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Peace to the planet. I go by the name of Charlemagne the God, and this summer I'm bringing my show back to Comedy Central with a new title and a new podcast. It's called hell of a week. But don't worry, every Friday I'll be keeping that same, calling out the ******** energy, and I'll have some of the biggest names in comedy, politics and entertainment with me. So if the news is terrorizing your timeline and causing your anxiety to rise high and gas prices, don't worry, we got you. Listen to hell of a week with charlamagne the God on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm dua lipa. And I'm thrilled to be back for the second season of my podcast tulipa at your service. Alongside me and my guests lists and recommendations, the show features conversations with some of my biggest inspirations working across entertainment, politics, activism and much, much more. So please tune in and join me on this very special adventure. Listen to Dua Lipa at your service starting Friday 23rd of September on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ebony K Williams, host of Holden Court, and I'm so excited to announce that Holden Court has a brand new home at interval presents. That's right, we're back and better than ever. Season 2 is here and we're bringing you the same in-depth legal analysis and cultural commentary that you know and love. Listen to Holden Court on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. So y'all, let's hold court. Hello, friends, and welcome again to behind the ********. I'm Robert Evans, your host on yet another journey into the life and mind of one of the worst people in all of history. My guest today is Caitlin Gill. Hey, that's me. Caitlin Gill is a comedian, and presumably some would argue that, but. And you're involved in a television production that's happening now. It happened. And that's about to come out July 11th. Tune into true TV's Misfits and monsters. Bobcat Goldthwait made a fun TV show, and I bet you're gonna like it, so watch it when it's on. So on this episode of the show, I will be talking to a a vastly more accomplished comedian and reading a story about a bad person in history. I live in a backyard. Don't worry about it. We all live in yards. OK? That's not just bragging that yours is a backyard. It's true. I have moved back from the front yard. That feels good. You know, I've been living on a porch for a while, and it is. Uh, not ideal. Speaking of porches, uh, what do you know about the Cambodian mass killings in the the 1970s? I know that it is 80s, one of the most 90s. Brutally depressing aspects of history you can look at. Wasn't it like 50s forward? It was long and really bad. There was a lot of **** going on from the 50s forward. It's like a million plus. Yeah, yeah. The, the, the mass killings started in 1975, went through to like 78 or 79. About 3 1/2 years. The Khmer Rouge was in power. What do you know about the the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot? And I mean some. I have a political science degree and I paid attention in those classes. But that was 15 years ago. So my updated history, not so great. But in the past I was disgustingly fascinated. It seems like one of the most cruel. Oh yeah, regimes that has ever gotten to spend some time in power. Real bad. Real bad, real bad people. And it was one of those things. So when we started this podcast, you know, I had some some people that I clearly had plans for. Wanted to talk about Hitler's favorite young adult novels and Saddam Hussein's ****** memoirs and all that sort of stuff. And then there were people were like, yeah, we're probably gonna do a pod episode at some point. But I didn't really know anything more than, like, what I'd learned in high school about him, which is like, yeah, he killed like a million and a half people. They had people with glasses murdered for some reason, like, and that's that's the end of the. And you figure it's like the same story with a guy like Hitler or Stalin where it was just some ******* who wound up in charge and just started murdering the groups of people they hated. And so I I didn't really know much about. Pot. And I started reading into the story recently, and I read a great book called Pol Pot, The Anatomy of Terror. And then that sent me down a a whole reading hole. And anyway, I wound up realizing that the most interesting character, the most terrible person behind all of this, is not pole pot himself, and instead it's a different guy, a different person entirely. Prince Norodom Sihanouk. You heard of that? I have not heard of this. Prince well, Samdech, Priya, Norodom Sihanouk. Was born and NUM Pen, Cambodia on October 31st, 1922. He was a member of both of Cambodia's two leading royal families, the Sisowath and the norms. But he was not born as the heir apparent. So Cambodia has like a different sort of way of appointing their kings nowadays. There's like a royal council that sort of is a mix of elected and unelected people who votes on the new king. Back when he was born the French were in charge of Cambodia and so they would appoint new kings when the king died. Yeah. So Nordam was an only child. And since this was the 20s, his parents were terrified he was going to die on them. They consulted an astrologer, which was a normal thing to do at the time, like everybody in Cambodia consultants. Like, right after the Russians thought it was a good idea to talk to Rasputin. Yeah. And this is within five years of that, medicine is almost happening. But Mystics are still like, maybe I'm medicine. Yeah. You get a flu in your family's like, well, I guess that's it for you. Since an only child Prince can't have any appearance of injury or illness anyway. So you get real creepy about how you know. It's a lot of secrets really early. Yeah, especially if you're talking to Mystic. Something's wrong with that kid. I don't know, bleeds a lot or like, can't breathe good or I don't know, they were just worried. And the astrology, you have to assume they're all lumpy babies. Every baby is lumpy. How are you the only child and not in line for a throne? Well, he was in line for it, but it wasn't a guarantee. So he was like, you know, you've got a certain number of kids who could. Could be OK because right away there's the royal families are big. And so the Prince are like, OK, there's like 9 or 10 kids we get to pick from. And he was obviously like, it wasn't guaranteed, but he was in the running, so his parents were very concerned about him. And they take him to an astrologer. And the astrologer warned that if he was raised by his mom and dad, he would die early. So as a young boy, Norton was raised by his grandmother, Madam Chahun Pot. She was like, you're describing a very bleak version of the movie Big. Yes. That's this entire story. There is a giant. Ohh. Good. Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be great. Oh no. I'm thinking about big fish. Big fish. Very different films. Yeah, I just like that. Like, I don't let him grow up with my parents anymore. I want to be a big kid right now. Only a very dark, evil version. Yeah. No, Zoltan. It's like a it's like a source. You know, an astrologer screaming your parents. Boy, I really got that movie wrong. You talking about the Tom Hanks film? Oh yeah, I'm talking about the yeah, the piano. I'm talking about a Cambodian dictator. You did bring up another one of history's great monsters, but we haven't done our Tom Hanks. But he definitely belongs. Ohh the T you could spill honey. Uh, so his grandmother's really religious. Uh, she's a Buddhist known for giving a lot of money to monks, which was, you know, pretty popular at the time. She dies when he's a young boy, and immediately after ** *** dies. He's ordained as a monk for exactly 24 hours. That was like a thing in Cambodian culture where everybody was. And it was really common for, like, if your family had any money at all, they'd send you away to learn how to be a monk for a little while. So it's not like the Universal Church that you sign up for just to marry your friends. It is. It is for him, so for normal. So for the for the Prince, because he might be the king anytime you might be a leader they send you off to be a monk for exactly a day just so he can say like no he's enlightened, he's been a monk like he's he's a he's a monk king sort of thing. That was important. If you were a normal Cambodian who was like middle class or up you'd also be a month, but you Monk but you'd be there for months and the training for non king monks was brutal. Here's how a normal Cambodian at the time explained like what the actual monks went through if you came to the waters a novice. You had to study for three months before you were allowed to wear the robe. You were taught the etiquette of a monk had to put on the robe, how to speak, how to walk, how to put your palms together to show respect, and you were given a thrashing. If you didn't do as they said, if you didn't walk correctly, you were beaten. You had to walk quietly and slowly without making any sound with your feet, and you weren't allowed to swing your arms. You had to move serenely. You had to learn by heart in Pali the rules of conduct and the Buddhist precepts that you could recite them without hesitation. If you hesitated, you were beaten. Yeah, yeah. That's like getting an honorary degree from like, the worst university. Yeah, yeah. Like Cobra Kai university. Everybody's everybody's getting beaten except for the Prince who shows up for one day and he gets to be a monk straight away. So as a young child, the Prince goes to school in Saigon, over in Vietnam, and then he goes to France. He gets a really nice western education. He develops a love for the arts and for French cooking. His mother nicknamed him tool or Tubby on this. At this point, I'm on his side. I get it, Francis. Pretty irresistible. And your resistible and your mom calls you fat. If you're just, like a portly, rich Cambodian Prince, honestly, just kick it in France, baby. Like, if that's what you're into, then be there. There's a lot of food is great in both places, but so different. Yeah, we go be a tubby in France. Yeah. So he spends a lot of time as a young man being a fat kid in France while other young Cambodian kids are getting beaten to learn how to be monks. So, so far, I'm just jealous. Yeah. Yeah, everybody's probably jealous. So in 1941, his grandfather, who was the current king, dies and the French, you know, have to pick from the options in the royal families. And in 1941 they decide to bet on Norodom Sahak because he seemed like the choice would give them the least grief. Uh, this is what he looked like on the day he was ordained. And we'll have these pictures up on the behind the ******** website. Copy. There's no reason to shame him. Yes, I feel like this is what makes me feel like his mom is probably giving him a complex because that's not a fat kid. He does have evil eyes. I want, like when you look at the picture, it looks like even just print it out on computer paper. I feel like he is across a bar and, like, raising his eyebrow at me. There's something that is bearing doing for a while. Yeah, it's like a painting that looks at you when you move across the room. This is the guy that leers at you from across the bar. Only in in photograph form, I think. But he's kind of hot. Like, I'm not mad he's looking at me. Except I know he's trouble, you know? Yeah. And if you knew that his mom had called him fat, his old childhood, you'd probably assume, like, oh, there's some darkness going on. Yes, there's issues I don't want. I mean, this is a good time for me to assess that he's kind of handsome and say that out loud before I hear about all the horrible things that he did. He is. Remember Hanson. People can be really bad. Bad people, handsome people with, it has to be said, fabulous, beautiful people are evil. Never forget. Yeah, you can tell by his. Cheekbones that he's dangerous. So in 1941 the French government appoints him isn't really France, it's Vichy France. You know, the Germans had conquered them, so he was appointed king by the puppet government for the Nazi occupiers. Their leader, Marshall Petain, became the leader of Cambodia as well. The children who grew up in Cambodia's public schools at the time were educated to pertain a standards which emphasized unity, order, and labor. The city was seen as the incarnation of All evil, and peasant life was highlighted as the soul of the nation. One of the children in these schools was a guy named Saloth Sar, who would grow into a guy. Named Paul Pott. Just a little bit of foreboding there. So Cambodia isn't an awkward position. And World War Two pull pot came from a much different social status. Not a Prince. Not a Prince. Normal. Kind. Kind of upper middle class. OK, right. Yeah, not rich. But his family is doing OK. Yeah, yeah, he comes from a pretty bougie little background, but he had to do the full monk training, too, so he's the guy getting the **** kicked out of him by monks and learning about how cities are evil in school, while the actual king is flying to France and. Developing a complex because his mom calls him fat, so Cambodia isn't an awkward position during World War Two. France is technically an Axis ally at this point, like the Vishi France, but the Japanese eventually wound up conquering Cambodia just a couple of months after the Prince gets coronated, so CNN now becomes Japan's puppet and proclaims Cambodian independence. Obviously that didn't last longer than 1945. As soon as the war is over, Sihanouk starts advocating for more independence from France. He introduced universal male suffrage to his country and press freedom, and he establishes an elected parliament. So far, he seems pretty enlightened for a king in Cambodia in the 40s. If you're a Cambodian dude. If you're a Cambodian dude, well, you can't just go from zero to letting women vote. You can't just go from zero to human rights for humans. Sorry. I know. I'll go bleeding rag feminist over here. What are you? Huh? Huh? Sorry. I mean, it was this was 25 years after we decided I just love the phrase universal male suffrage. Like, you don't get to universal and then immediately qualify. Universal to specifically what it's just a funny people I like suffering. Yes. That's all the people I like it to vote. Yes. Yeah. You're all universally invited to my birthday party except only 10 if you can come. But he's woke by 40 standards, yes. Yeah. He is woke if you lower the bar. Yes. Correct. So, so our 40s woke king is. A lot of Cambodians at the time, the ones who are living in like cities and towns, who were educated and kind of plugged into the world, it probably seemed like they were slowly sort of joining modernity and heading towards the kind of system England has. We've got a king, but the King's kind of a just a figure to, yeah, look pretty, we care about their weddings and **** but like, that's kind of what people were hoping for, what a lot of people were hoping for. But it's very different outside of the cities. So in rural Cambodia, probably about 1/4 of Cambodian peasants of the country like the real deep peasants. Had never used money at all in their lives. They Burning Man. I'm just that was terrible. Yeah, it's kind of like Burning Man, but with subsistence. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you don't farm enough rice, you starve. $7000 to get there and you don't have, like, a dust mask and there's no glow sticks. Yeah, well, there's totally Burning Man. Otherwise we have to assume there's glow sticks. But yeah, love it if somebody who's never used currency in their entire life and has just lived from the land that they're on for generations and you happen to be passing by and they're just glowsticking with like, where did you get those silent rave that's been going on for millennia that we just didn't know about 1000 year old rave? Like the 1000 year old egg? Be so much more fun. So the King's not a figurehead to the peasants. He's, he's kind of, he's seen, he's seen as sort of a figurehead in the cities to the peasants. He's semi divine. I'm going to read a description of Royal Court life from that book. Pol Pot, the anatomy of terror that I think sort of sets up kind of how the king is seen by the country people. Each spring, crowds gathered to watch the royal oxen plow the sacred furrow, and all of those things are capitalized, from which the King's astrologer would divine whether or not there would be plenty or famine in the year ahead. And a tank talk, the King's birthday, the provincial governors came to pay homage. Royal protocol was draconian in his palace, if no longer in the colonized state over which he reigned. The king was still an absolute ruler, the Master of life venerated by the populace as a sacred quasi divine figure at royal audiences. The Princess, Mandarins and other dignitaries Crouch on all fours with their knees and elbows on the floor and their hands raised together before their heads. The king sits above them enthroned on a Dias, sitting cross legged like an Indian idol. When he enters or leaves, all present frustrate themselves. Three times, no one has the right to speak unless the king addresses him, and no one may publicly disagree with anything the King says. So. You're already seeing sort of a disconnect between. You've got the people in the cities who are like listening to the radio, they're watching TV, they're getting the newspapers and then you got the people who they're on room, Springer. And then there's people still on the farm. Yeah, yeah. The king makes the rain come, which is not like a joke. That's like, that's like a widespread belief. So there's already a big disconnect here. So the camera language and the camera like the majority of people of Cambodia has its own special sub language for how to talk to the king. So there's like a separate Dictionary of words you just used to refer to the king and. The family the king was seen as impossibly high above even his high ministers, who were known non jokingly as quote we who carry the King's excrement on our heads. So that's. I mean, gets jokingly. Come on. That is a little bit tongue in cheek. Like, yeah, you. We got your **** on our head, buddy. Like, yeah, this is a little bit. I'm gonna ask you a little bit and a few more pages if you think that was jokey or if you think that just wasn't literally. Yeah, but it's got a there's a wink in there somewhere. There's a jester in the court. Yeah, there might be a couple of winks. I'll eat my words later. I won't eat the King's feces, but I will. I'll be happy to eat my words. Yeah. So this is, you can imagine, you know, guy grows up with his mom calling him Tubby. And now nobody's allowed to argue with him and he's philosophically ********. I was a tubby kid. We do not deserve power until we go through and unpack our trauma. You can't you can't hand, you know, you can take the Fed off the kid. You can't take the fat kid out of the fat kid just because there's this. Like, I'm an only child who was tubby. Trust, trust, trust. Oh yeah, I I grew up as a fat kid. And, you know, it's one of those things where when you see a fat kid who loses weight, like that's someone who didn't deal with their trauma. Who's just, like, trying to control themselves and their body through, like, there's something dark in there, is all I'm saying. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's like you have to shine the light in your own darkness. Yeah. And, you know, whatever happened to you in the bathroom in the locker room or on the playground, eventually you have to shine a little light on it or you become a dictator if you happen to be a Prince. Yeah. Well, what he ends up doing is like a bad assistant manager. You know, I think that's what most people do, but it depends on your access, where you start from. Usually you go for a tiny amount of power. Yeah, but he he kind of got on the. Had with my moderate amount of power. So we're talking old fashioned kings here. Notre Dame's grandfather was famous for having a gigantic harem made-up of beautiful local ladies. By the late 30s he was too old and sickly to make use of them, so these ladies weren't allowed to go out and live their own lives. They got frustrated and things got weird. One of the ladies courted by the old king was a girl named Riung. She was the older sister to Saloth Sar, the guy who became pole pot. He was about 15 at this point in time and his sister's position meant he got to spend some time hanging around the royal palace. Since he was just 15, he was even allowed to hang out with the Kings. Cortisone. And they would fondle him. So that's pull pots. 15 year old childhood is like hanging out in the Royal palace and getting like like literally *********** by the Kings board. *****. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So just trying to keep in mind. Very high class Charles Manson existence. Yeah. Charles Manson's mom, you know, bit of a she's a girl about town. I think that's actually how he described her. And and you know, he got traded for beer. But. Yeah. Who? The man who became Pol Pot just got jerked off by a bunch of royal Curtis. It's the same. Different. It is the same, but different. Apparently. That's my job here today. Here's something that's like what you're talking about, but not well. No, but it's it's good to point out that this this story that starts with different country in a different class level. And it is it's also a bad ending. Yeah. This is not a good jump. It's not a good thing to do to a 15 year old 15 year olds. Maybe. Should get like if you happen to get rubbed off when you were 15. Congratulations. And I bet you're fine. I hope for most of you. It was a positive memory. If you are a 15 year old being jerked off by a royal harem **** that that is going to change your path. Yeah, that's gonna change your path. That's different than like, you're you're you're dating somebody in high school. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We are either going to be an interesting section sex educator or apparently a dangerous dictator. Yeah. Yeah. And probably the 2nd. So, yeah, this is the sort of environment, cultural environment Norodom Sihanouk comes to power in. You know, he's he's he's the king. And so he's. He's dealing with both. Like, you've got these people in the cities who they're supposed to treat him like a God, but they they don't because he's just this they they know he's just like this guy and they're trying to be like, well, let's be a normal country that doesn't worship the king, but then he's got these people in the in the sticks who to whom? He's literally a deity. So you you can see how this would cause some conflicts within the king and within the country. Feel like for any crafty con man, crisis is opportunity. This is a great you know, you wink and nod on one side. And you and you get to grease the other wheels. Well, Speaking of crisis, by the time the king comes to power in the late 40s, well, he comes to power in 41. But the time he's really getting used to things, the Cold War starts kicking off. And his neighbors are all dealing with, you know, communism. You've got Vietnam with this, this Communist revolt against the French going on right now. And at first, it seemed like Cambodia was immune to communism. So in traditional Marxist theory, the revolution begins within the laboring class, right? You know, the factory workers who gets fed up with serving the needs of capital. In the 40s and 50s Cambodia had like a couple of 1000 actual laborers in the whole country, most countries subsistence farmers. They didn't really give a **** about capitalism or socialism. This is because neither had anything to do with their lives. They worked at most about six months a year to cover their basic needs. And they were all Theravada Buddhists and Theravada Buddhism places no value on acquiring wealth and therefore number one, there was no cultural need to acquire wealth and there just wasn't a lot to buy. King Sanook liked to tell a story about an American. Read expert who visited Cambodia in the 50s and convinced some villagers to start using modern fertilizer. They doubled their harvest yields in a year, and the aid worker came back the next year and was surprised to see that each farmer had only grown half as many crops this the next year. He didn't understand why they wouldn't want to produce twice as much. But clearly the Cambodians were like, no, we can farm half as much and make the same amount of food and work even less. So basically they're the smartest people in the world. They really got it right. They're really nailing it and like the. Late 40s, dumb historical question. For a little bit further back, I feel like I should know in terms of like the Silk Road and the spice trade in Cambodia has always been in a significant position for colonizers. But what? Is there a product that everybody was hungry for from the outside? Like why did my people, the Scots, get on a boat to go there? I come from thieves and plunderers to Cambodia. I'm not. No, no, no. I mean. I'll take a step in the broader sense of why people leave the tiny rock that they were on to go get something better from outside, pepper or a spice or a mineral. Why were people coming from places in the West to Cambodia? What were they plundering? What were they taking? I mean, so it's one of those things. Cambodia. Yeah, exactly. So Cambodians history is heavily based on sort of conflicts between Vietnam like Vietnam is their traditional enemy because Vietnam is like the big regional power. And so there's been a lot of like more or less constant sort of power struggles between China and Vietnam and Cambodia kind of winds up in the middle. And of course during World War Two, they wound up in the middle between everybody and the Japanese. But like they're never, nobody's more about position on the map than resources with exactly because they they're they're not like, they're not like a major. Industrial power. Obviously there's not like giant gold mines or anything like it's it's a country of like small farmers who just want to make enough food to keep their families alive. I just know that by the 40s, a bunch of economies, we're kind of closing up to do that. Most of their people would have been subsistence farmers, so it made sense for the economy to stay more closed than to invite and trade, since there would always be such an imbalance. That, and it's there's an interesting period of history when countries were more isolated and fascinating. Things happen in their history within that bubble because Cambodians weren't buying Ritz crackers, they were, you know, everything that happened is internally. Their history is inside the bubble along with their economy. So it's just kind of interesting to pick out and figure out what people were busy doing. And it's things like growing less crops because you didn't need to grow as many, which is ******* great. But one of the things they also have going on is a ankor Watt is in Cambodia, which is this crazy, gigantic, beautiful, like complex of of of massive buildings that was built during the Kamir Empire, which had fallen hundreds of years. Before this point, but so that's King Sienna's looking at that and saying, like, are people used to be great and build great gigantic things and I I have to figure out some way to make us into a significant power. The answer is always slaves. Slaves are always the answer to why people made big cool stuff. We always slaves. Slaves are always the terrible answer. Yeah, you you just spoiled a lot of the story. That is not a spoiler. Spoiler, spoiler. Evil King wants to build something big. There's no gap there. That is a straight. So we're going to get back to what exactly? This not yet evil, but. Definitely evil King is going to do later. So we're going to continue talking about this evil or not yet evil King in a minute. But right now we have to advertise some products because. Capitalist gods, yeah, yeah. None of us are Cambodian people. We will all work much harder in order to purchase things which we can fill our homes with. So grab grab a box of money and a bag of money and a suitcase of money and guns and some dumb dumbs. Buy some Dum Dums. This shows official sponsor is not Dum Dums, but we're advertising them anyway and now some other things. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. 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That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Hey y'all, this is Caroline Hobby, the host of Git real with Caroline Hobby, honest women, honest talk. I love podcasting. It is so much fun because I have the most in depth, spiritual, soulful, real, honest conversations with women who are mothers, who are entrepreneurs, who have started their own businesses, who are married to celebrities, who are celebrities themselves. These women are juggling motherhood, being a career woman, starting their own businesses, taking leaps. Knowing when to jump. These women are incredible and the conversations are so real it will hit every nerve in your body. As a woman, a little bit about myself, I was a country music artist and a trio. I traveled the country open for every celebrity you can imagine in country music. I also been on The Amazing Race twice and I'm married to Michael Hobby, who is the lead singer of 1000 horses. And we have our precious daughter Sonny, who's two listen to new episodes of get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to. Guest. So, yeah, we're back and we're talking about Cambodia and its culture at the time when a king Norodom Sihanouk is, is sort of coming into power in the late 40s, the early 50s. And he's frustrated because he wants to modernize his country. He wants to make it, you know, great again. And the people just kind of want to farm and not get involved in any of the conflicts raging around them. So there's there's sort of this little like, it's not really a huge conflict yet, but you can. You can see some groundwork late where the king, you know, wants to open things up more to the world and the people are just sort of like, but, you know, we've got rice. Like, I feel fine. Uh, so, yeah, there was a communist movement afoot in Cambodia in the late 40s and early 50s, but it was dominated by the Vietnam and by the Viet men, who, you might guess from the name, were Vietnamese and not Cambodian. Yeah, this made them not super popular among the Cambodians because again, there's this history of Vietnam being sort of this domineering power over Cambodia. So, so far it doesn't look like the Communists are going to gain a big foothold in in Cambodia. The problem is that the country occupies a really sweet position from the point of view of someone trying to smuggle weapons into Vietnam in order to fight the French. So it was important to Vietnam to have backing in Cambodia. They weren't really successful in spreading communism, but they had some success working with an anti colonial rebel movement. The chair is Iraq and the Israk aren't really communists, they're more Democrats. They want Cambodia to like vote for leaders, and they don't want the French to be in their ******* country anymore. And they're not super communist, but they're willing to take guns from the communists in order to try to kick out the French. So from a fighting standpoint, the user act look a lot like our conception of the Vietcong they're jungle warriors who carry out hit and run attacks against the military and waging endless guerrilla war. I'm not going to try to bog you down in details of Cambodian politics at this time, although they are fascinating. It's important for the story is that the camera is Iraq, or the guy's trying to uproot the French and thus King Sihanouk. You know, they call him a traitor and a collaborationist for sort of working with the French. How far have we moved in history? We're in the early 50s, fifty 152 and this is the point at time at which the conflict between The Isaacs and the French starts to really get bloody. There's a quote in the book pole pot that I mentioned earlier from a Shang song, who is a Cambodian senator today who remembered how in his village in the Takeo province, The Isaacs would decapitate victims and stuff their stomachs with grass. When we as children were fishing in the ponds, he remembered, we would find severed heads in the water. It didn't bother us. We were used to it. We'd yank them out. The hair and throw them aside. That was around 1949. Arby's deal with it. Yeah, so things are getting Cambodia in the late 40s to early 50s is transitioning from like this mostly peaceful place to being sort of increasingly racked with civil conflict. The Israk are pretty brutal guys. Many of their leaders were what were known as Punkrocker Smoke Children, which are amulets made from mummified fetuses that were said to stop bullets. The colonial soldiers were no better. One former government. Soldier these are like local Cambodian soldiers recruited from the cities but fighting under French command. One former government soldier described his units work as quote we would move into villages, kill the men and women who had not already fled, and then engage in individual tests of strength, which consisted of grasping infants by the legs and then pulling them apart. So things are getting bad in Cambodia in the early 50s, and the king sees the writing on the wall, which is that. This rebel movement, like he he's a smart guy. He's already guessed from the start of the fighting between the French and the Vietnamese that the the Vietnamese are going to kick the French out. And he knows that the Vietnamese are also going to continue funding the rebels in Cambodia to kick the French out. Which means that he's going to get overthrown and probably ripped apart by a mob if he doesn't figure out some cunning way to get his country free of France without letting the rebels win. So no, that is a dilly of a pickle. That is a dilly of a pickle. That is a deal. How would you solve that problem? Well, slaves, I'm just kidding. Always dropping back to slaves, well at nationalism is a is a pretty easy trick at that stage for something like it where you know you've got, you have the former loyalty of those who are worshipping you and you've got the up and coming gleaming cities that are looking to build and grow. You know, close the ranks and make it about being Cambodian, not French or Vietnamese. You know what? You would have made pretty good dictator. You would have made a great King of Cambodia. In the 1950s, you would have nailed being King of Cambodia in the 1950s. I don't know. That is pretty delicate dance. That's some tough marketing. You need the right people. This is a delicate dance. And so, Spoiler King Norodom Sihanouk as I think people spoiler alert history. It's just like, hey, you didn't read this spoiler alert for a thing that millions of people know. He's definitely a *******. Like, he belongs on this show, but he's kinda, it's one of those like he, he is a dancer. This whole story is him dancing around. And there's, there's an aspect of it where you're like era of like up until like, well, right now, up until the 50s, he's like from the 1900 to 1950, there are a whole bunch of Royal Courts just like we've been in Dotchin like just did like, oh God, we don't know anything, boy, it's like a stupid gift for kids on a like, you know, in a playground. Little whirly gigs thing where everybody stood spinning too hard and everybody's trying to hold on. They don't know what happened and why. One, they all fly off, fat kid goes last, but you know he's gonna go. You know he's gonna go, but this fat kid's gonna hang on. They hang on tight and some are still clinging, but it's it's just a period. No time in Monarchal history is boring. They're weird. Monarchies are very weird, but there's that. In history seems to be so volatile where they just couldn't keep up with the pace of social change everywhere, either. Backwards. Or forwards. Yeah. And I I'm sure he was dancing along with the rest. He's dancing. So you remember when he comes to power, one of the first things he does is he lets them in vote and he establishes a parliament that has, you know, some power. So he's basically, he's sharing power with the parliament and he has a lot of power. Like he's not like the King of England is now where there's no or I guess they have, you know, he's he's not he's not just a figurehead, but there's a parliament. They have power and they're right now dominated by the Democratic Party, which was kind of like the Democratic Party here, kind of a general liberalist party who included just sort of a melange of of. Left wing and centrist people, and they're big. Thing is, they want to be an actual democracy, so they're, they're kind of ideologically more or less in line with the israk, but they don't want to do it violently, you know, they want to, they want to peacefully sort of proceed to being decolonized and whatnot. So the SRX, meanwhile, are a little bit further to the left. Some of them are outright communists. They're most popular leader is a guy named Sun Nock than whose goal was to get the Democrats to back him in pushing the French authorities out of Cambodia. So he's trying to get his rebel movement to ally with the people. Empower and sort of force a coup against the government, and he's one of the guys attacking the king for being a puppet of the French. So this all comes to a head in June of 1952 when the king, aged 30, decides it's time for him to jump into politics for the first time because he'd sort of tried to be above factional politics. You know, you got the Cambodian right wing and you've got the Democrats, and he doesn't really weigh in. So he finally decides to weigh in, and he gave a speech attacking the Democrats and whining that people had dared to say that collaborating with the French wasn't cool. This prompts an uprising of right. In Cambodians in the city who take to the streets and advocate for the destruction of the current Democrat dominated party in power, Sihanouk calls up French troops. Moroccans, actually. In the middle of the night on June 9th, he dissolves the government, assumes emergency powers and declares himself Prime Minister. So there you go. I forgot about emergency powers. Don't manipulate your public. You got inside. Every now and then you create an emergency that you didn't have to. You then have to assume emergency powers. Well, yeah. And it was just a coincidence. That done, baby. Yeah. Yeah. So he announces that. Is launching a Royal Crusade to gain Cambodian independence within three years. He bans all political meetings in Nam Pen, and he has French soldiers and armored vehicles filled the streets to make sure nobody talks about politics other than the politics that he wants to. Honestly, that sounds refreshing. Yeah, yeah, no more just armed men stopping you from talking about the government. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Yeah. So the French, in spite of the fact that he says Cambodia needs to be independent from France, the French are more or less on his side because their basic idea is that democracy in Cambodia was a mistake. Cambodians aren't ready to be voting because they're going to vote to kick the French out, and only a king can keep things peaceful. The Republicans in the capital, and by that I mean people who want a Republic, not the Conservatives, because the Conservatives are all about this. The Republicans in the capital aren't happy. Senix crackdown inspires protests. In 19 in November of 1952, there's a big strike by students and non pen and several towns. King Siena tells them all to get back to class, but instead a bunch of them hold up in the National Assembly, which is the Parliament building. Monks came out to protest and argue that the king was in fact * ****. ** January of 53 there are some grenade attacks on schools and non pen Phillip, Short, author of anatomy of A Nightmare, says that these attacks were either from the rebels to provoke the king into brutal reprisals or just ordered by the king so that he could justify a crackdown. And it seems like it's probably the second one. So he has some people start throwing grenades into political gatherings so that he can basically crack down on everybody. So he gives a speech and says from now on, any individual or political party that opposes my policies will be declared a traitor to the nation and punished accordingly. The King is supported in this by his mom, who'd once called him Tubby. She hated democracy and thought the idea of people voting was a deliberate insult to her personally. That is hilarious. Oh my God. What? That is some serious, malignant narcissism. Yeah, that is mental illness combined with power. That is so funny. The personal insult that people would want to vote? Yeah. That's like that. They might want to decide the path of their country and life is like them ******** on you. There's also just so many crooked democracies. Like, yeah, sure, 98% of the populace voted for this one person. Like, just assume that you could set that up. I love it. I love it. That's great. My tubby son is letting people vote again. They're letting. No, you don't get to choose. So the French are still on board at this point. They want a strong man in Cambodia who can keep a lid on the communists. So they support King Sihanouk, while he arrests nine members of the Democratic Party and and imprisons them without trial for plotting against the state. That's always what happens on the ground, 100%. Only one thing happening. Yeah. I can't think of a single time where a colonial power backed a dictator and didn't have things work out great. Well, it works for the colonial power. I'm not saying it works in the sense that's like, yeah, a knife works for a murderer. Murders, not cool. That's not what I'm saying. It worked for us in Vietnam. You are France. It makes sense to prop up a brutal dictator because that prevents anything from changing. You don't care how brutal it is, you just don't want to change. And that right there. That's why all of the colonial powers are still in charge of their colonies well. I didn't say it works in the long term. There is no long term successful. There's no long con for colony, it doesn't work. No, yeah, so you're right. The French are doing exactly what you'd expect the French to do. Cnoc disbands student organizations that had any kind of political bent. He also intacts the heads of the two Buddhist monastic orders who had protested against him for sympathizing with the rebels. He says, quote for the first time in my life, I have to grab the monks by the throat. Me, the most religious man in the Kingdom, because I've had enough. More than enough. My subjects, and the elite among my subjects, must obey so shortly thereafter. Right after this, with his Kingdom in a state of unrest and outright civil war in some sections, Sienna flies to France to drop some pounds. So when you read about this guy in any of the history books, it'll regularly talk about him leaving for France to his house and the Riviera to take what's called a rescuer or a dietary cure. Which I thought it was because you hear like terms like that a lot. Old with old timey leaders where they're taking a risk here. Would you just like taking a vacation? But they don't want to say they're taking a vacation, so it's like a cure for him. It was a weight loss. Clinic. So he would go to France regularly throughout his reign when he got too fat to go to a French weight loss clinic and drop pounds. So that's basically what he's doing. Like he he cracks down on all political dissent. He arrests a bunch of people and then he goes to. Yeah. So he's a great. He's a great, great guy. This would be a pattern. Yeah. For the king, for his entire life. So after fat camp, the king flies over to Paris and he meets with the French President and gives him a list of demands. He wants full control of the Cambodian military. He wants French people. Cambodia to be subject to Cambodian law, and he wants a guarantee of eventual independence for his country. All of which those are reasonable things for the head of state of a country to ask another country who just took them over to get cheap rice, I guess. Yeah. Well, again, it's for a strategic cult like position. Yeah. Yeah. They wanted to. Yeah. They had so much more than right. They're really good at. Yeah. You know, part of the reason that they're satisfied is because what they have is really good. Yeah. Yeah. The, the people there are satisfied. The French are not satisfied because colonialism isn't working out for them is one of those things you'd think, like, after they stopped being in constant conflict with with Britain and like, Germany got sort of cut down to size by the Second World War and they they'd stop like, what do we have all these colonies? Like, what's what is what about this? Like, everyone else has stopped playing the game. The game's not going on. It's a different world now. The that process all started after World War One, when at the end of World War One, they rewrote the lines to figure out how to share stuff because they had spent centuries taking it over. And what they learned is you don't get to let it go. You can't like, it's all over your hands. It's not it. You're grabbing a gel, not a solid. You don't have to pull it away. So they were stuck with it and they propped up all these dictators that we're talking about now and sham governments. And it's just a plan that. There was no option other than for it to fail, yeah, no way to end the history that started evil, not evil, yeah, so you're watching the gasps of of colonialism. You know fade away. But why were they doing this, they already answered that question they shouldn't have you know they were trying to not do it. There's just no way to undo it once you start ******* the whole world. Once you conquer the whole world for 150 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah well. Yeah, France, France. I think had been in control of this part of the world since like the 1860s. So yeah, they've they've been here a little while, which is why all of their government documents at this time are in, like, French and stuff. But to his credit, King Sihanouk at no point thinks that colonialism is anything but ******. Like when the French are fighting against the Vietnamese, he's like, you guys are going to get your butts kicked. And when the Americans getting involved, he's like, this is not going to work for anybody. Like he knows that from the get go. So credit where it's due. He is smarter than all of the Europeans in this story, which maybe isn't the highest bar in the world. They're not sending their best people to to run their countries anymore. So yeah, he goes to the French President and he's like, I want, you know, my country's independence and full control of the military out of yadda yadda. The French presidents like, lol know. So CNN flies to the US to see if we would back him in his quest for independence. He meets with the Secretary of State, Alan Dulles, who was like, if the French army leaves, you're going to all be taken over by Communists, and we can't have that. So just be cool with the French being there. The president refused to meet with him. But White House officials coordinating his trip did offer to take the king to the circus, which he took as an insult. Which wouldn't you? I mean, honestly, the president can't hang with you. And we're not inviting you to dinner, which we always do with Heads of State. But there's a circus in town. Have you ever seen elephants? I guess you have. We stole these elephants from you. Look at these elephants we took from you and some carnies. Elephants just telegraphing. Take Me Home. It would be great if he stole Carneys and brought. Arnie's back to Cambodia, just that's the the cultural exchange he wants to make. We steal the elephants, they steal carnies. I don't. That is not an even trade. Solid screenplay, yeah. OK, so yeah, this made scenic angry, the French and the Americans both ignoring him. He gives it an explosive interview to the New York Times where he threatens America that Cambodia will go Communist if it's not given its independence. Done, done, done. He repeated the basic idea a few months later in a memorandum he sent to both the Americans and the British. I am asking the US and Great Britain if just for once, they will kindly consider the problem of Cambodia from the viewpoint of the kamares instead of that of the French. But people will tell you. We don't know what communist slavery means, but the slavery imposed by the French we know well for we are now living under it. So one of the weird things about this guy is when you read the things that he says to his people, he comes across as a ***** ****. And when you read everything he's saying to the colonial powers in the US, he's like totally reasonable. Like, you guys are ignoring what everybody here wants and just trying to do your own thing, and it's going to be a ******* disaster. He's like, yeah, right. But then when he talks to his own people, it's like dissent will be crushed. So in June of 1953, Sienna Sienna makes his play for Cambodian independence and absolute power. He secretly goes to Bangkok and he announces that he won't return to the capital or talk to French officials again until they agree to set his country free. If we cannot obtain what we want peacefully, the entire, people are resolved to obtain their freedom by other means and are ready to sacrifice their lives. So a few days later, this prompts the two largest Buddhist orders in Cambodia to call for a holy war against the French. The next day, Siena calls for Comair units in the French. For me to dessert. At the end of the month, he called for all citizens between 20 and 35 years of age to join the fight for independence. So the French military in Cambodia basically dissolves overnight because the king told them to leave and he's like the ******* semi divine figure. So the French realized that, like, they just they can't hold the country without this guy who they've basically been treating as a big toddler the entire time. So by October they've had enough and they agreed to relinquish all military control of Cambodia to the king. It'll take another year. France to totally pull out of their former colony. But King Sihanouk had done it. In November of 1953 the French handed over total control and a dumb and self aggrandizing ceremony where they like basically they phrase. They frame it as like a graduation ceremony. Like you people are finally ready to control your own country. Ran for thousands of years before we came in here, but yeah, all's well. Cambodia's independent. The yoke of colonialism has been cast off and the Communists are not in charge. So it seems like things are going great for seeing OK now. And probably nothing terrible will happen in this story, but that's the end of the podcast. This was really fun. I'm not sure why this guy was such a *******. Kind of bad. That crushing dissent was kind of rude. Anyway, thanks. Yeah, alright, but no, actually that's that is a lie. It didn't go good. It didn't go good after that. Well, we'll get into that after we sell some products and or do you like products and or services? Love both products and services and you know what else I love it is. And you know what else? I love exchanging money for them. Oh yeah. I you know, what I love is producing value for shareholders, which is then handed to me in a fraction that I can, I can spend on my own products and services which create value for other shareholders. What do you know? So let's all do that right now. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. 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The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Hey y'all, this is Caroline Hobby, the host of get real with Caroline Hobby, honest women, honest talk. I love podcasting. It is so much fun because I have the most in depth, spiritual, soulful, real, honest conversations with women who are mothers, who are entrepreneurs, who have started their own businesses, who are married to celebrities, who are celebrities themselves. These women are juggling motherhood, being a career woman, starting their own businesses. Taking leaps, knowing when to jump. These women are incredible and the conversations are so real it will hit every nerve in your body. As a woman, a little bit about myself, I was a country music artist and a trio. I traveled the country open for every celebrity you can imagine in country music. I also been on The Amazing Race twice and I'm married to Michael Hobby, who is the lead singer of 1000 horses. And we have our precious daughter Sonny, who's too. Listen to new episodes of get Real with Caroline Hobby every Monday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcast. And we're back. We are talking about King Norodom Sihanouk, who has just succeeded in wangling freedom for his country from the French colonial oppressor pig dogs. So it seems like all great except for everything isn't great. See you next. Triumph led to an immediate and bloody escalation of the fighting in Cambodia. The rebels under that than Guy we talked about earlier argued that the Prince was basically a slave of the French. They claim that his friendly relations with them were proof that he was just a figurehead and he was going to send Cambodians. To die in Vietnam. So yeah, the fighting continued, and it turned out that scenic wasn't actually all that good at war. By the middle of 1954, he lost about 40% of his territory to the rebels. The fighting was bloody enough that nobody wanted to really keep killing. And in May, a rebel representatives in the king traveled to Switzerland to talk it out with a bunch of other countries, including Vietnam, the US and for some reason, Canada. There's other countries there, too. Canada was just the one that why is what is Canada really good at? Apology? Yeah. So this is right around the time, you know, you had. Who did? North Vietnam and North Korea had already been established at that point. And so the the Camaro rebels in the north are like, we want our own separate country. We don't want to be ruled by the king. We want our own, like, legit democracy and stuff where we can, you know, choose our own path without this king doing whatever the hell he wants. And yeah, so that's their hope going into this, going into the session, the rebels begged the Soviet Union and China to stick up for them, but the US did not want what they assumed would just become a separate communist. Cambodia, above regular Cambodia and the. Soviet Union in China weren't willing to fight for the Cambodians. So everybody works out an agreement where the rebels will lay down their arms and elections will be held in 1955. It sounds like CNOOC wins this one, but everybody knew that once the elections were held, the Democrats, which were, you know, heavily backed by the rebels, would win and their most popular candidate would be than the guy who had been leading the rebels. So this would have left CNN because the constitutional monarch of a government that hated him and was definitely going to do whatever it could to turn him into just a figurehead. So the US is happy with this because it means that unlike. Or where else in Southeast Asia a country was about to happily vote for a democratic government they actually liked than he was pro US. They're like, this is a great thing for us. You know, we've we've established a democracy in Southeast Asia, let's wash our hands and walk away. But Sanook is not happy letting people choose who they wanted to lead them basically ran against all of his deeply held convictions, most of which were that he should be the guy in charge of Cambodia. So in February of 1955, after this agreement is made and the rebels lay down their arms, the king calls a referendum on his Royal Crusade. You know, the thing that. Free Cambodia from the French, and he's basically asking the whole Kingdom to vote. Do you like me? Yes or no? Voters were told, quote if you love the King, choose a white ballot. If you don't love the king, a black ballot of those voting 99.8% chose white ballots saying they loved the king, but the turn out was really low. Not a lot of people cared about percent of he and his mom. Yeah. 100% of him and his mom calls him 98, yeah. So a few days later, you know, he he's kind of fuming over the low turnout and he's fuming over the fact that all the polls are saying the Democrats and this guy. He doesn't like than are going to win the election and he winds up renting a house next to a big gathering for the Democratic Party and like listening into one of their speeches, and it ends and there's this huge eruption of applause and according to people who are there with him at the time he starts weeping with rage when he hears how popular the Democrats are so he's desperate and his fragile fragile ego. Yeah, hearing people cheering for like someone else on the dodgeball court, they're not even angry at you. It's like it's not enough to be a beloved king. Like the fact that anybody else is liked is just burning him alive. Yeah, he's desperate, and his fragile ego can't take being sidelined by some popularly elected politicians. So in March 21st, the king makes a surprise broadcast. Surprise? Oh yeah. Oh, not like a fun one, though. It's not like a birthday party. You tell me. I'm going to read the broadcast. My enemies work against me ceaselessly, and I I should note that anytime there's a me in here, it's spelled with the M capitalized. Ohh Royals, nothing like that will ever happen again, and certainly not in our own country. I I will say this could almost be a tweet from our current yes it could. President, close your eyes and listen and just pretend certain of our students who love injustice are determined to serve the Democrats and sun knock than the educated, the highly placed and the rich spend their time throwing up obstacles to my work for the sake of their own interests and ambitions. All of this has completely discouraged me and prevents me continuing to reign if I remain on the throne. I will be unable to work in your interests. My poor and humble subjects, freed from my golden cage in the royal palace, ioffer my life and my strength to my people. For though I leave the throne, I shall not shirk my duty to serve. So the king abdicated. He throws down his office. Fire me. I quit. Yeah, well, the king abdicates. He has his dad become the new king after him? Because, you know. Kings and chips? Yes, I guess usually how they do that. So now he's a Prince and a private citizen and he's free to run for election against the Democrats. So he creates his own political party. He calls it the people's community. So it would sound like a Socialist Party, even though it wasn't. All the conservative Cambodians instantly dropped their parties and they flocked to the Prince's banner along with more than a few of the Democrats because hey, the prince's popular the Princess Party Sangkum, makes a formidable rival to the Democrats. But the king and misjudged a little. His party had no policies and no plans. It's only stated goal was blind support of Prince Sihanouk. So I love that you go like, as a leader of the party, you go from like being actually king. And then when you're running for office to be essentially a king or like, you know, a an executive leader, you get to the. You get up to make a speech and you're like, I don't know my plan. Don't you just call me King or print? Doesn't it just become I still just go to fat camp, right? I want to be President. Plan is to go back to fat camp just like it was. It's eerie how well you've predicted this. So Cambodia probably stress eating a lot right now. I'm just saying, oh God, he must be just baguettes all day long, man, just pouring chocolate on them and crying. How could you not? If if I was literally if I was like a Cambodian king, I would be like a feudal Lord just walking from like street food cart to street food cart. Like I've come for my offerings chicken and rice and tea. Immediately. I will have the duck as well. Yes, and that's this is a mark of the kind of man he is. But he could have legitimately lived that life where he just is rich and beloved and gets fed forever. And he could just walk around letting people give him things that could be his whole life. But instead he wants to be in charge, which only crazy people want. That's true. Only crazy people actually want. Yes. So the King's party has no policies and no plans. And even with the King's popularity, the Democrats are still slated to win a lot of the seats. And so he's not going to be an absolute power. You know? He's going to have to do a coalition government and be a democracy. The king. That wants no part in that. So five weeks before the vote, he uses his control of the police and military to launch a massive intimidation campaign against the Cambodian left wing. He has the authors of Communist and lefty journals and newspapers imprisoned. Several far left candidates are outright murdered. King Synak uses the unrest from his repressive tactics to justify a heavy police presence at the voting stations. So he starts arresting people. That leads to protests, which he then uses as evidence that he needs to fill the polling locations with police and soldiers left wing voters who were brave enough to go vote. Are handed colored voting slips, each color representing a party, and they didn't have to put the slip into an urn while officials, police and soldiers watched them. So voter turnout was not great among the Cambodian left wing. But the king still did not do very well, so he had his minions just lie about the vote count in constituencies where his party's candidate finished second. They just outright destroy all the voting slips and murder the winner. Very simple. Yeah, very simple. So there's a lot of like when he, the King, Spoiler Alert, died in 2012, I think. And when you read the obituaries about him, they're mostly positive and like Western newspapers and they'll all talk about like that. None of them are even consistent about how much you won by. They'll say between 84 and 99% of the vote, just like, but nobody. It's frustrating because like the Telegraph or someone will be like reporting on this and say like, and he won the election with 99% of the vote. We didn't think he murdered people. The newspapers injured like the, well, the journalism in Colonia, like colonizers. Nations have a really hard time actually reporting on why. Like The Who, what, when and where is is not that hard, but why these things are happening. Kind of alludes, like, you know, even even still. But I imagine especially the reporting at the time is a little clueless about the why. The weird thing is the reporting at the time when he wins this election. More journalists who are in Cambodia cry foul at the obvious cheating. Like, they're like, this is clearly ****** **. Here's all of the different, like things that went wrong that were wrong, but the international community sticks their fingers in their ears to the Americans and the French are just happy Cambodia didn't go communist. And they're kind of like, don't like, who gives a ****? Who gives a **** if this country that's not America has a. Prince dictator now. So the whole mess LED one Cambodian voter to conclude. Taking part in elections is just for propaganda. An election is a power struggle. The one who has power in his hands is the one who controls the outcome. You want to guess who said that? Ohh, come on, that's our little one. Guess that's a little it's got. He's got a pot and pull this point. That's how old buddy pull pop out. As cute as I could make. That's our little buddy reference. Yeah, yeah. So this is kind of his little origin. Shouldn't get a fun name if you're a dictator. You shouldn't get you shouldn't get something fun to say. It should be clunky. It's hard. I am already ashamed. I keep calling the Prince the Prince because I am intimidated about getting names wrong. I'm and I apologize to anyone. I've written it down phonetically all over my note card. Yeah, but I'm still gonna call him the Prince. And pull pot is just so it shouldn't be fun to say no, it shouldn't. And he has the cutest name of any he does. Person who's just millions of people. Yes. Yeah. In terms. I mean, the list is pretty short. Yeah, but Chairman Mao's pretty cute because it makes me think of cats. Sure. Yeah, but the chairman part real heavy. That's the chairman is not a cute name. Pull Pot branding is real sharp. Yeah. Yeah. Clean, you know, and that's you got to give credit to the communists. Their branding was on point at this. Time in this period of time. But that slipped. Yeah. They they paid less attention to the aesthetic as time went on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. So, yeah, Pol Pot at the time of this election is working for the for the Democratic Party. So he's he's working for the Democratic Party, but he's also an officer and a secret underground Cambodian Communist Party. Whole pot and his fellow communists did want to change Cambodia's system of government, but prior to the election they hadn't wanted a violent war and overthrow or anything. So mausi dung, who was basically like the most respected sort of Communist philosopher in in Asia, had laid out a theory of how to flip countries like Cambodia who were feudal or colonized nations that didn't have a big laboring class. And he was like, how to flip them, the communism, without bloodshed. So first you needed a democratic revolution where peasants and workers in the bourgeoisie all worked together. To supplant the king and kick out the colonizers and gain a democracy. And then Mao said, you'd have a normal democracy for decades, probably for a very long time, and it would be capitalist. And that would be that would be fine. And basically the left would gain power gradually over time as people saw the flaws in capitalism, until everyone just agreed that communism was a swell idea and you had a peaceful transition to communism. Well, that worked, right? Well, that's what these guys were wanting to do. So Pol Pot as a young man right up until this election happens, believes in the democratic process, thinks it's a necessary step on the way towards making the country the way he wants to be and doesn't want there to be any fighting in his country. You know, they they would have been happy with the Democrats winning power and, you know, then just voting for a while. But when. Sienna cramps. Yeah. Yeah. Just before I hear about the rest of this, I'm going to say that if you were a guy who kills 1,000,000 1/2 people. Do you a Prince or fighting against a Prince in a Democratic Party that's in you before you get that power, you don't care how you get it. You're a site. You're a sociopath. So you don't have any moral connection to what you're actually spewing. You just collect and want power, influence, whatever it is. If you this guy would have you know again if he was just a bad assistant manager, he would have killed everyone in his Arby's like it's. Yeah. I feel like these seeds were already planted and and the prints are the same evil born in different soil. I feel like the seeds are there, but I don't feel like they're necessarily getting watered like you've got. I think Pol Pot, for one thing, he's a little different than, like, he's not like a guy like Hitler. So you get a guy like, like, you've got kind of these two different theories of how to look at history. There's trends and forces, and then there's like the great man theory. And like, it's probably a mix of the two, but you look at like in Germany after World War One. There was going to be another fight between France and Germany because it just how the whole thing ******* in. Somebody was some strong man ******* was going to take charge of Germany, but because it's Hitler, you have the Holocaust and the invasion of like Russia and whatnot. And I think Pol Pot is more like George W Bush. Interesting. Well, he kind of he like certain things like there was because of the **** that Prince is doing, because he's clamping down on oppression, because he's he's giving the left no legitimate way to win power. There was going to be a left wing. Revolution in Cambodia and it was worse than it would have been because Pol Pot is the man he is. But I think the Prince made it inevitable that this was going to happen. I think him crushing all dissent in me because like, a guy like maybe pull pot always would have been an ******* but there's like. Like it it's it's, I don't know. It's hard to say because like before this time he's like driving around in a in a nice car and he's like dating like rich ladies and like wants to be like he. He doesn't seem to want to murder 3 million people at this point in his life. And I guess, you know, it's it's debatable as to what would happen, but I don't know. I don't know if you're the person who can do that, that is in you and no moral compass, no philosophy you espouses, greater than whatever. Kidnaps, fires that lets you kill a million people. But I I feel like that's synapse is there. You're absolutely right. But I don't know that it necessarily leads to you because there's gotta be we've probably all worked with someone who, if they gained power could kill a million and a half people or whatever, but instead they're a stand up comedian because that's just the way life goes. I just think of a Jim Jones who was like, you know, his politics. If all you did was list out Jim Jones politics, you'd be like, well, this sounds like a person I probably agree with on most things. And then you're like, oh, but cult leader, who killed who? Just killed who killed everyone. Because it's the you're. You know, it's interesting when the you agree with the shell of someone and then on the inside is this horrible evil thing. So I feel like even if Pol Pot was like, no, I'm a good guy, don't believe in colonial power. I want justice. It's, you know, you're somewhere in you is someone who's gonna kill. Yeah. That guy was always in here. But I do. I take your point. Yeah. That because, you know, the Prince said in motion something that you know. You couldn't stop and pull pot is who he is. So it was that well, and you're looking at Cambodia prior to this. It's not a country where most people are biting at the whip to like, revolt against the system that exists. But that starts to change after the Prince, you know, brutally suppresses the left wing and essentially makes himself President Prince, which is, you know, President Prince is like an alternate universe I would love to live. Exactly. We both pictured exactly what that would be like capeless. Purple pants. And, like, the White House is, like, all Technicolor, cause it's like white, but you put the colors laser show. What? You know what? No one would have died in the war for Afghanistan, and it would be so much more colorful. Dance. Yeah. So well. Ohg, man. Whoo. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you for taking me there. OK. Please continue. Yeah, yeah. Got it. Can you imagine the things he would have done to the White House? Bowling alley? Oh my goodness. Yeah. It would have been a disco tech and it would been ******* incredible. God, that cabinet. Yeah. Fire. OK, well, now that we're all happy. OK, yeah, let's get back to talking about Cambodia in the mid 50s. Pole Pot decides that democracies ******** and shortly thereafter takes to the jungle with all of his friends and comrades to do a jungle communist ****. So yeah, Sanak is largely backed by conservatives, but he himself is not a conservative or a leftist. He is a chemist. His only guiding moral principle is that he should be in charge of Cambodia. So he doesn't really give a **** about politics. He just wants to be the guy. He's a smart guy. He knows that Cambodia is going to eventually go full communist. He knows the number one power in the region. China is already Communist, and he knows the United States is going to eventually get fed up with sticking ***** **** ** the whole area and leave Vietnam. So he figures that his main worry is the Vietnamese. They have a history of bullying Cambodia, and they're the main backers of the Cambodian communist movement. So Sihanouk comes up with a pretty clever plan. He will let the Vietnamese use his country as a highway for their guns and money first to fight against the French and the US. We'll even let 10s of thousands of them hide in Cambodia when the fighting isn't going their way. But they have to stop giving guns to and. Training the local Cambodian communists. Obviously, this ****** off the United States. So sionix promise to them is that he'll brutally repress the communists in Cambodia. So we go, one hand washes the other. That's how you do it. That's how you brutally dictate. Exactly. So in foreign policy terms, he's in lockstep with the USSR and China. But domestically, he's doing like a triple McCarthy and like everything, like killing all the communists in his own country. So Norodom Sihanouk is the only guy who was simultaneously on both sides of the Cold War. For the entirety of the Cold War. And dancing. And dancing and dancing. Watch the Royal Court fall down. Yeah. Yeah. So we are. Yeah. So the prince's father served as king when the Prince first abdicated. When he died in 1960, the CNX mom, Queen Cosmac, wanted to be crowned. But, you know, his mom had spent his whole life calling him fat. So the king flips the script on his mom and makes her guardian of the throne, which is a position with no power, and instead pushes through a constitutional amendment to make himself head of state for life. So now, by 1960, he is the President and the head of State for Life. And that is where we are going to end the podcast for today and we will be back on Thursday to talk about the rest of Sanix wacky career, which is, I mean it's it's going to get dark. I bet we're going to hear about some infrastructure improvement. I bet we're going to hear a lot about like Roberts rules and how it was implemented. Are you calling water filtration plants? Because I got 9 pages of water filtration plants. I'm so looking forward to that Beer Rock Gracie that's coming, right. Good. Yeah, that's a good chance. It's definitely not like death, destruction and horror. I mean, see you next time. Not yet. See you next time. Because we have a we have. You should plug some things before we we roll out for the day and 1/2 between the next podcast. I am Caitlin Gill and I have a website. It is called Caitlin gillcomedy.com. And you can go there and then you can see my schedule. It's the tab. You click it, and then there will be a little calendar. You get tickets standing in my life shows. Also, July 11th, miss with some monsters. Comes out on true TV. Watch it. I'm Robert Evans. I don't have any live shows, but I have a book. You can buy it on Amazon. It's called a brief history of vice. You can find me on Twitter at I write OK 2 letters, and this show behind the ******** is also on the Internet www.behindthebastards.com. You can also find us on social media at bastarde pod, so check us out. We'll be putting sources and images up so that you can sort of follow along and get the visual picture of the story, and we will be back on Thursday with Part 2 of this particular ********* tale. Peace to the planet I go by the name of Charlemagne the God, and this summer I'm bringing my show back to Comedy Central with a new title and a new podcast. It's called hell of a week, but don't worry, every Friday I'll be keeping that same calling out the ******** energy, and I'll have some of the biggest names in comedy, politics, and entertainment with me. So if the news is terrorizing your timeline and causing your anxiety to rise high in gas prices, don't worry, we got you. Listen the hell of a week with charlamagne the God on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm dua Lipa and I'm thrilled to be back for the second season of my podcast Dua Lipa at your service. Alongside me and my guests lists and recommendations, the show features conversations with some of my biggest inspirations working across entertainment, politics, activism and much, much more. So please tune in and join me on this very special adventure. Listen to Dua Lipa at your service starting Friday 23rd of September on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ebony Kay Williams, host of Holden Court, and I'm so excited to announce that Holden Court has a brand new home at interval presents. That's right, we're back and better than ever. Season 2 is here and we're bringing you the same in-depth legal analysis and cultural commentary that you know and love. Listen to Holden Court on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. So y'all, let's hold court.