Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country

Robert sits down with Andrew Ti for three episodes in one week about the bizarre life of Pol Pot, a man who spent too much time reading books and bullshitting with his friends and for convinced he could save his country by destroying it. (3 Part Series) See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Robert Evans?

  Oh my goodness gracious, Jiminy Christmas. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where Robert Evans is using the phrase Jiminy Christmas for some goddamn reason. We're allowed to curse on this. I don't get it.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  I almost just did your Boston accent to you when you did that. I don't know.

• 0:25Robert Evans?

  Were you gonna do, what does the Sophie Robert Boston accent sound like?

• 0:31Robert Evans?

  Nah, it's terrible. No, you gotta.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  That's your Boston accent?

• 0:35Speaker 01

  That's Robert's Boston, Boston Rob.

• 0:37Robert Evans?

  Oy, I'm from Boston! See, you gotta put like, you gotta put more of like a spit, like some grime on it, Sophie. It's gotta sound like, it's gotta sound like you're screeching it over a bunch of wet rocks.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I just try.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Just like the pilgrims did.

• 0:53Robert Evans?

  Just like the pilgrims did, yes, when they landed in Boston.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  I just think that's something that only you can do. I don't know, what about Jiminy Cricket? Was like, I wanna do Robert's Boston. But we were there.

• 1:04Robert Evans?

  Neither do I. Neither do I. Neither do I. Andrew T.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Andrew, what do you think of Ben Affleck's back tattoo?

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Oh, Ben Affleck's back tattoo? I, I think it's actually a pretty pleasant commitment to, it's like the most authentic thing he has going on.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Like, he, he is just a Boston guy.

• 1:28Robert Evans?

  See, I, I think he is, I think he's, he's our most, one of our most authentic male celebrities that we've ever had. That doesn't mean like, I'm not saying he's a good person. He's obviously not. But you can tell in his face that he knows that and hates himself, which is what I love about Ben Affleck.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  He is keeping it real. He's keeping it indisputably real.

• 1:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. When, that, that picture of him like, looking at J-Lo's butt and just being, having the look on his face like he's just watched fucking Dresden go up in flames, is like, it's because he's thinking like, obviously I'm going to cheat on her. Like, I'm Ben Affleck. I have no choice in the matter. Like, I can't, I simply can't be a scumbag, not be a scumbag.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Besides the beloved tattoo, I personally enjoy the video of Ben Affleck putting Jennifer Lopez in the car and then slamming the door and then realizing the paparazzi caught him. And then being like.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Oh, Jiminy Christmas.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  I have no idea what's, what mood I'm in, but this is how we're starting the podcast.

• 2:28Robert Evans?

  I, I, I had a friend of mine made me re-watch Gone Girl recently.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Oh, he's like playing himself.

• 2:35Robert Evans?

  He is. I'm just like, oh yeah. Ben Affleck didn't even know they were filming. Like, he, he was pleasantly surprised to realize he wasn't in trouble for murder at the end of this movie.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Fun, fun fact, fun fact about Gone Girl is he's had to stop production for multiple days because he was refusing to wear, I think it was like a Yankees hat that they wanted him to wear, but he's like, I'm from Boston, I can't wear.

• 2:57Robert Evans?

  Perfect, perfect bit.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  He ended up, they ended up like settling on him wearing a Mets hat. And it's like, it's like, come the fuck on, come the fuck on.

• 3:06Robert Evans?

  Incredible stuff.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  The murderer clearly was a Yankee fan. Like, what are we doing here?

• 3:11Speaker 02

  I think that also means he possibly didn't really, he didn't read that movie the same way the rest of us read that movie.

• 3:18Robert Evans?

  No, no.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  This podcast has literally nothing to do with Boston, the Yankees, Ben Affleck, back tattoos.

• 3:27Robert Evans?

  Well, you know, this hat, we're talking about a guy who you could call the Ben Affleck of Cambodian revolutionaries, because this week we're finally doing Pol Pot. That's right, everybody.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Andrew, we brought you on for a big boy.

• 3:41Robert Evans?

  We're getting in pole position here, baby.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 3:46Robert Evans?

  Well, when it, when we're going for the big guns, Andrew T, you can't do better. Um, and this is, I, this is also unfortunately, like I, we, we did King Nor- uh, Nouram Sahannak, who was the, um, the king of Cambodia, and also a massive piece of shit, had a lot to do with how the Khmer Rouge got in power and why they killed so many fucking people. And it was, he's also a lot less known. Like, I think generally people who have any kind of reasonable education are aware of Pol Pot, whereas like King Sahannak, not nearly as well known. So I thought it was important to start with him years ago. I think Pol Pot is really relevant now. I think actually right now, might be the most relevant he has been since the horrible crimes against humanity he was committing.

• 4:30Robert Evans?

  Because, at least from our perspective of a podcast that is primarily speaking to listeners in the United States, and it is because the way in which he and his comrades orchestrated the deaths of roughly between a quarter and a third of their country, something like that, we're talking a death toll of about, is somewhere in between like one and a half to three million, I think probably two million is generally kind of like the hedging your guess estimate out of a pre-war population of maybe six million Cambodians, right? And the reason I'm saying that this is extra relevant right now is that what essentially

• 5:12Robert Evans?

  happened in Cambodia is you had this cadre of guys who started as young men hanging out in reading groups, talking about politics and making plans for how they would like to rebuild their country and reorganize their country, starting from this position they called year zero, right? Like, we're gonna totally, totally strip down everything that had existed before and start new, based on these ideas we had in our like weird little friend groups, right? Well, that's essentially what's happening with guys like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and the cadre of fanatic young Doge kids, right?

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:46Robert Evans?

  Who are disassembling the administrative state for fun and trying to rebuild it based on a bunch of shit that they discussed on 4chan and 8chan over the years, right?

• 5:54Speaker 02

  The difference is the, these motherfuckers have never read a book, but otherwise, yeah, pretty close.

• 6:00Robert Evans?

  Yes, and the Khmer Rouge guys both read books and also, one thing you can't take away from Pol Pot and the other Khmer Rouge guys, they were hard as fuck by the time they got in charge. They'd spent 20 years fighting in the jungle, so.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:12Robert Evans?

  We have that going for us, but I do think there's a lot relevant here in the story of how, how a group of people, and particularly the dude at the head, come to believe a set of things about how the world should be remade and then pursue those goals, no matter the cost. And that's kind of the story we're gonna be telling this week, so I hope you're excited.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can't fucking wait. Jesus Christ.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 6:46Robert Evans?

  Picture this, you're listening to the Sniffy's Cruising Confessions podcast and suddenly, wait, what did they just say? Well, the questions raised in those show-stopping moments will be answered in the all-new bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor. Hosts Gabe and Chris will dive deep on a specific topic covered in that week's Tuesday episode, from sexual health and HIV prevention to finding the right doctor. Listen to this special bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor, now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get podcasts. Sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 7:48Robert Evans?

  So, let's fucking go and talk about the man who, well, one of the men who really fucked up Cambodia. Yeah. It's, I gotta say, there's strong competition for being the dude who was worst to Cambodia in the 20th century. You got Kissinger, you got Nixon, you got King Sahannak, you got Lon Noll, who we'll talk about later, but Pol Pot probably still does win the crown, which, which is hard, being the worst guy for Cambodia in the 20th century. Crowded ass field.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  It's a crowded, he's, I mean, he's also just like, he's got the name recognition and he didn't have a massive whitewashing campaign waged on his behalf, so.

• 8:25Robert Evans?

  No, no, he didn't have that. So, the first thing you need to know about Pol Pot is that Pol Pot's not his name, right? Like, this is a Namd revolution, you know? You get this with all of these guys. Joseph Stalin wasn't born Joseph Stalin. That he literally just picked the name Joe Steele because it sounded cool, right? And a lot of these guys do that because, for one thing, it's just smart if you're planning to overthrow your government to work under a fake name. And for another thing, usually your fake name sounds cooler than your real name. And one of the first thing that makes Pol Pot unique is that Pol Pot is not a cool name. And it was never meant to be. It doesn't sound, it's not cooler in Cambodian. It basically means like Joe Khmer. Like, the Khmer are the ethnic people that are the majority of Cambodia. Like, he's basically, Pol Pot is the Khmer equivalent

• 9:10Robert Evans?

  of calling yourself like Joe America, almost, right? Like, I'm the average man, right? That's basically what he was saying.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Or like John Doe, sort of.

• 9:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like John Doe. His real name sounds like a fucking, like, Marvel villain. He was born Saloth Sar, which is like, such a cool name? Like, that is the name of a guy who fistfights Batman. Like, I'm sorry. And he does well.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, he wins for two acts.

• 9:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he breaks Batman's spine at one point, right? Saloth Sar, I think goes by Pol Pot? No, this name goes too hard. Nobody will believe that. Saloth Sar was born in a village called Prakshav, a couple of miles west of the capital of his province and about 90 miles north of Nampin, which is the capital of Cambodia. For decades, there was considerable debate as to the precise year of his birth, and we don't have perfect knowledge of when he was born. There are a couple of reasons for this, just beyond the general fact that record-keeping in impoverished rural Cambodia wasn't great in the 20s. People were not like, keeping, no one was digitizing anything, right?

• 10:22Robert Evans?

  And Cambodia's educational system hinged a lot on your birth date because the central administration was lacking a culture that, and, sorry, the central administration, basically, if you had, if you wanted your kid to kind of get into the best kind of school that they could get into, if you came from a prosperous family, and Saloth does, it was common to like, alter your kid's birthday. To maximize which school they would get into. And that was as easy as literally just changing markings on a piece of paper. Cause there wasn't anything like centrally kept, right? So there was a strong culture of changing your kid's birthday, at least by a few, but sometimes by a couple of years in order to like get them where you wanted them to go.

• 11:06Robert Evans?

  Biographer Philip Short says that Saloth Sar's real birthday was probably March of 1925. Others will say May of 1927. Pol Pot himself told journalist Nate Thayer that he'd been born in January of 1925. But he just recalled that because he saw like basically a post-it note, not it wasn't literal post-it, but like a note that was like posted on top of like a cabinet in their kitchen. And this would be him remembering it as like a five-year-old. So we don't, we don't know when he was born, but somewhere in that period.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  My, my grandparents literally also had this. I wonder if now I'm realizing they did this for the same reason, but they were very, very squirrely about what their actual birthdays were.

• 11:47Robert Evans?

  I knew, I knew someone and interviewed someone once who had grown up as a like hunter gatherer in the highlands of Vietnam. They were a Montagnard and like didn't, they were like 16 or 17. The first time they heard music that wasn't being played in front of them. They didn't know what electric lights were for a while. And then, yeah, we're like, yeah, I have no idea when I was born. Like, I'm probably 26, I think was what they told me at the time.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  It's like, if I really sat down, I could maybe make an educated guess, but I do not know. Yeah, my grandparents were like, it was, there was a war, records got lost, we don't know.

• 12:18Robert Evans?

  We had, we had a lot of other priorities than remembering the exact birthday.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, birthdays weren't high, even for kids.

• 12:24Robert Evans?

  Saloth Sar's family was upper middle class, right? He came from about as much privilege as a non-noble member of Cambodia, of Khmer society could in this period of time. His father, Penn Saloff, owned a lot of land. Now, how much a lot, like I think something like two to three hectares would be like a normal amount for a peasant farmer to own. Biographer David Chandler says that Penn owned about nine hectares. But Philip Short, whose book is more recent and I think works off of better information, says that it was more like 50 hectares. So about 10 times the average. And their house was probably the largest of the 20 or so houses in the village. So they're not rich as like, they're not one of the people who run the country, but they're, they're, they're the wealthiest guy in town, right?

• 13:09Robert Evans?

  That's, that's his dad, you know? Penn Saloth was prosperous enough to hire his neighbors to help out during harvest time. So like, that's the kind of money he had where like, I am paying my neighbors to do my harvest for me. Right? As opposed to like, they just can't do that, right? He also owned multiple oxen, which was like, that's like having like a sports car or something. Right. A day, right? You've got your own oxen and more than one, you're like, that's a sign of wealth. His wife, Salath Sar's mother, came from a prominent family and was well known as a humanitarian and a pious Buddhist. The two had nine children. I think five of them survived into like the nineties. So like, pretty good record for, you know? Yeah. As a mom and dad. From the time, yeah. Uh, Saloth was number eight.

• 13:54Robert Evans?

  So he comes near the end and he and his two, the two siblings like around his age were very close. Short writes, "They played and swam in the river together and in the evenings by the light of a rush lamp, listened to the old people of the village recounting stories and legends from the days before the French established the protectorate in the 1860s." And if you remember back to our Napoleon III episodes, like right while France was getting ready to like, lose a bunch of territory and a major war to what became Germany, the navy was largely kind of carrying out, in to some extent, on its own recognizance, the conquest of a sizable chunk of Indochina, right? Of what came to be known as French Indochina, right? And this is why France is running Vietnam.

• 14:38Robert Evans?

  Uh, and it's also why France is running Cambodia, right? So they have this dominion in Cambodia. And for about a century, Cambodia is governed by the French. In the capital, which is the primary place you would see the white French colonizers, they were a tiny minority whose control was so great that they were, they were people who were young Cambodians in this period, like young Khmer, described French, like white French residents of the capital as almost deities, right? Because they were untouchable, you had, you did not have social contact with them and they had access to like, resources that were almost unimaginable to regular people, right? And again, Despite this being the capital of Cambodia, it has the lowest Khmer population of any

• 15:20Robert Evans?

  part of the country. The entire like business class, the people who are handle running companies and who are doing trading and thus have the most money outside of the white French class are primarily Vietnamese and Chinese Khmer, right? And these are in a lot of cases, still people who were born in Cambodia, but they are ethnically Chinese and ethnically Vietnamese.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:41Robert Evans?

  And this is, this is because Cambodia for most of its history has been, for large chunks of its history, has been the property of either like China or Vietnam or Thailand, like bits and pieces of it, right? There's been constant, it's in the middle of everything, right? It's like Poland. It's like the Southeast Asian Poland and that like, yeah, you guys are usually like under somebody's thumb, right?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Well, and yeah, that's also just like, like as much as like the French colonialism, you know, bad, obviously, it's like Asia just be doing that and China is probably the biggest culprit.

• 16:17Robert Evans?

  Well, and that's the, one of the initial surprises that the communists have that kind of slows down them getting off the board is they initially expect, well, everyone must hate the French and the regular Khmer people don't hate the French as much as they hate the Vietnamese. And in fact, that's going to be true even with the Khmer Rouge gets in power, like no matter, even with all the horrible shit the US does for the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, Vietnam is always the enemy, right? And it's because they've got a thousand years of shit, right?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  It's always the last war.

• 16:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  It's just like, that's the one that sticks.

• 16:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah. It's like, no matter how racist Americans get about a foreign country, Texans will always hate Oklahomans more, like, and vice versa. So the fact that the people with money in the capital and running these businesses, the kind of saying capitalist class isn't super useful in this sense, but that's kind of our closest thing, the fact that they're Vietnamese and Chinese contributes to a longstanding cultural grievance among the majority Khmer population who see themselves, they have an inferiority complex. And this is something that is written about extensively by Khmer people, right? That there is within the culture and within like even A lot of like the Buddhist kind of writings at the time. There's this discussion of like the Khmer were fundamentally good people.

• 17:32Robert Evans?

  We're humble, but we're also kind of like naive and and easy to be taken advantage of by these kind of savvier foreign peoples around us, right? This is the way they talk about themselves to a sizable extent, right?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Sure. Although how much I there, there is a question, I guess I'm asking more than like poking at this. But it's like, that is also exactly the type of thing that like a broad multinational religion could start to spread.

• 17:59Robert Evans?

  Well, right, right.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Terms of supporting imperialism.

• 18:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and there's, there's some, I mean, this is not, I'm not, I'm certainly not qualified to give you detail, but, but I think it's, there's, there's plenty of evidence that a lot of the way they discuss themselves is in sort of this context of we are, we really need to get our shit together and stop being ruled by these people.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 18:21Robert Evans?

  Like, that's kind of the attitude.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:23Robert Evans?

  And it depends with the Chinese Khmer, there's this mix of like respect with kind of some jealousy and some anger. Vietnam is seen almost Vietnamese people are seen almost entirely as as imperialists, right? It's like this arrogant force that has continually dominated us over our history. And again, Khmer people often have friends who are Vietnamese, Cambodians and Chinese Cambodians, but this is this idea of like, this is what this race is done to our race, right?

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:50Robert Evans?

  Like, that's really common. A very like popular story that would be told to children at the time when Salasar was a kid, described three Cambodian prisoners being buried up to their necks around a fire so their heads could be used as a tripod to hold their Vietnamese masters teapot.

• 19:08Robert Evans?

  And it's like a joke that like, this is what they think we're good for is like, you know, like that, that's the bit.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 19:15Robert Evans?

  Now, when it came to like the, the looking back at periods of time in which things were different, the real one period of like glory that educated Cambodians in particular would think back to was the time of the Angkorean Empire, which had ruled Northwest Cambodia from the 900s AD to about 1400 AD and included parts of modern day. Laos, Thailand and Vietnam as well, right? This is the Angkorean Empire. And Salath Sar and his peers would have seen themselves as being raised in the ruins of a once great culture. The, the attitude these people have is almost, we're growing up in a post-apocalyptic empire, right? And this was not far from the truth. By the 1200s, which is right around, if you've heard of Angkor Wat, it's still to this day,

• 19:58Robert Evans?

  the largest surviving religious complex on the world. And it's this massive, incredibly complex, beautiful, like temple complex that was part of the heartland of this empire. And while it was at its height around the 1200s, the Angkorean Empire contained a higher population than lived in all of Cambodia in the 30s. So if you're looking at like the degree to which things got worse, there are the, in the 30s, this area is capable of supporting fewer people than it supported in the 1200s.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 20:30Robert Evans?

  Like, so they are really living in a post-apocalypse in a lot of ways. Now, some of the first stories Sar would have heard would have been tales of his grandfather Fem, who came up during one of the many periods of domination by Vietnamese and Thai invaders. Cambodia came close to being destroyed as an independent culture. And Sar would have been raised on tales of Vietnamese soldiers gouging the eyes out of captives and salting their wounds before burying them alive. And this is a thing that happened. We are talking about really hideous wars that happened between these people in these periods. And I mean, in every period of time, right? These are, these are ugly conflicts and he grows up with stories about like, this is what war is. Like, it's not just fighting and killing to gain territory. It is like torturing and destroying your enemy.

• 21:15Robert Evans?

  And like, that is, that is the norm, right? The French, by comparison, would have seemed benign to him as a child, in large part because the French were the backers of the royal family. That was like, because there's still a king in Cambodia and he's a useful figurehead for the French. And Salath Sar's family is really close to the royal family. And so they, they kind of owe their privileges and their good position to, in part, to the French occupiers, right? Just like the king does. Salath's early childhood. Then was mild. His father was noted for being less strict and for beating out leaning. He didn't beat his kids as much as most fathers did, right? This is a culture where strict parenting is the norm and where children, it's believed that you need to be,

• 21:58Robert Evans?

  you need to use violence very strictly to maintain the behavior of your children, right? And this was not just common with parents, it was extremely common with teachers. These are like the, like the strain of Buddhism that is dominant in Cambodia is called Theravada Buddhism. And this is a, a, a faith that has an incredibly sharp delineation between good and evil. There's not really shades of gray, right? And so if you're doing the wrong thing, you need to be punished very severely, right? This is like a very black and white faith in a lot of ways. At least that's the way it's interpreted at this period of time. One common punishment from schoolmasters was to make a disobedient child lie down on an ant's nest.

• 22:40Robert Evans?

  That's like, if you're, if you fuck up at school, they make you lie down on a red ant.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Like straight up torture.

• 22:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  I just want to point out, Robert, of course, is not saying that if you don't beat your kids enough, they will become Pol Pot, but he's not, not, not saying that.

• 22:56Robert Evans?

  Look, there's obviously an amount of beating your kids that will turn them into Pol Pot, right? But there's an amount of beating your kids that will turn them into, uh, I don't know.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Not Pol Pot?

• 23:06Robert Evans?

  Not Pol Pot too. So, you know.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  It's a fine line.

• 23:10Robert Evans?

  I don't know. Maybe don't punish your kids with ants. Can we say, can we agree on that?

• 23:16Robert Evans?

  Philip Short quotes one of Pol Pot's peers, Kang Von Sak, as saying this about discipline in schools at the time. "I didn't like arithmetic and I hadn't learned my multiplication tables. So every time we were going to have a lesson, I said that I had a stomach ache and wanted to go home. The third time I did that, the teacher said, "All right, you may go, but first recite the seven times table." Of course, I didn't know it. How he beat me, kicks and punches, he was brutal. Then he took me outside and put me under a grapefruit tree full of red ants. After that, I knew my times tables."

• 23:51Robert Evans?

  Well, I guess if it works. No, I don't. I don't guess that at all.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  You know, that general philosophy, I think, held on for quite some time, if my parents are any indication.

• 24:03Robert Evans?

  And like, yeah, there's unique Cambodian, the whole ant thing, pretty unique to Cambodia. But the whole, you beat the shit out of a kid if they're not learning right. That's more normal than not in the 20s. You go to Oklahoma. I got beat as a kid in Oklahoma by my principal. So like, not trying to like, but yeah. And what's really interesting to me, though, is that Vansack recalls this teacher who like beat him and then tied him to an ant tree as a saintly man who was adorable. Like, this was my nicest teacher.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Oh, kicking a kid is really fucking nuts, I gotta say.

• 24:40Robert Evans?

  That's wild.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, truly, yeah. It just requires so much intention and preparation.

• 24:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And it just, it says a lot that like, and that's your good teacher. Like, that's the guy that you're like, and you know what? He really, he really straightened me out.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. I owe a lot to you. They say you never forget your teachers or how many ants they tortured you with. And it's true.

• 25:03Robert Evans?

  I can see why you wouldn't forget that teacher. If anybody kicked the shit out of me and tied me to an ant tree, I would remember that motherfucker.

• 25:14Robert Evans?

  Speaking of beating, nope. Speaking of not amusing children.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Jesus.

• 25:21Robert Evans?

  Products.

• 25:25Robert Evans?

  This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Devoto Dolutegravir Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devoto. Devoto is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devoto was right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devoto is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devoto.

• 25:49Speaker 05

  It is unknown if Devoto is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Devoto without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devoto if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Defetolide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devoto and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy.

• 26:24Robert Evans?

  Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit devoto.com or call 1-877-844-8872.

• 26:31Speaker 04

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 27:02Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So, as I've established, we're not talking about a society... This is a... Khmer society is in a lot of ways, and I don't... There's other aspects of it, like... But there's a lot of brutality here, right? And this is not unique among the Khmer, but this is a black-and-white society, and it's going to be meaningful in terms of how the Khmer Rouge act in power. That punishments like this are very normal when they're kids, right? There is already a high level. It's just like, you... The ultra-violence of the Nazis is not detached from the fact that the initial group of Nazis all spent four years in the trenches, you know? Yeah. Like, you can't separate those things, and you can't separate what the Khmer Rouge does

• 27:45Robert Evans?

  from the fact that this kind of stuff is normal when they're kids, right? Right. And the legends that were told often in Khmer society, because this is a group of people who have been constantly conquered and beaten and massacred by the... Their neighbors and of course done a little bit, done some of that themselves, to be fair. It does not, the, the stories, the fairy tales, the one that they grow up on, don't depict a just world, right? Um, they are instead of like, you know, happy endings and the good guy winning, there's a lot more stories of murderers going free and honorable men being hideously executed by the king. Right? That's a lot, a very common kind of thing. This is the lore of a culture formed through centuries of domination, defeat and murder.

• 28:25Robert Evans?

  Right? That's, that's the result, right? There's a lot of trauma in the collective history of the Khmer and it comes through in their legends. Salath Sar's cousin Meek joined the royal ballet corps in the 1920s. Now, that sounds nice, right? Ah ballet, good way to express yourself. Great. We love the arts. This is not that kind of ballet troupe. The ballet troupe is primarily a feeder organization for the king's harem, right? That is the reason why you collect all these ballet artists, right? Cause it makes it easier for the king to pick out who he wants to make a courtesan, right? David Chandler, in the book Brother Number One, which is a biography of Pol Pot, writes, quote,

• 29:05Robert Evans?

  "Each dance involved thousands of movements, each keyed to moments in a particular story and to the mythological character being portrayed. None of the gestures was improvised, although some dancers might be more beautiful or more graceful than others. Their movements depended on memory, tradition and practice. In other words, on what they had been taught, rather than what, on what the individual wanted to express. The dancers were vehicles for tradition rather than its interpreters. So while this is an art form, it is not one in which self-expression is prized. It is how can you abs- exactly recreate this, right?

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Do the thing as it was done before.

• 29:40Robert Evans?

  And again, this whole ballet corps, its primary audience is the royal family and the royal family within Khmer society is, it's so high above everything else, right? The Khmer word that like people who are high level advisors and counselors for the king would use for themselves, literally translated to something like we who keep the king's shit in our heads. Like, like, our brains are his shit, right?

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 30:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And, as I said, the ballet corps existed in large part to provide raw material for the royal harem. But it was traditional for kings and princes to have eyes bigger than their heads in this regard. And especially once kings got old, they would pick a lot of concubines that they wouldn't really get around to having sex with because they're like, old and sick. And these women are untouchable to any other men, but often also untouched themselves. And they're kept prisoner in a network of huts in the palace, and are forbidden from contact with non-royal boys over a certain age, right? So, most of their time was spent arguing and gossiping among each other, raising the few kids that they have, there's a lot of gambling. And when the few social, the few outsiders who are allowed to visit,

• 30:50Robert Evans?

  obviously, they socialize with as much as possible because they live in such a closed little society. And soon enough, Salath Sar would be one of those visitors. His older brother, Thay, was the first to be sent to the capital to attend one of the few western-style schools in the country. And these are schools the French have started. And they're often, sometimes they're run by Khmer, educated Khmer, but they're like, patterned off of French schools, right? And Salath followed into the capital in 1934, at age nine. And the plan was, he's going to start attending one of these proper western schools. But, as is not uncommon for a lot of Khmer, his parents don't want him to go fully western, right? They still do want him to be Khmer. So, he spends a year in a Buddhist monastery, just south of the palace,

• 31:35Robert Evans?

  before he goes to school, right? This is a really common experience. And in fact, the princes all do this too, right? Like, the guy who's gonna become the king, Nouradam Sahannak, spends like, a year or some amount of time as a, in this monastery. Because it's a thing that you do, in part to like, show, I'm authentically of this culture. And, this is also going to be the only education that Pol Pot ever gets in his native language. This is the only, the rest of his schooling, he'll be taught in French. So, this is the only time he's being taught, like, in Khmer, right?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 32:06Robert Evans?

  Now, about 100 kids a year had this experience, and the accounts that we get make it sound pretty miserable to me, like the worst summer camp you can imagine. There is no room in this for personal creativity or expression. Every single person has a strictly delineated role, and stepping out of it was met with traditionally brutal punishments. One of SARS contemporaries later explained, "You were given a thrashing if you didn't do as they said. If you didn't walk correctly, you were beaten. You had to walk quietly and slowly without making any sound with your feet, and you weren't allowed to swing your arms. You had to move serenely. You had to learn by heart the rules of conduct in the Buddhist precepts so that you could recite them without hesitation. If you hesitated, you were beaten." And I think I encountered a whole lot,

• 32:50Robert Evans?

  especially as like an angry young atheist, this idea, and you hear this, I think, more common among liberals that like, ah, you know, these Christians and Muslims and like, all the violence that comes out of these, these Western, like Judeo-Christian religions. Why can't we all be like the Buddhists? They never have terrorist groups, tons of Buddhist terrorist groups.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:09Robert Evans?

  Plenty of Buddhist genocides. Every religion has it, and also, non-religions have it. People love committing genocide. It's not, no, no culture has a fucking lock on that.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Religion is a handy tool, but it's not the only handy tool.

• 33:23Robert Evans?

  It's not the only tool. Get that out of you. Again, if you blame genocide fundamentally on the fact that people can be pieces of shit, that's, that's what's to blame.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  The real genocide juice is in here, you know, in your heart.

• 33:35Robert Evans?

  It's in here.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:36Robert Evans?

  If, if you want to understand how a person can be moved to genocide, drive in traffic for 22 minutes. Um, that's the most I remember like, yeah, we just gotta start killing people.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  If no one was here, I'd be home.

• 33:49Robert Evans?

  No, no, no. I'm three more, but still three minutes away from the fucking burger rest. God damn it.

• 33:56Robert Evans?

  So, the religious texts that they were made to memorize were rooted in a rigid respect for hierarchy. In Theravada Buddhism, children were treated almost as robots, right? They are the product of cause and effect that accumulate, rather than people in their own right. And so what matters is modifying what goes into them, right? In order to produce the desired outcome. There's almost, again, this is very mechanical. Understanding of like, this is how you make a good person, right? Now, their holy book was the Spap, uh, Sepap, uh, it's C P A P, it's like spelled like a CPAP machine, right? And it's basically a collection of morality plays and anecdotes which reinforce the sense of Khmer inferiority next to their neighbors. One relevant portion reads, "Learn arithmetic with all your energy, lest the Chinese and

• 34:41Robert Evans?

  Vietnamese cheat you. The Khmers are lacking in judgment. They eat without giving thought for what is proper and right. Each season, they borrow from the Chinese, and the Chinese gain control of the inheritance their parents have bequeathed." So again, this is a lot of-

• 34:55Speaker 02

  That's a hell of a morality play.

• 34:57Robert Evans?

  It's a hell of a, there's a lot of racism in this upbringing, and it's racism against these ethnic minorities in the country who have also periodically controlled the country, right? So it's complicated.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Well, it's sort of like reasonable resentment that is getting-

• 35:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah, of course, like, yeah, you would be pissed.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:14Robert Evans?

  But, as a spoiler in part two, this is going to lead to a bunch of genocides.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's how it goes. The resentment turns into the worst thing quickly.

• 35:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. Now, by the time Sar finished his year at the monastery, his, I've heard nine months, I've heard a year, I don't know that they were keeping that good a track, he will often lie about having spent longer time there because he's kind of proud of this period in his life. By the time Salat Sar finished his time in the monastery, his cousin had become the highest ranking woman at the palace. She was like in charge of the harem, basically. And this was in part because she had borne the prince regent, and that's the prince who's going to become the king when the king dies, a son, right before he was made the new king. So obviously, that elevates her in his eyes. His older brother, Loth Swong, had started working as a clerk in the palace in the late 1920s, and it was decided that he would take in his younger brother Sar and raise

• 36:06Robert Evans?

  him with his wife so that Salat Sar could live in the capital and attend a modern French style school. David Chandler writes that Loth Swong considered his younger brother, quote, "An even-tempered, polite, unremarkable child. As a primary student, Sammy told the Australian journalist James Gerand, Sar had no difficulties with the other students, no fights or quarrels. In examining his early years, I found no traumatic events and heard no anecdotes that foreshadow his years in power. People who met him as an adult found his self-effacing personality perhaps a carryover from the image he projected as a child. In Loth Swong's words, the contemptible polpot was a lovely child." And this is the weirdest thing about him. Almost every source agrees. He was an incredibly nice, like polite, pleasant guy to be around.

• 36:51Robert Evans?

  Which you don't, most dictators, you really do get like, oh yeah, there's hints of the megalomania. Maybe they can be nice to some people, but there's other people who are like, oh yeah, I got a sign of the crazy. Pol Pot, everyone's just like, yeah, he was pretty cool. He was, he seemed nice.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  That's so weird. I did not know that. That's, that's like so bizarre.

• 37:12Robert Evans?

  Even after, like when Nate Thayer, who's like the last journalist to talk to him, when he's like in hiding 18 or so years after leaving power is like, yeah, he was like a really very polite man. You know, it's, it's very odd.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  On that score, you know, the, the, like the modern day version of that is prior to now, most US presidents. Like Trump, at least you're like clear, like, okay, this guy's a fucking like, is exactly who he seems.

• 37:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  But like, yeah, truly people, you know, there's no amount of genocide George Bush could commit that people wouldn't, you know, be like, I'd drink with him.

• 37:46Robert Evans?

  No, and he's absolutely a monster, absolutely should be in the Hague. I was in a room with him once and like, I get, I get why people were loyal to him. He's very charming in person.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Or, or you know.

• 37:57Robert Evans?

  Even if you know what he's done.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  You're Obama's like.

• 38:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah. A fucking Obama, right? Exactly. People who have done horrible things are often deeply likeable, uh, which is how they get in position to do horrible things. And SAR appears to be that kind of guy, right? So yeah, uh, that said, he's also described as a pretty boring dude, right? He is not political at all and he's not political until very late in this story. His schooling at the monastery would mark the only time he was educated in his native language. Once he starts at the French style École Michel, SAR was taught in French by Catholic fathers who were either French or Vietnamese. So these are Catholic priests who are French and Vietnamese. He remains a Buddhist, but he's being taught every day in Catholicism, right?

• 38:41Robert Evans?

  And if this produced any sense of whiplash in the young boy, we don't have any evidence of it, but it must've been weird. I have to imagine. When he wasn't in class, SAR had the rare freedom to. Visit his sister in the ballet harem section of the palace. And again, not a lot of people are allowed here. This gave him semi, number one, he would run into the queen mother pretty regularly. And like, you have to bow when you see her and stuff. And interestingly enough, even afterwards, as a hardcore communist revolutionary, he remembered her with like a sense of awe and reverence.

• 39:12Robert Evans?

  Now, this also put him in a very vulnerable position. The fact that he's one of the few young men, boys, allowed in this harem. As I stated earlier, this group of women who were like officially the king's consorts and potential consorts were bored all the time. And they were forbidden to be touched by anyone else, right? And as a result, when a kid like Sar comes in, this is the closest they can get to going after a man.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:40Robert Evans?

  Right? And this leads to some profoundly abusive experiences for young Salat Sar. As Philip Short writes, "At 15, Sar was still regarded as a child, young enough to be allowed into the women's quarters. Decades later, two of the palace women, living out their old age on a French government stipends in Paris, remembered little Sar, who used to come to visit them wearing his school uniform, a loose white shirt with baggy trousers and wooden shoes. The young women would gather round, teasing him, they remembered. Then they would loosen his waistband and fondle his genitals, masturbating him to a climax. He was never allowed to have intercourse with them, but in the frustrated hothouse world of the royal pleasure house, it apparently afforded the women of a curious satisfaction."

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ.

• 40:23Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Fuck.

• 40:26Robert Evans?

  This does not come out until fairly late. Like the first, the Chandler biography and the earliest biographies you're gonna read about Pol Pot, don't talk about this, Nate Thayer. I don't know if, I think it may have been known when Thayer talked to him, but Thayer is in like a Khmer Rouge stronghold. So maybe you're just not gonna bring up like, hey, so let's talk about you getting molested? Like, I'm not gonna blame Nate for that, right? He was in a very dangerous position, you know? And exercised a lot of courage within that position. But we just don't, he never talked about this. So we can only kind of speculate like, oh, wow. I mean, this has to have had some impact, right?

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 41:02Robert Evans?

  This didn't help.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:06Robert Evans?

  But, you know, in anything beyond that is going to be pure speculation, right? Because they just didn't, this is the only, these are the only people who talked about it, right?

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. And it's not like, it's not like this is coming up in, you know, therapy notes that we can find.

• 41:19Robert Evans?

  Right, right, right. And, and while it is certainly not wrong to like, be like, well, this is pretty poisonous. I bet it had an impact on the kind of guy he was as an adult. I want people to also keep in mind this passage from Chandler's book. Quote, Cambodians attached to the palace in the 1930s and 40s, like Salath Sar and his relations, were insulated from the Chinese and Sinokamair's commercial sector of Nampen. From the worldwide economic depression and from the need to grow their own food. Salath Sar inhabited this elaborate, safe, safe, entirely Cambodian world for many years. So whatever, whatever impact this has, he is also one of the only Khmer people in the society who grows up feeling safe and secure. He's never worried about food. And these are the starving times. These are, and this is a horrible depression for the country.

• 42:04Robert Evans?

  Most people are short on food. That's not a thing for him. He lives in abundance as a kid.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Uh, for her, yeah, so.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But it's also like, like having that, I mean, I, you know, 15 is old enough to kind of realize like.

• 42:18Robert Evans?

  This probably shouldn't be happening.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. This, this abundance is conditional upon some of the other maybe horrible things that are happening.

• 42:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah, maybe the fact that these, these old ladies keep on, yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:30Robert Evans?

  For her part, his sister recalled his visits fondly, and she primarily remembered her brother as a funny kid. Quote, whenever he had something serious to say, he would make a joke of it. This was another common recollection shared by his classmates in primary school. Salath Sar was funny. He was easy to be around and he was most particularly gentle, a child who one friend described as not being willing to hurt a chicken. Which I guess is like not, you wouldn't hurt a fly in Cambodia? I don't know.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  You know, we're coming off a time where, where just anything that's considered violence, you could societally ramp it up from what us, us soft Americans are used to.

• 43:04Robert Evans?

  And to be fair, as an adult, he, maybe he wouldn't hurt a chicken, but he was willing to hurt a lot of people, you know?

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 43:10Robert Evans?

  Um, he was not a good. Student again throughout his educational career, he showed a capability to learn and study, but no inclination to do it. He did not graduate primary school until age 18. Two years after that would have been customary. Now, I should note that this is the general stance taken by Chandler and other biographers, including Short, that like he's not great in school. He's kind of lazy. Pol Pot rebutted these claims in the last interview he ever gave, saying that Chandler was not entirely accurate. Quote, "I was not a bad student. I was average. I studied just enough to keep my scholarship. The rest of the time I just read books." And you know what? Same, bestie. For most of, I shouldn't call Pol Pot bestie. No.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  He's in a price, probably.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  You're heading in that direction. Listen, again, it's just refreshing to hear about a murderous dictator who reads books.

• 43:57Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Oh, you would have loved, yeah, yeah. You would have loved The Hunger Games, Pol Pot.

• 44:05Robert Evans?

  For most of the big dub dub dose. And again, we're talking about like his education, his like, his like, the, the, the school years that he's going to remember the most are during World War II, right? Like he is kind of entering adolescence in like the 40s. And for most of that war, life for Cambodians like Sar in the rarefied air of the capital went by relatively unchanged. The Vichy government takes over in France, right? So it, for Cambodians, it's still French people running Canada, but it's a slightly different group of French people, right? Who are basically fascist collaborators, but you're not going to notice much different as a Cambodian, right? You know? Like, it's not like they're wildly different to you.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, the non fascist collaborators, still not such great dudes.

• 44:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah. The main difference would be that Sar would start learning in school songs about the glory of Marshal Patain and the like, but I don't know that much of this stuck.

• 45:02Robert Evans?

  Thailand invades and conquers several border provinces during this time, which is a deep shame to the king who is dying and a deep shame to Cambodia. But Sar is not a political kid, and we have no evidence that this particularly impacted him. Short does theorize, Philip Short does theorize that some of the fascist propaganda brought into the schools during this period did Sar, particularly the fact that the propaganda of the Vichy era romanticizes peasants, like, poor farmers, as the true embodiment of the nation, and that's really gonna be a big sticking point for him as an adult, and so maybe there's a line there, right? Right. The propaganda of the Potemist era also depicts the city as an inherently decadent

• 45:43Robert Evans?

  and unnatural thing, like a break from the righteous path of subsistence farming under a dictator, and that probably leaves a mark, right? Now, in the summer of 1942, the capital saw its first major protests against French control. A group of Cambodian monks began preaching anti-French sermons. This was an escalation of what was, at this point, a slowly developing sense of Cambodian nationalism that had been supercharged by the fact that France had collapsed under the Nazi boot heel. Two of these monks are arrested by Vichy French police, who do so in a way that defaces a religious shrine, and this sparks more extensive protests, right? And these protests terminate in a march on the French administrator's office.

• 46:25Robert Evans?

  Now, the main leader of the nationalist movement in the country at this time is a guy named Sonak Thanh, who, he had some kind of lefty inclinations, he was not anti-socialist, but he's not a communist, he's not really a socialist, he is a big Popular Front, big tent, "Let's free Cambodia, and then we can figure out, like, politically what we want to do", right? That's his kind of deal, right? And so he's broadly popular with kind of everyone who wants an independent Cambodia. He's a very heroic figure during this time, and he starts organizing demonstrations against the French, they do what regimes do, and they crack down, they imprison all his friends, and he's forced to go on the run, where he eventually asks the emperor of Japan for asylum and gets it.

• 47:10Robert Evans?

  Now, Sar would have been aware of all of this, he probably would have admired Thanh, but there's not much evidence that this takes up a lot of bandwidth in his brain. Like most of his classmates who go on to become communists, he was focused, at the time, on his own educational career. As a student, Sar loved French poetry and sports, he loved all kinds of sports, he was an avid soccer player who was known for kicking the ball behind his head with stunning accuracy. He also played, this shocked me, he's on the school basketball team? And Sophie, I looked it up.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 47:45Robert Evans?

  And since Pol Pot died in 1998, sadly, there is no way he ever saw LeBron play, uh, which is a real tragedy.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 47:52Robert Evans?

  LeBron does, LeBron goes straight into the NBA in 2003, I think. So one of the great tragedies of history.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  I was hoping, I was hoping you had some, some stats on, on Pol Pot's numbers, but.

• 48:01Robert Evans?

  He must have known about Michael Jordan. So at least there's that to comfort us.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  What position did he play?

• 48:06Robert Evans?

  I don't know. I, I, I looked, Sophie. I looked. I don't know. These are the great mysteries of history, if only.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  I'm just really proud that you're, you take the time to look up stuff about, you know, LeBron, Ramon James.

• 48:20Robert Evans?

  I, I did it for you. I did it for you. Yeah. What if Pol Pot had gotten to play a pickup game with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? You know, that's the, I'm working on a novel right now.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  How tall was he, by the way?

• 48:29Robert Evans?

  Not that tall. Look, I'm going to be honest. Camer basketball could not have been the most, like, these are not tall people, right? There's not a lot of protein.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, cause like LeBron's 6'9", 250.

• 48:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, no, these, LeBron alone probably could have taken on the whole team.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  I mean, I bet on him every time.

• 48:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Like, oh God. So while several of his friends went off to a prestigious secondary school, Salat Sar barely eked by, he does horrible in his exams. And so he's not able to go to like the humanities school, which is really progressive. He's, he's, so he goes to like a much worse boarding school, which is still vastly better than 99% of the population. Again, we're talking a chunk of 1% who gets any kind of education like this, right? So the fact that he's like at the bottom of the educated class still means that he is almost unfathomably privileged by the standards of average Camer. So he starts this school in 1943. In 1945, Japan seized territ, seized Cambodia from Vichy France

• 49:30Robert Evans?

  for a variety of complex reasons that all boil down to, they were losing the war and they were trying every hail mary they could, right? They're like, look, these French guys, they don't have a good hold on things. What if we just arrest them all and make Cambodia, Japan for a little while? Will that help us beat the Americans? No. Turns out Cambodia not really that useful in fighting the United States in this period. It will be later.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:58Robert Evans?

  The Vietnamese are gonna make some real hay out of having a Cambodia in their back pocket, but.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Right piece, wrong time, you know?

• 50:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  That's like, it's like any risk game.

• 50:07Robert Evans?

  It's like any risk game, right? Yeah, so they arrest all of the French people, basically in France, and Japan is in trouble, in touch for a while. Japan is pretty brutal in a lot of areas they govern. They, they really aren't in Cambodia to the Khmer, cuz like, why would they be? Right?

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:25Robert Evans?

  And they don't have the time, you know? It's 1945. But the main impact this has on people like Salazar and his peers is that they see all of these French administrators, all of these French teachers and priests get arrested and locked up. And these people had been untouchable previously. They were very similar to the king in that, like, you just can't even comprehend the idea of laying a hand on them. And they are, they see these people forced from power and locked up by people who aren't white. And that has a huge impact, right?

• 51:03Robert Evans?

  And the thing it teaches them is that, like, the power of the French is not inevitable or immovable. It can be pushed aside. And if the Japanese could do it, maybe we could, right? One of SARS friends later recalled, "We saw that a yellow," and this is his words, "we saw that a yellow race, the Japanese, had gotten the better of the white colonialists, the French. That awakened something in us. It made us start thinking." And as far as propaganda goes, we're gonna talk about all the reading that these kids do, and, you know, reading Mao, reading Stalin, that all has an impact. I don't know if anything has a bigger propaganda impact than seeing these Japanese soldiers locking up French imperialists.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  And that is the power of representation.

• 51:47Robert Evans?

  There we go, right?

• 51:50Robert Evans?

  Obviously, the Empire of Japan is no less imperialist than the French Empire, right? But that's immaterial in discussing how it influenced people like Salazar and the future Khmer Rouge. Now, for the immediate moment, though, the biggest change brought on by Japan's brief conquest is that everybody kind of got a case of senioritis because all their teachers get arrested, right? When you read about them talking about this period, it reminds me most of that week after you take your AP exam while they're still in school, but like no one's doing anything in class. That's kind of what these kids all go through. Like, their French teachers get replaced by some Vietnamese teachers, but the substitutes don't really know how to handle shit as well. So like, they're kind of fucking off for a little while.

• 52:35Robert Evans?

  Sanok Khan returns to agitate for independence and even manages to briefly run Cambodia as an independent country after Japan collapses, right? And so Cambodia is independent under this broadly popular nationalist for about two months, which is just enough that everyone really likes this guy and feels really good about it, but not so long that like, maybe some of the problems that he might have managed...

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:02Robert Evans?

  There's nothing... Not that he... I'm not saying... He actually seems like he was pretty competent, but like, it's going to stick in people's minds as a golden period because of how short it is.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  And you don't have to... The consequences of your tough decisions, you don't spend enough time in office for them to come back.

• 53:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, exactly. So this lasts about two months, and then the French show back up with their tanks and are like, "Actually, we still feel like Cambodia is natural French territory."

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:26Robert Evans?

  So they arrest Khan. They call him a traitor, and to what? Again, you guys weren't even there anymore. But by this point, he was universally beloved, particularly by young, educated Khmer like Salazar and his friends. Now, Sar, again, has no real political beliefs at this point beyond a growing endorsement of populist nationalism. He continues to be a mid-student. He fails to get into an educational program that would have gotten him a prestigious degree, and instead settles to go to a technical school. And he picks... The easiest degree plan at the technical school carpentry because the Khmer professor was known for giving everyone good grades, no matter how well they did.

• 54:08Robert Evans?

  So he's like a carpenter for a little while in school and he's doing this because there's like a, there's like a study abroad program that gets given to the best students. And there's a number of slots and like, he figured basically the easiest thing for me to be at the best at is carpentry. Cause it's like the, the, the blow off class.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 54:28Robert Evans?

  Best shot at getting into this program, you know?

• 54:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Grab a wild card slot any way you can.

• 54:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. What a very, very, that's a very modern attitude towards it, honestly. I have a lot of friends in school who made similar calls.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:42Robert Evans?

  1947 is the first year we have evidence for SAR getting directly involved in politics. That year, the newly found Democratic Party, which advocated for replacing French and absolute monarchical rule with a democracy, or at least like a hybrid democracy. Where there's a king, but he's limited constitutionally and we have like this, you know, parliament type deal. They win 54 seats in the national elections. King Van Sac, an older student who was something of a mentor to SAR and his friends, claims that SAR, along with several of his friends, including Yang Sari, who's going to also help run the Khmer Rouge, volunteer for the Democratic Party during the elections, right? And when I say Democratic Party here, it's literally like the party that thinks we should have a democracy, right?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 55:22Robert Evans?

  And there's some, this is, and this is kind of, this is a melting pot. A lot of future communists and socialists are in the Democratic Party, as well as a lot of guys who are like, going to wind up more on the like, well, I want to be aligned with the Americans, right? This is just kind of where a lot of them are at this stage. In 1949, Salat Sar gets picked for that study abroad program and he becomes one of the first 100 Khmer male and female students to win a scholarship to go study in Paris. They leave on a steamship, they, they actually go through Saigon. And they arrive in Paris on the same day Mao Zedong announces the founding of the People's Republic of China. So a lot is happening and this is going to increasingly make discussions of like communism a lot more relevant to these kids,

• 56:06Robert Evans?

  who it really hadn't been all that much up to this point. Now, nearly all of the students that he goes to Paris with wind up being prominent political figures. A lot of them are, are leaders within the Khmer Rouge. A lot of them get killed by the Khmer Rouge because they're leaders of the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge loves murdering the Khmer Rouge, right? Like. This is primarily because almost no one else in the country had access to educational opportunities or the free time necessary to learn about radical politics. So obviously, the people who are dominant in the radical political sect are the only ones with the time to read, right? It's not that shocking. Speaking of things that aren't shocking, these products.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  I'm gonna be surprised.

• 56:53Robert Evans?

  This ad is brought to you by ViiV Healthcare, the makers of Dovato Dolutegravir Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Dovato. Dovato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Dovato is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Dovato is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Dovato.

• 57:16Speaker 05

  It is unknown if Dovato is safe and effective if you have HIV and hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Dovato without talking to your doctor, as it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Dovato if you're allergic to its ingredients, or taking Dofetilide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Dovato and get medical help right away. Other serious or life-threatening side effects include severe liver problems and lactic acid buildup. If you're female or obese, you may be more at risk. Tell your doctor about your medicines or supplements, medical conditions, liver or kidney problems, pregnancy, breastfeeding, or planned pregnancy.

• 57:52Robert Evans?

  Do ask your doctor about fewer medicines. Visit dovato.com or call 1-877-844-8872.

• 57:59Speaker 04

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 58:32Robert Evans?

  We're back. And actually, it turns out several of our sponsors might electrocute you. But you know, some people call it getting electrocuted. I call it getting free electricity, you know, and that shit's expensive these days. If you looked at your power bill, can you afford to turn down getting electrocuted, you know? Maybe, probably yes.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Robber Capacitor Evans speaking.

• 58:54Robert Evans?

  I know I shouldn't use electrocuted because that only means you've been killed. Shocked, I guess. I had an electrician friend explain that to me once. Anyway, whatever. Fucking power jack. He's power cops. Um, so, uh, where are we here? Yeah. Uh, so SAR gets into this program to study abroad despite his unimpressive grades, not just because there's not a lot of kids in this program, but because even among the ones who do better than him, most of them don't want to like leave Cambodia for years, right? Because they got like families and shit, you know? His fellow students are guys like Yang Serry, who later becomes the co-founder of the Khmer Rouge. Chandler summarizes his early life this way. "Serry was born and raised among the Cambodian minority of Cochin, China.

• 59:39Robert Evans?

  His father, Kim Reem, was a prosperous landowner. When Reem died, Serry, still a young boy, was sent to live with relatives in the Cambodian province of Prey Veng. He was given the name Yang Serry, which sounded more Khmer than his real name, Kim Trang." And that's not an uncommon story is like, especially among these guys, Pol Pot's gonna do the same thing where it's like, eh, my original name, not quite as good as I want it to be. Let me Khmer this fucker up a little bit, right?

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  It's all very WWF. I like it. Just like, yeah, let's get a populist name going.

• 1:00:10Robert Evans?

  Look, I think one thing we've all learned from the last decade of American politics is that the Rosetta Stone for understanding all of human behavior, culture, and history is professional wrestling.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:00:22Robert Evans?

  If you get pro wrestling, you understand the whole swath of human achievement.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  You thought it was, you thought it was gladiatorial combat, but that wasn't nearly camp enough.

• 1:00:31Robert Evans?

  No, no, no, not nearly camp enough. Um, so as you can see, the reason I bring up Serry's background is it's not all that different from Saloth Sar, right? And most of these Paris kids who are going to become like the core of this like educated revolutionary class have similar stories, right? The, they are intellectuals. They're going to target and annihilate the intellectual class in Cambodia once they get in power, but they're intellectuals, right? That's the class they come from. It's not that different from how Stephen Miller's background goes, actually.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:03Robert Evans?

  So Salat Star and most of, Salat Star starts off his time in Paris, living in a dormitory complex. He would later claim that in the first year, he was a fairly good student. And this is true enough, but his studies quickly slipped. Part of this is because his middling grades meant that he had to go to a technical school rather than get a degree in like the humanities, which was a lot sexier for these people who are going to wind up being future revolutionaries. And the degree plan he's working on for his years in Paris is as a radio technician. Chandler suggests that this is because he kind of befriends the king's nephew, Prince Somongpon, who lives in Paris at the time. And Prince Somongpon is also studying to be a radio technician. We know the prince helps

• 1:01:46Robert Evans?

  him find an apartment with a couple of friends, which is, you know, the place he moves out of that dormitory to live in. Pol Pot will deny this for the rest of his life. He would lie a lot about his connections to the royal family, which are deep, as we've established.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:01Robert Evans?

  He gets a lot out of his family's connections to the royal family. But in the future, he's gonna be like, no, when I was in Paris, I lived with a cousin, you know? It's like, no, you didn't. You were friends with the prince. Come on.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  Let's not let it go unsaid that he was obviously studying to be the 20th century version of a podcast producer.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 1:02:19Robert Evans?

  That's right, that's right.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Pol Pot wanted my, coming for my job.

• 1:02:22Robert Evans?

  That's right. Oh, Sophie, I gotta, I gotta say, I'd give him a shot. Look, nothing against you. I just wanna see how Pol Pot produces a podcast.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  How fucking dare you. How fucking dare you.

• 1:02:32Robert Evans?

  Don't tell me you don't wanna see it.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  I would die for you. You're gonna give me up for Pol Pot?

• 1:02:38Robert Evans?

  Sophie, if Pol Pot gets in the operation, we're all dying.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  The important thing is Sophie could organize a genocide. Pol Pot could never produce a podcast.

• 1:02:50Robert Evans?

  That's, that's right. That's right. Yeah.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  This is gonna sting for a little while.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  It's about range.

• 1:02:55Robert Evans?

  I didn't say I didn't say I'd like it. I'd said it would be good content.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  You butter me up with a LeBron stat and then you kicked me to the curb for fucking Pol Pot.

• 1:03:04Robert Evans?

  Look, he could have been a pod- he could have been a podcaster, you know? Could have been a podcaster. He was known as having a nice voice, you know? He could have had my job, maybe. Behind the memes.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  And guess what?

• 1:03:14Robert Evans?

  The Pol Pot Podcast.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Guess what?

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Me and my boys.

• 1:03:16Robert Evans?

  The Pol Podcast.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  I would choose you.

• 1:03:20Robert Evans?

  I might, I might prefer to listen to the Pol Podcast, honestly. Like, that sounds, that sounds fascinating. So SAR joins the Camer Student Union, which at that time was in the process of morphing into a semi-covert communist youth league. He attended his first protest the next year for a radical member of the Democratic Party who was assassinated by right-wingers using a hand grenade.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Oh shit.

• 1:03:42Robert Evans?

  Still, at this point in his political involvement, it seems to have been a byproduct of his social life, right? He's at this protest because like his friends are doing stuff like this and this is where you like go to hang out with people, right? Um, and he is, he is kind of a hedonist at this phase of his life. Philip Short writes, SAR's friends regarded him as a bon vivant, whose purpose in life was to have a good time.

• 1:04:05Robert Evans?

  So, that's, I think where we're gonna end for part one. We're at about an hour. Uh, we've got a lot more Pol Pot here, so we'll see how long it takes to get through all of this. I really did try to cut this fucker down, um, because I wanted to deliver this all in one week, but there's this, this guy's life.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  We'll see.

• 1:04:22Robert Evans?

  Fascinating. Yeah. But there we are, part one. How are you feeling about Pol Pot so far, Andrew T?

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  I mean, so far, it sounds fucking dope. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly change? What could possibly go wrong?

• 1:04:33Robert Evans?

  This is like that first Star Wars prequel where it's like, hey, kids, he's kind of an annoying kid, but you know, whatever. How could things go badly? Yeah.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  He likes to party, but he's a kid. Come on.

• 1:04:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. He's got a weird crush on a lady who's visibly like 15 years older than him. That's a little off, but whatever. Like.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  You know, he doesn't realize it's abuse and that's the important thing.

• 1:04:56Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it is weird that they, they then paired, uh, Hayden Christensen with Natalie Portman, two people who are clearly the same age after establishing that like, she was a mature adult ruling a country when he was a small boy.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  It's just. Why, why would you write that in?

• 1:05:15Robert Evans?

  Look.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  You know, it's the power of shooting your shot, I guess. That's what the force is, is just shooting your shot.

• 1:05:20Robert Evans?

  Shooting your shot. The Star Wars version of Behind the Bastards probably does talk a lot about. And then Darth Vader has this weird relationship with this woman who's like 20 years older than him. So who knows how this abuse affected, you know, the things that he did when he was in Bauer, right? He never wrote about this.

• 1:05:37Robert Evans?

  What we have is this interview with Wato and that guy's not really super reliable.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Wato had his own agenda.

• 1:05:45Robert Evans?

  Wato had his own agenda. No, I'm pretty sure he murdered Wato if I'm remembering my Expanded Universe shit.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think Primary Universe.

• 1:05:54Robert Evans?

  Primary Universe? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. Or is that Legends? I don't know. Fucking Disney, god damn.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  You know what?

• 1:05:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  I like it.

• 1:06:02Robert Evans?

  Anyway, everybody, um, please join me for my Behind the Bastards Star Wars focused podcast, which is actually entirely about Kathleen Kennedy. I don't have any issue with Kathleen Kennedy. It's all about George Lucas.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, it's all about a bunch of anonymous money guys. Okay.

• 1:06:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:23Robert Evans?

  All right, well, like George Lucas, I hope you all have a good day eating in a food court and being photographed like a yeti. Andrew T, you got any pluggables to plug?

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  I mean, my podcast is yours is racist. I don't know. Let's keep it real.

• 1:06:37Robert Evans?

  Keep it real.

• 1:06:39Robert Evans?

  All right, everybody, you too, keep it real. Until next day or whatever. Go to hell. I love you.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

• 1:07:13Speaker 06

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:07:44Speaker 07

  This January, bare-knuckle fighting championship takes over the ocean. The inaugural Brew's Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool-deck bare-knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Mess of parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and non-stop action. The lineup reveals coming soon. Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at B K F S E A dot com.

• 1:08:14Speaker 06

  Hear every word and feel every beat with VIZIO's powerful and immersive soundbar lineup. Whether it's a streamlined all-in-one flexible surround sound with the 4.1 Pro Wireless, or pure cinematic surround sound and thunderous bass with the 5.1 Wireless Soundbar, VIZIO has the perfect fit for any room and any setup. Blast your favorite tunes and podcasts with the iHeartRadio app and hear every beat like you're sitting front row. Upgrading your entertainment has never been easier. Discover VIZIO's full soundbar collection at Walmart or walmart.com today.

• 1:08:44Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.