Episode 652: The Du Pont Foxcatcher Murder Part I - The Merchants of Death

Summary

Last Podcast on the Left – Episode 652: The Du Pont Foxcatcher Murder Part I – The Merchants of Death
Released: February 13, 2026
Host: The Last Podcast Network — Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, Ed Larson

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Episode Overview

This episode launches a three-part series on the Du Pont family and the notorious Foxcatcher murder, setting the stage for the 1996 killing of Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz by John E. du Pont. The hosts—Marcus, Henry, and Ed—delve deep into the sordid, far-reaching history of the Du Pont dynasty, exploring their role as “Merchants of Death.” The episode focuses on how the Du Ponts amassed obscene wealth through war profiteering, environmental devastation, and ruthless control, drawing striking parallels to modern billionaire class scandals like the Epstein revelations. The hosts blend dark history, sharp social commentary, and their signature gallows humor, painting the Du Ponts as both architects and avatars of elite American corruption.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction & Framing

• Marcus reveals the Foxcatcher case evolved from a single episode into an in-depth, three-parter due to the immense historical context:

  “This is the DuPont Foxcatcher murder. On January 26, 1996, an Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler named Dave Schultz was murdered on a sprawling estate in Pennsylvania called Foxcatcher Farms... by the farm’s multi-millionaire owner and heir of the DuPont family named John E. du Pont.” (02:24)

• The Du Pont story is positioned as essential context—comparable to the Murdochs in the Southern US but on a national, even global level:

  “The history of the DuPont family, who were nicknamed the ‘merchants of death’ by journalists after World War I...is inextricably linked to the darkest sides of American history.” (03:58)

2. The Du Pont Legacy: “Merchants of Death”

• Du Pont provided munitions and chemical innovations from the War of 1812 through nuclear arms, leaded gasoline, Teflon (C8), and more.

• Marcus outlines their impact, often in chilling terms:

  “Perhaps worst of all, the DuPonts are responsible for Teflon and the proliferation of the Forever Chemical C8, which has been scientifically linked to several forms of cancer. And it currently sits in the bloodstreams of every single person listening to my voice right now. It is in you.” (07:11)

• The family profited from and knew the dangers of their products:

  “The DuPont family knew that leaded gasoline, Teflon and C8 were dangerous and deadly from the get go… They just don’t fucking care.” (08:15)

• The hosts stress the pattern of catastrophic consequences for public health, environmental harm, and societal violence, citing the role of leaded gasoline in crime waves and the ubiquity of Du Pont’s chemicals.

3. Plutocracy, Privilege, and Modern Parallels

• Marcus and Henry compare the Du Pont dynasty to today’s “Epstein class”—a global elite living beyond consequence:

  “All these people care about is the accumulation of wealth and power. Because when you have that much money, laws and morals cease to exist... it proves that there is no war but class war, motherfuckers.” (09:05)

• The lack of accountability, seen also in the recent Epstein file revelations, is cast as an old tradition, not a modern aberration.
• John E. du Pont, the murderer at the heart of the Foxcatcher story, is presented as the “dumbest” incarnation of this class, not the most evil:

  “John E. Dupont, the eventual subject of this series, he is an example of the dumbest that the rich and powerful do. The principles, however, are the same.” (12:00)

4. Power, Influence, and Inbreeding

• The discussion traces the Du Ponts’ rise from the French Revolution, emphasizing their early connections to power (through Thomas Jefferson) and quick accumulation of wealth and slaves upon arrival in America.

• The family’s penchant for marrying within the bloodline is called out repeatedly and humorously:

  “Like the monarchies of old, the Du Pont routinely married their first and second cousins to keep the company entirely within their family… They have been, in the strictest sense of the word, an inbred family since the 1830s…” (53:16)

• Comparisons are made between “old money” legitimacy vs. “nouveau riche” outsiders like Epstein, illustrating anxieties within billionaire culture about lineage and control.

5. The Machinery of American Empire

• The podcast recounts how Du Pont supplied gunpowder for westward expansion, indigenous genocide, and nearly all American conflicts since 1803—"that's 223 military conflicts, all of which made the DuPonts a lot of money.” (45:34)
• The company’s exploitative labor practices are recounted: deadly factory conditions, union-busting with private armies (including the Pinkertons), vote-rigging, and poverty wages.
• The hosts observe with gallows humor how Delaware is still owned by Du Pont:

  “11% of Delaware still works directly for the DuPonts. And when you include businesses that depend on DuPont, that number rises to 60%... People call it Uncle Doopy.” (22:27)

6. Environmental and Societal Fallout

• The toll on workers and the environment is recounted in horrifying detail, with historic examples of deadly exposures and physical destruction—rivers poisoned, cancers rampant, and catastrophic explosions routine.
• Marcus notes:

  “That’s one of thousands bodies of waters that the dupont family has rendered not only useless, but deadly.” (48:34)

7. Shaping (and Warping) American Society

• The hosts describe how Du Pont avoided the philanthropic “monuments” of other robber barons, deliberately staying in the background to maximize unchecked power.

• Efforts to influence American ideology, such as molding the Boy Scouts into a nationalistic, capitalist organization, are recounted:

  “Their goal for the Boy Scouts was not dissimilar from the Hitler Youth… every Boy Scout would swear an oath of unyielding loyalty… to the Boy Scouts’ employer.” (95:15)

• The show contextualizes anti-immigrant and anti-union propaganda as classic scapegoating, with direct lines to playbooks still in use today.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On systemic power:

  “They are the context for why things are the way they are. And… there is no better time than the present to lay out that context in full so we can start to figure out how to finally do something about it.” (16:09)

• On lineage:

  Henry: “It takes family… Vin Diesel knew.”
  Marcus: “Epstein did try making his own family… trying to make a baby factory… but it seems the cum didn’t take.” (14:47-15:16)

• On business and genocide:

  “The DuPonts were, in effect, the sponsors of indigenous genocide across the globe. Them and smallpox.” (57:43)

• On public manipulation:

  “To distract people from the real problem… The United States government used the playbook that the wealthy elites in charge are still using today…” (91:49)

• On industrial violence:

  “Throughout the century, almost 400 people died in Du Pont powder mills, mostly from explosions caused by static electricity.” (66:51)

• On attention-hungry billionaires:

  Henry: “Billionaires were never like this before. In my time growing up… It’s interesting to see how now all of these morons are addicted to the same thing we’re addicted to, which is attention. And you think a billionaire would be past it?” (82:38)

• On history’s monsters:

  “If you want to know how we got here with Epstein, it is essential to know the history of families like the DuPonts here in America.” (12:10)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:58 – Why the Du Ponts were nicknamed “Merchants of Death” and their relationship with America’s wars
• 07:11 – The dangers of Du Pont chemicals (leaded gasoline, Teflon, C8) and impact on everyday life
• 16:00 – Rigorous context: why understanding the Du Ponts matters for grasping elite power
• 22:27 – The Du Pont family’s control over Delaware and political influence (including Joe Biden)
• 29:27 – The family’s origins in the French Revolution and their arrival in America
• 45:34 – Du Pont’s role in every American war and its implications
• 48:34 – Environmental destruction: Du Pont’s legacy of ruined and deadly waterways
• 52:47 – Inbreeding and cousin marriages in the Du Pont dynasty
• 66:51 – Lethal working conditions in Du Pont factories
• 95:15 – The Du Ponts’ disturbing influence on the Boy Scouts and youth indoctrination
• 97:32 – Preview of next episode: Du Pont in the 1920s, the atomic bomb, Teflon, and Vietnam

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Tone & Presentation

The episode balances exhaustive research and detail with the wild irreverence that defines Last Podcast on the Left. The hosts’ comedic riffing ranges from the absurd (inbred French accents, “Uncle Doopy” jokes, speculative recipes for rat foie gras) to the incisively angry (“If you want to know how we got here with Epstein, it is essential...”). Despite their humor, there’s palpable outrage at the sheer scale of Du Pont-caused suffering, the family's untouchable status, and modern political resonance.

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Takeaways for New Listeners

• The Du Pont family exemplifies generational, system-level corruption and violence, with consequences that ripple through American history to present-day scandals.
• Their story is not just one of greed, but of how American elites have systematically avoided consequence—often at lethal costs to workers, societies, and the environment.
• The groundwork for Foxcatcher’s tragic murder is carefully laid by showing how John E. du Pont simply inherited the culture of casual evil, impunity, and delusion cultivated over two centuries.
• The series will continue to expose further monstrosities in the next episode, promising even more revelations about war, chemicals, and the dark engine of American progress.

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Next Time

Episode 653 will cover the Du Ponts through the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, World War II, atomic weapons, Teflon, and more—without losing track of the human and planetary costs behind every innovation and armament.

Transcript

[Henry Zebrowski]

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[Ed Larson]

Cost of optional benefits.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Plan features and taxes and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third line free via monthly bill credits. Credit stop if you cancel any lines. Qualifying credit required.

[Marcus Parks]

There's no place to escape to.

[Ed Larson]

This is the last on the left.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's when the cannibalism stop started. What was that? Remember that?

[Marcus Parks]

What?

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, I don't know what you're talking about.

[Marcus Parks]

Make me feel the way that you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Do is right aside.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not saying words.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's a lot of mumbling.

[Marcus Parks]

So are you telling the audience to get ready?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sure.

[Marcus Parks]

Get ready, here we come. It's last podcast on the left. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabrowski, the man who vaguely knows the words to songs, but not really.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I know a lot of words to songs. It really depends if they're playing on the radio while I'm listening to it. Yeah, and I said the word radio. I'm ancient. Fuck all of you.

[Marcus Parks]

He's 42. He's not ancient. And we have with us the eldest member of the last podcast family, Ed Larson.

[Ed Larson]

That's right. You can see the morning, but I can see the light. Ride, ride, ride. Let it ride.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. Correct. He'll always be correct. Bachman Turner Overdrive. Now that's a family. I would agree in letting them run the United States of America.

[Marcus Parks]

The Bachman Turners. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

They're Canadian, I believe.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Why are we talking about the men who run America? Well, today we are starting a series. It started off as a one parter, then it moved to a two parter and now it is a fucking three parter. This is the Dupont Foxcatcher murder. On January 26, 1996, an Olympic gold medal winning wrestler named Dave Schultz was murdered on a sprawling estate in Pennsylvania called Foxcatcher Farms. He was murdered by. By the farm's multi millionaire owner and heir of the dupont family named John E. Dupont.

[Ed Larson]

Now, was he dressed like a fox? Cuz that would have been his first mistake.

[Henry Zebrowski]

These would then be the the dupont furry murder. But it's not. Honestly, I wish they were.

[Marcus Parks]

John E. Dupont is indeed a fascinating and bizarre character worthy of an episode. But after looking into this story further, we decided that the story of John dupont would work as a nice companion pie to our series on Alec Murdoch. See, while Alec Murdoch was an example of what happens when privilege gets out of control within a family that controls just five counties in one of America's poorest states, the story of John E. Dupont is what happens when the same thing occurs within one of the families that controls America itself.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's kind of amazing it took that long.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that. Well, it took that long that we know of.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

The history of the dupont family, who were nicknamed the merchants of death by journalists after World War I because of the insane profits they made off of the war. That history is inextricably linked to the darkest sides of American history. It goes back to damn near the founding of our country. The dupont family's companies have provided munitions and explosives to the American government in every war in our country's history, save the revolution. From the gunpowder used in the War of 184412 to the enriched uranium used in the atomic bombs dropped in Japan.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So congratulations, that's the point you're trying to make. Okay. Oh, I thought you were saying they were really good at business.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, if this was a different podcast, that would have been like a praise.

[Marcus Parks]

From the gunpowder used in the War of 1812 to the enriched uranium used in the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, the dupont company truly is a titan of industry.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Good on you, dupont. I can't wait to be a billionaire myself. All I have to do is pull my dick that seems to be swollen inside of my sister out of her, and I'm certain I'm on my way to millions of dollars.

[Marcus Parks]

The duponts, however, are not just involved in war profiteering. As their 1935 slogan put it. The more public facing side of the dupont company provides, quote, better things for.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Better living through chemistry.

[Marcus Parks]

I would put it more like better things for better living through chemistry.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, that is how it went. Like, some guy read it like that. And like, we can't talk to the people like that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Can we rejudge that?

[Ed Larson]

Honestly, robot chick.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Barney, we need you to stop doing these commercials.

[Marcus Parks]

Better things for better living through chemistry.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Dupont Company. Vanilla flavored douche.

[Ed Larson]

I'm dressed in rayon. Oh, can I lick your frying pants?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Good work, Barney. Now that's a solid middle American.

[Marcus Parks]

The DuPont companies have provided this world with rayon, nylon, cellophane, and countless other products that are an everyday part of our lives. Look around you and you'll probably see a dozen things. The duponts had a hand in making or creating these things.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All of these things.

[Marcus Parks]

All dupont.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, maybe. They probably had something to do with the plastic and the metal. Yeah, right.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. At some point. Yeah, at some point in the creation or the manufacturing, the duponts have their hands in every fucking sector of the modern world.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's why I buy things that cross my fingers.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So doesn't count.

[Marcus Parks]

No Dupont, no Nestle. No Dupont, no NestlE. And. Yeah, and it's done. Well, on the dark side of that, though, the duponts were also responsible for the manufacture and widespread use of leaded gasoline. Lead gas pollution has all but been proved to have heavily contributed to the serial killer epidemic and the high crime rates of the late 20th century. These trends of violence have risen and fallen in every single country in the world that has used then banned leaded gasoline. It has been proven. But perhaps worst of all, the DuPonts are responsible for Teflon and the proliferation of the Forever Chemical C8, which has been scientifically linked to several forms of cancer. And it currently sits in the bloodstreams of every single person listening to my voice right now. It is in you. So, yes, Merchants of Death is indeed a fitting nickname for the dupont family.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. If you had cancer in Ohio, thank them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Anything that helps her one person show, you know. So you mean to tell me that DuPont itself is an amazing benefactor to the world of solo theater?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, the world of solo theater, definitely. For hospitals.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Dude. No, Oppenheimer.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No. And you know what that means. No, Barbenheimer. Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

We would have missed out on that cultural exchange.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And, man, it was worth it.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, the Dupont family knew that leaded gasoline, Teflon and C8 were dangerous and deadly from the get go, either because their workers lost their minds working with it as it was with leaded gasoline, or their scientists straight up told them this shit is bad, as they did with Teflon and C8. The Duponts just don't fucking care. The Duponts have also spent centuries pushing America into war after war for their own personal profit. And they have manipulated American politics for just as long, not based on what was best for America, but rather on what would maximize the dupont family's profits and power. As such, I would actually go so far as to say that the Duponts are a perfect example of the systemic endemic rot that has been exposed in the latest Epstein files. Because remember, even though we got millions of pages recently, it is still only a small percentage of what they have.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, that is just because they wanted to cover all the pictures of teenage corpses.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And honestly, that was what they said. They're super, so we're not. No one's into it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, no one wants to see that.

[Ed Larson]

You may get your stuff. Film after all.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Since then, for years, snuff films don't exist. But it turns out the government has all of them. Turns out there are 60,000 hours of them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You ever seen the movie Silver Linings Playbook? Yeah, that's what this is.

[Marcus Parks]

But like the Dupont family, the people exposed in those Epstein files do not care about red or blue, Democrat or Republican. They do not care about America, democracy, or the people who do all of the work that makes them their obscene piles of treasure. All these people care about is the accumulation of wealth and power. Because when you have that much money, laws and morals and cease to exist, it proves that there is no war. But class war, motherfuckers. And the latest Epstein drop is the starkest example we have ever seen of that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, the worst part of the Epstein files is just the flippant way in which they do business. And honestly, the lack of care. It makes me so upset. How? I mean, Peter Thiel, he's not thinking about us.

[Marcus Parks]

He's done. No.

[Ed Larson]

You believe that shit.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So I can't.

[Ed Larson]

He was my PayPal.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I looked at. Honestly. Honestly, I looked at the bro.

[Marcus Parks]

He's not even my pay acquaintance.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, the bromance between Joe Rogan. I've been shipping. Shipping them Peter Thiel, Joe Rogan for a long time.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And then the fact there have been no less than six people in the Epstein files that have been guests on Joe Rogan's podcast. That also.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, where's that booker at?

[Ed Larson]

Right, Guys, come on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Guys, come on. Send him over to lpn. We need some of that heat.

[Marcus Parks]

Actually, I think it might be up to eight now as they discover more and more names. Man.

[Ed Larson]

It's just. I got a feeling this is going to be like the series that makes me the most angry.

[Marcus Parks]

It's going to make you very angry.

[Ed Larson]

Like, at least with like serial killers there's like passion and artistry sometimes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sometimes there are lazy serial killers. I still believe that Nathaniel Bar Jonah is the laziest of the serial killers. Just cuz he used his butt yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Cuz he just sat on kids.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that's just.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, it's fun for a time, but after a while, you got to mix it up.

[Marcus Parks]

But to bring it back to the duponts, this is not a new phenomenon. See, the Epstein class, that's the class of people so rich that they exist in a world free of consequence. Those people have been using the rest of us as pawns and playthings for centuries. I would actually go so far as to say that the Duponts are not only a part of the Epstein class, but were in fact, one of the families that created the conditions that made Epstein possible. If you want to know how we got here with Epstein, it is essential. Essential to know the history of families like the duponts here in America. But while everything involved with Jeffrey Epstein is an example of the most evil that the rich and powerful do, John E. Dupont, the eventual subject of this series, he is an example of the dumbest that the rich and powerful do. The principles, however, are the same.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's what happens when cousins for many generations.

[Marcus Parks]

See, John dupont was extraordinarily wealthy, completely detached from the real world and out of his fucking mind in every way possible. But even though he was crazy and dangerous, he had no guardrails whatsoever because he was rich and he lived life without consequence. Instead of using his money to build a pedophile island, though, John Dupont used his wealth to turn his Pennsylvania estate into a compound dedicated to his personal obsession. John dupont, obsessed with athletics, and specifically competitive wrestling. Not professional, but competitive, like collegiate and Olympic wrestling. But even though it was not a sexual endeavor in any way whatsoever, John dupont truly loved competitive wrestling simply for what it was. He still destroyed lives, made people miserable, and eventually committed murder when his playthings began behaving in ways that John dupont did not want them to.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You hear that, Rob? Better be careful. One question.

[Marcus Parks]

What are you talking about? Our fucking. But we buckle under the least of our employees requests.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We learn, we learned wisely with Epstein. What I find interesting is what we're seeing here is again, the difference between the Murdochs, which is a B team, Illuminati.

[Marcus Parks]

So the Dupont, when you look at the Duponts, it's C or D, they're huge, right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Epstein, what he wanted to do deep in his emails is that you saw some of the things that he was talking about, was trying to connect back to old money. That was a thing that Epstein never got. He was talking with the Rothschilds. He tried to create some fake lore about his own family name connected to Adolf Hitler. All of this shit.

[Marcus Parks]

That's. That's the. God damn it. That's the most insane thing where he said that his family owned the boarding house, that Hitler stayed out in Austria, and that they were the ones who made Hitler hate Jews.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It was like a whole thing.

[Ed Larson]

Bragging.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's like a bragging thing within these worlds. And he was trying to create lore about himself because Epstein, no matter what he wanted, he was nouveau riche.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No matter how much money he made, no matter how many connections he made, he was trying to set this situation up for himself. And it just shows. It takes family.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Vin Diesel knew.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I mean, he did try. Epstein did try making his own family with, you know, what was it? The genetically engineered.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, yeah, he was trying to make like his come farm. Yeah, right. He had his come farm where he saved his farm and he was trying to make a baby, like, factory. There was all that stuff. But to be frank, I honestly think at this point he might have been infertile or something, because you'd think he'd have dozens and dozens of children.

[Marcus Parks]

You think so?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, he might, but we don't know. It seems that they come didn't take.

[Marcus Parks]

Seems like him. But as it was with Alec Murdoch. To show you how someone like John Dupont comes to exist in this world, we're going to cover the history of the Dupont family. Because if we're talking about pure death and suffering, the Duponts rank as probably the most evil family in American history. You've got to have one hell of a pedigree to take the spot as the most evil American family ever. So that's why we're going to spend not just one, but two entire episodes covering the absolutely horrific things that this family has done throughout the centuries before we even get to the Foxcatcher murder.

[Ed Larson]

Context, context, context, context.

[Marcus Parks]

If you want to talk context, the Duponts are the context.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They really put the cunt.

[Marcus Parks]

The duponts are pure context. They are the context for why things are the way they are. And considering how incredibly fucking angry we all feel about the Epstein files, there is no better time than the present to lay out that context in full so we can start to figure out how to finally do something about it. Plus, there's more than enough death, murder, mutilation, inbreeding, and explosions to give the Dupont story that old fashioned last podcast kick throughout.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, and also we got plenty. Don't worry, this year we have a lot of murder coming your way.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, there's plenty of. There's like five Murders. Oh, no, I mean like one on one murders in this episode, you know, once again.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, you know, under 10, it's not. It's. Was it under 10? It's a tragedy. Like over a million. It's a statistic.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

We were talking about Dupont's like an uncountable amount of deaths.

[Marcus Parks]

It really, like, once we start getting into it and we get through, by the end of the second episode, they may be responsible for more deaths than any family in world history.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, as the resident capitalists, I'll say thank you for the stock market. Dupont.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

My dad would always buy money by Dupont stock. He would always buy Dupont. It was the first thing he checked every time he opened the stock. Things. Yeah, but you know, we report.

[Marcus Parks]

But yeah, it worked out great for y'. All.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. I saw the generational wealth that you were handed down.

[Marcus Parks]

I do know that your father bought only the finest garbage bags when he was wrapping the menu to make you drop weight.

[Henry Zebrowski]

These are the scent locks.

[Ed Larson]

Hefty and a hefty.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, for our main source today, we used Dupont Dynasty behind the Nylon Curtain by Gerard Colby. It is incredibly long. It's like a thousand pages. But it is fantastic for anyone who wants maximum historical context.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You're gonna fucking joke on it. There's gonna be so much fucking context, your life's gonna fucking end. I'm gonna fucking wrap my balls in context around your fucking nose.

[Ed Larson]

Hell yeah, man, you all are gonna die.

[Marcus Parks]

You might be out of luck if you're a hard copy purist here, because the dupont family bought up most of the copies of Dupont Dynasty upon the book's publication, then convinced the publish print another edition despite the first printing selling out. It's funny how that happens. Dupont Dynasty, however, is easily available through another corporate behemoth, Amazon, and is readily available on Kindle for anyone who wants to know how we got to where we are today.

[Ed Larson]

Interesting. I wonder why they expose them like that. Because they're essentially just as evil.

[Marcus Parks]

Amazon.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, Amazon don't care.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, it's not. Yeah, well, yeah, Amazon doesn't. They really don't care about anything. Yeah, I mean, they do.

[Ed Larson]

They've made life so simple that everyone's just like, yeah, it. I want my package tomorrow.

[Marcus Parks]

They have seen that the. The phrase convenience is king truly does apply in America. You give Americans convenience, you can do anything you want.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sadly, they were more functional than US government during the pandemic. It's really sad.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now there are currently over 1500 living DuPonts in the United States.

[Ed Larson]

That's a lot of doo doo.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Thanks, Bernie. Barney, I gotta. You gotta stop coming into these ad rooms or the end of these meetings. Okay, you read copy, Barney.

[Ed Larson]

Dupont doy kind of spell I saw.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Save that gold for the recording studio.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, my Billy hurts.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Uhoh. Seems that he. He's saving the gold. But he shared a little brown.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, Barney gotten into the cotton candy again.

[Ed Larson]

Tastes so good.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I know, but it's not food. Barney.

[Ed Larson]

My nostrils hurt.

[Marcus Parks]

Why are those 1500 living Duponts? Just about 50 Duponts form the core. The core Duponts control $200 billion in assets. Those assets come from over 100 multi million dollar corporations and banks around the world. The DuPonts are therefore easily the richest and most powerful family on earth. With a direct personal wealth estimated in excess of. Of $15 billion. Although it's impossible to know for sure just how far their reach really extends. But because their tentacles are so long, the list of corporations they control is far too massive to list. They have controlling interests in companies that make chemicals, weapons, cars, aircraft and oil. They control insurance companies, computer companies, sports teams, foods, utilities, investments, law firms. They control General Motors, Boeing Aircraft, Remington Arms, Phillips Petroleum, Conoco Domino Sugar Farmers, Mutual Insur. Liberty Mutual Insurance, and the United Fruit Company. United Fruit, of course, counted CIA Director and MK Ultra instigator Alan Dulles as a board member for decades. And we are to this day still dealing with the consequences of what the CIA and DuPont's United Fruit did down in South America back in the 50s. Because God forbid we don't have constant fucking access to bananas.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Let's not come for bananas, okay? I like bananas. Bananas are a big part of Ed and I's like there's a lot of potassium.

[Ed Larson]

The banana.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm just saying the human cost of making sure that we can get a banana whenever we want is pretty high.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I agree. I still like the bananas. The bananas are not at fault. They were just being yellow.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And like everything you listed there, it doesn't seem like there's really that much conflict of interest.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, none. No, no, no, no, man.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, none whatsoever. We're going to be getting into United Fruit, the CIA and dupont. Dupont far more in the next episode. Yeah, United. Dupont had a controlling interest in United Fruit starting in the 20s. So they are responsible for. God. So much. God.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Bananas, bananas.

[Marcus Parks]

But back in America.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Horns of pain. Oh, bananas filled with blood.

[Ed Larson]

Bananas are great because, you know, there's so many things that you can eat and that then fuck. The jacket it was wearing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, like a Like a lady.

[Marcus Parks]

But back In America, the DuPonts also more or less own the state of Delaware.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Ugh.

[Ed Larson]

No wonder no one knows what they're doing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Honestly, at least it's a shitty state. That's the one of the bad ones.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a shitty state because of the DuPonts. 11% of Delaware still works directly for the DuPonts. And when you include businesses that depend on DuPont, that number rises to. To 60%. In fact, the DuPont company even has a cute nickname in Delaware. People call it Uncle Doopy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's Barney's father. I love Uncle Doopy.

[Ed Larson]

He's got a big penis.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Looks like God spent a lot of time on my ding dong. And a lot of time on my brain part.

[Ed Larson]

You look tired, Uncle Doopie. You want massage?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes, star with my ding dong. Bernie, get back in here. We gotta record another commercial.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, since Uncle Doopie has their hooks so deeply in Delaware, and I'm talking about the dupont Corporation here, that means that the duponts almost certainly had Joe Biden by the short hairs from the very start of his political career until the very end.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What are you talking about? How dare you?

[Marcus Parks]

How dare I talk about our beautiful center right president? Bad for those poor corporations again and again.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Let me be here. Clack. All right, let me hear. Click the clack. All right, let me clear. Click. I don't know dupont. All right, listen here. Let me be clear, all right? Joe Paul. I know John Pont. I know dupont. Never met the man.

[Ed Larson]

He's covered America.

[Marcus Parks]

If this tells you anything. Biden purchased a 10,000 square foot foot former Dupont mansion in what year? 1977. As such, I very much guarantee you that the Duponts had every reason to want Joe Biden in office for as long as possible, no matter what it cost the rest of us.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He didn't work hard enough.

[Ed Larson]

Hold on. You're telling me they weren't Bernie fans?

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's crazy.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, they weren't Bernie fans. No, no, not at all. And they definitely wanted Biden to keep keep rolling, rolling down the fucking halls of the White House for as long as possible. Keeping him in office and keeping him in the election far fucking longer than he should have been. Now, to show you how the DuPonts rose to power here in America, Hunter Biden's my precedent. Yeah. And you know what? Guess what? Not in the Epstein file.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, dude, fuck it. He just made his own stupid Ukraine money. Man.

[Ed Larson]

It's so funny that, like, all these, like, former sex workers are coming out and talking about, like, how nice he was does to them.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Very generous, very fun guy. Just a fun guy.

[Marcus Parks]

I did. I did see a funny tweet. So it was like, yeah, Hunter Biden, of course he's not in there. He liked crack and adult Latinas.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, like, that's.

[Marcus Parks]

That's what Hunter Biden liked. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Kept him honest.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it did fly from your grave.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sling is the live TV service that puts viewers in charge of their entertainment at an unmatched value. Streaming livestream, sports shows and movies starting at just 4.99. And everything works instantly across favorite devices. The best part, your Pretty Face is Going to Hell is on it. That is a show that I did a lot of time on and spent a lot of work being in it, and a lot of physical sweat, blood, sweat and tears. Hundreds of people worked on it and they have taken it from everywhere. But Sling. Sling is the only place that you can actually, actually watch my show. Your Pretty Face is going to hell on Adult Swim from back in the day, back when they allowed other shows to exist besides Rick and Morty. Go on Sling. I don't give a care what else you do on Sling. You download your Pretty Faces Going to Hell and you tell them it's the only show that matters.

[Ed Larson]

All right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's not going to do anything. It's not going to even bring it back. Just makes us all feel better. Choose and customize your channel lineup or pause and watch for free. Sling lets you do that, so visit sling.com to learn more. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to help your business stand out and succeed online. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place, from consultations to events and experiences. Showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. The best part about it is it can help you design a funnel in which you can very quickly record commercials so that you can get it done while you were desperately trying to get on break. That's the best part about Squarespace. It can really shorten up the time you spend doing things. You got to get in there. You got to get in there. Use Squarespace. Man, is it fast. It is absolutely incredible. You're going to love your experience at Squarespace. Head to squarespace.com left for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code left to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Let's talk about something Everyone wants peace of mind. That starts with knowing your home and the people you love are safe. And that's where Simplisafe comes in. The security system millions of Americans rely on to protect what matters most, their things. Traditional security systems only take action after someone has already broken in. It's too late, they've already taken your things. Simplisafe's active guard outdoor protection can help prevent break ins before they happen. And they take all of your things. There's no long term contacts or cancellation fees. A monitoring plan start affordably around a dollar a day. Yeah, sure, you could get rid of all of your things and you could live a life of total absence of fun or entertainment or luxury at all. And no one will want to ride. But who wants to live like that unless you're some kind of monk that nobody cares about and it's long forgotten. So you might want to use Simplisafe because we use it here at the studio because we have things that we want to protect. And Simplisafe, it protects things. And that's what you gotta get for your things and you shouldn't wait. Protect your home today and enjoy. 50% off a new SimpliSafe system with professional [e-mail] LPOTL that's simply safe.com LPOTL there's no safe like Simplisafe.

[Marcus Parks]

Now to show you how the Duponts rose to power here in America, we actually have to go all the way back to the French Revolution every time.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This is why it's hard to find context, man.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, I assure you, it really does all star here. Now we don't need to get super deep into the French Revolution today. That's a series for another time. For the purposes of this episode, all you need to know is that in 1780s France, the king had lost the support of the people because life was shit for most Frenchmen. See, King Louis had driven France into an economic depression through both the Seven Years War with England and the rampant corruption and decadence of the upper class, which all this was fantastic. If you were rich, if you lived in Versailles, it was amazing. But the majority of France did not live in Versailles. And so Enlightenment thinkers like Francis Bacon and our very own Benjamin Franklin.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I'll buy a woman.

[Marcus Parks]

They began spreading the idea that if you had one person like, say, a king, making decisions based only on what the king thought was best, then those decisions very often made the lives of most people pretty fucking horrible.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I also was reading about the bathing habits during the time period Period of the royals. I got into this, like, long thing about how truly putrid it was.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hanging out with the rich people in Versailles, because bathing was considered to be, like, you'd wear all this makeup and you'd wear all this stuff, and you. Bathing was considered, like, low class.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So they would just dump perfume on themselves over and over again and just reek. And they all were, like, melting from syphilis.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Fun.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Who didn't like France? John Adams. Hated it there.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, interesting.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, after America's successful revolution against King George in 1776, the French started their own revolution against their corrupt monarchy in 1789.

[Ed Larson]

You're welcome.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So that's the kind of. That we do around here. That's the kind of.

[Marcus Parks]

Although their revolution was. Was far bloodier and far more cruel than the American Revolution, I think in.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That way, it made a more lasting impression.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now, a lot of Frenchmen were living high on the hog as a result of the corrupt monarchic system that spurred the French Revolution. And while a lot of those people died during the chaos, one man in the French court who survived was Pierre Samuel Dupont. Now, Pierre Dupont had been born the common son of a watchmaker, but through pure ambition, he. He had wormed his way into the courts of both kings, Louis XV and the 16th, as. What else but a financial advisor.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What does that sound like? A guy with no skills who manages to charm his way into a scenario which control all of a rich guy's money.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yeah. Just because he knows the best way to make money and he knows the best way to fuck people. Over time. Yeah. In fact, Pierre Dupont's ideas had heavily influenced both the corrupt French courts and the economic policies that kept the rich rich and the poor poor in France. But outside of his capacity as a financial advisor, Pierre Dupont was also a part of the negotiating team that allied France with the colonies in America against their common enemy of England during the American Revolution. And so. And this is the most important part, after America gained independence, Pierre Dupont befriended the American who was acting as a diplomat to France in the 1780s. Pierre Dupont's new friend was none other than one of our most famous founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, ponytail boy.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's all about who you know.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm all. You know what? Also the old. The Epstein stuff really shows me. I'm so glad I was bad at networking. I hated networking so much. And this is all networking get you.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, you just said no in some very key situations.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. It really did help me.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I. I want to Say I, I'm proud of me.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I'm proud of you as well.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That I wasn either corrupted or fully sucked.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Pierre Dupont was, without a doubt, a monarchist, but his reasons were, of course, evil and cynical. See, the duponts always ran their companies and their company towns in America with a Dupont knows best attitude. In other words, they ruled everything like kings. Because the duponts were very much of the belief that the people on high should always tell the people down below what to do and the people down below should follow their orders without question.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, they believed it was the natural order of things.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I mean, it goes back to the divine right of kings, the divine right of gods, which, you know, today is borne out by the whole prosperity gospel that you see in evangelical Christians. I am rich because God wants me to be rich. And anything that I do with that money must therefore be godly. It's the same that kings used to say, I am king because God wants me to be king, therefore anything I do is the will of God. It's the exact same, same logic.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's kind of interesting because it used to be almost even kind of cute in a way that they'd hire a bunch of children to run the factories, but now it's just the humans are going to be plugged directly into some sort of box in which we're just going to use their flesh as a battery.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure.

[Henry Zebrowski]

For computers that are going to write songs and make comedy shows. Yeah. Like what we're about to do.

[Marcus Parks]

Where else are we going to get the water from? But on the capitalist side of things things, Pierre Dupont also knew exactly how to make money within the monarchy system that the French elites had built in their country over the centuries. And Pierre Dupont absolutely did not want that to end. He was against the French Revolution, of course, but as a result, Pierre Dupont was very nearly publicly guillotined during the French Revolution's so called Reign of Terror, in which tens of thousands of people had their heads lopped off to the delight of the cheering French crowd.

[Ed Larson]

Yay.

[Marcus Parks]

The Reign of Terror, however, ended before Dupont's head ended up in the body pits. Yeah, if there was one. If there was one that we could have just get him in there. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He would have been another guy. Another guy named like Ron Barn or somehow be some other guy doing the same exact shtick, unfortunately.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, Dupont was therefore released from prison. Pierre, however, still believed in the monarchy. So after he publicly opposed Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power in the 1790s, after the Revolution, Pierre was thrown back into Prison. And so after he was released, Pierre finally decided that France was no longer stable enough to make money. Or at least no longer stable enough to make money the way that he knew how to make money. In 1799, Pierre Dupont decided to try his luck in America, where his friend from the French court, Thomas Jefferson, was just about to be elected our third president.

[Ed Larson]

Man, fucking tj, dude, you. Everyone thinks he's the best.

[Marcus Parks]

Thomas Jefferson. Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

He gets, you know, I mean, like that's what they teach us anyway.

[Marcus Parks]

That's what they teach us. It's John Adams. Yeah, it's definitely John Adams.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's the good one.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Memorial. Oh, he already memorialized. The only way it could possibly, possibly be appropriate for John Adams is that he was played by Paul Giamatti. Yeah, that's the memorial.

[Marcus Parks]

That's the best memorial he could possibly have. Now, the opportunities in America that Dupont saw were soaked in blood. Blood from the very start. See, the French Revolution had really only kicked off after gun makers industrialized. The mass production of guns meant that anyone who had enough money could just buy an army. In fact, the industrialization of gun manufacturing was also what enabled the United States to free itself from its monarchy. And Thomas Jefferson had told Pierre Dupont that the future of America was indeed in guns.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's why in civ it's so important to keep your production up because obviously the gold, obviously you're going have a hard times building enough army from scratch if you're doing it unit by unit. But you can buy an army.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's true. That's very true. It's been a long time since you've had a civ reference.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's just, it comes back.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Cuz it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Right now I'm mostly reading Cabala and, and, and, and watching and reading Epstein files. Yeah, and that's how you got both sides of Judaism.

[Ed Larson]

That's how you got civilis.

[Marcus Parks]

Yep.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, cute.

[Marcus Parks]

See, there was a lot of land to plunder on the American continent, and therefore a lot of people to kill. This was going to require many, many guns. And it just so happened that one of Pierre Dupont's adult sons, Irene du Pont, he had become absolutely consumed with the science of gunpowder. Du Pont also saw that there was ample opportunity for the establishment of a new kind of class in America. A class that had all the power of a king, but none of the responsibilities nor the account that a king might feel from his subjects. Dupont saw that if a person had enough money in America, they could do and get away with just about anything. Because as we still see today, there have always been people at the bottom in this country willing to bow down to the people at the top for just the slightest chance that they might one day be allowed to join the elite.

[Ed Larson]

That's right. And if they don't like that, they still love to blow shit up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, that's true. There's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of fun stuff in here for Americans. Yeah. And, like, just have to remember, guys, they're not going to choose you. No, they. You know what I've learned as a human being, like, honestly, this little lesson is that I thought the way show business and the way life worked was that you'd be so good at something. When I was a little boy, I really thought that you get good at something and you work hard at it.

[Marcus Parks]

That's what they tell us.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And you get out there and you do everything you can to put yourself in the right position, blah, blah, blah. And that, of course, they can't wait to have a new disruptor in there. They can't wait to have the new person that's going to take over the kingdom with all of their innovative ideas. Yeah. No, they don't. Yeah, they don't like that. As a matter of fact, it makes them really angry. And as a matter of fact, it's what keeps you from hitting certain levels, because you can't. Because you're not going along the grain. You have to suck dick to get in the club.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And that's the thing is, like, people are like, henry, you're doing great. You got this huge deal. Everything's wonderful. You run this company. He doesn't want this. He wants to be an actor.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All I wanted to do with nothing. Do you have any idea how easy the life of an actor is?

[Ed Larson]

This is an accident.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Totally an accident. Exceptionally easy. Timothy Chamolet's life is all right. This is a much more difficult road. We like it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And so Pierre dupont, his wife and their two adult sons boarded a ship set for America in October of 1790. The trip was only supposed to take five weeks, but the captain of the ship, the American Eagle, got lost and sailed aimlessly around the Atlantic for three months.

[Ed Larson]

That's because eagles fly.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Why name your boat after a bird?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Name it after a fish or a whale.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's really about that goes under.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What's on the water, what stays on the water.

[Ed Larson]

How'd that get lost? Just like, left. Left.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Honestly, I mean, it happened a lot.

[Ed Larson]

Keep taking left. So we get there.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. It happened a lot. Ocean's big. There's no signposts. You know, like, he ended up, like, way down south. Like, they ended up just sailing around aimlessly, trying to put up, you know, like, distress flags. Supplies ran out. Dupont had to survive on a soup of boiled rats that they'd trapped in a hot tub. But this temporary boiled rat.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I bet you on some point, though, you boil enough rats, you do eventually get good at boiling rats.

[Marcus Parks]

You got to, you know.

[Ed Larson]

But Spetis is a. The guts.

[Marcus Parks]

Mm. What?

[Ed Larson]

The guts.

[Marcus Parks]

The rat guts.

[Ed Larson]

Rat guts.

[Marcus Parks]

We should be.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You should be. The rat guts you got to close out. The only thing is, like, their livers. If you can feed one rat enough fragrant foods and thick fats.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Then the liver will grow. Then it will be.

[Ed Larson]

Taste rat. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Foie grant.

[Ed Larson]

You're just.

[Marcus Parks]

You're just talking about making a rat in a foie gras. But this temporary dip into discomfort, this provided the Dupont with a creation myth that made them seem more common than they really were. Because they knew that in America, a success story is the most powerful story of all. Their official biography claims that they arrived in America with no money. But in reality, they landed on our shores with large wooden crates full of furniture, clothes, books. They had a quarter of a million francs in cash with millions more on the way.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Where most immigrants, that's how you know they're self made. Yeah. Because their parents had a lot of money.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Because they bought what they had.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

That's a lot of franks.

[Marcus Parks]

There's a lot of franks.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I mean, like, what do you even do with all those franks? Gotta get Harry or Bill or something, you know, just like, it's gotta get confusing. Sitting there were the rats named Frank.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He'll be the first against the wall.

[Marcus Parks]

Where most immigrants to America in the early 19th century were forced to live in muddy hovels for months or years before being able to afford somewhere better. The dupont simply bought a big comfy house in Bergens Point, New Jersey, and christened it Good Stay. You know, it's humble when it has a name. Pierre also, in short order, purchased several slaves for his wife. And Pierre and his sons also bought up large swaths of land so they could sell it off piece by piece at a huge markup to the actual struggling immigrants who just arrived in America self made.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Marcus, what anniversary is the sleep slave purchase?

[Marcus Parks]

I think that's 35 years. Oh, wow. Yeah, you got plenty of time.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We'll have to really just get the legislature really kicking them yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But while the duponts were always adept at immediately finding the best way to make money by over others with less power, the thing that made the duponts a dynasty in America was Irene Dupont's obsession with guns. Gunpowder. See, Irene saw that gunpowder in America was hard to get, expensive, and of poor quality. And say what you will about the duponts, but they were actually geniuses when it came to chemistry. And Irene had devised a process to make high quality, affordable gunpowder on American soil. So Irene scouted locations for the first DuPont powder mill and eventually settled on the Brandywine Creek in northern Delaware as the place where the dupont dynasty was would begin. And that's why the duponts own Delaware. At the same time that the duponts were establishing themselves in America, their friend Thomas Jefferson became the third president. And he had done so with an eye toward westward expansion. Now, since the duponts had left France, Napoleon Bonaparte had indeed taken over. And he decided that he needed the French soldiers who were defending all those American territories. He needed those soldiers back in Europe so he could kill the British. So Napoleon put the Louisiana territory up for sale. And when Thomas Jefferson needed an advisor to negotiate what would be the Louisiana Purchase, he called up none other than Pierre Dupont. Since the duponts were heavily involved in the Louisiana Purchase, which effectively doubled the size of our country overnight, Thomas Jefferson returned the favor by leading the United States government into a contract with the newly established DuPont Gunpowder Company. As a result of of that first deal with Thomas Jefferson, the duponts have had their hands in every single American war invasion and so called police action since 1803. For those counting, that's 223 military conflicts, all of which made the Duponts a lot of money.

[Ed Larson]

God, that's like almost one a year.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it's.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know what?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, we sometimes have a lot going on at once.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Congratulations again, guys. Yeah, really great work there. That's crazy.

[Marcus Parks]

Get in on the ground floor. I mean, early investor in America.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Dude, come on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No one gives a about my pogs. I have so many pogs still, man. I got my OJ Simpson's Is Innocent pod slammer. I've got my Michael Jackson Is Innocent pog. I've got my Woody Allen Is Innocent pog.

[Ed Larson]

It's amazing. We were talking about it all the way back in Pog time. Yeah, and just like we said earlier, you read that whole thing in a different inflection. They look like fucking heroes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Exactly. That's crazy deal.

[Marcus Parks]

They've been involved in every single American war invasion and police action since 1803. That's like, for those counting, that's 223 military conflicts and still going to this day. We're looking at you, Iran.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I feel like we're at the dupont Museum with Barney there, who's just been like. That's why we tried to make the brassieres.

[Ed Larson]

We made all sides of preserve pudding in the cafeteria.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Barney, not now. No pudding around a pudding, Barney. Don't worry. Here's some lead.

[Marcus Parks]

Watch out, Colombia. We're coming for you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hope you like grapes now.

[Marcus Parks]

The United States government began its contract with Dupont Gunpowder with an order of 22,000 pounds. And that amount only increased with every year. Manufacturing gunpowder is, of course, incredibly dangerous. So a lot of men died fulfilling these orders. These guys worked in conditions that would become basically the dupont style. These men were tasked with doing the job as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible, and to hell with any hazards that might come as a result. Gunpowder manufacturing, for example, was so dangerous that workers would stand behind stone walls when it came time to mix all the ingredients together. Wall were supposed to shield the men because explosions occurred so often at this step in the process.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, you mean to tell me this whole situation is completely safe? My one question is, why is there so much rubble? Do they work?

[Marcus Parks]

Explosions were actually so common that powder mills were built with only three walls. This enabled the brunt of the frequent accidental explosions to blow go outside into the river instead of towards the workers, which of course, also polluted the out of the river.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, that's when you're laying in bed with your wife, when you fart outside the blanket. That's what I do, man. Send it to the closet.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, man. We definitely know as like a Jersey family, that the dupont family ruined the Raritan Bay in New Jersey to the point where it's like the largest, like 2 billion dollar settlement and it's still up to this day from everything that they built for World War II.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But hey, those fish got all that money.

[Marcus Parks]

Ye. And that's one of thousands bodies of waters that the dupont family has rendered not only useless, but deadly. Yeah. In the United States.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm still thinking about last week, about how we almost blew up half of Alaska just using hydrogen. Like, that was floated and people considered it, like, it was like, long discussions about it.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm sure There was a DuPont executive in the room when that discussion was happening.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I was like, you know, we could blow it up. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

They're all like, great idea.

[Ed Larson]

Even I who know that it's bad is like, but how. How big would it Be. Can we film it?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'd be curious.

[Marcus Parks]

Hypothetical. Hypothetical. But even with this practice of having three walls so the explosion would go outside, entire mills would sometimes explode. In just one year in the 1800s, five Dupont gunpowder mills exploded, killing 36 people. Only eight of those 36 dead were identified viable because the rest of the victims have been reduced to little more than bloody chunks of flesh and shattered bone. Cool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The idea of just like, you know, this is the worst part of getting off of work. And the only way you can get home is in a bucket, man.

[Ed Larson]

It would be a great way to like, just escape though life, you know, just like, ah, he was in the Dupont explosion.

[Marcus Parks]

No, you call it pulling a 911. Now, when the War of 1812 kicked off against the British, the United States government increased their gunpowder order with the duponts to half a million pounds per year, which meant that Irene dupont had to build even more powder mills to keep up with the demand. But even though profits were skyrocketing, the duponts still wanted more. They wanted to keep taxes on the company and wages paid to their employees as low as possible. So they hired an actual paramilitary force to, quote, unquote, bribe people into voting for legislation that favored those policies. Basically, the dupont would have their private army guard the bank where the workers got paid. And in exchange for their compliance and voting the way the duponts wanted, the workers were, let's say, highly encouraged to take hard liquor or beer if they drank, if they were Methodist, or gunpowder if they didn't, if they were Quaker. Wow. That is.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's like, not a lot.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Like, it's not a lot for it, but it's still.

[Ed Larson]

People really like that stuff to this day.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, I get it.

[Marcus Parks]

They do. But it's also like, they are highly. It's that thing, like, you know, it's like Serpico, like, oh, you're not taking the money. What? What's wrong with you? Why are you not taking the money?

[Ed Larson]

What's wrong with taking the money?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, you're being forced to do it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. You were being fought like they. They're bribing, quote, unquote, bribing. But you're being forced to take it. Now there were enough people.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it's because they're fucking Mafia.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now there were enough people. They're more than a mafia. They are a literal army.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, the mafia. They would destroy the mafia.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Again, congrats.

[Marcus Parks]

Now there were enough people in Delaware who didn't work for the duponts, where an uproar rose over this Vote rigging. Delaware therefore passed a state law prohibiting the raising of private armies by employers. They actually had to make that a law. But the duponts were once to step ahead instead of fighting the law. Irina Dupont's brother, Victor Dupont, he got elected as a state representative and later a senator. With the DuPont in Congress, they enacted legislation that basically guaranteed DuPont rule over Delaware in perpetuity. Still in. Still rule it to this day.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Honestly, you can keep it.

[Ed Larson]

I was thinking the same thing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Bad.

[Marcus Parks]

Because of that. Well, I'm going to get into it later.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Joking. I'm joking about Delaware.

[Ed Larson]

I'm sorry.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Certain. It's fine.

[Ed Larson]

It's the first state.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, that's right. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

The first one to say yay. Now, the duponts were rigging the system in America, just as Pierre had rigged it with the monarchy in France. But the duponts thought of themselves as royalty in more ways than one. See, in 1833, Irene Dupont's daughter married the son of Irene Dupont's brother.

[Ed Larson]

Wait a second.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, no, no, no, don't interrupt. Don't interrupt. The French.

[Marcus Parks]

The newlyweds were, of course, first cousins. And this would become a common practice amongst the Dupont.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Of course, nothing nobody kisses like my Aunt Becky. And honestly, thank God, her downstairs lips made her upstairs lips once again with my cousin Becky.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, like the monarchies of old, the Dupont routinely married their first and second cousins to keep the couple company entirely within their family.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, as Garthen has so succinctly put it in Preacher Son of God or Son of Man, you can't your sister and expect much good to come of it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it makes for horrible movies.

[Marcus Parks]

But while the duponts weren't necessarily sister, as far as we know, they have been, in the strictest sense of the word, an inbred family since the 1830s. And that's bound to create a few weird here and there as they continue to out more and more Dupont Paris sites.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You. You can say it's like legal to marry your first cousin and whatever state. I want to say it's like, how many. It's like three or four states or whatever. You can marry legally marry your.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a fair amount. I mean, we know, you know, everyone knows Holden McNeely.

[Henry Zebrowski]

His grandparents.

[Marcus Parks]

His grandparents were first cousins.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah, but that's the thing.

[Marcus Parks]

I think they were just first cousins once. I think if you just do it once, you just get a Holden, but if you keep doing it over and over and over again, you get a John Dupont.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So you think it was once? Yeah, yeah. You think it was once, you know, 19 states. Yeah. And Washington, D.C. oh, really?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Oh, so, yeah, that's our capital. That's fun to do.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It just feels like it's too close.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

There's all kinds of rules that should be. That should be in existence that aren't.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Why do we need this rule now?

[Marcus Parks]

The duponts acquired enough wealth early on in America's history, where the boom and bust cycles that ruined the lives of regular Americans, they never changed, touched the duponts in any meaningful way. As the unstable American economy of the 1800s took down tens of thousands of other businesses, the DuPonts never faltered and in fact, scooped up as many of these businesses as they could whenever the market took a downturn. Mostly, though, the duponts thrived because providing munitions for American wars always has been and always will be very good business. Settlers traveling west, for example, back in the 1800s, they needed a lot of gunpowder to fight and kill. Kill any tribe that stood in their way.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There were a lot.

[Marcus Parks]

A lot of tribes out there to kill.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, man, it was pain in the ass, too. I can't believe that they just sat there where they lived. Move. I said move. Look at my hat. I could see your balls. You don't deserve a house.

[Marcus Parks]

American armies along the Canadian and Mexican. Mexican borders, they also, they always needed plenty of gunpowder reserves at the ready. Additionally, the United States government, they owed a debt to the duponts for whatever lands they obtained for whatever may have happened on those Canadian and Mexican borders. Just as Pierre Dupont had played a part in the Louisiana purchase, the DuPonts also provided gunpowder for the Mexican American War, which resulted in the acquisitions of Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and where we sit currently, California.

[Ed Larson]

Wow, that's another one of those sentences. You want to read it again?

[Marcus Parks]

Just as Pierre Dupont had played a part of the Louisiana purchase, the DuPonts also provided gunpowder for the Mexican American War, which resulted in the acquisitions of Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and that beautiful land in which we currently sit, California, usa.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Thank you for the diapers.

[Marcus Parks]

The duponts, however, were not selling gunpowder to America because they believed in the American experiment. The DuPonts were pure business and therefore sold gunpowder to whoever wanted it, just so long as it didn't conflict with their biggest contract, the one with America. For example, even after Pierre Dupont had been jailed in France for speaking out against Napoleon Bonaparte, Pierre still sold £40,000 of gunpowder to Napoleon Bonaparte to aid Napoleon's conquest of Europe.

[Ed Larson]

Where are you going? To get it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Checks clear.

[Marcus Parks]

By the 1830s, the Duponts were also exporting 1.2 million pounds of gunpowder per year to South America and the West Indies in service of slaughtering those indigenous populations as well. Meaning that the duponts were, in effect, the sponsors of indigenous gifts, genocide across the globe. Them in smallpox and.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, but again, remember, if the indigenous people had the scratch, they could have bought it, too.

[Ed Larson]

That's right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I think that's what we're talking about here, is if they really. They wanted to get in.

[Marcus Parks]

So you're talking about the market forces. Yeah, market forces.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You see, if they really wanted to.

[Ed Larson]

Get in there, they could have bought it. Doing it the right way. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

The American way. And also the French way. And the market way.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And you get every way. This is the western way. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, it may also come as no surprise that the duponts were pro slavery, or as they put it, they weren't pro slavery. They were against abolition.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, no reason to be negative.

[Ed Larson]

We don't like to make people upset. The south really likes to blow shit up, and they buy a lot of bombs from us. So please.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know what? I also kind of noticed that a lot of the north had slaves anyway, so we didn't really, you know, in the end, we thought you guys didn't really care. We don't really care.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I'm in Delaware. I had slaves.

[Marcus Parks]

But when the American Civil War broke out, the duponts sided with the Union because the United States of America had always been the dupont's best customer.

[Ed Larson]

Did they sell gunpowder to the South?

[Marcus Parks]

No, not at all. In fact, the way that the dupont set up pricing, and because the dupont had become the biggest supplier of gunpowder in America, because they had been kind of, like, near a monopoly, they charged The United States $0.33 per pound for gunpowder, whereas the Confederacy had no access to DuPont gunpowder. And the DuPont did make the best gunpowder around. So the Confederacy had to pay up to $3 per pound for their gunpowder, which, of course, greatly contributed to the Confederacy's defeat. And it shows you exactly how corporations can simply use prices to complete. To shape the world to fit their own wants and desires. It's how it all works.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And in one hand, it's like, yeah, good, I'm got the north one. But it's also interesting the fact that they. It's like the. The very first, like, inner war we fought was also about, like, resources, and those with the most resources won.

[Ed Larson]

So you hear that, all you Confederate sympathizers, It's dupont's fault that you lost.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You should take your anger anti corporation.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it was dupont who did it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, they hate your flag.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah dude, go throw some cellophone. Go honestly, wrap your Confederate flag in some cell phone cellophane, bring it down to the local state house and just start stabbing elected officials with it. That's what I recommend you do.

[Marcus Parks]

Or I would say go through your house and find every single product that has Dupont's hand in it. You take it out to the front yard and you burn it. And then you go back into your, well, your empty lot because your house is going to have to be burned down as well.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

So yeah, go for it flies from your.

[Henry Zebrowski]

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[Ed Larson]

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[Henry Zebrowski]

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[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know what a time it is? It's time to take your wardrobe and kick it up a notch. You know, you want to look good, you want to look really good, you got to go to Quint's. That's right. Ooh, you love your Quince. I went to Quints recently. Love going to Quince. Had a good time over there. And you know what? I bought? I did something crazy. I did something I didn't even know was possible. I bought a Legend Vineyard exclusive Napa Red Blend, 2022 very expensive bottle of wine. Cheaper on Quince. It's very nice. I had to show my ID when it came to to the door, but hey, I opened it up and oh, baby, it worked. So go to Quince. Let them take care of you in more ways than one. You don't just have to look pretty. You can feel pretty too, when you slam that wine down your throat. So go to Quint's. Enjoy your life. Be a better person. You know what else I did? I did Julie a favor and I bought her a 100% organic cotton waffle cropped sweater tank because I love looking at her arms and I love looking at her neck. And now Quince helps me do that. Thank you, Quince. I really appreciate you refresh your wardrobe with quints. Go to quints.com last for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's q-u I n c e.com last free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints date.com last a gunpowder was merely.

[Marcus Parks]

Where things started for the Dupont family. In the late 1860s, an enterprising member of the family named Lamotte Dupont became very interested in a new invention called dynamite. Lamont, however, was one of the few duponts to become a victim of his own system. See, lamotte had to contend with the head Dupont at the time, Henry Dupont. And Henry was notoriously stubborn. He thought the dynamite was too new. Fangled. Why use dynamite when gunpowder can do.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The job just as well? Because they're saying dynamite bigger.

[Marcus Parks]

And so Lamont went behind Henry Dupont's back and began making dynamite in his own factory in New Jersey. But since lamotte Dupont was so hell bent on getting dynamite off the ground, he was was present and involved when his New Jersey plant blew the up. One day in 1884, Lamott was working on his chemical mixture when he accidentally allowed 2,000 pounds of nitroglycerin to boil overnight. Rookie mistake.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sometimes he's like, I just cut it so close.

[Marcus Parks]

This caused an unstoppable chain reaction. And even though Lamott tried to dilute the mixture himself, it was too late to stop the inevitable explosion. The vat blew up, taking the entire factory down with it. And since the mill was built into the side of a hill, tons of earth came crashing down on the Mott, breaking his neck instantly and badly mutilating his corpse.

[Ed Larson]

That's a lot of doodoo.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You're right, you're right, you're right.

[Ed Larson]

Barney.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Let's get you back over here. Steve, stop looking at all the tragedy. Stop eating all the rubble I'm sucking out of God. I like that. Now play with that funny little, little mechanism there.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, Lamont Dupont was nowhere near the only person killed in a Dupont munitions factory in the 1800s. Throughout the century, almost 400 people died in Dupont powder mills, mostly from explosions caused by static electric electricity. See, safety regulations slow down production. We all know this. So the DuPont lobbied for laws that prevented unionizing and therefore prevented regulation on the argument that unions. It impeded the DuPont's free speech. Yeah, First Amendment.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Think about the, the. The concept of a corporation's free speech.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, man. All they want to say is that. Oh my.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's it, buddy. Let their freak flag fly, man.

[Marcus Parks]

DuPont workers, however, pushed forward. But when they began striking in the 1890s, Dupont hired private and federal armies, police, and who else but the infamous Pinkerton Detective Agency to end these strikes with swift and brutal violence. At the same time, though, the dupont family was going through a fair amount of personal dramas. Think about how hard a time they're having.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They're distracted. There's so much.

[Ed Larson]

What's going on when you. You cousin.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, I guess it's cuz you got. I mean, honestly, you spend so much time together having. Growing up together.

[Ed Larson]

I love my Miss all my cousin.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cuddles you just like my uncle.

[Marcus Parks]

I know your daddy's knees are broken by the Dupont jack boots, but this other dupont's having a fight with his brother.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I actually really feel a lot for them.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, in 1892, a Dupont named Louis shot himself in the head with a revolver because he was upset that his brother was marry a woman that Louis loved. Not a cousin, by the way.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Also, guess what? Major ick, guys.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Girls don't care, people. Girls are, like, super not impressed if you blow your brains out in front of them.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And like, by the way, the head's, like, the worst place to shoot yourself. You, like, almost always die.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

For being a.

[Marcus Parks]

Totally true. But speaking of cousins, a bit of a Dupont family feud swelled when another Dupont man declined the option of marrying one of his cousins in favor of a poor Irish barber. Made quite scandalous. The scandals only continued when a Kentucky Dupont named Alfred the wealthiest man in Louisville. He was shot and killed by a disgruntled sex worker after Alfred got the sex worker pregnant and tried abandoning the poor woman. She wasn't having it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Gunpowder barons. They're just like us. It's all right.

[Marcus Parks]

I get it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's a lot of pressure. You need to have your. Was. It was. It was a gaml. What's it called when you got that when you had the lady on the side who's it. When. The G. Mistress. No, no, the guma.

[Ed Larson]

The guma.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Are you talking Italian now?

[Ed Larson]

Sopranos. Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, well, it's like. It's a mob thing.

[Ed Larson]

The guma.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The guma sucks your dick.

[Marcus Parks]

Your gun Mo.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, no, it's my. That's my. That's my official girlfriend. Because your wife, she can't do that. She kisses my kids with that mouth.

[Ed Larson]

You can't go around.

[Marcus Parks]

You got to make sure you got your guma. Yeah, well, this guy's guma shot and killed him.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now, when this happens, sometimes die.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, when the so called American century began in 1900, the Duponts found a way to be at the forefront of just about every great project for the next 100 years. Wow. As it turned out, dynamite had been a pretty good investment. The Panama Canal, one of the first massive works of the century, was built with Dupont dynamite. You know how much dynamite you need to blast hole that big? It's a lot.

[Ed Larson]

Okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, dude, I was saying, like, LPM wanted to. I think we were going to invest in a fusion tank.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure. Oh, cold fusion. Cold fusion.

[Ed Larson]

That's cool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We're going to have it here in the office.

[Ed Larson]

I want to get a black hole machine.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. Thank you. Yes. Next.

[Marcus Parks]

Sure. Yeah. Write a proposal. We'll look into it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Hell yeah. That's so great.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's my big's called the universe Gaper.

[Ed Larson]

I like working here.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I want to end the world.

[Marcus Parks]

However, there would be nothing more profitable for the DuPonts thus far than the five years of firestorms and mass murder. That was World War I. Oh, great. For them, 15 to 22 million people would be dead by the end of the war. But in the United States, the war would also create 20,000 new millionaires.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's amazing. Oh, that's the same.

[Marcus Parks]

It is pretty. I mean, if you. If you're looking at the map, how they look at it. Yes. If you. If human lives equal capital, then net positive for America. And many of those millionaires would, of course, be duponts. Now, the dupont had switched to smokeless gum powder by this point, along with everyone else. But if you'll remember, the key ingredient in smokeless powder was industrial alcohol made from fucking molasses.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Do you remember?

[Marcus Parks]

That means that the duponts were possibly inadvertently connected to the great molasses flood of 1919, because nobody in America made more smokeless gunpowder during World War I than the Dupont Company.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, sure. So it didn't. Fucking not.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, like, it definitely didn't help.

[Ed Larson]

So they. Were they, like, responsible for that, too? Was that their company?

[Marcus Parks]

It was not their company. I did check on it, actually. It was one of their competitors. But they were.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They were driving the market.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, they were driving. They were driving the market because that's the thing, is that these competitors were needing to make as much as possible to try to compete with the duponts because the duponts kept their prices so low. It's. I mean, it's the same thing that, like Walmart does today, you keep the prices incredibly low to drive out all the local competitors. So, yeah, it does. When you have these companies like this, it does not necessarily force, because these men, of course, aren't forced to do anything. Anything. But they feel like they have to cut corners in order to get more profit so they can, you know, follow the big dogs. It's. But it is. I think the point is, it is dupont who is setting the tone.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

And they are all following dupont's lead.

[Ed Larson]

And I gotta. You know, obviously, if you don't know the answer to this, we'll just cut it out. But where did Germany get their gunpowder? Did they get it from Dupont in World War I?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, they did not get it from Dupont. No, no, no. They. There was a little bit of. There was a bit of sneakiness with Germany in, in World War I. With the, with. With DuPont. But the, the real sneakiness is going to come with Germany in World War II.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yes. They were real sneaky then.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So we're super sneaky.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, we'll. We'll get into the sneakiness of the duponts and the Nazis. On the next episode.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, they created their own thing called the Haber Bosch process. They had their own way of. Of innovating Gunpowder.

[Marcus Parks]

Cool.

[Ed Larson]

Good for them.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now, the dupont sold millions of pounds of gunpowder to the British alone over the course of World War I. What began as 21 million pounds in 1914 for the British grew to an order of 455 million pounds just four years later. At the same time, though, the Duponts were also behind a propaganda campaign to get the United States involved in the Great War so that the duponts could get their best customer in the game. The big Dupont. In the early 20th century, Coleman Dupont routinely published scathing attacks on any government official who was anti war by using an organization called the National Security League. The NSL called for increased military service and an increased arsenal, and they bought politicians to echo that message. There was even a Dupont senator in Congress who spent all of his time steering other senators towards entering the war, which we did in April of 1917. Dupont, of course, provided the munitions, and that senator retired from Congress that same year.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, very smart.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, man. Job done, man.

[Ed Larson]

It's so many times. It's like my first thought is just like, man, these guys really fucking awesome. And then you're like, oh, wait a second. This is really bad.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, of course. You know what that is, Eddie, You're a true American. Yeah, true fucking American. I do the same thing. We have to constantly de. We have to, like, un. Like we're. We're brainwashed. Yeah, we're brainwashed.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, it's a. You know, it's respecting the game. You know, it's like, where. Where you're like, wow. Like, holy. That's clever.

[Ed Larson]

It's very clever.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What also just shows if you get in early, you know, you can do a lot. Speaking of, it's our 15 year anniversary of doing podcasting. Yeah. And it's amazing how low the bar could be if. If you just get there first.

[Ed Larson]

Yep.

[Marcus Parks]

Actually, in June, it will be. June is my 25th anniversary in broadcasting. Oh, wow.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I've been in this business for 25 years.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Should I give you, like, an ashtray or something?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, give me a watch. How's about that? Let's see what we can do.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Let's see what we can dig up.

[Ed Larson]

I'll look at you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, please look at me now. The dupont's daughter.

[Ed Larson]

Not just.

[Marcus Parks]

Man, look at me, look at me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Look at me now.

[Marcus Parks]

The DuPont did not just manufacture explosives for the Allied forces. Although the Dupont company did make 40% of all the explosives used by the Allies throughout the war. Remember that? The duponts were chemists, so they also manufactured deadly poison gases for use in the battlefields. They made chlorine gas. They made the dreaded mustard gas. They were not the only people who made this stuff, but they definitely made it and sold it, and it was used on the battlefield. Now, the point of both of these gases is that they burn and blind the enemy. While one gas mostly burned internally, while the other mostly burned externally, it's hard to say which one was actually worse. And I actually kind of want to ask the two of you, like, out of the. After I give you all of what these do, tell me which one you want.

[Ed Larson]

All right, cool.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Okay. I'm leaning towards. Towards mustard love pretzels. I mean, my first response would be like, mustard or chlorine? I'm like, give me a mustard.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, dude. Is it honey mustard?

[Marcus Parks]

Well, it's. It's actually more sulfur. It's a mustard because sulfur's yellow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, I thought it was farts.

[Marcus Parks]

But.

[Ed Larson]

I like a good sulfur bath. We'll talk about it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, he did one nicely.

[Marcus Parks]

Chlorine gas, for example, that causes internal. Internal burns to the esophagus and stomach. When inhaled, it causes debilitating pain and frequently blood vomit. Mustard gas, meanwhile.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I would assume it would be vomit. Vomiting blood, but it's just called blood vomit.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, I mean, that's what I call it.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Are you vomiting blood? Because to me, if you're vomiting, it's vomit, but if it's blood, it's blood vomit.

[Marcus Parks]

It is blood vomit. Yeah, it's specifically blood vomit. And they are vomiting blood because of what the chlorine gas is doing to their inside.

[Ed Larson]

So there's no food in there. It's just blood.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just. Just blood. And it's. And it's your own blood. It's not blood that you, like, drank.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Earlier, you know, not anymore.

[Ed Larson]

I'm sorry that I didn't say this again, but.

[Marcus Parks]

Cool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Exactly. He's getting it.

[Marcus Parks]

Mustard gas, meanwhile, could cause third degree chemical burns all over the body, which often destroyed all the layers of the skin down to the deep tissue. But mustard gas was not a oneand done within 2 to 48 hours of exposure. Large, painful blisters filled with fluid would form on the skin. And those blisters. Blisters would only be made worse when the victim would sweat. So anywhere that you sweat, armpits, you know, anything like that. That's where the blisters would be the most painful.

[Ed Larson]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

And when the blisters burst open, they created open wounds prone to infection, scarring, and eventually skin cancer. Both gases could also temporarily or permanently blind anyone exposed. And both were happily manufactured by the duponts.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hearing all that information. Mustard gas.

[Marcus Parks]

You going for mustard?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, only because chlorine. I feel like the interior is worse.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, it is worse. That's definitely worse. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

With mustard gas, I could still smoke weed and eat hot dogs.

[Marcus Parks]

You might still have some breathing problems, because it's not like breathing mustard gas was, like, great for you, but it would you up on the inside as bad as chlorine gas would. And chlorine gas also wasn't great for the skin, but it wouldn't you up as bad on the outside as mustard gas.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Dead.

[Ed Larson]

You know, who needs skin?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that is true.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, man skin for me. I like muscle and grit.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it's just holding your muscles back.

[Marcus Parks]

Just give me a cool jacket and I'm fine.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, dude, that'd be. Honestly, that'd be kind of cool. You skinless and an awesome leather jacket.

[Marcus Parks]

Hi, everybody. How you doing? Now, by the end of the war, the Dupont had increased their workforce from 800 men to 85,000 men. And their profits were no less than $247 million in 1919 money. That's roughly four and a half billion in today's currency. And that's just World War I. The Duponts, however, were clever enough to spread this wealth amongst many Duponts. After quite a few Duponts became millionaires, they began building mansions with 150 rooms on lavish estates furnished with decadent antiques. This is. Of course, we'll be getting into that with the Foxcatcher murders on. On part three. This is one of those estates.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cool.

[Marcus Parks]

It also seems like the duponts never quite forgot the French Revolution because some of their estates were built surrounded by walls that had shards of broken yet attractive glass poured into the wet concrete. This served as a sort of trademark Dupont esthetic. It's barbed wire for the incredibly wealthy. That, of course, also keeps out the unwashed masses.

[Ed Larson]

So it's a glass, like, jutting out from the concrete.

[Marcus Parks]

Glass jutting out from the top of the. The concrete. But it's also very pretty as well because it's, like, antique.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes, it is truly beautiful. Like, it's just, like colored glass, all, like, hyper sharp, just built into the concrete.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, cool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Exactly. God, we just like villains. All right, Hyper. When I played the Star wars card game, I only ever Played the Empire. I only ever played all the evil characters in Risk. It's me, man.

[Marcus Parks]

The dupont family, however, also did their best to keep those unwashed masses from even learning about the French Revolution. Here's where we get to Delaware. The Dupont made sure that Delaware stayed uneducated. And as a result, Delaware had some of the worst literacy rates in the country. Despite being. They had one of the worst literacy rates, but were also because of the DuPont's throwing off the average, the fourth richest state in the entire nation.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And that's also like. And then money attracts money. And where there's people with money, other groups with money will come and be a part of it. It's like sharks.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, but they also. But the duponts also made sure that they didn't pay any taxes into Delaware. So Delaware also remain poor.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, these are also the old school guys that would do it the old way, right? Like Carnegie. All these guys, they'd go do something bad and then they'd build a building.

[Marcus Parks]

Nothing Dupont.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I know.

[Marcus Parks]

That's the thing is that, that's why we know about. That's why we know Andrew Carnegie's name. That's why we know, you know, Guggenheim, why we know all these guys, because they did build these massive monuments. They did give their money Dupont. All you know their name from is a label.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Because the Duponts, the dupont liked to stay in the background as much as they possibly could. They did not like the spotlight because they're smart. Yeah, they're smart. They knew that the moment you come forward, the more you republic facing, the less you can get away with. And they knew that the less people know that you are a king, the more like a king you can act.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Shithead billionaires talking to us. We are in a new realm of that billionaires were never like this before. In my time growing up, I don't remember billionaires. I mean, I guess we didn't have billionaires was like Ross Perot was like the most in my mind, in my, my childhood. It was like he was the first guy I remember being like. He was like, I'm a billionaire and I do amazing things.

[Ed Larson]

Because he did look like the Monopoly man.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, very funny. But it's. It's interesting to see how like now all of these morons are addicted to the same thing we're addicted to, which is attention. And you think a billionaire would be past it?

[Marcus Parks]

Nope.

[Ed Larson]

And you wait, the Dupont's like they keeping Delaware stupid. No offense. Delaware back then. It's obviously different now.

[Marcus Parks]

Sorry.

[Ed Larson]

You know Sorry, Ian, but keeping them like uneducated and keeping them poor is a different form of slavery, in my own personal opinion.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, 100.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, it's just a little bit more expensive. But they're basically slaves.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, it's just stuff like Dr. Was like very casually dropping recently about how no one should ever retire. Yeah, like what is that then, if we're just working for the absolute rest of our lives?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you're just making money for the people up top. And you know, and the duponts knew all of the most evil ways to do this. They kept their workers poor, tired and sick. Many DuPont laborers made just a dollar an hour during the war, and most worked 60 to 80 hours a week. And when the work was over, they'd go to sleep in uncomfortable shanties built by the duponts where thousands would be crammed in to spread sickness and disease.

[Ed Larson]

And they would fucking thank the duponts for what they had always. They didn't know any better.

[Marcus Parks]

Uncle Doopy. Like they have a cute fucking nickname now on the job. Safety was not really a word that was even used in a dupont factory. The workers had no equipment to protect themselves with because equipment costs money. And since many DuPont businesses dealt with dangerous chemicals, workers routinely died from fumes or chemicals. Chemical byproducts that literally changed the color of their skin. DuPont chemicals like benzol turned workers blue, while men who worked with picric acid were called canaries because the acid turned their skin yellow. Picric acid, by the way, also poisons the lungs, attacks the intestinal tract and destroys kidney and nerve centers. And picric acid is also only. It's just used to kill people. It's used to in munitions. They are being killed by things that are being used to kill people. Workers were also fatally poisoned by mercury fulminate and nitroglycerin fumes. More explosives. While the fumes made by the manufacturer of smokeless powder made lung diseases like tuberculosis far easier to contract. And of course, if you get tuberculosis, that spreads even further. That spreads far beyond just the fucking. Just the fucking workers. That spreads to your family, that spreads to the community. It is a fucking the misery that the dupont pont's cause compounds and builds and builds. In all, almost 350 DuPont workers were killed in plant accidents during World War I. But the amount that survived terrible injuries or died later because of the long term effects of chemical exposure or the people that died just down the line, impossible to know for sure.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, my grandfather died from a chemical spill in his factory and he got cancer five years later. And he died. And that wasn't dupont, that was amicon. But like, fuck, yeah, it's like it's the same bullshit, you know, it isn't credited to them like the workplace incident did. It wasn't what killed him, it was the cancer five years ago. But he wouldn't have gotten the cancer if it wasn't for that.

[Marcus Parks]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean that's what, that's what Jon Stewart was trying to fight for. With all they were Talking about after 9, 11, all these people got super, super sick. And they were all like, yeah, but if they die like so much later, is it really a thing now?

[Marcus Parks]

Because the DuPonts cared more about 150 room mansions than the lives of their own workers, they spread propaganda that unions and strikes were un American. Because remember, people can have their opinions about unions, but if someone tells you that, that unions are un American, they are doing it on behalf of someone like the duponts.

[Henry Zebrowski]

How do I put it? If somebody ever says the word un American, don't take them seriously.

[Marcus Parks]

No. Now, like many other large corporations, the DuPonts hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to either break unions and strikes or to prevent laborers from organizing unions in the first. One of the Pinkerton's favorite tactics was to manufacture evidence that would result in organizers being charged with espionage against the government. That's a lot of prison time.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. Pinkerton's deserve their own episode one day.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We've been talking about for fucking years.

[Marcus Parks]

We've been talking about for a long time. It's just, it's so massive and much of it is unions.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

The dupont rebuttals against organizing would also frequently get violent. And the duponts therefore had another private military made up of of no less than 1400 bootlickers to guard and police their factories. The Dupont's tactics, however, only got harsher after the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The Duponts actually felt personally slighted by the revolution because Tsar Nicholas II had ordered almost a million pounds of TNT from the duponts.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He was a great customer.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that is exact. That's the whole thing. And when the Tsar went down with the rest of the Russian upper classes, the duponts lost out on millions of dollars in Russian tsarist contracts. And that was of course, TNT that Tsar Nicholas II was planning to use against his own people. Now, regardless of what you may think of Bolshevik tactics, Vladimir Lenin or the Soviet Union, the Bolshevik revolution was still at its most basic level a people's revolution that overthrew a corrupt and out of touch elite. If we take it down to just a bare, bare, bare, bare bones. Yes. And that was terrifying for people like the duponts. Terrifying that that could happen in one of the largest countries on Earth.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All I know is, is that every single time we, like, simplify something like that, we never get any emails. That's all I know is we definitely never get one. Yeah, definitely. I can't wait to get the emails about the people defending marrying your first cousin. That is going to happen. Absolutely. Absolutely. Going to receive an email about how I offended them because they think cousins should be free.

[Ed Larson]

They're in love, Henry.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. I can't wait to get an email telling me that I just. That I support the murder of small little girls. Because I said that sentence.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You do, though?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Do I support the murder of little girls? You didn't say no.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You didn't say no. No, you didn't.

[Marcus Parks]

Anastasia, at this point, at this point, am I. At this point, am I going to bat for Anastasia?

[Henry Zebrowski]

No. No, no.

[Marcus Parks]

Great movie, though.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I like their bat, though. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Anesthesia. That shit's fun.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You better eat. Fight for anesthesia. You gotta fight for anesthesia.

[Marcus Parks]

The duponts, because they were so terrified of the Bolshevik Revolution, they, along with many other corporate leaders, began sowing the seeds way back in 1917 that the United States should go to war with Russia specifically to overthrow Vladimir Lenin. This shit did not start in the aftermath of World War II. It did not start with Stalin. It started in the beginning. The capitalist drumbeat for war against the Communists was there from the start. And that drumbeat began solely because the Communists fucked with the dupont's already obscene profits. The duponts lost a big contract, but perhaps more importantly, the Bolsheviks had personally slighted a dupont.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And that's super offensive.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And I mean, they come from the French Revolution. They know what this shit can lead to.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Now, the DuPonts enacted mass layoffs after the war, bringing their workforce of 85,000 down to 18,000 in just seven weeks.

[Ed Larson]

Who needs them?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Got him loose.

[Marcus Parks]

That guy's coughing too much. Other companies did the same. And before long, 4 million people in the United States were unemployed. We were in a recession. But instead of taking care of the workers who had made them so much money, the DuPonts and the US government were far more concerned with stopping the spread of communism. And the DuPonts did have reason to worry, because Communism was very attractive to a bunch of guys who'd just been told to fuck off by the biggest corporations in America after they had just made those corporations record profits. And it's especially After a bunch of these guys. Buddies have been killed by the corporate indifference and greed of these corporations. And that doesn't even get to how many guys had chronic health problems from the $1 an hour job that they no longer had. Of course these guys are going to say, hm, yeah, I might be communist. I might be a communist.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So to distract people from the real problem, which was that extremely wealthy families like the Duponts use up the bodies and souls of average American and do everything they can to prevent giving a fucking cent back. The United States government used the playbook that the wealthy elites in charge are still using today. The government began telling people that the real problem here. I mean, you guys are fucking idiots. You don't see the real problem here?

[Ed Larson]

What is the real problem?

[Marcus Parks]

Immigrants.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, well, that's a thing. It's not like we're a country made of them.

[Marcus Parks]

No, no. The real problem is. No, not those immigrants. Not the, not the white one. Other immigrants.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You're right.

[Marcus Parks]

Other immigrants. And back then the other immigrants were mostly. We talked about it in the molasses episode. Italians.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah. Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

In the United.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's a loud group of immigrants. Nightmare. The nightmare.

[Marcus Parks]

If we throw out all the immigrants, who's going to. Give me a fresh pepper?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, hey. Whoa.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, the United States therefore began a far reaching, violent crackdown on the immigrant population to distract the public in 1917. This play has been in use for over a hundred years now. The government began throwing people that they considered foreign anarchists, communists or radical leftists into detention camps nationwide. The largest detention camp for immigrants was on guess where Ellis island. Which is. It's such a funny joke, which it tells you, you know this, the, all the, the government's doing now where it's like, it's kind of funny, like they're trying to be funny and kind of cute.

[Ed Larson]

Come on in.

[Marcus Parks]

They've always.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Right over here.

[Ed Larson]

Right over here.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

You sit here right behind the island and look at her ass. Yeah, that's where you live now.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's where you live until I send you back. Thousands of immigrants were deported without due process after detention, while all those who remained were. Were villainized by America's right wing media who all said that anything that even smelled a bit like socialism, anything that wasn't pure unadulterated capitalism, I always guess what, it's un American.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's just fucking so ridiculous.

[Marcus Parks]

And the Duponts are behind all of it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, are definitely one, I will say, I imagine.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. No, one of. Yeah, no, no, they're not the only. It's not like the Duke Dupont are like that. America is some shining like beacon of goodness and truth. And the Dupont are like the one rotten apples, the one evil ones. No, they're not. They're not Gargamel.

[Ed Larson]

No, but they made the playbook.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, they did.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But I still. This country, man, we still got a shot.

[Marcus Parks]

We do have a shot. No, no, I do believe in the promise of America. I truly do. We still do have a shot, but, you know, it's just we got to get rid of these a lot.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We gotta get rid of.

[Marcus Parks]

As to the Duponts. Instead of offering to pay more taxes on their profits to take care of the workers who had made them those profits, the family got to what was really important. They decided that the best use of their time and money was to invest in the manipulation of children. So they became a leading force in the creation of the Boy Scouts of America.

[Ed Larson]

Ah, yes. Where they go from weddelling to diddling.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It depends on how old you get. If you live on the Boy Scouts, that would. That would inspire Hitler.

[Marcus Parks]

My scout master touched my wee bellows.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, well. Well, you should have been better at not tying.

[Marcus Parks]

You wouldn't have been able to get your pants down. Yeah, well, in the early days, with the Dupont's guidance and actually their goal for the Boy Scouts was not dissimilar from the Hitler Youth. Every Boy Scout would swear an oath of unyielding loyalty to the president, the country, to the Boy Scouts leader, to the Boy Scouts parents, and lastly, an oath of loyalty to the Boy Scouts employer.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The most important of all.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, the guys who paid for this stupid scarf.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Who do you think made the badges you're fighting?

[Marcus Parks]

This was the influence of the Duponts, who wanted to turn the Boy Scouts into a nationalistic, paramilitary alternative to socialism. Instead, it unfortunately became, as many of these things do, just another place where children could easily be molested by an authority figure.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Honestly, a lot of it I point towards length of the shorts.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, now you're victim blaming. Yeah, kids should be able to wear as short of shorts as they want without some nasty scoutmaster coming in and grabbing them. Well, you're blaming the victim.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I will just kind of have to see about that one.

[Ed Larson]

You know, between everything. It's so weird because, like, as time goes on, like the Boy Scouts football, all this, the safest place for a child seems to be theater.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, buddy. That's why, you know, you went. I just also remember just how unpleasant sports was. Like, that's like part of the reason Why I went to theater was because it was gross and. And the men were bad and I didn't want to be anywhere near the bad men anymore.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. Or just running around in a circle is pretty safe now. There was.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Until you get the Olympics.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. And then it gets real bad.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Then you get molested again.

[Ed Larson]

Yep, yep.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, that's gymnastics.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I'm certain there's some track guys that got molested. Yeah, I know there are.

[Ed Larson]

The Olympics started in Greece, Marcus. They've been fucking boys since before. God.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You think the first print wasn't from Socrates? You know, like that was it he ran?

[Marcus Parks]

No. There were some people in the media who pushed back against the duponts. It's around the time that the profits from World War I were reported that journalists began referring to the Dupont family as the merchants of death.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cute.

[Marcus Parks]

But even with everything that the Dupont had already accomplished, there would be no decade in which the Duponts made a larger impact on American society than the 1920s. And it's there that we'll pick back up next week with the stock market crash, the atomic comic bomb, Teflon and Vietnam.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Can't wait, man. It's awesome. That's gonna be a great soundtrack. Whatever's going on, it doesn't matter, man. It's a great ass soundtrack. We're gonna put some good tunes for this story.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yes, yes. And I do know, I already know that Dupont was not the number one supplier of napalm in the Vietnam War. I do know that.

[Ed Larson]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

But they did say still supply enough.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They got in there.

[Marcus Parks]

It was enough.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, man. They got in there.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah. And providing all the enriched uranium for fat man and little boy and, you know, giving cancer to thousands of people and the sites that enrich that uranium due to, you know, low safety standards. It's worth something.

[Ed Larson]

Not to mention the firebombing of Tokyo.

[Marcus Parks]

The firebombing of Tokyo. That was also part of it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Again, one word, Barbenheimer.

[Marcus Parks]

That is true. Because didn't think everything changed after Barbie, didn't it?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Honestly, you know, I love Margot and I think about her. She really needs the money.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, she does.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Who else needs the money? Us. Yes. Go to patreon.com lastpodcast on the left and you can give us money for ad free episodes. Isn't that nice? You also can see us live 6pm PST every Tuesday for last stream on the left, where we will go make good fun for you. But then if you give 25 to the Patreon, you can actually submit videos for our brand new show Last stream on the left after hours in which we will show those videos. But everybody on the Patreon can watch. And we will put that up very soon. Our very first ones coming down the pipe very, very soon.

[Marcus Parks]

Man, we're getting people to pay us to do our work. That's capitalism, capital.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You just got to P it.

[Ed Larson]

Come see us on the road. That's right. February 28, Austin, Texas, Paramount Theater. March 13, Indianapolis, Indiana, Egyptian Room at the Old National Center. April 25, Cincinnati, Ohio, Taft Theater. May 29, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie Music hall of Oakland. I know that sounds confusing. June 27th, Grand Rapids, Michigan's A GLC Live at 20 Monroe. July 17th, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Kane's Ballroom. And July 18th, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Tower Theater. And on Wednesday I'm going to be in San Francisco Francisco over at the Punchline with Grant Gordon and Julie Rosing. Come hang out with me there. That's gonna be a lot of fun. That is on February 18th.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Great. Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma.

[Marcus Parks]

That would be fun.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And go on YouTube. Go see a new show, Vampire the Masquerade. We did lpn rpg. Go check it out. We're gonna have an announcement soon. Monday. It's coming out.

[Ed Larson]

Very cool.

[Marcus Parks]

We'll see.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Bye. Hail Satan.

[Ed Larson]

Oh God.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Satan had nothing to do with any of this.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you know what?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hell, Mark Ruffalo.

[Ed Larson]

Cuz he was in Fox Catcher as as Schultz. And he was also in the in the Dark Water movie against Dupont. He double, he double hates Dupont.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But you don't think that Dupont probably didn't also pay for those movies. So we're gonna look like they were cool.

[Ed Larson]

H, I'm still hailing the roof. Yeah, task was good too.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You'd be surprised how many things you like are paid by the thing that is the most evil thing on the face of the planet in order for them to help kind of soothe it all over by saying look, see?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh.

[Ed Larson]

Kind of like how the tobacco companies made the annoying Truth commercials really annoying so we would hate them and then in turn smoke more cigarettes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. So for that we want to say thank you Vanguard Group, for all the work you've done here at Netflix.

[Ed Larson]

Why have I asked my electrician I.

[Marcus Parks]

Found on Angie.com to bury my pet.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hamster nibbles in a our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet nibbles after his untimely end. Nibbles gone too soon. May he scurry in peace. Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff.

[Marcus Parks]

Nibbles would have loved you like a brother.

[Ed Larson]

Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years. Angie the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home [e-mail].

[Marcus Parks]

Hey listeners, Marcus, Ed and Henry here. A little bit of an announcement.

[Ed Larson]

You loving all the episodes of Last Podcast on the Left lately? Well listen, now you can get even more from us.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Squeeze it out of us if you want to hear new episodes ad free and unlock access to last podcast on the left seven days early. Subscribe to Sirius XM podcast plus on Apple Podcasts or visit sirius xm.compodcast plus to start your free trial today. Do it.