WEBVTT - Part One: Thomas Jefferson: King of Hypocrites 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:05.680 Media. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here and I wanted to 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:08.200 talk about something that is important to me, important to 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:11.040 everyone else at cool Zone. We have not really covered 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:14.160 it in detail, but on June tenth, twenty twenty four, 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.200 a man named Leonard Peltier, who is an enrolled member 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:19.759 of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa of Lakota and 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:23.079 Ojibwe Ancestry and is the longest serving political prisoner in 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:25.800 the United States, will be appearing before the US Parole 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:28.040 Commission for the first time since two thousand and nine. 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:33.720 The FBI is vigorously resisting any thought of him being 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:36.519 paroled because he allegedly killed two FBI agents and a 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:40.479 firefight on June twenty sixth, nineteen seventy five. Said agents 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:44.080 had shown up on reservation land to execute a pretextural warrant. 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:46.760 The initial firefight occurred during what's called the Reign of 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:49.120 Terror on Pine Ridge in the wake of the occupation 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:51.880 of Wounded Knee. It was a time of extreme violence 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.680 by the federal government, who had installed a puppet tribal 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:59.080 chair and was arming vigilantes who targeted Indigenous traditionalists. Everything 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.720 that led up to these events and the subsequent investigation 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:06.199 and mister Peltier's extradition, trial, conviction, and sentencings was characterized 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:09.560 by gross misconduct on the part of law enforcement, the prosecution, 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:13.440 and the courts. Mister Peltier's co defendants were separately tried 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.399 and acquitted on grounds of self defense. Mister Peltier was 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:19.680 railroaded and his cases tainted by discrimination at every level, 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:22.800 ranging from the withholding of exculpatory evidence to the torture 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:25.840 and coercion of extradition and trial witnesses, and from the 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:28.160 refusal of the trial judge to dismiss and a vowedly 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:31.319 racist juror, to the apologetic gymnastics of courts affirming his 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:34.840 convictions in the wake of meritorious legal challenges and admitted 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:38.320 evidence about rageous government misdeeds. Mister Peltier has been in 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:40.200 prison for more than forty eight years and is almost 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:42.959 eighty years old. He suffers from chronic and potentially lethal 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.679 conditions for which he receives insufficient and substandard medical care. 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:50.080 If you want to take action to hashtag free Leonard Peltier, 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:52.320 and I should tell you his name is spelled l 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:56.560 EO nar D p E l t I E r. 0:01:57.000 --> 0:01:59.600 You can call the US Parole Commission at two two 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:03.559 three for six seven thousand and sign the petition at 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:09.160 n d nco dot cc slash free Leonard Peltier at 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:13.560 n d nco dot cc slash free Leonard Peltier all 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:17.040 one you Know thing, or follow the n d N 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:19.840 Collective on social media for more ways to support him. 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:22.480 For more information on Leonard Peltier, you can listen to 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:25.440 Margaret's podcast on the Locoda Nation and read In the 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:32.240 Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matheeson. Oh, welcome back 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:35.840 to Behind the Bastards, the only podcast that you're listening 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:38.600 to right now, unless you're you're listening to more than 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:42.200 one podcast right now to I think I've done this 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:45.799 joke this like this, this bit about the brain hacking 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:50.520 people who like I read seventy books a week. Yeah, Jason, 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:52.280 do you have any brain hacks? How do you hack 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:54.280 your brain? How do you? How are you so such 0:02:54.280 --> 0:03:02.160 a such a a triple quadruple threat of a musician, writer, author, podcaster. 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:04.640 I guess two of those are technically the same thing. 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.400 But coffee entrepreneur, Yeah, yeah, how are you him? 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:11.200 I mean, as a few of them? I think one 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:14.160 of the main brain hacks is child labor. So if 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:15.679 you just that's a big one. 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:16.560 That's a big yeah. 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:20.000 You just find a little a little young hungry you 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:22.600 know what I'm saying. Kid, don't want to get famous. 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:24.639 And you just yeah make it we work too. 0:03:24.960 --> 0:03:27.480 Yeah, I mean, I'm telling you, man, it's like we. 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:29.920 Call that British umpire Maxing. Yeah, yep. 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:31.880 One of my one of my mentors, used to say, 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:34.800 everybody has the saying twenty four hours, but if you 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:39.320 work for me, I get eight of yours. So so like, dude, 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:40.080 I got thirty two. 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:43.840 Now. So that's there's your free advice for everybody today. 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:47.560 Go steal a child. That actually ties in very well 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:50.640 to the subject of this episode. Wow, because the guy 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.240 we're talking about this week is one of the most 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:58.120 famously productive human beings in history and and one of 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.680 the most influential American in the history of our nation. 0:04:02.120 --> 0:04:05.000 And he did it by stealing a bunch of children. 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:07.920 We are talking this week about Thomas Jefferson. 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:15.880 Hello, hello, oh man, the man loved him some black women. 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:19.760 Oh boy. We'll have a lot to say about all 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:30.760 of that. But first cold opens, dozen shut. We're back, 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.080 and you know, prop I said we at the introduction 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:35.040 of this the only way to get those extra eight 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.159 hours a day is by by stealing them someone younger. 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:40.760 But there is one other way, and it's crudely made 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:47.080 kretom tea mixed mine with macha and coffee. Today, I 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:49.279 was like, are we doing product placement in the first 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:53.560 minute of this coffee? Because this is just free the 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:55.080 concept of cretum. 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:58.120 Be cool if that coffee was owned by me. 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:02.000 I it was up until oh recently, I ordered like 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:04.960 four or five greats of your of your cold brew. 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:06.680 But I finally I need to I need to make 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.800 another order because I finally made it through. That's been 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:13.440 my early afternoon coffee. Just like crack a. Can go 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:16.640 go do some squats or sit down and finally write 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:19.160 for the day. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:23.880 It's like I will still say, I it is magical 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:26.800 that these scripts, that these are actually scripts, that you 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:30.000 write them. I'm like, do you type? Do you type 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:31.400 four thousand words a minute? 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:34.160 I can get about four thousand words. That's like a 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:37.479 normal night. That's like one one episode usually four to 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:39.360 five thousand words, so that's usually. 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.640 Not a minute, not a minute. Minute though, I was like, no, 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:45.440 did you count my joke here? Bro? Like I was like, nah, okay. 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:49.000 Once I finish like researching, it's usually about like five 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:52.520 hours of writing per script, Yeah, yeah, something like that 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:55.560 kind of depends on the script. Some of them take more. 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:57.599 Sometimes it's more like eight or ten for the same amount, 0:05:57.640 --> 0:05:59.800 because like, ye, word count is one thing, but it 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:02.360 all depends on like how well you understand, Like if 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:04.240 it's one of those things. If I'm like writing about 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.520 like Thomas Jefferson, thank god, at least the basics of 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:10.200 his history. Yeah, we were all raised with his kids, 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:12.280 So it's not as much as like if I'm reading 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.080 about Chow Chesku or whatever and I've got to like you, Ye, 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:19.440 let's get into Thomas Jefferson, and specifically I want to. 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:21.840 I want to dissuade people who might be worried at 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:23.599 the start. This is not even going to be four 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:27.839 episodes about Thomas Jefferson his whole life, because there's so 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:30.560 much written about this man and surrounding context we have, 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.080 we're drowning at him. These episodes are purely about Thomas 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:35.280 Jefferson and slavery. 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.560 Right, I'm gonna say this. I've got to say this Yeah. 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:42.920 I've gotta say I love the rhythm that the bastards 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:47.080 guests have. It seems like like some people get you know, 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:48.440 child murder. 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:52.600 We have our dead baby guests. 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:55.680 Yeah, you have a dead baby. Guess you have your 0:06:55.880 --> 0:07:01.159 you know, crack doctor. Guess I get horrible acts of 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:02.200 racism guests. 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:07.400 Ah, yeah, I mean I'll take it. Shit, I'll take it. 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:12.400 You're on the Mount Rushmore, Yeah, Rushmore. 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:15.920 So is Thomas Jefferson. I think I'm pretty sure he 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:18.760 has to be right. Yeah. Now to start with it, 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:21.160 to really, like, I think, to ground the story of 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.160 Thomas Jefferson because it's not really even calling it Thomas 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.480 Jefferson and slavery is not fully accurate. We're really talking 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:31.560 about Jefferson and like the concept of freedom, because Jefferson 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:33.440 is going to be seen in his own time as 0:07:33.480 --> 0:07:36.920 something of like a profit of the concept of human liberty, yes, 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:41.120 to an extent that bleeds surprisingly far, both in time 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:43.760 and geographically. And to make that point, I want to 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:47.960 talk about September second, nineteen forty five, which is when 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:49.720 a guy you might have heard of named Ho Chi 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:53.680 Minh gave a speech at bod Dean Square in Hanoi, Vietnam. 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:56.800 By this point in the Vietnamese struggle for liberation, the 0:07:56.840 --> 0:08:00.560 hated Japanese occupiers had been forced out in August, but 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:03.680 French imperial forces still controlled much of what was then 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:07.040 called Indo China. The war between France and the Vietmen 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:11.000 would take almost another decade until nineteen fifty four and 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.280 lead inexorably to an even bloodier conflict between the United 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:18.680 States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Given the brutality 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.440 of that conflict and how it has come down in memory, 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:24.520 particularly among their Western left, it may surprise some of 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.320 you to learn that Ho Chi Minh opened his Boddean 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.360 Square speech with a quote from the US Declaration of Independence, 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.520 written by former President Thomas Jefferson. Quote, all men are 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.199 created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:41.600 inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:44.360 of happiness. Here's what Ho Chi Minh had to say 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:47.560 about that line. This immortal statement was made in the 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:50.320 Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:53.720 seventeen seventy six. In a broader sense, this means all 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:56.440 the peoples on the earth are equal from birth. All 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:58.360 the peoples have a right to live and to be 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:04.120 happy and free. Now that is a lovely statement. That 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.320 is not what Thomas Jefferson meant by writing it, which 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:09.040 is the at of what we'll be talking about. 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:12.800 Yeah, Like I would say Thomas Jefferson when when I 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:16.679 was teaching high schoolers the phrase cognitive dissonance came up, 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:22.240 and I'm like, if cognitive dissonants were a person, it 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.440 would be Thomas Jefferson. Because there are things that have 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:29.319 came out of his mouth that are that I quote 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:29.800 to this day. 0:09:29.880 --> 0:09:31.800 Like him some of the best things anyone ever wrote. 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:34.360 The best is the concept of human liberty. 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:38.839 Yeah, yeah, sure, even about the institution of slavery. Like 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:43.280 if he was like if God is just yeah, right, 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:46.079 that's about favorite one. If God is as just as 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:49.800 we say he is, then oh shit, is we're gonna 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:50.320 be fucked. 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:53.640 We'll getto that line in its context and history. I 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:55.080 want to talk a little bit more about Ho Chi 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:57.559 Men because I don't think this is known enough, which 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:01.640 is that prior to the US really get involved in Vietnam, 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:04.560 he was a little bit of an America boo, right, 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:07.920 Like he kind of stannd the Founding Fathers just a 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:10.600 little bit and part of you get in this speech 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:14.400 he's got these like very valid complaints about the French occupiers. 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:16.839 He doesn't just quote the Declaration of Independence. He quotes 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:19.040 the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:22.000 which is made in seventeen ninety one during the French Revolution, 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.440 and is like, basically, hey, these are great things. You 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:27.920 guys are saying, why aren't you acting that way? Do 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:30.920 you should do it? Yeah, there's there's a heartbreaking line 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.040 in here where he's like, we are convinced that the Allies, 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:36.000 which at the Tehran in San Francisco conferences upheld the 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:39.960 principle of equality among the nations, cannot fail to recognize 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:42.920 the right of the Vietnamese people to independence. Oh boy, 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:47.200 they share dead buddy. Yeah. Oh, will apologize for that one. 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:51.880 But uh. He was generally Ho Chi Minh generally a 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.400 guy who like gauged the moment correctly. He was pretty 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:57.600 good at that. But he did not in this moment. 0:10:57.920 --> 0:10:59.280 No no, no, no, no, no no no. 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:01.800 So if you care at all about understanding the history 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:05.320 of human freedom as an ideological concept and a value system, 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.040 you do have to study Jefferson, not just because he 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.239 wrote eloquently on the matter, but because his words influenced 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.640 revolutionaries in the world over his lifetime and do so today. 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:18.120 At the same time, you can't study Jefferson without coming 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:20.920 to understand what ho Chi Minh eventually did about the Allies, 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:23.440 which is that it's one thing to express nice sentiments 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:26.120 about human liberty, and it's another to take any concrete 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:28.760 steps to further that end, especially if they might exert 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:31.760 a cost from you. So again, we're not doing a 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.520 political biography on the man, or even an exhaustive look 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:36.600 at all of the bad things he did in his life. 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:39.200 We are instead, Yeah. 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.800 He's like he just called cap and yeah and had 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:46.480 right to because it's like, bro, and that's to me, Like, 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:48.360 I'm glad we're doing this to me, because that's to 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:52.880 me what is so fascinating about history, and specifically American history, 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.640 the history of racism, the history of all of it 0:11:55.679 --> 0:12:00.000 is like when you drilled obviously I am a recipient 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:02.280 of all of this stuff, but like when you drill 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:05.280 down into what's going on in the heart and the 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:14.560 mind of a person that knows intellectually and even morally 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:20.959 and spiritually what they're doing is wrong, yeah, and continues 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:25.040 to be a part of it that you know, three 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:27.040 hundred years later, we could be like, I don't understand 0:12:27.040 --> 0:12:30.320 what the hell you're doing. You know, obviously this isn't 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:32.520 on the same playing field. But like fast forward to 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:37.000 me tomorrow hopping on this plane to sure fly, you 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:39.880 don't say like that's knowing full well, yeah, you know 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:40.360 what I'm saying. 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:43.960 That's particularly a good point because one of the chief, 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:46.679 if not the primary, moral issues that we are dealing 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:48.920 with right now is like the damage that we're doing 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:52.160 to the planets holding capacity for life. Yes, and it's 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:54.920 damaged especially all of us in the first world contribute 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.960 to because like it allows for our lives to be 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:02.040 very comfortable in comparison to most human lives. And that's 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:04.439 what's happening with Jefferson. Kind of at the end and 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:06.600 at the beginning, this is the guy we're gonna trace him. 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:09.920 He goes through changes, but kind of ultimately a big 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:14.840 part of why he betrays his principles on slavery is 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:18.240 because he builds kind of a first world life for 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:22.520 himself in the seventeen hundreds, and he's not willing to 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:24.880 give up that comfort. Right, There's more to it than that, 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:26.880 but that is ultimately what we're building too, because people 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:32.000 don't know enough about Monticello. So Thomas Jefferson Tommy Jeffs 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.200 was born in what biographer Dumas Malone called a simple 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:40.280 wooden house in today's Ablemarle County, Virginia. In those days, 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:43.080 Virginia was the property of King George the second of 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:47.760 Great Britain, ancestor to modern sausage fingered potentate Charles. The 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:50.760 calendar was different when Jefferson was a baby, but using 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:54.400 modern measures, we'd call his birth date April thirteenth, seventeen 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.800 four to three. So calling his family home simple probably 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:02.520 accurate enough, especially by like our modern you know, judgment, 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:05.000 but it loses some context, which is that his father 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:08.600 is quite wealthy for his time period and for his era, 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:12.319 and he's also kind of like famous. He's local boy 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:15.440 who made good. Specifically, he had helped to map and 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:18.320 lay out the boundaries of what became Virginia as a 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:20.960 young man, and as a result of that, in like 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:22.760 the work he did during that time, he comes to 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:25.120 own thousands and something like eleven thousand acres. I think 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:28.840 it was and a significant number of enslaved human beings. 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:30.120 To work that acreage. 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:32.720 So his dad, it's important to note, does not inherit 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.920 like builds what he has right primarily at least, that 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:39.920 is not going to be the case with Thomas. Thomas's 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:42.480 family home was called Shadwell, but when he was a 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.320 little boy around age three, his father moved the family 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:47.880 from Shadwell to a nicer plantation that he had been 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:50.840 hired to manage as the executor of his friend's estate. 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:53.440 Yeah, you can't tell me you come from meager beginnings. 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:54.640 If your house has a name. 0:14:54.960 --> 0:15:00.200 If your house has a name, yeah, that's really the 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:05.560 easiest quick way to like judge people's so geoeconomically, they 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.840 call your house. That's not just the apartment complex, like 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:10.760 the one what the this window? 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:15.320 Yeah yeah. If you come from like you know, Imperial Courts, 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:18.480 that's a housing project. So I'm like, okay, that's the 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:21.280 name of the projects. But you're telling me your house 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:23.160 itself as a name just shaf Well. 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:24.960 Yeah, that's that's a rich guy house. 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:26.680 I'm sorry. 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.520 Thomas's first memory is, as a three year old, a 0:15:29.560 --> 0:15:31.960 fifty mile ride on horseback through the woods to come 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:33.960 to this new home, and he's carried He's on like 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:36.520 the lap of one of his father's enslaved people. Right. 0:15:37.200 --> 0:15:40.040 That is his earliest memory is being carried by one 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:42.560 of the people his dad owns to a new plantation. 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:46.160 His parents would have several more children, three other sisters 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:49.880 or three sisters and one brother, and Jefferson spent age 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:52.880 three to about nine or ten wandering freely through the 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:56.200 semi wilderness around the plantation. He grew up on and 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.640 reading obsessively from works of classic history. We are talking 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:04.640 Roman shit. Yeah, he had an odd relationship with his family. 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:06.920 One biographer I have read said that he adored and 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:09.840 admired his father Peter, but had it best a strained 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:14.240 relationship with his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson Dumas, who is 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:17.760 Jefferson's most detailed early biographer. He writes like the first 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:21.640 kind of definitive Jefferson biography simply says there is no 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:25.840 positive testimony about her in Jefferson's notes and describes her 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:27.280 as a shadowy figure. 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:29.320 He got none sad about his mama. 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.640 He has. He has mom issues. They are mysterious mom issues, 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:33.800 but they are mom issues. 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:39.359 That's weird. Homie like I don't know she alright, I guess, like, well's. 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:40.440 Weird he doesn't say shit about her. 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:44.240 Yeah yeah, well, you know in him being a product 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:47.200 of his time because all the mom duties was offloaded 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:49.920 to slave black women. Yeah, Dot, you know what I'm saying, 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:51.720 Like you said, like we're riding in fifty miles, you 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:54.560 sitting on the on the on the lap of the 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:56.840 help rather than your mom. You know what I'm saying. 0:16:56.880 --> 0:16:59.160 Of course you're gonna feel feel some type of way 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:00.680 about your mamma because you don't do shit. 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.400 Yes, that is it, And I think that might have Yeah, 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:07.400 that's an interesting point. Actually, yeh, I've had I think 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:09.120 I've mentioned this on the show friends who like grew 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:12.199 up who were rich and had like a nanny, like 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:14.719 a full time nanny as a kid, and like express 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:16.359 that like, yeah, it was kind of confusing. It's like 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:18.440 a three year old I wasn't really sure which one 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:19.160 was my mom. 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:20.480 Yeah. 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.720 Now I find this interesting because immediately after saying he 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.960 could find no positive testimony about Jefferson's mom, he describes 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:31.720 her dumas Malone describes her as having physical endurance beyond average, 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:34.600 bearing a total of ten children, and raising eight of 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:38.040 them to adulthood, which is like, that's hard. That's that's 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:41.040 that's a not a bad. Eighty percent survival rate in 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:42.800 that time for kids is solid. 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:43.800 Kids. 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:46.000 You're kind of knocking it out of the park if 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.320 you're doing eighty on the percent to ten kids. 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:49.360 Yeah, it's pretty good. 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.840 Yeah. Yeah, we are awarding her a behind the Bastard's 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.560 T shirt that says, only two of my ten children 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:58.680 died here it is. Yeah, we love giving that shirt out. 0:17:58.800 --> 0:17:59.960 I just can that out at show. 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:02.400 Yeah, there it is. So I got two. I got 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:04.840 two awards under my belt. We got the No Diddle Award. 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:09.520 That's right, right, like, hey, you know I'm bad eight 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:10.640 hundred ki. 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:13.400 I got some bad news on the No Diddling Award here. 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:15.520 Thomas Jefferson is not going to win that, bad boy. 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:18.720 Oh no, no, absolutely no. 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:24.320 But he's still young. Pins not sure. Yeah, oh yeah, 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:27.280 maybe if we get a good pen guy. Yeah. So, 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:32.159 her husband, Thomas's father Peter, was significantly older than her. 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.439 This will prove to be a Jefferson tradition, and he 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:38.679 died young at age forty nine when she was thirty seven. 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:41.719 She lived nineteen more years after this and was a 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.800 widow longer than she was ever a wife. When Thomas 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:47.280 was ten, his father, who was still alive at that point, 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:49.520 gave him a loaded gun and told him to march 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:52.520 into the forest and find food. The goal here was 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:56.320 to increase the boy's self reliance. Thomas failed at first, 0:18:56.359 --> 0:18:59.280 but eventually found a wild turkey that had accidentally been 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:02.080 caught in a pin. He tied the captive animal to 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:04.399 a tree, shot it, and brought it home for the 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:07.120 family slaves to kill it. I might add that if 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:09.440 like you need the slaves to process your game, you're 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:13.520 not really living independently. It's kind of a huge part 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:14.280 of it. Actually. 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:16.240 Yeah, I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, I 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:19.399 think the kids just figured out the system found so, 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:23.680 which also plays well into who he becomes. It's like, oh, 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:26.000 you just got to work the system. Here's a turkey 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:30.440 that's already caught, so I'm just gonna shoot it. Yeah, 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:32.400 and it has somebody else do to dirty work. 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:32.680 Yeah. 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:35.879 Yeah. Take it credit for tie it to its tree 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.080 so I could shoot it, come throttle its neck. At 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:42.159 that point, man, you have the turkey. I don't know, 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:45.800 weird kid. So Thomas's family right about the time of 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.320 this hunting adventure, probably a little bit afterwards, his family 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:51.119 moves back to the Shadowell plantation, but they do not 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:54.240 take Thomas with them. He has left behind to live 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:58.919 with a teacher, Anglican minister William Douglas. Douglas was not 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:02.600 and Thomas's later beckoning a very good teacher, but Thomas 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:05.879 lived with him for five years, alongside several other kids, 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:08.359 I think five others. So this is like a pretty 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:10.520 normal thing at the time, right, Like you have your 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:12.639 childhood and then it's time to go to school, and 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:15.360 you know, there's not like us. We all live out 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:17.800 in the country on these you know, manners and stuff. 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:19.199 So we're just going to send you to live with 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:22.119 the teacher for a while and he'll take care of 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:22.800 you too. 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.040 Far like your school's far. Yeah, yeah, well did you 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:26.640 just stay there? 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:29.960 Basically during his adolescence, he's only ever home for like 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:33.680 short periods of time and only occasionally. His best friend 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:36.160 at school was another boy who also lived there named 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:39.959 Dabney Carr, who became his best friend. The one story 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.479