Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 389 - The Istanbul Snowball Fight

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

USE CODE DEC25 FOR 50% OFF ALL PATREON SUBSCRIPTIONS UNTIL THE END OF DECEMBER https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys In the early days of English ambassadorships to the Ottoman Empire, an increasingly petty collection of grievances among European envoys and Ottoman dignitaries set the conditions for a single errant snowball to incite an anti-English riot. Witness the story of the snowball that got a bunch of English guys' beaten with oblong objects. Research: Dr Joel Butler Reources: Public Records Office, The National Archives, Kew, London: SP 97/3; SP 97/4. ‘Bu bir nefret cinayetidir: Gazeteci Nuh Köklü, 'kartopu oynarken' öldürüldü.’ Radikal (2 February 2015). ‘Gazeteci Nuh Köklü kar topu oynarken öldürüldü’, BBC News Türkçe (18 February 2015). ‘Journalist Nuh Köklü murdered for playing snowball’, Agos (18 February 2015). ‘Life in prison for man who stabbed Turkish journalist over snowball fight’, Hürriyet Daily News (5 June 2015). Atran, S. ‘The Devoted Actor: Unconditional Commitment and Intractable Conflict across Cultures’, Current Anthropology, 57/S13 (2016), S192-S203. Brotton, J. The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam (New York, 2017) Brown, H.F. Calendar of State Papers Relating To English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 9, 1592-1603 (London, 1897). Burian, O. The Report of Lello, Third English Ambassador to the Sublime Porte / Babıâli Nezdinde Üçüncü İngiliz Elçisi Lello’nun Muhtırası (Ankara, 1952). Butler, J.D. ‘Between Company and State: Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy and Ottoman Political Culture, 1565-1607’, unpubd. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford (2022). _________. ‘Lello, Henry’, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2023). Coulter, L.J.F. ‘The involvement of the English crown and its embassy in Constantinople with pretenders to the throne of the principality of Moldavia between the years 1583 and 1620, with particular reference to the pretender Stefan Bogdan between 1590 and 1612’, unpubd. PhD thesis, University of London (1993). Foster, W. (ed.) The Travels of John Sanderson in the Levant (1584-1602) (London, 1931). Horniker, A.L. ‘Anglo-French Rivalry in the Levant from 1583 to 1612’, The Journal of Modern History, 18/4 (1946), 289-305. Hutnyk, J. ‘Nuh Köklü. Statement from Yeldeğirmeni Dayanışması’ (20 February 2015) at: https://hutnyk.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/nuh-koklu-statement-from-yeldegirmeni-dayanismasi/ (accessed 8 March 2025). Kowalczyk, T.D. ‘Edward Barton and Anglo-Ottoman Relations, 1588-98’, unpubd. PhD thesis, University of Sussex (2020). MacLean, G. ‘Courting the Porte: Early Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy’, University of Bucharest Review, 10/2 (2008), 80-88. MacLean, G. & Matar, N. Britain & the Islamic World, 1558-1713 (Oxford, 2011). Newson, M. ‘Football, fan violence, and identity fusion’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 54/4 (2019), 431-444. Newson, M., Buhrmester, M. & Whitehouse, H. ‘United in defeat: shared suffering and group bonding among football fans’, Managing Sport and Leisure, 28/2 (2023), 164-181. Purchas, S. Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, viii (Glasgow, 1905). Sheikh, H., Gómez, Á. & Altran, S. ‘Empirical Evidence for the Devoted Actor Model’, Current Anthropology, 57/S13 (2016), S204-S209. Unknown Artist. (c1604). The Somerset House Conference, 1604 (oil on canvas). London: National Portrait Gallery.

Hello, and welcome to the Lions led by donkeys podcast. I'm Nate. And with me today are Joe and Tom. We're intrepid English merchants seeking to turn a profit in the febrile cashed-up conditions of Istanbul in the year 1600. Not one of us speaks Turkish, and we don't speak Greek, and the only Italian we know is Duay Monsteri Bianchi per favor. But it doesn't matter all that much. We've made a killing selling the wares of Northern Europe here in the Eastern Mediterranean. There's no shortage of demand for large blocks of metal, elaborately painted harpsichords, one pair of linen pants that you wear for 30 years, assortments of blunderbuses with flared ends that keep getting wider somehow, dueling pistols you have to light with a candle, and so much more.

As representatives of the one non-Catholic European Christian country with diplomatic relations here in the center of the Ottoman government, we're seen as trustworthy, or at least not in league with the French as much. We're friends with the Ottomans. Some of us are really friendly with the Ottomans. We've even been instructed on how to deploy the smoke bomb that immediately turns you Turkish if you get into serious trouble behind closed doors. Things are going great. Flush with success, we decide to meet up on one particularly snowy day. We sit down in a cafe to drink cups of hot coffee prepared in the style of any number of countries in the region, which we've determined is always the same style, and it's always an observation that all the

residents of this region appreciate hearing from us. No, I'm serious. They love it. English Tom laments that the wind is never as wet or depressing in Istanbul as the way it felt back home. English Nate wishes there was less daylight here in December. It's just not natural for the sun to be up after 4 p.m. English Joe is seated with his eyes on the door, alarmed by something instinctive and ancestral that he can't quite put his finger on. I'm in danger, he thinks.

We recognize English Joe's premonitions as they're often quite alarmingly accurate portents. But then it passes, and we all share a laugh. You know what? I think I've come to a conclusion, English Joe says. No one with the last name Casabian will ever feel nervous in Istanbul ever again. I'll just kind of get over the idea

of walking a dude down with the beach. G's blunderboss, and she's shouting, you bitch, you ain't staying alive. Oh, there's more, don't worry. And then, as if Faye were responding to this statement with an immediate repost, were suddenly interrupted by a gang of French sailors who burst into the cafe,

armed with an ever more threatening array of oblong objects, were dragged from the establishment and beaten mercilessly. They cut our coin purses, relieve us of our frilly lacy undershirts, run us our shoes that are curved in a way you could only describe as sexual, and leave us lying in the snow, gently massaging our heads and saying,

Ow! It's a terrible day, and we're miserable, which is admittedly what we'd been hoping for in the first place. Still, a question remains, why did a bunch of French guys attack us?

Just for being English? When did that come in? And you can imagine our confusion when we learn that all of this mayhem in violence stem from an unimaginably over-exaggerated case of hurt feelings. That is, hurt feelings about a single guy getting hit with a snowball

as the trigger pull for a lot of other conflicts that had been slowly building tension in previous years. And now it's everyone's problem. Gentlemen, how are you doing? I love to get run up by the oblong object. I thought you'd like that turn of phrase. I normally don't like alliteration very much, but I was like,

oblong objects is just funny. There's something about that. It's like they don't have baseball bats for you to put spikes through yet, so you got to figure out something else. The ur form of the spiked bat is just a weird shape. Getting got by the Yeti battalion. Yeah, it's like, you know,

weird pieces of driftwood and like construction debris and like the inner goon inside you, different definition of the word goon there. It's just like, I can beat someone's ass with this. I can run someone their fucking coin purse for this. This will be amazing. Getting hit with a snowball.

Just all my coins fall out and me like Sonic wings. Yeah, exactly. Well, I love the idea that's like, you know, like three quarters perspective view, like Istanbul in the year, 1600, one of those games you get ads for on Instagram

where it's like level one Ottoman mafia boss. You're naked. Level 99. Ottoman Mafia boss, like, you've got a turban the size the entire fucking screen. I stumble outside and my curved shoes are hung up on the telegraph wire. You reach level 100 and you're just like, dressed like a UK drill rapper Air Max 95s and a ballion. Yeah, exactly. You're running something for their shoes. You're lucky we haven't invented power lines yet. Motherfucker. Did you just invent the Ottoman Roadman?

Kanichi Wang, my slimes. Is that why you cut, you? you're bearded to that autumn-esque mustache? No, it's part of a Halloween costume that I was like, shit, I don't really know what I can do. I haven't bought anything

and then I had to go to a costume shop on Halloween in in Kensington and it was a collection of people that only exist in Kensington aka parents in like

Arson Venger long puffer coats with kids that are named like Abdul and Charity but they're white. Also the kids were like they go to the private schools where the private school uniform

is like eight different fucking layers of like coats and undercoats and fucking all the weird scarves. I remember seeing ads for those like the tailor shops when I took a cab that went through Kensington. I was just like, that's not normal. Like you shouldn't go to school dressed like the blue boy from that Dutch master's painting where to the fuck. You know what I mean? I should think it was an English painter.

But you know what I'm talking about? Dressed like that guy who jumped off the Eiffel Tower that thing that he he knitted that was supposed to act as a parachute. We have an upper class Red Bull wing suit. That's what you wear to school. it was so funny because it was like in there

and obviously the type of people who go and buy a costume on Halloween for that night are not really that prepared and we're just a group of like 19 year old guys who like were obviously going to some college nearby

and they were just like pissing themselves laughing at a Jimmy Saville costume and I'm like oh wait till you get older and you go on a stagged do someone's going to be dressed up as a giant inflatable penis someone's going to be Jimmy Saville

someone's going to be Freddie Mercury I guess it's just like the Jimmy Saville thing is so sordid and macab that I just can't imagine dressing up as him. It's like, if America had like a long story like, you know, guys night out for at party tradition of dressing up with Subway Jared. I think if you go trick or treating somewhere in

Pennsylvania, someone's dressed up as like Joe Buterno. Yeah, but that's stupid Joe Paterno's different than Jerry Sandusky. Like, you know what I'm saying? But they would go trick or treating together. You know what I mean? Fuck you. I think the best analog of like the cultural tone of going

for Halloween dresses Jimmy Saville in 2020. is like pulling up to a party dressed as like Dennis Raider or something. That exists. I'll put money on it if we look through Instagram. We could find like a Halloween Dennis Raider, hanging out with a Halloween fucking, I don't know. The Dahmer, you know,

it's or Ed Gein since they made Charlie Hunnam play sexy Ed Gein, which by the way, completely off topic. And since I'm the co-hosts, one of the co-hosts today, which also means I'm canonically bisexual now. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it.

Thank God. You know what? Anti-heterosexual DEI wins the day. But I started watching that horrible Ed Gein show at Netflix. And I have to say, on top of it being horrible, it has to be the most confused TV show I've ever watched in my life. Like, it is strange. And Charlie Hunnam has continued his streak of never playing a role where he's allowed to talk normally.

He can never have a normal accent and his accent can never be authentic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like a good copul's costume that, like, will elicit kind of like what are you dressed up as is just go as Paul Pelosi in his underpants and then your partner have a hammer. I mean, that's just like a standard Republican Halloween trick-or-treating costume now. They is so horrified. This is an audio medium, but my, my reaction there was just like, you know, you know what? While we move on in this episode, how about that? You know what I mean? We can talk about other dudes getting their ass beat with hammers and hammer-shaped

blocks of wood and Minecraft weapons and shit like that. Just getting hit with a snowball of making the roadblocks, ooh. Yeah, exactly. Getting hit with a snowball, but it's a cube. So, what connects a snowball fight in the year 1600? Religious, political extremism, anti-English action with a K, and football hooliganism? It's a good question. Today's story is an unusual one, and it's one that takes us back and forth across the span of four centuries from 1600 to the present day. So we may need to strap in a little as we get to grips with the subject matter. And also, before I begin, I want to give a shout out to my friend, Joel, who researched and wrote 98% of this script, drawing on the extreme depth.

and breadth of his knowledge of English geysers encounters with Ottomans. We made an actual historian listened to this show and he somehow didn't hire Lee on the professional to end our lives. So, thank you, Joel. We found the only second cool historian after Patrick Wyman. I'm not including myself in the cool historian category.

It's like to talk about the dark ages. Yeah, what if the cool history wasn't cool and wasn't historian, e.g. me. As with our Berberi pirates, we are again looking at the lively and bizarre world of Elizabethan English merchants in the Ottoman Empire. we last checked in, things have changed quite a bit. We saw in our last episode on this topic that William Harbourn survived to his encounter with some truly idiotic part-time pirates

and went on to set up a successful embassy, which eventually helped defeat the Spanish Armada. We heard a little bit glancingly about Edward Barton, the highly successful second ambassador of the English crown to the Ottomans. By 1600, Barton's successor, Henley Lello, is in charge. And, well, we could definitely use some little bit of backstory on how Lello ended up in this role. Lello was born in rural Shropshire, six or seven miles from the modern-day England, Wales border. His family were evidently well to do as they owned property in both their home village of Clunton and the nearby settlement of Clun. Oh, brother, just you wait. All right. And it's the home village of Clunton and the nearby settlement of Clun, both helpfully

located on the river, Clun. Lello was afforded the education of a young gentleman and was said by his chaplain in Istanbul, a certain William Bidolf to have been educated at Oxford and the ends of court. Now there's a footnote here. Just understand this. Talking about the river Clun. The river's source is, quote, a marshy area near the public house, unquote, in a village called anchor. Tributaries of the Klan include the river Kemp, and, I am not making this up, the river Unk. Yes.

Sailing on the River Unk. Oh, God. The River of Unks just flows through eternity. Bloody hell, we didn't know there were so many Unks in the area. I'm Klan maxing through Unk town. Pull up an anchor where I can meet the confluence of the clun and the

unc. Oh my God. No record of Lello matriculating at Oxford remains, and it seems unlikely that he actually got a degree. In those days, Oxford was more like what we'd consider to be a really fancy boarding high school, and only those destined for the church tended to hang around long enough to receive degrees, because the only mandatory subject was theology, which remained the case well into the 19th century. The ends of court are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales, that is to say, senior court lawyers. There are four ins, Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, middle temple and inner temple. They date back to the 1300s when some of their premises belonged to the

Knights Templar. This means that Lello was on track to receive a legal education before he ended up in Istanbul. He wasn't a merchant himself before he set out. In fact, his education appears to have left him pretty uptight and forthright in his views about how things ought to be. Bidolf makes this clear in crediting Lelo for his steadfast religion, calling him one who first of all reformed his family and afterwards so ordered himself in his whole carriage that he credited our country and who lived an unspotted life. Lelo actually ended up in Istanbul because his father was a Levant company merchant, or at least an investor in that company, and responded to Barton's call for some sufficient man to be his secretary by putting his son forward. Lello was no hardened and experienced merchant who

knew how to cross-cultural boundaries, negotiated cross-linguistic and cultural differences, and look out for himself ahead of boring sovereign interests. He was a nerd and a Nepo baby. He's just like me for real. I love that he traveled to the Ottoman Empire to be like, guys, I have an idea. I am the first British man to come here to get a hair transplant and gigantic veneers. This will make us a killing. I mean, he just needs to smoke crack and get a few prostitutes and then he's just Hunter Biden. He's going to be right. Yes, early, early, early 17th century Hunter Biden, late 16th century Hunter Biden. I mean, we sure exists. You know, it's like whatever kind of, I don't even know if Laudanum was a thing yet, you know, the precursors for Lodom. I'm sure opium

existed. They had hash. Come on. You know what I mean? They could, they managed to figure out to make shatter. And it's like, it was lost to the ages. Like, dudes and Colorado had to reinvent it in the 2010s because the Ottoman secret had like fucking you know just it had been just it was like the tower of babble you got so high fucking no one could remember it. Are you saying shatters like Greek fire?

We don't have the technology anymore. There's just weird conspiratorial calls in England for people to release this guy's ledgers, you know? Yeah, it's got like Leonardo da Vinci style like weird machines like sideways helicopters with big wooden gears and it can you know spelled in like middle English spelling something called

the dab rig like D-A-B-B-E-R-I-G-G. He's created a new pipe to let you hit two rocks at once. It's like it's like it's like those epoxy fucking squirt tubes. You know what I mean? Where you've got to put them both together in it.

This motherfucker, if he was alive today, he would just open any Midwestern gas station with all with all like the weird tube socks the like the road, the glass tube with the rows in it or my personal favorite from when I was recently back in Michigan, an energy

shot just called Tweaker. Yeah, I love the guy who does some work overseas, like in Dubai and comes back and, you know, it runs a gas station. He's got, like, Dubai imports of like Confederate flag key rings, but they've got SpongeBob and Arabic for some reason on them. Also, if this guy was around now, he would

just end up after his sojourn in Istanbul, end up back in East London, playing nights that I go to that are described as Habibi funk. I'm manifesting Confederate flag-shaped Dubai chocolate bars.

Dubai veneers, Dubai chocolate, Dubai SpongeBob in Arabic, Confederate flag, key rings for some reason. Confederate flag Labu-Boubu,

Dubai chocolate. It's going to happen. All right. Lello's stern and rigid morals and his determination that his devoutly Protestant English way was always the only right way might not have mattered all that much

if it were not for the fact that Barton suddenly died of the flux with me in January 1598, aged only 36. or 38, and very much still married to his job. The flux, or bloody flux, by the way, is what Elizabethan's cult dysentery. So poor Edward Barton, after completely reinventing what an English ambassador could be in the space of less than a decade, died shitting his guts out. It happens to the best of us. I mean, like I said, whom among us hasn't thought this might be my end? Yeah. I am,

I am shitting so bad. I'm just going to die here. This is where this is where the road ends for me. He traveled to the Ottoman Empire Touched Horace Spice Precisely one time And immediately shed himself and died To be fair I did feel that way last night Because I had a big plate of beans for dinner And I was like two hours there

It was like I'm gonna die on this toilet Just a big plate of beans Why are you always eating meals That like the extras in the background Of like Black 47 are eating You're eating like a prohibition ERIS like sharecropper No listen

Do you know it's two days before payday, I was like, I'm going to use what's in the freezer. So I had I found a whole bag of Lyndon McCartney sausages. I had four potatoes in my press. I made potato wedges and I had a tin of beans. So I had

Linda McCartney sausages, beans that I added spices to and then homemade potato wedges and I felt it. Don't tell anybody that Tom lives like this. Having fucking Tom advice you ever to dinner and he's like, slaughter that horse last Tuesday. I think

she's starting to turn. I'm creating a barricow horse. It's just hanging from the ceiling. Hey, that's sacrilegious. All right. That's the body of our Lord and Savior. He's just horsed us.

So this, by default, and precedent, left Lello in interim charge as the sitting secretary. Maybe if he'd had more time to learn from Barton, he might have approached things a little differently.

Maybe Barton would have gotten sick of him and sent him home. Either way, Lello managed to spend the couple of years he was in interim charge before being made the permanent ambassador, repeatedly putting his foot in it. There were a couple of future ambassadors floating around at this point who were both accomplished merchants and gregarious people persons, which was both a help to Lello in that the Ottomans and the Venetian and French ambassadors actually tended to like them

and wanted to work with them. This was also a hindrance to Lello in that it was a further stick to beat him with that his assistants seemed more competent than him. Paul Pinder, the one that Lello actually liked, would be the ambassador from 1611 to 1620. He was experienced in trading in Venice, and naturally the Venetians saw him as the real brains with the English operation. Thomas Glover was the other secretary and right-hand man. He was a Turkish speaker who had been in Istanbul from a long age, looking up to Barton's example of how to behave, including all the partying and backstratching. He was favored by Ottoman contacts. Lello, of course, was not a fan of this kind of sociability. He was replaced as ambassador in favor of Glover in 1607 and took it really badly to the point of

refusing to leave for several months, despite being physically removed from the embassy household and conspiring with the friends to try to bring down English negotiations and make Glover look bad. In a furious letter-writing campaign over the following five years, Lello would come to a clues Glover of amongst other licentious behavior taking a poor local boy as a concubine and even more scandalously than decided to lie with said boy dressing him in fine apparel

and no, it doesn't escape my notice that this effectively mirrors a pivotal scene in the first disc of Final Fantasy 7 which is to suggest that even in the stories we tell ourselves across eras and cultures there is a reflection of a baseline common experience and also that Midgar is canonically Turkish I fucking knew it

Walmart, like the Wall Market was actually part of like the Istanbul Grand Bazaar what was so funny though is thinking about this with Lello getting fired later on and then he becomes like a guy who can't stop calling into leading Britain's conversation

like just there's something just innate in a certain kind of English guy something goes wrong he's like this is the worst thing that's ever happened to anyone ever like you got your job because a guy basically like a guy shit himself past having one HP to the point where he literally like he had no lives left it was game over

he hadn't saved like and then you got his job and then apparently you fuck it up so bad that everyone hates you and you're like I'm gonna I'm gonna write a petition Change.U.K. 1607. Petition, allow me to dress as many boys as I want and fine apparel. Well, actually, I think what it is is that Lello was accusing the guy who replaced him of dressing Cloudstripe up in order to win the affection of a local gangster before threatened to cut his

balls off. So Lello was like, this dude, not only are all these rumors of me sucking my job and being weird lies, but that dude is totally gay. And he's wasting money, getting nice clothes for fucking, for local, come on. youths, right? They need to be wearing barrels. They need to be wearing rags. Then it's okay. You dress them up, though. That's just indecent. They're going to start acting above their station. Wait, I have cloud strifo glue. Is that a thing? I do enjoy that the, there is now an established time on her tradition of being a sugar baby.

I mean, I feel like it's just one of those things where at a certain point, you know, like you look at the opportunities you've got. And it's like, you've won the affections of English ambassadors, the Ottomans. And, you know, he might give you like a nice thing. bit to where he might let you get a dope chain or you basically go back to I don't know like whatever the sort of dog shit job was in that air hammering big rocks with a hammer to make little rocks

like that's just your job is like you go to like the rock size reduction factory that's just what you do all day. Going to Turkish salvages so you can get a goyard bag from your ambassador boyfriend. Autumn and Sugar baby TikTok would be a very interesting vibe wouldn't it?

I mean listen no Nate that that still exists but it would have been illuminated manuscripts and there would have been no women, so there would be a different vibe. Okay, come on. My family could not be reached for comment, unfortunately. All of this just comes full circle with Instagram comments that say,

Habibi come to Dubai. I mean, my God, dude. Yeah, so basically, like, we're talking about Henry Lello. What we know is Henry Lello, obviously, was the ambassador when this incident we're going to talk about today happened,

but that the man was famous for not being good at his job. Nevertheless, it was Lello who secured the ambassadorial appointment in 1599. This might have been with yet more help from Daddy, though the decision-making process between the Levant Company and the Crown is opaque in the absence of sources. We do know that Lello wrote fondingly to Robert Sessel, Elizabeth's Lord Chancellor, sending him a carpet as a gift. Funnily enough, a painting of the Somerset House of Conference 1604 shows the room decorated with

large carpets in the Ottoman style. Turkey carpets, as they were called, were a highly sought after an expensive luxury good. Lello's associate and contemporary John Sanderson recorded that he gave one carpet worth one pound ten shillings to his sister as a wedding gift, a price amounting to something like 1,500 pounds in 21st century money. Between his family connections, the carpet, and the power of the secretarial incumbency, Lello was confirmed as the ambassador, and gifts and letters were sent out to the Ottoman Sultan to receive him. It is very funny sometimes where it's like, there were a lot of circumstances at play. We understand that this is contextual, but also it's like, but also he did buy a fly-ass carpet. Yeah. So you're saying he wrote a carpet

into power. I mean, you could perhaps say that, but instead it's sort of like, you know, there's there's there's there's there's there's a refraction of the sugar baby tendency and everyone here it's like you know if you want the job even if even in the sort of courts of manners and whatnot you buy somebody a nice gift you get them a really cool carpet like damn this carpet's so nice i'm to put it on the wall because i can't i don't want to walk on it also i'm russian maybe russians are like i don't know maybe maybe there's something there's god i wish that meant that they're only russian i've been to more than one household that has a carpet on the wall I mean, isn't it kind of like

an entirety of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Russia, to some extent, Eastern Europe kind of thing. It can be. I mean, Armenians are still solidly nice rug on the floor people, but you'll also see a rug on the wall from time to time. Because Afghans, obviously, Afghans don't, because they make rugs. And so it's just like,

they, you know, they, why, I've never seen Afghan homes that had carpets on the wall. We need, we need to have the deciding vote of someone needs to phone up a Tajik and ask them. We need to, we need to form the, the greater council.

of former Soviet people of like Central Asia, the Caucasus is, the Baltics, and be like, carpet, floor, wall. And we vote. And then we all promptly start stabbing each other to death over who put beef and leaps first. No, this is post-Soviet Vatican 2. Right. And it's like, yeah, we have like a sort of oral history compendium of all their interview responses and it gets like subpoenaed by the European Court of Justice for being the most racist document ever prepared. Flip it thumbing through the pages like, well, they got into a 30-minute long conversation and somebody knife the Georgian delegate over who invented bread. Issuing the Eastern Orthodox version of a fatwa, but it's only about whether a carpet

goes on a wall or the floor. I mean, it was very funny too because it wasn't like you were lacking in content. It was like across two episodes. But when you were doing the history of Georgia Joe, it was just laughing in the editing and review. They were like, how do we pat out this content if we feel like the script doesn't have enough? Get the Georgians and Armenians arguing about who invented wine. That's like the next 45 minutes. As I've said in the show, I do that in real life whenever I'm at a place when there's like Georgians, I'm like, so I really like Georgians, like, Georgians

like the Armenians like the hackles raise and they, I'm like, I just like, wheel my chair slightly back like and I'm entertained for the next hour, two hours perhaps. Yeah, they should start arguing. It's just like a cartoon where like, you know, it's just the cloud of speech bubbles in like mysterious glyphs and sigils. You can read

Armenian. I can't, I certainly can't read Georgian. It's like trying to fucking read the symbols on the stargay. It's like, what if Charlie Brown was talking about the Voynich manuscript. Like, it's just, oh my God. The Georgian opens up their coat and it's a symbio coming out like

puyunk. Fuck's sake. They're actually a Russian operative. It's like a relief we solved this problem. Okay. The Georgians are the Kardashians and the Armenians are the Ferengi, all right? As an aside, and while I'm noting

that he's not the main topic of today's episodes and a lot of guys are mentioned, Lello's associate John Sanderson is an interesting character whose life story contains quite a bit of the dynamics at play for English merchants in Istanbul at the time. Namely, while working in the Levant company, he found himself constantly losing his temper with his apprentice, who was also a kind of wealthy Nepo baby fail son.

He also had an insane temper. He was constantly getting into brawls. And at one point, he tried to fight a group of Polish Catholics while he was making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Like I said, nothing has been more English guy than these dudes. Like, that's the thing is, so this can be,

because we're talking about Lello in the Snowball fight in 1600. It's a lot of backstory. And there's quite a few guys where I would love to digress even further. But I had to keep these details saying, because I'm just like, wait what? How many polls does it take to beat up a single Englishman? Like, one of the anecdotes is him pulling a gun on a priest in Jerusalem. Like, it's just so, there's just so much.

Now we know where Tony Blair got his political rhetoric in like 2001. He was studying the esoteric text of, we need to be racist against the Polish. Yeah, exactly. The Polish disrespected me in Jerusalem because I'm a Protestant. So, you know what? Like, we're going to expand the EU so we can bring them here and be really rude to them. So in terms of the business of being ambassador, Lello was busy haplessly winding up the French, alongside dealing with Barton's debts to various Ottoman magnates.

When he could find the time, he would also write to Cecil, complaining that he hadn't officially been recognized as the ambassador yet. The two big issues with the French came down to diplomatic precedence, i.e. which of them was considered the more important ambassador from the more important nation with a more powerful monarch, and which country had the right to represent and collect consulage fees from the Dutch and Flemish merchants. In fairness to Lello, the French ambassador, Francois Savarita Breve, was almost certainly taking advantage of his inexperience and shaky standing to push back hard on all these issues. Breve had previously been frenemies with Edward Barton, since the two

had plotted together to depose Breve's cousin from the previous French ambassadorship. Lello, being the strict Protestant he was, managed to make things much more fraught by demanding a church for Protestant worship in Perra, the embassy district where most of the local inhabitants were Greek. Not only did this upset the French even more, but it also alarmed the Venetians, not at all cool with the idea of Greeks being encouraged along to a new Protestant church when they've been trying to encourage them along the Catholic one. They even went so far as to describe Lello's plans as chimerical, which that feels like that's 17th century sneakness because like to me, I was like, I was expecting something a little bit. You know, that's like

the hardest bar you can drop in 1599. So I guess this man is like, but also the idea of like, this is basically the religious equivalent of like showing up to a place as a guest, sort of like trying to like smooth things over and then immediately demanding that they serve a full English. The, the Venetian showing up, showing their anger by throwing the most gilded lion statue through your window. It's like, hey, listen, the Venetians have long been trading in this region and they've got like this incredibly baroque, you know, regimented, developed system of manners and decorum and you show up and you're like, Uno Biro, conchippies, por favor. Like, I mean, in fairness, that's kind of us ordering Monster Energy drinks in the fucked up

sandwiches at the kiosk, but I do kind of speak a little Italian. Getting jumped on by six dudes in those little funny hats. And you don't want to piss the Greeks off, you know, because they're going to throw their version of a Molotov cocktail, which is just the flaming cheese plate. No, it's not it's the olive oil cocktail. I feel

like having just spent some time into Greek speaking country, to me, it's sort of like, no, like every single chemical that's used to make this incendiary device that will 100% kill you is derived from pomegranate somehow. It's like dried pomegranates, hulled pomegranates, pomegranates, seeds, pomegranate syrup, pomegranate rope where you've dried pomegranate like rind

to weave it together like twine and then it's like and then you throw it and it's basically like a nine-banger flash bang. Like it's, I don't get it man. They have, they have, they're like you know, we don't waste any part of the deer like they don't waste any part of the fucking pomegranate. The most artisanal way to be set on fire. Oh, it's got the antioxidants.

Things managed to get even weirder when Lello's gifts arrived. The primary gift was a self-playing organ and clock built by a certain Lancastrian called Thomas Dallum. Dallum was still young at the time, 24, going by his baptismal record, but he would become a master organ builder with Norwich, Worcester, Wells, Wakefield, Durham, and Bristol Cathedral's all on his CV, alongside such bastions of power and prestige as Windsor Castle, Hollywood Palace, Eden College, Cambridge, St. John's College, Oxford. By all the final accounts,

his gift for Memment the Third was an absolute work of genius, but unfortunately on arrival after shipping, it came in pieces, several of which had been damaged. Lella was in a flap about how much of a terrible gift it was going to be not worth two pounds. And his friend and business associate William Aldrich, bet Dallum, the astronomical sum of 15 pounds that it was not fixable. Once Lello had set up a shed big enough to house the repairs, he soon changed his tune. The present, I mean the instrument, although at first here thought to be of small esteem, yet now brings set up in my house the opinion of such as I've seen it, though the Sultan will highly esteem the same. This is written in Middle English, and I'm trying my best.

It is the most, it is the full on like, thou hast place to pox upon thy. ass and balls like level of flu like using the ampersand randomly capitalizing it's that kind of english like i'm struggling because i want it to be coherent when i read from the script and also like i'm just ha ha ha pervert looking through the window because i love i fucking love when english is written this way it's just it's just my thing sorry also a self-playing organ is just i'm like this man basically invented a synthesizer this man created fucking you like gunpowder steam bug synthesizer. I have gifted the sultan one month free to Spotify. Just loads of viziers walking in a June 06 into the palace. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say

exactly. I was just like, it's like, yeah, it only, it only took one half as many repairs to get a Yama CS80 working again. It's incredible. Mehmed the 3 did in fact love Dallam's organ, wanting to see everything it could do and practically sitting on Dallam's lap to watch him play it. Not bad for the son of an itinerant blacksmith for Lancashire. In fact, palace staff were desperate to keep him, as if he, Dallam, were part of the gift. He had to invent imaginary wife and children back home to make his polite excuses to leave. He even claimed that palace servant allowed him to peek through a fence at the Sultan's harem and a ploy to try to convince him to stay, which is in truth not particularly likely.

Meanwhile, someone had to take on the duty of delivering the gift that Elizabeth had sent to Mehmet's mother, Sophia Sultan, also in the harem. She wasn't supposed to meet men from the outside world, but somehow she took a particular shine to Lella's associate Paul Pinder, demanding that he should come and meet her so she could pass on her thanks and some return gifts for Elizabeth. Perhaps fortunately for Pinder, Safia's thirsting was unsuccessful in the meeting did not take place. All this meant that the focus was very much drawn away from Lelo on his big day. Apparently, he was made to wait a long time before his audience with the Sultan could begin, and when it did, he was so nervous that his English colleagues described him as

standing, quote, like a modest midwife and beginning a trembling speech in English, sounding like the squeaking of a goose divided into semi-quavers, unquote. I love what I get, when I get really nervous, I just start honking at people like a Goose. I mean, the thing about it is, though, is that we already have a precedent deep within the show's lore for what this voice would sound like. Hello, Your Majesty, the Salton, I'm here on behalf of the Crown of England. I have a wonderful song prepared for you to play on this new piano. It's called Golden Brown. Some people take it's in 4-4, but it's actually in 7-4. My Lancasterian Twink has invented a synthesizer. He's going to play you a song we've called I Feel Love.

Perhaps it was his frayed nerves that led to the episode being topped off by Lelo, accidentally dropping a bomb in his audience with the acting Grand Vizier, Haleo Pasha. According to Haleo's later tittle-tattle to Bredve, Lello had told him the French king had turned from the good religion and was now an idolater, and that this being the case, no reliance could be placed upon the amity of France, but only upon his mistress, who was most constant and sincere. Which is interesting to me because it's like, okay, the French king had turned from the good religion, but this would imply what

he can't be like oh he's secretly a Muslim because you're in a Muslim court and you can't be like oh he's secretly Protestant because it's like you were Protestant you're like the Protestants there

it's because people don't recognize the Charlemagne Caliphate sort of like yeah the King of France actually thinks that this dude

dug up some golden plates asterix and obelets their entire overarching arch was them actually going on Haj yeah exactly Charlemaine join the Morish

science temple you see yeah, the druid said the shahada. Now, they're so powerful. Asterix and Oblix is just like, in the last panel from the comics, just at the Carver. Jesus.

All of a sudden, you can't show Astros and Oblix's faces anymore. Because it would be idolatry. Spitting this level of brimstone and exposing Christian theological spats in front of an Ottoman Grand Vizier was generally seen as not fucking cool. And Debrev refused his invitation

to Lelo's celebratory feast, as well as going taddling to the Venetians. Pindor went over to try to smooth things over with Girolamo Capello, the Venetian ambassador, and to make sure that he at least brought his entourage to the party, confirming the Venetian suspicions that Pindar was most acute and who really governs the ambassador, a man more practical than speculative. Capello made sure to note that he would remind Debrev that, ironically, the English and the French crowns were currently on very friendly terms. This was all in October of 1599, and things limped

along into January 1600, with the French throwing in more complaints of English piracy in the Mediterranean just to spice matters up further. Things were still frosty at best between the English and French embassies, and it was snowing outside. Various members of the English embassy household had gone out to throw snowballs with their Greek staff and neighbors. At some point, the French ambassador's master of house came passing by. Unfortunately, for everyone involved, someone hit him with a snowball. The sources do not recall whether he took the blow directly in the kisser or the snow deflected off his cloak, but either way, this was taken as a grievous and calculated insult to the honor of the French embassy and nation. The master of house stormed

back to the French embassy, and from there, in the already febrile atmosphere between the two embassies. All hell broke loose. Sort of like in Dark Souls, you can actually hit the turtle with a sword enough times to kill it, but you shouldn't do it. You shouldn't throw the snowball at the French ambassador. He hates that. Pull up with the Lello, let that shit bellow. Hit you

with a snowball, that shit piss yellow. Shut the fuck off. God damn it. French ambassador flies how I guess his and so he's like, he's like, I got enough ice on me already, motherfucker. You know what? step off you both fucking get snow on my cloak

yeah you can't be mad at someone if they throw a snowball at you and you're wearing a cloak that is effectively a Kevlar vest for a snowball yeah exactly it's like you switch to that cloak like fucking like aloo card and cut the snowball on half and be like my jewelry's so loud homie I can't even hear you he swirls around

real fast like he's uh with his cloak like his tuxedo mask and just vanishes I mean yeah exactly like that's the thing is that so many people were probably dumb asses and like awkward and not graceful in cloaks. And in our mind, we have this image

if you were a cloak, you've got to be a badass. It's like, what if the cloak was actually like the fedora of the 17th century? Oh, like that fucking loser,

red flag wearing a cloak at his stand ball. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. Look at him out here, cloak maxing. Yeah, get a new meme,

get a new illuminated manuscript meme. Get a new self-playing organ. Smelling like your local magic the gathering champion. Yeah, but you imagine.

I've already depicted you as the cloaked loser and myself as the uncloaked Chad. I've already drawn you. You actually don't have a face, but it's not because of Islam. It's because like showing your face would actually be an affront to God because you're so fucked up looking. Have you ever been

so ugly? It's a sin. A friend of mine one time. Oh my God. He was getting death threats for this. He had a tweet go viral because he just said like my five year old son asked me, Baba, why does Ian Miles Chong look like that? There's something wrong with him. And I said, no, son. It's just the wrath of a law.

There is not really any other way to describe what took place other than the French rounded up some big lads got tooled up and went on a rampage. Maybe they got offended because the people throwing them were secretly whispering the shahada into the snowballs before they threw them with a snowball that turns you Muslim.

I mean, that's not that far off from the rock concert that turns you Muslim in Sipzig so you know what? New DLC, all right? Ottoman Empire DLC. The French breaking into their arms room into a crate labeled Ablog objects. Like, it's time.

I mean, I will say this when you play Age of Empires 4 when you play as the Byzantines. It's so fucking, everything about them is so fucking weird, like mysterious. You're like, okay, guys, you might just go to the whole hog and be like, they were the kingdom of zeal from Krona Trigger on the floating island from 10,000 years ago. Like, you can't demystify the Byzantines to be, okay?

Everything about it is like weird cryptograms and words that read like fucking high fantasy. Like, it's just, yeah, I'm just saying. Our frog nights will blot out the sun. What is Ursula Le Guin? Some French sailors had recently docked in Istanbul, and someone was sent down from the embassy to let them know that the English needed sorting out. They took their, quote, daggers, staves,

and swords, unquote, and set themselves up all around Paris back streets to wait an ambush for any passing English person they could get their hands on. It turned into quite the ass-wipping for many an entirely innocent English merchant, including us. Lello tried to get the word out for people to avoid the area. By being advised, sent presently to command them that they should not meddle with the French, but rather come some other way because I knew they had not weapons, but before the advice, three were sent as far as the place for the French had waited for them, who issued out and hurt them all one after another, being six and eight upon a man. Ever as they came to by two and three, Englishmen in a company, the French wounded them to the number

of six, and that most cowardly cutting and slashing of their legs and arms after they were down with seven or eight wounds, whereby very dangerous, whereby I think two will be maimed forever. It is in a pretty staggering escalation from a snowball fight. The French embassy egged a group of angry and possibly drunk sailors onto a brutal attack on any Englishman that moved. Capelo's own account of the event is quite blunt. Quote, yesterday evening as a result of snowballing, a violent quarrel wait, stop. Yesterday evening as a result of

snowballing, it's just something about that turn of phrase, just like, no, no, no, no. Stop dead in your fucking tracks, dude. It should be going wild in those ottoman clubs. As a result of snowballing, it's happened again. A violent quarrel arose between the households of the French and English ambassadors. Several were badly wounded on either

side. Had night not fallen, worse would have happened. For the ambassadors themselves, began to take parts. There are differences between them, and also no good understanding on account of past events relating to the question of jurisdiction and other issues, as I, Capello, have on various occasions informed your serenity. Each attributed to the other the origin and beginning of the quarrel. The moment we heard of the occurrence, we instantly endeavored to calm their passions. Both of them readily listened to our representations, and this morning, I, Capello, visited both, and succeeded in soothing their ruffled tempers. Accordingly, this evening, the illustrious Senor Francesco

Gredinigo, son of the ambassador, went to renew in his father's name the representations I had already made. He fulfilled his mission with great prudence and deserves the highest praise. But the ambassadors agreed to send each of them three gentlemen of their suite to my house, who, in their master's names, solemnly declared that they had no part in this affair, and were extremely annoyed at what had happened. Further, that they left us to examine and discover the prime mover in this quarrel, and each of them promised that when the truth was revealed, they would severely punish the author whoever he might be. In the meantime, the ambassadors were reconciled in the presence of the illustrious signor Francesco, promising moreover to forget the injuries received

and to maintain between themselves that same good friendship would exist between their respective sovereigns. This reconciliation has given satisfaction to everyone and to us as well in view of the evil consequences which might have followed. Pause for a minute there because what's wild to me is two things. Number one, like, you'd like to think that people who are specifically there like, hey, this is a bit of a delicate balance. We all want influence here. Like we're representing our nations. Like might be be a little more circumspect versus like, that motherfucker got frozen water on me. You know what I meaning like, now I have to stick, now I have to like literally stab multiple countrymen.

So I, Capello, invited three men over to my house for the most vigorous snowballing. Also, that was the second point I was going to make is that it's really interesting to me because I've heard of this before that this is, you know, basically translated from a historical archive document of the report given by the Venetian ambassador of the kind of like strange, circuitous, roundabout, like indirect way of communicating in the way that they address. And, like, if you read that, like, that's a, that's such a strange way of writing. And it's obviously, it's historical. But, like, it's, you know, been translated from circa 1600 Italian.

It's, it's odd. I presume it was Italian. I actually quite honestly don't know. Like, one of the things talking with Joel has made that has blown my mind so often it's to be like, oh, yeah, as the Venetians, they were all speaking Greek or something like that. It'll be, you'll often find this kind of, you know, not always, but it does take place. But to me, it's like, that's, what an art in saying fucking nothing? You know what I mean?

Like, and it's just interesting to me, it's like, wait, so you guys basically caused a diplomatic incident and basically nearly killed, if not, you know, permanently wounded people because you're like, bitch what? You want to throw a snowball at me? Cloak Max, you see how fly I am? You see how dope? Like, it's basically if the little German kids

giving the interview, a bitch, if you feel off ex-Froidhaustu had like really pissed someone off and he killed them. I love the idea of a professional diplomat having to sit down in this other collection of diplomats to come to a informal peace treaty because multiple people are maimed for life because of a dude through a snowball at a man's cloak. Yeah, 100%, right?

It's like, once again, it's like, I am now slightly damper than I was going to be. It's like, we need to do a fucking pogrom immediately. We have anti-English action due to this one very small spot on my third outer layer being wet. Exactly. You know what? I have these linen trousers my mom made for me 30 years ago

and any additional dampness beyond the norm might make them fray forever. I might have to reach the stage in life where you were officially in middle age and you graduate to wearing a barrel. It's just, you know, don't do it to me. If you're wearing a barrel, a snowball can't hurt you. That is true.

Unless a snowball gets down the barrel, it can land directly on your dick and balls. And it's just really fucking cold for a while. That's truly snowballing. Yeah, exactly. Maybe that's what he brought the guys over for. All three, six of you, three from each house, getting your barrels, prepared to have your chunk frozen

by these like, excuse me, like the fucking cocktail bar, like solid sphere of ice, whiskey ice. where they drop that down the barrel. You don't like it very much, do you? Yeah, but nay, what you're proposing is dropping the cube into the barrel supposes that then there is a bottom on the barrel with two leg holes cut out and the cube wouldn't fall straight down. That is true.

Maybe there's like some kind of cloth object to stop air from going up into the barrel. This is a winter barrel we're talking about. But it does at least imply, but depending on how the person is dropping it, that the large block of ice does like a ski jump luge all the way down your dick and balls and probably going to be uncomfortable, you know? It's sort of like being like, like licked up and down by an ice esper. I mean, all this talk of barrels just makes me think about like how like Donkey Kong was a real sartorial renegade.

That's why he was throwing the barrels and just wearing a tie. Yeah, Donkeycock would have fucked all of these people up. You know, you know, before we started recording, I made the comment about like, you know, watching movies that have been censored because of like Qatar Airways or randomly airlingus or whatever were like the Elton John biopic, they basically. took out every reference to him actually being gay. And so you would think that he would just be like, you know, that he was just mad at guys a lot in his life.

And there's no explanation why. And you just come out of here about the talk about Donkey Kong is like a fucking like, like trendsetter and sartorial excellence. Like, I'm sorry, man. You cannot make fun of me for saying I'm familiar with Elton John's life story. And then say that shit. You cannot. Unfortunately, when you play Donkey Kong on Air Lingus or guitar ways,

the barrels are censored. Yeah. Which kind of that implies that Donkey Kong is just hanging dog everywhere. That even rhymes a little. Lelo took the matter straight to Capello as a neutral arbiter. Unfortunately, Debrev had already gone crying to Halil Pasha, playing the victim, claiming that his embassy had been attacked and Frenchmen had been killed. Given that none of the Venetian records mentioned this taking place at all, it seems likely

that Lello's account was the more truthful, and Debrev came up with the most dramatic lie possible in order to justify the sailor's behavior. Halil believed DeBrev, though, refusing to process any ordinary bureaucratic business on behalf of English merchants and openly referring to Lello as a lunatic. Lello was then forced to call in some Ottoman favors of his own. From his one remaining big-hitting government ally, the Italian-born renegade, Cholazadei Sanan Pasha. He managed to have a quiet word with his colleague, Khalil, about the unseemliness of taking sides and squabbles between Christian embassies, and the matter was dropped on the Ottoman side. This allowed the Venetians to do their mediation with Lello's cooperation.

A big part of it for them was managing the embarrassment of what Lello called, quote, an occasion to make the Turks laugh at Christians, unquote. one of the really remarkable things about after such a dramatic and violent flare-up of tensions, all parties kind of just forgot about it. It wasn't mentioned again at all. There's no precedent for this. It never happens again in history. Imagine how the guy who got stabbed over a snowball feels about that, like walking with a limp or whatever for the rest of his life.

I mean, they just say like permanently wounded or maimed. So maybe you get like a hand hacked off with a sword or something. Like, no, we're friends now. You know, in like samurai movies where it's kind of like perfectly like slightly unsheathing the sword. and then like in the blink like he's just like struck and this dude's barrel is just cut in hand

once again it's like I love the idea of the sort of diplomatic backshel to be like you know my liege it's kind of unseemly for you to put two Christians in a barrel

and shake it and make them fight like their bees well that's why like if you know just like a bee if you get a Christian really cold

they go to sleep and you can tie a rope around them and they'll unthaw and then you just got a guy on a rope you never heard about that with bees

Am I the only person heard about that? I heard about that. Yeah, I guess I thought it was going to be something more fucked up like, oh, you tie a rope around them and they explode or something. I don't know. No, you can go bee flying. I remember my brother tried to do this one time. He caught a bee, put it in the frit.

Like, this is a really fucked up thing to do, of course. But, you know, when you're eight, things really don't. Yeah. Registered like that. He tied a string around it, put on the counter for thaw out, and then forgot about it. So then there was just a really pissed off bee with a string around it, flying at our house and sticking him. I, I mean,

I was going to say to you that like growing up the way that we grew up. It's like, yeah, it's fucked up. But then it's like, you know, on an average day growing up in the Midwest, like your neighbor's dog or your neighbor's child just get hit by car and die. And so like being slightly mean to a B doesn't really register as like, like, you know, sort of ethical dilemma. Also, just as a side now, since we have been Ottoman maxing for the past a couple of weeks, I just find it so fascinating how you'll have like Turkish nationalists online, like,

post things like, oh, we need to return to the glory of the Ottoman Empire when like half the dudes with the title of Pasha where the real name is like Hans Gruber Yeah, there's so much of this that like the guy I have to pull up my notes really fast

but Joel actually told me that the guy that Lello actually reached out to Cholazade Sanan Pasha was an Italian who converted to Islam who became basically who became an Ottoman

effectively. Taylor's old as time it was like the siege of Kars where every Ottoman officer was like Hungarian. Yeah, I mean and it's interesting too because yeah

Yeah, he said that his original Italian name was, I think it's Chalas, how you'd pronounce it. But like, yeah, he just became Turkish. I mean, like, this is, this is, I think on one hand, it makes sense in that, like, when you think about the proselyization of Islam and also the way the Ottoman Empire worked is kind of like co-opting and integrating to some extent, different communities that had taken over. Like, there wasn't your experience may vary on that one. Well, yeah, but you know what I mean, though, like, what they were talking about with, you know, making Bulgaria, Ottoman, making the, Balkans, Ottoman, making any of the Middle East Ottoman, is that, like, there was a degree to which you had a social advantage by, obviously, this is different in places where Islam was already the dominant religion, but you had a social advantage by converting. And if you were of a different religion converting, you then, you know, were able, like, like, it wasn't considered like a, you know, like a last ditch thing from what I can tell. I mean, I'm not as well versed as you are, Joe. But to me, it's like people, if they wanted to rise within the system of power that existed,

you had to adopt an Ottoman name. You had to become Muslim, you know? And, and this is before the onset of, like the concepts of like Turkish nationalism or anything like that. Like that's not coming for a couple hundred years. And this is closer to the peak I think and also the fact that like you know the really serious decline and kind of like internal degradation took place in the Ottoman Empire like later on like closer

to the advent of of 19th to 20th century nationalism. And this is why in order to become the biggest podcaster in Turkey I'm going to convert to Islam and change my name to Mutamud Pasha. I once made a joke because when my when my partner was really, really sick that like

all of my my Muslim friends came through helped me out big time like when I was watching my daughter solo and and I was like they kept joking like yeah clearly you know what this is just leading you to the light of Islam and I was like well no I'm not really interested in being religious but like if there was a way to convert to being Kurdish I think I would at this point so you know it's funny though because you mentioned Turkish nationalist nowadays and this there's actually like a link here that um when we kind of bring it forward because there's a very similar kind of echo that in in events in Istanbul like relatively recently and we're going to get to this in a second so we'll continue in isolation and this is a pretty funny and interesting story in and of itself. You have Lelo, who is kind of a stuffy Nepo baby, probably not cut out for the really quite bizarre world he's been thrust into, and there's almost a sitcom level of chaos happening around him between a cast of larger-than-life characters. He ends up making things worse by being the straight man and trying to behave in a way that he thinks is just normal. He's like the Frank Grimes of the early

angle Ottoman relations. And many of his colleagues rip him mercilessly for it, calling him fog or foggy behind his back, saying that he stands like a midwife and stutters like a soprano goose. But even with how entertaining this is all by itself, it's also worth asking the genuine, genuine historical question of why that snowball fight descended into such brutal violence. Despite all the backstory of rivalry and tactlessness, it's still more than a little bit crazy that a Frenchman got hit by a snowball, so some sailors went on an anti-English violent rampage. The key to this might actually lie almost 415 years later in Istanbul of 2015, where there's another case of an innocent, misdirected snowball descending into senselessly violent reprisals. In the liberal and cosmopolitan district of Katakoui, before 10 years of increasing gentrification, there was a neighborhood called Russ and Pasha that still had a kind of rough around the edges but the happening feel to it. It was a kind of place where new pop-up bars and cafes provided

for local hipsters and Erasmus students, but there were still family-run corner shops, Kurdish Pida salons, Jordanian falafel houses, and students and hipsters lived alongside alongside young families. It proudly still had a synagogue in a couple of Armenian churches, even if they were now almost entirely unfrequented. Nowadays, the churches in the synagogue and the bars and cafes are still there, but all the small minority run businesses, backgammon and cards halls that catered to old men and neighborhood-oriented shops have been replaced by identicate booji coffee shops. Before the coffee shops terraform the place, one of the premises they now occupy was a large abandoned space, was taken over between 2014 and 2015 by a group called

Yaldiarmine Solidarity, which basically turned this empty commercial unit into a meeting place slash studio slash squat for a colorful range of local radicals, artists, dreamers, and activists. One such activist was New Ku Klux, an experienced journalist by trade. On 17 February 2015, he intended a peaceful, jovial demonstration over the AKP's latest bout of anti-democracy and anti-protest laws, organized by Yaldi Yerminna Solidarity and Forza Yaldi Yermina. They left the protest in a good mood, and a group of friends began to walk back towards the solidarity building in high spirits as snow fell. As they neared their destination, they began throwing snowballs at each other in the street.

One then hit the window of a spice shop run by a man named Sir Khan Azizolu, a religious and social conservative, who had harassed members of the group, particularly women before. His measured response was to come out bellowing and making threats, swearing and threatening the women present in particular. He soon went and fetched his baseball bat and launched himself at the dumbfounded group, tried to wrestle the weapon away from him and calm him down. As a group prepared to leave, he then went into the shop and grabbed a bread knife, attacking the friends yet again. After two people dodged his slashes, a third was cornered. Nukukhlu rushed to his friend's

rescue, managing to strike Azizolu from behind, but slipping in the snow in the process, Azizolu then stabbed Nuh in the heart, murdering over a stray snowball. The murder was of course convicted, despite his initial gloating at the scene that he would get away with it and later claims of self-defense. The details that came out of the investigation and trial were grimly unpredictable. He was a conservative, who was constantly watching the Turkish equivalent jocks on TV. He was mentally unstable. He had run into the group before, feeling like his area was being taken over by these radicals who threatened the traditional way of life, in a country where opposition was increasingly being framed by the government as an assault on the nation. As a regard to our

understanding of history, there's a useful byproduct of modern social sciences analyses of events like these. A significant amount of psychological and anthropological research has gone into trying to understand the motivating factors of people like Azizolu, who leaped suddenly committing acts of political violence after seemingly innocuous triggers. While much of it has looked at how political and religious radicalism affects people's sense of identity, there's another arena where this phenomenon has been researched extensively to football hooliganism. Two of the key concepts that have come out of this research are identity fusion and devoted actors. In a nutshell, identity fusion is when someone feels so strongly aligned to a cause or a team that the collective they identify with becomes an

extension of their personal identity. This means that when they perceive a threat to the group, they act as if it's a personal threat to them too. We can easily imagine here guys with soccer tattoos on their bald heads who would feel an overwhelming sense of rage just watching their team lose on TV. Likewise, we can think about people so strongly aligned with political or religious causes that the cause becomes an extension of their personality, and opponents begin to seem like personal enemies to them. We can easily apply this to the band of brothers kind of extended, personalized loyalty that develops between youths of the military, or say sailors reliant on each other for survival of their ship in the 16th century Mediterranean. The other concept, devoted actors, basically applies to those people experiencing identity fusion who are such true believers, so motivated by the group identity and particularly any perceived threat towards it, that they're willing to take extreme actions at mortal personal risk in order. to defend it. Defend being, well, their concept, not necessarily objective. They're the kinds of people who go beyond just being angry and hateful or saying hurtful words on the internet and are so

fused and devoted to their extended group identity that they are effectively willing to kill for it. Again, it's easy to imagine hardcore sports fans battering the fuck out of each other or political and religious extremists going on murderous rampages or blowing themselves up. Where this again can also be applied as the case of military or pseudo-military groups, such as our rowdy French sailors losing discipline and committing acts of mass violence against civilians or other innocent parties just because they are associated with hate figures who carry a perceived threat to the group. History is not psychology or anthropology. It's not a social science. And it certainly isn't an experimental science. But thinking about what these sciences have to say in the case of startlingly

comparable contemporary events to the Snowball episode helps make sense of the characters this historical tale might have been feeling. And the kinds of leaps their minds and emotions will have been making in order to drive them what seems like a completely disproportionate act of violence in revenge for a harmless snowball. When you throw together Lelo's tactlessness and misguided interference in matters of religion and the real threat of English and and other piracy that these sailors would face on a day-to-day basis while at sea, you can see why they might hold a hostile view of the English. Add in an equally furious French ambassador keen to highlight Lello's grievous insults about their king in person and the king's proxy, you can

begin to see how they would construct the English in Istanbul, being an insult and threat to their sense of Frenchness. Throw in the massive religious upheaval of the time that had been ongoing in England and France, with them ending up on opposite sides of the Reformation divide, after lots of bloody struggle in both countries, plus the band of brothers' group mentality of men reliant on each other's loyalty for their survival in a dangerous theater, it becomes very easy to see how some of the group could end up in a place of wanting to put their safety on the line in order to get back of those English bastards. And from there, a mob mentality could take hold. So the Frenchman who went on a mass-armed revenge mission for a single snowball weren't football hooligans

or necessarily religious or political extremists. But the lesson we can learn from looking at why those people behave in the ways they do can certainly help us to understand why these sailors went hell for leather in attacking the English Levant Company merchants in January 1600. one blunder and they let it pulse much like singing Frank Sinatra's My Way

in karaoke in the Philippines you can never throw snowball in Istanbul if you do it you better do it for hey you know it's like we were talking

about all of like the hardest fuck lines from apocalypse now never throw a snowball absolutely goddamn right unless you're going all the way I mean

I don't know like I said I this was really interesting to me because like it kind of stepped out a little bit of the way that we have covered

history in the past. And obviously, I'm very grateful to Joel for his help on this. And what I thought about it was interesting here is that, like, we talk so often on this show about these kinds of outpourings of violence, whether it's like, you know, sort of organized regimental military units, the precursors to those or like social upheaval in which these events take place. To me, I guess I thought, on one hand, I like to make jokes and joke about, you know, the barrels and draw the ice lute down your dick and balls of the perfectly formed sphere. But there's a thought process that goes into it here that I do find interesting, which is like, why on earth would, would this matter?

Is it just like, the violence was just kind of more commonplace to the point where like someone says, hey, grab shit, we're going to go beat some ass. Because that's not that far off from what I grew up with. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it makes all of a sense to me when you have, you know, a military, pseudo-military unit like a group of, I mean, these could have been, you know, French Royal Navy sailors. They could have been X, Y company sailors, whatever.

I mean, they are military slash pseudo-military unit. And I'm willing to bet as someone who has not necessarily beaten up a motherfucker for throwing... Actually, I have beaten up a motherfucker for throwing a snowball. But it's because they froze it first. But that's a different subject all together. But, you know, it's one of those situations that by the time you get dudes with like shivs in the street, none of them have any idea why or what started the event. You know, like it's like a game of telephone that eventually leads to violence.

It doesn't say like, hey, fucking Chuck from Unc River through a snowball at a guy, it's, you know, they assaulted a Frenchman or, you know, they outraged a Frenchman's honor or whatever, or maybe they even hit someone. And by the time, by the time it gets to guy getting stabbed in the street, the story has spiraled so wildly out of control that they, you know, in their mind, they're defending something worth defending. I'm willing to bet if they knew dude got a snowball thrown at them. They wouldn't have given a fuck. Oh, I'm going to experience this in real time tomorrow night because I'm going to the Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv match. I mean, that's a perfect example of like how that can happen where like, you know, a couple months ago, this episode's coming out in November, but a couple months ago here in the

Netherlands in Amsterdam, we had a massive, you know, it's correct to call it a riot. It didn't start that way, though. when McAvey-Televee fans came to Amsterdam for a game against Aax. A-X famously has quite a rowdy hooligan group. So do other football clubs in Amsterdam. And the McAvey-Tele-Telebe group came to, and mind you, these are ultras, you know, they are hooligans. Yeah. Famously, one of the most racist club in a very racist country came to Amsterdam and started saying all sorts of fucking outrageous shit.

Yeah. And people are like, well, you know, they got their ass kicked by football hooligans. which is partially true. But that's not exactly what happened. They managed to piss off the entire fucking city to the point that the various parts of Amsterdam society started fighting them. It had nothing to do with football.

And then, you know, it gets spun up into this idea it was a hate crime targeted at Israelis or, you know, obviously the Israeli government wants to say Jews. When that is not the case, it was just a bunch of dickheads getting their teeth kicked in. Right, because the story was like a bunch of drunk dickheads looking for a fight going around and harassing anyone who wasn't white, anyone with a Palestinian flag, any woman in hijab. And then it's like, oh, oh, it's like, it's like

Kristallnach too. Oh, God. Oh, it's like, it's like every one of these soccer hooligans with like, I love doing racism on their, on their chest. It's basically Anne Frank. It's like, man, shut the fuck up. Yeah. So it gets lost in the middle of like, oh, it was hooligans fighting each other, which like is not necessarily what happened. It's part of what happened. But you don't get, you don't like, you don't get fucking press ganged into being a hooligan by just existing in the way of a bunch of races dudes coming down the road. It's like, you know, like, if I get my, if I get run over by a car, it's not a head-on collision in traffic. You know what I mean? Like, it's a car hitting me the person. I don't get like anamorphed into a car. And it's like similarly. I think that might be more

of a transformer situation. No, in this car, the car is a mammal. It's anthropomorphic. It's got blood. It feels pain. It hurts a lot. So you're saying football humanism exists in the car's universe. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. 9-11 took place in the car's universe, which kind of implies that, That must have been really strange for the first World Trade Center attack because it was a truck bomb. So, like, that truck was alive also. No, but no, but if 9-11 happened in the Cars universe, there is also a supplementary film in that universe called Planes. So that means the plane itself was a jihadist. That's why they didn't need to learn how to land because the plane was flying itself. What if there were two Dale Earnhardt's

in parallel and that was 9-11 in the Cars universe? Muhammad Adda spray painting a big number three on the side of a plane Muhammad Adda spray painting the size his turn right instead of left No, Dale Earnhardt like dying in the cars universe is like how people reacted with Michael Jackson though That makes a really really fucked up impression

When you think about what Princess Diana dying was like in the cars universe Oh Nate I have to say I would like to extend a big thank you to Nate. And I don't want to call a research assistant because it's unfair to a man that's a PhD in history. But

our researcher friend for writing this episode and the last one that you led, because I took some time off for some unfortunate leave due to a death in my family. And I really like being able to come back and talk about quite possibly the weirdest shit ever. I mean, what

I'd like to say is that I obviously am very grateful for the attention and discipline with which Joel approached this subject and I don't know how he as a person born and raised in England is going to react when he hears this episode and we hypothesize Princess Diana's death in the car's universe. However, I felt like that I actually came away from this edified because like, well, I mean, thankfully, I someone did the research, much like you when you do an episode and I'm like, well, I learned something from what Joe research,

but this is a completely different approach that I really liked. Does that mean, sorry, Nate, that the journalist that were chasing Diana were like the Google Street View cars? Well, no, they were like evil motorcycles. They were like, I mean, in a way, it starts to become like, I don't know if this is going to have any resonance with you because it's such an old reference American, but it's sort of like, I mean, like, what if, you know, you got like, like, like the black magic version of the brave little toaster and those cars were chasing Diana. So they're sort of like, like, like ring wraith, anthropomorphic cars and versus Diana's like, but that also implies that she's like piggybacking on another car who's drunk. Like, I don't know how to work. Was she like on

a tow truck, like a drunk tow truck trying to whip ass through Paris in a tunnel? Who can say? I don't know. I really don't know. Being ran down by the French press version. of Nasgoul Oh my goodness I need to get the exclusive for my magazine Le Pedophile Racy's Hey they've changed their name

Now they're just La Russ East Okay They have they have aged With the times So all I can say With that And if you don't have

Any other reactions Is what we've talked about so far is The end And So we do a thing On the show called Questions from

The Legion Parentheses Cars for If you like to ask us the questions From the Legion You can ask us First you have to support

showed Patreon that's mandatory for all people universal basic Patreon I'm Joe Karsabian and you will have access to our Discord and obviously the Patreon and you can ask us a question on our Discord which we have a dedicated channel to

or on our Patreon and messages which admittedly Discord is better Patreon as a messaging platform is terrible but today's question is none of you live in the country where you were born what is a tell that you're not from there. Mine is pretty easy other than the obvious of

like I don't have blonde hair is people who live in Europe have a tendency if they wear like an American anything to do with American sports. It's like a Yankees hat or an LA Dodgers hat because those are the two American cities that exist in the European mind. I

obviously only wear Detroit stuff and nobody's wearing that shit unless you're from there. It's a pretty big tell that I'm wearing like the Detroit Tiger's hat or Red Wings hat or whatever It's like, oh, no, you have to be from there. Joe, starting the first ever branch of the Denhock-Puyruz. And they're just, their symbol is going to be the Detroit house.

I guess for me, it's like I've, I've definitely adopted perhaps, if not like, specifically Swiss-French way of dressing than sort of like the general pan Europe goes to H&M because it's cheap way of dressing. I think for me, it's obviously like, well, I think when I go to the grocery store, I feel as though I still shop like an American and like just lose my. place and stand in the aisle and block the fuck out of everybody. And it's, it's always crowded. And it's like, I live above a big grocery store, but like any time of day, it's going

to be crowded. I have to remind myself to, like, you know, sort of find a, find a non-trafficed area to stand. And if I need to just like, you know, zone out and think about what I want to cook for dinner. I also think that there are something, this is really funny. I still react really by surprise living in a society where, like, they, there isn't really as much like hardcore, we suspect everyone of shoplifting and we're going to kill you.

Like, there are times when I realize, like, I'm really confused. think I'm doing something wrong. Like, I had to buy this stamp for my business. It's a stupid thing for tax. They love stamps with your name on it here for business documents. And I bought one from this. And I said, can I just pay with a QR code bill? And they're like, sure, fine.

They shipped me the stamp. It was like, 125 francs. They shipped me the stamp and didn't send me the bill for like two weeks. Now, the American is like, okay, run me like about a thousand of those. You know what I mean? But like, obviously, I'm not going to steal shit. But what I'm saying is to me, to me, they ship something that's worth the equivalent of like $150 to me without me paying.

And they're like, yeah, just pay the bill by the due date. we'll send it in the mail sometime. That's like, I'm like, what the fuck? Is something wrong? Don't focus with me too. Yeah. I mean, another one I'll leave you is there's things here like in order to encourage people once they started doing like a citywide or cantonal wide composting program

where you can do like compost collection and they get like the green bags and they have like a special like a different kind of trash for compost collection. They were like, oh, we'll give you free composting bags. You can pick them up. Pick them up at like either city hall or your local police station. Now, Joe, you're American. I'm American. Do you think at any time on this fucking.

planet. I'm going to walk into a police station. Like, oh, can I have some free trash bags, please? Oh, never. Hell no. That's definitely a sting operation. Yeah, and it's completely legit. Like, it's just how they do stuff here. And so for me, I'm like, wait, what? Ask, he's not separating his driver cycling, get on the floor!

Exactly. Exactly. It's like, you can't get the leaves. You can't get the bag to tear off and then you're trying to pull it and they start, you're like, stop resisting. Yeah, man. Hell no. So you understand like, yeah, little things like that, I think. It's not necessarily like a huge giveaway. I mean, I speak, some people, have told me that they think by French Jackson's pretty good. Some people are like, no, you're definitely a foreigner. I don't know. But I don't, I'm not uncomfortable in the language.

So that's not always a dead, like, it's not a dead giveaway that I am American, for example, when I speak French. But little things like that, I'm like, wait, what the fuck. No, no. No, I just won't do that. It would be like, I don't know, it would be like, if there was just some kind of, like, instead of shaking somebody's hand, if you had to like, I don't know, like play footsy with them. And that was the new, like, Polly test. It would just be weird. I actually have, But I have another one in regards to that, which is, I refuse to send tickies to people. I was going to say, yeah. For people who are unaware, like, even amongst friends in the Netherlands, it is very, very common.

Like, you guys go for coffee or whatever. And then, like, you leave and you'll get, like, a ticky, which is, like, you owe them three, five years, whatever. It's for, like, negligible amounts of money. It's just something that's pretty normal. Obviously, super close friends don't do that. at least not for my experience, but like, you know, I go out with my friends. I'll buy a beer. You know, I go to like my Warhammer club. I'll buy the guy that I'm playing a game beer or whatever. And they're like, oh, you know, send me a ticket. I'm just like, no, I'm not going to do that. It was Joe, this is like, did I send you the Dutch hell TikTok? That was like, oh, a guy going to Dutch hell. And it's like, yeah, I'm going to buy you a beer, but I'm not going to send you a chickie. I'm not going to expect you to pay for it. I'm just going to hold it over you forever. Yeah, it's really weird for me. I do not do it. I, I, maybe it's like the Midwestern or American slash Armenian in me. I will never expect people to pay me back. No, I always like, yeah, I was always that way before the evening when I had a really hard time spending any money on myself. And I would have like, oh, yeah, it's okay. I've had this, you know, the same pair of boxers for nine years. And they're basically like, you know, the linen pants that are hanging on by a thread. But if we go out for drinks, I'm buying rounds to everybody. Like, no way am I letting you fucking pay me back in money. You want to pay me back and stuff later, get me later. Great. But I would never. so to me yeah that that is that is a very it's not quite as common here but like the idea of like hey you know because you can pay with QR codes and like it's easy to do that here people do it all the time for like splitting checks and i'm just like it's fine like i'll just get dinner man it's cool even if it is like a fucking mortgage payment in this country but i'm interested you england and ireland very different but also there are some similarities in a ways that maybe america and the netherlands aren't you know what i'm saying so there's loads like i think there is loads of similarities between the two uh like a handful of like big ones that i

notice all the time is one British people go on about loving cues but none of them know how to queue but also like they've since COVID have now started doing this thing of like when they're in the pub they'll queue up like single file rather than spreading along the bar and I'm like what are we doing just like

walk and stand and like lean on the bar and just like look at the shit on the wall and smile and they'll get to you when they get to you. Trust the judgment of the barmen of who is there first yeah but it's like you see it like in so many different things like, they love going on about queuing,

but they don't know how to queue in a way that's not agro. For our American fans, that means standing in line. Yeah, we're standing online if you're from New York. I mean, that's always weirded me up because it was such a thing about their kind of like self mythology.

And then living there, I'm like, these motherfuckers can't queue for shit. I've noticed that as well. Like, I've never been cut in line more than outside the caucuses where lines are more of a vibe. I've never been cut in line,

had people like do weird shit in line than in London. Yeah, I mean, like, I remember, because in Korea, it can be pretty aggressive. And when I was studying Korean, a bunch of the students with me were Chinese learning Korean and they were like, oh, it's so orderly here. People like, you know, wait in

lines. And I was like, what is China? Like the Castlevania level with the furniture's on the ceiling and everything's going really fast. Like, what the fuck? Like, but the thing is is that like Brits are just like pay pigs for their own culture. Oh my God, dude. They are just dominated by these like weird perceptions. Like another one

and people would probably understand this. Like, I don't care. really if people wear poppies I think it's stupid but like I've had so many conversations with like people I'm friends with who are like wear it and like I'll just say it's like oh like why do you wear

and it's like oh you know they have this like strange cultural attachment to it not in the kind of like poppy watch people but like just average people who like wear it and it's coming up to remember and stay soon which I'm going to I'm going to the Senate to take photos but it's like I find it so strange

and there's like so many I think with your examples is like it's much more concrete in the way people behave. It's just more so that like I think living in Britain you're taking constant chip damage to your psyche and it's like it just makes

people insane like they like they are obsessed with these things that they say they do but don't do in practicality. You are all weird. Do you stick out because obviously you're not going to throw on a poppy and walk around and he's going to wear a black pop

because I'm glad. They all died. I'm actually pro Kaiser. Like I saw a video the other day of this, like, guy who was like, couldn't be older than like 21 going on about how, oh, you know, all these like different variations of the poppy. So like, oh, you know, the poppy to specifically remember like the black service members or the Indian and Pakistanis who served in World War I. And he's like, oh, this is disrespectful to the memory of World War I. You should just wear the regular poppy.

I'm just like, you were insane. And like the reform guy who was like, oh, we wouldn't have depression in young people anymore if they just went out and had that wartime spirit and worked, you know, the best cure for mental health is a good day's work. It's like, none of you people served in an actual war.

You are insane. I mean, remember that line when we were doing the show with, uh, and, uh, Jeremy Vine was on about the collar being like, do you think anyone was going on about mental health at the Somme? Yeah. Like, I know what cured me of my PTSD was sitting in a trench line being sheled for like 13 hours. I mean, what I would say is for me is, I think there is actually a comparable thing just to close it out when you talk about that, Tom, because I had noticed

this, there's an equivalent thing with Americans where people were Americans who you would otherwise think to be pretty rationalable and even handed. And oftentimes like, you know, relatively politically progressive, but maybe not like on the, on the, you know, the far extreme of being left wing and like anti-imperialist, but like not like someone who's, you know, you would consider like a like a jingoist. If you talk about the pledge of allegiance or like the sanctity of the American flag. It's the exact same as Brits with the poppy and with the monarchy. The people that you would think are otherwise sane and reasonable will take on the most fucking bananas opinions. And you're like, wait, what? You actually believe that? You actually

believe that God's son lives in the Godhouse and he's the head of the aristocracy and he's in I have the funniest interaction between the two of it was last year. And I think it was in about December or so. And I was in, you know, one of those shops that does like the really fancy hot chocolates are over? Yeah, yeah. And I was like, went in there and there was like an American family in front of me so I was like two parents two kids and the guy ordered four hot chocolates

and it was like extortionally expensive and he asked the person behind the counter in London do you do a veterans discount and the woman visibly had to stop herself from laughing at him. Yes. I love that so much. Oh my God.

Asked for a veteran's discount on your natural fee to become a British citizen. I'm going to go down to I and D when I finally get my new residency card and I have to pay like what it was 20 euros to ask for a veterans discount and immediately get deported. Yeah. Like I was standing there and I was like so shocked. I like got my hot chocolate and like went outside and it like processed and I saw them walking down the street.

It was like he was a big dude like very typical. like American tourist he was wearing like a kind of like a light hiking jacket with like a heather gray hoodie underneath a boot cut jeans and like the most horrible like on running running shoes ever and it was like

this is so also he's wearing a snapback of course but it's like Hey whoa whoa snapbacks are fine if you haven't gotten a haircut in a while and you're fitted don't fit anymore but it's like this psychic damage this poor woman behind the counter took of this American

assing. do you do a veterans discount that's legitimately what the funniest things have ever that that's the funniest thing I've heard a very long time I've just been staring you guys maybe have noticed this on your screens I've just been dissociating this whole time after you said that I love it I love it I love it it's such a shame that this story came to me at the end of the episode I hope people are listening it genuinely is like once it was like a proustian reverie it was like I can actually picture it in my mind because it was so hot in there as well and it was like people are really crammed together

and there was like two cues and like it's so funny. I fucking love it. Yeah, actually this coffee shop in London is a subsidiary of Lowe's hardware store and so they do. But you have to stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance though like a submission barbecue. I'm pretty sure he got like a fucking like triple espresso

mocha as well. It's like this is mad. Like that man's going back to the hotel toilet to start podcasting. Can't get hot chocolate because that's gay. No, I'm going to get the triple shot mocha and get my veterans to his count. This is my new favorite guy we've talked about.

I don't even know like this just I mean shouts out Tom to like taking like last part of questions from the Legion to like fully flip the script on us and just like send us down this like you said Proustian reverie. It's just sort of like I don't even know what to do with this information. I love him. I love him so much mid December. No early to mid December and it was like all.

It was in around Covent Garden so it was probably the family were going to like the fucking Harry Potter thing or whatever and it was like balls hot if like you know

in the movies of like the Middle East from the 2000s the wind or the air is just waving yeah it's yellow filter they've got like like warbling

world music woman voice singer going on like scary Arabs everyone is holding like their north face buffer because it's so hot in this shop

and they're going so slow because it's like this artisan hot chocolate or whatever and just hearing this guy I'm trying to remember what he sounded like it definitely kind of like Midwest

because he didn't sound like he was from like the northeast like asking for oh this is so good I love him I love him he's perfect he's a perfect being I actually I'm pretty sure I sent a text to someone about it I probably texted shocks about this so I'm gonna try and find the text after this

make it the fucking episode art fans really confused oh well fellas I believe that is a podcast. Nate, again, thank you so much for taking the lead while I took leave for, I believe, the second time in this podcast history.

It was a lot of fun. I hope people enjoyed it. But you guys host other podcasts. Plug those podcasts. I am the co-host and producer of What a Hell of Way to Dad, a podcast about why you shouldn't join the military and also about parenting. Trash Future, a podcast about making fun of the tech industry

and Kill James Bond, a feminist film podcast. None of them offer a veteran's discount, unfortunately. Neither does this show. It sure doesn't. Despite the emails. No, no, no, sure. It sure doesn't. You know what? Take that shit to Red Robin and see if the fucking give you a meal. You know what I mean?

Like, it's not my problem. Yeah, okay? Take your veteran, your DD-214. That plus a metro car will get you on the subway. Tom. Beneath Skin, show about the history. Everything told through the history of tattooing and blood work, a show about the economy of violence. You can

follow my photography at Scam Golden that's G-O-L-D-I-N and yeah, buy my books from beneath the skin shop.com. I got some new ones coming out before Christmas. This is the only show that I host. Thank you for listening to it. Support us on Patreon. It is no longer voluntary.

Just $5 a month gets you everything, almost eight years of bonus content, side series like the history of Armenia and lines up by robots, as well as even more history stuff. Discord access every episode early. And one snowball that will cause your friend

to stab your homie over. If you're a veteran, you get the opposite of a discount. We'll actually charge you more. And until next time. I got one for you, buddy. Until next time. Akira slide the horse, whip that cloak fast as fuck, cut the snowball in half. No one will get mad at you.

Everyone will think you're cool. You promise. And we will talk to you next week. Hi. Bye. Thank you.