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Hey, Robert here. It's been like two months since I had LASIK and I'm still seeing 2020. All I had to do was go in for a consultation, then go in for a maybe 10 minute procedure and then my eyes have been great ever since. You know, I healed up wonderfully. It was very simple, couldn't have been a better experience. So if you want to explore LASIK plus I can't recommend it enough. They have over 20 years experience in the industry and they performed more than two million treatments right now if you want to try getting LASIK plus you can get $1000 off of your surgery when you're treated in September, that's $500. Of per eye, just visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees SO4-O months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. Bing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Ohh my goodness. It's behind the ******** the podcast where Michael Swaim and I talk about how Christopher Columbus was actually kind of a cool guy. Michael. How do you, you know, a lot of people get angry at them because of the slavery and the genocide. But. I hadn't heard that, but go, have you, have you considered? Is it Ohio that has a Columbus or is it Missouri has a Columbus. Both of them have a Columbus, don't they? Maybe both. At least Ohio. At least one American state has a town called Columbus, and I'm gonna say they have good pizza. I don't know. Nobody knows. Michael, you play video games, right? You're big video games, guy. You got pizza. I play video games. You are regular guy, Robert. You are. I should introduce you first. Not that you need introduction, because as you said, the format is and always has been. Robert Evans and Michael Swaim talking about Christopher Columbus? That's rather upset. That's every episode of this show. Well, you are the only member of the Cracked diaspora who has visited me in my new home. I I guess I could say that it's probably because of the plague, but I think it's it's it's a direct personal insult. But in any case, when you were here you you brought out a machine which allowed you to play video games on my television. A gaming console, right? That's right. And that made me think it's this. This was like a year ago now, but it made. I've been thinking ever since. Boy, it seems like it'd be nice to sit down on the couch and play it, play a video game old fashioned style. So I don't know. I don't have a lot of hobbies anymore. Michael and I kept thinking about it and yesterday, I don't know why, I was feeling kind of depressed and I was like, I am going to play a video game on the couch, but I didn't have it. I don't have a console, I don't have any way to do that. So I go down to the video game store and I'm like, I would like one PlayStation or Xbox. It doesn't matter. They told me you can't do that. You have to get an invitation to buy one. That's the way that all gaming consoles work now. And so I just need to ask you as a video game guy, what the **** is going on with video games? Why can't you just go buy a video game machine? Well, if you collect 6 steam decks then your punch card is full and you can get a PS5. No, it's my understanding is that the. Well, Full disclosure, I used to work at IGN and I would know this ****. I've laughs. That was like 4-5 six months ago. You know, I believe though that that should be turning a corner soon actually. Could chip shortage and the video card shortage kind of has already broken. That's all those thirty 80s. I have no idea what I have. You've got a gaming laptop that I bought a year or so ago and another fit of depression. And so I just, I realized eventually, why am I trying to buy a PlayStation? All I wanna do is play Grand Theft Auto 5. I can just download that on Steam and buy a controller and plug it in, plug it all into my TV. So it's fine now. I figured it out, but I was briefly back and punched that clerk in the mouth square. No, he was he. He was like, yeah, I mean, he wasn't being rude. It's just like, I didn't realize we'd gotten to there with video game. Yes, where you have to get an invitation like dinner with a shake, like what is happening here. I remember at work when the PS Fives were coming out, they told us all to sign up for X number of lottery tickets because if we didn't get enough consoles to go around for the staff, we wouldn't be able to cover stuff, which is the entire livelihood of the God. Weird situation. Yeah, it's it's something else. Michael. Michael, we're talking about Christopher Columbus. Michael swaim. Small beans network. Formerly of Cracked dot. That's right. Please don't put my name director of the film Kill Me now. That's true. Michael. Yes. You ready to get back to Columbus? Absolutely. Ohio or otherwise? Yeah. So, Michael, as our story comes back, it is 1492 now. Columbus has done sailed his *** right across an ocean blue. And he stumbled into a Caribbean island full of people who he immediately thinks are #1 hot. He repeatedly comments on how good looking they are, and #2 good potential servants slash slaves. Now, according to his journals, the first thing he focused on trying to do was convert them to Christianity, and most importantly, to make sure that they fought thought that all white people were chill dudes. Now, he did this in a couple of ways, mainly by handing out various trinkets. Here's how he wrote about it in his diary I in order that they would be friendly to us. Because they recognized they were a people who would be better freed from error and converted to our holy faith by love than by force to some of them. I gave red caps and glass beads, which they put on their chests, and many other things of small value which they took so much pleasure in and became so much our friends that it was a marvel. And one of the things that's like really funny here is that he thinks like you have. You get all these writing from the Spaniards at the time about how silly these people are because they're like trade gold gyms for like useless bobbles. But none of them ever considered the fact that, like maybe to these people. They're both useless that like a glass bead and gold are bond are roboute as valuable to each other, right? Like neither of them do anything. They just look nice. Yeah, if you've never gotten high. And yeah, the thought. Gold is just a rock, though, man, like it's just a rock. Someone just decided just a rock that sat out in the sun the most, according to Plato. And by the way, handing out red caps, I believe this is the official origin of the Maga caps, so you can play that. Started it. You might actually, you might draw. I don't know. I don't know enough about ******* Italian history in this period to know how meaningful it is. But, like, you gotta remember, he comes from a place where colored clothing is illegal. So I don't know. That's that's that's interesting. We got the latest hot ****. This contagious, man. Look at this, kids. It's ******* red. The color of passion, my friend. You don't tell the Pope and I won't tell the Pope. Yeah, ohh. My rods and cones are overwhelmed. And it's also, it's worth noting that, like, well, this is often referred to as gift giving, like him handing out trinkets. It seems based on the descriptions you get, that, like, the natives considered they that they are consciously, like, entering an exchange with him. Like, he's giving them stuff that they assume he values because they're giving him things that they value, right? They're assuming he's not being a huge prick like that. They are assuming he's not being an *******. They're like, oh, we gotta give him some nice stuff. He's giving us all this nice stuff that we've never seen before. Like they're giving him nice cotton thread and like, live parrots. Which Columbus thinks they're delicious? He is. You gotta give him credit with one thing. I don't know, this is I found this compelling. At least a lot of the Spaniards, especially once they start settling in these islands, refuse to eat the local food. It's actually a massive problem. They have to, like, keep shipping livestock over from Spain because people decide that, like, their cuisine is gross. Columbus is not one of those guys. He actually gets sick a bunch because he will eat anything these people hand him, which credit where it's due. That's how you're supposed to travel. Yeah, true. Umm. So one item he would give them in return are these tiny Hawks bells. And these are like, if you're doing falconry, these are like little bells that you tie the tie to birds and used to track them when they're, like, flying away. I guess it's just a thing that it was easy to get a lot of so that they could have a **** load of these to hand out. But he gives out a lot of hawk spells, and that's going to be noteworthy later. So just keep the hawk spells. Yeah, they're the livestrong bracelets of the era. If the Livestrong bracelets LED directly to a suicide genocide. Here we go. Columbus people, buckle up. The people who lived on the island that Columbus had discovered and then taken possession of for the crown were Tainos members of the Arawak group. Now, over the coming days, he met with many different, like, people on this island, many different, like, kinds of Arawaks because there's all these different, right? Like, it's pretty broad population, you know? And I think these are kind of like grouping by, by languages, and these guys give them a bunch of gifts. Of unknown types, you know, we get. He writes down some of them, but usually he just writes the tenants, like, they gave us trinkets. We don't actually know what that means. They may have been, like, handing him works of art, decorations, clothing, stuff that, like, could be because these people believe a lot of them at least believe that he's like a like some sort of celestial visitor. Right. So it's possible they're giving him, like, cultural artifacts of significant value to them. And he's just like, yeah, they just gave me some crap because it's not gold, right? Like, that's the only thing that he actually ever seems to notice. He calls their gifts tedious. Yeah. Fishing around his ridiculous panelists. What do I got? What do I got here? He yeah. The only things that he like shows any appreciation for are the small pieces of gold jewelry that he sees on some of their bodies. Now, it's worth noting that our friend Carol Delaney absolutely fawns over the descriptions Columbus writes of people and geography. She glosses over the fact that he like, she talks about like what a good like anthropological attention to detail that he does that he has. Which is interesting because. But also, like, dismissing all of these different gifts they're giving him as trifles, which I would say is bad anthropology, but I'm not an anthropologist here. So in short order, Columbus takes his little fleet away from this first island, which is probably San Salvador, and heads towards Cuba, which he thinks is Japan. Right. And he will think that until the day he dies. They were his last words. And yeah, I mean, look, it's you. You run into ceviche. You think it's sushi? It's happened. All of us, you know, same food, basically. Different, yeah. So yeah. He he decides that and and part of the reason why he's so like fired up to get to Japan #1, he's still looking for that great con, right. He's still looking for like some evidence of these massive Asian civilizations that he knows are supposed to be here and supposed to be ready for Christianity. And the other thing is that based on his kind of like these conversations he's having with the locals and they're not really conversations as well as much as like kind of gesture based discussions, but he kind of puts together. That the gold he's found, the little pieces of gold came from that island, so he's like, alright, that's where the gold comes from, and obviously that's the number one thing. So as he leaves this first island and heads for Cuba, he captures a bunch of people and takes them with him. These are random locals that he imprisons on his ship to ask his guides now in her book because she's terrible. Carol Delaney describes these people as willing and eager guests, friendly natives excited to show the white people around. This is not true. These captives told Columbus that there was an I like. Part of the evidence for the fact that these people were not willing guests. Yeah. Is that they told Columbus, like, as they're sailing to Japan, Cuba, they tell Columbus there's an island on the way. And they're like, Oh yeah, we've seen people there and they have, like, these huge gold bracelets that they were on their arms and legs. It's the most gold anyone has ever. Go **** with them for a while. Well, we'll take you there. We'll, we'll, we'll introduce you to them. Right. And as soon as they get to the island, all of the Taino prisoners he's taken run the **** away. They they absolutely they ******* escape. So he's annoyed. By this and he sends an armed party to the shore to recapture them or to capture somebody else. He also he can't. He feels like since he's gotten close to the island, he can't go past it without taking possession of it, right. The exact way he writes this is that it? It was my wish to bypass no island without taking possession, and this is another thing Carol fails to mention, so I'm going to quote from Lawrence Bergreen's book. Next quote. He dispatched several seamen in hot pursuit of the fugitives chasing them ashore, but as he ruefully. Quoted they all fled like chickens. When another dugout canoe innocently approached with a man who came to trade a skein of cotton. Some of the sailors jumped into the sea because he wouldn't come aboard, and seized the poor fellow as a replacement detainee, observing from his vantage point on the poop deck. Columbus sent for him and gave him a red cap and some beads of green glass, which I placed on his arm, and two Hawks bells, which I placed on his ears. That is the standard issue, trinkets of little value, and I ordered him back to his dugout. So his plan here was to bait the hook. He wanted the locals. To approach him with trust so that he could capture more of them, right? So he like, takes this guy, puts him back on his boat with a bunch of trinkets and sends him off, hopefully so that he can, like, question the others about gold and all that stuff. And this tactic is pretty successful. People are generally very friendly for him, and there's a few reasons for this. Some of it is that he is giving people gifts from time to time, and so they'll go back and be like, there's some dude and he's handing out **** let's go meet him. And the other reason is that, as Columbus kind of surmised, they saw him as he and his men. Quote men who came from the heavens now. It is hard for us to know precisely what their beliefs were here, right? We don't have the kind of context that we would like because they are genocide. It it is generally, he took all their art and **** and labeled it trinkets and trinkets get through it, through that **** overboard. Yeah, yeah. It is generally accepted that the people indigenous to a lot of these islands had popular beliefs. And again, you're talking about multiple groups of people, right? They're all under these kind of broad language groups, but that doesn't mean they're like they're often at war. They have different opinions of each other. Like right there there anyway. It is very likely that some of these people had popular beliefs that divine or divinely inspired beings were going to visit them one day. And it was kind of like a prophecy. Some time it may have been kind of like an apocalyptic prophecy, maybe some sort of, you might even view it as a little bit like kind of Christian rapture, like readiness, you know, which is not enough. Yeah. There are beliefs like that all over the world. It's court almost every religion. Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately just that at some point. In the distant future, we will meet this magical thing that's we always it's human nature to want to eventually meet or connect with or be one with the thing you made-up. Yeah, for sure, yeah, exactly. And and it's one of those things. So there there probably were some prophecies that sort of led some subset of the people he's meeting to believe that he and his Spaniards are divine visitors or celestial visitors or some something ethereal and otherworldly. It's also worth noting, though, that whenever we talk about prophecies like this, there's like a nasty tendency to act as if these beliefs are. Universal it gets flattened. So we say the people of these islands believed this or that, and we're talking about large decentralized groups on many islands. Human beings just don't work that way, right? They don't all believe the same thing just because they all live in the Caribbean. And oddly enough, there's a passage from Carol Delaney's book that does a decent job of making this clear. It's one of the little pieces of kind of insight we get into how varied beliefs might actually have been on the ground. Please note this is the beginning of Robert's turn to Pro Carol Delaney. By the end, he's super pro. Well, you know, I I just, I haven't found this anecdote and the other stuff I've read about Columbus. And I found it fascinating because it answered this question I always had as a kid when you'd hear, like, oh, they believed this or that, and it's like, well, they didn't. All right? Because we don't, you know, like, there must have been sex and schisms. And anyway, I find this interesting. At one stop, an old man who had heard of Columbus approached him with a desire to engage in a theological discussion. Perhaps he had heard that Columbus was interested in religious beliefs. Or he may have cleverly used this dialogue as a way to protect his people. Columbus. For his part, must have jumped at the chance to have a discussion with a learned native about their beliefs. They talked about the soul and what happens to it after death. The old man explained that his people believed that any injury to the body also affected the soul and begged Columbus not to injure any of the people. Columbus assured him that he only hurt bad people because that was what his sovereigns had commanded. Unlike others who believed Columbus was some kind of God. This man told Columbus that to his face that he was, quote, mortal like everyone else. Columbus was not offended and wrote that the old man expressed his thinking. With excellent judgment and courage. So that's interesting to me. Yeah, you get these little, like, hints of the variety of beliefs and thoughts that might have existed in this population. Oh yeah, and yeah, just the recurring motif of don't worry, I only hurt bad. I only hurt bad people. All Western civilization he is. Yeah, he is. You, you might. We talk a lot on this show about, like, whiteness and the fact that whiteness is like an idea with shifting boundaries that changed over time. But you might say Columbus was the first white guy. Like, he sounds like one for sure. Yeah. He's got, like the talk, right? He's got it all right. You could you could put this guy in like the George Bush White House and he could be delivering ******* press conferences on carpet bombings. It's great. As much as she tries to paint him as an unbiased, open minded cultural anthropologist, Columbus's own writing makes it clear that his only interest in these people was using them to define and mind gold for his Jerusalem goals. He wrote very little about their actual culture. He brushed over their again, you have to remember that what he said about their religion is they don't have one. Right. Because he didn't. He didn't understand it, so he assumed that they were just like a blank slate, ready for Christianity. He ignored their social order almost entirely. He he didn't really understand the way they were. Ordered. And who was in charge? He showed very little to no interest in their agriculture except to rave about the quality of their food. And even that may have been kind of out of desperation as much of anything, because as the days wore on, they keep not finding gold, right. They get these little trinkets, but there's no sign of these gold mines that he had told the king and queen were going to be here and, like, huge quantities. So he may have been playing up the only stuff that he thought was of value, right. Because yeah. But yeah, he doesn't care about the people or their culture. So it's like, well, the food's pretty good. Maybe we could just imagining. Flying saucers coming, and we're all excited about first contact. And aliens arrive and they're like, is Arby's open? The order a bunch of **** and we're like, do you want to have, like, cultural interchange? And they're like, don't bother us. No, no, you're good. I don't care about that, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then one of them writes home, gets, like, asked by his boss. So do humans. Is, like religion a big deal for them? No, I don't think so, man. I don't really think it's a big deal. Arby's, though. Yeah, they got the mates. Two of these things for $6. It's brilliant. It's like walking around Jerusalem looking for a ******* sandwich, being like, wow, these people don't have a religion at all. Meanwhile, you have an abduction quota and it doesn't matter who. Doesn't matter. Just take a ball. Just numbers. Yeah, well, we are getting to the abduction quotas, so the main thing that he does in his writing here, rather than a good Carol Delaney, is like just ******* hard as hell about trying to portray him as like this, this, like, anthropological savant. I think Lawrence Bergreen gets it more correctly when he describes Columbus. As writing about the new world that he's found, as a quote, Tabula Rasa, in which his sovereigns would leave a lasting imprint of empire. Columbus wrote that quote. Your Highnesses will command a city and fortress to be built in these parts, and these countries converted, and I certified to your highnesses that it seems to me that there could never be under the Sun lands superior to them, and fertility and mindfulness of cold and heat and abundance of good and pure water. And the rivers are not like those of Guinea, which are all pestilential, which is obviously the Portuguese have Guinea, right? So he's trying to. He's he's he's not to the fact to the extent that he describes all of this lovingly, he's not doing it out of legitimate interest. He's doing it to try to make it attractive to the king and queen. It's among sales. Yeah. It's a sales pitch. He's shown no interest in learning these things. No, he's it's gold. It's just gold. It's a sales in part because as per the deal he has with them, if this turns into a colony and there's trade, he gets like 1/4 of the profits forever, right? Like that's part of why he's trying to sell them on this place. Everything he's writing is like. He's like a *******. I don't know if you. Yeah. He he's he's he's he's a salesman, right. Like that's what he's trying to sell is this land other people live on. And part of the way he's selling that is like, and they're barely even real. Like they're not here. They don't care. Like they'll do whatever we want them to do. Yeah. He's playing life like it's SIV three. Before they had all the like, theism and addition. Exactly. Mods. It's just I clicked on your **** dude. It's my color now. My stuff now. Yeah. So a write up from American. Heritage summarizes Columbus's feelings after first contact with the Arawak on San Salvador. Quote two days after the first landing of the expedition on the tiny island of Guanahani in the outer Bahamas, which Columbus Christian, San Salvador. When Your Highness is so command, they could all be carried off to Castile or be held captive in the island itself, he wrote. Because with 50 men, they could all be subjugated and compelled to do anything. 1 wishes, he said. The line. Yeah, line. Yeah, yeah. Now, the Taino did try to introduce Columbus and his men to their food. The various inventions of their culture, and some of these did take the most exciting invention that they found that the Europeans found was the hammock. They had not invented hammock technology yet. We get our word hammock from from the the Arawak language. And this is a big deal because like, among other things, right? Think about a boat and the way boats are constructed. People don't have rooms on boats in this day, so you're just all sleeping in a pile around whatever ships boy is like. Too slow to evade capture by the mob, right? Yeah, the image is just sailors, like, on the floor. My shelf. Yeah. Sleeping. Yeah. The hammock is gonna revolutionize sleeping on boats. Wow. You know, anyway, so, you know, there was a genocide, but at least the world got the hammock. We got the hammock. It's a great. It is. I just. I want to see that packaged as a PSA. Hammocks. Worth it? We think so. The United Hammock ad pitch. It's just like a devastated land mass graves. The hammock worth it, a Native American and a hammock. Yeah, a single tier. We know the deal. We know the drill. So slowly, as the days turned into weeks, Columbus and his crew began to learn bits and pieces of the local language. Now the most important phrase that they learned was don't be afraid. And Protip, if somebody that's chilling. It's really ****** ** right? If anyone starts a conversation, that's the number one. They don't know someone means to hurt you. If they start by saying don't be afraid, then you need to be very frightened. That's a shooting word, Michael. That is, that is a shooting phrase. Have an alien comes to my door saying that I am not going to assume that what my trinkets. Yeah, what is your word for? Come with me to a second location. Yes, you have that. Is that. Could you condense it into one phrase? How would your people say? Leave your cell phone behind? So Carol Delaney gives Christopher big ups for realizing that, quote, the natives were not speaking gibberish as later so many Europeans attributed to primitive peoples and that it was important to learn their language. Yes, he figured out that humans speak language. Christopher, yes, one of his many achievements, but still he and his he and his men were not very good at the task of learning the local language. Six weeks into their journey he wrote quote I do not know the language and the people of these lands. Do not understand me, nor do I, nor anyone else that I have with me them. And many times I understand one thing said by these Indians that I bring for another, it's contrary. Nor do I trust them much, because many times they have tried to flee. But now, pleasing our Lord, I will see that the most that I can. And little by little I will progress in understanding and acquaintance, and I will have this tongue taught to persons of my household, because I see that up to this point, it is a single language. Now, First off, it is like a group of languages, but it's probably broadly like, you know, you go to like the the Balkans and there's like the different kind of. Turbo Croatian sort of dialects, and they're all different languages, but like like Ukraine, if you if you speak Ukrainian you can communicate to someone in Russian with vice, right? It's probably is kind of like that, but these are different islands, so you have to assume they are not in fact just one single language. But yeah, anyway, it's interesting to me that he's like, there's a lot that's interesting here to me, including the fact that he's like, I can't trust them very much because they keep running away when I capture them. Weird things I've learned about these people don't like kidnapping, real anti kidnapping, vibes on the natives on this islands. It's just weird to imagine the because I know because I know the way history and human beings work, that there must be areas where I live with a similar level of delusion and I just swallow it. But the idea that he can think that and just be like, that's weird. Like how does that not hammer home the core value of. Oh I see, they're like me. They're having the same experience I'm having. But if they were kidnapped, it's just bizarre that. Yeah. What? Their brains that much? I don't know that. I don't know that. I think you do live with that level of delusion. I think we all live with areas in which our our level of knowledge is that incomplete. But what he's saying is a delusion. And it's a delusion because as both a religious fanatic and an obsessive narcissist, he is incapable of looking at anything that happens to him through any lens other than how it affects his ambitions. Right? And so his interpretation of reality. Has to be tortured and twisted in order to make further those ends, right? No matter what, no matter what is happening, he has to find a way to translate it in that way. And I don't think you have that, Michael having known you for a while, well, if I'm losing it a video game, I do blame the controller and I think that we all do it degree of this, yes. Yeah. Yes. In his case, the controller is several 100,000 people with their own culture and religion. It's weird and bad that they want to not be abducted. It's like because. You want to abduct them? What is the problem here? Yeah, I'd call it their fatal flaw. Lovely people. Otherwise, the fact that he needs to learn this language so that he can better convert and capture them is what convinces. According to Delaney, this is what convinces Columbus that he needs to quote, take six Indians back with him when he left for Spain so that they could learn Spanish. Now she assures us that the experience was meant to be reciprocal, so that his family could learn that it's like a you know, it's like a gap year cultural exchange for these people. That's how, Carol. Describes it. It's also the very first iteration of this is America. Speak American. Damn it. I gotta learn Spanish. Sure, it's just gonna learn Spanish. That's just gonna be easier here. I'm gonna be honest. It it is amazing. Like there is. There is a type of person, and maybe Columbus is the first. That, like, when you stumble upon, like, find yourself in a place surrounded by people who speak and believe differently than you like your first thought is like, well, I gotta make everybody a little bit more like me. This isn't gonna do. Someone's got to help these people in their quote. What do you call this place, Lisbon? Nah, that ain't gonna work. No, no, no. United. So she, she describes this is like, yeah, these people are excited to learn from him and he's going to learn from them. And it's just this lovely cultural exchange that's going down. Yeah. Bear Green describes this as a much uglier process where there do seem to be some Taino who were excited to see Spain, as you'd expect. Because, again, they're not all one people. And anytime you get, like, effectively aliens. Having some people are gonna be like, well, **** yeah. I wanna see what you've got is like, yeah, I gotta see what's going on there, right? The whole process was, in fact, closer to abduction than anything. Quote, on Sunday, November 10th, a dugout canoe arrived with six men and five women. To pay their respects. Columbus returned their hospitality by detaining them. That's Columbus's words. In expectation of returning to Spain with them, he bolstered their number with seven additional women and three boys. He explained his thinking this way. I did this because the men would behave better in Spain. With women of their country than without them. His decision, he said, was based on his experiences detaining the inhabitants of Africa's West Coast to Portugal. Many times I happened to take men of Guinea that they might learn the language in Portugal, and after they returned, it was expected to make some use of them in their own country, owing to the good company that they had enjoyed and the gifts they had received. But matters never turned out as hoped. The problem, he decided, was that without their women the men would not cooperate. This time the result would be different. His latest captives, having their women, will find it good business. To do what they are told and these women would teach our people their language, which he assumed is the same in all these islands of India. At is indistinguishable from an MCU supervillain. It is. It is if we threaten their wives, yeah, they'll do what we want. Now, Michael, you didn't mean to do this, but you actually made it a little bit less ****** ** in your head there. So this is an interesting point in bear greens right up. It just sounds like he has detained these guys with their wives, right? Like he's detained men with the women that they were. In relationships with yeah, that's right, buddy. Yeah, he doesn't. They're interchangeable to him. I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote from another write up from American heritage. That makes a point I did not see noted elsewhere. And this is them quoting from Columbus's Journal. Afterwards, I sent to a house which is in the area of the river to the West, Columbus says in his journal. And they brought back seven head of women, small and large, and three children. I did this because the men would comport themselves better in Spain, having women from their land when without them. So again, he is kidnapping 7 head of women to keep the male captives. Russell, he uses the phrase the the exact way he writes this is Cabezas de Muerte de Mujeres, which is the way you it's the way you'd say. He's saying 7 head of women exactly the exact same way. So number one, that's pretty bad. And #2 he is, he is like, he doesn't understand that people have individual room. He's just taking, he's like, well, I've got guys I gotta get girls, gotta collect the set. He's just grabbing random women to go with these men, guys, 7 girls. And because, like, they are all traveling, all of the natives in here travel on canoes from island to island. He doesn't. I don't think he actually even knows that. Like the men and the women come from the same island. Like he may have grabbed people from different villages. And just like now you got your women with you, why aren't you happy? And it's interesting, Spanish historian Jose Ascencio writes quote, and this is a guy kind of writing around the time, this was a great abuse and bad judgment on the part of the Admiral, which was to set a most lamentable precedent and act so apparently trifling, which was to have fatal consequences. And that's interesting because, number one, it does show that like people at the time are are recognizing this is an abuse and bad. This is like a bad thing to do to people. But also it does say a lot that Ascencio calls kidnapping a bunch of people apparently trifling, trifling. Trifling. Look at this minor kidnapping of like a dozen people would leave the matterface if you will. Sticky wicket that, yeah. So anyway, that's pretty bad. Fatherless Casas is even more kind of clear when he writes in his history a quote. One might ask whether it was not a most grievous sin to pillage with violence women who had their own husbands, who was to give an accounting to God for the sins of adultery committed by the Indians whom he took with him, and to whom he gave those wives as sexual partners. And again, that's also you could see where Las Casas is where he's like, well, my God, they've broken the sacred bonds of marriage. Who's going to explain this to God? It's very funny. It's not so now. Again, there are again some people here and there who do show interest in hanging out with Columbus, but Columbus was not always interested in the people who wanted to go with him willingly. There's one point in his diary where a canoe with a man to woman and three kids rose up to his ship and the man begs to join Columbus and like, go back to Spain with him. And Columbus is frustrated because the guy is old. And can't do hard work, so he's like, well, he's not going to make a very good slave. I don't want this guy. Come on, he's the reason I'm kidnapping the young, strapping ones. Just lying in a hammock judging people's lives. Yeah. Now, Michael, you know who won't kidnap random groups of men and women from a culture and jam them into the hold of a sailing vessel together to take back to Seville, our sponsor. Big hammock. Yeah, come on down to hammock hammocks. We didn't start this situation. Look, all we do is make hammocks now. It's fine. It's just woven thread. Yeah, hammocks. The genocide was created prior to the start of the corporate charter. That's right. Could it be hammocks that ultimately ended the genocide causality connection? I don't know. I'm just a hammock. I'm just a yeah, this is just a company selling hammocks. OK, here's ads. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. 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Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love. Spreaker from iheart. Ah, we're back, Michael. So on every island he visits, Columbus sets himself to the task of erecting gigantic crosses. Delaney notes that this is more evidence that he had no intention to enslave the locals, because this is her logic. If he converts them to Christianity, they can't be enslaved, right? So the fact that he keeps building crosses on their land is evidence that he doesn't want them all enslaved, right? He's a good guy. Oh yeah. When someone puts a cross up in your yard, it's not aggressive. It's it is historically always a good thing. Usually. So Bear Green brings up parts of Columbus's notes that Delaney seems to ignore. At one point in November he did write that the indigenous people were, quote, very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil, neither murder nor theft, and they are without arms and are so timid that 100 of them flee before one person of ours. He recommended to the Queen quote Your Highness ought to resolve to make them Christians. For I believe that if he began in a short time, he would achieve the conversion to our holy faith of a multitude of folk, and would acquire great lordships and riches and all their inhabitants. Or Spain? Now, the source of these riches is quite clear in his mind quote because without doubt, there is in these countries a tremendous quantity of gold. And in case the extent of his meaning hasn't sunk in yet, gold needs to be mined. The indigenous folks acquired the small amounts of gold that they had mainly through, like searching riverbeds, right sifting through rocks and riverbeds and stuff to find little bits of gold. But to actually take the quantities necessary to fund his conquest of Jerusalem, proper minds would need to be open and converted. Indigenous people couldn't be enslaved. Because, you know, Christians can't be enslaved, but they could be forced to labor in gold mines as part of their taxes to the new enslavement. Exactly. Is it? And is there, like, assaying technology at this time? Like, is he right that there's a bunch of gold? Doesn't. Yes. I mean, they do find gold, right? Like he sees, like when there are, it is like a a reasonable conclusion that if you see a bunch of people with little bits of gold, well, somewhere there has to be a place where that gold's sure right. OK. His thinking on that matter is not, like delusional or anything he's seeing. You know, pieces of gold. And he's like, well, there's gotta be a place that's coming from. But as far as reasonable conclusions go, he's not making a lot of them. So I know you're asking that for a second. He they they do find this that that is unfortunately where the story is going. They do find gold mines. So on November 11th, the Admirals Fleet anchors off the coast of Cuba, which he thinks again, as Japan, he and his men quickly put to shore expecting to find gold. This was where all the people he'd met in islands along the way had told him the gold came from, but only a few of the folks he meets. On the shore are wearing gold jewelry, and again, it tends to be pretty small pieces of gold jewelry. Now Columbus is seriously starting to worry at this point. He's burning through days. He can't stay out here forever and he can't just return with some gold trinkets he feels, because that's not going to be enough to entice the king and queen. So increasingly he starts to focus on what has he seemed to be like. And what he's come to see is the most readily available source of wealth in this new world, which is its people, right? If I can't find gold, I can at least take and sell the people from a write up in American heritage. Quote on Monday, December 3rd, the Admiral assured the sovereigns that 10 men could cause 10,000 of the natives to flee. So cowardly and faint hearted are they and they carry no arms except some rods at the end of which are pointed sticks which are fire hardened. And again, Delaney is like portraying him as in love with these people and building these deep relationships and everything he's writing is like, we could **** these guys up no problem. They can't stop us. We're God's here. Yes, it's just it's wild that he's like. I don't know, I'll you want to make them our religion? You want to use them as slaves? You want some rocks, like, whatever. What's important is they're here and we can **** em up. I mean, he's literally is willing to denude the landscape that he's discovering of whatever or like anything, as long as he gets what he, you know, something valuable. Now by December 16th, his ideas in this respect have taken definite form. Quote, and here's Columbus again. They have no weapons and are all naked without any skill in arms. They're very cowardly so that 1000 would not challenge 3. Thus they are useful to be commanded and to be made to labor and so and do everything else of which there is need and build towns and be taught to wear clothes and learn our customs. I call them thinky gold. They can be taught to walk and speak as a man. It is also like you, you come across these people and you recognize, wow, everyone here looks very healthy and very healthy happy. And their food is delicious and it's like a paradise, you know? It would be great is teaching them how to labor. And forcing them to build towns and wear pants. Yeah, well, you hate to see it. It's the seesaw. It's I don't think his interest is improving their lives. It sure. Yeah, it is. It is not. Now, I wanna contrast these things which Columbus writes himself during his travels, with how Carol Delaney describes the exploration of Cuba slash Japan by Columbus quote. He sent some men ashore giving instructions as usual that if the natives fled at their approach, the men must not touch or take anything from their houses from the very beginning. Columbus notes how generously. The native shared whatever they had and he did not want his crew to take advantage of them. He demanded that there must be an exchange, for example beads and bells for a needed food supplies. It was unequal, to be sure, but trade nonetheless. He continually recounts having to restrain his crew from looting villages when the residents fled at their approach. Throughout the diary, he repeats. I did not allow anything to be taken, not even the value of a pin. Now. It's interesting, because she's not wrong in that he does repeatedly tell his men not to loot. He writes regularly back to his sovereigns that I said not to loot. But when you just include that part of the story, you get this vision of, like, a guy who's really just trying to meet people and explore, and he's constantly dealing with the fact that his men are unethical and want to just rob things. I would already question why you have corporate culture where everyone under you is, like, champing at the bit. Exactly, exactly. But when? Because what Carol has done here is cut out. Every time he's written like, boy, literally three of us could beat all of these people in a war and then we could own them and make them work for us. Like, I'm not gonna kill you, but like that dude like that. It would be easy, right? Yeah, so again, when you're leaving all that out, perhaps you are doing a disingenuous job of writing about a guy's back story. I'm not an anthropologist like Carol Delaney, but I see that as perhaps missing a key part of the story. Now, one thing we're not going to be getting into a lot in these episodes is the story of the Pinzone brothers. Delaney leaves them out mostly too. All she kind of notes is that in late November, Martin Alonso Pinzon, who's the captain and owner of the Pinta, right? All of these ships had other guys who owned them. They were just kind of in service to the Spanish crown. He abandons the fleet out of greed, right? Like not that long after they arrive, he takes the Pinta and he just goes separately and does his own thing for a while, and she makes pinzone out to be basically the villain of the Columbus story. This dangerous and. Competent buffoon who tries to like ruin. He's trying to like steal gold while he's away and he he's not listening to Columbus. And it is true that Pinzon takes the Pinta and kind of leaves the fleet and returns Spain eventually like separately. It is inaccurate to portray him as some buffoonish foil. Pinzon and his brothers basically handled all of the expeditions logistics. Martin Pinzone was the only reason Columbus was able to find a crew. He was a very respected sailor in Palos and he basically convinced others to join the journey interviews we have with crew members and their families. From a later court case between the two suggest that he basically ran all of the day-to-day business of the expedition because Columbus wasn't good at it and no one trusted him. Evidence that maybe people were right not to trust Columbus as an expedition leader comes right around Christmas, when the Santa Maria sinks like a ************ off the coast of what is today Haiti. Now the precise cause of the accident is unclear, and it is partly unclear because Columbus wrote and revised his own account of the disaster repeatedly in order to like blame different people it first. He blames the ship's boy, who he says is at the tiller at the wrong time and screws up. But as time goes on, he starts to claim that the ship hit an invisible reef while he slept. And then finally, as Bergreen writes quote now, he insisted it was caused by the treachery of the master and the people he's talking about pinzone here in refusing to run out the anchor from stem to kedge, that is, haul off the ship. As the Admiral ordered, there was no more mention of the hapless boy at the Tiller, or Columbus fatigue, or the holiday celebrations. Treasury had taken their place. So basically, he's having issues with this crew. A lot of them trust these pins zones and and, like, one of the Pinzone brothers ******* leaves with his guys. And Columbus initially is like, this thing sank because we were celebrating for the holiday and, like, I was tired. We didn't, like, pay enough attention that he's like, no, it was this boy. And then he was like, no, it was treachery from the mind of Palos who wanted to ruin the expedition and, like, didn't do what I told them to do. I don't know. I think Columbus maybe literally fell asleep at the wheel. Like, it is entirely possible that he just kind of, like, passes out and the Santa Maria crashes. Just. But yeah, anyway, it's very funny. And and what's interesting here is that kind of by that last revision of the story and what we're seeing is an increasingly paranoid Christopher Columbus, because he's he's under a lot of stress. He has to justify this expedition. And he also has come to increasingly believe that, like, God is directing him, right, God brought him here and he is like achieving a sacred end for the Lord. And so finally, a good turn in the story because God's good, God's gonna know what to do. This is gonna be great. Well, God is telling him that all of the crewmen he has are conspiring against him to stop him from achieving his goals. So the good news is that Columbus has men and most of their possessions get rescued by a local leader, a casique, which is kind of, I don't know, vaguely speaking, it's like a chief, right. A casique is like kind of a local kind of village or town level leader. Some, they seem to have pretty widely differing, kind of like numbers of people following. Sure. Middle management? No, I mean, definitely. I don't know. It just yeah, it does. It doesn't look like there's like a. A long chain, but yeah, one of these guys is named Guaca Nagari and Gangare is either depending on kind of how you interpret things, either one of these guys who sees the Spaniards is maybe semi divine, or he's just a very savvy local politician who sees them as powerful military allies against his enemies, right? He recognizes, well, these guys have good weapons and if I get in their good books, they will help protect me from my enemies, right? So after he rescues Columbus and his men. From this sinking he offers to build houses for the Admiral and his men and like, let them live there. And he presents them with several gold gifts. Like, he gives them kind of some of the biggest pieces of gold Columbus is found and he tearfully expresses his intense desire for friendship. Now, Carol Delaney writes about this at length and presents it as a beautiful example of platonic cross cultural love between these two men who is made into a Charlie Brown special. If I exactly. Yeah, he yeah, he had he had guaca Nagari or like just the best of buds. Bear Green's writing makes it clear that the Cassique was motivated as much by Realpolitik as anything else. Quote striding past Groves of trees next to the houses, the Spaniards found themselves escorted to their guest quarters by a good thousand people, all naked except for Guaca Nagari, who out of respect for his guests now wore a shirt and gloves that the Admiral had given him. And over the gloves he made more rejoicing than anything they talked of. Strategic matters of the Indians fierce rivals the Caribs, who carried bows and arrows reminiscent of the Spaniards exotic weapons. But made without any iron, and of the way the Caribs captured the Indians at will. At once the Admiral said by signs that the sovereigns of Castile would order the Caribs to be destroyed and would order them all brought with their hands bound. To reinforce his show of strength, Columbus ordered a Lombard and musket to be fired. The two shots, powered by gunpowder technology unknown to the Indians, shattered the Caribbean calm and the Indians fell to the earth. So. This guy is like, you can stay here, we can be friends, you know, by the way, would you help us out with these local enemies of ours who are, like, raiding us and taking some of our people captive? And Columbus is like, oh, once I tell the queen this, you know she's going to approve a genocide. Well, wipe them out. Don't worry. Look at look at our guns. And this is going to be noteworthy later because now that the Caribs are kind of in the picture, we've established basically everyone he's met before is like peaceful and and friendly. The Caribs are. Not peaceful. Or at least it is. They have agendas. They're doing things. They're well there. They can at least be portrayed that way. And if there is a group of people here who are aggressive, well, then suddenly a whole world of military options opens up, right? I guess that's like these. That's like me sticking my fist into a wasp's nest and going well. This means war. War. You see that? I had no choice. That is basically what happens here now, the show of modern arms. Has two purposes for Columbus, for one thing. Obviously it does establish his value as an ally to this guy, but it also acts as a show of force to guaca Nagari and his people, because with the Santa Maria sunk, Columbus doesn't have space on his boats to take all of his people back to Spain. But when the CASIQUE offers him a home on the island, the Admiral is like, well, wait a second. I can make a fortress here like I can leave some guys behind. We can fortify it, and I'll have built the first strong point for Spanish power in the region. It'll be like the start of our of our trading system and stuff throughout the islands. And Columbus now, because he he's kind of taken with this vision, he starts to see the loss of his flagship, the sinking of the Santa Maria, as divinely inspired. He was, he decided, quote, preordained to run aground and to meet Guaca Negare. And while his initial mission had been simple exploration, he was obligated now by Holy Fiat to actually start colonizing this new land. Quote Now I have given orders to erect a tower on a fortress. All very well done and a great Moat. Not that I believe it to be necessary for these people, for I take it. Are granted that with this people I could conquer all this island, which I believe to be bigger than Portugal and double the number of inhabitants. So he's like, I'm building a fortress, even though I don't really need one, right? Like I could conquer it without one, but I'm going to make one. Now, of the people who are already there, Columbus showed now no real pretense of kindness. He described them as cowardly and beyond hope of cure. It is right that this tower should be built, he insisted. And it is as it should be, being so far from your highnesses that they may recognize the skill of your Highness's subjects and what they can do, so that they may serve them with love and fear. So he's like part of what he's saying here is that the reason we should build a fortress here is to show these people is to have is to provide a physical, like a physical example of the power of the Spanish crown. Right, right. We don't need this fortress because to defend ourselves from them, because they're harmless. What we need it for is that they never forget that now they're subjects of the king of beer. Yeah, exactly. We are penny wise. We live off their fear. Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna build us a little death star in the middle of their nice little Caribbean island so they never forget. That the empires on their ******* neck absolutely is, yeah. Begin construction on the Dome. The death Dome, that is. That is his brilliant idea. So he said he leaves about 40 of his guys there to create a new settlement, and they're meant to build up infrastructure using native labor to help and collect gold for Spain that's going to be there. Upon their return, Carol Delaney writes that the men he left behind were just super jazzed for the opportunity quote. While once his men had desperately feared they would not be able to return to Spain, they now began to haggle who over who would be fortunate enough to stay on the island. While Columbus and the rest of the crew would attempt to return to Spain on the tiny ninia. That's good. Now, Michael, let's let's let's let's think here, let's war game this out, right? You've got these people who Columbus has already said every single time they come upon a village with the people, he has to stop them from stealing, right? Right. And now he's like, I'm going to leave some of you here alone with weapons, and they're all suddenly very excited to be in that crew. Do you think they have plants? Meanwhile, I'm going to put this fox in this grain and this duck and my boat all together, and I'm going to go over there. Do you think maybe something bad might be about to happen with these guys? Uh, but you know who would never Rob an island of people blind? Because I don't think physically possible. If you're going to say what I think you're going to say, yeah, yeah, that's right. The products and services that support this podcast when. Sets up the island that you can hunt children on. Which, by the way, Michael, you and I should hang out on one of these days. It's great. Great place for a vacation. Any excuse. They're not they're not robbing their island off the coast of Indonesia. They're creating value. You know, that island was just uninhabited by anything other than people when they came here. And now they've turned it into a hunting preserve. You know that's value, right? That's before then, we we weren't aware that cloth could be cut in the shape. That shape. That apron shape. It wasn't worth it for the apron. Yeah, the apron. Alone apron. Has made their island worthwhile, Michael. 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Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint mobilcom slash behind. Now, a word from our sponsor better help. If you're having trouble stuck in your own head, focusing on problems dealing with depression, or just you know can't seem to get yourself out of a rut, you may want to try therapy, and better help makes it very easy to get therapy that works with your lifestyle and your schedule. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try, better help is a great option. It's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com/behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com. Slash behind betterhelp.com/behind my name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Fried true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them, you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always feel like an ambassador for speaker, but that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's SPREAK. R.com get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker from iheart. OK, we're back. So, you know, Columbus is a. It's interesting here because like he is, he's leaving these guys behind and a lot of them are very excited to get to stay on the island and get up to the **** they're going to get up to. But it's also worth noting that, like Columbus is potentially dooming them all based on his own vanity and desire for advancement because he's very good at navigating right. He has navigated his way to and through the Caribbean with extreme facility, but the notes that he's written on how to get there and back are totally nonsense from a nautical point of view. Purposefully, he has written. The wrong way to get there and back in his notes because he doesn't want to risk getting intercepted by a foreign power and giving them directions to the new world right now. That's reasonable in a way, right? Because this is a valuable secret, and when you do it in code or in some way that you could still understand where you're going, well, he can. He knows how to get OK, great, great. But no one else he's. So here's the thing, though. He's leaving all these dudes behind and no one else is going to be able to find them again. That's amazingly right. That's like where he to have died. On the voyage, and people died for no ******* reason. Back then, all of those guys would have just been doomed. It's also the screenwriter in me just can't get over what a huge turn in, like, dooming so many lives that that moment is where he decides in his sick little brain. Yeah. Oh, I was supposed to stay here. Why? Because I'm supposed to take Dominion of this land, of all of it. You're like, done, done, done. Yeah. ****. But it is. It is funny that he is essentially gambling the lives of his men. Sure on the hope that he, a middle-aged guy in the 1400s, isn't going to like, die and leave them stranded forever. I just do. I find I find that also funny. Obviously that's not a particularly great crime in the Columbus Cannon, but it does say a lot about him as a dude that he just doesn't even think about it. Not for a second is there is an ounce of concern. What if we need to get back what, you know, left at the Big rock or whatever? I gotta go. Sale like, come on, figure it out. So Columbus begins his journey home on January 2nd, 1493, but despite days of begging from the Casique, that he stayed to provide protection from the Caribs before he left, he christened his new settlement on Hispaniola Navidad, and wrote in a letter to his sovereigns that when he returned to the island he he was sure that he would, quote, find a barrel of gold that those who were left behind would have acquired by exchange, and that they would have found the gold mine and the Spicery, and those things in such quantity that the sovereigns. For three years or over, we'll undertake to go and conquer the Holy Sepulchre. For this, I urged your Highnesses to spend all the profits of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem. Well, alright. So he's like, yeah, yeah, he is. He's like, they're going to. It's going to be great. It's going to change the world. Guaranteed it. Well, because what are you saying here? Is that what I'm leaving them on the island to? To collect gold and find a mind and find spices. Which #1 Carol Delaney is like. He just wanted them there to watch his friend and to set up a settlement. So people can live, essentially. Set up a human Bitcoin mine. Yeah, that that's actually what he's doing and he's he wants. He's doing it all for Jerusalem baby. So one of the last things Columbus did was he delivered a letter to the man he was leaving in charge of Navidad. It contained instructions and was signed instead of with Columbus's usual signature, it was signed with something new. This is the first time he starts using what instead of like. His signature is this bizarre glyph that he invents for himself during the voyage, and he. Creates this like glyph to sign things with because he's now grown convinced that he's being guided by God to some holy Ant. And here's how Carol Delaney describes this. The sigil resembles a ship in full sail and consists of three rows of letters in the shape of a triangle. The meaning of the last line is clear. Expo Ferens is a combination of Greek and Latin words, meaning Christ. Bearer Columbus must have believed that he had made good on his identification with his namesake, Saint Christopher, though during the voyage Columbus must have given much thought to the letters in their arrangement. But to this day they remain undeciphered despite the efforts of many people through the ages. 1 interpretation is that the initial stand for service at the top and then some altissimum salvadores on the second line and Chris de Maria Yesu on the 3rd. All of which translates as I am the servant of the most high savior, oh Christ, Mary, Joseph. Another interpretation is Servidor SUS, also Tejas Sacras Christo Maria Isabel, that is the humble servant of their most sacred majesties Christ, Mary and Isabella. So. He's, he's he's kind of gone full extremist here. Yeah, he's he's he's like built himself a logo that does that. Number one, he's like among primarily junior himself. Yeah, he is. He is, he is, he is signing himself now as like, the agent of God, right. Like the person who is going to like bring about the apocalypse and but it's designed of Jerusalem. Yeah. He, like, put it in a little cool triangle. He's spending a lot of time in his room writing. Figured it out. Yeah, he's got, yeah his we never got his notes. His little trapper keeper, as he figured out how to do this, failed the alternate ones and takes and little ****. He was going to doodle anyway. That's that we're now at like full Christ Bearer Columbus, who is number 1 convinced that he and bikes like he and the sovereigns now own this place, right. Because again he part of his deal with them is that. If they take it, he gets to be the governor and he gets a cut of all the profits, and he's also convinced that he is being directly guided by God to take possession of this in order to fund a holy war. So that's it is striking how often people who have acquired or are on the verge of acquiring completely, like, you know, unevenly levered, like advantage over something or to suck a huge amount of resource up, suddenly decide. That it's good this is happening and God wants this to happen and it's great and that's why it's fine. I love it. I love being on the show, Robert. I'm glad this is all we ever do together. Episode after episode, yes. Next we will be talking about Christopher Columbus's feet. Now, this is largely going to be based on, you know, my personal theories slash ****** dreams, but I think people will still get a lot out of it. Michael, I hope you do. I'm turgid, so let's go. You have any plugs you want to plug before we roll out? God, not after that. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity, Robert. Always have a blast here. Yeah. My name's Michael Swain. You can find me on Twitter mostly at Swaim under score Corp and if you want to hear me on a whole variety of podcast, search up small beans, which is the name of my imprint, or head over to patreon.com/small beans. I've also got another show that's not on that network called 1 upsmanship. A brand new video games podcast on the Iheart Network. Check it out if you're interested in video games as an art form because that's what we think it is. By we, I mean myself and my co-host Adam Ganser, again that's the number one and then UPS Manship, check it out. Excellent. Alright, the episodes over. Go home, everybody. Behind the ******** is a production of cool zone media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to. At my day job, follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. There, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioural discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts sisters. 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