Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 379 -The Great Siege of Gibraltar ft. Josh Boerman

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys LIVESTREAM TICKETS FOR OCT 4TH https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/livestream-lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-glasgow-4th-october-2025-tickets-1532091008449 CHECK OUT THE MERCH STORE: www.llbdpodcast.com/ Check out TWOAPW: https://www.worstpossible.world The largest battle of the U.S. War of Independence took place in... Gibraltar? On the southern tip of Spain? The rock that the Brits care about a lot? And there weren't any Americans involved? Josh Boerman, friend of the show and host of The Worst of All Possible Worlds podcast and Ill Conceived podcast, joins us for this strange transatlantic chapter of American history. Sources: Roy Adkins. Leslie Adkins. Gibralter: The Greatest Siege in British History https://www.historynet.com/rock-legend-gibraltar/ https://www.thecollector.com/great-siege-gibraltar-us-revolution/ https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/grand-assault-on-gibraltar/

Hey, everybody, Joe here. Good news, I suppose. Our October 4th show in Glasgow, Scotland, is sold out. We have sold out the second biggest venue we've ever done a show at. But good news, if you still want to see us, we will be live streaming it. There's no limit on however many live stream tickets are available. You can get it at the link below. It also comes with video on demand. So if you can't stay up that late, depending on your time zone or whatever, you'll still have the video available for you when you wake up and want to watch it at your own convenience. So check out the show notes, see the live stream link, and get your tickets for October 4th. Thanks.

If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Just $5 a month gets you access to our entire bonus episode catalog, as well as every regular episode, one full week early. Access to all of our side series that are currently ongoing and our back catalog of those as well. Gets you e-books, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merchandise when they're available, and also gets you access to our Discord, which has turned into a lovely little community. So go to patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys and join the Legion of the Old Crow today. Hello and welcome to the Wines Head by Duncan's podcast.

I'm Joe, and with me is Tom and Josh Borman. Josh and I are the chairman of the Peninsula Revolutionary Army. That's right, Joe. Tom is an honorary member because, well, we need a big-headed Irishman if history tells us anything. We longed to throw the shackles off of our comrades to tell the world that we will not be chained down by a ball and chained Rapprunner various isthmuses. And while I understand that this movement brings some serious questions regarding Korea and all that, we stand united as much as we stand alone in a body of water.

How you do it, fellas? For the first time, since the last time Josh was on, one of the many hosts of the worst of all possible worlds, one of the hosts of ill-conceived. Michiganers are the majority on this podcast. Finally, as it should be, as it goddamn should be. Fucking right. You know, you mentioned itthmuses. I don't like them as much as peninsulas.

Peninsulas are definitely my favorite. Well, this is going to be a hot button here, because an isthmus can be the area of land where a peninsula meets the rest of the body of land. So, unfortunately, it is like an ankle or a neck, possibly a wrist, whatever geographical body part. It could be the ass neck. sure the grundle

the peninsular grondle but at the end of the day it's about being the appendage that's what we love to be that's what we love to see I think that we're appendage maxing that's right we're drinking the mysterious goo on the street

in order to appendage like that's why you have that pilot of street energy drink Joe exactly you want to grow a second nose on your back yeah that's right Because if there's one thing, then Armenia needs, it's another nose. Tom was, I was actually in London, and Tom and I got a very nice coffee, a couple coffees, really.

And he was telling me about the pallet of energy drinks that you found, Joe. That's really something. Look, sometimes you're giving a gift, all right? You don't look the gift dumpster in the mouth. You just take the energy drinks. So I've gathered everybody here today, because we're going to talk about, a part of the American Revolution, which is why I

gathered myself and Josh, two people who are from states who are not part of the United States yet. USA. USA. And an Irish guy. I mean, inevitably, an Irish guy will show up, so... Yeah, exactly. I think having like the

random Irish guy is certainly more civil war coded, but, you know, close enough. Why not? There was always an Irish guy around doing something. That is the history of America. But if I was to ask you to where you thought the largest, longest, but most importantly, last battle of the American Revolution was, and who fought in it, where would you guess? I mean, I guess I could see it being in like, the state of New York maybe? That's a good

guess, especially like looking at the end of what most people consider the war, yeah. Tom, you got a shot? Oh, I see, I am going to base. my answer based on where is the most likely place for a random Irish person to pop up so Boston I mean see I I'm currently reading a really good book about

Thomas Francis Marr a man who was sent to Van Diemens land and escaped and made it to America and then became the governor of Missouri so I'm going to say Missouri Missouri was at a state yet but good shot but actually

it really doesn't matter what your answer was. Nobody was going to get this. Unless, of course, you cheated and looked at the title of this episode, which is the only bit of information that either of you two actually have at this moment. I mean, what I'm seeing in the thing is Gibraltar. That's not a state. You got it. What? So, the great siege of Gibraltar. I know we're not talking about what I assume is like Gibraltar, Ohio, which is probably a place that exists. it was not in New England it was not in New York it wasn't in Missouri

it was not in revolutionary America at all and it was not fought by Americans whatsoever we are summoning the big fat guy from the meme who's like beating the drum saying come on fucking England

win some fucking wars actually yeah pretty much okay so like Gibraltar like the huge rock the rock is what we're talking Yeah. Okay. It was an over three-year log siege that accidentally ended up deciding the fate of Canada and weirdly Florida and Puerto Rico's future. Okay. There's a lot of things wrapped up here. But since this is not taking place in what would become the United States, let's talk about a little rock called Gibraltar. Due to its location, as of course the greatest form of geography on earth, a peninsula. It's actually... That's right.

the best kind of geography two times over because it's a peninsula of the Iberian peninsula. Bam, Gibraltar, grand champion peninsula. It's sort of like the thumb in Michigan. It's a peninsula in a peninsula. The difference is nobody would ever accuse the thumb of Michigan of being cool. Once again, it's answering a question that wouldn't be asked until like probably the late 1970s, early 1980s is what if a Spanish guy was English? Yeah. Yeah, actually, kind of.

Gibraltar is who we have to thank for that. Yes, sir, I love a Tom Skinner. I love a sausage in a mash, and I loved king. I know that there's at least one lines led by donkeys listener from Bay City, Michigan. If that's you, send Joe angry emails right now demanding that the thumb be respected. Look, anyone from the thumb knows that the thumb is a seriously fucked up place. There's a reason why the other Oklahoma City bomber live there. Terry Nichols had a farm there and his brother did.

I didn't know that. Yeah, famously, if you go back in time a little bit to the documentary Bowling Columbine, he goes there to interview Terry Nichols's brother, who is a deeply fucking weird man. And like, there's a part where they go into his bedroom because he's like, yeah, I sleep with a gun under my pillow. And Michael Moore's like, no, you don't. don't. And he walks the Michael Moore into his bedroom and pulls out a like a fucking dirty, hairy-ass pistol. He's like, yeah, it's right here. And then like, he points it at his own

head. Oh, I do remember that. Yes. That was crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Moore, another case of Michigan excellence. Parentheses, cursed. But Gibraltar is this weird place that overlooks the, obviously the Straits of Gibraltar. But because of its natural location, that being a peninsula jutting off what would, of course, become Spain, capped off by the rock of Gibraltar, which is over a thousand foot high ridge that overlooks the water. And that isn't really what makes it so important. But what makes it important is that rock really has no place to land at the bottom of it.

If you were to try to scale this fucking place, you need to have a whole army of tactical Spider-Man at your disposal. It's just not going to work. it's probably on top of being the world's grand champion peninsula it's also the grand champion of withstanding various different sieges over the years to include

several generations of the same Spanish family over the course of like a hundred different years like 10 of them tried to besiege Gibraltar and they all failed that was a whole other subject that I wrote about and fell into a deep deep hole here but I end up cutting it out

because the script is already like 11 pages long Yes. A girthy script. I just love the idea of a generational blood feud against the peninsula, which is just what you call Ohio now. I was going to say, yeah. The Ohio State Blood feud. That's right. By the early 1700s, it was under the control of Spain until the end of the War of Succession, which ended with the Allied force of Brits and the Dutch, taking it from them before the war officially gave it to the Brits in 1713.

After this, things looked pretty good for the Brits. They had a death grip on trade in the region because they had Gibraltar. And they had one of the best fortifications in the world, but specifically in the area, a strong base for the Royal Navy. And having Gibraltar at the time amounted to a money printing machine. Yeah, I mean, like, if you are trying to ship stuff from the continent down into the Mediterranean Sea, you have to go through Gibraltar. And it's, you know, if Britain decides that they don't want you to go through the channel, they can prevent you from coming through the channel. Yeah. And they often did if you didn't pay them. And failing that, if there wasn't some kind of poll, which sometimes there was, sometimes there wasn't.

Traders would need a place to rest and refit Gibraltar. You're like a trucker rest stop, but, you know, probably with less meth and parking lot based sex workers. probably probably the Gibraltar paste Rhino dick pills I'm going to the Gibraltar Buckees it just has a fucking George's cross on the pill

and it's huge you have to eat it in sections I think that it's a little bit too heteronormative the straight of Gibraltar and the sort of things that are happening around there I think we need the gay of Gibraltar in order to compensate

We're doing bodies and spaces on the rock of Gibraltar. We're querying the straits of Gibraltar in terms of shipping zones. Where are the bisexuals of Gibraltar? That's what I'm in. I see where you're going to this. So I have a compromise. We'll staff it only with the Royal Navy. Okay.

While fighting between the Brits and the Spanish did mean it was put under siege more than once during the 1700s. All this came to nothing. Then the American Revolution kicks off 1775. And then obviously 1776 on what amounted to be the other side of the world from here. However, something many Americans do not really want to grapple with and understand is our revolution and our path to independence was little more than a proxy war for the empires of Europe. No, that's not true. That's not true. That's not true. That's not true.

The U.S. revolution was the most important revolution in the history of the world where finally human liberties were enshrined in a written constitution for the first time. That's right. I will have you know. The American Revolution is the second most important revolution in the world after the Texas Revolution. I mean, the Constitution, the United States Constitution, a perfect written document inspired by God himself. We know this. It was written by Jesus. I don't know why you're doing historical revisionism on the podcast, Joe. That's messed up. This podcast is developing a blood debt to the Mormons, weirdly. Not a whole lot of people know that York. Catamatons was founded on the Rock of Gibraltar.

The special salination of the air from the Mediterranean Sea, meaning the Atlantic, allowed us for the fusion of Dwemer technology and Gibralton Rock to create the first ever Yorkatomitons in order to replace human labor on the farm. Oh, God. Don't send that one to the south. Your catamatons was canonically on the side of the Confederates. It would be. Now, even before the so-called shot heard around the world, which is not a name that is exactly unique to the American Revolution, but the Americans kind of took it.

The British Empire's mainland enemies, the French, the Spanish and the Dutch, in this context, they have a lot more enemies as well. We're financially supporting the colonial revolutionaries of one way or another. Hell, even before the French would eventually sign an open treaty with the new American government and loudly proclaimed to the world that they were going to get all up in that. shit directly, the Dutch had ships full of guns, powder, and other warfighting supplies loaded up in the harbors down at Leiden to the point that the British

kept telling them, could you please stop? It was an open secret that everybody was supporting the American Revolution because it goes back to something we talk about often on the show. It's the greater unifying theory of fuck that guy. In this case, it was the British and the Americans prospered

because of it. Though I should point out here that this is not a direct intervention of the Dutch Republican government. Rather, it was a tale as old as time and quite possibly something the Dutch did before anyone else. And that was, look, the government is not involved. However, who are we to get in the way of free trade? But they kindly ask their traders,

don't sell anything to the British military. Most people are aware of the heavy French hand in the revolution. It is hard to miss. That's not really something at the American, have done a great job erasing thanks to Marquis de Lafayette and, you know, the statue of liberty. And the big ass statue in the harbor.

Yeah, I was going to say, like, come on. Which was famously inscribed with several sayings that our people have done a great job ignoring ever since. That's right. Another wonderful part of this is Benjamin Franklin fucking his way

across France is our nation's greatest diplomat. The most syphiletic man in the history of humanity. That man did not need people to clap for him. He brought the clap with him everywhere he went. But the French were out for British blood. They have lost most of their North American empire at the end of the seven years war and their North American chapter, which is something we call the French and Indian War. It was a massive loss of French prestige, as well as all of the money that they would extract from that land,

all going up in flames and being given to the British. This is a question that I have. The French and Indian wars, when you say we, by we, do you mean Americans? What is that referred to otherwise? Does everybody call it the French and Indian War? I'm not sure if Canadians do, but I know in the U.S., American history education calls our little chapter of the seven years war, the French and Indian War, despite the fact that was fought between the British, which include the Americans at the time and the Canadians, against the French and their Native American allies. Yeah, I mean, it was mostly a pretext to do more genocide. It's always a pretext to do more genocide, Gosh, that's the secret.

It's always hiding there just below the surface. Genocide is always the secret ingredient like MSG. Like in all settler colonial states of a modern one, I can't possibly think of off the top of my head. Genocide fuels them. Now, virtually as soon as the Declaration of Independence went across French desks, they were loudly on the side of Americans, just despite the British. The Spanish effectively fell into the same camp. They hadn't lost a huge swap of their empire to the British. Not yet, anyway, but they were allies with the French.

And they're beefing with the British over the Caribbean and parts of what would become Florida. Because this was back in the day when Florida was something that someone wanted rather than something that happened to you. Joining the war would weaken the Brits and open up a chance for the Spanish to consolidate their holdings. It would also allow the Spanish a crack at recapturing something the Brits had taken from them that they really wanted back. Raltar. Give me back my big rock. I want my big rock. I have to ponder the rock. I mean, like, look, so much of this period of war is like, I want that big rock, I want that small river, I want this bridge. Yeah. And then everybody looks at Boston's like, you can have it. Don't want it. So soon the French and Spanish began popping up shell companies in order to sell

military supplies to the Americans years before an open declaration of support would be signed. I should point out here that without support from these countries, namely the French, because the French would eventually commit thousands of ground troops, a lot of their Navy, and very, very badly needed trainers and leaders, the American Revolution would have almost certainly failed, and the U.S. today would probably look more like a Commonwealth nation, like Canada. So I guess long story short is, we really fucked up by winning this war. Whoops.

I don't know what you're talking about. America's about as good as it's ever been. I'm not saying Canada is exactly a cornucopia of hopes and dreams at the moment, but come on. The Americans, they have suffered your fully. They will not enjoy the thing that we call the Quebecois hamburger. Oh, man. I just, I just realized that that is suddenly now creating in my mind the idea of a bilingual Commonwealth where like down south you have the French in like Louisiana in the

surrounding area. Louisiana as America's Quebec is a wild fucking thought that I did not have until right now. If Louisiana was just way more French. Yeah. Which maybe it would have been if we'd gone down that road, you know? Yeah. Who's the say? What if the French empire in Mexico invaded north and we had French Texas? Yeah, Phil Anselma would have ended up in a marching band instead of being a neo-Nazi. Or he would just be a neo-dazzi who plays the tuba. Who could say? I do think he would have just been in a position of government in this specific version of Louisiana. This is a place where David Duke very nearly was elected to popular office. Yeah, I mean, like Phil Alselmo just like has the kind of same dark energy as someone like John Federman.

So it's like, you know, you can either be in Pantera or you can be in government. all of my ogres are French That's what the war was fought over Is to destroy the French ogre The French and ogres war But this was part of the deal Between the French and the Spanish The Spanish would not be setting soldiers

To fight the British in the 13 colonies They'd leave that to the French The French after all were more powerful They would be trying to strike out abroad With help of the French army and Navy As well as of course clashes in Florida and the Caribbean. Obviously, the French wanted Gibraltar out of the hands of the British, too.

And as Empire's ally and beef, they knew eventually they'd probably have to fight the Spanish over it as well. But they knew at the time they wanted it out of the hands of the British. Well, and at this point, the English Navy was still like unparalleled. Absolutely. Yeah. The closest would have been the French. And that distance was the distance between first and second place is quite far. It's very similar to today. Whereas like the United States Navy has the largest Navy in the world. And if you look at second place, it is very far in second place. And just like today, completely unnecessary. Fun fact about the supremacy of the British Navy, part of the contributing factor to the massive technological advance

and the just sheer number of ships that the British Navy had is partly due to the fact they completely deforested an entire country. They did that. Yeah, Ireland was like 95% covered in forest. And then they were like, no, we need ships. I just cut everything down. That is the secret of empire. Like, wow, look at all their technological advances. Like, squint in, oh God, it's misery. It's always misery. The cheat code in this version of Sid Meier's civilization is just Ireland for everything. Typing in Ireland, unlimited trees, typing in Ireland, unlimited potatoes. This is admittedly very like, you know, stupid American talking. But, But the more that I learn about what England actually did to Ireland, the more flabbergasted I get.

Yeah. It's not good. Like, I remember, I remember, you know, seeing Shnade O'Connor on SNL and all that, right? When she was really popular and being like, okay, like, but you're doing a bit much. And it was like, no, you're not going anywhere near hard enough. I remember when that happened. I was old enough to watch it on TV with my mom. And my mom, I'm not Irish.

my mom is an Irish but she was raised Roman Catholic which he tore up the picture of the Pope and my mom is just like good fuck that guy yeah it's the only thing me and a unionist in the North of Ireland agree on is fuck the Pope oh god

handshake across the peace walls they're calling him Ulster Tom but like fun fact For anyone at home, I asked this in the pub quiz that I'd run last week. It was like, so essentially in Ireland, priest of war, there was like the Royal Irish Constabulary, who essentially formed their own paramilitary death squads called the Black and Tans. I give you one guess where they were sent in 1922 after Irish independence.

Oh, I wonder. Could it have been Kenya? No, they got sent to the British Mandate of Palestine. Even better! By the way, for Tom and I, the last roughly hour of our coffee was just asking each other trivia questions, and it was great. Meanwhile in Gibraltar, things were quite relaxed for obvious reasons. The British knew that their enemies were supplying revolutionaries. It was hard to miss.

But it wasn't an open war between the three of them quite yet. So Gibraltar's governor, the sprightly 77-year-old George Elliott, was just kind of chilling. would make sense if you look at George Elliott's life. The man was old as hell for the 1700s. And remember, he's 77 years old. That's old for being the governor of anywhere. I mean, America notwithstanding. Normally, you're dead or retired by then, right?

I mean, Donald Trump is 79. Like, I feel like that puts a little bit of context. Tyne Feinstein is logged on. And as we've all learned, this is a great system and we shouldn't change it. I love that every era has had their own whole. And he got stationed in Gibraltar as something of a retirement gig. He had been in the army for 40 years at this point. He was a general.

And thanks to his service in the Seven Years' War, he temporarily captured Havana, Cuba from the Spanish and been paid a massive cash bonus from the crown for this. 25,000 pounds in 1700s money. Holy shit. Which according to a conversion calculator that I found is about 6 million pounds. today, which means he could almost afford an apartment in London. Let's bring it back a second.

He had a 40-year military career in his 70s, which means he joined the military in his 30s, which is insane for this time. He started his British Army military service in there. He had a strange life, especially for his day. He was a weird guy.

Despite being British, born and raised, he went to school in Netherlands. He went to the University of Leiden. Don't tell me he was in the Dutch Army. He did serve some time in the Dutch Army, but then he went to military can meet in France and then served in the Prussian Army. Wow. He's just a military tourist, but that isn't actually too weird for its day. What is weird is that he was a staunch vegetarian, which was so uncommon in the 1700s that people thought he might be crazy. And it kind of hurt his political aspirations. A British historian with the most British name

in this episode, Reginald Hargreaves described him as surviving on quote, vegetables, simple puddings and plain water my man full of pudding. I mean, it's great that like it held true for 200 years that like up until maybe like the late 2000s

if you were a vegetarian and wanted a political career everyone just pointed at you and went, ha, gay. Yeah, pretty much. Yep, not wrong. Wait, now I'm genuinely wondering if this has something to do with the origin of, like, the term pudding head? I would like to think so. Let's roll with that. Okay.

Now, he absolutely never drank. He was a teetotaler. But similarly, he never demanded people not drink or smoke around him. He just, it was not for him. Also, he only slept like three to four hours a night his whole life. He was one weird workout program away from being a modern day influencer. Yeah, he's almost David Goggins. If he took up jogging, yeah. He's like the Wim Hof of his era.

Wim Hof, but instead of getting it ice water, he's like, this is room temperature pudding. Did I ever tell you guys about there was at a company that I worked for? There was this unbelievably weird guy who I think he was from Georgia. And he would just randomly be like, hey, I'm going to lead a workshop for anybody who wants to come. about Wimhoff breathing techniques and how he can use them to, this guy did not last long. He was gone after six months. But every so often, he pops back into my head. And then he left a really salty glass door review for the company that we all laughed at. Yeah, I mean, if anybody deserves it, it's the guy who brought up Wimhoff breathing techniques at work.

Yeah. He made some of the women uncomfortable. Would that surprise you? No. I've had a lot of bad jobs, namely the army, and the army in the early 2000s, obviously a much different beast than it is today. It's still stupid, but stupid in a different way. Well, at least it's not woke anymore. Sure. I think if someone told us, like, we're going to practice Wibhoff breathing techniques, we all would have beat him up. Now, all of this simmers for a few years until 1778, when the French openly joined the revolution, signing the Treaty of Alliance with the United States, and the next year. year, the Treaty of Oranese with Spain. Now, the Treaty with Spain is interesting. Not only did it

end with a Spanish War of Declaration against the British, that's kind of a no-brainer, but with an agreement between the French and the Spanish that forbade any treaty with the British until the Spanish reclaimed Gibraltar. So none of them could go for a separate piece with the British until they got that rock back. The Franco-Spanish team of Bourbon Kings thought this conquest of Gibraltar would be so easy that it would be a speed bump, effectively. They believe that the British must be so weakened due to the revolution, so distracted by the revolution, that they would just be able to walk right in. And then, of course, what comes next, according to them, but an invasion of the British home islands. Like, this is all very easy

stuff. The Spanish put Martin Alvarez de Sotomayor in charge of taking Gibraltar and I assume his great, great, great ancestor would eventually end up on the Supreme Court. That's right. His effort was two-pronged. As we've kind of let on here a little bit,

subtly, Gibraltar is a peninsula off of Spain. So for starters, the peninsula would need to be cut off from the mainland while simultaneously

blockaded by the sea. So on June 24th, 1779, an army of 7,000 Spanish soldiers began digging siege works across the peninsula, which is about a mile long, give or take, while the Spanish fleet, under the command of Admiral Don Antonio

Barcelo, close the sea lanes. Barcelo's fleet was a strange mashup of a few ships of the line, a few small frigates, and a lot of smaller gunboats. It's not exactly a powerhouse necessarily, which will become an issue. Now, Elliot saw this happening, so he set his garrison to work reinforcing his already very strong position. For starters, he sent combat engineers to the Rock of DeBraltar, that being the sheer cliff face going into the sea. He believed that some parts of it were easier to climb, like, that was possible. So he just started blowing them up, which must have been a sight to see from the Spanish Navy. He's like, I believe he's blowing up the rocks, sir.

He also built earthworks and palisades, dropped logs and other nearby moles, kind of like a rock pier, to make it harder for any sea landings to happen elsewhere. He also evacuated a lot of civilians, which is a good thing, though a lot of civilians simply would not leave, because like all military bases back in the day, a lot of them were family members of soldiers. Worry could also begin to burrow into the rock to create reinforced tunnels. They attempted to what we call on this podcast Diglet Max, but the titles were not completed quite yet.

They end up being used for like supply dumps for gunpowder, but like a complex network of rat tunnels for cover weren't done yet. As it turned out, all this has made much, much easier for Elliot because around nine years before, the British government conducted a survey of Gibraltar and came to the conclusion that older Spanish built fortifications were decrepit as shit and need to be replaced. So thousands of men went to work doing just that. And this created a lot of new defenses and coastal blockhouses equipped with dozens of cannons, more fortifications around the waterfront and then forts along the Isthmus and something called the grand battery, which is effectively a massive blockhouse full of cannons and whatnot. Yeah, it's what it sounds like.

It's a battery and it's pretty grand. Yeah, exactly. It's a really big duracell battery. Joe, have you ever been to Battery Park? I have not. Oh, okay. One thing that I dig in New York City is that a lot of those old, old forts are still there. And so whether you go down to Battery Park or over a governor's island, it's really, really fun to look at those old defensive fortifications, and it makes you realize talking about the American Revolution how important control of that stuff on the harbor was, as well as how quickly the U.S. blew it by allowing the British Navy to just sail right up into the harbor. Whoops. It's always interesting when I have some really old fortifications near me, not obviously that old, but it's always fun where you have to wonder,

do they leave it there for a historical marker, or is it one that was like, they built it so well? That is a monumental pain in the ass to get rid of. That's how you know it's good. It's probably both, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. On top of that, he had begun bringing in more and more soldiers and conducting routine drills, so every man knew their duties during a siege. Though the Royal Navy's contingent was quite shoddy, since we're talking about the power of the Royal Navy, it simply was not at Gibraltar at this time. They had a single ship of the line, which is the HMS

Enterprise, about a dozen gunboats, many of whom were privateers and smugglers. Hell yeah, they were pirates. Like, the privateer is a pirate for people who don't. It's a pirate that flies under your flag. It's a salaried pirate, which is, you know, you got to

respect the pirate who settles down, decides it's time to get a government job with benefits. Yeah, it's like all of the the former military military contractors in sub-Saharan Africa right now

guarding oil fields. I would say that's a mercenary. That's different. A pirate and a mercenary are two different things. Say what you will about a pirate, but they at least only temporarily

exploit others for resources. Yes, we're getting into etymological arguments over mercenaries versus pirates. We're seven-year-old maxing right now. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. No, that would be pirates versus samurai, I think. Yeah, true, true. Well, ninjas. Or ninjas. Or dinosaurs. Don't even bring up the Nights either. Yeah, yeah. This is some freaking epic bacon. I'll tell you that for free.

Boo this man. Boo! Now, it might sound like, you know, pirates and smugglers aren't something you want in your Navy, uh, uh, from a tactical standpoint. But in my opinion, these guys turn into all stars of the siege. But we'll get to why in a second. There's also a 60 gun ship of the line called the HMS Panther, though it was so old that it had been converted into a gun platform. It was permanently tied up.

It could not go anywhere. This is just to give you a sense of how my brain is hardwired, is that every time you say HMS, and particularly when you say HMS, I'm expecting to hear HMS pinafore because, you know, that's just, again, that's how my brain is wired. Hey, we're not here to say any of our brains are wired incorrectly other than mine. Joe, I think you're the very model of a modern major podcast. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Someone should say that very, very quickly to the point it's confusing. By the time that the Spanish locked him down, he had only about 5,000 men stationed on

Iraq, as well as 412 cannons of various different sizes. But as we know, the most dangerous part of any siege has nothing. nothing to do with men or weaponry at all, but rather being cut off from supplies and dying of disease. Gibraltar had been supplied adequately enough, especially with gunpowder and ammo. It had a ton of gunpowder and ammo. It also had plenty of food and water for a couple months, which the British thought was more than enough under normal circumstances. And it was for a while, because it's now September 12th. This has already been going on for months, and the first real shots of the siege are fired at this point.

Up until now, pretty much everyone is a battle of positions. A lot of construction. On the north, which is the part that crosses into the mainland Spain, the Spanish soldiers were just digging constantly because when you're on the ground fortification of a siege, all you're doing is digging closer and closer and closer, building trenches and tunnels and whatever, inching your way towards what you're besieging.

And that's been going on for months. But at this point, Elliot opens fire with cannons to the north. According to legend and the accounts of a sergeant that was there, the first shots of the siege were fired by an officer's wife, who really, really, really wanted to be the first person to strike a match and touch off a cannon. Hey, sweetie. Can I, can I fire the cannon, sweetie, please? I've always really wanted to.

I think it'd be so much fun. Look, dudes had to do some weird shit. shit, the 1700 is to impress their wives. Yeah, we've two brilliant things holding, you know, throughout history is one, the Spanish dedication to jihad against the British. And men kind of like, all right, okay, you can do it, you can fire the fucking cannon.

World's first combat wife guy. Yeah, hell yeah. Tactical wife guys. Which also implies the existence of the tactical wife, which I think is really cool too. That's right. And all around the rock, all around the waterfront, other British guns

opened fire on the Spanish fleet that was lurking just beyond their range. This is an interesting facet of Ellie's tactics. He ordered his gun crews to either be firing or ready to fire at all times. Even if the Spanish were out

of range, hoping to intimidate them and show them, look, we have so much ammo we don't give a fuck and it did kind of scare off the Spanish at least the fleet the fleet despite being much stronger than the Royal Navy contingent at Gibraltar really only dared to zip in the bay of Gibraltar with gunboats at night fire off some shots and get the fuck out of there like Elliot has gun crews firing wildly day at night to the point that the Spanish like we don't want to go anywhere near them, they seem like they have a lot of guns and ammo. Despite the Spanish and French

thinking the Rock would be a pushover, it was now clear from the beginning that they were going to be in for a very, very long haul. I don't think they realized how long it would be, because by the end, it would be almost four years long. However, Elliot's defense plan did run into a pretty big snag. That being at no point did he think that he would be trapped there with the American Revolution pulling away huge amounts of British naval assets. The entire defensive plan of Gibraltar assumed that he would just have to camp out there for a month, maybe three months, maybe four months, and then the Royal Navy would come save his ass. But now, they were not coming. But in the immediate impact on Gibraltar, the most damage was actually coming from Spain

overland from the north and the reason for that is Gibraltar is a rock it is a barren piece of rock that really has no dirt to speak of very little trees

it is a boulder right on a cliff so people who lived in Gibraltar that being the military garrison would oftentimes have farms in the very north these farms

generally supply the peninsula with all of its tillable land, which meant all of its not pig-based food. The farms being on the itthmus. Yes. This is what happens when you get rid of the caliphate of Cordoba is like you rely too much on pork products. We've gone too far on the other direction.

Yeah, you should never let a Spaniard hit it from the north. So as soon as the Spanish began digging in and encroaching towards British lines, they did so through those farms and made them no longer accessible to the British. So when the Brits saw this happening, civilians ran north as close as the Spanish lines as they dared before getting shot

and just started taking handfuls of dirt and running south with them. Like, we have to plant gardens on the rock. We have to plant pulses and legumes. How else am I going to have beans on toast? That's so good So that's what they did Any place that seemed like it might work

They tried to build like little local gardens And things did grow Using you know Night Fertilizer as they call it But it was hardly enough Soon forge teams were hopping up and down the rocks Like goats looking for Dandelions and Wild Leaks

And that eventually Our favorite green on the show Grass But I cannot stress this enough At no point Despite this being a siege in this situation, did the Spanish fully close off to Bralter? Chalk it up to incompetence, chalk it up to whatever. Maybe they were taking a nap, I don't know. Remember how I talked

about the privateers and the smugglers? This is where they become the MVP's. Because every single night, smugglers and privateers snuck out of the blockade and sailed towards Morocco. After that, Morocco at the time being neutral in the whole situation, they load their boats up with food mostly, sometimes weapons, but almost entirely food and medicine, and sneak back through the lines. So these are privateers working under contract with the English. Yes. And there's just a guy in the 40s like, oh, fuck's sake, I've got to eat coos coos again. Where's my beans on toast? I demand rashers. I demand beans. I demand toast. What is this Mediterranean diet shit? Is this a fucking olive? I think that has held time in mortals.

is British people being faced with any food that isn't like heavily greasy and meat based Yep, yep I see one more cucumber in my food I swear to God we're going to invade Morocco

If I have to eat Tabuli once more I'm fucking jumping off the rock Meanwhile there's like an enlisted guy Who's already had to boil wood He's like wait you guys are having two meals a day What are you complaining about? I have not shit solid in six months there's just like a really

pretentious soldier who's stuck there like yeah so like if you look ethnographically at the Moroccans like their diet is actually really good for you like I know we have to eat dandelions and grass but like we're getting so much vitamin K I mean Elliot's thriving

he's like I live off of dandelions and grass and the best of days they had the best man for the job there he's only missing his simple puddings meanwhile you have you have mercenary solid

swimming across the straight of Gibraltar coming back with pockets full of cooscoos. Tabouli. Couscoos. Metal gear. We got to feed the people, Snake. You don't understand. Tabouet and

cusscus are actually the other agents' names. Yeah, yeah. Actually, Tabulae and Cuscoos are 100% like boss characters in a potential Cajima game. It would be a guy named Tabule Cuscus. That's what his name. would be.

That's the villain in the next call of Judy came when suddenly Morocco was evil. These supply runs were never enough for like abundance. Nobody was well fed, but they were never starving to death. They were in the gray.

They weren't dying. They certainly weren't threat. It was just enough to stay alive. But it was still something. Thankfully for Elliot and the defenders because so many ships were constantly sticking through the blockade. It meant that the government back in London was also getting a pretty steady stream

of information regarding how things were going. Because the smugglers and privateers would sneak over to Morocco, make contact with British agents, be like, this is a letter from General Elliot. These are a request, blah, blah, blah. Like, they had a way, a very roundabout way of communication, but they did have something. In one message, Elliot begged them for any kind of relief they could send. So in December 1779, the British began slapping together a rescue convoy under the command of Admiral George Rodney, who was actually under public orders to make for the West Indies. But he had additional orders that were secret given to him by the government not to share with anyone else to relieve Gibraltar along the way, because they were afraid that the

Spanish might learn of his approach via spies. Virtually as soon as Rodney left the port, he and his convoy of 19 ships of the line began absolutely wrecking the Spanish's shit. First in January 1780, they hit a Spanish supply convoy, capturing everything and adding it to his convoy to eventually give to Gibraltar.

And when the Spanish Admiral Juan de Lagara was sent out to stop him, Rodney smashed him too at what would become known as the moonlight battle off of St. Vincent. Imagine how hard you would bust a nut if you've been eating nothing but dirt and dandelions for a year and you have

a piece of chorizo. I feel like that would just like knock everything loose inside of you and you would have a shit that has never been comprehended before by human beings. Mm-hmm. You know? I feel like it might kill you. You'd shit out your

very spine. The shit that kills you instantly. You're just experiencing the self-inflicted version of a moral combat fatality. Reaching up your own ass and tearing out your spine. This one simple trick

defeats the siege of Gibraltar That's actually Tabuli Cuscus is finishing Rodney violently ill with fever Was mostly unable to command During this battle And said he passed it off to his second command Who then wrecked the Spanish's shit Where Rodney left off

The Spanish fleet was hammered Every Spanish sailor 2,500 men Were killed, wounded or captured and hilariously the Spanish flagship, the Phoenix, and its crew, were immediately released. And the reason for that is, Ligara told the second command, like, we surrender, but we should tell you, we have a whole lot of fucking smallpox on this ship right now. So he was like, you know what?

You're free to go. You take your flagship and fuck off back to Spain. It's unknown if he actually had that many smallpox victims on his boat or not. I contend with one is too many. So, good call on his part. By January 25th, Rodney's fleet was smashing into the Spanish blockade around Gibraltar, scattering it, and soon tons of supplies are being offloaded, as well as a thousand more infantry. The soldiers on the rock not only finally got to eat a full meal, not made out of dirt and grass clippings,

but also got a change of clothing for the first time in months. This included new shoes, because before this, they were wearing a very, very awful sounding shoe, It was canvas with souls made of yard. Oh. Oh. I can't even begin to imagine the calluses that you'd get as a result of that. I think it's nothing but callous at this point. Larry Bird was dunkin in those things in like the 70s.

And what is weird is the normal British Army shoe at the time was like there were leather shoes with buckles on them. They're called buckle boots. Even though they weren't boots, they were literally leather shoes. Also, they were not fitted to right or left feet. They were straight. Sorry, sorry. My brain is doing something that I need to get out now, which is, you said buckle boots.

And it made me think of Betty Buckley, who originated the role of Grizzabella in hats on Broadway. And now it's making me think booty buckley. And this is nothing. But like, I just needed to get it out there just for the sake of preserving my own brain. Please continue. Young British private Booty Buckley Okay, maybe this is something We've tabooly coos-coos

and Sergeant Booty Buckley What's fucking me up is If you guys ever went to Hot Topic when you're younger Those really high buckle Like goth chick boots Yeah, demoneas That's what I'm seeing the British soldiers

wearing now So you got Operation Black Parade is a go When I was A young boy My father took me to Gibraltar To get dysentery To eat some dandelions

There we go That's what the Spanish army just hears Like emanating out of the fort every night So with the siege broken the Spanish fleet Scattered this whole thing should be over then right Nope Rodney's fleet was actually en route to the West Indies, so it just

pulled away after it offloaded its supplies, and also all the Spanish soldiers are still in place to the north, digging ever closer to Gibraltar, leaving Gibraltar by the sea wide open. Soon, the Spanish fleet moved right back in, close off the streets again,

and keeping their distance and on watch for another surprise appearance from the Royal Navy. Yeah, Rodney was like, yeah, no, and you'd sail away, because I get no respect around here. Admiral Rodney Dangerfield, thank you. Yes. The Spanish fleet obviously didn't want to get caught napping again,

but there was still the Royal Navy ships, the Enterprise of the Panther in the port on defense. So they decided they need to go for them next. I mean, I would argue this is the Spanish fleet going for something first since they haven't really done anything yet. But in June of 1780, the Spanish went back to the drawing board and decided that they would roll out a classic of these two sides would know very well. fire ships. Now, so for people who don't know, a fire ship is exactly what it sounds like.

It is a ship that is filled with combustible things, set a light by a crew, and then they dive overboard, ghost riding that motherfucker directly into an enemy navy, sometimes a port, depending on what the target is. And then it catches fire. Fire at sea in an era of wooden ships is a bad thing. It's still bad now. Fire in a boat is horrible. As the Kuznetsov has proved multiple times over. Because that's breast and peace to the worst ship we've ever talked about. R.I.P.R. Sweet boy.

Yeah. Too dumb to live. Too dumb to die. Just dumb enough to be in the Russian Navy. Yep. Soon a few fire ships appeared gunning it towards the old mole. Which again is, despite its name of sounding something like really gross and on your grandmother's face

is like a stone pier that they used to offload things. It was the main offloading port for the defenders. and the Panther and the Enterprise, they opened fire on these fire ships. Meanwhile, teams of rowboats from the British side were kicked out into the water, racing towards the fire ship armed with nothing more than grappling hooks. That's because their whole tactic was paddle really, really close. Throw grappling hooks on these fire ships, remember, are only being powered by wind here and currents.

And that once the grappling hooks are in place, paddle your ass off and pull the fire ships off course. So they drift out to sea, run into the side of the DeBraltar Rock, make them harmless, right? This worked. They took out six fire ships this way. Wow. Which is not a job I would want to do. Meanwhile, three more were taken out by the Enterprise and the Panther. And of course, because this is the Spanish Navy of the time we're talking about here, three just entirely missed.

And as soon as the fire ships crashed and burned out, this is actually like a huge boon to the defenders. Because, again, they're on a featureless rock, right? What is one supply that you think, maybe you wouldn't think off of the top of your head that like, if I don't have this, I'm going to die? Remember, you're not freezing to death. It never really gets that cold in Gibraltar. Like winter in Gibraltar is like, you know, 17 degrees centigrade. You'll be fine. Well, I'm not sure what it would be because as you said, I can't quite think of it off the top of my head. Would to make cooking fires. Oh, yeah. Because remember, they get all this food. You can't eat raw meat. You'll die. You can't, you know, you need to be able to boil your oats to eat them. You need to. You need to. to be able to boil your wheat to eat it. They got all these supplies and suddenly couldn't use them because they'd already burned through their stock of firewood before this.

Time to go to Ireland. Well, instead they did the secret Spanish thing, which is go to whichever colony they were using to get their shipwood because after their fire ships burnt out, they dragged the burnt out hulks to the shore and then just part of them out for firewood. It's always like those little,

fun things that you learn in a fortress during a siege of like, what do you use every single day that you never worry about running out that suddenly you die if you don't have it? But the siege wore on. The Spanish continued the same tactics going forward. Strangle off the garrison, dig forward in the north, hit them as much as they can with cannons. Their Navy still stuck to nighttime raids as the siege stretched on until its second summer, then fall, then winter. Elliot did his best to keep his forces together, but once again, their supplies began to wear thin. Once again, soldiers and civilians inside Gibraltar were put on just above starvation rations coming from the never-ending stream of blockade runners.

Most of the British blockade runners, like we said, were going to Morocco, but eventually the salt of Morocco joined the side of the Spanish. This did not stop the smugglers, though. It just meant they now had to run two blockades instead of one, and they did, because nothing was going to stop them. Also, like, yeah, I feel like if you're dedicated privateer, you're going to treat that as a challenge. Yeah, and I mean, the British were paying the very, very well. You're already running a blockade by the Spanish Navy, and that didn't scare you off.

I'm pretty sure the Moroccan Navy is getting to scare you off either. Like, do you have any idea where I just came from, dude? Get out of here. Disease, however, began to spread like wildfire, namely cholera and dysentery, which was always going to fucking happen. You're telling me that there were meager rations, a grueling pace, and dysentery? What is this? The freaking Oregon Trail? Less wagons, more chickens.

The Oregon Trail, but you're just riding a chicken around in circles. Yeah. Now, one of the major issues here is hygiene, which is always an issue when you have several thousand people packed into a small area. As we often joke about, it's never a good time to go camping in the woods with 5,000 of your homies. armies would do normally obviously is they knew that shit should not be going near you or your drinking water so you dig trenches slit trenches specifically to shit and piss in namely to shit in people would still piss wherever but again they're on a rock there's nowhere to dig so everybody is just shitting all over like a bunch of british seagulls after the smuggling routes became harder and harder supplies got thinner and thinner included in this was their main supply of citrus fruit which meant everyone on Gibraltar soon became absolutely riddled with scurvy.

Ah, yeah. Which is not something you ever expect to get, not on a pirate ship, right? You'd never expect to get that on shore. Also, as well, like, insane to get that on the Iberian peninsula as well, where oranges are literally everywhere. Congratulations, you found the one part of Spain that is literally nothing but a barren rock covered a British dude poop. Mm-hmm. So many people were showing symptoms that the small. amount of fruit and onions, because onions also works to offset scurvy a little bit, were saved

for the worst people, like the worst off with scurvy so they didn't die. So like, oh, you're getting to the point you're bleeding from your mouth and your teeth are falling out, have some fruit juice or whatever. I do look. That is a really funny mental image of like this guy who's just fully like emaciated dying of scurvy. Here's one onion. Good luck. Oh, actually speaking of that, they had more onions than anything else. Like, I don't know. how their supply system work or what kind of weird connection the smugglers had a Morocco

but they had an absolutely wild amount of onions of like it was most of their diet at one point and eventually when the scurvy's aren't settling it on everybody the doctor that was in Gibraltar

would give men who were the worst off one pound of onions to eat per day what these dudes fucking reeked and it's just walking up eating an onion like an apple It was like, I don't see what the problem is.

I do this literally all the time. He was like onion floating in his glass of plain water. He's like, yeah, I wanted some spice. Spanish soldiers continued to inch forward. Gunboats nipped at the British edges. And the Spanish bombing got worse and worse to the point that Elliot decided he needed to reinforce their defenses even further. However, now he had no supply of materials to build these defenses.

And they needed the wood to cook with. Otherwise, they would just be down to raw onions, I suppose. So he needed to get creative. So he sent work crews out to begin digging up the cobblestone roads and bricks from any building that he thought was unimportant so they could build their defenses larger and larger. Parts of Gibraltar that were not blown up by the Spanish were disassembled by the British. By the end of this, there's pretty much no town of Gibraltar left. Once again, another thing that holds concurrent is being built up or being torn apart or blown up as either Etta or British Tourist and Benedorn, which is the worst terrorist or. organization.

However, no real bunker was perfect because the Spanish and the British began firing flammable cannonballs at one another. This was before the era of like hollow charge explosives and everything like that. So they had to get very creative in spectacularly evil ways. Yeah, I was like, how do you set a lead ball on fire? What does that look like? You drill holes in it and you fill it with sulfur, saltpetre, and oil. Oh.

So you set it on fire and then fire it at someone with the idea that the cannonball is weak and full of these things and the impact will cause it to just explode. A fart-smelling bomb would just rock it into a bunker and atomize whoever was inside. As bad as this sounds, and it was, the Spanish thought they had it all in the bag as the siege went into its second winter. That was until another British relief convoy blasted through the Spanish cordon and delivered tons of food, gunpowder, shells, and then fucked off once again. This time it was a hundred chips. So just at, like, every time Elliot and his men like, oh, lost another tooth of scurvy, another shipful of onions would show up.

You're losing all your teeth. You can't eat the onions anymore. But you have to like cut up the onions and then put it in your lip like it's a zin. I got my onion-flavored zin. I'm dipping diced onions Everybody smells so bad Once again Elliot is just like

I don't see what the problem is I dip onions every day I got onions in my pockets right now I got an onion tied around my around my belt because that's the style at the time You know what I'm saying Well it was the style of the time

Quite literally it was In this case Everyone's going around Like a fucking character of a French man With a string of onions Around their neck I can only imagine of what's like to be a Spanish soldier at this point

because they're still fighting overground in the north and every time they shoot a British soldier and loot his corpse, like, why is every pocket full of onions? They're drilling holes in the onions to try and make shoes. They have become the onion night.

They're loading the onions in the cannons and firing them. Oh, that's definitely like the episode art for this one is the Final Fantasy Onion Night in a British Army uniform. Now, as the bombardment went on. Soldiers kept moving their new supplies around in order to save them from getting hit by one of the estimated 200 cannonballs per day minimum, they were rocketing into

Gibraltar's town. This led to strange stories that could only happen to soldiers while under artillery fire. At one case, a Spanish cannonball glanced off Iraq, ping ponged around, took off a dude's leg, and then bounced back out into the ocean. And another, a white, hot cannonball flew so close to a sergeant that it set him on. on fire while trying to save a barrel of flour. So he drops the barrel of flour, strips butt naked,

picks up the barrel of flour and runs saving the food. Wow. Okay. That story didn't end the way that I thought it would. Nope. In another case, soldiers' chance being murdered by the artillery to sprint across open ground to break into the storerooms they knew had barrels of rum

and wine. Uh, they get blind, blind drunk while under cannonball fire. Others used a bra just covered to eat more than they were rationed, including one group of soldiers who was caught hiding in a bunker, slaughtering a pig, and grilling them.

Following the smell of grilled meats. Like, Sergeant, this isn't what it looks like as you're just like rotating the rotisserie. You don't understand. The pig is Spanish. Yes, sir, I am a Spanish

pig. I don't know how I ended up on Gibraltar, but I'm very happy to die. I don't want to be alive anymore. I'm listening to a lot of their Papa Roach. Look, in the famous words of Barack Obama, got to have my ribs. That's right. They're just doing the Obama thumbs open everything. Elliot got pissed at men breaking rationing rules. So when they stopped getting shot at, he ordered all the men to be flogged in front of the others. This did not slow soldiers down, of course. More cases of people getting really, really drunk. and killing pigs and chickens and breaking ration rules kept popping up.

Elliot realized something serious was happening. This is something we talked about quite frequently on the show. The discipline inside the siege was breaking down. Now, the second that the disciplinary body of soldiers begins breaking down, people stop acting like soldiers and instead just kind of go feral, especially in a situation of intense stress, starvation, depravity, you name it. So there's a few things you can do in a situation like this. We've talked about a lot of different options over the years.

The worst one is just start shooting guys because that's a net negative, right? Because now you have less soldiers and you're not getting reinforcements. The best thing you can do, generally, a light punishment, motivational speech, and everybody gets back in the line. That does require you having some decent sergeants at this point to be your enforcement. But a lot of the guys that Elliot was catching doing this were sergeants. So that's a problem. So Elliot decided, fuck it, I'm going to shoot like five people. So he did.

This did seem to do the trick, though. The drunken pig napping seemed to have stopped. However, civilians in Gibraltar were just kind of left on their own. They were not part of the military structure. They were not part of the military rationing system. They were left on their own to survive. And now their entire town is destroyed or parted out by the British, so they had to flee the wreckage. They formed a tent village at the southern end of the peninsula, which the Spanish then, of course, wheeled around and bomb.

By the southern end of the peninsula, you mean on the other side of the rock? Close to the rock, but not in military areas. But they were close enough where the Spanish saw it and hit it with a fuckload of cannibals. Sure. And then the tent city would just be rebuilt every time. The tent village eventually earned the nickname Cowards Town, but... I hate to be living in Cowards Town. I went to Cowards Town and everyone knew you.

There it is, yeah. But not because of like the civilians being there, but because deserters from the army would hide out there before trying to make a break to what they saw as freedom across the northern Spanish line in the middle of the night. Oh, okay. So this, sorry. I'm just Cowards town here located very close to like the actual Spanish border. Close enough. Yeah. So on the north side of the rock. I was I was thinking it was on the south side of the rock. No, I mean, Gibraltar itself is not very big. Right. So, like, even if it is in the very south of the British held part of the peninsula, in the middle of the night, you can make it from one end to the other.

Right. Elliot gave orders to his men in the north to open fire on anyone attempting to cross the lines. But soldiers did not take these orders very well. One British officer know that every time they saw a deser try to run across the Spanish lines, and he ordered his men to fire, they never hit anybody. They're just like firing their guns in the air like, oh, good luck. What is this? The dang Ohio state militia.

Huh? Got them. You shouldn't run your, uh, your military under the same rules of Warhammer 40K imperial guardsmen. Because generally speaking, your rank and file dude is not going to shoot a guy in the back because he's in the same shitty situation that he is. Right. And also, remember, they've been under siege for years at this point.

Everybody knows each other. Yeah. Also as well, it's like a hard. to maintain, like, shooting discipline when you have, like, arm strength that has been sustained solely on onions for the past year? Also, just to be very clear about the previous thing that I said, I'm not saying that it is good to be shooting people who are fleeing, right? And I'm not saying that it is cowardly of Ohio to not do so. I'm simply pointing to get that Ohio can't hit anything.

Because they suck. That's right. Take that Ohio. It's your one episode a year where you take shit. That's right. And also the other 364 days of the year because you live in Ohio. Joe, do you hate the abominable Brutus Buckeye as much as I do? That fucking monsters, the synagons man and God. Yeah, he's a horrible little pervert. He deserves like the guillotine.

Also, they should. That entire university should burn because of the things that it covered up similarly to my university. The day by day Spanish lines to the north got closer as they dug in and in and in soon they were only about 700 meters away from the town of Gibraltar Elliot decided waiting is not working anymore

we need to do a sortie an offensive to push the Spanish back over land right? It's their only option it's not like they can send out their busted ass navy to chase off the Spanish though for some reason I think Their privateers and smugglers could probably beat the Spanish Navy off the coast of Gibraltar at this point. They really seem asleep at the wheel.

So, Elliot decided we're going to go on the offensive, but it has to be a secret because their steady trickle of deserters might leak the plan to the Spanish. So Elliot passed orders to two subordinate commanders for an attack on November 27, 1781, with additional orders of not to tell a single fucking person until about 10 minutes before the start time of the attack at 2 a.m. And it turned out the Spanish were well protected from British artillery during their dig up towards Gibraltar. They had built shelters to hide from cannonballs, meeting shelters vertically to protect cannons. Their cannons had been positioned to fire at British cannons. But there had been no infantry offensives this whole time, this whole time during the siege. So they hadn't prepared for one at all. They had zero infantry defenses waiting for the British as the British.

charged at them. And another good reason why the Spanish believe that this one happened is like, they're starving, their disease, they know what happens during a siege. But here come the half-starved disease, mouth bleeding ass scurvy patients, absolutely reeking of onions, charging out in the middle of the night. Some of whom I'm assuming are fully nude at this point. They have to be. They have. Just for the love of a game, honestly. Yeah. And they're fucking chucked tailors with yarn bottoms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're just like a naked Larry Bird in his like yarn.

Fucking Chuck Taylor's who stinks of onions running you down. But he's got solid fundamentals. He's dribbling a hollow cannonball filled with sulfur and saltpeter. He's like one of the Titans from attack on Titan running down your encampment. Spanish soldiers broke and ran, caught completely by a surprise. Several Spanish cannons were blown up. their fortifications or set on fire

but also as the Spanish stormed forward one the places they took over were their former farmland which had been

left completely wild by the Spanish so they just kind of began stealing all the vegetables they could and just stuffing

it their pockets before running back towards Gibraltar I love that just like you know shooting with one

hand and shoving carrots into your mouth with the other you know just literally anything of it

onions. Give me something. I don't even care if I don't have teeth anymore. I'll gum that fucking carrot down to mush. Being assaulted by the Bugsbony Brigade. This was finally too embarrassing for Sotomayor and he got

fired. He was replaced by Captain General Louis de Belbez, a French nobleman serving in the Spanish military. Furthermore, the French began to take an active role in the siege of Gibraltar after because, you know, several years have passed that the Spanish have not closed the deal.

By May of 1782, they sent 40,000 men and hundreds of cannons to go support the Spanish, as well as elements of the French Navy, combat engineers, all that stuff. And for comparison's sake, everybody's keeping track of home.

The British only had about 6,000 men. Most of them sick, starving. They had taken a few hundred casualties at this point, but still mostly 6,000 men. However, still the British found inventive ways to fight back. smuggling continued, and along with the trickle of food and ammo, came entire disassembled gunboats stashed on privateerships.

Wow. The Brits quickly slapped the gunboats together and added them to a small gunboat navy they had been building, constantly doing drive-bys on the Spanish and French navies, who were left wondering just how the fuck this kept happening. Where did that boat come from? All the parts smuggled in by tabooly cuss-coos. That's right. It's at that scene from Lord of War, he opens the container.

It's nothing but fucking onions and you move it aside if there's a gunboat. I got you, baby. But by now, things were changing. The British had all but lost the American Revolution. The siege of Yorktown ended in October 1781. Independence of the United States was assured. All that was left was the resulting negotiations,

which were ongoing, how this would look legally eventually. It also meant that the reality of the war between the three sides, stuck here at Gibraltar, was about the change. The British reached out to the French to begin, you know, let's talk a way out of this. But remember, they'd promised not to do that with the Spanish. But I'm also thinking about the fact that now, with the Revolutionary War drawing to a close, that the English do have additional resources now that they could potentially, send down to Gibraltar and so that gives them some additional like hard power for negotiating

purposes. It could. Another thing that could happen is the Spanish, the French take it before negotiations are over. That is what they're aiming for because that would put the British in a weak situation. It's important to remember where the French are coming from here. They want to fuck the British up so badly that during negotiations about the independence of the United States, They can say, okay, but we also want Quebec. Right. That's what they're aiming for. And they're probably more than willing to take Gibraltar, be like, look, if you give us Quebec, we'll help you get Gibraltar back.

The French and the Spanish, having thought this entire battle would be little more than a nothing, had spent the last almost four years smashing their head against the rock to little to no effect. So an idea was put forward to use their massive ground army to surge down from the north, paired with landings from the sea, all supported. by a new revolutionary gun platform that would pound British defences to dust. That weapon was a C battery, which doesn't sound that revolutionary at all. It's a stationary, anchored, sea

platform with cannons on it. There's nothing special about that, but bear with me. It's also my favorite Hudson Mohawk song. Sea battery? Sea bat. Erie? And that guy on Reddit was just fucking to the sound of cannons. That's right.

Rather than just a floating platform for artillery, though, a French engineer named Jean-Le Machaud de Arcand was deciding we need to go above and beyond with this one. The batteries that he designed and built were absolutely insane. These were heavily armored floating gun batteries built out of reinforced heavy timber with layers of wet sand in between them to absorb concussions, more wood, and then a safety feature. water piping going directly into the ocean should a British cannon shot set the battery on

fire. They could immediately splash water on that bitch and put it out. That's cool. It's actually pretty ingenious. And just to let you in on the size of this thing, each of these, and he built 10 of them would be big enough for 700 men. Some of them even more. Some close to 800 men. Holy cow. Yeah. All with dozens of cannons inside. How many men is like a ship of the line carrying at this time. I think it's comparable to that, maybe a little less. I mean, like the Panther, for example, has 60 guns on it. Like,

that's a big ship. If it was still a functioning ship at the time. And it was believed that these floating monsters would be completely impervious to incoming fire. The idea was that these batteries, the Navy, and the Spanish and French artillery on the northern line, would be able to smash

the Gibraltar defenses and then mop the British up with the massively overpowered French and Spanish infantry. Like, 40, almost 45,000, I think at this point, versus 6,000 on the British side. Like, if the infantry is entering battle, this battle is over. So, on September 13th, 1782, what became known as the grand assault on Gibraltar began, behind a storm of hundreds of cannons on the batteries, the Navy, and the land.

There's little doubts in the head of the French and the Spanish that this would go down in history is one of their greatest triumphs. And actually, so did the locals, because thousands of Spanish and French civilians gathered in a nearby hilltop, they'll watch the whole battle a lot. Look, there was a huge amount of entertainment at the time, like, yeah, I'm willing to give him a pass on this one. Like, this is probably the coolest thing any of them are ever going to see. One of the people in the crowd was the future king of France, Charles the 10th. Wow. Yeah. However, things went badly, immediately. For starters, the batteries were towed into the wrong place.

Oh, well, that's, you hate to see that. Whoops. You think they would have had that part figured out. So when they opened fire, their cannons were off target and the batteries were not self-correcting, meaning they just were bobbing there. Then their anchors failed, which meant soon the current of the bay began smashing them into the walls of Gibraltar. Yeah, sort of a floating wooden platform versus gigantic fucking rock.

The rock is going to win 10 out of 10 times. Yeah, I'm putting my money out. fantasy rock football. I'm definitely drafting the rock in the situation. Yeah. They were right about one thing though. British cannon fire did very little to the wooden armored boxes full of cannons. That was until

Elliot got a very, very good idea. Heeded shot. Now these were cannonballs put in a forge until they were white hot and then fired. Oftentimes the whole goal of this is whatever these things hit. It's so hot it immediately catches them on fire.

Sure. The British gunners then aimed that the batteries had gotten the most stuck on the rocks. And at first, these heated cannonballs didn't work, but the British kept pumping them into the batteries until they started so many fires that the battery crews couldn't control it all with the piping system. British gun crews were throwing cannonballs into forges that were now so hot and overworked that the forges themselves began to melt.

Holy cow. And then they would take the cannonballs with a pair of tongs, load them up in a wheelbarrow full of sand so they could be transported over to the cannons. And they just had like an assembly line of this going. I would hate to be the guy. It's like, hey, you, grab the white hot cannonball. Try not to touch it. Yeah, that sounds like maybe the most dangerous job of all time. Being an artillery crewman back then would suck at the very base level. And it's just like every new

thing makes it worse. Like, okay, you're either handling a cannonball firing your artillery so close that a dude with a rifle or a guy on horseback is going to kill you because you're very valuable on the field of battle. Or you have to handle the fart bomb that we talked about earlier. I mean, I will say I have been playing a lot of thief lately because we just talked about Thief 2 on the worst of all possible world this past week. And all of these like forms of weaponry sound like shit out of thief. The like the super hot cannonball, the fart grenade. Like these sound like things that could potentially be in Garrett's load out or used against him.

I do like the idea of when the fart bomb hits its target, it lets out a very loud, beefy fart sound. has a bit of a squelch to it and then you get a guard saying what was that noise must have just been rats it's just like

like this whole system of like pulling out of the foundry loading into wheelbarrow full of sand this reminds me so much of the videos that I see of people working in foundries in China

and there's like no shirt on they're like whipping the metal around and then they're just getting a bucket of water thrown on them periodically yeah pretty much

one battery far from the others caught a cannonball in an area that began smoldering, and they couldn't really find where the cannonball was lodged. The bunker was so thick, and for a lack of a better term, girthy with reinforced timber. All right, let's go. That the cannibal just wedged in a crack somewhere,

smoldering hot and starting a fire before, and it just got out of control before any of them noticed. I often get out of control when I'm wedged within a crack. Sorry, sorry. to control when you get a hot balls wedged in your girthy crack. There you go. Everybody is saying this. But, I mean, that's two batteries down, right?

But they have eight more of these things. This battle could certainly be salvaged. And then a problem came up that nobody saw because the Spanish and the French were really bad at planning. And that is, the Spanish land forces fighting in the north ran out of ammo. Whoops. Nobody is sure why. It really seems like to sheer unbridled incompetence. That is like the one thing we didn't want to happen, right?

And like the French officers were just fucking furious. Like how could you let this happen? The whole point of the northern axis of this assault is hitting them with cannon fire. And you forgot to supply your guns with cannon fire. This meant the Brits could quickly pivot everything from the north to the south that began hammering the shit out of those floating batteries. with even more white hot balls. Okay, let's go.

A simple answer to this is just send in the tens of thousands of infantry you have, but they don't. They're worried that the British defenses are still too good, and they also don't know how badly they outnumber the British. They aren't entirely sure. Also, again, the Spanish military is wildly incompetent at this point. This went on for hours until darkness began to fall, and the Spanish and French ordered the burning batteries to be destroyed,

and their crews bailed out by the supporting Navy. There's still the other batteries there as well. The thing is, for whatever reason, the Navy never went to the batteries. The crews of the two batteries, over 1,000 men, spiked their own guns, just like they were supposed to,

which means setting them on fire, in an enclosed space full of gunpowder and charges, and sat on top of the burning batteries waiting for the rescue. But the Spanish Navy never showed up to pick them up. Do we know why not? Nope. Huh. It seems, if I was to follow the most likely reason is they were worried if they brought the Navy too close,

the British would open fire on them, which they probably would have from the Rock. Yeah, they probably would have. But after seeing what was happening, Elliot was like, this seems cruel. Like, these men are like out of the fight. They don't deserve to die like that. So Elliot ordered British Marines to get into some rowboats and go out to the batteries. to save the Spanish. As they did that,

one of the batteries exploded. Oh, shit. By all accounts, this is just about the largest explosion that anybody there has ever seen.

It was wildly powerful. It sent a mushroom cloud a thousand feet into the sky. What the fuck? And it just atomized everybody in that battery. The majority of

the Spanish and French casualties during the entire siege that were not caused by disease were caused. we're caused right here almost four years later from the beginning. I mean, that makes sense

because you've got, you said like, what, 700, 800 people on board that thing? Yeah. When the first battery exploded, it killed everybody on board.

It wounded several British men who were on the rescue boats, but it also encouraged the men on the second battery to say, fuck this and simply dive into the ocean and swim towards the British.

And if all of this isn't bad enough, in the confusion of the British rescue parties, the desperate Spanish and French crews looking for salvation, the old-timey nuke that they accidentally invented. The Spanish Navy then rolled up an open fire on both of them. On their own guys. On everyone. Oh, brother. See, this is, this is interesting too, because listening to sort of the way that this all played out, I'm like, if they had done a better job of planning it from a tactical

perspective, this would have been an easy dub. Like, yes, the Rock of Gibraltar is, you know, It's an extremely defensible landmark, but the amount of personnel that they had, just the overwhelming material advantage, they should have had this one in the bag, but they blew it. Yeah, the easy answer is incompetence, of course. On the French side of things, they did flex a lot of infantry support in that direction, but they were also worried about suffering massive casualties for their land forces, which. you know, surprise. And that is why they kind of pump the brakes on just an outright assault from the north. Even though they wildly outnumber the British, and I do think a ground assault probably would have just been met by Elliott to buy a surrender.

Like, this is the day that he'd surrender. They'd all just be sent home. Right. You know? But the French wanted to pulverize Gibraltar's defenses before sending them in, hoping that they would surrender in the meantime. And the Spanish could not tactically maneuver their way out of fucking. paper bag. So they didn't even remember to supply their guns. It's ridiculous. This is the most

like self gunshot to the foot ass battle we've talked about in a very long time. I mean, clearly these motherfuckers never played advanced war. Exactly. Because the first time that you forget to supply your artillery in advance wars is the last time that you failed to supply your artillery in advance war. We need to get these guys a Game Boy advanced is what we need to do. That's what I'm saying. It was clear that the grand assault had been a massive failure. And within the week, news of it got back to London, Paris, and Madrid. It was obvious to both the Spanish and the French that their window had closed on this opportunity. And despite throwing an army at it larger than either side had it in the field anywhere in the world at that point, they just would not crack

Gibraltar. This is only further underlined by yet another third supply convoy that broke through and made it to Gibraltar. It also just so happened to coincide with the British and American negotiations kind of sort of finalizing what exactly the legal United States would look like territorial boundaries are they going to go into Canada and things like because remember an important part of the American Revolution was we attempted to invade Canada yeah and got pushed the fuck back because and then fucking half the continental army froze up there famously yep and uh we did it again the world of 1812 uh America oh for over two in Canadian invasions um specifically in the Revolutionary War, the U.S. Continental Army and militias invaded Quebec. Did not work,

but the French also wanted Quebec back. And one of the things that the American revolutionaries did during the invasion of Quebec was trying to get Quebec wali guys to be like, see, look, we're trying to liberate you from the tyranny of the British. Like the whole thing was framed that way. And for a little while, it did seem like the British might concede Quebec to the French specifically, or possibly some kind of national project. But probably, but probably. to the French. However, at the news of the victory at Gibraltar, the British flatly refused to give up anything north of the Great Lakes as an extra fuck you to the three parties that are fighting against like, and you know what? America's got to pay us back for the shit that they owe us before the war.

One final effort from the side of Spain to get Gibraltar from the British is my personal favorite. That is, the Spanish kind of meekly offered to trade the Puerto Rico for it. Really? Yeah. And the British told them to fuck off. You could have had British Puerto Ricans blasting Sweet Caroline out of their massive car speakers. I mean, a world in which Puerto Rico is British and like Montreal is American is just

an incredible thing to imagine. A little did the Spanish know that about a hundred years, give or take later, the U.S. would come for Puerto Rico too. The Americans, the Spanish, the French, all of them realize they'd, truly had no more cards left to play. And agreed, it was officially signed in September 1783, Gibraltar remained British, and Quebec remained British, and Puerto Rico, still Spanish. Who would have thought? They did manage to consolidate some things in Florida. Minor victory there. The siege ended in February, 1783, after three years, seven months, and two weeks.

Of the thousands of those killed over the course of the fighting, about 95% of them, were dead by disease, which knew no side to this conflict. The other 5% blew up on that battery. Mostly, yeah. Just to underlined how solid the Gibraltar defenses were, over the course of this entire thing,

only 33 British soldiers died in combat. God dumb. This is despite the fact that the Spanish and the French fired nearly a quarter million cannonballs at them over the same time frame, which for comparison's sake, depending on

which numbers you use is more ordinance than was fired during the entirety of the American Revolution. Wow. All for nothing. The end. So how are you guys feeling about the Rock? We need an adaptation with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage. I am feeling that The Rock Financial is a great place to refinance my mortgage every time I go and see a Red Wings game. But that's that's not what we're talking about here the red wings much like the French and the Spanish putting up nothing but else as of wait that's right also

a fun detail that I've just found is Elliot died in 178 7090 from allegedly drinking too much mineral water from a local well yes he definitely

he definitely got clapped by bacteria Reptonam my man drank too much sparkling water and died of a tummy ache. He was the arch nemesis 200 and something years earlier of the liver king. He's like, I'm eating nothing but vegetables

and drinking too much mineral water until I die. We do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, you could support the show on Patreon. You can ask us in the Patreon DMs. You can ask us on Discord, which you'll also have access to if you become a

supporter. You can load it into a simple pudding and I will eat it and then I will answer it on I love my, I don't know what a simple pudding is, but sounds mostly white, mushy, and flavorless. I prefer a complex pudding myself. I want to dig into a pudding so complex. It tastes like M.C. Escher. Joe, you really buried the lead on a George Elliott because what was his station before he was stationed at Gibraltar? I don't remember. He was the governor of Londonderry. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Day's question is, tell us a meaningless piece of lore from your history. That is funny. Ooh. In 2008, I was, I decided to go to, there was a Mitt Romney rally. If you're an American, you probably know who Mitt Romney is. If you, if you're not, you might not. He ran for the nomination for president in both 2008 and 2012. In 2008, he was defeated by John McCain. for the nomination, and then in 2012, he won the nomination, of course, was defeated by Barack Obama in the general election. In 2008, I found out that he was going to be going to do a rally in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. And so I made a gigantic sign with, I traced the Mitt Romney campaign logo on it, but then I changed it to say Mick Romley, because I was just curious,

just like, what would happen? And so I brought this sign to this event that he had going on. And I thought it was going to be like a big thing in like an arena or something. But it was actually just kind of in this little room. There were maybe like 300 people in the room tops. But I still had my big ass sign, right? And so he came into the room and I was holding it up over my head. And Mitt Romney takes one look at the sign, sees that it very clearly says Mick Romley. And again, And to give you a sense of the size of this thing, it's a sign that's like about as big as me. And he looks at the sign, looks down, looks me in the eyes, and mouths, mouths Mick Romley.

And it's just very fucking confused. And I'm like, yeah. And then two days later, I searched for Mick Romley on Google. And it brought up a sponsored ad for Mitt Romney, which means that he saw that sign and told his campaign team to go and purchase the ad word. for Mick Romley, because people were getting confused about what his name was. Oh, that is good. That's like the kind of like harmless stupid shit that I love. You don't really get it. You don't get stuff like that anymore. People are just so mean now.

I mean, he certainly deserved something meaner than that. But that's what I felt like doing at the time. And it worked out pretty well. He had binders full of Mick Romley's. Exactly. I don't really have like much kind of like pointless lore about myself. I, do meet, like, quite a lot of, like, interesting people through work. Recently, I met the guy who was the heir to the Mr. Whippy fortune. Mr. Whippy is, like, was the first kind of, like, ice cream, uh, truck here in the UK. It's like soft serve ice cream. Hmm.

This guy's dad emigrated from Italy to the UK and started Mr. Whippy. Uh, at one stage was involved in, like, a gang war in Scotland over, uh, territorial. beef over ice cream. I was talking to this guy and I got told after it's like, oh yeah, he's the heir to Mr. Whippy. And like, I just thought Mr. Whippy was like a generic thing. But no, there is a guy who is an heir to a multi, multi million pound fortune because of ice cream. Just get shooters in the street. Yeah, quite literally. The territorial wars of like ice cream trucks are a big thing in New York City. I've heard about that. And hot dog It's well known that like every guy who drives a Mr. Softie truck has a baseball bat in the back just in case.

Trying a thing. Oh, I mean, when I first went to university, I was pre-med for being a veterinarian. And that is where I learned that I'm too dumb for this. And I dropped out and joined the army. And here I am. I guess another thing would be is even back in the day sometimes I think about these little stupid things

that would have wildly changed my life if they came to pass, right? Or maybe they did not come to pass. And that was like I almost couldn't join the army back when I did because I had a lengthy criminal record as a juvenile. Oh yeah, you've told me about that

how you're just like boosting shit from random stories. Wars. Like your copy of Final Fantasy 7 for instance. That is correct. Things out of cars. I set some stuff on fire. A few minor possessions. Yeah. I mean, if you're if you're from Detroit, that's a Devil's Night classic. Yes. To the point that even under the waivers that they're giving people in 2005, I did not meet them. Wow. And they're like, well, do you really want to like do this? And I was like, look, man, I got nothing else. Like, what process can we go through?

And he's like, I can make it go away. And I was like, how can you, Mr. Corporal Recruiter in some strip mall in Detroit make this go away? He's like, oh, don't worry about it. He just lied. Oh, yeah. As they calmly do. Well, he didn't lie to me. Like, normally they lied to you.

He lied to the government. Oh, shit. Because I later learned after years in the military that recruiters are actually under like massive amounts of pressure, especially back then, like to the point that like recruiter suicides are quite common. So they've got like quotas to hit? Yeah, they have, they had really high quotas to meet. So he just made by criminal background. He couldn't make it disappear is the thing. It had to be submitted. So he just straight up forged one. Oh. Yeah, which I'm fine saying because he later went to prison anyway. Okay. For meth related activities. That is entirely sure what

it was. That is so fucking odd brand. I got selected for this thing called hometown recruiting, which means like after you graduate basic training and your further training, they send you home. So you'd be like, I joined the army and I'm back home. Look at me. It was a month off of before you have to report to your first duty stage. It sounds like, fuck yeah, I'll do it. I went and they were supposed to pair you up with the recruiter that recruited you. So you could be like the father, son team of tricking high schoolers. And I should have like, yeah, where's corporal? So and so. I won't say his name. I still vividly remember his name as well. I was like, oh, prison. I was gone for four months.

What happened? He's like, oh yeah, he was actually already under investigation while he was recruiting him like, well, in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. But yeah, that is, that is my lore. I actually have a slightly embarrassing one up until I think I was maybe, 25, I thought that like lather rinse repeat when washing your hair was bullshit. So I would just use shampoo once, wash it out, and then just like get out the shower after I'd done everything else. Oh, you just did like, uh, this, this is bullshit sold to you by big shampoo. Everybody knows the, the good way to, to wash your hair simply dunk it in a bucket. I mean, pretty much. Like, I mean, if I'm in a rush, I'm not going to wash. I'm not going to want a scrub

my hair more than once. That shit takes too much time. Yeah, washing your hair is like washing your legs. It's completely optional. Well, Josh, you have significantly more hair than both Joe and I combined. So I can understand that. You don't need to wash anything. Just hang onions around yourself. We'll be fine. That's right. Um, but that is a podcast. Josh, you host other podcasts as you're the guest. You go first. Tell us all about your other podcast. You know what? I would love to. Uh, I co-host two delightful podcasts, and I'm going to tell you about them right now. The first one is called The Worst of All Possible Worlds.

It is a show where I, along with my co-hosts, Brian and AJ, talk about media. Every week, it's just a different piece of media, and we talk about the narratives within it, both the explicit ones as well as the ones that you might have missed. Our tagline is case studies in the pop culture of a dying empire, so the show is exactly what it sounds like. We have also had both of the illustrious hosts that I am speaking with right now on our show. We had Tom on to talk about a Spanish platformer called Blasphemous Two. And then we had Joe on for actually a two-parter.

First half of that is free. The second half is going to cost you. We talked about Final Fantasy 7. We do longer form episodes. So if you're the kind of person who is seeking a real like deep dive. into pop culture, you should find something to enjoy because our episodes are always at least two hours long minimum. This past week, we talked about Thief to the Metal Age. That episode was three hours. And yeah, we have fun, you know, we have fun. And we've been doing it now for

four years, which is fucking crazy. It's crazy to think about, right? We're coming up on eight years now. Oh, wow. It's the only podcast you can listen to where all three of the co-host sound the exact same. That's right. That's right. I disagree on that, but I know. I can tell the difference as well. It's just, you know, I get the year for that Midwest accent. You haven't edged over two thirds of our listeners there by virtue of being able to tell us apart. But yeah, that's the worst of all possible worlds. The other show that I co-host is called Ill Conceived. That is a show about natalism, which is the ideology that sees declining birth rates as like the most important policy priority in the world. And we've been doing that now for a couple months.

I co-host that one with June, who you might know as Juniper on the various social medias. And that one is more of, like, it's not a news show. It's more like looking into the history of a given thing that is connected to natalism in some way, shape, or form. So, for instance, last week we took a look at a guy named Lyman Stone, who is this real, like, fucking freak, who's trying to come up with ways to get more people to have babies now. Now, in the week before that, we looked at James Dobson, who is an evangelical Christian, who was trying to do that shit in the 80s and 90s. So generally speaking, the way the format works is one week will be something that's a bit more of history, and then the next week will be something that's happening right now.

That is about an hour a week. We've had a lot of success with that so far. And if you're interested in like current events or the way that narrative shaped culture, you might be interested in that. That one's specifically looking at like political culture and society as opposed to media. But yeah, also very proud of that show. You should go check it out. I am plugging shit.

This episode's already really long. Go listen to Josh's shows. Come play my pub quiz on a Tuesday evening in the Hagerston at 730 on Tuesdays. Tom might not have things to plug, but I do. You're already listening to this show. Thanks. Support us on Patreon. I get tons of tons and tons of bonus episodes.

And tell people that you list to share our contents, leave reviews, and tickets to our live reviews and tickets to our live show on October 4th in Glasgow, Scotland, still available. Check out the show notes. We have links for the actual live show and live stream. So make sure you're clicking on the right one and getting the right ticket. Thank you, everybody for listening. Check out Josh's shows. And until next time, eat onions, fight the Spanish. Eat onions. Explode.