Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder.
Speaker 2: That's Georgia Hardstar.
Speaker 1: That's Karen Kilgara.
Speaker 2: No pointing, Oh yeah, sorry, that's against the one I
Speaker 2: was the only one to pointing is rude point?
Speaker 1: Don't you ever stop do it? How are you? I'm good.
Speaker 2: I'm grateful to have the job of podcasting today.
Speaker 1: Same yep, why specifically today.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's just a really nice life.
Speaker 3: It's Vince and I were talking about how it's all
Speaker 3: democracy is going to be over soon, so like, how
Speaker 3: do we celebrate what we have now?
Speaker 2: That's right for me.
Speaker 3: I tell my therapists that when I'm really bummed, I
Speaker 3: think about if I took a time machine back to
Speaker 3: today because the apocalypse has happened, I'm going to look
Speaker 3: at everything and be like, wow, I was so lucky, Yes,
Speaker 3: to have these things, and to be able to talk
Speaker 3: to these people and to do these.
Speaker 1: We have a hot dog phone, to.
Speaker 3: Have freedom, to have a hot dog phone. So just
Speaker 3: pretend you're from the.
Speaker 1: Future, yes, which is a dark terrible place or not
Speaker 1: or not?
Speaker 2: Or a rule of six with that dark terrible place
Speaker 2: and five other options. Okay, got to do five other
Speaker 2: options every time? Okay, my therapist does it like this, though,
Speaker 2: she puts her hand up and then goes, this is dark.
Speaker 2: This is dark.
Speaker 1: Terrible times.
Speaker 2: It also could be neutral times.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: It could be very bright and shiny times exactly the same.
Speaker 2: It could be like we're all working at Macy's all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, weird but doable.
Speaker 3: I could have a desk job. See b Richard Ellis Investors,
Speaker 3: you could go moment please so quickly, ceev Richard Ellis Investors.
Speaker 3: I can't pay my rent. One moment please.
Speaker 2: Now there's your podcast. I mean you've always worked in
Speaker 2: the voice area.
Speaker 1: Clearly that was your early training.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and mine was reading aloud in sixth grade, which
Speaker 2: was my favorite.
Speaker 1: Thing to do.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: You love to be called on because they would just
Speaker 2: go up and down the road. There's no way. We
Speaker 2: haven't talked about this, but I would just I would
Speaker 2: go pick out the paragraph that.
Speaker 1: Would be mine. Practice, practice, not too much, not too little.
Speaker 1: So you didn't know, you didn't listen to what not
Speaker 1: a word? You knew what was that was none of
Speaker 1: my business. I was on that my.
Speaker 2: Paragraphs, that's why.
Speaker 3: That's yeah, and you killed it every time. I was
Speaker 3: very proud of my reading skills.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's nice and smooth, no trips.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Janet, for every every bad thing she did, she
Speaker 3: fucking she'd tell you to read real good the basics.
Speaker 2: She covered those basics. Three hots and a cot and
Speaker 2: a book that you could actually read for yourself.
Speaker 1: Belated birthday, Happy birthday.
Speaker 3: I just I just plopped a fucking little gift wrapped
Speaker 3: gift in front of Karen for her birthday.
Speaker 2: I will tell you listener, it's heavy, it's wrapped in gorgeous.
Speaker 1: So you I saw it. It's from Etsy. I it is.
Speaker 2: A diet coke ash tray. Ladies and gentlemen. It is
Speaker 2: hue so beautiful. It looks like handpainted. But then underneath some.
Speaker 1: Clear read the maker on the back.
Speaker 2: Oh, the maker is where w are your snacks?
Speaker 3: And so she has You can get that in like
Speaker 3: mine would obviously be. It's a potato chip with crumb
Speaker 3: fresh and caviar on it.
Speaker 1: Oh, you can get hot dog, you can get.
Speaker 2: Mine would obviously be who are you?
Speaker 1: Who are you? Orange County? That is caviar is like
Speaker 1: my like favorite.
Speaker 2: Mine would obviously be a gold bar cottage cheek.
Speaker 1: I don't know why it's just like so.
Speaker 2: But it's basically looking at something that makes your mouth
Speaker 2: immediately water or makes your thing though.
Speaker 1: That's my jam, that's your identity. So diet coke, a
Speaker 1: can of diet coke. I saw that.
Speaker 3: I was like, I have to get up for caring.
Speaker 3: It could be a catch all. You don't have to
Speaker 3: ash and you don't have to take up smoking.
Speaker 2: Oh, but I have to. Now that you've given me this,
Speaker 2: you've required it, and I'm going to go right back
Speaker 2: to the capris. They're thin.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, they're easy to smoke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, look up nineteen eighty eight Caprice cigarettes. Oh,
Speaker 2: thank you so much. That's a perfect gift.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now I have a gift for you that I realized
Speaker 2: the last time we talked about birthday gift giving. You
Speaker 2: were like, it's not my birthday yet, but I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: just we're going to give each other a gift at
Speaker 2: the same I like.
Speaker 3: An in between things because our birthdays are like almost
Speaker 3: a month apart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, a month and a decade, a month
Speaker 2: and a decade, yeah, wow, almost exactly ten years apart.
Speaker 1: We're generation apart. Wow.
Speaker 2: I think that's the hook of this podcast, right, no
Speaker 2: one's caught on.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: It's like old and young.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: What I was thinking about too, is like the fact
Speaker 3: that we started this podcast when we barely knew each other,
Speaker 3: so we were getting to know each other at the
Speaker 3: same time the audience was getting Yeah, got to know
Speaker 3: us that way. If we had already known everything about each.
Speaker 2: Other, it would all be facade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think that's the secret sauce. So I
Speaker 1: hate that term.
Speaker 2: Well should we call it the Thousand Island dressing of
Speaker 2: our souls?
Speaker 1: I agree?
Speaker 2: And I also think that we kind of knew it,
Speaker 2: but we also didn't know it. I think we both
Speaker 2: had that like we're grabbing hands and jumping off this cliff,
Speaker 2: which other people wouldn't have done totally. And I think
Speaker 2: so there was a feeling of that just discovering this now,
Speaker 2: but the feeling of that of like, she's up for
Speaker 2: this whatever, this.
Speaker 1: Thing is just up for it. Yeah, I'm game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank god, thank god.
Speaker 1: And that's this podcast. Well, thanks for listening, goodbye.
Speaker 2: This is our way of saying we quicked done.
Speaker 1: We both walk out.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 1: Fade to black.
Speaker 2: Also, just point out that it has been ten years,
Speaker 2: but the last time we recorded our episode was almost
Speaker 2: two hours long.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: So the idea when people are like, aren't you going
Speaker 2: to run out of stuff? It's like you would think
Speaker 2: we would.
Speaker 3: Today I'm doing this story that like means so ten
Speaker 3: years and I'm finally doing this story that means so
Speaker 3: much to me. It's not like I found the story
Speaker 3: and like, yes, another one. It's like they can still
Speaker 3: be so important and meaningful and shit, Unfortunately, there's just
Speaker 3: a never ending.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's bad hooray of this parade of humans.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's the name of the episode. Oh, that's right.
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask everyone if they know that we
Speaker 3: name every episode after some ridiculous thing we say in
Speaker 3: the episode, and that's like obvious to everyone, but I
Speaker 3: was like, what if they don't know that? So, like,
Speaker 3: you got to find the moment we say the dumb
Speaker 3: ass thing that we name the episode. It's like a
Speaker 3: little east eg Yeah, and then everyone knows.
Speaker 2: And then if you figure it out, we'll send you
Speaker 2: an easter egg in the mail from this last Easter.
Speaker 2: They don't they smell really bad, but but that's your gift. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, when we plan this show. There's all kinds
Speaker 2: of futuristic, technical, Easter egg type thinking that we put
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 1: Totally. We love Easter Eggs. We're like a video game. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a simulation. How could it not be.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you the thing that the physicist said. Okay,
Speaker 2: when I worked on the Time Travel show and somebody asked,
Speaker 2: that was the first question we asked, and he said,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Come on, that's not what I was expecting.
Speaker 2: Because if it's a simulation, it's so good we don't
Speaker 2: know or we're just catching on. But if it's a
Speaker 2: good enough simulation that we don't know, then that idea
Speaker 2: that like I'm stuck in the back rooms or whatever
Speaker 2: people get online about and weird in their head. It's like,
Speaker 2: it's better. It's better than that. Go to the beach
Speaker 2: and then think about the simulation.
Speaker 1: Okay, go now, okay, oh oh okay, oh oh oh shit.
Speaker 1: Okay a second. Well, first, fucking New MFM animated.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that's right.
Speaker 1: I haven't watched it yet. Of you, neither of us.
Speaker 2: Have seen this, and so we thought it'd be fun
Speaker 2: to show you at the same time as we are
Speaker 2: seeing it. For the first time ourselves.
Speaker 3: Our friend Nick Terry, by his own free will, Yeah,
Speaker 3: makes these incredible animations based on some dumb fucking thing
Speaker 3: that we've said. This is Starnada many f seventy eight.
Speaker 3: It's called Drama meine. Let's if you're not watching it
Speaker 3: on Netflix.
Speaker 2: Please do or go look it up, and now we're
Speaker 2: going to watch it for the first time right here.
Speaker 2: It was summer of two thousand and five and I
Speaker 2: was eight years old when we took a family vacation
Speaker 2: to Yosemite and San Francisco. While in San fran we
Speaker 2: got a boat tour that took us past Alcatraz and
Speaker 2: to some other island close by.
Speaker 1: What is that, Marin.
Speaker 2: I don't remember there being a two island stop for
Speaker 2: the Alcadras tour, but I haven't been there.
Speaker 1: Alcatraz too.
Speaker 2: It's smaller and hipper, and there's a disco. There's an
Speaker 2: amazing night life on Alcatrazdo Okay. My dad was really
Speaker 2: nervous that I was going to get seasick, so he
Speaker 2: gave me three dramamine and we bordered the boat.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It turns out that the serving size of dramamine for
Speaker 2: an eight year old is half a pill. So I
Speaker 2: was knocked the fuck out, Ellia, my dad happens to
Speaker 2: be a fireman. Yeah, and it says he's retired. Now,
Speaker 2: this is so classic. So he walked around the island
Speaker 2: Alcatraz with my sleeping eight year old body thrown over
Speaker 2: his shoulder in a fireman's carry. So can I just
Speaker 2: stop here.
Speaker 1: To tell you this?
Speaker 2: And this is the most dad life thing I will
Speaker 2: ever tell you, which is that at night when we
Speaker 2: were little, my dad, you could do the fireman's carry,
Speaker 2: You could do sack of potatoes, or you could ride
Speaker 2: a horse to bed. Those are the three ways we
Speaker 2: got carried to bed.
Speaker 1: You gotta pick which one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so cute. So fireman's you're just bent over
Speaker 2: his shoulder, sack potatoes, he's holding you buy rings.
Speaker 1: In your mind. Oh my god.
Speaker 2: But then the horse You got on back and put
Speaker 2: your hand over his mouth to feed the horse, and
Speaker 2: he ran down the hallway and threw you on the bed.
Speaker 1: Can you do it? Can I have that? I love?
Speaker 2: That might be the greatest privilege.
Speaker 1: Yeah, having a firefighter dad, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So that's I think this one gets me as actually,
Speaker 2: because he just basically like every fireman's like, we're just
Speaker 2: going to solve this problem, okay. So he would occasionally
Speaker 2: stop and wake me up to eat ice cold drink
Speaker 2: water with my eyes closed. My mom and brother took
Speaker 2: normal pictures and occasionally included me weekend of Bernie a picture.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Oh my god, it's the best picture too.
Speaker 2: The only thing that I actually remember about that day
Speaker 2: is waking up on a park bench next to a
Speaker 2: dog wearing sunglasses.
Speaker 1: Oh she's awakening. Oh god, she woke up.
Speaker 2: At the end of all that.
Speaker 4: Was like, hey, scene, Wow, what a joyful thing.
Speaker 2: I completely forgot that we knew what that little girl
Speaker 2: looked like. That's why the headband was so funny.
Speaker 1: To me.
Speaker 2: It looked we have an actual photo of her. Well,
Speaker 2: that was from Lizzie originally Lizzie. I hope this is
Speaker 2: bringing you so much joy. You now have a character
Speaker 2: in the Nick Harry MFM animated universe.
Speaker 3: Based off of you as a child, like the real
Speaker 3: photo of you. God, yeah, so special. I love it
Speaker 3: so much, so good. That was so funny. I was
Speaker 3: wondering if your dad was gonna throw me over her
Speaker 3: shoulder that would have been raped.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right to give you what you want, because
Speaker 1: I was like, can I do it? And Jim's like, no.
Speaker 2: I only have this one thing, which is the funny
Speaker 2: interpretation as I saw it, you rode the horse like
Speaker 2: kind of like a monkey on his back, so he
Speaker 2: had your legs.
Speaker 1: In his arms.
Speaker 2: Okay, it wasn't because if you ran down a hallway
Speaker 2: on your dad's shoulders, I think it's not a lamb
Speaker 2: into the Georgia. But not to criticize after the fact.
Speaker 1: Sure that was a joy? Sure can we edit? Could
Speaker 1: I get that? Edit it? My first round of notes?
Speaker 2: Have this to say? No, Nick Terry, No, we love
Speaker 2: you so much, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: What a joy? So good?
Speaker 2: Okay, should we do network?
Speaker 1: Yes, Highlight Podcast Network. It's the fucking best.
Speaker 3: Only cool people like you wouldn't even believe it, so
Speaker 3: it's called exactly right media.
Speaker 2: Here are some highlights and one of the podcast that
Speaker 2: is on this network is called The Knife. We Love It.
Speaker 2: Hannah and Pasha continue their unbelievable story of Paul Franzak,
Speaker 2: who is kidnapped from a Chicago hospital as a newborn
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty four. In this episode, as he digs
Speaker 2: deeper into his identity, he uncovers secrets that completely rewrite
Speaker 2: the story of his life.
Speaker 1: So wild Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then over on this podcast will Kill You, Aaron
Speaker 3: and Aaron just keep bringing it. How do they even
Speaker 3: think of these things? This time they tackle motion sickness.
Speaker 2: Just to go along with that MFM animator Right, tell
Speaker 2: me everything from boats to planes to the world's grossest
Speaker 2: historical cures.
Speaker 3: Yes, they break down why our brains and bodies completely
Speaker 3: betray us and me while traveling.
Speaker 1: Because you take three pills instead of half.
Speaker 2: And on this week's That's Messed Up, Karen Lisa recap
Speaker 2: episode eighteen from season seven of Law and Order Resview
Speaker 2: entitled Venom, and their special guest this week is Joe
Speaker 2: Graffi SI.
Speaker 1: Plus over on Ghosted Roz is joined by drag queen
Speaker 1: and comedian Juno Birch.
Speaker 2: And then just really Quick Over in the merch corner,
Speaker 2: the fan favorite married joggers Fuck you, I'm married or
Speaker 2: officially back just in time for wedding seasons.
Speaker 3: Right, grab a pair for yourself, your partner, or your
Speaker 3: favorite legally bound murdering no at exactly rightstore dot com
Speaker 3: and don't forget you can watch brand new episodes of
Speaker 3: my favorite Murder and Buried Bones every week on freakin' Netflix.
Speaker 1: Here we are. Have you seen yourself?
Speaker 3: Have you like been scrolling and just suddenly there's your
Speaker 3: face or there's last podcast on the Lift Faces.
Speaker 2: I came home to my own face because while I
Speaker 2: was away, my dog sitter put on the podcast video
Speaker 2: for the dogs, Oh my God, right, to see if
Speaker 2: it would help dogs it.
Speaker 3: We put on reggae because we heard that dogs like
Speaker 3: chill out reggae. Yeah, but I should put my own
Speaker 3: fucking voice on all theough Cookie lopspins more than me,
Speaker 3: so we should put on his podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's right. She's gonna be like this bitch is
Speaker 1: still here? Where's my reggae? What to do? Tell Bob Marley?
Speaker 2: Okay your first?
Speaker 1: I was first?
Speaker 3: And wow, okay, so I've been studying up until, like
Speaker 3: while I put my makeup on, to the minute that
Speaker 3: I left the house. When we were in high school,
Speaker 3: we spent a day or two in history class learning
Speaker 3: about Vietnam, right.
Speaker 1: Like, yes, the basics, sure breezed over it, moved on
Speaker 1: for their lives.
Speaker 3: This isn't It sounds like a brag, but it's not
Speaker 3: so I was really into the band Dead Kennedy's, and
Speaker 3: because of that, they sing about a lot of historical stuff.
Speaker 3: So I was really into that van and then I
Speaker 3: would go look up the things they were singing about,
Speaker 3: and one of those things pot exactly. I literally was like, Mom,
Speaker 3: what's poll pot? Yeap turns out and the song is
Speaker 3: called Holiday in Cambodia, So I learned a bunch about it.
Speaker 3: I was really into Vietnam. I read the book The
Speaker 3: Killing Fields, watched the movie, and.
Speaker 2: Through the Dead Kennedy's music, basically they kind of like
Speaker 2: made you go, what is this about?
Speaker 1: Why would they be singing exactly that?
Speaker 3: I mean, they also have a song about them who
Speaker 3: was shot in San Francisco, Oh, Harvey Milk, Like they
Speaker 3: just you learn about shit you wouldn't know. So pullpot Cambodia.
Speaker 3: Let's start here. Okay, It's a Sunday in late February
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six, and we're in Los Angeles' Chinatown. It's
Speaker 3: about eight forty five PM, and residents here something that
Speaker 3: sounds like firecrackers then make a horrifying discovery in the
Speaker 3: garage of a small apartment building. Neighbors find the body
Speaker 3: of a beloved fixture in Los Angeles's Cambodian community and
Speaker 3: in the Cambodian community worldwide. He had been shot getting
Speaker 3: out of his car and what police will ultimately decide
Speaker 3: was a robbery gone wrong, but this will remain up
Speaker 3: for debate. The reason for this is that the man
Speaker 3: who had been killed had been a vocal critic of
Speaker 3: Cambodia's government and a survivor of the genocidal Pullpot regime.
Speaker 3: And just to give you some numbers, that led to
Speaker 3: the deaths of an estimated one point five to three
Speaker 3: million people, which was a quarter.
Speaker 1: Of the country's population. Wow.
Speaker 3: This man had been a doctor, a forced laborer, a refugee,
Speaker 3: a community advocate, and in a surprise turn, an Oscar
Speaker 3: winning actor. In fact, he was the first person of
Speaker 3: Asian heritage to win the award.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: May is AAPI Heritage month, and this is the story
Speaker 3: the amazing life, brave actions and tragic death of Hang Noir.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: The main source for the story is a documentary called
Speaker 3: The Killing Fields of Doctor Hang s Nore fucking can't
Speaker 3: recommend it enough. It tells you so much information. Also,
Speaker 3: you should watch The Killing Fields. It's incredible. He plays
Speaker 3: the Cambodian journalist, right, and you know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 3: like the main character basically.
Speaker 1: So the rest of the sources.
Speaker 3: Can be found in the show notes. I've been wanting
Speaker 3: to do this story for so long, but I just
Speaker 3: wanted to make sure I did it right. And I
Speaker 3: really want to thank Ali Elkin, my researcher, for doing
Speaker 3: such an incredible job of putting this together for me.
Speaker 3: Nice Hang Noor is born into a reasonably well to
Speaker 3: do family in Cambodia. His father has several agricultural businesses,
Speaker 3: owning both rice fields and lumber yards. He's born in
Speaker 3: nineteen forty and his family lives in the country side,
Speaker 3: so they are just living this traditional life that their
Speaker 3: families have for generations in the agricultural business. They're not
Speaker 3: really far out from Panampen, the capital city, but their
Speaker 3: life is just kind of a peaceful, everyday life. For
Speaker 3: all of Hag's life, there is some degree of political
Speaker 3: unrest in Cambodia, and all of it is stirred up
Speaker 3: to varying extents by Western colonialism. So he's born under
Speaker 3: French colonial rule in a land that is still called
Speaker 3: at the time French Indo China, which also includes modern
Speaker 3: day Laos and Vietnam, and throughout his childhood there's a
Speaker 3: gorilla effort to overthrow the French colonizers. Hag's family at
Speaker 3: times is caught up in the middle of this. His
Speaker 3: parents had been kidnapped for ransom by corrupt members of
Speaker 3: both sides of this conflict on multiple occasions.
Speaker 1: So that's what everyday life is like.
Speaker 2: Multiple kidnapping, yes, horrifing.
Speaker 3: Part of the reason for this is that Hag's father
Speaker 3: is ethnically Chinese and his mother is part of the
Speaker 3: Cambodian ethnic majority, which is the Kumayr, so they are
Speaker 3: each victimized in turn for different reasons. But this is
Speaker 3: ultimately a low level inconvenience in comparison to what happens
Speaker 3: later in Cambodia's history. As a teenager, Hag moves to
Speaker 3: PanAm Penn to try to shelter from all this unrest
Speaker 3: in the countryside. He's very, very smart, like top of
Speaker 3: his class. He eventually goes to medical school and while
Speaker 3: he's there he meets a fellow student named Hoy and
Speaker 3: she's training to become a teacher and they fall in love.
Speaker 3: This is so truncated. Yeah, the documentary is incredible. Hang
Speaker 3: becomes a gynocologist, and in this time period, Cambodia becomes
Speaker 3: independent and under the leadership of a monarch who then
Speaker 3: becomes an elected leader. And at the same time, in
Speaker 3: the late sixties and early seventies, the Vietnam War begins
Speaker 3: and eventually the United States conducts a brutal bombing campaign
Speaker 3: on parts of Cambodia along the border with Vietnam. And
Speaker 3: so Ali added this famous quote in the research from
Speaker 3: Anthony Bourdain that says, quote, once you've been to Cambodia,
Speaker 3: you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death
Speaker 3: with your bare hands. You will never again be able
Speaker 3: to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating,
Speaker 3: murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie
Speaker 3: Rose or attending some black tie affair for a new
Speaker 3: glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did to Cambodia,
Speaker 3: the fruits of his genius for statesmanship, and you will
Speaker 3: never understand why he's not sitting in the dock at
Speaker 3: the Hague next to Melosovich.
Speaker 1: End quote. As in fucking War crimes.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows this already, but I just want to say
Speaker 2: it again, the loss of a mind and a spirit
Speaker 2: like Anthony Bourdain, where he is a speaker of truth
Speaker 2: to power in that way. There's not enough guys like
Speaker 2: that anymore, where they're like no, fuck you and the
Speaker 2: Truth times twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like this might hurt my career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm actually Pallas, this is actually yes, exactly,
Speaker 2: this is what we're supposed to be doing here totally.
Speaker 2: Why are we pretending that this isn't discussed exactly? So
Speaker 2: thank you to Ali for including that.
Speaker 3: So with this in the background in nineteen seventy, when
Speaker 3: Hayng is thirty years old and a practicing physician, and
Speaker 3: he just has this like kind of normal life. He's
Speaker 3: got friends, he's got family, he's got this girlfriend he loves,
Speaker 3: he's a doctor. He has this mentality that everything is
Speaker 3: fine and the warring is going to come to a truce,
Speaker 3: and like so many people, just pretends like it's not
Speaker 3: going to affect him and doesn't pay attention to it
Speaker 3: at all. At this place, this is when Cambodia's government
Speaker 3: is overthrown in a coup. So Cambodia's prime minister is
Speaker 3: a man named Noro Dum Sianak, and he had originally
Speaker 3: been appointed king by the French and then led Cambodia
Speaker 3: to independence and abdicated his position. Then was elected by
Speaker 3: an overwhelming majority, so people seem pretty happy with this,
Speaker 3: But then he goes out of town and there is
Speaker 3: a coup that is orchestrated by two government officials who
Speaker 3: are his opponents, and they only had support from a
Speaker 3: small minority of Cambodian elites, but some believe they were
Speaker 3: aided by the Americans, probably true. So these officials take over.
Speaker 3: They allow the Americans to invade the southern border with
Speaker 3: Vietnam to force out North Vietnamese fighters, and the influx
Speaker 3: of American money into Cambodia ushers in a time of
Speaker 3: prosperity for some, including Hang's father, who buys a second
Speaker 3: lumber mill. But in the countryside, poor and more rural
Speaker 3: Cambodians are coalescing their support around Sianak, now in exile
Speaker 3: in China, who has always been He'd always been beloved.
Speaker 3: People believed that he was appointed by God or that
Speaker 3: he was a god and behind this unlikely ally to
Speaker 3: the countryside and poorer Cambodians is the leader of Cambodia's
Speaker 3: communist party Polpot.
Speaker 2: Here we are here, we are okay.
Speaker 3: This group becomes the Kumer Rouge. They are actually ethnically
Speaker 3: Kumer and then Rouge I think means red, right, so
Speaker 3: red is communists.
Speaker 1: Hey.
Speaker 3: So in nineteen seventy five, the Khmer Rouge, under the
Speaker 3: leadership of Polepot but with the encouragement of Sianak, marches
Speaker 3: into PanAm Pen and deposes the new government.
Speaker 1: They take over.
Speaker 3: The regular Cambodians who are there are kind of rejoicing,
Speaker 3: thinking that finally the Kumar Rouge are going to bring
Speaker 3: some kind of peace and normality, and quickly learn that's
Speaker 3: not true. It's a big part of the movie The
Speaker 3: Killing Fields.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So, the Kumer Rouge launch a new ultra authoritarian communist
Speaker 3: regime that they nickname Year zero, like shit is over.
Speaker 3: Everything you thought you knew done gone. The idea is
Speaker 3: that the country is starting from scratch and educated people
Speaker 3: and professionals are specifically targeted to be killed or imprisoned.
Speaker 3: So it basically comes this ultra ultra communist country and lifestyle.
Speaker 3: All private property is outlawed, every aspect of life is
Speaker 3: dictated by the pullpot regime.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing as private property. There's no money.
Speaker 3: You can't even have your own cooking utensils and make
Speaker 3: yourself food. You have to eat in the big groups
Speaker 3: because everyone is equal. You can't wear glasses. Husbands and
Speaker 3: wives are separated, children are separated. It's just becomes this prism. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's no money, there are no clocks or calendars. Citizens
Speaker 3: are just assigned to labor details and non Khmers especially
Speaker 3: become forced laborers, so they're all sent out of the
Speaker 3: big cities back into the countryside to work. When Ali
Speaker 3: wrote note to Georgia, it feels important to mention that
Speaker 3: this vision of communism is often used as a reason
Speaker 3: why we shouldn't have any kind of socialized systems like healthcare.
Speaker 3: But this is authoritarianism, and whenever it's ideology is communist
Speaker 3: or fascist, it can result in similar violence and wiping
Speaker 3: out of civil liberties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so thank you Ali for noting that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you put authoritarianism on really anything, right, and it
Speaker 2: turns into the exact same thing.
Speaker 3: So when all of this have begun, as I said,
Speaker 3: Hang is a doctor at that moment that everything gets changed.
Speaker 3: He is operating on a patient when the Khmer rouge
Speaker 3: storm the clinic that he's in. One operative holds a
Speaker 3: gun to his head and asks him if he is
Speaker 3: the attending physician, which he is, but as I said,
Speaker 3: and he educated professionals are wiped out, so he lies
Speaker 3: and says the attending had just stepped out of the room,
Speaker 3: essentially posing as a lower level clinic staffer, which saves
Speaker 3: his life. He can't tell anyone he's a doctor. He's
Speaker 3: then caught up in a force evacuation from phenomen Pen
Speaker 3: and is separated from his girlfriend Hooi and his family
Speaker 3: separated from everyone, so Hang lies about being a doctor.
Speaker 3: Since educated people are automatically just being killed, Hang, like
Speaker 3: most other people, is assigned to an agricultural labor detail
Speaker 3: in which he is required to push.
Speaker 1: A plow through fields. That is a job that livestock would.
Speaker 3: Have primarily done, and they just put people on the
Speaker 3: oxen cart to push through the fields.
Speaker 1: They turned the whole country in to slave labor. Slave labor. Yeah.
Speaker 3: During this period, between one point five and three million
Speaker 3: people are killed in Cambodia through execution, starvation, and disease.
Speaker 3: Hanging is tortured on multiple occasions, usually for stealing food
Speaker 3: because he's starving. On one occasion, he's tied to a
Speaker 3: tree overnight and he's bitten all over his body by
Speaker 3: red ants. And on another occasion, he and multiple other
Speaker 3: force laborers are put on crucifixes with their bare feet
Speaker 3: over smoldering fires, and he watches as a pregnant woman
Speaker 3: who is being punished the same way die while this
Speaker 3: is happening. And in the documentary he is interviewed in
Speaker 3: the States about what happened, what was that was like,
Speaker 3: and he gets into some really gory details in front
Speaker 3: of this audience and it's just horrible. But it's so
Speaker 3: incredible that he is brave enough to tell the awful
Speaker 3: things that they did.
Speaker 2: To people when they're being punished like this, What was
Speaker 2: the justification?
Speaker 1: Do you know?
Speaker 2: Like, what was the point of putting those people up
Speaker 2: on crucifixes?
Speaker 3: Well, they stole food. This is your punishment. But this
Speaker 3: is awesome. So a lesson of everybody, everyone that this
Speaker 3: is what happens because everyone is equal, they get the
Speaker 3: same amount of food. If you're stealing food, you think
Speaker 3: you're better than the government, you think you know more.
Speaker 1: You're punished crucifixion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Hang eventually does reunite with Hoy, who becomes pregnant.
Speaker 3: There's already not enough food to sustain someone who isn't pregnant,
Speaker 3: and Hoi begins to starve. When she's seven months along,
Speaker 3: she goes into early labor, and obviously there's no way
Speaker 3: to get her any kind of medical attention, and there's
Speaker 3: no medicine, there's no equipment.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing.
Speaker 3: Hang is a trained gynecologist, and he could have operated
Speaker 3: attempted to save her, though he has no safe tools
Speaker 3: or medicine, but the operation would likely kill her. He
Speaker 3: knew that she was going to die either way. If
Speaker 3: he attempted to save her, he would out himself as
Speaker 3: a doctor, so he couldn't do anything. And Hoi dies
Speaker 3: in his arms, and the baby dies too. After Hoy dies,
Speaker 3: Hang actively tries to get killed.
Speaker 2: He just does a fucking I mean, the guilt, the
Speaker 2: horror of that, Like when you're in a survival situation
Speaker 2: like that and you're just having to make these calls
Speaker 2: that are beyond and.
Speaker 3: I feel like there's so many people, Like when we
Speaker 3: learn about Vietnam and Cambodia, it's like that's what their
Speaker 3: lives were like always, they were used to it, and
Speaker 3: I think people need to remember that that's not the case,
Speaker 3: like that it's the exact same thing, is if that
Speaker 3: sorted happened to us right now, like the horror that
Speaker 3: if you saw a pregnant woman being tortured is it's
Speaker 3: not like you've been seeing that since you're a child.
Speaker 3: You're used to it, which I think is sometimes the
Speaker 3: justification in people's minds that it's like not as bad somehow.
Speaker 2: I feel like anytime that is what's coming out of
Speaker 2: your mouth.
Speaker 1: Right, that's what?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Toulate, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? That?
Speaker 2: And also just the oppression, that level of extreme and
Speaker 2: just like oppression as far as the eye can see,
Speaker 2: is such a hopeless, horrible situation.
Speaker 1: To be in.
Speaker 3: I really don't think I would try to survive. I
Speaker 3: really don't think I would. I mean, I've thought about
Speaker 3: it so many times with like you know, the Holocaust too,
Speaker 3: It's like I don't think i'd be walking.
Speaker 1: I think i'd be Well, you say that, right, that's true.
Speaker 2: You say that, But then remember the guy that basically
Speaker 2: ran away from the Nazis and had to keep running
Speaker 2: for like four months or something like. That's a human
Speaker 2: survival instinct. That's what you do. And if you can
Speaker 2: get away, you do get away, and then you keep
Speaker 2: going and then you build from there, and then you
Speaker 2: get used to being scared, and then you help other
Speaker 2: people that are scared. And I mean that's what every
Speaker 2: immigrant story really is.
Speaker 1: Seriously, you don't let them win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you go through the real shit and then you
Speaker 2: come back and help other people go through shit. Right,
Speaker 2: that's very, very dismissive of an experience. I'm two generations
Speaker 2: away from yeah, and have no idea in terms of
Speaker 2: what you are talking about. It is like, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: You know it is.
Speaker 3: This is going to sound so corny, but like generational trauma, right,
Speaker 3: we all know that's a thing that's passed down, But
Speaker 3: the fact that we're alive means there was also generational
Speaker 3: like hutzpah, Yeah, meaning as they were traumatized, they stayed
Speaker 3: alive and kept living and lived long enough to fall
Speaker 3: in love and have children. And that's why we're alive.
Speaker 3: So we have generational trauma for sure, Yeah, but we
Speaker 3: also have whatever the fuck it was the chritzbah that
Speaker 3: kept them alive and.
Speaker 2: A perfect source of real gratitude.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for every day so Hoy dies and Hang is
Speaker 3: over life. He steals food at every opportunity, just trying
Speaker 3: to get killed, essentially, but somehow he makes it until
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight when the Vietnamese invade Cambodia. This sets
Speaker 3: off a decade of warfare between the Kumar Rouge and
Speaker 3: the Vietnamese. Now that there's the chaos of fighting to
Speaker 3: distract the Kumer Rouge, Hang has an opportunity to escape
Speaker 3: with a large group. He travels to the Thailand border.
Speaker 3: Out of the two hundred people that escape with his group,
Speaker 3: only seventeen people make it alive across the Thai border.
Speaker 3: The only living relative or person he knows at that
Speaker 3: point is his young niece named Sofia, and they escape together.
Speaker 3: Once in Bangkok, Hang works as a volunteer doctor at
Speaker 3: a refugee camp. So despite all of these fucking horrors
Speaker 3: that he's gone through, all this PTSD, he still becomes
Speaker 3: He could just doesn't have to do anything but survive,
Speaker 3: but instead he volunteers to be a doctor at this
Speaker 3: refugee camp.
Speaker 2: I bet you there's a part of him that was
Speaker 2: just like, I finally get to.
Speaker 1: Be a doctor, what I'm made for.
Speaker 2: My skills, and like, actually do something about this horror
Speaker 2: that I'm surrounded by.
Speaker 3: Totally, Hang takes the only thing he has is a
Speaker 3: photo of Hoy, and when he escapes, he has it
Speaker 3: professionally colorized and puts it into a custom gold locket
Speaker 3: wears that around his neck so she can be close
Speaker 3: to his heart at all times. And then he and
Speaker 3: his young niece, Sofia move to the United States. So
Speaker 3: Hang and Sofia, who's a teenager, now settle in Los
Speaker 3: Angeles in nineteen eighty, almost their entire family, in addition
Speaker 3: to Hoy had been killed by the Kumer Rouge. He
Speaker 3: trained to take his board so that he can practice
Speaker 3: medicine and works as a volunteer with refugees. So right
Speaker 3: around this time, and this is just he could have
Speaker 3: lived the rest of his life out like that, but
Speaker 3: for some reason, fate intervened and this Banana's thing happens
Speaker 3: to him. Right around the same time, director Ronald Joffey
Speaker 3: is preparing to make the film The Killing Fields. It's
Speaker 3: based on the true accounts of two journalists, one a
Speaker 3: Cambodian named derth Pran and one an American named Sidney Shanberg,
Speaker 3: and they had written the book The Killing Fields. And
Speaker 3: so the casting director, Pat Golden is working really hard
Speaker 3: to find the perfect person to play diff and hasn't
Speaker 3: had any luck. So she somehow finagls her way into
Speaker 3: a Cambodian wedding in order.
Speaker 1: To scout for her actor brilliant.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, And this is where she discovers Hang and
Speaker 3: he is just seems like a really charming, happy person.
Speaker 3: He's smiling and laughing a lot despite everything that happened
Speaker 3: to him. He's very outgoing and gregarious. He says when
Speaker 3: he was a kid, he was hyperactive, and he's just
Speaker 3: really likable, and so something about him catches her eye.
Speaker 3: It had never crossed Haang's mind to be an actor
Speaker 3: in Cambodia at the time, actors are not particularly well
Speaker 3: paid or respected. But he decides to go on an
Speaker 3: audition and just have a good time with it. He's like,
Speaker 3: here's a weird opportunity to have in my life.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. And there's a video of his audition and.
Speaker 2: A man is a survivor of concentration camp. Right, He's
Speaker 2: just like.
Speaker 3: Sure, yes, and he blows everyone away with his raw emotion.
Speaker 3: And when you watch the documentary and you watch this audition,
Speaker 3: you completely get it and you see that what he
Speaker 3: did is just took himself back to his actual pain
Speaker 3: and the actual things he experienced of the story that
Speaker 3: he is telling in this movie. It wasn't a hard
Speaker 3: stretch for him. Yeah, and he's able to do it.
Speaker 3: And so he's cast in the movie along with Sam
Speaker 3: Waterston our Law and Order.
Speaker 2: You know, the greatest man, the greatest actor ever to live,
Speaker 2: the greatest man ever to live.
Speaker 1: Here's a photo of them from the Killing Fields. Look
Speaker 1: at a young Samwise. I often, I know, damn.
Speaker 3: Ma, it's such an incredible movie, Like I get Full
Speaker 3: Metal Jacket, but this is the movie that you should watch.
Speaker 2: Also, just looking at his face. He had to go
Speaker 2: to a reenactment of a thing he actually lived through.
Speaker 3: Totally, and he just said he channeled it the whole time.
Speaker 3: And also he was telling them what it was really
Speaker 3: like the whole time.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: On set, Hang has that same access to all his
Speaker 3: very real emotions and experiences, and he's able to consult
Speaker 3: with the actors who hadn't had direct experiences with the
Speaker 3: Kumaer Rouge. When the movie comes out in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 3: it bears the brutal truth of the Kumaer Rouge regime
Speaker 3: to the world, and Hang is considered a front runner
Speaker 3: for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and you know who
Speaker 3: he beat for Best Supporting Actor, somebody like Robert Duval
Speaker 3: John Malkovich.
Speaker 1: Oh, she was also in this movie.
Speaker 3: Oh but John Malkovich like one of the greatest trained
Speaker 3: actors of all time, and he went. And so that
Speaker 3: year's Oscars are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which
Speaker 3: is downtown, and Hang and Sophia live in Chinatown, so
Speaker 3: they're like able to see where they're.
Speaker 2: Thinking, walk home, change their clothes.
Speaker 3: They are not in Beverly fucking Hills or Brentwood, Yes,
Speaker 3: so they vastly underestimate how long it's going to take
Speaker 3: them to get there in oscar traffic because they're like,
Speaker 3: it's five minutes away, it won't take us long. They
Speaker 3: just barely make it on time. And they didn't realize
Speaker 3: that the Supporting Actor Award is the first presented award
Speaker 3: that night, So when they're announcing the nominees, they have
Speaker 3: to put a photo of him up because he's not
Speaker 3: even in his seat yet, like they can't pand.
Speaker 1: His seat literally that late.
Speaker 3: And as he's walking in, his name gets called and
Speaker 3: he walks straight in and up to the fucking podium
Speaker 3: and gives like the speech will make you cry.
Speaker 1: It's so beautiful.
Speaker 3: Here's a photo of him winning. Oh, it's just such
Speaker 3: a beautiful moment. You can tell he's so tumbled by
Speaker 3: this opportunity to show what happened to his people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's such a representative of like the Oscars
Speaker 2: is the world kind of right, and so then it's
Speaker 2: like underworld's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And he brought his niece along. I think she was
Speaker 3: fifteen at the time, and she was a tomboy and
Speaker 3: he said to her, you need to get a dress,
Speaker 3: and she's like, I don't want.
Speaker 1: To do this. She goes. Anyways, she's in the documentary.
Speaker 3: So in his acceptance speech, he says, quote, this is unbelievable,
Speaker 3: but so is my entire life. I wish to thank
Speaker 3: all members of the Motion Picture Academy for this great honor.
Speaker 3: I think David Putnam, Roland Joffe for giving me this
Speaker 3: chance to act for the first time in The Killing Fields.
Speaker 3: And I share this award to my friend Sam Watterson,
Speaker 3: Dith Pran, Sydney Shamberg, and also Pat Golden, the casting
Speaker 3: lady who found me for this role. And I think
Speaker 3: Warner Brothers for helping me tell the story to the world,
Speaker 3: let the world know what happened in my country. And
Speaker 3: I thank God Buddha that tonight I'm even here, I'm
Speaker 3: not giving it what it deserves.
Speaker 2: Well, you're not supposed to do it, That's okay, I
Speaker 2: feel that, Oh no, But I mean just everything about
Speaker 2: that is such a especially back then when it was
Speaker 2: like the time of our tours. And I mean I
Speaker 2: remember seeing The Killing Fields on Siskel and Ebert on
Speaker 2: the weekend because of course my parents always watched that,
Speaker 2: where I was like, oh, that's heavy.
Speaker 1: I don't think I could watch that whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm always like yeah, And that took over the zeitgeist
Speaker 2: essentially that year, and everyone paid attention totally.
Speaker 3: I mean, there were so many incredible movies coming out
Speaker 3: at the time, so the fact that it broke through
Speaker 3: was really says a lot.
Speaker 1: About all of it.
Speaker 2: Go to hell, John Malkovich, and that's our message this podcast.
Speaker 1: There's a me message. Oh my god, Johnood, we love you.
Speaker 3: He's not here. He's not here, so mad. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: our friend was going to tell him. I'm sure they're
Speaker 3: from Paul. He's got to be friends with the fucking.
Speaker 2: Those powerful character actors that know each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they must come on.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Hayk gets more roles, but he also really
Speaker 3: dedicates himself to telling the world what happened in his country.
Speaker 3: He uses his famed get the message and goes on
Speaker 3: a lot of like talk shows. At this point in
Speaker 3: the late eighties and through the nineties, no one from
Speaker 3: the Khmer Rouge has been punished, and their predecessors continue
Speaker 3: to hold power in the Cambodian government, though the extreme
Speaker 3: and genocidal policies have been walked back a bit. Polpot
Speaker 3: goes into hiding. Hank testifies before Congress about his experiences
Speaker 3: and is an extremely outspoken critic of the Cambodian government
Speaker 3: and one speaking engagement. He notes the brutality portrayed in
Speaker 3: the Killing Fields, then saying, quote, the killing fields isn't
Speaker 3: bad enough, suffering enough, bloody enough end quote. He does
Speaker 3: this work prolifically through the first half of the nineties,
Speaker 3: he's actively speaking out against the current Cambodian government, which
Speaker 3: again has vestiges of the old Kumer Rouge. In the
Speaker 3: wake of the fall of Western Communism, Cambodia is in
Speaker 3: a period of transition with some unrest, though nothing like
Speaker 3: what he had seen, and Sianok is still influential and
Speaker 3: somehow evades blame for the Kumer Rouge, even though he
Speaker 3: had lent.
Speaker 1: His support to it.
Speaker 3: So this brings us back to the night that Hang
Speaker 3: is killed outside his Los Angeles apartment building in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six, and this is like I remember hearing about
Speaker 3: this and it's just he's what the things he survived
Speaker 3: that will never understand and he comes to it's just
Speaker 3: like I remember feeling shame that we did this to
Speaker 3: him after what he survived, Like our country, my city
Speaker 3: did this to him, you know. So Hang had been
Speaker 3: shot and he's found lying next to his car with
Speaker 3: his Rolex watch missing, but there's twenty nine hundred dollars
Speaker 3: in cash undisturbed in his car, and the immedia impression
Speaker 3: in the news and among Hang's neighbors is that he
Speaker 3: had been targeted by allies of the Cambodian government because
Speaker 3: of his outspoken criticism. They immediately knew he was trying
Speaker 3: to be silenced. Other people raise the possibility that organized
Speaker 3: crime could be involved, since Hang had several business interests
Speaker 3: in Cambodia, including his family lumber yard.
Speaker 1: Which he still had. So it's a surprise to.
Speaker 3: Everyone when three young men, all Asian American and all
Speaker 3: affiliated with a gang are charged with Hang's murder. All
Speaker 3: three men maintained that they had been about a mile
Speaker 3: away at the time of Hag's death.
Speaker 1: At trial, prosecutors.
Speaker 3: Say that the men had demanded Hang's locket with the
Speaker 3: picture of Hoy in it, that he still wore, and
Speaker 3: that he had refused to give it up, and this
Speaker 3: is why they killed him. That was the prosecution's story.
Speaker 3: People take issue with its argument because Hans's pockets were
Speaker 3: thought to have been undisturbed and there's twenty nine hundred
Speaker 3: dollars left in his car. All three men are found
Speaker 3: guilty on April eighteenth, nineteen ninety eight, the same day
Speaker 3: Pole Pot dies in exile in the jungle on the
Speaker 3: Thai Cambodian border.
Speaker 1: Wow Yeah. After Hang's death, Dith Pran, the journalist upon
Speaker 1: whose story The Killing Fields is based, says quote, he's
Speaker 1: like a twin with me.
Speaker 3: He's my co messenger and right now I'm alone.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: There are no trials from members of the Khmer Rouge
Speaker 3: until the early twenty tens, when the UN holds them
Speaker 3: alongside the chem Bodian government. Three high ranking officials are
Speaker 3: sentenced to life in prison. During one of these trials,
Speaker 3: the official says that Hang Nor's murder had been ordered
Speaker 3: by the Kumer Rouge as retribution for his speaking out
Speaker 3: against the regime. An organization called the Innocent Center has
Speaker 3: taken up the case of one of the three men
Speaker 3: who had been convicted of his murder. After the release
Speaker 3: of The Killing Fields, hang had said quote, if I
Speaker 3: die from now on, okay, this film will go on
Speaker 3: for a hundred years.
Speaker 1: And that is the story of the.
Speaker 3: Life and legend of Cambodian American truth teller and hero
Speaker 3: Hang Nor.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: I know, I almost did it at our LA live show,
Speaker 3: but I was like, it's too heavy.
Speaker 2: It's so heavy, I mean, but it's incredible. It's like
Speaker 2: that's what makes it like all of that, and then
Speaker 2: you walk straight into the oscars and win. What a
Speaker 2: life beyond.
Speaker 3: I mean, what an incredible life, and what a strong
Speaker 3: and what.
Speaker 2: A great example for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean it is though it is.
Speaker 2: That's a great example of someone who's been through an
Speaker 2: absolute governmental nightmare, basically the fabric of reality falling apart
Speaker 2: around him, trying to just dying and losing everything, dying,
Speaker 2: being murdered, being murdered, and then being an immigrant where
Speaker 2: he just builds and builds and builds and builds and
Speaker 2: then comes back to do something about.
Speaker 1: It, totally doesn't just move on with his life. Incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So hang Nor.
Speaker 2: Well, we are going to take a left turn. Please,
Speaker 2: I don't want to surprise you. But this is also
Speaker 2: based on the Dead Kennedy song. That's not true at all,
Speaker 2: and it's actually maybe the complete other end of the spectrum.
Speaker 2: This story is the main story. If you were a
Speaker 2: kid in the nineties and in elementary school a teacher
Speaker 2: read you a book about a family of pioneers.
Speaker 1: Christiane bears close.
Speaker 2: It's called Apples to Oregon by a writer named Deborah Hopkinson,
Speaker 2: and it follows an eighteen hundred's Midwestern family in their
Speaker 2: westward journey, and it is loosely based on the life
Speaker 2: of a successful horticulturalist who's also known as the Johnny
Speaker 2: apple Seed of the West. Oh yeah, there's the story
Speaker 2: of his life. After all his pioneering days were over
Speaker 2: and his fruit trees were planted, he went into a
Speaker 2: different branch of life. He attempted to start what's been
Speaker 2: described as a doomed Quaker sex cult. Oh dear, this
Speaker 2: is the story of horticulturalist Henderson Llewelling. Okay, are you ready?
Speaker 1: I'm so ready, Okay.
Speaker 2: Main sources used for today's story are reporting by Finn J. D.
Speaker 2: John from the Offbeat Oregon website, writing by Heather Arn't
Speaker 2: Anderson from Portland Monthly, and archival editions of the Iowa
Speaker 2: Journal of History and the Sacramento b your favorite newspaper.
Speaker 2: And the rest of the sources are in our show notes.
Speaker 2: So Henderson Lewelling's story begins in eighteen oh nine when
Speaker 2: he is born to a Quaker family in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: So this is one of those eighteen hundred stories that
Speaker 2: there's spotty reporting on some stuff. It's back far enough
Speaker 2: that it's like we're pretty sure that he blank blanklink.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of that kind of storytelling historic. It's
Speaker 2: very prehistoric in that it is like pioneer era life, right.
Speaker 2: Not a lot of when you're out on the prairie
Speaker 2: fighting for your life. Not a lot of diary keeping,
Speaker 2: not a lot of daily there's not a lot of journaling.
Speaker 1: A lot of sources to find the truth.
Speaker 2: We needed more scrap booking back then.
Speaker 1: Definitely we're blogging.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, just ofvlogging on a nice stone outside
Speaker 2: of town, down by the river.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So, when Henderson is in his teens, he and his
Speaker 2: family and many other Southern Quakers moved to Indiana, likely
Speaker 2: influenced by the Quaker community growing opposition to slavery, so
Speaker 2: they wanted to get out of the South. And when
Speaker 2: they moved to Indiana, Henderson's father opens a nursery and
Speaker 2: he and his brothers help run. It's the family business.
Speaker 2: He helps run it. He will later marry another Carolina
Speaker 2: born Quaker, her name is Elizabeth Presnell, and when he's
Speaker 2: in his twenties, Henderson opens his own nursery. So this
Speaker 2: is a story for Janet. Oh my god, my mom
Speaker 2: in love with this. She loves horticultures, such a horticulture
Speaker 2: in the eighteen thirties. When Henderson is in his thirties
Speaker 2: because he was born around eighteen hundred, he moves west
Speaker 2: again to eastern Iowa. So this is after the Blackhawk War,
Speaker 2: and the federal government had forcibly removed both the Sock
Speaker 2: and the Fox tribes from their land, and now they
Speaker 2: were actively encouraging white settlers to come and basically settle
Speaker 2: that land by selling it to them for next to nothing.
Speaker 2: So the Llewellings benefit from that and they settle in Salem,
Speaker 2: Iowa again. Henderson opens a nursery. He offers high quality
Speaker 2: seedlings and grafted trees. So I know you know this
Speaker 2: because your Danet's daughter. But grafting is when you take
Speaker 2: the roots from a strong tree and you attach them
Speaker 2: to the shoot or a bud from another tree so
Speaker 2: that the produce is really good fruit. Your Frankensteining fruit trees.
Speaker 2: Essentially got it. It's what you did all summer, every summer.
Speaker 2: So as more settlers arrive in Salem, virtually all of
Speaker 2: them become Henderson's customers, because this is basically like they're
Speaker 2: settling this land and planting it, and he brilliantly or
Speaker 2: you know whether or not it was intentional. He's in
Speaker 2: this business that is always needed, like, no matter what,
Speaker 2: there's a demand for basically being able to grow your
Speaker 2: own food. So Henderson's grafted trees reliably generate so many cherries, apples, pears,
Speaker 2: plums and peaches that, per one source quote, the local
Speaker 2: market could not absorb the yield.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So he's making it possible for everybody to live large.
Speaker 2: So his business is a massive success, and he and
Speaker 2: Elizabeth take this prosperity and they invest it into their home,
Speaker 2: but not in the way that you would think, not
Speaker 2: the usual pioneer luxuries red velvet curtains and soap. Instead,
Speaker 2: they build trapdoors and hiding places and then offer it
Speaker 2: as a stop on the underground railroad.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Because they are Quakers. Today that house is on the
Speaker 2: National Register of Historical Places. The problem is that when
Speaker 2: Lee Wellings Church learns that they are doing this for
Speaker 2: the people searching for freedom that way, they do not
Speaker 2: approve of it. Very Joel Osteen of them. So Henderson
Speaker 2: decides that he's going to leave that church and start
Speaker 2: his own church that is more full throated in its
Speaker 2: condemnation of slavery. So at some point in the eighteen forties,
Speaker 2: he opens the doors to his new place called Anti
Speaker 2: Slavery Friends.
Speaker 1: That's what he names his church.
Speaker 2: Straightforward, just like with the banner right over the front door,
Speaker 2: people will come, and they did so. Now he has
Speaker 2: a successful business, he has a happy family, and he
Speaker 2: has the glowing respect of his community.
Speaker 1: But he wants more, as they always do, so he
Speaker 1: literally guys, guys, stop it.
Speaker 2: They can't help it, especially if they read pamphlets, which
Speaker 2: was the vlogging of the pioneer days. So Henderson reads
Speaker 2: some pamphlets about the Lewis and Clark expedition that went
Speaker 2: from eighteen oh four to eighteen oh six. I say,
Speaker 2: as if I knew that, and he finds it all
Speaker 2: very romantic, the adventure and the discovery. More importantly, he
Speaker 2: learns that despite the fact that the Pacific Northwest has
Speaker 2: very fertile land, it doesn't have a variety of high
Speaker 2: quality fruit trees growing there. So instead of settling into
Speaker 2: the life that he's built in Iowa, he starts thinking
Speaker 2: about starting it all over again in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 2: No one can understand why he would want to give
Speaker 2: up everything and start over in an unfamiliar place for
Speaker 2: a third time. But to me, there's his trauma right there.
Speaker 2: He now needs to keep on doing. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 2: he's in control. But Henderson will tell a friend quote,
Speaker 2: it makes no difference how much a man has around him.
Speaker 2: If he is not satisfied, he will go off and
Speaker 2: leave it. So in April of eighteen forty seven, thirty
Speaker 2: nine year old Henderson and his wife and their eight children,
Speaker 2: along with several other pioneering islands, set out in a
Speaker 2: wagon train for the two thousand mile journey to Oregon.
Speaker 1: It's too many, and it's just a good things.
Speaker 3: It's just someone's pregnant and like just having the worst
Speaker 3: time of her life.
Speaker 1: Keep going.
Speaker 2: And it's hot or it's cold, or it's middle You've
Speaker 2: always got a bonad on always. So the Llewelling party
Speaker 2: consists of four wagons total, but Henderson has filled one
Speaker 2: of those wagons with seven hundred saplings and grafted trees
Speaker 2: so he can start his new nursery in Oregon. Author
Speaker 2: Heather Aren't Anderson writes, quote, it was an insane plan
Speaker 2: with little chance of success. Everyone mocked him for it.
Speaker 2: He did it anyway, those mockers. So the blue Willing
Speaker 2: family makes the brutal westward journey across the Missouri River
Speaker 2: over the Rocky Mountains. So they've got their pioneer wagon.
Speaker 2: Some of these trees are stretching out of the Pioneer
Speaker 2: wagging like four feet. It's so clunky and so bad
Speaker 2: for that kind of travel. It requires constant upkeep. It's
Speaker 2: also filled with soil, like the trees are planted in
Speaker 2: back of the wagon, so it's incredibly heavy. There's genuine
Speaker 2: concern that Henderson's oxen are going to give out under
Speaker 2: this wagon's weight. Members of the wagon train repeatedly suggest
Speaker 2: that he ditches nursery wagon.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's the whole point.
Speaker 2: It's the whole point. But else they're just like, come on,
Speaker 2: come on, there's trees everywhere, which you have to admit.
Speaker 2: It'd be like bringing a big wagon a dirt and
Speaker 2: just be like, we have to bring this good dirt.
Speaker 2: Is the dirt, This is the Iowa dirt. Henderson is committed,
Speaker 2: and seven months, very long months after leaving Iowa and
Speaker 2: no November of eighteen forty seven, the Llewellings finally arrive
Speaker 2: in oregons will Lammett Valley. Against all odds, the trees
Speaker 2: and saplings make it too.
Speaker 1: I've been there. It's so gorgeous, so beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where all the good stuff is.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they settle just south of Portland. Henderson immediately gets
Speaker 2: to work clearing his property of the large fir trees
Speaker 2: that are on it so that he can lay out
Speaker 2: his nursery, which will end up being another huge success
Speaker 2: and it will be the first grafted tree nursery on
Speaker 2: the Pacific Coast. It seems like I'm really being an
Speaker 2: arborist or something, and it's just part of this story
Speaker 2: because I'm going to pretend like I am just super
Speaker 2: into trees. Just pretend like that's always been my personality
Speaker 2: all the way up until this point.
Speaker 3: Definitely, you're a tree in influencer. Yeah, everyone knows that.
Speaker 2: That's when you find out that I've been dating a
Speaker 2: guy that's really into trees, and then suddenly I am too.
Speaker 1: That's so hot. Just a big tree guy, a lumberjack,
Speaker 1: just so sort of a I don't.
Speaker 2: Know, landscaper of some kind. But point of all of
Speaker 2: this is this man had a career. He also had
Speaker 2: a very strong spiritual life. He was living in his
Speaker 2: very settled ways in many ways, but then in eighteen
Speaker 2: fifty one, his thirty five year old wife, Elizabeth, the
Speaker 2: mother of his now ten children, dies of complications during
Speaker 2: her eleventh pregnancy. So some speculate that this loss changes him,
Speaker 2: with one Luwelling family historian writing quote, his life sort
Speaker 2: of fell apart, and he was adrift without an anchor,
Speaker 2: seeking for something to fill that void and never finding
Speaker 2: it end quote. So Henderson Lewelling is grieving, but he
Speaker 2: is also in the most prosperous era of his life,
Speaker 2: producing and selling sought after trees that help build up
Speaker 2: Portland's settler economy. But of course he wants more, and
Speaker 2: that's when he learns it. Down in California's mining towns,
Speaker 2: there's such a huge demand for reliable, high quality fruit
Speaker 2: trees that people will pay one eighteen fifties dollars for
Speaker 2: an apple tree seedling, but essentially today's seedlings in today's
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six money costs ten dollars. Oh wow, So
Speaker 2: that's how blowing, you know. It's just basically the seller's
Speaker 2: market in the California mining towns. So Henderson is now
Speaker 2: in his mid forties. He sells his Oregon business to
Speaker 2: a family member, and he heads south in eighteen fifty four,
Speaker 2: he winds up in the Bay Area and establishes a
Speaker 2: major nursery that he names Fruitvale, in property that has
Speaker 2: since been absorbed into the city of Oakland. You know
Speaker 2: the Fruitvale Station, which is the infamous train station where
Speaker 2: the shooting took place. So Fruitvale was a big part
Speaker 2: of the city of Oakland's kind of establishment, and Henderson
Speaker 2: is in the center of it, cultivating hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: of fruit trees, apricots, grapes, apples, cherries, all to be
Speaker 2: planted throughout California. One write up notes, quote again, Henderson
Speaker 2: was a no small measure responsible for the beginning of
Speaker 2: the great fruit industry of another Pacific Coast state, an
Speaker 2: industry which has brought more wealth to California than all
Speaker 2: the gold the state has produced.
Speaker 3: I grew up in Orange County. I was aware of
Speaker 3: it as a young child.
Speaker 2: I mean everywhere. And it's kind of funny because then
Speaker 2: when you fly up to the Pacific Northwest, like one
Speaker 2: of the first things you hear about are like the
Speaker 2: Marion Berris or the you know, like all of that
Speaker 2: and farmland that's in the Willammette Valley totally so once
Speaker 2: he gets to California, though, Henderson kind of starts going
Speaker 2: through a reinvention. He's perfectly middle aged, he's a widower,
Speaker 2: he's been working his ass off all his life, and
Speaker 2: he's been a Quaker. But now he's crossing paths with
Speaker 2: radical thinkers, including people who are in his own Quaker community,
Speaker 2: but that are now experimenting with new belief systems like
Speaker 2: the utopian movement, which was the idea that a perfect
Speaker 2: society could exist, or the free love movement, which posits
Speaker 2: that marriage is oppressive and sexist and that sexual norms
Speaker 2: should be looser, or the alternative health movements like vegetarianism,
Speaker 2: where people fall for both health reasons and moral reasons,
Speaker 2: or they moralized it. And of course it's the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 2: so you got to have spiritualism, I was wondering. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's right in there, the belief that the living can
Speaker 2: contact the debt. So there's a ton of overlap in
Speaker 2: all these ideas. They're all zeitgeisty, particularly in the Bay Area,
Speaker 2: which even then had a reputation for being open minded.
Speaker 2: So it's easy to see why Llewelling finds all of
Speaker 2: this to be appealing as a fierce abolitionist, the idea
Speaker 2: of liberating people from unjust institutions is important to him,
Speaker 2: and then the idea of personal liberation as a central
Speaker 2: tenant in the free love movement. He's also kind of
Speaker 2: a single guy out there, like, hey, what about what
Speaker 2: if this was cool to the average pioneer. Vegetarianism might
Speaker 2: seem weird, but it's a long held Quaker tradition, so
Speaker 2: it's not weird to him. And of course Henderson would
Speaker 2: embrace spiritualism while coping with the death of his wife,
Speaker 2: and that is kind of the gateway to the broader
Speaker 2: idea of utopia, where society and the self are things
Speaker 2: that can be harmonized brought into harmony. But at that point,
Speaker 2: this is where things go very far away from the
Speaker 2: Johnny Appleseed kind of folk hero stuff and into stranger terrain.
Speaker 2: Because now it's the late eighteen fifties, Henderson's in his
Speaker 2: late forties. He either starts this group or he links
Speaker 2: up with this San Francisco based group called the Harmonial Brotherhood,
Speaker 2: and there are sources that say he started it, but
Speaker 2: it isn't totally clear. But basically, there's no intricate day
Speaker 2: and day out details of the Harmonial Brotherhood. But what
Speaker 2: we do know is it's made up of about twenty people, men, women,
Speaker 2: and children, and many of them come from Quaker backgrounds,
Speaker 2: and now they subscribe to a blend of spiritualist, utopian
Speaker 2: and free love beliefs just like him, fun right and plums.
Speaker 2: So in the pursuit of personal quote harmony, they follow
Speaker 2: strict vegetarian diet, they swear off caffeine, and they favor
Speaker 2: spiritualism adjacent treatments of the day, like hydropathy, which is
Speaker 2: basically baths, wraps, cold plunges.
Speaker 3: Honestly, it sounds way better than some of the movements
Speaker 3: and religious fucking evangelicals from back then.
Speaker 2: Hell yes, it sounds like goop.
Speaker 1: I mean, am I wrong?
Speaker 2: Or they're definitely right about a lot of it and
Speaker 2: kind of right headed about a lot of it.
Speaker 1: But what usually happens, you know, Jim Jones comes along.
Speaker 2: There's always someone with transition lenses is going to fucking
Speaker 2: ruin your utopia. So the Brotherhood's hydropathy practitioner is a
Speaker 2: man who is either a spiritualist preacher or a blacksmith,
Speaker 2: depending on who you're reading, and he also was once
Speaker 2: a circus performer, so he can do it all.
Speaker 1: Definitely.
Speaker 2: The one thing he's not trained as is a formal
Speaker 2: medical physician, and yet he is referred to as doctor
Speaker 2: Tyler or doctor T. And he's the one that the
Speaker 2: water treatments are all coming from Doctor T. Okay, So
Speaker 2: there's an idea that doctor T kind of started this
Speaker 2: group because he's got all the treatments and the things
Speaker 2: that he's as. They're spiritual together. He's the one that's like,
Speaker 2: but I can actually lay some hands on and make
Speaker 2: some changes.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So the Brotherhood shares a dream of men and women
Speaker 2: living as equals in a state of excellent physical and
Speaker 2: spiritual health in a free love utopia, entering and exiting
Speaker 2: relationships at will or as Heather aren't. Anderson, the writer
Speaker 2: puts it quote an individual's rights to bang anyone they fancy.
Speaker 2: She wrote that, yeah, because essentially that's what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and doesn't sound like the worst life I've ever
Speaker 1: heard on this podcast.
Speaker 2: No. And also at this time there were other US
Speaker 2: based religious groups doing exactly the same thing. It's possible
Speaker 2: that they heard about the Oneida community in upstate New York,
Speaker 2: which was established in the eighteen forties and remained as
Speaker 2: a utopian, freelove Christian sect for decades, famously manufacturing the
Speaker 2: kitchen where you might have in your home.
Speaker 1: Right now, fucking right. You covered that right?
Speaker 2: No, actually I didn't, because Maren then writes note to
Speaker 2: Karen Oneida could be fun to someday cover. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: doing it dips. Okay, But as progressive as a place
Speaker 2: like San Francisco can be, it's not remote or rural
Speaker 2: upstate New York. And so the Brotherhood's values are far
Speaker 2: too radical for the average.
Speaker 1: Joe down on Market Street.
Speaker 2: They realize that to live out their utopian vision, they're
Speaker 2: going to have to go somewhere more isolated, no prying eyes,
Speaker 2: where they can build their new society and peace. It's weird,
Speaker 2: it is. It is like a footprint, like a blueprint
Speaker 2: for Jim Jones.
Speaker 1: It follows the trajectory of a cult. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And so this is where Henderson steps up and steps in.
Speaker 2: He's the richest member of this brotherhood, and of course
Speaker 2: he's willing to sink all of his fruit Tree money
Speaker 2: into this cause. If you think about all the risks
Speaker 2: he's taken He's completed multiple cross country trips and reinvented
Speaker 2: himself like three times, so and it's always worked. Why
Speaker 2: would he not think he could do this? So he
Speaker 2: sells the bulk of his California business and pours his
Speaker 2: money into a big schooner. He buys the boat himself,
Speaker 2: and then he buys a fifty thousand acre sparsely populated
Speaker 2: volcanic island off of Honduras, oh called Tiger Island.
Speaker 1: This is so jim, This is so yeah. People's downfall, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: A lot of people are caught off guard by Henderson's
Speaker 2: deep entanglement with the Harmonial Brotherhood, none more than his
Speaker 2: new wife Mary, who's been kept out of the loop
Speaker 2: on this whole Honduras Utopia plan from the beginning. She
Speaker 2: is not invited. Oh so she's not in it and
Speaker 2: she's not inviting. Yeah. Really, So, when she learns that
Speaker 2: her husband is about to abandon her, knowing that she
Speaker 2: will be left destitute, she tries to have him committed,
Speaker 2: and that actually is phrased very like it's one to
Speaker 2: the other. But there's also the chance she has been
Speaker 2: living with this man who's increasingly wearing transition lenses inside
Speaker 2: the house, and so she knows maybe something needs to
Speaker 2: be done right.
Speaker 1: It might not just be because it might fee legit.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, she might not just be covering your ass.
Speaker 1: But we'll never know.
Speaker 2: And the thing is, the courts agree with her, and
Speaker 2: the police are dispatched to go find him, but Henderson
Speaker 2: is two steps ahead of everybody. He's gone into hiding
Speaker 2: until October eighth, eighteen fifty nine, when the Harmonial Brotherhood
Speaker 2: schooner sets stail out of San Francisco with nine male members,
Speaker 2: five female ones, and six or seven children on board.
Speaker 2: Good Bye bye, guys. But Henderson's not on board. He's
Speaker 2: actually watching the schooner from shore, and once it sails
Speaker 2: into the bay and then passes the place that the
Speaker 2: Golden gate Bridge wants will be, he waits to see
Speaker 2: if any boats come up and try to arrest anybody
Speaker 2: on it. Once he sees that that doesn't happen, he
Speaker 2: gets onto a smaller boat and under the cover of
Speaker 2: midnight and moonlight, boards the schooner undetected.
Speaker 1: Out in the open ocean. Smart move.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cool or incredibly paranoid. So now they're sailing
Speaker 2: for Honduras. The boats crewed by hired sailors, not members
Speaker 2: of the Harmonial Brotherhood, and those sailors quickly realize this
Speaker 2: is going to be a weird ride, and they will
Speaker 2: later give statements. They're the reasons that we know what
Speaker 2: is happening on this trip, and so their statements to
Speaker 2: reporters shape what we know.
Speaker 1: Essentially.
Speaker 2: For example, living conditions on board are physically miserable, with
Speaker 2: passengers eventually being quote more or less covered with vermin.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: Maybe they didn't know how to stock the ship or
Speaker 2: pack vegetables. They had so many vegetables. Yeah, Also, tensions
Speaker 2: over food escalate very quickly because they're vegetarian. It's a
Speaker 2: tough reality at sea. Their onboard diet consists mostly of
Speaker 2: quote coarse flour apparently ground up with chaff, straw and all,
Speaker 2: and very much resembling cattle feed. Chaff is that outer
Speaker 2: husk that you sometimes get stuck in your teeth if.
Speaker 3: You eatal oh oatly Oh yeah ye the Odie parsh.
Speaker 2: Basically, they are starving on this ship. So then when
Speaker 2: they stop at ports along the way, some members get
Speaker 2: caught quote dietary cheating.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, give me that bacon exactly.
Speaker 2: Buying salted pork and game meat, because that's exactly what
Speaker 2: I know for it's likely.
Speaker 1: You get a big hunk of beef jerky, chew on
Speaker 1: it for mil to night and just chewing on it.
Speaker 2: The people who do this are caught red handed, and
Speaker 2: then heated arguments break out among the brethren because not
Speaker 2: only are you hoarding food, but it's against your beliefs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not hot.
Speaker 2: So the biggest rift on the ship about food is
Speaker 2: known as the egg Boar, and it starts in Wahawka, Mexico,
Speaker 2: when a merchant swindles both Doctor T and Henderson. His
Speaker 2: colon involves eight chicken eggs. Basically, Henderson sees him with
Speaker 2: the eggs, he runs up and says, I'll take all
Speaker 2: of them. The seller sells him the eight eggs and
Speaker 2: takes his money, and then Henderson runs away to go
Speaker 2: get a container to put the eggs in. And while
Speaker 2: he's away, Doctor T walks up and says, I want
Speaker 2: all eight of those eggs, and the guy's like, sounds good.
Speaker 1: Bad communication, No communication.
Speaker 2: No communication. He sells them a second time and then
Speaker 2: disappears when Henderson comes back with his handful of straw
Speaker 2: or whatever it is that he found to carry the
Speaker 2: eggs in, he sees Doctor T holding them and they
Speaker 2: start fighting over which one of them actually owns these eggs.
Speaker 2: We've all been there, sure, the Great egg War. But
Speaker 2: with these guys, they can't just work it up. They
Speaker 2: can't go like, ah, we both were scared swindled. This
Speaker 2: is what it's like, you know, out on the open seas. Instead,
Speaker 2: they resent each other for days, culminating in an all
Speaker 2: hands meeting on the ship.
Speaker 1: They're little bitches, both of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like everybody's fighting and it's ruining the
Speaker 2: crews for the rest of us.
Speaker 1: It's really the vibe. The vibes are off.
Speaker 2: The vibes are so off. So they have a staff
Speaker 2: meeting and all hands meeting on the Lido deck and
Speaker 2: Henderson tells the group God wants him.
Speaker 1: To have the eggs. Oh settled. Who knew, dude?
Speaker 2: They ever say that on Real Housewives? God wants me
Speaker 2: to have the eggs. So this fight is over. But
Speaker 2: apparently this works. Henderson winds up with the eggs, and
Speaker 2: the only reason we believe it is because at this
Speaker 2: same meeting, Doctor T vows to get revenge over eggs
Speaker 2: over eggs. They haven't even landed on the island yet,
Speaker 2: and things.
Speaker 1: Are that bad.
Speaker 2: So clearly the two vegetarian free love alpha males are
Speaker 2: vying for control over the schooner and the spirit of
Speaker 2: the group itself as they do as they seem to
Speaker 2: always want to do. Doctor t is a blacksmith. Henderson
Speaker 2: is a rich pioneer who will win. Lay your bets,
Speaker 2: good luck players. It takes them several months to finally
Speaker 2: arrive at Tiger Island. So several more months of that
Speaker 2: life and that strife I have bars. So when the
Speaker 2: schooner's crew is finally cut loose, they run to the reporters,
Speaker 2: describing the journey as a free love Hell.
Speaker 1: No such thing. You think those words wouldn't go together.
Speaker 3: But hey, and on a boat, and these are sailors.
Speaker 3: It's the first swingers cruise.
Speaker 2: Oh and these sailors are just like the weight staff.
Speaker 2: They're forced to stand by in the rented community.
Speaker 3: They know all the gossip because like they're just like
Speaker 3: in the background of everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 2: Just not into it. They keep walking into the supply galley.
Speaker 2: Everyone's fucking back there. Sorry, don't let your kids listen
Speaker 2: to this episode, and they also document the hypocrisy among
Speaker 2: the supposedly sexually liberated group members, mentioning a specific incident
Speaker 2: in another port in Mexico where a male member of
Speaker 2: the Brotherhood happens to end up at the same stream
Speaker 2: where the female members are skinny dipping or bathing. I mean,
Speaker 2: they have been on a boat for months, and Doctor
Speaker 2: T shows up and becomes so irate that this other
Speaker 2: man has just seen his wife naked that he quote
Speaker 2: threatened to break every bone in his body unquote, so chill.
Speaker 2: So the blacksmith turned water doctor seems like maybe not
Speaker 2: always okay, or he's like me where when his blood
Speaker 2: sugar gets low, he threatens to kill it.
Speaker 1: Which is the whole time they're starting.
Speaker 2: They can't have any sugar, okay. So now California papers
Speaker 2: are running sneering articles on this harmonious brotherhood utopian journey.
Speaker 2: They're clocking all of it. Meanwhile, on Tiger Island, the
Speaker 2: gang is in rough shape. They're exhausted and they're depleted.
Speaker 2: They just arrived. Now they have to build the infrastructure
Speaker 2: needed to start like their little society. But immediately and
Speaker 2: very sadly, something like malaria or yellow fever sweeps through
Speaker 2: the camp and the terrible reality sets in for the
Speaker 2: group that Doctor T's hydropathy treatments are no match for
Speaker 2: real disease. One of the articles covering this will document
Speaker 2: the death of a Brotherhood member identified only as Missus C,
Speaker 2: which is so sad if you think Richie Cunningham's mother
Speaker 2: dying this way, and they write quote, they took Missus
Speaker 2: C while raging with the fever, wrapped her in a
Speaker 2: wet blanket till she perspired profusely, and then threw cold
Speaker 2: water over her. The speedy result was her death.
Speaker 1: And what a fuck shitty way to go.
Speaker 2: Horrible after months eating the worst oatmeal of all time.
Speaker 1: What was it all for? For real?
Speaker 2: Just to dive far away from home. Two members of
Speaker 2: the Harmonial Brotherhood died shortly after arriving at Tiger Islands
Speaker 2: the sea and another as many as eight get sick,
Speaker 2: including Henderson himself, but they recover. But there's only twenty
Speaker 2: people on this ship, so morale is extraordinarily low. And
Speaker 2: make matters worse, the egg related rift between Henderson and
Speaker 2: Doctor T has not ended.
Speaker 1: Guys, let it go.
Speaker 2: We can't eggs eggs, precious eggs. Doctor T actually breaks
Speaker 2: away from the main group with a few loyalists on
Speaker 2: his side, and starts a rival utopian society. Me and
Speaker 2: my two friends are out.
Speaker 1: Of here on the other side of the island with
Speaker 1: our eggs.
Speaker 2: Literally they go, they move to another side of the island.
Speaker 2: They don't get me eggs. So soon after doctor T
Speaker 2: gets sick and dies himself. Oh so you can't. There's
Speaker 2: no room to just be busting off and being mad
Speaker 2: about eggs. The point is not the eggs.
Speaker 3: God has other plans for you when you're chief and
Speaker 3: about eggs.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 2: Okay, so from here the information is spotty because, as
Speaker 2: I told you, no one's keeping diaries. There are no
Speaker 2: scrap books from Tiger Islands.
Speaker 1: Was like, I want to write down stuff. Well, and
Speaker 1: this is actually dying.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is I got weird and high over eating
Speaker 2: too many vegetables and like having sex whenever I wanted,
Speaker 2: which seemed impossible. And now I'm in Honduras and I
Speaker 2: don't know what's going on.
Speaker 3: Maybe my wife was right to put me in a
Speaker 3: mental institution.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oops, maybe my water treatments don't actually work. This is
Speaker 2: a musical Okay, it only took eight months for the
Speaker 2: Harmonial Brotherhood's Free Love experiment on Tiger Island to implode.
Speaker 1: That's a long freaking time. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: What we know for sure is that in July of
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty, Henderson Lewelling commissions a crew to sail his
Speaker 2: schooner back to California. After this, when the group gets back,
Speaker 2: they disband for good.
Speaker 1: They seem to.
Speaker 2: The entire saga is extremely humiliating for all parties involved
Speaker 2: because they went out, you know, of course, guns a
Speaker 2: blazing of like, we're out of here. We are going
Speaker 2: to We're going to figure it out.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Things are going to be so much better at our
Speaker 2: new life. And this is always what I bring up
Speaker 2: in my argument against vegetarianism. Bring the bacon, Bring the bacon.
Speaker 2: It's the old saying, bring the bacon, you won't fight
Speaker 2: so much about the eggs.
Speaker 3: Also the yeah, because put your protein difference between the
Speaker 3: fucking eggs and the bacon.
Speaker 1: Really it's a focus.
Speaker 2: It's the lens through which it's so humiliating that Henderson
Speaker 2: Lewelling lives the rest of his life under a pseudonym.
Speaker 2: Oh of his family meanwhile carry on his horticultural mantle
Speaker 2: and continue producing popular crops on the Pacific Coast. His
Speaker 2: brother Seth is particularly successful, becoming famous for cultivating the
Speaker 2: bing cherry in the eighteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah love that guy.
Speaker 2: Seth actually changes the spelling of his last name to
Speaker 2: Lleuwelling L E W E.
Speaker 1: L L I to get away from the like damn So.
Speaker 2: In eighteen seventy eight, while clearing land with a control
Speaker 2: burn for a new nursery in San Jose, California, Henderson
Speaker 2: Lewelling dies of a heart attack at the age of
Speaker 2: sixty nine. So he was starting it all over yet
Speaker 2: again in San Jose. This is a hard part to hear.
Speaker 2: He's reportedly found quote partially roasted, with his clothes, beard,
Speaker 2: and the land around him still smoldering.
Speaker 1: So he got caught on fire and had a heart
Speaker 1: attack and died.
Speaker 2: He was control burning, had a heart attack, dropped to
Speaker 2: the ground.
Speaker 1: Oh, and we're live control burn. I couldn't get away
Speaker 1: from them.
Speaker 2: Hopefully he died, but let's say he died.
Speaker 1: Before their control burn. Oh God.
Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty nine, while musing on a sprout from
Speaker 2: one of Henderson's Oregon cherry trees. A writer named O. A.
Speaker 2: Garretson notes quote that this little cherry sprout originating at Salem, Iowa,
Speaker 2: should withstand the risks of transportation across the continent, and
Speaker 2: the hazards of frequent transplanting, and still live a towering
Speaker 2: monument to commemorate the energy and enterprise of a Salem
Speaker 2: pioneer is to the writer, a fact stranger than fiction.
Speaker 2: And that's the story of the so called father of
Speaker 2: the Pacific fruit industry and Dirty Bird Henderson Llewelling. Oh,
Speaker 2: I didn't show you any fucking pictures.
Speaker 1: It was so that you had the images and the words.
Speaker 1: I didn't need it. I have it all in my mind.
Speaker 2: I want to see some of them. Here's the book
Speaker 2: we were talking about.
Speaker 1: I think I read that as a kid.
Speaker 2: It seems so innocent. We'll just get ready, Okay, there.
Speaker 1: Is there is. There's a neck beard. Neckard.
Speaker 2: This is crazy.
Speaker 1: This is the season of Neckbeard's on my favorite murder.
Speaker 2: I guess this was like the Benson Boone mustache is today.
Speaker 2: This neckbeard was in eighteen fifty.
Speaker 1: Because you look fine without it. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: She's like you put some sheep's.
Speaker 2: Wool it's kind of quakery. I mean, this seems to
Speaker 2: be the trend of the time.
Speaker 1: Okay. What else we got is that the schooner No
Speaker 1: I was paturing like a yacht.
Speaker 2: That's Tiger Island.
Speaker 3: Great, Okay, there's the schooner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's more what I thought.
Speaker 2: Still, it's not big and you can only have like
Speaker 2: really crunchy oatmeal rough. Okay, so not even big enough
Speaker 2: for people to If the sailors from this boat are
Speaker 2: complaining about a free love situation, that weird them out.
Speaker 2: It's everywhere they were witnessing it front, back and center. Whoops. Okay,
Speaker 2: oh that's Lammett Valley at value. I know the willam
Speaker 2: at value when I'm looking at it.
Speaker 1: All right, Well that was great. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah those are all these experiences you can have in life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I could go so many different ways.
Speaker 2: That's all we want people to remember, right, yesha, please
Speaker 2: stop forgetting the variety of.
Speaker 1: Life and enjoy yours because.
Speaker 2: Life is like a bing cherry. Yeah, it's expensive, stay sexy,
Speaker 2: I don't get.
Speaker 1: Goodbye, Elvis, do you want to cookie? This has been
Speaker 1: an exactly right production.
Speaker 3: Our senior producer is Molly Smith, and our associate producer
Speaker 3: is Tessa Hughes.
Speaker 2: Our editor is Aristotle Ascevedo.
Speaker 1: This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.
Speaker 2: Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin.
Speaker 1: Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.
Speaker 2: Com and follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.
Speaker 3: Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Speaker 3: Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix.
Speaker 1: And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and
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