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