Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 204 - The Potsdam Giants

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Joe, Francis, and Shocks talk about the weirdest military unit of all time. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/potsdam-giants.html?safari=1 https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2021/07/28/potsdam-giants-by-name/ Darwin, Charles (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. John Murray. p. 112. https://knoji.com/article/the-potsdam-guards-prussias-giant-soldiers/ https://random-times.com/2018/07/14/king-frederick-william-i-of-prussia-and-his-obsession/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow with my Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and I got the boys in the house, the zoo crew, on a regular episode because I do not cherish my comment section. Hello, guys. I deposed Liam. I decided that there was only enough room on Joe's podcast for one person from the Eastern Seaboard. Is Pennsylvania technically the Eastern Seaboard? I mean, it is.

Yeah. I mean, it's like the Mid-Atlantic. It's not like New England. If Megachusetts took over, Pennsylvania would be part of it. I mean, I think only Yeah. I mean, it's like the Mid-Atlantic. It's not like New England. If Megachusets took over, Pennsylvania would be part of it. I mean, I think only like the North. I don't know. I'll have to go back to my Megachuset planning maps. Not that I have those.

Yeah, the Megachuset planning map is just a map of America with various slurs scrawled across the different regions. Ost plan Massachusetts. So every time Kerry gets on an airplane, he knows like how to insult the people of wherever he's going. It's like South Dakota,

like slur question mark, like written underneath it. We need, we need a slur for Dakotans. Dakotans. I mean, come on. That's,

that's a slur as it is. Let me follow that with an asterisk. White Dakotans. North and South Dakota. They're the state equivalent of a comic book that you keep in pristine condition in your closet, hoping that one day it's going to gain some kind of value. The Dakotas are there. If we need a little extra scratch, we sell it to Canada or something. Same with Texas to Mexico. Dakotas are just wish.com Montana.

I mean, they're just like a missile sink like you know when we hit during the cold war when we looked around we're like i don't know where can we uh where can we put some uh icbms that are away from anything valuable ah if the soviets struck them uh nobody would notice or everybody put them like oh fargo ah fuck we got a bunch of them in missouri too point stands now um fellas i brought you on today uh because well this is what we do every thursday um but also for the last several months on our regular feed we've been doing nothing but series francis obviously you're a part of one of those yes dead nazis the Dead Nazi one. Always a good series to be on. With the poop tree. Decorating the

Christmas poop. I'm going to ignore the fact that nothing about that series had anything to do with Nazis and just move right along. Sorry, I was thinking about the Curse series again. It's been a long time since we've just had a normal, relaxing, single episode. There's a lot of loaded terms there. So we did a bonus episode about Charles II of Spain a while back. Everybody really liked that. Sure.

Everybody really likes making fun of the... Because you people are sickos of the of the person that god spilled i mean this is that's like the most innocent sounding burn i've ever heard in my life and it fucking hits and i thought it would be interesting if we took a look at another ruler that this one you know obviously charles the second we couldn't hate him because now that was his fault fair you got a lot of pity for for charles so now i feel sad when people like post him at the hapsburg guy on twitter because it's like charles doesn't deserve that yeah charles it wasn't his

fault the new hapsburg guy just posts about anime all the time and i and he's some kind of ambassador or something of some kind i can't remember he's like a hungarian ambassador and he the only podcast he goes on are ones that like talk about popes but not like the pope when we did like he only likes to talk about good things about popes because he's super catholic but he's you know what he's a very nice follow because you never know what's going to come out of him. It's a whole bunch of stuff about the Vatican and being upbeat about Catholicism and then he'll have a fucking Evangelion fucking comment

or something or be talking about Dragon Ball Z and you're just like, I don't even know what's going on. But you know what? That's globalization, man. It's bringing everybody together. The internet, you can find, you find that you have something in common with a hapsburg that's what's gonna unite the uh

the classes in the end i believe that charles the second is just the dummy plug system uh but for hapsburgs i'm just gonna take over this podcast about how the haps how hapsburgian twitter is the next class consciousness that we're gonna have Now, here's a nice thing about this podcast, and I recommend it for all other podcasts, is we don't talk about Twitter because it's not real. This doesn't matter. None of this matters. I mean, I'm really just stuck on the idea of a waifu pillow, but for popes. Because it sounds like...

Did you see you can get waifu pillows of Zelensky? Of course we can. You get it at hellofaway way to die.com slash shop pick up your zelensky uh body pillow now i i decided to pick a king that is completely indefensible in every way possible and also has an incredibly hilarious fetish which brings us to a military unit called the pots damn giants have you guys ever heard of this before you named this pots damn giants and at first i thought it was pesadism giants and i was like i was thinking we're going to talk about you know um nuclear bombs and dolphins and stuff but uh i've not heard of pots damn giants i'm reminded of the kandahar giant

but as far as like a pot i'm trying i don't know that i got anything for that i mean other than like uh i don't know this is a cryptid of some kind like uh some sort of german cryptid kind of i guess like there's a new like wolfenstein game and like this is going to be the final boss in it i would say if you played the game a hold fast this is probably a mod for it for a very weird group of people. But in order to get to that point, I do kind of have to explain how the fuck we got here.

How such a weird guy ended up being king of Prussia. Versus all the normal guys who became kings of Prussia. Every Prussian person we're going to talk about is all very weird. You know, the very normal race of people who eventually started wearing

spiked helmets. Technically, they were German by then. Yeah, but they were from Prussia. It was like the Prussian-Russian officer corps, like the rest of it. Well, they were German before too, yeah. Now, obviously Prussia, which is now part

of Germany, as most people know for their military tradition in history. And I should point out that that isn't generally considered like retelling. Some of it is like a lot of it's very, very true, though. But we're not going to be talking about any of that. Now, they weren't exactly a technological superpower, and not many people were back then, because there's only so many ways that you and your fancy-dressed boys can line up in a line and shoot other fancy-dressed boys with a musket. What decade are we talking about here? What years are we in? We're covering like 1600s to 1700s here. Okay, so this is the Ark Busy times.

If you just want to use the term Ark Busy, be my guest, yes. If you just want to use the term Ark pussy, be my guest. Yes. Now, instead, to make a very long, complicated and very nerdy story short, Elector Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia, Brandenburg, came to power. His country didn't really have much of a military. They mostly depend on mercenaries like the land catch, which I'm sure I pronounced flawlessly, German listeners, that really had no loyalty nor discipline. This speaks to me, to be honest. It's a problem with mercenary armies, right?

The fuck you say? I don't know what you mean. I mean, I think all those guys who went down to Venezuela as part of Silver Corp, I mean, they ended up great, as far as I know. Well, they had other problems. Pay was not their main problem. If you fight only for pay, you fight only so long as you believe you're going to

get paid. A dead man cannot pay you. So, you know, if the war is starting to go badly, maybe you just don't want to fight in that particular war anymore. Work won't love you back, 1600s Germany edition. Yeah. Fucking local land catch union or whatever. Now, it was for this reason he wanted to keep Prussia edition. Fucking local land catch union or whatever.

Now, it was for this reason he wanted to keep Prussia out of the 30 Years War, or at least out of the worst of it. I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail in the 30 Years War. I'm sure eventually I'll make some mind-melting series about it where I lose myself for two months and then you have 15 weeks of content to listen to. But he ended up getting caught up in it anyway. But he's doing a retelling of the 30 Years War. What? Yeah, Everett's next 30 years of podcast content.

As I slowly get bound to my gamer chair by sweat and filth. 1,352 of the 30 Days War podcast. Yeah. They end up rebuilding better than most other people. There's various reasons for that.

They allowed virtually free immigration into Prussia Brandenburg for most Protestants who just wanted to show up. So they had a lot of inflow of people. The population swelled. So did their money. But another change that occurred was by the end of the war, Frederick had largely gotten rid of the mercenaries and fuckers are expensive after all and not great and replaced it with a revolutionary concept known as a standing army um by 1653 now i say like a revolutionary concept because like there was a draft um People got paychecks. They had salary. It was kind of like the Marian reforms of Rome, where it's a concept that seems so incredibly fucking simple.

It's kind of insane that this broke the game. Right? This wasn't very big, though. It was only about 8,000 people. I mean, critical support for a Prussian leader who does a proper test for independent contractor status and sues the Fisher workplace and brings everyone back under the auspices of a traditional employee-employer relationship. Yeah. I really like the concept of in the 1650s, a Prussian conscript lining up to get his 1099. What the fuck do you mean I have to pay taxes now? Why didn't you take

it out of my paycheck? There's not so much an app for that, but a scroll for that. Just the scroll for mercenaries. What do you mean I have to get per diem, you fucks? It was a very small army. It was only around 8,000 people. And the reason for that was Friedrich wasn't a king yet, or Frederick wasn't a king yet.

And he didn't want to scare the local nobility with this massive standing army or trigger some kind of civil war. However, that's exactly what he wanted. It was a really big army to play with. So he struck a deal with the nobility called the Recess, where the nobility paid Frederick a huge amount of money. He was considered the elector. He wasn't king quite yet. This is a one-time payment of half a million dollars, which is their

money at the time. That's fake. That's just fake money. Prussian Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. Prussian dollars is right next to Iraqi Dinar, which is as far as good investments. Prussian. That sounds like a weird sex act. I mean, this whole thing kind of sounds like a weird sex act. It's right next to Iraqi Dinar, which is as far as good investments. Proshoyn. Oh, that sounds like a weird sex act.

I mean, this whole thing, it kind of sounds like a weird sex act, if I'm honest. The weird sex acts are going to come. I mean, it's called the Possum Giants. There's a better than 40% chance that we get into some sort of vore thing by the end of this. Hold on to that thought. Oh, fuck me. thought oh fuck me i i like at this point you could say like i'm worried that this is going to end in cannibalism at any given point and you've been on this show enough where i could say hold on to that thought and you have no idea if i'm kidding or not that's how you know i've created a quality show i'm gonna start just like keeping a bingo card yeah you know just like not cannibalism

all right that's that's actually someone's question from the Legion. They sent me, it was like, what would Alliance led by donkeys bingo card look like the free spot in the middle is me bringing up Armenia, which you got me. I invite anybody to make one of those. I'm sure it's going to be horrifying,

but you know, with this huge amount of money, which it was a lot of money, he used that, that half a million dollars to professionalize his army, create a cadet corps, an officer corps, as well as institute legendarily draconian punishments for soldiers and officers should they step out of line. This is where the concept of the Prussian army discipline starts, which is all very,

very bad. It did work. At one point, I believe it was Frederick the Great. is all very, very bad. It did work. At one point, I believe it was Frederick the Great. His army was so brutal to people for discipline that he had to host people on cavalry duty to fence his army in to catch deserters because there were so

many of them. That means that you're doing good work, son. Now, using this large and professional army, he used up the flex on the nobility that paid for it and made them subservient to him. Now, prior to this, the elector was technically in charge, but he was kind of dependent on nobility having to do backdoor politicking and the whatnot. But now he had flipped that on its head. He stripped them of their money and holdings, pouring more and more money into the military in order to head off any kind of rebellion from these people that he you know kind of owned

that he hoodwinked like yeah look at look at my left hand and see all the things I'm doing don't look at my right hand where I have this huge fucking standing army of you know surprised setting up it'll be fine don't worry about it why are there so many thousands of angry Germans camped out in that field that's never a good sign

yeah I mean it's kind of like having a whole bunch of brightly colored Brits camped out in a field. It's just like traditionally not a sign of stability and good things for you. Hey, credit where credit's due. More countries celebrate their independence day because of the British than anyone else.

Jamaica's adding one to the list. I was about to say, yeah, good for them. Good. Queen's dead anyway. Now, it's really going to suck when this comes out in dead anyway um now it's really gonna suck when this comes out like three weeks that's not even a joke anymore she's actually dead she lived a good life it's fine i disagree her life's been terrible and a sin to man i mean she was comfortable the rest of us not so much but she was comfortable so i don't care if she dies i'm just saying that i'm

looking at clarence thomas i'm seeing what the Queen has done for England. And Lord, I want that for us. Now, he obviously used this army. And then he also folded the nobility class into the army. Rather than making the nobility all concerned about their own holdings, he tied them to the state. Their income and success was now tied to the military where they would get their commissions they'd win glory whatever that meant that it made these officers loyal to prussia rather than like fritz von whatever the fuck the fourth duke of schittsburgians. Yeah.

Ah, yes. The Massachusetts Schittsburgians. Now, this, of course, led to more centralization of power, ending in the Elector's son, also Frederick, to become the first king of Prussia in 1701. Yes, I'm aware I'm simplifying this incredibly, but this is not the Prussian history podcast. Don't turn around. Uh-oh. I'm just trying to get to the topic of today's show. We're just trying to get to the fucking giants. Yeah.

Wait, literally fucking giants? That's how I was saying it. Yes. Giants having sex. Hold that thought. I promise we'll get there. Yes. thought i promise we'll get there yes now frederick's son frederick king frederick william the first really creative bunch huh yeah it's frederick's all the way down uh his nickname is

the soldier king uh for very dark horrible reasons he's known for you know having countless reforms military economic and agrarian. And cool. Sometimes the saying the pen is mightier than the sword is attributed to him. No, he's 100% sure. But also, it's a very easy thing to say that the pen is mightier than the sword when you have probably the most powerful army in Europe. So it's pretty hollow. When you have a sword and a pen in your hand, you know, it's real easy to say one's better than the other as you're stabbing both of them into my neck right now the other thing he should be known for is all of the crazy because good fucking god was king frederick william insane for starters was an almost comical

hatred of the french now this is probably something we can mostly agree with. Well, you know, good thing that didn't portend foreign relations in Central Europe for the next, you know, 150 years. Forever, yeah. And I don't mean like the American hatred of the French where you just like laugh about World

War II and rename French fries or whatever. On top of various geopolitical reasons and war he hated french people as people so much so that he would refuse to eat french food and just like mentioning france near him would cause him to fly into a blind rage i swear to god jerry you bring up those fucking baguettes one more time. One more time, Jerry. I swear to God. It just reminds me of someone's very old, weird uncle that still doesn't consider Italians white people or something.

Yeah, it's just some sort of weird old-timey racism, but it's also part of state doctrine now. Yeah, yeah. Somehow saying the word frog with a hard r you can't say that only they can say that now um speaking of those rages oh boy now uh you would expect that his like rages were directed at subordinates or whatever, which is true. However, he was a pretty sick guy. He was pretty sickly his whole life. Part of the reason for that is he was very, very obese, which gave him gout, high blood pressure, and various other problems.

He had to walk with a cane. And he was known for having a hair trigger when it came to someone saying the word France around him. And if you were within Kane's reach of him, you were free game. It did not matter who you were. Servants, his kids, his wife. If you happen to be near him, you're just going to get smacked with a fucking cane, like repeatedly if he was mad, which was frequently. Speaking of his wife, her name was Sophia Dorothea of Hanover. Yeah, that sounds fake.

They were first cousins. Never mind, it doesn't sound fake anymore. Yeah, they were first cousins. It also just happened that a lot of their kids died at infancy. I'm sure those two things aren't connected. Oh, weird, huh? What a coincidence. That's strange.

Weird how that keeps happening. Now, one of those kids did survive. Well, more than one, but the most important one. We've got to marry even further inside the family tree. That's how we fix this. We'll be fine. The next Frederick, Frederick II, his comely name is Frederick the Great. And he actually kind of stopped that from happening for reasons that are obvious when you read about him.

Frederick was gay. Frederick the Great was much closer to his mother, which should come as no surprise, as you know, she wasn't hitting him with a cane. Now, this also ended him getting a much better education because in the Prussian tradition, or by that I mean his father's, his education should have been like living in a rustic cabin and learning about the church. His mother was very cultured, wanted him to listen to music, read, learn about French and German culture, which he's like, Frederick ended up learning French. That's a problem with kids these days in, I don't know, like 1800s Germany. They just want their participation trophies. They don't want to wear a hair shirt anymore. Nobody's living in the rustic cabin and learning about Protestantism. Yeah.

No one's like flagellating themselves while studying Martin Luther's treaties. It's a damn shame. If you made me study Martin Luther's treaties, I would flagellate myself. Now, his dad believed that this actual education made him effeminate

and caused him to beat the shit out of him. Now, it's pretty accepted now that Frederick the Great was gay, and he was in a relationship with the king's 17-year-old page, a guy named Peter Keith. Wait, how old was Frederick? Do we have to cancel him? Probably around the same age, if not younger. That's all right.

Young love. That's cute then. Frederick had a thing for older guys. Okay, that's all right. Young love. That's cute then. Frederick had a thing for older guys. Now, from the age of six, when his dad began to believe that his son was effeminate,

he ordered a cannon to be placed outside of his window and fired every morning as an alarm clock. He was also given an entire regiment of children who were dressed and armed as soldiers for his son to order around and like, mind you, a regiment is several thousand people. Imagine being like the fucking

E4 mafia at like eight years old. Right. Like we have to do fucking what? Why are we firing a cannon at this child's house? Just like a chain smoking eight year old. Just like, I guess it's a fucking 530 you gotta go load the fucking cannon again

sorry I got dental one of my baby teeth finally fell out one of my baby teeth finally fucking came in just kicking the wheels of the carriage like you know like that's fine it's good it's good go down to that child motor pool um just full of like

fisher price horses and stuff the mkt is an easy bake oven we're kidding we're kidding these children led horrible lives anyway go ahead i'm sure they're fine and man them up a bit nothing bad ever happened to any of these people. Packing a lip of pixie stick. Now, Frederick was pretty savagely beaten or doing horrible things such as falling off a horse while riding it or wearing gloves when it was cold outside.

No snivel gear. Now, after he attempted to flee to England with his tutor, the enraged king had the tutor beheaded before his son's eyes. It is also generally believed that this tutor was also his boyfriend. So, yeah, that probably had to hurt twice as hard. And for this, the prince, the crown prince, was court-martialed, despite the fact he was a child. There's a very good chance that he actually would have killed his son, but of all people, the Holy Roman

Emperor Charles VI was like, dude, what the fuck are you doing? Stop. Which, like, this is particularly a period where, like, if the Catholic Church is urging you to, like, that you're going a little off your fucking rocker, maybe dial it back a little bit inbred hapsburg with like his fucking drool going down to his nutsack is like bro what are you doing you can't kill your you can't kill your son

like he ended up selling it as like only the holy roman emperor could order the death of a noble which is not at all true i think it was just the way they could explain it so like the king of prussia didn't murder the crown prince of prussia bad pr now i guess nobody should be surprised when i tell you that frederick the great grew up to hate most people um he died childless you know because he was gay uh and he preferred the company of his dogs to whom he was buried next to when he died. So, yeah. I get it.

Yeah, that's the one part of his life that I can identify with. I would also, like, if I died, I'd also be buried with my dogs. He lived angrily reading books and surrounded by dogs. Like, that's fine. I'll do that.

Oh, weird. I don't know what that is like. That's strange. One of my favorite things is like the the military tradition of prussia is very very normally tied back to frederick the great and the people that do that and they champion like prussian military tradition would definitely not like gay people so like i i took a massive side road to tell that story because it's absolutely has nothing to do with the fucking rest of this episode as we all know uh being gay was actually only invented in like uh 1968 yeah of course i mean

before that it was a sparkling dick sucking yeah no no no they just have very close friendships like i love i love reading older history books that are too dumb or unwilling to make the connection these soldiers were such good friends they died arm that they were buried arm and arm I love reading older history books that are too dumb or unwilling to make the connection. These soldiers were such good friends that they died, that they were buried arm in arm. Just two bros broing out. Abraham Lincoln just really loved to sleep in a bed with another dude. He really liked wrestling. It's fine.

Who doesn't like to strip down to the waist, oil up, and get a little wrestle on? Abraham Lincoln hitting the Swanton bomb from the top rope. I really hope someone makes that Photoshop now. Or the only time that that never happened was like Alexander the Great, where it was like, no, he's gay. Nobody even tried to cover for him. Unless you're Oliver Stone, I think. I don't really remember what that movie was all about anyway over the course of 27 years frederick wilhelm from the greats dad uh was completely obsessed with his military to the point that some people estimated he spent a full 50 percent of the prussian budget on the military which is something america can only aim for

uh it's just like the daydream of like american insane people because like we i think we only spend like maybe 10 or something like that that's like what tom cotton jerks off to every night before it goes to bed i don't even think we spend 10 i don't even think it's that much so during this time you know the does that mean like the best job to have is the army or are you just like drafted and you're kind of fucked and then they choose you up and spits you out on the other end or like is this a professional army you're getting paid on a regular basis oh yeah yeah i mean both of those things can be true at the same time right i mean that like you will be conscripted however you will be paid and there's benefits and stuff like that what was like the status of like the prussian soldiers at this point real real bad

because i was getting like because i know like I know England, for all the power projected with its armies and shit, you were still essentially considered, I don't know, a bum in a nice coat as a soldier. Prussian put a lot of pride in their military in order to make serving in it worthwhile. Not to mention, it was a method for a decent amount of upward social mobility, as much social mobility as a peasant could have. They're still controlled by nobles. Right. As you were going to have in that society at that time. To the extent that there was any upward mobility, that's the main social vehicle for that. You have been promoted from dirt farmer to shit shoveler. The pay is better. The is worse that's that's

becoming an nco uh now he increased the size of the military from 38 000 to 83 000 and combining this with his obsession of previous established penchant for weird shit leads us to what might be the weirdest military unit of all time. Now, Frederick really liked tall guys. No, no, no. I mean, he really liked tall guys. I am 99% sure he wanted to fuck tall guys, despite hating his son for being... He probably knows I was gay.

But yeah, he definitely wouldn't have liked that about his son. Or have tall guys step on him or something. I'm not sure. Now, this unit of tall guys was something he actually inherited from his father, who established what was known as the Grand Grenadiers of Potsdam in 1675, which were only a couple people. It was maybe like 200 of the tallest dudes he could find in Prussia. Now, what does tall mean oh well what there was specific regulations okay oh thank god i was afraid that it was just gonna be like a it is german of course there's a regulation this unit was popularly known as the longfellows, which is kind of funny.

Just playing that famous German creativity right there. That's right. Now, this was not a unit meant for combat. They were under the king or the electors direct command and would just kind of stand around and be tall. Oh, so they're like the honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. But weirder. Yeah. Well, the difference is people volunteer to do that we'll talk more about the long fellows now the only

requirement for joining this unit was you had to be at least six feet tall which is not that tall but in like 1600s though people weren't eating you know, fortified food like we're like we're fucking giants now compared to what people were like 400 years ago. Even 40 years ago were much bigger. Yeah. Six feet tall. It's pretty big for a Prussian in the 1670s. Hold that thought. Now, Frederick became king and then things got very, very weird really quickly.

Now, in some ways ways the giants were given exclusive treatment by the king they were kitted out and like the best uniforms are bright blue they included a grenadier cap that was a full 45 centimeters higher to make them appear even taller they were given excellent barracks is significantly better than a regular soldier and they ate the best food. Normally. I mean, soldier food is universally very bad.

And your rates of pay were determined by your height. The taller you were, the more money you got. Now, all this sounds pretty sweet, right? I'm five 11. So no,

it sounds like I'm out and I don't like that. No, you're out. Yeah, I'm in. I'm in. Unfortunately, I don. It sounds like I'm out, and I don't like that. No, you're out. Yeah. I'm in. I'm in, unfortunately. I don't know what 6'3 gets. I assume it's like two steps above minimum tall guy wage. Just a tipped minimum wage, but just informed entirely by your height.

Like a government pay scale, but you have to stand next to it so they can see how much they're paying you that month. You have to do your yearly height and weight. But everyone's trying to hang from a pull-up bar immediately beforehand to try to stretch their spine out to get a couple more dollars every month. Yeah, they have what's called podcaster spine. They have to straighten it out. They have to straighten it out. Now, Frederick's dad, Frederick,

capped this unit only a couple people because it's like, whatever, who cares? It's ceremonial. Frederick, the soldier king, did not cap it. He wanted this unit to be as big as it possibly could be. Not in height, well, yes, that, but in size. We want all the tall guys yep no tall guy no tall guys left behind when you are recruiting specifically tall dudes who would volunteer you know in the 1700s 1600s being six feet and taller was kind of rare i couldn't find anything

about the height of germans in the 1700s because why would they have gauged that but american men of the era were generally around five foot eight and in germany today the average is five foot ten so being six foot tall still is not a common thing most people involved in this podcast most of the time myself being you know me nick nate we're all over six feet tall so like you fucks are we how tall how tall is nate tall is Nate? I've never met Nate. I have no idea. He's like six foot tall. Nick is the exact same height as I am. I'm not sure how tall Liam is.

Yeah, Nick seems like a giant too. How tall are you, Kerry? Yeah, he's about six three. I'm five nine. Oh, you're out. You're fucked. Get the fuck out of the Longfellow's podcast. For example,

only 15% of Americans today break the six foot mark. So, as you can imagine, back then, it did not take Frederick Long to run out of Longfellows to recruit voluntarily. I'm just imagining it being

Tinder. They advertise for a bunch of over six foot dudes and a bunch of guys who are like five, seven show up and just think no one's going to notice. I'm looking for your longest white Germans. Your longest of fellows. That got weird.

It's going to get weirder, I promise. Now, Frederick would pay fathers for their tall sons and landowners for their tallest farm hands, which you might recognize as slavery. Because it is. Now, he dispatched agents all over Europe. And if agents saw tall parents with a baby, they're like, that baby might be tall. They would take that baby.

This is like a grim's fairy tale style thing yeah but it's like the wicked witch it's a king with a very weird fetish still very german though it is very german mostly because there's specific regulations involved obviously most of these people are like no i don't want to be in the fucking military this sucks they would simply arrange for them to be kidnapped on one occasion they tried to abduct an unusually tall austrian diplomat which honestly just seems like a bad idea geopolitically right like imagine like so maybe like biden has a fetish like of tall dudes and then um i don't know canada sent the diplomat over and is like, steal that diplomat.

It's not a good idea politically. Like your fetish is literally impinging our government's ability to function now. Well, I mean, if there's one thing that we know from history, it's that bringing a disaffected young Austrian man over to Germany never creates any bad secondary effects. See what you did there. Yeah. How tall was Hitler? He was a short guy, wasn't he? Not very tall, I think. Don't mind me about the Google. Yeah, how tall was Hitler? He was a short guy, wasn't he? Not very tall, I think.

Don't mind me about the Google how tall was Adolf Hitler. I'm glad you stopped yourself from saying he was a short king, though, Cary. Short Fuhrer, mostly. Let's take bets. I'm going to say he's like normal German. I'm going to say like 5'8". Cary? 5'10". Ooh, you're both in the middle.

He's 5'9". Alright. Same height as Hitler, so I got that going for me. If you start growing any weird facial hair, you're going to have to switch to be the other kind of punk. This is why I only ever shave my mustache from left to right and never both sides of the middle. Now, like I said, he employed a large team of scouts

throughout Europe searching for tall guys. You're at an inn somewhere in what is now the Czech Republic and it's like, what's your job? You're chatting up somebody at the bar and it's like,

yeah, tall guy snatcher. Like, what? Oh, yeah, tall guy snatcher. Not one of the new, I'm a tall guy snatcher. Like, what? Oh, yeah, tall guy snatcher. Like, not one of like the new, I'm a tall guy snatcher too. I'm in a management role now. Mid-level tall guy snatching management. I like to think that there's probably like some sort of like media section of this that's like putting up signs in various villages. Like, you know, a see something, say something kind of sign, but for tall guys.

It's like, if you find a tall guy, you let us know. We'll take him in. Yeah. I mean, yeah, of course. That's what they did. You get $10 for every tall guy, for every inch of tall guy you find. Your satchel falls open and it's just like a whole bunch of weird, like, are you a tall guy posters that just scatter and fly off in the wind.

This is the one it looks like. I mean, this is effectively how NCAA recruitment works, right? For college basketball. Just showing up in weird suburbs like you see any tall guys. You tall, you want to go to college for free? Let's go. They would, of course, attempt to get these guys

to get with them voluntarily because it's easy right because to be fair their pay and food and combinations were very nice especially in comparison to how most people lived at the time but you know military life is pretty well known for fucking sucking so the people would say no and they're like all right i guess we're we're gonna shanghai well it's not a shanghai we're gonna pot stamp you um one of these was a irish giant named james kirkland who was over seven feet tall he accepted a job as a footman which is like you know a servant for uh baron bork yeah funny name uh wait baron bork he's the prussian ambassador to london however the job wasn't real. He showed up to the agreed-upon spot

and was just ambushed by Prussians with sacks and kidnapped. Sacks and stilts, I hope. Seven feet tall. Just trying to put a fucking sack over him. He's like, whatever. I put it around his hand. Just grab the weird, awkward bitch. Speaking of having to come off

the top rope on that one. Just trying to grab Andre the Giant like, shut up and come with us. Now Kirkland was stashed aboard a Prussian ship that was moored in Portsmouth and he was immediately bound, gagged, and shoved into a trunk that was purposely built for the... It's a tall guy catching trunk.

It's a Pokeball, but for long white men. Oh yeah, tall guy trunk. It's her Andrere the giant pokeball what do you have is something in a seven foot irishman trunk do you have like a couple different models now sir i'm looking for a box it's large enough for a human giant don't ask me why i need that box no don't ask me why i need a giant hood with a hole in it either yeah just like going through like ye ye old home depot just like yeah i'll just uh i just need a uh a seven foot tall sack and a trunk that could fit a 250 pound something uh you know it's fine don't worry about it like you have something in maybe like ye olde chloroform uh

perhaps you know say charles do you think he's just trying to make the world's biggest gimp yeah probably and some tin cans are strapped to our feet so we get tall enough to actually put the sack over his head or maybe pogo sticks so we can jump up there if we don't make our quotas this month the king will make us all pile into a trench coat and be a tall guy for him. See, that's the thing. The tall guy quota isn't by number of tall guys. It's by number of inches of tallness. So like a seven foot Irishman, man, that's like that's a month done right there.

Like you can just take the rest of the month off. It's like tuna fishing now uh another account is from a bavarian carpenter he was asked by this is probably one of my favorite acme-esque fucking plots i've ever read in history and to be completely clear this might not be true now this bavarian carpenter was asked by one of king frederick's agents to build a box that was big enough and tall enough for him to fit inside. This just sounds like a riddle. So the carpenter was like,

sure, okay, why not? And he was a coffin maker. I feel like that makes it slightly less weird. Yeah, but he was like, well, how big is your coffin? He's like, well, how big are you? And at that point, that's a threat. Well, I'm about 6'5". Well, I need to be about 6'5".

Well, that's certainly not suspicious. You seem honest enough, sir. I'll go ahead and build that coffin big enough for me to fit inside. I like the cut of your jib and the color of your gold, sir. Let's go. And then when the guy came back to pick it up,

the guy was like, that coffin isn't big enough. Prove that's big enough. Get inside pick it up the guy was like that coffin isn't big enough prove that's big enough get inside of it the guy's like oh fucking way okay crawled inside of it and like at this point the agents have to be this is the dumbest motherfucker we've ever kidnapped they put the coffin back on and nailed it shut

and then shipped it to fucking Potsdam. It's like some shit that even wily coyotes like, that won't work. Nobody's that stupid. Like, you know, like, oh, I'm making a man trap. Oh, really? We're going to bait it with, I don't know. What kind of food do you like?

Fuck, man. I put a really big pair of pants in there it shouldn't surprise you after explaining all this and remember this is the 1700s that not all these guys they kidnapped fucking survived oh weird yeah i'm i'm surprised to hear that perhaps nailing a man into a coffin and then shipping him from ireland to That was in Bavaria. From Bavaria to Prussia. What's that man drink? What's he eating? Probably nothing. Piss. I didn't even see if they put air holes in it.

Probably not. Giant's dead. Fuck. We killed another one, Bill. Put him in ye olde giant hole. Like, just toss him in. Fuck, we only made it six feet deep. You can just crawl right out.

And even when they get there, too, like, you're just like, imagine being like the guy who's like an in-doc. He's just like, you know, like, you know, in processing, like, so what's your job? You know, like fucking like Larry. Like, well, I have to deal with a series of pissed off giants all day who got kidnapped from their actual homes.

Probably don't speak fucking Prussian and just show up here in a real fucking angry mood after being in a box for anywhere between two weeks and two months. Oh, I was wondering why they contract if you make really long pants. Now, this wasn't just limited to the king's agents either. Frederick's obsession dripped all the way down to everyday Prussian life. Prussian teachers, eager to appease their really weird king, kept an eye out for tall children

and promptly handed them over to him when they got the chance again this is not as kidnapping yeah this is just a grim's fairy tale like this is like some fucking like you know hansel and gretel style this is a pyramid scheme but everybody's just kidnapping tall children like there's only so many of them like you're eventually gonna run out it's so wild to me that to just be like i mean one day you just might not see your kid anymore and it's just like i don't know did he die did he die in an industry accident did he fall off of a clip did he did he die a fucking dropsy like what happened was he press ganged into a uh a tall guy regiment who knows who knows i hope i hope my tall child is living well though

nurses uh like like midwives that would show up to um that's a tall newborn give it to the king that kid is fucking huge uh but like if parents were tall they'd like give the kid a red ribbon which would mark him to be like kidnapped later on jesus what is about germany and destroying like generations of children well i mean between them and russia they fucking excel at it yeah now between doing all of this parents would learn like wow an awful lot of our weird kids are disappearing so they like formed like if their kids were tall or they were tall they would hide their kids from Prussian life. You know, like the Pied Piper was a fucking documentary.

They came up with their own underground railroad for tall kids to like get them the fuck away from this weird ass country. They even had like underground schools for weirdly tall kids until they could try to get rid of them. Some people would just cut off their toes, some of their toes to make them ineligible for military service. Where'd you graduate from? Oh, the underground school for very tall children. It's a Zoolander school. No, even funnier than this is foreign power. This wasn't a secret. Like I said, this is happening all over the place.

Foreign powers learn about Frederick's weird ass love of tall dudes. So diplomats from around the world, from Britain to the Ottoman Empire, would show up in Prussia and be like, we've brought you a gift. It's our longest man. Would just deliver him tall guys. would just deliver him tall guys. Now, once men like Kirkland arrived in Prussia, their hard life of being kidnapped was not over. Frederick William was obsessed with tall troops and once admitted, quote,

the most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers, they are my weakness. He wants to fuck these guys nobody can tell me otherwise this is very reminiscent you remember like a year ago when uh i guess that new resident evil game came out and there was like the tall vampire tall witch or whatever yeah like vampire witch yeah it was giant giant vampire mommy yeah yeah, and like half of Twitter just showed their Freudian sides real fucking hard.

Look, everybody loves giant vampire woman. I will hear no disagreements here. Yes, I'm sure you want to be in the bosom of your mother again. What would Freud say? The Eddard. The Oedipal horn. Host of the podcast

wants to fuck his mom? It's the sign that you've done one too many episodes about the Greeks. Now, this obsession manifested itself in strange ways and soldiers were treated almost as circus freaks. If the king was sad, he would assemble two to three hundred of his favorite giants.

They were then, quote, preceded by tall turbaned moors with cymbals and trumpets and the grenadier mascot, which was a gigantic bear. I didn't bring up the bear yet. The giants had a bear. I mean, of course the giants had a bear. I didn't bring up the bear yet. The Giants had a bear. I mean, of course the Giants had a bear. When he was sad in his throne room or whatever, 300 people, a bear and a band, would be fucking paraded through. When he fell ill or sick,

his favorite ones are marched around his bedroom to make him happy. This is why it's always really funny to me every time there's one of the, we need to return Western Civ civ dudes like return to tradition having tall guys getting mauled to death by bears in the king's bedroom yeah well like a brass band plays in the background like are we gonna are we gonna start telling people not to do self-care yes yes if this is your self-care please don't do it yeah yeah please don't please don't

kink shame uh you know just like a reddit post me like you know 34 male and my 300 giants my 300 giant uh size polycules having arguments. I don't know what to do with it. My giants have unionized. The Longfellow's union. This is where you get one giant union from.

There it is. That's a dad joke for you. It slipped in among all of our other nonsense yeah dad iww joke right there for the listeners at home you know mark that one down now uh over the years some people attempted to rationalize why exactly the king would need these tall guys uh and the best they could cope with was well muskets are big and heavy and you know if someone was really tall it'd be easier to handle but here's's the thing. No, that's not why. Very clearly, a normal guy handling a musket is fine,

evidenced by the fact that all of history... And in fact, these guys were very, very bad soldiers for reasons that are pretty obvious, right? You don't become seven foot tall as a normal person. Oh, weird. A bunch of angry, pissed off dudes who got kidnapped from their homelands all speak different languages and are like...

Also that, yeah. And are like, you know, and like, yeah, also probably have a variety of interesting health conditions because of the fact that they're like seven feet tall and like, you know, 1,800. 1,600, that's even worse. worse i'm gonna tread kind of lightly here so people don't think i'm being a dick but generally speaking if you are seven feet tall or above you have some pretty serious underlying medical issues there's a few medical conditions that

do cause excessive height uh one is gigantism and the other is acromegaly um now these will both lead to terribly bad health effects and early death without medical treatment which did not exist at the time because it involved literal fucking brain surgery um and you know it's generally there's a tumor on your pituitary gland uh and other issues that's why the big show's so big yeah he ended up getting life-saving medical care uh like uh famously andre the giant did not get it on top on top of being like 400 pounds and a severe alcoholic uh but you know that he died very early uh this leads to heart problems it's incredible fucking joint pain because you're not supposed to be seven foot five and weigh 300 pounds um like generally speaking these guys would be very bad soldiers

which you know yeah of course like if you have acromegaly you can't join the army today for fucking reason unless you get it taken care most most of the time now it's identified very early and it can be treated but back in the day it was kind of a death sentence like the tallest people ever lived barely made to like 40 years old for a reason and they had very very painful lives uh being in the in a giant in the 1700s i'm using the term giant to mean gigantism or acromegaly, generally known as giants in the 1700s, probably met a very short, painful and horrible existence before dying early. Like on top of what I just talked about, there's other complications that come with this diagnosis like diabetes, osteoarthritis, blindness, sleep apnea, heart failure, and an incredibly, incredibly high rate of cancer. All things that did not have treatment in the 1700s. Well, and not only do you not have treatment, but then also you're also still in the Prussian army and getting your ass handed to you

on a regular basis, which is probably also not great for whatever other underlying conditions you might have. Now, these were the guys that were most desired for the Longfellows with seven foot and above. Now, you can be seven foot tall and above and not have crippling acromegaly. I'm not saying that's 100% of the case, but it is noted that that was generally what happened here. Well, and in particular, at this point, you have to to think from like just like a sheer like i don't know like you know background biological perspective like if everyone else is mostly like you know like under five eight and you somehow ended up you know like it's not like you know most people are trending towards six feet and you just happen to be six five like most people are trending towards more like five five and you happen to be seven foot right like the chances is to be normal, not the result of a condition or probably less than they would be otherwise.

Let's say you're one of the people who this does not apply to. You're one of the six footers. You're me, for example. Bad news. You're undesirable. The king wants you to be taller, and he was going to try to make that happen. Not because you're not tall enough, mind you, but just because you're Armenian. Yeah, I mean, he was probably weirdly racist.

Remember how much he hated French people. Now, the king had a way to make you taller. Bad news. It was going to kill you. That's going to say nobody has a way to make you taller in the 1700s. There's barely a way to do it now it involves like incredibly invasive surgery that only gets you like two inches i think now the most notorious practice was the rack effectively you got put on a rack and stretched out while the king watched

sometimes eating lunch um now these racking sessions would go on until he decided you were taller which generally meant until your arms and legs were fucking ripped out of socket, and you eventually died of some horrible infection. Now, this eventually stopped because he was burning through so many giants, he was running out. Do you ever stop to think about how many times

that you've said the terms, like, until you died of a horrible infection on this show? Yeah, it's a lot. Once again, if anyone out there is making a bingo card, maybe put that down as a square. Disease in general, yeah. Now, don't worry, though. He had a plan B.

Oh, good. You want to guess what that plan B was? Just some time at a spa, maybe. Just some self-care, maybe. I'm going to go with hang from the rafters while I tie something heavy to your feet. That's just the rack with even less rack. Well, what is it? Eugenics.

There's another square for your landslide by donkeys. That's right. Yeah. Now, he didn't actually understand what eugenics was. That hadn't been a thing yet. He kind of was a trailblazer. Now, his longfellows were paired

with women who were also tall for the sole purpose of having tall kids. Whether or not the men or women were consenting or not, they did not exactly have a choice. Also, this didn't work for a pretty obvious reason here that we

know now one of the side effects and medical problems that comes with gigantism and acromegaly is impotence and infertility they couldn't have kids if they fucking wanted to um so whoops i'm trying to wrap my brain around like Being a person who's just very tall And then getting press ganged into this terrible army And then just being like You have to have sex with this woman until she makes a bae Like, this is very alien thinking to me Well, I would hope so

Don't worry, you both have extremely recessive traits I'm sure if you both try to have a kid I'm sure it'll end up working just perfectly Oh yeah, all of these things that they totally understood at the time, they're like, no, you're tall. You'll have tall kid. That is the end of the science here. You know what? They did understand

that sometimes you have desirable traits. You put them together. That's how you get cows that are bigger, and I guess that's how you get kids that are bigger, right? It stands to reason. At the time, their understanding of science is like, I don't know, pray to God to make their bones longer. That's how we ended up with the Charles II Battalion.

Not named after him, mind you. Everyone in the entire battalion, from private to colonel, everyone has pudding on the brain. Now, this became very well known. Charles Darwin, obviously, of evolution fame, said, quote, that human beings, unlike livestock, had never been forcefully bred for select characteristics, except in the well-known cases of the Prussian grenadiers.

I should reinforce here that despite eugenics not being in full swing here, this shit was not half-assed by Frederick in any way. He had a full selective process in something that was called only a quote, testing chamber, a German testing chamber. Once again, never anything that has ever been bad or evil in the entire history of the world.

Yeah. Never let a German lock you in anywhere. I'm assuming this is more of a fuck dungeon, right? Like, there has to be a fuck dungeon. That's the only thing that this could be. Now, like I said, these experiments were all pretty much failures, which I am assuming since nobody ever credits the king of Prussia with founding eugenics. Instead, he was just a weird homophobe who beat his kids and wanted to fuck tall guys america number one baby take that prussia but there is something of

an urban legend that after this that there was a strange population of incredibly tall people in potsdam but there's no actual evidence of that it's just something that goes around i'm like the the weird town in brazil that has a weird population of blonde hair blue eyed twins that also is kind of not true however there are many people on the internet who are all named you know like carlos eichmann adolf and yeah that's that's enough about francis's family now um the the missouri von snobs the missouri schittsburgs yeah uh by the time the king died the Missouri Von Stoffs the Missouri Shitsbergs yeah by the time the king died in 1740

the regiment had once numbered only about a hundred guys was no over three thousand he passed the throne to his son previously mentioned Frederick the Great which I'm sure to the surprise of absolutely nobody was like why do we have all these fucking tall people around

and uh just going just flipping through the the mto and the inventory list and just coming coming across the longfellow brigade just like what what the fuck why do they need so much fabric why are they all seven foot tall what the fuck what do they need so much fabric? Why are they all seven foot tall? What the fuck? What do they do? Nothing. Honestly, the only thing worse than being kidnapped and added to like the tall guy brigade would be getting like adcept from it because they just decided to span the entire thing. That's what happened. Yeah. Now, he eventually didn't.

He didn't disband the unit immediately, but he did pretty quickly. But the thing is, he's like, ah, yes, you seven-foot-tall guy who can barely stand up straight and is also covered in tumors from your untreated medical problem. We're going to discharge you. Instead, they just parted them off to other units. You got your assignment of tall guy. Yeah. What's your MOS? Tall guy. Tall guy allotment. Here's your muskets. Here's some hard tech. And here's a tall guy yeah uh what's your mos tall guy tall guy allotment here's your muskets here's some hard tech and here's a tall guy and here's a here's a brace of longfellow yeah don't worry we nailed

him back into the coffin what happens if the enemies are very tall what if they're in a tree you don't know you might have to smack them out of their motive you need something from the top shelf at the supermarket every squad needs a tall guy just like every're in a tree? You don't know. You might have to smack them out of there. What if you need something from the top shelf at the supermarket? Every squad needs a tall guy. Just like every squad needs a guy that can shoot out to 500 meters, every guy also needs somebody who's 7 foot. I'm going to be honest with you. I hope everybody in the squad

can shoot out to 500 meters because that's basic rifle marksmanship. Now, eventually the tall guys were downgraded to battalion size uh which became a normal unit like other non-tall people were melted in but they were the same like potsdam grenadiers like their official name wasn't the potsdam giants it was like the potsdam's grenadiers um where they fought in various wars of fredericks until eventually being pitted against napoleon at

the battle of jenena in 1806, where they surrendered and were eventually disbanded. And that is the end of the longest fellows in Prussia. Ayo, ayo! Now, fellas, normal-sized fellows, we do a thing on the show

called Questions from the Legion, where you ask us questions, we answer them. Or at least we pretend to answer them. I mean, you know, you ask us questions, we answer them, or at least we pretend to answer them. I mean, you know, whether or not we try, whether or not we actually do is kind of a separate question.

That's true. Yeah. Okay. So I have a decent one. Uh, which historical dictator do you think could be the least worst modern us president? I'm going to lean,

I'm going to lean heavily on you on this one. I'm going to, I'm going to caveat on this one.'m gonna i'm gonna caveat on this one i'll also settle for the funniest uh yeah what is what's what does best mean here like there's the best isn't actually real in the situation all options are bad because as bad as like every u.s president has been they're not hitler uh so we have that going for us uh don't say that on twitter somebody will yell at you that's true i'm gonna go with fucking kane swinging frederick here uh with with the the tall you know the first the 38th tall guy uh division hell yeah make them all

tankers because this version of frederick hates them yes cruel like fuck those tall guys they're all gonna be tankers and then the rest of them are all gonna be like semen on a battleship somewhere just like you know in a sub in a world war two arrow submarine yeah just like banging their fucking everything nowadays what you do is like you know you ever see the pictures of the south korean and the north korean guards and the North Korean guards that the South Koreans always send their tallest South Korean soldier to dwarf the other guy? That's what you need a tall guy for. You need tall guys

to show everybody else, look how tall our guys are. It's a really tall German guy in a bright blue uniform that's like flintstoned his legs through a main battle tank and he's just walking around wearing his address. You show up to battle

and you're just like where's your tall guys you got like I see I see three heads I see three heads over six feet where's your tall guys I got 80 80 fucking tall guys do you want to give up now you want to give up now I have a regiment of tall guys most of them are crippled from their horribly untreated medical problems

but the ones who aren't oh ooh boy, you're going to wish they were. Man, they are tall all. Anyway, my candidate for the funniest or least worst dictator of America is Turkmen Bashi of Turkmenistan. Is he the guy who has all the weird

videos? No, that's the guy that came after him. Turkmen Bashi's real name is like Superoff Niyazoff or something like that. I can't pronounce his name. He's the guy who named Days of the Week after himself and his mother. He built a golden statue

in the middle of Ashgabat that rotates to face the sun at all hours of the day. And he made memorizing his book mandatory for you to get driver's license. Hell yes. I appreciate a dictator that isn't like, I need to murder like 10% of people in various ways. And instead, they're just like, I want a statue of me that points to the sun at all times. To be fair, he also killed a lot of people.

Okay, see, you didn't mention that. It's a dictator. It's assumed. It's not's it's a dictator it's assumed it's not like he became a dictator because everybody actually likes him i'm surprised you didn't go with napoleon napoleon wasn't a dictator i mean he eventually became one but he didn't start out that way okay well he was a benevolent emperor i'll have you know okay i mean if anything it goes chaos version of napoleon which Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Empire. Fucking Joe over here trying to play the game of terrorist versus freedom fighter.

Yeah, he's the people's emperor. Uh-huh. He's the people's dictator. That's what that is. Monarchy-based communism all ruled by the forever undying napoleon the first is my political ideology on the whole i'm gonna have to go with qaddafi here if we're just gonna go for entertaining so because you want the president to actually live in a tent in the front lawn we'll be spent like you know the last hour talking about like you know like the tall guy brigade

and uh you know qaddafi like all i'm thinking about is like, do you think it was like his Amazonian bodyguards? Yeah, it's a real dark chapter that we best don't explore too much. Yeah, like, don't get me wrong. I mean, like, it's dark as shit. I mean, like, my personal favorite is his love affair with Condoleezza Rice. Did you ever hear about that? He had like a binder of pictures of Condoleezza Rice and like, like clippings of her in the news,

which is just the weirdest fucking thing. Look, I'll back Gaddafi because that means I could be an NCO in the technical core. So that's true. I mean, you have it the other way around. That was Chad. But I mean, he also had technicals after all of his tanks got blown up by technicals. Yeah. How bad you got to be to lose a tank to a technical man.

You had to be Moe Mark Gaddafi. He was a fucking idiot. Anyway, you guys, thank you for good. Thank you for coming on this show. As always, uh,

listen to hell of a way to die. And thank you for supporting the show. Uh, maybe leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you use. That would be cool or don't. It's your time time but you know and and if you want more Joe man I got I got Joe on all of our

a lot of our bonus stuff so if you're pining for like Joe but like not not script reading Joe like loosey goosey Joe that's that's what the zoo crew is over on my worst version of Joe and all versions are bad

if you want joe but like yeah not the joe that's prepared but the joe that is himself the chaos agent joe in the role of uh me and francis uh and what we do when wherever i'm around joe's show uh yeah that's that's a hell of a way to die. Yeah. And until next time, don't kidnap tall people. Later.