Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Koby Bulleted Cool Stuff. What is
Speaker 2: usually your weekly reminder about that when there's bad things,
Speaker 2: you can do good things, But sometimes it just is
Speaker 2: a weird show. But I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
Speaker 2: with me today is my guest Miriam. Hello, Miriam, how
Speaker 2: are you hi?
Speaker 3: Margaret? That bodes extremely strangely. I can't wait to hear
Speaker 3: what we're talking about now.
Speaker 2: It's like this week is almost just a true crime episode,
Speaker 2: but not quite. You'll probably figure out pretty quick what
Speaker 2: it's about, but the audience might take a little bit longer.
Speaker 2: But Sophie is here. Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 1: I'm really mad that we're recording because we were having
Speaker 1: such a good time, so this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: but you promised me this was a fun one, so
Speaker 1: I'll accept.
Speaker 3: I'll accept.
Speaker 2: I believe you that I promised that. And our audio
Speaker 2: engineer Rory. Hi, Rory, Hi, riy Hey Rory. Our theme
Speaker 2: musical is written for us by unwoman because well it's
Speaker 2: not the because doesn't go there. Well, but what we're
Speaker 2: doing that should be fun is I want to do
Speaker 2: something a little bit different this week. Today. I want
Speaker 2: to talk about a story that is morally complex. I
Speaker 2: want to talk about someone who, at the end of it,
Speaker 2: is not a hero whose actions I don't support, but
Speaker 2: whose reasoning is really interesting. Because I want to talk
Speaker 2: about something that no one is talking about. I want
Speaker 2: to talk about a young man with an almost cliche
Speaker 2: Italian name who was suffering from chronic pain and went
Speaker 2: out and bought a gun and killed someone rather important.
Speaker 3: I've already figured it out. Yeah, is it, Jiuseppe Zangara?
Speaker 1: It is. Yes, I'm obsessed with you, Miriam.
Speaker 3: And I'm obsessed with Stephen Sondheim.
Speaker 2: And you. Obviously it's even some I'm the guy who
Speaker 2: wrote the musical.
Speaker 3: He wrote the musical Assassins, in which Jasepi Zangara gets
Speaker 3: a song about, Yeah, how he killed Roosevelt. Well, he
Speaker 3: tried to kill Roosevelt. He didn't. He killed the mayor
Speaker 3: of Chicago.
Speaker 2: I see you know the cliff notes already of this
Speaker 2: particular story.
Speaker 1: This is going to be very fun.
Speaker 3: It is one of many pieces of American history that
Speaker 3: I know, primarily through the musical About It. The only
Speaker 3: parts of American history I don't know from the musical
Speaker 3: about It is anything to do with Alexander Hamilton because
Speaker 3: I just don't care for that show that much.
Speaker 1: I've never seen it.
Speaker 2: I had this theory. I was thinking about it because
Speaker 2: for some reason, the musical Assassins comes up a lot
Speaker 2: in my life. But it might be because I talked
Speaker 2: to you a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say that, does it? Does it
Speaker 3: come up usually when I'm around because I talk about
Speaker 3: the musical Assassins like more than most people.
Speaker 2: And I have this theory that the two kinds of
Speaker 2: people who know this musical are theater nerds and history nerds.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, I stand at the overlap of that Ben diagram.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Assassins of course famously features Emma Goldman as a character,
Speaker 3: and she gets a lot of good lines.
Speaker 2: I actually never seen it. I really need to see it.
Speaker 3: It's worth checking out.
Speaker 2: I've heard some of the songs, I think from you.
Speaker 2: Probably About ninety years ago, the US elected a disabled
Speaker 2: man named Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the office of the
Speaker 2: President of the United States of America FDR. I will
Speaker 2: call him from here on out, because there's another Roosevelt,
Speaker 2: and they're not They're not as related as you like
Speaker 2: think they are related, but it's not like he's not
Speaker 2: Teddy's kid. Whatever. I've looked this up before. FDR went
Speaker 2: on to become one of the most progressive presidents in
Speaker 2: US history and was the longest serving president by a
Speaker 2: real solid amount. He got elected four times before he
Speaker 2: died in office, and shortly afterwards people are like, we
Speaker 2: should have term limits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe that. Prior to his third term, the
Speaker 3: two terms thing was just like a tradition. It was
Speaker 3: basically like just accepted that if you serve two terms
Speaker 3: as president, you would not run again. And it was
Speaker 3: only like when he just kept running and kept getting
Speaker 3: elected that people were like, oh, maybe this isn't just
Speaker 3: like a practice, but it should be like a rule.
Speaker 3: And I think, like not to bring up the current
Speaker 3: era too soon, but like the entirety of the Trump
Speaker 3: presidency has been like was like the first one obviously
Speaker 3: was people discovering like what things happening in American government
Speaker 3: were like normalized practices rather than rules, you know, like, oh, oh,
Speaker 3: he was allowed to do that the whole time. It
Speaker 3: just simply wasn't done up until then, and then realizing
Speaker 3: like maybe we should have actually said they couldn't do that.
Speaker 2: So are you saying that FDRs is the Trump of
Speaker 2: his time.
Speaker 3: I mean, he certainly did put a lot of people
Speaker 3: in concentration camps, so that's true. I'm not actually saying that.
Speaker 3: But there's are two points of comparison right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two of the least similar American presidents that have
Speaker 2: ever existed, but with two strong interesting points of overlap. Yeah,
Speaker 2: FDR oversaw America the United States during two of the
Speaker 2: most existential threats has faced, the Great Depression and then
Speaker 2: World War Two. He also gave my hobo grandfather a
Speaker 2: job by enacting the New Deal, and he legalized drinking alcohol.
Speaker 2: That's some other stuff.
Speaker 3: People were real ready for that one, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think that was like even like, I
Speaker 2: don't think he was like, Ah, this is the thing
Speaker 2: I'm gonna that was just gonna happen under his watch.
Speaker 2: But we actually covered the first woman Secretary, Francis Perkins,
Speaker 2: on this show, who gave him a lot of the
Speaker 2: ideas for the New Deal. Most of what we said
Speaker 2: about FDR in the show has been in those episodes,
Speaker 2: and they're worth listening to. I'm not trying to be
Speaker 2: like and he was perfect in every way. There was
Speaker 2: the whole concentration camp thing like it's he was a
Speaker 2: president of a giant, evil colonial power, you know. But
Speaker 2: as far as things go, I think it's worth understanding
Speaker 2: for the fact that our hero Zengar is not a hero.
Speaker 3: Our guy protagonist, we'll say protagonist is a protagonist.
Speaker 2: FDR almost didn't become president because about three weeks before
Speaker 2: the inauguration on February fifteenth, nineteen thirty three, an unemployed
Speaker 2: brick layer from Italy named giuseppe's Angara tried to kill
Speaker 2: him instead. As Miriam has already told you spoilers, no,
Speaker 2: it's fine, this whole this is the whole spoiler section anyway, right,
Speaker 2: Giuseppe took out the mayor of Chicago by accident, a
Speaker 2: guy named anton Cermac, who I was like, well, I
Speaker 2: bet that guy was like bad, right, No, literally.
Speaker 3: The only thing I know about him is that as
Speaker 3: he like lay dying, he said to FDR like, I'm
Speaker 3: glad he hit me instead of you, which is like
Speaker 3: just such a cool thing for a shot and dying
Speaker 3: person to say that. I can only assume he like
Speaker 3: at least was a little cool. Despite the whole being
Speaker 3: a mayor thing.
Speaker 2: His actual last thing he said was even cooler. Oh shit,
Speaker 2: And I'm not going to tell you what it is
Speaker 2: until he got to it.
Speaker 3: I gotta say, I mayor of Chicago is not like
Speaker 3: a job associated with being a cool person.
Speaker 2: So exactly. And so I had this whole like the
Speaker 2: whole time, I'm like, well, you know, he did kill
Speaker 2: a politician and sometimes, and then I was like reading
Speaker 2: about it and I was like, oh no, oh no,
Speaker 2: this whole story is a tragedy. It's a really interesting tragedy.
Speaker 2: Jiuseppe took out the mayor of Chicago and then he
Speaker 2: was immediately arrested, tried, and executed in the fastest legal
Speaker 2: execution in the United States in the twentieth century. It
Speaker 2: was three weeks to conviction, five weeks to his death.
Speaker 2: He's one of the most forgotten would be assassins in
Speaker 2: US history because no one quite wants to claim him.
Speaker 2: The left isn't really excited about him having been he
Speaker 2: was a leftist. He wasn't ideologically associated with any particular
Speaker 2: like group, but people are like not quick to claim
Speaker 2: him on the left because he was FDR was kind
Speaker 2: of the best thing going to me. It's a little
Speaker 2: bit like if Bernie had won in twenty sixteen and
Speaker 2: then like a kind of wing not leftist to try
Speaker 2: to take him out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't think. But my impression, and
Speaker 3: again my impression drawn primarily from a single song in
Speaker 3: a musical, is that whatever his politics were, he did
Speaker 3: not view his own action as politically motivated so much
Speaker 3: as like personally motivated.
Speaker 2: Is that No, that's the thing. That's the thing about Zengara. Okay, great, everyone,
Speaker 2: like there's all of these things that were like, we
Speaker 2: don't know why he did it. He wrote really clear,
Speaker 2: he's a whole autobiography. We're gonna do huge excerpts from it.
Speaker 2: It's a short autobiography, but like it's like Zene length autobiography.
Speaker 2: He was really clear about why he did it, and
Speaker 2: it was like spoiler, it was because capitalists are bad
Speaker 2: and he wanted communism. Like okay, but people are like,
Speaker 2: we don't know what was possibly in his mind, and
Speaker 2: they're like, he wrote it out. He just wasn't part
Speaker 2: of a He also like wasn't a communist in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three cents right, he had no allegiance to
Speaker 2: any political party, let alone Russia. But anyway, all right, well, and.
Speaker 3: Like just in terms of the strategy of his you know,
Speaker 3: like lan chol Gosh killed President William McKinley because he
Speaker 3: was an anarchist and fuck presidents and fuck McKinley in
Speaker 3: particular was sort of his approach, And there's like a
Speaker 3: coherence to that, right, even though it actually ended really
Speaker 3: badly for anarchists. But like, my impression was that the
Speaker 3: targeting of FDR in particular was not as like, okay.
Speaker 2: But yeah, let me tell you about why am I at?
Speaker 3: You're going to tell me?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: There are articles and articles and books about Joseppe Zangara
Speaker 2: full of wild conspiracy theories. But after reading all of
Speaker 2: this stuff, everything I could find about the case and
Speaker 2: about him and stuff, I get the appeal of the
Speaker 2: conspiracy thinking that has drifted into this particular narrative. This
Speaker 2: is how I was like, Oh, lord, I now understand
Speaker 2: the appeal of doing true crime investigation, because like there's
Speaker 2: some really interesting holes in the official story about.
Speaker 3: Him, as long as your version of true crime is
Speaker 3: about like unpacking ninety year old attempted assassinations of FDR
Speaker 3: and not about like encouraging white, middle class suburban women
Speaker 3: to think they're going to get sex trafficked in the
Speaker 3: target parking lot, like, I'm okay with it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, No, I thought all true crime was just
Speaker 2: about political assassinations from one hundred years ago. Is there
Speaker 2: another kind that sounds awful?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I must have dreamt that kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. But we do know. We know he tried
Speaker 2: to kill FDR because FDR was a capitalist. He was
Speaker 2: the president of the capitalist country, and JOSEPPI wanted to
Speaker 2: kill capitalists. He did it because he was poor as
Speaker 2: fuck and he'd been absolutely fucked over by capitalist healthcare
Speaker 2: his entire life. Doctors, I don't know, is this in
Speaker 2: a song? Doctors took out his appendix because he had
Speaker 2: chronic stomach pain and digestion problems, and they didn't have
Speaker 2: any reason to believe that it was his appendix that
Speaker 2: was causing that problem.
Speaker 3: The chronic stomach pain is in the musical, and there
Speaker 3: is a scene where he complains loudly about how much
Speaker 3: his stomach hurts, and another character in the like surreal
Speaker 3: all the assassins hanging out scene goes, well, have you
Speaker 3: considered assassinating FDR?
Speaker 2: Well, the surgery didn't solve anything. And also assassinating FDR
Speaker 2: wouldn't have solved anything.
Speaker 3: Well, he was executed, which did probably fix the stomach pain.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true.
Speaker 3: That's not like the best approach, but it can't be
Speaker 3: denied that five weeks later he had no stomach pain.
Speaker 2: No, and I mean, honestly, like my end result, the
Speaker 2: thing that I was like after reading all this, I'm like,
Speaker 2: this is an elaborate suicide by cop. This is a
Speaker 2: suicide by state.
Speaker 3: Right, And that's probably why he was executed so quickly, right,
Speaker 3: because I'm sure he didn't like do appeals, right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, No, his like defense was I killed them.
Speaker 2: I wanted to kill him because he was a capitalist.
Speaker 2: That was just like a he was. Really he stuck
Speaker 2: to his guns in all ways. Well, he only had
Speaker 2: one gun, but oh, a couple overtime. Anyway, we'll talk
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 3: One literal gun and some other metaphorical guns.
Speaker 2: Oh no, there was other literal guns earlier in his
Speaker 2: life when he tried to kill a king. But that's
Speaker 2: besides the point.
Speaker 3: He tried to kill a king.
Speaker 2: Oh no, it would have been so much better. This
Speaker 2: would be a regular people who did cool stuff if
Speaker 2: he'd killed the king who made Mussolini the dictator.
Speaker 3: Like that seems like a cool thing.
Speaker 2: He tried to do it anyway. Okay. The saga of
Speaker 2: Giuseppe Zangara Jiseeppi's Angara had a fucking rough life. He
Speaker 2: was born on September seventh, nineteen hundred, which makes it
Speaker 2: really easy to know how old you are. I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna say, like, be born on a round number.
Speaker 3: Don't even have to do math.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally in the southern region of Italy called Calabria.
Speaker 2: This is the toe of the boot, the southwestmost part
Speaker 2: of Italy. While still on the mainland. Just imagine that
Speaker 2: the boot is kicking Sicily, which is an island, and
Speaker 2: now you just you know whatever. His mother was named Rosina.
Speaker 2: His father was Salvatore. Neither was particularly good to him.
Speaker 2: He wrote, quote, the first day I was born, the
Speaker 2: doctors found a sickness in my ears and decided to
Speaker 2: operate on them at once. When my mother heard about
Speaker 2: the sickness, she said, I was bad luck. I do
Speaker 2: not remember my mother. She died when I was two
Speaker 2: years old while giving birth to a child. The child
Speaker 2: died also, Jesus, that.
Speaker 3: Is I'm sure neonatal ear surgery was in great shape
Speaker 3: in the year nineteen hundred.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean that part seemed to work. I
Speaker 2: doubt that caused his stomach pain. You know. No, but
Speaker 2: I think his mother was wrong about which child was unlucky.
Speaker 2: I will just go ahead and say.
Speaker 3: Maybe the bad luck just took a while.
Speaker 2: To kick in. Yeah, maybe that is rough.
Speaker 3: That is a rough first day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, no, And then here's the next couple
Speaker 2: of years of his life. Quote again. When I was
Speaker 2: three years old, I remember falling down two flights of
Speaker 2: stairs in the house where we lived. The stairs were
Speaker 2: built of stone, and when I was picked up, everyone
Speaker 2: thought I was dead. When I was four years old,
Speaker 2: I remember falling into a fire and burning my leg.
Speaker 2: Thus my bad luck continued. Also, this was the first
Speaker 2: time I remembered my name and realized that my mother
Speaker 2: was dead. I remember this dimly, just like a dream.
Speaker 3: Oh buddy, Yeah, you should be allowed to kill the
Speaker 3: king of Italy.
Speaker 2: I know, I know.
Speaker 3: If it is it going to make you feel better
Speaker 3: to kill the king of Italy, yeah, V for it.
Speaker 2: At the age of five, while visiting one day at
Speaker 2: a house of a friend of my aunt, I fell
Speaker 2: down the stairs and broke my wrist. I remember my
Speaker 2: aunt telling everyone how unlucky I was and mentioning to
Speaker 2: them all my hard luck and all the accidents I
Speaker 2: already had.
Speaker 3: I don't want to go back to that first piece
Speaker 3: of bad luck. But this is a lot of falls.
Speaker 3: And if his ear, oh, that's okay. And why am
Speaker 3: I trying to diagnose this guy? But like I'm just saying,
Speaker 3: if his ear was fucked up by perhaps some nineteen
Speaker 3: hundred surgery, then that might have damaged his inner ear.
Speaker 3: And that's why he keeps falling downstairs and into fires
Speaker 3: and like all that shit, I'm sure there's some more
Speaker 3: falls coming. What else happened to this guy?
Speaker 2: Most of the rest of the incredible bad stuff I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about now is because of how terrible
Speaker 2: his family his father was. But one of the worst
Speaker 2: bits of luck he had was being born to his father.
Speaker 2: He wanted to go to school, but his father started
Speaker 2: making him work in the fields. I want you to
Speaker 2: guess how old he was when he started working.
Speaker 3: God, Okay, I'm gonna try. I'm not gonna like say
Speaker 3: a comically you know, young age, Like I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: say like seven months, you know, But I'm trying to think, like,
Speaker 3: at what age a child, Like if I were a
Speaker 3: real evil bastard, what what age could I imagine a
Speaker 3: child performing a useful function in a field?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Six?
Speaker 2: Close? You are too optimistic.
Speaker 3: Five oh man, literal preschool age. Huh.
Speaker 1: I was going like this the entire time you were guessing, listeners,
Speaker 1: I was flashing a five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we called it.
Speaker 3: Write it down next time.
Speaker 2: Well, we've all learned that hand gesters don't mean anything.
Speaker 2: There's one thing we've learned this last week.
Speaker 3: Maybe Elon was just trying to tell us.
Speaker 2: Five yeah, totally, just very emphatically.
Speaker 3: Oh fuck that.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: I think what happened. I think his first jobs weren't
Speaker 2: even just at his own farm. I think his dad
Speaker 2: was buying livestock on credit. His dad was like poor
Speaker 2: but owned stuff like he owned a farm, and he
Speaker 2: owned some land, and he was always trying new like
Speaker 2: ventures and stuff like I'm gonna open a vineyard. But
Speaker 2: his only capital he had was IDT a five year old,
Speaker 2: So he would he would buy live stock on credit
Speaker 2: and then be like the credit repayment is that my
Speaker 2: five year old will go work for you.
Speaker 3: Jeesus, Like, I have some questions for the people who
Speaker 3: took him up on that deal.
Speaker 2: Right, like like what's wrong with you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Like what the fuck?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And whenever he failed at work, his father would
Speaker 2: beat him more or lesson to unconsciousness, and so his
Speaker 2: stomach troubles began at the age of five or six
Speaker 2: when he entered the workforce. He was very convinced and
Speaker 2: I see no reason to doubt him that his trouble
Speaker 2: started when he started working at the age of five,
Speaker 2: and it is because of the stress and the beatings
Speaker 2: that his lifelong illness began.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're not supposed to be working and getting
Speaker 3: beaten at age five, so I'm sure it had some
Speaker 3: negative health impacts.
Speaker 2: Yeah. His dad started leaving to go to the US
Speaker 2: to work for months or years at a time when
Speaker 2: JOSEPPI was like nine or so, but left strict orders
Speaker 2: with the stepmother that the kid could not go to school,
Speaker 2: he had to go to work. By the time he
Speaker 2: was eleven, he had to manage the family farm by himself.
Speaker 2: Come on, he know, hey know, I barely remember being eleven,
Speaker 2: Like I was reading my first fantasy books. I mean, uh,
Speaker 2: probably before then, but like I don't know.
Speaker 3: When I was eleven, my biggest like responsibility was that
Speaker 3: I was supposed to clean the kitty litter box. Yeah
Speaker 3: I often did not.
Speaker 2: Yeah totally. He got sicker and sicker. One time he overslept,
Speaker 2: so his father stripped him naked and beat him with
Speaker 2: a piece of wood and left him in the fields.
Speaker 2: I don't normally go into the sort of like more
Speaker 2: details around this kind of like abuse and stuff. I
Speaker 2: think it's a little bit important to understand his mindset.
Speaker 2: And then also because the whole strip naked and beaten
Speaker 2: thing is going to come up later when he's in
Speaker 2: the hands of the state.
Speaker 3: It does feel important to know because like a thing,
Speaker 3: a sense that I had about him was that he
Speaker 3: had a life that sucked. But I truly did not
Speaker 3: realize how much his life sucked, and we have not
Speaker 3: even gotten like through the first fifteen years of bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah he's like eleven right now. Yeah totally. Another time
Speaker 2: his pants were ripped and so he fixed them, so
Speaker 2: his father beat him. I don't understand that one, and
Speaker 2: I don't think Joeppe did either.
Speaker 3: Actually seems like he performed a chore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, saved his dad some money. Another time he was
Speaker 2: bed ridden for two weeks because he was beaten in
Speaker 2: the head so hard, which I'm sure didn't help anything.
Speaker 2: Jeppie never grew up to be a particularly large kid.
Speaker 2: I feel like the the thing that might have been
Speaker 2: made it into the musical. He was five foot one
Speaker 2: when he died. He was all of one hundred and
Speaker 2: five pounds.
Speaker 3: Well, I do know from the musical that when he
Speaker 3: did the assassination he was standing on a chair to
Speaker 3: see above the crowd. It's true, he must not have
Speaker 3: been a you know, he probably wasn't six foot, but no,
Speaker 3: five to one is little.
Speaker 2: Yeah. His only real interest in life at any point
Speaker 2: was traveling. Seemed to be the only thing that brought
Speaker 2: him happiness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he wanted to get the fuck away from
Speaker 3: his dad.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was the first thing he did.
Speaker 3: He's like interests traveling places anywhere that isn't this specific farm.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I would like to not be in the toe
Speaker 2: of the boot anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, gotta be better places.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When he was seventeen, he left home to work
Speaker 2: all over Italy despite intense chronic stomach pain. I think
Speaker 2: he was basically a hobo. He talks about how he's
Speaker 2: like sleeping outside and taking whatever work he could get,
Speaker 2: and all along he started hating how rich people had
Speaker 2: to be addressed differently than working people, how they needed
Speaker 2: to be called like maestro and shit like that.
Speaker 3: Legit.
Speaker 2: I don't know a lot about the honorifics he used
Speaker 2: in nineteenth century Italy, but you know, he didn't like it,
Speaker 2: and he hit upon his first political realization. Society shouldn't
Speaker 2: be structured so that poor kids have to work while
Speaker 2: rich kids go to school.
Speaker 3: No lies detected so far.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of his earliest memories, he's about five. He
Speaker 2: is digging in the dirt next to a road, watching
Speaker 2: a carriage full of rich kids go by on their
Speaker 2: way to school. And he basically was like, well, that's
Speaker 2: not that's not good. That's not how things should be.
Speaker 2: And he actually, I think while his dad was away
Speaker 2: when he was like five or six, he got to
Speaker 2: go to school for about two months and it was
Speaker 2: like the most joyous, happy thing in his life or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then like dad came back, was like, no more school.
Speaker 2: That was the end of his schooling.
Speaker 4: So was he illiterate. I mean, I'm assuming no, no,
Speaker 4: that's what's interesting too. He was smart as shit. He
Speaker 4: spoke way more languages than all the people hated him,
Speaker 4: but every European does. But he was not educated and
Speaker 4: he wasn't even like theory he did. He wasn't even
Speaker 4: self educated really in terms of like theory and stuff, right,
Speaker 4: But he certainly at the end of his life was
Speaker 4: reading both English and Italian. And he also he passed
Speaker 4: the citizenship tests in the US, which were harder at
Speaker 4: that point than they were at some point later in
Speaker 4: the twentieth century. I couldn't tell you exactly, and part
Speaker 4: of that was like proving multiple English competency exams. WHOA
Speaker 4: so I believe it was probably like written in oral.
Speaker 4: He spoke with a really heavy accent. So everyone thought
Speaker 4: he was dumb because he was speaking a second language
Speaker 4: while they were speaking a first language, and white Americans
Speaker 4: are not smart at understanding things. But yeah, no, he
Speaker 4: he could read and write, Okay, yeah, wow, He wasn't
Speaker 4: writing Shakespeare's stuff, you know.
Speaker 2: He wrote a very plain and direct with two months
Speaker 2: of school. Yeah, so this is you know, his earliest
Speaker 2: political realizations is school specifically matters to him, and he
Speaker 2: blames his bad luck in life on the fact that
Speaker 2: he didn't get to go all the while, it remembers said,
Speaker 2: I was easy to keep track of his age. When
Speaker 2: he is seventeen, there is a.
Speaker 3: World war going on, some stuff going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so as soon as he turned eighteen, this is
Speaker 2: the military has better ethics than the workforce. Yeah, as
Speaker 2: soon as he turns eighteen, they can script him as
Speaker 2: a laborer into the military and he starts digging trenches
Speaker 2: at the front. And he wrote about this time, quote
Speaker 2: this is not another part of the whole, like, oh, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: I didn't have any politics, he wrote, quote, I did
Speaker 2: not have any ill feelings against the Austrians and did
Speaker 2: not consider them my enemies. My real enemy was the
Speaker 2: capitalist government that we were fighting for. The capitalist is
Speaker 2: to blame for all wars and the suffering of the poor.
Speaker 2: He's so sympathetic, but you know what is also sympathetic.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure either. But here's ads unrelated and we're
Speaker 2: back much like those advertisements ended only a few weeks
Speaker 2: after they started. The war ended only a few weeks
Speaker 2: after he was conscripted because he turned eighteen and nineteen
Speaker 2: eighteen the.
Speaker 3: Great War in so many ways, like a child no ad.
Speaker 2: Stuck in your head, can't get away from it.
Speaker 3: It's just one of the ones that irritates me the most, Like,
Speaker 3: can I say that on the air.
Speaker 2: I think we should bleep out jumping and then that
Speaker 2: way it'll stay okay.
Speaker 3: An unspecified company whose ads truly need to stop? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean no, they need to keep giving you money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, yeah, no, they're great. I love that advertiser,
Speaker 2: just like I love all the advertisers and the Great War,
Speaker 2: just like as I as I go back to reading
Speaker 2: about how capitalists government destroys everything, so I'm.
Speaker 3: Like one expecting him to get the Spanish flu too.
Speaker 3: This everything bad seems to happen to this guy.
Speaker 2: You know, he doesn't actually, or at least he doesn't nice.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make it into anything I've read the Spanish flu.
Speaker 3: Took one look at his stomach and was like, nab good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just want to know.
Speaker 1: Magpie was my kidney Stone paid the inspiration for you
Speaker 1: writing this episode, Sophie.
Speaker 3: What are you gonna do with all your abdominal pain?
Speaker 1: I know, nothing actionable on an open line.
Speaker 2: Good call. The reason I am covering this is because
Speaker 2: this other Italian decided to stop being a plumber and
Speaker 2: do some other stuff last fall and I was like,
Speaker 2: this is really interesting, and someone really in passing was like, oh,
Speaker 2: like Zangara, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I totally know
Speaker 2: what you're talking about. And then I like googled it
Speaker 2: and then I ordered the book because I started reading
Speaker 2: more about it, and then I there's only one book
Speaker 2: that I've found so far about It's called The Five
Speaker 2: Weeks with j just Sepizungaram and the back of it
Speaker 2: is just his autobiography, right, and I just like read
Speaker 2: it in one sitting and I was just like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this guy's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, Like I'm going
Speaker 2: to break from format to talk about this guy. It'd
Speaker 2: also been kind of on this Italy kick with the
Speaker 2: podcast anyway, but knowing about the pain you were dealing
Speaker 2: with did help make me make the decision. And I
Speaker 2: also specifically was like, we need a Miriam for this
Speaker 2: one because it's gonna be a morally complex one. And
Speaker 2: also Miriam has heard me talk about this person. We've
Speaker 2: talked about him before.
Speaker 3: We have previously discussed this guy last time I sang
Speaker 3: it you, but I'm not going to do that this time.
Speaker 2: No, And it was in much less detail.
Speaker 1: I'm just grateful my pain is being turned into art
Speaker 1: and that Miriam is here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and all our dogs got to see each other.
Speaker 3: We're having a great time.
Speaker 2: We're doing great.
Speaker 1: My kidney stone past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, much like the Great War.
Speaker 1: Wow, you did it?
Speaker 2: What a podcaster I know. And also he's going to
Speaker 2: become a stone mason. Oh, he sticks around to help
Speaker 2: rebuild the city that had been leveled in the fighting.
Speaker 2: That was like the closest to where he was when
Speaker 2: he when it ended. And so he becomes a stone mason.
Speaker 2: And when he gets home, his dad's like, great, you're
Speaker 2: a stonemason. Build me a new house. So he builds
Speaker 2: a new house for his dad.
Speaker 3: Throw a rock at your dad's head, like, honestly at
Speaker 3: this point.
Speaker 2: Oh, he he sends money to his dad. His whole
Speaker 2: life heartbreaking, part of the tragedy of this whole thing.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's so sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like his dad is like the capitalist here he was.
Speaker 2: Like supporting your family and being supported by your family
Speaker 2: is a wonderful thing. People who traveled to other countries
Speaker 2: and then send money home to their families are heroes.
Speaker 2: When your family views you as purely a non person
Speaker 2: that they can just extract resources from. That's bad.
Speaker 3: That's so interesting that he saw so clearly the exploitation
Speaker 3: of capitalism and did not, for whatever reason, break free
Speaker 3: of the extent to which that was the main dynamic
Speaker 3: in his family.
Speaker 2: A lot of psychologists later when they were trying to
Speaker 2: figure out whether he was crazy, and put a lot
Speaker 2: of thought into that particular part of it. But part
Speaker 2: of it was because they couldn't conceptualize that, like hating
Speaker 2: the state was a rational thing, you know. So they
Speaker 2: were like, Oh, he just had daddy issues. That's why
Speaker 2: he killed FDR.
Speaker 3: So many people have daddy issues and so few people
Speaker 3: have killed FDR.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember what killed FDR in the end,
Speaker 2: so I can't make an effective joke.
Speaker 3: I think he died of natural causes.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and he gets home and he rebuilds his
Speaker 2: dad a house, and he's like, I want to work
Speaker 2: anywhere but for my dad, but no one in town
Speaker 2: will hire him because they're like, no, you have to
Speaker 2: go work for your dad. I think the dad has
Speaker 2: like scared everyone.
Speaker 3: Well, his dad sounds fucking scary.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: When he was twenty one, they conscripted him back into
Speaker 2: the army as a soldier this time, even though, as
Speaker 2: he put it, quote, I was not physically fit or able,
Speaker 2: but they took me anyway. Damn. It was terrible for
Speaker 2: him and his health. His stomach hurt most of all
Speaker 2: when he held a rifle. He saw army doctors who
Speaker 2: told him that his pain was chronic and there was
Speaker 2: nothing that could be done, and that was because he
Speaker 2: had been worked too hard as a kid. That's what
Speaker 2: he claims. They said, I have no particular reason it
Speaker 2: to believe him, but this is like the thing he
Speaker 2: holds onto, you know, like this is the diagnosis I got. Eventually,
Speaker 2: he wound up the orderly for a forty five year
Speaker 2: old captain with a twenty year old wife, and he
Speaker 2: spent all of his waking hours like shining that guy's
Speaker 2: shoes and bringing him food and stuff. And he hated it.
Speaker 2: And he was like, why are all the officers of
Speaker 2: the rich people this hmm, I'm starting to notice a trend,
Speaker 2: continuing theme. Yeah, he asked for a transfer, and he
Speaker 2: actually kind of like the captain was sort of oddly
Speaker 2: wasn't like terrible to him, Well, sometimes he was, but
Speaker 2: like when he was like, hey, I want to transfer.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do this any more. The captain
Speaker 2: was like, okay, I'm building a farmhouse. You can go
Speaker 2: build me a farm house and tend to the garden.
Speaker 2: But as the army.
Speaker 3: I mean that sounds corrupt, but also very very low
Speaker 3: chance of getting shot while building a farmhouse.
Speaker 2: So right, And then after they built the house he
Speaker 2: asked for another transfer. He ended up a guard at
Speaker 2: a payroll office, and he spent his time dreaming of
Speaker 2: stealing the payroll.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, who wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, Somewhere along the line, while he was a soldier,
Speaker 2: he tried to do something that if he had succeeded,
Speaker 2: well I already spoiled what.
Speaker 3: It is, but yeah, I think it was killed the
Speaker 3: King of Italy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wanted to kill the King of Italy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and we would have all been saying, good job, Joe
Speaker 2: if he had done it, because when he got to America,
Speaker 2: I everyon't called him Joe. This is just after the
Speaker 2: king appointed Mussolini, like within a couple months. So when
Speaker 2: Giuseppe heard that King Vittore Emmanuel the third was coming
Speaker 2: to town, he was like, all right, oh, that guy.
Speaker 2: And then it would have been particularly interesting because Vittoria
Speaker 2: or Victor was the son of Mberto the second, who
Speaker 2: was the one who gotten killed by an Italian anarchist
Speaker 2: named Gatano Bresci, who was living in Patterson, New Jersey.
Speaker 2: And that's gonna come back into the story later. But
Speaker 2: he didn't successfully kill the king, and there wasn't a like,
Speaker 2: no one knew that he tried to kill the king.
Speaker 2: He didn't take a shot, he h He found out
Speaker 2: where the king was gonna be. He waited there with
Speaker 2: a gun and he was too short, nobody. He couldn't
Speaker 2: see over the six foot tall guards.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I'm just picturing him like hopping up it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was so secere ol buddy.
Speaker 2: He waited at a railroad depot with a gun in
Speaker 2: his pocket, but he couldn't see the king.
Speaker 3: As a person of not tallience myself, I can really empathize.
Speaker 3: Usually for me, it's just not being able to get
Speaker 3: something from the shelf.
Speaker 1: But like, still, that's my life, that's all my life.
Speaker 1: But all my local friends are very tall women.
Speaker 2: See, they could kill the king anyway.
Speaker 3: They can do whatever they want.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then for the second time in a couple months,
Speaker 2: I will now tell a story that includes and then
Speaker 2: he wandered the streets of Rome, armed, hoping to see
Speaker 2: someone that he wanted to kill. This is the fourth
Speaker 2: person that I have described as doing that in the past.
Speaker 2: Three of the others were trying to kill Miscellini.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, well I know the answer.
Speaker 2: Irish lady shot Mussolini in the nose. Yeah, and she
Speaker 2: just wandered around. But before that, shoot whatever. You can
Speaker 2: go listen to my people who tried to kill Miscellini episode.
Speaker 2: And so he's wandering around and then described as time
Speaker 2: as he put it, all the time I was a soldier,
Speaker 2: I saw nothing but the sons of the capitalists as officers,
Speaker 2: and the sons of the working people were the common soldiers.
Speaker 2: That was why I wanted to kill the head of
Speaker 2: such a government, because I thought that this was the
Speaker 2: only way to help the poor working people. The officers
Speaker 2: always ate at the table and were served by the
Speaker 2: common soldiers. They ate the finest food, while the poor
Speaker 2: soldier was treated like a dog. I could not see
Speaker 2: why the officers should be treated any better just because
Speaker 2: they are the sons of the capitalists. I believe everyone
Speaker 2: should be treated alike, what did this man believe?
Speaker 3: Oh man, that's a mystery. Yeah, he made it pretty clear.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, that's so interesting. It doesn't fit. It doesn't
Speaker 3: fit the American narrative.
Speaker 5: Because of FDR, right, because like at the time and
Speaker 5: like still to this day, FDR was like being called
Speaker 5: a communist by the American right. Yes, so the idea
Speaker 5: that like somebody would kill FDR because or try to
Speaker 5: kill FDR because they were anti capitalist kind of doesn't
Speaker 5: compute with like the narrative of American history.
Speaker 2: It's true, and I also think that like he was
Speaker 2: probably falsely one to one comparing a president to a king. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't think it was a good plan that he
Speaker 2: later ended up with. You know, I don't think it
Speaker 2: would have helped the poor working people, whereas killing the
Speaker 2: king kind of mighta.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard hard to see how it could have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, which is funny because it's such a crapshoot
Speaker 2: when it's like a when it's a king. But literally
Speaker 2: killing Emberto made Italy a more progressive place.
Speaker 3: So kings are bad. I mean presidents aren't great either,
Speaker 3: but like, yeah, it is, it is a different it
Speaker 3: is a different.
Speaker 2: Type of action totally than an elected temporary leader.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Although FDR did try to be as permanent as he could.
Speaker 3: That's fairs as discussed, but he didn't nobody knew that
Speaker 3: at the time. People liked him and kept voting for him,
Speaker 3: like for reasons.
Speaker 2: It was probably good that. Like anyway, whatever, I haven't
Speaker 2: read enough about FDR. Maybe I'll do a whole I'll
Speaker 2: read about FDR and be like, oh my god, what
Speaker 2: was I thinking? You know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean the concentration camps. You kind of robust qualifies
Speaker 3: from any status as a cool person. If being president
Speaker 3: didn't already do it concentration camps, would.
Speaker 2: I suspect being a president probably cuts you out of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I don't like presidents.
Speaker 2: No, neither does our hero or Nope, not hero, our protagonist,
Speaker 2: our sympathetic tragic character, antiher.
Speaker 3: We don't need a hero. We each have dogs with us.
Speaker 2: He's a bad one in particular. After his mandatory service
Speaker 2: was done, he moved home for a few months. Then
Speaker 2: he got aboard a ship heading to the US, arriving
Speaker 2: I can't imagine why I wanted to get away from
Speaker 2: his dad, arriving September second, nineteen.
Speaker 3: Twenty Oh, it's almost his birthday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Oh, good memory. He moved in with his
Speaker 2: uncle who lived in Patterson, New Jersey, where all.
Speaker 3: The Italian anarchists were hanging out.
Speaker 2: Yep. However, since about nineteen twenty two, with the first
Speaker 2: Red Scare, the Italian anarchist movement had gone pretty underground. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so that's kind of one of the big question
Speaker 2: marks in my Italian of this. I will talk later
Speaker 2: about his feelings about anarchism specifically, but it's like, I
Speaker 2: don't know. This is where he moved to. This is
Speaker 2: the place that was like the hotbed of Italian anarchism,
Speaker 2: and under interrogation, Giuseppe always said that he had no
Speaker 2: political allegiance and no accomplices. Apparently, when I said I
Speaker 2: was gonna talk about it later, I met really soon.
Speaker 2: The federal investigation supports this idea that he did not
Speaker 2: have political allegiances and he had no accomplices. There are
Speaker 2: a ton of witnesses claiming this or that or some
Speaker 2: completely thing, including a lot of lying cops. So there
Speaker 2: are people who claim dat accomplices. There are people who
Speaker 2: claim he was part of different organizations, everything from various
Speaker 2: mafias to anarchist organizations to communist organizations. Everyone has made
Speaker 2: all kinds of claims, but most likely he was acting alone,
Speaker 2: working with a sort of anarchistic, communistic ideology that came
Speaker 2: from his own mind but also probably from conversation with
Speaker 2: other people. But he was also intensely a loner, almost
Speaker 2: as much as he has quotes that are like, I
Speaker 2: don't like no kings, I don't like no capitalists. He's like,
Speaker 2: I don't like people. He's like he.
Speaker 3: Hasn't had great experiences with them.
Speaker 2: No, he's like, my stomach hurts and I want to
Speaker 2: be alone. That's he's really consistent about that. But it's
Speaker 2: possible from my point of view that his uncle and
Speaker 2: some of the other brick layers are part of the
Speaker 2: now underground anarchist movement of Paterson, New Jersey or I
Speaker 2: don't know. This is fairly raw conjecture on my part,
Speaker 2: but there are odd coincidences about money and where he
Speaker 2: got it, Like he was getting checks from his uncle
Speaker 2: at one point, despite the fact that he had some
Speaker 2: other money. Like all of the stuff around his money
Speaker 2: is really weird, and it's the only thing I know
Speaker 2: he lied about in his autobiography.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's reasonable if he wants to protect his
Speaker 3: uncle from any implication that he was involved, that he
Speaker 3: you know, whether his uncle was involved or not.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I did it all alone. That is
Speaker 2: what you say, No matter what happened, is I did
Speaker 2: all of it alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And like even if his uncle had like given him
Speaker 3: money so that he could like eat right, saying oh,
Speaker 3: my uncle didn't give me any money would help protect
Speaker 3: his uncle when he is on trial for murder.
Speaker 2: It's true, but it's a different thing he lied about.
Speaker 2: We'll get to it. And so he's like, oh man, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is literally what it says next to my script.
Speaker 2: Any political assassin worth anything is going to say I
Speaker 2: did it alone. And Gioseppi was the perfect guy to
Speaker 2: be able to say that. He had this legacy as
Speaker 2: a loaner, and he had this like very clear, indirect
Speaker 2: but uneducated but smart way of speaking, and he just
Speaker 2: he absolutely could come across that way. But you know
Speaker 2: what comes across a certain way. The irony with which
Speaker 2: I transitioned ads. It is why everyone likes me, and
Speaker 2: it's why if he subscribed to cooler zon media. You
Speaker 2: just get the transitions, which is like all of the bonuses.
Speaker 2: Here's ads, here, they are right, now, here, go and
Speaker 2: we're back. So there's this other complication to what he
Speaker 2: would have had to say at various points too. Giuseppe
Speaker 2: he's gonna shoot some people, He's gonna go to jail.
Speaker 2: But for a while, the mayor of Chicago was expected
Speaker 2: to live. So Giuseppe wasn't facing the death penalty. Oh
Speaker 2: but there was, and technically still is. Don't listen to this,
Speaker 2: right wingers, right wingers, close your ears. There is a
Speaker 2: law in the US that says it's illegal to be
Speaker 2: a foreign born anarchist.
Speaker 3: Oh yikes.
Speaker 2: I believe it's been a law since like nineteen oh
Speaker 2: three or something like that.
Speaker 3: Wait, what if you are foreign born, come to the US,
Speaker 3: and then become an anarchist?
Speaker 2: Still count I actually don't want to get into what
Speaker 2: can be done with that law. Fuck it, no one
Speaker 2: has done anything with this law in a long time.
Speaker 2: It ties into some weird anarchist drama from the nineties
Speaker 2: of I'm not going to that's that's for one on
Speaker 2: one conversation. But so when they are like, are you
Speaker 2: an anarchist or part of a communist party, blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. Right, like, he probably wasn't, But he
Speaker 2: also has to say no or they can deport him.
Speaker 3: Because he's at but he is being asked, did you
Speaker 3: do this other crime?
Speaker 2: Right? And Italy is fascist at this point, and he
Speaker 2: might not want to go there. Although in the like
Speaker 2: every possible witness came forward to lie about him and
Speaker 2: tell different versions of the story. One person was like,
Speaker 2: he was a fascist, he loved Mussolini, and other people
Speaker 2: are like, no, he hated Musolini, and he was I think.
Speaker 3: We've already seen ample evidence he did not like Mussolini.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, he was not. But it's probable that it
Speaker 2: all happened just like he told it. It's probably he
Speaker 2: acted alone. It's probable that he had no ties to
Speaker 2: any organizations. His uncle was later shocked, saying that in
Speaker 2: all the years they lived together, he never heard just
Speaker 2: set me say anything about politics. So he goes to Patterson.
Speaker 2: He moves in with his uncle, and for a little
Speaker 2: while he works at a silk factory with his uncle,
Speaker 2: and then two months later he's laid off. And he's
Speaker 2: always sick, right, it's too hot in the factory, it's
Speaker 2: too cold outside. He started doing masonry work the local
Speaker 2: Masonry Union. He doesn't like unions. He's a member of
Speaker 2: the union, but he doesn't like him. The local Masonry
Speaker 2: Union is associated with the AFL, the American Federation of Labor,
Speaker 2: who are pretty mid at this point.
Speaker 3: Let's just say I remember correctly they were the bad
Speaker 3: guys in the previous episode. Yeah I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so totally. So they show up and are like, look,
Speaker 2: and actually any union would do this. They show up
Speaker 2: and are like, look, you got to join the union
Speaker 2: and you can't work as a stonemason around here. And
Speaker 2: he's like, well, I have ten bucks and they're like,
Speaker 2: all right, we're going to lend you the ten bucks
Speaker 2: and then you have to pay us back. Just honestly, fine,
Speaker 2: he's getting more money because it's union and whatever. Then
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, but you can't get your card until
Speaker 2: you prove that you have started your paperwork to apply
Speaker 2: for American citizenship.
Speaker 3: Well hey, now, yeah, why.
Speaker 2: Because they're biggots. I don't know, those are nativist assholes.
Speaker 2: So this is actually why he ends up in an
Speaker 2: American citizen Wow. He uh, but it takes him six
Speaker 2: years to get but he's allowed to work as long
Speaker 2: as he's proving that he's in the process of it, that.
Speaker 3: He's like working on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so then for a while in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: he worked. That was his life. He was quite good
Speaker 2: at what he did, but he was constantly sicken in pain.
Speaker 2: He ran crews and hired workers. He started saving money.
Speaker 2: He's like kind of pulling off middle class brick laying
Speaker 2: person and kind of it seems.
Speaker 3: Like sounds a little bit like he's bootstrapping it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, though not as much as the guy he's
Speaker 2: got to kill, but yeah, and he starts saving up money.
Speaker 2: When he died, there was like two or three thousand
Speaker 2: dollars in his bank account, and he had sent two
Speaker 2: or three thousand dollars back to his father. Three thousand
Speaker 2: dollars is seventy thousand dollars. Now, wow, I don't know
Speaker 2: a lot of people with seventy thousand dollars in savings,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, But it's interesting because he's still a
Speaker 2: working person, right, Like he knows he is not the
Speaker 2: rich capitalist, you know. Yeah, and he's just suffering. And
Speaker 2: so all he does is like work and suffer. That's
Speaker 2: like all he does. In nineteen twenty six, he checked
Speaker 2: into the hospital because of shooting pains in his stomach
Speaker 2: and the doctor didn't find anything wrong, according to medical records.
Speaker 2: Like literally the doctor was like, I don't know it's wrong,
Speaker 2: but then told Giuseppe, you have a cute appendicitist and
Speaker 2: we're going to take it. Oh, because the doctor decided
Speaker 2: to take out his appendix just because it might work,
Speaker 2: you know, like we need to rule it out, you know.
Speaker 3: I feel like back then they were like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: got something wrong from the chest downwards, we'll take out
Speaker 3: your appendix. Got something wrong from the chest upwards, We'll
Speaker 3: take out your tonsils. Those are the two things we
Speaker 3: know how to do, and we'll do them to everybody.
Speaker 1: I feel like they should teach people where their appendix
Speaker 1: is in like grade school.
Speaker 2: So they can guard it.
Speaker 3: Fight off the doctors.
Speaker 1: No, just because just because it's like I can't I
Speaker 1: can't even count them any times where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: where does it hurt? I want to make sure it's
Speaker 1: not your appendix, and somebody will point and then and
Speaker 1: then you'll realize they don't know where their appendix is to.
Speaker 3: Their elbow, Zasha, I think it's my appendix.
Speaker 1: People should probably know where their appendix is.
Speaker 2: Just that be new where his was. It was on
Speaker 2: a plate next to him because the and there was
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with it, and the doctor was like, oh,
Speaker 2: it looks like it's healthy. For some odd reason, JOSEPPI
Speaker 2: was really bitter about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, somebody cut out a part of him for no reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd be mad.
Speaker 3: I would be like, I wasn't using that, but I
Speaker 3: might have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't actually know what an appendix does. Lower
Speaker 2: lower right No one tell me. Wait, you all can
Speaker 2: tell me. I don't want any Internet stranger to tell
Speaker 2: me what does it do?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 1: What does it do? I think you said, where is it?
Speaker 1: Low kated? I was like your lower right side, magpie.
Speaker 2: I used to have so much like anxiety pain that
Speaker 2: I kind of almost didn't want to know where these
Speaker 2: things were. Because now it's fine because I got through
Speaker 2: that part of my life. But I was like, so
Speaker 2: good at having phantom pain everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's attached to your intestin and it helps with digestion.
Speaker 1: Is like the short version.
Speaker 3: Okay, It's thought to have played a greater role in
Speaker 3: digestion at an earlier stage of human evolution.
Speaker 2: Correct, Oh, interesting, okay, And so he's living this life,
Speaker 2: it's he's not particularly happy. He talks in his autobiography
Speaker 2: about how he spent all of his money super freely
Speaker 2: and he never saved any money, and everyone thought he
Speaker 2: was rich because of how he spent money. He spent
Speaker 2: all of his money on girls and such. I think
Speaker 2: he hired sex workers a lot. And I also had
Speaker 2: the implication he would like go on dates and then
Speaker 2: like blow a lot of money on whoever he went
Speaker 2: on a date with. But all of his friends, well,
Speaker 2: he claims he doesn't have any friends. He claims he
Speaker 2: had only acquaintances. All the people who knew him were
Speaker 2: like that man was stingy.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's so funny.
Speaker 2: So that's the thing he lied about.
Speaker 3: Like, I like when people's self conception is like so
Speaker 3: far off base from like you, like, you know, you
Speaker 3: know anybody who's like, oh, I'm the chillest person, I'm
Speaker 3: so chill, and you're like you were the most dramatic
Speaker 3: I know. Is like, honestly, most people who describe themselves
Speaker 3: as chill actually and people are like, oh, I hate drama.
Speaker 3: It's like all you do is drama. And I love
Speaker 3: that he was out there being like, oh, I'm a
Speaker 3: lavish spend thrift just throwing money around, and everybody else's like,
Speaker 3: my dude has not had a new pair of socks
Speaker 3: in six years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, he's he's always moving into the cheapest possible places.
Speaker 2: But he also, like when he's arrested, he was like
Speaker 2: living into like the cheapest possible boarding house he possibly could,
Speaker 2: and he had a really cheap suitcase full of really
Speaker 2: nice clothes.
Speaker 3: Oh good, Yeah, No, that's like what's important though. It's
Speaker 3: better to have nice clothes and a cheap suitcase and
Speaker 3: bad clothes and an expensive suitcase.
Speaker 2: No, it's a good point, sensible, and I think it's
Speaker 2: I think that the end of the day. The thing
Speaker 2: about it is that he just isn't seeing himself the
Speaker 2: way that others people see him, and so he's probably
Speaker 2: like constantly mad at himself about not saying, oh my godness,
Speaker 2: that's probably yelling at him about not sending enough money home.
Speaker 3: Basically, yeah, yeah, he's probably brought up to think any
Speaker 3: money he spends on himself is like money wasted, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that actually makes the most sense, and he
Speaker 2: seems to be getting a fair amount of money. He
Speaker 2: does like a fair amount of like big jobs or whatever. Again,
Speaker 2: not rich, and I was probably exaggero when it called
Speaker 2: him middle class, but like working class union labor. You know,
Speaker 2: he didn't take much joy in life. He mostly suffered.
Speaker 2: He spent most of his time alone, suffering. He had
Speaker 2: a few acquaintances. He went to his death claiming he
Speaker 2: had no friends. He basically ate onion soup and did
Speaker 2: not drink and did not smoke, and laid bricks and suffered.
Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty nine, the economy collapsed and he was
Speaker 2: mostly out of work. He started traveling, apparently just to wander,
Speaker 2: probably not coordinating with an international conspiracy of anarchists to
Speaker 2: kill world leaders. Legitimately probably not that. Just I'm like
Speaker 2: ninety five percent sure about that, you know, like usually
Speaker 2: you're one hundred percent on that?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 3: Like you want to you want to leave room for
Speaker 3: the possibility, because that would be a pretty cool story.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't want to claim him. I usually
Speaker 2: want to claim people. But like, like I'm coming across
Speaker 2: of anything Gus like too too soft an FDR of
Speaker 2: this episode, But like I have.
Speaker 3: Noticed that this has been like a weirdly pro FDR vibe.
Speaker 2: The world would have been so much worse if he
Speaker 2: had shot FDR. Nazis might have taken over the world,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, yeah, Like I'm not a very big man,
Speaker 2: a history kind of girl, and like maybe whoever else
Speaker 2: was there would have done it instead. Maybe it would
Speaker 2: have been better, but like my money is on the
Speaker 2: world would have been a lot worse if he had
Speaker 2: done this. I don't know, And it wasn't a it
Speaker 2: was not a strategic decision, I believe, So I don't
Speaker 2: want to claim him that the ninety certain that he's
Speaker 2: not working with international anarchistic conspiracy is just around. Like
Speaker 2: there are enough people who said, yeah he was. There
Speaker 2: are enough people who are like, oh, we think he
Speaker 2: was involved in the following plots and blah blah blah,
Speaker 2: which almost certainly are nonsense, right, But like there's just
Speaker 2: kind of a like, here's this brick layer from Italy
Speaker 2: in Paterson, New Jersey who suddenly goes around and starts
Speaker 2: like traveling around to San Diego and Cuba and Mexico,
Speaker 2: and like he's probably just off to go wander because
Speaker 2: he wants to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he has some disposable income and nobody's building new houses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is almost certainly what is happening. And he
Speaker 2: likes places with warmer weather.
Speaker 3: I mean, every time there was a assassination by an
Speaker 3: anarchist back in those days when anarchists were doing a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot more assassinations, the media narrative and
Speaker 3: sort of the popular native was like, oh, they must
Speaker 3: be connected with a big anarchist conspiracy, and like they
Speaker 3: usually were just some guy who was an anarchist and
Speaker 3: who did it. Like to the extent that there were conspiracies,
Speaker 3: they were usually very small. They were not like a thing,
Speaker 3: because when you plan an assassination or any kind of
Speaker 3: big illegal action, the more people who know about it,
Speaker 3: the less likely you are to be able to do
Speaker 3: it successfully.
Speaker 2: But I think overall, I think that's true. But like
Speaker 2: in the people trying to Kill Mussolini episodes, these were
Speaker 2: like conspiracies crossing ideological and state lines amongst like hundreds
Speaker 2: of people, and sometimes that's why they fell apart. And
Speaker 2: as you can compare to a lot of the people
Speaker 2: the anarchists who pulled off some other assassinations, they would
Speaker 2: do things like drop out of their friend group and
Speaker 2: then stop making friends with anyone and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and start keeping everyone away for the other people's safety.
Speaker 2: So that's like where it gets I don't know whatever.
Speaker 3: Anyway, unless they really on gosh, because he was just
Speaker 3: bad at making friends in the first place.
Speaker 2: He's a little bit closer to a show gosh. We'll
Speaker 2: talk about that. I think we should talk about him
Speaker 2: in sho gosh a little bit once we get to
Speaker 2: the actual thing. Yeah, we're getting ahead of ourselves again,
Speaker 2: all right, And now I want to say negative things
Speaker 2: about our protagonist. Well, first, he wrote kind of sweetly
Speaker 2: about this time that he was always chasing better weather
Speaker 2: or the his condition might improve, and he would do
Speaker 2: things like he would write about like, oh, I met
Speaker 2: this like cute mother on a train and she was
Speaker 2: nice to me and I was happy for a while.
Speaker 2: And then he would also talk about like and then
Speaker 2: I shacked up with a seventeen year old who I
Speaker 2: think is a sex worker in New Orleans and then
Speaker 2: let him let her live at his place and they
Speaker 2: were dating for a while and then he left and
Speaker 2: she was fine with it. Hmmm. And then he probably
Speaker 2: tried to pressure his landlord's fifteen year old daughter into
Speaker 2: marry him, and she had to tell him now multiple times.
Speaker 1: Hmmm.
Speaker 2: He would have been around thirty at that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The number of times a thirty year old should ask
Speaker 3: a fifteen year old to marry him is zero.
Speaker 2: Roughly, yeah, no, not roughly, yeah, just exactly, it's very
Speaker 2: exact number. And another point, he's talking about how he
Speaker 2: was going to marry this sixteen year old who did
Speaker 2: want to marry him, but then he decided not to
Speaker 2: because she was pregnant with someone else's kid and she
Speaker 2: was just doing it to like get the kid taken
Speaker 2: care of. And he was like, I got to get
Speaker 2: out of here's.
Speaker 3: It's becoming a trend. It is now a trend of
Speaker 3: this day.
Speaker 2: It started off with a nice mother and that was nice.
Speaker 2: But yep, but yep, hmmm, yeah, don't like this. He
Speaker 2: didn't really have any like great loves or anything like
Speaker 2: that in his life. He wandered. He sometimes worked. Some
Speaker 2: reports say that he would rabble rouse like giving speeches
Speaker 2: anti government speeches during lunch breaks at work, and other
Speaker 2: people are like that did not happen. One time, he
Speaker 2: may or may not have heckled a street preacher for
Speaker 2: telling the crowd. They shouldn't blame the government for their problems.
Speaker 3: I mean that sounds like a shitty street preacher. You
Speaker 3: should heckle that guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally, No, I'm fully in favor of him
Speaker 2: rabble rousing and uh, you know, heckling that street preacher.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, there's so much. He was very briefly,
Speaker 2: very famous, and everyone wanted to have theories about him
Speaker 2: and claimed interactions with him, and most people were lying.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's so interesting, Like yeah, because he was he
Speaker 3: spent time as like just a wandering, you know, sort
Speaker 3: of drifter guy, which means that when he became famous,
Speaker 3: I bet a lot of people were like, I want
Speaker 3: if that weird angry Italian I met five years ago?
Speaker 3: Is this weird angry Italian?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Totally.
Speaker 3: You know, I have remembering some guy you saw get
Speaker 3: into a fight with a preacher like that was probably
Speaker 3: the guy. Then you tell people that for the rest
Speaker 3: of your life to you know, get people to think
Speaker 3: you're interesting.
Speaker 2: Totally. In nineteen thirty two, he left Patterson, New Jersey
Speaker 2: for the last time. He wound up in Miami for
Speaker 2: the weather. Miami is a newer city than you might think,
Speaker 2: do you know this.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know that it like had that like
Speaker 3: for a long time. People like Americans were like, Florida,
Speaker 3: you can't build anything in Florida. It's all gross swamps
Speaker 3: and stuff. And then in like the twenties they were like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, actually Florida.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's basically Yeah. In eighteen ninety six, Miami was
Speaker 2: incorporated with a population of three hundred people, and pretty
Speaker 2: soon people will realize that it was a nice place
Speaker 2: to bring tourists and a nice place to do crime.
Speaker 2: So it became a tourist and crime town, which I
Speaker 2: wonder the impression that has not changed from but I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: I think it's less involved in the illegal liquor trade
Speaker 3: now than it was back then.
Speaker 2: But yeah, fair enough. Yeah, it was a kind of
Speaker 2: a mafia place as best I can tell, tourism, crime,
Speaker 2: and the fucking kkk oh. In the nineteen twenties and thirties,
Speaker 2: Miami had the kkk Hella present. The WASP establishment was
Speaker 2: happy to have clansmen enforcing segregation and marching and official
Speaker 2: parades and guarding the city against Bolsheviks and black people
Speaker 2: and Catholics and other such terrible monsters. The mafia was
Speaker 2: reasonably important in the city too. Cops that tried to
Speaker 2: fight corruption and organized crime were run out of their
Speaker 2: jobs soon enough. Like there's like a I think a
Speaker 2: sheriff who was like, all right, well we should probably
Speaker 2: do some about this organized crime. And he's like, wait,
Speaker 2: why don't I have a job anymore? What happened? I
Speaker 2: don't understand.
Speaker 3: It's like, I don't think you get it. The crime
Speaker 3: is organized, the call is from inside the house.
Speaker 2: But that's where I'm at. By nineteen thirty, when our
Speaker 2: story hits his climax, Miami had a population of one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand, which is about a third of
Speaker 2: its current size, but it saw a million tourists a year.
Speaker 2: And this was the city where the president elect, Franklin
Speaker 2: eleanor Roosevelt, He's middle name I think I got wrong
Speaker 2: last time, decided to go in vacation in February nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty three. We should just make up new middle names
Speaker 2: for him. I should. I should try and like, come
Speaker 2: save some of my anarchy cred.
Speaker 3: By making fun of by getting his name wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, decided to go on vacation there in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty three, Franklin David Roosevelt and in what was almost
Speaker 2: a rather ill fated decision but actually kind of turned
Speaker 2: out fine but not well for him, but not for
Speaker 2: the mayor of Chicago. Basically, before becoming president, he was like,
Speaker 2: all I'm gonna go fishing for a while. We got
Speaker 2: a boat and we went fishing for a while. About
Speaker 2: ten days he was like, all right, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do some speeches while I'm in Florida, and the city
Speaker 2: of Miami wanted to honor the president elect with parades
Speaker 2: and fanfare. Fdr agreed to give a very short, impromptu speech.
Speaker 2: The city was making a way bigger deal out of
Speaker 2: this than he was.
Speaker 3: Basically, he was like, I'm just trying to be on vacation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Basically he's like, look, I'm about to take the
Speaker 2: most stressful job. Like, can I just go catch some
Speaker 2: fish and talk about people's weight anyway. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: how it was weird obsession on people's weight later, and
Speaker 2: I don't know it somehow came up multiple times in
Speaker 2: this story that he is weird about people's weight. For
Speaker 2: days ahead of time, newspapers published all the details of
Speaker 2: his schedule, and the city turned out in massive numbers
Speaker 2: to see him. It was the largest crowd in the
Speaker 2: city's history. At that point. Twenty five thousand people were there.
Speaker 2: People came from all over, especially from all over Florida.
Speaker 2: FDR had won in a landslide four hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: two to the incumbent, Herbert Hoover's fifty nine. And this
Speaker 2: is partly because if you have a recession on your watch,
Speaker 2: you're gonna lose. And if you have a great recession
Speaker 2: on your watch, you're gonna lose greatly.
Speaker 3: If there are homeless encampments in every major city referred
Speaker 3: to as Hooverville's, you're really gonna lose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Franklin Dwight Roosevelt was a popular man, but
Speaker 2: not to everyone, not too Miriam, not to Giseepi. The
Speaker 2: Zangaraji Seppi saw those newspapers and was like, all right,
Speaker 2: time to buy a gun, except there's arguments about the order.
Speaker 2: Here is not a little mystery. Again, it's like probably nothing,
Speaker 2: but like he might have bought the gun before he
Speaker 2: saw the newspapers, which would have been not because we
Speaker 2: know where he bought the gun. So it wasn't like
Speaker 2: he just had a gun, like, but he was like, all,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go buy a gun. And he might have
Speaker 2: bought it before he saw the newspaper, so he probably
Speaker 2: bought it after whatever. Anyway, get you get the true crime.
Speaker 3: Is there anything? Is there anything he might have been
Speaker 3: interested in having a gun for that we can think of?
Speaker 3: Besides this, was he just maybe like worried about the
Speaker 3: about all the klansmen around or something.
Speaker 2: I think the implication would be that he would like
Speaker 2: have found out some other way the president was coming.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. But also like I mean, he
Speaker 2: wanted to die like so I don't know, but he
Speaker 2: probably saw the newspapers and then he went and bought
Speaker 2: a five shot revolver chambered in thirty two. He bought
Speaker 2: it and ten bullets for eight dollars, which is around
Speaker 2: two hundred dollars to day, which is a cheap gun.
Speaker 2: It was short barreled. It was basically like a self
Speaker 2: defense or crime gun equivalent of a Saturday night special,
Speaker 2: a gun for getting up to no good. To JOSEPPI,
Speaker 2: of course it was a crime gun. He wanted to
Speaker 2: commit a crime with it. As for what he did
Speaker 2: with it, you'll have to wait until when. No, you
Speaker 2: already know what he did.
Speaker 3: We mentioned it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, he tried to kill Franklin Douglas Roosevelt
Speaker 2: and he did kill the mayor of Chicago. But the
Speaker 2: story is really good and it's gonna get even better
Speaker 2: on Wednesday. Done, I know. But first you want any
Speaker 2: other podcasts or something you want to plug?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am on this published in this publishing collective
Speaker 3: and podcasting network called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We
Speaker 3: actually have this really cool thing. We're about to publish
Speaker 3: this book. We're doing a Kickstarter for it that will
Speaker 3: launch in March. It's by Margaret Killjoy. Ever heard of her?
Speaker 2: I have not, Nope, what a pretentious name.
Speaker 1: Kill Joy anyway, sounds like somebody who's not filled a
Speaker 1: lot of hope.
Speaker 3: It's a really good book. People are gonna like it,
Speaker 3: and they if they want to find out more about
Speaker 3: it as it as it nears publication, they should check
Speaker 3: out our kickstarter, which they can find by googling or
Speaker 3: using a different search engine to find. The Eternal Choir
Speaker 3: Holds Every.
Speaker 2: Voice, The Immortal Choir, Immortal Choir.
Speaker 3: Jesus, I'm the editor. I should know that the Immortal
Speaker 3: choir holds every voice.
Speaker 2: No one can remember my book titles. That's my special power.
Speaker 3: No, it's a really good title.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: I write incredible titles that don't stay in people's minds.
Speaker 3: I've said it correctly every other time I've said it.
Speaker 2: It's just I.
Speaker 3: Wasn't being recorded at the time. The Immortal Choir holds
Speaker 3: every voice. Check it out. Our cover art is gorgeous.
Speaker 3: Follow Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness on Blue Sky or Instagram.
Speaker 3: Don't follow us on Twitter. Listen to our podcasts. You
Speaker 3: know you can hear more of Margaret and also me
Speaker 3: and our other co hosts, and also cool people that
Speaker 3: we interview who do cool stuff.
Speaker 2: Even Yeah, Sophie, you got anything you want to plug
Speaker 2: because Miriam did mine apparently, Thank you, Miriam.
Speaker 1: Listen to Malli Conger's Weird Little Guys. It's yeah, so good.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 1: It's so good. Mollie's so talented. Molly can find out
Speaker 1: information like nobody I've ever known. It's just Molly's. Molly's Mollie.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how to.
Speaker 3: She. She will process so much boring information to find
Speaker 3: amazing stories hidden in them, you know, like, yeah, like
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter how many like city council meetings, or like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, fucking old newspaper article like she will find.
Speaker 1: It sometimes will be like, how's it going? And then
Speaker 1: Mollie will like list off the craziest things you've ever
Speaker 1: heard in your entire life. I've been reading insert insane
Speaker 1: thing here for the last eight hours, but I found
Speaker 1: out this one thing.
Speaker 2: You're like, Molly, are you okay?
Speaker 1: So you know, support Molly in her endeavor to read
Speaker 1: the strangest things on the internet.
Speaker 2: I wholly endorse and I'll talk to you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Babe.
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