Part One: Thomas Thistlewood: Slave Plantation Owner and Diarist

Summary

BEHIND THE BASTARDS Episode Summary:
Part One: Thomas Thistlewood: Slave Plantation Owner and Diarist
Release Date: November 11, 2025
Host: Robert Evans
Guest: TT Lee

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Overview

This episode explores the life and legacy of Thomas Thistlewood, an Englishman who became a notorious slave plantation overseer and owner in Jamaica during the 18th century. Thistlewood is infamous not merely for the brutality of his acts—which were common among his peers—but for his obsessive, detailed diaries. These diaries provide historians with a chilling, first-hand account of the daily mechanics and horrors of Caribbean slavery, including sexual violence, torture, and the normalization of cruelty and dehumanization. Through the episode, Robert Evans and TT Lee dissect Thistlewood's background, motivations, and broader context, connecting his personal narrative to structural forces of British colonialism and the enduring fascination with so-called "bad guys" in history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Study Thistlewood? (04:12–08:18)

• Historical Documentation: Thistlewood’s diary is a rare, unflinching record from a perpetrator’s view, akin to Nazi internal documents ("like some of those internal notes that the Nazis took" – Robert Evans, 05:37).
• His Ordinariness: He’s important not for being exceptionally monstrous, but because he was typical—a “normal” man of his time whose extensive diaries reveal the everyday, systematic violence of slavery.
  • "He's a pretty normal guy who owned people, who was unusually detailed in his normal note taking." (Robert Evans, 05:53)

2. Thistlewood’s English Roots & Early Life (12:03–18:04)

• Family & Upbringing: Second son of a moderately successful English farmer, excluded from inheritance; "the perfect foot soldier of the British Empire" due to his transactional view of relationships and need to hustle.
  • "This is gonna kind of turn him into the perfect foot soldier of the British Empire." (Robert Evans, 15:55)
• Early Hardship: Childhood shaped by paying relatives or guardians for board, emphasizing a lifelong transactional mindset.
  • "That's a very transactional way to think of your childhood." (TT Lee, 15:45)

3. Early Adulthood: Sex, Money, and the Search for Status (21:35–31:32)

• First Job – East India Company: Sought fortune as a ship’s purser; his diaries begin as ledger-like records of personal transactions.
• Attitude Towards Sex & Women: Obsessively catalogued sexual encounters, often in Latin and code, including notations about cost and "alphabetical" counting of women (25:33–26:01).
  • "He's just, like, alphabetically listing [women]." (Robert Evans, 25:33)
  • "There's a lot of debate as to, like, why did he write about sex this way?" (Robert Evans, 25:59)
• Exposure to Disease & Quack Remedies: Chronic venereal disease, interest in abortifacients, and 18th-century quack medicine—reflecting a "scientific" curiosity intertwined with vice (29:06–31:09).
  • "That's what he's taking for VD. It's like arsenic? Yeah. And, like, probably mercury and shit..." (Robert Evans, 30:51)

4. Colonization as Social Climbing (32:07–36:59)

• Attraction to Jamaica: Marketed as a “poor man’s country,” promising equality (for white men) and opportunity—mainly due to a high death rate, low supply of labor, and necessity for white overseers.
  • "There's this level of egalitarianism for white men in Jamaica, right?" (Robert Evans, 42:17)
• Brutality of Plantation Life: White newcomers faced staggering fatality rates from disease and climate, but if survived, could quickly rise socioeconomically.

5. Enslaving for Profit – The Jamaican System (45:17–52:00)

• Racial Demographics & Social Structure: White population vastly outnumbered by black slaves (~18,000 whites to 170,000 enslaved), driving white solidarity and “egalitarian” pretenses for survival.
  • "That's the reason for this quote unquote egalitarianism." (Robert Evans, 47:41)
• Upward Mobility Through Violence: Thistlewood worked as a bookkeeper/overseer, began buying and renting out enslaved people before acquiring land himself—all as a means of passive income and social ascent.
• Normalization of Atrocity: His actions and attitudes—while horrifying—were entirely ordinary among his class and context.

6. The Diaries: Sexual Violence and Scientific Pretense (57:37–67:13)

• Sexual Assault Against Enslaved Women: First rape recorded five months after Thistlewood’s Jamaican arrival, detailed through Latinized wordplay and codes (57:37–60:15).
• Documentation as Rationalization: He frames and codifies sexual violence as scientific “research”—influenced by the legacy of Linnaeus and classical education.
  • "He is a naturalist...Those are kind of the early scientists in this period of time...And so part of what he's doing is walling off these sexual experiences and documenting them as if he's doing scientific research." (Robert Evans, 61:29)
• Breeding as Investment: Kept notes to track the parentage of enslaved people he raped, as children of enslaved women were property and increased his wealth.
  • "Part of what he's doing here is keeping notes as to who he's sleeping with so that he can document the parentage of different people that he's going to own and sell." (Robert Evans, 62:06)
• Classical Myth as Self-Justification: Compared his actions to mythical narratives—e.g., Rome’s legendary origins through rape and conquest—framing his brutality as part of a “civilizing mission.”

7. Relational Dynamics and Survival (73:31–77:27)

• “Relationships” with Enslaved Women: Explains the complexity of power, coercion, and survival for victims, like Ginny and Fiba, who sometimes tried to leverage sexual violence or “relationships” for protection or improved circumstances.
  • "If I get in this guy's good graces and pretend that I like him, the next time he tries to beat one of my friends, I can convince him to stop." (Robert Evans, 76:10)
• No True Consent: Stresses repeatedly that such “relationships” were never truly consensual.

8. Thistlewood As a ‘Typical’ Slaveowner (78:57–81:32)

• Banality of Evil: Thistlewood’s behavior was not seen as unusual or particularly cruel among slaveowners—he stood out only for the detail of his record keeping.
  • "There's no evidence Thomas Thistlewood was particularly bad for a slave owner or an overseer in Jamaica in this period of time...They were all like this. He just kept a diary." (Robert Evans, 78:54)
• Historical Importance: His diaries strip away romanticized or sanitized views of slavery; abolitionists later used such “normal” accounts to shock publics outside slave societies.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Disturbing Fascination with Infamy:

  “There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a few about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bad guys (and gals) are eternally fascinating.” (Intro/Description)

• On Domestic Evil:

  “He’s a pretty normal guy who owned people, who was unusually detailed in his normal note taking. Right. That’s why we know about this.” (Robert Evans, 05:53)

• On White Solidarity in Jamaica:

  “There’s this level of egalitarianism for white men in Jamaica, right?...That’s the reason for this quote unquote egalitarianism is the wealthy plantation owners know that they need to keep these poor white guys on their side.” (Robert Evans, 47:41)

• On the Usefulness and Horror of the Diaries:

  “You'll find whole books by people that are just, like, exerting the stuff from his diary about the weather, because that's important for climactic science...and then there's this larger branch of scholarship that's about his crimes against humanity.” (Robert Evans, 08:02)

• On Scientific Pretense and Sexual Violence:

  “He’s walling off these sexual experiences and documenting them as if he’s doing scientific research...keeping notes so that he can document the parentage of different people that he’s going to own and sell. Right. And he sees this scientifically in the same way as people who are, like, breeding livestock.” (Robert Evans, 62:06)

• On Myth and Colonial Justification:

  “He sees this as part of this very scientific and high minded colonial project. England is colonizing and civilizing the wilderness and making it better. And these sex crimes I’m committing are a part of the scientific effort to improve...by inserting my DNA into these populations. That’s how he’s thinking about this, right?” (Robert Evans, 66:45)

• Host Commentary on Justifications:

  “This is not how they lived with themselves, but how they felt good about themselves for doing this.” (Robert Evans, 70:22)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:05–01:30 — Banter, show intro, transition to topic
• 04:12–08:18 — Why Thistlewood’s diaries matter/his historical context
• 12:03–18:04 — Early life and the influence of transactional relationships
• 22:44–26:01 — Diary structure, sex notation, and coded language
• 29:06–31:09 — Quack medicine and “scientific” mindset
• 32:07–41:37 — Voyage to Jamaica; white mortality; “poor man’s country”
• 45:17–52:00 — Plantation economy in Jamaica; Thistlewood’s social ascent
• 57:37–67:13 — First rape recorded in Jamaica; scientific and mythological framing
• 73:31–77:27 — Relationships with enslaved women, Ginny and Fiba
• 78:57–81:32 — Thistlewood as everyman, not an “exceptional” bastard

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Tone & Atmosphere

Robert Evans maintains his incisive, sardonic tone, occasionally bantering with TT Lee about the bleakness of the subject ("Wouldn’t we all like to age less?" 02:26; "There's not much to be light hearted. Yeah." 81:54), but the episode does not shy away from the horror and detail of Thistlewood’s world. Both express horror, curiosity, and at times gallows humor, but are consistently respectful and careful in handling deeply disturbing material.

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Conclusion

Part One establishes the historical, psychological, and structural scaffolding of Thistlewood’s story, revealing how ordinary men come to rationalize and record extraordinary evil. It resists easy distance from the past—emphasizing how the banality of atrocity and intellectualized justifications underpin both historical and modern systems of oppression. The episode prepares listeners for ongoing, more detailed explorations of Thistlewood’s crimes and the world that enabled him in future parts.

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“...within the community of assholes, he’s a normal asshole. I think it’s the way I would come down on him.” (Robert Evans, 81:32)

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For more on the mechanics of slavery, white supremacy, and the documented normalization of brutality, stay tuned for Part Two.

Transcript

[TT Lee]

Call Zone Media.

[Robert Evans]

Ah. And welcome back to behind the Bastards, the podcast that you're listening to today and maybe other days. Probably other days. I'm Robert Evans, here to tell you about some of the worst people in all of history. And to talk with us about some of the worst people in all of history is someone who's not one of the worst people in all of history, but is in fact, my friend, TT Lee. Welcome to the show. How are you doing?

[TT Lee]

I'm good. I mean, I still have time to become one of the worst people in history. So don't come if you really wanted to.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Like, I believe you could be a contender. No, no, it's like that, it's like that movie where fucking Marky Mark becomes a pro football player by trying out like. I think you could become a dictator if you show up.

[TT Lee]

If there was a competition show.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[TT Lee]

I need rules. If there's like a rubric. I mean, actually there probably is. I don't know if I would do well actually in that competition.

[Robert Evans]

But see, that's. This is what, this is what none of these network state, Silicon Valley dictatorship people have any sense of, like, fun. Because if you had like a reality show where whoever won got to govern like 3 million people's lives as like an iron fisted dictator, like, the franchising potential for that show is incredible. Especially if any of them become nuclear armed. I mean, my God, you could, you could keep people glued to the tv. Like that's, that's the new reality. Yeah.

[TT Lee]

Competition for who gets the nuclear codes. I mean, we might actually end up in better situation.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[TT Lee]

Than we are now. Just give it to someone else.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[TT Lee]

I have an important question. Yeah. How's wushu? Oh my God. Wushu. He's right behind me. Wait, is there a video on the. Are you guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's. He doesn't like when he's not the center of attention as. I don't know if anyone. I feel like old days when we used to go into the. That big building in Hollywood to record.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[TT Lee]

Wushu would run around and make a lot of noise and then I had to stop bringing him because. Yeah. But I discover he doesn't like when he's not the center of attention. I love.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, that's fair.

[TT Lee]

Back in the day, Anderson and wushu used to hang and that was nice. That was really nice.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[TT Lee]

He's an old doggie now. He's about to be nine. So Anderson will be. I'll have had Anderson 10 years next year, which Is horrific and awesome, but horrific. I would like her to age less.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Wouldn't we all like to age less?

[TT Lee]

Yeah, Fair enough.

[Robert Evans]

Would you. If. If giving like the blood of a young dog to Anderson would make Anderson younger, would you do the Peter Thiel thing with Anderson?

[TT Lee]

I would commit so many horrific crimes to extend the lives of Anderson. If I could extend Anderson's life longer, the amount of crimes I would commit to do this, I probably shouldn't say on it on Mike, but my goodness, I would commit Biohacker. Who's the guy who like, is always botoxing his penis?

[Robert Evans]

Ryan Jones. Are you talking about the guy who wants to live forever? Oh, that vampire looking dude they're all botoxing.

[TT Lee]

Oh, yeah. There's one guy on Twitter, Brian Jones. Yeah, probably him. Yeah. I feel like, I wonder when.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[TT Lee]

When the next dog.

[Robert Evans]

When the dog version of that.

[TT Lee]

The dog version of that. Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Cause it does tend to like every. After five or ten years, it trickles down. Like people are now doing cosmetic surgeries for their dogs and stuff. It just takes a little while longer for people to be like, well, maybe my dog also needs to be ashamed that their eyelids are drooping or something like that. Even though they're a basset hound and that's how they're supposed to look.

[TT Lee]

I mean, they have BBL surgeries for the Labubus now. That's like a whole what thing on TikTok. Yeah, that there's like, they like wear little doctor clothes and have little gloves and lights. Oh, my God. You gotta look it up. They're great. The videos are great. But I mean.

[Robert Evans]

Well, I love the modern world. But you know what the modern world is built on? Titi? Slavery, obviously. Right. We're all aware of that. With a bit faster today.

[TT Lee]

What a horrific transition. Robert, great way to.

[Robert Evans]

I wasn't given a lot of options.

[TT Lee]

Start my weekend. Fair enough.

[Robert Evans]

We started this how we started this. And that was the easiest way to get to slavery. You're never more than like two steps away when you're talking about, like, really any human history, to be honest. But when we talk about like the Atlantic slave trade. Right. Chattel slave trade in the Americas, a lot of like, our documentation about, like, what happened is documentation of like people kind of nearer to the end of the process who, like escaped and were able to write about it, that's not exclusively it, but you get a lot more from that period of time. Just because earlier in the system it was a lot harder for somebody to break out of that system. And then to be able to talk about what had happened to them. And so when it comes to kind of the height of this period of time, one of our best sources in terms of how actually brutal the system was on a day to day basis is the notes, the extensive diaries of a single man of a guy who was a planned plantation owner in Jamaica and one of the worst, like documented, like sex criminals and murderers in history, just because of like the stuff he wrote in his own diary. And this guy's name is Thomas Thistlewood and he's someone who's like studied by historians of slavery today because, like, you get something with him that you don't get a lot, which is like one of the guys actually doing. It's like some of those like internal notes that the Nazis took when they were doing their. Their shit, where you've got this guy who's a part of this system that is still a century away from a reckoning almost at the time that he dies, who's just writing about it as like, this got up this morning and here's what I did to these people that I own. So that's what we're talking about today. This is a bleak story, but it's really important. Not because Thistlewood himself is the worst specific guy who ever owned people, but more because he's a pretty normal guy who owned people, who was unusually detailed in his normal note taking. Right. That's why we know about this.

[TT Lee]

It's like a guy writing in his diary.

[Robert Evans]

That's exactly what it is.

[TT Lee]

I had no idea what, like, right before we started recording, I was like, I don't know what we're talking about today. And I asked you, I was like, is it going to be perfect? You're like, yep, we're dying while slavery.

[Robert Evans]

This one's real bad.

[TT Lee]

Here we go.

[Robert Evans]

I felt a need to warn you about this.

[TT Lee]

Yeah, I had a feeling. I'm like, you know what? It's been a while since I've done this podcast.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

It's.

[TT Lee]

It's gonna be a brutal one. But no, well, yeah, well, I mean, obviously I'm sure there's horrific things in it, but it's wild that you were talking what you said about before people realize there's a reckoning. Cause that's something I think about a lot. Just like him writing in a diary feels like the most private, safe, secretive thing, right? You just wrote in a piece of paper, there's no such thing as Xerox, there's no Internet. You just hide it somewhere. But that's also one of the most lasting things. Cause because nowadays, Internet could go away in, you know, 100 years.

[Robert Evans]

And this is one of those things where this guy. Yeah, like, like. Like this. There's a decent chance that, like, very few people's lives were, like, live tweeting or streaming. Everything they do today will be as known in 100 years as Thomas Thistlewood's, because he wrote it all down on paper. And it got, like. When he died, his effects wound up and I think in a university's collection, it was like, a long decades after his death that someone found these and was like, oh, my God. Like, there's a lot of detail in here about how slavery worked. He's also, like, our best detail on what the climate of Jamaica was like for about a hundred years. Because he was just taking, like, really detailed notes, and it would be like, woke up and committed these horrible sex crimes. Here's what the weather was like, right. Like, these are the diary entries that he's leaving behind. So he's. It's one of those things where you'll find. You'll find whole books by people that are just, like, exerting the stuff from his diary about the weather, because that's.

[TT Lee]

Important for climactic science and stuff like first impression.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And then there's this larger branch of scholarship that's about his crimes against humanity, but it's kind of like the Unabomber, where he is also known for his other work, you know.

[TT Lee]

Interesting. Reminds me, I don't know why I thought of Arcadia, the play, but that's too obscure of a reference where all the notes being taken are. Anyways, I probably shouldn't have even brought.

[Robert Evans]

It up, but anyway. No, no. What is that?

[TT Lee]

No, but because they go, Arcadia. It's Tom Stoppard play. But in it, they. Well, the reason I brought it up is because people are taking notes and try to infer what happened, but then there's, like, light misunderstandings of, like, what actually happened. But I just find that interesting if he mentions, like, a weird, obscure bird or something, and you're like, I just imagine some, like, you know, bird hunter, like, looking through his diary. Like, yes, he was a terrible slave owner, but there's a sign this extinct bird existed.

[Robert Evans]

We've documented that this animal lived here at this time, too. That is like, the thing with his diaries is that they're both really useful to, like, naturalists and also to students of one of the worst things people ever did to each other.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

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[TT Lee]

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[TT Lee]

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[Robert Evans]

So his name was Thomas Thistlewood and he was born on March 16, 1721 in 2 Lincolnshire. His father was Robert Thistlewood and he was a who was a moderately Successful farmer, you know. So this is in, in, you know, Ingoland. His dad is like an okay farmer. Yeah. But not like super wealthy. Right. Like his, his family aren't aristocracy, but they're like landed and they're doing okay. They're gonna be like upper middle class by the time his dad dies. And his dad dies pretty young when Thomas is 6 in 1727. Now, this is one of those things where like the early 1700s were kind of coming into modernity, but there's still a lot that's almost very medieval. So like the father dies and he's got multiple sons. Everything's going to the firstborn son. Right. That's just the way shit tends to work. And so if you're the second born son either of like a wealthy family or of like a family like this, that's just pretty comfortable, you're not going to inherit any of that land or really much in the way of wealth. Right. So you kind of. You grow up knowing your older brother's getting everything and you're gonna have to figure out something new to do something. Probably not. This is what fuels colonialism, right? Is to a heavy extent, you've got all these second and third sons who are like not gonna get shit unless they get it themselves. So they go over to the new world somewhere, somewhere and they probably die of cholera in a month. But whatever, you know, some of them get rich.

[TT Lee]

You can marry rich, but you know.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, that's your other option is marrying rich. But some people tried to do both. And yeah, this is kind of. Thistlewood's gonna be one of these guys who from the time he's like 5 or 6 years old, knows, okay, Dad's gone. I'm kind of on my own in terms of figuring out what I'm gonna do to make my fortune, you know. Thomas would be one of these unhappy second sons. His older brother John, born in 1716, inherits Bas. Their dad does set aside some money for Thomas, about 200 pounds sterling. And you can never kind of convert perfectly from that kind of money to this kind of money because like most people back then didn't have money or at least didn't use it most of the time. Like your average transaction as like your average working class person isn't handing over money for stuff. You're often like bartering like, well, this time of year, here's what I got and here's what I need, right? That's kind of a lot of a lot of the use of currency or IOUs and stuff. Like that. So, but anyway, you might translate his inheritance to like 40 or $50,000. Right. It's enough. It's gonna like pay for him to get through school, basically. And that's kind of it. Because for his whole childhood he has to like pay the people who are taking him in. Yeah, exactly. Right. So this has to last the rest of his childhood. It sounds like a lot.

[TT Lee]

I see.

[Robert Evans]

But it's gotta last him until. Or at least until he's an adult. Right. Because he's. He gets like moved around almost as soon as his dad dies. And basically these people who are teaching him, he's living with them or he's at a boarding school. And so wherever he is, he's paying to be. And he's paying people to take care of him for the rest of his childhood because that's kind of the only reliable social support there is. Some of these people are his relatives, but he still has to give them money because, like, that shit ain't free.

[TT Lee]

It's like you travel with your bag of money and you're like, one coin for you, right?

[Robert Evans]

You get one coin a year for taking care of me as like a seven year old, right? Yeah. So I wonder how much that does impact him as a kid, because that's a very transactional way to think of your childhood. Like, all right, now you have this much money left for your childhood and you have to pay this much a year to the people carrying you so they could feed you. Right.

[TT Lee]

That's wild. And you really have a sense of how much your value is in society. And if someone's like, I don't want to take care of you for this much, and you're like, please, I'm worth this much to be alive.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, exactly. Here's what I can pay to continue being alive. Please. And yeah, he's gonna be. This is gonna kind of turn him into the perfect foot soldier of the British Empire. Cause he's very. He sees relationships as very transactional and he's. He grows up knowing I'm gonna have to hustle constantly for everything that I'm gonna get right. Especially if I want to be anywhere near as comfortable as like my dad was and my older brother is going to be. So in 1729, and now 8 year old Thomas Thistlewood is sent to a school in Lincolnshire. This is a nice place, but it's not like the kind of fancy boarding school that the wealthy sons of the aristocracy are going to like, send their kids to. So he winds up boarding with a relative by marriage and he pays for his upkeep with his inheritance. And he does this in various ways over the next six years in three different schools. He studies Latin, he becomes fluent in that. He learns Greek, and he studies reading, writing, and arithmetic. And he's an intelligent. All signs point to the fact that he did pretty well in school. But it's also one of those things where once you're, like, 14 or 15, you're basically grown, and they're like, it's time to apprentice in something and figure out what you're actually gonna do for a living. So at age 15, he moves into an uncle's house, and he pays him five pounds sterling a year to be an apprentice on his farm. So he's like, paying his uncle to teach him how to run a farm. Cause he's not gonna. He's gonna have to work on someone else's. He's not gonna inherit any land of his own. Sometime after this, a couple of years.

[TT Lee]

Later, reverse paid internship, unpaid internship. Reverse.

[Robert Evans]

It's like an internship that you pay to attend at your family. Like, you're paying your uncle to do your. Like to give you a paid internship, which is a shitty gig, really. Like having done an unpaid internship. At least you're not out any money, right?

[TT Lee]

Yeah. And it sounds like he's working. He's given them free labor.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. It's really fucked up, actually. And this guy's his uncle. Yeah. But that just. That tells you something about how mercenary a lot of this culture is at the time. Right. Like, you wonder, why did the British Empire do the things that the British Empire did? Well, this is how people are living on the island, when they're better off, Right? Yeah.

[TT Lee]

Wow. That's like. It's like these are the citizens who. And this is like their norm.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. How do you think they're going to treat people in Bengal like. Yeah. Their own to pay. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know how long he spends in this internship exactly, but he probably would have been somewhere around 18 when he sets off fully on his own to make a living as a livestock dealer, Right. So he decides, I don't have any land yet, but I've got some money. I've saved up some leftover from my inheritance. I'm gonna start buying and selling livestock to try to make a profit. And around this time, as he's starting his career, he hooks up with a local girl for the first time, and she gets pregnant, Right. He gets this. This young woman pregnant, and they're not married. Now, in this period of time, the early 1700s, that there's this social level. If you get someone pregnant as the, as the, as the man, you have two choices. Choice one is convince this lady's parents to let you marry their daughter, right? And that's very much your job. She does not have a lot of choice in the matter, right? That's going to vary from family to family. But this is primarily you interfacing with this, this young woman's family, right? And if they don't want you to marry their daughter, if they don't see you as a suitable match, you can get in a shitload of trouble. You can go to prison for fathering a bastard, right? So yeah, he gets in this situation and this lady's parents, I don't know much about this person, but. And I say I don't know literally if she is a girl, like a child or if she's like, she could have been anywhere from like 15 to 20, given the way things worked at the time, right?

[TT Lee]

Yikes.

[Robert Evans]

And I have no idea like why, but her parents are like, this guy is not a suitable match for our daughter. Maybe it's just that he's poor. Maybe they see something of like the sketchiness lurking inside this man's soul. I have no idea. But they say no. And so he really is looking at like, if this girl has a kid, I could go to prison. I'm at least going to have to pay like a heavy fine for what I did. But then the child doesn't come to term and he gets off scot free, right? But this kind of inspires him to like, get the fuck out, right? Like, this was my message of like, I got it. Almost got in a lot of trouble here. I need to actually like escape my hometown, maybe get out of England altogether, right? And so in 1746, he travels to London and he signs a contract with the East India Company to act as a purser of supercargo on a ship headed for the Far East. This means that like, you know, you've got this boat and it's taking a bunch of goods over to like India and other parts of Southeast Asia and it's going to come back with a bunch of goods from the different places it visits on this like two year, year and a half, two year long voyage, right? This is the age of sail. That's how long shit takes back then. And he's his job, he's getting paid to like manage the money on board, right? They've got a bunch of petty cash, some of their, they're Using to, like, buy goods to take back some of it they're using to pay for, like, incidentals and necessities on the voyage. And he's the guy, like, man, he's the ship's accountant almost right now the ship, like the one that he signed onto, it's going to leave with goods loaded from the home country for homesick colonizers in India, and then it's going to come back with all sorts of shit. And you're getting paid to do your job. But you also. Part of how you make good on having a job like this is along the way, you're buying stuff at all of these different foreign ports that you're going to sell back at home, right? That's understood to be, like a perk of the job.

[TT Lee]

You're like, flipping your own side hustle, right?

[Robert Evans]

You're gonna, like, sell a bunch of tea that you bought in India for, like, way more money back in London or some shit like that, right? So the ship, they're gone for almost two years. Like, it's a long voyage. And they land back in Blackwall on August 27, 1748. Thomas disembarks. He's now in his late 20s. He's a seasoned world traveler and an entrepreneur. He gets his back wages for the journey, which is like 30 pounds sterling, something like 8,500 bucks in modern money, which is not a lot for like two years of. Of hard labor on a boat. Now he's got a bunch of shit with him that he's going to try to make a fortune flipping and selling. But he also spends most of his time, like, gambling and playing cards and speculating on investments, and he's just spending his money. And the money he's not spending on gambling, he's spending on prostitutes, right? Like, we're talking London in the 1700s. And he talks about this in a diary, right? Cause this diary that. This is like a thing that he picks up at the school that he goes to where they're like.

[TT Lee]

So this diary. Are we already starting with the diary? Cause I know when he was 8, he wasn't writing in it yet. Okay, so we're in diary, firsthand account mode.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. He starts kind of in his early adulthood, right? And this is not a diary of his thoughts and feelings. We learn basically nothing about how he feels. This is because he's just. He's listing everything he buys and sells. So you see part of the use.

[TT Lee]

Of this class diary.

[Robert Evans]

Class man, right? Yes, Classic, man. Where it's just like, this is what Dinner cost me in 1748, right? Like, this is the cost of, like, buying tobacco. This is how much I lost at cards last night. This is how much I paid this prostitute, right? And so it's both, like, you get. You do get this weirdly detached look at the inside of this guy. But you also get, like. You can see why it's useful to all sorts of different scholars where they're like, well, what did it cost to get, like, drunk and gamble and go out with a prostitute in London in 1748? Well, this we know, actually. This guy took notes on it, right? Or at least we have an idea.

[TT Lee]

What did it cost?

[Robert Evans]

Great question. So when to answer that?

[TT Lee]

Can time machines exist? No.

[Robert Evans]

Exactly. You need to know what to bring along. I have a lot of foreign currency from the past that I keep in emergency bags in case I get transported back in time. You wind up in ancient Rome. You don't want to not have any denarii. Like, what are you gonna do, you know?

[TT Lee]

Okay, Robert, you gotta fight for it.

[Robert Evans]

In a gladiatorial pit. You're not doing anything.

[TT Lee]

I actually believe you would have, like, an old money collection. Like, I do believe.

[Robert Evans]

You gotta be ready. Yeah. Keep that. And. Yeah.

[TT Lee]

All right, Robert.

[Robert Evans]

So whenever he was writing to know what it like, a night out with a prostitute cost in London in 1748, whenever he wrote about stuff like this, he would, like, box off the entry about the sex stuff from the rest of his diary entries, and he would preface it with the letters xxx, which is interesting. I didn't know that went back that far, but apparently it did. Or at least that's what he chose. Cause I don't think this was a broader thing in society yet. It may just have been a coincidence that he chose to do that. To kind of make a note that he was about to start talking about sex. And he would always write about it in Latin. And so the very first entry that we have of him writing about sex is of a night he spent with a prostitute in 1748. And he writes in the evening. In the evening to Moliere, two shillings. Right? And a moulier is a contemporary term for a prostitute, right? So he spends two shillings for a night with this lady, right? And he writes a G above her title, which is his way of letting her know. G is the seventh letter. It's his way of noting alphabetically that this is the seventh woman that he slept with. So presumably, while he's traveling around the world at various ports, he's doing, you know, he's probably paying women, right? That's likely who most of A through F are. One of them's gotta be that lady that he got pregnant. Briefly, right? Assuming, like. But this also tells you a lot about him that he is. He's talking about the women that he's been with. He's just, like, alphabetically listening.

[TT Lee]

He's counting them. I feel like that's like, what. Cause it, like, you. Even though it is private, there's a part of him that's like, just in case. Just in case someone finds it, he's writing it in, like, a secret code. That's what I did when I was a child in my first pink diary. Pig Latin.

[Robert Evans]

It's great that you pick up on that.

[TT Lee]

Not quite Latin. I wasn't writing. Yeah, I wasn't writing Latin back then.

[Robert Evans]

But Pig Latin, yeah.

[TT Lee]

And I wasn't hiring prostitutes either, so.

[Robert Evans]

Well, yeah, I would hope not. But it is, like, what you've picked up on is actually something scholars are really interested in. Cause there's a lot of debate as to, like, why did he write about sex this way? Why did he do it in Latin? Right. And that is one of the theories, right, as we'll talk about that Basically, this was his way of, like, if somebody comes across this, I don't want anyone, at least I don't want anyone uneducated, knowing what I've been writing about, you know? And from what we can tell, this is a guy who. I don't know if we'd call him, like, a nymphomaniac today, but sex is a lot bigger part of his life than people would have admitted to than like a polite man would have admitted to in this period of time, right? And he tries one last time after he gets back from this overseas voyage, to have a proper marriage with someone in England and start a life on the island. He sits down with the parents of a girl that he'd known as a younger man. And he asks them, hey, can I marry your daughter? And again, he writes that they entertained him with great civility. Which one of his biographers said was like. That was him saying that they said no. That they were like. They politely said, absolutely, you cannot marry our daughter. You're a creepy, right?

[TT Lee]

Like, yeah, there's stuff that he's like, not. You know, like when you meet someone.

[Robert Evans]

You'Re like, something's wrong behind this fucker's eyes.

[TT Lee]

You hear like, oh, what's wrong with them? And then you're like, oh, I see. That's why, like, the vibes are off, Something's wrong.

[Robert Evans]

He looks like the kind of guy who lists women alphabetically in his weird crime diary.

[TT Lee]

Like, yeah, yeah. Just those characters are correct in their assessment.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, good call. Don't let this guy marry your daughter. Good call. So during this period of time, as at all other points in his life, Thomas read voraciously and he took notes in his diary on what particularly interested him in the books that he was reading in January of 1749. This was abortions he's really interested in. And this again tells you a lot about what's happening elsewhere in this guy's life, is he's just casually interested in how to make abortifacience. Right. Like drugs to induce, like abortion. Wow. Or a mis. Like he often frames it as drugs to induce a miscarriage. Right. And one of his recipes, I just found this interesting. Cause this tells you, like again, one of the things that the society believes at the time for an abortifacient at the time is one pound of bitter apples. I think that's what it means. It's like ld of bitter. So it's an amount of bitter apples steeped in beer and cooked at least twice. It said will cause abortion, certainly. So bitter apples steeped in beer.

[TT Lee]

Damn, I'm covering my unborn baby's ears right now.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the good news is I don't think there's a lot of bitter apples around anymore. Although depending on the state of reproductive healthcare in the near term. I don't know. I don't. Also, I kind of doubt this worked very well, but maybe it did.

[TT Lee]

He's like making drinks to like feed like a little witch.

[Robert Evans]

He's making morning after pills.

[TT Lee]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

He's interested. Or at least he. He's put part of like, one of the things that's theorized is that if he didn't need it, then he was taking down notes while he was like near a library on how to make basically morning after pills. Cause he foresaw because of what had happened to him in his past. He was like, I might need to do that in the future. Right.

[TT Lee]

Dang.

[Robert Evans]

Because the other thing he's doing at the same time is he's writing down recipes for cures for venereal diseases. Because this is a guy who's probably by this point slept with prostitutes in ports all around the world. He's picked up a lot of vd, right?

[TT Lee]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Like, this is not like there's no antibiotics. They don't know anything about, like, how to prevent disease.

[TT Lee]

Yikes.

[Robert Evans]

So he catches chlamydia and he writes. This is like the recipe he gives for a treatment for chlamydia. Take every other day, one dose of any purging pills and continue that course if your strength will allow it, until the running change both its color and consistency and appears the same as the semen. Right. That's like this, like, discharge that happens when people get the clap. So he's taking these, like, weird balms, and we don't know exactly what's in them. Right. Because these are both cures for, like, the clap and for gonorrhea that guys are, like, buying on the streets. One of them's called Ciderhem's Common Purging. One of them's called Balm Captive. And we don't know exactly what he was taking. But I did find a dissertation by Elizabeth Polcha for Northeastern University that discussed a similar quack remedy that this exact guy used later for the same diseases, Ward's Pill and Drop, which were these blue, red and white pills that were filled with arsenic and other poisons. So that's what he's taking for vd. It's like arsenic? Yeah. And, like, probably mercury and shit. That's what people put in these. Cause they like, wow. It's the same logic that a lot of, like, bullshit New age medicine stuff uses today, where they're like, look, it's drawing out the toxins where they're like, if you give someone this, like, arsenic that they wind up, like, their body purges everything. Like, they wind up vomiting and, like, heart having these. Right. And so they're like, it must be cleansing you.

[TT Lee]

I mean, it's like, I think we covered this thing cracked. But they used to do. Lysol was originally invented as, like, a vagina cleaner. So. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure the men didn't have great healthcare before either. I mean, they got there a little faster than we did, but.

[Robert Evans]

Right. Yeah.

[TT Lee]

Still pretty rough out there.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. No one's doing great. And I think the logic is the same as with Lysol, where it's like, well, this looks like it hurts like hell, so it must be working right now.

[TT Lee]

You've just poisoned yourself, disinfect everything. Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

You're all just taking arsenic. So by the spring of 1949, things are not going well for Thomas. He has every venereal disease known to man.

[TT Lee]

Wait, 1949?

[Robert Evans]

Run out of his money? 1749, okay. Wow.

[TT Lee]

We skipped.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. No. He's 200 years old now. He's a vampire.

[TT Lee]

Real time Traveler.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. No. So this guy, I mean, he's just sick as hell all the time, and he's run out of money. All the money he got doing his merchant marine shit, he's blown through. He's got, you know, he's got some assets that he's still selling from his trip, but he's doing badly enough that he's borrowing money from his landlady, which that's like a level of doing bad, right? When, like, you can't. You're not even paying your landlady. You're, like, having to borrow money from her.

[TT Lee]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And he's also borrowing from his brother and complaining in his diary about how lonely he is all the time. The time. So he takes a little trip to the continent where he tries to sell off some of his goods. And he's doing badly enough that by the end of 1749, he finds himself back in London. And he visits this place called the Jamaica Coffee House. And as best as I can tell, this is like a business. It's like a cafe, basically. But it's also kind of an advertisement for white people to go to Jamaica, which at the time is like, I think it's the wealthiest agricultural colony in the British Empire. They're making sugar cane, right? That's what they're growing over there, Right? They're producing sugar, basically. And the Brits had. Had Jamaica not that long at this point. They captured it from the Spaniards in 1655. Right. So we're less than a century into, like, English control of the island. And they've done. In this little period of time where they've dominated Jamaica, they've done their best. They're trying to settle this island, but they're having trouble because it seems to them that Jamaica, like, life on Jamaica, has evolved primarily to kill English people. Like, they'll send over a bunch of young white guys to do the quote, unquote, skilled work on, you know, and a lot of that's overseer work managing these slave plantations. And most of these guys die in the first year, right? That's just known. You get a boat with, like, 200 white kids from the main island, and, like, 80 of them are gonna be. Or like 180 of them are gonna be dead within like a year, year and a half.

[TT Lee]

See, I wonder why you send a bunch of people to go to an already a land where people live, and you're like, why do the people who live here keep trying to kill us? We're just trying to colonize them.

[Robert Evans]

It's also just like the people who live there, right. Cause there's also, you know, the slaves who are brought there, the enslaved people also die at an elevated rate because, like, none of them have grown up around the various, like, diseases and bugs that are there. Right. Like they're getting bit by mosquitoes and getting shit that like.

[TT Lee]

Oh, you mean they're just dying of natural cause. I thought you meant like they're being fought.

[Robert Evans]

That happens. That does happen. That's part of this. Because there is. There's a heavy maroon. They're called maroons, right? Which is like people. They're former slaves and descendants of former slaves who escaped Spanish plantations and formed independent communities. And these like, really forested, often like mountainous chunks of the island, right. So there it's areas that. Where it's hard to control and you can't. Great Britain has troops in Jamaica, but as soon as you send soldiers out into these, like these heavily wooded parts of Jamaica, they just start dying of diseases left and right. You know, you can't keep a force out there for any length of time. Cause the natural world will kill more of them than the enemy, but the enemy will also kill them. Because these maroons, by this point, these are the people from the slave populations who survived their first years in Jamaica. So they are hardened to like, the different diseases and bugs and whatnot that exist on the island. And they know these, like, forested, dense, like rural areas. So they're able to fight very effectively this guerrilla war. So yes, it is both a mix of the natural environment and these different maroon communities that are killing all of the young white kids who come here. Right. And it goes badly enough for Great Britain that about a decade before Thomas Thistlewood shows up in Jamaica, the Brits give up and they offer terms to the maroon communities. And so they say to these, like, these independent chunks of the island basically that are made up of former slaves. And their descend will recognize your independence and will recognize your self rule over your territory. And in return, you have to keep the roads open for us so we can transport goods. And you have to not raid these plantations. And whenever future slaves escape from our plantations, you have to help us bring them back. You have to help us if there's an uprising by the enslaved population. Right. There's like a treaty where these, these marine communities agree to all this in order to stop, not have to keep fighting these constant wars with the English colonizers. Right. So this is like, you know, it's a pretty. It's an ugly thing. Like, it's a morally complicated thing. But you understand the decision these like maroon communities are making. They're like, well, at least we get to keep living on our own.

[TT Lee]

You know, they're not quite a sovereign nation, but so there's no, like big war to be fought. But they're not quite acknowledging that, like England owns the whole place. And England's like, we own this, but we don't. But we do.

[Robert Evans]

But we'll recognize your right to stay in your area if you stop fucking with trade, basically. Right? Like, that's kind of the agreement that these communities come to with these agents of the empire. You know who else are agents of the British Empire? Maybe, maybe our sponsors. Especially if it's like one of those big, big London banks they might be advertising on this show. Who's to say.

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[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

On the podcast health stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night.

[TT Lee]

Yes, I'm Dr. Priyanka Walley, a double board certified physician.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

And I'm Hari Kondabolu, a comedian and someone who once googled do I have scurvy at 3am on health stuff, we're.

[TT Lee]

Talking about health in a different way.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also.

[TT Lee]

What our health says about us and the way we're living.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

Like our episode where we look at.

[TT Lee]

Diabetes in the United states. I mean, 50% of Americans are pre diabetic.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

How preventable is type 2?

[TT Lee]

Extremely. Or our in depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

Oh, it's hard to explain to rest of the world that like your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible. But like, you don't even know.

[Robert Evans]

You don't know. You don't know.

[TT Lee]

It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

Listen to health stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster iheart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers are into, true crime, sports, comedy, culture, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. And all this reach means everything. Just think about the universal marketing formula. The number of consumers who hear your message times the response rate equals the results. Now let's get those results growing for you. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Let us show you at iheartadvertising.com that's iheartadvertising.com or call 844-844-IHEART. One more time, call 844-844-iHEART and get podcasting working for you from the studio who brought you the Piketon Massacre and murder 101. This is incels.

[TT Lee]

I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me either.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset.

[Robert Evans]

If I can't have you girls, I will destroy you.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

A kind of subculture, A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women. A seed of loneliness explodes.

[Robert Evans]

I just hate myself. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

At a deadly tipping point, Incels will.

[Robert Evans]

Be added to the terrorism guide. Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd, killing 10 people. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. I will have my revenge.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

This is Incels. Listen to season one of Incels on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

And we're back. How we feeling?

[TT Lee]

Sad. Well, you know, as you might expect, my mood has gone down since before we started recording. But in many ways, I'm also happy to see you. So I'm happy to see you, too.

[Robert Evans]

Happy to see you. Happy to learn about how shitty life was in the mid-1700s. Like, really just a bad time to be a person. So, yeah, into 17 or start of 1750, Thomas Thistlewood books passage on a boat after saying goodbye to his friends and family. And this is goodbye forever. He's never gonna see any of them again. He's, like 30, and he's saying, like, goodbye for it because I'm going to an island. I'll almost certainly be dead in a year, right? And in fact, it's one of the. You get this hint of how disposable these men being sent over are, that, like, within minutes of boarding, his luggage is broken into and his liquor collection is stolen, right? And I think it's just this, like, look, steal whatever you can from these guys. They're all going to be dead in six months. Like, fuck it.

[TT Lee]

You know, it's like, there's no law once you enter. Once you step off of England, there's no law.

[Robert Evans]

It's very much like, on the way to Jamaica. It's certainly like that. Like, this is still a period of time.

[TT Lee]

Like, have you ever taken a flight on the Spirit Airlines to Vegas? That's what that makes me think of.

[Robert Evans]

It's like a spirit flight to Vegas, right? Including some of the people on that plane are being trafficked. Like, some number of these men on these boats with Thomas have been, like, knocked out the night before at a bar. And they're just wake up working on a boat. Right, okay. We're putting them on boats in this time, right?

[TT Lee]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

They actually get stopped by, like, the British Navy on their way to Jamaica. And the navy's trying to make sure there's not, like, guys on there who got, like, beaten up at a port and are being forced into labor. Cause it's, like a major problem. So it is like, it is the Wild West. I mean, it's worse than that. But you are in between these settled areas. There's basically no rule. But part of the appeal of Jamaica to a guy like Thomas is it's known at the time, the marketing nickname for Jamaica when they're trying to get these young white guys to move over there, is that it's the best poor man's country, right? And what that means is that if you don't have any money and you don't have any standing in society back in Scotland or Ireland or, you know, England, you can go to Jamaica and you will be, number one, you can get rich there. And number two, you'll get respected. Because all white men are equally respected. That's the idea, right? It's not exactly true, but one of the things that's said about planter culture is that any white man who shows up at any plantation in Jamaica will get, like, the. He'll get put up for the night and get fed a good meal. It doesn't matter how poor you are or where you come from. There's this level of egalitarianism for white men in Jamaica, right? And as we'll talk about, this is not entirely what it sounds like, but this is how it's being marketed, right? This is how guys like Thomas are convinced to go there. And I want to quote now from a 2006 article in Caribbean Quarterly by James Robertson. The glowing promises which encouraged successive European migrants to sail to Jamaica often shattered against the brutal island society these Johnny Newcombs encountered. An early 19th century bookkeeper wrote home regretting his choice. Instead of being a gentleman's life, it is more like a slave. Continuing, I'll die before I'll be a planter. Though it is the best for getting money. A person that is hard enough to manage the business may get to be an overseer and have three or four hundred pounds a year, but no one has wages equal to their hazards. 19 out of 20 die without getting anything, and I fear I shall be one of the unhappy number. These were daunting odds. And while the brutalizing work contrasted with the splendid prospects that had persuaded him to migrate, even if gullible farm boys continue to swallow recruiters golden tails, the supply was never sufficient for all the vacancies. So this is one of those.

[TT Lee]

They're being recruited. Oh, sorry. Well, just to clarify, when you say he's. Because he's like, I'll never be a planter, but they're still like being paid is not well to be a planter. And so they're kind of being told they could be a boss. Is that right? Or are they already immediately going into slavery, the white people?

[Robert Evans]

I mean, they're not owning slaves, but they're managing slaves for slave owners. That's the start of the ladder once you get over here. And what that guy is saying, what that bookkeeper is saying is that the only way to really get rich is to make enough money to buy a plantation of your own and be a planter. But almost no one gets there. 19 out of 20 people will die before making any money at all. Right. That's what he's saying, is that money?

[TT Lee]

Well, he's not actually. So there's not having the white people actually do the labor still.

[Robert Evans]

The white people. The labor the white people are doing is making the black enslaved people work. That's the labor for white. Now there are some, like, experts who are like, making metal things or whatnot. There are jobs. And like that guy we heard from is a bookkeeper. So that's not the only job for these young white men. But what this guy is saying is that as soon as he got over on the island, he realizes it's a scam because there's almost no way to get. Make enough money to leave Jamaica again. And you're definitely going to die there, right? Like something on the island will kill you. So you've cut your life short and it's just this miserable situation. So that's, that's the, the where Thomas stumbles into on May 4, 1750. That's the day he gets to Jamaica and he starts like that other guy, working as a bookkeeper and eventually an assistant overseer on a plantation. The idea is that soon he'll get promoted to overseer, but this doesn't materialize. Now, lucky for Thomas, there's not nearly enough healthy white guys, right? So when this first place that hires him, when he finds out they're not going to promote him where he wants to, he's able to get another job really easily. He survives his first six months and then his first year. And after that point, options start to open up for somebody like you because you've proven that you're not going to die right away in Jamaica, so you're valuable to hire, right? And so all of these plantations, that none of them have enough white men, right? Even if they have enough enslaved people, they don't have enough like guys to run them for them. Because the slave pot, the enslaved population vastly outnumbers the white population, right? And this is part of why Jamaica in this period is the most productive slave plantation in the British Empire. About half of the 45,000 tons of sugar that were imported into Britain each year came from Jamaica. And while white overseers and technical employees like Thomas were a part of the workforce, most of it is enslaved Africans or their descendants. There's only rough numbers here, but by the time Thomas lands on the island, there's about 18,000 white people and about another 7,000 free black or like mixed race people on the island, right? So like 18,000 white people, another 7,000 free non white people. The enslaved population is 170,000. And so when we talk about why there's this reputation that any white man will be treated well in Jamaica, it's because there's not as much room for the rich people, the rich white people, to exclude the poor white people because they're so outnumbered, right? You kind of need these poor white guys at your back in case there's a slave uprising, which there will be periodically, right? And so that's the reason for this quote unquote egalitarianism is the wealthy plantation owners know that they need to keep these poor white guys on their side.

[TT Lee]

Like enough to have probably feel, to respond to that. I think it's interesting you bring up the point about like the egalitarian and maybe they're not having room to exclude the other white people. But I also think, I think part of it is them being. I mean, it is like, you know, the white supremacy, but being surrounded by so many enslaved people and they see them as, like, background. They don't see them as people. So subconsciously they're gonna feel like, you know, when they see another white person, like, you're on my side. As opposed to in a society where everyone's white, Those, like, aristocratic 1 percenters look for someone else to put down, but they kind of have that space filled and so they're gonna just be nicer. And. Yeah, I think that kind of leads to that, like, superiority complex because you just get so used to feeling like a whole nother race is a background to your supremacy. So.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[TT Lee]

Yeah, it's interesting.

[Robert Evans]

Well, and that also helps explain why these poorer white guys who don't own enslaved people themselves, will defend the system so much, is that they still, because of the system, they have a much higher place in society than they otherwise would. Right. Like, the fact that the majority of the people are this kind of, like, background noise to the white population means that as a poor white, you matter more. Like, you feel like. And that will make you more inclined to defend the system. Right. Like, that's also got to be part of what's going on here.

[TT Lee]

Yeah. And if their whole value, quote, unquote, is managing uprisings or, you know, people. But they're going to have to convince.

[Robert Evans]

Themselves and managing just this system of human slavery.

[TT Lee]

Yeah, yeah. They convince themselves that those people aren't people because they're required to be there to maintain order, quote, unquote.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Now, and I should make it clear here that at the time when he arrives, Jamaica's kind of changing. But at the time he lands there, it's still the case that of that 7,000 or so person population of free non white people in Jamaica, a good number of those people also own enslaved human beings and operate plantations. Right. Now, one of the things that'll change during the time Thomas is there is that this number will get, like, cut down because the only people who are able to be part of the island legislature are white property owners. And they start voting to, like, restrict both political rights and, like, reduce the amount of land that non white people can own during the time that they're here. So even the ones, even the non white people who are, like, part of the system of slavery are going to be, like, edged out of it over the time that Thomas is on the island by, like, these white slave owners who actually get to, like, manage things politically. Now, Thomas, like I said, he's Gonna live. He's gonna survive his first year and then some. And as a result, he's going to get treated. He's going to be very valuable. Right. He's going to take some pretty significant leaps very quickly in social standing and in income. He proves to be such a competent overseer that he's soon fielding offers for jobs from half of the plantations in his area, which means he's getting steady raises. His boss has to pay him more every year to keep him on because he always has places he can go. This allows him to accrue a tidy pile of ready cash. And he starts buying human beings of his own. And he will rent them. He doesn't own land yet, so he's buying people and then he's renting them out to his bosses as laborers. Right. And he's. He's pocketing the money for their labor. And that's how he basically sets up passive income for himself. That is going to, like, allow him eventually to buy a plantation of his own is he starts by, like, buying people and renting them back to his boss. And his boss is always going to pay above average rates for the slave labor that Thomas rents him. Because his boss wants to keep Thomas happy. Right. Because Thomas can go anywhere he fucking wants. So does that kind of make sense in terms of, like, why this would be appealing to someone like Thomas who can survive that first year of plague? Right. Like, he's doing better now than he'd ever have been able to do in England because he's buying and selling human beings.

[TT Lee]

I mean, yeah, no, it's fucked up. But it's also interesting that, I mean, like, prostitution was such a big part of his earlier life. Because there's, like, already, like you said, it's so transactional. There's already this idea of, like. Like, buying, you know, like, a night with someone and then kind of escalating that to being like, well, now he thinks I'm buying this person's labor.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[TT Lee]

And I mean, that's completely inhumane. But I could see, like, in how you're describing it, like, how this man's kind of thinking will jump to that extreme.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Because it is obviously paying your uncle to take care of you when you're like, 10 is different from owning humans. Paying for sex is different from chattel slavery. But he has his whole life been had this very transactional understanding of what human being other people are. Right. That has been with him, like, since he was a little kid. That has to have some sort of impact on, like, why you are this way. So James Robertson, in his article on Jamaica during this period of time, describes this, like, initial mass death of new arrivals from Europe as seasoning. And one of the reasons he theorizes Thistlewood survived his period of seasoning is that he's not getting drunk every night. He's like a nerd. He's spending all of his free time writing in his diary and journaling about the weather and like reading books. And so he's not just like, someone drinks all his liquor while sick. Right. Someone stole his liquor. That may have saved his life.

[TT Lee]

Yeah. And also all the arsenic he drank. Probably.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. All that arsenic made it so that nothing else could survive in his body. That's right. Everybody try drinking arsenic yourselves. See if it makes you stronger. Who knows? You know, I think that we could get RFK to endorse arsenic. Drinking arsenic.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Oh, God.

[Robert Evans]

Like that's medicinal now. So, Thomas, but you should do your second ad. Oh, should I? Okay, yeah. Well, here's another ad. Break.

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[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night.

[TT Lee]

Yes, I'm Dr. Priyanka Walley, a double board certified physician.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

And I'm Hari Kondabolu, a comedian and someone who once googled do I have scurvy at 3am on health stuff, we're.

[TT Lee]

Talking about health in a different way.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also.

[TT Lee]

What our health says about us and the way we're living.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

Like our episode where we look at.

[TT Lee]

Diabetes in the United states. I mean, 50% of Americans are pre diabetic.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

How preventable is type 2?

[TT Lee]

Extremely. Or our in depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

Oh, it's hard to explain to rest of the world that like, your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible. But like, you don't even know.

[Robert Evans]

You don't know. You don't know.

[TT Lee]

It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

Listen to health stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[TT Lee]

I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me either.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset.

[Robert Evans]

If I can't have you girls, I will destroy you.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

A kind of subculture. A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women. A seed of loneliness explodes.

[Robert Evans]

I just hate myself. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Add a deadly tipping point.

[Robert Evans]

Point Incels will be added to the terrorism guide.

[TT Lee]

Police say a driver intentionally drove into.

[Robert Evans]

A crowd, killing 10 people. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. I will have my revenge.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

This is Incels. Listen to season one of Incels on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Robert Evans]

And we're back. There's not a good way to segue into this next part, but this is the first time. December of 1750, about five months after landing on the island, is the first time that Thomas writes about committing sexual assault on an enslaved person who works on the ranch where he's working. And he writes this in his Latin shorthand, and basically the translation is that he slept with this enslaved woman named Sylvia, who is a black woman from the Ibo Forest region of modern day Cameroon in Sylv, right? He writes that he, like, he lay with Sylvia in Sylv. And Sylv is like, that's a shortened version of the Latin word for forest, right? So he's kind of writing. He's kind of writing about the sex crime he's committed almost as, like a. Like a Latin couplet, right? Like, he's. He's. He's not just writing about this thing that he's done, but he's clearly. He's clearly drawn to this woman named Sylvia because her name is similar to the name of, like, this Roman goddess, this Roman term for the wild part of the world. And this Roman term for a goddess, right? Like, it's this. He's making these weird references in his diary. These aren't just exploitation logs, but he's almost like, showing off his knowledge of, like, classical education while he's doing this too. And it's kind of unclear to me why he does this. I've read a couple of different theories as to, like, why he feels drawn to do this while he's writing about these things. In her paper Redacting Desire, Elizabeth Polka theorizes Thistlewood structured his sexual exploitation logs as an entry embedded within an entry, a private subspace into which he placed the record of his sexual activity. If Thistlewood's 10,000 pages of diaries were visualized as an architectural space such as a domestic home, the sexual exploitation logs would be a locked drawer in Thistlewood's bedroom dresser, where his Latin coding functions as a locking mechanism. Within this private space, Thistlewood placed walls around sexual encounters, employing documentation to codify and order the sex act within a system of concealment. Which is similar to kind of what you were saying earlier, right? Like, he's locking this away for anyone. That's part of why he's making these obscure references to, like, Roman gods in this entry log about a sex crime is so that the only other people who understand what I've done truly are other educated white men of a scientific bent. And they'll understand that what I was doing wasn't a sex crime, it was an act of science. Because that's how he writes about this. Yeah.

[TT Lee]

Well, I wonder if it's like. Like you said, it's more like in self defense. Like, it's. I don't know if he really believes it because. Because if he's already putting it into that box, like, literally. Right. You said he boxes it off. There's that feeling already. Yeah. He needs to separate it. And then on top of that, it's like you're kind of. What you said he's writing in couplet. It makes me think of, like, you know, you kind of code switch when you're. If you're writing, like people analyze if you're lying or not. Like, maybe there's a piece where he switches into, like, he thinks he's intellectualizing it, but really it's because he feels some sort of. Of guilt and then is trying to connect it or dissociate or, you know, be like, actually, I'm, you know, kind of going into this intellectual place when I'm doing this. But really it's a reaction to his own feelings. I mean, it's his diary after. When he's not needing to defend himself to anyone.

[Robert Evans]

Right. And the fact that. Cause it can be both. Right. Where he wants to hide this from anyone other than the people he thinks might understand why he's doing what he's done. But that implies that he understands there's something unacceptable to regular people about what he's doing.

[TT Lee]

Well, could he be trying to defend himself to himself? Like, almost like possibly.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[TT Lee]

You know, logging his. Yeah, I don't know.

[Robert Evans]

Like, what I'm doing is because he is a naturalist. Right. And that is. Those are kind of the early scientists in this period of time. It's like people who are going out into the natural world and they're taking. This is. Eventually guys like more rigorous and better versions of this are going to produce people like Charles Darwin. Right. But this basic idea that you go out and you're taking notes, that's why he's taking notes on the climate every day, too, on the weather he's experiencing, is there's this early scientific understanding that. Well, part of science is just documenting what you see. Right. And so part of what he's doing is walling off these sexual experiences and documenting them as if he's doing scientific research. And I think you're right that it's part of it. Part of it may be a defense mechanism where he's trying to make this unacceptable thing acceptable. And there's maybe this level of knowledge that that will not work for a lot of people. So he has to kind of code it for the people that he sees as like him, these other scientists. One of the reasons he uses Latin probably is to connect his. Because that's the scientific language. Right. And this also connects the work he's doing to the documentation of a scientist he greatly admired, Carl Linnaeus, who was a Swedish biologist and the person who created like, the modern taxonomy system, how we name species, is because of Linnaeus. Right. And during his time in Jamaica. Part of why. And part of why this is relevant to Linnaeus is Thomas is not only committing these sex crimes on enslaved people out of like some sense of desire or even a personal need for power. There's a financial motivation here, because if you get a person you own pregnant, the baby is your property. You can sell them when they're an adult. And he will repeatedly over his life. And part of what he's doing here is keeping notes as to who he's sleeping with so that he can document the parentage of different people that he's going to own and sell. Right. And he sees this scientifically in the same way as people who are, like, breeding livestock. Right. That's what this is to him. Right. That's horrible. But that is how Tom thinks about this. Right. That's wild.

[TT Lee]

That totally changes what I was saying before, because, yeah, it definitely makes it feel more like he's just logging his property.

[Robert Evans]

I think there's a few things he's doing. This isn't a simple thing, really. It's a lot in here. Right. But that's part of what he's doing here.

[TT Lee]

And he doesn't see them as his. I mean, I guess that's probably true for most people at this time, but just hearing that. So he doesn't see them as his children?

[Robert Evans]

No.

[TT Lee]

He's fathering a child with an enslaved person.

[Robert Evans]

He knows they literally are biologically his children, but he does not see them as human beings fully. I think that's probably accurate. Like all people living in these situations, there's a lot of weird relationships here that are all deeply unequal and fucked up and also difficult to categorize and understand. We will talk about that. That some. But, yeah, part of what he's doing here is, like, writing about what's happening as if he's breeding livestock. That's an aspect of what he's doing here. And beyond that, he's his era's equivalent of a nerd. Right. He's into science, is a cool thing for a chunk of the educated aristocracy. It's a thing you do as a hobby. Right. And so he has this sense of like, I'm not quite as good as a lot of other people because he doesn't grow up super rich and he's not fit for high society, where he comes from. And so this is kind of how he tries to fit himself in. Right. Is by framing himself and presenting himself to others as a man of science. There's a really good article on this called Thomas Thistlewood's Libidinal Linnaean Project for Small Acts Journal by Heather Vermulian. And she proposes a likely symbolic explanation for why Thomas wrote about this, like, very first sex crime on the island. The way that he did. Thistlewood may have intended more than a play on words with his description of the rape of Sylvia in the Silv. His choice to attack this woman in particular may have carried symbolic weight. As Robert Pogue Harrison writes, the traditional legends of Rome's foundation tell us that the city was born of the forests, but they also suggest that Rome had had to turn against its matrix in order to fulfill its destiny. According to Livy Harrison explains, Ro Romulus, the founder of Rome, belonged to the Sylvian family line, as is the case in many foundation myths. The rape of the Sabines, the rape of Lucretia. It is sexual violence that sets the story in motion. Romulus and his twin brother Remus were born when Mars, the Roman God of war, raped the vestal virgin Rhea Silvia. Viewed in this light, Thistlewood perpetuated his initial act of terrestrial rape against an enslaved woman, whose name evokes a spirit or goddess of the wood targeted for Roman conquest. As well as Rhea Silvia targeted for divine rape, his act also conjures the very manner in which Romulus populated Rome by capturing women from nearby cities and forcing them into relation with Rome's founding men. Thistlewood's rape of Sylvia may well participate in this classic genealogy of mystified sexual violence, ambiguous parentage, colonization and captivity, and then the imperial domesticating of unruly forested land as a sign of progress. Right? So this is. He sees this as part of this very scientific and high minded colonial project. England is colonizing and civilizing the wilderness and making it better. And these sex crimes I'm committing are a part of the scientific effort to improve via, not just like, you know, by developing the land, but by inserting my DNA into these populations. That's how he's thinking about this, right?

[TT Lee]

Does he say, I mean, cause that's like what I mean. I can see like, I mean that very well written scholarly interpretation. But, but is he, is he really like that? Like, I don't want to call him smart, but is he really like thinking that deep?

[Robert Evans]

Or this would have been all of these ancient Roman myths and all of this knowledge of Latin. This was part of a normal education for a man of his stature at this time. You got an intensely detailed classical education, right? Because in part the British Empire is portraying itself as in this line of civilizing imperial Western forces, right? And in this line of like. Because the Greeks and the Romans are very much admired for their understanding of the natural world, right. And for their power and command over it in an area in which that was seen as having been less common elsewhere. And part of why Latin is still the language of science at the day. And it's also, Thistlewood doesn't. He doesn't want to see himself as just a guy trying to get rich and committing horrible crimes against other human beings. He wants to see himself as part of this noble global endeavor to civilize the world. And that's how almost mythological. It's very mythological, yes.

[TT Lee]

There's a parallel to what I see. I mean, what I see happening now with a lot of white supremacists because they talk a lot about classical literature and referring to classical and biblical memes or imagery. I know Hillsdale College is one that, you know, very conservative and they really focus on teaching classical stories to children. And very much in the same way, you're talking about sort of like upholding these, like, images that are, you know, Eurocentric myths.

[Robert Evans]

And it's this. This is a massive part. This is not just a part of fascism, but this is a part of selling any fucked up thing to young men as you convince them they're doing something great. Right. This thing that we could just say is you giving in to your base impulses is also heroic and it puts you in line with divinity and you're part of this great civilizing mission. Right? We've been telling young men that in every society that's ever existed to get him to do fucked up shit. Right. And that doesn't. By the way, that's not to say, oh, Thistlewood's just a victim. No, no, no, no, no. He is choosing to find a justification for the cruel, violent, vicious things that he wants to do and that he increasingly finds appealing because he becomes a worse and worse person the more he gives into this. And that means you need to come up with increasingly, like, lofty intellectual justifications for the horrors you're committing. Right?

[TT Lee]

Yeah, well, to be clear, I'm not. I mean, because I know there's been times where I'm like, oh, that's interesting. He said that. You need to understand, for the listeners who don't know me, like, I'm very much like, oh, yeah, there's no justification. I, from the beginning to the end, like this slave owner. I'm already, like, not trying to be, like, justify it. But it is so interesting to me to dive into the details because it is like, why are we still here in some ways, years later, why are we still seeing people like this? I mean, not in the exact way, but how does it happen?

[Robert Evans]

You know, I think this is an important half, not even half, but this is an important part of the story, is not how they lived with themselves, but how they felt good about themselves for doing this.

[TT Lee]

And how they justify it in their own world that they're heroes and.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, but he is literally raping civilization into these people. That's how he thought about it in a very literal way, in a lot of, like. I mean, he wouldn't have called it rape, but, like, that's what he's doing, you know, and he sees this as private civilization.

[TT Lee]

He's boxing it off separately.

[Robert Evans]

And he also writes repeatedly about a lot of these people not wanting it. Right. He will write, basically, they weren't into it or they weren't like. Like, he will add that he takes notes on that sort of thing, too.

[TT Lee]

That's part of documentation. Does he describe the, like, sex he had with.

[Robert Evans]

Not in detail.

[TT Lee]

You know, women he dated? Well, no, no, like, that's not what I meant. I meant, did he describe the sex he had with women that were, like, dating differently than the woman he raped or. They're kind of all seen as, like, objects.

[Robert Evans]

We don't get any of that.

[TT Lee]

We don't know.

[Robert Evans]

We know because of things that. Little bits, side bits of his life that we get. We know that he got a woman who was roughly at his social level, pregnant when he was younger, and that the relationship didn't work out. Right. We know that he never writes about anything that could be termed an equivalent relationship between two people choosing to be like. Right. He writes about paying for sex. And, you know, I don't know about the ethics of where you want to put the ethics of sex work in 1700s London, but it's different than what he's doing in Jamaica. And he writes about sex crimes that he commits in Jamaica. Right. He does write there is an enslaved woman with whom he has a long relationship. That is obviously not a consensual relationship, but he writes about it as if it is. Because that's his interpretation. That's how he feels about it. We get a little of that, and it's still pretty brutal. Cause he's still, like. I mean, yeah, we'll talk, unfortunately, about too much of that. But In January of 1753, Thistlewood. Yeah, sorry. Takes on his most prestigious job yet. He gets made overseer of the large and profitable Egypt Plantation. This is still in Jamaica. It's just called Egypt. He's paid the princely sum of 60 pounds sterling a year for his labor. Immediately after he moves to the plantation, he commits another sex crime on another young enslaved woman named Flora Replicating his Sylvia Sylv word play by mentioning her within several lines of a passage discussing the plantation's flora. Right. And he writes that he paid her four bits after doing this. And this is something you get periodically. Some of these were jokes, like punchlines. No, it's a type of currency. It's two T's. Unfortunately. Well, I don't know. Probably. Yeah. I don't know where to take that. But it's a bit. You may have heard of this used especially in pirate literature. A bit is a. If you've heard of a piece of eight, like Spanish pieces of eight. Like that's a Spanish real, is a piece of eight. Or is like it's eight pieces of eight and you would like break off the little piece. That's like pirate money was a Spanish real.

[TT Lee]

I see.

[Robert Evans]

And a bit was equivalent to like 18 of a Spanish real. Right. Which is again the money in pirate movies as a general rule. So four bits that he gives this woman is half of a piece of eight. And depending on the source, that's equivalent from like 56, like $1,000 in modern money. Because it's really not easy to actually draw an equivalent based on the context. I think this is the equivalent of him giving her like five or ten dollars. Right.

[TT Lee]

But he's giving her. And that wasn't something he normally. I mean it's not standard practice.

[Robert Evans]

He did sometimes. He wasn't every time. And I don't think. I don't think most people might tip or something.

[TT Lee]

Cause he's paying.

[Robert Evans]

I think some of it is that maybe it makes him feel better. Like this is more like what he was doing with the sex workers in England than what it is, which is a sex crime. And I think some of it is that this just makes it easier for him. Right.

[TT Lee]

Like it was there world where there are. Where there were also enslaved people doing like sex work on the side.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Like that's a thing too. Is that like if you're Flora, maybe this is how you make money. Because there's not a lot of options open to you to do that. We really don't know how this conversation starts. We know that this is a sex crime just because of the slave and non free relationship. Right. But we don't know if she would have seen herself as like, well, this is a way for me to make money. Right. There's not a lot of money. Give me more money.

[TT Lee]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Or if he just assaulted her and then threw some money on the ground. Like both of the. Either of those could be the case. There's no way to know. All of them are. Yeah, and all of them are bad. It's just that we don't really know what was happening here. That said, it is worth. He starts after Flora. He picks out another African born enslaved field worker and he starts what he described as a relationship with her. Right. And he describes Ginny as consenting to the liaison. Obviously she didn't have choice here, but it's worth exploring what she would have seen as the benefits of a relationship like this. Because that does paint a bleaker story. And we get some hint as to that in Robertson's article because he writes that the two were together for nearly a year, but quote, she increasingly alienated his affections by heavy handed attempts to intervene when he assigned punishments. Bringing a knife to bed proved the final straw. So what I take from this is.

[TT Lee]

Wait, she brought him back to bed or he brought him back to bed?

[Robert Evans]

She did. She did. And Ginny. Ginny quoted. Again, I use the word choice loosely here. But one of the few choices available to her was if I get in this guy's good graces and pretend that I like him, the next time he tries to beat one of my friends, I can convince him to stop. Right?

[TT Lee]

Sure.

[Robert Evans]

And that's eventually toxic, manipulative, very fucked up.

[TT Lee]

Yeah. He's already interested in her. If she refuses, it's gonna be worse. So kind of put some.

[Robert Evans]

Maybe I can use this position to help some people. And Thistlewood gets annoyed at her. Her. Right. Because she's yelling at him when he beats people. And eventually she decides, I might need to kill this guy. Maybe I can't convince him to not be so much of it. And so she brings a knife to bed and he catches her. Right. And this is the end of whatever you want to call this very, very bleak thing. Right. But that does. It tells us a lot about how someone in Ginny's position may have thought about what was happening as like, well, maybe this is an opportunity to gain some control over my life and my friends lives. Right. And yeah.

[TT Lee]

What does he do when he finds the knife?

[Robert Evans]

He kicks her out, basically. I mean, she gets punished for this. She was almost certainly would have been like whipped for this. And there were talk about worse, but no, she's not.

[TT Lee]

She should have killed him. She should have just killed him.

[Robert Evans]

I don't think she got the chance.

[TT Lee]

No, she wasn't. I know.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah, it does seem like I know.

[TT Lee]

What she wanted to do because it's like, yeah, yeah. Even if she could she would get in trouble after that. So it's almost like a game.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, it would have been horrific.

[TT Lee]

It's a game. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

There's no good options for someone. It's like she's trying to take the best option, which is at least gaining some level of control. Trying to. Right. And it doesn't work out. And almost as soon as things end with Jenny, as a result of this, he picks a new victim partner, an enslaved woman named Fiba. She had been the last overseer's mistress, and she was his cook. When he starts at Egypt Plantation In December of 1753, they are physically together for the first time. Again, this is a sex crime, but it is framed in his life. And she is at least acceding to this image of it to him as a romantic relationship. And they will be together the rest of his life in this kind of grotesque parody of marriage. And again, I want to reiterate here at the end of this, that nothing we're talking about, we have all this detail about Thomas, and it's hideous, the things he did, and we barely scratched the surface. It's really important that I lay out here something that's gonna need to carry us through the rest of the episode, which is that there's no evidence Thomas Thistlewood was particularly bad for a slave owner or an overseer in Jamaica in this period of time or would have been considered bad in the Confederacy in North America. Right. Or in what became the Confederate States. There's no evidence that he was particularly violent. There's no evidence that he committed rape on a wider scale than his peers. They were all like this. He just kept a diary. Right. And so when we talk about.

[TT Lee]

You mean, like, if he was sort of an average of what people may have been acting like. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Because part of the thing is no one notices shit about this guy's diary until, like, I think it's the early 20th century, when this. Or it might have been after the US Civil War, when people started. First started looking into it. But people who owned slaves at the time in Jamaica didn't think anything of what he was writing. This was not extreme. This was not horrifying. This wasn't upsetting. This was a guy chronicling daily life in a normal way. Like, what he wrote about doing to these people was no different than him taking notes about the weather. That's very much how he's still sort.

[TT Lee]

Of a outcasty type of guy. Well, so that's interesting because it kind of. I feel like it draws, like, the people who end up Going into being slave owners probably all have that, like, already those fucked up red flags. But it sounded like early in his life people saw red flags and then all those people congregated and became these big.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it is interesting.

[TT Lee]

It's not like this is like, these are the good. I mean, I don't know, just. I bristled at that because it's still like, there is evidence that these people were seen as, like, not like, I don't want my daughter to marry someone like this.

[Robert Evans]

Well, that's what I'm saying. Within the context of people who were running plantations. He was not abnormal. Right.

[TT Lee]

Like, Wall street politics were like, they're all kind of fucked up.

[Robert Evans]

And yeah, those people are certainly all gonna be more fucked in the head than some random dude who, like, lives in London and works, like, at a counting house or lives a little further north and is working in, like, the first coal mines that open. Those guys are part of a slave state, but they're not thinking about what's. They would. Would probably be upset if you were to explain to them what Thomas Thistlewood's putting in his diary, because it's more upsetting, which isn't to say that they'd feel about it the way we do. But all of these slave societies are really brutal. Right. And it's why whenever you get abolition movements, a big thing, these abolition movements are doing both. The first one that sets up that gets slavery outlawed in the British Empire and the one in the United States. A big part of what abolitionists are doing is just taking, when they can, very normal accounts of daily life in these places where chattel slavery is the norm, and talking about them to people, because to people who live outside of that, it's fucked up and horrifying. Right. Even if those people are not what we would call have a modern attitude on race or anything like that, they're still horrified by a lot of what they're hearing about because it's really bad, you know? Yeah, I see. But, yeah, within that community, Thomas is a normal guy. Within the community of assholes, he's a normal asshole. I think it's the way I would come down on him. Right.

[TT Lee]

He's not an exceptional asshole.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, no, no. He just kind of is more of a nerd about being an asshole than most people. And that's part one. Teresa, how you feeling?

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Well.

[TT Lee]

I mean, however you expect. I feel like I'm not being very, like, lighthearted or funny, which.

[Robert Evans]

There's not much to be light hearted. Yeah.

[TT Lee]

I don't know if I'm doing okay in my role, but I'm learning a lot and definitely feeling sad for humanity. But yeah, I don't know, should I be, like, commenting more? I feel like there's, I guess trying to find a balance without being too jokey. A lot of fucked up, dense information.

[Robert Evans]

This is a real bad, real bleak one. There's not. People usually joke a lot.

[TT Lee]

I'm like, I'm not sure. I'm just going to listen and be like, oh, that's bad. But yeah, I don't want to. Like, yeah, I hope I'm doing okay.

[Robert Evans]

But yeah, you're fine. It's just bad stuff.

[TT Lee]

Yeah, yeah. Do you have anything you want to plug, Titi? You know, truly not much going on right now because I'm about to have a baby. But you know, my friend Zach Broussard just came out with a book and so I'll plug his book. It's kind of like a parody of those spooky stories, but it's a Christmas one. It's called Scary Stories to make you scared of Christmas. Zach Broussard. You get a free ebook online or you can buy it on Amazon. So check it out. He's a very funny comedian.

[Robert Evans]

Hell yeah. Check that out everybody. And yeah, we will be back. TT thank you so much for being on the show. We will talk to you again for a really depressing part two.

[TT Lee]

Can't wait. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Coolzone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behindthebaster.

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[TT Lee]

Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy. But I like it. Sure you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all. So farewell Oatmeal so long. Use strange soggy Break up with Blank.

[Robert Evans]

Grand breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon, egg and Cheese biscuit made with K tree eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese.

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On a buttery biscuit.

[Robert Evans]

AMPM Too much Good Stuff on the.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

Podcast Health Stuff we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night.

[TT Lee]

I'm Dr. Priyanka Wali, a double board certified physician.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

And I'm Hari Kondabolu, a comedian and someone who once googled Do I have scurvy at 3am and on our show we're talking about health in a different way. Like our episode where we look at.

[Robert Evans]

Diabetes in the United states.

[TT Lee]

I mean, 50% of Americans are pre diabetic.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

How preventable is type 2?

[TT Lee]

Extremely. Listen to Health Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Health Stuff Podcast Hosts]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[TT Lee]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.