Part Four: Thomas Jefferson: King of Hypocrites | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

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Part Four: Thomas Jefferson: King of Hypocrites | BEHIND THE BASTARDS
Robert and Prop conclude the story of Thomas Jefferson by talking about the time he built a smarthome powered by child slavery.Robert and Prop conclude the story of Thomas Jefferson by talking about the time he built a smart home powered by child slavery.
Original Air Date: June 13, 2024
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There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a few about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bad guys (and gals) are eternally fascinating. Behind the Bastards dives in past the Cliffs Notes of the worst humans in history and exposes the bizarre realities of their lives. Listeners will learn about the young adult novels that helped Hitler form his monstrous ideology, the founder of Blackwater’s insane quest to build his own Air Force, the bizarre lives of the sons and daughters of dictators and Saddam Hussein’s side career as a trashy romance novelist.
New episodes twice a week on iHeartRadio.
#BehindtheBastards #BehindtheBastardsPodcast #RobertEvansBehindtheBastards #BehindtheBastardsMerch #BehindtheBastardsJohnLandis #BehindTheBastardsHost #BehindtheBastardsIvermectin #BestBehindtheBastardsEpisodes #BehindtheBastardsBestEpisodes

Terry Pratchett wrote that the most basic root of evil, it's simplest condensation, is 'Treating people like things'. I couldn't believe it was that simple, but I struggle to find a flaw in it.

[@alexmcleod9078]

GNU Terry Pratchett

[@omegafilming]

The brief mention of Watson and Crick really whetted my appetite for a bastards episode on the both of them (more for the former than the latter, but they've each got their skeletons)

[@Othaur]

Especially since Rosalind Franklin discovered DNA. Watson and Crick stole her research and published. She was deceased at the time, but my god I hate those men.

[@chrisball3778]

Crick was described as something that rhymed with his name by many people who met him. Watson, though... jeez. He's just got more racist and insane as he's aged, and he's somehow still alive at age 96. They definitely deserve a BTB episode.

[@jerinmathew4726]

I had to hault my workout to say I'm immensely proud of Sophie for the "Die on this hill for you" joke. A1.

[@rodneysmith873]

Nothing beats waking up to Bastards in your cup

[@LayOnHands]

Tadeusz Kościuszko was a Polish fighter, who fought in an uprising against 3 armies that divided the Polish kingdom, wiping Poland from existence for over a century. The other Polish accent is a group of Polish soldiers who fought for Napoleon, because they believed, because he was against Russia, that he could help create in some way, and indepent state for polish people. Their motto was "For freedom, ours and yours". Some batalions of rhem were sent to Haiti to quell the uprising, and some of those decided "Hey, we're standing on the wrong side of this conflict" and switched sides. I must underline, not only did they stop fighting for the french, in a war that didn't help in any way the polish interest, which is pragmatical, and understandable, they decided to help the revolutionaries. And this is so freakin cool, and one of things, I as a Polish man think should be our national heritage.

[@Przeme]

In general Kościuszko was based, he also let out of servitude his peasants in his last will, cutting their serfdom before that (which for polish nobility was not obvious).

[@therearedoors]

Man, this series has been such a long time coming. My illusions have been crushed and I love it. Visiting Monticello was inspirational for young me, and now I realize just how much effort was put into scrubbing its grotesque history into a theme park for capitalist propaganda.

[@petebondurant58]

@SkylarKelly Hamilton and Franklin were the capitalists. Jefferson was landed wannabe gentry, and yes, there is a difference between the two.

[@naughtscribe]

What's Roberting, my bastarrrrrds?!

[@jizburg]

Whats behind my roberts!!!!

[@naughtscribe]

@@jizburg Knives. It's knives, isn't it? And gas station anti-sobriety substances.

[@ReclaimedDasein]

Lol. Peak response

[@Ducaso]

Who’s bastarding, my behinds!!??

[@_mycotroph]

​@naughtscribe youtubes AI moderation has made people become remarkably poetic in comments, maybe I don't hate it after all. Anti sobriety substances is a great euphemism

[@paulrhome6164]

The whole nail making arc just jumped out to me like he had just read the first chapter of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, which uses nail making as the model for capitalism, and just thought "yeah, that but with slaves."

[@nataschavisser573]

That is actually very likely, considering Jefferson's character.

[@Thebotulism]

Disney's not too far off from having slaves run their theme parks, I knew a friend that survived off of Ketchup packets and Ramen when they were working there.

[@orchidrose1410]

TRUE!! I think we’ve all got at least that “six degrees of separation” when it comes to that! 😂

[@billmozart7288]

Now I want an episode about Walt Disney

[@russelljackson2818]

Voicing my support for a Walt Disney series because there's no way that's only two episodes

[@Ennead13x]

Mountains vs hills really are vibes. I live on a mountain taller than Monticello. It's officially named a Hill, but then right down the way there's another hill just the same height which is named a Mountain!

[@kaitlynnp582]

It's so relative, too. I grew up in a valley of the cascade mountains, and was baffled by a tourist sign about mountains in Harper's Ferry Virginia when I was about 11. Where are the mountains? Oh, that's them. The rounded foothills. Got it.

[@RvEijndhoven]

If we want to get technical about it, the thing that defines a mountain vs. a hill has nothing to do with height. It's to do with composition. If the surface consists top soil, it's a hill. If it's made of exposed stone, it's a mountain. (Granted, this is based on the various words in other languages that get translated variably as 'hill' or 'mountain').

[@pseudonym8791]

I know it’s a tangent but gotta put in that Watson and Crick relied on the work of Rosalind Franklin, an x-ray crystallographer, to develop the double-helix model of DNA.

[@nataschavisser573]

They mocked her and generally treated her like crap but was happy to steal her work. To me it shows the bad conscience behind this type of misogyny. Since she is a woman, she has no right to be there and can be treated with contempt but since they are men, they also have the right to the fruits of her labour and do not have to credit or compensate her for it.

[@pseudonym8791]

@@nataschavisser573^^This - no notes

[@ashtangaxashtangapranayama8526]

​@@nataschavisser573 oooph 😖 ding ding ding* 🥊🥇

[@Ceruleansquid-lo3iv]

Ive been to Montechello, and it is not a mountain. Also, Watson and Crick weren't as great as everyone says because they basically copied off Rosalind Franklin. She discovered the double helix.

[@TCMcBiscuits]

Watson would be a good topic for an episode.

[@Flying-Maytree]

Came here just to say this. Please do an episode on James Watson -- he really is a bastard.

[@rabarbarum]

Came here for this comment.

[@maxmichalik4938]

I haven't seen anyone mention that "Monticello" means *little* mountain in Italian. It's essentially just a cutesy name for a big hill.

[@cyrneco]

​​@@maxmichalik4938they did mention it in the podcast but they translated it literally as 'little mountain'. Jefferson was a bastard but it seems he did understand italian.

[@redsenay]

He didn’t create a Disneyland. He created a Hogwarts, house elves and all.

[@raycearcher5794]

"Dad, I crushed my hand making nails!" "Call me Mr. Jefferson. And if you power through that mangled hand, I'll get you a brand new shirt!"

[@billmozart7288]

"What the hell is this world?" Great question, Prop

[@natmorse-noland9133]

Aayyyyyyy, love to see my boy Kosciuszko get a cameo! And for good things, too! 🇵🇱🇵🇱

[@yensid4294]

Jefferson's obsession with the Roman Republic answers so many questions. He wanted to be a Patrician living a decadent, pampered life on a country estate while he played at being a Philospher & Renaissance Man.

[@stgjr]

Yes! You mentioned Coles! Coles also became Governor of Illinois and led the effort to block making Illinois a slave state.

[@OsirisLord]

Illinois is above the Mason-Dixon line and I thought the agreement was that meant it couldn't be a slave state.

[@SgtKaneGunlock]

@@OsirisLord that might have been established after that

[@stgjr]

The Missouri Compromise was still new at the time, and more to the point, had a majority of Illnois voters demanded slavery be added to the state law it would have at least incited a fresh round of fierce debate in Washington, but with slavery having the advantage of being the "democratic" option. Also debatable if the federal government could have forced them to remove slavery if they'd implemented it. The Missouri Compromise was centered around accepting Missouri into the Union as constructed by its chosen constitution. IIRC this was a post-admission matter, not during the territorial phase, so is a whole new can of worms to deal with. Thankfully, Coles and other abolitionists won the resulting fight over Illinois' institutions. IIRC it wasn't an absolute victory and slavery advocatees won things like temporary residency laws that allowed slaveholders to maintain legal power over their slaves for limited spans of time in-state (presumably to appeal to Kentuckian and Missourian slave owners doing business in the state).

[@almostscottish]

“Slave powered smart house” so basically Monticello was a Warhammer 40K ship.

[@obamabiden]

cinncinatus was actually dictator twice, the second time they turned up to his (at least in the legend) implied to be pretty small farm to bring him out of retirement to save rome again

[@Goddot]

thus starting the action-hero-taken-back-from-retirement trope in antiquity

[@roshango125ab]

What I love about this Jefferson series is it completely debunks one of the worst bad faith arguments when it comes to defending slave owners, one Bill Maher got in hot water for using. "Slavery was the norm back then, you can't make a moral judgment on someone from 250 years ago. Imagine the things you'll be judge for by future generations" Nope! Even then other countries had freed their slaves long before America was even founded, Emancipation was a massive topic even then, the great thinkers of their days called out the horrors of slavery, and even Jefferson himself clearly knew what he was doing was wrong. Even by the standards of the later 1700s slavery was understood to be wrong

[@avocahdo2269]

As Robert has said before no matter what the year is there were always people who existed pointing to the fucked up systems and saying that's fucked up.

[@mattmorehouse9685]

Sounds like my Dad's views on Columbus. "Everyone else was enslaving peaceful people who welcomed strangers from across the sea, and didn't drive them off!" Except they weren't by this very example. Not to mention the classic parentism "If everyone jumped off a bridge would you do it?" Popularity doesn't equal morality.

[@loc978]

Spent this one looking around Monticello on google maps. Just to the southeast of Charlottesville, VA. At least the nailery has a plaque with a dry explanation of what happened there. It's just a few benches under a couple trees now, though. It's on the path overlooking the vegetable garden between the wood shop and the forge. fuuuuuuuu~

[@notreallyhere67]

Thomas Jefferson was playing Factorio....WITH PEOPLE...

[@jacobmartin1100]

I think the ironic thing about the Emancipation debate is in the end the British slave owners got the best deal compared to their American counterparts; the gov't had to pay *them* to free the people held in bondage, who ended up continuing to work in terrible conditions for little pay. They did a *reverse reparations* and probably ended up far richer than if it had continued for another few years and ended without compensation, while the Southern Aristocracy was ruined by the war and basically ceased to exist.

[@AzaleaJane]

"Am I out of touch? "No, it's the slaves who are wrong."

[@jnramage]

Very.nice. The Monticello parts were some things I never considered. You did gloss over some of his shitty backstabbing to Washington and Adams and his purchase of Louisiana was against his previous limited government theories

[@mycroft_moriarty]

I love the dark laughter from Prop when they discuss the Nails...

[@jnelson4765]

Jefferson made that cognitive dissonance work real fucking hard for him. He doesn’t have the body count of a Lenin, but that same combination of high minded philosophy and absolute cruelty is familiar.

[@ashtangaxashtangapranayama8526]

Lenin?

[@AzraNoxx]

Great series. Very useful for cleaning the mind. It helped me settle my opinion on this particular founding father: you gotta rely on the death of the author. He made some promises that he didn't mean, and to his great remorse younger generations believed those fancy words. Now it's our job to make good on those promises.

[@jaimeondrusek5429]

That business about weighing the feedstock for the nails before and after reminds me so much of that scene in "Schindler's List" where Goeth goes the guy making hinges and says "make me a hinge," times it, and then puts a pistol to the guy's hinge because the time for one hinge didn't jibe with the daily hinge total.

[@magpieMOB]

Please PLEASE release the Know What I'm Saying Megamix

[@nathanvega4986]

Wow, Thomas Jefferson was a bigger bastard than I ever expected! Thanks for setting things straight.

[@redjirachi1]

The only way you could make a more divisive Behind the Bastards podcast is if you did a Behind The Bastards: George Washington

[@Wayne-ji5vo]

"His Nail Boys"... Yes, Lord JeffaSin's Nail Boys from the Nailery! Creating the fibers to hold the firmanent all chrome, shiny, and NEW on the Monticello Road!

[@floraposteschild4184]

Heeh hee! Good point. 😉

[@billmozart7288]

46:11 So he has iron and smelters and black smiths and he decides to buy iron collars? No wonder he was in so much debt.

[@youmukonpaku3168]

or he's smart enough to realize that asking his own slaves to forge their own chains will result in faulty chains because they have nothing to lose except said chains.

[@billmozart7288]

@youmukonpaku3168 remember that there are many types of chains, including intangible ones, and violent bosses were there all the time. I think they said Tommy Jeff's didn't use Christianity as a form of coersion but it was a popular method. Plus Monticello is pretty far from anything, surrounded by miles of mountain forest. I'd rather take a beating than get mauled by a mountain lion

[@ragtopdeluxezl1]

It is my understanding he bought the iron rod stock for the boys to make nails with.

[@billmozart7288]

@ragtopdlxzl1 he had a forge, you can melt and shape the metal however you want

[@KSignalEingang]

The "know what I'm saying" remix Sophie's asking for at the end is just the break from "No Time For Yes" by Evolution Control Committee.

[@lillijaye634]

If you might die if you try to walk up it unprepared during the winter, it's a mountain

[@SgtKaneGunlock]

you can say that about steep drive ways in the mid-west a mountain that does not make

[@lillijaye634]

@@SgtKaneGunlock nah I walk year round (I live in Wyoming) and I feel pretty confident walking up steep driveways but the humble mountain overlooking my city (at about 3000 feet) gets a lot more snow that doesn't melt as fast and would be very dangerous for me try to walk up. See if I have a good pair of boots I can walk up a hill, but I'd need a lot of specific gear to walk up a mountain in the winter. The roads don't get shut down when the hill passes get snow, but they do with mountain passes.

[@marocat4749]

montesello the slavery powered nail making disney land, wow

[@rodneysmith873]

Absolutely shocked this wasn't the title. Hey maybe you can be Title Guy! Only real Crackedheads will get that one

[@patludwig1971]

The namesake on an 80s era housing project.

[@alangroskreutz235]

A mountain has to have a tree line otherwise it is a hill, and this is a land mass that projects conspicuously above the surrounding area that I will die on.

[@Fixtheproblemwithgoodpolicy]

I can see why the South loves Jefferson.

[@greenberry6019]

FYI, Robert, you're wrong about Monticello. In Italian, it basically means "hillock", so it's an appropriate name for 800 feet.

[@kirbyinhalesjotaro4471]

“I’m sure big mountain came for them” I think it would be more accurate to say small mountain came for them

[@OsirisLord]

This has been bugging me the entire time but Robert has been pronouncing Monticello wrong the whole time. You pronounce it Montichello.

[@youmukonpaku3168]

the only proper noun he's ever pronounced right is Van Nuys, and I'm dead certain that one was by accident.

[@ravenrose5712]

All this talk about cleaning up Jefferson's image has sparked some very specific memories...do the words "miku binder jefferson" generate war flashbacks for anyone here?

[@ravenrose5712]

Obsessed with how in the last podcast Jefferson was talking about how helpless enslaved people are without their owns when he very clearly could not do jack shit without the people he enslaved--like everything from Jupiter holding his hand through college to the enslaved people defending him during the revolutionary war to this.

[@banjohero1182]

"yay oh man"? jfc Robert, yeoman is said like "yo min"

[@Abderian]

Wait, so you stopped to look up the height of Montecello just to have a better impression of the place, but even knowing the name is Italian in origin, you didn't also wanna doublecheck that you were going to pronounce it correctly in your 4-part podcast series? FYI, in case you do a BtB on Stephen F. Austin or Davy Crockett or somethin', the Mexican territory of "Texas" was pronounced differently in the mid-1800s. The correct way to say it is "Klaatu Barada Nikto."

[@matthewheywood8532]

Jefferson might be one of the worst bastards because he knew what he was doing and slavery was wrong unlike most of the others who thought they were right , didn’t give a damn or too dumb to see it . Jefferson knew damn well it was wrong

[@Reid-mv4ll]

Here comes the best bastards on KZbin.

[@rothloaf1980]

Eight hundred feet is a mound unless it's straight up.

[@splittedcurve]

the c in monticello is CH tho

[@CopyCatNoBody-hn2re]

I visited Monticello, it’s definitely a hill, not a mountain

[@hobog]

Is "montisello" bait?

[@floraposteschild4184]

Italian pronunciations confuse me, but I've always heard people say mon-te-chello. As in cello.

[@greggreenfield5532]

I'm still waiting for Robert to explain how Jefferson is like 40k Orks......

[@TheNaldiin]

Mushroom with reality distortion field.

[@user-rx2ur5el9p]

Was Snowpiercer inspired by Monticello?

[@Pikepaw]

Nic Cage has a cringey line about the smartest men sitting in the President’s desk and it was less cringey than JFK’s line about Jefferson dining alone.

[@mandibarmello1]

Serious question. Was the reason why Jefferson was so against white women having mixed race children with black men, as opposed to black women having mixed race children with white men, because the child’s status as free or enslaved be determined by the mother’s race? I’m pretty sure mixed children born to white women were not enslaved.

[@franzfanz]

This is why I feel like of the top Nazis, Herman Goering is the most relatable to me, because he essentially does it all because he really, really likes the finer things in life. I get that. I don't get whatever weird shit Himmler was into. That shit was just plain insanity.

[@trvst5938]

You're kidding. Goering was a druggy extravagant man.

[@EBannion]

The irony of disqualifying Monticello from mountain status based on British standards is delicious

[@thekiwibird37]

He died on July 4th?! Oh good, now I can finally get in the partying mood.

[@Hexphile]

Monticello more like Collinetta

[@Swpeloquin]

I know that it's missing the point and is not important but it's pronounced mon-toe-chello. Not mon-toe-sell-oh

[@ragtopdeluxezl1]

Watched 18th century nail making video...1 nail every 30 seconds... The B@$t@rd...

[@banjohero1182]

... is it not pronounced like "montachello"?

[@BikemanSuperfast]

These episodes explain so so much about the types of boomers that borderline worship Thomas Jefferson.

[@seanford2478]

Hey tell Sophie Celtics up 3-0

[@noop1111]

A slave-powered smart house wouldn't burn fossil fuels like an electronic smart house would. Slavery could help combat climate change.

[@Chaosqueenngami]

Jefferson was a mortality pickme. Wanted all the perks of a high mortality person with none of the work. Worst part is that it worked unless we keep talking about how he was all talk and no doie doie.

[@skug9bob]

I imagine Jefferson was a hell of a lot more tolerant of miscegenation when it involved a white man and black woman rather than the other way around.

[@sallyd3700]

Kinda justifies my responses to the continued nonsense of, “well, if we get rid of these statutes what’s next? Washington? Jefferson? “ “Don’t tease. Yes, please, like yesterday, k?”

[@VildhjartaFanGurl]

Ye

[@yeahnaaa292]

Y'all thought 3 episodes were enough to cover the scope of ol' T-Jeffie's Morally Bankrupt, Dastardly Bastardness - NOPE.

[@naqdensjam]

obviously the guy was weak of character lack of iniciative narcisistic lack of general empathy and very arrogant !!! sorry americans !!!! at least pick some personalities with actual believe system !!!! this one is one of the first grifters in history

[@sottosopravoce]

As long as we're dunking on him for calling it a "mountain" I would like to add to the pile on by pointing out that he pronounced the Italian wrong.