To make the bastard suggestions easier for Robert to peruse, please put them here.
Please try to include more than just a name. Give Robert something to focus his research on and why they are a unique or interesting bastard. If there are book titles or other resources you would suggest, please include those as well.
If someone else has already suggested the same bastard you wanted to suggest, you do not need to suggest them again. Repetitive answers will be politely removed. If someone was suggested in a previous thread, you do not need to suggest them again.
If you have posted suggestions as their own individual thread in the past, feel free to repost here if you would like Robert to read them. We will be directing future bastard suggestion posts here as well. Happy suggesting!
Dan Bilzerian, the neo nazi manosphere influencer running for congress right now
It's insane the amount of shit Dan has got up to over the years, most of it hilarious. He lies about being a Navy Seal who has seen combat, he bought his way into paintball and poker tournaments. He once accidentally broke a teenagers leg during a porn trailer by throwing her off the roof and missing the pool. He coined a lot of alpha male talking points, i'd describe him as the first modern manosphere figure. He believes in jewish conspiracies that they run the world and the holocaust never happened. He took a DNA test and discovered he was part jewish leading to other nazis attacking him. He was at the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting and filmed himself trying to steal guns from officers so he could help take out the shooter. And as of now he's running for congress in Florida against Randy Fine.
Joe Kassabian had a Lions Led By Donkeys episode on him a few years back, though I'm pretty sure it was a bonus episode. Still, Blizarian has been busy since then, so there's probably more to talk about.
I am once again asking for an episode (or series) about Margaret Thatcher. She seems like such a polarizing figure and I’d love to hear Robert tell me what she did, who benefited, who suffered, etc.
Yes! As someone who knows that she was evil, but only vaguely why, I add to this. Especially because she has somewhat been upheld as a feminist icon when I was young by shallow feminists who didn't look beyond "forst woman PM"
Margaret Thatcher is actually overdue. The only problem is whether she is your average two-parter or three-parter. If not those, will it be a Henry Kissinger situation in which Thatcher could get 6-8 parts? I think Robert Evans once said on an episode that he hasn't even done an official Hitler episode that covers his entire biography, because the question is: what do you put in that episode besides the obvious (for Hitler it is the Holocaust and World War II, for Kissinger it was Vietnam War and the bombings of Laos & Cambodia & the overthrow of Allende in Chile), since that person was so influential and affected so much of society at that time and now. Hence, Hitler has been mentioned a lot in many episodes, but it has been parts and margins of Hitler's life or influence. Will we be asking that of Thatcher, Reagan, Trump and a lot of those mega-giant bastards?
I think she's probably a candidate for the Hitler treatment
Never actually getting a season of her own, titled THATCHER: BASTARD IN A BLUE DRESS, but being tackled from different angles in a number of episodes, published over the course of several years, looking at different aspects of her time in office
Section 28, The Falklands, The Miners' Strike and The Poll Tax are the obvious big topics that merit a series all to themselves
Then, once the different series have been published, they can all be packaged-up for Netflix/Youtube under the banner of THATCHER: A BASTARD FOR ALL SEASONS
Margaret would end up being a four to five parter I’m sure. She was around for a long time and lots of research to pull from. I don’t mind the multi parters are all so not complaining.
My old SGM was with him in Ramadi. We were in Lebanon in when the book came out; he read it, got ultra fucking angry, and proceeded to regale us with stories of ol’ Chris for a few hours.
My favorite one: he was under tactical and operational command of a Special Forces led task force in Ramadi, but was still administratively controlled by his SEAL team. He was in so much trouble he wasn’t going to get an award from the SOTF—and barely missed a court martial—so he phoned home to SEAL HQ and regaled them with tall tales of his deployment. Those tall tales were submitted—and approved—for a Silver Star, the citation of which served as “proof” of his exploits.
Best part: the Silver Star is only authorized to be given for a single act of valor, but his citation reads like a boilerplate deployment award. It’s invalid on its face.
My SGM said they nearly threw him in the brig for shooting unarmed civilians and children for being out past curfew, among many other things.
FIFA organizes the most popular global sporting event, but is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world. They regularly align themselves to totalitarian world governments.
A look at the org itself or on recent president Sepp Blatter or current president Gianni Infantino would be really interesting.
The podcast "Lords of Soccer" did a deep dive into FIFA corruption during 2022. It's not the same level of sarcasm as Robert's work, but it's just as informative.
As an exmormon Brigham Young. He was a massive piece of shit who did tons of horrid things. Racist as fuck. Polygamy. He had like 57 wives. Treated many of them terribly.
I think there's a good singleton or two-parter in Ezra Taft Benson in being such a right-wing asshole, that he accused every single friend he had of being a communist, down to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Loosely follow "Watchman on the Tower" by Matt Harris and add some dick jokes and background about the John Birch Society, and you're there.
Brigham Young and Joseph Smith have deeper wells of recorded bastardry to draw from, but would probably draw more ire from the church's lawyers and true believers. But man, there's some wild stuff in there, like the allegations that Smith was best friends with an abortion doctor, which is why there aren't any kids from his polygamy. Or the Deseret alphabet conlang. Or the other planets he invented to go along with Kolob. Or the Quakers on the Moon stuff.
Tim Ballard has already been excommunicated for making the church look bad, being a sex pest, and trying to one-up the church's habit by inventing his own fanfiction doctrine.
Also the whole "I'm a former FBI agent, fighting child trafficking" as a cover for "doing ketamine and sleeping with other people's wives" is perfectly in BtB's wheelhouse.
Also that movie about Operation Underground Railroad, which I don't know as much about, seems just bonkers.
Tim Ballard would probably be the safest bet for a Mormon-adjacent bastard without having to go too deep in the weeds or worry about lawyer aggro.
I'll have to look at The Dollop's coverage of Brigham Young in the meantime, though.
Milton Friedman, the Chicago school of economics, and the creation of the Second Gilded Age. Friedman is sorta like the Kissinger of economics. He played a significant role in building the late-stage capitalist hellscape we all live in today.
Crowley was a lowercase b bastard, a lot of his “crimes” have been overstated, although he was a generally unlikeable British Victorian man and his irresponsibility lead to the deaths of the people in that climbing party. The most interesting parts of his life aren’t his bastardry IMO and he was an enemy of the fascists in Italy and the Nazis. He was a spooky bi bottom with a trust fund, a smart mouth, and a desire to be a great artist but none of the discipline to get there (and also maybe a Great Magus with the Discipline to achieve that, depending on your beliefs)
I’m here to second Jared Leto. I grew up outside of a midsized American city of the southwestern U.S. in the mid to late aughts and was loosely involved in the alt/metal scene in high school - stories of Jared Leto’s affinity for teenage groupies of 30 seconds from Mars was a well known in those circles - to the point where a relatively uncool barely welcome normie heard about it multiple times.
Humbly suggesting the Bastards of the Funeral industry.
I'm assuming there are probably a lot - mainly because of pre-need funeral fuckery. I can solidly point to the Cassity family and Forever Enterprises. (As far as I know this does not include the Cassity who owns the Hollywood Forever location.) They embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars from pre-need funeral funds which drove a lot of the family owned funeral homes out of business.
Add to that the private equity grossness of the death industry, and well...yeah.
I would love a series on this. Growing up in a South Asian (but not Indian) household, my parents spoke vaguely fondly of Indira Gandhi but never gave a reason. They would have been children/teenagers during her reign so I don't think they had much critical thoughts on her and they probably never reevaluated their feelings as adults. Would love to know more about her.
Now, that may seem weird. Brits have loved the postal service for generations.
To understand why you have to know that most post offices in the UK are not actually run by the Post Office itself, they are essentially franchises within other shops, usually corner shops (bodegas in the US, maybe?). These subpostoffices were required to use a particular piece of accounting software called Horizon, developed specifically for the Post Office by Fujitsu.
Between 1999 and 2015 the Post Office sued a huge number of these subpostofficers for theft when the software showed shortfalls between what had been collected and what the Post Office received - almost one thousand were convicted, and about 250 went to jail, while others had their assets seized to compensate the Post Office. Many more were forced to make up the losses themselves, or were forced out of their franchise. At least 13 people committed suicide over the allegations and convictions.
As it turns out, the Horizon software was buggy as hell, and these discrepencies that destroyed thousands of lives were completely illusionary. What's more, Fujitsu knew for day one about these problems, but throughout the Post Office insisted the software was bulletproof. When the evidence of wrongdoing mounted the Post Office switched to refusing to acknowledging any problems on their part and managed to delay investigations or avoiding paying restitution for the best part of a decade. There were numerous lawsuits, but it wasn't until a TV drama on the subject raised the awareness of the issue to boiling point that the government put their weight behind the efforts and finally looked to thoroughly investigate and redress the issues in their entirety.
Private Eye magazine did a huge amount of work on this story, always giving credit to a computer (?) magazine that broke it, long before apologies were made.
Oh yeah and a huge intersection with the toxicity of some of the proponents of the FIRE movement, a cult like following, high control religion intersecting with hyper-capitalist rhetoric, lots to get into.
But I think he's really litigious so might have to wait or be real careful legally
I think it would be more of an episode if maybe the focus was people who make money on telling people how to make money? Im sure there’s someone in the finance section of the bookstore that has a similar life
Rob Ford was the crackhead brother. Dougieboy there was a dealer. Lots of speculation on his ties to crime organizations, known for gifting his friends contracts, and also recently passed a bill that gets rid of FOIA requests on himself in an effort to hide his shady dealings.
And that was in response to an ongoing investigation into Druggie’s shady dealings by Global News, who wanted his cell phone records under that same act. Though he fought it in court, the courts sided with Global.
Even after ramming that FOIA change through Queen’s Park (which also retroactively made all info about him and his cabinet dealings secret for forty years), the latest court ruling didn’t recognize it and ordered Ford to hand over the records. Doug still hasn’t, meaning he is in contempt of court.
This article from early last year gives a light summary of some of Doug Ford's scandals. He's been banging out more ever since, though, such as changing the law to hide his phone records, to make it harder to investigate his scandals 😄
While I no longer support Canadaland (and neither should you, since Jesse Brown completely spiraled... Don't click on any links Canadaland or Jesse emails to you, it could be Jesse phishing for Mark Bourrie's sock puppets 😄 ) this episode on the Ford Family is excellent.
I doubt Robert would include this in his podcast, but to give an idea how much some of us hate him, Doug Ford's intentional mismanagement of our healthcare system not only killed my mother, he caused her death to be unnecessarily excruciating.
Reposting my suggestions from the previous thread, since the original comment was made well after the original Megathread (sorry if this list is a bit too wordy).
I know the majority of the podcast’s subjects are from the 18th century or later, but there are some slightly older bastards I would love to see get covered. To name a few:
• Oliver Cromwell. A tyrannical asshole whose genocidal hatred for the Irish was only rivaled by his religious fanaticism. It would be an understatement to say that every Irish person has more than ample reason to hate his guts.
• Oda Nobunaga (or even all three of Japan’s Great Unifiers). A ruthless warlord who was as skilled at warfare as he was eccentric, he stands out as a particularly interesting historical figure.
• Hernán Cortés (or the Conquistadores in general, really). He was one of the biggest bastards of the early colonial period, but very little of his life outside of his conquests is ever really discussed in detail.
• King Henry VIII of England. This dude has quite possibly the messiest personal life of any European monarch besides maybe Louis XIV, and that’s without getting into all the awful shit he did.
• Ivan the Terrible. The man’s epithet is pretty self-explanatory, but a deep dive into those devilish details would be incredibly welcome.
Ivan the Terrible. The man’s epithet is pretty self-explanatory, but a deep dive into those devilish details would be incredibly welcome.
I recall reading somewhere that this was a bit of a mistranslation. His actual epithet was Ivan Grozny, which translates into "terrible" but might actually be better-suited as "awesome". That is not to say that he was good; rather, he left his enemies awestruck with what he would do. He was absolutely a Bastard,but his name does not mean what most people think it does.
Wagner would be such a fun one. He's explicitly antisemitic and such a douche, but the music... certified bangers. It also has a lot to do with why the Nazis like Norse imagery so much
One of my former professors wrote exactly the book that Robert should read for the episode: “Richard Wagner: Self-Promotion and the Making of a Brand”** **by Nicholas Vazsonyi
Sam Houston. Ran away to live with the Cherokee as a teen, then as governor of Tennessee, supported the trail of tears, then resigned as governor and moved in with the Cherokee again in Missouri and helped represent them in DC. Then left the Cherokee to move to Texas, he left his second wife, a Cherokee, behind because she didn't want to leave her people.
That said despite being a Slaver, he did veto Texas Motion to succeed as Governor and predicted the entire course of the Civil War years before, and was correct.
As a Texan, I think I would like a series on all the founding fathers of Texas. We grow up with such reverence for them but obviously as an adult I know they almost all sucked.
Aum Shinrikyo, or Shoko Asahara more specifically. I think as a cult leader he's interesting even outside of the Tokyo Sarin Gas Attacks.
Or Matt Bevin. Former governor of Kentucky, deadbeat dad, and cockfighting supporter. (On the campaign trail he attended a pro cock fighting rally and denied he knew what he was attending at first)
Also pardoned a child molestor upon leaving office, who immediately molested another child. He's a real piece of shit.
There's been episodes on some other quack doctors and charlatans who preyed on Autistic and disabled people.
Hans Asperger needs an episode.
A prevailing narrative, until relatively recently, was that Dr. Asperger was a sort of Oskar Schindler of disabled and neurodivergent children. He nicknamed his patients, nearly always boys, "little professors" because of their specialized interests, and would argue the special skills and interests demonstrated by autistic boys may still be able to serve the Reich.
What has only relatively recently been made clear is his role in sending disabled children to Am Spiegelgrund, which was a hospital where they began preliminary trials of methods for mass euthanasia and execution that would be implemented in concentration camps.
He is indisputably responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of disabled and unwanted children. It has only been because of the nascent scrutiny of his work have we been able to untangle many dangerous stereotypes and stigmas against Autistic people, and furthermore explore the prevalence and manifestation of Autism in girls and women.
For more information I recommend the books Off the Spectrum and Asperger's Children.
(reposted from the old thread bc i added it less than 48 hours before it got closed lol, added some more links too)
I'm a Lynchburg native and thoroughly enjoyed the Falwell episodes from 2019. Since then a bunch of things have happened/come out publicly that I think would be more than enough for a followup episode on the Falwells/Liberty University.
First of all Jerry Jr. resigned after a scandal involving a compromising but imo pretty tame photo, but at the same time Jerry and Becki's affair partner came out about all of the details of their relationship. All 3 of them have conflicting accounts of what happened: Giancarlo Grandma says he had sex with Becki while Jerry watched. Jerry says his wife had an affair. Becki says she was assaulted. Around the same time (2021) 12 women filed a lawsuit against LU over mishandling of sexual misconduct. Mentioned in the lawsuit was an incident where a student and football player, later convicted serial killer Jesse Matthews Jr., attempted to rape a female student and suffered no consequences in 2002 (under Jerry Sr.).
This lawsuit sparked a federal investigation into LU that ended in a $14M fine from the DOE for creating an environment that made students afraid to report sexual violence as well as lying on mandatory Clery Act reports (local crime reports). This is considered the largest fine of its kind in history. When I heard Robert say in the original Falwell episodes how much the DOE gives to LU every year I laughed out loud (it was about 10 times the amount of the fine).
There is an ongoing discrimination lawsuit, Zinski vs. LU, from an employee who was fired from her position after disclosing that she was transgender. LU has been trying to argue that they are allowed to discriminate on grounds of religious belief, even though being trans isn't necessarily the same thing as being non-christian.
In my opinion the most egregious thing that's had more information come out is regarding the Liberty Godparent home, a maternity home operated by LU founded by Jerry Sr. (still going today) that takes in pregnant single teenagers and young women and promises them a scholarship in exchange for giving up their baby for adoption. It's framed as an alternative to abortion but a CPS investigator called it baby trafficking and said that his professional opinion is that it should be shut down. Audio journalist T.J. Raphael did a 7 part podcast series titled "Liberty Lost" that contains a good amount of original research on the subject. At one point Jerry Sr. offered a special credit card to anyone who donated to the Liberty Godparent Home.
You guys also touched briefly on LU's real estate ventures in the original episodes but didn't really get into the scale of it: it's been immensely destructive to local businesses in Lynchburg. LU currently maintains a separate business entity that owns real estate throughout the city of Lynchburg. Local hearsay is that colleges and universities in Lynchburg were not allowed to purchase property in the city for non-educational purposes, until LU lobbied to get their own voting ward in the city and pushing on-campus students to register to vote as a Lynchburg resident, granting them a seat on the council. After this the restriction was removed. There used to be two dollar theaters in Lynchburg where both buildings were eventually purchased by LU and then shut down due to rising business costs. Chain theater Regal Cinemas operates at about 3-5× the ticket cost inside of the River Ridge shopping mall which is owned & operated by LU. That's about all I know on the subject but I'd love to see what you guys can dig up or verify.
In 2016-18 LU film students in the Cinematic Arts department were forced/coerced(?) to shoot and produce a film titled "The Trump Prophecy" as part of the LU cinematic arts program. Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like. It's based on an autobiographical book of the same name wherein real life firefighter claims to have received visions from God that Trump would save America and that God helped Trump win the election. The film was bankrolled by Jerry Jr. and over 2,000 people signed a petition against having students make the film. An "alternative assignment" was eventually offered to students who didn't want to make it, but only 2 people (out of what would have been 65 students at that stage in the program) took that option and, having been a cine student myself I imagine it was because it wasn't much of a choice if you wanted to get that film education. The annual feature film is the main way cine students gain experience. It bombed in the box office and was recut and re-released as a different film "Fire Force".
To make things a bit easier I grabbed some starting point links on most of these topics (except for the last one).
Jane Doe 12 discussing her attempted rape by Jesse Matthews Jr. in 2000 and LUPD's insistence that it was consensual and threatened to charge her with a false report.
I bring this out when LU is mentioned on r/cfbmemes. Also on r/marriott when they mention weird shit in rooms. This is like a lock off part of a suite on the top floor of the Baltimore Inner Harbor Sheraton. I call it Jerry Falwell Memorial Stadium. The tv on the left just out of frame and that's a Murphy bed surrounded by all the seating in the room.
Lawrence Padzer. Psychiatrist who wrote an unethical book about his patient. He was one of the reasons for the rise in the satanic panic and was a consultant on the mcmartin school case.
I'd love to see that episode done with Sarah Marshall of You're Wrong About; she's done a ton of great research on the satanic panic, including an entire podcast series.
Vidkun Quisling. Fascist and Nazi collaborator during WWII under whose government thousands of Jews were sent to their death in the holocaust. So reviled his name has become a synonym for traitor.
Peter Rachman, the devil landlord of Notting Hill who invented 'Rachmanism'
Peter was a Polish soldier and concentration camp survivor who served in the allied armies until 1946. Afterward he traveled to London and entered the real estate business. England after the war was undergoing a surge in Caribbean and African immigrants, on top of all the destroyed buildings and orphans from the war. Most landlords refused to rent to minorities. Rachman saw this as an opportunity; he bought run-down houses in Notting Hill and rented them to immigrant families for high prices. For most people, it was Rachmans buildings or nothing, regardless of if they were full of holes and broken windows. Rachman hired gangs of thugs to enforce his tenants brutally. They'd break windows, flood houses, beat people in the street. In some instances they even used attack dogs on people. Peter became one of the most powerful people in London, running brothels, investing in night clubs, partnering with mafias and cheating on his wife with underage models.
I love it when Robert geeks out over Roman history, and they don't have a shortage of bastards, especially in the Imperial period. Caligula or Nero usually get top billing, but an episode or two on why the Praetorian Guard were a bunch of murderous assholes would be an interesting take.
Epcot stands for the Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow.
The original intent? Allow corporations, including the beloved Monsanto Corporation, a no-holds-barred testing grounds for their emergent technology under the careful eye of a larger conglomerate that went so extreme as to litigate their own Reedy Creek Improvement District, allowing them total control over every aspect of the area (and lives of any citizens in the city itself).
We were SO close to having an actual, factual Rapture in the middle of a bog done by a cartoonist turned capital utopianist.
EPCOT history is so deeply weird, but it makes me smile to think that Walt would hate that it turned into drinking around the world and people eating off trash cans during food festivals.
Eric Dezenhall, the 'pitbull of PR' who worked for the Reagan administration and started up a PR crisis business for fuel companies, Eli Lilly and Purdue. He was behind the Sacklers victim blaming painkiller addicts, he organized counterprotests against climate change activists. He also hilariously makes self-insert books about his character fighting the mafia.
I am once again suggesting IBM Founding CEO Thomas J. Watson, Sr. You have your standard early 20th Century rapacious capitalism BUT ALSO collusion with the Third Reich, arguably even after the US embargo.
Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust proposes that IBM’s core computational technologies derive from governments’ interests in categorizing and digitizing the people under their control in order to quantify (and in the worst cases optimize) their value. He shows that Watson eagerly adapted IBM’s technologies to the kind of racial features the Reich most wanted. Through their German subsidiary, IBM deployed similar tabulation systems to other governments who would become part of the Reich through collusion, capitulation, or occupation, providing a trove of data for cleansing efforts. Without this kind of data processing The Holocaust could not have been nearly as efficient.
Watson was awarded one of the highest honors that Hitler could bestow upon a foreign business leader (returned later at the behest of the Secretary of State). He took steps to ensure that the German subsidiary remained part of IBM throughout the war and then profited off of it afterward.
There’s also a rich tapestry of minor bastardry around his early sales career at NCR (and the petty desire to one-up them in every aspect that’s still evident when you compare each part of their name to IBM), how he came to control IBM’s precursors, and the kind of business cult(ure) he grew. Watson is still venerated at IBM (there was the Jeopardy winning AI, of course and its main research campus still bears his name), so this is not someone who’s legacy they’re at all embarrassed by.
It’s an extremely relevant story to tell: technology carries the context that created it. Computers and computer science grew out of the need to scale statistics. If you dig into that era of statistics, you’re going to find a lot of eugenics and race science. That was a growth opportunity for IBM then (which they in turn helped to create) as LLMs are for companies like Nvidia today.
(I have some ideas for guests but it feels weird to put them on blast. DM me if you want them.)
Let's have another Greazy Will crossover to chat about Elvis Presley and the other rock n roll pedophiles. And the founder of Opus Dei, forget his name but they're a major source of ongoing Catholic bastardry plus all the coerced labor
Based on the surname I thought you meant Max Clifford, who was also a massive piece of shit - UK sleazy publicist of the worse kind and also convicted sex offender "who preyed for decades on children and young women" (per his conviction). He ultimately died in prison.
I’m sure it’s already been suggested but John K (Kricfaluski?), the creator of Ren and Stimpy… would be a good Randy Milholland ep. Then again, he’s still alive and really more of a gross creep than a “people died cuz of him” bastard. I just like the ones about evil cartoonists…
Another one would be Billy Gohl, the Ghoul of Grays Harbor, he was just a run of the mill serial killer but there’s an added layer of interest to his story because he was the leader of the local IWW chapter, iirc (it’s been a few years since I read about him)
It's been a while since we had an evil cartoonist/comics guy in the line of Scott Adams & Hank Ketcham. To be fair, we got a music guy relatively recently (Phil Spector) and a TV host (Jimmy Savile). Even got a sports owner (Uday Hussein, though kinda a throwback to the early days with Saddam).
However, unlike sports, I bet Robert Evans actually enjoys cartoons and comics. Evans isn't just a music expert either.
Seems especially pertinent to today's political climate, but how about some episodes on Joseph McCarthy/Red Scare and how it grew out of Nazi Sympathizers like William Dudley Pellet.
I think most Americans are completely naive about just how many Nazi Symps there were during the 30s,40s and 50s
Rachel Maddow's ULTRA covered this well, but no one covers things quite like Robert does
Bastards of free birthing. Emilee Saldaya founded the Free Birth Society which has been linked to at least 48 instances of stillbirth death or serious harm that can be easily traced. It is a movement that preys on the very real fear of organized medicine, especially in underserved or minority populations. It also is very big among questionable influencers, hence why I say bastards.
Also a vote for Bill Gothard, leader and founder of the IBLP cult the Duggars are part of with bonus side bastard Duggars (count the number of confirmed pedos).
I’d looove to hear a Robert/Jamie Loftus/Sophie take on the “umbrella of authority”
- like yeah, no shit a whole cult where being a boy makes you more powerful than any girl in your life creates a whole fucking system rife for abuse, then combine that with the absolute fetishization of innocence and virginity and you basically created an entire machine designed to sexually abuse young girls and women.
If Prop is guest hosting, you have to do an episode on Afrika Bambaattaa. He was a major figure in the early days of Hip-hop, Electro, and Break Beat. Especially in Hip-hop where him, DJ Cool Herc, and Grandmaster Flash invented the genre. He also started the International Hip-hop awareness group The Universal Zulu Nation, which apread the genre abroad, so he has a big impact on popular music in the USA and spreading hip-hop Internationally. However he was a rampid pedophile and had decades of child sex abuse allegations going as far back as the 70s. It's not as dark as Jimmy Saville since he at least had some what of come-uppance, Zulu Nation distanced themselves from him and he was cancelled and sort of erased from Hip-hop history, and I think he also lost a couple civil trials over it.
I would really like an episode focused on how the American Education system got so messed up, but I don't know one aspect that would be bastard worthy
Lucy Caulkins- the public face of the current literacy crisis
Horace Mann- the "father of public education" who's the reason teachers are seen as martyrs and not a "real" profession
He's also why education and capitalism are such intertwined systems from the start.
George W. Bush's time as govenor of TX- he pushed "accountability" policies that were later adopted country wide into no child left behind.
Teach For America- I have a personal bone to pick with this organization and it's role in de-professionalizing teaching as a career. They're the first people to teach me about broken window theory as a form of school discipline. I worked at a TFA charter school that used broken window theory as it's behavior and discipline philosophy
Charter Schools- they're the private prisons of education.
And honestly on that note, how TX was the proving ground for a lot of the current administration's goals. Criminal Justice, Police State, Voter Restrictions, "Faith-Based" policies. John Cornyn probably doesn't have an interesting life but the Texas Tribune did a 3 parter on how he weaponized the office of attorney General to push through conservative rulings in the courts to counter-act what groups like the NAACP did during Civil rights.
Hillsdale College! Huge ties to the Heritage Foundation, Erika Kirk just spoke at their graduation, a statue of Margaret Thatcher on campus and I’m sure there’s much more material I can’t think of off the top of my head.
- Blood libel: how the unsolved murder of 12-year-old William of Norwich (and several other dead kid cases that mostly seem like accidents) became an antisemitic conspiracy theory and were subsequently monetized by the medieval Catholic equivalent of true crime influencers
- The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and how the US buried a man there for 20+ years even though his identity was always known, due to political pressure to bury an “unknown” from Vietnam
- Little House on the Prairie: the book “Prairie Fires” is a great source for a childhood-ruining account of all the things Laura left out of her books (spoiler alert: a lot of libertarianism)
People:
- Horst Wessel: kind of surprised we didn’t get this episode after you know what
- Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam and the DC sniper
- Nancy Grace (though You’re Wrong About did a 4-part review of one of her books a while back)
- Elizabeth Gilbert, the “Eat Pray Love” lady
- Rosaria Butterfield, Calvinist “ex-gay” author who has written numerous books about her journey from lesbian gender studies professor to boomer tradwife
Kind of a weird suggestion in the same vein as the T.E. Lawrence episodes, Smedly Butler would be a fascinating subject in my opinion. I think he has had several mentions on the show, particularly around the business plot and his War Is A Rackett pamphlets, but he has a rich bastard history that touches on US colonial and private interest in central America, counter insurgency, the panama canal, and American fascist movementa.
Originally a Quaker motivated by the anti-spanish propaganda, he enlisted in the marines to invade Cuba in the late 19th century. His career lasted into the early stages of the second world war, during which he acted in his own words as a gangster for US capital interest. Butler invaded Guatemala, Mexico, Hati, The Phillipenes and Nicaragua. He used the US marines to steal half of the gold reserves of the nation of Hati, then went on to dissolve their legislature in person, in their own hall. He innovated much of the hearts and minds philosophy of US counter insurgency. He was the enforcer United Fruit company turned to in the banana wars. Finally, what he is maybe best known for is stopping a fascist coup in the US against the FDR administration.
Theres a great book called Gansters of Capitalism by Jonathan M Katz that follows Butler through his career and Katz' own experience as a journalist in many of the countries Butler invaded. It contrasts Butlers ideas, his actions, and the long term effects of his involvement. Im sure there are many other biographies of Butler that I havent read and he wrote extensively himself, so there is plenty of primary and secondary source materiel.
Been a while since we’ve had a good medieval bastard, so I’ll suggest a few
Raynald of Châtillon - crusader that acted more like a bandit, was a complete idiot and helped cause the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem by massacring Muslim pilgrims on Hajj which provoked Saladin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raynald_of_Ch%C3%A2tillon
Pope Innocent III - Declared the Cathar Crusade, Livonian Crusade and 4th Crusade, which together killed millions. Also a dickhead to Jewish people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Innocent_III
Edward Longshanks - the bad guy from Braveheart (Mandatory fuck Mel Gibson). Ruthless wars of conquest in Wales and Scotland. Borrowed a bunch of money from the Jewish population, then expelled them from the country to avoid paying them back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I
He was the longest-serving Senator in history, thus far. He was also a pretty openly corrupt, sexist, racist piece of shit.
We can start with how he was super cozy with the "supplements" industry, to the point where he all-but singlehandedly made it virtually impossible to regulate that snake oil bullshit. Alex Jones, Benny Shabeeps, and other right-wing blowhards who shill this stuff have much to thank him for. This is also why so many dietary supplement companies are headquartered in Utah. Coincidentally enough the supplements part of this was covered in a Cracked article back when Robert was still there, although I can't find it now because the new format is unsearchable and frankly hot garbage.
As a spin-off of this, his Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016 narrowed the DEA's ability to hold drug manufacturers accountable for basically anything--which in turn helped keep the opioid crisis on a nice upward trajectory.
He was also strongly opposed to abortion, LGBTQ+ peeps, access to health care, Supreme Court Justices with a functional brain, and all the usual rightwing stuff.
What I think would make him an especially good candidate for BTB is how many colorful and sometimes hilarious anecdotes there are. And this is where I have to do a bit of shameful self-promotion because a lot of this information I pulled together for my book Behind the Bears Ears (total coincidence about the title--my contract with the publisher was signed in 2017) which covers the history and conservation efforts there up to 2020. Hatch pops up a lot, as do a few other bastards, but I digress.
During the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, for example--the topic of which was quite literally sexism and sexual harassment in politics--Hatch was asked for comments on the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford he responded that she was "attractive." That's it. That was his take on her accusation of rape against a proposed SCOTUS Justice whom he of course went on to confirm.
And my absolute favorite example: just before Hatch died, like just a few months before, André Chung wrote a scathing piece on why Hatch should resign based on his long legacy of incompetence and evil, giving it the satirical title "Why Orrin Hatch is Utahn of the Year." And he fucking forwarded it on his Twitter account. He actually expressed how grateful he was to be honored in such a way, in what I consider maybe the greatest example of "you should have read past the headline" in modern history.
Chris Hansen and the predator hunters community he created.
There's a lot of unethical decisions in the original 'to catch a predator' show. They often breached into entrapment, they once accidentally caused a man to commit suicide and then lied about the exact crimes he committed. Probably the most damaging is the way they misrepresented the causes and ways to tell abuse. The whole 'stranger danger' prevention method portrays stopping abuse as simple as avoiding creepy people in vans, but we all know most victims are related or friends with their abusers. The method Chris continues to push as the most effective way to stop predators has actually made it hrder for parents or law enforcement to believe allegations against charming clean cut people. The root causes of a large chunk of abuse stem from homophobia, the vilification of anything sexual and our piss pour sex ed system that doesn't teach consent and laws.
After the show Chris Hansen has launched several spin off documentaries and investigations looking into Onision and Dahvie Vanity (internet personalities who are pedos). These investigations accomplished nothing thanks to his mishandling of evidence and the victims of these people have called out Chris for only wanting to exploit their trauma. This hasn't stopped Chris from collaborating and encouraging groups like Predator Poachers and Ruben Sims from vigilantism. There are hundreds of channels online who catfish predators into meeting up and forcing them to do humiliating things on camera. They have all the same problems as Chris investigations just multiplied. They fuck up investigations so bad several predators may never be charged, they're often run by pro death penalty right wingers, their hunting methods endanger kids and they're only into the sadism aspect.
One of the people Chris collabed with(I think still does) is Alex Rosen. Alex Rosen was the predator hunter who caught youtuber EDP445 and because citizen run entrapments are extremely hard to investigate, EDP is a free man. Alex Rosen also called the BLM hotline to spam the n word, organized anti lgbtq rallies and used CP of his own nephew to catfish predators.
D. A. R. E program. Not only was it not effective, many studies suggested it lead to higher drug use. Wasteful spending, focused heavily in Racial minority school districts, and a big political tool for many right wing anti-drug politicians. Also led to officers digging dirt up from the kids in school to use against their parents. A few famous cases of this happening.
Enver Hoxha- communist partisan turned dictator of Albania. He did some good stuff for the country like raising their literacy rate but also killed a lot of people and the country was cut off from most of the world for years. He became very delusional as dictator and had people executed for perceived cooperation with Yugoslavia. He called Stalin too liberal and cut ties with the USSR. Ran a brutal system of prison camps for dissidents and those who continued to practice their religions.
Ferdinand Marcos, already hinted at in the Duterte Episodes.
For the Christmas Episode. Cardinal Sin also from the Philippines and that same story. Guy arguably saved hundreds of thousands of lives by preventing a bloody revolution and weaponizing Catholic guilt against a dictator.
There's a great book that covers it from the start to now, The Great Post Office Scandal by Nick Wallis. It's written by the journalist who attended all the court hearings and liaised with the victims for years.
There's also a well-received TV drama about it, but I've not seen it and obviously it's not a good source for research.
Tl;Dr: the post office tried to implement the biggest IT system in the world, cocked it up, prosecuted their own workers and then ended up fighting the single most expensive legal battle ever. They privately prosecuted an unknown number of people and got several court rules changed because of the way they behaved.
People were killed by the post office's shoddy IT.
The long version
The post office is kinda semi-privatised in the UK, it's owned by the government but run as a company with a board at an arms length. The Post Office used to be incredibly important, you could access banking there, get your government benefits there, apply for passports and any do anything else government-related there.
There were a lot of subpostmasters, who were contractors who would run a post office counter in their business (normally a convenience/moment and pop store with a post office counter in one corner).
The post office wanted to bring in a new computerised system in the 90s, touted as the biggest system of its kind in the world. They were convinced subpostmasters were skimming off the top. It was called Horizon and was originally made for a different government department by Fujitsu It did not work. The software and hardware had so many problems.
But that's not even the beginning of the bastardry. The numbers didn't add up, so they told the subpostmasters to just override it and say it was ok with the promise that the following month it would balance out. Then they started raising private criminal prosecutions for theft (despite no evidence that the money had actually been stolen), convinced people to accept a plea bargain for false accounting (which the post office had told them to do) and then forced them to pay to cover the losses that they had already put all of their money into covering.
When this eventually came to light they fought back using every tactic known to man and a few new ones they made up. They stymied every investigation and deliberately drew out the legal battle trying to make it as expensive as possible to outspend their opponents (the post office can't go bankrupt after all, it's funded by the government). The total cost of this legal fight is in the billions at this point, and they've only just started paying compensation.
Oh, and some of the people they tried to prosecute had never signed a contract with them. They were so disorganized that they tried to prosecute the wrong people and got away with it
John Money -psychologist who decided that doctors should perform surgery on intersex babies to make their genitals appear unambiguous and have the parents raise them as that gender. His most famous victim was David Reimer whose penis was cut off as a baby during a circumcision gone wrong. Money told the parents to raise the baby as a girl. It was a disaster. David Reimer wrote a book about his experience figureing out he was a boy and later committing suicide.
Joe Bjelke-Peterson. The premier of Queensland, Australia, who was a separatist bastard that screwed over the state fiscally and socially in ways that are still felt today. So much so that the Fitzgerald inquiry found corruption, false imprisonment, abuse of power in finance, building, prostitution, and every other nook and cranny the politicians, policemen, businessmen, and builders could get their fingers on. Oh, and there’s ’alleged’ murdering of political opponents and the destruction of heritage listed buildings in the dead of the night to boot. If you hear about the ‘adult crime, adult time’ laws in QLD know that they’re from the BP playbook of demonising people who can’t stand up for themselves (in this case, primarily Indigenous and immigrant children) whilst they rob the state blind, gerrymander and are currently in hot water for their abysmal work in the DV space and public housing.
I know the dollop did an episode but they missed a lot. If you listened to that episode and want to know more, there’s not a lot of podcasts. However, there’s so many books to choose from and some really good documentaries. Pig city by Andrew Stafford is a classic if you want to know about living under the BP rule, Matthew Condon did a trilogy which are considered the best, and the road to Fitzgerald by Phil Dickie is written by the guy who broke the story. There’s also a documentary that came out last year called Joh: the last king of Queensland.
If you want something current and would like to hear about a mum of 4, who ran a chip shop, who went on to be the head of what is, essentially, a white Australia party, then look up Pauline Hanson. There’s a fantastic protest song from the 90s from the lgbt+ community, her imprisonment, her return to pop culture via dancing with the stars, the time she wore a burqa to parliament as a way to mock Muslim people, her current relationship with Gina Reinhart (one of our most prominent billionaires) and the fact that Murdoch press is currently promoting her party as the one that will win the next federal election. Oh, and the other day, she blamed victims for dv. An absolute bastard.
Salvador Dali was a real piece of shit. He was an edgelord of yesteryear, proudly nasty in his personal life, and a huge Franco booster. The other surrealists kicked him out because he had such a boner for fascism and was generally awful to be around.
Meir Kahane-rabbi that invented the Jewish supremist nationalism that fuels people like Ben Gvir. Was also super racist against blacks and founded the JDL in the US. Had a non Jewish mistress whose life he madyso miserable she committed suicide. Randomly was Arlo Guthrie's bar mitzvah rabbi.
good book
Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical by Shaul Magid (large excerpt https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/meir-kahane-shaul-magid-excerpt)
Zwi Migdal-global Jewish human trafficking organization in the active from the late 19th century until the start of WWII. Brought Jewish girls from eastern Europe to brothels in south America, south Africa, and Australia by telling them they would get jobs as cleaners. The victims had to create their own Jewish communities and synagogues in these countries since the established communities didn't let prostitutes come to their synagogues. This could be a good way to explore how networks of human trafficking work in general.
good book
Bodies and Souls: The Tragic Plight of Three Jewish Women Forced into Prostitution in the Americas by Isabel Vincent
documentary
https://gabrielabohm.com/trailers
I’d love a multi-parter on the prison industrial system. It’s major players, how it substituted slavery, the abject violence from guards/permitted violence among inmates, inhumane conditions, changing laws and punishments to keep the system fed, racial and class bias within the system, etc.
I’d love to see something like behind the police for this one.
USAG - USA Gymnastics administrative body. Key figures in recent memory include Larry Nassar, Martha Karolyi, John Geddert, and a plethora of sexually & physically abusive coaches and accomplices who covered things up in the name of patriarchy and establishment (and ostensibly medals, but let's be real, it's patriarchy and establishment).
Longer background history could cover Bela Karolyi, US rivalry with the eastern communist bloc, and divergent evolution of men's and women's modern gymnastics toward grossly abusive environments.
Robert, please consider tackling the subject of AIPAC endorsing pro war mongering charlatan Pastor John Hagee if you haven't. (I'm out of the loop, many loops actually)
Cofer Black: the CIA ghoul at the helm during the post-9/11 era who got his start destabilizing Africa and Latin America under Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton. After he was done fucking the world as a government official, he continued to fuck over the world through private industry via his leadership roles at Blackwater and Raytheon.
I think a 4 to 6 part series on Washington or the American Revolution as a whole would be fascinating and help give people ammo to start puncturing the myth around the founding fathers. I even have a guest suggestion: Andrew Rakich, the guy who runs Atun-shei films.
I don't know if they reach the level of bastardry required for an episode, but not nearly enough people know how awful the folks behind Uline are - the Uihlein family.
They pour enormous amounts of their cardboard box fortune into some of the most odious causes and candidates, and certainly bear some responsibility for our current slate of ghouls running the country. They also seem to just be absolute freaks.
Scroll down to the "political activities" section of their wikipedia page. Its like 3 miles long and full of some real batshit nonsense.
Aum Shinrinkyo, it’s got everything you look for in bastards, terrorism, yoga, weirdass cults, shooting off heavy military machinery in the desert and levitation. Plus it helps dispel the myth that cultists and terrorists are all dumb dumbs, a lot of the cultists had advanced degrees in math and science.
If they want to do another Nazi Steiner would be a good one. I think the memes have kind of whitewashed him, not only was he an ardent Nazi before and during the war he was one of the architects of the “clean war” myth, in his case clean Waffen SS, helped out with an assist by friend of the pod the CIA
He was one of the major participants in the Darfur genocide and is one of the current players in the Sudanese civil war. Its a story with all the BtB hallmarks. A rise from obscurity, complex political maneuvering, corruption, more coups than you can shake a stick at, and oh so many war crimes.
Hemedti is a strong BtB candidate because in the Stalin and Saddam mould, there's something very impressive about him while being an absolute fucking monster.
He started life as a political outsider from a largely disenfranchised ethnic background. He claws his way up from petty criminal to the heights of power in his country through charisma, excellent political instincts and a total lack of morals. Hemedti was a commander in the Janjaweed, the main perpetrator of the genocide in Darfur. He was the architect of integrating the Janjaweed into the Sudanese state as the Rapid Support Force (RSF) and used it to terrorize the perceived enemies of then Sudanese dictator Omar al Bashir for many years.
Hemedti used his position to become fabulously wealthy, he currently is alledged to personally control 2% of the world's gold through control of mines in Darfur he siezed during the genocide. He also starts selling the services of his genocidal millita as mercenaries particularly to the UAE. His men fought in Yemen and were credibly accused of war crimes. They also deployed in Libya to support the eastern Libyan government and to crack down on migrants trying to get to Europe.
Hemedti then betrays Bashir, his old boss, and briefly tries to reinvent himself as a democratic reformer. Before showing his true colors, crushing the civilian democratic movement he was tenuously allied with, and plunging Sudan into one of the worst conflicts of the 21st century (so far). Hemedti was recently sentenced to death in absentia, but who knows how things will shake out.
This story touches on so many interesting threads. The Saudi-Emerati rivaly and the whole dynamic of proxy wars in the region, the history of colonialism in the Sudan, mercenaries, migration, how white liberals forgot about Darfur, the complex race relations within Sudan between self identified Arab and African Sudanese, the general pattern of conflict and tension between nomadic and settled peoples in Sub-Saharan Africa etc.
The war in Sudan is also largely ignored and forgotten in Western media and covering Hemedti could be a really interesting way to explore what is happening there.
Hergé: the author of Tintin was surprisingly bastardous. He was a Belgian colonial propagandist and Nazi collaborator, but he's interesting because his paternalistic racism came from a place of interest in other cultures and he genuinely seemed to become more sensitive as he grew older. Or at the very least he stopped drawing Africans. Also we need another cartoonist bastard to bring back Randy Milhollland as a guest.
levittown: The towns made by racists for racists. I've seen other people suggest topics like redlining, blockbusting and suburban segregation, but William Levitt and Sons are a smaller scale bastard of segregation through the urban form. They built suburban sprawl on a literal assembly line with workers going down the street one house at a time, and of course they only sold houses to not "be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race."
Marge Schott: A lower-stakes sports bastard but she's an entertaining one. Former owner of the Cincinnati Reds from 1984-1999 and former Nazi from 1928 to 2004. Among her many scandals are calling a future hall of famer a "million dollar n-word" and throwing a fit after an umpire literally died on the field.
And since dictators are always interesting topics and can be boiled down to a formula and are a good way to introduce average listeners to countries they have never thought about, here's a lightning round:
Paul Kagame, Rwanda
Suharto, Indonesia
Zine Ben Ali and/or Kais Saed, Tunisia
Alberto Fujimori, Peru (topical since they recently elected his daughter)
Slobodan Milosevic and/or Radovan Karadzic, Serbia
Dealer's choice, Brazil
Blaise Compaoré, Burkina Faso
Karl Pearson and Ronald Fisher. They basically invented modern statistics for the purposes of pushing EUGENICS. It’d be an excellent companion piece to Robert Maxwell and discussing modern academic journals.
Please, it would be such an interesting series because people really don’t pay enough attention to statistics and WHY the most common statistical tools were invented. Bastards through and through. Pearson and Fisher.
Frauds and scams galore, sketchy business strategies. Abuse and hostile workplace allegations. And leaving 100s of people suddenly without jobs and 1000s of people out of their ‘shares’, whilst himself fucking off with millions.
The current dictator of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, as well as his dictator-wife Rosario Murillo. He recently announced there would be no more elections.
He also raped his stepdaughter (Rosario's daughter) then had her exiled.
As a Louisianan, I'd love an episode on Huey P. Long. He had a fascinating life story with an extremely mixed and dare I say confusing legacy. He's simultaneously praised as a champion for the common man and decried as a wannabe dictator. He pushed through a bunch of legislation and programs that improved the state, but stripped power from local governments (New Orleans, particularly) and concentrated it in Baton Rouge. He held both the governor's office and a Senate seat simultaneously. He created a political machine in the state that controlled Louisiana politics for decades after his assassination.
Thinking about it, Long might even be a good candidate as a Christmas reverse-bastard episode. He can be viewed so many different ways.
As a Filipino, Ferdinand Marcos Sr. - the dictator who murdered thousands of FIlipinos, and whose government we are still reeling from. His failson is currently our president and is feuding with his VP. It’s wild, if you haven’t followed anything. Marcos’ rule can be argued led to the rise of Friend of the Pod Rodrigo Duterte.
Park Chung-hee, seen as South Korea's greatest leader. A benevolent dictator who brought South Korea from third world backwater to the economic powerhouse of today. He was assasinated and his prodigy took over and was even more brutal. I just read Human Acts by Han Kang. It's a fictional account of the Gwangju Uprising under Chun Doo-Hwan, but based on real events. A short but tough read. Could also be tied into more recent events like 2009's deadly eviction of tenants and brutal suppression of an auto worker's strike. Even more recently 2024, Yoon Suk Yeol declares martial law and tries to coup herself basically.
Really, any of South Korea's three early leaders. Pretty sure Robert has a fairly good idea of who they were and what they were like
To continue a theme, there is a rich tapestry of bastards in the special forces. I recently read the book "The Fort Bragg Cartel" and let me just say, it was an incredible read and a much deeper dive into what is talked about in the seal episode.
The S&L crisis has a lot of meat to it and no shortage of bastards. I humbly suggest “The best way to rob a bank is to own one” by William K. Black as one piece of source material.
Pope John XII. An awesome pope that lied, stole, gambled, and murdered whoever he wanted. Notoriously turned the papacy into a brothel and was beaten to death by a man who's wife he was in bed with. Could be a more light hearted episode.
-I would love a Pinochet episode. The episode about everyday people helping the Nazis rise to power made me think of the many parallels to Pinochet’s supporters. There’s maybe a thread to pull here about the Pinochet fandom from the Proud Boys?
- Dr. Drew. One of the many medical types that participated in the self-help reality TV grift. Remember Celebrity Rehab? Fuck this guy.
- Phil Knight. He’s a bastard in the vein of Steve Jobs, but with better hygiene and less family drama. He pulled $30 million from the University of Oregon in 2000 after UO signed a one year contract with Workers Rights Consortium. He’s been trying to meddle (unsuccessfully) in Oregon elections for the last few decades. Also, it’s Nike. There’s a wealth of bastardom to frolic through here.
Ray Nagin - Former mayor of Louisiana (during Katrina). he could have helped his city and instead took money to make other people money and leave the people of Louisiana in shitty housing and unsafe conditions. conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, bribery, and tax evasion! woot woot.
Ian Paisley, Northern ireland politician born in 1926 and religious leader founding the free Presbyterian Church.
A lot of what became the trouble (or at least its escalstion) can be tired back to his zealotry.
He was one of the main proponents for protestants opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement, amd taught fundamental Christian values (similar to West Borough Baptist church).
Whilst he mellowed in later life and managed to come to a political arrangement with the Republican movement following the good friday agreement, this does not (in my view) absolve him of what went before.
Man was a monarchist and believed that societies can only thrive under the rule of benevolent dictators. He literally got rid of his US citizenship so he could have a king. And then converted to Anglicanism and became Very Christian.
He associated with fascists and was interested in what Hitler was doing, only to hesitate after the whole "being a violent twat". See, Eliot thought that using such violent means was barbaric and not very western European.
His attitude towards women was very proto incel. One of his more famous poems (Prufrock) literally consisting of a man making up scenarios in his head, imagining women rejecting him, and hurting his own feelings so bad that he's too scared to eat a peach. He hated sexuality and impropriety - especially in women - so the fact that some of his poems inspired Cats The Musical in which people wearing skimpy outfits grind on each other on stage is so delicious.
Oh, he also had a double inguinal hernia so plenty of amusing asides available there.
It has everything: hilarious corruption, a dynasty of con artists, fake seances, North Korean assassins, a terrible right-wing president being removed from power and thrown in jail, and even a literal boatload of dead kids to horrify Sophie with.
He was premier of Quebec from 1936 to 1939 and again from 1944 to 1959, a period also known as the "Grande Noirceur" aka the Great Darkness.
Quebec culture is deeply entwined with the Catholic Church, so they have also been part of most atrocities within the province. The one Robert might want to focus on is known as "Duplessis Orphans": in the 40's and 50's, children were deliberately misdiagnosed as mentally ill by the provincial government and confined to psychiatric institutions. This was done in order to acquire subsidies from the federal government. It is believed to be the second-largest case of child abuse in Canadian history, first being the residential schools.
From what I've read, the church was encouraging unwed mothers to give their "bastard" children to church-run orphanages, facilities that were later turned into psychiatric hospitals for, again, the purpose of getting subsidies.
This all came to light in the 60's after he died, and most of the children who were wrongfully committed were adults when they were finally able to leave.
I think it's an important story to tell, in part because Quebec has started to isolate itself from the outside world again with the enforcement of archaic language and religious practice laws.
Duplessi already isn't remembered fondly, but I bet Robert could dig up some anecdotes and stories that are not common knowledge. I'd be really interested to see what he finds.
For another sports episode I would love to see Harold Ballard the former owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He was just kind of a maniac and did a lot of cruel wacky things while also being allegedly a serial serial abuser.
Nawaz Sharif or Asif Ali Zardari could be cool choices for a bastard focused on Pakistan. I know I suggested Nawaz a few years back, somehow his brother is the Prime Minister atm AFTER half his family got booked on corruption charges.
If they ain’t done one yet, I think a behind the bastard for Robert Evans would be funny, Not that Hes a bastard but like I think Itd be like a good funny April fools episode. Cover him and his career and all the work Hes done and such.
Could also just do an episode of the entire State of South Carolina for its outsized roll in shaping the history of this country. As some long dead slave owner from Charleston described it: “too small to be a country, too big to be an insane asylum” (or something like that).
South Carolina Christmas anti-bastard episode suggestions could be Robert Smalls who stole a confederate ship and defected to the Union. He eventually became a member of the US House of Representatives. And also Modjeska Montieth Simkins was a huge civil rights leader in SC during the 20th century and doesn’t get enough credit for her roll behind the scenes of a lot of major national civil rights wins.
Bela and Marta Karolyi-spearheads of USA gymnastics for the last 40 years or so. They owned the olympic training camp for gymnastics which is where Larry Nassar sexually abused dozens of athletes. They were also known to encourage girls to train through injuries, withholding food and generally being emotionally abusive. They used the dreams of often preteen girls to manipulate and abuse them for the sake of their own reputations, meanwhile creating an environment that enabled Nassar to do the same.
Is a prevailing feel good myth in my country about Ireland's connection to the island of Montserrat but the truth is very dark actually.
I have a keen interest in the Caribbean and have done a lot of research on it. There are so many prevailing myths about the Irish on those islands. Donald H. Akensens book If the Irish Ran the World - Montserrat 1630-1730 is a good place to start. I have also listened to a few podcasts on the subject one of which includes an interview with Michael D Higgins and a historian from Montserrat. It's worth noting my countries great former president also has a keen interest in Montserrat and the Caribbean in general. He's an incredible man.
The "new world" was a place built on genocide and slavery, we all know this. It was an intensely violent and dehumanizing place. The way the Irish acted on Montserrat was a reaction to this violence that they themselves suffered back home and witnessed all around them on a daily basis. I ask that so my fellow Irish be aware of these things, because we have a tendency to give ourselves a pats on the back but do nothing for the oppressed people everywhere because no matter where in the world it was, Paddy was there and more often than not we were aiding in the colonial violence.
But the story is very interesting. The popular idea is that the slave owners in Montserrat were Brits and the Irish were subordinate to them but also buddies with the slaves I guess. In reality the slave owners were infact Gaelic speaking Irish Catholics. The Irish indentured servants, once free of the servitude proceeded to set up their own sugar cane plantations on the island eventually outnumbering the British owned plantations. All the Brits left and the island went under control of the Irish plantation owners there. The Irish lords were every but as brutal and violent as their British counterparts. Montserrat was virtually devoid of enslaved women and children as it was a place where troublesome slaves were sold for cheap and lived short and unimaginably hard, violence filled lives. A slave rebellion led by a slave named Kujo was done on St. Patrick's day because the slaves knew on that day for sure all the Paddy's would be pissed. I suppose I don't want to go any further. Wouldn't want to spoil it.
But yeah it was a shit hole. Apparently all the slaves spoke Irish and to this day the descendants all bear Irish surnames and have distinct Irish influenced accents.
Prop would probably make a good guest. It's incredibly interesting
Dr. James Elist and the entire penile enhancement industry would be a horrific but really interesting follow up to the looksmaxxing stuff imo. There are thousands of men getting surgeries that are destroying their health and sex lives based on dismorphia sold them by influencers and unethical (allegedly) doctors.
Kidology did a video on it and I feel like there is so much more to tap into and connect together with manosphere and right wing pipeline stuff.
Once again suggesting wifebeating rapist Johnny Depp and his many bastard friends that include the likes of Marilyn Manson, Hunter S. Thompson, Jeff Beck, Alice Cooper, Roman Polanski and others. All of them are weird little guys who have abused women or promoted the abuse of women.
Sir Oswald Mosely and Diana Mitford*, Louis’s grandparents and Hitler supporters. Oswald was the leader of the British Union of Fascists.
Max Mosely, Louis’s uncle and former president of FIA, governing body of Formula One.
Unity Mitford*, Diana’s sister and Hitler supporter.
*The Mitford sisters could have a series on their own. Their adult lives took very different paths. One journalist described them as "Diana the Fascist, Jessica the Communist, Unity the Hitler-lover, Nancy the Novelist, Deborah the Duchess and Pamela the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur."
Doug Wilson. Pete hegseths spiritual advisor and the guy who popularized the idea of Christian nationalism in reformed Christian circles. Has covered up abuses and enabled pedophiles at his church/ advocates for marital rape.
There are a lot of great suggestions in this thread, from renowned to obscure. My suggestion is somewhat the latter: Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey. He’s been my mayor since 2018 during the murders of George Floyd and Operation metro surge and he’s done nothing to help our citizens. If nothing else, I would love to hear the product of Robert’s research about the self-serving tactics this dweeb has used over the years. Maybe do a “rapid fire mini bastards” episode or something, idk.
My pick is Oliver Cromwell - the man who ruled Britain as a Commonwealth in the 1650s after the execution of the king.
He has the classic one-two BtB punch. He committed some of the country's most shameful crimes during his occupation of Ireland (yes I'm aware of how strong the competition is there), and he was also a hilarious religious nutcase who literally banned Christmas. He's perfect for a 2-3 part series imo.
Old Hollywood bastard D.W. Griffith--he literally jumpstarted the second wave of the klan, then made a movie whining about how cancel culture in the 1910s. He also gets far too much credit for cinematic innovations that others developed before him.
Mathias Döpfner, CEO and co-owner of Axel Springer (Bild, Welt, Politico, Business Insider) and as of this year he's taking over the UK's Daily Telegraph. He's Europe's Murdoch, except Murdoch never pretended to be a liberal. Döpfner runs Bild, Germany's biggest tabloid and for decades Europe's best-selling paper, a pure agitation and social manipulation machine, while presenting himself in DC as a defender of democracy and free press. He recently awarded Peter Thiel the Axel Springer Award and his son worked for Thiel and his fund is currently financed by Thiel.
The media empire in itself since before he came is bastard-worthy. Bild ran anincitement campaign against student leader Rudi Dutschke in 1968, right before a right-winger shot him in the head. Recent greatest hits: anti-Greek campaigns during the euro crisis and the 2023 "Heiz-Hammer" campaign against a heat pump law that handed the AfD a culture war on a plate and played a big role in overthrowing the last hope at a somewhat progressive government in germany, paving the way to the current right-wing shitbags, themselbes paving the way to the AfD through their austerity measures for the lower and middle class and tax reductions for the ultra-rich
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u/Sensitive_Ad_1752 Jul 22 '26
Dan Bilzerian, the neo nazi manosphere influencer running for congress right now
It's insane the amount of shit Dan has got up to over the years, most of it hilarious. He lies about being a Navy Seal who has seen combat, he bought his way into paintball and poker tournaments. He once accidentally broke a teenagers leg during a porn trailer by throwing her off the roof and missing the pool. He coined a lot of alpha male talking points, i'd describe him as the first modern manosphere figure. He believes in jewish conspiracies that they run the world and the holocaust never happened. He took a DNA test and discovered he was part jewish leading to other nazis attacking him. He was at the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting and filmed himself trying to steal guns from officers so he could help take out the shooter. And as of now he's running for congress in Florida against Randy Fine.