Part One: King Leopold II: The First Modern Bastard

talking about a little Belgian dude named Leopold. You've ever heard of King Leopold of Belgium. Uh? Not particularly King Leopold the Second, If that makes it. Yeah, I feel like the closest I'm gonna come is. I feel like at some point I got a box of fancy chocolates that might have had a Leopold. Maybe not the bad Leopold. I assume a good Leopold. This is not a good Leopold. Yeah,

probably not this particularly Leopold. Yeah. Uh. Leopold the Second was King of Belgium once upon of time, and he was, in my opinion, the first world leader to be truly shitty in the modern sense of the word. Like like like the kind of shitty that like Putin and Trump right right right, so not right, we're discounting our Genghis Khans and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because Genghis Khan like did what he did, but he didn't have like a bunch of newspapers, did he. He was just like I'm

gonna conquer some ship, right right right. This is the transition from barbarian bastards into media bastards exactly. And I think Leopold of Belgium is really where it happens in a modern like obviously other people had toyed with aspects of this. He really nailed it. Uh So King Leopold the Seconds dad was obviously King Leopold the First, uh and he was the first king of Belgium. Not obvious?

Is that? Is it always like a like one piguets two or is it like a your grandfather was Leopold the first, I'm Gerald of Belgium, but you're gonna be Leopold too. I think that's more how it happens most of the time, not this time. This time, Leopold the First was like this went so well, yeah, we're gonna have at the second. Um so Leopold the First was like the again, the very first king of Belgium at all, because Belgium had just been made a thing in the

wake from the Napoleonic Wars. So during the whole fighting between Napoleon and everyone else in Europe, Belgium was generally the battleground, where like the everyone would sort of duke it out between the Germans and the French and the French and everybody else. Yet Waterloo was in Belgium. So after Napoleon's but gets kicked, the European powers who win are like, okay, we can't have France and Germany fighting over Belgium forever. We're gonna make it its own thing.

And since it was going to be a new country, obviously it needed a king um so they Leopold the First got the job because he was a German prince who didn't have a kingdom of his own, okay, so it was just like split off, right, this is like we're going to give Megan Marcole Whales or whatever or part of Wales. Yeah, part of Whales, yeah, yeah, it's that exactly that sort of thing. They actually tried him out to be king of Greece first, but he didn't like,

didn't fit for whatever. Yeah, that's an option. We're gonna find you with something, buddy, don't worry leap. Oh my god, I'm gonna put you in a kingdom. Greece isn't the right one. Yeah, of course you try a starter kingdom. Everyone has a kingdom to start. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Greece was his unsold pilot. Yeah. Um. And he was, by all accounts, a pretty good king of Belgium if you're

into that sort of thing. Yeah. Um, waffles, waffles and chocolate and pocolate, getting by beer, yeah, great beer, getting jammed by the Germs, great beer. Great at getting jammed by the Germans. That's Belgium in a nutshell. Um. But yeah, he was a good king. While he was king. Midway through his reign in eighteen forty eight, there was like this big year of revolutions all across Europe, and all these European countries had their monarchs overthrown except for Belgium.

So he's the Christian spring we call that, Yes, the white white Man's springs, that's the lad three hundred years. What a time, what a time for the whites, given up for the whites. Yeah um so Leopold the first solid King. I've got two main sources for today's podcast, which I shouldn't note now. The first is a biography called Leopold, the Second King of Belgium. Uh. It's a pro monarchist book that was written in nineteen ten um.

The article is critical about Leopold sometimes, but he thinks he was like a great king and he thinks kings are a good idea. So it's an interesting book because it gives you an idea of how Leopold himself would sort of present himself and defend himself and let you know what the propaganda at the time was well, and also write just critical enough to be legitimate. Well, no, no, it's totally I guess for the time it wasn't bad.

What I mean is the you put it in just the faintest of criticism to give the exactly you know, yeah, this is a real investigation. Yeah, it's like the monarch's equivalent of one of those like celebrity biographies out of Ben Affleck or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, the Heraldo Interview of books exactly right, exactly. And then the other book is a book called King Leopold's Ghost by Adam hosh Child, which takes the stance that Leopold was one of history's

great monsters. Anyway, So these are these are most of what I come from, a sort of the contrasting views that these two books. Person, you read two books for a podcast, Get out of your mind. Come on, there's a lot to dig into here, and there's not a lot. You're making me feel real bad. I'm like, usually good for half a Wikipedia article. Holy sh it, well this is at least the equivalent of like four Wikipedia articles. Jeez,

go ahead, alright. So Leopold the seconds Mom Louise was almost a love match is the term the book uses for his dad, the King Um And it says this because the king was already in love with her before they get married. That makes it a love match. He liked her when she was fourteen, so it's love. Yeah, there were hell of it, and she had the right land.

She had some nice land. I'm related to the right enemies she was with I think from the Orleone family, so she was like she had some solid ass royal pedigree. You know, you get some German from King Leopold the first, you get a little bit of French from his wife and then their baby is sort of a mix. So maybe Germany and France won't fight over belgimin what a brave Yeah, didn't war? Yeah. So Leopold the second was born Leopold Louis Philippe Mary Victor. Uh, and he was

his parents second child. His older brother died eleven months before he was born. Um, so if you think about that timeline a lot, it's not very fun. Because Leopold's older brothers born, he dies eleven months later, they pop out another son, Yeah, immediately, immediately, not a lot of morning time, or maybe they just kind of, you know, fun the pain away. But yeah, yeah, that's probably would happened.

That's the optimistic look. Um. Alright, So at age five, Leopold's father declared him Duke of Brabant, which is how he was addressed right up until his coronation. Uh he said five, age five, Yeah, age five, Yeah you can you'll have to be a duke at age five. And he looks he looks like he looks like people in this pretty little duke. We'll have the pictures up on our website. He has no chin um and a kind

of a lopsided face. But maybe that's just the painting looks a little bit like a ghost, like a human ghost. It looks like the painting of a ghost that you find in the basement of an old house. And then like there's a rush of wind and the camera falls over, and like your friend gets mauled by a spirit. Yeah, and that's this guy's selfie essentially. Yeah, that's this guy's like, this is the image we want to put out into

the world. Yeah, this was like hanging in palaces. So he looks like a creeper from day a little spooky boy, but he's still a baby. Um. So, the biography notes that Leopold and his siblings were brought up in quote the simplest manner and taught to behave as if they were normal citizens rather than noryalty. That sounds great until

you get to the next part quote. The king further expressed the wish to develop in the children the sentiment of duty and not to allow them to have an opinion of their own with regard to their duties and their studies. Um. Basically, the king was trying to crush the individuality of his kids so that they would just fit the role of king. That's kind of yeah, good actually is it in that? Well what else are you

gonna do? Because I got to do this dumb job? Well, I mean you could try to make them be healthy, fully formed people. Yeah, but why then they got to be king? Yeah? Well okay, that's fair. I mean you were taking Leopold the first side. Yeah, well he's the good one again, I'm probably this chocolate. Um No, but right, isn't that the he's He's he's just as trapped as everyone else, you know, Yes, so if he's got to do this thing, you might as well make it so

he can do this thing. Okay, So you're expressing some motivation maybe two, why you would do this, why you would do what he winds up doing, and you don't even know what he winds up doing do? Yeah? What did I just defend? We are still? Let me just say right now, whatever he does, I stand behind it. Well, he kills about ten to fifteen million people. Yeah, it's fine. Okay, Well what's it? Um? So when Leopold is fifteen, his

mom dies of some illness or another. It's one of those things where the writers at the time aren't specific. They're just like she took ill and was secret and then she and then she dies, Like, yeah, it's probably dip theoria or some weird named the flue disease. Yeah, would be a big deal, I guess. I mean it's probably as a flu like that killed everybody back then. Um. Yeah. And King Leopold's ghost, Adam hosh Child, describes Leopold's childhood

as being kind of stark and cold. Quote, if Leopold wanted to see his father, he had to apply for an audience. When the father had something to tell the same, he communicated it through one of his secretaries. I mean, look, this is not just uh eighteenth century arrested element. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of kind of what's going on. Like, he definitely has a buster Bluth vibe to him. Um again, especially once you see this fucking painting, you'll get it audience.

The biography that was written at the time says that it is worthy of note that the late king never had any comrades or playmates. His childhood was passed among his teachers and tutors, and the disciplinarian father made even more the relationship with his brother and sister a very formal one, frank childish gaiety and brotherly expansion and confidence were banished. The princess thoughts thus became concentrated upon himself and his natural activity and vitality, his exuberant strength were

expended on work and study. Tight yeah about it, No, friends, does nothing but work. Yeah, he's a duke. Yeah, I mean he's already achieved a lot. I mean he has kind of a boss baby. Yeah, just throwing that out there. So he grows up, He serves in the Belgian military, he apparently does okay. By his early twenties, Leopold becomes an fluential figure in Belgian politics. You know, he's the crown prince. Everyone who's going to wind him being king? And he kind of looks a little like Adam Driver.

He yeah, he looks here, he looks like a anime Adam Driver. Yeah. Yeah, that's who you would cast his anime Adam Drive. Yeah yeah in the movie. So Um. Like many rich young people, he traveled far and wide in his early twenties. He went all throughout the Middle East, North Africa, parts of Asia. But he was not traveling for his enjoyment. Uh, he was basically traveling. The biography,

he says, it's like a commercial employee. So he was essentially looking for financial opportunities for Belgium because this is the period when all of Europe is colonizing the entire world. Belgian doesn't have a colony. So he's traveling all around the Middle East and Asia basically being like what can who's yeah, who's like can we take? Yeah? Yeah, what can we get? Does this hop ahead to the Congo? Oh? Yes, oh nice, Yeah, that's where we're headed. Tight, Okay, how

do I know that tiny bit of history. It's one of those things that drops in every now and then you'll hear like, oh, yeah, the Belgium's did something bad in the Congo, but you don't ever get I don't know any details story. In fact, I probably no more plot points from Michael Crichton's The Congo than than realities the Congo. Yes, I mean there's unconfirmed reports that he he tried to find the lost city of Zinch but no great movie. Is that what what they were doing there? Yeah? Yeah,

they're trying to find diamonds. That a monkey there's a monkey city. Yeah, find diamonds and monkeys were evil. Yeah, that's more what I remember. Solid to bed. There's a laser. There is a laser. There's definitely a laser in that movie. Man, what a weird it's a ride, Michael, We're still watching

his bullshit. I can't believe West World. Yeah, um okay, So Prince Leopold, one of his favorite books as he's a young man studying trying to find a new colony for Belgium is a book about the Dutch East Indies called Java, How to Manage Your Colony. Uh yeah, why would you? Oh my god, I mean, I guess that's why you have to tell people your favorite book is.

But yeah, that's well, no, I mean, because so the book is all about how the Dutch colonized the island of Java and how they got a shipload of coffee and sugar and like dies and tobacco and it it made basically made so much money that they were able to buy a bunch of railroads and canals back in Holland. Um, so,

like the book is all about that. So so it outlines sort of how they were able to monetize Java so well, and like it talks about how the king basically brought in a bunch of private companies and became a major shareholder in those companies and it was the company's job to farm the land and to produce the resources, and they export them to Belgium. So the king didn't have to send Dutch government workers over and do anything.

The king just said, I own Java corporations. Come in, give me a steak in your profits, and do whatever you want. I think it's just cool to have political leaders also owned corporates. That has never been a problem and never will be a problem. No, it seems to always work out great. Um. It seems to work out great percent of the time. Um. The book also did note that the Dutch prophets in Java would have been

impossible without a huge amount of forced labor. Uh. And young Prince Leopold agreed with this and said that forced labor was quote the only way to civilize and uplift these indolent and corrupt peoples of the far East. Yeah, yeah, he ain't wrong. Go ahead, what else? What else? God thought? You said this guy was bad? Alright? Uh? So late in his dukedom, you know, a few years before he becomes king, Leopold gets in front of Belgium Senate and he urges them to take up foreign colonies. So they

got a king and a senate. Yeah, that work so basically, the King of Belgium is kind of a ceremonial figure. He's got he's got more power than like the Queen in England has today. It's heading towards, but it's heading towards that. There's no formal power, lots of soft power, lots of soft power in a little bit of formal power. But um, you can't do things as the king like us make colonies. M you can't do things as the king likes in the army places. Um. And so Leopold's

dad seems to be okay with that. But Leopold the second is growing up chopping at the bent to do ship and doesn't want to become a monarch who just waves at the crowd. Um, why not. So he gets up in front of the Senate and he says, quote, I am profoundly convinced of our vast resources, and I passionately wish that my beautiful country would show the necessary pluck to derive all the benefit which, in my opinion, it can derive. I think that the moment for our

expansion abroad has arrived. We must not lose time. Otherwise, the best positions in markets which are becoming more rare. Every day will be occupied by nations more enterprising than ourselves. And when he talks about positions in markets, he's talking about whole countries and stuff. I mean, millions of people. It's more chilling in the original Flemmish. Yeah yeah, yeah, nailed. But although he probably would have been speaking just French for alright, so well you can say, you can say

Walloon if you want. I'm getting what is that. That's the other group of people. There's Belgium is made up of Flemish people and Walloons. Yeah, the wall Unatics, of course, band aid on their face. We got it. It's a rough name to grow into the world stage taking on. Uh well, you know, you gotta get you get enough rifles, get enough cutlasses, everything starts to make sense. I don't feel like it does. I feel like Germany was so fierce in part because German is like, that's like an name,

like the Germans are coming. Imagine if if the name got switched and the Belgians were called the Germans, and like the Nazis had tried to invade and everyone was like, oh, the Walloons are invading. Yeah, that's not gonna go. Yeah, yeah, Well listen let's boot up a risk game. We'll figure it out, all right. Um so, yeah, Leopold, the first Leopold, the seconds Dad died in December of eighteen sixty five, the same year the American Civil War ended. Leopold is

now with the king and thirty years old. Uh. This appears to be the point when he decided to grow a gigantic mountain man beard tight, which he would maintain for the rest of his Yeah. Well, there's a lot of pictures of Leopold with a beard. Will post him on the site. Some of them look uncomfortably like me. Some of them are clear missteps in the beard growing process, where he's got like gigantic mutton chops and it's he

looks like a fucking hair octopus style of the time. Yeah, he he went through some rough patches in his sartorial history, for sure. That's pretty that's get any easy kind of we're looking at Yeah, that's a rough picture and almost he's almost wearing bell bottoms in that picture. Hey, it's the sixties. It is the eighteen sixties. Boom alright. Uh so, yeah, Leopold the King of Belgium. He's super frustrated because the

King doesn't have that much in the way of power. Uh. Leopold takes two sort of bocking the restrained role that he has in Belgian politics. There's a story of like this guy who came to visit him, uh, because like, you know, the King's got a visit with like his donors and benefactors and whatnot. And this guy complains about the poor state of the roads around his property, and Leopold interrupts him and says, I have no authority to change the roads. You ought to address yourself to the press,

especially to the small papers. The municipality and the government will do anything they ask. So he was like, he was like making that point. I'm frustrated that, like I can't do anything, so I'm just kinda like to take it to the press. King is not allowed to do anything. Um. He sort of set to work making himself into kind of an image for the Belgian people. He was the aristocratic equivalent of an alpha male. Uh. He spent a lot of time doing science work and and and you know,

supporting the arts and sciences. Nineteenth century science is just like beakers of lead and ship He's he's pouring colored water into bakers. He's got goggles on, you know, you know how that goes. Yeah, there's a quote from his biography that says he used to sleep in a camp bed so like a military cot, and had a general horror of everything that could innervate or render him a feminate. So he's kind of like he's a proud boy. Yeah, that's what they call people who aren't racist soy boys.

Is that right? Yeah, because eating soy feminizes you again, Yeah, that's what the that's all right thing? Yeah, um, hey, well at least we know that they have a nice historical antisy. Leopold would have been all about that stuff. So he's he's growing a giant, weird beard, he's sleeping in a palace in a military cot. He's scared of girls. Uh,

he hates spending money. His biography says, quote his pocket handkerchief was only renewed on Sunday mornings when going to Mass, and on no account would he take another in the interval. If his valet's changed his towels more than once a week, they were sure to receive a good scolding from his majesty. What So he's like a gross miser, Yeah, don't clean those tells which one of those wasn't one of the all right guys living in their mom's basement. I think

most of them are definitely Yeah, yeah that guy. Yeah, rouche Vie, the pickup artist guy that was found living in his mom's basement. Literally, that's what this guy was. Leopold was missing. Yeah, yeah, I guess the Beard. The Beard experiment clearly on that factor. His mom died young, so he became a king. Yeah yeah, instead, okay, called peacocking everyone. How you interact women the kingdom? Yeah, I mean having a castle is pretty solid peacocking Yeah, undeniable. Yeah.

Leopold the Second was noted in his biography, is the first king to treat his kingship as a corporate endeavor. His primary concern was making money, not for Belgium, but for himself. It was all about the bottom line. Um. So there's um Like when you talk about dictators and warlords and terrorists, there's like a tendency to call them side paths and sociopaths. Sociopath is like an actual medical diagnosis.

And I don't think guys like Hitler or Stalin really fit it, um because they all had histories of like warm family life and like people who cared about them and people that they like sacrificed for. At times, Leopold might have been a straight up like yeah, because that's that's that's what they say, right, is like so many CEOs and fortune fid uh whatever. Then there corporately like

psychopathic traits. Yeah. Even his positive biography says that while he was charming, he was quote devoid of enthusiasm and set himself and was quite incapable of arousing any and others. So he just can't unctually touch people's heart. He can't motivate people. Um, so, yeah, we're gonna get more into the soulless Leopold the second, his scheme to find a colony and the colony that he eventually found. But for we've got some ads. Of course, we all realized it's

a pro corporate podcast, so let's keep it real. Here's some buying advice, and we're back. Uh, we're back. We're talking about King Leopold, who is searching for a little colony somewhere in the world to fill that whole of course. Yeah, Leopold the Deuce, Leopold to Electric Boogaloo whenever you want to call him. We were just talking about what a soulless, sociopathic creepy is. Yeah, allegedly. Well here's another quote again, this is from like a positive pro Leopold biography that

he probably paid for. He disliked music, hunting, tobacco, and had no taste for physical exercises except walking. Although a frequent visitor at Austin, which is like one of his palaces, he never learned to swim. He was seen yawning and a gala performance of Faust. So he doesn't like plays. He doesn't like art, he doesn't. He hates music like it's a thing. Any book you read about him, anyone who knew him. He hated music like not like he hated popular music. Music itself was offensive to him. So

that's fascinating. Well that's cutting into the American psycho narrative. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah a little bit. Yeah, he's he's a weird guy. He's very vain um. But his main vanity was quite odd. He thought he had the most beautiful hands in all of Europe, type his biography. What his biography notes. Another of Leopold's hobbies was his dislike for gloves, and although he often wore uniform he has never reported to have

put on gloves. It may have been a hatred of restraint, but more probably it was a pardonable vanity on the part of the late king, for he possessed the shapely and beautiful hand of the Orleans family that rules so hard. Here's the only picture I could find hands. He's holding the gloves in his hand, so his hand is not even stra younger actually like reminding people you could be wearing gloves. I'm the master of the his I mean, in fairness to him, his hands are beautiful in this picture.

I mean they just just look at the bone definition. They are shapely. They're good ass hands. Yeah, they're good ass hands. Oh man, So that means that he made some painter or do multiple drafts on those hands. That's like, this is like, isn't it wait, rest of development where the guy has a fake hands, always, always always sunny, always fake hands. Yeah, then there's some things to be said about our president in hands. It's weird. It's it's weird that you would even like I never think about

my hands like how they look. Like when I'm thinking about someone taking a picture of me, like zero percent of the time, I'm like, oh, my god, my hands do they look shapely? Do you know what's crazy is I had to send a picture of a piece of equipment for this job I'm on to a technical person and I just took a picture of my phone and into to them. And I realized as I was sending the email, was like, my hands like funked up in this.

I'm having a real low hand self esteem day. Oh, I think you have the shapely hands of the Orleanslan family. I know you're being really nice right now, but it's actually a little hilarious that the one day possibly in my life, that I've noticed my hands, I was like, what the fund is up with my hands? Only these were feet. Yeah. I've been an arm model before. My friend was doing some not like you know, elbows down

I was doing. I was doing some stock photography and was like, I want to take pictures of your arms, and I was like, you're wilding out. So you know what, I'm good. I'm good risk to elbow to elbow, Yeah, I got I got far arm. My fearms are I'm about it? Well, Leopold was a handman. Yeah, so we've got this frustrated, greedy, gorgeous handed king on the throne of Belgium. He keeps trying to get his country and to jump on board the having a colony train that

the people of Belgium expresses zero interest in this. Oh okay, wait, why what do you mean? All right? Because obviously all European colonialism is pretty much the root of almost everything that's wrong in the world right now. But there is. But I don't understand why they. I mean, they certainly didn't. I'm gonna, I guess not want to do it. For the reasons why I don't think they should have done it.

I think the Belgians, for one thing, So the Belgiums of this era, anyone who's like a mature adult, lived through what was at that point he equipment in World War two, the Napoleonic Wars, like we just don't want any trouble, Like we just want to stay in Belgium and eat chocolate and drink beer. We don't really want to go to Africa or Asia. And let's see the first of die not the first can I say, can continue an incredibly less long list of ignorant as sh

I'm about to say, you do you is Belgium landlocked? No? No, no, no, it has an Antwerp Antwerp, that's right, okay, number of Yeah, yeah, it's it's a wee little country. You can drive across it in a couple of hours. Yeah, okay. I was just like, okay, yeah, I was just like, it's funny to imagine a landlock country own and stuff. But of course they can who gives a ship. But they're not landlocked, so fuck me. Yeah, no, they're not. Um they didn't have a colony at this point, and they seem to

have zero interest in having one now. At this same time, from eighteen seventy eighteen seventy seven, when Leopolds like a decade or so into his kinghood, there's this explorer named Henry Morton Stanley. Uh and yeah, from seventy four to seventy seven, he completes seven thousand mile expedition across Central Africa. Much of his travel centered upon the still undiscovered by like white people, Congo. No one had like mapped the extent of the Congo River. We didn't know where it

originated from at this point. Um so, and at this time in European history, like different explorers mapping Africa are kind of like the Marvel movie franchise of the day, Like each of these guys is world famous and like newspapers breathlessly cover every expedition, and whenever they finished an expedition, they write a book and millions of people by it so automatically. For the ball exactly, this is like the

thing people care about at this point in time. It's like what these explorers are doing in Africa and all over the world. Like that just means if I were alive then and a white person, two big guests, I would be like struggling to get on one of the good expeditions. Yeah you really, you really like fingers crossed. It's not one of the ones where people eat each other. Yeah yeah, yeah, statistically a lot of them are. Yeah.

Um So Stanley maps like a huge chunk of the Congo, more than anyone had ever done before, and it's like big news. He gets back to Europe from Africa and he goes on tour. He's doing like speaking engagements. He's a big celebrity. I feel like there's a lot of like skulls and calipers in a talk like this, Yeah, and probably buckets of racism, like like totally unexamined racism. I look. If you don't look, it's not there. Yeah, that's the racist motto. Um. So he's touring around and

King Leopold winds up meeting with him. Um. Stanley had been bullish on the idea that the Congo would be a great place for a colony, and he wanted the British to set up a colony there. You want to go to the best colonizing studio first, Yeah, exactly, that's like the paramount good. Probably not. I don't know anything about Warner Brothers. We all live in the Disney, isn't that's the Disney. Yeah, Britain's the Disney of colonizing. Yeah. And and instead he goes to I don't who's who's

making DC's garbage movies. Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers. Okay, so Leopold's Warner Brothers. No, they're not even in it. Leopold is like he's gotten very confusing. Leopold is like, uh, snapchat making stuff, Like technically they got the our YouTube like it's a YouTube show. Yeah, you know, it's like they got some money. Let's actually call it no history for it, but who knows. I feel like we actually hit upon the right thing to compare him to, which

is Amazon. Yes. Yeah. So Stanley tries to sell his Congo idea to Disney Slash Britain and it fails, and King Leopold a k A. Amazon's like, well, we might be interested in this plan. Yeah, we'll fund this. Why don't you, Why don't you give me your elevator pitch colony and the Congo Huh? I like it. I like this idea. Yeah. So Leopold uh contracts Stanley to work for him, and he sends him back to Africa with

a new mission. So Leopold's master plan here, I'm gonna appeal back for a minute, and we're going to zoom into the different pieces because it's a complicated as plant. His master plan is to create the Congo Free State, which is a supposedly independent African nation that just happened to also be ruled by King Leopold the Second UM.

So he went about doing this in a few ways. Uh. In eighteen seventy six, he hosted the Brussels Geographic Conference, where he invited a bunch of European experts to form the so called International African Association, which of course had no Africans as members. UM the association was a supposedly philanthropic organization. I'm going to read you a selection from Leopold's speech at the conference where he sort of lays

out what he wants to do. The subject that calls us together today is one that demands the first place in the attention of friends of humanity to open up to civilization. The only part of our globe where she has not yet penetrated, to pierce the darkness that envelops entire populations is I may venture to say a crusade worthy of this century of progress, and I am glad to observe how very favorable public feeling is to its accomplishment.

The current is with us. So he gets this association together and he says, this is an international group and we're trying to civilize Africa and improve lives of people who were there. I didn't realize that back then. The rhetoric was already like the kind of like always is this is to help them double speak. I actually just assumed they were like, yeah, I'm gonna take this ship

from black people. No, they they are. And these guys the people he invites to the Geographic Conference and forms the International African association with these guys are a lot of people who legitimately want to make things better for Africans, who aren't even thinking about making these are the well meaning liberal white people, yeah, exactly, and like missionaries who

are like and like well meaning liberal white people. Because there's an Arab slave trade in Africa, like traders moving through the Congo, and the abolition movement is very big at this point in time, and so these people are being like, we've got to stop the slave trade in Africa, sold we can do that. And there's a bunch of people who are like, we've got to christianize the Africans and Leopolds, like we can do that and like that.

So that's that's what he's claiming this association. Okay, so this is right, This is like definitely like colonialism two point o or three point oh. He steps ahead of everyone. He's not even framing this as colonialism. He's framing this as a charitable endeavor to exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So he suggests that Belgium would be a great place for this new international body to meet because it's a neutral country

and it's centrally located in Europe. And then he suggests that he might be a good person to run the association just for its first year. Hit yourself, you know you've got to conference first year. Uh. And he assures them all that he's doing this from the goodness of his heart. Uh. He says, Belgium is small, she is happy and satisfied with her lot. I have no other ambition than to serve her well. And it was true that Belgians were pretty happy with their lot. But Leopold

did have some ambitions. So he gets elected head of the International African Association the first year, and then he gets elected the head of it the second year too, even though that was supposed to be illegal, back to back. And then the association kind of stops existing, and Leopold replaces it with the Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo, and then he replaces that with the International Association for the Congo. On paper, these are all different international philanthropic groups.

Their names were deliberately forgettable and similar, so the public would assume they were all the same thing. Uh. In King Leopold's Ghost, Adam hos Child writes that Leopold directly told his aids quote, care must be taken, not to let it be obvious that the Association of the Congo and the African Association are two different things. The public doesn't grasp that. So in reality, all of these lanthropic groups are shadow fronts for Leopold's plan to conquer the Congo.

So they're all charity organizations that he gets international aid money getting sent into, and he's able to pour Belgian government funds into ass and donations, just like Hillary Clinton, not exactly like Hillary Clinton. Yes, you've watched the documentary Clinton Cash by Niche Deza. Yes. Um. The thing that's amazing about this is it's so complicated a plan that doesn't feel like I mean, I you know, I'm a super smart person. Of course I'm not finding a place

where you could improvise your way into this. You just gotta wait, because we're not even halfway through the plan like this, like he's he is a legitimate Like okay, so the villain that Marvel keeps trying to write and like failing to write in my opinion, where it's like the low key character whether here he's got all these plans within plans step ahead. Leopold actually was that guy to the whole world, but in sort of the same villain as way, You're like, this is insane. There's so

many things that could go wrong in this. So he's now created three different philanthropic associations just because like the backers will start realizing that the association's fake and they'll pull their money, but he'll keep the organization alive or whole roll its assets into a new organization. And nobody who got caught, who realized that this was some weird show company wants to admit that they got caught, so they just don't say anything. And the public just here's like, oh,

it's the new thing. Is how the International African Association, it's that group of people trying to make life better in Africa, right, Um, So he all these groups are basically funneling money into the work of Henry Morton Stanley, that explorer who Leopold sent back to Africa. So Leopold sent him back in eighteen seventy nine, and his job was to start building, using the association money, a series of stations along the Congo River to act as like

way points for steamboat traffic. Uh. He also met with hundreds of local treats all throughout the Congo, all the different people who had chunks of land throughout the Congo, the different villages and chiefs, hundreds and hundreds of them. He meets with these guys and he gets them to sign treaties giving up their rights to the land. Uh. Here's a quote from host Child's book. The very word treaty is a euphemism. For many chiefs had no idea

what they were signing. I few had ever seen the written word before, and they were being asked to mark their excess to documents in a foreign language and in legal ease. These guys weren't ignorant of the concept of diplomacy. They knew wouldmitt to write treaties of friendship with neighboring tribes or villages. They understood the idea of a non aggression pact, and that's what they thought these were. The

reality was somewhat different. Quote. In return for one piece of cloth per month to each of the undersigned chiefs, besides present of cloth in hand, they promised, too freely of their own accord for themselves and their heirs and successors, forever give up to set association the sovereignty and all sovereign and governing rights to all their territories. So Basically he gives them cloth. They think that they're getting some sick ass clothes, just assion pacts. This is a thing.

Here's our everyone. You give us shirts. We promise we won't shoot you. We don't want to shoot you anyway. That sounds great. In reality, these are all statements saying that they give up other rights to the International African Association, and the Association will have the right to collect taxes on the people who gave up their rights to their land, and those taxes, because there's no currency in most of the Congo, those taxes can be paid in labor. So

Leopold gets hundreds of chiefs from Stanley to sign these agreements. Um, yeah, Jesus so Europe. Thanks. Stanley's over there doing valuable philanthropic work fighting with the slave traders and trying to open the Congo up to free trade. That's the big buzzword everyone's using. It's like, we're gonna open the Congo to free trade and it will benefit the Africans, it will benefit Europe. Everyone will benefit if there's free trade in

the Congo. Uh. Meanwhile, what he's actually doing is getting pieces of paper that give Leopold the rights to the Congo that make it look like all these chiefs have come together and said, we want this guy to be our king, and we want to be a country. So I feel like I should break for just a second and talk a little bit more about Henry Morton Stanley. Who's the guy who's actually doing all this leg work.

He was one of the greatest explorers in history. And he was also a human garbage fire, sort of a Darth Vader. Definitely a Darth Vader too. He was terrified by the thought of being touched by a woman, just like Darth Vader. He once cut off his own dog's tail, cooked it, and fed it to the dog for no real reason. Um. And he basically, when I say he was an explorer, he shot his way through Africa. Here's a quote from a description of one of Stanley's expeditions

in King's Leopold's Ghost. To those unfortunate enough to live in its path, the expedition felt like an invading army, for it sometimes held women in children hostage until local chief supplied food. UM. So yeah, he's shooting his way through these tribes, taking their food, taking their ship, um, burning down villages if there's any resistance um. One of his men described just hunting people like the predator, like

laying in wait and just shooting random strangers. UM like less ethical than the predator, who should played out has a certain code. Yeah yeah, way less ethical than the predators. So these guys are predatoring their way through through Africa, but they're not particularly worse than any other explorer at the time. I would he's one of the worst. They vary. So Henry Morton Stanley, you know, the Dr Livingston, I presume that he's that guy. And Dr Livingstone was apparently

a pretty nice guy. He was also an explorer and actually would like get to know people and like and plcate himself in the local culture. So some of these guys are legitimately just in it for the sake of exploration, and they're scientists and they're good to the people they encounter. And some of them, like Stanley, just want to make a shipload of money and they're creepy. Stanley is one of the kills thousands of people while he's exploring. God,

I got it. I just want to I guess when I met not as a mitigating thing of like everyone was doing it, but like, if not the only standard practice. It was not what you're describing is not not he's a standard he's it's definitely common practice on a lot of these guys. But he's not near to the only one. But he's one of the worst for sure. Um So yeah. While Stanley's expedition is going on, Leopold also hires a bunch of other expeditions to explore their parts of Africa.

These were deliberately showy expeditions meant to distract public attention. One of them involved the team of four Indian elephants being sent to Africa to see if they could bread with African elephants. All of the elephants died horribly, but the news covered the story the whole time. So nobody's reading about what Stanley is doing because they think it's a boring philanthropical mission and there's this crazy story about elephants.

Let's read about that, so fucking dark. So he's clearly understands the media well enough that he's not just thinking about how to accomplish his plan, but how to distract public attention. And while he does it, when Morton Stanley gets back from his expedition and he writes a book it's an instant bestseller. King Leopold edits it himself. That's one of the things he had insisted on is that Stanley could write a book about this, but King Leopold

would get to edit it. And most of what he did was correct the times when Stanley mixed up the different associations and committees that he was supposedly working for, because nobody could keep it straight, but Leopold. That's such an attention to detail, that's unbelievable. Like I said, he's

the first modern, truly modern past um. So this book is sort of framed as like Henry Morton, Stanley is helping the Congo Free State be born and helping these these Africans like take their stab at nation hood and joining the international community and whatnot. So that's how that all this is being played on the outside world. The reality and the Congo is very different. Uh. And what happens next is uh not what anyone but Leopold had expected. And we're going to get into that in a minute.

But right now, Uh, Andrew, do you have too much money? Oh? Hell yeah. Well one of the great things to do with too much money is spend it on products. Products like the ones that I'm going to talk about. Now here's ads. So we're back. Uh and King Leopold has sent an explorer off to the Congo to trick a bunch of tribes people into signing away their rights to the land, while he has distracted the rest of Europe

with a bunch of showy expeditions. Uh So it's just like it used to be, just like cannons and soldiers swords, I guess, and now it's pr and fake treaties and stuff. Yeah, it's really modern in a lot of ways. Um. So Leopold has this new bestselling book that's talking about the great stuff he's trying to do in the Congo that gets the public jazz, and he's able to sort of further push the legitimacy of his project by getting the US President Chester A. Arthur to recognize the Congo Free State.

Leopold had charmed the former U S Minister to Belgium, a guy who called himself General Sanford, even though he was an ACTU le a general. Um. But he was a rich guy who had a lot of money and like an orange plantation. And because he was a rich guy, he was able to get the President's ear Uh. General Sandford appealed to President Arthur's justlike of Arabs, because again there were all these Arab slave traders. Um, yes, nothing's changed,

nothing's new. Yeah, so chess Sterry Arthur was. He also pointed out that that the Congo had been discovered by an American because Henry Morton Stanley called himself an American. He wasn't he was actually British, but the light his whole life and said he was American. Everyone lies about everything in the no Internet, because yeah, nothing like you. You run into thousand colonels when you're reading anything in

this period, and none of them are colonels. Sure, none of them were ever in the military, just like they just I'm going to be a colonels, fried chicken colonels. It's fine. And in this case of General anyway, Chess Terry Arthur was like, sounds great, Uh, Congo free street, sounds like a great idea. You're gonna fight some Arabs party, hooray. So he included this next bit in his State of the Union speech, recognizing the Congo free speech quote from

Chester A. Arthur. The rich and populous valley of the Congo spelled with a k in. This is being opened by a society called the International African Association, of which the King of the Belgians is the president. Large tracts of territory have been ceded to the Association by native chiefs. Roads have been opened, steamboats have been placed on the river, and the Nuclei of states established under one flag, which

offers freedom to commerce and prohibits the slave trade. Oh my god, So that's how Chester A. Arthur pictures it. So he got paid placement for his propaganda in the State of the Union. Yeah, in the State of the Union. Uh. So far the people of Belgium and the other European states are fooled pretty well. But France and some other folks and like the British government whatnot are starting to catch on the Leopold's plan and realize that he's making

a power grab. This helped to spark a general what's known as the Scramble for Africa, where all these European powers are like, oh my god, we're running out of Africa to take over. Uh. So they start shooting out expeditions to claim the last pieces of the continent before it fills up. Uh. This all culminates in the Berlin Conference of eighteen eighty four to eighty five, and a bunch of stuff is decided there. But Leopold's main goal is to get recognition for what he starts calling the

Congo Free State. He's basically like, I've got all these treaties. Like he gets up in front of Europe and he's like, I got all these treaties. Look, the people of the Congo want to be their own state. They want me to be their king. They've given this this state the rights to their land. Uh. And if you all back me and establishing the state, it will be a free trade zone, so all everyone will be able to trade freely and buy and sell freely in there. It will

make a bunch of money for everybody. So that's Leopold's pitch, and Europe buys it. In eighteen eighty five, the Congo Free State is established. Leopold had to go in front of Belgium Senate to ask if he could be two kings at once. Uh. He promised that the Congo would be its own independent nation and that it would pay its own way in the world. He told Belgium he thought it was his duty to quote help the nations of second rank become useful members of the great family

of nations. Then he asked for money, a little alone to help the fledgling new nation. And he asked his fellow Belgians to volunteer to help in this bold project quote more than any other. A manufacturing and commercial people like ourselves ought to strive to obtain a market for all its workers, for thinkers, capitalists and workmen. So the Congo Free State is on paper a country with Leopold

the Second as its absolute ruler. So he's gone from the King of Belgium, but he doesn't really have any power to yeah of of a country like twenties times the size of Belgium. Jesus Christ. Uh. So the Congo Free State is to all intends and purposes of state. It has its own army, the Force Publique, which is made up of African soldiers led by Belgian officers. It's illegal for black men to be officers in the Army of the Congo. That sounds about yeah, um. So man

Leopold is a wired himself an African empire. Unfortunately, he didn't want an empire. He had no desire to actually rule another just wanted money. He just wanted money. So the Congo Free State is entirely a money making scheme and it's all based around rubber. So the late eighteen hundreds is when rubber really started to take off. That's like in the mid eighteen hundreds or so is when they figure out how to vulcanized rubber, which is what makes it like nice and shiny and stable and it

doesn't smell weird and fall apart. Um. It's so the Macintosh coat becomes popular around this time. People like in Europe are just like covered headed tone rubber, like it's it's it's everywhere. It's like the fashion of the times. People are just flipping out over rubber. Um fetishes are born tons exactly, hot air balloons. It's like this one. It's a wonder material. It's like the first time people they don't have to use glass for everything. Um. So

everyone's in love with rubber. But there's only two ways to make rubber at that time, vines and trees. Now rubber vines grew wild all around the Congo. The two ways are vines and trees. There's rubber vines and there rubbers. Yeah, I thought it was going to be vegetation and chemistry. No, they hadn't. They didn't. They do now we can make

but they hadn't figured that ship out. Um So, actually harvesting all of the rubber from vines like the ones who grew in the Congo required thousands and thousands of people climbing trees in the jungle. There's the risk of snake bite and monster attacks, and it's just it's just a nightmare harvesting, Yeah, at large scale in the Congo.

Harvesting rubber from trees, on the other hand, is really easy, and some enterprising people had already started planting groves of rubber trees in South America, but those trees took about twenty years or so to really get going. So Leopold standing here in charge of the Congo knows that he has about twenty years to be the world's leading producer of rubber. The Congo Free State wasn't basically just a giant rubber factory. That was his whole vision for this

land filled with millions of people. This is like the actual story of Willie Wonka. Yeah, he's the real Willie Wonka. Jesus Christ. So, I remember when I said that Leopold had the right to collect taxes in the form of labor. Well, he used these taxes to make Congolese people go harvest rubber for him. In theory, I think he was allowed to only demand like forty hours a month from them or something. But what happened is that he would have his soldiers go from village to village and take hostages.

These hostages would be put in concentration camps where they'd be starved and beaten until the village met its rubber quota. So if you didn't get all the rubber that you were supposed to get soon enough, your family would just starve to get Uh. Leopold's government did have a problem because obviously it needs soldiers to enforce these nightmarish rules. But white people die like crazy in the Congo um, Like a more than a third of the Belgians who

went there died there. And since again it's illegal for Africans to be officers and force publique, uh, there would wind up being like four or five Belgian guys commanding hundreds and hundreds of African soldiers. So that's like, obviously you're treating these guys terribly. You're making the massacre of their own people, and there's five of you for every five hundred of them. That's like a recipe for a revolution, or it would be if the soldiers had free access

to bullets. One of the ways the Belgians controlled their army was by heavily restricting when anybody would get bullets, and by policing their AMMO so they couldn't hide any away. So each soldier would only be issued a certain amount of AMMO when they go out to get rubber, and if they fired any rounds, they had to account for them. The general policy and the congo became that if you fired around, you had to provide a right hand from

a corpse for every round that you shot. This was meant to stop people from stockpiling AMMO, and it was meant to stop them from like hunting for animals when they should have been, you know, shooting people. Um what this actually meant? Yeah, exactly so, but that creates a market for right hands. Exactly possibly go wrong. Yeah, For one thing, these soldiers aren't fed enough, so they're starving and they start hunting, and then once they fired a couple of rounds to hunt an animal, they need to

pick up. Okay, we we we fired three rounds getting that that whatever it is. Now we need three hands. So we need to go into a village. We need to take some people's hands. And in addition to that, like it becomes common if if a village refuses to provide rubber, like people like we're not going to work to you, We're not going to give up our relatives as hostages. The Force Publique would just burned down the

whole village. Sometimes they just kill everybody in the entire village. Um. And this this is happening on basically an industrial scale. In nineteen o three, a single rubber collecting post was sent more than forty replacement rounds of ammunition to every round that they're being sent. They've got a hand. Um. Yeah. So like the military units in the Force Publique even would have a keeper of the hands whose job was to smoke all of the severed hands so that they preserve,

so that you could go back to the authority. We need twenty more bullets. Here's twenty thou human hands, Jesus Christ. Yeah. So in five, when this whole operation is just getting off the ground, King Leopold is named in British Court as a client of what the British called a disorderly house. Can you guess what a disorderly house was? Uh? Probably not enough. It's the Hottish a go for it. Yeah,

it's it's a brothel. So while this is all starting off, King sorry to a horhouse in England, I thought, I thought you disorderly house meant like his dukedom didn't have like x or y like paperwork filed. No, no no. While he's freshly the king of the Belgian Congo, he's named in British court as a client of a whorehouse. Uh. And they say that he had been paying eight hundred pounds a month for a steady supply of young women, some of whom were ten to fifteen years old. That's so,

I mean, that's what Leopold's doing in between administering the Congo. Yeah. Um. And while he's doing that, his men in the Congo are building a system of Rhodes railways, post and steamboats that are meant to allow the rubber making operation to prosper. Leopold doesn't want to pay for all this himself, so he claimed the infrastructure is necessary so that the Free States Army can fight those dastardly Arab slavers. Um got the US to pay for it, or just generally he

got everyone wants to pay for it. So he gotten Europe on board with this by saying the Congo was going to be a free trade zone. But then he's like, we need to build all this infrastructure in order to fight the slavers, so we're gonna have to collect import taxes. Now he's just he like the one that you can trust Leopold to do is he will funck over every single person. Ye. So now even these countries who had like gotten on board because they thought this was a

free trade zone, they're getting screwed. And of course the millions of people whose hands he's having severed and unscrewed. I guess the key is just never stopped lying. Yeah, whenever you read about any of these guys. That is the most important thing. He's never ever stopped lying. If you're going to be a monster, you have to lie, consist only for decades about everything. All right, Yeah, I'm in. It works, Yeah, No, I mean I'm in. Well, you'll be a great king of the Congo. Um so uh.

To Leopold's credit, his men did fight Arab slave traders, but most of the fighting was done by conscripted African soldiers who were themselves basically slaves. Yeah. Yeah. King Leopold personally endorsed a system where white agents of the Free State got a bonus if they were able to find more recruits for the Force Publique. Many agents wound up buying them in from various chiefs and effect doing the same thing as the Arab slavers they bragged about fighting.

State agents also got bonuses for quote reducing recruiting expenses, so if they outright enslaved people rather than paid them to join, they got more money in their pocket. As many as three quarters of all volunteers for the Force Publique died before they could receive training. Most of those volunteers were teenagers, right, yeah, so they're just volunteers, quote unquote,

that's fucking incredible. It was like, we have our indentured servant army is going to fight your slave arm So basically the Congo at this point is groups of white guys with soldiers going into the jungle to collect a bunch of other soldiers and they'll put them in chains and like march them through the jungle and most of them will die, and then they'll train those guys up to fight, and they'll take those guys into the jungle to tell people to collect rubber from people, and to

kill everyone who doesn't provide enough rubber, and to kill a lot of the people who do provide enough rubber, just because these kids are like starving to death, and maybe they have to shoot an animal, or maybe there's rebels and they get into a firefight, but they don't, and then you got to take hands from the So it just keeps spiraling out of control and becoming like even more of a nightmare to everybody but Leopold, because

again he's sitting back in Belgium this time. Um. Since Leopold was the absolute monarch, he got to rule by royal decree. His first decree was that all quote vacant land was now property of the state. He didn't explain in what vacant meant, because obviously farmers don't live on every inch of their farmland, so basically most of the land in the Congo was now just his. Uh. He

leased this land to a series of private corporations. And this gets to the real brilliance of his scheme because Leopold didn't have to dirty his hands actually running any of the rubber harvesting. He was able to private right. Yeah, other people paid for their right to mind rubber and cut off hands and do all the actual work, and LEOPOLDLD owned the rights to a huge chunk of their profits.

So basically, these companies would come in and give him an owning stake in the corporation, licensed the scheme of incliving people, cutting off their hands, etcetera. Yeah. Adam hash Child in King Leopold's Ghost compares the Congo Free State to a venture capital firm. Quote he had essentially found a way to attract other people's capital to his investment schemes. While he retained half the proceeds. In the end, what with various taxes and fees the companies paid the state,

it came to more than half. So in the eighteen nineties, the Congo Free State really starts putting out rubber, and suddenly King Leopold is one of the richest guys in the world. He starts buying gigantic monuments and palaces and shipped for Belgium, big showy projects, some of which are still there, and it is to make people like him. It's to keep him popular at home. He's succeeding beyond his wildest dreams in the business side of things, but his personal life is just kind of one series of

train Wrex after the other. Um. Yeah, his son had died in eighteen sixty four, which led to an understandable estrangement between Leopold and his wife. It took eight years before they could stand to be around each other and try again. This passage from Leopold's biography tells you a

lot about the relationships between the sexes. In the eighteen sixties quote, Leopold the Second was anxious to have a male heir, and in eighteen seventy two Queen Marie Henriette consented to resume conjugal life with her royal spouse, from whom she had separated some time before. She sacrificed herself, as one may say, for her country. A child was born unto them, but alas it was a daughter and not a son, which was given unto them, So that's

messed up for a lot of reasons. She's one of which is just that Even in the pro Leopold biography, it just admits that having sex with Leopold is a sacrifice. I actually I'm surprised that the amount of agency she has, like she you know, she is the queen facing pressure, but it wasn't force that guillotined point or whatever she kind of was. I guess that's true. I guess that's between the lines, of course. Yeah, Jesus, it's I mean,

she probably has more agency than the average. But at the same time, in the way she is less because it's less important for a commoner to have a son, because like the king, that's like the whole dynasty things. You might say she has even less. Um, we probably should say, yeah, we probably would be. Um. So, yeah, Leopold did not take having a daughter very well. Uh.

This quote is from King Leopold's ghost. When the last daughter, Clementine, was born, according to his sister Louise, the king was furious and thenceforth refused to have anything to do with his admirable wife from the beginning. She wrote, quote, the king paid very little attention to me or my sister's. So he doesn't pay attention to his daughters, and he mostly seems to care when one of them, like fox

with his garden. Um, here's a recollection from Luis. Large, juicy peaches grew on the walls of the gardens, and the king was very proud of them. I had a passion for peaches, and one day I dared to eat one, which was hidden away among the leaves. And that year peaches were plentiful. But the following day the king discovered the theft. What a dramatic moment. At once suspected, I confessed my crime and was promptly punished. I did not

realize that the king counted his peaches. So while Leopold is running a nightmare hand harvesting rubber making scheme in the Congo, he's got enough time to make sure that his daughter doesn't steal a peach from himself. Because it's like, at least Ivanka Trump has the decency to pretend that she loved her tie with her daddy, even though like in all those like stories she tells, it's sad and weird too, but it's like, at least she's like, I

love him. He's my dad, you know, And I believe in all this sha he couldn't even get his daughters to be like I love Well, there's gonna be more about his daughter's coming in. He's he is not a great dad. Yeah, if you can't sell that already. Um, there's in fact no evidence that Leopold cared about any of his children as anything more than vehicles for his legacy.

Even that fawning nineteen ten biography can't make it seem like Leopold had a single funk for his family as King Leo, I'm gonna be honest, that's so far the most relatable thing about it, just not liking his family. As King, Leopold grew older and richer, he also became a full on hypochondriac. He took to wearing a waterproof bag around his gigantic beard whenever he went outside in

the rain or when he swam. He required his palace tablecloths to be boiled every day to kill any germs, which is at least a character evolution from not letting them wash his sheets. Yeah, napkin, Um yeah for him, So he's changing, He's had his own little heroes journey. Yeah, yeah, we all get there. Yeah, hypochondria. Um. This wind up being another really really long one. There was just so much research, So um, this is gonna be a two parter podcast and the second part is going to drop

on Thursday. Uh so we'll be getting into the rest of Leopold's story and the tremendously dark story of the Congo. So so stick around, check back out on Thursday. It's gonna be great. In the meantime, you can check out andrew ts podcasts This Racist. You can also check out every other episode of Behind the Bastards. You can find us on Twitter at Bastards Pod and Instagram as well. You can find us on the Internet at behind the Bastards dot com and you can find me on Twitter

at I Right. Okay, so Andrew and I will be back on Thursday with more Leopold, so check us out then.