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Speaker 1: Also media, Oh, what's the Dodgers won the World Series?

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Speaker 1: The Daughters won the World Series?

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Speaker 2: Won the World Series? Not that's not the open is

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Speaker 2: dressed up as a Dodger.

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Speaker 1: I was dressed up as Kendle Roy.

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Speaker 3: This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where Robert is

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Speaker 3: very disappointed because I had a whole bit planned to

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Speaker 3: do with my guest. Oh, Margaret kill Joy, do you

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Speaker 3: could think.

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Speaker 1: This is a four part or do it next time?

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Speaker 3: Margaret? Have you have you? How do you feel about

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Speaker 3: bringing back thylacine foxes which are extinct? That's the Tasmanian tiger.

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Speaker 3: But this company says they've got it figured out, they're

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Speaker 3: going to be able to clone them.

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Speaker 2: You know, land on that kind of stuff that I am,

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Speaker 2: but I'm a little bit on like bring on the dinosaurs.

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Speaker 2: Ca Yep, that's I've got.

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Speaker 3: I've got a plan for how we can how we

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Speaker 3: can make this work for the Democratic Party.

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Speaker 2: Well, Trump probably wants to bring back back the ore ox.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I honestly, I don't mind bringing back

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Speaker 3: the ROX, but I would focus on the dinosaurs, and

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Speaker 3: I think what we do here. You know, obviously America

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Speaker 3: has a massive problem with gun violence. But we've already

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Speaker 3: seen from the last like twenty years it's basically impossible

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Speaker 3: to do much about it. You know, the Supreme Court

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Speaker 3: particularly has come down against any kind of like functional

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Speaker 3: laws on that regard. So let's work around the problem. Right,

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Speaker 3: people can't die of gun violence if every American is

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Speaker 3: dying early in a dinosaur park accident. And I honestly

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Speaker 3: think if we rejigger our entire economy around cloning dinosaurs,

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Speaker 3: putting them in parks, and then having those parks kill

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Speaker 3: everyone at the park, we could solve basically all of

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Speaker 3: our current domestic issues. Right, you know, nobody's going to

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Speaker 3: be you know, all of this shit the GOP is

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Speaker 3: going on about migrants, you know about trans people. If

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Speaker 3: everyone's just dying to dinosaurs, right, you know, there's no

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Speaker 3: more problems we do think every issue in American society.

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Speaker 2: I think it would be good for humanity to not

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Speaker 2: always be the top of the food chain. I think

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Speaker 2: that if as you were getting ready to go to work,

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Speaker 2: you opened the door, and like a rabbit exiting her burrow,

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Speaker 2: you had to look both ways for predators.

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Speaker 3: Because the Veloci raptors escaped from Disney World again, like

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Speaker 3: they do every day. Yeah, yeah, okay, I think this

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Speaker 3: is good. I think this solves all of our problems.

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Speaker 1: Anderson's dressed is Kendall Roy from Succession, and I'm very

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Speaker 1: proud of this costume.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, who is a baseball? If you're watching this and

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Speaker 2: you don't know what that is, h kender Roy is

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Speaker 2: a baseball with the Dodger and l to the old

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Speaker 2: He's the best.

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Speaker 3: He's the best linebacker in the New York Yankees the.

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Speaker 2: New York Lakers. Yeah, oh my god, I've got to

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Speaker 2: sit the New York Yankees. But yes, that that's even

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Speaker 2: better killing me, Margaret.

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Speaker 3: Speaking of the Yanks, you know, that's a team for

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Speaker 3: all of the rich assholes in America. But before we

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Speaker 3: had the New York Yankees, we had their political equivalent,

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Speaker 3: the British Empire. How do you feel about the British Empire, Magpie?

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Speaker 2: Primarily negative?

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Speaker 3: Primarily negative. Well, I guess that's pretty obvious because they're terrible. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: what do you know about probably like the most famous

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Speaker 3: hero of the British Empire of the twentieth century, Lawrence

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Speaker 3: of Arabia.

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Speaker 2: I know almost nothing about Lawrence of Arabia, but I'm

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Speaker 2: very excited about excellent. I've been recently really interested in

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Speaker 2: learning more about the Ottoman Empire. We'll be talking Ottomans.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, cool.

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Speaker 3: A lot of Ottoman shit is going to be going

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Speaker 3: down in this story. So this is, you know, maybe

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Speaker 3: a slightly different kind of behind the Bastards episode because

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Speaker 3: I think, like the title of this could be, was

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Speaker 3: Lawrence of Arabia a bastard? And that's a complicated question.

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Speaker 3: He is a guy who the appraisals of him have

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Speaker 3: gone kind of back and forth since his death in

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Speaker 3: nineteen thirty five, from like, oh, you know, he was

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Speaker 3: this hero of the empire and a hero of the

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Speaker 3: Arab people who like backed their liberation from ottom and tyranny,

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Speaker 3: to he was an agent of imperialism who like betrayed

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Speaker 3: and you know, manipulated these Arabs that he claimed to

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Speaker 3: care about, and has a lot to do with the

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Speaker 3: modern fucked up state of much of the Middle East

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Speaker 3: and the Muslim world, Like a lot of our current

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Speaker 3: lot of like what's going on in Gaza right now,

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Speaker 3: in fact, does have a lot of direct ties to

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Speaker 3: Lawrence of Arabia. And then you know to today where

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Speaker 3: I think there's another reappraisal going on, and you've even

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Speaker 3: got some like left wing scholars. You were saying, well, actually,

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Speaker 3: like the really critical views of this guy are not

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Speaker 3: entirely fair. So it's one of those things what kind

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Speaker 3: of will repeatedly revisit, Like where do we think this

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Speaker 3: guy's landing? Is this guy a bastard? Is he maybe

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Speaker 3: a cool person? Or is he kind of somewhere in

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Speaker 3: the middle.

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Speaker 2: Are you saying that historical people can be morally complex

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Speaker 2: and so yes, yeh wow, absolutely, that would destroy both

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Speaker 2: of our show's concepts if that were true.

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Speaker 3: And it's also he is particularly hard to judge because

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Speaker 3: he was a spook, right, he's a spy, you know,

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Speaker 3: he is an intelligence, and so he lies to everyone

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Speaker 3: constantly the entire life.

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Speaker 2: Often for good reasons.

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Speaker 3: A lot of his lies are like, well, I would

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Speaker 3: have tried to do the same thing in his situation, right,

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Speaker 3: And then a lot of his lies are like, oh,

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Speaker 3: well I can see why that, Like, the guilt from

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Speaker 3: doing this destroyed your entire life, Lawrence.

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Speaker 2: That was pretty fucked up.

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Speaker 3: So he's a guy I have always been interested in

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Speaker 3: him because it was my dad's favorite movie. And I'll

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Speaker 3: tell you right now. The I rewatched late last year

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Speaker 3: the Lawrence of Arabia movie from the sixties whenever it.

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Speaker 2: Was holds up.

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Speaker 3: If you haven't seen it, I really do recommend watching

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Speaker 3: it because it's fucking gorgeous. You know, it was made

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Speaker 3: in an era when if you were going to make

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Speaker 3: a movie about T. E. Lawrence, you sent a bunch

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Speaker 3: of dudes out to the desert and you blew up

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Speaker 3: trains with dynamite. There was no other way to get

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Speaker 3: those shots. And that's pretty cool. I think he's also

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Speaker 3: really relevant because one thing we all share as Americans,

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Speaker 3: you know, whether you're left or right or centrist, is

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Speaker 3: this very strange and somewhat incoherent love for insurgents, even

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Speaker 3: though we also find ourselves constantly fighting and losing wars

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Speaker 3: two insurgents and this all. You know, it has its

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Speaker 3: roots in the kind of mythic origin of our nation,

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Speaker 3: the Revolutionary War, but it also has its roots in

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Speaker 3: you know, I think at this stage we have to

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Speaker 3: acknowledge that George Lucas is as much a founding father

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Speaker 3: of this nation as George Washington, right, and so like,

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Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of impossible to separate the our

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Speaker 3: love of the you know, the the Founding fathers and

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Speaker 3: their insurgents struggle from like fucking rebel alliance, which we

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Speaker 3: all learned about at age like four.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So we're going to talk about te Lawrence this week.

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Speaker 3: And when I brought Lawrence up in conversations, particularly with

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Speaker 3: friends who are on the left, I noticed that I

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Speaker 3: think the general, the general trend is for people to

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Speaker 3: write him off as like an orientalist and imperialist and

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Speaker 3: you know, the British Empire's equivalent of the CIA agents

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Speaker 3: who spent most of the twentieth century overthrowing democratically elected

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Speaker 3: governments around the world. And it's fair to view him

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Speaker 3: as all of those things. There's an extent to which

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Speaker 3: all of those are accurate descriptions of the man. But

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Speaker 3: he's also not someone you can ignore if you are

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Speaker 3: on the left, especially if you're if you're one of

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Speaker 3: these people who has ever sat around talking about like,

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Speaker 3: you know, revolution and like, could you know some sort

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Speaker 3: of like insurgent left wing movement, you know, take power,

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Speaker 3: you know, defeat the United if any of that is

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Speaker 3: shit that you care about, if you just care about

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Speaker 3: you know, what's happening over in Gaza. If you're interested

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Speaker 3: at all in how asymmetric warfare can topple powerful states, right,

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Speaker 3: you have to study Lawrence of Arabia, because in some

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Speaker 3: very important ways he invented like how warfare works in

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Speaker 3: the twenty first century. Like he is the guy who

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Speaker 3: created and codified our modern concept of how an insurgent

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Speaker 3: struggle works, right, you know, and that's people are going

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Speaker 3: to be like, well, that's ridiculous if you think of

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Speaker 3: an insurgent struggle as just like some dudes who aren't

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Speaker 3: regular soldiers, like ambushing imperial troops in the desert or whatever. Right,

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Speaker 3: Like that's been going on for for fucking ever. Right,

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Speaker 3: you know, that shit was happening when the Romans were around.

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Speaker 3: It happened to the Greeks, happened to a fucking Alexander

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Speaker 3: the Great Troops when they marched through Afghanistan.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: But that's not what an act. That's not what modern

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Speaker 3: insurgent warfare means. Modern insurgent warfare is a much more

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Speaker 3: complicated thing that involves the use of insurgent troops alongside

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Speaker 3: regular national troops and a struggle between empire that takes

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Speaker 3: place over a wide geographical area, right, Like, you know,

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Speaker 3: when you look at how Vietnam won their war, it

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Speaker 3: wasn't that the viet Cong just outfought the Americans and

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Speaker 3: the Jungles. It was that the viet Cong participated in

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Speaker 3: a very complex struggle that also involved regular state forces

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Speaker 3: that had the backing of other empires. And you know,

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Speaker 3: that conflict took place not just as a conflict in Vietnam,

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Speaker 3: but as part of a broader conflict between the Soviet

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Speaker 3: Union and the United States. And the way that worked was,

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Speaker 3: you know, heavily informed by a lot of the theories

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Speaker 3: that Te Lawrence wrote out as a result of what

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Speaker 3: he's doing in the Arab Peninsula during World War One.

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Speaker 3: And to make that case, because I'm sure there's some

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Speaker 3: people being like, what the fuck are you talking about, Robert,

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Speaker 3: That's nonsense. I want to talk go a little bit

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Speaker 3: ahead of the story right before we actually talk about

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Speaker 3: Lawrence's life to something that happened about a decade after

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Speaker 3: he died in nineteen four. Now, this is a story

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Speaker 3: that relates to what would become the Vietnam War. But

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Speaker 3: in nineteen forty six, you know that the Vietnam War,

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Speaker 3: the Indo China conflict. It's not really an armed struggle

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Speaker 3: quite yet. It's still at this point a disagreement over

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Speaker 3: the region of Asia than known as French Indo China.

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Speaker 3: During the rule of Napoleon the Third, powerful interests in

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Speaker 3: the French Navy had succeeded in pushing from military control

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Speaker 3: in the region that had expanded across much of modern

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Speaker 3: Vietnam until their control. France's control was interrupted by Japan

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Speaker 3: during World War Two. Now, if you know anything about

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Speaker 3: Vietnamese history, the Vietnamese people had a long history of

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Speaker 3: identifying as like, we are Vietnamese and we are not

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Speaker 3: the people who are in charge of our land right now.

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Speaker 3: Right Vietnam's history has a lot of occupation by foreign powers,

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Speaker 3: and the end result of that is that when Japanese

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Speaker 3: occupiers took over, they met with spirited resistance. Now, one

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Speaker 3: of the leaders of that resistance was a man named

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Speaker 3: vo When Japp, who, by any stretch of the imagination,

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Speaker 3: deserves to go down as one of the great military

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Speaker 3: leaders of all time, and you could argue is probably

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Speaker 3: the greatest war leader of the twentieth century. During his

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Speaker 3: long and storied life which ended in twenty thirteen, I

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Speaker 3: had realized he made it so long. Japp led Vietnamese

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Speaker 3: forces to victories against the Empire of Japan, France, the

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Speaker 3: United States, and what you could either call a victory

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Speaker 3: or at least a solid draw against China, and like,

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Speaker 3: who else has that record? Who else could claim that shit?

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Speaker 3: That's amazing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: From nineteen forty one to nineteen seventy two, he was

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Speaker 3: the military commander of the Vietmen, and he orchestrated the

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Speaker 3: Battle of Dian Benfu, which forced an end to French

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Speaker 3: occupation of his land. Now, before Dan Binfu in nineteen

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Speaker 3: forty six, it was not necessarily a foregone conclusion that

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Speaker 3: Japan and France were going to fight, right, the Vietnamese

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Speaker 3: had helped to oust the Japanese occupier, and they were

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Speaker 3: kind of there were negotiations taking place between Vaux and

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Speaker 3: the Vietman and you know, the French political and military establishment,

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Speaker 3: and there was at least some hope that maybe a

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Speaker 3: conflict could be avoided. So Vo sits down in Hanoi

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Speaker 3: in nineteen forty six for a meeting with General Raoul

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Speaker 3: Salon to see if there was a way to work

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Speaker 3: things out peacefully in a manner, you know, Salon at

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Speaker 3: least is like in a manner that still leaves France

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Speaker 3: basically in charge, right, And obviously this was a doomed measure,

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Speaker 3: but they don't necessarily know that at the time. One

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Speaker 3: of my sources for these episodes is the excellent book

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Speaker 3: Guerrilla Leader by James Schneider, a professor of military theory

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Speaker 3: at the School for Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth.

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Speaker 3: Schneider opens his book with the story of Jopp and

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Speaker 3: Salon's meeting and describes it this way. Toward the end

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Speaker 3: of the meeting, discussion turned towards Jop's success in resisting

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Speaker 3: the Japanese occupation of Indochina since nineteen forty. Salon wanted

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Speaker 3: to know the source and inspiration of Jiop's success. Without hesitation,

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Speaker 3: Jiop reached behind his seat and withdrew from a shelf

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Speaker 3: a heavy book and laid it before Salon, who recognized

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Speaker 3: the author immediately. Jap gestured towards the book, saying, my

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Speaker 3: fighting gospel is T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

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Speaker 3: I am never without it.

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Speaker 2: That's cool.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is. I mean, that's that's high

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Speaker 3: praise for your book. Yeah. I hope that one day

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Speaker 3: My book A Brief History of Vice is the is

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Speaker 3: the bible of an insurgent leader destroying French tyranny over

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Speaker 3: their land, maybe.

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Speaker 2: In France, be destroying something.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: This has taught me to tell all, have all of

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Speaker 3: my troops mixed tobacco and their own urine together and

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Speaker 3: then make themselves vomit. I think the key part of

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Speaker 3: modern insurgent struggle.

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Speaker 2: One of the things that I kind of can when

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Speaker 2: you were saying earlier about how you know you think

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Speaker 2: of gorilla warfare as like, oh no, you just like

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Speaker 2: jump some people in the wood, just beat them up

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Speaker 2: in the in the forest. Yeah, yeah, and like because

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Speaker 2: that's the way that most movies are sort of representing

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Speaker 2: guerilla warfare, because you know, that's the sexy part of

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Speaker 2: a gorilla struggle over yeah right, yeah, And realizing that

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Speaker 2: there's this like lineage of development of how like, just

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Speaker 2: like how technology develops, so do tactics and organizational strategies.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and yeah, So realizing that, like because you'll

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Speaker 2: read about the social democrat nihilist from Russia. Stepniak wrote

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Speaker 2: a book on guerrilla warfare from his time fighting I

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Speaker 2: actually think fighting the Ottoman Empire, but I can't remember,

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Speaker 2: you know, but.

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Speaker 3: That was they helped a lot of people figure that

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Speaker 3: one out.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and uh, you know, but it's like, but

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Speaker 2: then that's that's not the one that people are using.

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Speaker 2: And then you you know, you fast forward to after

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Speaker 2: World War Two. I know, a lot of people were

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Speaker 2: writing like, gee, how do partisans work? You know, and

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Speaker 2: so it just it really interests me that there's development

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Speaker 2: also of just like literally how do you organize this stuff?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean and because there had to be, right,

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Speaker 3: especially because the conflicts of the twentieth century are so

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Speaker 3: much much wider in scope and more complex and able

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Speaker 3: to be because of the level of development that exists. Right,

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Speaker 3: so you need new theories of how to actually wield

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Speaker 3: a modern the story of modern insurgent struggle and the

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Speaker 3: kind of stuff Japp was doing, because Jiapp is not

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Speaker 3: just a line level guy, right, he is thinking about

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Speaker 3: grander strategy is how do you wield insurgents as a

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Speaker 3: weapon in concert with the other weapons of a modern state? Right,

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Speaker 3: That's the question, and that's what Lawrence is kind of

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Speaker 3: a formative scholar on now at the point in nineteen

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Speaker 3: forty six, that Jiapp is showing off his copy of

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Speaker 3: Seven Pillars of Wisdom in this meeting. T E. Lawrence

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Speaker 3: is still very famous, right. He becomes a celebrity as

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Speaker 3: a result of what he does in the Middle least.

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Speaker 3: That's why there's a fucking movie about him, right, And

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Speaker 3: he was famous primarily as this guy who wo had

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Speaker 3: helped the Allies win crucial victories over the Ottomans by

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Speaker 3: welding these Arab bandits into an effective force. This is

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Speaker 3: as well, like partially an accurate description of his accomplishments.

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Speaker 3: But Jiapp understood better than Salon what Lawrence had really done,

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Speaker 3: and as a result, Lawrence is kind of puzzled when

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Speaker 3: he hears that Jiop has this copy of Lawrence's book,

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Speaker 3: because Celon is like, well, this is just a guy

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Speaker 3: who like taught some desert Arabs how to ambush trains. Right,

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Speaker 3: that has nothing to do with fighting the Japanese in Vietnam.

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Speaker 3: Why would you consider this relevant? And I'm going to

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Speaker 3: continue with another passage from Schneider's book, ah Giop replied,

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Speaker 3: is that your assessment of Lawrence Selon nodded a casual

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Speaker 3: affirmation of course, then you have missed the whole point

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Speaker 3: of Lawrence, said Jiap. He is less about fighting a

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Speaker 3: guerrilla war than leading one, and leadership, Giop emphasized, is

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Speaker 3: applicable in any context, desert or jungle, military or civil.

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Speaker 3: And so if you're someone who might be inclined to

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Speaker 3: ignore or dismiss Lawrence as just another like imperialist proto

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Speaker 3: cia guy appropriating a local culture, I would encourage you

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Speaker 3: to consider there's something worth finding in what Giops saw

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Speaker 3: in the man, right, Yeah, And it's worth studying anyone

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Speaker 3: whose work was a critical part of the strategy that

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Speaker 3: led Vietnam to victory over the United States because in

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Speaker 3: a lot of ways, that gave us the twenty first century. Right,

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Speaker 3: you kind of have to study a guy who can

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Speaker 3: do that. And I will say one of the through

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Speaker 3: lines of the story, we'll be reading some quotes from

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Speaker 3: separate pillars of wisdom. One of the things that makes

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Speaker 3: Lawrence a powerful insurgent leader, which is part of why

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Speaker 3: I like the story, is that he's an excellent writer.

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Speaker 3: He's just an actually incredibly talented, beautiful prose and that's

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Speaker 3: a big part of why he is an influential military theorist,

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Speaker 3: and I kind of like that.

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Speaker 2: That's cool. I'm want to read Seven Pillars now.

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Speaker 3: It's great, Yeah it is. It's actually very very good

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Speaker 3: and is now historians have gone back and forth on this,

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Speaker 3: but like modern historiography will agree, gen't really accurate. As

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Speaker 3: we'll talk about, there's a couple of areas where Lawrence

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00:18:03,520 --> 00:18:07,639
Speaker 3: probably lied or at least may have lied, but generally

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Speaker 3: accurate to what happened. So Schneider's book makes a pretty

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Speaker 3: good case for Lawrence as like the father of modern

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Speaker 3: insurgent warfare. My main issue with his book is that

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Speaker 3: he focuses on like the how and a lot of

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Speaker 3: just kind of the military nuts and bolts, and as

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Speaker 3: a result, his story leaves out something that the nineteen

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Speaker 3: sixty two movie leaves out, which is, why would a

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Speaker 3: guy born into like the comfortable upper middle class of

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Speaker 3: life in the British Empire choose to become, you know,

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Speaker 3: a leader, not the leader of an Arab revolt against

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Speaker 3: Ottoman power?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 3: How do we get there? And that's the story we're

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Speaker 3: going to tell today. Thomas Edward Lawrence was born on

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Speaker 3: August sixteenth.

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Speaker 2: Eighteen eighty eight.

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Speaker 3: Before this section, sure you know who else was born

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Speaker 3: on August sixteenth, eighteen eighty eight in the United Kingdom.

361
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Speaker 3: Probably not our sponsors. They're probably Donald Trump again. Oh god,

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Speaker 3: there's a good chance.

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Speaker 2: I missed the gambling ads. I miss them too, No Chumba,

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Speaker 2: Maybe not by the time this comes out. Yeah, we'll see,

365
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Speaker 2: no said, will be an ad for gorilla warfare. Yea

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Speaker 2: gerrilla warfare.

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Speaker 3: Disappointed about the election results, you know, one way or

368
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Speaker 3: the other, A lot of people are going to be

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Speaker 3: thinking about guerrilla warfare in the wake of this election

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Speaker 3: coming up in a couple of days. So that's part

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Speaker 3: of why I wrote these episodes. Uh, and we're back.

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Speaker 3: So Lawrence was born in maybe the most ridiculously named

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Speaker 3: region of Great Britain Trinidog trimid Dog, Carnovanshire, Wales, which

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00:19:50,600 --> 00:19:53,200
Speaker 3: I know I've pronounced wrong. I don't like, fuck you people,

375
00:19:53,240 --> 00:19:55,720
Speaker 3: look at that trimid dog. What does that even mean?

376
00:19:56,320 --> 00:20:00,719
Speaker 3: That sounds like that sounds like medicine for fleas or

377
00:20:00,760 --> 00:20:03,600
Speaker 3: like if your dog's too fat, you give it trima dog. Right,

378
00:20:03,800 --> 00:20:07,080
Speaker 3: It's just like, excuse.

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Speaker 1: Me, I'm sure you're not body shamed dogs.

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Speaker 2: Excuse me, I'm.

381
00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:14,280
Speaker 3: Not I'm just saying, if you were selling that medicine,

382
00:20:14,520 --> 00:20:16,520
Speaker 3: like if you're selling dog o zimbic, you call it

383
00:20:16,600 --> 00:20:21,119
Speaker 3: trima dog dog o zimbi has to be a thing, right,

384
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Speaker 3: there's no way that's not coming.

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Speaker 2: I really hope not. But you're probably Oh no, there's

386
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Speaker 2: no way.

387
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Speaker 3: There's no way that's not gonna There's no way that

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00:20:28,640 --> 00:20:31,320
Speaker 3: there's no way there aren't people who are already shooting

389
00:20:31,320 --> 00:20:35,760
Speaker 3: ozimbic into their cloned dogs. I love, that's definitely happening.

390
00:20:36,160 --> 00:20:40,720
Speaker 2: Drugs just go both directions real quick now, like horse

391
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Speaker 2: drugs for humans.

392
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Speaker 3: Yeah. Me, you came over the other day and we're

393
00:20:46,080 --> 00:20:48,720
Speaker 3: talking about how like rintros on trasa doone and hey,

394
00:20:48,840 --> 00:20:51,680
Speaker 3: so am iras a buddies.

395
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Speaker 2: No, it made it great when I was I was

396
00:20:53,920 --> 00:20:56,000
Speaker 2: in a place that was never mind, I want to

397
00:20:56,040 --> 00:20:57,320
Speaker 2: I don't want to tell you anything about how I

398
00:20:57,359 --> 00:21:01,000
Speaker 2: acquired some I've always gone through the problem channels to get.

399
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Speaker 3: I love the proper channels, Margaret, speaking of the proper channels.

400
00:21:06,320 --> 00:21:09,200
Speaker 3: Lawrence comes from a line of people who did things

401
00:21:09,240 --> 00:21:13,920
Speaker 3: through the proper channels. His father was not born a Lawrence.

402
00:21:14,359 --> 00:21:17,560
Speaker 3: He was instead born a member of the Landed nobility,

403
00:21:17,920 --> 00:21:23,359
Speaker 3: Sir Thomas Chapman. Now Lawrence's his family, like Lawrence's ancestors,

404
00:21:23,680 --> 00:21:27,760
Speaker 3: are the literal Irish landlords responsible for like so much

405
00:21:27,840 --> 00:21:30,560
Speaker 3: of that island's misery, Like when you read about like

406
00:21:30,600 --> 00:21:34,560
Speaker 3: those like absentee, Like, that's Lawrence's people, right, that's the

407
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:39,120
Speaker 3: line he comes from. So Lawrence's dad's family, the Chapman's,

408
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:42,919
Speaker 3: they send Sir Thomas Lawrence to Eton, where he is

409
00:21:42,960 --> 00:21:45,919
Speaker 3: abused and molested into being a proper young inheritor of

410
00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:48,479
Speaker 3: the empire. And he was, by all accounts a normal

411
00:21:48,560 --> 00:21:52,679
Speaker 3: boy of the landed nobility until he marries someone who

412
00:21:52,800 --> 00:21:55,520
Speaker 3: is like a bad match for him, which is not

413
00:21:55,640 --> 00:21:58,439
Speaker 3: unusual in his social class. But he is not capable

414
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:02,560
Speaker 3: of being happy and like a loveless marriage. And also

415
00:22:03,320 --> 00:22:06,479
Speaker 3: you know, he's a romantic. He's a romantic, and his

416
00:22:06,520 --> 00:22:10,320
Speaker 3: bride only gives him daughters, right, so he's like also

417
00:22:10,400 --> 00:22:13,359
Speaker 3: not thrilled about that. So, like many men of his

418
00:22:13,480 --> 00:22:16,280
Speaker 3: social standing, he picks up a mistress and he brings

419
00:22:16,320 --> 00:22:19,200
Speaker 3: her to Dublin, where she gets pregnant with his child.

420
00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:22,200
Speaker 3: This child comes out of boy, which is what he

421
00:22:22,240 --> 00:22:26,000
Speaker 3: had wanted, and he makes the incredibly questionable decision to

422
00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:30,760
Speaker 3: give his bastard child his name. Right, Hell yeah, now

423
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:33,199
Speaker 3: it's herd. That's not if you're trying to keep this

424
00:22:33,359 --> 00:22:36,760
Speaker 3: on the down low, which you're supposed to do, that's

425
00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:39,520
Speaker 3: a bad way to do it. This does not lead

426
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:43,119
Speaker 3: to a sustainable situation with his other legal family, and

427
00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:46,119
Speaker 3: everything falls apart for Sir Thomas, and one of the

428
00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:49,080
Speaker 3: things like there's there's this fucked up old timey stuff.

429
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Speaker 2: This is dad.

430
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:56,919
Speaker 3: Sir Thomas is Lawrence of Arabia's dad. Last Lawrence is

431
00:22:56,960 --> 00:23:01,199
Speaker 3: a bastard, right, So Sir Thomas, what's interesting about him

432
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:02,919
Speaker 3: to me because up until this, like, oh, he's not

433
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:06,439
Speaker 3: happy that his Mary, his legal wife, only gave him daughters.

434
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Speaker 3: So he has a mistress and a secret family. That's

435
00:23:09,600 --> 00:23:12,280
Speaker 3: not weird. What's weird is that when this gets exposed

436
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:15,159
Speaker 3: and his life falls apart, he's just like, fuck it.

437
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:17,639
Speaker 3: I don't want to be a nobleman anymore. I have

438
00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:20,679
Speaker 3: no attraction to this social circle. So he makes a

439
00:23:20,720 --> 00:23:23,320
Speaker 3: deal with his wife. You get all the land, you

440
00:23:23,359 --> 00:23:25,880
Speaker 3: get nearly all of the income. I'm going to keep

441
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:27,639
Speaker 3: a small portion of the income so I don't have

442
00:23:27,680 --> 00:23:29,960
Speaker 3: to ever work a job. But you get like ninety

443
00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:33,520
Speaker 3: percent of everything right, and I'm just not going to

444
00:23:33,560 --> 00:23:36,840
Speaker 3: be a chapman anymore. I'm going to disappear and live

445
00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:39,959
Speaker 3: under a new name and raise my bastard son and

446
00:23:40,040 --> 00:23:42,480
Speaker 3: live with my mistress who I actually love. Is that

447
00:23:42,720 --> 00:23:47,240
Speaker 3: cool with you? And his wife is like sure, that's

448
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 3: a good deal.

449
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:49,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now you don't have to have a husband.

450
00:23:49,280 --> 00:23:51,680
Speaker 3: It seems like a pretty good deal given that this

451
00:23:51,760 --> 00:23:57,800
Speaker 3: is the eighteen eighties. Yeah, so yeah, they do this,

452
00:23:57,960 --> 00:24:00,639
Speaker 3: and Sir John moves out of Ireland to Wales and

453
00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:03,520
Speaker 3: he takes up a new name with his still a mistress,

454
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:06,880
Speaker 3: never legally a wife, and they become known as mister

455
00:24:06,960 --> 00:24:10,200
Speaker 3: and missus Thomas Lawrence, even though again they're never legally married.

456
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:12,719
Speaker 3: So that's where Lawrence's name comes from. It's not his

457
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:15,800
Speaker 3: real name, it's the name is Dad Picks after abandoning

458
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:18,879
Speaker 3: his life as a member of the landed nobility to

459
00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:22,040
Speaker 3: go live with his mistress in Wales, as we all

460
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:26,040
Speaker 3: hope to do one day. So t E Lawrence was

461
00:24:26,080 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 3: their second son. He was born in Trimidoc, not long

462
00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:34,280
Speaker 3: after Thomas's old life fell apart. Now his dad is

463
00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:37,440
Speaker 3: racked with guilt over what happened, right, he does seem

464
00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 3: to feel bad about a lot of aspects of this.

465
00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:44,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, but their daughters aren't super excited about I.

466
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:50,840
Speaker 3: Bet his daughters aren't thrilled. But Yeah. Lawrence's mother, Sarah Lawrence,

467
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,560
Speaker 3: which is very funny that that's her name, was the

468
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:58,080
Speaker 3: self herself the child of an unwed, illegitimate union. So

469
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:00,199
Speaker 3: she actually doesn't feel bad about this at all, and

470
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:04,359
Speaker 3: she is by far the domineering force in the relationship.

471
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:07,119
Speaker 3: Like you get the feeling Lawrence's dad is kind of

472
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:08,600
Speaker 3: a sad sack and his mom is like, shut the

473
00:25:08,640 --> 00:25:13,120
Speaker 3: fuck up, like you don't have to work, like good,

474
00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:15,760
Speaker 3: Like chill the fuck out. There's nothing wrong with the

475
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:18,439
Speaker 3: fact that we were not married and having kids. Like

476
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:22,480
Speaker 3: she's Irish or English. I think she's English. Her name

477
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:25,120
Speaker 3: is Sarah Lawrence, which does sound like an English name.

478
00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 3: Lawrence would later write that his mom saw their father

479
00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:34,360
Speaker 3: as quote her trophy of power. Lawrence has some mom issues,

480
00:25:34,359 --> 00:25:36,320
Speaker 3: but also I don't see any reason why this is

481
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:40,920
Speaker 3: necessarily wrong. He describes her as a very controlling woman

482
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:44,880
Speaker 3: and his father as like kind of a mild person. Now,

483
00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:48,120
Speaker 3: one of the things that's really unique about Lawrence's dad.

484
00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:50,320
Speaker 3: He is in a very i mean not just a

485
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 3: rarity for the age, but he's almost a singular figure

486
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:58,080
Speaker 3: in that he is an attentive, full time father. Right.

487
00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:01,399
Speaker 3: He never has to work and he has no social

488
00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 3: obligations to keep up, so he pours all of his

489
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 3: interest into being there all of the time to raise

490
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:09,000
Speaker 3: his kids, which.

491
00:26:08,800 --> 00:26:13,879
Speaker 2: Like doesn't happen, no, but it's like certain people's dream yeah,

492
00:26:13,920 --> 00:26:18,080
Speaker 2: like stay at home dad. Like yeah, money's taken care

493
00:26:18,119 --> 00:26:20,200
Speaker 2: of by inheritance or whatever.

494
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:22,399
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he is living a lot of

495
00:26:22,400 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 3: people's dreams. And it's just so interesting to me that,

496
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:28,240
Speaker 3: like Lawrence is like the one guy in nineteen in

497
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:34,239
Speaker 3: Victorian England who's raised by like a responsible dad, at

498
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:37,959
Speaker 3: least responsible to his sons. In the wonderful book The

499
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:41,879
Speaker 3: Young te Lawrence biographer Anthony Satin writes that Lawrence and

500
00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:45,359
Speaker 3: his four brothers never quote had an unhappy or even

501
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:48,320
Speaker 3: an unsettled life. They moved more often in their first

502
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:51,000
Speaker 3: few years than most families moved in a lifetime, but

503
00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:54,640
Speaker 3: they were close knit and well loved. Now from an

504
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:57,720
Speaker 3: early age, their parents don't inform them of their actual

505
00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:01,000
Speaker 3: lineage of like all everything that went down with dad

506
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:05,200
Speaker 3: before they became Lawrence's But from an early age, te

507
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:08,399
Speaker 3: and his brother ned they're very smart kids, and they

508
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:12,320
Speaker 3: have inklings that they might be bastards, although they think

509
00:27:12,359 --> 00:27:14,919
Speaker 3: for a very different reason. Right, they think that like

510
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:18,680
Speaker 3: basically there was cheating going on within between their parents

511
00:27:18,760 --> 00:27:20,360
Speaker 3: as opposed to the real story.

512
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:23,359
Speaker 2: Right, they think their dad isn't their dad.

513
00:27:23,640 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think their dad isn't their dad. Now, this

514
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:29,399
Speaker 3: is this is something that is a trauma to a

515
00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 3: degree for young Thomas because he and his family they're

516
00:27:32,840 --> 00:27:37,199
Speaker 3: very religious. They're raised incredibly strictly in the church, and

517
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:40,399
Speaker 3: sex out of wedlock is a big deal. The guilt

518
00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 3: his father felt, which eventually compelled him to reveal the

519
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:46,080
Speaker 3: truth to his sons in a deathbed letter, may have

520
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 3: bled over to them in some way. Whatever the truth,

521
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 3: Lawrence wrote himself about being dogged by a peculiar sense

522
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:55,520
Speaker 3: of worthlessness his whole life. Right, this is the way

523
00:27:55,520 --> 00:27:57,960
Speaker 3: this manifest is he always kinds of things. I'm just

524
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:00,920
Speaker 3: a piece of shit, Like I don't believe anywhere. I'm

525
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 3: a bad person. I come from nothing, you know, I

526
00:28:04,880 --> 00:28:08,360
Speaker 3: don't deserve anything. This is like he's he's got imposter

527
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:11,399
Speaker 3: syndrome his whole life, despite the fact that he is

528
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:14,120
Speaker 3: he is not just a smart kid. He is clearly

529
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:18,000
Speaker 3: a genius. And when I say a genius, I mean

530
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,480
Speaker 3: that as a small boy, he develops a scholarly fascination

531
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:25,840
Speaker 3: and like a professional scholarly level of knowledge of medieval

532
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 3: art history. In order to indulge this knowledge, he would

533
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 3: travel around on foot and through bicycle to different historic sites,

534
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:36,040
Speaker 3: either on his own or with a small group of

535
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 3: friends to His hobby is to make rubbings of brass

536
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 3: reliefs of crusaders and kings from various tombs and churches.

537
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 2: Right, a normal kid, like.

538
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 3: A normal kid. Yeah, just a normal kid. Now, this

539
00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:53,280
Speaker 3: is even for the day, a nerdy hobby, right, kids,

540
00:28:53,320 --> 00:28:55,720
Speaker 3: are you know reading fucking at least kids of this

541
00:28:55,880 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 3: level of wealth or reading like fucking the Iliad in

542
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 3: grade school? But this is nerd for that day. Right.

543
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:04,080
Speaker 2: He started to do original research on the alien and

544
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:09,959
Speaker 2: he's doing like original historiography, and Lawrence takes the nerdiness

545
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:13,400
Speaker 2: up a notch by developing an obsession with fidelity and

546
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:15,600
Speaker 2: completion that modern.

547
00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:18,719
Speaker 3: Day like nerd collectors will recognize, this is a kid

548
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 3: who in the modern era probably would have gotten way

549
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 3: too into like warhammer or something. Right, and I'm going

550
00:29:25,000 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 3: to put again from Anthony Sattin's biography, it was typical

551
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:32,600
Speaker 3: of Lawrence that his interest should become obsessive. His principal collaborator,

552
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:36,320
Speaker 3: his childhood friend, Cyril Beeson, known by his school nickname

553
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:40,320
Speaker 3: of Scroggs, remembered that it was no collector's hobby. There

554
00:29:40,360 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 3: were experiments in the technique of rubbing with different grades

555
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:45,840
Speaker 3: of heelball, a mix of lamp black and wax and paper,

556
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 3: assisted by friendly advice from shoemakers and paperhangers who shop

557
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 3: supplied our raw materials. Another school friend described the outings

558
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 3: as a ransacking. Nothing stood in Lawrence's way, So if

559
00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 3: Brass's were hidden behind some pews, Lawrence, already ruthless, made

560
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 3: short work of the obstruction. And I still hear the

561
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 3: splintering woodwork, and his short laugh almost sinister to my

562
00:30:06,960 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 3: timorous ears. So he's he's both like he will destroy

563
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 3: any like you don't give a fuck about those pews.

564
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 3: He will break and damage church property to get to

565
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 3: these goddamn reliefs that he's going to do rubbing.

566
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 2: Zod this is such a perfect British orientalist yes style

567
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 2: thing to get into, like, I'm gonna find the history

568
00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:31,880
Speaker 2: even if I have to destroy everything between me and it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

569
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 2: He is fucking child tomb raider. Yeah.

570
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:40,160
Speaker 3: Now, Lawrence is despite his brilliance and uneven student when

571
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:42,959
Speaker 3: he was interested in a type I think today there,

572
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:46,080
Speaker 3: I don't know what kind of neurodivergent he would be

573
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 3: diagnosed as, but made probably all of them.

574
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 2: Right.

575
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 3: One thing that is written about him is that if

576
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:54,480
Speaker 3: he was interested in a topic, he would be he

577
00:30:54,520 --> 00:30:57,000
Speaker 3: would be so far beyond every other student in the

578
00:30:57,040 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 3: class in that topic, you'd be like at the teachers level.

579
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:00,240
Speaker 1: Right.

580
00:31:00,840 --> 00:31:03,400
Speaker 3: And if he wasn't interested in something, he couldn't do

581
00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 3: the work at all. He was, he was completely non functional.

582
00:31:06,600 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 2: Right now, we can identify with this pretty hard.

583
00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:12,480
Speaker 3: You're going to identify very hard with the next thing

584
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 3: we talk about here, because he is the way to

585
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 3: look at him. He is an early iconoclastic example of

586
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 3: a nerd. Right. He is a proto geek. Right, and

587
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 3: he is I even wrote this in the script not

588
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 3: dissimilar in some ways to our guest for these episodes,

589
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 3: Margaret Killjoy and let me make that case now. At

590
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 3: age fifteen, Lawrence leads his friends on raids through Oxford's

591
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:39,520
Speaker 3: libraries to learn the secrets of how to make chainmail

592
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 3: and other medieval arms and armor for themselves.

593
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:47,040
Speaker 2: And he was doing when I was so our school

594
00:31:47,040 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 2: had to ban us for making chain mail.

595
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is what Lawrence is doing as a kid.

596
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:56,000
Speaker 3: He's like the very first generation of Western kid doing this.

597
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:56,440
Speaker 2: Right.

598
00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 3: They're making their own chain mail, their own weapon. They're

599
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:02,719
Speaker 3: teaching themselves how to fight by reading medieval man manuals.

600
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:06,160
Speaker 3: They learn how to speak appropriate old English and draw

601
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 3: heraldry from memory. Like this kid's soul is a wren

602
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 3: fair right, and Lawrence is one of those kids. His

603
00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 3: interest in medieval history is always married with this deep

604
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:22,680
Speaker 3: care for the fine details, for fidelity. One of his

605
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 3: hobbies he starts a hobby of like buying shards of

606
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:28,680
Speaker 3: pottery from excavations in the city. Right, people will be

607
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:30,880
Speaker 3: doing construction and they will they will turn up some

608
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 3: old pottery shards, and his hobby is like buy them

609
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 3: and meticulously glue them back together. And he is so

610
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 3: good at this as a teenage boy that local Oxford

611
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:43,720
Speaker 3: museum still keep and display pieces that he rebuilt from

612
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:46,960
Speaker 3: like the Roman era, Like he's that level of skill

613
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 3: that like even today his work as a child is

614
00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:50,880
Speaker 3: recognized as like pretty good.

615
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:52,440
Speaker 2: He was pretty good at that.

616
00:32:55,360 --> 00:32:59,320
Speaker 3: So they made the case very bright kid, probably probably

617
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:02,000
Speaker 3: fair to call a genius, the kind of.

618
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 2: Person who's going to do something really good or really terrible. Right,

619
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 2: as you've pointed out, somehow both.

620
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:11,760
Speaker 3: Somehow, both certainly significant. Now for his own part, Lawrence

621
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 3: described his education at Oxford High School with the words

622
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:18,920
Speaker 3: very little, very reluctantly, and very badly. Right. That's how

623
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:22,000
Speaker 3: he talks about his like the end of his primary

624
00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:25,800
Speaker 3: school education. We can into it from some details that

625
00:33:25,840 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 3: we do have that he was the recipient of a

626
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:30,320
Speaker 3: fair amount of bullying, as you would guess from a

627
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 3: child who is gluing together pottery sharks, like the.

628
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:40,560
Speaker 2: Most infamous bully academy in history, the School for making psychopaths.

629
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:46,200
Speaker 3: Yes, he develops as a child a hatred for bullies

630
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 3: that is going to be with him his entire life,

631
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 3: and that, at age sixteen spurs him into some disastrous action.

632
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 3: In this particularly notable incident, one of his friends is

633
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 3: being picked on by an older kid, and Lawrence intervenes,

634
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 3: but he is not a large boy, right, This other

635
00:34:02,440 --> 00:34:04,720
Speaker 3: kid is much bigger. Lawrence intervenes because it's the right

636
00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 3: thing to do, and the fight goes so badly that

637
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 3: his leg is broken enough that he misses a semester

638
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:13,360
Speaker 3: in school. Right like he has rendered an invalid for

639
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:15,759
Speaker 3: months because of how badly this kid beats the shit

640
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 3: out of him. His mother is convinced that the injury

641
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:20,360
Speaker 3: stops him from growing into what should have been his

642
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:24,480
Speaker 3: full height, although that's probably just not biologically true. Yeah,

643
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 3: I'm going to quote again from Satin's book here. The

644
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:31,960
Speaker 3: injury exacerbated Lawrence's reluctance to join in. His eldest brother, Bob,

645
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:34,919
Speaker 3: remembered that he was good at gymnastics and took part

646
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 3: in games in the playground, but Ned admitted that I've

647
00:34:38,120 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 3: never since I was able to think, played any game

648
00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 3: through to the end. At school, they used to stick

649
00:34:43,080 --> 00:34:45,360
Speaker 3: me in football are cricket teams, and I would always

650
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 3: trickle away from the field before the match ended. The

651
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 3: obvience reason might have been physical, but Lawrence later thought

652
00:34:51,160 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 3: there were other more complex issues behind his avoidance of

653
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:57,720
Speaker 3: team sports. Because they were organized, because they had rules,

654
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:01,160
Speaker 3: because they had results. I find that so interesting.

655
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 2: I identify with this.

656
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:03,279
Speaker 1: Yeah.

657
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 2: So if yeah, it's hard not to Yeah. Yeah. So.

658
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:13,759
Speaker 3: Schneider, who's not as detailed as Satin when it comes

659
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:18,520
Speaker 3: to dissecting Lawrence's personality in life, posits that Lawrence's ditaste

660
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:21,319
Speaker 3: for organized sports has something to do with the fact

661
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:24,360
Speaker 3: that he preferred to lead rather than follow. Now, I

662
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 3: think that's probably him working backwards and maybe an error.

663
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:30,239
Speaker 3: The quote from Lawrence that Satin presents is a more

664
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:33,439
Speaker 3: interesting explanation. They're organized, they have rules, and those rules

665
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 3: aren't my rules, right. I don't understand why things are

666
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:38,680
Speaker 3: doing this this way, and I don't like just saying, well,

667
00:35:38,719 --> 00:35:39,480
Speaker 3: this is the way.

668
00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:41,240
Speaker 2: Things are done. Yeah.

669
00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:43,960
Speaker 3: In the summer of nineteen oh five, Lawrence cycled to

670
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:46,760
Speaker 3: France with his father. This was not his first taste

671
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,840
Speaker 3: of freedom again. He traveled extensively across the UK on

672
00:35:49,920 --> 00:35:53,279
Speaker 3: foot and by bike, motivated partly by a desire to

673
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:55,800
Speaker 3: get away from his mom. But the trip to France

674
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:58,640
Speaker 3: awakens something in him, and for the next several years

675
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:01,160
Speaker 3: he feels this obsession with like I need to get

676
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:04,359
Speaker 3: out there, I need to travel. But unfortunately he's got

677
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:07,760
Speaker 3: to go to college. He attends Jesus College at Oxford.

678
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 3: Oxford is people talk about it as Oxford, but it's

679
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:13,360
Speaker 3: actually like five colleges, and Jesus is one of them, right.

680
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:17,040
Speaker 2: And this is a college called Jesus. There's Jesus College.

681
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:21,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just called Jesus. It just called Jesus. I

682
00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:23,799
Speaker 3: mean maybe they have a seminary degree, but that's not

683
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:26,799
Speaker 3: what he's doing. He's getting an undergraduate degree. He's a

684
00:36:26,920 --> 00:36:29,759
Speaker 3: history dude, and he hates college. He hates it even

685
00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 3: more than high school. He hates his undergraduate college. So

686
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:35,960
Speaker 3: he has to find outside ways to stimulate himself. And

687
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 3: so in nineteen oh six, at age eighteen, he takes

688
00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:42,719
Speaker 3: himself alone on a twenty four hundred mile cycling trip

689
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:46,919
Speaker 3: through France into the Greek coast. Now this is price

690
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 3: doesn't touch Greece. That's a long that's a.

691
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:51,200
Speaker 2: Long bicycle trip.

692
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:55,759
Speaker 3: And this is I think this is his equivalent of

693
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 3: if we're going back to the Margaret comparisons like being

694
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:03,160
Speaker 3: a trained kid, right, because he takes this This is

695
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:05,680
Speaker 3: not just about seeing, you know, France, It's not just

696
00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:09,759
Speaker 3: about cycling. It is an exercise in aestheticism. Lawrence wants

697
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:12,200
Speaker 3: to see how tough he is. Part of the goal

698
00:37:12,239 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 3: is he eats as little as possible because he wants

699
00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:18,000
Speaker 3: to explore how little food can take me? Can I

700
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:20,919
Speaker 3: live on while I going this distance? Right? And there's

701
00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 3: also this intellectual dimension to it. He spends the entire visit,

702
00:37:24,320 --> 00:37:27,279
Speaker 3: he goes through every medieval church and castle on this

703
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 3: route through France to Greece, and he analyzes the architecture

704
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 3: in exhausting detail. And Schneider makes a supposition here that

705
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:36,200
Speaker 3: I think is well founded, which is that he thinks

706
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 3: this journey is integral to Lawrence's growth into an insurgent

707
00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:43,920
Speaker 3: leader because it demanded and it cultured him in physical toughness.

708
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:46,520
Speaker 3: And he's also pay it's training him how to pay

709
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:50,440
Speaker 3: close surgical attention to his environment. And I have trouble

710
00:37:50,600 --> 00:37:53,120
Speaker 3: like arguing with that that contention here.

711
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:56,680
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like it's it's a little bit reading backwards,

712
00:37:56,719 --> 00:37:57,399
Speaker 2: but it's also right.

713
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not necessarily wrong. Now, when you string too

714
00:38:01,560 --> 00:38:04,640
Speaker 3: many details together like that in a podcast, it can

715
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:07,359
Speaker 3: make the man Lawrence seem kind of like an automaton

716
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 3: of history rather than a teenage boy. So one thing

717
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:12,880
Speaker 3: I value Satin for is he includes details from this

718
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 3: trip like that, Lawrence, while he's you know, starving himself

719
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 3: and biking thousands of miles and taking meticulous historical notes

720
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:23,160
Speaker 3: about all these castles and churches and stuff, he's writing

721
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:25,839
Speaker 3: his mom letters constantly telling her that he's not going

722
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 3: to tell her any details about his journey. All I'm

723
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:30,560
Speaker 3: going to tell you, mom, is descriptions of the buildings

724
00:38:30,560 --> 00:38:32,800
Speaker 3: that I've seen. And he does this so many times

725
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:35,319
Speaker 3: that you have to conclude this is him kind of

726
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:38,600
Speaker 3: sticking back at his mom because she's so controlling, Like,

727
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 3: fuck you, Mom.

728
00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:40,040
Speaker 2: You don't know me.

729
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:41,879
Speaker 3: I'm not going to tell you anything about my trip.

730
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 3: I'm just going to describe these buildings to you, like

731
00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:45,160
Speaker 3: a little shit.

732
00:38:45,360 --> 00:38:47,839
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also probably like fell in love like three

733
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 2: separate times on that trip. Yes, yes you have.

734
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:52,879
Speaker 3: Well maybe not, Margaret. We're going to talk about that.

735
00:38:53,480 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 3: This Lawrence of Arabia may low key be our first

736
00:38:56,080 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 3: behind the Bastard's Ace icon. Oh okay, yeah, well but

737
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 3: we're building to that. Or he's a pedophile one of

738
00:39:04,680 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 3: the two. Mark I, let's hope for ace.

739
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:08,560
Speaker 2: Yeah.

740
00:39:08,719 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 3: So Lawrence's journey ends on the Greek coast with a

741
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:16,160
Speaker 3: miserable case of malaria. He is also just sick constantly,

742
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:18,320
Speaker 3: which I think is just unavoidable if you travel in

743
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 3: this period of time, Like if you are a world

744
00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 3: traveler in the late Victorian era, you are dying of

745
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:28,600
Speaker 3: fucking typhus or malaria or something eighty percent of your

746
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:33,000
Speaker 3: waking hours. But while he's kind of trying to survive malaria,

747
00:39:33,239 --> 00:39:37,000
Speaker 3: he gets a view across the Aegean of distant Turkey

748
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 3: and this ignites something in him. Later he would write,

749
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:42,959
Speaker 3: I felt that at last I had reached the way

750
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 3: to the South, and all the glorious East, Greece, Carthage, Egypt, Tears, Syria, Italy, Spain,

751
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 3: Sicily Crete, they were all there and all within reach

752
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:56,000
Speaker 3: of me. I fancy I now know better than Keats

753
00:39:56,000 --> 00:40:00,120
Speaker 3: what Cortes felt like, silent upon a peak, and Darian, Oh,

754
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:03,640
Speaker 3: I must get down here farther out again. Really, this

755
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 3: getting to the sea has almost overturned my mental balance.

756
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:10,319
Speaker 3: I would accept a passage for Greece tomorrow. So he's

757
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:12,040
Speaker 3: just the fact that he has to go back to school,

758
00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:16,160
Speaker 3: go back to England, so close to this this world

759
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 3: that he's just been reading about all of his classical

760
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:22,680
Speaker 3: education and like the Crusades and whatnot. It's like a

761
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:26,160
Speaker 3: wound in his soul that he can't just keep traveling.

762
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 2: It's like I think for I think for a lot

763
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:32,520
Speaker 2: of the Victorian, especially English, it's kind of like reaching

764
00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:35,440
Speaker 2: the world of fairy Like. Yeah, in the orientalist's mind,

765
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:37,839
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, I have discovered the place where none

766
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:40,359
Speaker 2: of the rules make sense, and I don't belong in

767
00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 2: this world. So here's this other world, you know, like

768
00:40:43,680 --> 00:40:46,880
Speaker 2: Byron and all those people were like obsessed with the

769
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 2: Near East for that reason, you know.

770
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:51,200
Speaker 3: And if you were nerd in this period, there's not

771
00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:54,960
Speaker 3: Tolkien to fall into. They're certainly not like Star Wars,

772
00:40:55,239 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 3: but you have classic history and medieval history, right, And

773
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:02,799
Speaker 3: so is for him like if someone today, if you

774
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:05,480
Speaker 3: were to just stumble into Middle Earth, like right, like

775
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:07,920
Speaker 3: that that's how he feels about it, and like that

776
00:41:08,080 --> 00:41:12,000
Speaker 3: is orientalism, right, Like that's a factor in orientalism. But

777
00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:14,239
Speaker 3: it's also when you think about it from the perspective

778
00:41:14,280 --> 00:41:16,399
Speaker 3: not of someone of power, but of this like boy

779
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 3: who's just been has this obsessive interest in the history

780
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 3: of this era area. There's a degree that you have

781
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:25,879
Speaker 3: to be kind of sympathetic too at this stage where

782
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:28,920
Speaker 3: it's like, well, yeah, of course he felt this way.

783
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:31,120
Speaker 2: Because Orientalism is really complex because you have both of

784
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:33,319
Speaker 2: the like Orientalists like, oh, we're going to go over

785
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:35,839
Speaker 2: there and steal all your mummies and smoke them, and

786
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 2: that's like coming from like power, I would smoke a mummy.

787
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:42,279
Speaker 2: I would smoke a mummy. Mar no fair. But there's

788
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 2: also just this like well that's there's this also kind

789
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,360
Speaker 2: of putting on a pedestal, which is also not always great,

790
00:41:49,480 --> 00:41:50,600
Speaker 2: but there's like like there's a weed.

791
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 3: No, it's problematic too, but yeah, it's he and he's

792
00:41:53,239 --> 00:41:57,000
Speaker 3: from the web side of things right now. Once he

793
00:41:57,080 --> 00:41:59,919
Speaker 3: becomes a graduate student, his enjoyment of school improves mark

794
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:04,080
Speaker 3: because the pedagogical style and that part of Oxford once

795
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:06,759
Speaker 3: you hit your graduate era, instead of just being like

796
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:09,040
Speaker 3: you have to learn and memorize these things we say,

797
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 3: which is just torture. For Lawrence, it's like, hey, what

798
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:16,160
Speaker 3: are you interested in? Our job as your advisors is

799
00:42:16,239 --> 00:42:18,480
Speaker 3: to find the areas of interest you're in and like

800
00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:20,560
Speaker 3: figure out why working with you ways that you can

801
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:23,759
Speaker 3: contribute to academia that you can move and like that

802
00:42:23,960 --> 00:42:27,279
Speaker 3: Lawrence excels in right once, that's what school is. He

803
00:42:27,360 --> 00:42:30,760
Speaker 3: does very well. So Lawrence and his advisor talk themselves

804
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:33,200
Speaker 3: into an idea for how he might combine his desire

805
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:35,960
Speaker 3: to travel further east, which had been sparked by his

806
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:39,120
Speaker 3: first vision of the Greek shoreline, and his obsessive interest

807
00:42:39,160 --> 00:42:43,440
Speaker 3: in medieval architecture. A major debate at the time centered

808
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 3: around the presence of castles built by European crusaders in

809
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:49,920
Speaker 3: the Middle East that had structures in common with some

810
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 3: of the structure scene in classical medieval European castles, and

811
00:42:53,520 --> 00:42:57,560
Speaker 3: the question was does this mean that Europeans introduced certain

812
00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:00,759
Speaker 3: architectural methods to the Arab world or was it the

813
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:06,680
Speaker 3: reverse Crusaders learned local techniques from you know, local people

814
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:10,000
Speaker 3: in you know, the Arab world during the crusades and

815
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:13,560
Speaker 3: then took them home with them, right, And so medieval

816
00:43:13,680 --> 00:43:16,200
Speaker 3: castles are actually, in large part an example of knowledge

817
00:43:16,200 --> 00:43:21,000
Speaker 3: transfer from the Muslim world to the West, right, right,

818
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:24,400
Speaker 3: which is I think largely true. It's agreed obviously, like

819
00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:26,719
Speaker 3: this is the kind of thing that's more complicated than

820
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 3: we're going to exhaustively like tease out an episode of

821
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:33,480
Speaker 3: Behind the Bastards a podcast by two people who don't

822
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:37,719
Speaker 3: know much about my medieval architecture. But Lawrence, I think

823
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 3: the agreement is that he was onto something here, right,

824
00:43:40,520 --> 00:43:42,800
Speaker 3: And obviously he's not the one who started this idea,

825
00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:45,000
Speaker 3: other people had proposed it. But he's going to actually

826
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 3: contribute significantly to like historia historological debate in this measure, right,

827
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 3: So Satin writes, quote, Lawrence decided to take a broader

828
00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:56,960
Speaker 3: view of the topic and to question whether the skill

829
00:43:57,000 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 3: to build a castle, not just a pointy arch, had

830
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:02,319
Speaker 3: come from the East. The accepted view championed at that

831
00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:05,360
Speaker 3: time by Charles Ohmann, professor of history at Oxford, was

832
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:08,680
Speaker 3: that the Europeans marched east with hardly any understanding of

833
00:44:08,719 --> 00:44:11,640
Speaker 3: fortifications and learned from the Byzantines how to build the

834
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:14,920
Speaker 3: magnificent castles they have left in the levant. According to Aman,

835
00:44:15,080 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 3: much of what Lawrence had admired in France had its

836
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:20,360
Speaker 3: origins elsewhere, but neither ormand Know any of the others,

837
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:22,319
Speaker 3: nor any of the other scholars who had written about

838
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:25,120
Speaker 3: this period had traveled to Syria and Palestine to see

839
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:28,759
Speaker 3: the buildings, relying instead on historical documents for evidence to

840
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 3: support their theories. Now, this is something that's going to

841
00:44:32,040 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 3: be a thing for Lawrence's whole working life, which is

842
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:37,680
Speaker 3: that he's willing to go places other people of his

843
00:44:37,719 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 3: status aren't. And he always prefers to do the most difficult,

844
00:44:42,200 --> 00:44:45,520
Speaker 3: dangerous version of any task set before him. Right. He

845
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:49,320
Speaker 3: is not someone who is like comfortable making inferences or

846
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:53,280
Speaker 3: assumptions without actually getting his hands dirty. So he decides,

847
00:44:53,600 --> 00:44:55,440
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to the Middle East to take

848
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:58,919
Speaker 3: part specifically, I'm going to go to Turkey to take

849
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 3: part in, you know, a dig in some of these

850
00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:04,839
Speaker 3: classical ruins, and I'm going.

851
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:05,319
Speaker 2: To start that.

852
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:08,239
Speaker 3: Before I go over to Turkey, I'm gonna do a

853
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:11,919
Speaker 3: walking tour of Syria. Now, he has warned ahead of time,

854
00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:15,880
Speaker 3: no one, no European does this, right, it's too hot,

855
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:19,440
Speaker 3: it's too dangerous. You need a guide in servants to

856
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:22,600
Speaker 3: carry your luggage and whatnot. And Lawrence is like, no,

857
00:45:22,760 --> 00:45:24,839
Speaker 3: I'm just going to walk on my own, right, I'm

858
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:27,239
Speaker 3: gonna carry my own shit, and like I'm gonna I'm

859
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:27,680
Speaker 3: going to.

860
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:31,799
Speaker 2: Invent backpacking as a hobby. Yeah, yeah, So weirds are

861
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:32,759
Speaker 2: we talking about here?

862
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 3: We are talking nineteen oh six, Okay, yeah, so he

863
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:40,080
Speaker 3: says he's gonna do this, and his Yeah, his advisors

864
00:45:40,120 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 3: like Europeans don't walk in Syria, and Lawrence's response is,

865
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 3: well I do. Which hard not to like this guy,

866
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:50,319
Speaker 3: I know. So he takes his first steps into the

867
00:45:50,320 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 3: Arab world during a fascinating time in relations between his

868
00:45:53,239 --> 00:45:55,359
Speaker 3: country and the end. Again, when I say the air world,

869
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:58,600
Speaker 3: Syria is the Arab world. Obviously Turkey is not. Turks

870
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:01,000
Speaker 3: are not Arabs, I want to be clear that I'm

871
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:03,160
Speaker 3: not like conflating the two. I'm gonna be using a

872
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:07,880
Speaker 3: lot of terms that like, because he travels extensively in

873
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:10,360
Speaker 3: the Middle East. He travels extensively in the Near East,

874
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:14,760
Speaker 3: which is more accurate to call Turkey. Yeah, and he travels.

875
00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:16,280
Speaker 3: He spends a lot of time both on the Arab

876
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 3: Peninsula and in modern day Syria and Iraq. Right, that's

877
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:22,360
Speaker 3: all of his like stomping grounds. But at this stage

878
00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:25,760
Speaker 3: he's kind of walking through Syria, going through the Holy

879
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:29,640
Speaker 3: Land and getting to like kind of the Ottoman heartland, right, Like,

880
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:33,920
Speaker 3: that's the gist of this trip. And he takes this

881
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:37,799
Speaker 3: during a fascinating time in relations between his country and

882
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:40,640
Speaker 3: the Ottoman Empire, which was well in decline by the

883
00:46:40,640 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 3: mid eighteen hundreds, riven by unrest and constantly picked at

884
00:46:45,120 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 3: by expansionist csars and quarrelsome Serbs. By eighteen fifty four,

885
00:46:49,680 --> 00:46:52,319
Speaker 3: Great Britain had actually come into the Crimean War on

886
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 3: the side of the Ottomans, not because like, oh, they're

887
00:46:55,560 --> 00:46:58,440
Speaker 3: being picked on, but because, like, if the Ottomans fall

888
00:46:58,600 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 3: and Russia, you know, stins the Russian Empire across like

889
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 3: fucking Constantinople, then we don't have a bulwark against this

890
00:47:07,040 --> 00:47:09,640
Speaker 3: country that we see as a geopolitical rival. Right.

891
00:47:09,680 --> 00:47:12,359
Speaker 2: You're saying that the Western Powers need to have an

892
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:13,359
Speaker 2: ally in the.

893
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:17,880
Speaker 3: Yes, in the struggle against Russia. Yes, and in this

894
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:21,880
Speaker 3: case it's the Ottomans. The British had another reason for

895
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:24,840
Speaker 3: wanting good relations with the Ottomans that's even more selfish,

896
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:27,360
Speaker 3: which is that the Sultan of the Empire, and again

897
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:31,920
Speaker 3: this is a Turk is the Khalif of Islam. Right now,

898
00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 3: this does not in fact make him. The way a

899
00:47:34,080 --> 00:47:36,359
Speaker 3: lot of Europeans take this is that like he's the

900
00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:40,640
Speaker 3: Pope of Islam, right, which is kind of the case,

901
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:43,239
Speaker 3: but also really not the case in the hearts of

902
00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:47,680
Speaker 3: most Muslims. Because like a shitload of the Muslim population

903
00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:51,080
Speaker 3: or Arab right, and so they both are co religionists

904
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:54,160
Speaker 3: with the Khalif and also are oppressed and ruled by

905
00:47:54,200 --> 00:47:56,919
Speaker 3: the Turks and not happy with it necessarily.

906
00:47:57,239 --> 00:47:58,719
Speaker 2: Right, starting to get kind of more of the rise

907
00:47:58,760 --> 00:48:01,000
Speaker 2: of Turkish nationalists. I'm during this period.

908
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:06,279
Speaker 3: Turkish nationalism and Arab nationalism is starting. I meant to say, yes, well,

909
00:48:06,320 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 3: I mean Turkish nationalism is also a major factor.

910
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:11,399
Speaker 2: And what's happening, yeah, right, but in like opposite directions, right, Yeah,

911
00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:14,319
Speaker 2: the Arab nationalism is it tenants against y.

912
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:16,800
Speaker 3: And as we're talking about, we'll talk about the Turkish

913
00:48:16,880 --> 00:48:20,080
Speaker 3: nationalism is like everyone in this entire wide region of

914
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:22,560
Speaker 3: the world are Turks. There are no Arabs, there are

915
00:48:22,560 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 3: no Kurds, You're just mountain Turks.

916
00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:25,279
Speaker 2: Have lost your.

917
00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 3: Language, right, which a lot of Turkish people still still

918
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:31,360
Speaker 3: argue for today. It's kind of a major factor in

919
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:35,719
Speaker 3: what's happening in Rajava. So anyway, a lot of Europeans assume, oh,

920
00:48:35,719 --> 00:48:38,520
Speaker 3: this Khalif is like the king of Islam, and so

921
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:41,840
Speaker 3: you know, we have India, the Gym and the crown

922
00:48:41,880 --> 00:48:44,799
Speaker 3: of the British Empire with this massive Muslim population, and

923
00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:48,240
Speaker 3: we have constant issues with uprisings, and if the Khalif

924
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 3: gets pissed at us, he might call for a jihad

925
00:48:51,160 --> 00:48:54,279
Speaker 3: from these Indian Muslims, and who knows what will happen then, right,

926
00:48:55,200 --> 00:48:58,680
Speaker 3: which is not like a complete non factor as a threat,

927
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 3: But they're also vastly stating the degree of influence the

928
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:07,880
Speaker 3: caliph has right in fucking India. So this is the

929
00:49:07,880 --> 00:49:10,640
Speaker 3: status quo for a while, Like we're gonna, you know,

930
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:14,280
Speaker 3: keep propping up the Ottoman Empire because of these reasons

931
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:16,839
Speaker 3: that are useful for our own empire. But then things

932
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:19,040
Speaker 3: start to change in eighteen sixty nine, which is when

933
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:22,279
Speaker 3: the Suez Canal opens in Egypt. One reason that the

934
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 3: British Empire had needed the Ottomans to remain semi stable

935
00:49:27,400 --> 00:49:30,279
Speaker 3: was that we need them in order to provide us

936
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:32,839
Speaker 3: with a way to quickly and easily take goods from

937
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:34,359
Speaker 3: the East and the Europe and vice versa.

938
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:37,319
Speaker 2: Right, do you say goods and services? Goods and services? Right?

939
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:40,760
Speaker 3: Speaking of goods and services, you know who else takes

940
00:49:41,080 --> 00:49:44,200
Speaker 3: every product that sponsored on this show travels through the

941
00:49:44,200 --> 00:49:47,919
Speaker 3: Ottoman Empire, you know, including it's extremely expensive. Yeah, yeah,

942
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 3: it's ruining the time stream. We have time cup problems

943
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:54,240
Speaker 3: every fucking week, always trying to bring various weight loss

944
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:58,400
Speaker 3: pills and gambling apps through the Ottoman Empire. And you know,

945
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:02,800
Speaker 3: how do Ottomans for the eighteen nineties feel about Chumba Casino.

946
00:50:02,840 --> 00:50:05,720
Speaker 3: They don't love it, Margaret, they don't love Chumpa Casino.

947
00:50:07,160 --> 00:50:13,399
Speaker 3: They're broadly positive about the Trump sneakers though. Anyway, here's

948
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:23,440
Speaker 3: some ads, So we're back. So yeah, the British, you know,

949
00:50:23,480 --> 00:50:25,759
Speaker 3: get the sus Canal going, and suddenly they don't really

950
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:28,680
Speaker 3: need the Ottoman Empire to be a stable in order

951
00:50:28,680 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 3: to like move goods and services, right, and they, you know,

952
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:34,319
Speaker 3: they make a shitload of money off the canal, and

953
00:50:34,360 --> 00:50:36,680
Speaker 3: once they're kind of fatted on canal profits, they stop

954
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:40,640
Speaker 3: really caring about the Sultan and like propping his bullshit up.

955
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:42,919
Speaker 3: And as a result, the British kind of snooze through.

956
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:46,640
Speaker 3: Another Russian invasion of Ottoman territory. Now this isn't the

957
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 3: ottomanive heartland. It's the Balkans, right, which you have to

958
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:51,880
Speaker 3: remember much of the Balkans, you know, the territory that

959
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:55,320
Speaker 3: becomes like Yugoslavia during the twenty the later twentieth century

960
00:50:55,840 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 3: is Ottoman territory in this period of time. And so

961
00:50:59,440 --> 00:51:03,560
Speaker 3: the Russians invade the Balkans and you know, eighteen eighty

962
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:06,960
Speaker 3: two or the Russians invade the Balkans, and like, you know,

963
00:51:07,040 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 3: the Brits don't do anything. And then in eighteen eighty

964
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:13,400
Speaker 3: two the British occupy Egypt. Near the end of the century,

965
00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:16,240
Speaker 3: Greece and the Ottomans go to war, and war spreads

966
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:20,840
Speaker 3: quickly in this connected world. British colonial figures in India

967
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:24,200
Speaker 3: are shocked and horrified when Indian Muslims start demonstrating in

968
00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:26,560
Speaker 3: support of the Ottoman side of the war, and they

969
00:51:26,600 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 3: take this as, oh, you know, the Khalif, their leader

970
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:31,840
Speaker 3: has called them to action. I think what this actually

971
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:35,239
Speaker 3: is is that like Muslims in India sympathized with their

972
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:38,359
Speaker 3: co religionists in a very natural way in a war

973
00:51:38,400 --> 00:51:42,239
Speaker 3: against the West's right. I think that's more accurate than like, ah,

974
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:44,799
Speaker 3: the Khalif ordered them and they have to follow him.

975
00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:47,320
Speaker 3: I want to quote now from a book called Setting

976
00:51:47,320 --> 00:51:50,239
Speaker 3: the Desert on a Fire by James Barr, and this

977
00:51:50,360 --> 00:51:54,000
Speaker 3: is talking about like European coverage of the war against Greece.

978
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:57,479
Speaker 3: At the times, Valentine Chirol believed that the Sultan's power

979
00:51:57,520 --> 00:52:01,200
Speaker 3: as khalif gave him a disturbing and disruptive political influence worldwide.

980
00:52:01,520 --> 00:52:03,520
Speaker 3: He and others feared that the Sultan would use his

981
00:52:03,560 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 3: position to upset the stability of Britain's Eastern Empire. Now

982
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:10,879
Speaker 3: this is not how things worse work out. And this

983
00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:13,359
Speaker 3: is probably we know, now probably fair to call this

984
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:16,399
Speaker 3: a silly and racist assumption. But you know who else

985
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:21,319
Speaker 3: is silly and racist, Margaret not our sponsors Germans. And

986
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:23,920
Speaker 3: while the British are like, oh my god, what if

987
00:52:23,960 --> 00:52:26,839
Speaker 3: the Caliph incites a rebellion in India, the Germans are

988
00:52:26,880 --> 00:52:30,239
Speaker 3: also looking and seeing England as a geopolitical enemy and going,

989
00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:32,120
Speaker 3: oh my god, what if we could get the Sultan

990
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:34,560
Speaker 3: to incite a rebellion in India? Or you know, that

991
00:52:34,640 --> 00:52:37,440
Speaker 3: could really help us with our British people problem. So

992
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:40,920
Speaker 3: the Germans start increasingly sinking resources into making the Ottomans

993
00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:43,839
Speaker 3: their friends. They send engineers and metal workers to help

994
00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:47,000
Speaker 3: the Sultan build railways, and they send military officers to

995
00:52:47,080 --> 00:52:48,240
Speaker 3: modernize his army.

996
00:52:48,600 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 2: And this is you know that if tankies existed, then

997
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:54,960
Speaker 2: they'd be supporting the Germans because they'd be like, well,

998
00:52:54,960 --> 00:52:56,720
Speaker 2: at least they're against the British.

999
00:52:56,320 --> 00:53:01,400
Speaker 3: Anti imperialist icons, the Kaiser's Germany. Yeah, yeah, there's no

1000
00:53:01,480 --> 00:53:06,160
Speaker 3: genocide in Namibia. What are you talking about? No Armenians

1001
00:53:06,200 --> 00:53:10,520
Speaker 3: were ever killed by the Turks now anti Western, anti

1002
00:53:10,520 --> 00:53:12,760
Speaker 3: imperialist icons, the Turkish Empire.

1003
00:53:13,560 --> 00:53:15,360
Speaker 2: I know a bit about how the Germans are going

1004
00:53:15,440 --> 00:53:18,840
Speaker 2: to be involved in the Armenian genocide in a lastic Germans.

1005
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:20,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're not gonna get We'll be talking a

1006
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:22,880
Speaker 3: little bit about that, not enough. But this isn't a

1007
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:25,799
Speaker 3: story primarily about that. But that is happening, right. This

1008
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:29,440
Speaker 3: is the situation in the Muslim world. When Te Lawrence

1009
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:32,200
Speaker 3: embarks on his first journey there in June of nineteen

1010
00:53:32,239 --> 00:53:35,440
Speaker 3: oh nine, a steamership takes him to the port of

1011
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:39,680
Speaker 3: Jedda in modern days Saudi Arabia now Later, during the

1012
00:53:39,719 --> 00:53:43,239
Speaker 3: second landing in Jedda in nineteen sixteen, Lawrence writes about

1013
00:53:43,239 --> 00:53:46,759
Speaker 3: the experience of taking this steamership to Jetta, and this

1014
00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:49,040
Speaker 3: is such a beautiful passage that I just have to

1015
00:53:49,120 --> 00:53:52,000
Speaker 3: read it. When we at last anchored in the outer

1016
00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:55,160
Speaker 3: harbor off the White Town, hung between the blazing sky

1017
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:58,280
Speaker 3: and its reflection in the mirage which swept and rolled

1018
00:53:58,320 --> 00:54:01,279
Speaker 3: over the wide lagoon. Then the heat of Arabia came

1019
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 3: out like a drawn sword and struck a speechless.

1020
00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:11,960
Speaker 2: He clearly cares about living an esthetic life. Yes, that's

1021
00:54:12,200 --> 00:54:15,680
Speaker 2: everything to him, but also, like you were talking about earlier,

1022
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:18,160
Speaker 2: how he still wants I'm sure he's going to fail

1023
00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:20,000
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of times, but he wants to do

1024
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:23,120
Speaker 2: what's right in any given situation. Well at the same time, yeah,

1025
00:54:23,160 --> 00:54:26,200
Speaker 2: trying to live up a beautiful life regardless of the

1026
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:30,400
Speaker 2: yes cost to his health. And that's that's fascinating.

1027
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:33,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. And I can tell you just from

1028
00:54:33,520 --> 00:54:36,920
Speaker 3: extensively traveling in this similar region, that description of like

1029
00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:40,280
Speaker 3: the heat like a drawn sword striking you in the face,

1030
00:54:40,560 --> 00:54:43,319
Speaker 3: I identify with quite a lot like that. Is That

1031
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:45,759
Speaker 3: is how it like, especially that first getting off the

1032
00:54:45,800 --> 00:54:48,719
Speaker 3: plane in a rack and stepping outside, for it is

1033
00:54:48,840 --> 00:54:51,640
Speaker 3: it does feel like you've been assaulted suddenly. It's like

1034
00:54:51,680 --> 00:54:53,040
Speaker 3: a violent experience.

1035
00:54:53,600 --> 00:54:58,320
Speaker 2: Is a dry a wet heat? It is a dry heat. Yes.

1036
00:55:00,160 --> 00:55:03,520
Speaker 3: From Jetta, he covered more than eleven hundred miles, mostly

1037
00:55:03,560 --> 00:55:06,400
Speaker 3: on foot in a ride up for the Guardian Laura

1038
00:55:06,440 --> 00:55:10,839
Speaker 3: Feigel describes his journey. Lawrence wandered around Syria clad fastidiously

1039
00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:14,160
Speaker 3: in a bespoke suit and hobnailed boots. He've amused the

1040
00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:17,440
Speaker 3: natives with his insistence on walking, even when accompanied by

1041
00:55:17,520 --> 00:55:20,880
Speaker 3: guides on horseback. He was especially English in his understated

1042
00:55:20,920 --> 00:55:24,040
Speaker 3: response to hardship. I've had the delay of four attacks

1043
00:55:24,080 --> 00:55:26,480
Speaker 3: of malaria when I had only reckoned on two. He

1044
00:55:26,600 --> 00:55:29,680
Speaker 3: complained to his mother, informing her nonchalantly that he had

1045
00:55:29,680 --> 00:55:32,480
Speaker 3: been robbed and rather snatched up by a group of

1046
00:55:32,600 --> 00:55:37,239
Speaker 3: armed robbers just casually, like nearly died of malaria, got

1047
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:38,400
Speaker 3: beaten by bandits.

1048
00:55:38,440 --> 00:55:42,320
Speaker 2: Anyway, how are you doing, mom? That is the one

1049
00:55:42,600 --> 00:55:48,120
Speaker 2: the British characteristic that like endurates. It's pretty good. It's

1050
00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:50,879
Speaker 2: pretty good. Not everyone should have it, but the keep

1051
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:53,719
Speaker 2: calm and carry on while you're being while you're literally

1052
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:58,320
Speaker 2: the only nache power of fighting the Nazis. Yeah, sometimes

1053
00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:01,640
Speaker 2: you just need the like anxious, so stiff upper lip.

1054
00:56:01,800 --> 00:56:04,120
Speaker 3: I mean, it's part of why I've spent most of

1055
00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:07,919
Speaker 3: my career reporting alongside British journalists. When like you're really

1056
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:10,000
Speaker 3: in the shit, it's very helpful to have a brit

1057
00:56:10,040 --> 00:56:16,560
Speaker 3: next to you, they're very good. Yea, yeah, they call

1058
00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:18,680
Speaker 3: them a word that sounds like a slur, but it's not.

1059
00:56:20,160 --> 00:56:20,279
Speaker 2: So.

1060
00:56:20,719 --> 00:56:24,680
Speaker 3: His experience entered. His experience of this time where he's

1061
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:29,000
Speaker 3: like nearly dying while walking eleven hundred miles, is completely positive.

1062
00:56:29,040 --> 00:56:32,600
Speaker 3: He is just he falls madly in love with the

1063
00:56:32,719 --> 00:56:36,720
Speaker 3: local culture, with particularly like these Arabs that he's starting

1064
00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:38,840
Speaker 3: to meet as he begins his journey through that portion

1065
00:56:38,920 --> 00:56:42,359
Speaker 3: of the Ottoman Empire, and he's particularly taken by their

1066
00:56:42,400 --> 00:56:44,560
Speaker 3: treatment of him as a guest. He writes home to

1067
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:47,759
Speaker 3: his father, this is a glorious country for wandering in,

1068
00:56:47,840 --> 00:56:51,000
Speaker 3: for hospitality is something more than a name. Setting aside

1069
00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:53,759
Speaker 3: the American and English missionaries who take care of me

1070
00:56:53,800 --> 00:56:56,279
Speaker 3: in the most fatherly or motherly way, they have all

1071
00:56:56,320 --> 00:56:58,640
Speaker 3: so far been as good as they can be. There

1072
00:56:58,640 --> 00:57:01,239
Speaker 3: are the common people, each one ready to receive one

1073
00:57:01,280 --> 00:57:04,000
Speaker 3: for a night and allow me to share in their meals,

1074
00:57:04,160 --> 00:57:06,560
Speaker 3: and without a thought of payment from a traveler on foot.

1075
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:08,920
Speaker 3: It is so pleasant, for they have a very attractive

1076
00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:12,560
Speaker 3: kind of native dignity, and there's a you know, there's

1077
00:57:12,800 --> 00:57:15,640
Speaker 3: Orientalism going on in that passage. But this is also

1078
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:18,160
Speaker 3: something if you travel in this region of the world

1079
00:57:18,160 --> 00:57:21,840
Speaker 3: today you will experience, which is the treatment of guests

1080
00:57:22,760 --> 00:57:26,240
Speaker 3: is It's deeper than just Islam. It's something that goes

1081
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:29,200
Speaker 3: back very far in that region of the world, and

1082
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:30,560
Speaker 3: it is a profound experience.

1083
00:57:30,560 --> 00:57:31,440
Speaker 2: I don't know how else to.

1084
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:35,440
Speaker 3: Describe it, but like the welcome you are in people's homes,

1085
00:57:35,720 --> 00:57:38,360
Speaker 3: people like fighting over hosting you and putting you up

1086
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 3: through the night. Like it's a very unique experience. And

1087
00:57:43,680 --> 00:57:46,160
Speaker 3: I'm not surprised he's taken by it. I know exactly

1088
00:57:46,160 --> 00:57:48,600
Speaker 3: how he feels here, and there is this feeling of

1089
00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:52,360
Speaker 3: belonging that's totally different from like southern hospitality right where

1090
00:57:52,360 --> 00:57:54,640
Speaker 3: people will offer you things, but it's kind of rude

1091
00:57:54,760 --> 00:57:59,120
Speaker 3: generally to take them. It's more a matter of like,

1092
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 3: like you all, it's almost sometimes a problem for you.

1093
00:58:03,080 --> 00:58:05,280
Speaker 3: The degree to which people are offering you meals in

1094
00:58:05,360 --> 00:58:07,880
Speaker 3: hospitality because like you have, you have a schedule to keep,

1095
00:58:07,920 --> 00:58:09,320
Speaker 3: You've got to get places right.

1096
00:58:11,040 --> 00:58:13,000
Speaker 2: And what he says, it goes beyond Islam. I know

1097
00:58:13,040 --> 00:58:16,480
Speaker 2: that it's a fundamental concept in Islam is taking.

1098
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:19,200
Speaker 3: Yes, it's like but but it's a fundamental concept in

1099
00:58:19,280 --> 00:58:21,920
Speaker 3: Islam because that was present in the cultures of the

1100
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:26,520
Speaker 3: region before Islam existed. Right, I'm not saying like Islam stolen.

1101
00:58:26,560 --> 00:58:28,520
Speaker 3: I'm saying that like it is a part of Islam,

1102
00:58:28,560 --> 00:58:30,120
Speaker 3: because it's been a part of the culture for.

1103
00:58:30,240 --> 00:58:34,400
Speaker 2: Much The people who made Islam already had that going on, right, Right, that's.

1104
00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:38,520
Speaker 3: Now Lawrence seems to have been drawn in part to

1105
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 3: the feeling of belonging that he felt here because he'd

1106
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:43,479
Speaker 3: never felt like he belonged at home, in part because

1107
00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:46,360
Speaker 3: he's haunted by his status as an illegitimate child, so

1108
00:58:46,440 --> 00:58:48,560
Speaker 3: part of the people here everywhere he goes because he

1109
00:58:48,600 --> 00:58:51,720
Speaker 3: glues pospet together. Right. He never he doesn't feel like

1110
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:54,600
Speaker 3: he belongs. He feels like a fraud and impostor, he's bullied,

1111
00:58:54,640 --> 00:58:56,640
Speaker 3: and then he goes to this place where everyone's extremely

1112
00:58:56,680 --> 00:58:58,600
Speaker 3: happy to see him and nice to him, and he

1113
00:58:58,680 --> 00:59:02,600
Speaker 3: feels like he has a place to be. Right now,

1114
00:59:02,640 --> 00:59:06,080
Speaker 3: there's also imperialist impulses right that are influenced by his

1115
00:59:06,120 --> 00:59:09,720
Speaker 3: obsession with the Crusades. Schneider writes, quote, Lawrence began to

1116
00:59:09,720 --> 00:59:11,919
Speaker 3: see the Arab world in a new way and would

1117
00:59:12,000 --> 00:59:13,960
Speaker 3: soon come to believe that he could move and bind

1118
00:59:14,000 --> 00:59:16,960
Speaker 3: it to his will, that his Crusader musings were more

1119
00:59:17,000 --> 00:59:20,200
Speaker 3: than an adolescent fantasy. We're starting to see some of

1120
00:59:20,320 --> 00:59:23,800
Speaker 3: like the darker side growing as he begins to understand,

1121
00:59:23,880 --> 00:59:25,920
Speaker 3: he also starts to think about how I can manipulate

1122
00:59:25,960 --> 00:59:29,360
Speaker 3: and change things here. So Lawrence has this first trip

1123
00:59:29,400 --> 00:59:32,040
Speaker 3: and he has a wonderful time. He returns home with

1124
00:59:32,120 --> 00:59:35,720
Speaker 3: his documentation of these different like structures he's seen from

1125
00:59:35,760 --> 00:59:40,000
Speaker 3: the Crusades, and he graduates from Oxford. Right. He makes

1126
00:59:40,000 --> 00:59:43,160
Speaker 3: several more trips to France to work for the Ashmolean Museum,

1127
00:59:43,200 --> 00:59:47,480
Speaker 3: but he remains obsessed with the East. Right, and in

1128
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:50,800
Speaker 3: late nineteen ten, he succeeds in setting up an apprenticeship

1129
00:59:50,840 --> 00:59:54,560
Speaker 3: and an archaeological dig in Turkey. To prepare, he traveled

1130
00:59:54,560 --> 00:59:57,480
Speaker 3: to Beroot that Christmas and spent two months in Lebanon

1131
00:59:57,600 --> 01:00:01,520
Speaker 3: being tutored in Arabic. Schneider writes that sixty years later,

1132
01:00:01,800 --> 01:00:05,040
Speaker 3: his Arabic teacher recalled him as someone who quote lived

1133
01:00:05,160 --> 01:00:08,280
Speaker 3: rather in the spirit than in the body. Right, that's

1134
01:00:08,280 --> 01:00:11,880
Speaker 3: her description of Lawrence from meeting him. Okay, Now, many

1135
01:00:11,920 --> 01:00:14,440
Speaker 3: descriptions of Lawrence paint this picture of him as almost

1136
01:00:14,520 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 3: a monk, this severe aesthetic philosopher type I think some

1137
01:00:18,080 --> 01:00:20,720
Speaker 3: of that is conscious because he admires these monks who

1138
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:23,920
Speaker 3: are like a major part of the transmission of the

1139
01:00:23,960 --> 01:00:27,120
Speaker 3: medieval history. That is such an obsession to him. Right.

1140
01:00:28,440 --> 01:00:30,720
Speaker 3: That said, he is not one of these guys who's

1141
01:00:30,800 --> 01:00:34,200
Speaker 3: like this that almost gives you this picture of him

1142
01:00:34,200 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 3: as someone who's like unknown and unknowable. That's not him

1143
01:00:37,280 --> 01:00:40,240
Speaker 3: at all. In fact, he is incredibly popular with the

1144
01:00:40,320 --> 01:00:43,760
Speaker 3: local Arab diggers that he meets in. You know, some

1145
01:00:43,880 --> 01:00:46,960
Speaker 3: are Arabs, some are Turks, but like this is like

1146
01:00:47,040 --> 01:00:52,400
Speaker 3: in a rural region of Anatolia, right, and a lot

1147
01:00:52,440 --> 01:00:56,080
Speaker 3: of these guys, these very like dirt poor diggers, really

1148
01:00:56,120 --> 01:01:00,160
Speaker 3: identify with Lawrence because he's not like the other europe

1149
01:01:00,320 --> 01:01:02,480
Speaker 3: and that he doesn't just sit around and wait for

1150
01:01:02,560 --> 01:01:05,080
Speaker 3: other people to do work for him. He digs as

1151
01:01:05,080 --> 01:01:06,560
Speaker 3: hard as anyone else on the team.

1152
01:01:06,720 --> 01:01:06,880
Speaker 1: Right.

1153
01:01:06,920 --> 01:01:10,080
Speaker 3: He's actually useful and he's committed to not just like

1154
01:01:10,200 --> 01:01:13,720
Speaker 3: sitting around while other people do shit. Snyder writes, quote.

1155
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:17,000
Speaker 3: A typical example of this aspect of Lawrence's leadership occurred

1156
01:01:17,000 --> 01:01:20,480
Speaker 3: in June Today. I cured a man of compound scorpion

1157
01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:23,000
Speaker 3: bite by a few drops of ammonia. For that, I

1158
01:01:23,080 --> 01:01:26,200
Speaker 3: have a fame above Thompson's as hakim doctor and as

1159
01:01:26,240 --> 01:01:29,400
Speaker 3: a magician who can conjure devils into water. His role

1160
01:01:29,400 --> 01:01:31,800
Speaker 3: as camp position would be put to good use, for

1161
01:01:31,840 --> 01:01:35,440
Speaker 3: in June of nineteen twelve, a severe outbreak of cholera

1162
01:01:35,560 --> 01:01:38,640
Speaker 3: struck the Aleppo area, and saw Lawrence helping the local

1163
01:01:38,680 --> 01:01:41,840
Speaker 3: population deal with the problem through the remainder of the summer.

1164
01:01:43,360 --> 01:01:47,040
Speaker 3: Lawrence also adopted local garb, dressing in a Kurdish belt

1165
01:01:47,080 --> 01:01:49,760
Speaker 3: and attiring himself like the diggers he'd gotten to know.

1166
01:01:50,240 --> 01:01:52,760
Speaker 3: He found their clothing much more practical than what he

1167
01:01:52,880 --> 01:01:56,080
Speaker 3: bought from Oxford, and he wrote of his Western colleagues,

1168
01:01:56,360 --> 01:01:59,440
Speaker 3: the foreigners came out here always to teach, whereas they

1169
01:01:59,440 --> 01:02:02,720
Speaker 3: had much better to learn. You can see why this

1170
01:02:02,800 --> 01:02:07,200
Speaker 3: guy's well liked, you know now. In his books Setting

1171
01:02:07,200 --> 01:02:10,480
Speaker 3: the Desert on Fire, Barr also gives a much again,

1172
01:02:10,680 --> 01:02:12,440
Speaker 3: if you want a little bit less of the like

1173
01:02:12,840 --> 01:02:15,960
Speaker 3: you know, agent of history moving nobly through time picture,

1174
01:02:15,960 --> 01:02:18,840
Speaker 3: here's a much more fun account of Lawrence's behavior at

1175
01:02:18,840 --> 01:02:22,840
Speaker 3: this time. He injected these excavations with an excitement not

1176
01:02:22,960 --> 01:02:26,000
Speaker 3: usually associated with the world of archaeology by firing his

1177
01:02:26,080 --> 01:02:29,040
Speaker 3: pistol in the air. Whatever an interesting find was unearthed.

1178
01:02:29,520 --> 01:02:32,200
Speaker 3: This is also what makes him popular. He loves shooting

1179
01:02:32,200 --> 01:02:33,680
Speaker 3: his gun in the air whenever he's.

1180
01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:39,480
Speaker 2: In a good mood. In honorary American, honorary American.

1181
01:02:39,640 --> 01:02:42,720
Speaker 3: Yeah you have, I am declaring you with citizen of

1182
01:02:42,720 --> 01:02:46,720
Speaker 3: the State of Texas, Lawrence. Your tin gallon hat is

1183
01:02:46,760 --> 01:02:50,040
Speaker 3: in the mail. Now. The digging season is not a

1184
01:02:50,120 --> 01:02:52,920
Speaker 3: year round thing, yet Lawrence could always be counted to

1185
01:02:52,960 --> 01:02:55,520
Speaker 3: hang around long after all the other foreigners had left.

1186
01:02:55,560 --> 01:02:58,080
Speaker 3: He just doesn't want to leave when the digging is done.

1187
01:02:58,440 --> 01:03:01,040
Speaker 3: One of his English colleagues later wrote, I never quite

1188
01:03:01,040 --> 01:03:04,040
Speaker 3: fathomed why Lawrence was still at Carkemish when the digs

1189
01:03:04,080 --> 01:03:06,240
Speaker 3: were closed down, but I gathered that it was partly

1190
01:03:06,240 --> 01:03:08,800
Speaker 3: from choice and partly from economy. He used to spend

1191
01:03:08,800 --> 01:03:11,960
Speaker 3: his time wandering around in Arab dress, sometimes for days

1192
01:03:11,960 --> 01:03:14,960
Speaker 3: at a time, storing his phenomenal memory with scraps of

1193
01:03:15,000 --> 01:03:18,000
Speaker 3: local knowledge, which came in very useful later on. When

1194
01:03:18,000 --> 01:03:19,800
Speaker 3: he was not doing this, he was trying to puzzle

1195
01:03:19,880 --> 01:03:22,640
Speaker 3: out the Hittite inscriptions or target shooting with a long

1196
01:03:22,720 --> 01:03:25,960
Speaker 3: mouser pistol. I amused myself by competing with him at

1197
01:03:25,960 --> 01:03:26,920
Speaker 3: both of these games.

1198
01:03:27,960 --> 01:03:29,040
Speaker 2: So he's just a fun dude.

1199
01:03:29,080 --> 01:03:32,880
Speaker 3: He likes shooting, he likes puzzling out Hittite inscriptions, you know.

1200
01:03:33,080 --> 01:03:36,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he wants to dress like the locals and

1201
01:03:36,080 --> 01:03:39,480
Speaker 2: he wants to see where he's because when he's walking

1202
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:42,200
Speaker 2: around in his like suit and hobnail shoes and the desert,

1203
01:03:42,600 --> 01:03:44,960
Speaker 2: you're like, yeah, oh man, he's like one of those

1204
01:03:44,960 --> 01:03:46,280
Speaker 2: like young Republican kids.

1205
01:03:46,360 --> 01:03:50,520
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, he just didn't know a better way. And

1206
01:03:50,600 --> 01:03:53,360
Speaker 3: like a big part of it is like it's just

1207
01:03:53,480 --> 01:03:57,880
Speaker 3: much more reasonable to be dressed that way in the

1208
01:03:58,160 --> 01:04:00,000
Speaker 3: in this part of the world like he is.

1209
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:00,880
Speaker 2: He is car chemist.

1210
01:04:00,960 --> 01:04:04,600
Speaker 3: He's like right on the border of a you know,

1211
01:04:04,680 --> 01:04:09,240
Speaker 3: modern day Turkey, like the far southern Turkey and Syria. Right,

1212
01:04:10,720 --> 01:04:12,480
Speaker 3: So this is it's not far from like some of

1213
01:04:12,520 --> 01:04:14,840
Speaker 3: the area. It's not it's like not far from well

1214
01:04:14,880 --> 01:04:17,800
Speaker 3: actually no, sorry it is, but like yeah, it's far

1215
01:04:17,840 --> 01:04:20,520
Speaker 3: from Haseka, but like yeah, he so he's right in

1216
01:04:20,920 --> 01:04:22,840
Speaker 3: you know, this is like the Turks would say, part

1217
01:04:22,840 --> 01:04:25,400
Speaker 3: of the Turkish heartland, but this is like the Arab world,

1218
01:04:25,440 --> 01:04:27,680
Speaker 3: the Kurdish world. It's kind of like right in the

1219
01:04:27,680 --> 01:04:30,280
Speaker 3: middle of all of that, and it's just not a

1220
01:04:30,320 --> 01:04:33,040
Speaker 3: reasonable place to wear a three piece suit all summer.

1221
01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:37,160
Speaker 3: The garb that the locals wear as much more comfortable,

1222
01:04:37,240 --> 01:04:38,959
Speaker 3: especially if you're digging all day.

1223
01:04:39,400 --> 01:04:41,600
Speaker 2: It's compared to the thing that was developed on a

1224
01:04:41,760 --> 01:04:46,240
Speaker 2: terrible island where the sun never want an empire where

1225
01:04:46,280 --> 01:04:48,640
Speaker 2: the sun never sets is yeah, live on an island

1226
01:04:48,680 --> 01:04:49,360
Speaker 2: where it doesn't.

1227
01:04:49,680 --> 01:04:53,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So Lawrence was to spend the next three

1228
01:04:53,160 --> 01:04:56,120
Speaker 3: years of his life in Turkey as much as possible.

1229
01:04:56,400 --> 01:04:59,160
Speaker 3: This was, by every credible account, the happiest period of

1230
01:04:59,200 --> 01:05:01,360
Speaker 3: his life. And it is also where we get the

1231
01:05:01,480 --> 01:05:05,760
Speaker 3: first claims that he was a bastard, right specifically the

1232
01:05:05,840 --> 01:05:08,680
Speaker 3: claim that he was a pedophile or some sort of groomer.

1233
01:05:09,080 --> 01:05:12,000
Speaker 3: Right now, I'm gonna tell you right now, I don't

1234
01:05:12,040 --> 01:05:14,720
Speaker 3: agree with this interpretation, but I'm I'm gonna make the

1235
01:05:14,720 --> 01:05:16,439
Speaker 3: case for it. I'm going to explain to you why

1236
01:05:16,520 --> 01:05:19,640
Speaker 3: people talk about this. So the gist of it is

1237
01:05:19,680 --> 01:05:23,520
Speaker 3: that while Lawrence was participating in this dig a fourteen

1238
01:05:23,600 --> 01:05:26,760
Speaker 3: year old boy named Salim Ahmed was hired on as

1239
01:05:26,800 --> 01:05:30,240
Speaker 3: a donkey boy. In the parlance of the times, this

1240
01:05:30,360 --> 01:05:34,440
Speaker 3: means he helped lead donkey trains of supplies to the diggers. Salim,

1241
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:38,200
Speaker 3: nicknamed Dahum or the little dark One by his fellows,

1242
01:05:38,240 --> 01:05:41,439
Speaker 3: became fast friends with Lawrence. We don't know precisely why,

1243
01:05:41,480 --> 01:05:45,360
Speaker 3: but their bond deepened when Lawrence caught dysentery later that year,

1244
01:05:45,680 --> 01:05:48,720
Speaker 3: and Dome cared for him until he got better. The

1245
01:05:48,760 --> 01:05:52,320
Speaker 3: two traveled to Aleppo together, and Lawrence began promoting his

1246
01:05:52,360 --> 01:05:55,960
Speaker 3: young friend to higher positions and ultimately made Dahom his assistant.

1247
01:05:56,360 --> 01:05:58,200
Speaker 3: While on the dig, the two lived in the same

1248
01:05:58,240 --> 01:06:00,960
Speaker 3: house and seemed to take particular place you're in wearing

1249
01:06:01,000 --> 01:06:03,240
Speaker 3: each other's clothes. This is something that everyone will say

1250
01:06:03,240 --> 01:06:06,200
Speaker 3: about them, is like they would exchange outfits and dressed

1251
01:06:06,320 --> 01:06:09,520
Speaker 3: like each other. They have pictures taken where they're dressed

1252
01:06:09,560 --> 01:06:13,040
Speaker 3: in identical outfits, like dressed as each other, and by

1253
01:06:13,040 --> 01:06:16,280
Speaker 3: all accounts they are inseparable. Right and again, this is like,

1254
01:06:16,840 --> 01:06:19,920
Speaker 3: I think he's fourteen, you know, to sixteen during the

1255
01:06:19,920 --> 01:06:22,280
Speaker 3: period where they're spending most of their time together, and

1256
01:06:22,400 --> 01:06:25,919
Speaker 3: Lawrence is in his twenties, so this is potentially very problematic,

1257
01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:30,960
Speaker 3: right Lawrence biographer Jeremy Wilson described Lawrence as having a

1258
01:06:31,040 --> 01:06:34,440
Speaker 3: quote almost fatherly concern for the boy. One of his

1259
01:06:34,520 --> 01:06:37,680
Speaker 3: colleagues at the dig. Leonard Woolley went much further after

1260
01:06:37,760 --> 01:06:40,920
Speaker 3: Lawrence became famous. He made public allegations that Lawrence had

1261
01:06:40,920 --> 01:06:43,920
Speaker 3: convinced quote Domed to live with him and got him

1262
01:06:43,920 --> 01:06:46,520
Speaker 3: to pose as a model for a queer crouching figure,

1263
01:06:46,720 --> 01:06:49,760
Speaker 3: which he carved in the soft local limestone. To make

1264
01:06:49,800 --> 01:06:51,640
Speaker 3: an image was bad enough in this way, but to

1265
01:06:51,680 --> 01:06:54,520
Speaker 3: portray a naked figure was proof to them the local

1266
01:06:54,600 --> 01:06:57,920
Speaker 3: arabs of evil of another sort. The scandal about Lawrence

1267
01:06:58,000 --> 01:07:01,560
Speaker 3: was widely spread and firmly believed. So Willie's allegation is

1268
01:07:01,600 --> 01:07:06,200
Speaker 3: that these two were homosexual lovers and like the locals

1269
01:07:06,200 --> 01:07:09,120
Speaker 3: found out about it because he was carving an image

1270
01:07:09,240 --> 01:07:13,920
Speaker 3: of Dome in local naked and local limestone. Now again,

1271
01:07:14,560 --> 01:07:17,680
Speaker 3: Dome would have been fifteen or sixteen, and at the

1272
01:07:17,760 --> 01:07:22,160
Speaker 3: time that is not the same as fifteen or sixteen today. Again,

1273
01:07:22,160 --> 01:07:25,800
Speaker 3: and like Germany, you're an adult at fourteen. But I

1274
01:07:25,840 --> 01:07:28,680
Speaker 3: donuld say that to mitigate potential pedophilia, just to say

1275
01:07:28,720 --> 01:07:32,120
Speaker 3: like that is why his countrymen who criticized him for

1276
01:07:32,160 --> 01:07:35,640
Speaker 3: who like he was homosexual, they're not calling him pedophile

1277
01:07:35,680 --> 01:07:37,680
Speaker 3: because that's not how they would have seen this, right,

1278
01:07:37,680 --> 01:07:39,640
Speaker 3: they would have seen this as a gay relationship. That's

1279
01:07:39,640 --> 01:07:41,960
Speaker 3: not how we see it. I don't think we're wrong

1280
01:07:42,160 --> 01:07:44,880
Speaker 3: in seeing it differently. But he is not written about

1281
01:07:44,920 --> 01:07:47,160
Speaker 3: by people who criticize him as his time as a pedophile.

1282
01:07:47,160 --> 01:07:49,960
Speaker 3: He's written about as a homosexual, which is a severe

1283
01:07:50,080 --> 01:07:53,280
Speaker 3: criminal offense in the UK at the time. Right, if

1284
01:07:53,280 --> 01:07:55,360
Speaker 3: he had been convicted of this, he would have gone

1285
01:07:55,360 --> 01:07:55,840
Speaker 3: to prison.

1286
01:07:57,160 --> 01:08:01,800
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting is because for centuries, yeah, gay men

1287
01:08:02,080 --> 01:08:05,360
Speaker 2: and Britain would go to the Ottoman Empire because it

1288
01:08:05,440 --> 01:08:09,520
Speaker 2: was like more accepted to be gay there and just

1289
01:08:10,040 --> 01:08:13,920
Speaker 2: a friendlier place. But obviously I think that started to

1290
01:08:13,960 --> 01:08:17,439
Speaker 2: fade around this time. Actually I've heard because of Western influence,

1291
01:08:17,479 --> 01:08:19,759
Speaker 2: but I'm not I've been more certain about things.

1292
01:08:19,920 --> 01:08:22,439
Speaker 3: It's a bit more. It's too complicated for us to

1293
01:08:22,439 --> 01:08:24,680
Speaker 3: get into and detail. But one aspect of this that

1294
01:08:25,000 --> 01:08:27,599
Speaker 3: I think was an aspect of why it was friendlier

1295
01:08:27,640 --> 01:08:29,120
Speaker 3: in the autom An Empire, and it's an aspect of

1296
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:31,759
Speaker 3: how everyone looks at it and how like Lawrence is famous,

1297
01:08:31,760 --> 01:08:35,000
Speaker 3: he's not homophobic, right, he has friends who are gay

1298
01:08:35,120 --> 01:08:37,960
Speaker 3: that he knows are gay, and he does not seem

1299
01:08:38,000 --> 01:08:40,800
Speaker 3: to have any issue with this. But also I don't

1300
01:08:40,840 --> 01:08:42,760
Speaker 3: know that he would have I don't think he had

1301
01:08:42,760 --> 01:08:45,479
Speaker 3: any kind of sexual relationship with Doom to like skip

1302
01:08:45,479 --> 01:08:47,400
Speaker 3: ahead here. But I don't know that he would have

1303
01:08:47,400 --> 01:08:49,640
Speaker 3: felt that was wrong, because he would have looked at

1304
01:08:49,680 --> 01:08:52,880
Speaker 3: it in the way that like he saw and in

1305
01:08:52,920 --> 01:08:56,920
Speaker 3: the way like ancient Greeks had these relationships between older

1306
01:08:57,000 --> 01:09:00,880
Speaker 3: men and their younger wards. Right, that is probably how

1307
01:09:00,920 --> 01:09:02,719
Speaker 3: he would have seen it, right, That.

1308
01:09:02,600 --> 01:09:03,240
Speaker 2: Makes sense to me.

1309
01:09:04,200 --> 01:09:06,840
Speaker 3: That's not what I think is going on here. Now.

1310
01:09:06,840 --> 01:09:10,120
Speaker 3: There are allegations later in his career from adult colleagues

1311
01:09:10,439 --> 01:09:12,840
Speaker 3: in the army who claimed that Lawrence asked them to

1312
01:09:12,880 --> 01:09:15,320
Speaker 3: whip him, right, and so these have kind of been

1313
01:09:15,360 --> 01:09:17,759
Speaker 3: merged in the public mind with some of these rumors

1314
01:09:17,760 --> 01:09:20,519
Speaker 3: that he and Doom had a sexual relationship. And a

1315
01:09:20,560 --> 01:09:23,240
Speaker 3: good example of how this comes down in casual.

1316
01:09:22,920 --> 01:09:23,640
Speaker 2: History is a.

1317
01:09:25,400 --> 01:09:28,400
Speaker 3: Quote from a very bad listical I found called great

1318
01:09:28,439 --> 01:09:31,080
Speaker 3: People who were also perverts, which I found on this

1319
01:09:31,200 --> 01:09:34,000
Speaker 3: terrible shitty we clickbait website called backloll.

1320
01:09:34,360 --> 01:09:37,960
Speaker 2: The artic going to make a crack com joke. But no, no, no, no.

1321
01:09:37,680 --> 01:09:40,400
Speaker 3: No no, I don't know. Maybe they stole this from us,

1322
01:09:40,439 --> 01:09:43,800
Speaker 3: I don't know. Lawrence was very famous for playing Lawrence

1323
01:09:43,800 --> 01:09:46,840
Speaker 3: of Arabia pictured here a great actor. Not many know

1324
01:09:46,880 --> 01:09:48,920
Speaker 3: that he was also a great archaeologist. I think they're

1325
01:09:48,920 --> 01:09:51,760
Speaker 3: confusing him with Peter O'Toole here, so I think we

1326
01:09:51,800 --> 01:09:53,960
Speaker 3: would have caught that. At Cracked, it was said that

1327
01:09:54,040 --> 01:09:57,519
Speaker 3: Lawrence didn't go much for relationships at all, then suddenly

1328
01:09:57,560 --> 01:09:59,840
Speaker 3: he fell in love with a young boy who was underage.

1329
01:10:00,040 --> 01:10:02,040
Speaker 3: He also loved to be whipped hard on his backside,

1330
01:10:02,080 --> 01:10:05,600
Speaker 3: so definitely had strong leanings towards masochism. A pedophile at

1331
01:10:05,600 --> 01:10:08,320
Speaker 3: a masochist is a far cry from the over glamorized,

1332
01:10:08,680 --> 01:10:11,479
Speaker 3: glamorized image people have him as a great actor. Do

1333
01:10:11,520 --> 01:10:13,760
Speaker 3: you not know Lawrence was a real prayer. He's not

1334
01:10:13,840 --> 01:10:16,240
Speaker 3: Peter O'Toole. I don't think Peter O'Toole was a pedophile,

1335
01:10:16,240 --> 01:10:21,799
Speaker 3: what like? Okay, Anyway, after that, this is a separate person.

1336
01:10:22,280 --> 01:10:26,479
Speaker 3: You have some serious misconceptions about the history here.

1337
01:10:26,960 --> 01:10:27,000
Speaker 1: No.

1338
01:10:27,080 --> 01:10:29,920
Speaker 3: A different article I found on a better website, Cleohistory,

1339
01:10:29,920 --> 01:10:32,320
Speaker 3: a dot of work, made the equally confusing decision to

1340
01:10:32,400 --> 01:10:37,240
Speaker 3: ignore the particulars of Dohome's age and depict his relationship

1341
01:10:37,280 --> 01:10:40,200
Speaker 3: with Lawrence as more of a thwarted gay love affair.

1342
01:10:41,080 --> 01:10:41,519
Speaker 2: Quote.

1343
01:10:41,680 --> 01:10:44,439
Speaker 3: While at Carchemish, he formed a particularly close bond with

1344
01:10:44,479 --> 01:10:47,559
Speaker 3: a handsome young Arab water boy, whom Lawrence once took

1345
01:10:47,600 --> 01:10:50,880
Speaker 3: on a long visit to Oxford. However, given the reticences

1346
01:10:50,920 --> 01:10:53,360
Speaker 3: of the time, it seems impossible to finally get a

1347
01:10:53,360 --> 01:10:55,400
Speaker 3: clear picture of Lawrence's romantic life.

1348
01:10:56,160 --> 01:10:56,839
Speaker 2: Now I'm gonna.

1349
01:10:56,640 --> 01:10:58,799
Speaker 3: Skip to the end here and say there's no evidence

1350
01:10:58,880 --> 01:11:01,639
Speaker 3: that Lawrence had sex with Dahoum, or that he even

1351
01:11:01,720 --> 01:11:05,479
Speaker 3: wanted to. There is, in fact, no evidence whatsoever that

1352
01:11:05,560 --> 01:11:09,320
Speaker 3: Lawrence ever chose to engage in sexual activity with any

1353
01:11:09,400 --> 01:11:13,519
Speaker 3: person over the course of his entire life. Anthony Satin writes,

1354
01:11:13,800 --> 01:11:17,080
Speaker 3: Lawrence said he never had a sexual relationship, and most

1355
01:11:17,120 --> 01:11:19,080
Speaker 3: people who knew him found that credible.

1356
01:11:19,640 --> 01:11:21,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, if he's friends with gay folks, he would have

1357
01:11:21,600 --> 01:11:24,200
Speaker 2: said it. If he was like nah, yes, sleeping boys.

1358
01:11:23,800 --> 01:11:26,720
Speaker 3: And he does. He describes himself in a letter to

1359
01:11:26,760 --> 01:11:28,600
Speaker 3: a friend of his who was gay and who he

1360
01:11:28,640 --> 01:11:32,000
Speaker 3: knew was gay, as this is Lawrence describing himself funnily

1361
01:11:32,120 --> 01:11:35,760
Speaker 3: made up sexually. And from the context we can see

1362
01:11:35,760 --> 01:11:39,520
Speaker 3: two things. He was aware of homosexuality and not judgmental

1363
01:11:39,560 --> 01:11:43,400
Speaker 3: of it, and he did not consider himself gay or straight,

1364
01:11:44,040 --> 01:11:46,800
Speaker 3: and I think probably the best term that fits for

1365
01:11:46,920 --> 01:11:50,120
Speaker 3: him is a sexual Right now, this is not an

1366
01:11:50,120 --> 01:11:52,479
Speaker 3: orientation that is well understood even today, and we shouldn't

1367
01:11:52,479 --> 01:11:54,519
Speaker 3: assume that he would have talked about his sexuality the

1368
01:11:54,560 --> 01:11:56,960
Speaker 3: way modern day ace people talk about it, right, Right,

1369
01:11:57,960 --> 01:12:01,759
Speaker 3: this is nineteen eleven, and in any sexuality is pretty

1370
01:12:01,840 --> 01:12:04,599
Speaker 3: much non existent in the public consciousness, right, he probably

1371
01:12:04,640 --> 01:12:06,439
Speaker 3: would have thought of his own sexuality more like he

1372
01:12:06,439 --> 01:12:08,280
Speaker 3: thinks of like a monk, someone who has taken a

1373
01:12:08,320 --> 01:12:11,080
Speaker 3: vow of celibacy, totally right, although he doesn't write about

1374
01:12:11,080 --> 01:12:14,559
Speaker 3: having any particular sexual desires, and in fact, I m Forster,

1375
01:12:14,760 --> 01:12:17,320
Speaker 3: the gay friend that he wrote to about his own sexuality,

1376
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:21,040
Speaker 3: seems to have interpreted Lawrence's feelings towards Dahome as an

1377
01:12:21,200 --> 01:12:24,920
Speaker 3: unconsummated love affair. But I think that's Forster kind of

1378
01:12:25,360 --> 01:12:28,719
Speaker 3: pushing some of his own sexuality onto Lawrence.

1379
01:12:28,840 --> 01:12:29,600
Speaker 2: Right.

1380
01:12:29,680 --> 01:12:34,400
Speaker 3: Lawrence describes himself as kind of celibate. He writes repeatedly

1381
01:12:34,560 --> 01:12:37,400
Speaker 3: about his love for Dome, but in a manner more

1382
01:12:37,439 --> 01:12:40,920
Speaker 3: complicated than just like fatherly affection, but also not in

1383
01:12:40,920 --> 01:12:43,240
Speaker 3: a way that sounds like lust to me. And here's

1384
01:12:43,280 --> 01:12:46,519
Speaker 3: Satin again. Ten years later, when Lawrence referred to his

1385
01:12:46,560 --> 01:12:49,120
Speaker 3: friendship with Doome, he talked of it as one in

1386
01:12:49,160 --> 01:12:52,680
Speaker 3: which there was such intimacy and mutual understanding that they

1387
01:12:52,720 --> 01:12:55,240
Speaker 3: had said all two people could say to each other.

1388
01:12:55,680 --> 01:12:58,439
Speaker 3: This freed them to work or rest together for hours

1389
01:12:58,479 --> 01:13:02,360
Speaker 3: without speaking. Experienced that sense of calm and trust with

1390
01:13:02,520 --> 01:13:05,160
Speaker 3: very few people in his life. It was not obvious

1391
01:13:05,160 --> 01:13:07,680
Speaker 3: that one of them would be a donkey boy from Jerablas.

1392
01:13:09,120 --> 01:13:11,559
Speaker 3: In the summer of nineteen thirteen, the two of them

1393
01:13:11,600 --> 01:13:14,160
Speaker 3: spent most days and evenings together working at the dig,

1394
01:13:14,280 --> 01:13:17,800
Speaker 3: swimming in the euphrates, cleaning and drawing, photographing and cataloging

1395
01:13:17,840 --> 01:13:20,040
Speaker 3: the finds in the courtyard or a large sitting room

1396
01:13:20,040 --> 01:13:22,599
Speaker 3: of the expedition house, even while Lawrence was busy writing

1397
01:13:22,640 --> 01:13:26,519
Speaker 3: of his adventures in Seven Pillars of Islam. And you

1398
01:13:26,520 --> 01:13:30,679
Speaker 3: know by this characterization, Yeah, they were two people who

1399
01:13:30,800 --> 01:13:35,559
Speaker 3: had a profound bond, but not a sexual one. And like,

1400
01:13:35,840 --> 01:13:39,080
Speaker 3: why did he carve that sculpture? Well, because he liked sculptures, right,

1401
01:13:39,240 --> 01:13:43,519
Speaker 3: and he was raised on sculptures of the naked human

1402
01:13:43,560 --> 01:13:46,120
Speaker 3: form that he didn't see as sexual. Because this is

1403
01:13:46,160 --> 01:13:50,479
Speaker 3: not a guy who particularly had any sexual feeling probably right.

1404
01:13:50,520 --> 01:13:53,599
Speaker 2: It's interesting because I was talking to my sister about

1405
01:13:53,640 --> 01:13:54,960
Speaker 2: this one time, and we were talking about the whole

1406
01:13:55,080 --> 01:13:57,760
Speaker 2: historically close friends thing and how like, you know, we

1407
01:13:57,840 --> 01:14:00,000
Speaker 2: kind of we go back in time and say, like, oh,

1408
01:14:00,120 --> 01:14:01,960
Speaker 2: all of these women were lesbians, like all the ones

1409
01:14:02,000 --> 01:14:04,519
Speaker 2: who just had historically close friends that they lived with

1410
01:14:04,520 --> 01:14:07,880
Speaker 2: a roommates. And it's hard because we just actually don't

1411
01:14:07,920 --> 01:14:10,640
Speaker 2: know in most circumstances, like sometimes we do we have

1412
01:14:10,720 --> 01:14:14,120
Speaker 2: like professions of sexual love between the two, but like

1413
01:14:14,600 --> 01:14:17,760
Speaker 2: sometimes historically close friends were just historically close friends in

1414
01:14:17,800 --> 01:14:21,560
Speaker 2: a way that also doesn't map to any current understanding

1415
01:14:21,600 --> 01:14:24,719
Speaker 2: of sexuality that we know we operate with today.

1416
01:14:25,320 --> 01:14:27,720
Speaker 3: And all I can say is, you know, for one thing,

1417
01:14:27,760 --> 01:14:31,160
Speaker 3: that colleague who initially made the allegations that Lawrence was

1418
01:14:31,200 --> 01:14:33,439
Speaker 3: gay later in life came to be like, actually, I

1419
01:14:33,479 --> 01:14:36,120
Speaker 3: think it's probably likely that he never had any kind

1420
01:14:36,160 --> 01:14:40,200
Speaker 3: of sexual feelings towards Dahom, and Lawrence in his own

1421
01:14:40,280 --> 01:14:43,120
Speaker 3: letters to his friends with whom he could have been

1422
01:14:43,160 --> 01:14:45,200
Speaker 3: open if he had what they would have seen as

1423
01:14:45,240 --> 01:14:48,280
Speaker 3: a homosexual affair, was like, I've never had sex, and

1424
01:14:48,320 --> 01:14:51,200
Speaker 3: I've never really wanted to. And that's how Lawrence talks

1425
01:14:51,200 --> 01:14:55,120
Speaker 3: about it right now. Lawrence is not a perfectly reliable narrator,

1426
01:14:55,160 --> 01:14:57,400
Speaker 3: but I just don't see any reason he would have

1427
01:14:57,479 --> 01:15:01,080
Speaker 3: lied about this. I think he was probably if we're

1428
01:15:01,200 --> 01:15:05,360
Speaker 3: characterizing him today, he's probably a sexual right And I

1429
01:15:05,400 --> 01:15:08,400
Speaker 3: want to close with a quote by Satin about Lawrence

1430
01:15:08,439 --> 01:15:11,639
Speaker 3: and Dome. It is impossible to know what Doom thought

1431
01:15:11,680 --> 01:15:14,559
Speaker 3: of these changes to his life. He was obviously flattered

1432
01:15:14,560 --> 01:15:16,559
Speaker 3: that Lawrence was taking an interest in him well. The

1433
01:15:16,560 --> 01:15:18,880
Speaker 3: extra money and new status helped set him apart in

1434
01:15:18,920 --> 01:15:21,840
Speaker 3: the village. A range of possibilities was opening through his

1435
01:15:21,880 --> 01:15:25,040
Speaker 3: growing ability to read and write Arabic. But only occasionally

1436
01:15:25,080 --> 01:15:28,240
Speaker 3: can we hear Doom's voice with any clarity. One moment

1437
01:15:28,320 --> 01:15:31,320
Speaker 3: was at ibin Wardani, but the most persuasive was his

1438
01:15:31,400 --> 01:15:34,000
Speaker 3: answer to Miss Farida's question in the summer of nineteen

1439
01:15:34,040 --> 01:15:37,599
Speaker 3: twelve of why he loved Lawrence. He did so, he replied,

1440
01:15:37,800 --> 01:15:41,160
Speaker 3: because Lawrence was brother, friend and leader, because he could

1441
01:15:41,200 --> 01:15:44,519
Speaker 3: do things better than them, because he was courageous, playful, humorous,

1442
01:15:44,520 --> 01:15:47,160
Speaker 3: and perhaps more important to them, because they knew he

1443
01:15:47,240 --> 01:15:50,400
Speaker 3: cared for them. And I think that that if you're

1444
01:15:50,400 --> 01:15:52,800
Speaker 3: looking for like is he apanas well, that's not what

1445
01:15:52,880 --> 01:15:55,519
Speaker 3: Doom says. Doom says he was like a brother, and

1446
01:15:55,600 --> 01:15:58,640
Speaker 3: I think that's probably a better much. That's probably the

1447
01:15:58,720 --> 01:16:00,320
Speaker 3: right way to look at this relationship hip.

1448
01:16:01,640 --> 01:16:05,120
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, anyway, so far, the only way in which

1449
01:16:05,120 --> 01:16:06,840
Speaker 2: he's a bastard is in a literal sense.

1450
01:16:07,160 --> 01:16:08,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a bastard literally a little bit of he

1451
01:16:08,920 --> 01:16:12,120
Speaker 3: does some orientalizing right in. Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, you know,

1452
01:16:12,160 --> 01:16:14,120
Speaker 3: but like not in a way that would earn him

1453
01:16:14,120 --> 01:16:18,360
Speaker 3: an episode here. He's probably not a pedophile kind of

1454
01:16:18,400 --> 01:16:20,799
Speaker 3: maybe an ace icon Lawrence of Arabia.

1455
01:16:20,920 --> 01:16:21,120
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1456
01:16:21,400 --> 01:16:23,080
Speaker 3: I had always my dad had always told me when

1457
01:16:23,080 --> 01:16:25,080
Speaker 3: we would watch the movie together, that he had been gay,

1458
01:16:25,640 --> 01:16:27,360
Speaker 3: and I've come to find that, like there's not really

1459
01:16:27,360 --> 01:16:31,040
Speaker 3: any evidence for that. Like he was cool with gay people,

1460
01:16:31,120 --> 01:16:33,840
Speaker 3: but like there's not really any evidence that he was gay.

1461
01:16:34,720 --> 01:16:36,479
Speaker 2: Do you think that was your dad like trying to

1462
01:16:36,520 --> 01:16:38,840
Speaker 2: be chill about a gay person, because he sounds like

1463
01:16:38,840 --> 01:16:40,280
Speaker 2: your dad liked Lawrence Ville.

1464
01:16:40,320 --> 01:16:42,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, it may have been. It was also just like

1465
01:16:42,760 --> 01:16:46,600
Speaker 3: that had that was the understanding, the common understanding, and

1466
01:16:46,680 --> 01:16:48,559
Speaker 3: I think that still is. I think most people would

1467
01:16:48,560 --> 01:16:50,160
Speaker 3: still say, oh, he was gay, right, Like I think

1468
01:16:50,160 --> 01:16:53,200
Speaker 3: that is still how most people think of this, I

1469
01:16:53,200 --> 01:16:53,920
Speaker 3: mean in a weird way.

1470
01:16:53,960 --> 01:16:56,240
Speaker 2: Also, because I've been reading a whole bunch recently about

1471
01:16:57,200 --> 01:17:00,880
Speaker 2: some of the early Protestant ideas around sexuality and and

1472
01:17:01,720 --> 01:17:06,000
Speaker 2: not making kids and not getting married. Is all sort

1473
01:17:06,000 --> 01:17:09,439
Speaker 2: of equally gay, yeah, to a certain degree. So like

1474
01:17:09,880 --> 01:17:14,200
Speaker 2: monks and priests were sort of gay to the Protestants

1475
01:17:14,240 --> 01:17:18,320
Speaker 2: because they like weren't having weren't getting married and having kids. Yeah,

1476
01:17:18,360 --> 01:17:21,000
Speaker 2: you know, And so I could see I'm always saying this,

1477
01:17:21,760 --> 01:17:27,679
Speaker 2: there's a version of you know, queerness whatever, that there's

1478
01:17:27,680 --> 01:17:29,680
Speaker 2: a reason that Ace is in the queer umbrella now,

1479
01:17:29,760 --> 01:17:29,920
Speaker 2: you know.

1480
01:17:30,000 --> 01:17:39,080
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely? All right, Well, so, uh that's it. That's

1481
01:17:39,080 --> 01:17:39,720
Speaker 3: the episode.

1482
01:17:40,320 --> 01:17:43,320
Speaker 2: All right, we did it, Joe mag Pie. Do you

1483
01:17:43,320 --> 01:17:46,519
Speaker 2: have anything you want to plug? Well, if you like

1484
01:17:46,680 --> 01:17:51,320
Speaker 2: history about complicated people who mostly aren't bad, then I

1485
01:17:51,439 --> 01:17:53,439
Speaker 2: have a podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,

1486
01:17:53,439 --> 01:17:58,519
Speaker 2: which is on this little known network called cool Zone Media,

1487
01:17:58,760 --> 01:18:02,040
Speaker 2: and you can listen to it. And it's probably too

1488
01:18:02,120 --> 01:18:04,479
Speaker 2: late to catch me on tour when you're listening to this,

1489
01:18:05,080 --> 01:18:09,200
Speaker 2: but maybe maybe it's not. Maybe I'll be on a

1490
01:18:09,200 --> 01:18:12,800
Speaker 2: different tour by the time you hear this, And which case,

1491
01:18:13,120 --> 01:18:14,840
Speaker 2: you can find me there. But just go listen to

1492
01:18:14,880 --> 01:18:16,000
Speaker 2: the cool people did cool stuff.

1493
01:18:16,560 --> 01:18:20,720
Speaker 3: Listen to cool people who did cool stuff, and you know, uh,

1494
01:18:21,320 --> 01:18:24,120
Speaker 3: launch an insurgent war I don't care against two do

1495
01:18:24,240 --> 01:18:25,559
Speaker 3: it somewhere. You know.

1496
01:18:27,080 --> 01:18:29,280
Speaker 2: This is going to sound really weird depending on what

1497
01:18:29,320 --> 01:18:30,280
Speaker 2: happens next week.

1498
01:18:30,479 --> 01:18:33,559
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my advice to you, no matter where you

1499
01:18:33,600 --> 01:18:35,800
Speaker 3: are in the world, go start some shit you know

1500
01:18:36,479 --> 01:18:39,360
Speaker 3: or don't or don't legally don't.

1501
01:18:42,840 --> 01:18:45,559
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1502
01:18:45,920 --> 01:18:48,519
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1503
01:18:48,600 --> 01:18:52,559
Speaker 1: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1504
01:18:52,640 --> 01:18:55,800
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

1505
01:18:55,800 --> 01:18:59,880
Speaker 1: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

1506
01:19:00,040 --> 01:19:03,639
Speaker 1: and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

1507
01:19:03,840 --> 01:19:05,280
Speaker 1: at Behind the Bastards