A Geek History of Time - Episode 338 - Historical Villains We Shouldn't Forget

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

you know the thing is you have you have reached farther for less good to be blunt the money in tabletop games isn't great we have to wind up with the church of England because obvi I'll start I mean you're you're here to be the expert but um that doesn't stop that one oddly doesn't make me angry because you know who's the boss you know what I'm going to keep my head down and be as inoffensive as I can to everybody possible. And that's it. You want to fight? I'm going to dry hump your leg until we're friends.

Of course, reminded me of that one woman that I went on a single date with who said, you know, the downside about my job is that we don't show kids drowning anymore. I don't know. I don't know. We're going to be able to We're going to be able to be. this is a geek history of time where we connect nerdery to the real world my name is ed blaylock i'm a world history teacher here in northern california and uh just in the last week we made a change in our household um my son is seven years old now and uh we decided that instead of him having an assigned rest time which started out as nap time, and we shifted it to rest time. You've got to be in your room.

You've got to be quiet doing stuff. It has now been shifted to reading time. And I am very, very happy to report. He can be anywhere in the house. I mean, other than like places he's not allowed, obviously. But, you know, it can be in the living room, we can be in his room, whatever. I have to break in here. What places is he not allowed?

Our bedroom. We're not in there. Oh, just as a, no, I get it. Like, yeah, I totally understand. There's certain, like, fuck swings that need to be, yeah, you don't want to answer those questions. I get it. You know, we don't want to deal with that just yet. Yeah.

I want to keep him innocent a little while longer. And, like, we don't want him going in the garage, you know. It's not a room that's garage. Without us there. Yeah, but, yeah, but you know what I'm saying. I do. So anyway, you know, he doesn't have to be in his room. He can be elsewhere.

but he has to read for an hour quietly and number one my son is already when when he chooses to do it he is already reading silently and we do I think have to work on his attention span because we have been lax about the amount of time he spends looking at screens and and you know having having media but he enjoy he really enjoys reading and we lucked out in that so I'm very very very happy to see the way that that has been going so that's that's what I've got going on what about you well I'm Damien Harmony I'm a U.S. history teacher up here in the northern California area and I have not completed that many games in role-playing games I think that's true of all role players yeah yeah um i completed another one um not one that i've run okay so i've i've completed arcs for

my kids right right i i have not completed uh games that i've played in except for one star war's game and now one d and d game completed the arc right not nice we all got bored let's move on to something else yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no full arc um and i was i was supposed to start GMing for that group and I offered them I said hey we don't have to stick to d and d we can do all these other systems brought all the books and stuff everybody was down for it because there's a forever GM and he's like yeah I'd like to take a fucking break and uh as it turns out he didn't need to take a break because when he ended it with this world he was tired of the world so he created another world and so instead of me running he's running again I'm like all right

just let me know when you want to tag out that's fine yeah and my husband whole thing is every time I play a new character, it's always going to be something about that character will be completely the opposite of the previous one I played. Okay. So for instance, previous one I played was a bard. Right. And a Uxorius bard who talked a lot, right? So okay. I can do that in a game. I can do that in life. So it was fun. Yeah. Um, this character is not quite a mute, but like he is kind of smiles and nods a lot. they both have the same intelligence but it's going to express in very different ways um because intelligence is continues to be my dump stat for some reason um but um again i like to play characters

that are opposite of me and i yeah don't mean toot my own horn but i'm i'm somewhat intelligent fella so yeah so in the in our session zero uh just last night um we we had a map and i was like okay my guy has been all over the place he's he's the most traveled of the group i pointed to a spot on the map do you have a name for that town yet no can i name it oh sure okay and then i i you know because we're you know episode zeroing it so i'm like okay yeah here's what this place is um here's my experience in this place now build from that and have we named this no okay uh and then i noticed there was an island to the very very north of the continent And I said, has anybody named that one yet?

And I said, no. I said, may I? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I said, okay. This island is named for its bravest queen, who for 40 years, 200 years ago, held off my ancestors. My ancestors were raiders, and now I've since settled and stuff like that. So I'm descended of them, but, you know, many generations removed. But she held off my ancestors for 40 years.

Her name was Lucy the Brave. and her husband died in that battle and she ran the whole place so this is the Isle of Lucy the Brave and they're like okay that's great that's great that's great I'm like really yeah I'm like awesome

and then of course one of the players is like a friend of the show Tim Tim Wong creator of Republic the graphic novel that you should go by yeah he's like what am I missing

here. I'm like, well, it's the Isle of Lucy the Brave. He's like, God damn it. So there's an Isle of Lucy. Yeah. Yeah. Nicely done. Thank you. Nicely done. You know what? Oddly enough, I'm not mad at that one. I don't know. I don't know why in this case. I think it's not original too because I think I got that from Spinal Tap. Producer George would point this out to me, I think. Oh, okay. Yeah. So. yeah all right yeah it's good nicely done thank you well played all right for this episode um you know we we've done things that we've forgotten about we've done things we've done nostalgia pieces we've done stuff like that yeah this episode is is a part of an ongoing series as i develop

it more um okay it's it's not part one of like 40 but there will be other episodes you know how like we had like cartoons we wish had more time right we're going to come back around that right yeah this one is villains from history movie may have forgotten oh okay so i'm only going to cover two tonight oh wow all right it's going to be deep cuts all right in so many ways uh we're going to start with Giuseppe Ferlini. Okay. Do you know him? No, the name rings, no bells at all.

Okay, then I'm correct. We have forgotten him. White the ride. He will be a bane to you and a bane to me on a professional and personal level. So, Giuseppe Ferlini was born before Italy existed and he died while it was still a kingdom. He seemed to have left home at the age of 17 or 18, evidently to have. escape a wicked stepmother. He's from Bologna, which is up in the north, Po Valley, if I recall, or nearby. And he went in and when he left, see, this is the thing that people used to be

able to do. It sucks around here. I'm going to leave. Like there weren't that many like we should deport people shit going on. Yeah. It was a different time. But he went through Venice and Corfu and ended up in Albania while it was still under Ottoman rule. okay okay however albania was in constant conflict with the ottoman empire and ferlini studied medicine as he traveled at a time where someone simply had to say that they were a doctor and moved 30 miles away from home he actually seems to have made a study of it okay I think he made a study of it in the same way that like somebody might pick up languages as they travel through europe though okay And also, this is like the 1800s. Right. So, yeah. So making, making a study of medicine is there's, there's, um, does anybody know how to take a pulse?

Yeah. Yeah. Study, study is load bearing. Yes. Yeah. Medicine less so. Yeah. So, Ferlini seems to have been welcomed at first into the Albanian army as a doctor.

and in 1922, no, 1822, I'm sorry. I was about to say, holy shit. Yeah. Ottoman Empire is gone. No, in 1822, Ferlini was a part of the Greek rebellion against the Turks on the Peloponnese Peninsula. Okay. Now, this was a part of a larger Greek War of Independence,

which lasted from 1821 to 1829. Thank you, Lord Byron. Yes. I was going to mention bad, bad, and dangerous to know himself. The result was that Greece became free of the Ottoman rule. Remember, this is during the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire. Right. The first Greeks to declare war for their independence were the maniots.

I think that's right. Yeah. My ancient Greek may interfere, but it may inform the manniots on the southern Peloponnesian Peninsula. And after four years of the Maniats slowly grinding out a victory against the Turks, the Ottomans had had enough. Mahmoud II, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire at the time, asked Muhammad Ali of Egypt to help him out. Mahmoud the second was the one who disbanded the Janissaris, which is often what most people are like, oh, oh, that guy, okay. Okay. Yeah. So the Janissari's, as I recall, are the ones who were Serbians who would be taken as children, Serbian Christians, taken as children, converted to Islam, and turned into soldiers and essentially civil servants upon their retirement for the Ottoman Empire. Yeah. And actually something that Serbian parents wanted for their children because it meant that their children would benefit from from this kind of.

of status yes um and depending on the time period and the the ruler uh the janissaries um were waxed and waned in their level of power yeah sometimes they were like action yeah at some points they were like the the praetorian guard was in rome and yes and in other times they were like the Bratorian Guard was in Rome. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really apt comparison. Yeah, they, hey. Yeah.

If you were a strong enough ruler, you could utilize the Janissaries. If you were a weak enough ruler, the Janissaries would use you. Yes. Yes. So, so, so Mahmood the second was the one who had disbanded them.

Yeah. And now at his request, Muhammad Ali, Egypt, sent his own son, Ibrahim Pasha, with an Egyptian army to suppress the revolt, in exchange for greater territorial rights and autonomy under the Ottoman Empire for Egypt. Again, part of the decline, right? Now, by the end of 1825, the Egyptians had put down most of the then split amongst themselves revolt on the peninsula, and Greek morale began to flag.

okay now in fact had it not been for russia britain and france all deciding that they hated the ottomans more than they hated each other in 1825 which is saying something yeah it's i mean you know napoleon is is i think six years from death uh still i think he died in 31 yeah the the specter of his of his reign uh yeah is still very much in living memory and france has all kinds of problems You know, the English are, you know, ascendant as an empire. Russia is trying to show how not back where they are. Anyway, they all hated the Ottomans much more than they hated each other. And had that not been so, then the Greeks might have lost.

But instead, the three former foes found fleets for fighting fairly fast, forcing flagships and frigates to flank each other and fire ships, firing fuel salads from cannons far fatter than five-pounders found on the four decks in free water, finally forcing finally a flight from the flagged fortresses found on the foreland. Well done. Thank you. I've fulfilled my contract. All right.

See you again in nine episodes. So after the obvious naval defeat, which I just described, at the Battle of Navarino, the Egyptian army withdrew completely from the area in 1828. Okay. This means that only Ottoman garrisons were there. And those Ottoman garrisons surrendered shortly thereafter. And from here, the Treaty of Adrian Opel was signed between the Ottoman and Russian forces in 1829, accepting Greek autonomy. So Greece becomes a country for the first time since fucking before Rome. Yeah.

Like I'm going to say ever, because even then, they weren't really a country. Well, yeah, I know. The Greeks were all the Greeks when Troy happened, but then they split back up into being their groups. So it's 1830. It's a big year for little countries. The Greek state was recognized and given protection by the British, which should sound like Belgium. But during the time where the Egyptians were defeating the infighting Greek revolutionaries, Ferlini escaped from this area.

And he wouldn't return to Greek territory until 1827. in order to bury a lover, according to literally a single source that I found but could not verify. So he may have been burying his paramour. He may have just come back. But Ferlini seems to have stayed in Greece and saved all of his money to move to Egypt, the people that he'd fought against and fled from. And you're going to find this about Ferlini often. He is a man who does not mind who he's working for.

He does not seem to hold nationalistic grudges. And I don't know if this is a sign of his mercenary behavior or that he is not as easily made into a tool as almost everyone else. Okay. But many of the Ottoman troops who left the newly anointed Greece behind were actually Egyptian. Okay. So, and because Muhammad Ali was trying very hard to modernize Egypt, he, Ali was actively recruiting European technicians. This includes doctors.

And this sounds very similar to me, honestly, to the Meiji approach. Yeah, there's definitely a parallel there. Yeah. And so for Eleni, now, I don't know if, do you get to the Meiji era in your curriculum? No. Damn. We do not. This might be something for my world history friends at the high school level then.

Yes. comparing Muhammad Ali to Emperor Not Tokugawa Yeah, it was No Shogun So I'm thinking of

Emperor the Meiji era Who's the emperor of the Meiji era I gotta look it up Okay I want to say Emperor Meiji But I know that's not right Yeah But anyway

That Emperor and Muhammad Ali As far as nation builders Compare and contrast Like that would be Some good shit Yeah Um, anyway, because they're, they're both on either side of the midpoint of the century, too. So you could also be like in the 1830s, it was like this for Egypt.

In the 1870s, it was like this for Japan. Who was the guys down? It's, uh, Mutsuito, posthumously honored as Emperor Meiji. There you go. Okay. So comparing him to Muhammad Ali. Anyway, so he's, Ali is recruiting European technicians. Um, for Lini being a doctor, makes his move to,

Egypt and it becomes much more attractive as an idea for all involved. Ferlini gets to Alexandria by 1829 and immediately sets out for Cairo. Ferlini was enlisted as an assistant to the military to create a more efficient system of military health care. And by 1830, he's named Surgeon Major of the Egyptian Army. Okay. So either he's tremendously learned, talk to good game, or got a lot of on-the-job training, or any combination of the three.

Yeah, I was going to say, poor Ceylon, no los trace. Yeah. Now, from Cairo, as a surgeon major of the Egyptian military, Ferlini accompanied the first regiment to their post in a place called Senar. Do you know Senar at all? Not off the top of my head. I didn't either.

And then, like, diving in on Ferlini, I found all kinds of shit. Okay, so Senar is the capital of the Fungg Sultanate, which had been utterly reduced to an echo of itself. by this point. Okay. They had given up to the Ottoman Egyptians, often called the Turco-Egyptian conquest of Sudan, without a fight in 1824. For Egypt, this was in some way an effort to replace the loss of slave labor that Egypt's

Muhammad Ali had done away with by exterminating the Mamluks. Right. He was trying to modernize, but it would take a lot of slave labor to do this with all the agriculture that he had planned and he'd gotten rid of the mom luke's because they were a dangerous faction in egypt much like the janissaries yes parallels there yeah um and i love the the idea of the mom luks again i'm not a fan of slavery i'm going to go on record being harsh against it but uh i would point out that the the mom luks every one of them was a slave and they their empire was run by the one who worked his way up yeah like you go from being slave to emperor and

this was the system. It was very interesting. Yeah. So Cennar is on the Blue Nile. And Farlini had heard a lot about the legend of the gold of Cennar. The Egyptian military in Muhammad Ali's son, Pasha, had also expected to find a ton of gold in Cynar. And of course, they were sorely disappointed because there was no fucking gold in Cynar. from Sonar because again they had been just collapsed and all their greatness the reason that they capitulated so quickly is because they had nothing from Senar Ferlini then went to Khartoum I know you've heard of that and he met an Albanian merchant named Antonio

Stefani not the great great grandfather of Gwen a different relation and I believe this kick started forlini's move from mercenary to villain Now, with Stefani, Ferlini visited Khartoum and a place called Wadi Haifa. Fighting a malaria outbreak, Ferlini ended up back in Khartoum, and then he met the governor there named Mehmet Kurshid. It's spelled so many different ways. The way that gave me the least trouble in Autocrat was C-U-R-S-C-H-I-D. Um, Kershid, uh, took Ferlini and, uh, so it could be Kurskid, uh, took forlini and Stefani on several expeditions throughout Nubia in search of this rumored gold. Since they didn't find any above ground, clearly the only viable option was to dig for it.

After all, the pharaohs had amassed untold wealth. And since France had gone through Egypt, only 10, 15 years earlier, Yeah. And then the English came through. Everybody's crazy about the Egyptian gold. Now, Stefani, he financed the expeditions for their equipment, and he said, I'll put up the money, but I get half the profits that we find. And given that others had done similar excavations for similar purposes, Ferlini was not outside the norm for this kind of villain that he was. He was an early adopter, but by no means was he the originator of European shittiness.

along these lines. Right. We're talking grave robbing. We're talking tomb robbing. We're talking plundering the archaeological greatness of a place. So Ferlini focused on a place called Merriway, M-E-R-O-E with an umlaught, so you pronounce the E, Merri-Way. And the reason he focused on Merri-Way specifically was because it was as yet largely

untouched by French, English, and not yet Italian men who were working specifically for Muhammad Ali to develop Egyptology as a thing. Okay. So Muhammad Ali is pushing for Egyptology, and part of it is because we need the money, but also part of it is because look at the greatness that is in our lands. So Ferlini arrives in Merriway in August of 1834, accompanied by his Ethiopian wife. Oh. Yeah.

Hundreds of porters, dozens of servants, and a shit ton of camels. um he did not find any gold where he'd hoped at first they had tried to access a half buried temple by poking at the walls with tools to create an opening so like i said he's going to bother you on a personal and professional level yeah yeah that that didn't work out uh they then worked their way over to an obelisk obelisk obelisk obelisk obelisk uh that was buried amongst a bunch of sand covered ruins um and while it was decorated with all sorts of hieroglyphics and such which is really cool. It was too big for them to take with them, so they left it. Ferlini and Stefani abandoned that effort, so left it there. Not without damaging it a whole bunch, so making it, yeah. Unfortunately, after these two failures, diseases ravaged Ferlini's workers and his beasts of burden, no word on him and Stefani or their wives, interestingly enough.

And I dare say they live separately enough from most of the peasants that they hired. Ferlini still believed that there was gold to be had and so he went out and hired 500 local peons and equipped them with picks to find an entrance Okay Yeah now Ferlini and his crew They worked their way over to the pyramids Which were the resting place for Queen Regnant

Regnant regnant regnant Regnant Um Amani Shacketo She's often referred to as Candice Because the merotic term for queen or queen mother is Kandake Mm-hmm

So queen regnant Amani Shaketo Also known as Candice She was the ruler of that area from 10 BCE to 1CE Which is like the time that Augustus is doing things Yeah she actually is part of a line of Kushite queens And she held off Augustus oh hey now this is early in his career right because he doesn't become yeah but but yeah

now this is referred to as great period great pyramid n6 in modern day parlances the damage they did to this pyramid with these picks didn't get them inside of the pyramids from the side by the way so it's just great so then ferlini went topside for n6 and then they dug their way down. And so Ferlini found an empty sarcophagus and a bunch of royal stuff. Most of it was bronze and not gold, so not that valuable to him, but it did wet his appetite. And so he continued his work. Now, incidentally, what he did find, Ferlini took special care to hide because he didn't trust the people that he'd hired.

okay and from what i've found was it was actually not without merit it turns out his servants whom i presume he vetted more thoroughly than the 500 men he hired to vandalize um his servants reported to him that there was a betrayal afoot um i don't read french which is unfortunately what ferlini a man from bologna published his 1838 diary in um which again makes some level of sense considering how far north his hometown was. Anyway, regardless, Ferlini and Stefani loaded what they could into their camels and by several and by several reckonings. Here's the list that I found.

A dozen bracelets containing silver, bronze, and gold. Sixteen scarabs made of gold and enamel. Nine shield rings, 67 signet rings, two armbands, and dozens of rings bracelets, crosses, necklaces, and figurines of various stones. and and and see listening to you read that off yeah makes me deeply deeply uncomfortable with myself because you want to see them don't you well one yeah but as a role-playing gamer with a long history of looting of of of looting I hear that and like that sounds like you know the treasure you'd find in a dungeon

Oh, shit. It is uncomfortable. Oh, hey. Wow, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, I don't believe in any gods. And I still think this is fucked up. Well, because it is. There's something. Yeah. There is something about the idea of whether there's, there's religion tied up in it or not about respect for the dead yeah yeah this is how they wanted to be leave them yeah now this is I guess the dividing point between me and Diogenes because Diogenes

would be like I don't know fuck they're dead and I get what are you saying yeah but I can't make that choice for other people yeah like you know like morally yeah oh yeah yeah In Ferlini's hunt, he helped to destroy more than 40 pyramids. Oh. We know this because there was a man named Frederick Calliard, Kalioud, yes. He found them a few years earlier, and he reported that all of these pyramids are in really good condition

less than a decade earlier. but Ferlini and Stefani were all about that money, baby, and so Ferlini's topside's efforts were with gunpowder and dynamite. Oh, oh. Smash and grab 40 pyramids. Wow. Now, in fairness, archaeology by Europeans had yet to be developed.

And I say this because one of Ramsey's the great's son, Kayam Wesset, had been doing what we call archaeology before the Trojan war had even happened. Yeah, well, because he lived in fucking Egypt. Right. And Mesopotamians had been doing similar things from about the time of Rome's establishment as a republic. Chinese critics had been critical of such efforts as early as the Song Dynasty. When is that? Because you teach that.

And I'm about to embarrass myself because I think it's in the 600s, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Oh, yeah. You're talking about. Yeah, sorry, I was, I was thinking I got, I got confused between Song and Joe. There's a reason we have notes, you know, that we teach from, so, yeah, song, yeah, song, yeah, song is, is, is, call it 600's, see, yeah.

So, you know, so, so Chinese critics were critical of people valuing our archaeology back then, yeah, in medieval India. There's a very legalist, there's a very legalist, uh, uh, outlook on what, Why are you digging in, like, the state is not served by this? Right. You know. Yeah. In medieval India, it had been as early as the 1100s seat. Yeah.

Yeah. So when I say European archaeology, I mean, like, the babyist of archaeology. Once nationalism took hold in Europe in the early 1800s, there was a focus of, a focus on archaeology that was developing. It was largely predatory in nature, but there, there. had been excavations of Pompey and Herculaneum as early as the 1700s. And in Virginia, in 1784, we had excavations.

Yep. But, to be honest, like Ferlini's efforts largely predate modern archaeology, as we understand it. But still, the dude's blowing up pyramids to grab the gold within and then sell it. So he's a fucking villain.

Yeah. Or a D&D second level character. Yeah. Fifth. Yeah. Fireball is a third level spell. Fair point. Disintegrates even higher level.

So, you know, that just makes the whole process more efficient. What I want to interject about, you mentioned Jefferson. Yes. One of the very few things that we can give credit to Jefferson for not being a shithead and an awful human being is, Jefferson was one of the few people in the 1700s who looked at excavation of the mound builder culture sites

on the Mississippian peoples and was like oh these are these are Native American this is these are the ancestors the people that you know are you know the other side of the river and and you know remarkable how he could get that right I got to give credit where credits do, but, like, dude, your own children? Right.

So, so, yeah. And yeah, for Lee, yes, European archaeology is nascent at this point in its infancy, one might say. But dynamite? Yeah. so yeah so he j jay walker did and uh so with with the treasure treasure that they'd unearthed for lini and stephani made their way to the nile and then they took the nile downstream which is one of the few rivers that goes north um to the fifth

cataract um now there's six cataracts of the nile and the cataracts are essentially shallow rapids right so this sounds really exciting in all kinds of cinematic ways if you overlook the robbery and the selling things part and from the fifth cataract Ferlini headed to Cairo to inform the governor of what he'd found he used this report as the foundation for his 1836 publication of his diary for the trip called first trip to the interior of Africa once it was translated into French and republished in 1838 it started selling so he's making money off of this now originally people didn't buy the things that he had stolen much because they thought that such wealth was not possible in Egypt or Sudan so it was racist

okay yeah so there's no way you could have gotten this gold from here I'm not going to buy it when it says right right right yeah it's full of shit clearly a con right right yeah Carl lepsis the Prussian Egyptologist validated most of it in front of the British museum

So we're just villain upon villain upon villain. Jesus. It's like the Legion of Doom. Yeah. Ferlini was able to sell most of the treasures that he'd found in Germany with that validation. And as a result, King Ludwig I of Bavaria bought most of them because this is, Germany doesn't exist yet as a state. Right.

While the Egyptian Museum of Berlin bought the rest. okay remind me how does this fit in with schleeman like chronologically um oh god i uh you're talking about the maggeberg stuff uh i'm talking about troy oh troy oh um yeah because that wasn't schleman um i don't remember but i think this This is about a generation before Schleeman. So he's going to be, he's going to be born and growing up while this shit's happening. Okay. So this is, he is the heir of all of this ideologically.

In a lot of ways, yeah. Yeah. Or takes the baton from some grave site and runs with it. So like I said, this was many years before Germany was a country. But eventually all of these things end up making their way to the Egyptian music. of Berlin, which is its own level of grave robbing, but with state sponsorships. So that's cool. Now, interestingly, to me at least, is the fact that Ferlini is hardly remembered at all. And those who do remember him, specifically remember him for blowing up fucking 40

pyramids to leave the bodies. You know, it would be like if nobody remembered Wolfgang Puck. And then the few people who remembered him is because he's stomped a baby to death or something like yeah yeah nobody cares about the soup that he made you know yeah yeah so now i i took this from his diary and i i will tell you i found his diary online in french and it's a it's a pdf so like you can't really copy paste effectively so i i did my best to select and then threw it into google translate because i don't speak french right and then i threw at Google Translate, and I had to clean that up. So this is what I got, being a guy who doesn't know French.

I embarked at Cairo on 6 August 1830. At that time, I held the rank of Dr. Surgeon Major attached to the first regiment stationed in the valley of Cinar and its dependencies. I was stationed there for four and a half years, but I only spent 10 months in the capital of Upper Nubia, i.e. Cinar, where the first battalion of my regiment was garrisoned. On the arrival of Dr. Boda, son of the celebrated historian, on 13 May 1832, I went to Cordifan, the capital of West, capital of the western part of Nubia, 12 days from Cinar, after crossing the White River and passing nine days in the deserts.

Just real quick, this sounds fucking miserable. Like, if I'm ever going to do archaeology, it's going to be somewhere cold. That's the tone kind of miserable. I much prefer being a historian. I'm going to work in an archive where it's air condition. Books need climate control. Exactly. So do I.

Thank you. Yeah. I am not remarkable. I will pass a book to a remarkable person someday, maybe. Okay. In 1833, a new core of doctors and pharmacists was formed under the direction of the Tuscan doctor, Landrini. He sent me to the 5th Battalion, resident at Khartoum, a city at the extreme. of the peninsula of Sinar, built by the Turks after the conquest of the country.

It is here that the White River and the Blue River merged to form the Nile, and where resides Cruset Pasha, governor of all the colonies conquered by the Viceroy, in the countries that take the name of the military Sudan. Okay, so I got the, I got the wrong Pasha. Okay. Since my stays in Greece and Egypt, I had constantly fixed the idea of making some discovery useful to history. To this effect, I sought to get into the good graces of the governor. After some months of the, some months the opportunity arose to ask him for permission to make

some excavations in the places where there were ancient monuments. The Pasha was surprised at my request and did not leave me ignorant of all the perils to which my enterprise would be exposed. He told me that although he gave me his permission, he would not allow me to work until I promised to pay the workers and that I ran the risk of losing the fruits of my four years of saving. So that's the opening, right? That's Act 1.

And then he says, quote, later on, he says, quote, I left Mr. Stefani and went with a hundred men to visit the Great Pyramids. A few days later, my friend discovered another habitation as big as the first, but there was no luck, just a small terracotta idol. I'm sorry, that's huge. yeah like okay okay yeah with this in mind i had demolished the remains of a small pyramid at the foot

of a hill coming to the foot of the mountain i found black stones which seemed to have been carved by man i saw it with the aid of a pick to penetrate below the foundations and found the first step of a stair i continued to uncover the stair and reached the ninth and last step this led into a small cave where I only found some bones of camels, horses, and some other small skeletons, which I took for dogs. Then I found two types of harness. I just loved how casual he is of like,

yeah, I only found this little thing. Then I blew shit up. Yeah. Anyway, during this time, Mr. Stefani, who had begun the demolition of another pyramid, in eight hours, had only reached the height of the portico. He tried everywhere,

this day and for several days after, to find the stair in the caves. Among the bodies he found one covered by stone. Among the bodies, he found one covered by stone. We were digging at the side of the head to remove this stone when a worker, giving a blow with his spade to a round stone, like an ostrich egg, caused a massive glass objects to come out of a solid, white, and transparent nature.

So, there's a lot to change. chew on about him solid white and transparent like like the first thing I think of is there's some kind of alabast or something going on there right that you're just or like frosted glass

holy shit how cool would this be you're just smashing shit yeah and again you're a man from another place smashing shit on behalf of a government that just conquered this territory which itself

is like I mean the current guardian of this place but like not of the culture that you're digging like there's so many layers here you know there's so many levels on which this suck this is like fractally awful yeah it's like lasagna of terrible like

so fuck this guy yeah yeah with a sleeper sofa yeah he blew up so that's the first villain 40 pyramids so so so I I have this image

in my head. Uh-huh. Like, I kind of want somebody to make a movie about this guy. Sure. I want it to be an absolutely pitch-black satire, like an absurdist dark satire. Oh, I want Kevin Klein to play him. Oh, I was going to say James Franco, but I think you're right. Oh, no.

James Franco should never get work ever. Yeah, okay, fair. Yeah. but but you get you get why i'm thinking of him like the oh yeah angles of his face just like yeah like yeah kevin klein i can i can see that yep um just and and i and i have this picture in my head of him in the foreground having some conversation over some niggling little terrible detail right with with with you know one of one of his underlings and in the back background you just see

bang and the top the top of a pyramid just like evaporates yeah and then him just turning back yeah and and you know and then and checking his watch maybe

oh yeah they're late yeah yeah and then a fast cut to something completely different just you know I put two links into the chat for you just open up those two links. The first one is the pyramids as they are now. You might have to scroll a little bit. The second one is the pyramids as they were. Oh, no. Okay. Oh. You really? I love the title here too. Just

one Italian. Yeah. The pyramids of Meroa and Giuseppe Ferlini, their destroyer. yes wow imagine having that be your your legacy in the world like wow all the more reason we should publicize him more son of a bitch really they were beautiful weren't they that's uh yeah son of a bitch you know what it reminds me of wow uh it reminds me of do you remember in true lies uh asia carrera's character, where she hid guns and drugs in these like 4,000-year-old horse statues. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that. I was just like, mooh.

Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I can, you know, and I'm looking, I'm going back to the, the just one Italian article there. Mm-hmm. And, and, and, yeah, I can totally see this framed in like a Wes Anderson kind of. Oh, yeah.

kind of way you know yeah oh my god what a prick yeah just imagine him in like a vanilla suit and a hat and just yeah yeah panama panama hat yeah so that's that's the first one um the second one i'm going to talk to you about is a guy named uh kennesaw mountain landist do you remember him the name is vaguely familiar okay uh at the end i'll have you listen to a song um canisaw mountain landis is uh well kennesaw mountain is a mountain between kennesaw georgia and marietta georgia the descendants of that area uh were mound builders um or i'm sorry the descendants of the mound builders in that area are called the creek okay okay yeah The creek were pushed out of the area by the Cherokee,

and then everyone was pushed out by Andrew Jackson, who ignored a Supreme Court order to specifically stop doing that. Could you imagine a president doing that, like ignoring a court order? That's inconceivable. Yeah. Now, this led to... Say again? Keep using that word.

Yeah. I think it means. What I think it means. Yeah. Now, this led to this area being developed as Cobb County, Georgia, which is the home area of the big boss man.

Okay. Okay. All right. There was also a huge battle there during the failed slaver's secession in 1864. That's probably why I recognize the name Kennesaw Mountain.

Yes. Okay. It might have popped up in our confederama discussion, even though that was Tennessee. But it is listed as a victory for the Confederacy, specifically the Confederate Army of Tennessee,

but it didn't stop Sherman's march to the sea or his Atlanta campaign. Now, two years later, a Millville, Ohio physician and his wife welcomed their sixth child into the world. That physician had been wounded fighting for the United States of America during the failed slavery secession

at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. And since the two were unable to agree on a name for their fourth son, the mom suggested to name him for the place where the dad received his wound. And thus, Kennesaw Mountain Landis was born and named. So that is 1866. Okay. Now, Kennesaw Mountain Landis was one of five boys that were born to that couple, that couple ultimately. He left school at 15, so about 1882 or so, after failing to master algebra. He was a smaller kid, but he had spent years working on the family farm, which he reportedly did not like much, which totally get that. Physical labor wasn't for him,

and ultimately he'd taught himself shorthand while working for a newspaper out of Logan's Port, Indiana, a state where two of his brothers ended up becoming congressman. He also started riding bicycles and winning awards at this brand new sport and managing a baseball team, a fairly new sport as well. He was actually offered a contract to play a professional baseball, but he turned it down preferring to instead play for the love of the game. Okay. Back then, a contract to play baseball was not what it is now.

No. No. Now, Landis worked his way into becoming a lawyer in Illinois through the later 1880s and early 1890s, Jesus. Okay. And he was part of a nonpartisan group aimed at me. municipal reform. During the second Cleveland administration, Landis was hired as the personal secretary of Walter

K. Gresham, the Secretary of State, largely for his shorthand skills. Okay. Now, after leaving public service in late 1895, Landis became a large corporate lawyer in Chicago and became very influential in the Republican Party with money, which is a totally novel thing and not at all a problem for our democracy. Yeah. Now, after Teddy Roosevelt became president and Landis supported a failed Illinois gubernatorial campaign for his friend Fred O. Loudon, Roosevelt offered Loudon a seat as northern district of a seat on the bench for the Northern District of Illinois Federal Trial

Court. Okay. Loudon declined, but he said Landis should get it. And since Landis had a history of stern progressivism leaning Republican TR totally wanted that so he said okay now Landis became a federal judge in 1905 oh is the story starting to come together for you

no I'm just imagining where it could go wrong and just how bad it could get all right Landis became a federal judge in 1905 and he immediately brought a showmanship to his stern progressivism he ran his courtroom like how Elder

Gen Xers and boomers want to be seen. Cranky, edgy, commonsensical, and dictatorial. Great. The only one who's right, the only one who's reasonable in a ridiculous world, that kind of shit.

Okay. Now, as such, Landis violated all sorts of rights and norms from 1905 to 1922. Some of the ones that made people think, yeah, this guy makes sense, were when he talked to an elderly defendant who said that they wouldn't be able

to live a complete five-year-old. sentence his response was well you could try couldn't you great another time he admonished a witness to stop fooling around and tell exactly what did happen without reciting your whole life story okay dismissive kurt no nonsense according to himself and absolute in his power again what every boomer and gen xer wants to be so while being this kind of prick Landis also favored customers over corporations repeatedly

Landis issued a subpoena for Rockefeller and sent US federal marshals to Rockefeller's house Oh wow Yeah Like you will not defy court order motherfucker I don't care how rich you are Like could you imagine Yeah

Rockefeller dodged that Eventually I think he was golfing at the time or something something um rockefeller was made to appear before landis and it amounted to very little um but uh it it it was it was big for newspapers um because rockefeller was on the stand and had to answer questions about the finances of rockefeller oil and all of his subsidiaries because there were there were lawsuits going on uh due to a violation of um the elkins act actually so rockefeller uh pulled to ronald Reagan and claimed not to know a lot of things.

And Landis went on to find Standard Oil the maximum penalty for violating the Elkins Act. Essentially, the Elkins Act was a tariff act and they got around tariffs and antitrust laws via offering rebates. And he's like, no, you can't do that.

Right. Yeah. Rockefeller was golfing when he was delivered, I think by telegram, he was delivered the news that Landis had ruled against him and find him the maximum that he could um did i write down what the maximum was i don't think i did um it was lots of money um but rockefeller got it and he was told the amount of a fine and he said oh landis

will be long dead before i'll ever have to pay this fine um and by 1909 he was proved right because standard oil had been acquitted in the supreme court great back then corporations could buy their way out of, you know, any kind of consequence, whereas now we have a lot of regulations. Right, yeah. Now, Landis would regularly take recess. He's in Chicago. He'd take recess to go watch a Cubs game or a White Sox game.

Okay. And he was a huge public fan of the game, and people would regularly take his picture there. He also was the judge when the Federal League antitrust case came before. him. So for baseball fans, there's the National League, there's the American League. Originally, there was just one league, and then there was an American League, and then there was some question about what the, and then they figured out a way to operate. Well, an upstart league in the early 1900s was called the Federal League, and they basically said baseball has a huge trust

going on, and that's not okay. We're not allowed to compete with them, et cetera, et cetera. And this is the Sherman Act. The Federal League tried to start up and challenge the American and National leagues by and they brought a suit against the owners of Major League Baseball, claiming a violation of the Sherman Act, which was the antitrust act that, uh, that Theodore Roosevelt gets all the credit for, but honestly Taft did most of the work for. Right. Now, the owners were worried because they were, in fact, a fucking trust.

Another word for trust would be a monopoly They had a reserve clause And a 10-day clause Now a reserve clause is We reserve the right to resign all of our players Only if we decide not to resign Resign them then another team can pick them up Right

So if you get drafted by a shit team You're stuck there Especially if you're a good player You're gonna be stuck there As they try to build a team around you and fail miserably. Like, this is why there's so many great baseball players in history who never won a World Series because they didn't have free agency.

Now, they also had something called the 10-day clause, which meant that these indentured servants, I mean, these players, could be let go with as little as 10 days' notice. So you bought a house to live in, you know, upstate New York to play for the Yankees. they let you go last week you've got 10 you know they're letting you know that in 10 days you're going to be shipped over to Detroit actually the Yankees wouldn't have sent

them to Detroit they would have sent them to like Pittsburgh yeah but so they have indentured servitude they have a trust the reserve clause like it said means that a player could only sign contracts with their current team unless that team wants to let them go

and so baseball is as 1880s as it gets oh yeah the federal league comes in and says oh we're going to offer a totally different way of doing things and that's very attractive to a lot of the players but the players can't leave their teams right now landis being such a public fan ought to have recused himself from this case he did not given his prior history the owners were actually rightly scared though still that he would fuck them over and side with the federal league and the play players right because he's like fuck you corporations right yeah um so the the the the owners were

scared that they're going to lose their their plantation owner power over their sharecroppers and players um and so these hearings happen in january of 1915 and during these fair these now remember baseball spring training starts in late march right um landis was all about stopping the conflict surrounding baseball he said quote any clothes uh any close at the thing called baseball would be regarded by this court as a blow to a national institution and then

he refused to recognize baseball players as doing labor okay yeah it's because he played remember he was offered a contract and he just wanted to play for the love of the game you're playing a game that's not fucking labor oh

and then yeah and then Landis sat on the case until the federal league ran out of money no shit really yes yes and then uh and the thing is if he'd actually made a decision the federal league might have had a shot at becoming a third competitive league um and the players might have had more rights going forward which they could have secured more than more financial capability they could have made themselves wealthier and if they make themselves wealthier that's less tempting to throw games.

Oh. So Landis is responsible for the Black Sox controversy. Oh, I'll go you three better than that. Just watch. Okay. All right. Yes.

This also led the way for the eventual Supreme Court case in 1922 called Federal Baseball Club the National League, which determined that since Major League Baseball was primarily entertainment and not interstate commerce, despite the fact that,

that they play fucking teams in other states they were thus exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act yeah fucking hell like

these guys literally hop on trains to go to different states to play yeah no it's entertainment doesn't count which if you think about this now you see why wages for vaudeville were so low or shit why you see

this is why you see like actors and singers and shit like that it's so low yeah because it's not interstate commerce well it's not interstate commerce and the attitude of of society and the courts was well it's entertainment right now you're not digging ditches the thing is you're not farming yeah baseball uh is going to be the only sport exempted from the sherman antitrust act over time football when it becomes i mean it it becomes a national sport like the first football I think the first professional football game was like 1919 or something like that um basketball when it becomes multiple leagues uh professional wrestling the NWA had to be broken up per the the Sherman and that's not even a fucking sport um like all these other things were strictly regulated by the Sherman antitrust act not baseball because of the Supreme court decision now he was not a part of the Supreme Court decision, but because of his sitting on it that led to the Supreme Court decision.

Yeah, and the precedent that, you know, his, his inaction essentially established. Yeah, and his refusing to recognize baseball players is doing labor. So, Landis was also especially harsh and willing to look the other way on due process when it came to wartime draft dodging and socialists. He deported as many foreign socialists as he could, and he gave maximum sentences to homegrown socialists for riots. And yet when the IW, and by wartime, I mean World War I. When the IWW's offices were raided, Landis absolutely respected the due process rights

of the defendants. He dismissed a whole bunch of charges against the communist. He had a reputation against radicals, and yet he respected the heck out of their rights in the process of the trial. So if the evidence gotten against them was gotten illegally, he's like, I'm sorry, we can't admit that. You guys should have done a better job. Yeah. And so when the jury came back with guilty verdicts all around, Landis also was not sparing in his sentences. Now my personal thought here is that Landis probably wanted to make sure that the theater, the spectacle of his

courtroom gave the appearance of righteousness and that he let his personal feelings toward the communists whom he called, literally called them scum and slimy rats. That's what he let guide his sentencing. So it's kind of one of those. I gave you every shot. Now, go fuck yourself. Right. Most of the communists or most of the communists and the people in IWW got long sentences

and several had to have their sentences commuted by Calvin Coolege in 1923. Landis was public and enraged in his response. Now, that's how it was reported. I still haven't found him saying anything specifically about it. Now, after World War I, Landis still went in heart against socialist. I think he actually tried to go join up for World War I, but they needed him to be a lawyer and a judge. Now, since the Espionage Act of 1917 was still a law, despite being a wartime violation of all things constitutional, especially in the Berger case, or Berger case, I'm sorry. There's a guy named Victor Berger, who is an Austrian-American socialist who got elected to Congress in November of 18,

November of 1918 Holy cow So he gets elected a week later the war ends Okay Yeah he was indicted on anti-war activities Despite the fact that the war was over Along with several of the defendants Berger moved for a change of venue

Once they found out that Landis was going to be the judge On November 1st 1918 Kennesaw Mountain Landis Was reported to have said quote If anybody has anything, has said anything about the Germans that is worse than I have said, I would like to hear it so I could use it myself. Great. So, yeah. Yeah.

So how about moving that venue out of his court? He examined the transcripts of the trial that he was alleged to have said this, and he couldn't find the transcript recording him saying so. And as a result, he rejected the motion as perjurious. Wow. Now, after the case was done being held, Landis spent over an hour doing all sorts of cartoonish shit. He laid down prone on his desk. He twirled in his chair. He pointed to the jury box and talked about how secretive espionage is.

And unsurprisingly, the jury found Berger and others guilty, and Landis denied them bail. This is because Big Bill Haywood had skipped bail when he had been sentenced. So this is kind of a combination of Landis being. biased and also learning from history like if I grant bail they could be a flight risk because it is 19 18 yeah yeah early 19 yeah um now either way land is sentenced everyone to 20 years in federal prison however the case was appealed up to the Supreme court and in 1921 they overturned the convictions and sentences because they determined the Supreme court determined that landis had no reason to reject the affidavit's request for a change of venue.

The Supreme Court then ordered a new trial, and then the federal government just dropped the case in 1922. Yeah. Now, between his sentencing, the Socialists, to 20 years, and all charges being dropped against them, Kennesaw Mountain Landis got another job. He started moonlighting, in addition to being a judge. Oh, no.

Baseball, to this point, had been governed by a three-man commission. the president of the National League, the president of the American League, and the owner of the Cincinnati Reds. I think it's because the Cincinnati Reds were the oldest professional baseball team in history. When he stepped down, the owner of the Cincinnati Reds, that left a two-man commission, which would always result in a deadlock, National League, American League. The owners couldn't agree on another owner since it would be a league from one, it would be a guy from one league or the other, and that would tilt it, right? And so they wouldn't agree on that.

So they needed another plan, a singular commissioner from outside of baseball. And this was fast-tracked largely because of the scandal brought on by the discovery that the White Sox had thrown the World Series in 1919. This discovery actually happens just before the World Series of 1920. And since public interest and trust in baseball was flagging going into the 1920 World Series, the owners wanted to put on the appearance for baseball to have law and order. Now, originally, for their commissioner of baseball, they'd considered William Taft. Okay. They'd also considered General John Pershing and William Gibbs McAdoo, the former secretary of the Treasury.

Okay. Not enough of the owners could agree on any one person. The president of the National League at the time stated that what they needed was to sanitize the image of baseball. These are my words, not his. But here's his words. He says, we want a man as chairman who will rule. with an iron hand baseball has lacked a hand like that for years it needs it now worse than ever therefore it is our object to appoint a big man to lead the new commission so you know where

i'm going with this yeah kennesaw mountain landis became the first commissioner of professional baseball yeah and it was uh he was proposed by several owners and it became a unanimous vote on november 12th 1920 they sat in the bad the owners went to the back of his courtroom and did what rich men do. They couldn't shut the fuck up despite everything that was happening. Landis banged on his gavel and he made them wait out the rest of his docket for the rest of the day before he took them into a meeting in his chambers. The group convinced him to take the job and Landis set insanely autocratic terms for his

moonlighting efforts. If I'm going to do this, this is what I want. And in all fairness, he bargained for what he wanted and they gave it to him. Kennesaw Mountain Landis served as baseball's first commissioner and a federal judge for seven years, and then he stopped being a federal judge. He drafted up a tentative agreement that gave him nearly total power. Here's a list of what he had. As commissioner of baseball, he would get $50,000 a year.

Holy. Okay. In 1920. 20. Yeah. Wow. Now he would also. Yeah. He would also take a $7,500 deduction in his annual salary for all the years that he was a judge because appearances.

Right. Okay. That was his salary as a judge. As commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis could not be dismissed by the owners. Okay. As commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis could not have his pay reduced by the owners. Okay. As commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis could not be criticized in public by the owners. Wow. Now, I like all this because fuck the owners. Right. As commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis had the ability to ban anyone he wanted from baseball for life.

Oh, shit. As commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis had almost unlimited power over everyone involved in baseball from owner to Bat Boy. Wow. As commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis was immune to any judicial recourse against his decisions. wow well they they wanted a strong man yeah be careful what you wish for i guess and in january of 1921 he flexed all of his muscles now by this point the players of the white socks from nineteen nineteen had benefited from all sorts of shenanigans both legal and extra legal uh landis put the eight on an ineligible list from both major and minor league baseball

just straight up you can't play either Kamiski towed the line and released the seven who were still looking to play, and then on August 2nd, 1921, the players were acquitted. Now, the trial probably was held pretty crookedly because people who had evidence disappeared or lost it, etc., etc. Yeah. Now, the next day, Landis issued a statement in response to this acquittal. Quote, regardless of the verdict of juries,

no player that throws a ballgame, no player that undertakes or promises, to throw a ball game. No player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing a ball games are planned and discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it will ever play professional baseball. Just keep in mind that regardless of the verdict of juries, baseball is competent to protect itself against crooks, both inside and outside the game. Okay. The public largely regarded this as just. He then banned baseball owners from owning horse tracks or race horses.

Landis continued his crackdown on players who met with gamblers. He ended up banning a total of 18 players during his time, turning baseball players into snitches on each other because nobody wanted to have happened to him what happened to Buck Weaver of the White Sox. So Buck Weaver was the third baseman for the White Sox. I believe he was in the room where they discussed it. I believe that people might have come

to him and he's like no um and and he played his heart out he had a really good series but because he knew the guys were throwing it he was out too so even though he was largely innocent of all of the things that they were guilty of yeah now interestingly this actually cleaned gambling out of baseball for quite a while well makes sense that it would yeah right Now, in 1884, and we're going to rewind a little bit, because Landis becomes commissioner in 20, 21. In 1884, Major League Baseball informally banned black players from baseball. It was a handshake agreement by all the owners. Interestingly, Landis was considered progressive and liberal when it came to race questions

to the point where African American newspapers defended him in efforts to impeach him. in 1942 Kennesaw Mountain Landis stated that there is no rule in baseball against any player of any color working for any team that's true there was no fucking bylaws

this is all nothing quote the term they used for black people back then not the super derogatory one but the one for which there is a college fund named ends

are not barred from organized baseball by the commissioner and never have been in the 20 year 21 years I have served There's no rule in organized baseball Prohibiting their participation and never has been to my knowledge So he's actually correct on all of this

Yeah But you don't need you don't There is no law against black people eating vanilla ice cream In in small towns in Mississippi But you didn't have it happen Yeah So if Durrosher That was the manager I think of the New York Giants

If Durrishir or any other manager or all of them want to sign one or 25N players, it is all right with me. That is the business of the managers and the club owners, the business of the commissioners to interpret the rules of baseball and to enforce them, end quote. Okay. So there's no law against this. There's no rule against this. Right. Anybody can get into Harvard. during World War II

Landis also turned desire against gambling on the owners too even owners who bet on their own team although there is a special logic to that okay so that's kind of the big critique against you know bands on Pete Rose because they're like well wait he only ever bet on his own team

and it's like okay but if you're the manager and you bet on the team to win you're going to do everything that you can to win that game to make your money which means you're going to keep pitchers in who are getting tired you're going to not sub people

in because they're lesser than and so on you're going to hurt your team to win your bet so that's also its own problem so this idea of even players or even people who bet on their own team it's like no no that's also still bad

when you're a baseball owner that's doubly true So Landis banned a man named William D. Cox, the owner of the Phillies, from baseball for betting on his own team. The owner of a team was banned and had to sell his own team. Such was Landis's power. Wow. Now back to the color line. Landis stayed quiet and only quoted the rules.

He didn't stand up and say, quote, there's no rule against it, so I have no idea why teams don't draft the best place. regardless of race, he said, there's no rule against it. Now, here's a ridiculous possible example to show that nobody wants to do, right? Right. If they want to hire one, 20, or 25, I don't care, right? No one's doing that. In fact, in the 1970s, you know, Jagger Robinson broke the color line in 1948 in baseball. In the 1970s, if there was a black player on your team and another black player was

drafted to your team or was brought up to your team. That first black player would be like, well, I'm probably going to get traded. Yeah. So, and if there's a third one, you knew that one of you all was going. So Landis stopped games between teams that were playing summer games against black teams in exhibition games. Okay. So the Yankees go out and play the Barrens. He straight up stopped that from happening.

there was a series yeah there was so there's no problem with race and baseball also i'm not going to let these players in the summertime play against these black players there was a series of games between the kansas city monarchs and the dizzy dean all-stars and and this was an all-major league baseball player team of all-stars that traveled it was supposed to go for four games but the monarchs won monarchs of the black team they won the first three games games. Landis himself canceled the fourth game. Wow. Yeah. And he also banned any games going forward that would be like this. No more white teams playing against black teams. No more playing against Black League or the end league. Yeah. Now, he, the only exception to this was when the Dodgers

played in Havana in the 1940s, evidently. And what's odd here is that there was an incident in 1938 where a Yankees catcher named Jake Powell was interviewed on the radio. And Jake Powell heavily implied on the air that he worked as a cop and he beat up black people. Landis suspended him for 10 games for, or 10 days for saying that. Wow. So, you know, it's real like all over the board, although if you dig a little deeper, you'll find out that Landis does this after he has pressured by black activists at the time. He wasn't so much mad at the comment, but he was mad that a player got it out on the air.

Yeah. You know, it's the, look at the damage that you're doing to our image, not you're a terrible person. Yeah, yeah. And harming the sport. Yeah. Exactly. 10 games out of 154 games also is not that big a penalty. Let's be real.

So he punished a guy for saying racist stuff, but we really should look at the context. text. Also, Landis forbade players and managers from speaking about their preferences on the color line. So again, there's no law against it. There's no rule against it, but I'm also not going to let anybody say what they think. Some would see this as a part of his overall personality in terms of autocracy and dictatorial grumpiness protecting the game that he holds so dear, but honestly, he's protecting the status quo while claiming not to oppose change. And that's a really flimsy look. And also, that's kind of how he ran most of his courtroom, too. If you opposed him, he had a problem with you. Otherwise, he kept up the appearance of equanimity and limited duties

when falling hard on people who fell outside of what he determined was right. So this is not that different. Now, in 1942, Leo DeRosher, the manager of the New York Giants, told the daily worker that he would hire black players if he was allowed. DeRosher spoke about the gentleman's agreement. He called it a grapevine agreement. Um, and Landis ordered DeRosher to deny ever having said it, casting doubt on the newspaper for running the article. Because again, you're making the sport look bad. Right. And also now people don't trust the, uh, the, uh, what do you call it, the daily worker.

Landis regularly denied requests, uh, to be interviewed about what was known then as the color line. Stan Lacey, uh, a sports reporter did not let that deter him at all. He was a sports writer and a journalist as well as a radio reporter in the 20s and 30s, and he had been a sports editor for the Washington Tribune, a black newspaper in Washington, D.C., while sports editor Stan Lacey covered Jesse Owens' successes in Munich in 1936. Okay. He also covered Satchel Page, Josh Gibson, Joe Lewis, and in 1936, Stan Lacey starts agitating the senator's owner, Clark Griffith, to allow black players to play on the team

in Washington, D.C., a town with a large black population. He finally secured a meeting face-to-face with Griffith, but it didn't go well. Griffith claimed to be down for it in concept, but that there were so many southern ball players that would object, and this has some truth to it, actually, because there you go. Yeah.

But, again, if you look at how baseball was organized back then, players couldn't do fucking shit. Yeah. So it doesn't really matter that most of the Detroit baseball team was from Georgia. Tell them to suck it up. Anyway, Stan Lacey moved to Chicago in 1941. He starts working for the Chicago Defender, and that's where Kennesaw Mountain Landis is based out of at that time.

And so Lacey wrote letter after letter to Landis requesting a discussion on desegregation of baseball. Landis answered exactly zero. Kennesaw Mountain Landis finally agreed to talk about the color line, but then he held an all-purpose meeting with multiple black reporters and activists. He invited what was called the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association, as well as Paul Robeson. Do you know Paul Robeson?

Yeah. The baritone? Yeah. Also a huge sports guy. Oh. He'd played football. He'd played baseball. He was a big deal in sports. Now, Landis loved his spectacle, and he used this as an opportunity to take the narrative away from Lacey, the reporter, and put all the spotlight on Robeson, the communist. Robeson then becomes the main voice asking about desegregation, and that, of course, is going to leave Lacey out in the cold because Lacey's like, look, I've been bringing this up.

I'm a sports reporter. I know sports. Paul's great. He's a polymath. He does all the shit but like you brought a guy who is a magnet for conservatives to hate on well yeah i mean we're not we're not saying this guy who was dumb right he knew what he was doing right now because the now the the the avowed communist paul robesons uh otherwise very reasonable attempt at engaging landis about desegregation would now have the communist pink stink on it right landis could then turn around in Lacey's mind, and not without precedent, and claim that the efforts towards desegregation

were just a communist effort to weaken American institutions like baseball. After all, Robeson's in favor of it. Yeah. So no owner would want to be the first one who jumped out first, because then it would

look like they were being actively duped or co-opted by the communist front using black athletes to denigrate this pure sport. So Stan Lacey characterized Landis as cartoonishly two-faced, extending the long hand of friendship while wielding a sharp knife behind his back with the other hand. In December of 44, Kennesaw Mountain Landis died, and Stan Lacey addressed the baseball owners in March of 1945.

So three months later, no doubt with the cultural backing of the Double V campaign, the fact that racism and fascism were being shown as so connected and the successes of black athletes growing harder and harder to deny this made it so that the owners without Landis as a bulwark no longer could claim

that like well we would but so we have a meeting and in that meeting Stan Lacey encourages the owners to desegregate baseball he also engaged a man named Happy Chandler the successor to Kennesaw Mountain Landis I don't understand what it is with these fucking names and baseball commissioners

yeah I yeah you beat me to it yeah but anyway Stan Lane or not Stan Lane that's that's the claimed father of Lauren Bobert Stan Lacey the sports reporter and the activist engaged Chandler in a discussion about

desegregation and Chandler was more than barely tacitly supportive of it. A few months later, October 45, Branch Ricky, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed a contract with Jackie Robinson

to get him on to the Montreal Royals. Right. It would still take three more years before he was called up to the major leagues. But the fact of the timeline remains, some would say that Branch Ricky was headed in that direction already, which is fair, but he didn't make a fucking move until Landis died.

Yeah. Given Landis's autocratic power over owners down to Bat Boys, given that Landis forced the Phillies owner to give up his stake and his team over gambling, I think Branch Rickey wanted to desegregate, but wanted to wait until Landis died. Makes sense. So Landis did clean up baseball, got rid of the gambling influences for quite some time.

But, I mean, ultimately he's a villain who did. several right things, but he keened sharply over to maintaining the shittiest status quo that he could partly as a way to express his power and partly as a way to keep his power. Yeah. So that's the other villain of the meeting. Yeah.

Yeah. The Robeson thing. Yeah. That's the cherry on top of all of that. Yep. Yeah. Wow. And then he did it until the day he died. Like, wow. Yeah. Now, some other time

I'll cover Amelia Dyer Alexander Graham Bell Edith Wilson Matthew Hopkins William Bailey Mother Teresa She deserves And then also

The group of John L. DeWitt Owen J. Roberts Charles Fahey and Dylan S. Meyer I'll cover all of them as well as Villains that we forgot about All right Anyway, what have you gleaned from these two fellas Oh, gee, many Christmas.

It's a different set of lessons from each one. With our first story, it's just a reminder of how hard it behooves us to work to be aware of our Eurocentrism. sure and the chauvinism that goes along with it yep um you know because archaeology has has you know uh uh improved in in all kinds of ways by leaps and bounds since then um but you know there is there is still a tendency toward um paternalism uh by by you know western archaeologists when dealing with non-Western or non-dominant cultures

So that's I'd say the lesson from the first one And for the second one You know Somebody's Somebody's love of something That you know We romanticize

You know People's love of things For the thing you know and and most of the time it's right to do that you know but sometimes we need to be we need to view it critically and yeah and i think i think uh kenneth saw mountlandis is is a good example like his his love of the game is obvious but like that was a cover for some really sketchy shit You know, like, like beyond sketchy, like, yeah, like villainous, villainous shit.

So, yeah. Yeah, I think, I think that's my takeaway there. And, yeah, I'm going to go to sleep tonight picturing pyramids exploding. Well, before you do, I'm going to have you listen to this song. So I'm going to pause this and we'll come back to it. Okay. so that was the song Kennesown Mountain Landis

by Jonathan Coulter yeah smoking monkey album yeah smoking monkey yeah I I don't know what I just heard what I said earlier

about Giuseppe I want to I want a parody movie or a satire movie I feel like in musical form I just got that Yes About about Landis

Yeah Yeah And now Now I'm gonna have Kennesah Mountain Landing It was a bad motherfucker It was a bad motherfucker

He was 15 feet tall And he had 150 wives Yeah I had a feeling You'd go to bed With that in your head Yeah Wow

That that's that's a thing um yeah i don't i don't know what to make of that yeah i mean but you know i will share this i am always going to be partisan toward the guys who are doing the work getting the lion's share of the money yeah and baseball has never been that yeah and one of the reasons baseball has never been that is because of how strongly Kennesaw Mountain Landis stood for intransigence. And it was a system that 100% was based on nobles oblige. And you motherfuckers are going to fucking oblige,

but also you players, you're not labor. Like there was, yeah. So had he not done that, I think there had been a lot more gambling in baseball because the gambling is a symptom. Yeah. One of the reasons that the White Sox threw it. Like so many of them threw it was, I mean, with the exception of like there's a player on the team who's, oh, God, I forget his name now.

But he regularly, like he got involved with boxers and got them to throw things. He was a gambler. He just was a big time gambler. But the rest of them, it was because, if I recall correctly, Kamiski, the head of the White Sox, Fuck them on their bonuses Yeah So they're like well We're not loyal to you fuck you

Like and at the same time They were forced to be loyal to him Yeah So they had no other They had no other recourse yeah So I'm you know The the symptom of gambling He fixed

He absolutely did But boy did he keep a fucked up status quo Yeah he didn't he didn't He didn't solve gambling by fixing the underlying conditions he just mitigated the symptom. Yeah, and he maintained the color line not by

passing rules to and reinforce it but by refusing to address it and again, more allowing the owners to be shitty people so. Yeah. But anyway, those are your villains that we have forgotten that I think deserve mention.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. In both cases. Yeah. Wow. So what are you going to recommend to folks. What I'm going to recommend this week is the series of books that my son has been reading very, very excitedly during his reading time that I talked about at the top of the episode. And the series is The Boy with Video Game Powers by R.L. Olman, is the author's name. and it's exactly what it says on the tin

I have not read them but I have I have had them summarized to me in great detail my son is very excited today because we just got the third one in the series I want to say that there are four of them out at this point yeah there's four of them out at this point there's a possibility of more

but yeah highly recommended for young readers. How about you? I'm going to recommend the book Eight Men Out, actually, by Elliot Asanoff. It was originally written in 1963. I grew up with the movie in the late 80s, you know, because Field of Dreams came out, and that kind of brought it to the fore for most people. But there was another movie with Charlie Sheen, if I recall correctly, and yeah, I think so. Michael Rooker and several other guys whose names I don't remember just yet.

Christopher Lloyd was in it. But anyway, called Eight Men Out. There's a movie called Eight Men Out. And this was the book that it was based on. And so it's Eight Men Out, the Black Sox, and the 1919 in World Series. It digs in pretty deeply to the reasons why a lot of people turned to throwing the game. Yeah. Anyway, cool.

Well, where can we be found? We can be found on our website at wauwbawba-wava-wava-wava. At geekhistorytime.com, we can also be found on the Apple Podcast app, the Amazon podcast app, and on Spotify. And wherever it is that you have found us, please take a moment to give us the five-star review that you know we deserve and make sure to subscribe. And where can you be found, sir? Let's see, November 7th, December 5th, January 2nd, February 6th, and March 6th, you can find me and the crew of Capital Punishment at the Sacramento Comedy Spot. Myself, Justine, Emily, and a bevy of really good guests. We've been booking really solid shows.

So $15, definitely well worth it. Go to sackcomit spot.com and go to the calendar page. buy your ticket online so you avoid the rush and so you can make sure you secure yourself a ticket in case we sell out because we will and 9 p.m. So take an app, get some dinner, and then come out for the show.

So capital punishment at Sacramento Comedy Spot first Friday of every month at 9 p.m. Well, very cool. For a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.