Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Worst Team Owner in FIFA History: Uday Hussein

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

In honor of the World Cup, Robert tells our guest, Molly Conger the wild story of the worst team owner in FIFA History, who also happened to be Saddam Hussein's oldest son.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Also media. I didn't see you there. Welcome to Behind the Bastards. You've stepped into our living room, podcast, house. I don't know. It's a podcast about bad people. I struggle through the introduction every week, but then we get to the terrible person, one of the worst people in all of history that we're talking about.

And everybody has a good time learning about things that make them feel bad because we're all damaged people. Speaking of, oh, shit, that's a bad. way to, uh, speaking of talented podcast hosts. Thank you. My guest this week, Molly Conger. Molly, welcome to the show. I'm thrilled to be here.

Yeah, I also have a podcast about, um, about guys who suck, uh, minor, weirder and littler. It's weird little guys. Yes, yes. There's a strict height requirement, much like the Prussian heavy infantry, um, in order to be on your podcast, but in the reverse way. Anyway, Molly, how do you feel about soccer, football, as it's called by most of the people who like it? So I don't know anything about it, but I've been watching the World Cup with my husband, and I love hollering at the TV. Oh, good, good, good.

I feel like this is kind of, this happens periodically where, like, you know, the World Cup's in the United States. So a lot of Americans who normally aren't so much in to what the West, to football, we'll call it football. suddenly find themselves intrigued by it for like the first time or the first time in a while. And right now, the whole freedom-loving world is captured by a new and often performative love of the sport. And as I think most people are aware, the organization that governs how football or soccer works is FIFA. And they are more corrupt than a barrel full of Iraqi generals marinated in oil. Is it jane? Like, huh?

Is it Gianni and Fentino? Are we doing Johnny Baby? No, no. Much worse. Much worse. Much worse, Molly. Much worse. Because if you're not aware. If you were that excited about that, because he's evil.

We will have to cover him at some point. But like, FIFA is so corrupt that if you Google FIFA corruption scandals, you have to specify the year in order to get any kind of useful result because there's just way too many otherwise. Like you're just going to get like chronological news stories from the latest one. And any infamously corrupt and abusive institution is only as good as its most corrupt and sadistically violent team managers. And in the case of professional soccer, the most abusive manager slash team owner in the history of the sport. Do you want to have a guess to who's the most abusive team owner in the history of football? I couldn't even begin to guess.

But as I've been watching the World Cup, I have noticed that whenever they cut to the sidelines, It's the most sinister-looking man you've ever seen in your fucking life. And that's how it is now. Now, I'll give you one hint, Molly. One hint. The character we're talking about today is the son of a widely beloved romance novelist. Although someone who's better known for their other work. Is it one of the Hussein's sons?

It's Uday Hussein. That's right. That's right. He owned a soccer team. He was like the manager of a FIFA team. He was a big deal in the world of society. soccer for a while. Oh, it didn't.

For a long time, actually. And I imagine he treated the players fairly and with respect. That's right. This is a story about a man who treated his players respectfully and didn't, for example, keep a torture dungeon underneath the team workout area for members of the team. Highly motivational, tactical tactic. That's right. That's right.

I've told Sophie, we want to try something like that for the network, but she says apparently it's hard to expense torture dungeons. anymore unless you're Amazon. Yeah. I think I could bring in twice as many downloads if I was recording above a torture dungeon. If there was a torture dungeon, yeah, exactly,

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Listen to Here's the Thing on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So, yeah, you're ready to talk about Uday Hussein? Soccer. Star, kind of. I mean, I think if you ask me, like, the traits of Uday Hussein, like what was he best known for? How would you describe Uday Hussein? Football manager, top, top of the list. manager. Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of. Yeah, manager's sort of it, team owner. It's a little, it's hard to translate his job directly, but he basically, he owns, like, the most prestigious team in Iraq, and he's also the head of, like, their football, like, the national, like, football committee and the head of their, like, Olympic football team, right? Because of his great skill at football.

Because of his great skill in football, of course. Uday Hussein wouldn't get the job for any other reason at the age of 20. Anyway, we're going to go given to a bit of a biography. These are not technically our Uday episodes. I think. think I still might do dedicated Uday episode. There's a lot this guy got up to in his life. And it's all pretty awful, but pretty entertaining. But we're going to stick mostly to football in this one because there's that much. Like, his football career is that significant.

Born in Kark Baghdad on either June 18th or March 9th of 1964. And you, again, one of the best ways to tell if this is going to be a great episode of Behind the Bastards, are there multiple equally likely birthdays? for the bastard? Or like, do we have any idea when they were really born? At least this many children. Like, oh, he had at least five children. Yeah, at least.

At least. These are the details, you know, that make things fun. Uday came into this world, the son of a father who was a man of modest means. You know, Saddam Hussein was not born wealthy. He came from a scrappy backwater town, and he was a scrappy backwater kid who fought every hour of his life to become a powerful and influential man in the new Iraq that he also helped to create. Saddam was a Ba'ath Party activist, and he'd fought to help the party seize power three years before Uday's birth.

So by the time Uday comes into the world, the future of the Ba'ath Party in Iraq is uncertain, right? They had just taken power. They don't have things like super solidified. It's very possible there's going to be a counterwave that, like, pushes them out because they're not necessarily doing the best job, right? So it's at this point, by no means guaranteed that Saddam's going to ever be more than like a mid-level kind of politico thug. You know, this is, he could have just been just yet another pretty forgettable guy in the history of Iraqi politics. And indeed, shortly after Uday was born, Saddam miscalculated and put his support behind a faction in the party that lost out in a major power struggle. And Saddam was imprisoned for two years, but escaped in being Saddam Hussein.

He goes on the run. And so, like, in some of Uday's earliest years, his dad is, like, living outside of the law and having, like, infrequent communication with his family. I think they're moving sometimes to try to like meet up with him. And by the time Uday is like three years old, Saddam has kind of gotten himself out of the doghouse. He scraped back enough power to make like a play for a better position for himself. And he succeeds. There's like a, you know, another coup basically in Iraq. And the new power structure that Saddam helps bring into being sees Iraq run by a president named Al-Bacher,

who is kind of in the mold that happens in these situations, a sick and elderly. man that people sometimes compare to Weimar Germany's Paul Hindenberg. Like after this, this coup, Saddam is the secondary guy to this sick old dude that more people like. And he's kind of running things from

the background, you know? Like, that's what's happening when Uday is like four, five, six years old, right? In those years. So Saddam is basically running Iraq at that point in Uday's life, but he's not officially in charge. Does that make sense?

I guess it's been so long since you're Saddam Hussein. Those like early in the show, right? You did Stam early on. Almost 10 years ago. Almost 10 years ago. I know we're kind of yada. Because this isn't Saddam episode. I know.

I'm just trying to think because I guess that's, you know, most of what I know about Saddam Hussein. Yeah. I just never occurred to me that his children were young during his rise to power. Like when he was a young, like aspiring dictator. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just Uday really.

I don't think Cusei's come into the picture at this point. But yeah. He was there for the come-up. Yes. Uday is probably his first memories are kind of when his dad is like vice president and just sort of coming into power. Tribuna writer George Woodward describes Uday being raised, quote, from the age of five like a crown prince. So from about his earliest memory, his dad is the guy who's running everything and he's expected to follow in his dad's footsteps, right? So he doesn't really have much in the way of a life before that.

Although you have to imagine the kind of chaotic and dangerous very earliest years of his life probably had some impact on him. The fact that his dad's on the run and stuff, like that likely percolated through to some extent, I expect. I don't know. By the time you're five, you're a little prince. Right, right. Maybe it doesn't do all that much. Now, if you lived through the Gulf War and then the Iraq war years, as I think all three of us on the show did, you've encountered a lot of propaganda about Saddam Hussein and his Iraq. Now, much of that has been proven to be nonsense, as we'll discuss in these episodes.

There's a lot of bullshit about Saddam Hussein, just because it made a good story and new, especially like cheap periodicals like the New York Post, weren't checking anything. If someone had like a lurid story about Saddam Hussein in 2002, you could get it printed in a bunch of places. Nobody was checking on shit. As long as some guy who was an Iraqi defector said that this is what happened, people were not doing any kind of due diligence in the journalism world, right? Especially not the early 2000s.

But not a lot of them. Right. Yeah, not in the early 2000s. Now that doesn't change the fact Saddam Hussein is not doing any revisionism. Saddam was an undeniably brutal dictator. He was a horrible guy. And Ude is going to grow into a horrific violent man who kills a lot of people. But that doesn't mean every story about them is true.

And so part of what you have to do when you're kind of researching an episode like this is try to pick apart. How possible is this crazy claim that I may want to be true, but how long? likely as that that it happened. Right. Did Uday do that or was it Dr. Evil? Yeah. Right.

Because that sounds more Dr. evil. Yeah. I found an article. Did he put lasers on the sharks? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if he had access to those.

I think Iraq might have done better if he'd had lasers for the sharks. So I found an article in these football times by Justin Sherman that gives a pretty representative summary of the common take on Uday's childhood. This is how he's described in a lot of publications, right, in very similar terms to this, because this is the definitely like most marketable version of his life story. Almost from birth, Uday Hussein had a curiosity and borderline affinity for violence. As an infant, instead of pushing toy cars, he played with disarmed grenades. By the age of 10, he was already shadowing his father to the torture chamber at Kasser al-Nehia,

nicknamed the Palace of the End. Many political enemies were killed here, including the overthrown King Faisal II, to observe how Saddam dealt with perceived dissidents. By high school, he bragged how. how he had murdered his teacher for disrespecting him in front of his girlfriend. So that's the traditional, like, take on Udei from born to murder, right? Like from the time he's a little kid, torturing with glee, just one of these people who was inherently monstrous. And obviously, look at how evil Saddam is.

How could he be anything but inherently monstrous? We'll talk a little bit about how accurate, I think, all of that is here. Woodward's own description attributes Ude's propensity to violence to, quote, unusual ideas. that Saddam had about raising children. But notes that this claim that, like, Ude is violent because his dad had these different beliefs about how you raise kids, that that claim is something Saddam's political opponents circulated after they fled the country, right? Because who's actually raising the child? Is this mothers? Is it nannies?

It's nannies and mom. Like, his mom is in the picture, but he's also, like, a wealthy kid. So they all, from a pretty early age, he's being watched by a lot of different people, right? We don't have a ton of context on that, but that's kind of what I've pieced together. And like what kind of parenting philosophies are we talking about? Is that the like early 20th century German thing where it's illegal to touch your children? Like you can't kiss them? It's more Saddam wanted him to like see guys being beaten and tortured up close from a pretty young age.

That's a weird parenting philosophy. This is what it takes to be in, it's a game of thrones kind of shit almost. It's like you need to know what it takes to rule this kingdom. Got to see your first beheading by six. Yeah. Right. Now again, how crazy all this actually went and how crazy people talk about it, these are two different things. And there are alternate, less extreme explanations and less crazy-standing descriptions of Uday's childhood that sound very different from the paragraph I just read you. For example, the thing about him playing with disarmed grenades. If you read deeper, that's like one specific story of like him playing around with like a disarmed grenade while they're waiting for like the result of some raid, like, or some like, like, coup kind of related activity that has. his dad was carrying out. It was like a dangerous night for them. And Uday is playing.

They've got like a disarmed grenade. And like maybe that sounds crazy. A disarmed grenade could be fun. One of my, yeah, I remember one of my uncles had when I was a kid that had like a desk toy that was like a disarmed or faith. I think it may have just been a training grenade or whatever. But that may have been what Uday had.

It's like a training grenade that was never real. Like it's not clear to me. I don't know. I don't think it's that crazy. He's not playing with disarm grenades because he was being. It's not any weirders than like a toy gun. No. Exactly, exactly. And it's not like those were his only toys. This is like one weird occasion, right?

Right. If instead of blocks, he only had like military surplus equipment, that would be weird. Yeah, that would be weird, but I don't think anyone's really saying that. Yeah. And he definitely at a certain point, sees like his dad's torture dungeons, right? And it helps his dad. He's going to be a big fan of torture. It's unclear when that starts. Woodward says it's from age like 15 on that Saddam lets him participate in torture. That said, I also think it's fairer to describe that as Saddam abused him by making him participate in torture because he's 15. Right, that's just child abuse. Yeah. But also, I feel like exposing a child to that, like, especially like during puberty.

I don't know. There's something about like the cement being wet in your brain at that moment. It's not going to do good things to him. You're going to become weird, probably. And you get really varying stories as to like, when did Saddam start exposing him to this stuff? Uday's obituary in the independent claimed that when Uday was five, Saddam made him attend a family like gathering in a Baghdad public square to watch the hanging of dozens of Iraqi Jews who had been declared spies. The article continues that, quote, Saddam boasted that he toughened his boys up by taking them to watch the torture of enemies of the nation and the liquidation of traitors. That's very medieval.

And again, I don't have trouble believing that. That's in line with some other stuff. and it's pretty consistent in stories about them. But it's often described as, like, evidence of Uday's early propensity of violence and brutality were more of what I'm seeing. And this will make sense with some other stuff we're about to talk about, is that I think Saddam starts exposing to Uday to violence at a very young age, and it, like, fucks him up. And you can see it change him and damage him.

He was not a violent kid from an early age. He's brutalized by his dad exposing him to this stuff. Even if he has a 12-year-old, he says, saying, oh, daddy, please take me to the public hanging. That's still a child? And it's still your responsibility as the parent to say, no. Probably because you make it sound cool because he doesn't really know what it is because he's 12, you know? It's child abuse, I think, to take children to the torture dungeon.

I'm going to stand firm on that one. Exactly. And it's not described as that often enough. It always in these stories comes across as part of, well, this is a man who was just always from the earliest days of his childhood, a violent. No, this is a child who was molded and abused into being a violent psychopath. That's kind of important, you know? It's not like those stories of, like, serial killers where you hear, like, oh, you know, in middle school, he started disembering cats. Like, this is not that.

No, this is different than that, really. And, like, yeah, I don't know. Maybe I don't know enough about Udea's childhood to know was he that guy, but there's reasons to believe he wasn't, right? And I'm inclined to doubt the often repeated possibly by Uday's story that he'd murdered a teacher before he went into high school for disrespecting him. That sounds fake. He would tell that, right? It not only does it sound fake, but I've read a book, and it's kind of hard to find, but there's some online copies that is like the Saddam Hussein approved version of his life story for Westerners.

Like it was a propaganda thing that he came out. And one of the stories in there is him holding his principal at gunpoint to force him to, like, admit him to school because Saddam loved being, loved learning how to read, like love school. His reading program actually was really good. He had a very effective reading program for Iraq. It was one of the things he was good at. I thought I handed to him. The literacy program was good. It really did, where it worked quite well.

But, and that's definitely a lie. Because they held the children kind of point. And I think Uday may have told that lie because, like, well, my dad has a story about fucking being violent to his teacher. I need an even more extreme one. That's what I read there. Because I don't have, I don't have any, like, good reason to believe he actually killed a teacher. No one claims to know who this teacher is or to have seen it directly. there are accounts of Ude doing stuff like this later in life, but I think that just makes people assume,

well, if he did that 20 years later, he must have done that when he was 10. And that's nonsense, right? Right, that's personal myth building. Yeah, I think this is him myth building and copying his dad's myth building. But why I think that, and this isn't just me thinking that because it's easier,

we have some accounts from some of his teachers because Uday went to really nice schools for most of his education. And we, the most detailed account we have, have from one of his teachers comes from a foreign teacher who like worked in his because like these are nicer schools in Iraq. A lot of the teachers are foreigners. Dina Bentley from Yorkshire in the north of England married a Kurdish man back in the

1970s and wound up working at a private school in Baghdad when Uday Hussein is a pretty a young kid. Iraq has a long tradition of private school staffed with foreign teachers for the children of the elite and wealthy. And even in Saddam's area, these people were respected professionals who enjoyed a high degree of protection. Uday is certainly not going to be killing like a white European teacher, right? Saddam doesn't want that smoke. But if he did, we would know about it. Like this didn't have heard of it too, right? It was 1980. Now, he also had Iraqi teachers, but again, I think

someone would have said specifically, like, we would hear something besides like he killed a teacher for being rude to his girlfriend. We would have more of that story, I think, if it were real. And again, this just doesn't comport with Dina's time with him when he was very young. In 2003, and this is like the height of Iraq War fever, Dina recalled to ABC that time in her life when she was teaching in Iraq, and Uday was her student, he would have been 11 years old at this point.

And per that article, quote, Saddam Hussein, then second in command, was already a powerful figure at the time. Uday arrived at school with bodyguards, but she recalls a normal child who was bright, cheerful, and responsive to discipline. He was always grinning and happy, and as soon as they knew who he was,

the other children were a little bit wary, but he certainly wasn't a bully, she said. People would like me to say that he had two heads and was an unbearable pupil. He wasn't. Asked about Uday's current reputation, she said, it must have been around the time of the 1991 Gulf War when there were stories in the papers.

I don't know how true they are about his murderous ways. That did surprise me because he was never aggressive or a problem in class, she said. I had a good relationship with him. He never tried to pull rank. He certainly never said to me, do you realize who I am? You know?

So Ude got the pleasure to be in class on his report card. Right, right, right. It just sounds like a real kid as opposed to this, like, violent murderer's 11-year-old that, like, a lot of news stories want you to believe that, like, this kid is obsessed with death as a child, naturally. A lot of what I do on my show, and I'm writing about these men who become terrible, these men who commit these terrible acts, they are not, like, ontological evil. They were not, you know, they did not emerge from the womb as a monster.

It's a human guy who became fucked up over time, sometimes for discernible reason. Yes, yes. And that's all, again. Very rare for someone to be born monstrous. Yeah. And again, Uday's going to do monster. We're going to be talking all about the nightmarish stuff he does. I'm not at all trying to mitigate it.

I just really would emphasize the most. I think it actually makes it more frightening, right? That this was just a human man who became this way. I don't know. It's more comforting sometimes to write these people off as, oh, sometimes just ontological evil exists in the world. And there he is. It's easier to believe that than that, like, yeah, this kid could have been a perfectly

nice child at 11. And then four or five years later, because of the shit, his dad exposes him to a way scarier person, you know? Like, that's just more upsetting. It's a more complicated and upsetting story, yeah. Yeah. And again, it's not that there's not fear around this kid then. It's just the fear is clearly not because he's a maniac.

No, the fear is that if I upset this child, his dad will heal my family. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And Dina was like, I'm glad, like, said, I never came to parents evening. And I'm glad he didn't. Like, I knew stories about him at the time, right? I didn't want to meet the guy. The parent teacher conference would be nerve wracking.

Yeah, you don't want to have that one. And she also stated that her colleagues, her Iraqi colleagues, were surprised that she was willing to discipline Udeh when he did misbehave. They were too worried of his father to discipline him. Which, again, isn't based on him doing stuff. It's based on Saddam, right? She told one other story I find particularly interesting. He was leaping about in class one day, so I took him by a tuft of hair and sat him down. I said, we don't do this.

I am teaching. You are learning. Now sit down. Another teacher, watching through the classroom window, was horrified. She said to me later, do you know who that is? It's Saddam's son. And this anecdote tells us a couple of things. One is that there's enough fear around his family, again, that most people don't want to discipline Uday.

And that must have had an effect on him. But Dina does and nothing happens to her, right? And it's also interesting, Uday's reaction to being chastised by his teacher. You could see, like, the crazy version of this kid would have gotten furious at her embarrassing him and would have had some plan for a bin. Would have struck her or had her killed or. Ude gets a haircut. So he has his barber trim off the bit of hair that she'd grabbed him by.

And he like smiles and points it out, which is like malicious compliance maybe. But that doesn't, that doesn't suggest a homicidal mind. That seems like a normal 11 year old boy, you know, a rich kid maybe. But like pretty normal, right? She lived to tell the tale. She lived to tell the tale, you know. Dina added, he was not a high flyer, but he did his best. He was always smiling, a bit of a clown.

Uday picked up a lovely Yorkshire accent from me. He's probably still got it. It was nice because it reminded me of home. So the Yorkshire folks in our audience, if you're wondering how this fucker sounds, is he's torturing soccer players, football players, like you. Sorry. That's not your fault. It's not Dina's fault.

She's trying to teach the poor fucker English. Not poor fucker. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. Yeah, it's really funny to think of. and I want you all to keep that thought in your mind as we take a little trip down advertiser lane. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp's 26th State of Stigma Report found that most people believe getting mental health support is wise, yet feel society discourages people from doing so. The gap between knowing that mental health support can be a good idea and actually seeking it for yourself can be large.

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That was nice. Oh, I just got an email about a FIFA party in Portland. That sounds awful. I don't think I'm going to be doing that. Hey, should be RSVP? Absolutely not. Yeah, RSVP, no thank you. I don't like, I don't like them.

Nope. Molly, Sophie, shall we dive back in? Yep. Okay. So, Uday's dead now, obviously, but he was noted as speaking English very well. And all of the other hard facts we have about his education comport with Dina's story. He wasn't a great student, but he wasn't a bad one. And there aren't really any clear, incredible claims that he was involved in hardcore violence.

There are some, but not any that I find super believable until he's 15. And his dad starts taking him to see and possibly help out in the torture chambers that he's operating, right? Yeah, and I think that, you know, assuming that's true, and it does, it's pretty consistent, I can see this being what sort of changes him, because by the time he's an adolescent, Saddam is looking at his eldest son as the era parent, but that's not going to last like forever, right? Uday's going to start to really, like, change and take a turn for the brutal as a young adult. It's a little unclear to me when exactly that starts, but I can definitely see. see a lot of this being the result of Saddam,

wanting to raise his air to be strong and powerful and just kind of destroying this kid's mind and turning him into a dangerous homicidal maniac. Because Saddam doesn't do the same thing with Kusei. The funniest thing about maybe there's some fundamental difference in the two of them, I don't know. But it kind of reads to me just like he got better at being a parent in between the two.

It was like, oh, I fucked up the main kid. I got to pick a new air. I'm not going to make this next one turn out more normal. So I think it's an Irma Bombbek quote, right? Children are like pancakes. You have to throw the first one out. Right, right. That's kind of how Saddam treats Uday after a point. But at this era, Ude is still looking like the era parent, you know, and he hasn't done anything too crazy. So one person who claims to have attended private school with Uday is Latif Yahya.

And you may have heard of this guy. He also becomes particularly famous in the post-Golf War period and then again right before Operation Iraqi Freedom. or when we invaded Iraq for the second and really, really illegal time, right? So if you've heard of Latif Yaya, Dr. Latif Yaya, it's because he's going to claim to have been forced to serve as Uday's body double. You've probably heard of Saddam's body doubles, the whole family. A lot of stories. They may all be lies, by the way. I can't prove, we'll thought, I may do a dedicated story.

I can't actually prove that, like, they had body doubles in the way it was usually reported. Everyone takes it as red, but then when you look into like, okay, well, did they find any of those guys? And it's like, no, they never did. Huh, that's weird. It's weird that, like, the actual individual body doubles, the guys who claim they were always have really sketchy stories that you can't back up. And the evidence, like, the body doubles that were supposed to be found mostly weren't there. And it kind of looks like maybe instead of having a stable of comedic body doubles, it just was like some of his guards who looked like him could also, like, if you just want to, like, run a dude out, who might look like the boss to see if anyone's going to try to shoot in him. something. And maybe it wasn't as crazy

elaborate as all the news reported it to be. I was just watching Veepe, and there was like a plot line in VEB where her primary secret service assigned to her looks like her from the back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not a body double. It's just like, if somebody's going to shoot through the back of the head, maybe they'll shoot her.

So much late 90s, early 2000s comedy relied upon fucking Saddam Hussein body doubles. Like, that was a really big, I don't know why in the media. And it just anyway, this guy, Latif Yaya, going to claim to have been Uday's body double. And so a lot of our best Uday stories, the wildest stories of Uday being a maniac,

come from Dr. Lateef Yaya. Oh, so from a guy who might be making him up. He's definitely making it up. Latif Yaya is for sure a con man, a huge con man. He definitely lied about a bunch of stuff, and there's zero evidence whatsoever he was ever Ude's body double. However, he may have known Uday. That doesn't mean he didn't know him at all because there is some evidence that he may have

been connected to the regime in some like kind of corrupt ways. Like with some of the money laundering and stuff. The best cons have a little bit of truth in the mouth. Like a little new get center of truth. He denies that entirely. There's just allegations. I don't fully know what's going on with this guy, but there's not, there's no reason to really think he was Uday's body double.

But he may have in fact known Uday. He came from a wealthy family in Baghdad. He claims he and Ude went to the same like primary school, private school, like private primary school. And they very well may have. I can't disprove that. So I will read you some of his accounts, but I need you to remember, this guy is for sure a liar. So I don't know.

I'm not going to tell you to take the, you're going to run into this guy anytime you read about Uday. So I don't want to ignore him because then people will be like, why didn't you include this guy? Well, because he's a fucking liar. But I will tell you some of what he says, because again, he may have known Uday. There's some reason to believe that. He just definitely wasn't doing what he said he was. So here's his account of supposedly Uday in like high school, basically. First came the bodyguards, then Ude, usually in a t-shirt and jeans like a cowboy.

His hair was longer than ours, and he wore it in an afro, like Jimmy Hendricks. After a few weeks, we finally got used to the daily performance. Ude was never friendly, never normal, never conventional, and I actually found him repugnant from the very first. He had no respect for the teachers or anyone else who tried to tell him what to do. He couldn't care less about tests or homework or anything. There were 24 of us in the class, and while everyone else worked hard to succeed, Ude wasn't interested.

If a teacher tried to call him to the blackboard, Ude would throw chalk at him and order him to change the subject or simply to leave him alone. He came to, he came when he wanted to, left when he wanted to, and basically did whatever he wanted. He never took his textbooks home with him, and nonetheless he received the best grades at the end of the school year. And I don't actually have that much trouble believing it, you know? That, again, this guy may have been in position to have known Uday, and that's not

necessarily inconsistent with like five or six years later, the kid that we heard about earlier, especially going through some rough years with his dad. Exactly the kind of behavior I would expect from someone who doesn't have no said to him. You're not going to punish him. Yeah, exactly. So why would he? He's a teenager. For sure.

For sure. And again, as I just said, I think Latif Yaya is not a super honest guy. But also, if you're going to be running a con like that, there are often based on some truths. And there's evidence, you know, it's not impossible. So I don't find that a super hard to believe description. Yeah, like, of course he's disperful. respectful to his teachers. What are they going to do? Yeah. Yeah, exactly, right. So, Yaya claims Uday obeyed no rules and even broke the strictest taboo of all, girls. This means that one

time he brought his girlfriend to class with him. Yaya describes him enjoying the teacher's helplessness when Uday ordered him to continue teaching while he made out with his girlfriend. He claims this teacher was gone the next day and none of us ever saw him again. And I think that's a lie. And I guess I might be able to believe that he knew Uday a little or knew him at a distance and just kind of added some bullshit too. I don't know. Maybe this is all, like, but there's one more study of Uday's school days in Yaya's questionable book that I will include.

He claims that in 1980s, soon after Saddam took power, like in the like front power, right? Like he's no longer kind of sitting in the back pretending to be the VP. Uday asked Yaya to paint a picture of his father as a congratulations gift. So Yaya says he took this as an honor initially and he finishes a painting. of Saddam Hussein, and he gives it to Uday in class, and the dictator's son is really happy and compliments. And quote, he heaped me with compliments. Simply perfect, simply perfect, he lisped because he had slightly protruding teeth and thus a

slight speech defect, although no one ever mentioned it. It is interesting. I found one other account, at least, that Uday had a speech impediment, that I can like to a separate person, so at least a couple people have said that. It's weird to me that his English teacher didn't notice it. Maybe he didn't have a lisp in English. I know, I guess that's, that's possible. I don't know.

But a Lisp specifically is like a, isn't it like a structural thing in your mind? It's like something you're doing with your mouth that you would do in any language, I assume. I mean, like we can ask a speech language pathologist. I'm not a, my mom was a speech language pathologist, ironically, but I don't know shit. So I'm not going to try to guess more. I can't say that he's like, because other people do talk about him. It's just interesting that his teacher didn't seem to mention that either. And I could also see this, him kind of wanting to make fun of Uday.

and this was the time in which it was more acceptable. Obviously, there's nothing wrong than a speech impediment, but in the 90s, it was a lot more acceptable to, like, mock people for stuff like that. Like, people did that a lot more openly. And this is kind of a shitty guy. So that might just be what he's doing here. I don't actually know. So, yeah.

Yaya says that Uday was thrilled and start seeking him out and trying to hang out with him every day after getting this painting of Saddam. And, quote, he even promised he would give me everything I wanted. He would sort it all out. but Yahya claims he instinctively knew to keep Uday at a distance because he wasn't comfortable at their peers kept pointing out how similar they looked. They're like, wow, you guys really look a lot alike. And they look, do look kind of similar?

A little, yeah. I'm going to look at it up. Crazily, but somewhat, yeah, Dr. Lateef Yaya and Uday. Now, I'll caution against giving, again, too much credence to anything in this fucker's book, but it's not too wild a claim. Yaya claims that he and Ude lost touch after graduating, like you do. And we'll hear more of Yaya's claims. next episode. We will talk about him more. But let's get back to Uday. So after graduating,

you know, the school, the high school where he and Yaya went together, Uday went to Baghdad Medical College. And you can kind of gather how legitimately he got, he earned his introduction to Baghdad Medical College by the fact that he dropped out three days later. Oh, three days. He has a medical school for 96 hours. So, like, he wouldn't have even attended very many lectures at that point. I don't know if he attended any. He signed up for classes. He got to the dorm and he went home.

Yeah. No, no. He might have gotten spooked by his first stethoscope. It's, thank God he didn't. Dr. Uday Hussein, no. Probably not a good idea. Okay, I looked it up and maybe it's just, I mean, they're just like two guys who both have a mustache.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the other thing. And this is also part of the, if you read like the, some of the, like Saddam Hussein body double story. having been to Iraq a good amount of times, I could just see those being stories of like, well, they were just looking for a guy

who was kind of Saddam's size and had a mustache because they needed somebody at a distance for a minute. But that's not as crazy as he's got like this team of men who lived their entire lives pretending to be him and get like facial surgery. You know, I don't know which is true. So he drops out of Baghdad Medical College

and next he starts taking classes at the College of Engineering where he got a bachelor's degree and then he attends military academy, me and he writes a thesis on the Iran-Iraq war. He's trying different things. He's trying to do... Be a doctor, be a janeer, be a general.

Who knows? Yeah, yeah, exactly. He needs to establish his bona fides as like, this is why I'm good to follow in my father's footsteps. You know, I have the military experience. I have this, you know, professional experience. Now, he's not really doing much of any work here. His thesis is nearly universally agreed to have been written by, like, a professional

military advisor in the Iraq. Army, he just, like, writes it for Uday, which would be nice. Although, I guess in the United States, if Pete Hegseth wrote your essay, I don't think it would get you very much. So. I guess it depends on who's grading. Yeah, I guess it depends on who's grading. Per George Woodward's article, quote, while at university, Uday wanted to marry a fellow

student from a noble Iraqi family, but his father refused. He wanted a bride from within the family clan. Ude obeyed, but from then on he was spoken of as a serial rapist. Girls were allegedly abducted for him and forced into sex. One of the most famous stories says that a bride was kidnapped for Ude on the second day of her wedding. After the rape, she could not live with the horror and took her own life. And the groom by Ude's order was hanged as a preventative measure.

Now, that's an awful story, and you hear a couple versions of it. So it either means either he did stuff like this several times, or like one person told this story about him and maybe pieces of it were true and other pieces aren't, but people just started spinning it off. I, it's very hard for me to tell because there's slightly different versions of this story. And I don't know, are these evidence of him doing it a bunch or is this evidence of like the same? Because a lot of these come from like people dissidents who leave Saddam's Iraq and are telling all sorts of horrible stories.

And I don't doubt some amount of this is happening. It's just hard to tell what is happening and which stories are true and which ones are like the inth repetition of something that has changed over telling a bunch of times, right? And I guess, too, if you're, you know, if he... It's murky. Take us, take as a given he is a serial rapist. He is committing these sexual crimes. Pretty good evidence that he was. Abducting a woman on her wedding night and raping her is this sort of worst scenario of this genre of crime.

This is very, this is dictator's son premonauta type shit. I never doubt the basics of like, oh, dictator's son committed a lot of rape. But these particular sort of details is like, what's the worst version of this story you could tell? The theatricality always makes me second guess. Like, this doesn't necessarily always seem like something a person would do. Right? Like, not even, I don't think he's this bad. This seems weirdly elaborate.

Like, you're getting jaded. You've to have done too many sex crimes. Yeah, and again, so I can't, for reasons like that, I can't throw all this stuff out either because he does some pretty crazy shit. Yeah. And one of the reasons that kind of makes me hesitant about this is that one of the most. detailed accounts of this kind of like him murdering, like raping a woman after her wedding and like they're being murders after

that comes from Latifaya, right? He's got a story that sounds a lot like the one I just recounted to you that I found from a 2009 interview he gave to the national and this is in an article of Michael Tibodos. This is years after Uday's dead. He tells of a grotesque

episode in El Habania, Iraq's leading honeymoon resort when Uday noticed a newlywed couple walking hand in hand and called over to them Ude was livid when they ignored him. Mr. Yaya attempted to persuade Uday to leave the couple alone, pointing out that they had only been married a few days. Uday snapped back. This isn't your business!

Uday's pimps beat up the husband and forced the beautiful bride to his suite where he raped her. In shame and despair, she later threw herself to her death from the fourth floor window of the building. Mr. Yaya says the husband was accused of trying to kill Uday and sentenced to death but was later spared because of his long service and a war against Iran for which he was awarded medals. The man, Yaya claims, was one of those who nearly killed. killed Uday in a 1996 assassination attempt. And I have that, so this is part of why I have trouble believing specifically is that we know this story Yaya gives claims from when he supposedly Ude's body double, and he almost

certainly wasn't. So that means I don't believe this story, and that's so similar to the other one that it makes me wonder how much of these specific, really theatrical stories of rape are just sort of like things that enemies concocted in that period of time when it was profitable to do But again, Colonels of Truth, right? I'm sure he may have raped, married women who then killed themselves because within that culture, she would not be able to go back to her family. Yeah, yeah.

So, Colonels of truth. Colonels of truth, it's just there's so much of it that's like, I, or that's, I mean, But then he tried to kill him and then he let him live because of his medals. Like, that's too many details. There's a lot of like, yeah, I don't know. We'll see. I'm trying to present you with all this so that, like, you, the listener, can conclude what you want to believe about Uday Hussein, but...

Choose your own adventure. It's hard to tell, for sure, with stuff like this. It's so politicized. The fact that the U.S. was looking for any excuse to do a war against Saddam's Iraq makes it hard to judge every piece of information as easily as I'd otherwise like to. But yeah, anyway, all of this takes us up to the early 1980s. During this period of time, Iraq was not yet the global pariah state that it would become. after Desert Storm, and it had one of the best football teams in the entire Middle East. Iraqis had become very proud of their team, which got its first foreign manager, the Romanian

Cornel Dragooshen, in 1962. And in 1965, under his leadership, they won the Arab Nations Cup. They won it again in 1966. People started calling them by the nickname, the Lions of Mesopotamia, which is an undoubtedly cool name for your football team. I mean, that rocks. It's pretty sick. Yeah.

That rocks. Yeah, that's a dude's rock moment. moment. Given the guys involved, I'm surprised there wasn't a real lion on the field. Where's the lion? Give me a lion. I don't know that there wasn't Molly. And I would also like to remind you, you've got a fucking Romanian man whose last name is basically dragon and a team full of Iraqis. The mustache game in that team. We don't have the capability to recreate mustaches that were that powerful. I need to see this coach. Amazing stuff. I can only imagine him in my dreams. They're mad to actually be. pictures of the guy. I didn't look them up. But I'd be disappointed if he doesn't have a beautiful mustache. So first couple of years that this guy's working, you know, the Iraqi team in the mid-60s is really starting to get off the ground in a big way. It's looking good. And for a

new country, in Iraq is a new country in the mid-60s, having like a football team that's a huge hit, like one of the best in the region, that's a big deal. And so it becomes like integral to like this burgeoning sense of national pride that Iraqi people are getting. You know, the team becomes very beloved for this reason. However, after the mid-60s, they kind of backslide for quite a while. There's this initial period of greatness. And then through the late 60s, up through much of the 70s, you know, there's a lot of unrest and disorder in the country.

Saddam is rising to power and causing a good amount of that unrest. It's a rough period for the team. So after Saddam takes power and starts a war. against Iran in 1984, that war is consuming Iraqi soldiers at a terrifying rate. And Saddam needs something to bind the people together and improve morale, because the population is not happy with this war that did not need to happen. So you're saying people don't love it when you take them into an unnecessary war with Iran, and you should distract them with soccer.

Yes, Saddam Hussein is the only world leader. Exactly. No, yeah, no, it's never happened again. Never as a world leader started an ill-advised war with Iran and then trying to distract the country by a soccer game against Iran. Yeah, that's never happened before. It's never happened. So, yeah, there's wars consuming human beings at a terrifying rate, and Saddam needs something to improve morale. I'm going to quote from Justin Sherman's article again here.

In the hope that his son could help rebuild the spirit of the nation while also proving himself a worthy successor, Saddam handed Uday the reins of both the country's illiberal. Committee and its Football Federation. Through sports, Saddam believed that a fervent nationalism would return, permeating through the sun-kissed football pitches to the trenches in the desert. The appointment of the 20-year-old Uday would initially yield historic results. Iraq would win the Gulf Cup his first year in charge, followed by the Arab Cup just a year later. However, nothing could prepare them for what was about to come. With a dramatic win over Syria in their final match of qualifiers, Iraq punched their ticket to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, which to this day represents their first and only appearance in the prestigious tournament.

So, Wow. Pretty good early first two year run for the fail, for, you know, Saddam's Nepo baby son. But like, is that because of his management? Or were they going to go anyway and he was just there? So not long before this. And by the way, I should note, Iraq is in the World Cup this year. So this was their first time San Zude.

These articles are yelled. But I think this is their first, yeah, qualified for the second time in 2026. So that is something to celebrate this year. Like, I love a lot. So they can do it without a day. They could. They finally did. They finally did. It took a while. And I have, I've loved the country a long time. Like, it's, it's, unfortunately, when we're telling Iraqi stories, they're often very sad just because of how difficult that country's recent history has been. But it's actually really awesome. I'm really happy for them that they made it back to the World Cup, because that's going to mean a lot to people.

Like we've been talking about like football means a lot to people. Teams like this, especially with shit's really hard out there means a hell of a lot to people. So that's actually super nice to hear. And that's why Saddam thinks this is a good idea, right? And at first it kind of looks like it is. You know, Uday pulls the team. It seems like Uday pulls the team. Now, part of what's really happening is they've recently brought on a new coach.

He's delegating. Like Ude doesn't know shit about managing a national soccer team? No. And I think this new coach has started. started before and that's kind of started to. But he doesn't fuck it up. You got to give him credit for that. Like he doesn't,

he doesn't step over his own dick, which he's going to in the future. Yeah. I don't. I certainly can't say that he was bad at the job at this stage, right? But it may just be that's because he was too nervous to like do anything. So maybe he was just listening to his subordinates in this period of time. Because it's not going to,

this is going to be the only period of time where things are like really good for the team. But yeah, at first things are going really well. And at this stage in the story, like the Lions of Mesopotamia, it's like a fucking 90s movie. It's like a Disney movie from like 1996. It's such a cool name. Like you've got the dictator's fail son who doesn't particularly like football and has never been good at anything and is desperate to please his father. And he takes on this team that had been great once, but they've fallen into disrepute. And he welds them together into this like group of lovable misfits.

And they make it to the World Cup. Like, that's a really good Disney movie. I'll watch that movie. I'll watch that. Absolutely. If you do not include anything that happens after the World Cup, it's a great Disney movie. No, just credits roll over the football pitch. Yeah, over the football pitch at the torture chamber.

No, no, no, at the World Cup. It ends there. It ends there. That's right. It ends there. Because there's no torture at the World Cup other than having to watch football. Oh, I shouldn't say that. There was an issue with some slaves.

Here's that. Well, yeah, there's slaves, too. There's slaves, too. We should do our... We should do it. Yeah, I was trying to go to ads after accusing FIFA of complicity and slavery. Accusing. But they definitely are.

That is a fact. You know what else is a fact, Molly? It's time for ads. Wow. Listen. And you're there. For heart-wrenching knockouts. The world's biggest stage.

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The declaration, which is full of these beautifully rendered, sentences and paragraphs about enlightenment ideals, does also have this darker history to it. Why is it important for the darker part of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution? Why is it important that Americans know about it? Well, if we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded, we won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself. I'm Rebecca Nagel.

Gohyn, Taoadol, Julyette, Liga, citizen of Cherokee Nation. Are you guys big chiefs fans? Hell yeah. This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be, and how we got to this present moment. Listen to First America on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Maybe I have adult ADHD. I need to look this up. Where's my phone? Juliana, your phone is hot to the touch. I think it's asking you for a break.

You know what? Maybe I should just ask chat GPT. Or maybe we can ask an actual human. Yes, like a couple sex therapist. Whoa, that escalated quickly, but okay. Because I have questions. We have questions. And I bet everyone has questions. Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms?

We do that. How about this one? Is bribing your kids bad parenting or just negotiating? Oh, and I still do need to know why was my poop green that one time? Hypothetically, right? Okay, well, instead of letting the internet guess, We've got actual people answering these exact questions. And laughing with us has got to be better than spending three hours down a rabbit hole online.

Listen to Bill and Juliana. The podcast. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We're back. So it's in the days right before the World Cup that we first start to see science. If, and I think this is probably likely, the success of the Iraqi team in New Day's first couple years is because he mostly stayed out of his own and let other people make decisions. If that's the case, then it's right before the game that he starts to think,

maybe I am a genius and I should be making more decisions. That's exactly the right time to fuck with the team, like right before the game. That's when you want to start doing it. That's when you want to start doing it. Let's change the lineup. Yeah. Let's pull on different shoes. He's accused later of having been a hardcore drug user. There's certainly evidence that he used heroin and other like pills on and pills and

on occasion. I've heard allegations that he used a lot of Coke. It would certainly make sense. I don't know if he's doing that now. That could explain if he's, if he's got into Coke because his team went to the World Cup, that might explain when he decides, maybe I need to be making more of the decisions. I need, I can't listen to the coach anymore. This is all, but it's got, it's good day's time, you know?

I got to get out there. Yeah. So, uh, he's like while they're, you know, at the World Cup, he gets asked to organize friendly matches while they're there with both Brazil and England. And this is like a big deal. These don't count for the overall World Cup. But it's still a big deal. Iraq is a new country and their team has just started becoming good again.

Brazil and England's teams are both very well established. And they're both asking, like, hey, that's like, basically, that's a huge compliment saying, we want to do this like game with you, right? It should be a huge thing for Iraq. It's a really, among other things, it's the country being kind of invited into the global community in like a really prominent big way. It's a big deal. It should have been a great moment.

Uday says, no, fuck off. We're not having any friendly games because he thinks his guys will lose and then his dad will be angry at him if they lose the friendly games. And it's like, it's not about winning or losing. It's about the fact that you're like, part of this community of nations

and that your team is, and he can't see that because he's scared of his dad getting pissed at him for losing. But also like this fear of loss, like you're going to have to play those teams eventually. Yeah, you're going to have to play them eventually. Like this is how you actually would make.

It's a lax manner where they're going to go kind of easy on you. Right. Right. Exactly. And also it might make your team better. Like playing against really good teams. Yeah. It's like, and I can believe that he didn't do this because he was scared of his dad.

He didn't want to like, he was scared would make him look bad, right? It's the kind of insecurity you would expect out of a guy like this in this situation. A guy who's seen his dad torture somebody? Right. For failure? Yeah. And it makes it, it makes it clear why Uday was never going to be a very good team manager. right? And he makes the further mistake after this of replacing right before the World Cup.

He replaces the, I mean, he's not technically the team manager, but he is doing that job. And he replaces the guy who had been the official team manager with his assistant right before the match for no real reason, right? He's just switching people around. He changes the team colors from green and white to yellow and blue with no consideration that for 20 years Iraqi fans had gotten used to the old colors. He just does it for no reason. Athletes are so superstitious. They're so superstitious and paranoid. They spook like horses. They spook like horses.

Exactly. Yeah. And so do fans, to be honest. Like, why would you do that? Yeah. There are people out there wearing dirty underwear because it's their lucky panties. Like, you can't, you cannot understand how crazy people are about sports you day. You can't change it.

And yeah, I wonder how much of it is that he's not really into sports. Like, that is emphasized in a lot of what you read is he never really cared all that much other than he didn't want to lose, you know? So Justin Sherman argues that as a result of all this, the Iraqi team arrives in Mexico for the World Cup, quote, ill-prepared and mentally shackled. And it's possible that by this point, Uday has already started threatening his players. I don't know if he's already started. The allegations of torture don't start until after this.

I don't know when it actually started. Now, I'm not well-suited to the task of judging Iraq's performance at the World Cup, but the accounts I've read all seem to agree they did a really good job for a new an experienced team. You got to remember what's happened here is Iraq is a team that has just started seeing success again. They won some local championships. And kind of, it's not a fluke would be the wrong, but they get, they get really lucky, and they make it to the World Cup, and they're not really fully ready to be there. And that's not a bad thing. Like playing Brazil is a different situation. Exactly. And this could be really good for a new team, right?

getting into the World Cup this early, getting to play with teams of that caliber that could really, like, help take move them forward and take them up, right? And they don't do badly in the World Cup, right? Not compared to how new they are, right? They get knocked out pretty early. They only score one goal in all three of their games. However, if you just kind of read it that way, it makes it seem like they did less well than they actually did. And I don't want to shortchange the team. But not, like getting there at all, like even like losing to a good team.

Doesn't mean you did badly. Like, Kate Verde, tying up Spain was an incredible win. They didn't win the game. Exactly. That's an incredible win. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what George Woodward points that out in his article for Tribuna.

And I want to read from that here. Quote, after rewatching archive footage from 40 years ago, we can see that Iraq looked good, but lacked experience of major tournaments in an evenly matched game with Paraguay that conceded the only goal from a quickly taken free kick. At the end of the first half, they even equalized. But referee Piccon Akong from Mauritius's time. disallowed the goal. He blew for half-time just as the decisive corner was being delivered. Against Belgium, Iraq actually looked better and more dangerous, even with 10 men. The Belgian

scored the winner from a penalty that today might well have been overturned by VAR. In the final match, at the 100,000 seated Azteca against hosts Mexico, who needed to improve their goal difference, the Iraqis defended bravely and conceded only once. So it can be said that they performed with dignity despite their final place in the table. In a good world, if this is like a normal country with a normal leadership, this would be the start of like a really good team, you know, that could build for this, make it back. Right, right, right. It's, this should have been the start of something great and it's not. Iraq doesn't make it back again until this year to the World Cup. And the story, a lot of what we're going to be talking about this week is why, because Uday is a

big part of why Iraq does not go back, that this promising start does not continue promising. because Uday can't accept that just getting to the World Cup was a victory. And I have to presume part of this is because Saddam is a huge asshole to him about losing. So when the team returns home to Baghdad, they're greeted, not the way they should have been as like a team that did really, really well and has a bright future. Instead, he explodes with rage. And in the days and years to come, the Iraqi football team is going to see just how violent Uday Hussein could be. And we'll talk about that in part two. Woohoo!

How you feel it? I'm pumped. I'm ready to watch some soccer. Well, we're just going to talk about it because I don't know much about soccer. But what I do know about Molly is that you have a podcast. That's all I know. I'm like Casper Hauser, you know. I stumbled into work this morning with a sign around my neck that says weird little guys hosted by Molly Conker.

That's all any of you. I don't even have a name. Just tabular rasa, yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's something to do with the German cavalry. The ideal listener. Yeah, exactly.

That's what we, we in fact, target directly for Germans several centuries ago who lost their memories somehow. I don't remember enough of that myth. Anyway, Molly, anything to say before we go? Yeah, listen to weird little guys. It's fun. You'll love it. You'll love it. You'll love it.

Listen to weird little guys. If you want to hear more about the clan, you know? Yeah, yeah, weird little guys. Uday's a weird little guy. You love weird little guys. If you love weird little guys, listen to weird little guys. I'm not going to say that title anymore for a minute. Hey, weird little guys, weird little guys, weird little guys.

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, we're done. Well, Sophie came up with it. She can say it as many times as she wants. Word of little guys, weird little guys, weird little guys, weird little guys, weird little guys. Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday.

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