Behind the Bastards - CZM Rewind: The British Super-Soldier Who Killed A Nation

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Original Air Date: July 17th, 2018 Robert is joined by comedian Brodie Reed to discuss Idi Amin, a highly skilled soldier who murdered an estimated 300,000 or more of his own people, and his rise to power in Uganda.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Tracy R. Kelburns was two years old, her baby brother died. I was told that Matthew died in an accident. Her parents told police she had killed him. I'm Nancy Glass. Join me for burden of guilt. The new podcast that tells the true and incredible story of a toddler who was framed for murder. Listen to burden of guilt on the iHe I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A brand new historical true crime podcast. When you lay suffering a sudden brutal death, starring Allison Williams, I hope you'll think of me erased theased, the murder of Elma Sands. She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl. That's so ugly! Until she met that man right there. Written and created by me, Allison Flop.

Is it possible, sir? We're standing by for your answer. Erased, the murder of Elma Sands. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. The system's broken. I said, something's wrong here, you know, whenever a woman is allowed to kill my two kids. Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggel, a mother accused of murder.

Despite signs that Catherine Hoggel took her tiny children one by one into the night, never to come home again. She has yet to stand trial. Listen to Unrestorable on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the show completely ad-free, subscribe to the iHeartTrueCrime Plus channel, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Plus you'll get ad-free access to dozens of hit True Crime shows, like paper ghosts,

betrayal, and the Idaho massacre. I'm Paul Muldoon, a poet who over the past several years has had the good fortune to record ours of conversations with one of the world's greatest songwriters, Sir Paul McCartney. The result is our new podcast, McCartney, A Life in lyrics. Listen to McCartney, A Life in lyrics on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Call the media. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here.

Earlier this week we had a one-parter on Dracula. Could have been long enough for a two-parter, but I just thought it ran better as a one-parter. But this is a holiday week. The most sacred day on my calendar, Halloween. So I'm taking the rest of the week off. So we've decided on Thursday we're giving you a blast from the past. We're doing a rewind episode. And this is our episode on EDMine from like, fucking almost five years ago, I think, something like that. It's really a

fascinating story. If you're a newer listener, you might have missed it. So check it out. Hello, friends, and welcome back to Behind the Bastards. I'm Robert Evans and this is the show that tells you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. Today my guest who I will be who's coming in cold with this tale and who I'll be reading the story to is Brody Reed, comedian. Hello. Hey. A steamed guest, I think. A steamed guest. Yes, yes, Esquire. Brody Read Esquire. I think means you're the editor for Esquire magazine.

Right, I'm a lawyer and I'm also the editor of Esquire magazine. Those are my credits. Yes. And I won't change them. That's what that means. Now, we're doing a little bit different today. Normally, we're pretty upfront about who the subject of the podcast is, but there's a lot of background

to get to before we can really properly introduce this guy. So I'm kind of curious as to when you figure out who we're talking about, and I also kind of want it to be a little bit of a surprise for the audience. So if you're good, I'm just going to get into it. Okay, I mean, I'm kind of like an amateur private investigator, so I might get it real off the bat and I want to ruin your flow or anything,

but let's try. All right, let's see how this goes. Time on the clock. Maybe this will be my great disaster, but. I think it'll be fun. Yeah. All right, so today, right now, 2018, Britain is a tiny, adorable nation filled with wizards and a conspicuously broad definition of the word pudding.

It's easy. Okay, I'm going to guess Voldemort. No, no, no, no. I'm just getting it that it's easy for us to forget today considering how docile the British people are that for a while they ruled the entire world. Yeah. The British Empire was the largest empire in human history. The Mongol Empire at its height held about 24 million kilometers in area. 16% of the world's population, the British Empire was over 35 million kilometers in area, 16% of the world's population, the British Empire, was over 35 million kilometers in area and ruled nearly a quarter of the planets.

Trust me, I did not forget the big, colonized everything. Yeah. Well, I think what's most shocking to me when I read about this is that they controlled that huge chunk of the planet with probably the smallest army that any empire has ever had. You know, the Roman Empire at its height was about 750,000 regular soldiers. The British Empire at its height before the World War started was about 120,000 British soldiers.

They never spent more than about 2.5% of their GDP on defense. Wow. Which is a regular soldiers were like super serum like Captain America's soldiers. So you have predicted a little bit where this is going. Now these soldiers are regular soldiers. They're volunteers, which is different from most, most militaries in this period are not volunteer, permanent standing militaries.

So the British are a little bit different there. But they're just normal soldiers. They have machine guns, which certainly helps with the whole colonizing thing. Or they have machine guns for a chunk of this. But it does beg the question. We've only got 120,000 guys. And for most of the British Empire, they don't have machine guns. How do you hold a quarter of the planet in bondage for 200 years with a whole army that's a little larger than the modern coast guard in the United States?

Nukes. Is that not the correct one? No, no, I mean, you get the locals to oppress themselves. Oh, yeah. That's what smells my second guess. Yeah, so Michael Codner, who is the head of military science for the Royal United Services Institute, described the British Empire's military as essentially,

quote, the Royal Navy and a system of indigenous constabularies overseen by a small but professional British army. Sure. Now I found that quote in a BBC article from back in 2011, the article also quoted a military historian named Dr. Hugh Davies who noted that all of British NVA was controlled by just 30,000 British troops, supervising hundreds of thousands of local Indian soldiers or sepoids.

He was quoted as saying, the Empire had to pay for itself and it had to be profitable. And if you put too much into building up the army, the Empire is no longer a profitable enterprise. He sounds like the rat mogul. So that sentence ends. And his empire has a build itself. In his defense, I don't think he's justifying imperialism. I think he's just explaining this was the attitude that the imperialists had.

We can't spend too much money on the army otherwise Yeah, everything is for profit exactly And British India was conquered in the first place by a for profit corporation the East India trading company The East India company had a private army of over a quarter of a million men. Wow most of those were indigenous soldiers So you know local Indians people from Burmese that's, local jobs. Yeah, no, yeah, exactly. By local, very, very ethical with our modern. It's a job creator, yeah. Yeah.

So the East India Company started taking over India on the 1600s, and by 1803, they controlled most of what's now India, Pakistan, and Burma. In 1814, this giant multinational corporation declared war on Nepal, which was at that point known as the Kingdom of Gorka. They fought for two brutal years before the Kingdom ceded a third of its territory to the company in exchange for peace. The British won, but the Gorkas had put up a really vicious fight, and the East India Company was impressed by their warriors, so they started recruiting these men into their

army. At first, these Gorkas were used to keep the peace in Everbeleus India, but the Gerkas quickly proved themselves to be very capable warriors. In 1858, when the Queen formally took control of India away from the company, Gerkas were integrated into the greater British army. They served as elite shock troops in World War I and II. The British army today still fields battalions of Gerkas recruited basically as mercenaries from Nepal and paid far less than their British citizen counterparts. This sounds like Game of Thrones. It sounds like some unsullied nonsense. It's a little bit like that.

Now, the British like the Gerkas because they were loyal and just incredibly deadly. They carry these big knives called kukris and there, there's a lot of, if you go online, you can find threads today where British veterans talk about the stories their NCOs told about GERKAS and like there's a common one where you have to tie your shoes a certain way. Okay.

Because the GERKAS... They'll cut your foot off. Well, no, when they're doing espionage missions on the night, they'll tell who they want to kill by feeling their bootlaces. They could tell, like in World War II, they knew what German bootlaces felt like. And so if an ally soldier took boots off of a dead German, he might get cut by a Gerkka. Like, it's a possibly apocryphal story, but very insivators still told today.

So they'll kill you if you tied your shoes wrong, essentially. If you tied your shoes like the enemy. Yeah, I heard that. Yeah, so the Gerkka's were like super soldiers of the British Empire. A little bit of what you were getting at. Yeah, they sound like sword guys to me. Yeah, they're not actually dangerous.

Yeah, they're not absolutely dangerous. Yeah, they're scary. And they weren't the only super soldiers in the British Empire. Over their period of time conquering huge chunks of the world, the British encountered a number of warrior peoples. Some of these peoples like the Gurkas had their own well-developed warrior culture already when the British arrived and the British just exploited it. But in other parts of the world, the process occurred less naturally.

Take the tribes of the West Nile region of Africa. Their first contact with more technologically advanced peoples came in the early 1800s when successive groups of Arab slavers started praying on them. Certain tribes who were the best fighters were enslaved by these Arab slavers and used a soldiers to capture other Africans who were then sent off to markets in North Africa in the Middle East. So yeah. Yeah, it's a bummer. This whole story is going to be kind of a bummer.

Oh, great. When you're talking colonialism, it's never not a heartbreak. I mean, aren't you talking colonialism if we want to get real? Well, I mean, and that's one of the point, like when you start talking about dictators, especially from the 70s, 80s, 90s, you can trace nearly all of them back to colonialism. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's more or less this story. So, but the 1870s, the British had become abolitionists in a big way, perhaps because they felt kind of bad about, you know, the whole Atlantic slave trade thing. But mostly because it was a way to justify

conquering colonies in Africa, saying we're going to stop the Arab slave traders, but we have to conquer this whole chunk of Africa in order to stop the slave trade. Right. They're a good guy with a gun. With a lot of... With all the guns.

That's a lot of mascgon. Yeah. So the British took over a huge chunk of North Africa, including the Sudan, and with public pressure behind them, they sent armies down to stop the slave traders. These armies like all British armies were made mostly of locals. Many of those locals were recently freed slave soldiers that the British were happy to induct into their army.

So they would free these slave soldiers from the Arab slave traders, and then they would induct them into a colonial military and use them to fight slave traders. Yeah, sounds like college. Sounds like the job market. slave traders and then they would induct them into a colonial military and use them to fight slave traders. Yeah, sounds like college. Sounds like the job market. I thought you were going to compare this like college football. Well, yeah, that's it. Absolutely.

So, one such army of former slaves was headed by a German doctor and a Muslim convert named M. M. Pasha. In the 1880s, M. M. Pasha and his army were besieged by an Islamic army during the modest insurrection. They were eventually freed by a guy named Henry Morton Stanley, who regular listeners of the podcast will recognize the guy who mapped the Congo for King Leopold of Belgium. Stanley took Pasha with him when he left, and Pasha's men stayed behind in the West Nile region on Garrison duty for a few years, until they were picked up by agents for the Imperial British East Africa Company. Now, the company representatives were always alert for new warrior people to enlist, and

they considered these men to be, quote, the best material for soldiery in Africa. These tribes came to be called Nubian and became the British Empire's shock troopers in Africa. The East Africa Company used their Nubians to carve an empire out of the continent's heart. They named their new colony, Uganda. As the British Empire grew, the New Beans were inducted into their regular British army and became the elite fourth battalion of the King's African rifles. There were Muslims, which differentiated them from most of the peoples they were sent to suppress in Central and West Africa. The British basically turned the New Beans people into a living, breathing

factory for the production of the deadliest colonial soldiers in Africa. And, yes, being bread for war had a negative impact on the Nubians themselves. Here's what one former commanding officer of the King's African rifles wrote about them. Quote, the Nubians became the most feared and influential ethnic group in Uganda, mercilessly suppressing uprisings and tribal subprutes at the behest of their British masters. It was the success of these early operations that gave them contempt for all pagan and Christian tribes in the country.

In 1974, a journalist named David Martin echoed the sentiment, quote, among their fellow countrymen, they enjoyed an uninveable reputation of having one of the world's highest homicide rates. The dubians were renowned for their sadistic brutality, lack of formal education, for poisoning enemies, and for the refusal to integrate even in the urban centers Martin was a new gondor to write about one newbie and in particular one of the deadliest warriors to ever serve in the King's African rifles a man named iti I mean okay, wow okay, so that's this guy sound like black Republicans

Well, you guys are on the wrong team. I mean, they're like, did they ever have a choice? Like, no. Yeah, exactly. You're right. If you recruit a people with soldiers for 100 years and don't really give them any other options for anything to do, it's not going to be pretty. Yeah, I hear that. I mean, I grew up in a bad neighborhood also, but I didn't become a tough warrior.

I just became a comedian with this mormout. I'm sure there were a few newbie in comedians. And that like, part of the difficulty here is like all these stories about how brutally are coming from like British and American white guys. Yeah, totally. They're probably just like pretty cool. They're probably just like, I don't know, trying to invent whatever sports game that they had. I'm trying to play some football and they were like, well these guys are brutal. They're kicking our ass. Well, I mean, it's like British football. Yeah, for sure.

Kind of. I mean, I feel like if colonizers came over to Africa and then the Africans just like dunked a basketball, they'd be like, wow, these brutal power. It's a shame that basketball is to take it over there first. No, I don't. So Idiah mean was born sometime between 1925 and 1928. We don't really know for sure. He was probably born in the village of Kogokko in Northwest Uganda.

He was for sure a Kakwa, which were one of the Nubian tribes that British considered to be a warrior people. Now, it is father served with the British army in the King's African rifles and was generally out of the picture. His mother is usually described as a witch or a self-proclaimed sorceress. I watched a documentary when I was sort of prepping for this thing that was called Amin, the Rise and Fall, and it was a terrible documentary. It's one of those like 90s made for TV movies where all the rise and fall and it was it was terrible documentaries one of those like 90s made for TV movies where all the acting is bad and it's very sensational Super biased super biased and it leans into this stuff that I think what most people have heard about it I mean, which was like witchcraft cannibalism that sort of thing, okay, which will be we'll be talking about a little bit later

But is I mean that just sounds like Los Angeles culture. Which crafty cannibalism. Yeah, astrology and veganism, not much, not so much cannibalism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say veganism, yeah, a betterism than cannibalism. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we're gonna get into sort of how a lot of these facts are unreliable about it. But the way that this terrible documentary summed up it is childhood, I found humorous, which is the child grew up by the river learning the ways of manhood and the spells of witchcraft. That sort of sums up, I think, the general common popular perception of who this guy was. It sounds like he fished a lot. Boy, yeah, there's always, there's gonna be a lot of dark stories about rivers whenever you read about the, it's scary. Yeah. How did the ocean get to

the land that way? Yeah. It's one of those like anytime you read about a place with that's like famous for its rivers and they have some sort of like horrible butchery happen. There's just always tons of stories about kids finding heads in the rivers. We were just in the Cambodia one. It was the same thing, just like. I mean, you find all kinds of weird stuff in there. Yeah, to be H. So yeah, the witchcraft stuff is almost certainly racist bullshit.

Well, witchcraft was and is still common in parts of Uganda. I mean, was it practicing Muslim? Uganda and Muslims had their own kind of witchcrafty tradition where people would use the Koran to foretell the future. and he certainly used that, but he wasn't doing like pagan blood magic or anything like that. Yeah, all of this sounds like astrology so far. What was the sign, doesn't it say? Well, it was like these, these, these lomac version of astrology.

Oh, okay. But I don't know, probably a quarry. Witchcraft was less of a factor in his regime than the traditions and rituals of his beloved British army. So it was eventually abandoned by his father and by some accounts his mother too. It's kind of hard to tell what happened there. He got as far as the fourth grade before he dropped out of school when he was at most 17, a British colonial army officer noted his tremendous size and recruited him into the King's

African rifles. He started his service as a cook's assistant, literally peeling potatoes, which is like the stereotypical bottom on the wrong army job. But he kind of seems like if you're big, that you shouldn't be a rifleman. We're going to make you target. You're a pragmatic man. I mean, I would only recruit the little guys, the most feared army ever. He didn't stay at the bottom long. Itty was gigantic.

He was like six foot four, well over 200 pounds. And he was in his younger days. He gets kind of heavier as an older guy, but you could get pictured when he's young. He is solid muscle. Like he's just a mountain of a man. Yeah, me too. He's got about three inches on me.

And that's about it. So he was a perfect candidate to become a heavyweight boxer, which is exactly what happened. According to Robert Keely, Deputy Chief of the US Mission in Campala, quote, his advancements came essentially through boxing. He was very tall with tremendous reach in big hands. He was big and strong and tough in general. You can picture him in any culture as a heavyweight champion and that's what he was. The Ugandan are very fine boxers.

They still prove it to this day in the Olympics. They have a strong boxing tradition, which the British encouraged. The main avenue for advancement in the army was boxing. So Amin eventually became the heavyweight champion of the army, and in 1951 to 1952, the heavyweight champion of all Uganda. His ability to punch people proved useful

in maintaining discipline among other soldiers in his unit. Here's another quote from Keeley. Itia Mene became prominent as the link between the two, the officers sitting around sipping their tea or their brandy or their port. Upon hearing some noises and disruptions outside, would call in Sargent Amin and tell him to take care of the problem. Amin goes out, there are some shouts and screams, Haseenaq's hem heads together and kicks him butt, and then silence. The officers resume they're sipping in a very appreciative of edis of performance. Jesus, literally.

They eventually made him the top sergeant. Wow. Okay. Because, of course, sergeant was as high as an actual African could raise in the King's African rifles. We're not allowed to have any Africans be officers in any of the British colonial armies in the world, or I think in India for that matter, Which is, if you're a racist colonial power, you don't want anybody in your army.

You can't have, like you've got to recruit soldiers from the locals, but you don't want them learning about supply lines and logistics and stuff. Yeah, good point. Yeah, then they'll know how to overthrow the seven guys that you have there. Yeah, that's why I haven't been promoted to any officer, ranks. I Yeah, that's why I haven't been promoted to any officer

ranks. I mean, how's your boxing? I mean, very, very, very bad. But if we're talking about a Wii game, then still very bad. So we need an army where we is the product. I mean, with drones nowadays, that's the future. I feel like that's the future. Drone boxer.

I hear you. So, he was the perfect soldier for the British Empire. Everyone who served with him in those days was impressed both by his toughness and by his almost superhuman strength. His commanding officer Ian Graham said that his body was, quote, like that of a Grecian sculpture. During one terrible march, when all of the other men could barely continue, quote, one man was an example and an inspiration to us all.

As we finally passed the finishing post, Edie Amin was marching beside me at the head of the column, head held high and still singing for all he was worth. Across one's shoulder were two brin guns and a brin is a, like a machine gun. It's like a 22 pound machine gun that you put on a tripod on the ground. So we had two of those in one hand, and over the other was a crippled ascari,

and the ascari was a British word for like a local soldier. So he had one of his wounded comrades in one arm, and two machine guns on the other. That's like the kind of soldier he made. He was just, he was like, he was a super soldier. Man, he invented CrossFit. Apparently, some Joe Rogan, Alphabet brain kind of going.

Now Ian Graham said that seeing this reminded him of a translation of another of a King's African Rifles marching song. I'm about to read you the song, which is explain sort of how the British viewed men. No, sing it. Oh boy, that's the... I think I can do a good British accent here, but I don't know that No, sing it. Oh boy, that's the... I think I can do a good British accent here, but I don't know that I can sing it. I mean, does it even rhyme?

I don't know if it does. Oh, okay. It does, it does. It definitely rhymes, and it's a bit racist. Oh, great. Now, you need to understand the word Soudi is another word for Nubian. Like, it's like a local term for like people

who are from his group of Ugandans. So here's the British fighting song that this guy thought of when he saw it, I mean, marching. It's the Soudi, my boy. It's the Soudi with his grim set ugly face, but he looks like a man and he fights like a man for he comes of a fighting race, which that's exactly what these people were to the British. So the whole thing, huh? So the thing. I assume there was more, but this was the line that this guy recalled, which is like, it shows you exactly what the British thought of these guys is that they are soldiers. That's why, and that's what they were bred for and encouraged for. And they didn't have to do people of like the Cockwood tribe. Didn't have to do anything other than send their sons to fight for the British Army.

And the British would take care of them. And then they respond with their own diss track? Or I don't have these pieces, girl. I think they saw this as a diss track at that point. That's too bad. Yeah, it is. And it gets better. So Youngamine was sent to war several times

on behalf of the British Empire. In 1949, he went to Somalia to suppress the shift of rebellion. In 1952, he went sent to Kenya to suppress the Malmau uprising. We don't talk about the Malmau uprising a lot these days, but it basically started as a bunch of Kenyan rebels who were angry because the British were whipping people half to death, which is that's how British kept discipline and all their African colonies was just horrific amounts of whipping. So these guys rose up and they killed some British people and the British sent an army in and brutally suppressed it

They put more than one and a half million Kenyans in concentration camps. They hanged thousands of them Edie probably would have been doing a good amount of the hanging And he also killed a number of warriors in vicious battles in places like Kenyoma and Ken Gema So he's been raised just as a soldier and now he's been brutalized Suppressing multiple colonial wars very violently. Man, successful black man and then he just turned around and then betrays his culture. Classic story.

I mean, he kind of starts with the betrayal, right? Yeah. And then later, well, we'll get to later right now, actually. Oh, man, there's more. Okay, great. There's a lot. So by the late 1950s, itty had risen as high as an African code in the King's African rifles, which is Sergeant, the British, yeah, as I said, didn't let their locals be officers

and their armies. This policy came back to bite them in the ass in the late 50s, because by that point, it had become clear that colonialism was on its way out. The British were preparing to release Uganda as an independent nation. Unfortunately, the British hadn't governed any of their colonies as countries. They basically just treated them as money-making enterprises, corporations, essentially,

with all the business of state craft kept out of the hands of the locals. The British were required by international community to leave Uganda with an army, so it could defend itself. But they hadn't trained any sort of officer corps into Uganda, which is an important thing to have, which is why every military in the world has an officer corps. You know, you train people to do certain jobs, but the Ugandan's just didn't have that. And rather than spend more money and time to build an officer corps for their soon to be country, the British just randomly promoted the sergeants they liked best.

One of those sergeants was a boxer with a fourth grade education named Idiahmeen. This isn't okay, cool. Yeah. He was commissioned in 1962 right before Ugandan independence. He found himself in charge of a platoon in Northwest Kenya, captured a bunch of prisoners and ordered them to be executed. The British governor of Uganda, Sir Walter Coats, vetoed the possibility of Idiah being charged for this war crime.

I mean, was one of the few African soldiers in the entire officers in the entire army and prosecuting him right before independence was deemed politically undesirable. No one stopped to consider whether or not it might be bad for Uganda if one of their high ranking military leaders was a war criminal. Okay. So, when we get back, we're going to get into how itty and mean rose to power and to be the president of Uganda. And what happened next, which is going to be a dark story. But we have some ads first off.

Okay, great. And before we get into some ads, you know, I've been talking a lot about the Doritos people. We're trying to get Doritos to sponsor the podcast. Oh, I hear you. I love that crunchy crunch. That, the Doritos chip. Nothing washes the horrible taste of colonialism out of your mouth. Like a cool ranch.

I was gonna say not to show cheese, but that's what's great about Doritos is freedom. The freedom to cleanse your palate with whatever exciting flavor combination you want. How are they not a sponsor yet? I, well, maybe they will be after this video. Jesus. Let's hear from some other sponsors.

And we're back. Oh, sorry. What's up? So, yeah, I did want to get into before we dig into the rest of the story. What you recall about it, I mean, before we get into his career. Um, not much. I have heard the name before. I've heard that he was a president of Uganda.

He was a bad guy. I don't know the details. I mean, already I've learned way more than I thought. Yeah, before, you know, it was even, it even became an independent nation. I didn't realize that You know they killed so many people. Yeah Well, it was one of those things I had I had vaguely heard yes president of Uganda There were these rumors of witchcraft and cannibalism. I hadn't known any of this stuff about Sort of how the British military worked at the time

and the fact that he, he, he was basically bred to suppress insurgencies. Like that's what the British used his people for, was controlling populations through brutality, which I think is an important thing to get into here, because otherwise it's just a story of like this dictator, but he didn't rise up out of anything. He was like, and I think- He went up to the system, he paid his dues. And he was also trained, you're going, when we get into the things he didn't you gondor that were brutal, they're all echoes of things

he was doing for the British. Like, it's not just a story of some horrible dictator rose up and did terrible things. It's the British trained this guy to do terrible things on their behalf and then abandoned the country if you gone to them. Yeah, this is basically, this guy is completely might meet's right and that's dangerous.

It's really dangerous. And it's dangerous if you don't, like people like that exist in every culture. We've got more than our first share of them in the United States. We have structures built up to make sure that those people don't wind up in charge of the military or whatever. Yeah. At least not to the extent where it's like, there's a reason we've never had the army

of C's power. Like, it's in our country. Yeah, definitely. Well, it's because we give them so much money. Cool. Okay, so not just cool, cool ranch. Fuck. Let's get back to itty, I mean.

But seriously, Doritos people send us a drop of something. Get out of here. We're at Bastard's pod on Twitter. Yeah, itty, I mean, has just committed a war crime right before you got an independence and the British governor of Uganda has sort of hushed up the whole thing because he's one of the only officers and they didn't want to, you know, they just didn't want any complications. They said it would be politically undesirable if this came up right before independence. So IDIA mean now an, rises again rapidly through the ranks,

according to Robert Keely, he advanced by eliminating his rivals in one fashion or another, either physically or by discrediting them, or by scaring them, or somewhere or another. His promotions came frequently. So, he's good at working the system. He understands how the British military works. Respect the hustle.

Yeah. And if there's one man who knows how to hustle, it's Eddie Amin. Now, on October 9th, 1962, Uganda gains its independence from Great Britain. Uganda's first prime minister was a guy named Milton Abote, and the president was a guy named Edmund Muteza. Muteza was also the king of the Buganda, who were a southern tribe in Uganda.

He was better known as King Freddie. For a little while, Muteza and Abote co-existed, and things were all tribe in Uganda. He was better known as King Freddie. For a little while, Mutesna and Abote co-existed and things were all right in Uganda. Milton Abote, like Idiamine, came from Northern Uganda. He advocated for a great African awakening. He was a socialist, although not a very dogmatic one.

The West generally disliked him, but he was also super corrupt, which is gonna be a theme in this story. So by 1964, Idiamine had been named Deputy Army Commander under a dude with the really cool name Shaban Upalot, which is one of my favorite names that I've encountered in this podcast research. He saw action again, fighting alongside Ketanga rebels who were battling the government of Zaire.

Itty took gold and diamonds from the rebels and gave them guns from the Ugandan Army in exchange. He then sold the loot for cash. A boatay the president got it on the racket. There was a brief parliamentary inquiry, but a boatay had all the other people in this scheme arrested, and so he and he and itty were fine. Now in 1966, a boatay got tired of sharing power and suspended the constitution. He sent Colonel Edie Amin to attack the palace and bring the king back dead or alive. The king managed to flee the country, but the coup succeeded and Abote was left as the sole power in Uganda. Now this did not make the British happy. The Buganda were their favorite tribe in Uganda, Winston Churchill, under Secretary of State for the colonies from 1905 to 1905. Yeah, super good guy. Never caused a famine that could grow or to have a million people.

Yeah, not even well once, but let him among us who has not starved for a half million. Yeah, we all cause a couple of famines. He considered the Beganda to be civilized, which means basically that they'd all converted to Christianity easily. Their territory was just where the British wound up putting the railroad and their administration buildings. So the Begonons were the people the British had spent the most time with in Uganda. They considered them civilized because they acted like British people. They're the good ones. Yeah, exactly. Now, the Ugandan people, most of whom weren't Begonons, supported Abote's kicking down the king. They saw him as casting down a

British-backed monarch. They saw this as a true break from the past and chance it a new beginning. It was an exciting time, but the excitement soon faded in the reality of Abote's ridiculous corruption. People protested, of course, and by 1969, the government could only stay in power with the military's backing. Edie had been popular with the British because he was a great soldier and because he spoke English with just the right accent that made them think he was cute and dumb because they were racist as fuck. But it was not dumb.

Well, the government had grown more dependent on his military. He started recruiting hundreds of his relatives and fellow Newbyans into the army and putting them in the positions he would want them in when it was time to take power. This was disrupted in 1970 when an assassin tried to kill President of Bo-Tay and shot him through the mouth. American diplomat Bovunau recalled, the army went a muck and for about 12 hours, it was a pretty horrifying situation. It appears to have gotten confused and thought the attempt was a coup against both him and

a Bote. So he ran. He quote, jumped out the back window of his house and his pajamas and disappeared, which really mystified us all, because they were expecting that this assassination attempt was him seizing power, but it was just somebody else. So he was mocked for weeks in the wake of the attack because he ran out in the night in his pajamas, and a number of people counted him out

as a force in you-gown in politics at this point. But Edie embarked on a redemption tour. Part of that was having a bunch of people clandestinely executed in the night. Part of it was showing up in public with a bunch of his armed friends and just scaring people. Nal was there for part of that, too.

He was at at a bar one night and he, quote, you know, he saw it, he saw it, quote, I walked out of the bar and there was a mean, a huge man in an enormous fellow with his officers and their weapons sitting in the main lounge, sitting at attention, not talking, just looking around. I thought, Jesus, what's going to happen? They sat there for about half an hour,

and then a mean said something in one of the local languages, and they all got up and walked out of there. What it was, I'm convinced to this day, was a threat on the part of a mean about reestablishing his position. He knew that he was laughed at because he ran away. This was his reprisal, his counter threat, and it worked.

People were scared to death. So, they might have been more scared by the fact that Diddy had had a number of people killed. Yeah, and the fact that he just sat there for half hour for his eyes, I was cruising. Yeah, a little bit like some guy just sits in the bar scaring at you with like his friends and all their guns. Yeah, that's intimidating. So yeah, in 1971 President of Bote went to Singapore for a conference. Before he left, he put out the order that Idemen was to be arrested for massive corruption and murder, which Idemen was guilty of, but which Abote was guilty of, too. Before the warrant could be served, Idemen launched his coup.

The killing started right away, at least a thousand soldiers from tribes that Idemen didn't trust were massacred. The river filled with corpses, which is, you know. So when you tell the story, like, when I hear stories like this, I'm like, I don't even know where all these people, how many people are they gonna kill before they're just completely run out of people, you know?

It's like, geez, Louise. Yeah, they really go pretty far. And by the time this is all over, it will have killed, I think, something like one in 57 of the people in Uganda and he's not the worst of them which we'll get to as well. He's just the one that everyone focuses on because there's rumors that he ate people. Wow. So, Nal was the American diplomatic officer in Uganda. So he had responsibility for all of the 800-ish American citizens in country. He told those people to hold fast and chill at home

and that went fine, but there was also a tourist group in town who were furious that this coup got in the way of their vacation. So I wanna read this story just because it's a little bit of levity. It's just American. A Yelp review in here. It's rich Americans acting like rich Americans

in the middle of a coup that's life and death for the people in Uganda. We just wanted to go on a nice vacation, hot and some endangered animals. I said to them, look, the airport is closed and later the tour leader turned to me and said, well, Mr. Nell, these are important people. They haven't got time to wait around. They're going to miss their connections in Nairobi. I said, you're damn right. They're going to miss their connections in Nairobi and they're going to get hungry. They're going to get tired. They're going to get dirty

and they're going to want to get their laundry done and it's not going to be done because I don't see any chance of these folks leaving for four or five days. And that was just the case. They were furious. One guy, the president of this big liquor distributing company in Hartford, Connecticut, high blood or a huge mind or something, he beat me about that on the head and shoulders. He said he had to get back to sign a contract. I said, you can't do it.

There are soldiers at the airport who will kill you Which I just love Like there's people getting murdered in the street. You're like I've got a contract to get back to yeah That sounds like every screenplay or a business man Yeah, it's like that. Yeah, there's a terrorist hijacking the airplane and he's like, I'm going to miss the account. I got to get home for Christmas. So, okay, that was a nice little interlude. So in short order, Eddie Amin is the new president of Uganda. That's a position he would hold for more than eight years. The Western powers,

mainly the British and the Americans, were hopeful at first. They hated a boatay because he was a socialist and because he was even more corrupt and they were prepared to forgive. Itdia mean had a good reputation among the British. He trained as a paratrooper in Israel, so Israel really liked the guy too. So yeah, at first it seems like this new dictator is going to be great for white people. You know, Lady Lista Well who was a Hungarian noblewoman and a journalist who became itty's first biographer, met him around this time, and here's how she described meeting him for the first time to give you an idea of like how this guy comes across.

Quote, I looked into the smiling face of a tall muscular officer with shrewd eyes who infighted me to a cup of coffee. He was a hooking figure of a man and I was fascinated by his hands. Beautiful slim hands with long tapering fingers. We got it. You're warning. We got it. I just, we did a podcast on King Leopold of Belgium, the guy who massacred 15 million people

in the Congo. In his biography, there's like a whole paragraph talking about how beautiful his hands were. So I just, that's apparently, that's now, if I can find one more, that's a fish. I'll put you on the train. I'll put you on the train a train his hands were beautiful hands I'm just always shocked that apparently some people are really staring at hands a lot Yeah, I know and you never hear about like you know his cuticles weren't not while manicured

Yeah, it's been a little long It's really yeah, yeah, there were actually reasons that a reasonable person who wasn't purely looking at this from the British point if you might have thought Eddie and me and had a shot at being a good president. For one thing, he was a fun guy. Everybody who met him really spoke highly of him. Like even people who later were like, oh yeah, he definitely committed atrocities.

He was charming. He was a fun guy to be around. Yeah, I met him and I was so scared. I was like, this guy is going to kill me. So I was like, Ha, ha, ha. Nice guy. Great guy. Um, he was obsessed with Scotland, which is one of the other famous things about Eddie. I mean, yeah, all of the officers and the Kings African rifles. Yeah. And he had, he loved people playing backpacks. Times weird. Yeah, all of the officers in the Kings African rifles have been Scottish. He loved people playing backpacks. Backpacks? Weird.

Yeah, all of the officers in the King's African rifles have been Scottish. And so Edie just really loved Scottish culture. He had a whole plane. I do remember seeing him in like clothing and he's wearing like plaid and stuff. And there's a movie about him that's not super accurate. It's called The Last King of Scotland.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And he had a whole plane dedicated just bringing Scottish whiskey into Uganda. Like there was like a presidential plane that's just the whiskey express, which is a cool thing to dedicate a plane to. Yeah. No, that's that's legitimate and they find.

Hey, are you cool of flying? Yeah, I'm fine. You're it. No, we have a vodka guy fly the whiskey express. He's fine until he gets home. Eddie adopted a number of British military traditions for his own military. He sent a musician to Scotland for a year to learn the bagpipes. He also established a state military jazz band with perhaps the best name of for a band

I've ever heard. The Revolutionary Suicide Jazz Band. Also known as the Revolutionary Suicide Mechanized Regiment Band or the Suicide Mechanized Jazz Band. And here's their... Are they like a punk band? No, they're just a jazz band. They should have been a punk band. What's up, fuck? They call themselves himself suicide? This is a really great picture. They were the regimental band, they were a military band, and the band they were unit four was one of the elite mechanized regiments in the Ugandan army that was the suicide mechanized regiment.

So it was like to try to make them sound scary. Because guys don't care if they die. They're the suicide regiment. For sure. And this amazing picture with several others will be up on our website behind the bastards.com, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Yeah, so it also seems I should know that from reports at the time most of the musicians in the Suicide Revolutionary Jazz Band were sort of press gangged and forced to play. Yeah, they don't look exactly happy because they don't look jazz. Yeah. Wow.

Um, so it is rain was brutal by all measures, uh, and got increasingly brutal as time went on. There are a number of theories as to why Robert Keely thinks he was just promoted out of his depth like Michael Scott. Basically, he was a fine sergeant, but he never should have been an officer let alone running the nation, uh, which is one way or another, probably fair. Keely says, quote, he had learned to use his fists and translated that into how you hold your position, how you protect yourself.

He applied all of the brutal boxing lessons he had learned against his rifles. Lady Listowell also thought that this poor guy had just been forced to jump into a position to complex for his mind. Quote, the cockwa have a great respect for personalities, but not for rank or position. They never had chiefs or recognized clan leaders. I mean, was brought up to believe that all Kalkwa tribesmen are equal. Some of his recent measures illustrate all too well that he had to leap from a peasant background into the complicated politics of the modern world without any intermediate

feudal preparation. I think this attitude that Idi was just a guy that who got promoted beyond his talents is an accurate and based pretty heavily in racism. It shifts the blame over to Uganda for letting such a man rise that high. And I think the real blame lies with the British. Again, there's guys like Idi in every country, violent authoritarians who seek to impose their will on others. Establish nasons, build antibodies up, checks and balances and legal systems and establish

bureaucracies to stop men with fourth grade educations and histories of head injuries from heading the army. Boy, that sounds nice right about now. Well, clearly ours aren't perfect. So, but, you know, Uganda didn't have any of that. The British didn't put any of that in place before they just abandoned them. It's one of those things where if you look at what was set up when the you got into was freed, I don't see someone like it was bound to at least try to take control.

Yeah, it sounds like they set up the country like a reality show. Yeah, yeah, it is almost like that. Yeah, they're like, here you guys go, here's some sticks survive. And they didn't they didn't consider any of the ways it could go badly. And they didn't like they know like the British have never had a military coup. And they have an officer cod refer a reason. They like set, like they know how you set up a military so it doesn't destroy the country.

And they didn't do any of that in Uganda because they were lazy and they didn't care. So, you fucked the British. You didn't fuck them. And Floyd Michigan still doesn't have clean water. Yeah, I'm fuck us too, for sure. For sure. This one is actually this one sort of our bad too,

because we supported the idiomine regime for a while. We being the United States. Fuck us. Fuck everybody. Fuck everybody. Except for Uganda, they didn't deserve any of this. Except for Doritos. Now, Doritos had nothing to do with this.

Okay, that's good enough. That's fair. And you could argue that Doritos has stopped similar monsters from arising in other countries by filling them with Nacho goodness. Yeah, that's right. You stopped the monster of hunger. As far as we know, Idiah,

I mean, never got to experience extreme Nacho flavor. And that might be the secret of his madness. Yeah. The only extremism he should have been into is nacho cheesy crunch. So yeah, when the British first started the Ugandan colony, they had carried out a policy of bringing in South Asians, mostly from India to Uganda, to quote, service a buffer between Europeans and Africans in the middle rungs of commerce and administration. This had started when the British brought 30,000 Indians over to build railways in Uganda.

These folks had a lot more experience with Western-style capitalism than the average Ugandan. And as a result, they saw great success setting up businesses in the new colony. By the early 1970s, Ugandan Asians owned 90% of the country's businesses and contributed 90% of its tax revenue, despite making up a small minority of the actual population. This obviously caused a lot of unrest between Native ethnic Ugandans and the Ugandan Asians. President DeBote had pursued a policy called Africanization, which attacked Ugandan Asians

with laws aimed at reducing their economic dominance. It expanded on that policy and added an healthy dollop of straight-up racism. He announced that the government would be reviewing the status of Ugandan Asians who've been given citizenship. So basically they were looking at naturalized Ugandan citizens and finding excuses to take away their citizenship. Yeah, that's what's happening right now. Yes, it's exactly what's happening right now to naturalized American citizens, which is a... Huge bummer. now. Yes, it's exactly what's happening right now to naturalized American citizens, which is a huge bummer. Huge bummer. Weird how these shitty guys have the same playbook in

a lot of cases. I mean, also canceled all in progress citizenship applications from Asians. And then in August of 1972, he gave all Asians and Uganda 90 days to vacate the country. So we're going gonna get into how that policy went and what a cluster fuck ensued afterwards and what happened once the West finally decided that Edie Amine wasn't their man. But first, we've got some capitalism to get into. Oh, yay!

Yay! Capitalism, the thing that has nothing to do with the tens of millions of death stick colonialism. Not a thing. Not a thing. Here's some ads. And we're back. So as the story has come up here, it didn't mean his seized power. He's executed a bunch of people. And he has decided to expel all of the Asians in Uganda. He's given him 90 days to vacate the country. This policy affected 85,000 people,

23,000 of whom are already citizens of Uganda. I'm gonna play a clip of Idiami in talking to the press to hear how he justified the policy. And I think what's interesting about this is how friendly the foreign press is to him, which sort of gives you an idea of how charming this guy was in person. So even though he's introduced, he's talking about something pretty awful, like people are, they just, yeah, I'll play it. The decision for the economy of Uganda. And I must make sure that every Ugandan's get

a fruit of independent. Since independent, actually, Uganda is not yet independent, I will Kutakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakakak This is my decision after I want to see that the whole Campala Street is not full of Indians. It must be proper black and the administration in those shops is run by the Ugandan. Would you like to get all Asians out really soon? Yes, they must go to their country. Even nationals of Ugandan. If they want to go, they are welcome to go. What will happen to these people if they don't go by the time they meet? I think they will be sitting on the fire. I will tell you this. You just wait

after three months. What will you do to them? Okay, you will see. I think they will not be sitting comfortably here in Uganda, I will tell you this, I must actually tell you the truth. I am not responsible for building them, transit camp. Have you asked the British to take them away? Yes, it is a British high commission, he is a responsibility. I have told him. You said you wanted to teach Britain a lesson president. Why is that? And that is now a lesson I am teaching the British. I am teaching now the lesson because I am correcting them from the mistake they had to think before earlier that there is the African here who can even work and

building the railway with the instruction given to them by the British, this problem will not happen. Wow, that's like a multi-pathon. Yeah, it's remarkable that he's like talking about like these 80,,000 people, terrible things will happen and they don't leave. And then all of these guys laugh, like just because it's... Disgusting. It's yeah, and it's so... I mean, he has a point at the end there when he says like, it was fucked up with the British to bring these people

into build railroads and not just have us build railroads because it's our fucking country, which is, you know, a fair point, but at this point, these guys are like third generation Ugandan, like it's messed up to kick people out of your country and take their businesses. It's just weird to me how friendly the press was to him still at this point.

Well, they were all British guys, and they didn't really give a fuck about brown people either way. They were just there because they had it being. Yeah, and they thought he was fun. And they liked it. Yeah. So it is main defense of his policy was that he was trying to give you gun to back to you, Gunnans.

He also said that God had told him in a dream that South Asians were to blame for you, Gunnans economic woes and corruption. It's probable that this policy had a lot to do with the fact that Great Britain had just refused to sell them guns so he could invade Tanzania. So he was basically just being like, okay, Great Britain, you have to deal with 80,000 refugees now because you wouldn't give me the weapons I needed to phone with my neighbor.

Itty was brutal to the Ugandan Asians, but he was equally brutal to ethnic Ugandans. His particular targets were a choli and lungi tribesmen. In the first few days of his regime, he executed more than 1,000 members of these tribes in the army, as his reign wore on the purchase spread from the military to the general population. Bullets were in short supply in the country and desperately needed for all the wars, it he planned to start, so the murder squads he dispatched had to find other ways of doing their work. Their preferred tools were sledgehammers, crowbars, and sometimes crocodiles.

Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you have crocodiles, every problem looks like crocodiles. No one has ever wielded a crocodile. That's been a good guy. It's never a tool of the good guy. No.

What about, yeah. So the most feared government agency, sort of the idiomine equivalent of the German SS was the state research bureau, which is maybe my favorite name for like a secret police organization. It just sounds so like- Yeah, that scares me. Seems like the guys who should be like,

oh yeah, your soil's pH is off, but these are the murder police as opposed to countries where all of the police are the murder police. Anyway, Apollo, LaWalco, survived 196 days in the pink stucco building where they tortured and executed their captives. He gives us our clearest picture of what life was like for people deemed by itty and me

and to be enemies of the state. Well, when the prisoner's name was called out, the guards would go and grab him. We were all in handcuffs already. We were in handcuffs 24 hours a day, but they would change the position when they called a man, putting them on and back. And then they would place a long rope with a loop around his neck. Then someone would drag him by the rope along the staircase going up to the ground floor, and people would be beating him on all parts of his body, then his head would be beaten in. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, he was dead.

So, L'Awoko claims the guards made sure the prisoner saw every execution, that was part of the point. He claims that between 150 and 200 people were executed every night, well he was there in 1977. Lowoko believes he saw more than 15,000 Ugandans clubbed and beaten to death over just five months. At least 250,000 Ugandans perished during an idiomian's terror, and the real number may be more like half a million, roughly one in every 57 were to die over the next eight years. So idi himself has said he would participate in a number of these murders. Lwoko claims to remember seeing him beat Menda death with sledgehammers while wearing a gas mask. Quote was actually participating. He turned to us at one point and told us to relax.

The state research bureau men were mostly newubians, like itte former super soldiers of the British Empire doing what they'd always done just for themselves now. And again, this is not savagery that he's executing suddenly now that he's in charge. This is exactly what he was doing on British orders in Kenya. I'm going to go ahead and guess that when he was president is not the first time he had people killed with sledge hands. Like, it's, it never ceases to amaze me. Just the capability of brutality of some people. No, and these all, all these deaths, like obviously these deaths are an idiom, but they're also on colonialism, which is, well, yeah, for sure.

I blame everything on colonialism, just so frustrating. And then you can, it, for sure. I blame everything on colonialism, just so frustrating. And then it's totally fair. Like being a white kid who is educated in the South, I did not hear very much about colonialism growing up. And so it's once I've started researching a lot of these guys in the show and learning about King Leeopold and the 15 million who died in the Belgian Congo, which is probably the worst single crime of colonialism

that I've come across. But like, it's, I think it would probably be fair to say that like, if you add together the Nazis and the Stalinist and Maoist communists and all the people they killed, it doesn't come close to the deaths to colonialism. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, in a shorter time, you know, the Nazis were great at killing people fast, but there's, yeah, we'll never know most of what was done on behalf of the British Empire. Yeah.

Anyway. So while most secret police organizations were, you know, where leather trench coats and dress in all black, it like, you know, like a, you're cat, you're in central casting, you're trying to like cast secret police. Like, they're all in black, they look like a, you're cat, you're in central casting, you're trying to like cast a secret police agent. Like they're all in black. They look like the Matrix guys. Yeah, they're wearing turtle necks. They're wearing wraparounds in the glasses.

Not the men of the research bureau. Okay. They wore floured Hawaiian shirts, platform shoes and sunglasses. Oh no, they're dressed real cool like me. Oh. I appreciate someone doing it different. If you're gonna massacre hundreds of thousands of people, at least try a new, you know, there's no arm bands here.

It's style. Yeah, dress like paired heads, I guess. Yeah, this is, we're sandals. If Jimmy Buffett carried out a massacre. It would look like this. Every time you kill somebody, you get a lay. Yeah. One, you know, they're all drunk with a, they've got a whiskey plane. Yeah.

Yeah. So, the research bureau headquarters was connected to President Amin's home by an underground tunnel so we could show up and participate in the executions when he wanted to. Most of the work was headed by a man named Major Farouk Minawa. He was sort of the Leverenti Berria type figure. Berria was the head of the KGB for a while under Stalin. So he's a kind of guy who could murder his own friends after a night of drinking and hanging out

with them. At one point, he had his wife and three daughters executed. Fuck dude, that guy should have waited till a grandfather came out. It just didn't get it out of the system. I think so. He suspected his wife and daughters were helping gun and rebels because they were begandas, which is like the tribe, one of the tribes that it hated.

It's important to understand that all the repression apparatus it he created was very decentralized. Most of the deaths during this period were not, it had a mean signing someone's death warrant. It was as a result of the fact that all soldiers and intelligence officers in his country were allowed to arrest or kill any person they considered dangerous to peace and good order. Man.

So it gave his men a legal excuse to pursue their personal grudges and steal from people. Wow. A ball of ice, you guys. Just putting that, just dropping out in there. No, and that is the official line of the podcast is abolish ice by Doritos. A abolish ice.

I'm drinking all water, lukewarm, until ice is abolished. It is funny that like our Gestapo equivalent is ice because- Yeah, if they had known 15 years ago, they probably would have named it something cooler. Ice is, yeah.

It's not that cool. It's not that cool. Yeah. I mean, gave his men excuses, yeah, to pursue personal grudges and steal from people. One survivor recalled, quote, everything you have seen in Wild West movies was everyday life here. So when bumping off the husband and publicly taking the wife or someone bumping you off and openly driving off with your car.

So I hope we've presented kind of a picture of how brutal a means regime was. Let's dig a little deeper into the man himself. You can't understand it, you mean, without understanding that he was great at fucking. Great at fucking your rope out. Well, at least he needed everyone to believe that he was great at fucking it.

So one way or the other, it's important to understand that that was a part of his public image. That's how you knew his bad ladies. No, and almost all like the only person, the only famous person I've convinced to is ever actually good at fucking with. Benjamin Franklin. What? I was going to say Marlon Britta, but I think. Well, Marlon Brando makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. He was method, so. He was method. Anyway, yeah. So I mean was, it was important to him that there be a public image that he was virile and good at sex. His former minister for health, Henry Kimba, said this. Besides his five wives, also he had five wives.

Kind of low, honestly, for what I thought. Yeah, no, he's a conservative fellow. Besides his five wives, I mean, his head countless other women, many of whom have borne him children. His sex life is truly extraordinary. He regards his sexual energy as a sign of his power and authority.

He never tries to hide his lust. His eyes lock onto any beautiful woman. His reputation for sexual performance is so startling that women often deliberately make themselves available, and his love affairs have included women of all colors and many nations. From school girls to mature women, from street girls to university lecturers. Which is, who knows how true that is. Yeah, sounds like a lot of right. It definitely, definitely a lot,

because there's a ton of stories from having husbands executed so we could fuck their wives. Oh my gosh. But this is, you know, his former minister of health giving what is, this is what Idemon wanted people to hear about him. That he's, because this was important.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, I'm great at fighting and I'm great at fucking. Yeah, he sounds like World Chamberlain. There's just something about authoritarian assholes and needing people to believe they're tough and good at fucking. Mm-hmm. I want everyone to know I am bad at sex. Which means very smart ladies.

Bad at sex. Good sex over there. Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to think about which of our presidents were definitely the bit because I hear JFK was terrible. Really? Yeah, I've heard, I've heard, LBJ said JFK was terrible. Well, you can't trust that guy. You can't trust that guy.

He was too as jealous. And he called his dick jumbo, which means he definitely... Well, maybe that's true then. I don't know. Nixon seems pretty bad. Nixon can't have been good, right? No way. No. Well, maybe that's true then. I don't know. Nixon seems pretty bad. Nixon can't have been good, right? No way.

No. I feel like Teddy Roosevelt. Well, he was in a wheelchair. No, that was FDR. Oh, never mind. Well, he was a big stick guy, right? Yeah, that was the big stick guy. Yeah, that guy could fuck.

That guy could fuck. And I feel like FDR was probably pretty good, but like he would have been like a hands and oral man. That's my guess for FDR. I think he leaves them satisfied as what I'm saying. I don't think I agree. Yeah. Yeah. So, it do you mean again had five wives?

His favorite wife was a lady named Sarah. He met her when she was 18 and a go-go dancer for the revolutionary suicide jazz band. Okay. Um, story is oldest time. Sorry, I don't know that. Uh, itty fell in love, but tragically, Sarah already had a fiance and she was pregnant. So when she gave birth on Christmas Day in 1974, itty just told everyone the kid was his and had the birth announced on state television.

Oh, what the fuck? Sarah's fiance was not happy with this, but he died in a car crash immediately after this. So it worked out. No suspicion. Nope. But that I don't know. Nope. Just a random car crash, the like the day that he complains. Oh, poor guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I shouldn't laugh there. I may be getting a little callous with all these stories. I mean, it's hard not to disassociate a little bit. I mean, so far in the last hour, I've learned of many millions of people. Yeah, it's horrific. So, itty, I mean, married Sarah at the 1975. It was a small private ceremony, but itty was concerned that having a small private ceremony

might be portrayed or might be seen as excluding the people of Uganda. So he remarried her in a gigantic, televised ceremony. Yes, or arafat was his best man. The banquet cost $2 million, the banquet. Not the whole wedding, just the, which I kind of want to check out a time. I mean, I've seen super 16, you know, whatever it's called.

President Amin cut the wedding cake with a sword, knowing his history, there's no chance he didn't also use that sword to stab people. Obviously, sword guys, a sword guy. A fucking sword guy. A sword guy to the problem. That's how you know someone's been interested

if they're a fucking sword guy. Mm-hmm. Machete is a people's weapon. While you were learning about colonialism, I was studying a blockchain. So, it he had five wives and something like 40 or 50 children. He married his first two wives in the same year in 1966 when he was 28. One of those marriages went all right and produced several children, but his second wife, Kay, divorced him. It he murdered the best man and then murdered K.

Her arms and legs were found in a sack in the trunk of a car, so it he had her body sewn back together and marched around in front of his children and other wives. Oh my God. Or he didn't. So this is again where we get into some controversy. Because his kids are still around and talking today and do speeches and like several of them have have they don't like necessarily doubt the crimes that were committed in their dad's reign But they are all pretty consistent about the fact that no he was a good dad and very normal around us So it's possible this is a this stories a lie like the witchcraft stuff. Okay, hard to tell Because again his kids even today are all pretty much, he was, he was fun.

So he might not have brought it home. I really don't know. I wasn't there. Yeah, okay. There's, I, it's one of those things. It's impossible. Another truth. There's stories that he was brutal to his kids and fucking had corpses planted around them. And then his kids say stuff like, here's a quote from a son. It was fun with my dad all the time. It was fun. His daughter, Mayn Muna Amin said, he was such a lovely man, so good, so lovely. He never beats any children.

When he's at home, he just wanted us all to be on him. He's like a mother, a father, a sister, a brother, and one. He loved music, and he's always on his accordion singing. Wow, what a revisionist history in that, Mr. Coss. I mean, it's also possible that he was a brutal monster everywhere outside of the home and was fine with his kids. Yeah, and they just never heard about the others though.

No, they heard about it. But again, they know a lot of them don't deny the brutality of the regime. They're just like at home, he was a normal guy. That's fucked. Which, that happens. Like, you can find plenty of stories about people hanging out with Hitler and being like,

he was super nice and he was like my uncle. Yeah, people always say dictators are charismatic and stuff. I mean, even if we, I feel the same thing with celebrities, I don't really know. Yeah, and I can't know. What we do know, and what we do know for certain, is that Eddie and I played the accordion fucking constantly. He was apparently, if you're an accordion guy, he was apparently good at playing the accordion accordion and here is here's a picture of him doing the weird out thing. Oh my god, right It's weird that dorks are truly the worst people in the world

Guys in the swords accordions backpipes This guy has bad taste. Everyone has bad his needs to be called no And if he had grown up now like yeah, he would still play the accordion and have a bunch of swords, but he would also be able to talk to you about anime for 16 hours. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm sorry, anime fans. I mean, anime is pretty cool.

Yeah, it's a goi. Some of it. So the stuff it is I mean is probably most famous for is, again, cannibalism witchcraft in his obsession with Scotland, because that's like the sensational stuff where you can be able to. So he's for sure eight people. We don't know. Okay.

That again, that's one of those, yeah, we're about to get into that. So it's an arguably true that he loved Scotland. There's shitload of documented evidence of that. Yeah, maybe he just was eating some haggess and people thought it was like human intestines. Or they just wished it was. Yeah, exactly. Oh, please eat some people. Stop with that shit.

It is very much up for debate as to whether or not he was really into black magic and cannibalism. The rumors that he was in a magic and eating people started with the begondons and the begondons were people from South Uganda and they did not like the people from North Uganda. A lot of these rumors originate from one begandan who served in it means cabinet. He wrote in his book, which was one of the major sources for the last king of Scotland, quote, Ameans bizarre behavior derives partly from his tribal background. Like many other warrior societies, the Kaka, Ameans tribe are known to have practiced

blood rituals on slain enemies. These involve cutting a piece of flesh from the body to subdue the dead man's spirit or tasting the victim's blood to render the spirit harmless. Such ritual still exists among the kakwa. If they kill a man, it is their practice to insert a knife in the body and touch the bloody blade to their lips. I have reason to believe that a means practices do not stop at tasting blood on several occasions he has boasted to me and others that he is eating human flesh. He went on to say that eating human flesh is not uncommon in his home area. It's possible that this is true. The British noted that the Kaka engaged in quote, sacrifices of humans and animals.

But it's also worth noting that most of the claims about cannibalism came from it's enemies. A major source for this podcast was an article from the University of Grunagan in the Netherlands titled, Iniamine, Icon of Evil. This article notes that the witchcraft and cannibalism myths may have started as a result of local racism within Uganda, so racism from southern Ugandans towards northern Ugandans. Quote, the southern Ugandans are particularly

contemptuous of the southern Sudanese and Nubis, not of other northern tribes, as wild and uncivilized. It is from them that we have reports of Am mean and his noobies tasting the blood of their victims and eating their livers, and the explanation that such a custom is either a noobie or cockwa one. So we don't know, it's possible he licked blood, it's possible he ate flesh, it's also possible that's just racism from people in the center. Yeah, I mean, I would argue, you know, you kill thousands of people.

That is worse anyway. I mean, like, I wouldn't be completely surprised if, you know, he got into desecrating some bodies at all. It wouldn't be beyond the pale to assume. But it's also, I think this is something that happens in Western media a lot with these dictators where if you can get like there's a bunch of stories about the North Korean regime that are bullshit that have no basis in reality about like and it's always like the kooky ones about like ridiculous claims that Kim's made and like the stuff that that sounds really funny like that you can laugh at. And some of those are true because like any authoritarian regime is going to have some silly stuff around it. Because it's a silly thing. But a lot of it's just lies. And

it's the same thing. It's lies that make it seem like something other than what it is, which is a brutal dictatorship. As opposed to like, no, there's this crazy cannibal madman who ruled a country. And it's like, well, no, there's nothing really crazy. He's just a monster, like all of the other ones. Yeah, that's less scary to me than just a person who knows exactly what they're doing and does it anyway. That's like, if an oil tycoon or something, and then there was a rumor, they're like, did you hear that he litters?

Yeah. He's ruining the environment. Yeah, and that's kind of why I wanted to dig into these myths about him a lot, because that's what most people know about to dig into these myths about him a lot because that's what most people know about EDM, which I think is less, I think the fact that the idea that, oh, maybe this guy was a cannibal and a dictator, is less interesting than like this guy was trained to be a brutal dictator in the British army who raised him to be a soldier and then abandoned him and his country to whatever was going to happen next, which I think

is a more accurate story. But that one isn't fun for Americans because it implicates all of Western civilization as opposed to some cannibal gotten in charge over there in Africa. Anyway, that's, you know, my thinking on the matter. So, obviously by this time, and you know, by the middle of his reign, kind of the bloom was off the rose. The British were no longer fans of it. I mean, what if his atrocities had filtered out to the world, Europe turned away, and it did what he always did when someone questioned him, he flipped out and attacked. He declared himself conqueror of the British Empire.

He had t-shirts printed up with his face on it and conqueror of the British Empire printed beneath, which is a pretty, pretty pro move. He developed a love for having white guys, particularly British guys bow to him. So there's a bunch of pictures like this of British businessman like, I mean, Oathstem.

Now this is the first cool thing that you showed me. Oh, just wait, because it's about to get fucking better. Because at one point he made a bunch of British businessmen carry him around on a sedan chair while a crowd cheered, which is, that's a solid move. Yeah, I do like that. It's hard not to support that. For sure, he's got a little, he's got,

oh, okay, someone's holding an umbrella for him. Yeah, and that's the kind of wackiness that we know went down and again, he's not all wrong. Like the whiskey plane was a solid idea. Yeah. Yeah. So Eddie desperately wanted to be a major player on the global stage. He wasted no opportunity to wait into any global conflict that he could. When the Watergate scandal broke, he sent a letter to Richard Nixon and gave him advice on how to handle Watergate. Nice. Quote, when the stability of a nation is in danger, the only solution is, unfortunately,

to imprison the leaders of the opposition. Yeah. The longer he was in power, the more unhinged in Braggie he became. President Amin started to inflate the stories of his military service claiming he'd fought in Burma during World War II. He offered to marry Princess Anne of Great Britain. He also offered to become King of Scotland and lead the Scots to Independence from Britain. Britain.

For the most part, the international response to it Amin was laughter, the same kind of laughter you'll find today when people talk about ridiculous, and Korean propaganda. Alan Koran, a British comedian, had a popular column in Punch magazine where he'd write out fake it, I mean, speeches that were very racist. If you've got Spotify, you can find the album

that was made based on these columns with a white guy doing it, he's voice, it is. One of those? It was, I mean, this was like in the mid-70s. Okay. If you look up it, I mean, this was like in the mid 70s. Okay. If you look up itty, I mean on Spotify, you'll find the album and it's like infuriating. Wow.

Because it's just, it's joking about what was in reality, a horrific crime-filled regime. Yeah. Making fun of the fact that itty, I mean, talks funny, which he doesn't even talk that funny. He speaks better English than I do. Fucking you, Gondon. So, yeah, but this is again, that's the international reaction. Is they're laughing at this guy, they're making fun of him. He's like, this

horror show is playing out in Africa and it's being treated as kind of like a a freak show to the rest of the world. Um, so, yeah, the caricature of IDIA mean is based a lot in white European racism, but it's also based in some local Ugandan regional racism. So their north of Uganda is basically the social equivalent of the American South, and the well-educated well-to-do southern Ugandans considered ittyamine to be like a hillbilly. They thought his accent, when he spoke in Yugan, then they thought his accent was painful. So it's basically, he was like to a lot of people

in southern Yugan, that he was like if we had a president who came from the dirty south and talked like he was, he grew up on the buy-in. Yeah, president, kid of rock, number 46. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That is the attitude that like the southerners have towards him. In reality, it, I mean it was a pretty smart guy. He wasn't educated, obviously,

but he was, he had a lot of intelligence because you don't carry out a regime like this and keep it going for eight years without that. Most of his actions were pretty logical. Mass murder is a time-honored way to stay in power, exiling the Asian's tank you got as economy, but it provided it with a host of businesses that he could give away to his supporters

in exchange for their loyalty. And for a while, his tactics worked pretty well. But he made more mistakes as Tywin went on. One of those was alienating Israel. He had initially been friendly to the country. He'd train there again as a paratrooper. But he wound up switching around and backing the Palestinian cause, which is fine, but he also descended into horrific anti-Semitism.

In 1972, he told the UN Secretary General that Hitler had been, quote, right to burn six million Jews. And he promised to build a monument to Hitler in Kampala. He was eventually convinced to cancel this plan because everyone around him was like, that's fucking bad idea, Eddie, I mean. But he continued pissing off Israel as the years rolled by. On June 27th, 1976, an air france flight with 248 passengers was hijacked by two members of the popular front for the liberation of Palestine. Now this is back in the day when terrorist plane hijackers didn't kill people.

As a general rule, they just kind of have the plane flown to an airport and hold everyone hostage until their comrades were released from prison or they got a bunch of money or whatever. This was like a common thing. they got a bunch of money or whatever. This was like a common thing. It was a period of time in the 70s where every week there'd be a new fucking hijacking. So these particular hijackers, and this plane, most of the passengers are Israeli. So these particular hijackers land first in Libya and then at Intebbi Airport in Uganda. President, I mean welcome them enthusiastically. This proved to be a mistake, when one week later, Israeli commandos raided the airport, liberated the captives, and destroyed a sizable chunk of the Ugandan Air Force while it was sitting on the tarmac. Oh wow. Yeah.

There's a movie called Raid on Intebbi about it. It's a very famous like commando raid thing. So it flipped out of this. He'd already switched from Mimpro Israel to Pro-Palestine, of course, but he went over the deep end. He had a 73- being pro-Israel to pro-Palestine, of course, but he Went over the deep and he had a 73 year old Jewish woman in the U.G. in hospital named Dora Block Pretty brutally murdered and then he went on kind of a world insult tour So this is kind of a little bit and there's growing local Resistance to him at this point too. So he's he, in the late 70s, go off the rails a bit. He called the President of Tanzania a coward, an old woman in a prostitute. He called the President

of Zambia, an imperialist puppet and bootlicker. He called Henry Kissinger, a murderer and a spy, which was pretty fair. He also said that Queen Elizabeth should send him her 25-year-old knickers to celebrate her silver jewellery. So he was like, this is a some-year-old knickers to celebrate her silver jewellery. So he was like, some of your old underwear, Queen of England, which is... I appreciate a good this. Yeah, that's a solid. He steadily expanded his list of titles over the years. In 1977, he announced that he must now be addressed as, quote, his excellency, field

marshal Alhaji, Dr. Idi Amin D data, life president of Uganda, conqueror of the British Empire, distinguished service order of the military cross, Victoria Cross, and professor of geography. What a good tag at the end. This guy is funny. Yeah, that professor of geography thing is really what sets it off. On October 30th, 1978, it made the biggest mistake of his dictator career he invaded Tanzania

This was over a pretty useless piece of land like there was no good reason to attack the spot that he did Tanzania counter-attacked and since their military was much more functional than Ugon than military The Ugandans were quickly thrown back next Tanzania marched Uganda, aided by the Ugandan and Ugandan exiles. They moved to Unseat Idi from power. For his part, Idi Amin announced that he now loved the Tanzanian president. And quote, would have married him if he had been a woman. This didn't work and did not turn back the Tanzanian army. So Idi Amin had to flee from power first to Libya and then to Saudi Arabia, where he spent the rest of his life in exile. Somehow not being a warlord anymore seemed to calm him down.

He lived a quiet life, regularly visiting Mecca and living with just one wife and several of his children. Yeah. Yeah, he's one of the ones who got away with it. Iddi explained in a rare 1993 interview that quote, when I am no longer president, some of them say they don't want me. I accept it frankly I have had one life since and have found also to have one life is better

So ittyamine laps into a coma on July 19th 2003. Yeah, he was put on life support at a hospital in Jeddah His family had begged the new you gun and government to let him return home to die They were told he'd have to stand trial if he returned so I mean he didn't go back and on August 16th 2003 It didn't mean died peacefully in a hospital bed in Saudi Arabia and that's unfortunately not the end of the story or Uganda's problems. Uh-oh Because President about it goes I President of Boate returned after it he wassted. Boate was not outwardly ridiculous.

He didn't make crazy claims about the Holocaust or randomly insult foreign leaders. He didn't have a wacky title. What he did do was vastly expand the purges that itia mean had begun. While a mean had mostly targeted certain tribe members in the military and government, a Boate targeted huge chunks of civilians

based on their tribe. He probably killed more people in his second term than died during the entirety of Edemian's reign. Aboe was eventually overthrown by a general named Bazzello Olaro O'Kello who was violently overthrown by Yawari Musavelli's natural a national resistance army in 1986. Musavelli is still the president of Uganda today. He had term limits abolished in 2005 and removed the presidential aid limit in 2017. Uganda has to this day never seen a peaceful transition of power. Wow. So That's the story. Oh, it's a heartwarming tale. It is it is

And it's a tale where like, I mean, itia mean is the organ through which all of this repression and violence was executed, but the real bastard of this is the British empire, in my opinion at least. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'll trace all the blame back to white people at any time, for sure. But man, I really just can't imagine

living in a country where so much bloodshed is like happening constantly all the time politically. Yeah, I wouldn't move away so fast. Well, and that's, it's one of those things that, how are you gonna, but? Yeah, how are you gonna? And you get all these people in Europe and the United States now, because most of the people who like flee parts of Africa are going to

widen the heading to Europe because it's very it's easier to get there than it is to get to the US and you know get this like what is our what we can't take all care of all these people it's like well you could steal their shit for 200 years like and then leave them without because you got the for 200 years, and then leave them without, because Uganda, at no point in prior history, there were kingdoms and states and whatnot, all over Africa, but there had never been a Uganda. All of these groups of people had never been forced together before the British did that.

And if you're going to do, you shouldn't do that in the first place, but if you're going to do that, if you're going to force these people into a state, you owe it to them to create a functional state before you leave, which, yeah, it's fucked up. It's real fucked up. Well, I hope you learned something today. I sure do.

I do. I somehow left more grim than I came in. That's the fun of colonialism. But that's okay. I mean, sometimes you gotta know the monstrous capabilities of what we can do as human beings to prevent it. Yeah.

Geez, I don't know. Yeah, it's hard to take a good lesson out of this other than don't be a colonialist and don't know. Yeah, it's hard to take a good lesson out of this other than don't be a colonialist and don't take a people and train them to be soldiers and nothing else for a century. Yeah, don't murder that. Don't murder some other things. Don't play bagpipes, don't play the accordion. Whoa, that's okay.

Let's not attack that. Don't get into swords. That's not a tag. No, let's attack. Let's attack. The bagpipes aren't the problem here. Yeah, I don't know what else to learn. I mean, with you about accordions.

Yeah, I mean, I haven't watched, what's it called, Last King of Scotland? Have you watched this? Yeah, I don't, I didn't enjoy it very much. Is it sympathetic or? No, it plays into the brutality. One thing that does a decent job of showing you how he might have charmed people early in the, but I think it leans more into the sensational side of things, which, and it doesn't

talk at all about a means past in a meaningful way. That's why I led this by talking about British military policy and their colonies, because I don't think you can understand a mean without understanding where he and his people came from. Yeah, I mean that alone is interesting by itself as a story. I mean, not a fun story, but it's definitely not a fun story, but it's an important one. And I will say if you are starting a punk band in the near future, the Suicide Revolutionary Jazz Band is pretty fucking so.

Yeah, they honestly sound like a scab band. And look like one. They do look like a scab band. They're all dressed nice. They got their shirts tucked in. Oh man, I could go for some suicide revolutionary scumb music. Yeah. I think my worst part of that story was that he died peacefully. That is. It's always a bummer when that happens. Because like we're I think Kadoffi is going to be running shortly before this podcast comes out. And that's a story where the monster gets,

like that's what you want to see happen to these guys, is they get dragged out into the street and murdered by their own people. Yeah. They fucked over. Yeah, I can think of a couple of people I like to see that happen to. Yeah, yeah, whose names we won't give

because there are laws against that sort of thing. But yeah, it's hard not to want certain people dragged out into the street. And at least like, you know, it's hard not to want certain people dragged out into the street. And at least, maybe not even killed just peed on by dozens of people. Well, I guess there's nothing left for us to do, but for me to ask you to plug in. Plug, plug, a plug-ables, yeah. Cool. You could maybe get some laughs from looking at some videos.

I don't know how to transition this either. I have some videos on my website, BrideyRead.com. You can follow me on Twitter at AyoBroBro, where I just usually complain about people getting cast in Hollywood and making some jokes. And you can see me perform to jokes all around LA and You know if you have any more questions, I will

Refer you to this guy cuz I don't know anything. Well, you know if you like complaining about casting They did just cast a new itty-mean movie. I did that. Yeah, Scarlett Johansson's gonna play him fuck off You got me You got me I'm Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at I Write Okay, just the two letters there. I get a book on Amazon called a brief history of ice. You can find that on Amazon.

You can find this podcast at BehindTheBastards.com where we will have pictures of the incredible suicide revolutionary jazz band and some other pictures from Amines Rain, as well as links to all the sources for this podcast. I really do recommend reading that University of Grown again article. It's a fascinating analysis of why it is seen sort of the way he is today and where he came from. So you can also find us on Twitter and Instagram, social media at BastardsPod. So look us up, check us out. This has been behind the Bastards for the week. I've been Robert Evans. Check back in next Tuesday when we

will be talking about someone else who is also terrible. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website CoolzoneMedia.com or check us out on the IHART Radio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. When Tracy Rekelle Burns was two years old, her baby brother died. I was told that Matthew died in an accident. Her parents told police she had killed him. I was told that Matthew died in an accident. Her parents told police she had killed him. I'm Nancy Glass. Join me for burden of guilt. The new podcast that tells the true and incredible story of a toddler who is framed for murder.

Listen to burden of guilt on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. A brand new historical true crime podcast. When you lay suffering a sudden brutal death, starring Allison Williams, I hope you'll think of me. Erased. The murder of Elvis Hayes. She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl.

Let's go up here! Until she met that man right there. She was a sweet, happy, virtuous girl. Let's go up here. Until she met that man right there. Written and created by me, Alison Flop. Is it possible, sir? We're standing by for your answer. Erased, the murder of Elma Sands. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

On Pomoldo, a poet who over the past several years has had the good fortune to record ours of conversations with one of the world's greatest songwriters, Sir Paul Piccardney. The result is our new podcast, McCartney, A Life in lyrics. Listen to McCartney, a life in lyrics on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Penelope Spheras, on the host of a new podcast about the life and death of Peter Ivers. Peter was the host of a TV show featuring prominent LA punk bands until he was murdered in 1983. Forty years later, we dive into that music scene and the mystery of his passing.

Listen to Peter and the Asset King on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. you