Latest / Ridiculous History / CLASSIC: Patriots, Prisoners and Plants: The World of Political Body Doubles

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CLASSIC: Patriots, Prisoners and Plants: The World of Political Body Doubles · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous Historians, We're back with this week's classic episode,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Riddle me this, nol. What's more, what is the height
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: of fame? Because I think it's not just having a
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: mansion or a castle, or a jet or you know,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: fish and Portuguese onions. I think it's when you make
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: enough money to have a doppelganger.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Ah, is that what you're shooting for? Ben, I don't
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: know you want a body dub.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I'm into body dubs right now. That's so Williamsburg. Oh
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: you like dubstep, I like body dubs.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: No, No, it is definitely a flex. As anyone never
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: told you that you resemble a celebrity. Well, perhaps you
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: may have a second career as a body double. It
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: would be quite the fascinating job, that's for sure. And
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: we have a story in today's episode of real life
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: examples of body doubles from World War Two to more
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: recent and quite surprising events.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Let's roll the tape. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thanks for tuning in.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: If you are like most people on the planet, at
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: one point or another, someone has said, hey, you know
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: what you really look like insert person here x. It's
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: also it's also often said that everyone on the planet
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: statistically has a doppelganger.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: A doppel who's your doppel ben?
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know, nol I get. I get a lot
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of references, many of which are completely woosh moments to me.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: But I think I just have to accept the fact
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: that a lot of people look like me. Really. Yeah, Well, you.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: Get a lot of like looks of recognition that you
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: then have to process and realize, like, Okay, is this
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: real or is this someone imagining that I am someone
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: who they think I might be, but I'm actually not.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question because like a lot of people,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: for instance, when they say, hey, you look like this
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: other person, they're not. They're not looking at the entirety
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: of the face or the body, or the appearance or
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: the voice. They're looking at a specific maybe a facial
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: feature like a beard for instance. That happened to you, right?
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Man?
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Do you know how many people with beards I get
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: compared to? And the thing that's so weird is it's
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: their body type or any other quality completely irrelevant if
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: they have a bushy beard or some sort of well,
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: quaffed face mane you know like me, then we're the
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: same person. This is call it beard blindness. Have I
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: mentioned beardlin that's great like.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Face blindness, but beards that's great, man, that's it was
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: like a real thing, A brief anecdote for me, just
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: how tricky it can be. I had a long time
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: ago there was this store I used to go to,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: this Asian grocery store called First Oriental. You know, it's
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: down the street from the Farmer's Market into cab and
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I used to go there all the time to pick
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: up various things I would use when I was I
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: was cooking at home, and me and the lady was
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: like the proprietor got to know each other pretty well
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: sort of. And then one day she said, you know what,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: you know who you look like? And I said, I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: don't know who. I was very interested, and she said
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Bradley Cooper, which is just fundamentally false. The only thing
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: me and that guy have in common is maybe one
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: or two mutual friends, and the fact that we both
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: have brown hair and maybe are genetically similar.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Well, you're both smolderingly good looking.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: That's so kind man, thank you.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: And just to have to back you up here. Ben's
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: not humble bragging there.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Bradley Cooper is in fact the closest best personal friend
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: of our boss Connel Burn.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: That's true. We can mention that on Let's come up Okay, yes,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: yeah he is. He is with us defending the show
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: against the tyranny of Sheryl Crow.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Do you think Bradley Cooper has a body double?
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: Ben?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Just you know, for walking around times.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Definitely for do a shopping for him.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Definitely for characters and roles he plays. As an actor,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: A lot of actors have body doubles for stunts or
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: for intimate romantic scenes, but.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: They don't have to look the same in the face.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: They mainly just have to be able to look the
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: same in profile, or like from behind or like from
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: a long shot.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Right Like when you see photographs of stunt doubles next
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: to their actors. It's it's kind of an uncanny Valley thing,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: for sure, And occasionally it's a I'll say it, occasionally
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: it's a real life version of that. We have blanket
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: home meme.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: Right, you know what I'm talking about, Ben, It's I'll
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: send to you some Okay, I'll send youseth.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: For now we know that you are the real Nol Brown.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: I am the real Ben Bolan. So far as we know,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: there are no body doubles involved here.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: I refuse to stand up though, sir, right, And.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: We know that our super producer, Paul Mission controlled decand
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: is himself the one, the only, except no substitutions. But
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: today you and I are talking about real life body doubles,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: not someone who just is a victim of beard blindness now,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: not someone who vaguely looks like some other person with
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: brown hair.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: Not the way Casey Pegram, super producer Casey Pegram has
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: a secret life in France as some sort of criminal
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: mastermind known as LaBouche.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's an alternate identity right now.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: That's the same thing as a body double.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Right He's one guy with two identities that we know of.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: A body double would be two seven real people who
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: share at least publicly a single identity.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: And specifically, today we're talking about political body doubles, which,
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: as it turns out, are pretty rare. Yes, it's a
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: pretty short listical episode, but all of them are nice
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: and beefy. A lot of good info out there, But
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: the ones that we do know of.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we brought the juice and we wanted to be
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: sure that we didn't get lost in some quagmire speculation
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: real quick to set this up. You know why they're
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: increasingly rare, right, No, it's because of the rise of
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: photography and video. So you know, back in the thirteen hundreds,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: someone could walk up with a letter and say, this
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: is a letter signed by someone else you've never met.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: That's say, I am, you know, the Archduke of Hamington Sandwich,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: which is maybe I'm paraphrasing.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: You must be.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, there's actually a story I heard through another
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: show that I'm working on in the music space. I
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: guess about how I think it was the Supremes, or
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: maybe it was the Commodores, a very influential, famous band
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: from that era, had a body double version of the
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: band that would tour simultaneously, so they could literally have
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: two versions of the show on the road at the
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: same time.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: That's crazy, dude. That reminds me of Morgan Freeman's voice double.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: We talked about this before, I think, right, maybe not
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: on errow. Maybe we're just hanging out. So Morgan Freeman
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: has a voice double, and you know he's got such
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: an iconic, iconic resonance to his voice, a lot of
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: people want him to do a read for a commercial
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: or a cause or whatever. And apparently the story goes,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I'd love if someone can confirm this. The story goes
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: that he has two different kind of pricing structures. One
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: is if you can afford the actual Morgan Freeman, but
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: if you want the more economical choice. Word on the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: street is he has like he officially co signs some
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: other guy to do Morgan Freeman voices. So it's crazy
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: can't get the real mf you can go for the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: next best thing.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: I'm not trying to dog on voice actors because I
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: know it's definitely you know, it requires some skill, but
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: specifically what Morgan Freeman does, where he basically just is
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: Morgan Freeman all the time, that's kind of the height
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: of laziness. Like it's already an easy gig just to
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: be Morgan Freeman on Mike and read some ad copy
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: about credit card or something. But to have somebody else
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: kind of sub in for you and get the bargain
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: basement price. I don't know how I feel about that.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Morgan Freeman capitalism, baby roll the dice Yeah, it's interesting.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: This is such a tangent, but there's also you know,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: it leads us to one of those great divisions of actors.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: A lot of a list amazing American actors are pretty
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: much themselves in films. Christopher Walken, al Pacino, I'll say it.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Keanu Reeves, who seems like a tremendous guy.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Sure does.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: So they have stunt doubles, but that's different. As you said, Nol,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: getting to the point of our show, we do have
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: a point today, there are political body doubles. They are
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: much less common perhaps then fiction would have led us
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: to believe. So we'd like to go through a few
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: of these and get your take along the way. The
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: first one was a surprise to me. I was not
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: very familiar with this historical character. General Bernard Montgomery, known
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: as Monty to his friends, had a real life body
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: double named M. E. Clifton James. But why did he
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: have a body double? Right, he's a general. That's a
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: big deal, so maybe it's military related.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's true, so must call him Monty because
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: we're friends were familiar. Monty was a very influential general
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: who was responsible for a lot of the logistical planning
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: that went into the D Day invasion of Normandy, you know,
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: the big one. So they found it.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: They as an I five found it to be a
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: high priority to make sure that this guy was protected
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: in every sense of the word. Ah.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, because this is deep in the propaganda front of
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the war. Both the Allied and Axis forces are trying
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: to trick one another with the publication of fake plans.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: They're trying to lay some red herrings and mislead their opponents. So,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: as you said, Noel m I five, I five says,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: this guy's a valuable asset. He's instrumental to D Day
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and other events and will will need him alive and
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: at the top of his mental game. But he's just
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: one man. And that's when they run into a man
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: named M. E. Clifton James. Emmy Clifton James is not
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: a general.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: He's not even British.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: He is an Australian actor. Yes, And so I five
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: approaches him and they say, okay, we need you to
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: do us as solid. We have a special mission for you.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: You are going to dress like General Montgomery, you are
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: going to act like General Montgomery, and you were going
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: to travel around northern Africa, right publicly talking about Allied
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: plans within the earshot of Nazi spies who don't think
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: we've discovered them yet. So act like this guy, act
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: like Montgomery and walk around saying total fake malarkey plans.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Just be like, you know how truly put in all
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: of our forces in Lithuania.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: This reminds me of the story we did about poujel Lia,
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: the operative for the British Intelligence Agency who planted fake
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: stories with the Germans.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, just so very very similar tactic.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: We had somebody who write this very nice thing on
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Instagram about that too recently.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: Right, it's pretty cool these people post like cool history
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: pictures and little captions.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good idea. A shout out to History
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: with Astro Astro who said that they really enjoyed our
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: account of Agent Garbo, which was one of that guy's
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: many nicknames. And you and I both looked through this account.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I really enjoy the different snapshots that History with an
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Astro takes, you know, little vignettes for sure.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: Yes, there's a lot of those kind of accounts footing
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: around these days, and this one does a really good job.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: So back to James, here's the thing. There was a
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: one little kink here. James had a missing finger, he
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: lost it during World War One, and he had a
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: prosthetic that would help him pass for Monty, you know,
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: and pull off the subterfuge.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: As long as he did have to type something right exactly.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: And James actually wrote an autobiography called I Was Montes's Double,
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: where he said that the Nazis were so completely taken
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: with his subterfuge, with his imitation, that they actually were
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: considering assassinating him.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So here's specifically what he was spreading, and
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: here's how successful he was. According to his own autobiography,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: he had propagated the idea that the Allied troops would
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: be coming from southern France, So the German forces moved
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: a ton of their troops to southern France because that's
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: where they thought the evasion would be based rather than Normandy.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: So this worked. It's kind of tough to say how
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: much of a sway his actions his secret mission had
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: on German forces, but they definitely did play a part. Now,
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: this con this duplicity was pretty complicated because the best
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: way to teleconvincing falsehood is to make it very, very
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: closely related to the truth. It has to have a versimilitude, right,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: and this meant that James had to be a full
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: on method actor sometimes in ways he did not appreciate.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: I five told him that he could not drink booze
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: and he could not smoke tobacco because Montgomery didn't do that.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: So it could blow the whole thing wide open if
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: you catch General Montgomery out back in an alleyway, you know,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: sneakily puffing on something. And additionally, the General did like breakfast,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: but he did not eat eggs, and he did not
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: eat pork, and he had kind of a spartan diet,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: so he wouldn't use milk or sugar as porridge. So
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: all of that is out for James. He has to
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: become this other person like Dennis Reynolds says and always
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: sunny in Philadelphia to live within his skin.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: Indeed, went full Leo on that business. So this whole
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: operation was referred to as Copperhead. And it was conceived
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: in January of nineteen forty four when Brigadier Dudley Clark
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: saw a movie that inspired him, a movie called Five
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Graves to Cairo.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Right right, This actor Miles Mander Dudley Clark sees him
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: playing a British officer and he thinks, well, heck, that
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: guy looks a lot like General Montgomery. This is a
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: different guy from Emmy James. Here's how it goes down,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: he says, Dudley that is, says this guy will be
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: a great body double, and so he develops this concept.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: But then they meet a huge snag. They arrange a
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: meeting with Miles Mandarin in person, and then they say,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: oh no, way too tall, way too tall. General Montgomery,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: you see, is a bit bantam. He is five foot
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: six bantam.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: You say, what does that mean?
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Technically it means kind of a small chicken, but.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: It's also a weight class in boxing, U huh.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Bantam weight. It also uses is slangly used to refer
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: to people of diminutive stature with combative disposition.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: It's a vocabulary corner with then and all bantam. I
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: love that word. So, yeah, dude's a little short, he's
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: a little prince like.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah sure yeah.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Uh So they say, Okay, that's not going to work.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Everyone will clock that immediately if they meet him in person,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: and a true body double has to be effective in person,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: so they can't find any other actors, and they think
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: maybe this, maybe it's just not in the cards for
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: us to pull off this coup. Until that is a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: guy named Stephen Watts, who's an mi I five officer.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Happens across a photo of a British Army lieutenant named
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Emmy Clifton James who is dressed as the General for
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: a stage show.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Weird, weird, so many weird little happenstancey things that happen here.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: And this guy was sort of a lesser known Australian actor,
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: sort of a Toast of London type character. He was
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: forty six, so he was you know, it wasn't happening
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: for him, but he had been in this production and
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: they He then was assigned to the Royal Army pay
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Corps and was based in Leicester, not Leicester like you
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: think it would be pronounced when you look at it
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: on paper.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: It's a tricky one. It's a really but it's like
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Worcester in Massachusetts.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: But it's almost like, I think I'm still gonna get
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: yelled at even though because I said it wrong. Even
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: though I said it right, I said that I wanted
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: to say wrong. And that's just as bad as saying
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: it wrong. Nah man lean into it all right. It's
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: a living language. So Leicester is Ray's base working for
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: the Army, Royal Army pay Corps. And he kind of
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: did little side gigs as as an actor on the
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: you know, when he wasn't when he had free time.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: M h that Watts and Clark made this happen.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Stephen Watts and Dudley Clark put
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: this operation Copperhead into motion and it worked. As we said.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Emmy James had to go full Daniel day Lewis and
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: assume the role of Montgomery. It wasn't super pleasant for him,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: but by gosh, by golly, by gummy, he did it
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and pulled it off successfully. This was This was admitted
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: by General Montgomery himself. On May eighth, nineteen sixty three.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Emmy Clifton James died. He was sixty five years old.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: When the General received word, he said, he performed a
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: very useful had a very dark time of the wool.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: What he did completely fooled the Germans.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: Is that your Churchill voice?
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: It's no, no, No, Churchill voice is way more RiPP roar.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Is it offensive?
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: That's just sort of your General British official voice, and
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: you'll notice this guy's voice changed.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: He's got two different voices here. Yeah, so the General
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: totally co signs this. But we have to ask ourselves.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Did he completely fool the Germans? It would seem so
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: for his part. Yeah, But this was one of several
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: other operations going on.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: Because again our guy Poujol was heavy, heavily involved in
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: this kind of campaign of deception as well. There was
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: another operation, but they were happening in tandem because both
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: revolved around D Day and the planning of D Day
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: and making sure the Germans did not know where it
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: was going to happen, absolutely where they were going to
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: invade on the beach.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: So on a one to ten success scale for this
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: body double the Stoppelganger, I gotta say man a ten,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: especially considering that he had to wear a fake finger
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: and he still pulled it off. How did that work out?
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Where they just like the General doesn't shake.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Hands exactly, all right, that makes sense.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Howie Mandel doesn't shake hands.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: He's a notorious germophobe, right, that's right.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a fist bumper all day. So this is
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: one of those rare cases of a proven, documented, successful
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: body double, but it's not the only one. We'll stay
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: roughly within the same time period, give or take a
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: few decades, and let's travel across the Iron Curtain. No,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: why are we going to Russia for the next story.
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Why wouldn't we? We've both been watching Chernobyl. I mean,
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: it seems like an obvious place to go, seems like.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: A great place. It's a it's a learning opportunity, it
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: really is.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: No another famous body double, or one that we know of,
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: at least was one belonging to I guess you could
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: say Joseph Stalin.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Joseph Stalin, one time leader of the Union
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR, and by.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: All accounts a real pill, a real pill and nearing
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: the end of his life, especially very paranoid. I mean,
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: it seems like Soviet culture sort of engenders that overall,
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: like with the KGB and everyone feeling like they're followed
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: and tapping phones and what do they say, confirm.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: Or trust but verify.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's sort of the doctrine of the KGB or
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: of like Russian intelligence in general. So it basically means
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: trust no one.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: So there's so many strange facts about this guy. First off,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: we still have people arguing about when his actual birthday is.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: He was born in Joseph Visyyanovich Jugashvili and I am
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: woefully mispronouncing that. And then when he was thanks Tilt
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: for that slow clap. And then when he was in
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: his thirties he changed his name to Stalin because it
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: means man of steel.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Got a nice ring to it.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: The balls on this guy, seriously, brass now steel, the
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: steal off the steel on this guy.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: So during his time during the Second World War, he
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: of course became concerned that someone would attempt to assassinate
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: him and the predecessors of the KGB, the Soviet secret
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: police started recruiting people to be decoys more or less
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: for Stalin. So he had like a team of doubles. Yeah,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: he had a gang. Mm hmm, he really had a Doppelgang.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: That's good, Ben, that's all right. Seven out of ten.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: I liked it, thank you. I would have given it
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: an eight point five thank you. That's very kind.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: So yeah, we looked into this, and the thing is
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: that he was given these political decoys in World War Two.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: But it is widely suspected that he kept them employed
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: for the rest of his life.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: Right, there's also some conjecture that he faked his own
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: death and that it was one of these decoys in
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: his coffin, which which that would imply that he had
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: to have them killed in his place. I don't pretty
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: cold blooded. I don't think that would be a problem
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: for him. No, I don't think so either. I think
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: it would just be another Tuesday self sacrifice. But I'm
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: telling you, I'm so steeped in Chernobyl right now. To
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: serve what is it to serve the USSRU?
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: What was the what was there? Was that film that
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: came out maybe a year ago or so.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: The Death of Stalin? That's it's fantastic, it's great. Jeff
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: is in it.
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: And wait does he play He doesn't play Stalin, Steve
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: as Shemi plays Krushev and the whole kind of you know,
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: gimmick of the movie. It's not a gimmicky movie at all.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: This this totally isn't an issue. Everyone just has their
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: own accent. No one uses Russian accent. Steve Bismi as
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: Khrushchev sounds just like Steve Bushemy as Steve Bushmi.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: It's fantastic. Yes, I recommend it so highly.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: It's it's the guy, uh, what's his name, Ianucci, who
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: is the creator of Weep and another political series.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: It's British political series.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: But it's just really sharp, really funny and really disturbing,
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: and it really shows.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: This whole culture of paranoia. I don't remember if the
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Doubles played into it or not.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I don't remember either. I need to rewatch it. But
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: it totally nails that Gallows humor or the paranoia, and
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: it is based on fact. We could do an entire
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: episode about the weird death of Stalin now that it's
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: in question. So during his rise to power, he implemented
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: numerous murder plots against people are citizens of the Soviet Union.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Anyone who opposed him would go to a fake trial
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: and be executed or kangaroo court right or they would
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: just disappear. And he kind of functioned under a sort
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: of unfortunate self fulfilling prophecy. He was a man convinced
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: that he was surrounded by enemies, and his behavior create
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: a roster of people who very much wanted him dead
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: or knew that their lives would be easier if he
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: was out of the picture. We know for sure that
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: he had at least two body doubles that he called
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: political decoys, but there may have been there may have
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: been many more. One one is named Rashid. That's even
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: now in twenty nineteen. That's all we know about the
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: guy is like his first name.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: We also know of a man named Felix Dadyev, who
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: is another of one of his body doubles who we
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: are aware of. And here's the thing.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: It's tough to prove that any political leader used a.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Body dumble it is. It is because they would not
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: want that information out there. This is not something they
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: would want to broadcast. It's also kind of it's not
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: embarrassing exactly, but it certainly tips your hand. If if
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: it's like a known thing, it removes all effectiveness, absolutely
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: all efficacy of the Yet so we did.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: We don't find out about Rashid and Felix for a
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: long long time. Rashid actually dies in nineteen ninety one
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: at age ninety three, so the double outlived the original.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: But because we know more about Felix da Diev, maybe
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: we can explore his story a little similar to Emmy
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: James at least in my opinion, he was like an
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: actor trying to make it happen. Right.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: Oh, get this though, dude, Felix Dadev didn't even it
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: didn't come out officially that he had been one of
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: I believe the very least four of Stalin's doubles that
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: we know until April until two thousand and eight, So
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is pretty new information.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Uh. And I believe.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: Daddeev got permission, special permission from Putin himself to be
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: able to come out with this information for his own purposes,
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: so we could like write a book about it. Yeah,
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: and he was eighty eight, so that we know about
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Russia though, wouldn't you think I would have thought that
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: Putin would have said.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Sir, it was a different times, it was a different time.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: And also that kind of that kind of information when
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: it comes out is useful for them. It becomes a
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: situation where you want people to know. It makes someone
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: clever full you exactly. So Dadyev during the time that
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: the Second World War breaks out is an actor, an illusionist,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: and a magician.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Pretty cool, Pretty cool.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: So he was all set to travel to the UK
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: as a member of the state, singing and dance band
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: of Ukraine. But when the war broke out, he got
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: reassigned to a concert brigade. So entertaining the troops certainly
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: what we.
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: Have in the States with the USO, where you know,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: to entertain the troops, keep moral up and all of
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: that exactly.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: However, in the Soviet military, if you're a soldier, you're
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: a soldier. You're a soldier, meaning that he still had
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to fight while juggling and doing magic illusions.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, seriously. Yeah, and Dancy, he had it harder than
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: any of them.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: He was a triple threat that was pressed into quadruple
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: threat status. Yeah.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: And this, this, you know, eventually led to him being
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: quite badly injured.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: In nineteen forty two.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Right during the Russian liberation of Grosny. His family is
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: notified that he has died. But here's what actually happened.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: In nineteen forty three, He's flown to a small cottage
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: near Moscow and the Secret police tell him that he
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: needs to forge a new identity as Stalin's body double.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: So they're capitalizing on the fact that he's been reported
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: as dead.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Correct, Yeah, yeah, I mean it's great, he's a ghost
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: at this point.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: M so no one's going to look for a ghost.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, So he starts training to become the spitting
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: image of Stalin, both in appearance and behavior. The problem
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: is that this guy at this point is is in
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: his what his mid twenties or something. Yeah, and Stalin
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: is sixty years old.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Look at the very least.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: So they really have to implement some serious like you know,
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: prosthetics and movie magic kind of stuff to really age
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: this guy.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: And so he watches repeated, repeated samples of Stalin's public speeches,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: of his ambulatory habits. How he's walking is.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: The way you hear method actors work. You know, we're
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: like training to be portray someone in a film.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: You go through.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Every possible archival, you know, foot piece of footage that
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: you can, and you learn their mannerisms. You learn the
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: way they move and the way that their facial expressions are,
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: any ticks that they have, you know, and he kind
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: of tells, really really interesting.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: This is so wild. Okay. So his his first gig
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: is pretty intimidating. He is tasked to stand in for
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Yosef Stalin at the Kremlin, and the idea was that
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: if he can convince ministers and committee leaders that he
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: is actually Stalin, then he can officially be employed as
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: a political decoy. And it worked. It worked so well
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: that they sent him to talk to other international leaders, right,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: that's true.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: He went to Yalta to meet with Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: This is so cool that we have so much information
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: about everything that he actually did, straight from his mouth
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: and with the approval of the state no less. Yeah,
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: he met with Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to discuss the
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: reorganization of Europe after the war. And here's the thing.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: He had a sort of a cross purpose here. He
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: was meant to be a decoy that allowed the real
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: Stalin to land in Yalta and not be noticed. So
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: he was sort of like a decoy in a separate plane.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: It made his exit, and then the real Stalin was,
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: you know, landed elsewhere.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So he said that he had had he
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: not impressed the chief of the Secret police or Stalin's
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: personal head of security details, he probably would have been shot.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: He believes that because they couldn't let the political decoy
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: story be in the news at all. Even so, if
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: the guy was an unsuccessful audition, right, then they can't
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: have him walking around looking like Stalin, knowing all these
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: intimate details. Because he was successful, he was forced to
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: sign an NDA, or non disclosure agreement that prevented him
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: from saying anything about his role as Stalin's body double
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: for decades after Stalin's death in nineteen fifty three. He
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: was also never able to tell his family that he
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: was alive. He could never tell them what he was
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: doing for the Soviet government. And this was so ironclad
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: that when Stalin died and they never and they needed
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: no more body doubles, he had to create an entirely
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: different identity for himself. And that's how we came to
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: know the musician Tom Waits.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: Exactly funny thing too, Bene. When I think of a double, like,
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: I think of them as like buddies, like hanging out
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: and stuff. You know, I don't know why, And that's
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: where my that's where my mind goes. Yeah, not the case,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: my friends, not the case. Felix only met Stalin one
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: time in his entire life, and near the end of
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: Stalin's life in nineteen fifty three. And there's a fantastic
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: article on history collection dot co that goes through a
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: lot of this chronology called The Strange Life of Joseph
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: Stalin's Body Double by Donna Patricia Ward, and she quotes
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: this from this from this meeting, saying that Stalin quote again,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: this is from the autobiography quote.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Smiled and gave me an approving nod, and that was it.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I told you what I saw you, hey, man validated.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: You don't want to talk to that guy?
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: No, probably not.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: People will die, absolutely And can you imagine how I mean,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you could almost have a heart attack from being in
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: the same room with that guy and just making an
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: eye contact. Seriously, if he smiles and nods, that's it.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: That's you got what you came for. You're a ghost.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Now disappear. Don't let him see you again. He might
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: change his mind. So now we've upped the stakes because
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: now we have a guy who has multiple body doubles.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: We have one more example for today, which is much
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: more recent and even even goes a little past our
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: usual caveat. We usually try to keep things, you know
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: in the three Yeah, yeah, because of the gorilla. Yeah,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: so we that is true. Check out our episode where
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: we pretty much spontaneously decided.
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: That yeah, I still feel good about it. I am
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: totally fine with this is the right call on our part.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Uh So, now we're journeying to the Middle East Rock specifically,
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: this is the story of Saddam Hussein. Like Yoso Stalin,
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Saddam Hussein apparently used more than one body double for
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: the war. Many people in Iraq said they could tell
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: the real Saddam from one of his multiple lookalikes, not
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: by watching him but are the person pretending to be him,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: but by watching his bodyguards, which were around him at
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: all times. Yeah, and Saddam was reported to have had
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: a veritable menagerie, a harem. I don't know what do
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: you call a group of employees. None of those words apply.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Doppelgang is still.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: Found, the total doppel gang. Yeah, he really did. He
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: had multi multiples while he ruled Iraq. And this is
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: according to US intelligence. So you had mentioned earlier, Ben
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: that there was some there were some tells that the
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: bodyguards would have that would kind of let folks know
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: who knew what to look for, whether they were dealing
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: with the real artic of the real deal, or you know, one.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Of these one of these copycats.
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So if the bodyguard appeared a little too casual,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: or if they appeared to laugh at jokes or something.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: A lot of Araki's took that as a tip off
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: that they were not guarding the real Saddam, because they
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: just they wouldn't be that chill and relax if it
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: was the genuine article.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Another tell from the Washington Times.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: Washington Times reports an article called the fate of Saddam's
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: Lookalikes remained unknown was the fact that Saddam himself was
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: a big fan of close ups.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Very very vain guy.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. This is This is
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: the same guy, by the way, who was a fairly
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: prolific author of romance novels.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Erotic fiction. Dare we say, yeah, which like sex mysteries.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's it. That's one of that's one of our
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: new favorite idioms or expressions. We gotta, we gotta bring
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: that into the fold on air. But yes, he loved
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: to close up. He was a bit of a ham.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: The problem is that when you have a look alike,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: you need to keep a distance totally.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Eric shadows the illusion because again, this is one that's
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: much more in the era of constant around the clock,
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: twenty four hour news cycle, you know.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Right, because now we're in the digital age, and streaming
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: video can be transported across the planet very easily, so
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: there are more opportunities to determine whether someone is a
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: body double. People were so concerned about this, and I
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: love that you mentioned US intelligence earlier in People were
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: so concerned about this that when Saddam Hussein was captured
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, then Defense Secretary Donald H.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Rumsfeld said, Okay, we need to figure out if we
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: have the real guy, you know what I mean, or
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: if we just have some hapless person who is forced
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: to be Saddam Hussein.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: Well, surely every ready's don't we know about these doubles?
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: They wouldn't have been so hapless, right, It would have
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: been almost a privilege for me.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: It seems to be like Felix Dadiev strikes me as
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: someone who made a patriotic decision, So did Emmy James,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: so we can only imagine it would be it would
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: be similar, right. So Rumsfeld was so concerned about this
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: that he demanded they do DNA testing because you know,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: some of these body doubles have probably spent decades at
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: this point mirroring the real deal totally.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: And I do want to back down my previous statement,
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: a lot of these folks were in fact forced to
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: do this.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: There's a film called The Devil's.
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: Double that came out in twenty eleven that kind of
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: looks at the Saddam Hussein regime through the eyes of
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: a double that was meant for his son, Ude, who
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: was a real piece of work himself in his own right.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, big time, and this man was forced to do this.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think I've seen that film. So Rumsfeld,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: you know, he's so paranoid about this that he demands
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: they collect DNA and he accepted it finally as ninety
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: nine point something percent proof positive that this was the
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: genuine Saddam Hussein. And he also emphasized, he said, look,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: when we caught him, Saddam Hussein admitted his identity and
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: several of his former cabinet members confirmed he wasn't a
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: body double. But his body doubles were so dedicated to
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: this job that they had undergone plastic surgery, and they
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: could have even had things like tattoos, bullet holes, or
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: moles that would make them appear to look even more
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: like the leader. And as I think it's really interesting
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: that you mentioned Ude Hussein that's his oldest son, right,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: so his body double the guy in real life named
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Latif Yahia. Y Ahia your school chums, I believe. Yeah,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: they went to school, right, And then he, like all
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Iraqi citizens at the time, had mandatory military service. It's
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: part of growing up. So in nineteen eighty eight he
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: is enlisted non consensually to be UDA's body double. And
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: then he said it was pretty He said Oude was
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: a psychopath. Yeah.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: There's even a story where from a former Iraqi soccer
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: player by the name of Shahar Haydar who said that
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: during a match with Jordan, the team lost and he
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: personally was dragged across the ground with two other players
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: and then they were forced to take their shirts off,
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: and they tied their feet together and pulled their knees
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: over a bar while they were on their back, and
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: then they dragged them across the concrete, peeling the skin
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: off of their backs. And then they would force them
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: to get in a sand pit so there would be
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: sand in the wounds on the really really really psychotic,
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: grizzly stuff. They even made them climb a ladder and
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: jump into a vat of raw sewage with these open wounds,
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: and it was the idea that like they would, they
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: would do that to them until they won. Seems like
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: really good motivation there.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about Uday Hussein. Writing for
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: The Guardian, Suzanne Goldenberg looks into this guy's behavior in
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: life and he's incredibly dangerous and imbalanced. He was a
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: sadist with a taste for cruelty so extreme that his
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: father had to say, this kid is not a worthy air.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: He's a real Jeoffrey Lanister type figure.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Totally yeah, one hundred percent on that. So when he
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: was overseeing these soccer teams, he apparently kept a private
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: torture scorecard where he would write instructions on how many
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: times someone should be beaten according to how they performed
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: in a losing game. He was a notorious sexual predator.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: He would order any girl or woman who caught his
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: eye to be brought to his private pleasure doom. So
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: this was this was a place with It was on
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: his father's estate, with indoor fountains, big erotic murals, HIV
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: testing facilities, and huge stashes of drugs. He had another
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: just straight up torture chamber secreted somewhere away on the
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: banks of the Tigris. He shot one of his uncles
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: in the leg. In nineteen eighty eight, he bludgeoned his
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: father's bodyguard to death in front of people at a party,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: and yeah, it was just worse and worse and worse.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: So I would hate to be his body double. Oh absolutely,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I almost would rather. I don't know, it's tough to say.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: I kind of want to see the film. I have
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: not seen it. I've just read a little bit about it,
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: so I understand that.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: It's pretty visceral and a lot of the stuff is
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: dealt with, and this person is basically like living in
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: fear of his own life. Not to ment to the
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: fact that he is being a body double for a
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: man who is universally despised.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, probably people gunning for him all the time.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Great point to people know that he's not the real
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: ude because he's not killing people parties. That's a very
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: dubious distinction. Yeah. So eventually Oude passes away in July
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: of two thousand and three. He had already at this
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: point been imprisoned several times, been exiled several times, and
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: even received a kind of sort of death sentence from
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: his father's government. So our thoughts go out to anybody,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: especially to Latif who anybody who had to be a
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: body double for someone that violent and destructive. And these
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: are so these are just three examples of real life
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: proven body doubles. I guess we could say four examples,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: because you know, we're two Hussein's deep at this point.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: But there are many, many more alleged body doubles.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Right. A guy named Joe R.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: Reader, who served as undersecretary for the US Army, gave
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: an interview with Fox News in one where he kind
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: of intimated that there were some others that he knew of.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: He said, Osama bin Laden likely have, which makes a
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: lot of sense, being that he was so doggedly being
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: hunted by the US military.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Uh, and also Manuel Noriega. What are some other ones been?
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Well, of course there's Fidel Castro. I don't know if
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I was body double level, but I did a pretty
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: good Castro costume one Halloween really in yester years. Yes, yeah,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: I have the jacket for it in the hat. It's
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: mainly what it is.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: He's need a really nice square beard, yeah, and a cigar,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: and I could grow I could grow beards pretty quickly.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: Nice offensively superpower.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Dude, it's a very inconvenient superpower because I'm a guy
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: who likes to drink milkshakes and eat soup and I
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: just can't. Okay, I have a min's respect for you, man.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: You have a great beard. I don't know if you
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: guys know this about my co host here, but he
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: has a he has a fantastic and well quoifed beard.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: No, I know because of beard blindness from the top
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: of the show, remember, yeah, but we need to we
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: need to thanks for big up in my bear. Here's
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: some other ones that aren't body doubles. Winston Churchill was
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: reported and you could have been this guy Ben. Honestly
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: sure he could do such a good, such a good impersonation. Yeah,
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: used a voice impersonator, a man named Norman Shelley to
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: do these like again, it's sort of like what we're
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: talking about with Morgan Freeman, just kind of like laziness
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: like he did. He didn't want to do those morning
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: breakfast chats every day, so he had someone else.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: He was probably tanked, right, yeah, hungover exactly.
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: That makes perfect sense then, an aid to Henry Kissinger
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: has been on record saying that when Kissinger went to
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: China on a secret mission to China and seventy one
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: he used an impersonator at least one time.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: So is this okay? Here's my question is we had
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: earlier talked about what a what a rich person's toy
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: a blimp must be, Like you own a blimp? Yeah,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: then your blimp riche You're you're blimpriche. You're frivolously possibly
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: offensively wealthy.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Blimpridge is a funny thing to say. It sounds like
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: it's own word.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: It sounds somehow like a curse work. It does, But
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: I love it. So I'm thinking that having your own
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: body double is another one of those rarefied luxuries of
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: billionaires in the elite, you know what I mean totally.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: I'm supposed to take the blimp out to the Builderberg conference,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: but I believe I'll send my body double.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing, though, it only matters if it has
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: to be you, right, Otherwise it's just called a servant,
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: that's true, or like an assistant or something like that. Right,
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: someone is to go do errands, be a runner for you.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: So you have to not only be wealthy, you have
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: to kind of be pretty damn important and need to
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: have a lot of FaceTime that either you don't feel
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: like doing or that could actually put you in danger.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: And there have been many other body doubles or alleged
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: body doubles throughout history. There was even a Mexican politician,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Renato Trunco Gomez, who held a national competition in twenty
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: fifteen to try to find the best candidates to be
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: as body doubles, which might defeat the purpose. And I
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: think in China this may still be going on. Wealthy
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: people who are sentenced to serve time in prison or jail,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: they can engage in the practice of hiring what's called
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: a replacement convict. So you get sentenced, you get a
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: guilty plea, but then you just pay someone else to
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: go to jail for you must be nice. I don't
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: want anyone to go to jail, right.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: I hope you're a good person, Ben, You've got a
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: kind heart.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: That's very that's a that's very kind of you. Just say,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: and this is our episode. Look now I have to
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: ask you, know you don't have to, I feel compelled
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: to ask, do you do you have any body double
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: observations or doppelganger observations?
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: With which you agreed.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Did someone ever say something like, hey, you know you
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: you kind of look like or sound like, doesn't have
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: to be faced. You also maybe sound like this person
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: you agreed and said. It wasn't just the beer.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: You know, it comes up a lot.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: It's really weird. I've heard this multiple times from listeners
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: writing in. They say that I sound like Dwight from
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: the Office.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I've heard this.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: I don't hear it. I don't get it, and I
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: love the Office and I like Dwight, but I don't
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: know what it is. And I've only really seen the
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: British version of the Office.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, the American version is great, That's what I hear.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: I hear great things.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: So maybe maybe I can make a call on that
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: when I'm more familiar with it. But yeah, we have
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: received several emails regarding that.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: My god, now that's not so I'm doing. I'm doing
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: job from Arrested Development. Oh yeah, I don't even know
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: who still reminds me very I'm going to say it.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: I know it's not his favorite thing. Maybe aware we're
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: all kind of a big family here. How stuff works.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: One of our producers, brilliant guy, friend of the show
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: and personal friend of mine named Chandler Mays always freaks
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: me out by how much he resembles the actor who
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: plays Job in Arrested Development.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: He does a little bit.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I can that saw so much in the face. It's
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: the swag, it's the mannerism. Yeah, yeah, it's the love
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: of illusions. Very true.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: It's a very big, big, big sweeping hand movements. I
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: agree with that. Well, this has been an episode, and
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: I think it was a pretty good one.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: I don't know if I do say so myself. Yes, yeah,
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: I want to get too big here, and I want
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: to know get too big league.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: No. Yeah. When I have a meeting with the other
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Ben Bolan later this weekend, and I think he'll be
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: he'll be really glad to know that this went well.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, we'd like to hear from you. Do
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: you ever get a let's all be nice to each
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: other on the internet? Do you ever get repeated comparisons
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: either in your voice, your mannerisms, or your appearance, and
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: if so, do you agree with that? Do you have
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: like do you have like thirty eight people a day
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: tell you that you look like Natalie Portman? You know,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I had a long time so I had a very
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: difficult time differentiating for years Natalie Portman and Paul What's
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: her cure? And Knightley.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that it looks similar.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's on me. Maybe I have face blind.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: Do you remember the show The Adventures of Pete and Pete.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: I'm familiar with it.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: And huge fan.
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: There's a character on it called Endless Mike who's kind
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: of a bully, and for the longest time I thought
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: that was young Sam.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Rockwell, I remember you mentioned this earlier, and then.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: Some friends of some of friends of ours who are
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: also big fans of the show thought the same thing.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Well, maybe you're onto something. Let us know. Let us
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: know your favorite doppelganger look alike or body double stories.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. For Facebook,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: we highly recommend checking out our favorite part of the show,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: your fellow listeners on our page or Ridiculous Historians.
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and if you want to find me individually on Instagram,
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: you can look me up at how Now Noel Brown And.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: If you want to find me on Instagram, I believe.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Most recently I was looking into the problematic past of
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Belgian comic strips at the Belgian Comic Strip Museum. That
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: instagram is at ben Bowling.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: If you don't want to do any of that stuff,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: you can us an email. We do have one. It
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: is ridiculous at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: And of course, as always, thanks to our superproducer Paul
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: I'm standing in for super producer Casey Pegram like a champ.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Thanks to
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: Gabe Lucier who helped us put this episode together research wise.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks to Christopher Hasiotis. Because we just liked we
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: just like to thank him in general.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzer can go right to help. Thanks
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: to Jonathan Strickland.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: To aka the Quizzor, thanks so much to you for listening,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: and Noel, thank you for being you. You know, if
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: you are a body double right now, I will say
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: that you are doing a top notch job. I do.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: I take my work very seriously. See you, letter folks.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows