Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

Robert sits down with Andrew Ti for three episodes in one week about the bizarre life of Pol Pot, a man who spent too much time reading books and bullshitting with his friends and for convinced he could save his country by destroying it. (3 Part Series)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Oh my goodness gracious, Jiminy Christmas. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where Robert Evans is using the phrase Jiminy Christmas for some goddamn reason. We're allowed to curse on this, I don't get it. I don't get why I did that. I almost just did your Boston accent to you when you did that, I don't know.

What are you gonna do? What does the Sophie Robert Boston accent sound like, Sophie? Just stop. No, it's terrible. No, you gotta. That's your Boston accent? That's Robert's Boston, Boston Robb. I'm gonna put these accents.

Oy, Boston! See, you gotta put more of like a spit, like some grime on it, Sophie. It's gotta sound like you're screeching it over a bunch of wet rocks. I just try. Just like the pilgrims did. Just like the pilgrims did, yes,

when they landed in Boston. I just think that's something that only you can do. I don't know what about Jiminy Cricket was like, I wanna do Robert's Boston. Yeah. But we were there. Neither do I, neither do Yeah, we were there. Neither do I. Neither do I. Andrew T. Andrew, what do you think of Ben Affleck's back tattoo?

Oh, Ben Affleck's back tattoo. I think it's actually pretty pleasant commitment to. It's like the most authentic thing he has going on. Yeah. Yeah. Like he is just a Boston guy. See, I think he is, I think he's our most, one of our most authentic male celebrities that we've ever had.

That doesn't mean like, I'm not saying he's a good person. He's obviously not. But you can tell in his face that he knows that and hates himself, which is what I love about Ben Affleck. He is keeping it real. He's keeping it real. He's keeping it indisputably real. Yeah, yeah. That picture of him looking at J.Lo's butt

and just being, having the look on his face like he's just watched fucking Dresden go up in flames is like, it's because he's thinking like, obviously I'm going to cheat on her. Like I'm Ben Affleck. I have no choice in the matter. I simply can't be a scumbag and not be a scumbag Besides the beloved tattoo

I personally enjoy the video of Ben Affleck putting Jennifer Lopez in the car and then slamming the door and then realizing the paparazzi caught him Jiminy Christmas, I have no idea what mood I'm in, but this is how we're starting the podcast. I had a friend of mine made me rewatch Gone Girl recently. Oh, he's like playing himself. I'm just like, oh yeah, Ben Affleck didn't even know they were filming. Like he was pleasantly surprised to realize

he wasn't in trouble for murder at the end of this movie Fun fact about Gone Girl is he had to stop production for multiple days because he was refusing to wear I think it was like a Yankees hat that they wanted him to wear but he's like I'm boss and I can't perfect Ended up that they ended up like settling on him wearing a Mets hat and it's like it's like come the fuck on Come the fuck on Clearly wearing a Mets hat and it's like it's like come the fuck on come the fuck on Clearly was a Yankee fan I think that also means he possibly didn't really he didn't read that movie the same way the rest of us read that movie No, no

Yeah, I guess has literally nothing to do with Boston the the Yankees, Ben Affleck, back tattoos. Well, you know, we're talking about a guy who you could call the Ben Affleck of Cambodian revolutionaries because this week we're finally doing pole pot. That's right, everybody. Oh, yeah. Andrew, we brought you on for a big boy. We're getting in pole position here, baby. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when we're going for the big guns, Andrew T., you can't do better. Thank you. And this is also, unfortunately, we did King Noordaam Sahanak, who was the king of Cambodia,

and also a massive piece of shit. Had a lot to do with how the Khmer Rouge got in power and why they killed so many fucking people. And he's also a massive piece of shit had a lot to do with how the Khmer Rouge got in power and why they killed so many fucking people. And he's also a lot less known. Like I think generally people who have any kind of reasonable education are aware of Pol Pot, whereas like King Sahara not nearly as well known. So I thought it was important to start with him years ago. I think Pol Pot is really relevant now. I think actually right now might be the most relevant

he has been since the horrible crimes against humanity he was committing. Because at least from our perspective of a podcast that is primarily speaking to listeners in the United States. And it is because the way in which he and his comrades orchestrated the deaths of roughly between a quarter and a third of their country. Something like that. We're talking a death toll of about, somewhere in between like one and a half to three million.

I think probably two million is probably, is generally kind of like the hedging your guess estimate out of a pre-war population of maybe 6 million Cambodians, right? And the reason I'm saying that this is extra relevant right now is that what essentially happened in Cambodia is you had this cadre of guys who started as young men hanging out in reading groups, talking about politics and making plans for how they would like to rebuild their country and reorganize their country, starting from this position they called year zero, right? Like we're gonna totally, totally strip down everything

that had existed before and start new based on these ideas we had in our like weird little friend groups, right? Well, that's essentially what's happening with guys like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and the cadre of fanatic young Doge kids, right? Yeah. Who are disassembling the administrative state for fun and trying to rebuild it based on

a bunch of shit that they discussed on 4chan and 8chan over the years, right? The difference is these motherfuckers have never read a book, but otherwise, yeah, pretty close. Yes. And the Khmer Rouge guys both read books. And also, one thing you can't take away from Pol Pot and the other Khmer Rouge guys both read books, and also, one thing you can't take away from Pol Pot and the other Khmer Rouge guys, they were hard as fuck by the time they got in charge.

They'd spent 20 years fighting in the jungle. So we have that going for us, but I do think there's a lot relevant here in the story of how a group of people, and particularly the dude at the head, come to believe a set of things about how the world should be remade and then pursue those goals no matter the cost And that's kind of the story we're gonna be telling this week. So I hope you're excited

Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Soledad O'Brien, and on my new true crime podcast, Murder on the Towpath, I'm taking you back to 1964, to the cold case of artist Mary Pinchomire. She had been shot twice in the head and in the back. It turns out Mary was connected to a very powerful man. I pledge you that we shall neither commit nor provoke aggression. John F. Kennedy. Listen to Murder on the Toe Path with Soledad O'Brien

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and my latest interview is with Michelle Obama. To whom much is given, much is expected. The guilt comes from am I doing enough? Me, Michelle Obama, to say that to a therapist. So let's unpack that. Having been the

first lady of the entire country and representing the country in the world, I couldn't afford to have that kind of disdain. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tramarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men dominated the field. But tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrer's,

known as the Wicked Lady, who terrorized England in the mid-1600s. Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's fucking go and talk about the man who,

well, one of the men who really fucked up Cambodia. Yeah. It's, it's, I gotta say, there's strong competition for being the dude who was worst to Cambodia in the 20th century. You got Kissinger, you got Nixon, you got King Sahanek, you got Lon Nol, who we'll talk about later, but Pol Pot probably still does win the crown, which is hard.

Being the worst guy for Cambodia in the 20th century, crowded ass field. It's a crowd, he's, I mean, he's also just like, he's got the name recognition and he didn't have a massive white watching campaign waged on his behalf, so. No, no, he didn't have that. So the first thing you need to know about Pol Pot

is that Pol Pot's not his name, right? Like this is a Nam de revolution, you know? You get this with all of these guys. Joseph Stalin wasn't born Joseph Stalin. He literally just picked the name Joe Steele because it sounded cool, right? And a lot of these guys do that because for one thing, it's just smart if you're planning to overthrow

your government to work under a fake name. And for another thing, usually your fake name sounds cooler than your real name. And the first thing, usually your fake name sounds cooler than your real name. And one of the first thing that makes Pol Pot unique is that Pol Pot is not a cool name. And it was never meant to be it doesn't sound it's not cooler in Cambodia. It basically means like Joe Khmer, like the Khmer or the the ethnic people that are the majority of Cambodia. Like he's basically Pol Pot is the Khmer equivalent

of calling yourself like Joe America almost right like I'm the average man, right? That's basically what he was saying. Or like John Doe sort of. Yeah, like John Doe. His real name sounds like a fucking like Marvel villain. He was born Saloth Sar, which is like such a cool name. Like that is the name of a guy who fist fights Batman.

Like, I'm sorry. And he does well. Yeah, he wins for two acts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he breaks Batman's spine at one point, right? Sal Ahtsar, it goes by Pol Pot. No, this name goes too hard. Nobody will believe that.

Sal Ahtsar was born in a village called Prekshov, a couple of miles west of the capital of his province and about 90 miles north of Nampin, which is the capital of Cambodia. For decades, there was considerable debate as to the precise year of his birth, and we don't have perfect knowledge of when he was born. There are a couple of reasons for this, just beyond the general fact that record-keeping in impoverished rural Cambodia wasn't great in the 20s. People were not like keeping, no one was digitizing anything, right?

And Cambodia's educational system hinged a lot on your birth date because the central administration was lacking a culture that, sorry, the central administration, basically, if you wanted your kid to kind of get into the best kind of school that they could get into, if you came from a prosperous family and Saloth does, it was common to alter your kid's birthday to maximize which school they would get into. And that was as easy as literally just changing markings on a piece of paper. Cause there wasn't anything like centrally kept, right? So there was a strong culture of changing your kid's

birthday, at least by a few, but sometimes by a couple of years in order to like get them where you wanted them to go. Biographer Philip Short says that Salazar's real birthday was probably March of 1925. Others will say May of 1927. Pol Pot himself told journalist Nate Thayer that he'd been born in January of 1925.

But he just recalled that because he saw like basically a post-it note, not it was a literal post-it, but like a note that was like posted on top of like a cabinet in their kitchen. And this would be him remembering it as like a five-year-old. So we don't know when he was born, but somewhere in that period. I will say, my grandparents literally also had this.

I wonder if now I'm realizing they did this for the same reason, but they were very, very squirrely about what their actual birthdays were. Yeah. I knew someone and interviewed someone once who had grown up as a like hunter-gatherer in the highlands of Vietnam. They were a Montagnard and didn't, they were 16 or 17 the first time they heard music that wasn't being played in front of them.

They didn't know what electric lights were for a while. And then, yeah, we're like, yeah, I have no idea when I was born. I'm probably 26, I think was what they told me at the time. It's like, if I really sat down, I could maybe make an educated guess, but I do not know. Yeah, my grandparents were like, there was a was a war records got lost. We don't know we had a lot of other priorities Birthday yeah birthdays weren't high even for yeah, Salah stars family was upper middle class, right?

He came from about as much privilege as a non noble member of camp the of Cambodia of Khmer society much privilege as a non-noble member of Cambodian, of Khmer society could in this period of time. His father, Pen Saloff, owned a lot of land. Now, how much? A lot? I think something like two to three hectares would be a normal amount for a peasant farmer to own. Biographer David Chandler says that Pen owned about nine hectares. But Philip Short, whose book is more recent and I think works off of better information, says that it was more like 50 hectares, so about 10 times the average.

Their house was probably the largest of the 20 or so houses in the village. They're not rich as like, they're not one of the people who run the country, but they're the wealthiest guy in town. That's his dad. Penn Saloth was prosperous enough to hire his neighbors to help out during harvest time. So like, that's the kind of money he had. Where like, I am paying my neighbors

to do my harvest for me, right? As opposed to like, they just can't do that, right? He also owned multiple oxen, which was like, that's like having like a sports car or something every day, right? If you've got your own oxen and more than one, that's a sign of wealth. His wife, Salath Sar's mother came from a prominent family

and was well known as a humanitarian and a pious Buddhist. The two had nine children, I think five of them survived into like the 90s. So like pretty good record for, you know, as a mom and dad. For the time, yeah. Salath was number eight, So he comes near the end. And he and his two, the two siblings like around his age were very close.

Short writes, they played and swam in the river together and in the evenings by the light of a rush lamp, listened to the old people of the village recounting stories and legends from the days before the French established the protectorate in the 1860s. And if you remember back to our Napoleon III episodes, like right while France was getting ready to like lose a bunch of territory and a major war to what became Germany, the Navy was largely kind of carrying out,

to some extent on its own recognizance, the conquest of a sizable chunk of Indochina, right? Of what came to be known as French Indochina. This is why France is running Vietnam, and it's also why France is running Cambodia. They have this dominion in Cambodia. For about a century, Cambodia is governed by the French. In the capital, which is the primary place you would see the white French colonizers, they were a tiny minority whose control was so great that they were people who were young Cambodians

in this period, like young Khmer, described white French residents of the capital as almost deities, right? Because they were untouchable, you did not have social contact with them, and they had access to resources that were almost unimaginable to regular people, right? And again, despite this being the capital of Cambodia, it has the lowest Khmer population of any part of the country. The entire like business class, the people who are handle- running companies and who are doing trading and thus have the most money outside of the white French class are primarily Vietnamese and Chinese Khmer, right? And these are, in a lot of cases,

still people who were born in Cambodia, but they are ethnically Chinese and ethnically Vietnamese. And this is because Cambodia, for most of its history, has been, for large chunks of its history, has been the property of either, like, China or Vietnam or Thailand, like, bits and pieces of it, right? There's been constant, it's in the middle of everything, right? It's like Poland. It's like the Southeast Asian Poland

and that like, yeah, you guys are usually like under somebody's thumb, right? Well, and yeah, that's also just like, as much as like the French colonialism, you know, bad, obviously, it's like Asia just be doing that and China's probably the biggest culprit well and that's that one of the initial surprises that the

Communists have that kind of slows down them getting off the board as they initially expect well everyone must hate the French and The regular Khmer people don't hate the French as much as they hate the Vietnamese and in that's gonna be true even with the Khmer Rouge gets in power like no met even with all the horrible shit the US does for the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, Vietnam is always the enemy, right? And it's because they've got a thousand years of shit. It's always the last war. Yeah.

It's just like, that's the one that sticks. Yeah. It's like, no matter how racist Americans get about a foreign country, Texans will always hate Oklahomans more. Right. And vice versa.

So the fact that the people with money in the capital and running these businesses, the kind of, saying capitalist class isn't super useful in this sense, but that's kind of our closest thing. The fact that they're Vietnamese and Chinese contributes to a longstanding cultural grievance among the majority Khmer population who see themselves, they have an inferiority complex. And this is something that is written about extensively by Khmer people, right?

That there is within the culture and within like even a lot of like the Buddhist kind of writings at the time, there's this discussion of like the Khmer were fundamentally good people, were humble, but were also kind of like the Khmer were fundamentally good people, were humble, but were also kind of like naive and easy to be taken advantage of by these kind of savvier foreign peoples around us, right?

This is the way they talk about themselves to a sizable extent, right? Sure. Although how much, there's a question, I guess I'm asking more than like poking at this, but it's like, that is also exactly the type of thing that like a broad multinational religion could start to spread

Terms of supporting imperialism Yeah, and there's there's some I mean that this is not I'm not I'm certainly not qualified to give you detail but but I think it's there's there's plenty of evidence that a lot of the way they discuss themselves is in sort of this context of we really need to get our shit together and stop being ruled by these people. Like that's kind of the attitude. And it depends with the Chinese Khmer, there's this mix of like respect with kind of some jealousy and some anger.

Vietnamese people are seen almost entirely as imperialists, right? As like this arrogant force that has continually dominated us over our history. And again, Khmer people often have friends who are Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Chinese Cambodians, but this is this idea of like, this is what this race is done to our race, right? Like that's really common. A very popular story that would be told to children at the time when Salazar was a kid, described three Cambodian prisoners being buried up to their necks around a fire,

so their heads could be used as a tripod to hold their Vietnamese master's teapot. And it's like a joke that this is what they think we're good for, is like, you know, that's the bit. Like this is what they think we're good for is like, you know, like that's the bit. Right, right. Now, when it came to like the looking back at periods of time in which things were different,

the real one period of like glory that educated Cambodians in particular would think back to was the time of the Angkorian Empire, which had ruled Northwest Cambodia from the 900s AD to about 1400 AD and included parts of modern day Laos, Thailand and Vietnam as well. This is the Angkorian Empire. And Salah Tsar and his peers would have seen themselves as being raised in the ruins of

a once great culture. The attitude these people have is almost we're growing up in a post-apocalyptic empire. And this was not far from the truth. By the 1200s, which is right around, if you've heard of Angkor Wat, it's still to this day the largest surviving religious complex on the world. And it's this massive, incredibly complex,

beautiful like temple complex that was part of the heartland of this empire. And while it was at its height around the 1200s, the Angkorian Empire contained a higher population than lived in all of Cambodia in the 30s. So if you're looking at like the degree to which things got worse, there are, in the 30s,

this area is capable of supporting fewer people than it supported in the 1200s. Right, right, right. So they are really living in a post-apocalypse in a lot of ways. Now, some of the first stories Saar would have heard would have been tales of his grandfather Pham, who came up during one of the many periods of domination by Vietnamese anti-invaders. Cambodia came close to being destroyed as an independent culture, and Saar would have

been raised on tales of Vietnamese soldiers gouging the eyes out of captives and salting their wounds before burying them alive. And this is a thing that happened. We are talking about really hideous wars that happened between these people in these periods. And I mean, in every period of time, right? These are ugly conflicts. And he grows up with stories about like,

this is what war is. Like it's not just fighting and killing to gain territory. It is like torturing and destroying your enemy. That is the norm. The French, by comparison, would have seemed benign to him as a child. In large part because the French were the backers of the royal family. There's still a king in Cambodia and he's a useful figurehead for the French. And Salat-Sar's family is really close to the royal family.

And so they kind of owe their privileges and their good position to, in part, to the French occupiers, right? Just like the king does. Salat's early childhood then was mild. His father was noted for being less strict and for beating out, he didn't beat his kids as much as most fathers did, right? This is a culture where strict parenting is the norm and where children, it's believed that you need to use violence very strictly to maintain the behavior of your children, right? And this was not just common with parents, it was extremely common with teachers. These are like the strain of Buddhism that is dominant in Cambodia is called Theravada

Buddhism. And this is a faith that has an incredibly sharp delineation between good and evil. There's not really shades of gray, right? And so if you're doing the wrong thing, you need to be punished very severely, right? This is like a very black and white faith in a lot of ways. At least that's the way it's interpreted at this period of time. One common punishment from school masters was to make a disobedient child lie down on an ant's nest.

That's like, if you fuck up in school, they make you lie down on a red ant nest. Like straight up torture. Yeah. I just want to point out, Robert, of course, is not saying that if you don't beat your kids enough, they will become pulp-hot. But he's not saying that. Look, there's obviously an amount of

beating your kids that will turn them into pole pot, right? But there's an amount of beating your kids that will turn them into, I don't know, not pole pot. Not pole pot too. So you know. It's a fine line. I don't know. Maybe don't punish your kids with ants. Can we say, can we agree on that? Philip Short quotes one of Pol Pot's peers, Kang Von Sak, as saying this about discipline in schools at the time. I didn't like arithmetic and I hadn't learned my multiplication table. So every time we were going to have a lesson, I said that I had a stomach ache and wanted

to go home. The third time I did that, the teacher said, all right, you may go, but first recite the seven times table. Of course, I didn't know it. How he beat me, kicks and punches. He was brutal. Then he took me outside and put me under a grapefruit tree full of red ants. After that, I knew my times tables.

Oh my God. Well, I guess if it works. No, I don't. I don't guess that at all. Well, I guess if it works. No, I don't. I don't guess that at all. You know, that general philosophy, I think, held on for quite some time. If my parents are any indication.

And like, yeah, there's unique Cambodian, the whole aunt thing. Pretty unique to Cambodia. But the whole you beat the shit out of a kid if they're not learning right. That's more normal than not in the 20s. You go to Oak Low, I got beat as a kid in Oklahoma by my principal. So like, not trying to like, but yeah. And what's really interesting to me though,

is that Van Sack recalls this teacher who like beat him and then tied him to an ant tree as a saintly man who was adorable. Like, this was my nicest teacher. Oh, kicking a kid is really fucking nuts. I got to say wild. Yeah. Like, though, truly. Yeah, it just requires so much intention and preparation.

Yeah. And it just it says a lot that like, and that's your good teacher. Like, that's the guy that you're like, and you know what you really really straighten me out. Yeah I know a lot of you they say you never forget your teachers or how many ants they torture do it I can see why you wouldn't forget that teacher Anybody kick the shit out of me and tied me to an ant tree. I would remember that motherfucker Speaking of beating, nope. Speaking of not amusing children. Products.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Look, times are hard and they are not getting any easier. None of us get through this without a support system. I don't know where I'd be without the people, the community really, who help keep me on an even keel, who let me talk when I'm having trouble. Friends and social support is absolutely crucial, right? Nobody's got all the answers,

but the people who do the best of getting by know when to ask questions and seek support from their community. In a society that glorifies hyperindependence, it's easy to forget that we're all better when we have a support system behind us. And part of a good support system can be therapy. And if you're interested in starting a therapy journey, you might try BetterHelp. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, and you can easily

switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. So build your support system with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash behind to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelpHELP.com slash behind. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long silent voices from his past came forward. And he was just staring at me.

And they had secrets of their own to share. Um, Gilbert King, I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott. I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it. Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known. If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail.

I would have never existed. I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Season 2, Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something.

Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Soledad O'Brien, and on my podcast, Murder on the Toe Path, I'm taking you back to the

1960s. Mary Pinchot Meyer was a painter who lived in Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Every day she took a daily walk along the towpath near the E&O Canal. So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart. The police arrived in a heartbeat. Within 40 minutes, a man named Raymond Crump Jr. was arrested.

He was found nearby, soaking wet, and he was black. Only one woman dared defend him, civil rights lawyer Dovey Roundtree. Join me as we unravel this story with a crazy twist, who dared defend him, civil rights lawyer, Dovey Roundtree. Join me as we unravel this story with a crazy twist, because what most people didn't know is that Mary was connected to a very powerful man. I pledge you that we shall neither commit

nor provoke aggression. John F. Kennedy. Listen to Murder on the Toe Path with Soledad O'Brien on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, I just found out that my dad lived a secret life as a hitman for the Chicago mafia for all these years. It doesn't make any sense.

He was a firefighter paramedic. How the hell can he be a hitman? I need answers. So I am currently on a plane back to Chicago to interview everybody. Anybody that knows anything about this. I'm in shock. This is absolutely insane. I just don't understand. I need to figure this out. The shocking new true crime series, Kirk County from Tenderfoot TV and iHeart podcasts

is available now. Binge the entire series for free on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So as I've established, we're not talking about a society. This is a, Khmer society is in a lot of ways, and I know there's other aspects of it, but there's a lot of brutality here, right?

And this is not unique among the Khmer, but this is a black and white society and it's going to be meaningful in terms of how the Khmer Rouge act in power. That punishments like this are very normal when they're kids, right? There is already a high level. It's just like you, the ultraviolence of the Nazis is not detached from the fact that the initial group of Nazis all spent four years in the trenches, you know? Like, you can't separate those things and you can't separate what the Khmer Rouge does from the fact that this kind of stuff is normal when they're kids, right? And

the legends that were told often in Khmer society, because this is a group of people who have been constantly conquered and beaten and massacred by their neighbors, and of course done a little bit, done some of that themselves, to be fair, it does not, the stories, the fairy tales and whatnot they grow up on don't depict a just world,

right? They are, instead of like, you know, happy endings and the good guy winning, there's a lot more stories of murderers going free and honorable men being hideously executed by the king, right? That's a lot of very common kind of thing. This is the lore of a culture formed through centuries of domination, defeat and murder, right?

That's the result, right? There's a lot of trauma in the collective history of the Khmer and it comes through in their legends. Salat Sar's cousin Meek joined the Royal Ballet Corps in the 1920s. Now that sounds nice, right? Ah, ballet! Good way to express yourself.

Great, we love the arts. This is not that kind of ballet troupe. The ballet troupe is primarily a feeder organization for the King's harem, right? That is the reason why you collect all these ballet artists, right? Because it makes it easier for the King to pick out who he wants to make a courtesan, right? David Chandler in the book, Brother Number One, which is a biography of Pol Pot writes, quote, each dance involved thousands of movements, each keyed to moments in a particular story and to the mythological character being portrayed.

None of the gestures was improvised. Although some dancers might be more beautiful or more graceful than others, their movements depended on memory, tradition, and practice. In other words, on what they had been taught rather than on what the individual wanted to express. The dancers were vehicles for tradition rather than its interpreters. So while this is an art form, it is not one in which self-expression is prized. It is how can you abs- exactly recreate this, right? Yeah. Do the thing as it was done

before. And again, this whole ballet corps, its primary audience is the royal family. And the royal family within Khmer society is, it's so high above everything else, right? The Khmer word that like people who are high-level advisors and counselors for the king would use for themselves Literally translated to something like we who keep the king's shit in our heads Like like our brains are his shit, right? Right, yeah And as I said the ballet corps existed in large part to provide raw material for the Royal harem but it was traditional for kings and princes to have eyes bigger than their heads in this regard and And as I said, the ballet court existed in large part to provide raw material for the royal harem.

But it was traditional for kings and princes to have eyes bigger than their heads in this regard. And especially once kings got old, they would pick a lot of concubines that they wouldn't really get around to having sex with because they're like old and sick. And these women are untouchable to any other men, but often also untouched themselves. They're kept prisoner in a network of huts in the palace and are forbidden from contact with non-royal boys over a certain age. Most of their time was spent arguing and gossiping among each other, raising the few kids that

they have. There's a lot of gambling. The few outsiders who are allowed to visit, obviously they socialize with as much as possible because they live in such a closed little society. And soon enough, Salahzad would be one of those visitors. His older brother, Thay, was the first to be sent to the capital to attend one of the few Western-style schools in the country. And these are schools the French have started. And they're often sometimes they're run by Khmer, educated Khmer, but they're

like patterned off of French schools, right? And Saloth followed, uh, into the Capitol in 1934 at age nine. And the plan was he's going to start attending one of these proper Western schools, but as is not uncommon for a lot of Khmer, his parents don't want him to go fully Western, right? They still do want him to be Khmer. So he spends a year in a Buddhist monastery, just south of the palace, before he goes to school, right?

This is a really common experience. And in fact, the princes all do this too, right? Like the guy who's gonna become the king, Nauradam Sahanic, spends like a year, or an amount of time in this monastery, because it's a thing that you do in part to show I'm authentically of this culture. And this is also going to be the only education

that Pol Pot ever gets in his native language. This is the only, the rest of his schooling, he'll be taught in French. So this is the only time he's being taught in Khmer, right? Sure. Now, about 100 kids a year had this experience, and the accounts that we get make it sound pretty miserable to me like the worst summer camp you can imagine There is no room in this for personal creativity or expression

Every single person has a strictly delineated role and stepping out of it was met with Traditionally brutal punishments one of SARS contemporaries later explained you were given a thrashing if you didn't do as they said if you didn't Walk correctly you were beaten you had to walk you didn't do as they said, if you didn't walk correctly, you were beaten. You had to walk quietly and slowly without making any sound with your feet and you weren't allowed to swing your arms. You had to move serenely. You had to learn by heart the rules of conduct

in the Buddhist precepts so that you could recite them without hesitation. If you hesitated, you were beaten. And I think I encountered a whole lot, especially as like an angry young atheist, this idea, if you hear this, I think I encountered a whole lot, especially as like an angry young atheist, this idea. If you hear this, I think more common among liberals that like, you know, these Christians and Muslims and like all the violence that comes out of these

these Western like Judeo-Christian religions. Why can't we all be like the Buddhists? They never have terrorist groups, tons of Buddhist terrorist groups. Plenty of Buddhist genocides. Every religion has it. And also non-religions have it. People love committing genocide. No culture has a fucking lock on that.

Religion is a handy tool, but it's not the only handy tool. It's not the only tool. Get that out of you. Again, if you blame genocide fundamentally on the fact that people can be pieces of shit, that's what's to blame. The real genocide juice is in here. You know, in your heart. It's in here.

Yeah. If you wanna understand how a person can be moved to genocide, drive in traffic for 22 minutes. That's the most I'm ever like, yeah, we just gotta start killing people. If no one was here, I'd be home. No, no, no. I'm three more, but still three minutes away

from the fucking burger rest. God damn it. So the religious texts that they were made to memorize were rooted in a rigid respect for hierarchy. In Theravada Buddhism, children were treated almost as robots, right? They are the product of cause and effect that accumulate rather than people in their own right.

And so what matters is modifying what goes into them, right, in order to produce the desired outcome. There's, again, this very mechanical understanding of like, this is how you make a good person, right? Now, their holy book was the SPAP. It's C-P-A-P. It's like spelled like a CPAP machine, right? And it's basically a collection of morality plays and anecdotes which reinforce the sense of Khmer inferiority next to their neighbors.

One relevant portion reads, learn arithmetic with all your energy, lest the Chinese and Vietnamese cheat you. The Khmer's are lacking in judgment. They eat without giving thought for what is proper and right. Each season they borrow from the Chinese and the Chinese gain control of the inheritance their parents have bequeathed so again Morality play there's a lot of racism in this upbringing

It's racism against these ethnic minorities in the country who have also periodically controlled the country Yeah, right, so it's sort of like reasonable resentment Yeah, like yeah, resentment that is getting. Yeah, of course. Yeah, he would be pissed. Yeah. But as a spoiler in part two, this is going to lead to a bunch of genocides. Yeah, that's how it goes.

The resentment turns into the worst thing quickly. Yeah. Now, by the time Saar finished his year at the monastery, his, I've heard nine months, I've heard a year. I don't know that they were keeping that good a track. He will often lie about having spent longer time there because he's kind of proud of this period in his life. By the time Salah Sarr finished his time in the monastery, his cousin had become the highest ranking woman at the palace. She was like in charge of the harem basically. And this

was in part because she had born the prince regent and that's the prince who's going to become the king when the king dies, a son, right before he was made the new king. So obviously that elevates her in his eyes. His older brother, Loth Suong, had started working as a clerk in the palace in the late 1920s. And it was decided that he would take in

his younger brother, Tsar, and raise him with his wife so that Salah Tsar could live in the capital and attend a modern French-style school. David Chandler writes that Law Song considered his younger brother, quote, an even-tempered, polite, unremarkable child. As a primary student, Sammy told the Australian journalist James Gerand Sarr had no difficulties with the other students, no fights or quarrels. In examining his early years, I found no traumatic events and heard no anecdotes that foreshadow

his years in power. People who met him as an adult found his self-effacing personality, perhaps a carryover from the image he projected as a child. In Lothuang's words, the contemptible pole pot was a lovely child. And this is the weirdest thing about him. Almost every source agrees he was an incredibly nice, like polite, pleasant guy to be around. Which you don't, most dictators, pleasant guy to be around, which you don't, most dictators, you really do get like, oh yeah, there's hints of the megalomania.

Maybe they get nice to some people, but there's other people who are like, oh yeah, I got a sign of the crazy. Pol Pot, everyone's just like, yeah, he was pretty cool. He seemed nice. That's so weird. I did not know that. That's like so bizarre. Even did not know that. That's so bizarre.

Even after, like when Nate Thayer, who's like the last journalist to talk to him when he's like in hiding 18 or so years after leaving power is like, yeah, he was like a really very polite man. You know, it's very odd. On that score, you know, the modern day version of that is prior to now, most US presidents. Trump at least you're like clear, okay, this guy is a fucking, like he's exactly who he seems.

But like, yeah, truly people, there's no amount of genocide George Bush could commit that people would be like, I'd drink with him. No, and he's absolutely a monster, absolutely should be in the Hague. I was in a room with him once, and I get why people were loyal to him. He's very charming in person.

Or even if you know what he's done, it's just the skill. Your Obama's like. Yeah, a fucking Obama, right, exactly. People who have done horrible things are often deeply likable, which is how they get in position to do horrible things, and Sarr appears to be that kind of guy, right?

So yeah, that said, he's also described as a pretty boring dude, right? He is not political at all. And he's not political until very late in this story. His schooling at the monastery would mark the only time he was educated in his native language. Once he starts at the French style Ecole Michel, Saar was taught in French by Catholic fathers who were either French or Vietnamese. So these are Catholic priests

who are French and Vietnamese. He remains a Buddhist, but he's being taught every day in Catholicism, right? And if this produced any sense of whiplash in the young boy, we don't have any evidence of it, but it must have been weird. I have to imagine. When he wasn't in class, Tsar had the rare freedom to visit his sister in the ballet harem section of the palace. And again, not a lot of people are allowed here. This gave him, number one, he would run into the queen mother pretty regularly and like you have to bow when you see her and stuff. And interestingly enough, even afterwards as a hardcore communist revolutionary, he remembered her with like a sense of awe

and reverence. Now this also put him in a very vulnerable position. The fact that he's one of the few young men, boys, allowed in this harem. As I stated earlier, this group of women who were like officially the king's consorts and potential consorts were bored all the time and they were forbidden to be touched by anyone else. Right? bored all the time and they were forbidden to be touched by anyone else. As a result, when a kid like Saar comes in, this is the closest they can get to going

after a man. This leads to some profoundly abusive experiences for young Salat Saar, as Philip Short writes. At 15, Saar was still regarded as a child, young enough to be allowed into the women's quarters. Decades later, two of the palace women, living out their old age on a French government stipends in Paris, remembered little Tsar, who used to come to visit them wearing his school uniform, a loose white shirt with baggy trousers and wooden shoes. The young women would gather round, teasing him, they remembered.

Then they would loosen his waistband and fondle his genitals, masturbating him to a climax. He was never allowed to have intercourse with them, but in the frustrated, hothouse world of the royal pleasure house, it apparently afforded the women of a curious satisfaction. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Fuck. And this does not come out until fairly late. Like the first, the Chandler biography and the earliest biographies you're gonna read about,

Pol Pot, Don't Talk About This, Nate Thayer. I don't know if, I think it may have been known when Thayer talked to him, but Thayer is in like a Khmer Rouge stronghold. So maybe you're just not gonna bring up like, hey, so let's talk about you getting molested. Like, I'm not gonna blame Nate for that, right? He was in a very dangerous position, you know?

And exercised a lot of courage within that position. But we just don't, he never talked about this. So we can only kind of speculate like, oh wow. I mean, this has to have had some impact, right? Right, right, right. Like this didn't help. Yeah. But you know, anything beyond that

is going to be pure speculation, right? Because they just didn't, this is the only, these are the only people who talked about it. Right, right, right. And it's not like this is coming up in therapy notes that we can find. Right, right, right. And while it is certainly not wrong to be like,

well, this is pretty poisonous, I bet it had an impact on the kind of guy he was as an adult. I want people to also keep in mind this passage from Chandler's book. Quote, Cambodians attached to the palace in the 1930s and 40s, like Salah Sarr and his relations, were insulated from the Chinese and Sino-Khmer commercial sector of Phnom Penh.

From the worldwide economic depression and from the need to grow their own food, Salah Sarr inhabited this elaborate, safe, entirely Cambodian world for many years. So whatever impact this has, he is also one of the only Khmer people in the society who grows up feeling safe and secure. He's never worried about food.

And these are the starving times. These are, and this is a horrible depression for the country. Most people are short on food. That's not a thing for him. He lives in abundance as a kid. Right. Yeah. For her, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But it's also like having that, I mean, you know, 15 is old enough to kind of realize like- This probably shouldn't be happening. Yeah. Yeah, this abundance is conditional upon some of the other maybe horrible things that are happening too. Yeah, maybe the fact that these old ladies keep on, yeah.

Yeah. For her part, his sister recalled his visits fondly and she primarily remembered her brother as a funny kid. Quote, whenever he had something serious to say, he would make a joke of it. This was another common recollection shared by his classmates in primary school. Salath Sar was funny, he was easy to be around

and he was most particularly gentle, a child who one friend described as not being willing to hurt a chicken Which I guess is like that. You wouldn't hurt a fly in Cambodia I don't know, you know, we're coming off a time where we're just anything that's considered violence You could societally ramp it up from us soft Americans are used to and to be fair as an adult He maybe he wouldn't hurt a chicken, but he was willing to hurt a lot of people. You know exactly He was not a good student again throughout his educational career. He showed a capability to learn and study, but no inclination to do it.

He did not graduate primary school until age 18. Two years after that would have been customary. Now I should note that this is the general stance taken by Chandler and other biographers, including Short, that he's not great in school. He's kind of lazy. Pol Pot rebutted these claims in the last interview he ever gave saying that Chandler was not entirely accurate. Quote, I was not a bad student, I was average.

I studied just enough to keep my scholarship. The rest of the time I just read books. And you know what? Same, bestie. For most of, I shouldn't call Pol Pot bestie. No. He's in no price, probably. You're heading in that direction. For most of- I shouldn't call Pol Pot bestie. No. He's surprised probably. You're heading in that direction.

For most of- Listen, again, it's just refreshing to hear about a murderous dictator who reads books. Yeah, oh, you would've loved- We're out of that. Yeah, yeah. You would've loved the Hunger Games, Pol Pot. For most of the big dub dub dose,

and again, we're talking about like his education, his like, the school years that he's going to remember the most are during World War II, right? He is entering adolescence in the 40s. For most of that war, life for Cambodians like Tsar in the rarefied air of the capital went by relatively unchanged. The Vichy government takes over in France, right? For Cambodians, it's still French people running Canada,

but it's a slightly different group of French people, right? Who are basically fascist collaborators. But you're not going to notice much different as a Cambodian, right? Like, it's not like they're wildly different to you. Yeah, the non-fascist collaborators still about such great dudes. Yeah, the main difference would be that Tsar would start learning in school songs about the glory of Marshall Patain and the like,

but I don't know that much of this stuck. Thailand invades and conquer several border provinces during this time, which is a deep shame to the King who is dying and a deep shame to Cambodia, but Tsar is not a political kid and we have no evidence that this particularly impacted him. Philip Short does theorize that some of the fascist propaganda brought into the schools during this period did impact Tsar, particularly the fact that the propaganda of the Vichy

era romanticizes peasants like poor farmers as the true embodiment of the nation. And that's really going to be a big sticking point for him as an adult. And so maybe there's a line there, right? The propaganda of the botanist era also depicts the city as an inherently decadent and unnatural thing, like a break from the righteous path of subsistence farming under a dictator. And that probably leaves a mark, right? Now, in the summer of 1942, the capital saw its first major protests against French control.

A group of Cambodian monks began preaching anti-French sermons. This was an escalation of what was at this point a slowly developing sense of Cambodian nationalism that had been supercharged by the fact that France had collapsed under the Nazi boot heel. Two of these monks are arrested by Vichy French police who do so in a way that defaces a religious shrine, and this sparks more extensive protests, right? And these protests terminate in a march on the French administrator's office. Now, the main leader of the nationalist movement in the country at this time is a guy named Son Nok Tan, who he had some kind of lefty inclinations. He was not anti-socialist, but he's not a communist. He's not really a socialist.

He is a big popular front, big tent. Let's free Cambodia and then we can figure out like politically what we want to do, right? That's his kind of deal, right? And so he's broadly popular with kind of everyone who wants an independent Cambodia. He's a very heroic figure during this time. And he starts organizing demonstrations against the French. They do what regimes do and they crack down,

they imprison all his friends. And he's forced to go on the run where he eventually asks the emperor of Japan for asylum and gets it. Now, Tsar would have been aware of all of this. He probably would have admired Than, but there's not much evidence that this takes up a lot of bandwidth in his brain.

Like most of his classmates who go on to become communist, he was focused at the time on his own educational career. As a student, Tsar loved French poetry and sports. He loved all kinds of sports. He was an avid soccer player who was known for kicking the ball behind his head with stunning accuracy. He also played, this shocked me, he's on the school basketball team?

And Sophie, I looked it up. And since Pol Pot died in 1998, sadly there is no way he ever saw LeBron play, which is a real tragedy. Because LeBron play, which is a real tragedy. Because LeBron does, LeBron goes straight into the NBA, 2003 I think. So one of the great tragedies of history. I was hoping you had some stats on Pol Pot's numbers, but.

He must have known about Michael Jordan. So at least there's that to come to us. What position did he play? I don't know. I looked, Sophie, I looked, I don't know. These are the great mysteries of history, if only. I'm just really proud that you take the time to look up stuff about, you know,

LeBron, Ramon James. I did it for you. I did it for you, yeah. What if Pol Pot had gotten to play a pickup game with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, you know? That's the- How tall was he? I'm working on a novel right now. Not that tall.

Look, I'm gonna be honest. Khmer basketball could not have been the most impressive. These are not tall people. There's not a lot of protein. I was gonna say, cause like LeBron's 6'9", 250. Yeah, no, these, LeBron alone probably could have taken on the whole team. I mean, I bet on him every time.

Yeah, like, oh God. So while several of his friends went off to a prestigious secondary school, Salah Sarr barely eeked by, he does horrible on his exams. And so he's not able to go to like the humanities school, which is really progressive. So he goes to like a much worse boarding school, which is still vastly better than 99% of the population. Again, we're talking a chunk of 1% who gets any kind of education like this, right? So the fact that he's like at the bottom of the

educated class still means that he is almost unfathomably privileged by the standards of average mayor. So he starts this school in 1943. In 1945, Japan seized Cambodia from Vichy France for a variety of complex reasons That all boiled down to they were losing the war and they were trying every Hail Mary they could right? They're like look these French guys. They don't have a good hold on things What if we just arrest them all and make Cambodia Japan for a little while? Will that help us beat the Americans? No Turns out no. Turns out Cambodia, not really that useful in fighting the United States in this period.

Just spitballing it. It will be later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Vietnamese are gonna make some real hay out of having a Cambodia in their back pocket, but. Right peace, wrong time, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's like any risk game. It's like any risk game, right?

Yeah, so they arrest all of the French people, It's like any risk game. It's like any risk game, right? Yeah. So they arrest all of the French people basically in France and Japan is in touch for a while. Japan is pretty brutal in a lot of areas they govern. They really aren't in Cambodia to the Khmer because like, why would they be? Right? Right.

And they don't have the time, you know, it's 1945. But the main impact this has on people like Salazar and his peers is that they see all of these French administrators, all of these French teachers and priests get arrested and locked up. And these people had been untouchable previously. They were very similar to the king in that like,

you just can't even comprehend the idea of laying a hand on them. And they are, they see these people forced from power and locked up by people who aren't white. And that has a huge impact, right? And the thing it teaches them is that like, the power of the French is not inevitable or amovable. It can be pushed aside. And if the Japanese could do it, maybe we could, right? One of Tsar's friends later recalled, we saw that a yellow, and this is his words, we saw that a yellow race, the Japanese,

had gotten the better of the white colonialists, the French, that awakened something in us. It made us start thinking. And as far as propaganda goes, we're gonna talk about all the reading that these kids do and you know, reading Mao, reading Stalin, that all has an impact. I don't know if anything has a bigger propaganda impact

than seeing these Japanese soldiers locking up French imperialists. And that is the power of representation. There we go, right? Yeah. Obviously the empire of Japan is no less imperialist than the French empire, right? But that's immaterial in discussing how it influenced

people like Salazar and these, the future Khmers Rouge. Now for the immediate moment though, the biggest change brought on by Japan's brief conquest is that everybody kind of got a case of senioritis cause all their teachers get arrested, right? Sure. When you read about them talking about this period, it reminds me most of that week

after you take your AP exam while they're still school, but no one's doing anything in class. That's kind of what these kids all go through. Their French teachers get replaced by some Vietnamese teachers, but the substitutes don't really know how to handle shit as well. So like they're kind of fucking off for a little while.

Sun Ok Tan returns to agitate for independence and even manages to briefly run Cambodia as an independent country after Japan collapses. And so he's run it. Cambodia is independent under this broadly popular nationalist for about two months, which is just enough that everyone really likes this guy and feels really good about it, but not so long that like maybe some of the problems that he might have managed.

Right. Yeah. There's nothing, I'm not saying, he actually seems like he was pretty competent, but like it's going to stick in people's minds as a golden period because of how short it is. And you don't have to, the consequences of your tough decisions, you don't spend enough time in office for them to come back.

Yeah, exactly. So this lasts about two months, and then the French show back up with their tanks and are like, actually, we still feel like Cambodia is natural French territory. Yeah, ah-ha-ha, et cetera. So they arrest Than. They call him a traitor and to what?

Again, you guys weren't even there anymore. But by this point, he was universally beloved, particularly by young educated Khmer, like Siloth Saar and his friends. Now Saar again has no real political beliefs at this point beyond a growing endorsement of populist nationalism. He continues to be a mid-student. He fails to get into an educational program that would have gotten him a prestigious degree and instead settles to go to a technical school. And he picks the easiest degree plan at

the technical school, carpentry, because the Khmer professor was known for giving everyone good grades no matter how well they did. So he's like a carpenter for a little while in school. And he's doing this because there's like a study abroad program that gets given to the best students. And there's a number of slots. And like, he figured basically the easiest thing for me to be at the best at is carpentry. Cause it's like the blow off class.

And that'll be my best shot at getting into this program. You know? Oh yeah. Grab a wild card slot any way you can. Yeah, yeah, whatever. That's a very modern attitude towards it, honestly. I have a lot of friends in school who made similar calls. Yeah. 1947 is the first year we have evidence

for Tsar getting directly involved in politics. That year, the newly found Democratic Party, which advocated for replacing French and absolute monarchial rule with a democracy, or at least like a hybrid democracy, where there's a king, but he's limited constitutionally and we have like this parliament type deal, they win 54 seats in the national elections. King Vansak, an older student who was something of a mentor to Tsar and his friends, claims

that Tsar, along with several of his friends, including Yang Tsare, who's going to also help run the Khmer Rouge, volunteer for the Democratic Party during the elections. And when I say Democratic Party, it's literally like the party that thinks we should have a democracy. Yeah, right. And this is a melting pot. A lot of future communists and socialists

are in the Democratic Party, as well as a lot of guys who are going to wind up more more on the like, well, I want to be aligned with the Americans, right? This is just kind of where a lot of them are at this stage. In 1949, Salahzad gets picked for that study abroad program and he becomes one of the first hundred Khmer male and female students to win a scholarship to go study in Paris. They leave on a steamship, they actually go through Saigon, and they arrive in Paris on the same day

Mao Zedong announces the founding of the People's Republic of China. So a lot is happening. And this is going to increasingly make discussions of communism a lot more relevant to these kids, who it really hadn't been all that much up to this point. Now, nearly all of the students that he goes to Paris with

wind up being prominent political figures. A lot of them are leaders within the Khmer Rouge. A lot of them get killed by the Khmer Rouge because they're leaders of the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge loves murdering the Khmer Rouge, right? Like, this is primarily because almost no one else in the country had access to educational opportunities or the free time necessary to learn about radical politics.

So obviously the people who are dominant in the radical political sect are the only ones with the time to read, right? It's not that shocking. Speaking of things that aren't shocking, these products. I'm gonna be surprised. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long silent voices from his past came forward. And he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share. Um, Gilbert King. I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.

I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it. Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known. If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail.

I would have never existed. I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley, season two. Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear the entire new season ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Soledad O'Brien and on my podcast, Murder on the Toe Path, I'm taking you back to the 1960s. Mary Pinchot-Meyer was a painter who lived in Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Every day, she took a daily walk along the toe path near the E&O canal. So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood. She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart. The police arrived in a heartbeat.

Within 40 minutes, a man named Raymond Crump Jr. was arrested. He was found nearby, soaking wet, and he was black. Only one woman dared defend him, civil rights lawyer, Dovey Roundtree. Join me as we unravel this story with a crazy twist because what most people didn't know is that Mary was connected to a very powerful man. I pledge you that we shall neither commit nor provoke aggression.

John F. Kennedy. Listen to Murder on the Toe Path with Soledad O'Brien on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, I just found out that my dad lived a secret life as a hitman for the Chicago Mafia for all these years. It doesn't make any sense. He was a firefighter, a paramedic.

How the hell can he be a hitman? I need answers, so I am currently on a plane back to Chicago to interview everybody. Anybody that knows anything about this. I'm in shock, this is absolutely insane. I just don't understand. I need to figure this out. The shocking new true crime series, Kirk County, from Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts is available now.

Binge the entire series for free on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tramarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men dominated the field. But tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrer's, known as the Wicked Lady, who terrorized England in the mid 1600s. Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Hear the story of the gentleman robber, the romantic darling of the ladies, and a tale about a wager over a sack of potatoes, but you'll have to tune in to learn who won

that one. Some highwaymen were well-mannered or faked it. People were concerned about the romanticism of robbers, but most were just thugs. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Call them robbers or bandits. Some are legendary figures. Listen to stories about historical crimes on Criminalia Now, plus the cocktails and mocktails inspired by each. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back.

And actually it turns out several of our sponsors might electrocute you. But you know, some people spelled getting electrocuted. I call it getting free electricity, you know, and that shit's expensive these days. Have you looked at your power bill? Can you afford to turn down getting electrocuted? You know, maybe. Robert capacitor Evans speaking. I know I shouldn't use electrocuted because that only means you've been killed. Shocked, I guess. I had an electrician friend explain that to me once.

Anyway, whatever. Fucking power jack. Power cops. So, where are we here? Yeah, so, Sar gets into this program to study abroad, despite his unimpressive grades, not just because there's not a lot of kids in this program, but because even among the ones who do better than him,

most of them don't wanna like leave Cambodia for years, right, because they got like families and shit, you know? His fellow students are guys like Yang Seri, who later becomes the co-founder of the Khmer Rouge. Chandler summarizes his early life this way. Seri was born and raised among the Cambodian minority of Cochin China. His father, Kim Rim, was a prosperous landowner. When Rim died, Sarie, still a young boy, was sent to live with relatives in the Cambodian province of Pre Vang. He was given the name Yang Sarie, which sounded more Khmer than his real name, Kim Trang. And that's not an uncommon story, is like, especially among these guys,

Pol Pot's gonna do the same thing where it's like, eh, my original name, not quite as good as I want it to be. Let me, let me Khmer this fucker up a little bit, right? It's all very WWF. I like it. It's just like, let's get a populous name going. Look, I think one thing we've all learned from the last decade of American politics

is that the Rosetta Stone for understanding all of human behavior, culture, and history is professional wrestling. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you get pro wrestling, you understand the whole swamp of human achievement. You thought it was gladiatorial combat, but that wasn't nearly camp enough.

No, no, no, not nearly camp enough. So as you can see, the reason I bring up Sari's background is it's not all that different from Salot-Sar, right? And most of these Paris kids who are going to become like the core of this like educated revolutionary class have similar stories, right? They are intellectuals.

They're going to target and annihilate the intellectual class in Cambodia once they get in power, but they're intellectuals, right? That's the class they come from. It's not that different from how Stephen Miller's background goes actually. So Salah Star starts off his time in Paris living in a dormitory complex. He would later claim that in the first year he was a fairly good student. And this is true enough, but his studies quickly slipped. Part of this is because his middling grades

meant that he had to go to a technical school rather than get a degree in like the humanities, which was a lot sexier for these people who are going to wind up being future revolutionaries. And the degree plan he's working on for his years in Paris is as a radio technician. Chandler suggests that this is because he befriends the king's nephew, Prince Salmongpon, who lives in Paris at the time.

And Prince Salmongpon is also studying to be a radio technician. We know the prince helps him find an apartment with a couple of friends, which is the place he moves out of that dormitory to live in. Pol Pot will deny this for the rest of his life. He deny, he would lie a lot about his connections to the royal family, which are deep as we've established. He gets a lot out of his family's connections to the royal family, but in the future, he's gonna be like,

no, when I was in Paris, I lived with a cousin. You know, it's like, no, you didn't. No, you didn't, you are friends with the prince. Come on. Let's not let it go unsaid that he was obviously studying to be the 20th century version of a podcast producer. I was gonna say, Pol Pot wanted my coming for my job.

That's right. Oh, Sophie, I gotta say, I'd give him a shot. Look, nothing against you. I just wanna see how Pol Pot produces a podcast. How fucking dare you? You know what? How fucking dare you? Don't tell me you don't wanna see it.

I would die for you. You're gonna give me up for Pol Pot? Sophie, if Pol Pot gets in the operation, we're all dying. The important thing is, Sophie could organize a genocide. Pol Pot could never produce a podcast. That's right, that's right.

Yeah. This is gonna sting for a little while. It's about range. I didn't say I a little while. I'm not it's about range I didn't say I didn't say I'd like it I'd say that you'd be good content with a LeBron stat And then you kicked me to the curb for fucking bull pot look he could have been a pot He could have been a podcaster. You know could have been a podcaster. He was known as having a nice voice You know he could have had my job. Maybe behind the means

pot pot I would choose you You know, he could have had my job maybe. Behind the means. The Poll Podcast. Me and my boys. The Poll Podcast. I would choose you. I might prefer to listen to the Poll Podcast, honestly. Like that sounds fascinating. So, Saar joins the Khmer Student Union, which at that time was in the process of morphing

into a semi-covert communist youth league. He attended his first protest the next year for a radical member of the Democratic Party who was assassinated by right-wingers using a hand grenade. Still at this point in his political involvement, it seems to have been a byproduct of his social life, right? He's at this protest because like his friends are doing stuff like this,

and this is where you like go to hang out with people, right? And he is kind of a hedonist at this phase of his life. like this and this is where you go to hang out with people. He is kind of a hedonist at this phase of his life. Philip Short writes, Sar's friends regarded him as a bon vivant whose purpose in life was to have a good time. So that's I think where we're going to end for part one. We're at about an hour. We've got a lot more pole pot here so we'll see how long it takes to get through all of this

I really did try to cut this fucker down Because I wanted to deliver this all in one week, but there's this this guy's life. See fascinating Yeah, but there we are part one. How are you feeling about pole pot so far Andrew T? I mean so far sounds fucking dope what could possibly go wrong what could possibly change what could possibly go wrong? This is like that first Star Wars prequel where it's like, hey, he's kind of an annoying kid, but you know, whatever, how could things go badly? Yeah.

He likes to party, but he's a kid. Come on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's got a weird crush on a lady who's visibly like 15 years older than him. That's a little off, but whatever. You know, he doesn't realize it's abuse and that's the important thing.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it is weird that they then paired Hayden Christensen with Natalie Portman. Two people who are clearly the same age after establishing that she was a mature adult ruling a country when he was a small boy. It's just, why would you write that in? Look, you know, it's the power of shooting your shot,

I guess, that's what the force is, is just shooting your shot. Shooting your shot, the Star Wars version of Behind the Bastards probably does talk a lot about, and then Darth Vader has this weird relationship with this woman who's like 20 years older than him. So who knows how this abuse affected, you know, the things that he did when he was in Bower, right?

He never wrote about this. Well, we have this interview with Watto and that guy's not really super reliable. Wato had his own agenda. Wato had his own agenda. Now I'm pretty sure he murdered Watto if I'm remembering my expanded universe shit. Yeah, no, I think primary universe.

Primary universe? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. Or is that legends? I don't Yeah, no, I think primary universe. Primary universe? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. Or is that Legends? I don't know, fucking Disney, God damn it. You know what? Yeah. I like it. Anyway, everybody, please join me

for my Behind the Bastards Star Wars-focused podcast, which is actually entirely about Kathleen Kennedy. I don't have any issue with Kathleen Kennedy. It's all about Kathleen Kennedy. I don't have any issue with Kathleen Kennedy. It's all about George Lucas. Yeah. Well, it's all about a bunch of anonymous money guys. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Well, like George Lucas, I hope you all have a good day eating in a food court and being photographed like a Yeti. Andrew T, you got any pluggables to plug? I mean, my podcast is Yozos Racist. I don't know. Let's keep it real. Keep it real. All right, everybody. You too keep it real until next day or whatever. Go to hell. I love you. 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. This podcast is supported by BetterHelp, offering licensed therapists you can connect with via video, phone or chat.

Here's BetterHelp head of clinical operations, Heshew Jo, discussing who can benefit from therapy. I think a lot of people think that you're supposed to be going to therapy once you're like having panic attacks every day. But before you get to that point, I think once you start even noticing that you feel a little bit off and you can't maintain this harmony that you once had in relationships, that could be a sign that maybe you want to go talk to somebody. There's always a benefit in talking to someone because we can all benefit from improved insight about ourselves and who we are and how we behave with other people.

So if you're human, that's like a good indicator that you could benefit from talking to somebody. Find out if therapy is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com today. That's betterHELP.com. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Soledad O'Brien, and on my new true crime podcast, Murder on the Towpath, I'm taking you back to 1964, to the cold case of artist Mary Pinchomire.

She had been shot twice in the head and in the back. It turns out Mary was connected to a very powerful man. I pledge you that we shall neither commit nor promote aggression. John F. Kennedy. Listen to Murder on the Toe Path with Soledad O'Brien on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and my latest interview is with Michelle Obama. To whom much is given, much is expected.

The guilt comes from am I doing enough? Me, Michelle Obama, to say that to a therapist. So let's unpack that. Having been the first lady of the entire country and representing the country and the world, I couldn't afford to have that kind of disdain. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.