Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Dictators Work

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

There are many types of dictators, from so called "benevolent" ones to the kind who rule with an iron fist. There are also many ways they can come into power, and they don't all include violence. Learn all about dictators past and present in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much, like Easy Listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and I'm an architect of COSI. Come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the Village of Nothing Much, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Walter Isaacson set out to write about a world-changing genius in Elon Musk and found a man addicted to chaos and conspiracy. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social, emotional, networks. The book launched a thousand hot takes, so I sat down with Isaacson to try to get past the noise. I like the fact that people who say I'm not as tough on musk as I should be are always using anecdotes from my book to show why we should be tough on musk. Join me, Evan Ratliffe, for On Musk with Walter Isaacson. Listen on the iHeart Radio App Apple Podcast

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this select, I've chosen our 2017 episode on dictators. How much the world can change in just a few years. We mentioned a couple of times in this episode that authoritarianism was on the wane and that it was being replaced by good old democracy. I'm saddened to report that has changed in recent years as authoritarianism has come barreling back and in some surprising places. Listen

to this episode to find out why that's a bad thing. thing. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And it's 2017. Jerry or benevolent dictator. Uh, and it's 2017. Jerry, or benevolent dictator.

Yeah, for real. She's got those heppolites that she wears all the time in sunglasses. Uh, I was just commenting. I thought this is a pretty good article here from House stuff works. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that before. Who wrote this one? Do you have that on there?

No. I always have it on there. You didn't have it today. It might be a shame of freedom and joy. I think it may be. That sounds familiar. Yeah. Anyway, it's a good one.

Yeah. And here it is. That was the word for word by intro that you just stole. Wow. My mind reading class has been paying off. Chuck, yes. Have you ever lived under a dictatorship? Not exactly. No. I haven't either. I think we should kind of consider ourselves fairly lucky because it turns out that not only were we born in a country that most people would argue is not a dictatorship, although

you can find plenty of websites that argue that it is, it has been for the last several years, possibly even. For the most part, most people would say it's not a dictatorship. So we were lucky to be born in a country that isn't a dictatorship, but not only that, we were lucky to be born in a time when dictatorships have become fairly hard to find comparatively speaking, because dictatorships were basically the way that people were ruled for thousands of years, up until very recent times, around the time of the Enlightenment, when the idea of individual liberties

and the protection of those individual liberties became kind of widespread. Yeah, and this article kind of starts off, I thought it was interesting that you don't often, well, first of all, the word dictator is just one like the one who dictates the thing. It's kind of funny when you break down the actual definition. Yeah. You're like, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense then. It's the guy

who paces back and forth and further desk while somebody's typing or these things. Take dictation. Yeah. But they don't call themselves that very often, although it has happened before we get into the history, it's, it's, we should point out that like Castro and Saddam Hussein, you never hear them say, I'm a dictator, as a bad rap, you know, I'm the dictator, Fidel Castro. Yeah, it's like how propaganda got turned into PR. Yeah, that will call themselves Premier or President or Chancellor or Führer. Boss of you.

Kim Jong Il holds three titles. I think he's looking for a fourth and fifth, like as we speak. Well, he's in the ground, his son. Oh, wait, I got this to confuse, right? Yeah. Well, he held three titles. Yes, he did.

I'd imagine, well, his son probably holds four then. He probably found that fourth, just made one up. Did you know that there's like a, you know, the Kim Jong-un is the supreme leader of North Korea, but he actually technically shares power with two other officials as well. They have basically a triumvirate going there. It was news to me. Yeah, those guys are called keep quiet one and keep quiet too. I was just looking up some of his greatest hits recently. Yeah. And Kim Jong-un alone has already started to amass several, but one was a North Korean leader. Pretty high ranking official was

executed with an anti-aircraft machine gun for slouching or following a sleep at a meeting. Holy cow. Right. But you hear stuff like that. Imagine what that would do to a body. Yeah. Oh my God. But you should take that kind of stuff

with a grain of salt, especially when it's coming out of North Korea, because we have really virtually no idea what's going on day to day over there. Yeah. Even big events like that. Even if it is true that that guy was executed with an anti-aircraft gun, whether or not it was for falling asleep during a meeting or something like that remains to be seen. Yeah, you're saying take any information with a grain of salt.

Yes, yes. It's good advice. Thanks. But as Shana, I believe Shayna points out that dictators do have some things in common, and one of the big ones is, is almost 100% of the time, a dictator doesn't come to power through an election. They're usually not freely elected to that position. No, but they have been. They have been. Yeah, pretty prominently, like Hitler. Yeah, he was an elected, though.

Wouldn't he named Chancellor? Yes, by the elected president, though. Right. But he still wasn't elected. No, I guess that's true. Okay. Fine. Well, let's get into history, then. All right. So you say, Dick Tater's got a bad, it's got a bad rap over the years, right? As far as calling yourself that, I think so. But it officially, originally, and I saw a couple of references to Greece, but it seems to be Rome, classic Rome. Classic Rome. Yeah.

It trips coming into the party and everybody's like, that's classic Rome. He tried to walk through that screen door, wasn't open. So, classical Rome, how about that? It seems to be an invention of classical Rome, right? There is a station called dictator, there's an office basically. And in ancient Rome, the leadership was held by two men called councils.

And they were equally powerful from what I understand. Consoles? Council, console. OK. Sure. All right. And when something went down and stuff hit the fan, the Roman-Tedded tradition of appointing one

of the councils, Dictator, which is basically an emergency investment of unparalleled power into this one person. And the whole thinking behind it was when you were faced with an emergency, when the state was faced with an emergency, you needed somebody who could basically get stuff done. Yeah, like a single voice. Yeah, didn't have to go to the Senate to ask anything, didn't have to go worry about making the wrong move, the dictator couldn't be held criminally liable for their decisions.

Didn't have to worry about not being invited to the other consuls Christmas party the next year. Right. The other council wanted to be invited to the dictators Christmas party. So there was an investment of these emergency powers in this one person, and usually I saw a one year, this article says, it lasted for six months. And then the dictator would be like, well, that was a wild ride.

I'm going back to my normal life. The rebellion has been quelled or the siege is over or something like that. Yeah, and interestingly, there were a few rules. They couldn't be held legally responsible for their actions. Big one. It says couldn't be an office longer than six months,

although I think is I think they were there to handle the situation as kind of long as that took for the most part. But there were also guys who were like, oh, I like the feel of this. Yeah, I'm not giving this up. And they'll say, well, you have to we say. And then they said, well, I'm the dictator. They said, we hadn't thought this all the way through. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. They could change Roman law and the Constitution.

They couldn't use public money, unless other than what the Senate said you could use it for. So they supposedly still, and these are the official rules, as we see, coming up here, people bent these rules. And they couldn't leave Italy was the last one. It was just a good one. And they would have like Colombo come in and deliver that last bit. We look just only Italy for a while. Okay. That's your Colombo impression. Yeah. He sounded just like Josh Clark. It was spot on. So this kind of happened here and there until about two O2 BC and then about a hundred years after that a gentleman named Lucius Cornelius Sulla. I love all these Roman

dictators sound like either 70s like black exploitation movie stars or Roman gladiators. Sure. So he was appointed dictator without a term limit and didn't have these restrictions. And so this sort of changed the game from here on out. Yeah. And he actually wanted Caesar dead. So Caesar ran off and joined the army. Julius Caesar, I should say.

And just basically laid low until Silla died. And then Caesar came back. He was appointed council and then dictator himself. He succeeded Sulla, right? Yes. And Caesar is very well known to be a dictator, but he actually, if you look at the stuff he did, he was a friend to the people. He forgave debts among the- A benevolent dictator?

Pretty much. Yeah. Among the middle and lower classes, he improved infrastructure. He basically went to bat for the lower classes, which threatened the elite because it made a immensely popular, plus it was the dictator. So he actually created, he staged a coup to become a dictator, right, to gain power. Yeah, which we'll talk about a little more. And then a coup was plotted against him and he was assassinated by the ruling elite of the Senate.

On my birthday. Yeah. Well, long time before my birthday. But you know what I mean? Back in 1971. Yeah, I mean, we've tossed out benevolent dictator a couple of times, kidding around, but that's a real term, and that generally means a dictator who for the most part isn't just in it for themselves, and they are trying to make things better for the people. Right, but it depends on your perspective. Well, yeah, exactly. So like the ruling elite found him very threatening.

They would not have considered him benevolent at all. Right. But like say the average plebeian would have been like, I love Caesar. Yeah. Give me some more of the coins with his face on it. Yeah, I mean, followers of Castro still, after his death, say he was a benevolent dictator. Sure. But again, people say no.

It's perspective. It's a subjective term, basically. Napoleon actually, he came to power, again, like many dictators in a state of emergency, and he was actually a benevolent dictator in a sense because he did a lot of great things for a while for the people. Right. He was extremely popular. Yeah.

He was undefeated at the time that he rose to power. He was appointed counsel and then he said, you know what, let's go a little further than that. I'm going to call myself emperor. And they said, okay, Napoleon, we'll possibly go wrong with that. Yeah. Well, first he was named counsel, then he was like, I think counsel for life has a better ring to it.

And then that wouldn't enough. Right. So he's like, let's just shorten that. Like you said, though, he was super popular because he was, he was undefeated as a military leader. He balanced the budget. He reformed government. He wrote the civil law, which a lot of us is still around today in France. Yeah. Civil law. Right. Not too bad. He had a lasting impact for sure. He did. But again, again To call him benevolent if you remember a parliament who was thrown out of one of the windows of a parliament when he took over You probably wouldn't be like you're so benevolent

Right, he also controlled ahead an iron thumb on the press He controlled every fast of government. He had it spies working for him. Right. So it's not like, and he wasn't just, you know, both of the clowns, no. Both of the clowns was super shady. No, if you put all that together though, Chuck, you get the impression of why historians consider Napoleon the first modern dictator. Yeah.

He checked basically every box there was. He had it figured out. He drew new boxes and checked those. Right. He said, all dictators to follow, here's your boxes. I just looked down at your notes and I want to show you something. I think we should take a break.

But before then, okay Chuck? I think you should see this. Yeah. So in this article on dictators from How Stuff Works, there's a side bars, what they're called in web print parlance. Yeah, just a little extra bit. And the title of the subbar is Darth Dictator. That's all we need to say. And it talks about Emperor Pell Patine and his rise and Chuck had his exed out and I independently X-Fine out as well. So we won't be talking about that today everybody.

No, but let's do take that break and we'll discuss that in private so you don't get to know about it and we'll be right back. I'm Catherine Nicolai. And you might know me from the bedtime story podcast, nothing much happens. I'm an architect of cozy, and I invite you to come spend a night with me. I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a great writer, and I'm a Nicolai, and you might know me from the bedtime story podcast, Nothing Much Happens. I'm an architect of Cozy, and I invite you to come spend

some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default. When you tune in, you'll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods. A favorite booth at the diner and a blustery autumn day. Cats and dogs and rescued goats and donkeys, old houses, bookshops, beaches where kites fly and pretty stones are found. I have so many stories to tell you and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of nothing much on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk, he believed he was taking on a world-changing figure. That night he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea. What he got was a subject who also soared chaos and conspiracy. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks. And when I sat down with Isaacs in five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all. They had Kansas spray paint and they're just putting big axes on machines and it's almost like kids playing on the playground.

Just choose them up left, right, and center. And then like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it, getting the bars, done and excused being a total f***. But I want the reader to see it in action. My name is Evan Ratliffe, and this is On Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series

as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius. Listen to On Musk on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new Amy and TJ podcast, Amy Roboc and TJ Holmes, a renowned broadcasting team, with decades of experience delivering headline news and captivating viewers nationwide, are sharing their voices and perspectives in a way you've never heard before. They explore meaningful conversations about current events, pop culture, and everything in between. Nothing is off limits.

This was a scandal that wasn't. Yeah. And this was not what you've been sold. The Aimee and TJ podcast is guaranteed to be informative, entertaining, and above all, authentic. It marks the first time Robock and Holmes speak publicly since their own names became a part of the headlines. This is the first time that we actually get to say, what happened and where we are today.

Listen to the Amy and TJ podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we're back. We talked about one of the things that dictators had in common is they generally aren't elected and it like a fair election. They are usually ruling autocracies. A lot of times they have what's called the totalitarian regime. Yeah, we should talk about that. That's a big one. That means you're in control of all the news and all the media that gets out about everything.

Right. So, there's a lot of confusion over the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. A totalitarian regime is authoritarian, but not all authoritarian regimes are totalitarian. An authoritarian regime is where the government is headed by one single leader. There's no parliament, there's no courts, there's no nothing that that leader doesn't either control or just doesn't exist

to counter that leader's decisions. A totalitarian regime is like you were saying. I think you're missing an eye there. They could, it's like deletrious. They control everything, not just the government. They control the social aspects of life in that country. Yeah. They control the economy of that country. They control the media. They control everything. It's total totalitarian. Personal freedoms might be vanquished, might be. There might be police, secret police, there might be spies spying on citizens. It's not a good way to live. No, and all citizens. You will probably be encouraged as a citizen to spy on your fellow

citizens because authoritarian regimes quickly learn that if you have a large population, it's kind of tough and very expensive to keep tabs on everybody. So if you have a secret police going around and people are aware that there is a secret police, they're gonna behave themselves more. And if you can get your citizens

to kind of keep an eye on one another, everybody's gonna behave even further. That's a terrible way to live. Well, and you know what? Like, it sounds like a totalitarian ruler would be, I bet there's a lot of paranoia that goes along with that. Like when you're in that kind of position. Oh, if you're the ruler.

Yeah, it's not just like, oh, a rule everything, so it's all good. Like at that point, you don't know who to trust. You're probably always looking over your shoulder. You know, it's not that, like why bother with all that? Right. Like you know, it's not that like why bother with all that? Right. Like you know, it's gonna end badly. Just kick back and light a dooby instead. Why bother with all that? Many times they're there they foster what's

known as a cult of personality and this is a big one. If you went into and saw Saddam Hussein's Iraq or you go to North Korea or in the times of like linen and Stalin, you're going to see a lot of posters and statues of these leaders everywhere. Yeah, oh yeah. You're taught that the leader is basically the state. Who is this the leader? Right. And the state is the most important thing. But the leader is basically the state. Who is this the leader? Right. And the state is the most important thing. But the state is personified by the leader and sometimes it'll even go so far as a state.

By the way, the leader is descended directly from God. Yeah. So go make a painting of a kid. Right. And we're gonna put it up in the town square. Who is the one who had the statue rotated to face the sun? He was the head who had the statue rotated to face the sun? He was the head of Turkmenistan. He changed his name when he took over in 1991. His birth name was Saper Mirat

Niazov, but he changed his name to Turkmembashi, and then he started naming everything in Turkmenistan, Turkmembashi, including the month of January. But he created that statue. Yeah, and he had the golden statue rotated to always face the sun. So yeah, he was always facing the sun. And he said, read that quote, and that quote is awesome. All right. He said, quote, I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets. But it's what the people want.

We got that, I think, from an OD list, actually. my pictures and statues in the streets, but it's what the people want. We got that I think from an OD list actually. Yeah, we'll probably pepper in more of those. Okay. But I mean, I hope this drives home the point that these totalitarian dictators, they're narcissists, they're megalomaniacs. They are obviously paranoid, otherwise they wouldn't need to rule with an iron fist. Yeah. And yeah, it's just not it's not a good way to run a country. Like I said, it always ends badly.

I think it gets to get caught up in the power and they don't see what history is taught as time and time again. I, I, I wish we knew what it was because you can look around, especially in the world today in C country, after country, after country sliding down that rabbit hole. Well, it's a mental disorder on their part, I think. But it doesn't just have to be, there doesn't just have to be like a single leader, like even liberal democracies are starting to slide down that hole where like they want all the information possible on everybody.

Yeah. Ultimately to keep control. But is it based on fear, or is it based on paranoia, or is it based on that desire to hang on to power, what witch is brew of all those things? Is it that creates that? Why do we keep doing it over and over and over again? Because it's the death knell for a civilization

when the leadership starts doing that. It's unsustainable. Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about how they end, but it always is badly. You see Saddam Hussein and power in these military uniforms, and then you see this sad old man pulled out of a foxhole. Yeah, it looks like he washed up on Gilligan's Island or something like. Or Noriega like wasting away in prison, like begging to get out in a wheelchair. And I would like to know the story behind that. Because who Noriega? Yeah, Panama and the US were pretty good friends. And all of a sudden the US invades.

And now Manuel Noriega is in prison in Miami and has been for 30 years. Like something went down that prison. Is he? Oh, yeah,. Like, he's in that prison. Like, he's in that prison. Is he? Oh, yeah. And then they transferred him to, well, outside the Panama Canal, ironically. Oh, really? Yeah, he's in some prison there.

He's like in a wheelchair in his early 80s and just, yeah, not doing so hot. But he served his whole sentence, I think, in Miami, and then they transferred him to Panama to, to carry out another sentence down there. Oh really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. But something went down that I don't know about them. Intensely curious to know if anybody knows out there. Tell me. I'm sure you could find that pretty easy, right? Apparently not. I was just kidding. I bet it's highly guarded secret.

You think even after all these years? No, no, no. Noriega had motor he was a motor mouth. I'm sure he told everybody who'd listen. What we mentioned Hitler earlier, he like he said, although not elected, was legally installed. He was appointed chancellor by president Paul von Hindenburg and then once Hindenburg died Hitler said, you know what, there's this German word, a furor, it means leader. And he went, why don't we just make that my new title, which is because we don't really need a president and a chancellor. I can be both dudes. Right. And then eventually I'll just kill myself in a bunker. Yeah. Another, about to say sad end, but just pitiful end, you know. That's a great word for it. Sad indicates that it, you know what I mean? Yeah. I don't have to over explain that. Do I know? So, but Hitler, he came to power legitimately. So did Saddam Hussein,

actually. He was the general of the Iraqi army and vice president. And then as the president came, I think he fell ill. So that's who saying started to take on more and more power. And finally was just like, I'm president forever now, okay? Yeah. And I think that's the case. Like the point that this article is making is that there's a number of different ways a dictator can come to power. They can come to power in a power vacuum. They can come to power in a coup, which we'll talk about. They can come to power democratically.

But if it's the kind of person who wants to rule unfettered, and they know how to basically work the populace, and the circumstances are right you know like maybe there's fear of Outside is coming your way or the economy's bad or something like that Then you can conceivably consolidate your power and turn whatever situation into a dictatorship. Yeah, I think it's more It's based on the person and the circumstances that the nation is in when that person grabs power, than it is on how they actually get into power. Yeah, and whether or not the current leader

just happens like be out of town or something. Yeah, that's another big one too. Like sometimes, yeah, that's a, well let's go ahead and talk about Koo, should we? Okay, sure. So Koo is, there are different kinds of K or coup d'état, but a coup is different than a revolution in that there is generally a smaller affair. It's not some big mass uprising of people.

It's a dude gets a smallish band of his military cohorts together and like we were talking about either someone is sick or they're dying or they're just out of the country on business and they come back and they're like you're not in charge anymore. Yeah, sorry to tell you. Yeah. And they're like, man, the discount on this dishwasher was not worth leaving the country for over this. It can be, Koo's can be very bloody and violent, but they don't have to be.

In fact, I think a lot of times they're not violent. No, there's a term, a bloodless coup. Yeah. And it's basically a couple of things that make coups, or is it just coup, like you were saying? There's no S. No, there's a no. Is it silent? No, I don't know that. So we're going to go with coups, okay? A couple of hallmarks of coos that you were saying, like they're not popular uprisings. It's a small elite group that decided to do it.

Usually the higher ups in the military. Yeah. And they can be bloodless where it can just be like, you're not in charge any longer. You were out of the country, stay out of the country, we're putting you in exile. Right. They can be bloody,

especially if the person who's being deposed has a lot of loyalty in the military as well. Yeah, then it can turn pretty bad. Yeah, but I get the feeling that a lot of times the coup isn't attempted unless they feel like they have the support to pull it off. Well, I mean, look at Turkey,

the people who tried that coup like just a few months back. I understand that's true. I don't know what happened to them. I think Erdogan said the people were going to be punished, but not necessarily executed, but I don't know if that's true or not. That's another thing that can make a coup bloody, is that it can fail. Then the people who are carrying out the coup get executed, or it can succeed. And sometimes just for good measure, the people carrying out the coup,

execute the former president, which was the case in Peru, with Pinochet. No, sorry, Chile. Yeah, Chile. Where Pinochet took over, because apparently the parliament asked the military to get rid of the old guy, Salvador A&A, and they said, all right, fine, we'll do it.

And then they execute it A&A. Yeah, and Akut doesn't always mean a dictator comes right in either. Sometimes Akut can just be temporary until they can elect a new national leader, right? But it's just basically just a very small overthrowing of the current government. That's all.

So you want to take another break? Yeah, let's do it. OK. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to go.

I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. I'm going to go. Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much, like Easy listening, but perfection. If you've overdosed on bad news,

we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and you might know me from the bedtime story podcast, Nothing Much Happens. I'm an architect of Kozy, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default. When you tune in you'll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods. A favorite booth at the diner and a blustery autumn day. Cats and dogs and rescued goats and donkeys. Old houses, bookshops, beaches

were kites flying and pretty stones are found. I have so many stories to tell you and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the Village of Nothing Much on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new Amy and TJ podcast, Amy Roboc and TJ Holmes, a renowned broadcasting team with decades of experience delivering headline news and captivating viewers nationwide are sharing their voices and perspectives in a way you've never heard before. They explore meaningful conversations

about current events, pop culture, and everything in between. Nothing is off limits. This was a scandal that wasn't. Yeah. And this was not what you've been sold. The Aimee and TJ podcast is guaranteed to be informative, entertaining, and above all, authentic. It marks the first time Robock and Holmes speak publicly since their own names became a part of the headlines. This is the first time that we actually get to say, what happened and where we are today. Listen to the Amy and TJ podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk, he believed he was taking

on a world-changing figure. That night he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea. What he got was a subject who also soared chaos and conspiracy. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks. And when I sat down with Isaacson five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all. They had Kansas spray paint and they're just putting big axes on machines

and it's almost like kids playing on the playground, just choose them up left, right, and center. And then like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it, getting the bars, done an excuse being a total f***. But I want the reader to see it in action. My name is Evan Ratliffe, and this is On Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait

of a polarizing genius. Listen to On Musk on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. What's a Jinta? Oh, it's related to the jacama root. Hickama. No, that's not true at all. And I didn't really know this, but you've heard a military junta. Wait, you know it's junta.

Is it really? Yeah, that's how I was making that joke. Yeah, okay, I wasn't sure. Because I called Hickama Jekama. Right. Yeah. Are you sure it's not Jekama? Are you sure it's not junta?

I guess. It is. It's a military junta. So the junta is almost like a dictatorship by committee. You find these a lot in Latin America and it's a committee of military leaders who essentially act like a dictator. Right. It's instead of one leader.

Yeah. Maybe three, four top ranking military usually. There's a, if you like Fiji brand water, you're supporting a military junta when you buy that. As of 2006, the military rose up in Fiji and over to the government. And now military junta runs the show there. Yeah, that's a bad scene over there.

Yeah, Thailand apparently had a coup that same year. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, they, they, they followed the typical coup or the president left the country. If our president and I run shaky ground, yeah, don't go anywhere. I'd be like, I'm sitting right here. You know, you know, Scarface, you would just be like in your office with submachine guns. Right. Well, probably not the mountain of cocaine. Right. Although I could because I'd be a dictator knowing could say anything during any one. But there was one other thing that's really important too.

Not only would I not leave the country, I wouldn't even leave the presidential palace. Because that's like one of the number one things you do in a coup is you secure the presidential palace, secure the prison, secure the infrastructure, secure like presidential, secure the infrastructure, secure the local media, and as long as the president's there for some reason, physically, it makes it exponentially harder. I don't know why, but couldn't,

if you were the military, couldn't you just go up to the president and be like, you're not president anymore? And they could say, yes, I am. You say, no, you're not. We have the guns. Get out of the military. You're right. The president for palace. Yeah, it's like very passive aggressive to just like change the dead bolts when they really is. I really say, sorry, can't get to your bedroom anymore. But Thailand had the same thing, but but their junta was,

or the the coup carried out by the junta was apparently popularly supported. Oh, it was. Yeah. It was the president who was like, I vote nay. Everybody else said, yay. So sometimes when there's a dictatorship, they actually give the appearance that they might hold elections. Oh, yeah. When in fact, it's just sort of a farce.

That's a big deal though, actually, because I mean, democracy or liberal democracies are viewed as so legitimate that dictators will hold like, like, farce-to-cold elections. Pagentry, basically. Yeah, to make it seem like the populace is all for them. But the elections will be like, do you want to keep the leader?

No one's running against the leader, right? But do you want to keep the leader? No one's running against the leader, right? But do you want to keep the leader? Yes, no, please write your address down and include a picture of your most beloved person in your life. Or in the case of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Sad. That's a mouthful. He said, you know what, we're gonna have elections for the first time since the 60s here in 2005

And you can choose your local civic leaders and your local councils But women can't vote Like technically they can but you don't have the idea to vote because you're a woman so you can't vote and to vote because you're a woman so you can't vote. And a man can't register you to vote because you're a woman. And there just aren't enough women poll workers to register you so you also can't vote. Right. So it's classic voter disenfranchisement saying you don't have ID so you can't vote so you might as well not be allowed to vote. Right. So since there's a whole an entire gender that's excluded from the vote, it's not a democratic vote. That's a little less farcical than say, you know, one where it's like, where you have no opposition.

Yeah. Yeah. And I found this article is hilarious. It's called, um, dictatorships. It was on like kids net in Australia. Did you see that thing? An Australian website. And like at the top, there's like teddy bears and a son and rainbow and blue skies and then in the Text that says dictator and it's all about dictators

There's just kind of a weird juxtaposition they had misspellings in it too, which is weird Yeah, but it made some pretty good points if I were a kid if I had kids I'd be like you read this website. They know what they're talking about. Read it every day. Every day. Just read the dictator entry. That's it. But they mentioned, although, yeah, they got something horribly wrong.

They mentioned dictator Charles King of Liberia. I think they mean Charles Taylor. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Who claimed to have won by such a landslide that apparently it was like 15% larger than the actual total electorate of his entire country. But then I have also seen that he's done elections that were watched by outside poll watchers. And that they just they said that no, this is a legitimate election.

Interesting. Well, we talked a little bit about them, the dictatorship ending badly or sadly. A lot of times it's just a simple matter of time catching up to somebody. And they get sick and die, let him suffer stroke, Stalin suffer to stroke. A Castro got really sick. You know, all the power and money and influence in the world is not gonna save you in the end. My friend, Mr. Dictator. Only paranoia will save you and keep you alive. It's always just kind of pitiful though, I don't know.

I disagree. Oh really? Yeah, I think it's worth dancing on their graves over. I don't know, I don't mean pitiful for them. It seems like they always go out with a whimper. Yeah. Yeah. Some go out with machine gun fire though. Yeah.

Yeah. It doesn't say the salad days forever. No, it's true. I think the message is that's no way to rule a people. I hope we've gotten that across. You know? I don't know how many dictators listen to our podcast, but I hope that if any do, we've really given them some pause to think about what they're doing with their lives.

Should we read a few of these weird things done by dictators? Sure. And we should say it's widely believed that dictatorships are on the decline worldwide. What are there like 70 of them now? The most I saw was 24 right now. Oh, yeah. And the reason why is again, I think liberal democracy is like basically changing the game.

But there was a big influx after the the Cold War ended where the a lot of no, I'm sorry, the Cold War began. There was a big influx because a lot of the old colonial powers that had colonies and say like Africa and Asia suddenly said, World War II's over, we're getting out of the imperialism game. Good luck. Right. And those power vacuums allowed a lot of dictatorships to grow. And then the polarization of the Cold War allowed them to thrive because a dictator could say, hey, I'm strategically necessary United States. Don't you like me? Don't you want to look the other way on all of my human rights atrocities? And then someone else would say the same thing to the USSR and the superpowers would prop up these dictators

throughout the world. When the Cold War ended, that actually led to a huge and almost immediate decline in dictatorships around the world. Yeah. Yeah. So they're hopefully going the way of the dinosaur, but we'll see. Yeah, what was that last article you sent, the one that made a really good point about the United States could learn a little bit about these dictatorships and how they work, not to be like that, but to learn that you can't. Not for pointers. Not for pointers. But for pointers, and maybe not necessarily saying, hey, we can just go into a country that's been run a certain way

for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and just say, do it all different now. Yeah, here's a book on liberal democracies. Read it and do it. Yeah, and that we might have a more successful approach to foreign policy if there was a little bit more understanding on how these systems work.

Yeah, and that a lot of these dictatorships are not totalitarian, but autocratic, which makes them inherently weaker. But if we threaten them, if we're belligerent to them, we give those people a reason to be afraid and to line up behind their leader. So when we actually threaten other countries that are autocratic, we, all we're doing is making the leader more powerful. Whereas if we treat them like as kind of a weak leader

of a weak state that is run in a way that suggests that the people aren't really behind it because they have to be run with an iron fist. Then that person's probably gonna eventually get deposed. It's pretty interesting. It was an interesting article. It was in Reason Magazine, I think. It was written by John Bazel Utley.

And if that guy's not British, no idea who is. All right, so we promised a few weird things. Where did you find this one? Odie. Strange things done by evil dictators. Kim Jong Il. Those of dude in South Korea name Shin Sang-ok. And he was known as the Orson Wells of South Korea.

And he was kidnapped and brought to North Korea to basically Kim Jong-il was like, you know, we show the world that we are creative artists. Like, start making movies. Right. We've kidnapped you and brought you here. Make good movies. In fact, remake Godzilla because we just need our own Godzilla. It's basically what the CIA did with Jackson Pollock in the early 50s, but Jackson Pollock wasn't aware that he was being propped up because he was drunk. So they did remake Godzilla sort of in a movie called The Pole Gasari, and I looked it up and he basically looks like Godzilla with like Minotaur horns coming out the side. Yeah, not the best. What else?

This Beatles story was kind of nuts. Yeah, the Marcos is, remember, Melda Marcos and all of her shoes? Yeah, who can forget? A Ferdinand and a Melda Marcos, they ruled the Philippines for a while. And apparently they love the Beatles back in the 60s. And so they invited the Beatles to the Philippines

to play a couple of shows on their world tour. And when the Beatles got there, the military met them at the airport and said, hey, before you go to your hotel, you're scheduled for a lunch, private lunch with the president and the first lady. Yeah. And the Beatles were like, look, mate, we're really tired. We're going to just go to the hotel and crash because we've got two shows tonight. And that did not go very well.

Yeah, they were acting through their manager, of course, Brian Epstein. We've got two shows tonight and that did not go very well. Yeah, they were acting through their manager, of course, Brian Epstein. And supposedly the story isn't so much that, but he said that they don't accept these formal like state invitations, really, as a rule. I got to. Either way, they didn't go. And Emilde Marcos got on TV and started talking about it. Brian Epstein tried to apologize on TV

and they blacked him out. And people got really upset. The police, basically their private police escort was removed and the Beatles were on their own. Wow. Which was in 1964 when you're in the Beatles, this is not a good place, especially in the Philippines, to find yourself.

Yeah, they basically had to escape to the airport and just run out to the plane and head off. Yeah, and one of their dudes was like beaten really badly and Brian Epstein was kept from getting on the plane and had to like, basically was shaken down to pay them back money from the concert to get on the plane. And then later on, Mr. Lennon, give peace of chance, John Lennon, said, yeah, if we go back to the Philippines, it's going to be with an H bomb.

Did he really say that? Yeah. Wow. He said he won't even fly over it. So they did not have a good experience here. Wow. Who's next? I think that E. in when it was kind of interesting. That sounds so EDM in totally. He declared himself president for life, P for L. And he said, you know what? I'm going to do this in high style. I'm going to get four white men to carry me around in a chair to celebrate being president for life. And he called it the white man's burden. Yep. And everybody loved it. He was a odd duck.

Yeah. If you look up white man's burden and I mean, and Google images, there's a couple of really great pictures of these kind of blonde white men and suits carrying around. Right. Giant you, you gone to man and chair. Have you ever read the Bukowski book that was the basis for bar fly?

Yeah, which one was that? Hollywood, I think it's what it's called. I read Hollywood, was that the one? Yeah, he talks about watching a documentary about Edia Mene and how he, Edia Mene didn't have the money for an air force, but he had pilots that really wanted to fly. So, like, in the documentary, they're showing these pilots running down a runway and then

jumping and then going back to the end of the line and just doing this over and over again to practice flying, even though they didn't have planes. That movie was good, the force, Whitaker movie. Yeah, the last king of Scotland. Yeah, great movie. Poor James McElvoy. You know, you can stay in Charles Bukowski's house that he grew up in an Airbnb now. Oh, really? Yep. Nice. It's been remodeled. Yeah. He wouldn't like that. But no, he would hate the whole thing. I'm sure. How about a cut offi? We'll end with him. Sure.

So, Momore Kadoffi loved women apparently. Did you know that about him? I did not. He loved women, and he actually surrounded himself with female bodyguards who he very graciously allowed to wear makeup and high heels while they were protecting him. And in the West, these women were called the Amazonian Guard. This is just off the rails at this point.

Yeah. And boy, this podcast? No, Kadoffi is the whole Amazonian Guard the whole thing. Yeah. So Kadoffi actually had some sort of legitimate thinking behind it. He thought that an assassin would have trouble shooting a woman. Yeah.

It stands to reason. So he surrounded himself with female bodyguards who were also trained to kill. Yeah. But they weren't like the four or more makeup and lipstick. Yeah. Oh, actually, can we mention the Hitler thing? Sure. Because is this true?

I don't know. This is how I walked past. It sounds like urban legend, but supposedly Hitler came up with a synthetic blow-up doll to comfort soldiers. And it was referred to as a synthetic comforter. Yep. Blonde hair, blue eyes, could fit in a backpack. And they only made about 50 of them because the soldiers were like, I'm not carrying that

thing around. What are you crazy? And he went, in fact, I am. You'll see. Walk a walker. If you want to more about dictators, you can type that word into the search bar at howstuffworks.com and since I said search parts time for listening to mail. A quick correction beforehand because this has to do with bottle feeding kittens. But in our feeding babies episodes, which by the way thanks for all the support on those,

it's really made us feel good to know we did a pretty good job there. But I erroneously, many times, said pump and dump as, you know, breast milk and dump it in the bottle to use. Oh, no. Yeah, pump and dump. You were saying that and pick up on it. Well, I just, I think I've kind of threw that term around as just the general term for breast pumping. That's funny.

But dumping is dumping it down the drain. Right. One reason or another, like you maybe had some alcohol or whatever. Dumping it straight to hell. Yeah, so, yeah, pump and dump. It sort of just kind of went wild there. That's okay, Chuck. That's right.

I did notice a couple of people staying up but I didn't get what they were saying. Yeah, I was wrong. Huh. All right, so it feels weird. I promised a story about bottle feeding kittens, which you ever done that? A little baby animal that you gotta care for at that young age?

Pretty darn cute. Sure. Very powerful feeling. It's very stressful. It is stressful. Hey guys, when I was a kid, you want this bottle or not? You want this crack face? I can crush you.

When I was a kid, my older sister had a habit of rescuing animals that became family pets. She rescued a pair of ferrets from drug abuse. Quote. Quote. Drug abuse. When the ferrets were being abused with drugs or themselves active users, I still don't know. That's a weird thing to say. Yeah.

This is a weird email. The family ended up stuck with those smelly little weasels for years. What really, I wanted to about that was much more mundane. One day we rescued a random stray kitten from our gutter. It's a beautiful little thing fluffy and snowy white, practically newborn, too young to lap milk. She became a family project of sorts. Throughout the day, almost all the family members to take turns cradling the little kitten, feeding her with a dropper was pretty special. It was maybe nine at the time but gladly took time away from playing Zelda to feed the

kitten. Playing Zelda, I forget it. Here's the kicker though, as much as pure love that we pumped into that little kitten. That cat ended up being one of the most purely mean and different cats we ever had. Sounds about right. She grew up to be beyond ungrateful. She came and went and she pleased and was prone to swipe at you if you tried to pet her.

She hung around for the food, but after a few years, she just disappeared entirely. Sounds like the cat was on drug abuse too. Most of our cats were sweet and true. Maybe the point is, there are just some bad seeds out there. That is from Chris, PS, the fairs, ended up living for years and years. That was a mysterious email in a lot of ways.

Uh-huh. It was like a, it was like a David Lynch email. Uh-huh. Well, thanks a lot Chris, with a K, I imagine. No. Okay. Thanks a lot Chris, we appreciate that. And if you out there want to get in touch with us like Chris did,

you can tweet to us at sysY.S.K. podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.housedeport.com. As always join us at our home on the web, stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Tune in to the new podcast, stories from the village of Nothingmuch. Like easy listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite

you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nicolai and I'm an architect of COSI. Come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of nothing much. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Walter Isaacson set out to write about a world-changing genius in Elon Musk and found a man addicted to chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social, emotional networks. The book launched a thousand hot takes. So I sat down with Isaacson to try to get past the noise. I like the fact that people who say I'm not as tough on musk as I should be are always using anecdotes from my book to show why we should be tough on musk. Join me, Evan Ratliffe, for On Musk with Walter Isaacson.

Listen on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new Amy and TJ podcast, news anchors Amy Robach and TJ Holmes explore everything from current events to pop culture in a way that's informative, entertaining and authentically groundbreaking. Join them as they share their voices for the first time since making their own headlines.

This is the first time that we actually get to say, what happened and where we are today. Listen to the Amy and TJ podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.