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

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