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Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh, and for this Select, I've chosen our 2017 episode on Dictators. How much the world can change in just a few years. We mentioned a couple of times in this episode that authoritarianism was on the wane and that it was being replaced by a good old democracy. I'm sad to report that has changed in recent years as authoritarianism has come battling back and in some surprising places. Listen to this episode to find out why that's a bad thing.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. It's 2017.

Jerry, our benevolent dictator.

Yeah, for real. She's got those epilets that she wears all the time and sunglasses.

I was just commenting and I thought this is a pretty good article here from how.

Stuff works. Yeah, I've heard that before.

Who wrote this one? Do you have that on there?

No, I always have it on there.

You didn't.

Have it today? It might be a Shane of Freeman joint.

I think it may be. That sounds familiar. Anyway, it's a good one. Yeah.

Here.

It is.

That was word for word, my intro that you just stole. Oh, well.

My mind reading classes have been paying off.

Chuck? Yes. Have you ever lived under a dictatorship?

Not exactly.

No?

No.

I haven't either. I think we should consider ourselves fairly lucky because it turns out that not only were we born in a country that most people would argue is not a dictatorship, although you can find plenty of websites that argue that it is, has been for the last several years, possibly even. For the most part, most people would say it's not a dictatorship. We were lucky to be born in a country that isn't a dictatorship. But not only that, we were lucky to be born in a time when dictatorships have become fairly hard to find, comparatively speaking, because dictatorships were basically the way that people were ruled for thousands of years, up until very recent times, around the time of the Enlightenment, when the idea of individual liberties and the protection of those individual liberties became widespread.

Yeah. This article starts off, I thought it was interesting that you don't often... Well, first of all, the word dictator is just the one who dictates the thing. It's funny when you break down the actual definition. You're like, Oh, well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense then.

It's the guy who paces back and forth in front of the desk while somebody's typing what he's saying.

Take dictation. But they don't call themselves that very often, although it has happened. Before we get into the history, we should point out that Castro and Saddam Hussein, you never hear them say, I'm dictator, has a bad rap. I'm the dictator, Fidel Castro.

Yeah, it's like how propaganda got turned into PR.

Yeah, they will call themselves premier or president or Chancellor.

Or Fuerer. Boss of you.

Kim, Kim, Kim, John, Ile holds three titles. I think he's looking for a fourth and fifth as we speak.

Well, he's in the ground, his son.

Oh, wait, I got this too confused, right? Yeah. Well, he held three titles. Yes, he did. I'd imagine, well, his son probably holds four then he probably found that fourth. Just made one up.

Did you know, though, that there's like... Kim-jong-un is the Supreme Leader of North Korea, but he actually technically shares power with two other officials as well. They have basically a triumvert going there. That was news to me.

Yeah, those guys are called Keep Quiet One and Keep Quiet Two.

Yeah, I was just looking up some of his greatest hits recently. Kim-jong-un alone has already started to amass several, but one was a North Korean leader, a pretty high ranking official was executed with an anti-aircraft machine gun for slouching or falling asleep at a meeting.

Holy.

Cow. Right. But you.

Hear stuff like that. Can you imagine what that would do to a body? Yeah. Oh, my God.

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

Yeah. You're saying take any information with a grain of salt?

Yes. It's good advice.

Thanks. But as, I believe, Shane-A points out that dictators do have some things in common. One of the big ones is almost 100% of the time, a dictator doesn't come to power through an election. They're usually not freely elected to that position.

No, but they have been. They have been. Yeah, pretty prominently like Hitler.

Yeah, he was an elected, though, wouldn't he? Named Chancellor?

Yes, by the elected president, though.

Right, but he still wasn't elected.

No, I guess that's true. Okay. Fine.

Well, let's get into history then. All right.

You say, Dictators got a bad... It's gotten a bad rap over the years, right?

As far as calling yourself that, I think so.

But officially, originally, and I saw a couple of references to Greece, but it seems to be Rome, classic Rome.

Classic Rome.

Yeah. It trips coming into the party and everybody's like, That's classic Rome.

He tried to walk through that screen door. It wasn't open.

So classical Rome, how about that? It seems to be an invention of classical Rome, right? There is a station called Dictator. There's an office, basically. In ancient Rome, the leadership was held by two men called councils.

And.

They were equally powerful, from what I understand.

Councils?

Council. Council. Okay. Sure. All right. When something went down and stuff hit the fan, the Romans had a tradition of appointing one of the councils, dictator, which is basically an emergency investment of unparalleled power into this one person. The whole thinking behind it was when you were faced with an emergency, when the state was faced with an emergency, you needed somebody who could basically get.

Stuff done. Yeah, like a single voice.

Yeah, didn't have to go to the Senate to ask anything, didn't have to go worry about making the wrong move. The dictator couldn't be held criminally liable for their decisions.

Yeah, didn't have to worry about not being invited to the other council's Christmas party the next year.

Right. The other council wanted to be invited to the dictator's Christmas party. That's right. There was an investment of these emergency powers in this one person. Usually, I saw one year, this article says it lasted for six months. Then the dictator would be like, Well, that was a wild ride. I'm going back to my normal life. The rebellion has been quelled or the siege is over or something like that.

Yeah, and interestingly, there were a few rules. They couldn't be held legally responsible for their actions. Big one. It says couldn't be in office longer than six months, although I think they were there to handle the situation as long as that took for the most part.

Yeah, but there were also guys who were like, Oh, I like the feel of this. Yeah? I'm not giving this up. They'll say, Well, you have to. We say. Then they said, Well, I'm the dictator. They said, We hadn't thought this all the way through.

Yeah, that's true. They could change Roman law and the constitution. They couldn't use public money unless, other than what the Senate said you could use it for. They supposedly still, and these are the official rules, as we see coming up here, people bent these rules. They couldn't leave Italy was the last one.

That was just a good one. They would have Colombo come in and deliver that last bit. We look just don't leave Italy for a while.

Okay. That's your Colombo impression? Yeah. He sounded just like Josh Clark.

I thought it was spot on.

This happened here and there until about 202 BC. Then about 100 years after that, a gentleman named Lucius Cornelius Sully. I love all these Roman dictators sound like either '70s, like black exploitation, movie stars, or Roman gladiators. He was appointed dictator without a term limit and didn't have these restrictions. This changed the game from here on out.

Yeah. He actually wanted Cesaar dead. Cesaar ran off and joined the army, Julius Cesaar, I should say, and just basically laid low until Silla died. Then Cesaar came back, and he was appointed counsel and then dictator himself. He succeeded Silla, right?

Yes.

And Cysar is very well known to be a dictator, but he actually, if you look at the stuff he did, he was a friend to the people. He forgave debts.

Among the- A benevolent dictator?

The Pretty much among the middle and lower classes. He improved infrastructure. He basically went to bat for the lower classes, which threatened the elite because it made immensely popular. Plus, he was a dictator. He actually created a... He staged a coup to become a dictator to gain power.

Yeah, which we'll talk about a little more.

Then a coup was plotted against him, and he was assassinated by the ruling elite of the Senate.

On my birthday?

Yeah.

Well, a long time before my birthday, but you know what I mean.

Back in 1971.

Yeah, we've tossed out benevolent dictator a couple of times, kidding around, but that's a real term. That generally means a dictator who, for the most part, isn't just in it for themselves, and they are trying to make things better for the people. Right.

But it depends on your perspective. Well, yeah, exactly. The ruling elite found him very threatening. They would not have considered him benevolent at all. But say, the average plebeon would have been like, I love Caesar. Yeah. Give me some more of the coins with his face on it.

Yeah. I mean, followers of Castro, still, after his death, say he was a benevolent dictator. Sure. But again- Other people say no.

-it's perspective. It's a subjective.

Term, basically. Napoleon, actually, he came to power, again, like many dictators in a state of emergency. He was actually a benevolent dictator in a sense because he did a lot of great things for a while for the people.

Right. He was extremely popular. Yeah. He was undefeated at the time that he rose to power. He was appointed counsel and then he said, You know what? Let's go a little further than that. I'm going to call myself emperor. They said, Oh, okay, Napoleon, what could possibly go wrong with that?

Yeah, well, first he was named counsel, then he was like, I think Counsel for Life has a better ring to it. Then that wasn't enough.

Right. He's like, Let's just shorten that. Yeah.

Like you said, though, he was super popular because he was undefeated as a military leader. He balanced the budget, he reformed government, he wrote the civil law, which a lot of us is still around today in France, the civil law.

Right.

Not.

Too bad. He had a lasting impact, for sure. He did. But again, to call him benevolent, if you remember Parliament, who was thrown out of one of the windows of Parliament when he took over, you probably wouldn't be like, You're so benevolent. Right.

He also controlled and had an iron thumb on the press. He controlled every facet of government. He had a spy working for him. Right. He wasn't just Bozo the clown? No.

Bozo the clown was super shady. No, if you put all that together, though, Chuck, you get the impression of why historians considered Napoleon the first modern dictator. He checked basically every box there was. He had figured out.

He drew new boxes and checked those. Right.

He said, All dictators to follow, here's your boxes. I just looked down at your notes and I want to show you something. I think we should take a break. But before then, okay, Chuck? I think you should see this. Yeah. In this article on dictators from how stuff works, there's a sidebar, is what they're called, in web print parlance.

Yeah, just a little.

Extra bit. The title of the subbar is, Darth Dictator.

That's all we need to say.

It talks about Emperor Palpatine and his rise. Chuck had his exed out, and I independently exed mine out as well. We won't be talking about that.

Today, everybody. No, but let's do take that break, and we'll discuss that in private. So you don't get to know about it and we'll be right back.

Jeffie Chanell. Jeffie Chanell. Jeffie Chanell. Jeffie Chanell. Jeffie Chanell. Jeffie Chanell. Jeffie Chanell.

In.

The new Amy and TJ podcast, Amy Robach and TJ Homes, a renowned broadcasting team with decades of experience delivering headline news and captivating viewers nationwide, are sharing their voices and perspectives in a way you've never heard before. They explore meaningful conversations about current events, pop culture, and everything in between. Nothing is off limits.

This was a scandal that wasn't, and this was.

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What you've been sold.

The Amy and TJ podcast is guaranteed to be informative, entertaining, and above all, authentic. It marks the first time Roboc and Homes speak publicly since their own names became a part of the headlines.

This is the.

First time.

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What.

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And where we are today.

Listen to the Amy and TJ podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk, he believed he was taking on a world-changing figure.

That night, he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea.

What he got was a subject who also sowed chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertips feel for social, emotional networks. And when.

I sat down with Isaacson five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all.

They have cans of spray paint, and they're just putting big X's on machines. And it's almost like kids playing on the playground. Just choose them up left, right, and center. And then like, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it. Getting to bars doesn't excuse being a total, but I want the reader to see it in action.

My name is Evan Ratliff, and this is Ayn Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius. Listen to Ayn Musk on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tune into the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much, like easy listening but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and you might know me from the Bedtime Story podcast, Nothing Much Happens. I'm an architect of COSE, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default. When you tune in, you'll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods, a favorite booth at the diner on a blustery autumn day, cats and dogs and rescued goats and donkeys, old houses, bookshops, beaches where kites fly and pretty stones are found. I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from The Village of Nothing Much on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, so we're back. We talked about one of the things that dictators had in common is they generally aren't elected in it like a fair election. They are usually ruling autocracies. A lot of times they have what's called the totalitarian regime.

Yeah, we should talk about that.

That's a big one. That means you were in control of all the news and all the media that gets out about everything.

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

I think you're missing an eye there.

It's like Deletrius. They control everything, not just the government. They control the social aspects of life in that country. They control the economy of that country. They control the media. They control everything. It's totalitarian.

Personal freedoms might be vanquished. Might be. There might be police, secret police. There might be spies spying on citizens. It's not a good way to live as a citizen. No.

Also, you will probably be encouraged as a citizen to spy on your fellow citizens because authoritarian regimes quickly learn that if you have a large population, it's tough and very expensive to keep tabs on everybody. So if you have a secret police going around and people are aware that there is a secret police, they're going to behave themselves more. And if you can get your citizens to just keep an eye on one another, everybody's going to behave even further. That's a terrible.

Way to live. Well, and you know what? It sounds like a totalitarian ruler would be... I bet there's a lot of paranoia that goes along with that. When you're in that position- Oh, if you're the ruler? Yeah. It's not like, I rule everything, so it's all good. At that point, you don't know who to trust. You're probably always looking over your shoulder. It's not like, Why bother with all that? You know it's going to end badly.

Just kick back and light a doobie instead. Why bother with all that?

Many times they foster what's known as a cult of personality, and this is a big one. If you went into and saw Saddam Hussein's Iraq or you go to North Korea or in the times of Lenin and Stalin, you're going to see a lot of posters and statues of these leaders everywhere.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's just ubiquitous. You're taught that the leader is basically the state.

Who is this the leader? Right.

The state is the most important thing. But the state is personified by the leader, and sometimes they'll even go so far as to say, By the way, the leader is descended directly from God.

Yeah.

So go make a painting of him, kid, and we're going to put it up in the town square.

Who was the one who had the statue rotated to face the sun?

He was the head of Turkmenistan. He changed his name when he took over in 1991. His birth name was Sopramurat Nezov, but he changed his name to Turkmenbashe. Then he started naming everything in Turkmenistan, Turkmenbashe, including the month of January. But he created that statue.

Yeah, and he had this golden statue rotated to always face.

The sun. Yeah, he was always facing the sun. He said, Read that quote, man. That quote is awesome.

All right. He said, quote, I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets, but it's what the people want. We got.

That, I think, from an OD list, actually.

Yeah, we'll probably pepper in more of those. But I hope this drives home the point that these totalitarian dictators, they're narcissists, they're megalomaniacs. They are obviously paranoid. Otherwise, they wouldn't need to rule with an iron fist. Yeah. Yeah, it's not a good way to run a country. Like I said, it always ends badly. I guess they get caught up in the power and they don't see what history has taught us time and time again.

Dude, I wish we knew what it was because you can look around, especially in the world today, and see country after country after country sliding down that rabbit hole.

Well, it's a mental disorder on their part, I think, genuinely. But it doesn't just.

Have to be a single leader. Even liberal democracies are starting to slide down that hole where they want all the information possible on everybody, is ultimately to keep control. But is it based on fear or is it based on paranoia or is it based on that desire to hang on to power? What witches brew of all those things that creates that? Why do we keep doing it over and over and over again? Because it's the death knell for a civilization. When the leadership starts doing that, it's unsustainable.

Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about how they end, but it always is badly. You see Saddam Hussein and Power in these military uniforms, and then you see this sad old man pulled out of a foxhole.

Yeah, it looks like he washed up on Gilligan's Island or something.

Like that. Or Noriega wasting away in prison, begging to get out in a wheelchair.

I would like to know the story behind that. Who? Noriega? Yeah. Panama and the US were pretty good friends, and all of a sudden, the US invades. Now, manual Mordiega is in prison in Miami and has been for 30 years. He's actually.

Out of that prison.

Is he? Oh, that's right. And then they transferred him.

To- Well, outside the Panama Canal, ironically. Oh, really? Yeah, he's in some prison there. He's in a wheelchair in his early '80s and just not doing.

So hot. But he served his whole sentence, I think, in Miami, and then they transferred him to Panama to carry out another sentence down there. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. But something went down that I don't know about. I'm intensely curious to know. If anybody knows out there, tell me.

I'm sure you could find that out pretty easy, right?

Apparently not.

I was just kidding. I bet it's highly.

Guarded secret. You think? Even after all these years?

No, I don't know.

Noriega had motor... He was a motor mouth. I'm sure he told everybody who'd listen.

Well, we mentioned Hitler earlier. He, like you said, although not elected, was legally installed. He was appointed Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg. Then once Hindenburg died, Hitler said, You know what? There's this German word furo, that means leader. He went, Why don't we just make that my new title? Because we don't need a president and a Chancellor. I can be both dudes. Then eventually, I'll just kill myself in a bunker. Another, I was about to say, sad end, but.

Just.

Pitiful end.

That's a.

Great word for it. A sadindicates that, you know what I mean? Yeah. I don't have to over explain that, do I?

But Hiller, he came to power legitimately. So did Saddam Hussein, actually. He was the general of the Iraqi Army and vice president. Then as the President came, I think he fell ill. Saddam Hussein started to take on more and more power and finally was just like, I'm president forever now, okay?

Yeah.

I think that's the case. The point that this article is making is that there's a number of different ways a dictator can come to power. They can come to power in a power vacuum. They can come to power in a coup, which we'll talk about. They can come to power democratically. But if it's the person who wants to rule unfettered.

And.

They know how to basically work the populace and the circumstances are right. Like, maybe there's fear of outsiders coming your way or the economy is bad or something like that, then you can conceivably consolidate your power and turn whatever situation into a dictatorship.

I.

Think it's based on the person and the circumstances that the nation is in when that person grabs power than it is on how they actually get into power.

Yeah, and whether or not the current leader just happens to be out of town or something.

Yeah, that's another big.

One, too. Sometimes, yeah, that's just... Well, let's go ahead and talk about coups.

Should we? Okay, sure.

Yeah. So a coup is there are different kinds of coup or coup d'etat. But a coup is different than a revolution in that there is generally a smaller affair. It's not some big mass uprising of people. It's a dude gets a smallish band of his military cohorts together. And like we were talking about either someone is sick or they're dying or they're just out of the country on business. And they come back and they're like, You're not in charge anymore. Sorry to tell you. Yeah.

They're like, Man, the discount on this dishwasher was not worth leaving the country for this.

It can be. Cous can be very bloody and violent, but they don't have to be. In fact, I think a lot of times they're not violent.

No, there's the term of bloodless coup. Yeah. And it's basically a couple of things that make coups. Or is it just coup, like you were saying? There's no S?

No, there's an S.

Is it silent?

No, I don't know that.

So we're going to go with coups. Okay. A couple of hallmarks of coups that you were saying like, they're not popular uprisings. It's a small elite group that decided to do it. Usually, the higher ups in the military. Yeah. And they can be bloodless, where it can just be like, You're not in charge any longer. You were out of the country. Stay out of the country. We're putting you in exile. They can be bloody, especially if the person who's being deposed has a lot of loyalty in the military as well. Then it can turn pretty bad.

Yeah, but I get the feeling that a lot of times the coup isn't attempted unless they feel like they have the support to.

Pull it off. Well, I mean, look at Turkey, the people who tried that coup just a few months back. Yeah, that's true. I don't know what happened to them. I think Erdoán said the people were going to be punished, but not necessarily executed. But I don't know if that's true or not. That's another thing that can make a coup bloody is that it can fail and then the people who are carrying out the coup get executed or it can succeed. Sometimes just for good measure, the people carrying out the coup execute the former president, which was the case in Peru with Pinochet. No, I'm sorry, Chile.

Yeah, Chile.

Where Pinochet took over because apparently the parliament asked the military to get rid of the old guy, Salvador Allende. They said, All right, fine, we'll do it. Then they executed Allende.

Yeah, and a coup doesn't always mean a dictator comes right in either. Sometimes a coup can just be temporary until they can elect a new national leader. But it's just basically just a very small overthrow of the current government. Right, that's all.

You want to take another break?

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay.

When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk, he believed he was taking on a world-changing figure.

That night, he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea.

What he got was a subject who also sowed chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertips feel for social, emotional networks.

And when I sat down with Isaacson five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all.

They have cans of spray paint, and they're just putting big X's on machines. And it's almost like kids playing on the playground. Just chews them up left, right and center. And then like Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it. Getting the bars, done excuse being a total. But I want the reader to see it in action.

My name is Evan Ratliff, and this is An Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius. Listen to An Musk on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the new Amy and TJ podcast, Amy Robach and TJ Homes, a renowned broadcasting team with decades of experience delivering headline news and captivating viewers nationwide, are sharing their voices and perspectives in a way you've never heard before. They explore meaningful conversations about current events, pop culture, and everything in between. Nothing is off limits.

This was a scandal that wasn't, and.

This was not.

What you've been sold.

The Amy and TJ podcast is guaranteed to be informative, entertaining, and above all, authentic. It marks the first time Robach and Holmes speak publicly since their own names became a part of the headlines.

This is the.

First.

Time that we actually.

Get to say.

What.

Happened.

And where we are today.

Listen to the Amy and TJ podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much, like easy listening but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Katherine Nicolai, and you might know me from the Bedtime Story podcast, Nothing Much Happens. I'm an architect of COSE, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default. When you tune in, you'll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods. A favorite booth at the diner on a blustery autumn day, cats and dogs and rescued goats and donkeys. Old houses, bookshops, beaches where kites fly and pretty stones are found. I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from The Village of Nothing Much on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're back. What's a Jenta?

Well, it's related to the Jukama root.

The Hickama? Mm-hmm. No, that's not true at all. I didn't really know this, but I've heard a military Junta.

Wait, you know it's Hunta. Is it really? Yeah, that's why I was.

Making that joke. Okay, I.

Wasn't sure. Because I called Hikama Jukama. Are you sure it's not Jukama?

Are you sure it's not Junta?

Yes, it is. It's a military Hoontah.

The Hoontah is almost like a dictatorship by committee. You find these a lot in Latin America. It's a committee of military leaders who essentially act like a dictator.

Right. Instead of one leader, it's maybe three, four top ranking military usually. If you like Fiji brand water, you're supporting a military hunta when you buy that. As of 2006, the military rose up in Fiji and over to the government, and now military hunto runs the show there.

Yeah, that's a bad scene over there. Yeah.

Thailand apparently had a coup that same year.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

Yeah, they followed the typical coup or the President left the country, if I were a president and I were on shaky ground-.

Yeah, don't.

Go anywhere. Nope, I'd be like, I'm sitting right here.

You'd be Scarface. You'd just be in your office with submachine guns. Right. Well, probably not the Mountain of Cocaine.

Right. Although I could because I'd be a dictator. No one could say anything.

Do anything.

You want. But there's one other thing that's really important, too. Not only would I not leave the country, I wouldn't even leave the presidential palace because that's one of the number one things you do in a coup is you secure the presidential palace, secure the prison, secure the infrastructure, secure the local media. And as long as the president's there for some reason physically, it makes it exponentially harder. I don't know why Yeah. But if you were the military, couldn't you just go up to the president and be like, You're not president anymore? They could say, Yes, I am. You say, No, you're not. We have the guns. Get out of the military. You're right, though. It is weird. Get out of the presidential palace.

Yeah, it's like- It's very passive-aggressive to just change the dead bolts when they leave. It really is. They say, Sorry, can't get to your bedroom anymore.

But Thailand had the same thing, but the coup carried out by the Hunta was apparently popularly supported. Oh, it was? Yeah. It was the president who was like, I vote Nay. Everybody else said, Yay.

Sometimes when there's a dictatorship, they actually give the appearance that they might hold elections. Oh, yeah. When in fact, it's just a farce.

That's a big deal, though, actually, because democracy or liberal democracies are viewed as so legitimate that dictators will hold like farcical elections.

These.

Pageantry, basically. Yeah, to make it seem like the populace is all for them. But the elections will be like, do you want to keep the leader? No one's running against the leader. But do you want to keep the leader? Yes, no. Please write your address down and include a picture of your most beloved person in your life.

Or in the case of Saudi Arabia, King Abdul bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, that's a mouthful. He said, You know what? We're going to have elections for the first time since the '60s here in 2005. You can choose your local civic leaders and your local councils, but women can't vote. Technically, they can, but you don't have the ID to vote because you're a woman, so you can't vote. A man can't register you to vote because you're a woman, and there just aren't enough women poll workers to register you, so you also can't vote. Right. It's classic voter disenfranchisement saying you don't have ID, so you can't vote, so you might as well not be allowed.

To vote. Right. So since there's an entire gender that's excluded from the vote, it's not a democratic vote. That's a little less farcical than say, one where it's like-.

Where you have no opposition. Yeah.

And I found this article is hilarious. It's called Dictatorships. It was on KidsNet in Australia. Did you see that thing? An Australian website. And at the top, there's teddy bears and and rainbow and blue skies. Then in the text that says dictator and it's all about dictators. It's just a weird juxtaposition.

It had misspellings in it, too, which is weird.

Yeah, but it made some pretty good points. If I were a kid, if I had kids, I would be like, You read this website. They know what they're talking about.

Read it every day.

Every day. Just read the dictator entry. That's it. But they mentioned, although, yeah, they got something horribly wrong, they mentioned dictator Charles King of Liberia. I think they mean Charles Taylor.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, who claimed to have won by such a landslide that apparently it was 15% larger than the actual total electorate of his entire country. But then I've also seen that he's done elections that were watched by outside poll watchers. Right. And that they said that, no, this is a legitimate election.

Interesting. Well, we talked a little bit about them, the dictatorship ending badly or sadly. A lot of times it's just a simple matter of time catching up to somebody and they get sick and die. Lenin suffered strokes, Stalin suffered a stroke, Castro got really sick. All the power and money and influence in the world is not going to save you in the end, my.

Friend, Mr. Dictator. No, only paranoia will save you and keep you alive.

It's always just pitiful, though. I don't know.

I disagree. Oh, really? Yeah. I think it's worth dancing on their graves over.

Oh, no, I don't mean pitiful for them. It seems like they always go out with a whimper.

Yeah.

Some go.

Out with machine gun fire, though.

Yeah? Yeah. Just it doesn't stay the salad days forever. No, it's true. I think the message is that's no way to rule a people.

I hope we've gotten that across. I don't know how many dictators listen to our podcast, but I hope that if any do, we've really given them some pause to think about what they're doing with their lives.

Should we read a few of these weird things done by dictators?

Sure. We should say it's widely believed that dictatorships are on the decline worldwide.

What are there? Like 70 of them now?

The most I saw was right now. Yeah. The reason why is, again, I think liberal democracy is basically changing the game. But there was a big influx after the Cold War ended, where a lot of... No, I'm sorry, the Cold War began. There was a big influx because a lot of the old colonial powers that had colonies and say, like Africa and Asia, suddenly said, World War II is over. We're getting out of the imperialism game. Good luck. And those power vacuums allowed a lot of dictatorships to grow. And then the polarization of the Cold War allowed them to thrive because a dictator could say, Hey, I'm a strategically necessary United States. Don't you like me? Don't you want to look the other way on all of my human rights atrocities? Then someone else would say the same thing to the USSR, and the superpowers would prop up these dictators throughout the world. When the Cold War ended, that actually led to a huge and almost immediate decline in dictatorships around the world. Yeah. They're hopefully going the way of the dinosaur, but we'll see.

Yeah, what was that last article you sent? It made a really good point about the United States could learn a little bit about these dictatorships and how they work, not to be like that, but to learn that you.

Can't- Not for pointers.

Yeah, not for pointers. But for pointers and maybe not necessarily saying, Hey, we can just go into a country that's been run a certain way for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and just say, Do it all different now.

Yeah. Here's a book on liberal democracies. Read it and do it.

Yeah, and that we might have a more successful approach to foreign policy if there was a little bit more understanding on how these systems worked.

Yeah, and that a lot of these dictatorships are not totalitarian, but autocratic, which makes them inherently weaker. But if we threaten them, if we're belligerent to them, we give those people a reason to be afraid and to line up behind their leader. So when we actually threaten other countries that are autocratic, all we're doing is making the leader more powerful. Whereas if we treat them as a weak leader of a weak state that is run in a way that suggests that the people aren't really behind it because they have to be run with an iron fist, then that person is probably going to eventually get deposed. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. It was an interesting article. It was in Reason magazine, I think. It was written by John Basel-Utley. If that guy is not British, no idea who is.

All right, so we promised a few weird things. Where did you find this one?

Ody.

Strange things done by evil dictators. Kim-jong-il, there was a dude in South Korea named Shin-Sang-Uk. He was known as the Orson Welles of South Korea. He was kidnapped and brought to North Korea to basically... Kim-jong-il was like, We show the world that we are creative artists. Start making movies. We've kidnapped you and brought you here. Make good movies. In fact, remake Godzill because we just need our own Godzill.

It's basically what the CIA did with Jackson Pollack in the early '50s, but Jackson Pollack wasn't aware that he was being propped up.

Because he was drunk.

Yeah.

They did remake Godzill in a movie called Pol Gasari. I looked it up and he basically looks like Godzill with our horns coming out the side. Yeah.

Not the best.

What else? This Beatles story was nuts.

Yeah, the Marcoses. Remember Imelda, Marcos, and Oliver's shoes?

Yeah, who can forget?

Ferdinand and Imelda, Marcos, they ruled the Philippines for a while. And apparently, they love The Beatles back in the '60s. And so they invited The Beatles to the Philippines to play a couple of shows on their world tour. And when The Beatles got there, the military met them at the airport and said, Hey, before you go to your hotel, you're scheduled for a lunch, private lunch with the President and the first lady. And The Beatles were like, Look, mate, we're really tired. We're going to just go to the hotel and crash because we've got two shows tonight. And that did not go over very well.

Yeah, they were acting through their manager, of course, Brian Epstein. Supposedly, the story isn't so much that, but he said that they don't accept these formal state invitations, really, as a rule.

I got you.

Either way, they didn't go. Imelda Marcos got on TV and started talking about it. Brian Epstein tried to apologize on TV, and they blacked him out. People got really upset. Basically, their private police escort was removed and the Beatles were on their own. Wow! Which was in 1964, when you're in the Beatles, it's not a good place, especially in the Philippines, to find yourself.

Yeah, they basically had to escape to the airport and just run out to the plane and.

Head off. Yeah. One of their dudes was beaten really badly and Brian Epstein was kept from getting on the plane, then had to basically was shaken down to pay them back money from the concert to get on the plane. Then later on, Mr. Lennon, give peace of chance, John Lennon said, Yeah, if we go back to the Philippines, it's going to be with an H-bomb.

Did he really say that?

Yeah. Wow. He said he won't even fly over it. They did not have a good.

Experience here. Wow.

Who's next? I think the Edie, I mean, one was interesting.

That sounds so Edie, I mean. Totally. He declared himself president for Life.

Yeah, P for L.

And he said, You know what? I'm going to do this in high style. I'm going to get four white men to carry me around in a chair to celebrate being President for Life. And he called it the white man's burden, and everybody loved it. He was an odd duck.

Yeah, if you look up white man's burden in I-Mean and Google Images, there's a couple of really great pictures of these blonde white men in suits carrying around this giant Uganda man in a chair.

Have you ever read the Bukowski book that was the basis for Barfly?

Yeah. Which one was that?

Hollywood, I think is what it was called.

I read Hollywood. Was that the one?

Yeah. He talks about watching a documentary about Ydi Amin and how he, Edie, I mean, didn't have the money for an Air Force, but he had pilots that really wanted to fly. So in the documentary, they're showing these pilots running down a runway and then jumping and then going back to the end of the and just doing this over and over again to practice flying, even though they didn't have planes.

That movie was good, the Forest Whitaker movie.

Yeah, The Last King of Scotland. Yeah, great movie. Poor James Mcelroy.

You can stay in Charles Bukowski's house that he grew up in Airbnb now.

Oh, really? Yep. Nice.

It's been remodeled.

No, he wouldn't like that.

But now he would hate the whole thing. I'm sure.

How about Gaddafi? We'll end with him. Sure. Mubarak Kadafi loved women, apparently. Did you know that about him?

I did not.

He loved women, and he actually surrounded himself with female bodyguards who he very graciously allowed to wear makeup and high heels while they were protecting him. In the West, these women were called the Amazonian Guard. This is just off the rails at this point. Yeah.

What? This podcast?

No, Kadafi is the Amazonian Guard, the whole thing. The Gaddafi actually had some legitimate thinking behind it. He thought that an assassin would have trouble shooting a woman.

Yeah, it.

Stands to reason, I guess. He surrounded himself with female bodyguards who were also trained to kill. Yeah.

They weren't like.

The Finbots. Just wore makeup and lipstick.

Actually, can we mention the Hitler thing? Because is this true?

I don't know. That's why I.

Walked past. It sounds like urban legend, but supposedly Hitler came up with a synthetic blow-up doll to comfort soldiers, and it was referred to as a synthetic comforter.

Yep.

Blond hair, blue eyes, could fit in a backpack, and they only made about 50 of them because the soldiers were like, I'm not carrying that thing around. What are you? Crazy? He went, In fact, I am. You'll see.

Walk a walker. If you want to know more about dictators, you can type that word into the search bar, howstuffworks. Com. Since I said search bar, it's time for Listen or Mail.

A quick correction beforehand, because this has to do with bottle feeding, kittens. But in our Feeding Babies episodes, which by the way, thanks for all the support on those, which really made us feel good to know we did a pretty good job there. But I erroneously many times said pump and dump as Itell you, pump breast milk and dump it in the bottle to use.

Oh, no. Yeah, pump and dump. You were saying that and.

Pick up on it. Well, I think I threw that term around as just the general term for breast pumping. That's fine. I didn't know what to do. But dumping is dumping it down the drain for one reason or another, like you maybe had some alcohol or whatever.

Dumping it straight to hell.

Yeah, pump and dump. It just went wild there.

That's okay, Chuck. That's all right. I did notice a couple of people saying that, but I didn't get what they were saying.

Yeah, I was wrong. -huh.

-all right.

-it feels weird. I promised a story about bottle feeding cats, which you ever done that? A little baby animal that you got to care for at that young age? Pretty darn cute.

Sure.

Very powerful feeling.

-it's very stressful.

It is stressful. Hey, guys, when I was a kid, you're like, You want this bottle or not? -you're like breakfast.

I could crush you.

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

To say. Yeah, this is a weird email.

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

Playing Delta, I forget it.

Here's the kicker, though. As much as pure love that we pumped into that little kitten, that cat ended up being one of the most purely mean and different cats we ever had.

Sounds.

About right. She grew up to be beyond ungrateful. She came and went as she pleased and was prone to swipe at you as if you tried to pet her. She hung around for the food, but after a few years, she just disappeared entirely.

Sounds like the cat was on drug abuse, too.

Most of our cats were sweet and true. Maybe the point is there are just some bad seeds out there. That is from Chris, PS, the ferrets ended up living for years and years.

That was a mysterious email in a lot of ways. It was like a David Lynch email. Ill, thanks a lot, Chris. Were they K, I imagine? No. Okay. Thanks a lot, Chris. We appreciate that. If you out there want to get in touch with us like Chris did, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on Facebook. Com/stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks. Com. As always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow. Com.

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Walter Isaacson set out to write about a world-changing genius in Elon Musk and found a man addicted to chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertips feel for social, emotional networks.

The book launched a thousand hot takes, so I sat down with Isaacson to try to get past the noise.

I like the fact that people who say I'm not as tough on Musk as I should be are always using anecdotes from my book to show why we should be tough on Musk.

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Tune into the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much, like easy listening but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Katherine Nicolai, and I'm an architect of COSE. Come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from The Village of Nothing Much on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.