Episode 653: The Du Pont Foxcatcher Murder Part II - The House of the Butterflies

There's no place to escape to. This is the last. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. Who's that? Yeah, I mean, I'm not super looking forward to it. I mean, as someone who's had four colonoscopies at this point, the medication has actually gotten quite a bit better. Do you like the taste of it now? No, no, no, no. It's efficacy. It used to be. I thought you just liked the process. No, well, it used to be you would just sit on the toilet all day long, like painful diarrhea. And the stuff they give you now, it just turns everything in your stomach into water. And it's just like a fire hose coming out of your asshole. As long as it's not painful. It's not. And you're filling my day because that's kind of one of the hardest things, especially between gigs. Yeah. You know, especially when I'm trying to fill my CEO time. Yeah. Fill your day. That's like a great way to do it. Yeah. Are we ready to go? Every once in a while I want to do it Just sometimes when I'm feeling a little heavy Yeah, I get it We'll get you in there Just do a colonic I can Yeah, we'll blow it out I've never done a colonic It's semi-pseudo-science You did it? No Oh, well, how do you know? It just blows old shit out of your asshole Yeah And when I say heavy, I just mean I don't mean like I feel heavy Yeah, I feel like I need to poop Well, I'll get it out of you Yeah I'll jump on your stomach You know what I found? I can shake you a bunch Yeah, sure You ever thought about getting held upside down and slapped all around? Not by you. I can do it. I'd love to put you on my back and I'll joss you around like I'm a big pony. I'll play airplane games. Yeah, all right. Yeah, we'll play dishwasher. You know what I find funny is that every single old bastard I've ever met in my life all told me that I was going to get more conservative. Yes. And that time and the weight of age would finally wisen us to conservative ideals. Well, they didn't count on you learning about murder every day. You know, they really should put more warnings on books and what they do to you. Because still, even as the resident capitalist, I'm the Satanist capitalist of our trio. Yeah, that's you. That's me, and I'm still out there fighting the good fight, making sure I take candy from children, resell it to them for the opportunity for them to learn about business. See, what you need to start doing is take candy from children and give it to poorer children. Well, great idea. And then take it from, if they don't have candy, if I see poor kids without candy, I charge the poor kids for not having candy fee. I got excited because I thought you said pork kids. And I was like, hmm, they make kids out of pork now? No, hey, this isn't the Epstein files. Hey, don't be a jerky boy. Well, you're saying that you are getting less conservative as you grow older. I am getting angrier and angrier and angrier. And the documentary, I'm going to go ahead and say that Eddie made me watch about this subject. That would be The Devil You Know. The Devil We Know. Fantastic documentary. That was more unpleasant than any Josef Fritzl coverage. I'd rather watch Josef Fritzl have sex with his daughter than watch that documentary again. That's how sad it was. Josef Fritzl had a plan. He was locked in. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with resident capitalist Satanist Henry Zebrowski. I'm thinking about ruminating. Alright, you're going to ruminate about the capitalism? Yeah, sure, absolutely. But I will say yeah yeah yeah yeah i i will say joseph fritzl wasn't locked in the daughter was yes and the man with the headband it's ed larson how you doing now marcus i don't like to critique your work sure but i was reading through your script and i noticed a couple of mistakes like every time it says dupeont it says dupeont and not like a thick black line yeah yeah that's kind This is way too not redacted. I'm so used to reading redactions. It's almost like my brain just puts redactions. Yeah, DuPont has a D, an O, an N, and a T in it. So it clearly should have been redacted. Oh, no, Ed's deep now. Ed's just deep. He just talked about the Don T thing. I just get that. Oh, my God. And if we unredacted all this, the whole system would fall apart. Edward, don't you know that? Don't you know that the Dow is above 50,000? But there's like so many names in your script that like hold people accountable. It's kind of angry. It's like a capitalist, I'm angry. It's hard to handle. It is hard to handle, but we're going to fucking handle it today. Can I ask a serious question? Sure. She says, hey, the president's a pedophile and we're covering it up, obviously, but the Dow is over 50,000. Why are we talking about that? Sure, but my question is that that actually made me realize, oh, so now that the global market has been separated from the presidency, that's what you're telling me then, is that his crimes are not affecting the market, that means we could really get him now, right? Yeah. Because he's in more trouble than he's ever been. The market's doing great. That should show you. The market's going to do fine. Let's get some guillotines going, man. The market will hold. And you know what? We're actually going to prove that point again and again today. that the market will hold. Yes. I just can't believe the cousin fuckers won. Hey. That's why you hold things to the chest. Yeah, same thing like your niece. Country was built by cousin fuckers. Actually, some of the best Americans we've ever had were cousin fuckers. We're going to get into it. They have lots of incestments. I mean, investments. You don't get a great return on them. Incestments. So when we last... Just become wall-eyed. So when we last left, the DuPont family and this continuing coverage of quite possibly the most evil family in American history, World War I had just wrapped up and journalists were referring to the DuPonts as the merchants of death because of how much money the DuPonts had made selling munitions to the Allies during the war. The DuPonts were also starting to dabble in cultural manipulation. That's, of course, with the Boy Scouts of America. And this was in addition to the decades of governmental meddling. This was all in response to the rise of communism in Russia, which the DuPonts had taken personally because the murdered Russian czar, Nicholas II, he'd been a good customer. But even though the DuPonts had made an ungodly amount of money making products that were mostly used to kill human beings, they were about to enter a decade where they would begin to have an effect on just about every aspect of human life in the century to come. And I'm not just saying American life, I am saying human life. As it turned out, there truly was not a limit to the greed of the DuPonts. And as a result, they would straddle the 20th century as not only a family that was involved in many of our deadliest wars, but also as one of the worst offenders when it came to introducing the forever chemicals that are continuing to kill people around the world every day. In other words, there's going to be a lot of death in this episode, and the DuPonts are at the center of it all. If anything, this episode will prove that the darkness of this world was shaped to an outsized degree by the decisions made by the DuPont family. Okay. I'm going to do a little think tank here. Okay. Now, let's say we're all CEOs of a company. Okay. Let's say we're podcast network CEOs. Okay. All right. Now, let's just say. You're fired. Wow. I agree. I agree. All right. Now, imagine. Imagine. It comes out. Podcasts cause ear cancer. Sure. Okay. It comes out before we face allegations, before we get to the Pottenberg trials, which we're hung for a crime. We'll get to that. There will be retribution. Three years from now, it's going to come out that podcasts cause ear cancer. And right now, this is an internal study that we've done saying that podcasts cause ear cancer. And we're getting the message in, Marcus, how do we spin this? Well, if podcasts cause ear cancer, then the only thing that we're going to need to do is we're just going to have to go to video and subtitles. Netflix! Netflix, he's already did it! They're saving the day! Subtitles. Read the subtitles as I am talking. That's amazing. We've already solved the problem. Yeah. And if it wasn't for this new rash of ear cancer, there would be so much less ear cancer research. See? And that's a waste of money. That's a real CEO right there. Creating jobs. Yeah. Now, as I said at the end of the last episode, the 1920s was a decade in which the DuPonts would have the largest impact on American society outside of providing gunpowder for all our wars and our various colonial conquests across the continent. See, the 1920s were when the era of mass production and modern consumer society truly began. It's the birth of the modern world. And the DuPonts were right there at the forefront of everything. They guided the construction of this new world by having a big say in how it worked, who was in charge, and most importantly, how money was made. The 1920s saw the birth of the white-collar worker, the regular middle-class Joe with the office job. And the DuPonts knew that they could continue to get away with anything just so long as enough of those white collar workers believe that they could one day join families like the DuPonts in their depravity and their greed. As long as the promise is there, that's all you need. Those people will keep voting against their interests for merely the promise. Yes. Yeah, exactly. If you think that one day that you could be a billionaire, you will want them to not get taxed. Exactly. You're like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be a billionaire one day. I don't want to pay taxes when I'm a billionaire. Actually, one of the super key things, and I'll tell you right now, if you want to get a leg up on getting into a billionaire family, you have to just develop a taste for unibrow and gills. And old cum, if you can just build yourself up to that, just get into that mind space, you might have what it takes to be a billionaire. We're being hard on the DuPont family. I honestly, I've been saying that at home at my money. I pull my money out and I apologize to it. I say, I'm sorry. If it wasn't for them, there'd be no toxic avenger. Yeah. Where would Lloyd Kaufman be? Oh, my God. Just a professor at Harvard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the DuPonts also knew that they could not count on constant war to keep their bottom line high. And since the conquest of the American Indian had been done and dusted for decades by the 1920s. That's sad for them. Yeah, the DuPonts knew that they needed to diversify. So the DuPonts purchased a majority stake in General Motors at the same time the automobiles were becoming an integral part of American culture. Now, in the company General Motors or just motors in general? It's a good question. The company General Motors. All right, good. Thanks, Barney. Just remember, next week when you come by, let's just ask simpler questions. I like motors. I know that you do. I know that's something just like one. The DuPonts also acquired dye patents for the paint used on those automobiles. So the DuPonts made money twice, on the car and on the paint. Fuck yeah! The DuPonts also produced the first cheap cellulose film, which allowed the fledgling motion picture industry to increase production dramatically. We wouldn't have the motion picture industry if not for this. Finally, they began acquiring or creating entire chemical industries that would produce such modern miracles as shatterproof glass, rayon, and cellophane. Rayon. Man, I'm trying to get rid of all my fake fabrics, man. Yeah, all your polyesters. Yeah, it rubs on my nipples. It hurts my nipples. It does. Now, cellophane is important here. Cellophane had no practical use when it was invented. So the DuPonts, seeing the new consumerist world for what it was, they created a use for it. They put a team of scientific researchers to work to see how they could best use this thin, clear plastic. And it was discovered that cellophane was a great way to wrap products like bread or cigarettes. If you've ever bought a pack of smokes, you've given money to DuPont. Any pack of cigarettes that is wrapped in cellophane gives money to DuPont. That is just one of the tiny ways in which they make money off of this world. Man, I love that little wrapping paper. I used to always, like, whenever I used to, like, sell weed or, like, I'd pinch a nug off. You know, you take that off, put the two nugs in there, then you light it with a lighter. So you can burn it and put the plastic into the weed. Yeah. We all did it. There's not a single person that didn't put two hydrocodone in an old cigarette fucking holder wrapper and burn it with a fucking lighter. and then take those later on, open it with your teeth, and then take those when you're going to work, obviously. Oh, man, when I used to smoke so much, the high point of my day would be taking the cellophane off a new pack of cigarettes. There was no happier moment than taking that off. Pure joy. Pure joy. Is there any reason to pack cigarettes? It's fun to do. I know that. It keeps them a little fresher. That's the thing. It helps a little bit. That's the thing about cellophane. It helps a little bit. It does kind of keep things fresher, but it also produces ungodly amounts of garbage. What are you talking about? The birds love it. The birds have new opportunities. They don't have new mediums. They don't love it as much as the fish. If they didn't want to have their stomachs filled with plastic, why keep eating it? I'll let you in the water. That's why I keep my plastic. Goddamn morons. Now, the non-explosive chemicals created or bought by DuPont would actually be their biggest moneymakers of the 20th century. They began making lacquers, varnishes, acids, paints, and artificial leathers. Pleather! Then they would hire a team to turn each and every product into something marketable. Rayon, for example, was an artificial silk made from wood pulp created by the DuPont Corporation. Rayon textiles are used for a lot of shit, but one of their big uses in everyday American life was artificial silk stockings, which became hugely popular and eventually evolved by the 1950s into pantyhose. Yeah, and if we didn't like ripping them open so much with our teeth, they wouldn't do so well. But so many people seem to get a kind of unnatural, almost unholy joy ripping them off somebody. And while pantyhose might seem like a small thing, this shit adds up. Yeah, for some people, it isn't a small thing. Not let it go, huh? To some people, it's a big thing. You're just kind of stuck right in that pantyhose fetish, I would dare say. No, no, no, no, it's a fascination. So you're saying that the DuPont family directly contributed to one of your personal fetishes? No, I don't have that. I'm just saying it's genuinely, objectively fascinating for anybody to watch a woman who was stuck in a well or in a way. That's why mostly, I'd say most general people are stuck into a well and she's a haunted girl but she's wearing pantyhose because she's obviously mature. That's how you get her out. Bigger in the back area, right? You gotta haul her out by them. Yeah. And yeah, the objectively sexy thing of accidentally ripping them open as you're pulling her out of the well is one of those things that I think everybody can connect to and relate to. Are you describing the episode of Pretty Face that your wife was in? She did the video she did the stunt work for it. Wow. This became wholesome somehow. I'm just saying, everybody likes pantyhose. But that is to say, this shit adds up. And by creating the product first and finding a use for it second, the DuPonts greatly helped with the creation of the highly wasteful American consumerist lifestyle. Their R&D paired with their incredibly effective advertising department, which their advertising department alone employed thousands of people. This soon made the DuPonts the head of the world's largest chemical empire. So they were basically playing, like, whose line is it anyway? Props with random shit around the office and then making billions of dollars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The best jobs in the world. What can we do with this? I don't know. Put a potato in it. Oh, yeah, oh, wow. It's a potato swinger. It's a potato swinger. Like, no, no, I don't know about how many people are swinging potatoes. I don't know, Barney. What if we wrap the bottom of a woman in it? Wait a second. What is that feeling? Yeah, I just got hard. And as we all know, Jimmy getting hard is a number one sales team number. That means that if he gets hard, that this is going to be a big seller. So put that rap on that woman. Oh. Did they ever make condoms? I don't know if they ever gotten a latex. I do know. Probably the shit that kills the sperm. Yeah, they might have gotten a spermicide. Yeah. They might have gotten into latex I know they got into spandex We'll talk about that later A ton of synthetic material Like mylar You know the thing that we put comic books in You know like that mylar comic book They invented that Oh that's so great Right They're still creative Right from your grave Now because the DuPonts already had their hands and car manufacturing and painting, it only made sense that they would try their hand at fuel as well. And here's where we begin exploring the true unabashed evils of the DuPont's chemical dominion. See, while the DuPonts did not manufacture commercial automobile fuel itself, they did create and manufacture the so-called lead in leaded gasoline. And this manufacture would have an incalculable negative effect on American and world history. In the early 1920s, a scientist working for the DuPont-controlled General Motors discovered a chemical compound called tetraethyl lead. Tetraethyl lead made engine combustion more efficient, increasing both fuel economy and vehicle performance. Sounds like a good thing overall. Yeah! Let's go! I want to go back! Push it out! Spray the hose! But after DuPont built a chemical plant to manufacture tetraethyl lead in a southern New Jersey township ominously called Deepwater, they found very quickly that tetraethyl lead came with dire consequences. I wonder if this is why Jersey doesn't pump their own gas. For health reasons? In an extremely short order, DuPont discovered that the tetraethyl lead manufacturing process, it made workers go violently insane. DuPont employees at the Deepwater plant even began dying in raving delirium, which soon led people to refer to tetraethyl lead as loony gas. That's so fun. Loony gas. Oh, it's like working at the joke factory. Oh, they must only laugh. What? Oh, to have a DuPont community I could be a part of? I like farts. That's my loony gas. Good work. Good work, Barney. I'm having a good time over here. You're bleeding out of your ears. Oh, I'll eat it. Love, Barney. Love his attitude. Love his attitude. He's always going to be number one in my heart. He's self-started. Now, the already creepy deep water chemical plant soon gained an even creepier nickname. People began calling it the House of the Butterflies. That's nice. It's haunting. Can you begin? Yeah, look at this factory on a hill in New Jersey. He's like, behold, the house of the butterflies. Yeah, dude, it sounds like a fucking, like, Neil Gaiman place where they put children that are, like, you first think they're being brought to a magic school, and then it's like a prison. No, yeah, it's where they grind up their bones to make magic dust. Yeah, I like going into the butterfly gardens with my little nephew, because he's, I mean, he ate, like, four last time we were there. He was like, get out and try this. What's this one taste like? What's this one taste like? Here, try this one. This one might be raspberry. I'm bringing ketchup next time. Well, it was called the House of the Butterflies because workers affected by the tetraethyl fumes would try to snatch invisible butterflies out of the air. And many drew butterflies on the brick walls of the factory. The fumes? Yeah, it's fucking insane. So fun. It's a very cute disease. Well, that's why they call it loony gas. What a wonderful way to celebrate diversity. Now, fumes from tetraethyl lead can be absorbed not just through the lungs, but through simple skin contact. And like many of DuPont's chemicals, it is totally resistant to all forms of detoxification. In other words, once it's in the body, it stays there and it builds up until the victim finally succumbs to lead poisoning. Amongst many other terrible symptoms like seizures, vomiting, and headaches, blood poisoning can also cause diminished cognitive function, mood disorders, and irritability. And when you add a violent personality into that mix, you got all the makings of a serial killer. Fuck you! Eddie? Eddie? There's no excuse anymore. There's no excuse. We've done it. We've cleaned it up. We're done with it now. Now this shit was floating around in our era for decades upon decades, especially in smog ridden true crime capitals like our fair Los Angeles here. I mean, you've seen the pictures of what L.A. looked like in the 50s and 60s and 70s. It looked like Mordor. Yeah, it did. Don't look great now. No. I will say shit is better. It's way better than it ever been. New York City as well. Even from when I first started coming here, it is extremely better. That's why the fucking sunsets are so fucking beautiful. You mean it that way? Every time you look at a sunset and you see that nice slice of green, you thank the pond, okay? Because, oh, it wouldn't be so nice if it wasn't all for the chemicals making the birds gay. Yeah, bro. Everybody knows the sky is supposed to be purple. This bird's got two peaks. That means extra food. Lucky bird. Well as more cars hit the roads of America and more leaded gas was used the crime rate in our country steadily rose It thought that the fumes from leaded gas were most harmful to kids that all the exhaust coming from the tailpipes of these cars prevented the full development of a child's brain. While it didn't necessarily make a person more violent, exposure to tetraethyl lead made people more likely to act on violent impulses. The reason why we think leaded gas caused developmental problems is because gasoline containing DuPont's tetraethyl lead was not only in use, but it was the standard in America from 1923 until it was finally banned in 1986. Now, the crime rate in America didn't suddenly drop in 1986. We all remember that the 90s were rife with violent crime. But nobody move. Nobody get hurt. Because it was also very deeply hidden in the poetry written by our very sensitive artists like Tupac. That's right. And Biggie Smalls poets. But the crime rate did begin to sharply drop a few years after leaded gas was banned. And lest you think that I'm confusing causation with correlation here, many countries that have used and banned leaded gas have seen the same rise and fall in violent crime at roughly the same rates on roughly the same timeline as America did. And no matter what these pieces of shit in our Capitol are trying to tell you, we're actually at the least violent point in American history as well. Like, we're actually in a place since where we have, despite all the mass shootings, despite everything, we're still at less violence than ever before. Yeah. It's the safest America's ever been right now. Weirdly. Isn't that fucked? Yeah. No, I think, yeah, New York City is... They're just, they're literally creating a problem in Minneapolis to solve it. Yes, they are. That is what they're doing. Yeah, yeah. Camden used to be the murder capital of America. And then, you know, everyone got murdered. Because eventually it's like one of those things that's like, man, there used to be so much more people around here to kill. Yeah, I remember that too. Yeah, you remember how awesome last year was? Yeah. Ah, let's go to Delaware. Is this still considered murder if it's a dog? Yeah, Barney. For you it is. Now, you might also play devil's advocate here and say that there was no way that the DuPont Corporation knew what kind of effect leaded gas would have on the public in the long term. But as we'll see again and again with the DuPonts, they knew exactly what tetraethyl lead did from the very beginning, and they did everything in their power to cover it up so they could keep making as much money as possible. Shortly after the deepwater chemical plant opened in the early 1920s, a worker named Frank Durr, who'd been working for the DuPonts, there's no other way to say that name besides Durr, he'd been working for the DuPont since he was 12 years old and he started working with Tetraethyl Lead at the age of 37 and Durer had been a perfectly normal man prior to Deepwater but he was soon plagued by terrible nightmares after working with Tetraethyl Lead he eventually lost grip with reality completely and was sent to a mental asylum where he died in a straitjacket listen closely listen closely I had a dream I had a dream and it's real what was it? It was a car. It was an old jalopy car. It started talking to me in a funny voice and I kept kind of laughing to myself because I kept completing the sentences he was saying. He would say stuff like, let's get her done. I saw another car. He had a Mexican accent. He was so funny and goofy. I just want to live in that world. I want to live in a car-based world. You know, there's no villain in that movie. Yeah, because guess who the villain is? The gas. DuPont. Yeah. Making people hallucinate that it's fucking real. Yeah. Well, about five years after Frank Durr, five workers at the deep water plant began raving incoherently before developing uncontrollable twitching and convulsions. Reportedly, all five of these men died screaming in delirium from the effects of tetraethyl lead poisoning. This is in the 1920s, and America still had 60 more years of tetraethyl lead use to go. I'm sorry to laugh, but there's just something about somebody just going... I think it tapers. I think you don't necessarily just... It's not like Monty Python's... And then you fall. it's like that old holden joke sometimes i scream myself to sleep now there's one thing that du ponts do just as well as chemicals and munitions it's public relations so du pont's pr team got to work dismissing the severity of what the so-called loony gas was doing to its workers in fact i wouldn't be surprised if the du pont's pr team pushed or even created the term loony gas in reference to tetraethyl lead to make the whole scandal seem silly and less dangerous. Now, DuPont did indeed reduce deaths from tetraethyl lead poisoning in their plants, but hundreds continued to be poisoned. These people would be treated, then sent back to work where they'd be poisoned again. In one 18-month stretch, 300 workers were poisoned, causing hysteria and extreme anxiety. Eight of those 300 died. And even though a A 1936 investigation showed that the poisonings and deaths were caused by neglect and a lack of safety precautions. The DuPonts were never punished or even charged. Instead, they continued manufacturing tetraethyl lead. The fumes from the exhaust coming out of every single car in America eventually poisoned much of this country to one degree or another. The resulting brain damage caused untold amounts of death, destruction, and misery through the violent crimes caused by those who were poisoned. Serial killers were just a part of it. And hell, besides the serial killer epidemic of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, one could even argue that the lowered inhibitions of the hippie movement in the 60s might have also come from tetraethyl lead poisoning. And it's also why their brains are so fucking pickled, that those same people that tried to create a big civil union, like civil rights march world, they would then become the group of people that would subjugate us all? Yeah, and would vote Ronald Reagan in the office. And also the reason why the boomers are so fucking awful on the internet and in the community. Yeah, and can't regulate their emotions. The government, they really can't. They can't regulate their emotions. They don't know what's going on. They're extremely mean and disoriented. Yep. Yep. Quite possibly. But of course, that's just speculation. That's just conjecture. The DuPonts couldn't be bothered with what was happening to their workers at plants like Deepwater. After World War I, many DuPonts became the new American multimillionaires. Before long, the DuPonts had broken the record for most yachts owned by a single American family. Nice! And each yacht had a cute name, like one was called the Gadfly. That's funny as hell. Congrats, DuPont. Hard work all around, everybody. I'm doing the thing that kids do now. They're clicking their fingers together because children have become elderly African American people. DuPont's profits continued to skyrocket throughout the 1920s because they made money off every road and car built in America. They had hands in every industry involved, from concrete and rubber to steel and paint. Their financial executive at the time, John Raskob, increased profits even further by maximizing the output of products while minimizing the cost of labor, which was bad for the worker, but great for the investor. Speaking of investors, the DuPonts were also one of the main companies who manipulated the stock market throughout the 1920s to maximize their wealth. Businesses would go under as a result of this stock manipulation, and the DuPonts would buy those companies for pennies on the dollar. Of course, that stock manipulation eventually led directly to the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. And it can be laid directly on the feet of the DuPonts amongst other business leaders. And of course, this caused even more untold misery to millions across the globe. I'm going to make another little speculation here. As we said in our Himmler series, if we didn't have the Great Depression, Hitler probably wouldn't have ever gotten into power because the crash of Germany's economy effectively opened the door for the Nazis. So did the DuPonts cause the Holocaust? I'd say kind of. It definitely didn't help. You know, like the stuff didn't help. The rampant sort of like unmitigated growth like a tumor in the center of the stock market in our entire industry kind of zone. I think that didn't help. Yeah, but what people don't talk about, though, is that if there was no Great Depression, how would we know what it's like when things are good? You know, and that's the silver lining. That's what the writer's side brings to the table. It really is. Because that's truly important. Think about how amazing it would have been, right? I mean, if we didn't have the Great Depression, then it's like our whole vibe off. Yeah, like no Woody Guthrie. Fucking no Woody Guthrie, no east of Eden. Do you want to... I mean, come on. It's worth it. Steinbeck, everybody loves it. Fucking laugh a minute. Everybody loves a big black pearl. If there was no dust bowl, then, you know, it would just be on a plate. Yeah, why would maids exist? Just as it had been with the boom and bust economic cycles of the 19th century, the DuPonts were far too rich for the Great Depression to touch them in any meaningful way. While profits did drop after the crash of 29, just one single DuPont, Pierre DuPont, he was still able to profit $26 million in 1932. That's down from $31.5 million prior to the Great Depression. To be honest, though, that is a bit of a disappointment to the shareholder. It is a bit of a disappointment to the shareholder. But I'm talking, that is personal wealth. that is personal wealth of Pierre DuPont. But while the DuPonts were still making unimaginable amounts of money, the majority of Americans were suffering because of their actions and the actions of other wealthy Americans. And so Americans elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932 to try and turn the whole ship around. Now, Roosevelt was himself fabulously wealthy. So wealthy, in fact, that he did indeed marry his cousin. Eleanor Roosevelt was his cousin. She didn't even have to change her name after the wedding. It's so nice to skip a fucking trip to the court and the city hall and the DMV and stuff like that. I think it's cool to marry your cousin if they're gay. Because that's kind of funny. They never kissed. Do you think that FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt ever had sex with each other? Yeah. He could shove his fingers with his seed up into her. I've seen that happen. They had sex with each other. Like, yes, Eleanor Roosevelt, her sexuality is, of course, a matter of debate and discussion. But they did have sex. But FDR also had his own. He had many, many girlfriends on the side. Yeah, she should, man. But that's the interesting thing is that it hurt Eleanor every time that he did. So which tells me that there was some sort of definitely, like, relationship there. One thing we will know is that Eleanor was always on top. she had her own house that would looked at the other house yeah yeah it was funeral yeah honestly it's a really nice that's nice yeah yeah and then she did have like this really because when i went to hyde park i was we were asking of course you know we had a like private tour and hyde park is fucking amazing it's really cool i actually really like the fdr presidential library it's really cool but uh so but when we went we're like talking to her we're like hey what about eleanor being gay and all this stuff. And then she's like, well, yeah, she did live with a woman in her house, but she also was banging this dude. And she showed me a picture of this strapping man holding her and stuff like that. Oh, you're a security guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was just partying. Eleanor was just horny as fuck. That's what Eleanor was. She was a swinging lady. Great Eleanor Roosevelt quote, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. That's right. She also, one of my favorite quotes of hers, I should have brought a snorkel. She's got a real Steve Buscemi face. Alright, alright. I'm gonna get out of here before you start in on the fucking Eleanor Roosevelt's face jokes. Well, Eleanor was in fact Teddy Roosevelt's favorite niece. She was part of the Oyster Bay Roosevelt's. FDR, on the other hand, he was part of the Hyde Park faction of the Roosevelt's. But that's all to establish that Roosevelt was fucking rich. He was the cousin of a recent president. But despite Franklin and Eleanor's shortcomings, like, for example, the later internment camps, they still genuinely gave a fuck about the common man. And the Roosevelt's were often seen as class traitors by people like the DuPonts as a result. See, the DuPonts were not happy when FDR was elected president, but they were somewhat satiated when Roosevelt told them that he was more than willing to work with them rather than against them when he took office. That happiness, of course, only lasted as long as it took FDR to actually implement policy. See, the inflection point that we're at today with AI is extremely similar to the one faced by America during the Great Depression, and it is also very likely that the AI bubble is going to lead to another crash, like the crash of 29, sometime in the near future. It's never going to wake up and be God in the machine. I'm sorry, Peter Thiel. I don't mean to disappoint you. No. As it is now, technological advances in the 1920s had changed the fabric of American society because more goods and services were being produced with less labor. But if people had no money to buy those goods and services, then the whole American system collapses, and FDR knew that. So FDR used the government to tip the scales. He created public works projects to not only build infrastructure, but to fund jobs in the arts, theater, music, and history. All this, of course, had to be paid for. But instead of putting the burden on the lower classes, FDR simply raised taxes on the extremely wealthy. A novel fucking idea. And if there's a single politician listening who cares even a little bit about anything other than gaining and holding power, FDR's New Deal programs and policies paid for by taxing the wealthy, they were some of the most popular and successful programs in american history yeah they brought us food back yeah i will say man you know we're talking a lot of mess but i'm pretty happy that my tax dollars went to kidnapping the president of venezuela because i think it was worth it i think that i was completely worth it i got my own little bucket of crude yeah that's what you guys have to understand what you don't know is that if you hit a certain marker in money yeah i get a bucket of crude every year yeah i can do with whatever i want and honestly this year i'm just taking it to the beach yeah i you know you don't have to really take it to the beach because all those little sewer grates you know it says there goes right to the beach yeah but if i don't drive to the beach then how am i going to contribute to the pollution going to the beach oh yeah that's That's why I said no Waymo. I purposely did pick up an orderer Waymo, an empty Waymo, to go there and back. But there is a reason why we're talking about all this. Because raising taxes on the rich, that put FDR squarely in the DuPonts' crosshairs. Roosevelt made the DuPonts even angrier when he implemented the Glass-Steagall Act, which prevented the kind of stock manipulation that had led directly to the Great Depression. Glass-Steagall Act, by the way, was repealed in 1999 by Bill fucking Clinton, and its repeal led directly to the Great Recession of 2008. So, yes, this shit is necessary. But because FDR was raising taxes on the rich and putting rules into place that would prevent average Americans from getting fucked over en masse, the DuPonts and other business leaders became convinced that they had to prepare for a literal civil war to prevent their America from being destroyed by so-called socialists. Does it sound familiar yet? And this is simply because the government was like, you should pay taxes. Because the DuPonts were not paying. You got to pay taxes. Like, sorry. And sorry, you can't engage in games that might cause a stock market crash. You can't do that anymore. And they're like, Civil War! It's like, you literally will make maybe like 2%, 5% less. Like, this is a thing that you're caught in this idea constantly. There's like the pressure that we just get as a little tiny network of like, why aren't you? Why haven't you done a live show on the moon yet? Why aren't you? Where's your where's your like? It's a kind of shit where you're like, what are you fucking talking about? All I know is 33 percent of my money is the same as 33 percent of their fucking money. Goddamn right. And so in 1933, the DuPonts joined a cabal of businessmen in an attempt to actually overthrow the United States government. This came to be known as the business plot or the Wall Street push. This was an actual coup that was attempted in this country. The plan was to overthrow FDR and install a military dictatorship that the business community could control with a general named Smedley Butler as a dictator. Smedley. Yes. Yes. I cannot wait to lose the cannons. We're going to go to Frank Butler, but he's like, your name's not evil enough. No, thank you. And I will have my handlebar massage attached to sweat. Thank you. And when I'm done with them, I'm going to kill the Smurfs. I actually think that Vice President Gargamel has a lot of the dots. And we really should just... Honestly, I think we should hear him out and really kind of see how it plays. Now, Butler was approached by a Wall Street broker with all the details of the plot. But Butler, actually, he was a loyal American. He was immediately appalled. He was, however, smart enough to hide it. Butler continued getting information from the broker until he had enough knowledge to testify in front of Congress, where he revealed the plot and the people involved. And tell me again if this sounds familiar, but all the plotters had to say was, nah, I didn't do that. And not a single one of them faced consequences for trying to overthrow a democratically elected president. It's like they caught a mid-coup. They were like, so we caught everything? They were like, oh, oh, no. I didn't do that. I mean, us? Me? Merely joshing, sir. Is the First Amendment not in this country anymore? Is it not a part of this country anymore? They wouldn't choose Smedley. Oh, Smedley's the guy? He's the good one. Now, after FDR was elected in a landslide in 1936, the DuPonts pretty much resigned themselves. That's also how he got around. Some warts bring me a surfboard. That's pretty good. Bring out the presidential skateboard. And someone bring the four presidential huskies to pull it. Well, after that re-election, the DuPonts pretty much resigned themselves to working within the system. And they soon discovered that it really wasn't that much different from one they'd already been working within for 100 years. They were still able to hire the Pinkerton Detective Agency to infiltrate labor unions and prevent those guys from striking in the north. And they were still able to recruit the KKK to terrorize and murder black workers at their facilities in the south. The DuPont Corporation actually went on a bit of an invention streak in the 30s due to a scientist named Dr. Wallace Carruthers, who developed over 50 patents for the DuPonts. Amongst many other products, Dr. Carruthers invented DuPont's most profitable product ever. Nylon. Whoa. Nylon is used in fucking everything. Oh, yes. I mean, it's in stockings, curtains, underwear, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, surgical sutures, guitar strings, fishing line. Yoga pants? That's spandex or lycra. Yeah, whatever holds it in, yeah. So, yeah? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's far too many products to name here. Is that why they're hard to rip? Yeah. Because that's so frustrating when a woman is bent over inside of a well and she has this Lululemon, like these, like, scent guard ones and they just don't rip. Did you find a website that's all well pornography? No, absolutely not. well based no I would never do something like that specifically is that why you bought Natalie a bucket for your anniversary no that was because of all my chum so much chum realize now the fetish isn't stockings and islands it's wells it's just something about ripping no it's the wells well I like the trees I like stone work well sadly Dr. Wallace Carruthers suffered from depression throughout his life and shortly after developing nylon his sister died he also felt like he'd run out of ideas so in 1937 Carruthers died by suicide after ingesting potassium cyanide in a lonely hotel room god that's gonna be so bad in the middle what guy's sitting there oh god I wish I could turn the light on it with a Oh, fuck! That would have been a mess! Life from your brain. Now, even though nylon would be the DuPont's most profitable product, don't forget they're still a munitions company. Oh, wow! And while World War I had been incredibly profitable for the DuPonts, it was nothing compared to what they would make from World War II. Now, the DuPonts were what you'd call early adopters in the Second World War. As early as 1925, that's just six years after the first war's end, the DuPonts were illegally smuggling arms to warlords in Manchuria, and they had full deals with the Chinese government by 1929. DuPonts, however, were all about playing both sides, just so long as one of those sides was in America. The DuPonts also invested in the Japanese military. Wait a second. These guys are really fun. They're super smart. And when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 one of the earliest conflicts of World War II and also led to such horrible events as the rape of Nanking They did so with munitions bearing the name DuPont DuPont also sold powder and dynamite all over Europe throughout the 1930s. And they even invested over a million dollars into Benito Mussolini's chemical industries in fascist Italy. And so when World War II began, the DuPont name was all over the battlefield. We were trying to work with Mr. Mussolini. He had a lot of wonderful ideas, but I do feel like the Parmesan gas is not really as effective as it is sort of just making the men gather where it is. And they're eating it with their hands. It's delicious. Wow. He needs some nonstick Teflon on that noose. I'm free. I'll see you later. Hey. Hey, I'm a lot of soap. The guy that airtight will hang the soap. Now, I'm sure you're wondering by this point how the Nazis play into all this. And let me tell you, the DuPonts do not disappoint. Fuck yeah, dude. Fuck yeah. Don't leave a fucking set on the table. Yeah. See, it was illegal to sell arms to Germany after World War I because of the Treaty of Versailles. So in the 1920s, the DuPonts got around this treaty by arranging for the Germans to, quote unquote, steal powder and dynamite in Turkey. By 1933, the year Hitler took power, the DuPonts were smuggling shipments of munitions into Germany through the Netherlands. Then they purchased a 20% stake in Hitler's largest German munitions manufacturer. See, yeah, this is business, guys. It is business. Well, I mean, speaking of business, by this point, and this is something that goes way under the radar, an American Senate munitions committee had agreed to allow American companies to sell munitions to Nazi Germany. To be fair, British and French munitions companies were also selling to the Nazis in 1934. I mean, how else are they going to win? Yeah, I mean, I'm just sad because they got a real return on their investment, didn't they? Yeah. But regardless of who all was doing it, the DuPonts were indeed one of the companies supplying the Nazi war machine in 1934 in advance of Hitler's conquest. As a result, I'm willing to bet that more than a few Poles were murdered by DuPont munitions when the Nazis marched east a few years later. DuPont, however, remained publicly neutral regarding the rise of fascism in Europe until, of course, America entered the fray. They really wanted to distract the Polish. They could have dropped a lot of sheer pantyhose all over the little villages filled with wells. There's so many wells out there on the little villages and just imagining all those little peasants struggling with the pantyhose. That really would have. The Goronskis and the Bolonskis and the Zabrows. And the Dublowskiewicz and the fucking Gorskis. The Gorskis for certain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know how many fucking kielbasa you could fit in pantyhose? Well, I mean, you know. Four. Yeah, if they're long. behind the scenes in the highest levels of the united states government in the 1930s franklin delano roosevelt and his cabinet made a secret industrial mobilization plan that would have 20 000 factories including dupeont factories switched to the production of war materials in 1940 congress approved a 17 billion dollar arms program and as we all know world war ii did indeed do quite a bit to get america out of the depression that was of course caused by families like the DuPonts. So arms manufacturers got us into it, and they got us out of it as well. One of the little-known facts about America's involvement in World War II is that DuPont did have an inadvertent role to play in Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. See, silk had been Japan's biggest export, but DuPont had effectively replaced silk with nylon. That cratered Japan's economy. The yen fell at the low, low levels. Japan saw this as an effective declaration of economic war. And while this, of course, wasn't Japan's only reason for attacking America, it absolutely contributed to the decision. And honestly, I'm trying to pull, I said this before, but I'm trying to go back to all the old fabrics. Yeah. Trying to get back into it because they're made better, they feel better, and it's nicer. So it's like, you know, silk is nicer than nylon. Yeah. Yeah. It's just more expensive. My pants are made out of lambskin. Not an eulogenic. And also, what's nice is natural body heat makes it kind of smell like it's Easter in here. Bad. Now, once America got into World War II... It's a rosemary. The DuPonts didn't really have a problem with FDR anymore. DuPont produced 70% of the explosives used by the United States during the war. 4.5 billion pounds of explosives in all. They also sold 38 million yards of nylon for parachutes, 93 million pounds of cellophane to wrap rations and drugs, paint to cover the hulls of the entire United States Navy, and 51,000 miles of DuPont film to capture the action. This, of course, is only a fraction of what DuPont made for the government during the war, not to mention what they made for the allies. United States military, for example, bought 11 million pounds of the incredibly cancerous insecticide DDT. That's another DuPont product to delouse troops and kill malaria spreading mosquitoes in the Pacific theater. I hate mosquitoes. Yeah, no, I hate mosquitoes too. And from what I remember, the cessation of DDT use in New York City is why bedbugs made such a huge comeback when we all moved there in the mid 2000s. So there's trade It's actually DDT is having like a reconsideration moment. Like they've been like, it's kind of funny. Like they've been saying now that they think that there might've been, which is hilarious. The idea that now they're like defending DDT to come out and say, it might not be as bad as we originally thought it was. And now they're starting to say, actually the damage that bed bugs, ticks, mosquitoes do might actually equal out to whatever other environmental or health disease DDT does to you. Breast cancer. That's what DDT causes. Yeah. I'm sure if it was testicular cancer, people would probably have a lot more to say about it. But since it's breast cancer, ah. Well, because, you know, it's hard. It all evens out. With testicular cancer, it's like one of the most, you can fix it. So, and then you also get the cancer special. You get to be Tom Green. Tom Green got a lot of mileage out of it. He really did. And without breast cancer, I wouldn't wear pink in October. Yeah. You never would. Unless, of course, when he's dressing as trans Miss Piggy. Now, by the end of World War II, the DuPonts had profited the modern equivalent of $13 billion, which proves that there is still plenty of absolutely obscene profit to be had, even when these people pay their taxes. But out of everything that the DuPonts did during the war, there was nothing more destructive than what they contributed to the weapons America dropped from the air. In another surprising turn, the DuPonts were intimately involved with the Manhattan Project. Now, Los Alamos was the site where the atomic bomb was built and developed, but the military needed a company to process the radioactive fuel used in the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs. So, General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, he approached DuPont to see if they were interested. Now, the DuPonts were hesitant because the conditions for participating in the Manhattan Project or that they couldn't profit off their work, nor could they hold the patents to anything they produced to profit later. Like, oh, I don't know. Well, in the end, the DuPonts did it for America, I suppose, and agreed to participate. As long as it's an atomic bomb, we will work for without profits, okay? How many people can it kill at once? We'll do that for the love of it. Yeah, love of the game? Absolutely, of course. How big of a hole? How many Japanese? Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it twice. DuPont is responsible for so many deaths. They should just change their name to the Vatican. Yay! Got you, Chicago Pope. Suck my dick. Now, in short order, DuPont built the Oak Ridge plant in Tennessee and the Hamford site in Washington State. These were where we developed and manufactured nuclear materials for the bombs that we dropped on Japan. And since there was no profit to be had, it seems as if DuPont's standards for safety were even lower than usual. At Oak Ridge in Tennessee, for example, 50 million pounds of uranium chips were simply stored in dumpsters and buried in shallow trenches. While another 12 million cubic feet of radioactive waste was just put in the ground right alongside the uranium. Is it cool that these mounds are humming? I just want to know. I have this paper mask on. I'll be okay, right? That's great. Great, great, great. Absolutely. Because it's green over here. I can't see anymore. Is that a... Okay, that's a common sign. I'm burnt out? Yeah. Well, that explains the singing bush. Oh, yeah. He was saying horrible things earlier because we called it the slurring bush bush this morning. But then we just changed that bush's name to George. Ha! As for the Hanford site in Washington state, it is believed that the DuPont company allowed 400 billion gallons of contaminated waste to seep into the earth. All this shit naturally found its way into the groundwater at both locations. As a result of this incredibly lazy disposal, some workers at Oak Ridge had a 900% increased chance of getting leukemia, While workers and locals at Hanford reported elevated instances of thyroid ailments, infertility, miscarriages, deformed babies, and of course, leukemia. And all of that is in addition to the fact that these sites, DuPont sites, produced the uranium that was used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both of which were brought to you by DuPont. Okay. And all of this is in addition to the fact that these sites produced the uranium that was used in the bombs, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both of which were brought to you by DuPont. That's right. And here comes Jack Gordon rolling around the driver once again in that DuPont car. Yeah, no, they are responsible for the deaths of a million Japanese civilians. Yeah. Yeah. And that's for starters. Yeah. Actually, it's not even for starters. That's like for middles. Yeah. Hey, I'd kind of cut it in half because we're already in a war. True. Right? Now, the atomic bombs were not the only DuPont product dropped on Japan from the air during World War II. The DuPonts were also massive manufacturers of one of the most evil wartime products to ever be used, napalm. Honestly, yeah, it's bad. It's really bad. Developed at Harvard in 1942, napalm is a fire weapon. It's a gelling agent mixed with gasoline or diesel that allows it to spread across large areas and insert itself into every little crevice, all while it burns at temperatures of up to 1,200 degrees. My question is, isn't this weapon used for just like Agent Orange? Wasn't the idea, was it to clear out foliage? No. No, because I didn't know. The idea was excuse, quote unquote, the excuse, like with Agent Orange, the idea was to like kill all the plants. Well, that was Agent Orange. No. And napalm was used specifically to destroy cities and kill civilians and just kill wanton violence. Yeah. It really is just used to kill and destroy. I mean, as far as how hot it burns, to put it into perspective, cremations start at about 1400 degrees. and napalm's chemical makeup allows it to sustain these temperatures for a long time while also generating massive amounts of carbon monoxide that means that napalm suffocates you while it simultaneously melts your flesh i mean a lot of things on youtube say you begin to come your cremation at 1400 degrees but i've actually been doing a lot about like sometimes you can get a better maillard reaction on the body if you start on a cold slab and then turn up the heat yeah Well, the reason why I know that it wasn't just for defoliations, because when they started going up in front of Congress, you know, people were starting to say, OK, this napalm is the worst shit ever. People at DuPont and at what was the other one? Dow Chemical would say like, no, no, no. The point of napalm is that it removes all the oxygen from the air. So you suffocate before you burn. That's the whole point. It's actually it's actually very humane. It's just hard because then you have like five congressmen and three of them are going, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can spray it on some little girls. Yeah. Well, when napalm was invented at Harvard by Louis Pfizer, who interestingly was the same guy who developed certain important blood clotting agents and anti-malarial drugs. Oh, he just liked clots. Yeah. Napalm was actually made with natural rubber, which was hard to get. But here's where the DuPont's coming to play. Lambskin. It's a meat jelly. When Dr. Fizer approached DuPont with the problem, like, hey, I got this great stuff that burns a lot, but I got to use natural rubber. DuPont, they brought standard oil into the game. And all three of these people worked together to develop synthetic rubber. And thus, DuPont made it possible for napalm to be cheaply mass produced. Yeah, but also those little bouncy balls in the quarter machines. Oh, yeah. You can make those, too. Yeah. Those are fun, dude. Those are blasts. You know what's nice to hear? Yeah, my little fidget cube. This is probably made with DuPont products. Oh, yeah, dude. But, you know, there's so much division now. It's just so nice to see these companies getting together and working on a common idea. Yeah. It's nice. This is the third space that we've been talking about. A place where CEOs can meet and destroy the world comfortably. Now, napalm was primarily used against Japan during World War II. And I really don't think it's a coincidence that napalm was used in the decades after on mostly non-white combatants. Because it seems like it was seen as too cruel of a weapon to use against those of European descent. And there's proof for this. Did they just not have it in time? No, they had it. The firebombing of Dresden, for example, was magnesium-based. That killed about 22,000 people. Firebombing of Tokyo, however, the deadliest air raid in history, that primarily used napalm and burned or suffocated nearly 100,000 civilians. On March 10, 1945, cluster bombs were dispersed over Tokyo with incendiary bomblets filled with 1.2 million gallons of DuPont-made napalm. And by the end of the operation, a quarter of Tokyo was simply erased off the earth by DuPont products. And also the chemical used to make synthetic rubber in napalm also causes cancer. Oh, well, that's just if you live. Obviously, if you live through it. No, I'm talking about the people who make the napalm. They're also getting cancer in the plants from making the napalm. Good. From working with the synthetic rubber. That's great to hear. Obviously it's nice to see because the only time I make incendiary bomblets is when I'm done getting my repair made napalm. When I go to get that super authentic spicy tie man. I'm making some fucking bomblets dude. Just to think about the numbers here on that. 100,000 people. We just kind of like move past that. It's in two days. It's in two days. Pearl Harbor was 3,000. Yes. And we have a fucking holiday. 9-11 was 3,000. We killed 100,000 people in two days in Tokyo. Yeah, where's their holiday? Yeah, where's that holiday? Well, we don't have it. They have remembrances. Yeah, but do they turn it to a barbecue? Do they have fun with it? Do they have a dance? Then it's not really a celebration. Japan, get on it. Be better. Do better. Now, after the DuPont spread as much death and destruction as they could across Europe and Asia, they turned their sights south after World War II, using another one of their non-munitions companies. This one, however, had nothing to do with chemicals. This one was all about food. See, it's a little-known fact, but the DuPonts had held a controlling interest in the legendarily evil United Fruit Company since the 1920s. This was the company behind South America's so-called banana republics. Now, those of you steeped in history know that United Fruit is part of the reason why large parts of South America are still fucked to this day. Basically, United Fruit turned South American countries into single export economies, where the only thing that mattered was how many bananas they could produce, i.e. that's where the term banana republic comes from. Workers naturally rose up against the horrible working conditions imposed by United Fruit and DuPont. But because DuPont had far more freedom to be evil down in South America amongst a powerless population, thousands died as a result. So where DuPont had to be a little sneaky about busting unions in America, down South, they showed what they would do if there were no guardrails. In countries like, say, Colombia, they could use government soldiers to simply open fire on workers. This resulted in tragedies like the Banana Massacre of 1928, in which up to 3,000 protesting workers were murdered and dumped into either mass graves or the ocean. They just opened fire on these people. Yeah, man. And like, you have to like, take, hold these people accountable. And that's why I shop at Tommy Bahama. It's a really good, very irresponsible thing and honestly i'm just glad that no bananas were hurt no the banana massacre of 1928 just because the bananas are innocent here they are now by the 1950s dupe's united fruit began working with the united states government directly because the secretary of state under president dwight d eisenhower john foster dollis as well as his brother cia director alan dollis both of those guys had done legal work for united fruit everybody i don't like everybody being family members yeah it's like the same names keep popping up over and over and over and over again so united fruit specifically had a problem with guatemala because guatemala had democratically elected a president who had instituted sweeping reforms that included redistributing unused united fruit land to families and rural farmers hey man i voted for guatemala harris you racist fuck is it? I don't know I think it's too confused, I think it's too stupid I think it's too stupid because you know what? makes no sense at all in any way whatsoever I see Guatemala Harris on RuPaul's Drag Race you know what I mean? I see a small chubby Filipino drag queen named Guatemala Harris I see that too, yeah Guatemala choose one All right, go figure it out. Let's go. How many further? If you ever want me for Celebrity Drag Race, Martha Sparks. I got it locked and loaded. It's ready to go. She's ready to go. Henry Zabrowski literally just browsed, like with the brows capitalized. Yeah. Edie Larson. Very good. Well, DuPont's United Fruit, they didn't like that the Guatemalans had democratically elected a man who had socialist policies. And since this all had the flavor of communism, DuPont contacted their old friend, Alan Dulles in the CIA to see what the United States government could do about all this. And so Dulles went all in. He gave 100 CIA agents and $7 million to DuPont's United Fruit in order to overthrow Guatemala's democratically elected government, all so they could install someone who was willing to do anything that United Fruit and DuPont wanted. Interestingly, this CIA-backed coup, this was where the CIA printed its very first assassination booklets. They were, I actually have a, one of the archive saved versions of their assassination booklets. And they have these, it's very interesting because the idea is to spread it amongst the people and they'll really be into it. And most of them are all like, okay, why are you doing this? Do not want to die. Yeah. Do not want to kill people. Please leave us alone. And the CIA also was like, not good at this. Yeah. Well, I mean. They did it. I mean, it was successful. But then it's like. It fucked everything up. Well, the thing is, the CIA was really good at doing it. It was the follow through that the CIA was really bad at. And it turns out it's super crucial. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the end, the assassination booklets actually weren't really needed. The CIA had used a PR firm to spread false propaganda that Guatemala had been taken over by communist Soviets, which it hadn't. But because the PR was effective, the coup was fully supported and it was achieved with a relatively low body count. And so the CIA installed a military dictatorship and DuPont's United Fruit was welcomed as corporate aid to the government. This installation, however, led to a civil war in Guatemala just a few years later. That civil war lasted for over three decades. It was the leftist rebels versus the United Fruit and United States backed Guatemalan military death squads. Hundreds of thousands of people died, mostly indigenous Mayans. They were killed before a treaty was finally signed in 1996. And by the way, United Fruit, still around. Since 1984, it's been known by the adorable name of Chiquita Banana. I like the lady. You know, bananas give you potassium. I shop dull. I grow my own bananas. Really? Yep, in his hammock. a real small pink and gray now after world war ii the duponts made five and a half billion off the korean war where napalm was used to the tune of 80 tons a day thank god i was actually concerned i was hoping they'd make money on the korean war yeah oh yeah don't worry plenty at least we won yeah yeah at least that war Solid victory. Everybody loved that one. It not like the North Korean leader just today named his heir It the girl right It the girl It his daughter yeah Fascinating It all It very fast One day we will do an Un family run I want to do it so bad. One day. It's just hard to know exactly what the fuck is going on there. What happened? How is North Korea going to have a female leader before us? Seriously, buddy. No, it's fascinating. It is like we're watching that country. Something's going to change inside of that country. But yeah, it's the first female leader. It's amazing. DuPont also began moving their operations overseas. And by 1970, half of their chemical plants were in Latin America, which had already been effectively colonized by the DuPont company United Fruit. DuPont was also heavily invested in Southeast Asia, which meant that they absolutely had a large stake in the Vietnam War. At least we won that. Yeah, I mean, another former. Because again, and you said, oh, without DuPonts, we wouldn't have the Holocaust. Yeah, sure. But also without DuPonts, you know, so we wouldn't have fucking CCR, dude. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Credence, man. I know. Credence, brother. Yeah, at least they're still together. Yeah. John Fogarty, super fair. You know what? I'll trade. I'll give up CCR. I'll give up credence. I'll give it up. You fucker. I'll give it up. Yeah, I'll give it up. You are one fortunate son. Oh, I guess so. Have you ever even seen the rain? Well, while Dow... See, while Dow Chemical got most of the bad press for making the napalm for the Vietnam War, DuPont absolutely contributed their fair share. Yeah, they were like the Scottie Pippen. Yeah. U.S. forces dropped 350,000 tons of napalm on Vietnam over the course of the war. But napalm ended up hurting the war effort in the end. The infamous photo of the Vietnamese girl running naked and screaming was taken after that girl had been burned in a napalm attack. And that photo alone did quite a bit to change American opinion on the Vietnam War. My uncle was sprayed with Agent Orange. And that's the reason why they were all, uh, a lot of my cousins were mentally handicapped. I don't know if Agent, I don't know who made Agent Orange. I think that was Dow. Is that Dow? I'm pretty sure that was Dow that made Agent Orange. Yeah, he got sprayed real bad with it. Yeah, Dow's also pretty bad. No, yeah, it's bad. Yeah. I'm saying it's all bad over there. Vietnam sounded like it was really complicated. Yeah. Actually, it was quite simple. Yeah. But out of all the sins of the DuPont family, and we skipped over hundreds, their worst might be in the forever chemicals that they have knowingly and callously introduced into the bodies of each and every person listening right now. and the most insidious of those forever chemicals was introduced by the seemingly innocuous product known as Teflon. Now, we all know what Teflon is. Keeps shit from sticking to pans. But Teflon is also used in the manufacture of carpets, shampoos, smartphones, paint, furniture, adhesives, food packaging, cosmetics, and much, much more. It is resistant to heat, oil, grease, and water, and has therefore become an integral part of the modern world. It's almost like it doesn't exist. Yeah, it's everywhere. You know what I mean? Like in a way where it's just like, it's so cute and it's so harmless and it doesn't do anything. Nothing touches it. It's just, it's innocent and it's sweet. Yeah. No, it's actually one of the worst things to ever be introduced into the world. Yeah. It's because there's something about a chemical that's made that no one can touch it. You know what I mean? Like it's like this thing where the one thing it does is deny all physical engagement with the world. Yeah. And it turns out that the thing that is extremely resistant to water is also really harmful to bodies that are made primarily of water. 70% water. Yeah. But, you know, this is all coming from the people who helped us make bullets. You want to stick a fucking dynamite? Teflon, brought to you by the company that brought you Nagasaki. Nagasaki. Yeah, they're all like, oh, sorry, we took a long time to kill you. We could do it once. You want to do it at once? Oh, we'll fucking kill everybody immediately. Well, Teflon is made with a chemical that is commonly known as C8. C8 falls under the umbrella of forever chemicals, meaning that it never leaves your body and it causes adverse health effects like cancer. It's like we're adopting it. Yeah, it's like it's part of us. C8 is what you call biopersistent, meaning that it will not and cannot be removed from your blood. It remains in your body even after you die. That's so romantic. And it's actually so horrible in every way that it is referred to by chemists as the devil's piss. And I should know because I drink piss. One of the many, many ways in which C8 gets an aura of bloodstream. Remember how many things I said that Teflon is in. lipstick shampoo but one of the many ways that it gets into our bloodstreams like say you have a pan that's coated with teflon and you use it for a long time after a while bits of teflon start to flake off into your food you therefore ingest c8 which significantly increases cancer risk amongst other health problems i mean imagine how many restaurants you go to little bits teflon oh yeah flake off you know in your own home yeah everywhere it's that's how it gets into everything and every one. Well, now I just straight up eat credit cards. Like, now I just eat a credit card. It's just like, I don't really care. I honestly kind of feel they've been talking about the loneliness epidemic, and it's nice to have something that's with you always. Yeah. Yeah. And like, forever chemicals are a great investment, because they last forever. Yeah. It's true. Now you're thinking like a businessman. See? That's all it takes. She's got a couple of shares. I hate sharing! Now, the DuPonts began manufacturing Teflon sometime in the late 30s or early 40s, and they did so in conjunction with another American chemical giant, 3M. Both companies, of course, said when they began using C8 that it was an inert substance that had no adverse health effects. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's like it doesn't exist. No, that was a guess, or let's say a hope, because they hadn't actually done any studies on C8's effects when they introduced it into the public. Can I ask why you're an enemy of hope? I'll be an enemy of plenty of... Yeah, I'm an enemy of hope. Why are you an enemy of hope? Because hope... See what happens with these liberals? You can't engage with them on anything. They're monsters. They're mean. Now, please just die. All right. Eventually. Yes. Well, 3M finally got around to doing some testing in the early 50s. And what they found was immediately disturbing. They began testing C8 on rats. and found that not only did all of the fetuses and the pregnant rats die, but all of the rats developed fatal tumors. Oh, okay, so we stopped using it. No, honestly, the mice can't use it. Obviously, it's a mice-bound problem. They'll never get the uses of Teflon. What a great episode. Well, they did think, like, okay, well, it causes tumors in rats. Let's try it on dogs and monkeys. Yeah! Ten years later, by the 1960s. Please don't try it on me. I'm so addicted to the mice. I'm just a whole hound dog. Don't do it to me. Let's see if we can even, I bet you we can't even get you wet. Try to spray it with a hose. The water just beads all over it. This is not wetting dog. Nope. All the dogs and all the monkeys developed huge tumors and died. In fact, they found that the monkeys died with the lowest doses of C8 out of all the animals tested, which tells you it's probably really bad for humans, too. Yeah, they said it's one part to one billion. So a drop in a swimming pool, the Olympic swimming pool. Yeah. And that's enough to fuck you up. Yes. Yeah. And eventually 3M learned that C8 actually has adverse effects on DNA itself. It is changing our DNA. And so when 3M learned how toxic C8 really was, they went to DuPont and told them that, well, we're not saying you got to remove C8 from all your products. We're just saying you probably shouldn't dump anything containing C8 into local water supplies. Just try that. Just don't do that. Just don't do that. Not saying you got to take it out of everything. Just saying dispose of it properly. DuPont, of course, said, fuck you and continue dumping it wherever they want it. And this is where I like literally watching that documentary. It's so hard because every serial killer documentary I watch, which I love, you know, I love all the like her panties were found stuffed inside her cavity. Like I like that. Right. That provides almost a sense of comfort to me. So you're ASMR. Yes. But then like watching the poor people on this. Honestly, this wonderful documentary is like a guy with like three eyes just going, you know, I just feel happy to be alive. It's just two other no spawned routines. You could possibly, it's just not to see rainbows. And you're just sitting there just like, Jesus fucking Christ. Yep. The devil we know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bucky's all right. He's a, oh yeah, I mean, he's doing great. Yeah. I'm just saying. Honestly, like, I was like. Not that guy. I'm talking, it's just everybody's jacked up. Yeah, no, but yeah, but he's sitting there like, yes, and when they had to put the balloon into my forehead to mark my head, it was the worst thing I've ever felt in my life. This is like the most upsetting thing I've ever watched. Yeah, they had to put a balloon in his forehead to stretch his skin so they could take the skin from his forehead and give him a second nostril because he was born with only one nostril. It's bad. Yeah, and that's all due to the C8 exposure suffered by his mother when she was pregnant with Bucky. Yeah, whose co-worker, the same thing happened to her and her child. Yeah. Now, it was noticed starting way back in the 1970s that people who lived near DuPont C8 plants were developing cancer at rates 20 to 30 percent higher than the rest of the population. and women who worked in those plants were giving birth to children with incredible physical deformities. DuPont, however, kept using it in countless products, and they themselves knew that C8 had spread everywhere. See, DuPont had done their own research. Because they realized if we make everybody deformed, that's the new base. That's the new baseline, yeah. Well, DuPont had done their own research on C8 in 1960, But they discovered when they wanted to compare blood contaminated with C8 to a clean sample that no clean sample existed in anyone. They searched everywhere for a clean sample, but they eventually had to use preserved blood from Army servicemen taken before 1950 to find blood that did not contain any C8. This was in 1960, and today it is estimated that C8 is in the blood of 99% of Americans, if not 99% of the world. Congratulations, DuPont. You did it. Total market coverage. Yeah, really good work, guys. There's some, oh wow. But to the credit of 3M, they did voluntarily remove C8 from their products in, you know, in the year 2000. It took them a while, but they did take it out. I mean, it's hard. It's hard. They realized it was bad, and they stopped making it. Yeah, and then they phased it out completely by 2002. DuPont, meanwhile, increased production, and they built a new C8 plant in Fayetteville, North Carolina, around the same time that 3M was pulling C8 out of all their products. That's right. So they started making it themselves just so they can keep using it. Yes. Now, the effects of C8 weren't known for a long time because DuPont usually built its most dangerous chemical factories in poor southern towns, where the people become dependent upon and even grateful for the deadly jobs that DuPont provides. You have people that will defend DuPont until the day they die because DuPont gave them a paycheck. Yeah, because they gave them the fucking one bedroom house that their 10 family members live in. Which also just shows what the U.S. government could do helping people get homes and helping people like what that could do versus letting it be up to the corporations to do it to then poison all of us. Yes. DuPont also spent decades successfully lobbying the media to prevent reporting on the horrors of C8. DuPont actually has a long and successful history of influencing not just the media, but the government as well, mostly to get policies legislated in their favor. There have actually been several DuPont loyalists appointed to the Environmental Protection Agency over the years. And those men have been instrumental in shutting down investigations into C8. And just like the oil companies have done with climate change, DuPont has their own team of scientists who are paid to create reports that C8 poses no risk. We can all use Teflon as much as we want without worrying. Eat it with a spoon. Put it on a sandwich. Everyone loves Teflon. Honestly, I've been trying to put it on a sandwich. It just won't stink. It's a fun game for the kids. Straight from the vat. But by the mid-2000s, enough horror stories about C8 were making the rounds that a number of lawyers put together a class action lawsuit against DuPont. During the discovery process, it was found that DuPont had known about the dangers of C8 since the 1960s and had done nothing. In fact, they'd done worse than nothing. They had provably doubled down on production and had increased their PR budget to keep C8 stories out of the media. It was also found that DuPont had been dumping 50,000 pounds of C8 into the Ohio River every year for decades. Yeah. Do you know how many people I know in Cincinnati that have had cancer? A lot. It's fucked up. It's insane how much they're really messing with everybody. That whole area of the world right now, like northern Pennsylvania, Jersey, that whole thing has become a cesspool of environmental, massive environmental fuck-ups. Remember that train collapsed with all the fucking waste on it that went into the river? This is like a thing that happens again and again and again, and we're all just like, yeah, well, hopefully they don't poison too many of the people. Like, we're just kind of hoping it doesn't fully kill everybody. Yeah. Now, it was obvious that DuPont was going to lose this class action lawsuit if it went to trial. That's how incredibly guilty they were. Do you know how incredibly guilty a corporation has to be to lose a class action lawsuit? So they offered a $347 million settlement instead. Oh, for everybody. That works. Everybody gets one dollar. Everybody that's ever tasted C8 gets one singular dollar. Well, in a selfless move, the plaintiffs decided to use that money to put together a long-term scientific study to look into the effects of C8 and prove that it caused health problems. After this seven-year study was through, C8 in drinking water was linked to kidney cancer, testicular cancer thyroid disease fatal preeclampsia high cholesterol and ulcerative colitis which leads to colon cancer colon cancer by the way is killing our generation en masse as we speak it fucking killed james van der beek yesterday it is killing us at an incredible rate i'm gonna say right now we got to start a new campaign to screen millennials and generation xers for colon cancer I'm going to call it, I don't want your death. Get checked. Honestly, guys, preemptively get your buttholes checked. You're going to want to eat more fiber. You're going to want to drink more water. Well, I don't know about drinking more water because this whole thing has made me fucking paranoid about drinking tap water. Because we don't know how. Well, even filtered. Filter, don't fucking take care of C8. I think it's too late, buddy. Yeah, I know. I know. But, you know, you can drink out of a plastic bottle. And that'll be fine. You know what I've been doing recently? I just buy it out of plastic bottles. Have you done this recently? Fucking Christ. You know what I've liked recently? I've had a hard week, man. Was I open up a gallon Ziploc bag. I fill water. I fill from tap into the gallon Ziploc bag. And I just leave it in the car for a couple hours. And I let the natural heat of the sun bake it. Yeah. Yeah, so it really gets filled with plastic. Now, DuPont promised to phase out C8 in 2015, but their shenanigans were not over. Instead of using C8 for Teflon and other products, because we can't live without Teflon, they are now using a chemical compound that they seriously called Gen X. No independent studies have been done on Gen X, but DuPont's internal studies on rats have shown, you guessed it, tumors and death. What? Just like with C8. Our water and our bodies are now also full of Gen X in addition to C8 and a ton of other forever chemicals besides. Now that's admittedly a lot of heavy shit, and I really wish we could have ended this exploration to the evils of the DuPonts on a higher note. The only way to end on a high note is, and then every member of the DuPont family was then subsequently lined up, shot in the head. And their money was disseminated amongst the entire world. They stopped hiring the KKK and the Pinkertons and everything is fine. But I suppose all I can say is that these are the people in charge of our lives and have been for some time. And if the Epstein files tell you anything, it's that these people are betting on collapse and misery more than they ever have. They are betting on collapse to make money on the collapse. They are actively pushing for it. They want to kill us just to make the money for a world in which there's none of us to work for them. Yes, but whether or not we let them push us over the cliff is up to us. Something needs to be done to remove these people from their positions of power, because it is quite obvious that they are more than willing to die right alongside the rest of us if it means that they can make profit right up to the point where their fucking heart stops. It has become existential, and we need a fucking plan. But until that plan can be formulated and implemented, join us next week as we take a little break From the DuPonts to hear an episode led by our very own Ed Larson while these boys are doing two shows up in Alaska. Yeah. So we're going to be a little change in the schedule because we will be leaving town early next week to go to the fair state of Alaska. Please join us, lastpodcastontheleft.com. You can buy tickets for that that are still available for Fairbanks. I think we'll be there tomorrow when this episode comes out for everyone. We'll be there, so go buy tickets there if you would. but then we're coming back with the fox capture killer. The week after that, join us for the finale of our DuPont series, where we're going to see what happens when one of these DuPonts are left to spin their wheels and create their own fantasy world, which results in what else but murder. Yes! Yes! Murder! Murder! Finally. I'm so excited for some murder. Some pure, old-fashioned murder. Finally. Someone's just going to, one guy's just going to shoot another guy. That's what I had. And that's it. And that's it. It's not going to be on the... Simple. Yeah, just real simple, one-on-one violence, idiot shooting a wrestler. We literally did this series because of how angry we are. Like, this was not supposed to be this way. I already see several people sending emails, oh, there's a lot of historical context. But it's really just because we're furious and we want to talk about these things, even amongst ourselves. And that's why we do this fucking show. because we're here to talk about things that interest us in this fucking world. And I think it's important to know. It is. It's very important to know. I think this episode had the most death. You know, I think it might have, out of every episode we've ever done, this might be the most death. Yeah, I think you're right. Of all of them. Of every single episode. But also remember, though, we have a lot of true crime coming down the pipe. Yeah, we do. So I want you to understand that. We have a lot of true crime coming. And then right after my true crime series, I'm going to say it. I'm doing a true crime series. You are. We then are going to introduce another head on the Mount Rushmore of evil, which I think you might be very, very surprised what it is. So we're here. We're in it. We're locked in for the rest of your fucking life. Hail Satan. I'll see you when I'm fucking dead. By the way, I looked it up just to see who, like, because you mentioned Bill Clinton. I wanted to see who 3M and all of them were donating to now, who DuPont was donating to now. Their number one donation is to a place called the Committed to America PAC, and their only person that they give money to is Mike Pence. And then the second person that they gave the most amount of money to was Kamala Harris. So that's what we got going on. They're still playing both sides. Yes. No, they are absolutely playing both sides. And the fucking establishment of both parties are corrupt and fucking evil. Just one of them is a little more upfront about it. The whole fucking system needs to be wiped away, and we need to fucking change. We need a massive, massive change. My friend Charlotte introduced me to a Dupont member of the family that was deeply involved in a full anti-Jewish cult run by Lyndon LaRouche. This goes, there's a lot here. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot. So. There is a lot. Happy hunting. Go to patreon.com slash podcast on the left to get episodes ad free. You can also go and see last stream on the left live 6 p.m. PST every Tuesday. Also now, if you join our $25 tier, you can submit videos for us to play for all of our Patreon subscribers on our new show, last stream on the left, After Hours. That's right. Oh, yeah, the ones where we show our titties. You guys remember that? When USA used to do that at night, silk stockings. Yeah, silk stockings. Nylon stockings. Yeah, Gilbert Goffey'd up all night. It is when you would have to alternate between masturbating to bikini girls, and then you'd have to listen to Gilbert Gottfried talk for a little while. That's how you learn how to do it. That's how you get re-going to do it again. I'm just glad we ripped open this topic like a pair of thin pantyhose over the struggling butt of a woman. Stuck in a well. Stuck in a well. Stuck in a well. Well, come see us on tour. February 28th, Austin, Texas March 13th, Indianapolis April 25th, Cincinnati May 29th, Pittsburgh Wow, we're really doing the DuPont tour That should be our next tour Yeah, the DuPont cancer tour June 27th Grand Rapids, Michigan July 17th, Tulsa, Oklahoma July 18th, Oklahoma City Come see us live on the road This shit is fun, dude Yeah, fuck that, dude We'll see you out in the ice Hail Satan Hail Geek, get your colon checked. Get your fucking asshole checked. Yeah, and hail Bucky Bailey. Hail Bucky. I like Bucky. I like Bucky a lot. Who's Bucky Bailey? He's the guy in the documentary. Oh, yeah, he is a sweet man. He is.