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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and every Monday and Wednesday,

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Speaker 1: I tell you stories about people I think we're just

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Speaker 1: swell grand, the bees knickers, the cat's knees, and the

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Speaker 1: hearts potatoes with me today is my guest run Ran.

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Speaker 1: On a scale of swell to grand, how are you doing,

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Speaker 1: I would say, I'm well. Actually I'm still a little

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Speaker 1: bit sad about the episode we recorded a few days ago,

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Speaker 1: or that came out a few days ago, So I

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Speaker 1: don't know where I am on the scale from swell

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Speaker 1: to grand. I feel like I'm still sitting with that, okay, um,

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Speaker 1: But but otherwise I would say quite swell, okay yeah.

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Speaker 1: And then there's Sophie, the producer. Wait, what did I call?

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Speaker 1: Decided to call you the mad Wizard? No mean lord lord, um,

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Speaker 1: Hi Sophie, how are you doing? Swell? Grand? Upset about Norway? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: upset about Norway who murdered beloved walrus who they named Freya.

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Speaker 1: They named her and then they killed her so that

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Speaker 1: rich people and their boats could be you know whatever,

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Speaker 1: Like she was just lounging on peers and like being adorable.

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Speaker 1: And then humans had to ruin in so they killed her,

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Speaker 1: and I'm mad about it. The fuck the Norwegian government agreed.

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Speaker 1: That's what I was supposed to say, right, Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean I wanted you to say, what you what was

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Speaker 1: in your heart? What's in my heart? The Norwegian government

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Speaker 1: for killing Freya? Justice for Freya. She was a legend.

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Speaker 1: He and as our audio engineer on women did our music,

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Speaker 1: both are swell and grand. Hopefully I can't actually speak

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Speaker 1: to how they're doing, but as people as adjectives I

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Speaker 1: would describe them with, I would consider swell, grand the

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Speaker 1: heart's potatoes. This is part two of our two part

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Speaker 1: series and Roger Casement, the Irish humanitarian night trader who

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Speaker 1: brought down helped bring down Leopold the Second and got

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Speaker 1: ang for his guns for Irish people. Planned Oh that's

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Speaker 1: the spoiler. Ah, but you should go back to not you, Wren,

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Speaker 1: but everyone else should go back and listen to part one,

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Speaker 1: because this won't make any sense if you haven't heard

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Speaker 1: part one. So where we last left Roger Casement, he

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Speaker 1: had just secured permission to go explore Leopold Congo to

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Speaker 1: figure out if all the rumors were true. And it's

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Speaker 1: a it's a fucking apocalypse. M hm. He'd been there before,

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Speaker 1: right before it was Leopold's private kingdom. He saw, you know,

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Speaker 1: he went to a town he had been to before

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Speaker 1: that should have forty people. There were eight thousand people left,

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Speaker 1: with no trade, no canoes. Um, they were just enslaved

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Speaker 1: another village. They said they had to go farther and

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Speaker 1: farther every week to meet their quota. They were out

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Speaker 1: there dying of exposure. They were getting eaten by animals. Um.

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Speaker 1: If they were late, they'd get mmulated and murdered. And

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Speaker 1: when they ran out of rubber vines, the entire town

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Speaker 1: just fled. Um. He met them where they had fled to.

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Speaker 1: You know, they came and talked to him because I

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Speaker 1: think he had some personal connections with some of them.

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Speaker 1: He he gets sick on this journey, but he spends

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Speaker 1: a lot of time sick. It just like kind of

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Speaker 1: doesn't bother him, I think. I mean, I'm sure it

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Speaker 1: bothers him, but like he does what he continues to do.

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Speaker 1: You know, he turns thirty nine on this trip, just

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Speaker 1: to get a sense of where he's at in his

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Speaker 1: life at this point. Um. And when he first starts

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Speaker 1: meeting people and they're telling them all this awful ship.

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Speaker 1: He's like, maybe this is exaggerated, and then soon he's like, no, no,

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Speaker 1: this is not. There's a town of five thousand people,

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Speaker 1: it's not two people. They were killed out right, or

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Speaker 1: a lot of them were worked until the immune systems

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Speaker 1: failed them. One of the big things that Leopold claimed

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Speaker 1: about all the death was that it was an outbreak

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Speaker 1: of sleeping sickness, which is a tropical disease. Um. But

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Speaker 1: it wasn't It wasn't that, but a lot of people

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Speaker 1: were dying of sickness because their immune systems were failing them. Um,

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Speaker 1: And like what a dark line. He goes around and

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Speaker 1: he uses what authority can to set children free from prisons.

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Speaker 1: Everywhere he goes he tries to be like, I'm kind

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Speaker 1: of in charge a little bit. You've got to stop

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Speaker 1: at least doing that thing, right, Yeah, And I don't know,

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Speaker 1: there's just more bad stuff. Um. And rumor gets around

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Speaker 1: that he's actually trying to make it better once he

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Speaker 1: starts setting children free, because these people were not used

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Speaker 1: to a lot of white people who are trying to

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Speaker 1: make things better. So more and more people come to

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Speaker 1: talk to him, and they show him the ways in

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Speaker 1: which they've been wounded and mutilated and stuff. Um, and

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Speaker 1: he he gathers up a ton of information for this

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Speaker 1: report and then he like practically runs out of the area.

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Speaker 1: He gets out as fast as he can because he

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Speaker 1: feels so urgent to get it done. And also a

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Speaker 1: little bit I wonder whether he's like, are they going

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Speaker 1: to let me get away with this? They keep killing

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Speaker 1: everyone who does this kind of thing, you know. Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. That's that's my that an inference on

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Speaker 1: my part. But he gets out as fast as he can.

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Speaker 1: He stays up all night writing his report. Is before

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Speaker 1: he doesn't go back to Europe. He just gets back

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Speaker 1: to the coast. Um stays up all night writing the report.

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Speaker 1: He writes for days, and then he sends once again

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Speaker 1: he's still like a good bureaucrat. He sends letters to

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Speaker 1: the Free State officials being like, please investigate the following crimes.

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Speaker 1: And it's just like a list of every single crime

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Speaker 1: that he had evidence of it and had encountered. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then he also sends his initial report to England. Um,

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Speaker 1: and the people in England who are in charge of

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Speaker 1: his report, they're supposed to give it to the rest

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Speaker 1: of the Berlin people. This is still his preliminary report,

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Speaker 1: and they got it. They well, they don't got it.

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Speaker 1: They don't change much about it except they take out

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Speaker 1: all of the names and they replace them all with

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Speaker 1: like you know, if you read like old timey books,

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Speaker 1: it's like and then I ran across X, and it's

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Speaker 1: like X and A dash. Have you seen this, like

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Speaker 1: the naming convention, like like they it's like a censoring thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like like I feel a lot of nineteenth century

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Speaker 1: books that I read for fun, we'll have like and

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Speaker 1: then I ran across gentleman M and it's like M

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Speaker 1: dash and so I know what you're talking about. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: replacing the names of code. And they do that, but

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Speaker 1: there's so many people in his book that it goes

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Speaker 1: like A B, C, D, E F G, and then

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Speaker 1: it's like A A, B, B and then it's like

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Speaker 1: A C D F is the name of someone or whatever,

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Speaker 1: and it's just like illegible to a lay reader who

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Speaker 1: isn't keeping very very careful attention. Um, so it gets ignored.

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Speaker 1: The Berlin signatories, the people would agree to carve up

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Speaker 1: Africa ignore it. It's in their best interests to ignore

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Speaker 1: it anyway. Um. In Brussels everyone makes fun of it.

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Speaker 1: Is it's British anti Belgian propaganda. He heads back to

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Speaker 1: London to write the rest of his report, and then

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Speaker 1: while he and then he gets back and he talks

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Speaker 1: to the press and then he sucks a guy with

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Speaker 1: a seven inch cock and writes about it in his diary. Um.

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Speaker 1: And then the government keeps delaying their request for the

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Speaker 1: finished report because the capitalists in England don't want the

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Speaker 1: finished report and there's like specific surname people or so

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Speaker 1: and so who just are like, don't write that report,

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Speaker 1: don't don't ask for it. So they need more public outcry,

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Speaker 1: and the newly formed Congo Reform Association works at it,

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Speaker 1: and eventually the report gets requested. He writes the report,

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Speaker 1: and slowly the sort of lumbering wheels of almost justice

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Speaker 1: gets set into motion. The powers of Europe are like,

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Speaker 1: oh really, actually this is maybe a bit too far. Um.

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Speaker 1: Belgium sets up an independent inquiry and confirm casements report,

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Speaker 1: and in Leopold the Second is forced to relinquish the Congo.

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Speaker 1: He didn't give it to the Congo, which is what

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Speaker 1: would naturally happen with one ceased controlling the country, he

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Speaker 1: gives it to Belgium. Um, because Europe is a place

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Speaker 1: of monsters. And Leopold also burned all of his fucking

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Speaker 1: record mm hmmm, so the world will probably never know

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Speaker 1: the true extent to his monstrosity. Um. Just and just

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Speaker 1: like people saying like, oh, the ovens were burning for days, um,

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Speaker 1: as he trashed all his records, Belgium got the congo

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Speaker 1: continued to suck it over for decades, which is a

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Speaker 1: story we don't have time to get into. But Leopold

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Speaker 1: was a fucking monster, and this is still good that

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Speaker 1: he got stopped. Um. And then Leopold died a year later,

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Speaker 1: and I can't figure out how the funk he died.

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Speaker 1: Do you know how he died? Do either of you

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Speaker 1: know how he died? Every source that I find to

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Speaker 1: be fair, I didn't go and buy a biography of

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Speaker 1: King Leopold to write and are to write a thing

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Speaker 1: about someone else. But I skimmed a ton of books,

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Speaker 1: and I skimmed a ton of articles. I found out

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Speaker 1: how his kid died in open heart surgery, and found

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Speaker 1: out his dad died. I completely forget because it was

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Speaker 1: irrelevant to the story. UM, I don't know who King

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Speaker 1: Leopold died, but he died. I mean, he's old, so

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Speaker 1: he just died. Don't know, UM, I like to think

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Speaker 1: because he was oh and then. But the cool part

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Speaker 1: is that when he died, at least according to the

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Speaker 1: BBC reports, UM, when he died people, his own people

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Speaker 1: booed him at his funeral. Incredible. I think I think it.

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Speaker 1: I think it was pneumonia based on search pneumonia and

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Speaker 1: three separate articles. Who could all be like I just

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Speaker 1: feel like about no, I'm now I just feel like

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Speaker 1: a bad researcher because okay, yep, let's go pneumonia. So

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Speaker 1: he gets booed at his funeral. It's probable that he

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Speaker 1: doesn't get booed for being like one of the worst

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Speaker 1: people to have ever been born, but instead because like

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Speaker 1: by the end of his life, he um he started

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Speaker 1: dating a sixteen year old sex worker and married her,

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Speaker 1: and UM disinherited his daughters and then gave his entire fortune. Two.

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Speaker 1: The the teenage sex worker who might not have been

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Speaker 1: teenage at that point when I don't know that, the

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Speaker 1: UM who was basically just sucking UM gold digging very effectively,

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Speaker 1: and so she inherits all of his money and then

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Speaker 1: marries the pimp who introduced her to Leopold. Um. I

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Speaker 1: think that's why he got booed at his funeral, But

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Speaker 1: I like to think it's because he was one of

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Speaker 1: the worst monsters in all of history. That's not even

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Speaker 1: what's so amazing, right, because as you're like, okay, Casement

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Speaker 1: to this thing, right, this amazing thing, and that is

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Speaker 1: the we're not done with Caseman because he did an

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Speaker 1: awful lot more. All right, So Caseman, he has successfully

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Speaker 1: stopped Leopold or been a large part of a multi

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Speaker 1: a huge movement, right, but an important part of it.

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Speaker 1: I'm not trying to downplay him, but I'm also not

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Speaker 1: trying to say he is the person who stopped Leopold,

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Speaker 1: right totally. Yeah, and maybe because he's seen some of

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Speaker 1: the worst aspects of colonialism up in front. It's around

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Speaker 1: this time he has really into being Irish and he

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Speaker 1: in nineteen o four he joined the Gaelic League the

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Speaker 1: Conra Na gelga Um, which is an organization that fights

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Speaker 1: for the preservation of the Irish language. And one of

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Speaker 1: the rn knows more about the thing that I'm now

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Speaker 1: talking about then I do. But it's it's possible that

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Speaker 1: this organization which UM, which he didn't start, right, but

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's spearheaded the movement that, as far as

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Speaker 1: I can tell, saved the language from extinction. In the

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Speaker 1: first decade of the nineteenth century, Irish people grew up

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Speaker 1: speaking Irish. By the last decade of the nineteenth century

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Speaker 1: was three point five of people were speaking Irish is

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Speaker 1: their first language. Yeah. So he worked in in Ulster

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Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland, where he was more or less from

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Speaker 1: and he basically was trying to help convince fellow Protestants

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Speaker 1: that the Irish language mattered and yeah, which is rarer UM.

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Speaker 1: But I do feel like you do see UM And

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Speaker 1: I don't know if I would be able to come

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Speaker 1: up with specific examples, but you do see a lot

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Speaker 1: of like Anglo Irish and Irish Protestants really sort of

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Speaker 1: being important players and in UM like fighting to free

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Speaker 1: Ireland from the English. But he's definitely not the only one. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that I kind of

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Speaker 1: like I came across more and more because you know,

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Speaker 1: my family is um is Irish Catholic, and so you

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Speaker 1: kind of have this this narrative that Ireland is the

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Speaker 1: loyalist Protestants and the you know, nationalists or Republican Catholics, right,

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Speaker 1: and it it does seem like it's way messier than

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Speaker 1: that than what people and like more of the Protestants

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Speaker 1: were actually down with a free Ireland, or at least

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Speaker 1: there were like some notable ones who just like had

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Speaker 1: a good analysis and we're, you know, we're down to

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Speaker 1: throw down. Yeah, and so and when I say fellow

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Speaker 1: Protestants that he was all trying to teach, it's like

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Speaker 1: it's hard to it seems like was not actually personally

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Speaker 1: convinced one way or the other between Protestantism and Catholicism. Um.

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Speaker 1: And but also it's like this is like what the

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Speaker 1: histories want to talk about, right, because like everyone's invested

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Speaker 1: in having him be their guy, you know, or having

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Speaker 1: him not be their guy if they think he's a

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Speaker 1: dirty trader or like had too much gay sex or whatever.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know, I think he was kind of

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Speaker 1: agnostic on spiritual matters, um. Not there was no part

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Speaker 1: of him that was atheist, but in terms between between

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Speaker 1: Protestantism and either way, what he is not confused about

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Speaker 1: is that he cares about Irish um and and while

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Speaker 1: he's working for it helps that at this point he

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Speaker 1: is Britain's and if not maybe the world's most prominent

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Speaker 1: human human rights activists at this point because of the

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Speaker 1: Ship that he just managed to do um and he,

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Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, lives in a way

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Speaker 1: that proves this. I keep kind of wanting to find

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Speaker 1: the like, yeah, but he was, actually I keep wanting

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Speaker 1: to find the wasn't quite as nice as everyone says

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Speaker 1: he was. Everyone says he was this nice. The only

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Speaker 1: thing they argue about is whether or not it made

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Speaker 1: him a bad person for being so nice, Like he

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Speaker 1: was either a fool or a saint. Okay, no one

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Speaker 1: was questioning that he like he He was not rich,

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Speaker 1: He had no capital assets, no inherited um. He lived

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Speaker 1: off his civil servant salary. He also hated landlords and ship.

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Speaker 1: I tried to, like pigeonhole, figure out whether he identifies

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Speaker 1: socialist or whatever. I didn't. I don't have an answer

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Speaker 1: to that. I do know he hated landlords, which is cool. Well,

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Speaker 1: landlords and if he's if he's getting into Irish nationalism,

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Speaker 1: they're all the landlord in in Ireland just like this

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Speaker 1: very specific okay thing right, because there were um during colonization,

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Speaker 1: and I talked a little bit about this. I have

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Speaker 1: this whole little potato sticked because he liked sponsored by

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Speaker 1: the concept of potatoes. But um, there was like a

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Speaker 1: huge amount of expropriation of land in Ireland during before, during,

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Speaker 1: and after um Cromwell's conquest and so um, there's this

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Speaker 1: long history of people getting evicted from their land by

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Speaker 1: these large like English ruling class, um landholders. So there's

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Speaker 1: this long history of eviction. It happened during the famine,

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Speaker 1: it happened before, it happened after. So I think of

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Speaker 1: landlords as a specifically they're they're terrible everywhere, um, but

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Speaker 1: but they were specific powerful group within Ireland that was

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Speaker 1: sucking people over. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's good that Okay. Yeah, Like I'm trying to figure

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Speaker 1: out how to picture him and um, so he's living

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Speaker 1: off his salary. He does not live off of capital assets.

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Speaker 1: I think basically everyone else in his field it made

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Speaker 1: their money by being crooked, you know, made their money

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Speaker 1: by setting up a little something on the side in

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Speaker 1: the place that they were colonizing or whatever. Um because

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Speaker 1: the salary was not great. I tried to on it

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Speaker 1: through calculators. It's very hard to calculate, like English pounds

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Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy two U s dollars now. But like

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Speaker 1: he he was not doing great, but he was doing

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Speaker 1: better than a lot of people around him in Ireland.

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Speaker 1: And so he does ship like buy cows for random families.

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Speaker 1: Like he'll talk to a family and they'll be like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're kind of starving to death, and it was like,

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be better I for you like a cow and

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Speaker 1: you could have some milk, And they're like, it would

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Speaker 1: be better, and he's like that, So he leaves and

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Speaker 1: he goes buys them a cow. He doesn't even go

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Speaker 1: back and bring them the cow himself, because he's not

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Speaker 1: there to like look cool, you know, yeah, well that's okay.

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Speaker 1: So then they have another tie. And I'm going to

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Speaker 1: grab a potato fact sheet, all right, all right, because

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Speaker 1: I think that people think of Irish cuisine and they

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Speaker 1: think of the potato, which of course is a product

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Speaker 1: of the so called Columbian exchange from from regions like Peru,

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Speaker 1: Northern South America. Actually like a very horrific and genocidal

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Speaker 1: conquest of the America's But potatoes get imported to Ireland. Um,

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Speaker 1: but they're there to feed people because the Irish were

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Speaker 1: originally cattle herders who mostly ate meat and dairy, and

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Speaker 1: the British came in and saw this hurting lifestyle as

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Speaker 1: really lazy and wanted to let me see what I

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Speaker 1: have here, so they made I was like, yeah, Wren

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Speaker 1: came prepared. I'm very excited about that. I did come prepared.

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Speaker 1: I'm like, exit, I'm not a great off the cuff person.

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Speaker 1: So I wrote it all down, even when it's like

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Speaker 1: stuff I know. Yeah. So the so the British came

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Speaker 1: in and they were like, these lazy Irish people who

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Speaker 1: are like pushing their cows around, we have to turn

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Speaker 1: them into farmers. And so in the sixteenth and seventeenth century,

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Speaker 1: British invaders still tens of thousands of heads of cattle

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Speaker 1: in an attempt to start the Irish out, and they

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Speaker 1: thought if they could turn them into farmers, they'd have

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Speaker 1: less time for activities like rebelling against the English right,

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Speaker 1: because it's like basically like, if you have a cow,

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Speaker 1: you don't need to plan any potatoes and you don't

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Speaker 1: even need to own land. You can kind of just

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Speaker 1: like wander around and hang out with your cow. I think.

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Speaker 1: So I don't feel welly understand like the like how

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Speaker 1: nomadic Irish people were before colonization, But I do know

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Speaker 1: they were herders, right, They mostly ate meat and dairy

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Speaker 1: with a little bit of vegetables um. And then it

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Speaker 1: was when the British came in that um that there

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Speaker 1: was a strong push to turn turn Irish folks into farmers.

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Speaker 1: And then the potato becomes really useful because it's an

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Speaker 1: easy crop to grow, and it grows underground. And one

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Speaker 1: thing that Cromwell does when he comes in UM is

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Speaker 1: he burns a bunch of crops. But it's really hard

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Speaker 1: to burn crops that are underground, so the potato i'm

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Speaker 1: still able to be harvested. So so it's interesting that

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Speaker 1: Casement is buying cows for people because probably Casement was

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Speaker 1: just like they need a cow, but there was this

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Speaker 1: strong tie into too, like earlier food ways on the island. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I wouldn't put it past him with every because

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Speaker 1: he's obsessed with Irish history, like people like, Yeah, he's

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Speaker 1: like deep into Irish language and stuff. Yeah, and people

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Speaker 1: are like, like literally the people who don't like him

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Speaker 1: are like, he's obsessed with Irish history basically mythology. He's

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Speaker 1: just he thinks he's living in Irish mythology. So okay, okay,

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Speaker 1: So that like maybe I mean the cow thing if

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Speaker 1: you want to talk about Irish mythology, which I'm not

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Speaker 1: really going to very much, but the cow comes up

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Speaker 1: over and over again. Could but I'm not. I don't

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Speaker 1: feel like I know enough. But but the cow is

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Speaker 1: very important. Like there's one of the most famous um

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Speaker 1: Irish mythological stories which I would say that most of

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Speaker 1: the people in it are not cool people who did

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Speaker 1: not do cool stuff. They're like very complicated and sometimes

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Speaker 1: bad mythological figures. The cattle Rate of Coolie, which is

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Speaker 1: all about stealing cows. Yeah, I can see him being

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Speaker 1: really into cows. Okay, Okay, I like this, um yeah, No,

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Speaker 1: we're just gonna decide, We're gonna right. It's it's so

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Speaker 1: much about him is mythologized, and he was also into

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Speaker 1: in mythology. I think he's actually would be okay with

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Speaker 1: being mythologized. So he bought cows. You've heard it here first,

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Speaker 1: or maybe you've heard it from other people to have

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Speaker 1: come to the same conclusions. This is why he bought

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Speaker 1: people of cows. He also um. He he rides third

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Speaker 1: class on trains. His friends make fun of him for

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Speaker 1: always giving way money to every beggar he saw, and

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Speaker 1: they say things that he like he is buying smiles

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Speaker 1: at a penny apiece and they like say this as

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Speaker 1: if he's gonna like feel bad about it, and so

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Speaker 1: he's just like, yeah, that makes sense. He refuses all

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Speaker 1: luxuries for himself. Sucks not being a luxury um. I

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Speaker 1: mean especially in the context of you know, having to

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Speaker 1: be secretly homosexual or whatever. Um. And he saves up

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Speaker 1: money to offer prizes in schools for the study of

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Speaker 1: the Irish language. Um. And he he organizes It's like

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Speaker 1: in amongst all of this other stuff, I feel like

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Speaker 1: this is such an This is an equally important part

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Speaker 1: of anti colonial struggle as like getting guns for people.

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Speaker 1: Right is He's organizing Irish gatherings for Gaelic songs and

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Speaker 1: dunces um. And his friend refers to him as his

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Speaker 1: happiest during such moments when he's like just like sitting

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Speaker 1: back and watching the kids like listen to Irish music

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Speaker 1: and dance. You know. He starts raising money. He uses

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Speaker 1: his international connections to raise money for Irish kids in

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Speaker 1: school basically like like Brazil sends a thousand pounds, which

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Speaker 1: is like a hundred thousand pounds and they sent a

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Speaker 1: lot of money, um to help feed Irish kids who

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Speaker 1: can't for food, you know. Um. And in nineteen o five,

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Speaker 1: chin Fain is founded UH, an Irish republican party that

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Speaker 1: wants Ireland as a republic. Imagine living in a country

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Speaker 1: where republican means wants a republic. Um. He joins right off.

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Speaker 1: He is one of the first people to join this um.

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Speaker 1: He's still a British civil servant, but whatever, fuck it,

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Speaker 1: I'm joining shin Fain because of his position. When he

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Speaker 1: wrote about Irish nationalism, he writes about it mostly anonymously,

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Speaker 1: and and he writes about Indo pen Is anonymously for

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Speaker 1: various newspapers. He calls himself the leprechn of Irish politics.

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Speaker 1: I think because he was like evasive, elusive, you know. Um.

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Speaker 1: So let's talk about potatoes, because we're switching to an

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Speaker 1: addition now so as everyone knows or maybe are learning

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Speaker 1: now this is your first episode. We're sponsored by good Things,

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Speaker 1: and we're sponsored most traditionally by the concept of potato.

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Speaker 1: But I'm hearing that there might be some complications that

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Speaker 1: we need to take into consideration. Um, because it sounds

404
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Speaker 1: like right, you have it as this colonial well robbed

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Speaker 1: from the people of South America in a really devastating way,

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Speaker 1: introduced the people of Ireland in a really devastating way,

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Speaker 1: but also provided a certain amount of resiliency because it

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Speaker 1: doesn't burn. I mean, like everything in history, it's complicated, right, Um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So so potatoes come actually all over europe peasants start

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Speaker 1: eating potatoes. It's sort of hailed as as a way

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Speaker 1: to prevent famine, which, as you will, does not actually happen,

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Speaker 1: but um, yeah, as to a way to cheaply feed

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Speaker 1: people who couldn't afford food in Europe. Um, And so

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Speaker 1: it gets introduced. It really takes off in Ireland though,

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Speaker 1: But yeah, it is complicated, right because then I think

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Speaker 1: if we're going to talk about Irish nationalism, there were

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Speaker 1: many famines, but the Great Hunger, which is what the

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Speaker 1: Irish Famine is typically called, I believe within Ireland. Sorry

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Speaker 1: to any Irish people if I'm getting that wrong. Um,

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Speaker 1: but that you know, that was a definitely an impact

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Speaker 1: on people wanting to independent Ireland, one of many impacts.

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Speaker 1: And in that case, um the lumper potato, which is

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Speaker 1: the potato that started being grown all over Ireland. UM.

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Speaker 1: It was not very tasty and it was not very

425
00:23:49,640 --> 00:23:54,480
Speaker 1: resistant to um sort of blight, which is what ended

426
00:23:54,560 --> 00:23:57,440
Speaker 1: up happening. But it grew very quickly and it grew

427
00:23:57,480 --> 00:23:59,520
Speaker 1: a lot, so it was really good for feeding people,

428
00:24:00,080 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 1: um until it wasn't. Until it wasn't and the famine

429
00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:07,359
Speaker 1: actually hit. I didn't actually go back into this research

430
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:09,439
Speaker 1: when I wrote these notes, but it hit all over Europe.

431
00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:13,240
Speaker 1: But it really had I really badly because because of

432
00:24:13,240 --> 00:24:15,159
Speaker 1: what I was talking about before, right where people have

433
00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:17,440
Speaker 1: been pushed off their land, they were basically only being

434
00:24:17,480 --> 00:24:21,040
Speaker 1: able to grow potatoes and a few other crops. It

435
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:24,240
Speaker 1: was actually a bad idea to grow a garden where

436
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:27,240
Speaker 1: you would get like other delicious vegetables, because that would

437
00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 1: be considered an improvement on your property and the landlord

438
00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:33,639
Speaker 1: could raise the rent what you could afford if you

439
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:36,720
Speaker 1: would plant like a garden with like you know, greens

440
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:40,359
Speaker 1: and tomatoes, and I don't know cabbage, kale. I'm trying

441
00:24:40,359 --> 00:24:43,000
Speaker 1: to think of things that that Irish folks back then

442
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: might plant. And they were also really easy to grow

443
00:24:45,320 --> 00:24:48,159
Speaker 1: because they could be grown in lazy beds, which the

444
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:52,119
Speaker 1: Irish had grown crops in forty five hundred years um.

445
00:24:52,160 --> 00:24:54,919
Speaker 1: And it was really well adaptot to Ireland's thin, wet soil.

446
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:58,119
Speaker 1: But of course the British didn't understand it and despised

447
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:01,280
Speaker 1: it because it didn't take enough work. The British are

448
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:04,960
Speaker 1: really in the Irish to be hard working farmers, so

449
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 1: once they were dug and planted, they needed little work.

450
00:25:07,280 --> 00:25:09,360
Speaker 1: But this did allow the Irish peasants to have time

451
00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: for other tasks, which was really important since most of

452
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 1: them also had a farmer work on behalf of their landlords. Um.

453
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:18,640
Speaker 1: It wasn't it like the great they made. They grew

454
00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:21,200
Speaker 1: potatoes from themselves and they grew everything else for exporter

455
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:23,679
Speaker 1: to give to the landlord's pay rent. Totally right, And

456
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:26,280
Speaker 1: that's so that's where the lumper comes in, because they

457
00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:28,639
Speaker 1: could just produce a lot of it and then I

458
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:32,840
Speaker 1: have some stuff about. There was a population boom between

459
00:25:32,840 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 1: seven hundred and eighteen forty five that drove a demand

460
00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 1: for land, but there actually would have been enough if

461
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: there weren't all these huge landlords expropriating the land, and

462
00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:44,120
Speaker 1: so instead many people were forced into a system called

463
00:25:44,119 --> 00:25:46,440
Speaker 1: the conaker, which was paying for the right to grow

464
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:50,080
Speaker 1: potatoes on a piece of land, and forty one percent

465
00:25:50,080 --> 00:25:53,000
Speaker 1: of the Irish population didn't even have that. They consisted

466
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 1: of landless labors as of eighteen forty five, right, that's

467
00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:58,160
Speaker 1: the first year of the famine, and Ireland was almost

468
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: entirely agricultural, so land was super import written. There wasn't

469
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,760
Speaker 1: a ton of industry there, and rents could be really

470
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:07,960
Speaker 1: really high. Rents were eight higher than in England. Okay,

471
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:12,840
Speaker 1: well ship basically so. But yeah, basically there's like just

472
00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:15,760
Speaker 1: a really bad situation where people are forced into a

473
00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:17,920
Speaker 1: system where they're paying to grow potatoes. I already mentioned

474
00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:20,720
Speaker 1: the thing where they couldn't grow kitchen gardens. So once

475
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:23,200
Speaker 1: the blight gets hit, their hit really bad. The English

476
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:25,080
Speaker 1: don't want to send aid because the Irish have a

477
00:26:25,119 --> 00:26:31,119
Speaker 1: reputation for exaggerating um and as every like every like

478
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:35,480
Speaker 1: marginalized person is always You're not you're just complaining. You're

479
00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:37,920
Speaker 1: just you're always complaining. Why are you always complained because

480
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: you're starving to death every day a new complaint. Yeah, totally.

481
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 1: You didn't have food yesterday, Why are you complaining about

482
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:47,159
Speaker 1: food today? Same completely idea yesterday. For sure. It's like

483
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:49,200
Speaker 1: they weren't working hard enough, as their potatoes were like

484
00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:53,280
Speaker 1: rotting in their fields. Um. And they also there were

485
00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:54,920
Speaker 1: also a few people who make comments about it, like

486
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 1: controlling the Irish population, which is a lot more nefarious

487
00:26:59,080 --> 00:27:02,440
Speaker 1: um them. And then they had all these really really

488
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:05,919
Speaker 1: silly ideas like straining the rotten potatoes, baking them so

489
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: the rotten part was baked off. None of these worked.

490
00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:13,040
Speaker 1: They like sent um corn. They wouldn't send grain because

491
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:16,440
Speaker 1: grain would mess with the market forces of the capitalist market,

492
00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 1: but they sent they sent flint corn, and the assumption

493
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:22,480
Speaker 1: was that like in England, there'd be all these mills

494
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 1: and they can mail the flint corn and use it.

495
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:26,600
Speaker 1: But there weren't mills in Ireland. Really to the same.

496
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 1: I think it's like a hard corn um that you

497
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:33,960
Speaker 1: would have to mail to make into like a corn meal.

498
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:37,560
Speaker 1: But I whoever is listening should probably fact check me

499
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:40,240
Speaker 1: on that. So they couldn't mille it. So the English

500
00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:42,439
Speaker 1: told them to boil it, which didn't really work. So

501
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:46,439
Speaker 1: basically they're sending useless food. Then you have other groups.

502
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:50,159
Speaker 1: You have Protestant groups who are starting soup kitchens, but

503
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:54,120
Speaker 1: you have to convert or attend services to receive the food,

504
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:58,200
Speaker 1: which gave rise to the phrase taking the soup. Um.

505
00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:02,640
Speaker 1: But then we have our friends the Quakes, who were

506
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:05,320
Speaker 1: some of the only people who set up relief efforts

507
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:07,879
Speaker 1: that weren't tied at all to like trying to convert people.

508
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:11,679
Speaker 1: Some of them actually died from illnesses related to the

509
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 1: famine doing the relief work. Um, and their efforts saved

510
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:17,160
Speaker 1: thousands of lives. Sorry, I feel like I just went

511
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:19,080
Speaker 1: off onto this famine. No, I mean this was like

512
00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:22,160
Speaker 1: literally the plan of the reason for anyone who's listening. Um.

513
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:26,959
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I had, uh, I wanted potato facts,

514
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 1: and so Wren came up with hashtag potato facts. But

515
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:34,120
Speaker 1: then they actually form an actual narrative about potatoes. Yes.

516
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:37,440
Speaker 1: And then there are also funds that came in from

517
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: all over the world, including Mexic co Venezuela, India, the

518
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 1: Chalk Talk people, UM, Russia, Italy, and beyond individual British citizens.

519
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 1: You know, people like casement. I'm sure you know he

520
00:28:47,360 --> 00:28:51,959
Speaker 1: wasn't alive then, but right, we have one million Irish

521
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: people who died as a result of the Great Hunger

522
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 1: and one million who immigrated because of it, And so

523
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 1: the countryside was so empty that I've never had a

524
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:03,520
Speaker 1: chance to go to Ireland, but I've read that even

525
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 1: today you can see the remnants of these lazy beds

526
00:29:07,080 --> 00:29:10,160
Speaker 1: where people grew potatoes, just like all the landscape because

527
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,240
Speaker 1: they were like they were like cottages and farmhouses there,

528
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:18,400
Speaker 1: and now it's just so um, I think that's the

529
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:22,040
Speaker 1: end of potato facts. Yeah, and I feel like that

530
00:29:22,200 --> 00:29:24,000
Speaker 1: is like context to just like I think one of

531
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:26,719
Speaker 1: the problems I always struggled with history is that, you know,

532
00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 1: the dates didn't mean anything to me when I was younger,

533
00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 1: before you could start connecting. The only point of knowing

534
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:34,320
Speaker 1: all the dates in history is so you can start seeing,

535
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 1: you can start weaving the web and seeing the grander narrative.

536
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:40,000
Speaker 1: It's like the dates of the points of connection. Because

537
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:44,600
Speaker 1: and so it's worth thinking about the fact that he is,

538
00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:49,200
Speaker 1: you know, his parents lived through the Great Hunger, um,

539
00:29:49,240 --> 00:29:52,720
Speaker 1: you know, and like, so this is the context that

540
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:55,360
Speaker 1: he's coming into is like, what was it the population

541
00:29:55,400 --> 00:29:57,640
Speaker 1: of Ireland went down by half or something like that.

542
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 1: I tried to look that up again and all I

543
00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:03,840
Speaker 1: found was that two million the one millions million immigrated,

544
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:07,440
Speaker 1: so I don't think it was quite half. Ye, But yeah,

545
00:30:07,520 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 1: so he's I don't know is important context both for

546
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: Roger Casement and for fans of this show's primary sponsor, Potatoes.

547
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:23,959
Speaker 1: We also have other sponsors. Um tap water, good healthy,

548
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: clean tap water is one of our sponsors. Um, Sophie,

549
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: do you have any good sponsors? The concept of a

550
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:39,440
Speaker 1: always cool pillow? Mm hmm, yeah, that is a good um,

551
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:41,520
Speaker 1: and that is what we're sponsored by, not any brand

552
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:47,520
Speaker 1: of cool cooling pillow. They. Um, we are however accepting, uh,

553
00:30:48,120 --> 00:30:52,960
Speaker 1: we are ever accepting donations of cool pillow. Never mind.

554
00:30:53,280 --> 00:31:04,400
Speaker 1: We are yeah, okay, here's some advertisers. Okay, and we

555
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:07,400
Speaker 1: are back and we are talking about how Roger Casement

556
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 1: is basically like getting really involved in not just Irish politics,

557
00:31:12,680 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 1: but Irish culture and actually at this point primarily Irish culture,

558
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:19,560
Speaker 1: although also joined shin fein the Republican Organization and the

559
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 1: rest of the movement. They're not as sure about him. Um,

560
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:25,959
Speaker 1: he's Protestant. He works for England. That's probably an even

561
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 1: bigger deal than the Protestant thing. I don't know. I

562
00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:33,360
Speaker 1: would trust this guy, um, but he he doesn't care

563
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:36,800
Speaker 1: because he's not doing it for cloud. He is doing

564
00:31:36,840 --> 00:31:39,200
Speaker 1: what he believes is right. He's got a lot of

565
00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: ideas about chivalry. A lot of his writing is about chivalry,

566
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:44,760
Speaker 1: and he actually wrote about how imperialism was the death

567
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: of chivalry. I would argue that there's problems in the

568
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 1: you know, traditional ideas of chivalry as well. But this

569
00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: is this is what's leading him. This is the fire

570
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:56,280
Speaker 1: inside of him that makes him do what's right. And

571
00:31:56,320 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 1: he he's really into the Fianna, these heavily mythologized fans

572
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:02,120
Speaker 1: of Irish warriors from the Iron Age in the early

573
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: Middle Age, And I don't know. And so the thing

574
00:32:06,440 --> 00:32:07,960
Speaker 1: that's really interesting me about it if I were into

575
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:11,720
Speaker 1: myth making, and let's be realized, I am. He is

576
00:32:11,760 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 1: in his own way a night I mean, he ends

577
00:32:13,800 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 1: up knighted later in the story. But you know, if

578
00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:21,360
Speaker 1: you understand knighthood mythologically right, the like we are not

579
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:23,360
Speaker 1: sponsored by the concept of knighthood. I want to be

580
00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: clear about this, but the concept of knighthood divorced from

581
00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:30,960
Speaker 1: the actual historical existence of knighthood does seem to be

582
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:35,840
Speaker 1: a motivating archetype in his life. So I've gone from

583
00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: calling him gay James Bond to I don't know, okay,

584
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:42,880
Speaker 1: sir Gowen, I don't know the knights of the round table,

585
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:48,480
Speaker 1: fake geek okay. So he in nineteen o six, he

586
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 1: before I was just thinking about I got lost thinking

587
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,920
Speaker 1: about swords. Um always in the back of my mind,

588
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:56,720
Speaker 1: the bedrock of all fosses, swords and shields and armor.

589
00:32:57,000 --> 00:32:59,440
Speaker 1: But in nineteen o six he's off overseas again. He's

590
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 1: sent off a sees and this time he goes to

591
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 1: South America, to Brazil. He's there for three years, and

592
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:08,800
Speaker 1: in he goes deep into the Amazon in Peru to

593
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:12,840
Speaker 1: investigate a colonial operation that is using force labor to

594
00:33:12,880 --> 00:33:16,600
Speaker 1: extract rubber. It's basically is beat at this point is

595
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:20,520
Speaker 1: um evil corporations that are using force labor to extract rubber.

596
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:22,800
Speaker 1: It's just as bad as what he saw in the

597
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 1: Congo Uh. It's not at the same numerical scale, but

598
00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: it is just as bad in terms of the atrocities

599
00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 1: that are happening to people it's just sucking evil. He

600
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: writes a long report full of first person accounts from

601
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:38,080
Speaker 1: the indigenous people who are actually were being enslaved people

602
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 1: at the time. It was like kind of a big

603
00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:43,040
Speaker 1: deal that he kept like using people's actual words, like

604
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:48,400
Speaker 1: letting them speak for themselves, you know. And his damning

605
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:51,280
Speaker 1: report comes out and the company is like, oh, sorry,

606
00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 1: we'll be better, But he doesn't give up. He goes

607
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 1: back a year later and they are not better, so

608
00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:01,600
Speaker 1: he starts campaigning against them. It know, a really quick overviews.

609
00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 1: Like he writes these reports and things fall. But he

610
00:34:04,440 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: writes these reports and then participates in large movements to

611
00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:11,399
Speaker 1: drive public opinion and impact, you know, the bottom line

612
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:14,319
Speaker 1: of these companies and stuff. And so this he works

613
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 1: with this international campaign for years too. And he he

614
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:21,279
Speaker 1: destroys the company or he participates in the campaign to

615
00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: destroy the company. Many, but not all, the people involved

616
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:27,000
Speaker 1: in the bad ship get prosecuted. Um. And this whole

617
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 1: story deserves more time than I'm giving it, but I can.

618
00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:33,040
Speaker 1: I picked two of his many many stories. I picked

619
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:37,959
Speaker 1: h the Congo, when I picked the Easter Rising. Um.

620
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 1: This work makes him up. He's already like the most

621
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:44,600
Speaker 1: famous humanitarian in the world. He's now just a fucking hero.

622
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: He gets knighted by England and I'm a little surprised

623
00:34:49,040 --> 00:34:52,120
Speaker 1: he accepted. He's not super keen on the English crown.

624
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:54,440
Speaker 1: At this point, I fell down this rabbit hole of

625
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 1: the like, there's like, my favorite Wikipedia list is the

626
00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 1: list of people who have refused knighthood. A ton of

627
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:03,840
Speaker 1: people have refused knighthood because they've been like either they're like,

628
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:06,319
Speaker 1: well that's a little bit silly, isn't it. Or they've

629
00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 1: been like, no, I fucking hate you and everything you

630
00:35:08,560 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 1: stand for. What would I take knighthood? But he he

631
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 1: accepts knighthood. Later he tells his interrogators, because later he

632
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:20,520
Speaker 1: gets interrogated, he says that he accepted it because refusing

633
00:35:20,560 --> 00:35:23,840
Speaker 1: it would have meant losing his job, and he couldn't

634
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 1: afford to lose his job. Um, and I don't know,

635
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:32,480
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know exactly what that looked like

636
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 1: to him, you know, but basically it was like, if

637
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:38,400
Speaker 1: I want to continue in the position that I've worked

638
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:42,320
Speaker 1: my entire life in this career, I can't if I refuse.

639
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:49,880
Speaker 1: If I start refusing these commendations. So he's sir Roger Casement,

640
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:57,840
Speaker 1: Sir Roddy rod Sex okay so um. In nineteen thirteen

641
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 1: are you twelve? Okay? Anyway? So okay? He gets knighted

642
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:14,480
Speaker 1: and in the nineteen thirteen he retires and he immediately

643
00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 1: sets about his new job. His new job is kicking

644
00:36:17,120 --> 00:36:20,799
Speaker 1: the English the funk out of Ireland, peacefully if possible,

645
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 1: with guns if necessary. That is the full of his

646
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:29,800
Speaker 1: his mission. In thirteen, he and several other people found

647
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:32,759
Speaker 1: the Irish Volunteers, which is a military organization for the

648
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 1: freedom of Ireland, or at least the home rule of Ireland.

649
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:38,520
Speaker 1: There was some argument within the ranks about exactly what

650
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 1: they were fighting for. You always shocked to know. And

651
00:36:41,239 --> 00:36:43,920
Speaker 1: it was explicitly open to people regardless of class or religion.

652
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:48,279
Speaker 1: It wasn't quite a let's overthrow the government organization. Um.

653
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 1: It saw itself as a counter to the loyalist militia,

654
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:58,040
Speaker 1: the Ulster Volunteers that was forming. And basically, I don't know,

655
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:01,280
Speaker 1: take note, Americans. Militia's form and to counter other militias

656
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 1: is a sign that troubles comping for better or worse.

657
00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 1: So you have these two, you know, So you have

658
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:13,200
Speaker 1: this loyalist militia and this nationalist militia UM, and the

659
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: Ulster militia is well funded and shipped and so they

660
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: have a lot of advantages. UM. And the Ultar militia

661
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:20,680
Speaker 1: does this whole thing where they like smuggle in a

662
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:22,440
Speaker 1: bunch of guns and they send guns to like every

663
00:37:22,440 --> 00:37:26,000
Speaker 1: fucking loyalist in the country, totally illegally, and no one's

664
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:29,839
Speaker 1: trying to stop them. So the Irish volunteers are like, well,

665
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:32,840
Speaker 1: we need guns too. So Roger Caseman, he's like organizing

666
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 1: large things that involve international things. I'm your guy. And

667
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:41,720
Speaker 1: so he and several others, including an American born Irish

668
00:37:41,760 --> 00:37:45,720
Speaker 1: woman named Molly Childers, who I'm literally just name dropping.

669
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 1: So we're not passing the back deel test right now.

670
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:50,960
Speaker 1: This entire episode has so many men in it, but

671
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,799
Speaker 1: there's some women involved. Um yeah, it was almost an

672
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:59,719
Speaker 1: all male episode. But yeah, but I guess we're not men. Yeah,

673
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 1: that that helps. And then and then we have Molly

674
00:38:02,239 --> 00:38:06,720
Speaker 1: Childers but yeah, who's mostly written in all the history

675
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:10,959
Speaker 1: books as Mrs Ermine childhood, mostly known by her fucking

676
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 1: husband's name because he was involved too, but so was

677
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:17,719
Speaker 1: goddamn she. Um. I don't know. I I was thinking

678
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 1: about this and it was like, there is also and

679
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:23,160
Speaker 1: maybe it's bad, but I'm like, I think when you

680
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:25,840
Speaker 1: write about gay men in history, there's also a certain

681
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:28,359
Speaker 1: amount of like, Um, I don't know, I'm not trying

682
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:30,880
Speaker 1: to get myself off the hook for this, Okay whatever.

683
00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 1: Anyway it happens. So Molly and Roddy they're like, let's

684
00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:39,239
Speaker 1: buy some guns from from the Germans and who are

685
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:42,319
Speaker 1: not yet at war with all of Europe. And so

686
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 1: they raise a bunch of money through various means, including

687
00:38:44,440 --> 00:38:46,960
Speaker 1: Casement just giving up all his money always. I literally

688
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:49,760
Speaker 1: don't understand how he like ate food. Um, he's always

689
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:52,400
Speaker 1: giving up all of his money. Um. And he raises

690
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 1: money through his connections and they do all these like

691
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:57,919
Speaker 1: fundraisers practically like bake sales to buy us some fucking

692
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:03,600
Speaker 1: rifles and um. And they buy black powder rifles from Germans,

693
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 1: which are completely obsolete weapons. Uh. And these are some

694
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 1: of the weapons that later get used in the Rising. Um.

695
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:12,359
Speaker 1: And when they show up to buy them, they're like, no,

696
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:15,800
Speaker 1: these aren't for a we're not planning to violently evict

697
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 1: the English from our own country. There for Mexico, and

698
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: they smuggle them over to Ireland. And this this part

699
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:26,720
Speaker 1: is not Casement. This is Molly and some other people,

700
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 1: and they smuggle them over to Ireland on two personal

701
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:33,160
Speaker 1: yachts owned by Irish nationalists, including one yacht that was

702
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:36,840
Speaker 1: called the Asgard, which means it is the second Germanic

703
00:39:36,840 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: paganism reference in a show about Ireland and the congo

704
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 1: um and I'm excited that the Germanic pagan reference shows

705
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: up on the good side in this case. The yachts

706
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: are so full of guns that the crew had to

707
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:52,440
Speaker 1: like throw out all their food and ship and they

708
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:56,480
Speaker 1: literally sleep on top of guns. Uh. They go through

709
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 1: storms and at one point they sailed through an entire

710
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 1: fleet of English and you can just imagine it in

711
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:03,240
Speaker 1: the movie. It's the part where everything's like really silent

712
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:05,840
Speaker 1: as the little personal yacht moves through all the warships

713
00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:11,320
Speaker 1: you know. Um, and they succeed. They land the yachts

714
00:40:11,320 --> 00:40:13,800
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day, very intentionally, right the

715
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:16,640
Speaker 1: Ulster volunteers. They snuck it in at night and they

716
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:18,799
Speaker 1: were like, as far as I could tell, They're like,

717
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:21,360
Speaker 1: fuck you, this is our country that we're doing this

718
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 1: in the middle of the fucking day. They land as

719
00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:26,520
Speaker 1: close to Dublin as they can, um, and when they

720
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 1: show up there's a crowd, and the fucking people running

721
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:32,000
Speaker 1: the docks were a bunch of snitch asses. And so

722
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:35,360
Speaker 1: they call the cops, and the cops come. The crowd

723
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:38,200
Speaker 1: riots and it drives back the cops by throwing stones

724
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:41,600
Speaker 1: maybe shotguns towards the cops. No one seems to have

725
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:44,480
Speaker 1: been injured during this part of it, um, but they

726
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:47,600
Speaker 1: drive the cops off. The cops only managed to confiscate

727
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: like nineteen of the rifles, and then a judge makes

728
00:40:50,040 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 1: them give them back later anyway, just cool um and

729
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:57,600
Speaker 1: the rest of you know. So the guns are all

730
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 1: secreted away by the revolutionaries and hidden, and the crowd

731
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 1: makes a mistake. The crowd follows the cops to basically

732
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 1: follow them down the street and laugh at them. It's

733
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: just like yeah, like fuck you cops. So the cops

734
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 1: open fire and run in with bayonets and injured people

735
00:41:15,160 --> 00:41:22,200
Speaker 1: and kill yeah. And they so four people die, thirty

736
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 1: people get injured, and it incites more nationalist fervor um.

737
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:28,920
Speaker 1: The operation is overall of success. I don't know how

738
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:31,759
Speaker 1: the four people would feel about it, probably actually okay,

739
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 1: with it, and the guns are whisked off to be

740
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 1: hidden in a Catholic school run by revolutionaries because Ireland.

741
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, it's fourteen and there's this important thing that

742
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:46,600
Speaker 1: happens in fourteen. Speaking of the dates mattering and them

743
00:41:46,640 --> 00:41:49,879
Speaker 1: being the things that intersect and connect everything, World War

744
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 1: one starts yep uh, in which Germany decides to go

745
00:41:56,200 --> 00:41:58,839
Speaker 1: declare war and stuff. Um, this isn't a World War One.

746
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:02,319
Speaker 1: Cast the Irish are like, fuck, yeah, Britain is going

747
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 1: to be busy, It's time to fucking go. Some of them. Yeah,

748
00:42:07,200 --> 00:42:10,760
Speaker 1: the Irish Volunteers actually end up split. The overwhelming majority

749
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:13,399
Speaker 1: of them change their name to the National Volunteers and

750
00:42:14,040 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: are like we must go defend German fight against Germany. Um.

751
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:21,360
Speaker 1: And then there's like this whole thing and there's this

752
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:23,840
Speaker 1: whole falling out, and it basically means that the radicals

753
00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: kind of take control the Irish Republican Brotherhood i RB

754
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:30,319
Speaker 1: take control of the Irish Volunteers, and then a lot

755
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:32,439
Speaker 1: of the National Volunteers like kind of comes sulking back

756
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 1: and are like never mind, can we come back? And

757
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:35,600
Speaker 1: they're like yeah, But the radicals are kind of more

758
00:42:35,600 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 1: in charge and I'm like, okay, whatever. So this kind

759
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:40,400
Speaker 1: of like lays a lot of the groundwork, um for

760
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:44,960
Speaker 1: well for Ireland to do its thing where it sort

761
00:42:44,960 --> 00:42:49,400
Speaker 1: of gets independent later um Casement. In the meantime, I

762
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:51,480
Speaker 1: think he's actually in New York City when the war

763
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:54,280
Speaker 1: breaks out, because he's like, all right, we need guns

764
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:56,000
Speaker 1: and money. I'm going to do the thing where I

765
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 1: travel around the world and sleep with people and get

766
00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:00,920
Speaker 1: guns and money. Um. And so he goes to New

767
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 1: York and he um his contact there is an Irish

768
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:09,120
Speaker 1: guy named John Devoy, and he says, practical politics, he

769
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:12,680
Speaker 1: did not understand. He was an idealist, absolutely without personal ambition,

770
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:15,640
Speaker 1: ready to sacrifice his interests and his life for the

771
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:18,320
Speaker 1: cause he had at heart. But he was too sensitive

772
00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:22,919
Speaker 1: about the consequences to others of his actions, which again,

773
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:25,120
Speaker 1: like people keep saying this ship about Caseman as if

774
00:43:25,200 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 1: people are oh, he's a softie, and I'm like, good,

775
00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:31,560
Speaker 1: I like him more because he actually thinks about the

776
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:39,040
Speaker 1: impact of his actions, like and I don't know whatever, um.

777
00:43:39,080 --> 00:43:40,840
Speaker 1: And now that he's done working for the British I

778
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 1: just like him unreservedly at this point. So he also

779
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:48,760
Speaker 1: means with the German diplomat and they they smuggles himself

780
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:51,920
Speaker 1: into wartime Germany from Norway, and the crown tries to

781
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:54,600
Speaker 1: get his companion in his traveling companion to snitch him out,

782
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:58,960
Speaker 1: offering in today's money the equivalent of millions of pounds,

783
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:04,040
Speaker 1: but his companion and refuses, quite possibly because Casement and

784
00:44:04,200 --> 00:44:08,120
Speaker 1: his traveling companion were dating. But no one knows. But

785
00:44:08,200 --> 00:44:12,680
Speaker 1: you know what else, no one knows about the good

786
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 1: stuff that supports this pod podcast. Like, let's see now,

787
00:44:19,960 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 1: I just feel so complicated about the concept of potatoes.

788
00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:26,520
Speaker 1: I think that the it's okay, Like I think that

789
00:44:26,520 --> 00:44:30,520
Speaker 1: that really reflects how history is always complicated, you know. Yeah,

790
00:44:30,760 --> 00:44:33,839
Speaker 1: Like I love potatoes, I don't. We can eat potatoes later,

791
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:39,279
Speaker 1: you know this, This podcast is sponsored by the concept

792
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 1: of fuzzy socks that make your feet just warm enough

793
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 1: but not too performs yeah, and give you that nice

794
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 1: little cushion that makes you feel like you're getting a

795
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:53,879
Speaker 1: hug on your feet. Ye welcome listeners for that description.

796
00:44:55,920 --> 00:45:04,479
Speaker 1: Ads M okay, and we are back and we're talking

797
00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:07,040
Speaker 1: about Casement, who is now a spy again, and this

798
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:09,960
Speaker 1: time he's like, actually, um, you know, in a country

799
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:13,000
Speaker 1: that's at war with the country that ostensibly rules him.

800
00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:16,040
Speaker 1: He has smuggled himself into wartime Germany during World War

801
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:19,759
Speaker 1: One to try to get the military aid of the

802
00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:22,880
Speaker 1: enemy power. I can't figure out why anyone thought he

803
00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:25,799
Speaker 1: was a trader. I mean, I think he rules, but like,

804
00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:28,240
Speaker 1: you know whatever, I could see how this looks badly.

805
00:45:28,920 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 1: So he has three goals. And so he's trying to

806
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 1: get Germany to help the Irish fighting. Yes exactly, Um, yeah,

807
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 1: he he has three goals. He wants German recognition for

808
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 1: an independent Ireland. He wants an Irish brigade made up

809
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:46,759
Speaker 1: of the prisoners of war in Germany, basically all of

810
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:48,600
Speaker 1: the people that have been captured in World War One,

811
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 1: all the Irish people who are fighting for Britain, Great Britain,

812
00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:55,640
Speaker 1: UM or for the UK or whatever. And and he

813
00:45:55,680 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: wants tons of guns. Those are three goals. He he

814
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:02,439
Speaker 1: has this funk Off plan where he's going to raise

815
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 1: the Irish brigade right, and so the Germans start treating

816
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 1: the Irish prisoners better, and they start keeping them in

817
00:46:09,160 --> 00:46:11,600
Speaker 1: one place so that he can go and like proselytize

818
00:46:11,640 --> 00:46:16,400
Speaker 1: to them. Basically, this does not work. The Irish prisoners

819
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:18,799
Speaker 1: of war are like, are you fucking kidding me, you

820
00:46:18,880 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 1: trader piece of ship? Um, only fifty one of the

821
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:27,120
Speaker 1: two thousand or so agree to join an Irish brigade.

822
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:29,880
Speaker 1: It could be that they were motivated by if we

823
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:32,440
Speaker 1: do this, we'll get hanged. It could be that they

824
00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:35,719
Speaker 1: got motivated by we don't want to do that. We

825
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:38,920
Speaker 1: were loyalists all along. There's it could be they were like,

826
00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:42,239
Speaker 1: we were literally just fighting against the Germans. Doesn't feel

827
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:44,759
Speaker 1: good to switch sides. I can't even blame the people

828
00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:49,880
Speaker 1: who didn't join his idea. UM, but this plan fails,

829
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:52,200
Speaker 1: except we guess fifty one. He's a fifty one strong

830
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:58,960
Speaker 1: Irish brigade. He gets German recognition, sort of. Germany's like,

831
00:46:59,520 --> 00:47:02,120
Speaker 1: i'll tell you what, will write a statement that's like,

832
00:47:02,680 --> 00:47:04,959
Speaker 1: if we come to Ireland, it will be to free

833
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 1: you and recognize you as an independent nation and not

834
00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:10,680
Speaker 1: to conquer you. Um, just sort of the best he

835
00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:14,360
Speaker 1: can get. And he gets another boat full of rifles.

836
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:16,759
Speaker 1: This time it's twenty thou most and agants, which are

837
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:20,520
Speaker 1: not obsolete at this point, and ten machine guns, which

838
00:47:20,560 --> 00:47:23,600
Speaker 1: is not nearly what he was hoping to get. And

839
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:28,160
Speaker 1: he is depressed he has. He's there for a year

840
00:47:28,200 --> 00:47:30,400
Speaker 1: and a half doing all of this work and he

841
00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 1: gets this sort of pittance. From his point of view, Um,

842
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:36,560
Speaker 1: he also knows that if this plan fails, he's going

843
00:47:36,600 --> 00:47:40,080
Speaker 1: to die. Like he's just like this is this is

844
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:42,640
Speaker 1: the death of me. And as the plan is continuing

845
00:47:42,680 --> 00:47:45,719
Speaker 1: to not succeed because his only real hope of surviving

846
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:50,200
Speaker 1: at this point is to win right to show up

847
00:47:50,239 --> 00:47:54,440
Speaker 1: a brigade and guns and kick out the English, and

848
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:56,800
Speaker 1: that that's that's the only way he's getting out of

849
00:47:56,800 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: this alive. So he spends a year and a half

850
00:47:58,719 --> 00:48:02,799
Speaker 1: being like I dead, this is it, And he goes

851
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:07,280
Speaker 1: about his work anyway, um and writing in his journal

852
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:09,280
Speaker 1: about how he wishes he was dead and being very depressed.

853
00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:14,520
Speaker 1: But he and he finds out about the Easter Rising

854
00:48:14,600 --> 00:48:18,719
Speaker 1: while he's there, right, um, and I'm going to cover

855
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: the Easter Rising at one point, like in more detail

856
00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:23,080
Speaker 1: one of these days, because I'm really excited about it

857
00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 1: because my my family fought in it. I met my

858
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:27,719
Speaker 1: great uncle who who fought in it. Maybe a bunch

859
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: of my great uncles did, but I'm not sure so.

860
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:33,000
Speaker 1: But the Germans agree to smuggle him back before the

861
00:48:33,120 --> 00:48:35,319
Speaker 1: rising um and he mostly wants to show up at

862
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:36,880
Speaker 1: this point. He wants to show up and be like,

863
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:39,560
Speaker 1: don't do it yet. We didn't get the stuff that

864
00:48:39,600 --> 00:48:42,560
Speaker 1: would make it work, you know, and he's like hoping

865
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:46,240
Speaker 1: to get home in time to postpone it. But Germany

866
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:48,600
Speaker 1: still sends the guns and they send him back and

867
00:48:49,160 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 1: he said he decides not to take his Irish brigade

868
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 1: with him. They offer him to bring his fifty one

869
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:56,240
Speaker 1: people back, but he's like, no, the rising is doomed.

870
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:59,399
Speaker 1: It is it's I will go back and tell them,

871
00:48:59,480 --> 00:49:02,480
Speaker 1: and by doing so, he actually saves the lives of

872
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:05,160
Speaker 1: Irish brigade. Um. They might have been mad about it,

873
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:06,680
Speaker 1: though I don't know. They might have been like whatever,

874
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:09,640
Speaker 1: we'll do it anyway. I think that some of them

875
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:12,680
Speaker 1: show up to his state funeral, like four years later.

876
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:15,080
Speaker 1: We'll get to that. So the gun smuggling and Star

877
00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 1: with the gun smuggling, it did not go well. To

878
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:19,080
Speaker 1: be clear, nothing is going to go well for the

879
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:22,360
Speaker 1: rest of his life at this point. Mm hmmm. The

880
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:25,600
Speaker 1: German ship disguises itself as the Odd Org, a Norwegian

881
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:28,960
Speaker 1: neutral ship. This is probably why it failed. Sophie is

882
00:49:29,040 --> 00:49:33,600
Speaker 1: that it was Norwegian and the Norwegian government, Um, they

883
00:49:33,680 --> 00:49:38,680
Speaker 1: kill Walruce's trash. Yeah, um, except all the sailors on

884
00:49:38,680 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 1: board were actually German um, and they had all of

885
00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:44,520
Speaker 1: their stuff, like their uniforms and their books and everything.

886
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:49,120
Speaker 1: The German government has never done anything, you know, bad, right, No,

887
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:53,520
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Okay, we would have heard, yeah,

888
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:57,759
Speaker 1: or done podcasts about it. I'm not sure that's the

889
00:49:57,760 --> 00:50:01,000
Speaker 1: main way that people know about things for sure. Yeah.

890
00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 1: The one thing that I can admit that American history does,

891
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:09,400
Speaker 1: American educational system does teach people about It'd be clear, Bernie.

892
00:50:09,640 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 1: You know, this is World War One Germany, who are

893
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 1: not great, right, but it's not We're not among the Nazis.

894
00:50:16,680 --> 00:50:19,759
Speaker 1: So the ship, the Odd Norc or the fake Odd Norc.

895
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:22,440
Speaker 1: They go sailing off with a whole bunch of guns,

896
00:50:22,480 --> 00:50:25,160
Speaker 1: but the English had intercepted some communications that and we're

897
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,840
Speaker 1: on the lookout. And even worse, they completely just fucked

898
00:50:28,880 --> 00:50:31,640
Speaker 1: up the rendezvous point. They just like got the wrong

899
00:50:31,719 --> 00:50:34,640
Speaker 1: rendezvous point and so this whole thing falls apart. They

900
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:36,839
Speaker 1: get there and they get to the wrong one and

901
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:40,000
Speaker 1: basements not there, and so they were like huh, and

902
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:42,000
Speaker 1: they just hang out for a couple of days and

903
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:45,359
Speaker 1: then the English are like, hey, buddy, what are you doing?

904
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 1: And they're like, oh no, we're caught and they scuttle

905
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:50,640
Speaker 1: the ship. And scuttle is a very fun word to say.

906
00:50:50,680 --> 00:50:54,440
Speaker 1: When do you want to try saying the word scuttle? Yeah? Yeah,

907
00:50:54,480 --> 00:51:00,160
Speaker 1: so if you do want to scuttle, scuttle, scuttle. Oh,

908
00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:02,479
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say. I also kind of felt

909
00:51:02,480 --> 00:51:04,640
Speaker 1: the need to say it like many times, so I

910
00:51:04,719 --> 00:51:07,759
Speaker 1: might have I might have covered Sophie up accidentally. What's okay?

911
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:10,239
Speaker 1: It's such a good word. Um. Which between you blow

912
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:12,560
Speaker 1: up your own ship? I love that there's a verb

913
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:16,879
Speaker 1: for blow up your own ship. Um. So they had

914
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:19,279
Speaker 1: preset explosives that like, if we get caught, we'll blow

915
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: up our own ship. They they surrender and then they

916
00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:25,360
Speaker 1: set off the the scuttle. I don't think it's annun

917
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 1: They scuttled their ship with explosives. Um. And the these

918
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 1: people who had tried to bring guns to the Irish

919
00:51:31,560 --> 00:51:37,160
Speaker 1: become POWs. And as for Casement, the Germans small him

920
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:39,920
Speaker 1: back on in a U boat just submarine. A few

921
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 1: days before the rising, they show up to the rendezvous point,

922
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:45,600
Speaker 1: but the boat's not there, so they're like, well, that's bad.

923
00:51:46,360 --> 00:51:48,600
Speaker 1: But the U boat captain is like, I'm not going

924
00:51:48,640 --> 00:51:52,040
Speaker 1: to hang out here for days, good luck, see you later,

925
00:51:52,760 --> 00:51:54,360
Speaker 1: and he like kicks them out in a rowboat and

926
00:51:54,360 --> 00:51:56,200
Speaker 1: he has two other buddies with him at this point,

927
00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 1: and the U boat fox off. They rowed ashore. Later,

928
00:52:02,239 --> 00:52:06,759
Speaker 1: he wrote a sister about landing back in Ireland. When

929
00:52:06,760 --> 00:52:10,080
Speaker 1: I landed in Ireland that morning about three am, swamped

930
00:52:10,120 --> 00:52:13,440
Speaker 1: and swimming ashore on on an unknown strand, I was

931
00:52:13,480 --> 00:52:16,399
Speaker 1: happy for the first time for over a year. Although

932
00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 1: I knew that this fate waited on me, this fate

933
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:21,120
Speaker 1: being the fact that he's he's writing this while he's

934
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:25,040
Speaker 1: waiting to be killed. Um. Although I knew that this

935
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:27,400
Speaker 1: fate waited on me, I was, for one brief spell

936
00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:30,080
Speaker 1: happy and smiling once more. I cannot tell you what

937
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 1: I felt. The sand hills were full of skylarks rising

938
00:52:33,200 --> 00:52:35,600
Speaker 1: in the dawn, the first I had heard in years,

939
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:37,920
Speaker 1: The first sound I had heard through the surf was

940
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:40,319
Speaker 1: their song as I waded through the breakers, and they

941
00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:43,480
Speaker 1: kept rising all the time up to the old wrath

942
00:52:43,840 --> 00:52:47,200
Speaker 1: at Kershonne, where I stayed and sent the others on

943
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:50,440
Speaker 1: and all around were primroses and wild violets and the

944
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:52,880
Speaker 1: singing of the skylarks in the air. And I was

945
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 1: back in Ireland again. Who was happy to be home?

946
00:52:58,040 --> 00:53:00,400
Speaker 1: Locals saw them and there are a bunch of fucking

947
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:04,719
Speaker 1: snitch ass ah. We are zero for two for the

948
00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:09,280
Speaker 1: coastal Irish people in this story for not being snitches. Um.

949
00:53:09,320 --> 00:53:13,719
Speaker 1: They call the cops and Casement is caught. He was

950
00:53:13,960 --> 00:53:16,560
Speaker 1: taken to England, thrown in the Tower of London. He

951
00:53:16,600 --> 00:53:18,279
Speaker 1: went to some other prisons in the meantime, but the

952
00:53:18,320 --> 00:53:20,120
Speaker 1: Tower of London is the one that I recognized the

953
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:22,600
Speaker 1: name of, so I'm sticking with that one. While he

954
00:53:22,640 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 1: was waiting for trial, he tries twice tried to kill himself.

955
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:29,280
Speaker 1: Once he took poison that he had smuggled with him

956
00:53:29,480 --> 00:53:32,560
Speaker 1: because he's James bond Um. But it was the kind

957
00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:34,520
Speaker 1: that needs to be introduced through blood and so he

958
00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:39,400
Speaker 1: like broke his own spectacles. He did not succeed. Uh.

959
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:44,600
Speaker 1: The next time he swallowed nails um that also did

960
00:53:44,600 --> 00:53:48,000
Speaker 1: not kill him. Yeah, he has put on trial for treason.

961
00:53:48,360 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 1: It's a three or four day trial. It's prosecuted by

962
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 1: Edward Carson, who's the same absolute funk of an anti

963
00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:56,919
Speaker 1: Irish asshole, but previously prosecuted future friend of the Pod

964
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:01,439
Speaker 1: gay Irish anarchist icon Oscar Wilde. Um so we guess

965
00:54:01,480 --> 00:54:05,640
Speaker 1: the same fucking prosecutors Oscar wild Casement wants to defend

966
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:08,279
Speaker 1: himself because half of the people on the show wants

967
00:54:08,280 --> 00:54:11,440
Speaker 1: to defend themselves. That's like a running theme. His friends

968
00:54:11,440 --> 00:54:14,080
Speaker 1: talk him out of it. Um, it probably wouldn't have

969
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:16,880
Speaker 1: mattered in the end. George Bernard Shaw, and Irish socialist

970
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:19,440
Speaker 1: in playwright, was supporting him and offered to write him

971
00:54:19,440 --> 00:54:23,279
Speaker 1: a speech if he did defend himself. And incidentally, while

972
00:54:23,320 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: we're on the subject of people refusing knighthood, Shaw refused

973
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:30,080
Speaker 1: a knighthood. Um. He hated all awards and once he

974
00:54:30,120 --> 00:54:32,680
Speaker 1: was set to refuse the Nobel Prize in Literature, but

975
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:36,600
Speaker 1: his wife was like, you fucking asshole, you need to

976
00:54:36,640 --> 00:54:39,960
Speaker 1: accept that for Ireland. If you're not doing it for yourself,

977
00:54:40,040 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 1: do it for Ireland. Um So George Bernard Shaw listened

978
00:54:43,600 --> 00:54:47,560
Speaker 1: to his wife accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature. Anyway,

979
00:54:47,680 --> 00:54:51,000
Speaker 1: he was the one that he was the one that wrote.

980
00:54:51,520 --> 00:54:54,000
Speaker 1: I mean, he's written a lot of things but he

981
00:54:54,040 --> 00:54:57,399
Speaker 1: wrote the play about jenn of Art right, St. John,

982
00:54:57,600 --> 00:54:59,359
Speaker 1: I will take your word for it. I do not know.

983
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:05,240
Speaker 1: I think that he did. Um, it's it's a cool play. Um.

984
00:55:05,280 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: Speaking of queer icons, there's yes St Joan by George

985
00:55:11,040 --> 00:55:14,680
Speaker 1: Bernard shaw there's a lot of Joanna Barkus is one

986
00:55:14,719 --> 00:55:16,680
Speaker 1: of those people where some people will be like, she

987
00:55:16,880 --> 00:55:20,280
Speaker 1: definitely wasn't queer, and then there's a lot of evidence

988
00:55:20,320 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 1: that she was certainly gender nonconforming. Yeah. I feel like

989
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:27,439
Speaker 1: that part's hard to argue with. Yeah, at the very least,

990
00:55:27,560 --> 00:55:34,400
Speaker 1: wasn't a big like stick to your gender lane person. Yeah,

991
00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:37,520
Speaker 1: but it's a good I've seen a filmed version of

992
00:55:37,520 --> 00:55:40,719
Speaker 1: the play. It's ok Now. I want to cover Joan

993
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:42,759
Speaker 1: of Arc at some point on this show. I don't

994
00:55:42,760 --> 00:55:45,600
Speaker 1: know when, and so I'm excited if I get to

995
00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:48,160
Speaker 1: watch a Shawl play in the process. I like the

996
00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 1: people who like we've through. I don't know whether all

997
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:51,880
Speaker 1: of are like specifically talked about shaw or something, but

998
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:53,479
Speaker 1: I like the people who like weave in and out

999
00:55:53,640 --> 00:55:58,239
Speaker 1: of the background of all these stories. So Casement, he's

1000
00:55:58,239 --> 00:56:01,799
Speaker 1: accused of violating the thirteen fifty one Treason Act. It's

1001
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:03,879
Speaker 1: hard to imagine being accused of breaking a law that's

1002
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,239
Speaker 1: like six years old or whatever, five years old at

1003
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:10,879
Speaker 1: this point, um, six fifty years or whatever. And he's

1004
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:12,759
Speaker 1: the first night of the realm to be tried for

1005
00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:16,440
Speaker 1: treason in centuries, which also really goes with the whole

1006
00:56:16,520 --> 00:56:20,520
Speaker 1: chivalry mythologized thing. From my point of view. His defense,

1007
00:56:20,600 --> 00:56:22,600
Speaker 1: he had two defenses. There was the one that he liked,

1008
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:23,920
Speaker 1: and there was the one that his lawyer liked, and

1009
00:56:23,920 --> 00:56:27,200
Speaker 1: they used both. His defense was, fuck you, I'm not

1010
00:56:27,239 --> 00:56:29,759
Speaker 1: fucking English, it's not fucking treason, and I would do

1011
00:56:29,760 --> 00:56:32,480
Speaker 1: it again. Um. He said it a little bit more

1012
00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:35,160
Speaker 1: nicely sometimes and a little bit kind of almost like that.

1013
00:56:35,719 --> 00:56:38,919
Speaker 1: I don't think he cussed very much. But his other

1014
00:56:38,960 --> 00:56:41,759
Speaker 1: defense that his lawyer was more fond of was that

1015
00:56:41,800 --> 00:56:44,759
Speaker 1: the act, the Treason Act, was ambiguously written. It was

1016
00:56:44,800 --> 00:56:48,720
Speaker 1: written in French, like Old French or something, I don't know, French,

1017
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:53,920
Speaker 1: and it um, it didn't have any punctuation in it.

1018
00:56:55,000 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 1: Uh So if you wanted, you could read it as

1019
00:57:00,120 --> 00:57:03,200
Speaker 1: basically you could you could read it as it's only

1020
00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:06,840
Speaker 1: treason if it happens in England or the United Kingdom,

1021
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:10,240
Speaker 1: or you could read it as anything that impacts England

1022
00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:12,640
Speaker 1: no matter where it happens. It's just literally depending on

1023
00:57:12,680 --> 00:57:15,279
Speaker 1: where you'd want to put a comma, which at the

1024
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:18,880
Speaker 1: time there was no comma, and so where to put

1025
00:57:18,920 --> 00:57:23,480
Speaker 1: commas killed him. Later, awaiting death, he wrote, God deliver

1026
00:57:23,600 --> 00:57:27,080
Speaker 1: me from such antiquity antiquitaries as these, to hang a

1027
00:57:27,080 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 1: man's life upon a comma and throttle him with a

1028
00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:35,640
Speaker 1: semi colon um and use a good poet sometimes. Yeah,

1029
00:57:35,800 --> 00:57:37,920
Speaker 1: some of the stuff you're reading from him is actually

1030
00:57:37,960 --> 00:57:41,000
Speaker 1: very beautiful. It's funny because like all of his prose

1031
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:45,080
Speaker 1: is beautiful, and and I whatever, like his poetry is

1032
00:57:45,080 --> 00:57:49,400
Speaker 1: actually fine. I think people are snobs, um, I mean whatever. Anyway,

1033
00:57:49,960 --> 00:57:53,479
Speaker 1: So Roger Casement knows his days are up. A month

1034
00:57:53,520 --> 00:57:56,400
Speaker 1: earlier the other prisoners from the Rising had all been executed,

1035
00:57:57,080 --> 00:57:59,720
Speaker 1: and so on the stand, he said, where all your

1036
00:57:59,800 --> 00:58:03,320
Speaker 1: rights become only an accumulated wrong, Where men must beg

1037
00:58:03,360 --> 00:58:06,160
Speaker 1: with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land,

1038
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:08,920
Speaker 1: to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs,

1039
00:58:08,960 --> 00:58:11,560
Speaker 1: to garner the fruits of their own labors, and even

1040
00:58:11,560 --> 00:58:14,520
Speaker 1: while they beg to see these things inexorably drawn from them.

1041
00:58:14,720 --> 00:58:17,000
Speaker 1: Then surely it is a braver a singer, and a

1042
00:58:17,040 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 1: truer thing to be a rebel and act indeed against

1043
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:22,800
Speaker 1: such circumstance as this, than tamely to accept it as

1044
00:58:22,840 --> 00:58:25,800
Speaker 1: the natural lot of men. And he also said, I

1045
00:58:25,880 --> 00:58:29,960
Speaker 1: think in the same speech Ireland that has wronged, no man,

1046
00:58:30,080 --> 00:58:32,960
Speaker 1: that has injured, no land that has sought no dominion

1047
00:58:33,040 --> 00:58:36,240
Speaker 1: over others. Ireland is treated today among the nations of

1048
00:58:36,240 --> 00:58:39,040
Speaker 1: the world as if she was a convicted criminal, if

1049
00:58:39,080 --> 00:58:41,720
Speaker 1: it be treason to fight against such unnatural fate as this.

1050
00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:43,960
Speaker 1: That I am proud to be a rebel, and I

1051
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:46,920
Speaker 1: shall cling to my rebellion with the last drop of

1052
00:58:46,960 --> 00:58:53,640
Speaker 1: my blood. Um. Because he's fucking cool. That's that's a

1053
00:58:53,640 --> 00:58:56,480
Speaker 1: A ton of people came out to support him. They're like,

1054
00:58:56,520 --> 00:58:58,640
Speaker 1: this is our guy. This is the guy who brought

1055
00:58:58,640 --> 00:59:01,040
Speaker 1: down Leopold. He's a knight. Like we shouldn't there be

1056
00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:05,120
Speaker 1: like some leniency. He's like our guy, right. Joseph Conrad,

1057
00:59:05,280 --> 00:59:08,240
Speaker 1: his old friend, disavows him as a trader, and he's like, no, no,

1058
00:59:08,520 --> 00:59:13,480
Speaker 1: not a guy. But Joseph Conrad anyway, um h G. Wells,

1059
00:59:13,800 --> 00:59:17,240
Speaker 1: who I was. History remembers him as a socialist, but

1060
00:59:17,320 --> 00:59:20,200
Speaker 1: he was super anti Irish, and when asked to sign

1061
00:59:20,200 --> 00:59:23,160
Speaker 1: a petition on Casement's behalf, he wrote back, certainly not.

1062
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:25,920
Speaker 1: He ought to be hung. A whole bunch of literary

1063
00:59:25,960 --> 00:59:27,919
Speaker 1: and scientific types around Europe and the U S signed

1064
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:30,160
Speaker 1: a petition for him, though, and at least one Black

1065
00:59:30,200 --> 00:59:33,640
Speaker 1: American organization organized his own petition for his freedom, saying

1066
00:59:33,640 --> 00:59:35,600
Speaker 1: they couldn't stand aside while someone who had done so

1067
00:59:35,680 --> 00:59:38,760
Speaker 1: much for Africans was hanged. And so all of the

1068
00:59:38,800 --> 00:59:42,760
Speaker 1: work he had done was like, you know, thinking about

1069
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:45,640
Speaker 1: saving him or whatever. But so the British Crown had

1070
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:49,600
Speaker 1: one ace up its sleeve to silence his support. They're

1071
00:59:49,600 --> 00:59:52,800
Speaker 1: called the Black Diaries, in contrast of his other diaries,

1072
00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:57,400
Speaker 1: the White Diaries. Um they release Casement's secret diaries to

1073
00:59:57,440 --> 01:00:01,000
Speaker 1: the press, the ones that talk about sec He's not

1074
01:00:01,040 --> 01:00:04,840
Speaker 1: a trader, He's a gay trader. All the notes about

1075
01:00:04,880 --> 01:00:06,800
Speaker 1: the sex he had, about the size of every dick

1076
01:00:06,880 --> 01:00:11,000
Speaker 1: that he took. The public support dies down, uh one

1077
01:00:11,120 --> 01:00:13,800
Speaker 1: right up. On the gay website Romeo dot Com argues

1078
01:00:13,840 --> 01:00:16,320
Speaker 1: that part of this was that worse than just being gay,

1079
01:00:16,800 --> 01:00:19,680
Speaker 1: he was a bottom. If he'd fucked Native men in

1080
01:00:19,680 --> 01:00:21,880
Speaker 1: the places he went, he could have been forgiven, but

1081
01:00:21,960 --> 01:00:24,240
Speaker 1: he was fucked by native men and it was just

1082
01:00:24,280 --> 01:00:27,600
Speaker 1: a step too far for everyone. It's like the worst degeneracy.

1083
01:00:27,720 --> 01:00:31,200
Speaker 1: He's an invertise blah blah blah blah blah blah. And

1084
01:00:31,240 --> 01:00:32,720
Speaker 1: I want to I want to point out a specific

1085
01:00:32,760 --> 01:00:35,560
Speaker 1: contrast that came up to me while researching this in

1086
01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:37,720
Speaker 1: the in the context. Now we live in this atmosphere

1087
01:00:37,760 --> 01:00:41,600
Speaker 1: where grooming is accusing LGBT folks, especially trans people, of

1088
01:00:41,600 --> 01:00:44,400
Speaker 1: grooming his back end style. Right. Um, I haven't read

1089
01:00:44,440 --> 01:00:46,280
Speaker 1: the whole Black Diaries. I read a bunch of excerpts

1090
01:00:46,320 --> 01:00:49,240
Speaker 1: from them, and I've read some analysis of them. He

1091
01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:52,960
Speaker 1: sleeps with young men and people he calls boys. I

1092
01:00:53,000 --> 01:00:55,800
Speaker 1: don't exactly know what that means, um, but at one

1093
01:00:55,840 --> 01:00:58,560
Speaker 1: point he's talking about sleeping with someone he considered very young,

1094
01:00:59,000 --> 01:01:02,240
Speaker 1: who was eighteen. And in contrast, you have King Leopold

1095
01:01:02,320 --> 01:01:05,480
Speaker 1: the Second who's using money from the Congo to literally

1096
01:01:05,520 --> 01:01:07,720
Speaker 1: buy a season past to an English brothel that provides

1097
01:01:07,760 --> 01:01:11,000
Speaker 1: them girls as youngest ten. And so this is the degeneracy,

1098
01:01:11,080 --> 01:01:14,360
Speaker 1: this is the whatever. I doubt anyone who's listening to

1099
01:01:14,360 --> 01:01:16,880
Speaker 1: this is like anti gay or whatever, but it just

1100
01:01:17,960 --> 01:01:22,160
Speaker 1: it really sticks out to me that, um whatever, I

1101
01:01:22,240 --> 01:01:26,560
Speaker 1: get real mad about it. Yeah, and the whole Black

1102
01:01:26,600 --> 01:01:29,560
Speaker 1: Diaries thing is controversial even today. A lot of the

1103
01:01:29,600 --> 01:01:32,880
Speaker 1: Irish people, a lot of Irish rebels, are like, these

1104
01:01:32,880 --> 01:01:35,600
Speaker 1: are forgeries. Absolutely no way that our guy did this.

1105
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:39,520
Speaker 1: And there are storians who still believe that their forgeries. Um.

1106
01:01:39,640 --> 01:01:41,640
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're like, no one can have that much sex,

1107
01:01:41,680 --> 01:01:43,720
Speaker 1: and every like yes story and that I listened to

1108
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:47,200
Speaker 1: about it is like or read about it, It's like what, yeah,

1109
01:01:47,240 --> 01:01:50,280
Speaker 1: you can, what do you talk about? I think they're real.

1110
01:01:50,600 --> 01:01:52,760
Speaker 1: I acknowledge I have a lot of bias here. Um.

1111
01:01:52,840 --> 01:01:54,880
Speaker 1: But they had only three weeks between his arrest and

1112
01:01:54,920 --> 01:01:57,320
Speaker 1: his trial to create the forgeries, and they're full of

1113
01:01:57,320 --> 01:01:59,800
Speaker 1: phrases from like way upriver and congo that would have

1114
01:01:59,800 --> 01:02:02,640
Speaker 1: been really hard for Forger to come up with, including

1115
01:02:02,720 --> 01:02:13,520
Speaker 1: like inside gay congo slang. You know, um so whatever. Um.

1116
01:02:13,560 --> 01:02:15,280
Speaker 1: I would like him even if he was secretly straight

1117
01:02:15,320 --> 01:02:20,480
Speaker 1: this whole time. On August two, nineteen sixteen, the day

1118
01:02:20,520 --> 01:02:25,560
Speaker 1: before his execution, Roger Casement converts to Catholicism. When I

1119
01:02:25,560 --> 01:02:27,160
Speaker 1: first started researching this, I assumed it was like a

1120
01:02:27,200 --> 01:02:29,800
Speaker 1: final funk you to England. But but he meant it.

1121
01:02:30,040 --> 01:02:32,280
Speaker 1: The more I understood Roger Casement and also read about

1122
01:02:32,280 --> 01:02:35,360
Speaker 1: his conversion in more detail, he he did nothing out

1123
01:02:35,360 --> 01:02:43,600
Speaker 1: of spite. Um. He was always earnest, literally to a fault. Um.

1124
01:02:43,640 --> 01:02:45,840
Speaker 1: He went back and forth for months trying to decide

1125
01:02:45,840 --> 01:02:47,760
Speaker 1: what he believed. On the eve of his death, like

1126
01:02:47,800 --> 01:02:51,240
Speaker 1: what he should do, and he um, he converted to

1127
01:02:51,280 --> 01:02:54,600
Speaker 1: Catholicism on on August thir And there's this whole thing

1128
01:02:54,680 --> 01:02:57,360
Speaker 1: where like a lot of parts of the English Church

1129
01:02:57,480 --> 01:02:59,440
Speaker 1: didn't order the Catholic Church didn't want to let him

1130
01:02:59,560 --> 01:03:02,040
Speaker 1: convert to Catholicism because he was a terrible you know,

1131
01:03:02,480 --> 01:03:06,120
Speaker 1: gay person or whatever, right, um. And then like Irish

1132
01:03:06,200 --> 01:03:08,480
Speaker 1: Catholic priests were like, what do you fucking the whole

1133
01:03:08,480 --> 01:03:12,280
Speaker 1: point of Catholicism You can forgive people for ship, you know. Um,

1134
01:03:12,320 --> 01:03:15,760
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything to forgive, but whatever. August third,

1135
01:03:15,880 --> 01:03:18,560
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, he was hanged at fifty two years old,

1136
01:03:20,000 --> 01:03:22,520
Speaker 1: after taking Mass for the first and last time in

1137
01:03:22,560 --> 01:03:26,040
Speaker 1: his life. One convict who saw him march through the

1138
01:03:26,080 --> 01:03:30,440
Speaker 1: prison said he had a visible aura around him. The

1139
01:03:30,440 --> 01:03:33,640
Speaker 1: priest who attended him said, basically, like this guy is

1140
01:03:33,680 --> 01:03:36,160
Speaker 1: a saint. We should be praying. We shouldn't be praying

1141
01:03:36,200 --> 01:03:39,120
Speaker 1: for him, we should be praying to him. His executioners

1142
01:03:39,160 --> 01:03:42,800
Speaker 1: said he was the bravest man I ever killed. Um Again,

1143
01:03:42,960 --> 01:03:47,120
Speaker 1: this is all in mythologizing, but I also don't have

1144
01:03:47,120 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 1: any reason to doubt these particular accounts. Um And. He

1145
01:03:51,480 --> 01:03:53,200
Speaker 1: was the last of the rising prisoners to die, and

1146
01:03:53,200 --> 01:03:55,280
Speaker 1: he was the only one who was murdered outside of Ireland.

1147
01:03:55,800 --> 01:03:58,600
Speaker 1: His last wish, which was communicated to his sister, was

1148
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:01,080
Speaker 1: that to be buried in a in the graveyard of

1149
01:04:01,080 --> 01:04:04,080
Speaker 1: a chapel on Merlough Bay in County Antrim, which is

1150
01:04:04,160 --> 01:04:07,440
Speaker 1: currently in northern Ireland. Um And he begged for a

1151
01:04:07,520 --> 01:04:12,480
Speaker 1: Christian burial. Instead, his body was thrown unceremoniously into a

1152
01:04:12,520 --> 01:04:15,000
Speaker 1: pit in the prison yard in an unmarked grave and

1153
01:04:15,080 --> 01:04:18,800
Speaker 1: covered with quicklime to decay it quickly. It took fifty

1154
01:04:18,880 --> 01:04:21,360
Speaker 1: years before his remains were moved back to Ireland in

1155
01:04:21,400 --> 01:04:25,080
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, where he was buried in a state

1156
01:04:25,160 --> 01:04:31,480
Speaker 1: funeral um and attended by thirty thousand people. But his

1157
01:04:31,560 --> 01:04:34,640
Speaker 1: remains were granted to Ireland under the specific condition that

1158
01:04:34,680 --> 01:04:37,040
Speaker 1: he not be allowed to be buried in Northern Ireland

1159
01:04:37,920 --> 01:04:41,040
Speaker 1: because it's still part of the UK, and so his

1160
01:04:41,160 --> 01:04:46,320
Speaker 1: last wish literally can't be fulfilled m into Ireland as united. Yeah.

1161
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:51,160
Speaker 1: Shortly after he died in eighteen, a Dublin press called

1162
01:04:51,160 --> 01:04:53,360
Speaker 1: Talbot Press put out a chap book of his poetry,

1163
01:04:53,680 --> 01:05:01,240
Speaker 1: and the introduction is like, Roger Casement wasn't a poet. Um,

1164
01:05:01,400 --> 01:05:07,960
Speaker 1: They're they're perfectly passable poems. They're okay, you know, they

1165
01:05:07,960 --> 01:05:11,840
Speaker 1: don't like linger in the brain forever necessarily, but they're

1166
01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:17,000
Speaker 1: like they're fine. Yeah. I mean I feel like Ireland

1167
01:05:17,080 --> 01:05:19,200
Speaker 1: is also an island of poets, like it is, like

1168
01:05:19,640 --> 01:05:22,680
Speaker 1: I feel like different cultures have different sort of strengths,

1169
01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:27,440
Speaker 1: and there's a long tradition of oral and written poetry

1170
01:05:27,440 --> 01:05:29,360
Speaker 1: in that country, so I could imagine even a decent

1171
01:05:29,400 --> 01:05:32,000
Speaker 1: poet they're like not good enough, you know, No, that

1172
01:05:32,000 --> 01:05:36,320
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. I had thought about. Um. Actually,

1173
01:05:36,400 --> 01:05:39,160
Speaker 1: Yates writes a poem about him that's really good. I'm

1174
01:05:39,200 --> 01:05:41,040
Speaker 1: not a huge fan of Yates on like you know,

1175
01:05:41,080 --> 01:05:44,320
Speaker 1: some like political levels and stuff, right, but I totally

1176
01:05:44,320 --> 01:05:46,440
Speaker 1: like some of his poetry. And he wrote a poem

1177
01:05:46,440 --> 01:05:49,280
Speaker 1: called Roger Casement is Beating at the door. That's basically

1178
01:05:49,280 --> 01:05:52,440
Speaker 1: just about the horrors that continue and the ghost of

1179
01:05:52,520 --> 01:05:55,840
Speaker 1: Roger Casement is like here to haunt all of that.

1180
01:05:56,080 --> 01:06:02,480
Speaker 1: Um and okay, and as a final vignette about his legacy,

1181
01:06:02,560 --> 01:06:05,160
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote the least academic source I will

1182
01:06:05,200 --> 01:06:11,200
Speaker 1: ever quote the comments of a YouTube video, but hear

1183
01:06:11,280 --> 01:06:14,160
Speaker 1: me out. There's this video called the Execution of Roger

1184
01:06:14,200 --> 01:06:17,680
Speaker 1: Casement on YouTube. It's a historian talking about his execution,

1185
01:06:18,440 --> 01:06:21,200
Speaker 1: and the comments are really interesting to me. One person

1186
01:06:21,320 --> 01:06:24,360
Speaker 1: says he was my great great uncle and I'm very proud.

1187
01:06:25,040 --> 01:06:27,760
Speaker 1: Another person says, my grandfather is an Irishman who helped

1188
01:06:27,800 --> 01:06:31,560
Speaker 1: catam paraphrasing here, my grandfather is an Irishman who helped

1189
01:06:31,600 --> 01:06:35,040
Speaker 1: capture him and was forced to testify against him. Another

1190
01:06:35,080 --> 01:06:37,040
Speaker 1: as an Englishman who says he was a traitor, he

1191
01:06:37,080 --> 01:06:39,680
Speaker 1: got what he deserved. And then the final comment will

1192
01:06:39,680 --> 01:06:42,160
Speaker 1: not the final comment. But in this, in this interesting

1193
01:06:42,240 --> 01:06:45,000
Speaker 1: string is a Congolese person who says he is one

1194
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:47,600
Speaker 1: of the two men who saved my country from Leopold,

1195
01:06:48,320 --> 01:06:51,080
Speaker 1: the other being the journalist moral And I just think

1196
01:06:51,120 --> 01:06:55,360
Speaker 1: that's like those four perspectives of him are really interesting

1197
01:06:55,400 --> 01:06:58,040
Speaker 1: to me, and that's how people view him. He's a

1198
01:06:58,040 --> 01:07:02,440
Speaker 1: trader or a hero. Yeah, it's easy for me to

1199
01:07:02,480 --> 01:07:10,280
Speaker 1: pick totally, Um, what would you pick? What? I'm like

1200
01:07:10,360 --> 01:07:12,640
Speaker 1: the worst person to ask this because I'm like, well,

1201
01:07:12,720 --> 01:07:15,440
Speaker 1: he's definitely not a trainer, obviously, but I feel like

1202
01:07:15,440 --> 01:07:20,080
Speaker 1: he's a complicated Carrocter and so it's hard for me

1203
01:07:20,080 --> 01:07:22,320
Speaker 1: to say he's a percent a hero. But earlier you

1204
01:07:22,360 --> 01:07:24,680
Speaker 1: said some people thought he was a saint, some people

1205
01:07:24,720 --> 01:07:26,600
Speaker 1: thought he was a fool, And it kind of feels

1206
01:07:26,640 --> 01:07:30,560
Speaker 1: like maybe he's both, you know, yeah, all the complexity

1207
01:07:30,560 --> 01:07:34,160
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, but definitely someone that like I'm really

1208
01:07:34,160 --> 01:07:36,520
Speaker 1: glad I know about now, you know, and who did

1209
01:07:36,560 --> 01:07:41,080
Speaker 1: some really interesting, really amazing things. Yeah, he like almost

1210
01:07:41,080 --> 01:07:44,960
Speaker 1: like stumbled by having this very strong moral compass. He

1211
01:07:45,080 --> 01:07:47,920
Speaker 1: like stumbled out of a really bad thing he was

1212
01:07:48,000 --> 01:07:53,360
Speaker 1: doing and into like better directions. He didn't succeed actually

1213
01:07:53,400 --> 01:07:55,280
Speaker 1: succeeded a lot of stuff, right, because I think people

1214
01:07:55,320 --> 01:07:57,640
Speaker 1: like will focus on like, oh he failed at the

1215
01:07:57,800 --> 01:08:01,280
Speaker 1: like raising the Irish Brigade, and like this motherfucker did

1216
01:08:01,400 --> 01:08:04,600
Speaker 1: way more than anyone I've ever met, you know. Yeah,

1217
01:08:05,360 --> 01:08:07,120
Speaker 1: but no, you're right, and like and and I never

1218
01:08:07,200 --> 01:08:10,040
Speaker 1: wanted if I ever present a truly uncomplicated hero I

1219
01:08:10,040 --> 01:08:15,560
Speaker 1: should be fired and someone else should take this job. Um,

1220
01:08:15,720 --> 01:08:20,720
Speaker 1: but no, I don't know. Yeah I think that those yeah,

1221
01:08:20,840 --> 01:08:25,400
Speaker 1: those comments really sum it up well. Um, the YouTube

1222
01:08:25,400 --> 01:08:29,479
Speaker 1: comments that you that you share. Yeah, I was like

1223
01:08:29,560 --> 01:08:31,200
Speaker 1: so surprised when I ran across that, and I was

1224
01:08:31,240 --> 01:08:35,559
Speaker 1: just like, oh, this feels really telling, you know, just

1225
01:08:35,600 --> 01:08:44,040
Speaker 1: like these four perspectives, um, and yeah, well that and yeah,

1226
01:08:44,080 --> 01:08:46,360
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, like I feel like this

1227
01:08:46,360 --> 01:08:48,719
Speaker 1: this is like a zooming out into like how history

1228
01:08:48,800 --> 01:08:53,479
Speaker 1: is told, right because so many people, especially these characters

1229
01:08:53,479 --> 01:08:57,040
Speaker 1: that are minor figures in the grander historical narrative are

1230
01:08:57,160 --> 01:09:00,519
Speaker 1: constantly contested. I don't know, Sorry you can cut that out,

1231
01:09:00,560 --> 01:09:05,200
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's just yeah, no, totally. Um. And it

1232
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:07,040
Speaker 1: took a long time, like he was basically like kind

1233
01:09:07,040 --> 01:09:09,200
Speaker 1: of like cut out of martyrdom for a long time

1234
01:09:09,200 --> 01:09:14,280
Speaker 1: because of his homosexuality totally. And then like some people

1235
01:09:14,479 --> 01:09:17,200
Speaker 1: like I know, there's just so many ways people talk

1236
01:09:17,240 --> 01:09:21,360
Speaker 1: about him. It's such an easy figure too to believe

1237
01:09:21,479 --> 01:09:25,720
Speaker 1: things about, you know, totally and either like see yourself

1238
01:09:25,880 --> 01:09:28,679
Speaker 1: in or see as this like arc type of good

1239
01:09:28,800 --> 01:09:34,120
Speaker 1: or bad or Um. Yeah, I don't know the gay

1240
01:09:34,200 --> 01:09:38,280
Speaker 1: Irish Knight who was more of a mythological night than

1241
01:09:38,320 --> 01:09:46,840
Speaker 1: a English one and is the world is better for that? Totally? Well? Uh,

1242
01:09:46,920 --> 01:09:48,880
Speaker 1: the only books coming out that people could read if

1243
01:09:48,880 --> 01:09:52,880
Speaker 1: they want to know more about food and good potato facts. Um.

1244
01:09:52,960 --> 01:09:55,240
Speaker 1: I actually don't think there are any potato facts in

1245
01:09:55,280 --> 01:10:00,240
Speaker 1: the anthology. Unfortunate, they're not actually any post effects either.

1246
01:10:00,479 --> 01:10:02,839
Speaker 1: I ran out of food. Those are the two foods

1247
01:10:02,960 --> 01:10:06,280
Speaker 1: I know. I'm trying to Well, there's there's a really

1248
01:10:06,280 --> 01:10:10,800
Speaker 1: amazing piece on the women rice workers of Northern Italy. Right,

1249
01:10:10,920 --> 01:10:14,040
Speaker 1: that's also food. Okay, yeah, that's in it that I

1250
01:10:14,080 --> 01:10:16,679
Speaker 1: did not write. I'm just the editor of the anthology. Um.

1251
01:10:16,680 --> 01:10:20,439
Speaker 1: But it's called Nourishing Resistance, Stories of Food Protests and

1252
01:10:20,600 --> 01:10:23,519
Speaker 1: Mutual Aid um. And it'll be coming out from PM

1253
01:10:23,560 --> 01:10:28,760
Speaker 1: Press sometime in ear available for pre order now. It

1254
01:10:28,800 --> 01:10:36,439
Speaker 1: should be available for pre order now, yeah, um yeah, Sophia,

1255
01:10:36,439 --> 01:10:39,960
Speaker 1: do you have anything you want to plug? Uh? Check

1256
01:10:40,000 --> 01:10:45,000
Speaker 1: out hood Politics by prop on the Cool Zone Media

1257
01:10:45,000 --> 01:10:49,240
Speaker 1: Network wherever we get your podcast and um, bye bye

1258
01:10:49,400 --> 01:10:54,519
Speaker 1: bye both Ren and Margaret's books. Please yeah, we will

1259
01:10:54,560 --> 01:11:04,120
Speaker 1: see you soon. By everyone. I Cool People Who did.

1260
01:11:04,160 --> 01:11:06,880
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff is a production of cool zone Media. For

1261
01:11:07,000 --> 01:11:10,000
Speaker 1: more podcasts on cool zone Media, visit our website cool

1262
01:11:10,080 --> 01:11:12,439
Speaker 1: zone media dot com, or check us out on the

1263
01:11:12,560 --> 01:11:15,559
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1264
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Speaker 1: your podcasts.