino is this edgy, kind of ratty, kind of high, squeaky know guy who's clearly ill at ease in his own know. The fucking eyes of America's media on the bank as the heist turns into a siege. And again, motivations are revealed. The film is fucking 40 od years old. So I can go ahead and talk about it. [00:40:34] Speaker B: Wait, I don't want you to spoil it because this is something I think I would like to actually finish. Hori, now that you about it. [00:40:40] Speaker A: So great. And progressive as shit as. Well, progressive in ways, because I knew nothing about Dog day afternoon going in. Literally nothing. And I was bowled over it at how disarmingly progressive a film. It is. [00:40:56] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:40:57] Speaker A: And a cast. Holy shit. You've got a cameo by young Lance Henriksen. Looking, fucking looking cut and hot as fuck. [00:41:05] Speaker B: He always is, though. I mean, not necessarily hot, but he's always. [00:41:09] Speaker A: His, his. He looks like a Gerald scarf cartoon. His fucking features are drawn and sharp. You've got Chris Sarindon is in it. Just this beautiful, soft performance by Chris Sarindon. It's just wonderful. Loads of that, guys. Just a whole mess of that. Glimpsed the guy. I think I glimpsed Buffalo Bill in a crowd scene. [00:41:39] Speaker B: Really? [00:41:40] Speaker A: Yes. [00:41:41] Speaker B: I feel like, I think I see him in things all the time and it's like maybe he doesn't seem that generic but maybe he just looks like all blue eyed blonde guys. But I constantly think I see him in stuff. [00:41:54] Speaker A: Well, I'm certain I saw Buffalo Bill in the kind of last hour or so of dog afternoon. [00:41:59] Speaker B: If you could hear him talk you'd know in an instant he's kind of. [00:42:03] Speaker A: Shouting, recognizable, but yeah. One for the ages. One that I can't believe it took me 45 years to watch. But I'm so delighted that I did. [00:42:13] Speaker B: Beautiful. [00:42:13] Speaker A: And that then led me to twelve angry men. [00:42:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw that on your letterbox and I was like, oh that's an interesting poll. [00:42:22] Speaker A: A Covid watch. So I'm at home, everybody else is at work, the kids are at school. I'm like, I enjoy dodged afternoon. Yeah, I really like network. Let's watch twelve angry men. It's the good shit, isn't it? You said that the ODS passes the Mark Lewis fucking Screenplay fucking stage test in the worst way. Twelve angry men. It's just watching it. You're watching a play unfold in front of you. [00:42:52] Speaker B: Oh yeah. And it's done as a play all the time. [00:42:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Of course I'm certain everybody knows the plot of twelve angry men by now, but a room full of very sweaty, very tense caricatures of men almost are sent to deliberate on the jury for the murder case of an 18 year old kid. And the jury is split eleven to one. And during the course of the film Henry fonder with grace and with calm resilience and with reason and with the fucking sword of truth cuts through prejudice and intolerance and anger and bigotry and baggage and psychological know, social fucking baggage and turns the room around and ends up acquitting the case. Just the writing, the performances, it is so tight. And Henry Fonda's kind of his intellectual calm, but yet just emotionally fucking available and giving and loving performance in that film as he just dismantles all of these horrible fucking entities in the room around him. [00:44:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that is up there on pretty close to perfect movies. [00:44:17] Speaker A: It's a piece of work. It's a real fucking piece of work. I was astounded. Really fucking great, great shit. So good. [00:44:25] Speaker B: Awesome. [00:44:26] Speaker A: Love that now because see what I also then watched yesterday while I was off work was David Blue Garcia's Texas Chainsaw massacre from a couple of years back. The Netflix Texas chainsaw went back to that, just in the background while I was doing other bits, but I all too quickly wasn't doing other bits anymore and I was watching it because. Talk about a fucking movie that. My finger is not on the pulse, right? Yeah, because letterbox has that as, like, a 1.5. I shit you not. [00:44:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. I don't understand that at all. The crazy thing about that is the rating is like a 1.5 or 1.7 or whatever, but there's a couple. I think 14 of my friends on there have watched that and there's, like, a couple twos, but for the most part, it's, like, above. So I don't know. Why did everyone hate this so much when everyone I know seemed to have quite enjoyed, had a good time with it? [00:45:24] Speaker A: No, I don't get it. I mean, it's a legacy sequel, as they call it. And it's got problems. It's got issues, of course, sure. [00:45:30] Speaker B: But not 1.5 problems. [00:45:32] Speaker A: No, sir. [00:45:36] Speaker B: That is emotion rating, not actual what you just watched rating. [00:45:42] Speaker A: Yes. And you scan letterbox reviews as you do, and it just seems like a lot of people are spectacularly missing the point. It's nothing like the original, mate. Mate, nothing is like the original. [00:45:59] Speaker B: Right. The sequels have been like the original. [00:46:02] Speaker A: Exactly. The fucking guy who made the original also made the sequel and decided to make it nothing like the original because you can't make anything like the original. For fuck's sake. Grow up. But I think it's a propulsive good time. It fucking rockets along. It's a great leatherface. Leatherface in that film is fucking brilliant. Agreed. I think Leatherface is a more nuanced character than people give him credit for. Right. I think there's levels to Leatherface. I don't know. I'd like to talk more on that. Maybe in some future episode. Can we do a leatherface episode where we talk about the leather faces from each of the different fucking Texas chains? [00:46:43] Speaker B: I'm very into that. I am 100% on board with that. [00:46:47] Speaker A: I tell you what, right? You do your fucking four episodes on Israel Palestine, right? Quid pro quo. I get a leatherface special. [00:46:57] Speaker B: That seems like a perfectly fair trade off, to be honest. [00:47:00] Speaker A: Pro quo, Corrigan. Let me see. And that's it. [00:47:07] Speaker B: Okay. All right, I'm going to race through my things here. I watched a cute movie called jewels. Just. I was scrolling through. I'm still kind of in that space where I don't super feel like watching any movies, but I'm starting to come out of it. So I was just scrolling through Hulu and came across or Showtime and found this movie, jewels. It's a total old person movie, which I find fascinating. Every generation of old people has their movies that they make that are supposed to sort of be a little relevant to their age group and all that kind of stuff. And this one has Ben Kingsley and a couple other old ladies in it. And it's about a man who is getting dementia. And then an alien crash lands in his backyard. So of course people don't believe him because he's got dementia. [00:47:57] Speaker A: Does it really? Or is it the dementia? [00:47:59] Speaker B: No, an alien really crash lands in his yard and he sort of befriends this alien and it becomes this sort of metaphor where it's like all these four aging and all that kind of stuff and all these people, the few old people, these two old women who come to find out about this alien and sort of help him raise this alien or whatever, they all are old and have their issues with their children and stuff like that and being forgotten. And they project a lot onto this alien and talk a lot to this alien who can't understand them, but it's like they're trying to have a bond with someone at a time when they're so incredibly lonely and all that. [00:48:41] Speaker A: And it's getting batteries not included vibes. [00:48:44] Speaker B: I have never seen that. [00:48:46] Speaker A: Oh, you should. [00:48:47] Speaker B: Okay. If it's like Jules, I'll probably enjoy. [00:48:55] Speaker A: You will cry. I'm sure I will cry at that film. [00:49:03] Speaker B: I will put that on the list. But, yeah, Jules was fun. It was easy. Not a lot of thinking. Just put it on and take in the cute little old people story recommend. [00:49:16] Speaker A: What led you to watch that, may I ask? [00:49:17] Speaker B: I was literally just scrolling through Showtime and nothing else was hitting me. Like, there were other movies that I was like, I want to watch this. But it was like every. I would play like a minute and a half of something and then be like, no, I don't want to watch that. I'm not in the mood for it. And then I started this one and I kept going. So that's how I ended up watching it with the scream and chat. We watched a creature feature called mosquito that was super fun. Thought it was going to be terrible. I mean, it is terrible, but in a great way in that it's got great practical effects. Very silly. And over the top about these murderous alien mosquitoes attacking. [00:49:58] Speaker A: I'm going to get that downloaded right now, in fact, because I saw that you'd watch that and I saw that. It looked right up my street. [00:50:04] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just super fun. If you're looking for practical effects, silly. Just like the old school kind of stuff that you would watch. Like that. A good little creature feature. Mosquito absolutely delivers. There's like a part early on where it just like sticks its proboscious, which the lead keeps on saying over and over again, which is hilarious. I really relate to the lead in it. This like, delightful. You're okay. This delightful, sort of autistic, coded lead character in this who keeps on going on about this thing's proboscious and nobody cares, but it sticks it into. [00:50:51] Speaker A: Hilarious. [00:50:53] Speaker B: Sticks it into this naked woman's ass that just starts gushing blood and this kind of stuff. And it is so surprising and ridiculous that immediately all of us were like, okay, we're in. Why not? This is absurd. So mosquito, great time. Other insect related movies. Beekeeper. Fucking blast. So freaking much fun. If you love like a Jason Statham romp revenge action movie, that kind of stuff. Beekeeper absolutely delivers. It is 90 minutes of just unrealistic revenge catharsis. And it is so fun. It's about a woman, this guy who is a beekeeper, literally, he makes friends with this old black lady played by Felicia Rashad, who takes care of him, and then she kills herself after her money is all taken in one of those scams where someone calls you on the phone and asks for your bank accounts and all that kind of stuff. And it turns out that he is also a beekeeper, a member of some sort of secretive organization that is very deadly. And he decides to go on a revenge kick all on his own and murders all of these scammers all over the place. And it's just very fun to watch. [00:52:15] Speaker A: Okay. Big fan of that. You know that I've been historically against it, but when everybody in the fucking world is saying that, it's a good laugh. [00:52:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it feels like it's a big, dumb action movie, which I feel like if that's what you're looking for, you're going to have a lot of fun. If it's not what you're looking for, you're going to have a shit time. But if that's what you want, delivers completely. And another thing I watched, I think, I know this was just American Nightmare, which is a Netflix docu series that I think I mentioned. I started watching it, and then I gave up on it. And then Richard was like, basically like, you have to see where this story goes. It's insane. And I was like, okay. And it is a deeply AcaB docu series in which a woman in Vallejo, California, which is near where I came from, is kidnapped and raped. And then when she comes back, the police are like, no, you weren't. And they tell everyone on the news and everything that this woman was not kidnapped or raped and turns everyone in town against her, and she very much was. And not only that, this guy was like a serial rapist and peeping Tom and all of this kind of stuff, who is eventually sort of uncovered only because of one female detective somewhere who was like, I'm connecting some dots and stuff, and this feels like this is a thing, and managed to solve the case as a result. It's an insane story. There's a lot of twists and turns in it. I still don't like the Netflix style of docuseries or whatever, but it is a very interesting story and it'll make you mad and all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, american nightmare, I'd say, is worth watching just for a look into how hard it is for a wealthy white woman even to. Basically all the cops saw gone girl and decided that was what happened. Like, literally, they just were like, it's gone girl. Nancy Grace went on tv and was like, she's doing a gone girl, and all this kind of stuff. And that movie made it so that they just did not believe this woman. Imagine how hard it is for other women. [00:54:33] Speaker A: That movie impacted that case. [00:54:35] Speaker B: Oh, 100%, completely. They saw the movie and they were like, that's what you did. That was it. They didn't really put any effort into investigating or anything like that. They were just like, we don't know. That never happened. You just made this up. Crazy. [00:54:52] Speaker A: Okay. Lots of watches there. [00:54:55] Speaker B: Lots of watches. Yeah. We said we were going to breeze through it, but, man, we just watched such interesting movies, it's hard not to talk about them. [00:55:03] Speaker A: Just super quick, I just want to just say one line. I just want to say one thing, and I'm not going to follow it up with anything, and I'm not going to pray see it with anything. I just have one. Just little thing that I want to say that I think it would be remiss of me not to say, okay, the king has cancer. Okay. [00:55:28] Speaker B: Got that out of the way. [00:55:30] Speaker A: All right. [00:55:32] Speaker B: Well, then, let's get into our main topic, shall we? [00:55:37] Speaker A: Please. [00:55:38] Speaker B: And, yeah, it'll be a little bit of a thing, but we're going to go for it. We said at the end of last year that we recognized that even though we're not a current events podcast. We're a podcast that talks about dark things and at times about what's going on in the world, because it's important and relevant and whatnot. And it's like, imagine if you were living in London during the blitz and you just never mentioned the war. That would be pretty weird. And it started to feel like that was what we were doing by just not talking about Gaza at all. [00:56:13] Speaker A: And for my own part, I know two things to be true. Right. Silence isn't an option, and ignorance isn't a good look. [00:56:23] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [00:56:26] Speaker A: The only reason that I'm silent is because I don't want to speak on something that I don't have knowledge about. [00:56:33] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:56:34] Speaker A: You know what I mean? It's better to have people think you're an idiot than to speak up and remove all doubt, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I come to this topic over the next couple of weeks with that spirit. You know what I mean? I'm looking forward to learning some shit that I didn't know about and filling up. [00:56:52] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And thus, as you're alluding to, we're going to spend February getting into some of that history. We can't cover everything. And there's so much, but some of the history that led to the current genocide and specifically why our countries are so wrapped up in what's going on over there. Because you can't separate what's happening in Gaza from both british and american imperialism. And honestly, for those of us that want this shit to end, it's important for us to recognize our role. We can obviously get deep into middle eastern politics and stuff, and we will get into that, of course, but for the purpose of being like, what can we do? And what do we need to know about how we are a part of this? That's sort of the angle that we're going to come at it from. And so with that, I'm going to start at a place that's probably going to sound like a stretch, but you'll hopefully come to see is actually extremely relevant to where we are now. And that place is the spanish american war. [00:57:51] Speaker A: Okay. [00:57:52] Speaker B: Now, Mark, I probably don't even have to ask this question, but do you know anything about the spanish american war? [00:57:57] Speaker A: Well, Corrigan. [00:57:59] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:57:59] Speaker A: You may be surprised. No, I know shit all about. [00:58:04] Speaker B: Could you. When would you think it might have taken place? [00:58:08] Speaker A: Tell me again. Which war? [00:58:09] Speaker B: This is the spanish american war. [00:58:16] Speaker A: I am going to say the 1700. [00:58:24] Speaker B: You're a little early on that. It's the end of the 19th century. In fact, the end of the 18 hundreds. [00:58:30] Speaker A: All right. [00:58:30] Speaker B: That this occurs. And Mark is going to help me out throughout this, just to break it up, because I have a lot to say here. So Mark is going to read some of the quotes throughout this. So it's not just my droning voice throughout. And obviously we'll have various conversation around this, but this, not knowing about the spanish american war, I think you're in good company on that. I think Brits, Americans alike, probably have very little understanding of what went on, aside from maybe a little slight high school knowledge. Probably something about yellow journalism. So here's the overview of what we're going to take away from this. By the end of my spiel, this is what the takeaway should. Yeah, we'll just go there. The United States wasn't always an inherently imperialist nation, but once it was set on that course, after the spanish american war, our relationships with the rest of the world changed. We became a world power and we exerted our power through military force and intervention. And this was done to control and preserve our economic interests. The way we approach colonization in the wake of the spanish american war has basically become a textbook for violent intervention ever since. And when we look at what's going on in Gaza, we can see direct parallels with what we were doing at this particular moment in time and what we've been doing ever since. So that's the takeaway that after this, you should get from the spanish american war. And I'm about to explain to you how a handful of sociopathic rich guys who wanted to play soldier irrevocably launched the US from being a country that firmly believed in the right of all peoples to self governance, to one that said, fuck what people want. We're going to own them now. And for the record, I'm kind of going through this as a series of book reports. So the main source for this episode is the true Flag, Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the birth of the American Empire by Stephen Kinser. Great book. I recommend it. Let's go. So, at the center of the story are two main players, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge. And both were born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths. Lodge grew up in Massachusetts amongst what are known as the Boston Brahmin. Those are the Kennedy types. The super rich folks with that weird accent like Mayor Quimby from the Simpsons and a good chunk of that cohort were descended from the original british colonists in the Americas and were your classic old money types. Lodge was born of two prominent Boston families and eventually went to Harvard College and Harvard law, becoming this stereotypical lawyer people were always joking about hating in the 1990s, totally dislikeable. Would have gotten eaten in Jurassic park, that kind of guy. Roosevelt grew up in New York, also riched, but plagued with health issues as a youngster, specifically asthma. But he was also super into the idea of adventure. And when he was a kid, he saw a dead seal at the local market and was like, dude, that rules. He got his grubby little hands on the seal's head somehow and dissected it with several other kids. And this is where his interest in zoology began. And listeners, I'm doing scare quotes here because saying Roosevelt was interested in zoology is like saying Jeffrey Dahmer was interested in fine dining. Roosevelt liked killing shit. Mark Twain, for his part, saw Roosevelt for the poser douchebag. He was saying. [01:02:00] Speaker A: He has no sympathy with any brand of nature study other than his own. In a word, Mr. Roosevelt is not a naturalist, but a game killer of the real spirit of animal life, of their habits, as discovered with quiet watching, with no desire to kill. He knows nothing and never will learn till he goes into the woods, leaving his pack of dogs, his rifle, his prejudice, and his present disposition behind him. [01:02:24] Speaker B: And I really love that last part because Twain is basically like this fucker needs a personality transplant. He needs to become an entirely different person. Roosevelt, like Lodge, went to Harvard for undergrad, but then went on to Columbia law school. From there. The two had more in common than just being rich and going to prestigious law schools. Though they both yearned for war. Lodge wanted the United States to dominate the rest of the world, and Roosevelt wanted to play army. Colleagues of Lodge made fun of his privileged upbringing, calling him silver spooned young man a la di da boy, and the gentleman rider of Nahant, which is his hometown. And honestly, I think we should bring back congressional negging. This is the one thing that Trump has gotten right, is just neg the shit out of each other. Meatball Ron is still the funniest thing anyone has said in politics in decades. But Lodge was totally ignorant to and uninterested in the struggles of normal Americans, let alone the poor. Knowing he was an arrogant snob and actually proud of that fact, he was aware that he would never win the presidency because other people found him loathsome, but he could use Roosevelt as a proxy for his shitty views. Roosevelt was mocked by his political colleagues in Albany with nicknames like young Squirt, Weakling, Jane Dandy, and my personal favorite, punk and lily. And he had spent punk and lily. It's cute. He had spent his whole life reading about heroes and wanted nothing more than to be one. But not by, like, feeding the poor or building schools or anything like that. He wanted to kill. He dreamed of starting wars. Psychologist William James wrote of Roosevelt, quote, he gushes over war as the ideal condition of human society for the manly strenuousness which it involves and treats peace as a condition of blubberlike and swollen ignobility fit only for huckstering weaklings dwelling in gray twilight and heedless of the higher right. Jesus Christ. Basically, Roosevelt would absolutely be one of those TikTok guys running boot camps for betas where they yell at them about their small dicks as they army crawl in mud pits covered in barbed wire. That kind of vibe. Roosevelt started to transform into the badass image. We've come to think of him now after the death of both his mother and his wife on the same day, February 14, 1884. And anyone who's been through a traumatic death probably knows it does weird things to your psyche. I know when my dad, like, I started doing all kinds of things and filling, like, every moment of my life with some ambitious endeavor, for whatever reason. And Roosevelt did basically the exact same thing. After losing both of them simultaneously, his mother to typhoid and his wife to kidney failure, Roosevelt went beast mode, fully reinventing himself from the dandy his colleagues mocked, to a rugged mountain man, even going so far as to buy a whole ass cattle ranch in North Dakota. So this, like, twerp from New York suddenly is like, I'm a cowboy. Now, as Kinser put it in the book, both believed two things passionately, that the United States must become one of the world's great powers, and that they could do so only by taking foreign lands. Now, obviously America wasn't new to the idea of expansion, and neither lodge nor Roosevelt pioneered that. We were all about expanding across this continent, whether by force, like the trail of tears, or by buying it, like the Louisiana purchase. Lincoln's secretary of state, William H. Seward, wanted the US to acquire Hawai, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Virgin Islands, Canada, Greenland, and Iceland. [01:06:18] Speaker A: Rice. [01:06:19] Speaker B: I know, right? Like, buddy, slow the fuck down. None of those became american territories in his lifetime, and he's mostly known for Seward's folly, his debacle in Alaska, wherein he arranged the purchase of the territory from Russia for $7 million and was roundly ridiculed for the absurdity of buying a polar bear garden in Congress. Degree of success aside, this is just to say that the dynamic duo of Roosevelt and Lodge weren't the first to mastermind the idea that we might start expanding outside of what Daniel Immer calls the logo map in his book, how to hide an Empire. That's the neat and tidy map of the US we're used to seeing. That leaves out Hawai and Alaska and all the territories we now have and owned in the past. The last decade of the 19th century was actually a pretty chill one, and Roosevelt did not like that. He was desperate to figure out how to start a war, and that wasn't limited to regional dustups. He legit wanted to fight the indigenous people of Australia and Siberia because, quote, the most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages. He also was into the idea of maybe starting some shit with Germany, and mused that, quote, the burning of New York and a few other seacoast cities would be a good object lesson in the need of an adequate system of coastal defenses. And listen, I'm not a psychologist, and also, I know we can't just diagnose dead people who haven't been examined, but both he and Lodge seem like downright sociopaths. They did not think of others as real people. It was just playthings for like, that's an insane thing to say. If we just burn down New York, that'll teach people that we should have stronger defenses. [01:08:00] Speaker A: It feels like a parallel, if you want to, like a modern parallel. During COVID our ex prime minister, was quoted as saying, let the bodies pile high in their thousands before we do another lockdown, that kind of thing. Actual human people in their homes and property, as, like you said, props and pawns in your own. [01:08:22] Speaker B: They're just. They're not real. They're just a stepping stone. They're whatever. So the two teamed up with Alfred Thayer Mahan, a naval strategist. Sorry. They teamed up with Alfred Thermahan, a naval strategist, to make their war fantasies a reality. He was in the navy during the civil war and then commanded various ships, but he was, frankly, a shitty captain and kept wrecking said ships. But Mahan understood that if you wanted to be a superpower, you needed control of the seas, and that the US would have to build a strong navy and start sending it to islands, ports and peninsulas all over to secure a foothold. He said, I am, frankly, an imperialist in the sense that I believe that no nation, certainly no great nation, should henceforth maintain the policy of isolation which fitted our early history imperialism. The extension of national authority over alien communities is a dominant note in the world of politics today. Why doesn't anyone just want, like, a chill ass nation? Why do we all got to be superpowers? [01:09:21] Speaker A: Just like, yeah, I hate it. [01:09:23] Speaker B: Just hang out vibe. [01:09:25] Speaker A: The term that always is guaranteed to get friction with me is this fucking. Whenever anyone refers to an american president as leader of the free world, right? So bad. Get fucked, pal. [01:09:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's certainly the kind of thing that comes from this era of thinking. Before that, they certainly would not have said that. And, yeah, it's a galling phrase. [01:09:50] Speaker A: Oh, I hate it. [01:09:51] Speaker B: Absolutely galling. [01:09:53] Speaker A: I'm part of the free world, mate, and you ain't leading shit. [01:09:56] Speaker B: Unfortunately, we are. [01:09:58] Speaker A: Well, yeah, but from where? I'm. [01:10:00] Speaker B: How your country has been falling apart for the last several years. That's what happens when you follow the leader of the free world. That's what goes on. But anyway, Mahan's book, the influence of Sea power upon history, 1660 to 1783, despite its dry title, became a big and influential hit, making the case to Americans who otherwise would have been opposed or indifferent to the idea of the american empire that it was actually good and necessary. And this was compounded by a major economic depression in the US in 1893, when the collapse of the Philadelphia and Redding railroad threw the country into absolute turmoil and panic. And panic is one of the worst things that can happen when economic uncertainty hits. That's why Franklin Roosevelt, not this Roosevelt, in his first fireside chat, basically served the purpose of telling the american public to calm the fuck down while he sorted out the banks, according to Kinser, quote, hundreds of banks failed. Thousands of businesses collapsed, millions lost jobs. Bitter strikes were brutally suppressed. Commodity prices plummeted, leaving many farm families destitute. Hordes of angry unemployed converged on Washington and chaos threatened. Thus, for political and business folk, the solution was clear. Overseas markets. We needed new markets for american products, Kinser says Mahan reminded them that overseas commerce would have to be protected or imposed on unwilling nations by naval power. He fused America's commercial and strategic interests into a global strategy that captured many imaginations. Throughout the 1890s, the US intervened militarily into various international affairs. But imperial fever didn't quite catch on. Yet. In 1896, though, presidential candidate William McKinley made it clear that foreign markets were a priority. This appealed to the business class, and McKinley became the first presidential candidate to receive large campaign donations from wealthy capitalists. Before then, it actually wasn't a normal thing for captains of industry to donate to political campaigns, which is hard to imagine now because they're the only donors who matter in current times. His main opponent, William Jennings Bryant, who most Brian, who most of us were more familiar with because of the whole scopes monkey trial thing, was vehemently opposed to U. S. Interference in other nations'affairs. He was a hero to the poor, who the rich saw as about to dismantle everything they'd built. Brian once said, there are those who believe that if you will only legislate to make the well to do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them. In other words, he was giving a big middle finger to trickle down economics nearly a century before it'd be given a name and fully believed the priority of the government should be making all people prosperous, not catering to a rich minority and hoping they'd be benevolent enough to help the poor. I'm just going to spoil Brian for you out the gate because he comes across real heroic and has great views until he doesn't. He eventually became almost solely to blame for America becoming imperialist once and for all. And of course, in the evolution debate, he was the ultra religious guy trying to ban the teaching of evolution in schools. Turned out to be a whole asshole. But in his early days, dude had bars. McKinley won the election, which was fascinating, but would take me way too much time to get into. And at his inauguration, he said he, quote, cherished the policy of non interference with affairs of foreign governments and insisted that we want no wars of conquest. We must avoid the temptation to territorial aggression. But Lodge had done some stumping for McKinley, and he asked McKinley to name Roosevelt as secretary of the Navy as a favor. And although Lodge and Roosevelt were dismayed at their inability to rile Americans to the imperial cause, they promoted the building of warships, expansion of naval bases, and better conditions for sailors. It was a start. And then it finally happened in 1898. The main at the time, Cuba was a spanish territory, but the people of Cuba were starting to rise up in resistance to that colonial rule. There started to be unrest in the streets and the US took this as an opportunity to get involved and protect our economic interests there, sending a ship called the USS Maine to hang out at the harbor and basically serve as a big we're watching you to the Spanish. According to Kinser, quote, over the past year, Americans had grown enraged by the harshness of spanish colonial rule in Cuba. Most cheered when Congress declared war on Spain. They were thrilled when President McKinley sent troops to help cuban revolutionaries fighting to expel the Spanish. Roosevelt and lodge were, of course, champing at the bit to just start a war with Spain on this alone. But McKinley wasn't nearly as hawkish. Then on February 15, 1898, an explosion rocked the main, killing 260 of the Americans on board, which was more than half. There were less than 400 people on that ship. Experts at the time, who have since been validated by a 1976 naval investigation, said that the ship exploded because of a fire that ignited the ship's stalks of ammunition. That's not the story the government and the press ran with. Instead, they claimed, completely without evidence, that the main had been destroyed by a spanish mine, a clear act of war against the United States. This swept Americans into a fervor. Surely we must retaliate. And indeed, politicians agreed, but with the caveat that this couldn't be a land grab. The Cubans were fighting for independence, and if we were going to come in there and fight Spain, it had to be for righteous reasons to free the Cubans. Roosevelt et al. Weren't happy with that, but they also knew how to leverage this to their advantage. Sure, they might not be able to have Cuba, but a decisive defeat of the Spanish would leave other territories open for the taking, Kinser wrote. Before long, someone, Washington, suggested that instead of allowing Cuba to become independent as promised, the United States should take the island and rule it. Then they began talking of seizing Puerto Rico and even the Philippines. Imperial fever had broken out and was spreading, and this did not go unnoticed by anti imperialists at home, of which there were many and many of which were extremely influential people like Andrew Carnegie, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and Mark Twain, just to name a few. The war with Spain was short and sweet, fought both in Cuba and in the Pacific, with Manila being the other central target. The war took, like, three months. Very short. Roosevelt, huh? You've been to. Yeah, we'll have to talk more about that at some point. I know you've been there, but, yeah. Roosevelt had gotten the chance to round up a group of guys who became known as Roosevelt's Rough Riders to have a grand old time killing people in Cuba. And the war became known as the splendid Little War. He genuinely had fun. And with the help of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who published anti Spain propaganda with gusto, the american public was all hopped up on post war good vibes. And then it became time to figure out what to do with Cuba and with Spain's other territories. And with Hawai. Yes, Hawaii. We've talked a bit about Hawai before, but one of the key things to know is that Hawaii's own indigenous monarchy had been overthrown not by the US government, but by a bunch of rich guys. And that's not to say the US government wasn't involved. It was. But the overthrow was carried out, literally by businessmen who hoped the annexation of the territory would immediately follow and their business interests would be protected. This new interim government was presided over by Sanford Dole. And we're still eating the colonialism tarnished fruit of that oppression to this day, which is neat. I love when there's no consequences of the lineage of colonialism and it flourishes. Super cool. Do you have dole fruit there? [01:18:15] Speaker A: Yes, pineapple. [01:18:16] Speaker B: That's the guy. Overthrew Hawaii. We had not yet annexed Hawai at the time of the spanish american war, but afterwards we were like, hey, that was a really important strategic location. So while we're talking about snatching up spanish territories, we should probably also just go ahead and take this one for once and for all. This was not taken lightly by the vocal contingent of anti imperialists, leaders of industry, politicians, and everyday folks alike. In June of 1898, anti imperialists assembled at Fanniel hall in Boston to protest the annexation of Hawaii and other territories. And the rhetoric was fiery. At the opening of the meeting, Gamaliel Bradford said, we are here to insist. [01:19:02] Speaker A: That a war begun in the name of humanity shall not be turned into a war for empire, that an attempt to win for Cubans the right to govern themselves shall not be made an excuse for extending our sway of alien peoples without their consent. We are a world power, but the question is whether we shall be a power for beneficiance or malfeasance. Everything is against the policy of conquest, which seems reasonable. It does. I can get on board with that. [01:19:32] Speaker B: I can buy, get behind Gamaliel here. But at the very same time that this meeting of protest was occurring, Congress was in Washington, where they held a decisive vote in favor of McKinley's move toward imperialism, starting with the seizure of the hawaiian islands. Obviously, America had been a colony of England, and it was pretty central to its founding ethos that we were about self determination and the right of a people to govern themselves, not be ruled by some foreign body. So it was pretty antithetical to how we conceived of ourselves as a nation to then take on colonies and territories of our own. And it was truly unprecedented. A colony had never become a colonizer before. In fact, Thomas Jefferson once said, if there be one principle more deeply written than any other in the mind of every american, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest. Important phrasing here, by the way, because politicians then had to rhetorically distance themselves from the concept of conquest, even though that was exactly what they were doing. They had to make it benevolent. It was doing the right thing for us and for these other nations. In the decades following the civil war, people began basically saying that all those old codgers were people of their times, and times had changed. We couldn't have stability at home if we weren't aggressively controlling and protecting foreign markets. And staying out of the colonial game would leave us at a huge disadvantage while letting our expansionist competitors and enemies get a stranglehold on trade. Richard Parker of New Jersey argued this annexation is not a conquest or a subjugation of others, but a continuation of our established policy of opening lands to the colonial energy of the great colonizing nation of the century. Which is impressive, abuser. It's like straight up like boss babe speak. Bring in that hot colonial energy. Yes, queen. Good grief. Edward Ridgley of Kansas similarly stated that we need not, nor do I believe we will enter into a conquest of force, but to the contrary, our higher civilization will be carried across the Pacific by the white and peaceful wings of our rapidly increasing commerce. [01:21:46] Speaker A: White and peaceful wings, eh? [01:21:48] Speaker B: White and peaceful wings. Okay, interesting metaphor you picked. I wonder if that was intentional. Yeah, really interesting. Ask the Hawaiians about how peaceful and civilized that colonization was. BTWs, on the other side, John F. Fitzgerald, granddaddy to the Kennedys, took issue with the idea that Hawaiians had benefited from christian missionaries redeeming them from savagery, an argument that was being used to show how cool and awesome it would be for them to be fully colonized. He argued that, quote, the native Hawaiian's view of the almighty injustice must be a little bit shaken when he sees these men who pretend to be the exemplars of Christianity and honor take possession of these islands by force, destroy the government that has existed for years, and set up a sovereignty for themselves. You might already be getting a sense of why I'm bringing this up to get you into the zone for discussing Israel and Palestine. But another thing I always want to point out with stuff like this is that it blasts a hole through our people of their times narrative that we like to use about the past. We like to pretend that people in the olden days didn't know not to be racist or sexist or any number of sins, and so it's unfair to hold them to our current standards. But there are always loud and numerous voices like Fitzgerald's going respectfully. What the fuck? Those are people too. As America steamrolled into imperialism, the voices were loud and mainstream that vehemently protested it. It's important to remember that. It's also important to recognize that some people were anti imperialism because they were racist and were like, ew, gross. We don't want savage Hawaiians or Cubans fucking up the american character or stealing our jobs. I'm certainly not trying to redeem all people of the past or anything like that. It's complicated. But anyway. Louisiana's Adolf Meyer, son of german immigrants and one of very few jews in Congress, had this to say. [01:23:41] Speaker A: Our whole system is founded on the right of the people, all the people, to participate in the government. Take this first fatal step and you cannot recall it. Much error we have corrected, much that may hereafter be you can correct. But when this step is taken, you are irrevocably pledged to a system of colonialism and empire. There are no footsteps backward. [01:24:06] Speaker B: William Jennings Brian asked, is our national. [01:24:10] Speaker A: Character so weak that we cannot withstand the temptation to appropriate the first piece of land that comes within our reach? To inflict upon the enemy all possible harm is legitimate warfare. But shall we contemplate a scheme for the colonization of the Orient merely because our ships won a remarkable victory in the harbour of Manila? Our guns destroyed a spanish fleet. But can they destroy the self evident truth that governments derive their just powers not from superior force but from the consent of the governed? [01:24:39] Speaker B: And Morfield's story added, how can we. [01:24:43] Speaker A: Justify the annexation of Hawaii, whose people outside the small fraction now kept in power by us are notoriously opposed to it? Let us once govern any considerable body of men without their consent. And it is but a question of time how soon this republic shares the fate of Rome. [01:25:02] Speaker B: Meanwhile, Mississippi's William I know, right? God damn and well read, by the way. [01:25:09] Speaker A: Most kind. Thank you. [01:25:12] Speaker B: Meanwhile, Mississippi's William Hepburn put forth in Congress that, quote, we have not a foot of territory that we have not taken from others. Which sounds like a condemnation, but that's not at all what he meant. He continued, who dares to say that even if we should enter into this new policy, the fate which befell the roman empire would be ours? Look at England. What would she be today if confined to her insular domain? Which is a fucking wild thing to say when you're standing in the congress of a country that literally fought England not to be her colony. Can you hear yourself? What the fuck, dude? But his mindset was apparently the winning one. In a 209 to 91 vote. The House of Representatives voted for the US to seize Hawaii, and the Senate and President McKinley followed suit. As for Cuba, it became a us protectorate, meaning we were temporarily in charge of them until they got their shit together in a way that we approved of. Or to be more precise, in a way that lodge and Roosevelt approved of with their Platt amendment. Spain ceded the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the US in the Treaty of Paris, all of which would serve strategic military and economic functions for. And the one I want to focus on specifically to bring this all around is the Philippines. Because what we did there is going to sound eerily familiar to the stories out of Gaza today. First, I want you to read McKinley's justification of the annexation of the Philippines because it is staggering in its audacity. [01:26:52] Speaker A: Before you go, I would like to say just a word about the philippine business. I've been criticized a good deal about the Philippines, but don't deserve it. The truth is, I didn't want the Philippines. And when they came to us as a gift from the gods, I didn't know what to do with them. When the spanish war broke out, Dewey was at Hong Kong, and I ordered him to go to Manila and to capture or destroy the spanish fleet. And he had to, because if defeated, he had no place to refit on that side of the globe. And if the dons were victorious, they would likely cross the Pacific and ravage our Oregon and California coasts. And so he had to destroy the spanish fleet and did it. But that was as far as I thought. Then when I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps, I confess I did not know what to do with them. I sought counsel from all sides, Democrats as well as Republicans. All sides, Democrats and Republicans. [01:27:43] Speaker B: All right, all of them. [01:27:45] Speaker A: But got little help. I thought, first we would only take Manila, then Luzon, then other islands, perhaps also. I walked the floor of the White House night after night, until midnight. And I'm not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed, almighty God, for light and guidance more than one night, and one night late, it came to me this way. I don't know how it was, but it came. One, that we could not give them back to Spain. That would be cowardly and dishonorable. Two, that we could not turn them over to France and Germany, our commercial rivals in the Orient. That would be bad business and discreditable. Three, that we could not leave them to themselves. They were unfit for self government, and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was, and four, that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos and uplift and civilize and christianize them, and by God's grace, do the very best we could by them as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly. And the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the war Department and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States. And there they are, and there they will stay while I am president. [01:29:10] Speaker B: You're welcome to everyone for that nice long Marco read, by the way. But the pr spin here is incredible, right? We didn't want the war. We didn't want the Philippines. But God came to him in a dream and was like, bro, it's the only way. It's for our good, it's for theirs. It would be genuinely sinful for you to give them their independence. It's so deeply transparent. McKinley even argued that it was simply not in the american character to tyranize foreign territories as Europe did, claiming that american foreign policy was set with unselfish purpose. American rule would be good because America was good. [01:29:51] Speaker A: There's just no other way around this, right? Obviously, he's laid it out in very clear and succinct points there. There simply is no other way. [01:29:59] Speaker B: I mean, I'm convinced. Are you convinced? [01:30:02] Speaker A: Well, we can't possibly leave them to just argue amongst themselves. Can we possibly do that? We've got to get in there and that. Fuck me, that word Christianize is right. Repugnant. [01:30:16] Speaker B: Not only is it repugnant on its face, but keep in mind that they've been under spanish rule. They're Catholics. They're already Christians. We're coming in here and being like, we need to christianize these savages who have been Catholic for, like, centuries at this point, so altogether a ridiculous statement for us to be making. The idea of benevolent assimilation prevailed in the government despite the loud voices against it. Andrew Carnegie even tried to buy the Philippines from the US for $20 million in order to free them. That's how hard people were trying on this. And I think it's one of those things that you don't even. Because we don't like to talk about american imperialism, you don't hear about this, that this rich dude was so concerned with how we were treating the Filipinos that he tried to buy the country to give it back to them. It was that important. He was not going to gain anything. [01:31:15] Speaker A: From that just for my benefit. Where are we historically here? Where are we in chronological terms? [01:31:21] Speaker B: 1898, when this is occurring. [01:31:23] Speaker A: That's really not that long ago. [01:31:25] Speaker B: No, it's not. That's the crazy thing is by the end of this thing, we're talking about like 19, one, nine, two. This stuff comes into the century we were born in. [01:31:36] Speaker A: Sure. [01:31:37] Speaker B: Just for context, right? Yeah, this is very recent. So Andrew Carnegie tries to buy them for $20 million. And one anti imperialist, Vincent F. Howard, wrote a poem called the Robbers of the Earth. [01:31:52] Speaker A: It went, lo, ye are weak and ignorant, while we are strong and great. And so in christian charity, we've come to rule your state. We've come to civilize ye and we've come to teach ye. Pray, bow down, bow down, ye savages, or else we needs must slay. [01:32:15] Speaker B: Really sold that. [01:32:17] Speaker A: It rhymes. [01:32:18] Speaker B: It does. And it really gets to the heart of the matter because that's exactly what happened. The US seemed to genuinely think they would tell the Filipinos, hey, you're our territory now, but it's fine because we're going to civilize you and it's for your own good. And the Filipinos would be like, hell, yeah. We love you, colonial rulers. [01:32:36] Speaker A: Thank you. [01:32:38] Speaker B: Thanks so much. This is awesome. We're going to get a Starbucks. [01:32:42] Speaker A: I'm a Christian now. [01:32:43] Speaker B: Christian. [01:32:45] Speaker A: Awesome. [01:32:47] Speaker B: Us commanders thought we'd roll in there with 5000 soldiers and it'd be smooth sailing. But the Filipinos, who had, by the way, been tricked into thinking they were getting their freedom after the war, didn't just lie down and take it. One senator told Congress, quote, more Filipinos have been killed by the guns of our army and navy than were patriots killed in any six battles of the revolutionary war. It has become a gigantic event. The slaughter of people in no way equal to us, meeting us with bows and arrows and crawling into jungles by hundreds there to die has stupefied the american mind. No one has said that our mission of commerce and of the gospel was to be preceded by the slaughter of thousands of persons. And indeed, the american public was horrified. As Hearst, who had backed the spanish american war because of his abiding belief in the cuban freedom cause, now turned against those that had instigated it and published the atrocities being committed abroad. William James wrote, surely there cannot be many born and bred Americans who, when they look at the bare fact of what we are doing, do not blush with burning shame at the unspeakable meanness and ignominy. We are cold bloodedly, wantonly and abominably destroying the soul of a people who never did us an atom of harm in their lives. It is bald, brutal piracy, impossible to dish up any longer in the cold pot grease of President McKinley's cant. A letter to the editor in one newspaper read, we've taken up the white man's burden of ebony and brown. Now will you tell us, Rudyard, how we may put it down? Lodge denied it all, of course, saying on the Senate floor, there has never. [01:34:31] Speaker A: Been an act of oppression against the Filipinos by any american soldier or by the american forces of any kind in the Philippines. Their oppression exists solely in speeches in the United States Senate. They have been treated with the utmost consideration and the utmost kindness, and after the fashion of orientals, they have mistaken kindness for timidity. [01:34:54] Speaker B: And Roosevelt, as he later campaigned for president, had this to say in Chicago. [01:34:59] Speaker A: I have scant patience with those who fear to undertake the task of governing the Philippines and who openly avow that they do fear to undertake or that they shrink from it because of the expense and trouble. But I have even scanter patience with those who make a pretense of humanitarianism to hide and cover their timidity and who can't, about liberty and the consent of the governed in order to excuse themselves for their unwillingness to play the part of men. Their doctrines, if carried out, would make it incumbent upon us to leave the Apaches of Arizona to work out their own salvation and to decline to interfere in a single indian reservation. Their doctrines condemn your forefathers and mine forever. Having settled in these United States, resistance must be stamped out. The first and all important work to be done is to establish the supremacy of our flag. [01:35:57] Speaker B: I wish that people could see your face after finishing reading that. [01:36:03] Speaker A: That's red, sight unseen. I've never read that before. And you could easily put those words in the mouth of any other number of fucking tinpot dictators. [01:36:12] Speaker B: Yes, 100%. This is what I'm talking about, right? About establishing a pattern, establishing a textbook that would then be used on and on and on. These things are certainly completely relevant to the things that the Israelis are saying right now as well. The israeli government is saying right now. The reports from the Philippines were truly awful. George Kennan, a correspondent from New York magazine, went to the Philippines and reported back that Americans were heavy handed in the use of torture against the Filipinos and that it used them indiscriminately. Quote, it is painful and humiliating to have to confess that some of our dealings with the Filipinos, we seem to be following more or less closely the example of Spain. We have established a penal colony. We have burned native villages near which there has been an ambush or an attack by insurgent guerrillas. We kill the wounded. We resort to torture as a means of obtaining information. The US needed some way to dehumanize the enemy. That was gaining too much sympathy because of reports like this. An attack was just the way. On the island of Samar, Americans had been, according to Kinser, quote, breaking the resistance with familiar tactics of burning crops, killing livestock, taking hostages, forcing civilians into guarded camps, and capturing or sinking vessels approaching the coast. They succeeded in reducing much of the island to hunger and disease. And if you've been following what has been happening in Gaza, not just now, but in the occupation before this, all of that should sound extremely familiar. The exact same things they're doing. In fact, I saw a video earlier today of them killing livestock, snipers killing sheep so that the Gaussians wouldn't be able to eat them, for example. This is again the textbook that is being used. In response, the villagers finally retaliated, attacking the Americans, who were largely unarmed at the time. With knives and axes, they killed 40 and wounded 26. The attack, which came to be known as the Balangiga massacre, was presented to the american public as an unprovoked attack. Politicians condemned the Filipinos for their uncivilized warfare in the face of an american occupation that had been nothing but good to them. Why would they attack their kind? Occupiers? Guess they just must hate America. Again, nothing familiar here. Right? And to close this, I want to read a dialogue between General Robert Hughes and Senator Joseph Rollins regarding the tactic of burning filipino villages. If these shacks were of no consequence, what was the utility of their destruction? [01:38:54] Speaker A: The destruction was punishment. They permitted these people to come in there and conceal themselves, and they gave no sign. [01:39:01] Speaker B: The punishment in that case would fall not upon the men who could go elsewhere, but mainly upon the women and little children. [01:39:09] Speaker A: The women and children are part of the family. And where you wish to inflict punishment, you can punish the man probably worse in that way than in any other. [01:39:17] Speaker B: But is that within the ordinary rules of civilized warfare? Of course you could exterminate the family, which would be still worse. Punishment. [01:39:26] Speaker A: These people are not civilized. [01:39:31] Speaker B: So here we've got the textbook being written. How to occupy a nation and to pretend it's for their own good. How to dehumanize the civilians, how to torture people until they retaliate and then pretend the retaliation came out of nowhere. How to make women and children into enemy combatants. Because they might be hiding actual insurgents, insurgents who are again, fighting an oppressive occupation. And this is the beginning of the US steamrolling into foreign affairs in order to protect economic interests, which, as we'll get into in the coming weeks, is at the center of why we are so invested, quite literally, in Israel. There you go. That's the beginning of our foray into what's going on in Gaza. From a historical perspective. [01:40:31] Speaker A: I hope that theory about the human brain only having a finite capacity isn't true because I'm going to forget a whole bunch of things otherwise it's okay. [01:40:40] Speaker B: That's why I gave you takeaways. Right. Because you don't have to know all the details of this. The point is that we have this situation that unfolded in America that has shaped the way that we do foreign policy. [01:40:56] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a playbook being written, isn't it? [01:40:58] Speaker B: It's a playbook being written in the late 19th century that now we can see being directly paralleled in a conflict that is happening in 2024. And next week we'll have kristen here to talk more specifically about the. I don't have it with me right now, but a book called the Thousand Years War on Palestine that's going to go further into, like, the naqba, which you've probably heard about, but we'll get further into that. We're going to talk more about sort of the history of why this is happening, specifically there from that palestinian perspective. And then after that, we're going to go back into sort of like. I mean, that's going to also contain how Britain plays into know what's the UK's role in this, because the UK is instrumental in the creation of Israel and everything that is happening now. And so that's what we're going to have for next week is sort of dig into that angle. We've started with how America has created the model. Now let's go into how Britain perpetuates it and what this war is all. [01:42:02] Speaker A: About, just to close us off. I can tell you about a conflict which is happening right now, a different kind of conflict which is going on live as we speak. [01:42:12] Speaker B: Oh, dear. [01:42:13] Speaker A: I know there's another McFlurry in the freezer. [01:42:17] Speaker B: Oh, no, that is deadly knowledge. [01:42:20] Speaker A: I know it's there. And that knowledge brings conflict. [01:42:24] Speaker B: Just think about 02:00 a.m. Mark's tummy after having three McFlurries. There you go, dear. [01:42:33] Speaker A: Anyway, listen. [01:42:34] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for. Thanks for joining us on this journey. Hopefully that was informative to you. And you're starting to see the shape of things so far. And they will continue to become clearer and clearer as the weeks carry on. And we're just glad that you're along with us on this journey, as always. Anything else that we need to tell to our dear listeners? [01:42:55] Speaker A: Stay healthy and stay spooky. Amen.