1
00:00:01,760 --> 00:00:08,000
Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast

2
00:00:08,119 --> 00:00:10,800
Speaker 1: about the very worst people in all of history, and

3
00:00:11,039 --> 00:00:14,720
Speaker 1: ladies and gentle them's we've got a real motherfucker of

4
00:00:14,760 --> 00:00:18,200
Speaker 1: a motherfucker for you this week. And to talk about

5
00:00:18,520 --> 00:00:21,360
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting sons of bitches we're going

6
00:00:21,400 --> 00:00:23,759
Speaker 1: to talk about on this series, I have one of

7
00:00:23,800 --> 00:00:26,320
Speaker 1: the most interesting guests that we've had on this show,

8
00:00:26,600 --> 00:00:31,120
Speaker 1: Adam Conover. Adam, Welcome to the program. Don't you hardly

9
00:00:31,200 --> 00:00:34,400
Speaker 1: need introduction, but obviously you were the host of Adam

10
00:00:34,479 --> 00:00:37,199
Speaker 1: Ruins Everything, and you've done I mean, you've been in

11
00:00:37,320 --> 00:00:39,839
Speaker 1: a ton of stuff since you were in BoJack Horseman.

12
00:00:40,520 --> 00:00:43,600
Speaker 1: You serve on the board of the WGA, and you

13
00:00:43,680 --> 00:00:45,120
Speaker 1: have a podcast now right.

14
00:00:45,640 --> 00:00:48,879
Speaker 2: Yeah. I do a show called Factually on YouTube and

15
00:00:48,960 --> 00:00:51,640
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts. And I also do video

16
00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:54,000
Speaker 2: monologues which don't really have a title, but it's sort

17
00:00:54,040 --> 00:00:56,880
Speaker 2: of the current evolution of what people know me for doing,

18
00:00:57,240 --> 00:01:02,080
Speaker 2: doing topical comedy about the world around, mostly about fascism.

19
00:01:02,080 --> 00:01:03,520
Speaker 2: I'm doing a lot of weekly.

20
00:01:03,280 --> 00:01:05,880
Speaker 3: Video a lot of that these days.

21
00:01:05,120 --> 00:01:07,720
Speaker 2: About creeping fascism and what we can do about it.

22
00:01:07,800 --> 00:01:10,679
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, trying to try to be a little

23
00:01:10,680 --> 00:01:13,200
Speaker 2: green shoot in the ashes of the entertainment industry and

24
00:01:13,840 --> 00:01:16,200
Speaker 2: you know, doing stuff online now having a great time.

25
00:01:16,520 --> 00:01:17,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a lot of fun.

26
00:01:18,080 --> 00:01:19,800
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting to be You and I both came

27
00:01:19,840 --> 00:01:21,839
Speaker 1: out of because you came out of college humor, where

28
00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:23,959
Speaker 1: you did a lot of your early work. I came

29
00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:26,120
Speaker 1: out of Cracked. So we're kind of like cousins in

30
00:01:26,560 --> 00:01:30,720
Speaker 1: digital media terms. Definitely, both of them started out doing like, yeah,

31
00:01:30,760 --> 00:01:34,000
Speaker 1: pop culture commentary, and now it's it's just all fascism.

32
00:01:34,080 --> 00:01:35,160
Speaker 3: It's just a facism.

33
00:01:35,319 --> 00:01:39,440
Speaker 2: Remember when there used to be websites, and yeah, on

34
00:01:39,480 --> 00:01:44,640
Speaker 2: the websites you could do comedy about various things history

35
00:01:44,959 --> 00:01:49,440
Speaker 2: or pop culture or just like you know, something about

36
00:01:49,880 --> 00:01:52,680
Speaker 2: dating college chicks, and people would check on that. You'd

37
00:01:52,680 --> 00:01:55,200
Speaker 2: get some money. And now you got to go on

38
00:01:55,400 --> 00:02:01,120
Speaker 2: Elon Musk's platform and talk about how a judge was arrested.

39
00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:04,560
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Or you go on to Facebook and you

40
00:02:04,600 --> 00:02:09,320
Speaker 1: see a crudely AI generated image a soldier with no

41
00:02:09,600 --> 00:02:12,919
Speaker 1: arms and a face that just isn't quite right that says,

42
00:02:13,200 --> 00:02:17,320
Speaker 1: nobody will share this image like it's great. I love

43
00:02:17,320 --> 00:02:19,160
Speaker 1: what's happened to media? This is so much better than

44
00:02:19,160 --> 00:02:20,280
Speaker 1: my friends having healthcare.

45
00:02:21,120 --> 00:02:24,160
Speaker 2: No one will share this image is the funniest trope

46
00:02:24,200 --> 00:02:26,440
Speaker 2: of viral Facebook boomer content.

47
00:02:26,800 --> 00:02:30,560
Speaker 1: I love it, I love it. I love it so good.

48
00:02:32,040 --> 00:02:34,560
Speaker 1: So this is actually slightly relevant to the person we're

49
00:02:34,600 --> 00:02:39,079
Speaker 1: talking about today because our bastard this week is he's

50
00:02:39,120 --> 00:02:41,560
Speaker 1: the man who ruined science in a lot of ways,

51
00:02:41,560 --> 00:02:44,440
Speaker 1: and he's also one of the major figures who helped

52
00:02:44,480 --> 00:02:47,839
Speaker 1: make media what it is. He was Rupert Murdoch's nemesis

53
00:02:47,880 --> 00:02:52,560
Speaker 1: for years. And the primary reason you're going to know

54
00:02:52,639 --> 00:02:54,320
Speaker 1: this guy, and I think everyone listening is going to

55
00:02:54,360 --> 00:02:57,040
Speaker 1: know this guy, is he is the father of Gilan Maxwell.

56
00:02:57,320 --> 00:02:59,840
Speaker 1: We're talking this week about Robert Max.

57
00:03:00,120 --> 00:03:08,320
Speaker 3: Well, do you know anything about Robert Maxwell.

58
00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:10,960
Speaker 2: I know nothing about Robert Maxwell.

59
00:03:11,360 --> 00:03:14,040
Speaker 1: This guy is so fucking weird. So part one of

60
00:03:14,080 --> 00:03:17,680
Speaker 1: this is going to basically be like inglorious bastards because

61
00:03:17,680 --> 00:03:19,959
Speaker 1: the first twenty something years of his life he is

62
00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:22,880
Speaker 1: a character from a Quentin Tarantino movie, Like he is

63
00:03:22,919 --> 00:03:26,480
Speaker 1: a righteous avenger fighting Nazis, and then he turns into

64
00:03:26,600 --> 00:03:30,760
Speaker 1: like a business monster who destroys the industry of scientific

65
00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:34,440
Speaker 1: publishing for quick profit. It's such like a weird heel

66
00:03:34,520 --> 00:03:35,360
Speaker 1: turn story.

67
00:03:35,760 --> 00:03:38,480
Speaker 2: I was wondering how he was going to destroy science,

68
00:03:38,640 --> 00:03:42,200
Speaker 2: and destroying scientific publishing is how you would view it.

69
00:03:42,240 --> 00:03:45,280
Speaker 2: And that has been done. I know this has been done,

70
00:03:45,320 --> 00:03:46,960
Speaker 2: and so I know I'm interested to hear about the

71
00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:47,880
Speaker 2: bastard who did it.

72
00:03:48,280 --> 00:03:51,200
Speaker 1: Well, at first, he's going to be pretty sympathetic, although

73
00:03:51,240 --> 00:03:53,440
Speaker 1: he's also going to commit a lot of war crimes,

74
00:03:53,440 --> 00:03:55,520
Speaker 1: so it's going to be a mix of things happening here.

75
00:03:56,120 --> 00:03:59,200
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is Gilan Maxwell's dad. She's obviously was

76
00:03:59,240 --> 00:04:03,400
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein like right hand woman, was the only one

77
00:04:03,440 --> 00:04:07,240
Speaker 1: to get convicted for his crimes because of obvious reasons.

78
00:04:08,600 --> 00:04:10,840
Speaker 1: And yeah, we're gonna be talking about her dad because

79
00:04:10,840 --> 00:04:12,920
Speaker 1: he's just so much more fucking interesting than her. People

80
00:04:12,920 --> 00:04:15,160
Speaker 1: would always refer to when you would, like when I

81
00:04:15,160 --> 00:04:17,839
Speaker 1: would read about, you know, what they had done, that

82
00:04:17,920 --> 00:04:21,040
Speaker 1: she was an heiress, and I had assumed she came

83
00:04:21,080 --> 00:04:22,680
Speaker 1: from like older family money.

84
00:04:22,720 --> 00:04:23,159
Speaker 3: She is not.

85
00:04:23,320 --> 00:04:26,039
Speaker 1: The fortune just goes back to her dad like he is,

86
00:04:26,520 --> 00:04:29,120
Speaker 1: as he actually was a self made billionaire.

87
00:04:29,279 --> 00:04:30,560
Speaker 3: And I say that because he.

88
00:04:30,520 --> 00:04:34,080
Speaker 1: Grew up deeply impoverished on like the Ukrainian step in

89
00:04:34,120 --> 00:04:37,560
Speaker 1: an incredibly poor Jewish village. In like the nineteen twenties,

90
00:04:37,960 --> 00:04:40,080
Speaker 1: so like not one of these guys, not like an

91
00:04:40,080 --> 00:04:43,680
Speaker 1: Elon Musk story. There's no Emerald minds in his background, right,

92
00:04:44,360 --> 00:04:48,280
Speaker 1: this this guy comes from nothing and like all people

93
00:04:48,279 --> 00:04:49,880
Speaker 1: who would grow into because he is kind of a

94
00:04:49,920 --> 00:04:52,680
Speaker 1: con man. Robert Maxwell. That is not the name he

95
00:04:52,760 --> 00:04:54,880
Speaker 1: was born under, which you probably guessed when I said

96
00:04:54,880 --> 00:04:57,880
Speaker 1: he grew up in a steppe village in the Ukrainian steps, right,

97
00:05:00,200 --> 00:05:03,520
Speaker 1: not the most Ukrainian name ever. He was born Abraham

98
00:05:03,680 --> 00:05:08,120
Speaker 1: leeb Hawk on June tenth, nineteen twenty three, in a

99
00:05:08,160 --> 00:05:12,279
Speaker 1: village called Slatinsky Doli and most modern and I just

100
00:05:12,279 --> 00:05:14,520
Speaker 1: said he was born in Ukraine. That's where his hometown

101
00:05:14,600 --> 00:05:17,520
Speaker 1: is located today. But when Abraham was born, it was

102
00:05:17,560 --> 00:05:21,040
Speaker 1: part of Czechoslovakia, right, because all of those borders move

103
00:05:21,080 --> 00:05:22,839
Speaker 1: around quite a bit in the first half of the

104
00:05:22,920 --> 00:05:27,640
Speaker 1: twentieth century, He wouldn't have grown up really identifying as Czech,

105
00:05:27,760 --> 00:05:30,760
Speaker 1: partly because being Czech was like a thing that had

106
00:05:30,880 --> 00:05:34,000
Speaker 1: just really started, you know, in that period, like Czechoslovakia

107
00:05:34,080 --> 00:05:36,640
Speaker 1: was a new country after World War One. He would

108
00:05:36,640 --> 00:05:39,560
Speaker 1: have identified and most of the people around him as Ruthenians,

109
00:05:39,560 --> 00:05:42,479
Speaker 1: which is kind of this isolated eastern portion of what

110
00:05:42,600 --> 00:05:46,359
Speaker 1: is then Czechoslovakia where his family grows up. Now, again,

111
00:05:46,480 --> 00:05:49,760
Speaker 1: Abraham's family was Jewish and the village that they came from,

112
00:05:49,839 --> 00:05:53,960
Speaker 1: Slatinsky Doli, was noteworthy because it's like it was close

113
00:05:54,040 --> 00:05:56,800
Speaker 1: to where all the pagrams were happening, but it was

114
00:05:56,880 --> 00:06:01,039
Speaker 1: the place that usually was relatively safe. Its entire history

115
00:06:01,040 --> 00:06:06,040
Speaker 1: and its population. There's almost like sedimentary layers of different

116
00:06:06,160 --> 00:06:09,080
Speaker 1: pagrams that occur over the course of the couple of

117
00:06:09,080 --> 00:06:11,360
Speaker 1: centuries before this, where like you'll get a new wave

118
00:06:11,440 --> 00:06:14,479
Speaker 1: of people moving to the village because everyone else in

119
00:06:14,520 --> 00:06:17,320
Speaker 1: the area they came from got massacred by the Cossacks

120
00:06:17,360 --> 00:06:20,560
Speaker 1: or whatever. Right, Like, that's the story of the village

121
00:06:20,560 --> 00:06:24,279
Speaker 1: that he grows up in. So you know, this is

122
00:06:24,400 --> 00:06:27,760
Speaker 1: again not a guy who comes from money. One of

123
00:06:27,760 --> 00:06:30,160
Speaker 1: my sources for this episode is a biography on Maxwell

124
00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:33,080
Speaker 1: by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, and here's how it

125
00:06:33,160 --> 00:06:36,440
Speaker 1: summarizes this village. It was a place where Jews were

126
00:06:36,440 --> 00:06:38,800
Speaker 1: allowed to sell their goods to their Christian neighbors. Some

127
00:06:38,920 --> 00:06:41,640
Speaker 1: even had licenses to offer alcohol that were permitted to

128
00:06:41,720 --> 00:06:44,120
Speaker 1: educate their children in the Judaic faith. And wear their

129
00:06:44,120 --> 00:06:47,120
Speaker 1: traditional dress and speak their own language, haunted by their

130
00:06:47,160 --> 00:06:49,200
Speaker 1: own cruel past. There was hardly a family in the

131
00:06:49,240 --> 00:06:51,800
Speaker 1: village that had not lost relatives to the Pagrams. They

132
00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:55,440
Speaker 1: lived frugal lives within the sanctity of their faith. That

133
00:06:55,720 --> 00:06:57,800
Speaker 1: says a lot right there. That Like a key part

134
00:06:57,800 --> 00:06:59,520
Speaker 1: of this is like some of the residents are even

135
00:06:59,520 --> 00:07:01,320
Speaker 1: allowed to say alcohol, you know.

136
00:07:01,279 --> 00:07:04,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're allowed to. These people are allowed to wear

137
00:07:04,800 --> 00:07:08,039
Speaker 2: shoes and speak to one another, and they can walk

138
00:07:08,160 --> 00:07:09,080
Speaker 2: down the streets.

139
00:07:09,200 --> 00:07:12,360
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, we let these Jews sell to Christians. Can

140
00:07:12,400 --> 00:07:16,640
Speaker 3: you believe it? How progressive? Not exactly easy living?

141
00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:20,680
Speaker 1: No, no, again, this guy comes from about as rough

142
00:07:20,680 --> 00:07:23,920
Speaker 1: a background as you get, and we're talking the life

143
00:07:23,960 --> 00:07:27,240
Speaker 1: he's born into. These are peasants in nineteen twenty three,

144
00:07:27,800 --> 00:07:30,800
Speaker 1: But their daily life if you had pulled someone from

145
00:07:30,800 --> 00:07:33,400
Speaker 1: the same area in the sixteen hundreds into this village

146
00:07:33,440 --> 00:07:37,280
Speaker 1: in the twenties, it would have mostly been familiar to them, right. Wow,

147
00:07:37,600 --> 00:07:40,720
Speaker 1: Like that, that's kind of how behind the rest of

148
00:07:40,760 --> 00:07:43,800
Speaker 1: the world and how isolated that they are now within

149
00:07:43,920 --> 00:07:47,160
Speaker 1: kind of Czechoslovakia. Abraham and his family are double pariahs

150
00:07:47,200 --> 00:07:51,280
Speaker 1: because they're Jewish and they're Ruthenian and ruth again the

151
00:07:51,360 --> 00:07:54,640
Speaker 1: kind of like regional racism that existed within Eastern Europe

152
00:07:54,640 --> 00:07:57,680
Speaker 1: at this time. Ruthenians were seen as like backwards and

153
00:07:57,720 --> 00:08:00,360
Speaker 1: almost less human by a lot of the rest of

154
00:08:00,400 --> 00:08:03,640
Speaker 1: the country. A travel guide to the region published by

155
00:08:03,680 --> 00:08:07,080
Speaker 1: the Czech government in like nineteen twenty praise the fresh

156
00:08:07,080 --> 00:08:09,920
Speaker 1: air and the wildlife in the area, but warned visitors

157
00:08:09,960 --> 00:08:14,000
Speaker 1: of the quote rather unintelligent Ruthenians, whose expression is almost

158
00:08:14,080 --> 00:08:17,440
Speaker 1: blank stare who sit in the marketplace side by side,

159
00:08:17,520 --> 00:08:20,640
Speaker 1: gazing at the distance, seldom speaking a word or moving

160
00:08:20,680 --> 00:08:21,160
Speaker 1: a muscle.

161
00:08:22,080 --> 00:08:24,760
Speaker 2: This is their own government travel.

162
00:08:25,120 --> 00:08:31,080
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, this is I mean, visit Ruthenia where the

163
00:08:31,080 --> 00:08:32,080
Speaker 1: people aren't people.

164
00:08:32,720 --> 00:08:35,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. You know, if I was doing

165
00:08:35,840 --> 00:08:38,439
Speaker 2: a travel guide to La that's how I describe Santa Monica.

166
00:08:38,520 --> 00:08:41,120
Speaker 2: So you know, they said people just staring off into

167
00:08:41,160 --> 00:08:42,080
Speaker 2: the distance, you know.

168
00:08:42,320 --> 00:08:44,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's a product of all of the weed

169
00:08:44,440 --> 00:08:50,400
Speaker 1: shops on Venice. But so Robert Maxwell rarely talked about

170
00:08:50,400 --> 00:08:53,200
Speaker 1: his early childhood. And again this guy grows into a

171
00:08:53,320 --> 00:08:56,920
Speaker 1: consummate liar, and so what he did say is seldom reliable.

172
00:08:57,280 --> 00:08:59,120
Speaker 1: But there are some things we can infer based on

173
00:08:59,200 --> 00:09:02,320
Speaker 1: family lore, just our knowledge of the time. His family

174
00:09:02,400 --> 00:09:05,720
Speaker 1: last name Hach was not their original last name. That's

175
00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:08,600
Speaker 1: not really like again, this is not like a Germanic area.

176
00:09:08,679 --> 00:09:11,360
Speaker 1: These people are in like what's modern Ukraine. The whole

177
00:09:11,360 --> 00:09:13,719
Speaker 1: reason they have that last name is one day, back

178
00:09:13,720 --> 00:09:16,960
Speaker 1: when the Austro Hungarian Empire is in charge of the village,

179
00:09:17,120 --> 00:09:19,520
Speaker 1: a government official comes to town to do a census

180
00:09:19,559 --> 00:09:22,760
Speaker 1: in this Jewish village, but he doesn't speak Hebrew or Yiddish,

181
00:09:22,840 --> 00:09:25,600
Speaker 1: and so he's asking everyone what's your last name? And

182
00:09:26,360 --> 00:09:29,360
Speaker 1: Maxwell's ancestor I think it's his grandfather at the time.

183
00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:33,120
Speaker 1: This official can't spell their original last name, so he

184
00:09:33,200 --> 00:09:35,280
Speaker 1: just writes down Hawk and calls it a day because

185
00:09:35,280 --> 00:09:38,400
Speaker 1: he speaks German. So he's like, yeah, fuck it, close enough,

186
00:09:38,880 --> 00:09:39,960
Speaker 1: that's what you're called now.

187
00:09:43,800 --> 00:09:46,840
Speaker 2: In German, hawk means high right.

188
00:09:47,320 --> 00:09:49,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds right. I don't I'm not good at German.

189
00:09:49,920 --> 00:09:52,800
Speaker 2: Why why would he just what is just a funny

190
00:09:52,840 --> 00:09:55,200
Speaker 2: name to choose a common name?

191
00:09:55,600 --> 00:09:57,600
Speaker 1: I think he was probably making up a lot of

192
00:09:57,679 --> 00:10:00,160
Speaker 1: last names that day, just talking to all of these

193
00:10:00,200 --> 00:10:02,480
Speaker 1: people who speak like Yiddish. Primarily You're like, fuck it,

194
00:10:02,559 --> 00:10:04,559
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna start writing stuff like I don't give

195
00:10:04,559 --> 00:10:09,040
Speaker 1: a fuck like the Austro Hungarian Empire great at governance.

196
00:10:09,520 --> 00:10:09,880
Speaker 3: So uh.

197
00:10:10,000 --> 00:10:13,240
Speaker 1: In nineteen nineteen, after the war, Slatinsky Doli, that's the

198
00:10:13,320 --> 00:10:15,400
Speaker 1: village stops being part of the Austro Hungarian Empire and

199
00:10:15,440 --> 00:10:18,760
Speaker 1: becomes part of Czechoslovakia, and the family last name ceases

200
00:10:18,800 --> 00:10:22,000
Speaker 1: to exist again because yet another At this point, a

201
00:10:22,040 --> 00:10:25,040
Speaker 1: Czech government official who speaks Czech shows up in village

202
00:10:25,040 --> 00:10:28,560
Speaker 1: and does another census and he's like, OK, that's not

203
00:10:28,600 --> 00:10:30,520
Speaker 1: a proper Czech name, and so he gives them a

204
00:10:30,559 --> 00:10:32,120
Speaker 1: new last name, Ludvik.

205
00:10:32,480 --> 00:10:33,600
Speaker 3: This just keeps happening.

206
00:10:39,400 --> 00:10:43,559
Speaker 2: That's the prerogative empire, right town, new names.

207
00:10:43,280 --> 00:10:44,920
Speaker 3: For new names for everybody.

208
00:10:45,280 --> 00:10:50,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're Steve and you're a Bilbo. Oh man them out.

209
00:10:50,520 --> 00:10:52,440
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest, if I had that job, that

210
00:10:52,520 --> 00:10:53,760
Speaker 1: would be one of the perks.

211
00:10:54,679 --> 00:10:56,960
Speaker 3: Now I don't like I don't really like Mike.

212
00:10:57,160 --> 00:11:00,320
Speaker 1: You know what, I'm gonna go to this, We have

213
00:11:00,320 --> 00:11:02,440
Speaker 1: a lord of the rings and give you an orc's name.

214
00:11:02,679 --> 00:11:03,440
Speaker 3: Just make it fun.

215
00:11:03,640 --> 00:11:07,000
Speaker 4: And in modern times, that person's relative now misspells people's

216
00:11:07,040 --> 00:11:08,199
Speaker 4: names at coffee shops.

217
00:11:08,559 --> 00:11:12,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, the modern equivalent of these government officials is a

218
00:11:12,480 --> 00:11:13,599
Speaker 1: Starbucks barista.

219
00:11:13,920 --> 00:11:16,440
Speaker 2: That's great. The Starbucks barista should be able to go

220
00:11:16,520 --> 00:11:19,839
Speaker 2: into a town and give everybody the names they think

221
00:11:19,920 --> 00:11:22,160
Speaker 2: you should have. Yeah, yeah, what if they were in

222
00:11:22,280 --> 00:11:23,360
Speaker 2: charge of the names.

223
00:11:23,440 --> 00:11:26,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, we need to deputize them as judges. Give Starbucks

224
00:11:26,120 --> 00:11:32,320
Speaker 1: baristus the force of law. So Abraham's father, Mehl, was

225
00:11:32,360 --> 00:11:34,840
Speaker 1: known as Mehl the Tall because he's like the only

226
00:11:34,880 --> 00:11:37,000
Speaker 1: tall man in town. These people are not well fed,

227
00:11:37,200 --> 00:11:39,360
Speaker 1: but for whatever reason, Mehl comes out. He's like a

228
00:11:39,360 --> 00:11:42,640
Speaker 1: brick shit, he's like six foot five and yeah, so

229
00:11:42,720 --> 00:11:45,480
Speaker 1: for like that's tall today these people are all starving

230
00:11:45,520 --> 00:11:45,840
Speaker 1: to death.

231
00:11:45,880 --> 00:11:46,720
Speaker 3: He's a giant.

232
00:11:47,240 --> 00:11:50,720
Speaker 1: And famously so his job, he's like a small time trader.

233
00:11:50,760 --> 00:11:53,079
Speaker 1: So his job, he walks from town to town with

234
00:11:53,160 --> 00:11:57,160
Speaker 1: like goods like pelts or whatever, deer skins, and like

235
00:11:57,240 --> 00:11:59,200
Speaker 1: trades or sells them. And that's kind of how his

236
00:11:59,240 --> 00:12:01,839
Speaker 1: family gets by. And the thing everyone knew about him

237
00:12:01,880 --> 00:12:04,760
Speaker 1: was that normally people who have this job travel in

238
00:12:04,840 --> 00:12:07,960
Speaker 1: groups in like caravans, because there's brigands. This is a

239
00:12:07,960 --> 00:12:10,440
Speaker 1: period of time where there's brigands. But he's like twice

240
00:12:10,480 --> 00:12:13,240
Speaker 1: everyone else's size, So he just walks alone with a stick.

241
00:12:13,720 --> 00:12:17,720
Speaker 2: I love a brigand they're much better than bandits, you know. Yeah,

242
00:12:17,800 --> 00:12:21,360
Speaker 2: bandits are like level one. Brigands are level three. You

243
00:12:21,440 --> 00:12:24,040
Speaker 2: gotta be a little stronger. They've got studded leather armor.

244
00:12:24,240 --> 00:12:28,720
Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly, yes, exactly. I'm glad we both remember our

245
00:12:28,800 --> 00:12:35,360
Speaker 1: third edition D and D source books. So Abraham's mother, Hannah,

246
00:12:35,520 --> 00:12:38,000
Speaker 1: or she's also called Chunka, which I think is just

247
00:12:38,080 --> 00:12:41,920
Speaker 1: Hannah's just sort of like the gramatization of her Hebrew name,

248
00:12:41,960 --> 00:12:44,720
Speaker 1: I'm guessing, is what's going on there. As best as

249
00:12:44,720 --> 00:12:47,760
Speaker 1: I can tell. The unusual thing that you hear about

250
00:12:47,760 --> 00:12:50,760
Speaker 1: her is that she was learned and intelligent, and people

251
00:12:50,880 --> 00:12:53,880
Speaker 1: did not describe women in villages like this that way

252
00:12:54,000 --> 00:12:57,640
Speaker 1: very often. Right, given the nature of the time, we got.

253
00:12:57,559 --> 00:13:00,760
Speaker 2: A family with a tall guy and a learning woman.

254
00:13:00,960 --> 00:13:02,040
Speaker 3: Right, that's his parents.

255
00:13:02,160 --> 00:13:04,360
Speaker 2: These people must have been ruling the town.

256
00:13:06,840 --> 00:13:10,360
Speaker 1: Not really, they were like fairly prominent citizens in this

257
00:13:10,400 --> 00:13:13,240
Speaker 1: town where no one has any money. Yeah, And her

258
00:13:13,360 --> 00:13:15,839
Speaker 1: kind of defining trait that people would remember later is

259
00:13:15,880 --> 00:13:18,840
Speaker 1: that she would like scavenge newspapers from everyone else in

260
00:13:18,880 --> 00:13:22,520
Speaker 1: town because she just was so interested in reading. She's

261
00:13:22,559 --> 00:13:25,080
Speaker 1: going to be when they're when for the very first

262
00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:28,320
Speaker 1: time there's a Democratic Socialist party that starts up, and

263
00:13:28,360 --> 00:13:30,480
Speaker 1: someone comes to this town that had been ruled by

264
00:13:30,800 --> 00:13:33,520
Speaker 1: an emperor, you know in her childhood, and it's like, hey,

265
00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:37,200
Speaker 1: there's politics now, and here's there's this party. She's like, yes,

266
00:13:37,280 --> 00:13:41,640
Speaker 1: democratic socialist is exactly what I am. Right, she kind

267
00:13:41,679 --> 00:13:42,960
Speaker 1: of sounds rad okay.

268
00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:46,160
Speaker 2: So she's like a college educated leftist who's like reading

269
00:13:46,200 --> 00:13:50,880
Speaker 2: Fucou and annoying everybody at the at the DSA meeting.

270
00:13:51,400 --> 00:13:54,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, she she's that, except for obviously there's no college.

271
00:13:54,480 --> 00:13:57,840
Speaker 2: She's just able to read. Yeah, she's the equivalent in

272
00:13:57,840 --> 00:13:59,440
Speaker 2: the same way that it sits. And a half foot

273
00:13:59,480 --> 00:14:02,440
Speaker 2: tall man is an eight foot tall man. Someone who

274
00:14:02,480 --> 00:14:06,840
Speaker 2: has read page a four of the newspaper is like

275
00:14:07,120 --> 00:14:09,360
Speaker 2: has high falutint knowledge.

276
00:14:09,440 --> 00:14:09,680
Speaker 3: Yeah.

277
00:14:09,840 --> 00:14:12,040
Speaker 1: There's one description of her I found that described her

278
00:14:12,080 --> 00:14:14,600
Speaker 1: as an exception in the village because she read books.

279
00:14:14,760 --> 00:14:16,320
Speaker 1: She was almost an intellectual.

280
00:14:19,880 --> 00:14:22,920
Speaker 2: Ah, she sees spot run. This woman is so full

281
00:14:22,920 --> 00:14:26,520
Speaker 2: of herself. She's basically got a bachelor's right now.

282
00:14:26,680 --> 00:14:29,840
Speaker 1: Maxwell would later say regularly that his mother was a

283
00:14:29,880 --> 00:14:33,680
Speaker 1: committed Zionist. This is not impossible given the time. It's

284
00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:36,720
Speaker 1: also he becomes that later in life, and we don't

285
00:14:36,720 --> 00:14:39,680
Speaker 1: really we have no direct quotations of anything that she said.

286
00:14:39,680 --> 00:14:41,560
Speaker 1: And this is the thing he starts saying in the eighties,

287
00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:44,040
Speaker 1: So who knows, but it would not have been like

288
00:14:44,120 --> 00:14:47,080
Speaker 1: wildly out of like step with what a lot of

289
00:14:47,240 --> 00:14:50,120
Speaker 1: folks in that situation believed at the time, given the

290
00:14:50,160 --> 00:14:53,160
Speaker 1: realities of life in Eastern Europe for poor Jewish families.

291
00:14:53,760 --> 00:14:56,440
Speaker 1: Thanks to his mother, Maxwell grew up aware of the

292
00:14:56,480 --> 00:15:00,320
Speaker 1: injustices that suffused his early life. Thomas and Dylan that

293
00:15:00,360 --> 00:15:02,680
Speaker 1: she was quote a woman who was outspoken about the

294
00:15:02,720 --> 00:15:05,360
Speaker 1: injustices of their life just because there were Jews. The

295
00:15:05,400 --> 00:15:07,640
Speaker 1: images of her which would survive would come much later

296
00:15:07,680 --> 00:15:10,720
Speaker 1: from Maxwell. He described her as intelligent and well informed,

297
00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:13,400
Speaker 1: different from other local women. She was passionate about the

298
00:15:13,440 --> 00:15:16,520
Speaker 1: need to improve the masses for greater social justice. And

299
00:15:16,560 --> 00:15:19,000
Speaker 1: again this is stuff he says decades later. Some of

300
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:21,800
Speaker 1: this is probably like myth making, especially the factor he's like,

301
00:15:21,840 --> 00:15:24,040
Speaker 1: none of the other local women cared about this, Well,

302
00:15:24,320 --> 00:15:26,680
Speaker 1: maybe they did. Maybe you just are kind of want

303
00:15:26,720 --> 00:15:29,000
Speaker 1: your mom to seem like she was the only one,

304
00:15:29,360 --> 00:15:32,640
Speaker 1: because it, you know, burnishes your own story. Yeah, we'll

305
00:15:32,680 --> 00:15:36,120
Speaker 1: never know, but Hannah and Mehel had the standard number

306
00:15:36,120 --> 00:15:38,560
Speaker 1: of kids for that period of time, which is a shitload.

307
00:15:39,000 --> 00:15:41,800
Speaker 1: Abraham was the third of nine, two of whom died

308
00:15:41,840 --> 00:15:44,400
Speaker 1: in infancy from something only described at the time as

309
00:15:44,400 --> 00:15:47,800
Speaker 1: a bad cold. You know, it's just what happened with kids.

310
00:15:48,080 --> 00:15:51,120
Speaker 1: One of Maxwell's earliest experiences would have been watching his

311
00:15:51,200 --> 00:15:54,440
Speaker 1: parents bury their kids, and that's a pretty normal life

312
00:15:54,440 --> 00:15:57,880
Speaker 1: experience for people back then. Starvation would have been a

313
00:15:57,920 --> 00:16:00,520
Speaker 1: regular thing, like not to death, but they would have

314
00:16:00,560 --> 00:16:03,920
Speaker 1: gone hungry regularly throughout the year. That was pretty normal

315
00:16:04,080 --> 00:16:06,880
Speaker 1: for people in this time, in this village. When he

316
00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:09,800
Speaker 1: was still a baby and still named Abraham, his mom

317
00:16:09,840 --> 00:16:12,480
Speaker 1: and dad had to register him with the Czech authorities,

318
00:16:12,640 --> 00:16:14,960
Speaker 1: who advised them it would be better for everybody. They're like,

319
00:16:15,240 --> 00:16:17,720
Speaker 1: you want to call him Abraham. Look, lady, I don't

320
00:16:17,720 --> 00:16:20,000
Speaker 1: know if you got the news, but we're Czechoslovakia now

321
00:16:20,080 --> 00:16:23,320
Speaker 1: and Abraham is not a Czech name. And let me

322
00:16:23,360 --> 00:16:26,520
Speaker 1: give you some advice. People here are pretty racist. Your

323
00:16:26,600 --> 00:16:28,960
Speaker 1: kid might have an easier time in the days ahead

324
00:16:29,000 --> 00:16:32,320
Speaker 1: if you give him an undisputably check name. And like,

325
00:16:33,080 --> 00:16:36,760
Speaker 1: this sounds pretty bad. It's also maybe what saves his life,

326
00:16:37,240 --> 00:16:40,800
Speaker 1: because very soon it's going to be really good to

327
00:16:40,920 --> 00:16:43,160
Speaker 1: be an Eastern European Jew who has a name that

328
00:16:43,240 --> 00:16:46,360
Speaker 1: does not sound Jewish, right, And his parents take this

329
00:16:46,440 --> 00:16:49,240
Speaker 1: guy's advice and they change his name from Abraham to

330
00:16:49,400 --> 00:16:53,280
Speaker 1: Jon Abraham Ludvik, which would be changed yet again later

331
00:16:53,320 --> 00:16:57,240
Speaker 1: in his life to Jan Ludwick Himan Binyamin Hawk. But yeah,

332
00:16:57,480 --> 00:16:59,000
Speaker 1: he goes through a lot of different names.

333
00:16:59,040 --> 00:16:59,640
Speaker 3: This guy the.

334
00:17:00,320 --> 00:17:04,040
Speaker 2: Least Jewish name you could possibly the most Germanic.

335
00:17:04,200 --> 00:17:06,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yan, we'll call him Yon. That seems safe.

336
00:17:07,840 --> 00:17:09,600
Speaker 1: Yan is the name you want to be giving at

337
00:17:09,680 --> 00:17:13,800
Speaker 1: check points and the not too distant future here. So

338
00:17:13,920 --> 00:17:16,840
Speaker 1: the first job that the future Robert Maxwell had would

339
00:17:16,840 --> 00:17:18,840
Speaker 1: have been helping his family with the annual harvest, which

340
00:17:18,880 --> 00:17:21,560
Speaker 1: he would have done from infancy on up. A highlight

341
00:17:21,600 --> 00:17:23,600
Speaker 1: of the year. This is described in every book about

342
00:17:23,640 --> 00:17:25,840
Speaker 1: it I've read, was the hay harvest. And it was

343
00:17:25,880 --> 00:17:29,160
Speaker 1: a highlight because their beds were just like cloth stuffed

344
00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:31,600
Speaker 1: with hay. And by the time you do the harvest,

345
00:17:31,800 --> 00:17:34,359
Speaker 1: the hay is like matted, and it's riddled with lice

346
00:17:34,560 --> 00:17:36,960
Speaker 1: and moldy. And so the day when you get to

347
00:17:37,040 --> 00:17:40,000
Speaker 1: replace the gross old hay with fresh new hay. Is like,

348
00:17:40,280 --> 00:17:41,920
Speaker 1: that's the best day of the year.

349
00:17:41,800 --> 00:17:43,399
Speaker 2: The best day of the year.

350
00:17:44,000 --> 00:17:46,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the highlight of year year.

351
00:17:47,240 --> 00:17:50,040
Speaker 4: Hey day, the amount of life. I'm like itchy thinking

352
00:17:50,080 --> 00:17:50,480
Speaker 4: about it.

353
00:17:50,720 --> 00:17:52,720
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean everyone's got a lot of lice.

354
00:17:52,920 --> 00:17:56,040
Speaker 1: It's basically a medieval village.

355
00:17:55,400 --> 00:17:59,640
Speaker 2: Most of the time. Though. Harvest time is nice because

356
00:17:59,680 --> 00:18:02,119
Speaker 2: you get a good meal because that's when the food

357
00:18:02,160 --> 00:18:04,280
Speaker 2: comes in right and you get But like the idea

358
00:18:04,280 --> 00:18:06,119
Speaker 2: that harvest is the best day of the year because

359
00:18:06,119 --> 00:18:09,040
Speaker 2: you get a slightly better bed to get to it.

360
00:18:09,080 --> 00:18:11,480
Speaker 1: For an idea of where we've gone in a hundred years,

361
00:18:11,560 --> 00:18:14,440
Speaker 1: we've gone from my most exciting time of the year

362
00:18:14,520 --> 00:18:16,720
Speaker 1: is the hey harvest to yeah, once a year, I

363
00:18:16,720 --> 00:18:23,760
Speaker 1: get a new phone. Although none of these people again

364
00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:26,800
Speaker 1: have to know Twitter. So who's better off?

365
00:18:27,200 --> 00:18:29,639
Speaker 2: Do you think like we do with phones? Any of

366
00:18:29,680 --> 00:18:31,240
Speaker 2: them were going like, you know what, I can wait

367
00:18:31,280 --> 00:18:33,400
Speaker 2: one more year before I have a refilled my bed.

368
00:18:33,560 --> 00:18:35,920
Speaker 2: I'll yeah, I'm going to really hold out for a

369
00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:36,600
Speaker 2: nextra year.

370
00:18:36,920 --> 00:18:40,040
Speaker 1: Nanna, I hear bed five has all this spyware on it.

371
00:18:40,400 --> 00:18:45,960
Speaker 1: I don't really want to get into that. By age five,

372
00:18:46,200 --> 00:18:49,040
Speaker 1: Yan had proven himself an advanced student, which in his

373
00:18:49,080 --> 00:18:51,159
Speaker 1: world meant that he was learning to read and to

374
00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:54,560
Speaker 1: memorize prayers. By ten, he was a better writer than

375
00:18:54,600 --> 00:18:57,720
Speaker 1: his father. Although Mehel the Strong was not renowned for

376
00:18:57,800 --> 00:19:01,560
Speaker 1: his brain, he was quick enough that the town rabbi

377
00:19:01,680 --> 00:19:05,679
Speaker 1: recalled decades later his analytical ability and uncanny aptitude for

378
00:19:05,760 --> 00:19:08,560
Speaker 1: learning and retaining what he was taught. He could become

379
00:19:08,600 --> 00:19:10,880
Speaker 1: a rabbi. And at that time and place, if you're

380
00:19:10,880 --> 00:19:12,600
Speaker 1: saying this kid could be a rabbi, that is the

381
00:19:12,600 --> 00:19:16,040
Speaker 1: same as like today being like you could be a physicist, right, yeah,

382
00:19:16,040 --> 00:19:18,919
Speaker 1: Like that is the highest intellectual achievement for people in

383
00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:21,800
Speaker 1: this strata, right, kids aren't really like it's not likely

384
00:19:21,800 --> 00:19:23,320
Speaker 1: that kids are just going to go to college to

385
00:19:23,400 --> 00:19:27,720
Speaker 1: learn things, you know, not in this far off the

386
00:19:27,760 --> 00:19:31,280
Speaker 1: beaten path. So Yan grows up large. Robert Maxwell is

387
00:19:31,320 --> 00:19:33,600
Speaker 1: a big man. He's going to be like six foot

388
00:19:33,680 --> 00:19:34,240
Speaker 1: something too.

389
00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:36,919
Speaker 2: He loved by the way that his name at this

390
00:19:36,960 --> 00:19:40,240
Speaker 2: point has been changed seventy four or five times and

391
00:19:40,600 --> 00:19:43,480
Speaker 2: it has not gotten any closer to being Robert Maxwell.

392
00:19:43,680 --> 00:19:45,200
Speaker 2: This is where we know it's going to end.

393
00:19:45,520 --> 00:19:48,199
Speaker 3: We have at least four more name changes before we

394
00:19:48,280 --> 00:19:48,680
Speaker 3: get there.

395
00:19:48,800 --> 00:19:52,400
Speaker 1: By the way, the amount of ground this guy's name

396
00:19:52,440 --> 00:19:58,280
Speaker 1: covers nuts he's good at soccer because again he's twice

397
00:19:58,320 --> 00:19:59,200
Speaker 1: the size.

398
00:19:58,840 --> 00:19:59,760
Speaker 3: Of everybody else.

399
00:20:00,720 --> 00:20:02,720
Speaker 1: And I did look it up the local kids in

400
00:20:02,760 --> 00:20:04,920
Speaker 1: this town, when I say they, and obviously they called

401
00:20:04,920 --> 00:20:05,480
Speaker 1: it football.

402
00:20:05,520 --> 00:20:06,359
Speaker 3: But that's just wrong.

403
00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:09,320
Speaker 2: We know that, right, we're in North America. We use

404
00:20:09,359 --> 00:20:09,800
Speaker 2: our word.

405
00:20:10,280 --> 00:20:13,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, we use our word. The ball that they had

406
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:15,240
Speaker 3: was rags bound in Cowhid.

407
00:20:17,359 --> 00:20:22,359
Speaker 2: It's just like, look, there's nothing better than Eastern European

408
00:20:22,440 --> 00:20:26,879
Speaker 2: ball sports, Okay, right, Yeah, I really remember there was

409
00:20:26,920 --> 00:20:28,080
Speaker 2: a point in my life and this is a little

410
00:20:28,080 --> 00:20:29,840
Speaker 2: bit of a digression, but I do love to think

411
00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:32,400
Speaker 2: about this. Yeah, when the first Borat movie came out,

412
00:20:32,440 --> 00:20:34,920
Speaker 2: the people of Kazakhstan were like, this movie is really

413
00:20:34,960 --> 00:20:37,879
Speaker 2: mean to us. It really portrays us in an unflattering light.

414
00:20:37,920 --> 00:20:40,520
Speaker 2: We're not that backwards. And then somebody was like, yeah,

415
00:20:40,560 --> 00:20:42,639
Speaker 2: but don't you guys have a sport where the ball

416
00:20:42,880 --> 00:20:46,919
Speaker 2: is a decapitated goat's head. Yeah, but that's awesome, And

417
00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:49,480
Speaker 2: they were like, yeah, you know, yeah, no, it's true,

418
00:20:49,520 --> 00:20:50,040
Speaker 2: it's awesome.

419
00:20:50,080 --> 00:20:50,760
Speaker 3: Like it rules.

420
00:20:50,800 --> 00:20:52,400
Speaker 2: You gotta embrace it, you know what I mean?

421
00:20:52,800 --> 00:20:56,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a Afghanistan has a sport like that called

422
00:20:56,160 --> 00:20:58,760
Speaker 1: burs kashi, and it's like the deadliest sport in the world.

423
00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:01,239
Speaker 1: People are like beheading each each other on horseback with

424
00:21:01,280 --> 00:21:04,200
Speaker 1: their fucking sticks as they go after this animal head.

425
00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:05,600
Speaker 1: I would love to watch it.

426
00:21:05,640 --> 00:21:05,960
Speaker 3: Plate.

427
00:21:06,600 --> 00:21:11,000
Speaker 2: That's great. Why are we fucking around watching arsenal when

428
00:21:11,040 --> 00:21:14,480
Speaker 2: we could be watching goat and ball sports? A rag

429
00:21:14,720 --> 00:21:16,680
Speaker 2: bundled with leather? Great? Yeah good?

430
00:21:16,720 --> 00:21:18,200
Speaker 3: Yeah right.

431
00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:22,200
Speaker 1: So the Thomas and Dylan biography, I get a couple

432
00:21:22,240 --> 00:21:24,359
Speaker 1: of different accounts of whether or not Mehl the Strong

433
00:21:24,520 --> 00:21:26,680
Speaker 1: was a good dad. One of the books I read

434
00:21:26,680 --> 00:21:29,600
Speaker 1: described him is like pretty gentle. This is not an

435
00:21:29,640 --> 00:21:32,640
Speaker 1: account that is repeated by Maxwell's most recent and probably

436
00:21:32,760 --> 00:21:36,919
Speaker 1: most rigorous biography, Fall by John Preston, which alleges that

437
00:21:36,960 --> 00:21:39,400
Speaker 1: Mehel beat his son in public on a regular basis,

438
00:21:39,480 --> 00:21:42,199
Speaker 1: quote often so hard that he broke the skin. On

439
00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:44,600
Speaker 1: one occasion, the young Maxwell threw up in the street,

440
00:21:44,920 --> 00:21:47,040
Speaker 1: grabbing him by the hair. His father rubbed his face

441
00:21:47,040 --> 00:21:50,040
Speaker 1: in his vomit while passers by looked on. So by

442
00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:52,560
Speaker 1: this account, at least, his dad is abusive. By again,

443
00:21:52,840 --> 00:21:58,440
Speaker 1: like nineteen twenties rural village in Czechoslovakia standards, so rough

444
00:21:58,520 --> 00:22:02,280
Speaker 1: upbringing in a lot of ways. He was born left handed,

445
00:22:02,440 --> 00:22:04,840
Speaker 1: his teachers forced him to write with his right hand,

446
00:22:05,119 --> 00:22:07,359
Speaker 1: and he was like everyone in town would yell at

447
00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:09,439
Speaker 1: him if they saw him using his left so he

448
00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:12,880
Speaker 1: just like stops being a lefty. Also very common at

449
00:22:12,880 --> 00:22:14,840
Speaker 1: the time. You can't have those left handers.

450
00:22:15,040 --> 00:22:17,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a lefty and our people suffered under the

451
00:22:17,960 --> 00:22:21,040
Speaker 2: yoke of forced rightyism for a long time.

452
00:22:21,320 --> 00:22:26,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, We're finally free. Yeah, I actually did.

453
00:22:26,359 --> 00:22:28,400
Speaker 1: My first grade teacher tried to stop me from being

454
00:22:28,440 --> 00:22:30,200
Speaker 1: left handed.

455
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:33,200
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, in rural Oklahoma.

456
00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:36,840
Speaker 2: Holy shit, Yeah, it was. This was it was honestly,

457
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:38,960
Speaker 2: as a as a white man in America. It was

458
00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:41,720
Speaker 2: the first time that I ever felt myself as part

459
00:22:41,720 --> 00:22:45,760
Speaker 2: of a formerly persecuted by right lefties, Like I was

460
00:22:45,800 --> 00:22:47,760
Speaker 2: literally told the child. You know, lefties really used to

461
00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:50,480
Speaker 2: be treated poorly, and we've come a long way. Yeah, yes,

462
00:22:50,520 --> 00:22:53,520
Speaker 2: thank you to my to my ancestors.

463
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:56,959
Speaker 1: To our brave left handed forefathers. Yeah, to Ned Flanders

464
00:22:57,000 --> 00:22:59,000
Speaker 1: with the left torreum making a place for us.

465
00:23:00,480 --> 00:23:02,920
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry that you had to deal with tricky scissors,

466
00:23:03,440 --> 00:23:05,200
Speaker 4: so so brave guys.

467
00:23:05,359 --> 00:23:08,000
Speaker 1: Whenever you get like RFK being like, why are autism

468
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:09,959
Speaker 1: rates skyrocketing? Have you looked at a graph of how

469
00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:11,520
Speaker 1: many more left handed people there are?

470
00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:11,720
Speaker 3: Now?

471
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:14,040
Speaker 1: Do you think there's something environmental there? Or we're just

472
00:23:14,080 --> 00:23:16,040
Speaker 1: not hitting kids for using their hand?

473
00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:19,400
Speaker 2: Literally, it's the best argument for why is they're more

474
00:23:19,400 --> 00:23:21,560
Speaker 2: gay people and everything. I mean, people admit this argument

475
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 2: over and over again. But yeah, like, once you aren't

476
00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:26,560
Speaker 2: slapping people around with being something, they're a little more

477
00:23:26,600 --> 00:23:29,200
Speaker 2: willing to say that's what they are on a survey, right,

478
00:23:29,400 --> 00:23:31,359
Speaker 2: exactly pretty obvious.

479
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:35,920
Speaker 1: So at eleven, the no longer left handed Yahan goes

480
00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:39,119
Speaker 1: to a yeshiva and because again he's he's most of

481
00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:41,960
Speaker 1: these kids are not getting sent away to Bratislava, to

482
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:44,560
Speaker 1: the city to go to a yeshiva. He's smart enough that,

483
00:23:44,680 --> 00:23:47,440
Speaker 1: like the rabbi basically pulls some strengths to make sure

484
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:49,600
Speaker 1: that he gets a chance at this. And so he's

485
00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:52,520
Speaker 1: he's kind of like in training to potentially be a rabbi,

486
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:55,280
Speaker 1: and he's good, he's like really good academically, but he

487
00:23:55,359 --> 00:23:58,159
Speaker 1: hates it. He doesn't like reading rabbinical literature, and he

488
00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:00,919
Speaker 1: grows really bored with formal schooling, and he starts like

489
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:04,239
Speaker 1: cutting rabbi school to sell jewelry on the street, like

490
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:08,680
Speaker 1: to be like a small time like a merchant, because

491
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 1: this guy just has business brain, right, Like, you put

492
00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:13,720
Speaker 1: this man in any time and place and he is

493
00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:15,560
Speaker 1: going to find a hustle. That's just the kind of

494
00:24:15,600 --> 00:24:18,840
Speaker 1: man Yan is. Right, in March of nineteen thirty nine,

495
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:23,000
Speaker 1: when he is fifteen, the Nazis invade Czechoslovakia. Now, the

496
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 1: fact that Yan's family is in Ruthenia winds up being

497
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:29,760
Speaker 1: beneficial to them because when the Nazis take Czechoslovakia, Hungary

498
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:32,720
Speaker 1: is allied with the Nazi state, and Hitler kind of

499
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 1: gives them this chunk of Czechoslovakia Ruthenia because Hungary had

500
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:39,320
Speaker 1: been claiming it for it's this whole thing. It's one

501
00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:42,320
Speaker 1: of these border regions that everybody claims, right. So Hungary

502
00:24:42,359 --> 00:24:46,080
Speaker 1: winds up annexing where his family lives. And the Hungarian

503
00:24:46,119 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 1: government is not anti Nazi, right obviously, but it is

504
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:53,800
Speaker 1: a safer place initially to be then the Reich, you know,

505
00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:56,440
Speaker 1: like not a high bar, right, but there's a little

506
00:24:56,440 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: bit of protection there for a short period of time,

507
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:01,919
Speaker 1: and I emphasis on the short because it's not gonna last.

508
00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:04,880
Speaker 1: The fact that Yan's mom had given him a check

509
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:08,399
Speaker 1: name pays off because he immediately and this is one

510
00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 1: of the things that's interesting about this guy, he's very perceptive.

511
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:13,560
Speaker 1: As soon as this happens, there are a lot of

512
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 1: people who are like kind of baring their heads in

513
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:16,919
Speaker 1: the sand, trying to be like, I don't know how

514
00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 1: bad it'll be. Yan immediately is like, all right, I'm

515
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 1: going to join the underground and start fighting the Nazis.

516
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:24,680
Speaker 1: That's obviously what has to happen at this point, right,

517
00:25:25,280 --> 00:25:27,879
Speaker 1: So he drops out of the Yeshiva, He shaves his

518
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:31,160
Speaker 1: side locks because he doesn't want to look as Jewish,

519
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:34,440
Speaker 1: and he flees. He goes into the underground. He knows

520
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:36,360
Speaker 1: he can't go back to the village where he'd been

521
00:25:36,359 --> 00:25:39,080
Speaker 1: born to stay with his family, and he later claimed

522
00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:41,960
Speaker 1: the Hungarians were taking over that part of Czechoslovakia, and

523
00:25:42,000 --> 00:25:44,120
Speaker 1: I said to my parents, I'm leaving because I want

524
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:46,280
Speaker 1: to go and fight. They didn't want me to go,

525
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: but I went anyway.

526
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:50,919
Speaker 2: So far this story is just kind of rips. He

527
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:52,400
Speaker 2: sounds awesome, Yes he does.

528
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 1: He is awesome up to this point, right, and there's

529
00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: a little bit of doubt about like did he actually

530
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: immediately try to join the resistance or did he fall

531
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:02,560
Speaker 1: into it, because like, at a certain point you don't

532
00:26:02,560 --> 00:26:05,560
Speaker 1: have any other options. But at a he's he is

533
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:08,639
Speaker 1: fighting the Nazis at a very early point, right. And

534
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,720
Speaker 1: here's what writer Robert Philpott sums up about what Maxwell

535
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:15,760
Speaker 1: would later claim of his own wartime experiences. The teenager

536
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:19,280
Speaker 1: joined the anti Nazi resistance, but was captured, accused of spying,

537
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:21,919
Speaker 1: and sentenced to death. Maxwell later claimed that he had

538
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:25,480
Speaker 1: managed to escape relatively easily after overpowering a one armed

539
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:28,480
Speaker 1: guard while being transported to a court appearance hiding under

540
00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:28,879
Speaker 1: a bridge.

541
00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:30,679
Speaker 2: Don't have the guard be one armed?

542
00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:34,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's your first mistake.

543
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:36,360
Speaker 3: Two armed guards.

544
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 2: Come on, guard only has one arm. You think I

545
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:40,920
Speaker 2: can overpower him?

546
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 3: I think I could probably take this guy.

547
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:47,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just got to push him hiding under a bridge,

548
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:50,520
Speaker 1: He recounted on one later retelling he was aided by

549
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:53,119
Speaker 1: a Gypsy lady who freedom of his handcuffs.

550
00:26:53,119 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 3: This is that's how he phrases it. Now again.

551
00:26:56,680 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 1: John Preston, his biographer, lays out that large portion of

552
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:03,080
Speaker 1: this story have to have been made up after the fact,

553
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:06,240
Speaker 1: right quote. Intriguing though the story is, it does beg

554
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:08,920
Speaker 1: a number of questions. However stretched the Hungarian prison service

555
00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 1: may have been at the time, it seems odd that

556
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:12,720
Speaker 1: they couldn't wrestle up a single two armed guard to

557
00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:14,720
Speaker 1: take him to court and early.

558
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:18,960
Speaker 2: All right, see see we're seeing the holes as you.

559
00:27:19,280 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 3: See in the holes, there's a couple of them.

560
00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, little convenient to have the one armed.

561
00:27:23,600 --> 00:27:24,880
Speaker 3: Guard right right.

562
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:27,640
Speaker 1: In earlier versions of the story, Maxwell didn't say anything

563
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:29,720
Speaker 1: about hitting the guard with his manacles he claimed to

564
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:32,160
Speaker 1: have used to stick, Nor did he say anything about

565
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:35,520
Speaker 1: the mysterious lady who helped him. Why hadn't he thought

566
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:38,359
Speaker 1: of her worth mentioning before? Had she simply slipped his mind?

567
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:40,520
Speaker 1: Then there's the question of what was she doing under

568
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 1: the bridge in the first place. Did she live there

569
00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:45,640
Speaker 1: or just conveniently happened to be passing with the lock pick?

570
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:48,600
Speaker 1: And what's weird about this is that we have a

571
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 1: lot of guys who lie to make themselves sound cooler.

572
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:54,200
Speaker 1: Yet the core of this is true. He is sentenced

573
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 1: to death and escapes. That's cool. You don't have to

574
00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:00,440
Speaker 1: lie about like a lady under a bridge, you picking

575
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:02,560
Speaker 1: your locks or fighting on what. I don't get why

576
00:28:02,560 --> 00:28:03,160
Speaker 1: he does this.

577
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:06,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't make you sound cool. No, this makes

578
00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:07,720
Speaker 2: the story sound more fake.

579
00:28:07,760 --> 00:28:09,280
Speaker 3: But yeah, more fake and racist.

580
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I don't know why he does this. Again,

581
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:17,400
Speaker 1: he will repeatedly lie about his wartime experience, and what

582
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:20,200
Speaker 1: we can confirm is one of the coolest stories I've

583
00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:22,879
Speaker 1: ever heard out of World War two. Like, it's nuts

584
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:25,440
Speaker 1: that he like feels the need to lie about this.

585
00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: It's like if Oscar Schindler added another thirty people to

586
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:31,440
Speaker 1: the list of folks that he saved you didn't exist's like, what,

587
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:37,080
Speaker 1: but why would you do that? Like speaking of I

588
00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:39,000
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm speaking of. Here's some fucking ads.

589
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: We're back so again, his real story is one of

590
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 1: the most intense World War II stories I've ever heard.

591
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:56,080
Speaker 1: He's sentenced to die, he escapes the Hungarian authorities, he

592
00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 1: goes into the underground. He spends months on the run,

593
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 1: being from Belgrade to Beirute to Marseillese. So he takes

594
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:06,440
Speaker 1: like a boat to Marseille and he lands in Marseille

595
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: while Germany is invading France, and so while the Germans

596
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 1: are busting through the Maginot Line. He enlists in the

597
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 1: French Foreign Legion in an all chech unit because he's like,

598
00:29:17,360 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I want to fight. I want to fight

599
00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:21,840
Speaker 1: right now. You guys are fighting the Nazis. I'll fucking

600
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:26,000
Speaker 1: help now. Unfortunately, it's kind of a bad time to

601
00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: join the Foreign Legion in France because the French Army

602
00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 1: is not going to last very long in France, right.

603
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think they didn't. They didn't win those

604
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:38,480
Speaker 2: particular battles, did they.

605
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 3: It not super well, those engagements don't go for them. No.

606
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 1: Now, this Czech all check unit he joins is like

607
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:48,600
Speaker 1: a lot of other Czech basically people who flee Czechoslovakia

608
00:29:48,600 --> 00:29:51,280
Speaker 1: when the Nazis takeover into France and are like, yeah,

609
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:54,560
Speaker 1: I'll fucking fight to liberate my country. Right, So he

610
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:57,120
Speaker 1: joins this unit, which has like ten thousand people in it.

611
00:29:57,200 --> 00:29:59,320
Speaker 1: But by the time he's like trained up and equipped,

612
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 1: the French are fully collapsing and he winds up routed

613
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:05,760
Speaker 1: with large portions of the French and British forces and

614
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: he is one of the guys who gets evacuated as

615
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:10,760
Speaker 1: part of the Dunkirk landings like Robert Maxwell is there

616
00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 1: at Dunkirk, and by the time he's there, this ten

617
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:15,880
Speaker 1: thousand man unit just has four thousand people left in it.

618
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: So like this is a chaotic and hideous time, Like

619
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 1: he experiences some shit right this unit. Once they get

620
00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:26,959
Speaker 1: over to the United Kingdom, the unit is reformed and

621
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:29,400
Speaker 1: retrained and the idea is that they will at one

622
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:32,400
Speaker 1: point take part in the liberation of their homeland. Now

623
00:30:32,440 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 1: Maxwell is still going by Yon at this point, and

624
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 1: even though all of these guys are like fighting the

625
00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:41,280
Speaker 1: Nazis together, they're still super racist against him because they're

626
00:30:41,360 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: very anti Semitic. They're not like Nazis, but they're super

627
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 1: anti Semitic.

628
00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 2: We wait, how do they know? This man is Jewish?

629
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 2: His name is Jana Home and he cut off his things.

630
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:56,360
Speaker 1: You know, I think he may have made the mistake,

631
00:30:56,440 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 1: I guess of admitting to his war comrades thinking that, like,

632
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 1: you're fighting the Nazis, you're probably not racist.

633
00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 2: No bad call, yes, common mistake.

634
00:31:08,480 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 1: Common mistake. So he decides like, well, fuck these racist checks,

635
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: I'm going to join the British Army. And so he

636
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 1: actually like joins this like it's effectively.

637
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:20,680
Speaker 3: A trash unit. In the British Army for the foreign.

638
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 1: Volunteers that nobody trusts. The thing about this is like

639
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:26,320
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of German doctors who fled the Nazis

640
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 1: because they are like, I'm not a Nazi. I'm going

641
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:30,960
Speaker 1: to go to whoever will fight them, please, like i

642
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: am a German who wants to fight these people. And

643
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: the British are like, oh no, we can't trust Germans.

644
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 1: But they also a lot of the Germans who were

645
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:40,560
Speaker 1: in the UK at this point, they're literally putting in

646
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:43,400
Speaker 1: a camp, like there is a concentration camp in Germany

647
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:46,320
Speaker 1: for or in Britain for German citizens, because that they

648
00:31:46,320 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 1: don't trust. But doctors are valuable, so they put them

649
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: in this unit where they're like, we'll find something for

650
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:54,360
Speaker 1: you to do, but we don't want to like trust you, right,

651
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 1: And so that's where they put Yan because as a Czech,

652
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 1: he's basically a German in their eyes.

653
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:02,200
Speaker 2: And as he's a man who's read a book, he's

654
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 2: basically a doctor.

655
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:04,719
Speaker 3: He's essentially a doctor.

656
00:32:04,800 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 1: Yes, And in true British fashion, they mostly have these

657
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:10,840
Speaker 1: guys doing backbreaking manual labor.

658
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 3: He's like busting stones.

659
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:17,280
Speaker 1: For a while basically, but this does shockingly this experience

660
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 1: like convinced ns of you know what, I want to

661
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:23,800
Speaker 1: be British. That's the nationality for me. I love these people.

662
00:32:24,040 --> 00:32:26,080
Speaker 1: At least they're fighting the Nazis, right.

663
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:30,640
Speaker 2: I like how in these early days of nationalism you

664
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 2: can kind of just like pick and choose and like

665
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:36,280
Speaker 2: wander around beside your nation in a way that they

666
00:32:36,280 --> 00:32:38,480
Speaker 2: don't really what you do today. You just join armies

667
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:39,760
Speaker 2: and like fuck.

668
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 3: It, I'll be British. I tried be in French. No, no, no,

669
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,720
Speaker 3: the Brits are for me. Yeah.

670
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 1: So he learns English in six weeks, and this is

671
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 1: some kind of exaggeration, but he is. He does speaking

672
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: like eleven languages, so he really does have like a

673
00:32:53,800 --> 00:32:57,520
Speaker 1: faculty for this. And he he bases his accent off

674
00:32:57,520 --> 00:33:00,560
Speaker 1: of Winston Churchill because he talks for his whole life

675
00:33:00,560 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 1: with a British accent that he patterns off of Winston Churchill.

676
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:07,720
Speaker 1: And he will claim I started imitating his accent before

677
00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:10,280
Speaker 1: I understood English, because I could just tell what he

678
00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:12,800
Speaker 1: was saying even when I didn't speak the language, because

679
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 1: of the way he said it.

680
00:33:14,560 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 2: What have you?

681
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 3: Like?

682
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 2: Ran into a Czech guy who talked exactly like Donald Trump,

683
00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 2: Like that's got to exist, Like, how did people not

684
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 2: it would be one of the most famous voices in

685
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 2: the country.

686
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:29,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, I used to know.

687
00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 1: I knew an Afghan guy who had been an interpreter,

688
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: you know, for the US military in Afghanistan, who had

689
00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:37,440
Speaker 1: grown up in a refugee camp in Pakistan and taught

690
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:42,080
Speaker 1: himself English by repeatedly rewatching Rambo with subtitles, and he

691
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 1: sounded so cool.

692
00:33:43,760 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 3: He was like the coolest talking motherfucker I've ever heard.

693
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:55,720
Speaker 1: Maxwell proved himself an excellent mimic, and most casual observers

694
00:33:55,720 --> 00:33:58,400
Speaker 1: would only have noticed his foreign origins by his use

695
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:02,000
Speaker 1: of idiosyncratic and frankly wrong mix ups of colloquial English

696
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: phrases like you can't change toads in midstream.

697
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:08,400
Speaker 3: I actually kind of love.

698
00:34:12,040 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 2: You can't change toads in midstream.

699
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:16,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't try.

700
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:18,799
Speaker 2: It, adam, I've never done it.

701
00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:23,440
Speaker 1: Once, right, Yeah, exactly. Nobody has to go with his

702
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:25,600
Speaker 1: new accent. Jan picked a name for it, and this

703
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:28,400
Speaker 1: proves that, like he's pretty good at languages, but he

704
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:31,920
Speaker 1: not hasn't immediately picked up everything because the the proper

705
00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 1: British name that he picks for himself to blend in

706
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:36,880
Speaker 1: is Ivan du Marier.

707
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:40,759
Speaker 2: Name name number four?

708
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:45,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and just like what's a British name? Ivan?

709
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:46,440
Speaker 3: That's it?

710
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:48,399
Speaker 4: How did he come up with this shit?

711
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:50,759
Speaker 1: Well, he came up with the last name because his

712
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:53,120
Speaker 1: favorite brand of cigarettes were Du Mariar's.

713
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:57,239
Speaker 2: But this is also Douglas Adam's joke about Ford Prefects,

714
00:34:57,400 --> 00:35:00,120
Speaker 2: right right, yes, naming yourself after a brand.

715
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:03,759
Speaker 1: He literally does that. People love these cigarettes, so they'll

716
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:07,399
Speaker 1: like me. Unfortunately, this was like the even worse than

717
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:09,880
Speaker 1: being German, because if there's one thing that British hated

718
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:12,560
Speaker 1: more than the Germans at any point in time, it's

719
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:13,760
Speaker 1: the French, even.

720
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 3: During World War Two.

721
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:18,200
Speaker 1: So people just treat him worse because he now sounds

722
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 1: like he's got a French name.

723
00:35:22,280 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 4: So he's gonna change his name again.

724
00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:24,920
Speaker 3: Scene, right, He's.

725
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:27,319
Speaker 1: Going to change his name so many times, Sophie, we're

726
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:29,640
Speaker 1: not even We're like sixty percent of the way through

727
00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:30,440
Speaker 1: the name changes.

728
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 2: So so far, this entire story is just this guy

729
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:37,680
Speaker 2: going from country to country and doing a terrible job

730
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:40,880
Speaker 2: of baking a different ethnicity in every place.

731
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:44,319
Speaker 3: It's so funny. Ivan, really.

732
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:49,560
Speaker 1: His fortunes finally changed when he began an affair with

733
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:53,239
Speaker 1: an elderly, wealthy widower and this lady's British and she

734
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 1: happens to know a brigadier general and she convinces him

735
00:35:56,800 --> 00:35:59,759
Speaker 1: to do her a favor. Ivan du Marier is transferred

736
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 1: to a real fighting unit, so he goes from this

737
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:03,480
Speaker 1: like unit. But we're kind of keeping the guys. We

738
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:06,520
Speaker 1: don't trust this lady pulls some strings and it says

739
00:36:06,560 --> 00:36:09,520
Speaker 1: a lot Maxwell repeatedly. His only goal is to get

740
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 1: to grips, to get into hand to hand combat with

741
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:14,640
Speaker 1: the German army. That is what he wants, right. Everything

742
00:36:14,680 --> 00:36:17,360
Speaker 1: he's doing is to orchestrate. I want to shoot Nazis.

743
00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 2: Yes, nice.

744
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 4: He's literally a teared t you're so right with the

745
00:36:20,120 --> 00:36:21,680
Speaker 4: Tarantino character, and.

746
00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:24,359
Speaker 1: By god, he finally does it. So he gets in.

747
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 1: He is close to the tip of the spear. He

748
00:36:26,719 --> 00:36:29,440
Speaker 1: lands at Normandy a couple weeks after the initial landing

749
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:33,320
Speaker 1: and engages almost immediately in a hard close quarters fighting.

750
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 1: At Normandy, he is promoted very quickly to lance corporal

751
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:39,680
Speaker 1: and then made sergeant in charge of a sniper unit

752
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:43,000
Speaker 1: where he got his first experience leading in combat, and

753
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:45,440
Speaker 1: he does very well in this and in fact, after

754
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 1: this first big battle that he is like leading the

755
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:51,320
Speaker 1: sniper unit in, he's recommended for an immediate battlefield promotion

756
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 1: to lieutenant. Now it's worth really leaning into what this

757
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:58,320
Speaker 1: means because privates and sergeants are in CEOs and lieutenants

758
00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:01,799
Speaker 1: are officers. These are two different career tracks in the military.

759
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:04,920
Speaker 1: You don't just jump from one to the other unless

760
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:08,640
Speaker 1: everyone else is dying and you're really good at your job,

761
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:12,840
Speaker 1: right Like, that's why Ivan gets this promotion to lieutenant

762
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: because like every all the officers are getting shot and

763
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 1: he's not.

764
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:19,239
Speaker 2: But this is like a very unusual level up.

765
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:22,880
Speaker 1: Yes, like he's very good as a soldier, right Like,

766
00:37:22,920 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 1: That's what this says is that he's like an excellent

767
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:28,560
Speaker 1: fighter and an excellent combat leader. That said, his subordinates

768
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:31,080
Speaker 1: didn't like him all the time. One of his adjutants

769
00:37:31,080 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 1: told a reporter in the sixties he had a smooth,

770
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:36,319
Speaker 1: silky way about him, a big fellow, very dark, a

771
00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:38,880
Speaker 1: bit of a mystery, which just makes him sound cooler

772
00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:43,520
Speaker 1: at this point. So again, it's forty four, he's fighting

773
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: his way across France. He has no idea what's happened

774
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:49,239
Speaker 1: to his family, right, But he's hearing the stories of

775
00:37:49,239 --> 00:37:52,440
Speaker 1: what are happening to Jews in Nazi occupied Eastern Europe, right,

776
00:37:52,719 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 1: so he has to know like it's probably not good.

777
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 1: And his whole motivation is, I want to fight my

778
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:02,399
Speaker 1: way back to my home village to rescue my family, right,

779
00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:04,960
Speaker 1: I'm going to kill every Nazi in between me and

780
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:05,800
Speaker 1: my mom and dad.

781
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:07,279
Speaker 3: And as a result, he.

782
00:38:07,239 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 1: Is filled with the kind of rage that you would

783
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:12,040
Speaker 1: expect from a man in this situation, so he does

784
00:38:12,040 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: stuff that you're not supposed to do, like he would

785
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: rob every killed and capture German soldier of all of

786
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: their money.

787
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:19,040
Speaker 3: You're not really again.

788
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: Supposed to do this, But also they're Nazis, so I

789
00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 1: don't feel that bad about this. His comrades did kind

790
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:26,920
Speaker 1: of think he was a dick, because they noted he

791
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 1: kept all of the cash for himself and handed out

792
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:33,279
Speaker 1: the change to his men, So a little bit of

793
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:39,799
Speaker 1: a dick move there. One of his first real distinguishing

794
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:43,279
Speaker 1: moments was his successful infiltration of an occupied village by

795
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:47,200
Speaker 1: dressing up as a Nazi officer. Again, you're not supposed

796
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:50,200
Speaker 1: to dress in a enemy uniform. That's like against the

797
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 1: rules of war. But Maxwell was like, well, let me

798
00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 1: get a lot closer, and so I was able to

799
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:57,080
Speaker 1: figure out how to kill him a lot better fuck it,

800
00:38:57,160 --> 00:38:58,720
Speaker 1: and nobody punishes him for this.

801
00:38:58,719 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 2: This is the most Tarantinos thing yet.

802
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:02,279
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes.

803
00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:05,799
Speaker 1: And as a result, because this is so successful, he's

804
00:39:05,800 --> 00:39:08,960
Speaker 1: like reconnaissance. He's so good at this, the military is like, hey,

805
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:10,520
Speaker 1: you might have a future in like spy.

806
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:17,360
Speaker 3: Shit, we got to give you a new name. So

807
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 3: they start calling him Leslie Smith. That thing could come

808
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:21,480
Speaker 3: up with.

809
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:26,560
Speaker 2: They start calling him Leslie Smith, Leslie Smith. This is

810
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 2: the British Army.

811
00:39:28,080 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 3: This is the British Army. He's issued in name.

812
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:36,000
Speaker 2: Leslie is like a British name. From that time, you're Leslie.

813
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:37,200
Speaker 3: Now here's a rifle.

814
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:44,279
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I thought he's a chief. He's a chief.

815
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:45,440
Speaker 2: His goal of being British.

816
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 3: He doesn't sound British.

817
00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:50,400
Speaker 2: You're like, no, no, no, no, you're British now.

818
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 3: Leslie Leslie Smith.

819
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:57,040
Speaker 1: Within days after becoming Leslie, he distinguished himself in the

820
00:39:57,080 --> 00:39:59,960
Speaker 1: brutal fighting to cross the Orne River, and his courage

821
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:03,480
Speaker 1: was celebrated in a Canadian radio broadcast which identified him

822
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 1: as Leslie de Marier, a name he had never gone by.

823
00:40:07,120 --> 00:40:10,640
Speaker 1: All this confusion and Maxwell's clear ability to navigate it

824
00:40:10,719 --> 00:40:12,720
Speaker 1: marked him out to his superiors. To someone is like, again,

825
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 1: this guy might make a good spook. He clearly has

826
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:17,440
Speaker 1: no issue going under a bunch of different names.

827
00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:20,480
Speaker 2: This guy has. This guy has hundreds of names, and

828
00:40:20,520 --> 00:40:24,279
Speaker 2: it's everyone's confused all the time. Yes, but he's navigating

829
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:25,040
Speaker 2: it with a plum.

830
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:27,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, make him a spy and I think I think

831
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:30,320
Speaker 3: it's time for another one. Yeah.

832
00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:32,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, they do give him another one at this point.

833
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 1: So he has issued a new name, Private Jones, and

834
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:39,239
Speaker 1: he's sent to Paris. Has just been recaptured, and the

835
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:41,960
Speaker 1: Allies are worried that there might be a Communist uprising

836
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: in Paris after beating the Nazis out of it, so

837
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 1: they send him there and he's like he sometimes he'll

838
00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 1: dresses a British officer, sometimes he dresses a French. He's

839
00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:54,520
Speaker 1: wearing all these different uniforms and fake identities to try

840
00:40:54,520 --> 00:40:57,319
Speaker 1: to like figure out if there's an uprising planned, and

841
00:40:57,400 --> 00:41:02,040
Speaker 1: like there wasn't. Nothing really happens here, but he seems

842
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:03,919
Speaker 1: to have had a lot of fun. Basically, he's getting

843
00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:06,200
Speaker 1: to like play dress up and get drunk in Paris

844
00:41:06,280 --> 00:41:08,400
Speaker 1: in the middle of like his war experiences, which is

845
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:08,920
Speaker 1: a nice.

846
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:10,959
Speaker 4: Little break, and he finally has a cool name.

847
00:41:11,200 --> 00:41:13,800
Speaker 3: And he's finally got a cool name, Private Jones.

848
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:14,759
Speaker 2: I love that.

849
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 1: Near the end of nineteen forty four, he is commissioned

850
00:41:18,560 --> 00:41:21,800
Speaker 1: as an officer officially, and since he's now an officer

851
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:24,920
Speaker 1: and a gentleman in a prestigious regiment, he decides to

852
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: pick what will be his final name for himself.

853
00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:30,560
Speaker 3: What's about you got a Private Jones?

854
00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:31,400
Speaker 2: Private?

855
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: He gets rid of Private Jones because a friend of

856
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 1: his who's a Scottish officer, is like, you should call

857
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:39,400
Speaker 1: yourself Robert Maxwell. And that's the name he picks is

858
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:40,800
Speaker 1: Robert Maxwell. Wow.

859
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:44,280
Speaker 2: How many total names did he go through on the way?

860
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:47,760
Speaker 3: It's like ten, right, Like, get so many fucking names?

861
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:50,920
Speaker 2: You just went through four in the last ninety seconds.

862
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:53,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so many names that after he changes his

863
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: name to Robert Maxwell, his banker sends him an angry

864
00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:59,359
Speaker 1: letter being like, if you change your name one more

865
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:03,120
Speaker 1: fucking we're dropping you like this, this had better be

866
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 1: your last name.

867
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:08,960
Speaker 3: I think that's valid, oh man, but we are this.

868
00:42:09,160 --> 00:42:12,000
Speaker 1: He has finally landed on his ultimate name, so you

869
00:42:12,040 --> 00:42:13,279
Speaker 1: know that's that's good for him?

870
00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:16,000
Speaker 2: Is this is Is this his Wikipedia name? Because that's

871
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 2: your most important name that you have.

872
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:19,560
Speaker 3: Yes, this is his Wikipedia name?

873
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:20,360
Speaker 2: Kay?

874
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 3: Yeah?

875
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:26,280
Speaker 1: Uh speaking of Wikipedia, I'm not really speaking of Wikipedia.

876
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:34,800
Speaker 3: Go buy something, here's ads. We're back.

877
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:38,359
Speaker 1: So while Bobby Max is in which is what I'm

878
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:41,240
Speaker 1: gonna call him, is in Paris, he meets this French lady,

879
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:45,720
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Minard, and she goes by Betty. I think because

880
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:47,440
Speaker 1: she's gonna wind up living in the UK and that

881
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 1: just works better for everybody.

882
00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, I thought it was because you

883
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 4: were going to say that she heard he likes people

884
00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:54,520
Speaker 4: with different name changes.

885
00:42:54,760 --> 00:42:57,319
Speaker 3: He likes people to change their names. Really into it.

886
00:42:57,440 --> 00:42:59,360
Speaker 3: She's like, She's like, yeah, I like what you like.

887
00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:01,000
Speaker 4: I'm Betty Hi.

888
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:05,440
Speaker 1: She describes herself as almost passing out when she sees

889
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:07,840
Speaker 1: how hot he is. That is something everyone of He

890
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:10,960
Speaker 1: He is described a little later than this by like

891
00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:15,160
Speaker 1: the Check Secret Service as looking like a handsomer Clark Gable,

892
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 1: Like that's that's how good looking this man is. Oh yeah, No,

893
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:23,640
Speaker 1: Betty is like I almost passed out when I saw

894
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 1: him for the first time he was so fucking hot.

895
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:30,360
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. This is just like he's like a character

896
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:33,719
Speaker 2: from like a self insert character from a novel where

897
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:37,319
Speaker 2: it's just he's the he's so tall and handsome, and

898
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:39,759
Speaker 2: everyone loves him when they see him, and they're con

899
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:44,080
Speaker 2: giving him promotions and new names. You know. It's like

900
00:43:44,600 --> 00:43:47,520
Speaker 2: I just read the Book of the New Sun last year.

901
00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:50,960
Speaker 2: It's like that character like just describing how awesome he is.

902
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:52,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

903
00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:55,719
Speaker 4: I just looked him up and I have questions.

904
00:43:55,480 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 1: He does not grow into like him as a mature

905
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 1: adult is not a particularly handsome man. But this is

906
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:04,160
Speaker 1: what Betty says, like she writes a book and she

907
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:06,320
Speaker 1: describes him as this hot and again the check Secret

908
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:09,239
Speaker 1: Service says he looks like Clark Gable And why would

909
00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:10,040
Speaker 1: they lie about it?

910
00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:12,200
Speaker 3: Right, Like they don't have a vested interest in making

911
00:44:12,239 --> 00:44:13,240
Speaker 3: this guy sound hot.

912
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 1: He gets just enough time off while waiting to continue

913
00:44:17,600 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 1: fighting the nazis that he's able to court Betty and

914
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:23,680
Speaker 1: propose to her. And during this proposal process, he makes

915
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:26,439
Speaker 1: the kind of bold and impossible promises that men make

916
00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:29,239
Speaker 1: to women in such times. In this case, the promise is,

917
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 1: I'm going to win a Military Cross, right, basically that's

918
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:34,279
Speaker 1: the British Medal of Honor, and he's like, I'm going

919
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:36,759
Speaker 1: to win one of these for you, Betty, right, and

920
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:38,480
Speaker 1: then when I get out of the army, I'm going

921
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:40,120
Speaker 1: to get rich and I'm going to become the Prime

922
00:44:40,160 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 1: Minister and we're going to be happy forever. And he

923
00:44:43,080 --> 00:44:45,719
Speaker 1: does not fulfill all of these promises, but he does

924
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:49,320
Speaker 1: fulfill the first like half of them. So like immediately

925
00:44:49,320 --> 00:44:51,800
Speaker 1: after promising Betty he's going to go win a military

926
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:54,440
Speaker 1: Cross for her, Like, he just goes and does that

927
00:44:55,760 --> 00:44:59,160
Speaker 1: within weeks, actually within days of them getting married. In

928
00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:02,600
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, he wins the Military Cross for heroism

929
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 1: in the face of the enemy. And the actual story

930
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 1: is fucking nuts. So on January twenty ninth, nineteen forty five,

931
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 1: his battalion captures a town called Parlow, but they get

932
00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:14,600
Speaker 1: counterattacked by Germans and rubber boats who had crossed this

933
00:45:14,719 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 1: river in the middle of the night, and the Germans

934
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 1: assault the houses that Maxwell and his unit are billeted in,

935
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:22,120
Speaker 1: and so just in the middle of the night, suddenly

936
00:45:22,120 --> 00:45:24,799
Speaker 1: there's Germans throwing grenades into the rooms that they're in

937
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:27,040
Speaker 1: and just emptying their machine guns into these houses at

938
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:30,200
Speaker 1: random at close quarters. It is like the most chaotic

939
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 1: and disorienting combat situation that it's possible to be in. Right,

940
00:45:34,760 --> 00:45:36,960
Speaker 1: Like you talk to anyone who has been in heavy combat,

941
00:45:37,239 --> 00:45:40,760
Speaker 1: being surprised in a night attack like in urban fighting

942
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:43,960
Speaker 1: is like, it's just the worst situation you can be in.

943
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:47,400
Speaker 1: So that the Nazis occupy a bunch of these buildings

944
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:51,240
Speaker 1: in this town, and Maxwell's commanding officer, Major DJ Watson,

945
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 1: orders a counter attack, and Watson and his men, as

946
00:45:55,120 --> 00:45:57,640
Speaker 1: soon as they try to counterattack to retake these buildings

947
00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:00,120
Speaker 1: get shot the fuck up and they have to pull

948
00:46:00,160 --> 00:46:03,359
Speaker 1: back and withdraw. And I'm going to quote from John

949
00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:07,719
Speaker 1: Preston's book Fall Here describing what happens next. Withdrawing his men,

950
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:10,759
Speaker 1: Watson witnessed a remarkable sight. As he wrote in his

951
00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 1: official account, mister Maxwell, also a platoon commander, sallied out

952
00:46:14,560 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 1: of the darkness. Maxwell had repeatedly asked to be allowed

953
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: to lead another attempt on the houses. At first, Watson

954
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:22,600
Speaker 1: had refused his entreaties, but when it became clear that

955
00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:24,960
Speaker 1: the men inside were sure to be killed unless there

956
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:27,840
Speaker 1: was another rescue attempt, he changed his mind. The officer.

957
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:30,800
Speaker 1: Maxwell then led two of his sections across bullets, swept

958
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 1: ground with great dash and determination, and succeeded in contacting

959
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:36,839
Speaker 1: the platoon who had been holding out in some buildings.

960
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 1: Showing no regard for his own safety, he led his

961
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:41,359
Speaker 1: sections in the difficult job of clearing the enemy out

962
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:44,320
Speaker 1: of the buildings, inflicting many casualties on them and causing

963
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:45,440
Speaker 1: the remainder to withdraw.

964
00:46:46,160 --> 00:46:46,480
Speaker 2: Wow.

965
00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:49,040
Speaker 1: And the fact that Maxwell lives through this is like

966
00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:51,880
Speaker 1: a fucking mus So. When they get to this surrounded

967
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:56,400
Speaker 1: British platoon, he thinks that they're Germans, that like the

968
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 1: Brits in this building are Germans, because again it's super chaotic,

969
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:01,919
Speaker 1: and so he shouts upstairs in German like come down

970
00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:04,800
Speaker 1: and surrender, and the British soldiers upstairs hear a German

971
00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: shouting and start shooting. They go yes, you fucker, and

972
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:12,640
Speaker 1: open fire and they miss him by inches. Cannot exaggerate

973
00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:15,560
Speaker 1: how dangerous this is. But what is funny is that

974
00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:19,440
Speaker 1: Maxwell feels the need to exaggerate this. And again, you

975
00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:22,960
Speaker 1: don't need to lie about this story. There's documentation from

976
00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:25,160
Speaker 1: your CEO of what you did. You win a medal

977
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:27,520
Speaker 1: for it, but he would later lie and claim that

978
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:30,680
Speaker 1: his commanding officer had ordered him not to attack and

979
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:34,560
Speaker 1: threatened to court martial him, which is just like not true.

980
00:47:34,600 --> 00:47:37,600
Speaker 1: Like his CEO nominates him for the award. Did He's

981
00:47:37,640 --> 00:47:41,160
Speaker 1: not saying like, I'm gonna punish you for doing this,

982
00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 1: but Maxwell just decides later. Now the story doesn't pop

983
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:46,439
Speaker 1: without the court martial line. I gotta throw that in there.

984
00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't even though nobody wanted me to do it. Yeah,

985
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:52,319
Speaker 2: they wanted me to do it so little that they

986
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:54,759
Speaker 2: gave me an award for doing it right.

987
00:47:55,440 --> 00:47:59,600
Speaker 1: And again, you heroically rescued an entire platoon by like

988
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:03,040
Speaker 1: fighting Nazis and close quarters hand to hand combat. You

989
00:48:03,080 --> 00:48:05,920
Speaker 1: don't need to pretend like, yeah, that's awesome.

990
00:48:06,680 --> 00:48:09,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, just take that win man, take.

991
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:10,720
Speaker 3: The w Yeah.

992
00:48:10,760 --> 00:48:12,719
Speaker 1: So I'd said earlier he and Betty were already married.

993
00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:14,920
Speaker 1: Sorry that was incorrect. They were engaged at this point

994
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:17,319
Speaker 1: when he wins this award. So he comes back, He

995
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:18,839
Speaker 1: gets a week or two of leave, and they get

996
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:21,720
Speaker 1: married in March of nineteen forty five, and he writes

997
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:24,759
Speaker 1: her a letter laying out his expectations for the relationship.

998
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 1: Don't nag don't criticize unduly, give honest appreciation, pay little attentions,

999
00:48:30,760 --> 00:48:33,800
Speaker 1: be courteous. Have the utmost confidence in yourself and in

1000
00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:40,160
Speaker 1: your partner. You know he's a fortyes guy, sure, not

1001
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 1: super weird.

1002
00:48:41,480 --> 00:48:42,400
Speaker 4: Don't nag.

1003
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:44,759
Speaker 3: Don't nag Number one.

1004
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 2: The end is nice. Have the utmost confidence. That's good.

1005
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:51,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, that part's nice. Yeah. Have confidence in yourself, confident.

1006
00:48:51,400 --> 00:48:53,799
Speaker 3: Don't nag me, but don't fucking nag me.

1007
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 2: Don't use any of my fifteen old names.

1008
00:48:56,800 --> 00:48:58,960
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1009
00:48:59,080 --> 00:49:04,360
Speaker 1: So the month and this again. Within days of marrying Betty,

1010
00:49:04,640 --> 00:49:07,239
Speaker 1: he gets the knowledge that his mom and sister were

1011
00:49:07,280 --> 00:49:09,920
Speaker 1: executed by the Nazis as hostages.

1012
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:11,200
Speaker 3: Right Jesus.

1013
00:49:11,200 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 1: And he finds out later they die at Auschwitz, right like,

1014
00:49:13,719 --> 00:49:16,080
Speaker 1: that's what happens to most of his family. Most of

1015
00:49:16,080 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 1: his family is incinerated at Auschwitz, like nearly his entire

1016
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:22,239
Speaker 1: immediate and extended family. But he knows about his mom

1017
00:49:22,239 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 1: and sister at this point in the spring of nineteen

1018
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:28,000
Speaker 1: forty five, and again, his animating goal as a soldier

1019
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:29,759
Speaker 1: this whole war had been to fight his way back

1020
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:32,480
Speaker 1: to his hometown and save his family, and the sudden

1021
00:49:32,560 --> 00:49:35,400
Speaker 1: knowledge that he had failed irrevocably in this goal, obviously,

1022
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:38,439
Speaker 1: through no fault of his own, broke something inside of him.

1023
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:41,440
Speaker 1: In her own memoir, his wife Betty later wrote, he

1024
00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:43,719
Speaker 1: was convinced that had he stayed home, he could have

1025
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 1: saved the life of his parents and younger siblings. Nothing

1026
00:49:46,719 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 1: he achieved in life wouldever compensate for what he had

1027
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:51,760
Speaker 1: not been able to accomplish the rescue of his family,

1028
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: which is like the tragic He's going to turn into

1029
00:49:54,600 --> 00:49:57,640
Speaker 1: a real piece of shit, obviously, but like, yeah, to

1030
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:01,200
Speaker 1: have that hanging over you, and again you literally couldn't

1031
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:03,080
Speaker 1: have done more to try to save.

1032
00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:05,920
Speaker 2: Them, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1033
00:50:05,960 --> 00:50:08,719
Speaker 1: So, in addition to his mom and sister, his father, grandfather,

1034
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 1: and all but two of his remaining seven siblings are

1035
00:50:11,280 --> 00:50:17,160
Speaker 1: massacred at Auschwitz. Maxwell had always been aggressive towards the enemy, right,

1036
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 1: This is a guy who does not fear being shot.

1037
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:23,560
Speaker 1: But in the wake of this he steps things up

1038
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:26,399
Speaker 1: again to like a Tarantino level and to a war

1039
00:50:26,480 --> 00:50:29,239
Speaker 1: crimes level. A week after his wedding, he's back in

1040
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:32,359
Speaker 1: action during an attack on two German villages, and in

1041
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:38,680
Speaker 1: this attack, Lieutenant Maxwell alone, acting alone, kills fifteen ss

1042
00:50:38,719 --> 00:50:42,360
Speaker 1: men and takes fourteen prisoners. In other words, he single

1043
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 1: handedly kills or captures an entire platoon of the German

1044
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:48,120
Speaker 1: Army's best Wow, it's fucking nuts.

1045
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:51,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you do that?

1046
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:53,799
Speaker 1: I believe it's this one of these situations where he

1047
00:50:53,840 --> 00:50:55,080
Speaker 1: gets them at a bad angle and.

1048
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:56,040
Speaker 3: He's got a machine gun.

1049
00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, Now there are some allegations that maybe they

1050
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:02,879
Speaker 1: were sodering and he massacres them. That's unclear, but he

1051
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:06,719
Speaker 1: does do that later in this instance. I think it's

1052
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:11,120
Speaker 1: kind of unclear what actually happened. But he increasingly starts

1053
00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:14,719
Speaker 1: killing prisoners, right like, in addition to killing guys in

1054
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:17,440
Speaker 1: the heat of combat. And he actually writes about this

1055
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:20,400
Speaker 1: in a letter to his wife, as you can well imagine,

1056
00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:22,759
Speaker 1: I am not taking any prisoners, and whatever home my

1057
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:25,680
Speaker 1: men occupy before I leave it, I order it destroyed.

1058
00:51:26,520 --> 00:51:29,480
Speaker 1: And those are both war crimes. You're not supposed to

1059
00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: do either of those things. And in the days and

1060
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 1: weeks that follow that letter, Maxwell.

1061
00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:35,960
Speaker 3: Is as good as his word.

1062
00:51:36,080 --> 00:51:38,239
Speaker 1: This quote from an article in The Independent describes an

1063
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:41,920
Speaker 1: incident that occurred two weeks after his wedding. His platoon

1064
00:51:41,960 --> 00:51:44,440
Speaker 1: was involved in mopping up resistance from the German defenders.

1065
00:51:44,520 --> 00:51:47,040
Speaker 1: On a second of April, Maxwell ordered his men to

1066
00:51:47,120 --> 00:51:49,800
Speaker 1: fire mortars at a German village. He wrote to Betty.

1067
00:51:49,880 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 1: A few minutes later, I saw them running out of

1068
00:51:51,600 --> 00:51:53,680
Speaker 1: the houses and we started firing at each other. I

1069
00:51:53,719 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 1: got two of them, and I ordered the mortars to

1070
00:51:55,640 --> 00:51:57,880
Speaker 1: shell the village for a few minutes. It proved a

1071
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:00,560
Speaker 1: very effective tactic that led to the surrender the remaining

1072
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 1: Germans and inspired Maxwell to try it once more as

1073
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:05,719
Speaker 1: he moved towards a nearby town. So I sent one

1074
00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 1: of the Germans to fetch the mayor of the town.

1075
00:52:07,640 --> 00:52:09,759
Speaker 1: He told his wife. In half an hour's time, he

1076
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:11,120
Speaker 1: turned up and I told him he had to go

1077
00:52:11,160 --> 00:52:13,720
Speaker 1: tell the Germans to surrender and hang the white flag,

1078
00:52:13,760 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: otherwise the town will be destroyed. One hour later he

1079
00:52:16,520 --> 00:52:18,480
Speaker 1: came back saying that the soldiers will surrender and the

1080
00:52:18,480 --> 00:52:20,880
Speaker 1: white flag was put up. So we marched off. But

1081
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:22,919
Speaker 1: as soon as we marched off, a German tank open

1082
00:52:22,960 --> 00:52:25,440
Speaker 1: fire on us. Luckily he missed, so I shot the

1083
00:52:25,480 --> 00:52:28,880
Speaker 1: mayor and withdrew and like because this tank fires at him,

1084
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:31,040
Speaker 1: he blows the mayor's brains out, and that is again

1085
00:52:31,320 --> 00:52:34,600
Speaker 1: a war crime. This is an unarmed civilian who was

1086
00:52:34,640 --> 00:52:36,240
Speaker 1: not in any position to be giving.

1087
00:52:36,120 --> 00:52:36,919
Speaker 3: Orders to that tank.

1088
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:37,719
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1089
00:52:38,160 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: One of Maxwell's comrades would later claim that he executed

1090
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:43,600
Speaker 1: multiple German civilians. That he doesn't just shoot the mayor,

1091
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:47,240
Speaker 1: he starts shooting several civilians when this tank fires at them,

1092
00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:51,560
Speaker 1: and Maxwell himself would both brag and express regret at

1093
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 1: committing several war crimes later in his life. In one

1094
00:52:54,640 --> 00:52:57,360
Speaker 1: interview with journalist Mark Maloy, he discussed an assault on

1095
00:52:57,400 --> 00:53:00,439
Speaker 1: a fortified farmhouse. I got up close to the farm

1096
00:53:00,520 --> 00:53:02,920
Speaker 1: door and shouted in German, come out with your hands up.

1097
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 1: You're completely surrounded. They came out, and I shot them

1098
00:53:05,719 --> 00:53:08,239
Speaker 1: all with my submachine gun. I thought my boys would

1099
00:53:08,239 --> 00:53:10,680
Speaker 1: be pleased, but all they said was that's not fair, sir.

1100
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:14,759
Speaker 1: Those lads had surrendered. Maxwell expressed incomprehension to Maloy over

1101
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:17,960
Speaker 1: the reaction of his comrades. Can you understand such an attitude?

1102
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:24,279
Speaker 1: And wow, like, yeah, war crimes are bad. I understand though,

1103
00:53:24,320 --> 00:53:26,840
Speaker 1: the discrepancy of like these guys who they don't like

1104
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:30,000
Speaker 1: the Nazis. They're fighting them, but they didn't suffer from

1105
00:53:30,080 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 1: them right outside of that fighting, and so they're like

1106
00:53:32,680 --> 00:53:37,160
Speaker 1: they surrendered there's rules. Maxwell's like, they're Nazis, there's no rules.

1107
00:53:37,280 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't I kill every one of them?

1108
00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:41,440
Speaker 2: I mean, his whole family has been murdered, right, you

1109
00:53:41,480 --> 00:53:45,479
Speaker 2: can understand the psychology, they'll get it, yes, yeah, how many?

1110
00:53:45,480 --> 00:53:48,120
Speaker 2: Can I just ask? How many languages does this man speak?

1111
00:53:48,160 --> 00:53:50,480
Speaker 2: By the way, he grew up speaking Hebrew Yiddish.

1112
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:52,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, he grew up speaking Hebrew Yiddish, and I assume

1113
00:53:52,680 --> 00:53:55,319
Speaker 3: he would have learned Czech. He also grows up.

1114
00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 1: He speaks German by this point, and he probably grew

1115
00:53:58,080 --> 00:54:00,479
Speaker 1: up speaking it, and he speaks English, right, I believe

1116
00:54:00,520 --> 00:54:02,080
Speaker 1: he also speaks French at this point.

1117
00:54:02,560 --> 00:54:04,400
Speaker 3: Incredible, quite a polyglot.

1118
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:07,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there's there's a couple of different So in

1119
00:54:07,200 --> 00:54:09,760
Speaker 1: that one with Malloy, he's obviously like can you imagine

1120
00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:12,319
Speaker 1: being angry at killing Nazis? But there's another moment. His

1121
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:14,439
Speaker 1: sons will talk about where they're watching, like a World

1122
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:16,880
Speaker 1: War two movie, and he comes in and he like sees,

1123
00:54:17,200 --> 00:54:20,319
Speaker 1: you know, these young German soldiers on the screen, and

1124
00:54:20,360 --> 00:54:22,759
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, you know when I was, when I

1125
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:25,080
Speaker 1: was a young man, I killed boys as old as

1126
00:54:25,120 --> 00:54:28,360
Speaker 1: you my sons are today, And like I feel haunted

1127
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 1: by it. I wish I hadn't killed so many of

1128
00:54:30,640 --> 00:54:33,719
Speaker 1: them right when I didn't have to. Wow, So I

1129
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:36,480
Speaker 1: don't see it as that is really inconsistent, right that, Like,

1130
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:40,280
Speaker 1: he feels differently about all these massacres as he gets older.

1131
00:54:41,800 --> 00:54:43,680
Speaker 1: That said, he commits a lot of war crimes, but

1132
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:45,800
Speaker 1: he's not punished for them, right, No, one's really inclined

1133
00:54:45,920 --> 00:54:47,960
Speaker 1: to punish a kid whose family is wiped out in

1134
00:54:48,000 --> 00:54:51,719
Speaker 1: the Holocaust for again, mostly massacring the SS, although he

1135
00:54:51,760 --> 00:54:56,920
Speaker 1: does kill some civilians too, which isn't good. But yeah,

1136
00:54:57,040 --> 00:54:59,760
Speaker 1: very you get it, right, Like.

1137
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:04,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, he's not coming off like a you know, bloodthirsty,

1138
00:55:05,320 --> 00:55:07,640
Speaker 2: you know guy who joined the army because he just

1139
00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:11,440
Speaker 2: wanted to murder people. He's blinded by grief and rage

1140
00:55:11,440 --> 00:55:14,560
Speaker 2: and right, and it's war and people go nuts, like, yes,

1141
00:55:14,840 --> 00:55:15,839
Speaker 2: that's how he's coming off.

1142
00:55:15,960 --> 00:55:17,919
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's coming off is like he wants to save

1143
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: his family, he finds out he can't, and he just

1144
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:23,600
Speaker 1: starts killing them in response. He sees his responsible and like, yeah, bro,

1145
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:26,879
Speaker 1: like I get it, you know, hard to blame him

1146
00:55:26,920 --> 00:55:31,239
Speaker 1: for all of this, although again, definitely war crimes. So

1147
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:34,200
Speaker 1: the war ends and his military career continues to blossom.

1148
00:55:34,280 --> 00:55:36,759
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty six, he is twenty three years old

1149
00:55:36,800 --> 00:55:41,440
Speaker 1: and stationed, impartitioned and occupied Berlin, working as an intelligence officer,

1150
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:44,000
Speaker 1: and he proves to have an immediate faculty for the

1151
00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:46,680
Speaker 1: skills required in that role. He's an exceptional liar. He

1152
00:55:46,719 --> 00:55:50,080
Speaker 1: speaks basically every language, and he's not really scared of anything.

1153
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:52,840
Speaker 1: And it's here that he would make the connections that

1154
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:55,600
Speaker 1: would turn him from the Quentin Tarantino character. He's been

1155
00:55:55,640 --> 00:55:57,839
Speaker 1: this episode to the father of one of the most

1156
00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:00,759
Speaker 1: abusive industries in the world today. That's all coming in

1157
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:02,640
Speaker 1: part two. Adam, how we feeling.

1158
00:56:02,760 --> 00:56:05,320
Speaker 2: I'm feeling great so far? I love this guy. I

1159
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:05,960
Speaker 2: don't understand.

1160
00:56:06,000 --> 00:56:07,120
Speaker 3: It's hard not to like him.

1161
00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:10,520
Speaker 2: I don't understand why your show's uh called behind the Bastard.

1162
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:13,719
Speaker 2: So far, all he's done is uh go on a

1163
00:56:13,800 --> 00:56:17,920
Speaker 2: Nazi killing spree, which we just discussed the ambiguous morals

1164
00:56:17,960 --> 00:56:21,399
Speaker 2: of how you know. So, I'm a little confused about

1165
00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:22,719
Speaker 2: the format of the show, but I guess I'll find

1166
00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:23,359
Speaker 2: on the next part.

1167
00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:25,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, it is. This is a real whiplash episode.

1168
00:56:25,960 --> 00:56:27,759
Speaker 1: I don't know that we've ever had one for the

1169
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:34,239
Speaker 1: whole first episode. It's like this guy fucking owns you're

1170
00:56:34,280 --> 00:56:38,239
Speaker 1: on like a Nazi death quest through Europe. Like that's

1171
00:56:38,239 --> 00:56:38,960
Speaker 1: fucking sick.

1172
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:43,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he again, he feels like the hero

1173
00:56:44,160 --> 00:56:45,520
Speaker 2: of like a pulp novel.

1174
00:56:45,719 --> 00:56:46,239
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1175
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:48,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I have expected to be attacked by

1176
00:56:48,680 --> 00:56:51,160
Speaker 2: a dinosaur and wrestle in a submission. Yeah.

1177
00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:52,960
Speaker 1: And I guess if you if you want to imagine it,

1178
00:56:53,000 --> 00:56:55,160
Speaker 1: you can. You can see this Part two is like

1179
00:56:55,239 --> 00:56:57,920
Speaker 1: right after Inglorious Bastards ends, you know, they're carving a

1180
00:56:57,960 --> 00:57:00,520
Speaker 1: swastika in that guy's forehead and then like Brad Pitt

1181
00:57:00,600 --> 00:57:03,319
Speaker 1: goes and gets a job in finance and destroys the world.

1182
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:08,800
Speaker 1: A good story I think we need.

1183
00:57:08,880 --> 00:57:12,359
Speaker 2: Honestly, I want more sequels that are that. I want

1184
00:57:12,360 --> 00:57:16,080
Speaker 2: to see the people turn into bad people or disappoint

1185
00:57:16,360 --> 00:57:17,160
Speaker 2: or not you know.

1186
00:57:17,480 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, John McClain grows up in campaigns against the rights

1187
00:57:21,080 --> 00:57:24,040
Speaker 1: of incarcerated people to have access to library race or

1188
00:57:24,080 --> 00:57:26,720
Speaker 1: something like that after Diehard exactly.

1189
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:29,320
Speaker 2: And I want to see the sequel to the rom

1190
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:31,240
Speaker 2: com where the people fall in love and then they

1191
00:57:31,240 --> 00:57:33,800
Speaker 2: get married, and then I want the sequel to them

1192
00:57:34,160 --> 00:57:37,320
Speaker 2: ten years later, not fucking each other and being resentful

1193
00:57:37,560 --> 00:57:40,960
Speaker 2: and cheating on each other, like that's God. Yeah, show us,

1194
00:57:41,160 --> 00:57:42,600
Speaker 2: show us real people breaking down.

1195
00:57:42,720 --> 00:57:45,560
Speaker 1: Right, The Star Wars reboot should have been Luke Skywalker

1196
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:53,560
Speaker 1: turning into like an anti Ewok rights activist. Just all right, Adam,

1197
00:57:53,640 --> 00:57:54,640
Speaker 1: Where can people find you?

1198
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:57,360
Speaker 2: People can find me? I do a podcast called Factually.

1199
00:57:57,520 --> 00:58:00,000
Speaker 2: I also have a YouTube channel where that podcast is,

1200
00:58:00,480 --> 00:58:03,560
Speaker 2: and I do monologues and things like that about the

1201
00:58:03,640 --> 00:58:06,080
Speaker 2: horrible state of the world. And I have a stand

1202
00:58:06,160 --> 00:58:08,760
Speaker 2: up special called Unmedicated. This out on Dropouts on the

1203
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:10,200
Speaker 2: TV platform drop Out.

1204
00:58:10,240 --> 00:58:11,919
Speaker 3: Oh hell yeah, I drop I'll love drop Out.

1205
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, check out Adam everywhere you can find them.

1206
00:58:15,720 --> 00:58:18,480
Speaker 1: Check out drop Out also to see Adam and just

1207
00:58:18,520 --> 00:58:22,680
Speaker 1: separately because it's great, And check out Fighting Nazis, you know,

1208
00:58:23,320 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of that that needs doing.

1209
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:29,480
Speaker 3: Anyway, the episode's done.

1210
00:58:32,080 --> 00:58:34,800
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1211
00:58:35,160 --> 00:58:37,760
Speaker 4: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1212
00:58:37,840 --> 00:58:41,800
Speaker 4: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1213
00:58:41,880 --> 00:58:45,040
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

1214
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:49,120
Speaker 4: Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday

1215
00:58:49,200 --> 00:58:52,880
Speaker 4: and Friday, subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

1216
00:58:53,080 --> 00:58:54,560
Speaker 4: At Behind the Bastards