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Selects: Genghis Khan: Madman or Genius? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Joshum. For this week's select, I've
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: chosen our really great episode on Genghis Khan from back
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: in June of twenty eighteen. He's maybe one of the
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: more misunderstood characters in all of history. He's certainly one
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: of the most significant. I mean, how many individuals can
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: you trace a portion of the global population to? Not many,
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  Speaker 1: I can assure you anyway. I hope you like this episode. Enjoy.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: sitting across from me, it's Charles w. Chuckis Chinkis Bryant.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: And sitting to your right is ghost producer Casper Nobody.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: It was Ramsey, guest producer Ramsey. We've got like all
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: these new guest producers coming on, hot and heavy.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Jerry, she had to leave today and I think everyone's busy,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: and so someone came in.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: There's also a distinct lack of interest I picked up on.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Boy, remember the days when people used to jump at
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: a chance to sit in here.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Now they're like I've got to mail something.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: I know. It used to be like, oh, my gosh,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Jerry's gone, let me do it, let me do it.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Then they grew up, Yeah, and then they grew up
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: in Now we have our little uh dunking bird to
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  Speaker 2: peck the key, Yeah, the r record button.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Just going back and forth thinking about where its life
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  Speaker 1: went wrong. Just us, just Us, Chuck and a guy
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: named ginghis Dingus Cohn, Do you pronounce it Dingis or
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: ginghis or Chingis?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Are you being serious?
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I know it's not Dingus, but I've also seen it
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: spelled in a way that would suggest you pronounced it Chingus.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Oh really, I think I have heard that, But we're.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Going to go with the unerual Genghis pronunciation.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, right, although his uh what was his birth name?
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Timujin h doesn't even Ging's kind isn't even his real name, everybody,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: so calm down. It's temujin or temujin.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Man. Did you see that statue?
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I've seen it before. Yes, it's enormous.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Have you seen in person?
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: No, I've not yet been to Mongolia.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: It's something else, man, Well one day though.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know it's it's the world's biggest equestrian statue,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and with good reason. It's like forty meters or one
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty feet tall. Yeah, that's an enormous statue.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It's pretty impressive whether whether you're on a horse or not.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: That's a big old statue, right, sure, I almost didn't
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: say old. And I think it's made of like two
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty tons of stainless steel, which means it
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: rinses clean really well.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: And it looks like I saw the wide shot, it
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: doesn't look like one of those. It's you know, surrounded
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: by burger kings.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Oh good, looks like.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of land around it.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Well, Mongolia has a lot of land, a lot of
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: undeveloped plan from what I understand.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this was an interesting one because depending on what
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: kind of historian you are, he is a either a
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: revered mastermind or scorned butcher.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Butcher, yeah, I know, he's actually I think both well
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: of course. But yeah, there are definite camps for sure,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Like like a lot of people i've seen him called
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the pro ginghist camp, the pro g Yeah, yeah, that
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: they're they're all about like all the cultural transmission that
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: happened under his his rule, yeah, or all of the
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: all the new innovative laws or religious religious tolerance was
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: another one. Yeah, and yes, you like all that stuff happened.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: It's not in dispute, Like there are a lot of
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: things that we'll talk about that were really positive. But
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  Speaker 1: he's also directly response for the deaths of about thirty
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: five million people the antig over a twenty five million,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: twenty five year period. That's a ridiculous amount of death
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: of people who had Genghis Khan not been born and
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  Speaker 1: you know, decided to lead a conquest, would probably otherwise
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: not have died violently. That's a big mark in his
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  Speaker 1: favor or against him. Well, my morality just switched off
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  Speaker 1: there for a second.
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  Speaker 2: So you got the pro G, the anti G, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: the ally G. Right, it's the third camp.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah I missed that. Oh it's good stuff, it is.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: But they tried to bring it back, remember, and it
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: was like, oh.
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  Speaker 2: Really, was there a part two two point zero?
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: That's that's the problem. They didn't do new stuff. It
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: was just him introducing old stuff, and it was like,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: we want more new stuff. We've all seen this old
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: stuff a bunch. It was like for a month on FX.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: But they shot new hosting segments.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, that were like fifteen seconds long.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: So basically they said, Hey, Sasha Barrit Cohen, how'd you
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: like to make another x amount of dollars by showing
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: up for a day.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: How would you like to do the ALIG version of
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: sysk selects.
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  Speaker 2: Ooh, yeah, all right, I'm not gonna examine that one
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  Speaker 2: too closely.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: All right, so we're talking about Alig, I mean Genghis Khan.
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  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, and just some large statistics right off the
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  Speaker 2: bat as far as his his influence, well, not his influence,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: but his rule in sheer numbers.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the reason we're still talking about him,
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  Speaker 1: not just because he killed so many people.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed. By the time, you know, of course, everyone
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: knows he was a great conqueror who just kept branching
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: out further and further. And this is how far he reached. Eventually,
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  Speaker 2: in modern day terms, he would reach Austria.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Austria, he banged on the door of Austria. Yeah, his
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: son did.
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  Speaker 2: Just get out a world map and look at where
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  Speaker 2: Mongolia is, So Austria, Finland, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Vietnam, Burma, Japan,
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  Speaker 2: and Indonesia twelve million contiguous square miles, which is the
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  Speaker 2: size of Africa. Again, amazing Yeah. And then to put
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  Speaker 2: that in context, you know, the great Roman Empire that
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: was about half the size of the United States.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Roman Empire was half the size of the
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: United States.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: It took them four hundred years to amass that. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: in twenty five years, Genghis Khan had an empire the
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  Speaker 1: size of Africa.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then at the time, the population in the
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: world was about seven billion people and the Mongolian Empire
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  Speaker 2: was about three billion of that. So it's just astounding.
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  Speaker 1: It is astounding. And to put it in like true
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: cultural or true historic context at the time and say,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: like the early early thirteenth century, the mongol were the Mongols,
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  Speaker 1: a bunch of nomadic tribes, tribes on the steps of Mongolia.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: China was a well established and fairly advanced patchwork of dynasties.
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  Speaker 1: You had like Europe growing in the they were in
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, but they were like the Renaissance is
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  Speaker 1: coming not too long. You had the Native Americans over
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: in America doing their thing, Africa doing their thing. So
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: there's all these different things going on in the world,
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  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this
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  Speaker 1: tiny little bunch of people who aren't even in agriculture,
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  Speaker 1: take over Eurasia in twenty five years out of nowhere
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  Speaker 1: and kill thirty five million people out of nowhere. It'd
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: be like if Polynesia suddenly rose up and took over
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the Americas in twenty five years. They just assembled and
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  Speaker 1: said we're taken over, and they were just so ferocious
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  Speaker 1: that America just didn't even know what to do and
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  Speaker 1: was overrun by them.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there their rule was not long lasting for
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  Speaker 2: a lot of the reasons that there's a lot of ironies,
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  Speaker 2: you know, a lot of the reasons that they were
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: able to spread so fast ended up being their undoing.
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  Speaker 2: But this is all just set up fodder.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we haven't even gotten into it yet, So let's
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  Speaker 1: let's let's do start, Okay, sure back in uh people
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  Speaker 1: think the best guess is probably I think eleven eighty five.
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  Speaker 1: I saw there was a kid named Temujin eleven sixty two,
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  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, and he was born in a place called
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  Speaker 1: well along the Onon River near Ulla Batar, which is
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  Speaker 1: a great name, but that's the capital of Mongolia.
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  Speaker 2: There's five a's in that. That's a lot of a
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: that's a lot of a's.
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  Speaker 1: And this this kid this Temujin who would grow up
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  Speaker 1: to be ginghis Khan was not Genghis khm material from
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  Speaker 1: the outset.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: No, he was. Well, he was a middle brother, and
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: apparently both younger and older brother out shown him.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was very much the jam Brady of his family.
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  Speaker 2: He was because apparently little brother was a much better
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  Speaker 2: athlete and a better you know, arrow shooter or I
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: guess you would call them archers, kind of better at everything,
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  Speaker 2: and then his older brother picked on him. He was not.
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  Speaker 2: He was illiterate. He wasn't like formally schooled or super smart.
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  Speaker 1: Right right, But I mean, in his defense, neither were
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  Speaker 1: most of the people he knew or sure lived on
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  Speaker 1: the steps.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not like his two brothers like got their doctorates.
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  Speaker 1: Their PhDs and kicking butt.
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  Speaker 2: Well that's true, but he was there. I mean, reading
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  Speaker 2: I wish I knew more about this, this whole era,
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  Speaker 2: because it sounds like it was just a crazy time,
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  Speaker 2: especially over there, where people would be like, if I
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  Speaker 2: want something, I'm just gonna go take it. Yeah. If
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: I want that tribe gone, I'm gonna go kill them.
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  Speaker 2: If I want those ladies and her children, I'm going
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  Speaker 2: to kidnap them, and that was just sort of how
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: the land was ruled. Yeah, it was kind of not chaos,
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  Speaker 2: but just brute force.
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  Speaker 1: Lawless.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty lawless.
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  Speaker 1: And you were you were loyal to your tribe or
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: your clan, and your tribe or clan was nomadic and
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: you live by the horse, and yeah, you you There
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: was a lot of war between these tribes on the steps,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: like like you said, kidnapping, like you would kidnap your wife.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: That's how you got your wife? Was you go kidnapper
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  Speaker 1: from another tribe and be like you're my wife.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Now that's how his mother came about, right.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's how he came about. Well, his father kidnapped
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: his mother. His father was the chief of his tribe.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Oh what's his father's name? Ya Sugi nice? And Yesugi
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: kidnapped hou Hulun.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of umlauts in there. I don't
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: know how the umlaut represents Mongolian dialect.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Well, we're going to do a German style. So her
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: name is Loon.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Is that pretty German merty crue?
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  Speaker 1: So she was kidnapped and this is the thing, like
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: I have no context to put this in. If this
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: was a common thing, was she like, I'm being kidnapped, Okay,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Like I guess I'm eighteen now or something like. This
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: is just a normal course of events for so it
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: didn't impact her, I don't know, or is that just
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: a ridiculous thing to even think? And like, yes, if
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: you were kidnapped and taken from your tribe and made
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: to be some dude's wife unwillingly, it doesn't matter where
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: it happened or when it happened. It was a horrific experience.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: I think it was. I mean, I think it was
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  Speaker 2: that and just sort of the way it was. Women
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  Speaker 2: were just had no recourse or say in anything at
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: the time.
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  Speaker 1: So it was both.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: But like I think I know what you're saying though,
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Like you know, she had these children and they were
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: a quote family, but what does you know, what does
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: that mean in that context?
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Is it a family if mom's like looking for
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: an escape route, right the whole life?
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, either way, it was not like people recording
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: one another back then.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Right, So yes, Sugi right, that's what we decided on. Yes, Yes,
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  Speaker 1: Sugi was the chief, like I said, of the clan
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: of the tribe, very powerful dude, and he was poison
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Actually he died by poisoning when Temujin was nine, and
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: that was bad news for Timogen, his mom and his
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: two brothers.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were just sort of kicked out of this
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: new tribe. And I'm not sure why. I guess because
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: he was the son.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Of Yeah, they didn't want anybody being like, oh, by
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: the way, I'm the rightful heir, right, I should really
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: be the chief of this tribe. I'm very surprised that
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: they didn't just kill all of.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Them, yeah, because that's kind of the way it usually went.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, they were kicked out, So he had a
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: rough childhood. They were not They had to scavenge for food.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: I reckon it toughened him up a little bit, but
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: as our article points out, that it kind of gave
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: him a will to and probably ticked him off. So
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: he had anger and will, vengeance and vengeance all rolled
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: up into one, which says a lot about like the
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: man that he would become.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I think for sure. So he and his family make
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: it so, not all of his family. There's a story
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: called the Secret History of the Mongols, and it was
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: written in about twelve forty, so, shortly after Genghis Khan's death.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: We don't know who the author was, but that's the
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: primary source for most of the auto or the biography
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: of Genghis Khan. They know a lot, a lot because
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: somebody sat down and wrote this. We'll see eventually why,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: but that's where we're getting all of this information, which
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: is also why if you listen to the history of
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Genghis Khan, a lot of it sounds like a string
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: of fables and tails wrapped, for sure, but historians tend
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: to think that there's some some kernel of truth or
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: just outright truth to most of it.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Should we take a break, Yeah, all right, we'll take
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: a break and we'll talk about what young Timojin was like.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: All right, So we said that he was a bit
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: of a cry baby, got picked on, wasn't very athletic
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: or strong, but he had charm, he had chutzpah, he
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: had charisma.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: And a little bit of moxie.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: And definitely you gotta throw in some moxie. And apparently
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: he was able through his charisma to talk people into
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: helping him out, and that became sort of a trade
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: through his life. And they give a couple of examples.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: One time he was going after a horse thief and
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: he just ran upon a stranger and kind of convinced
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: the guide to not only give him a horse, but
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: to help him out.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he really attracted people into his orbit from what
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I understand. Yeah, he was like like Gilbert Godfrey.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: It's funny because I knew I was trying to think
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: of someone legitimately, and I knew that you were headed
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: down a different what else. There was another time that
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: he had a bride to be or maybe I think
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: he was married and she was kidnapped, because that's how
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: it went, And so he went to the leader of
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: another tribe and said, hey, take this sable skin. It
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: was one of my wedding gifts. Yeah, he was pretty
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: impressed apparently because he helped him rescue the wife and
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: then pledged his allegiance to him as an ally for life.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, he said, not only am I going to help
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: you get your wife, You're going to go on to
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: do great things and I want to be there with you.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Love me. So there's just tons of stories like that,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: like early stories where like he was held prisoner by
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: he was kidnapped himself and escape by beating the guy
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: watching him with a wooden collar that he had fastened
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: around his neck. There's just tons of stories like that.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: If you put it together, you can kind of see
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: this guy develop over time, right, sure, but eventually you
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: probably right, yeahs. As he grows up and develops, and
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: more and more people kind of come into his orbit
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: and want to help him out, he starts putting that
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: that charisma and that vengeance to I guess productive use,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: and he assembles like his own tribe and other tribes.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: He starts align with other tribes, and the tribes that
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: don't go along with it, he slaughters in war, and
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: he would he was known for having like an eye
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: for other talent, which would aid him tremendously throughout his
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: years as a conqueror. But for example, if you were
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: a good enemy soldier, and he noted that in battle,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: there was a good chance that you were going to
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: end up a field commander on his side. After the
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: battle was over and he beat your your guys. And
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: there's actually a story where his horse was shot out
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: from under him, and after his group won the battle,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: the Mongols won the battle, he wanted to know who
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: shot that arrow, and the guy on the other side
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: stood up and said it was me. And he said,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: you your name is Jebbe now, which means arrow, and
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: you're going to become a field commander for me. And
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: he went on to be one of the best he
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: ever had.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: I think I was like, is he messing with me?
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that was pretty par for the course with him.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: And so through these actions he started assembling like an
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: army and became the leader of the steps.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and people like you said, if they challenged him,
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: they were squad. He had a surrender or die policy,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: which apparently if you literally did not fight and you
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: were just like, okay, we're all yours, apparently he was
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: okay to you. He wasn't known for torturing people. I
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: don't know if he you know, I don't know. I
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: don't want to say he was kind to them, but
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: I think he kind of wanted his subjects to be
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: happy and productive. So if they didn't fight him, he
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: was like, all right, you're you're part of the big
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: extended Khan family.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Come here, come here, you thank you for your kingdom.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Although he isn't con at this point. Still.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: No, that didn't take place until I believe twelve six.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when they the Mongol tribes all got together.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: They had a great assembly called Kurilai, and they said,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: you know what, you're the man, You're Genghis Khan. Now
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: we are all on your team because quite frankly, we're
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: scared of you.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: So he was like, hey, that's fine.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so ginghis khan. They think the khan means ruler. Yeah,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: indisputably Genghis. They're not one hundred percent sure what they
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: meant by it, because it can mean ocean or just
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: so they think. They were saying, like supreme, like the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: leader all the way to the ocean, sure, and then
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: then you run into to Triton. You don't want to
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: mess with him, right, but up to Triton's area, this
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: guy is the leader. So that's what they meant by
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: like ocean leader.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: He wasn't Aquaman. No, So they're unified now, and he
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: said I have to, like, I have to assemble a
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: nation here. I've got all these tribes. I want a
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: unified people. Yeah.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: That was a big move.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: It was, and it was a smart move. And all
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: these old clans got together, people that were enemies joined forces.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know if they became you know, best buds
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: or anything.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the things they did is they renounced
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: these old rivalries.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: They they stopped warring with each other, they stopped robbing
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: one another. Yeah, and they started identifying not as these
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: individual clans but as Mongols.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and like strengthen numbers. I think they realized this
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: could benefit us, all right, if we're one big, powerful group.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Right, But numbers is relative though, man like Sure, from
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: what I saw at its peak, the army of Genghis
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Khan had about one hundred thousand men.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is peanuts.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: It is pea nuts. So why were they Should we
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: get into why they were successful yet or this? Yeah, okay,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: why were they successful?
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Well? A few reasons. Probably one of the biggest is
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: is these dudes could ride horses and shoot arrows like
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: nobody's business. Yeah, they were incredible. They had an incredible cavalry.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: He was one of the first that whoever wrote that
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: article you sent that one historian he was great.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: So he pointed out that he he realized that that
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: the cavalry didn't need to be followed by an infantry,
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: which was a huge advantage.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: I guess in battle you needed far fewer guys.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and just get everyone up on a horse.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: They were incredible archers. They could their accuracy was unmatched.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: They could fire an arrow apparently like over three hundred
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: yards accurately. These horses were awesome. They were grass fed,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: they could live off the land. They had this armor
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: that was really lightweight and flexible. So you know, at
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: the time they were fighting people and much heavily armored apparel.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: So they they were they could move around better, you know,
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: on their horses. They were firing arrows, and they had
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: these little short swords, and they had this thing called
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: they hooked lance. And they're like a lance is all right,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: it's cool, I guess to poke someone off a horse,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: but what if you can poke them or grab them.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: So they added a hook to the land. It's a
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: very simple feature and it really changed things. It was
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: like a modern evolution and weaponry. So these are just
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: a few of the reasons. One of one of the
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: others is tactics and strategy. He would scout out before
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: battles for weeks. Sometimes he wouldn't just go as like
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: as brutish as they were. They would spend a lot
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: of time doing research and spying and really kind of
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: figuring out a game plan.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Like like if they were going to sack a city,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: like they knew where the trade lot or the supply
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: lines were, sure, escape routes, you know, all that kind
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: of stuff, all the stuff you need to notice. Saca
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: city one of the other things. So part one I
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: saw it called a quantum leap in military strategy and technology. Yeah, okay,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: that was the first thing. The other thing is something
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: you touched on earlier. Or they're surrender a die policy. Right,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: So their military prowess combined with their tactics and their
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: policy of if you don't just say yes, that's fine,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: we don't want to fight, we're gonna kill everybody, just
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: about everybody. And they were actually pretty smart about it too.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: They'd find like the skilled craftsmen in some cities and
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: we're going to spare your life because you're now a Mongol.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: You got to move to Mongolia, by the way. But
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: they would just kill so many people that a lot
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: of historians have tried to figure out why were they
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: so ferocious, And there've actually been a number of theories
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: that have been put up. One is so apparently so.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Genghis Khan was a He was into shamanism, that was
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: his religion. But he was like fervently religious about shamanism,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and there was like a great god of the sky
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: who I think is analogous to Vishnu maybe in Hinduism.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: And this god supposedly gave him a vision that he
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: should become conqueror of the world. And so some people
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: have said, well, you know, if you opposed him, you
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: were opposing as god, and so there was no room
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: for that, and that's what made him so ferocious. Probably
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: the best explanation though, is that if some if like
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: one of their one hundred thousand horsemen, died, that was
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: a big deal, right, So to save their numbers, they
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: were better off not fighting. So by slaughtering an entire city,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: that word about that gets around the area. So when
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: those guys show up to your city, there's a pretty
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: good chance that if they say surrender or die, you're
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: going to surrender. And so the Mongols didn't have to
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: sacrifice a single person.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and also get the idea. I mean, we're going
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: to talk about his major sieges, but he also had
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: a lot of smaller skirmishes with just kind of regional
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: tribes I think, and I got the idea that he
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: wouldn't send all his dudes in there. He would send
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: in a small amount of people as possible, right, because
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: they were so fierce and good at what they did,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: he didn't need to. And then that also reduced the
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: chances of loss of life, I guess.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: And then so the smallest units, those that one hundred
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: thousand man army boiled down to units as small as
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: ten people. Yeah, that was the individual unit was a
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: ten person cavalry group. Yeah, and yeah, you could just
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: say send five groups in or a thousand groups in
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: or whatever.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. And he would also he would
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: also as he went he would pick up whatever weaponry
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: and tactics that other armies used and use those. Because
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: one thing that was pretty clear in reading this, Genghis
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Khan did not like walls in walled cities.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I saw that too.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: It ticked him off, especially for some reason.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Why would you do that?
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: No, so he you know, he got catapults and things
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: like that, and he would you would do some awful
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: things like with ladders and cattle bolts. He would fling
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: diseased animals like that wasn't I don't know, he wasn't
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: the only one to do that. But uh, some of
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: this seems like Lord though. The thing with the cats
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: and the birds.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he told one city that he'd spare them if
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: they gave him a thousand cats and ten thousand birds.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: And they gathered up their ten thousand birds, which I
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: guess they had in the thousand cats, and gave them
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: to him. And then he set the cats and the
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: birds on fire and flung them over the walls to
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: start fires in the city.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Well supposedly, kid Cotton, Oh got you to them and
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: set them on fire.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Well that's much better, but I'm sure the fire spreads.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: It does seem apocryphal.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if I believe that.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Apocryphal. By the way, I just learned in like the
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: last year or so means that word made up.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: You didn't know that's you never heard the word or no.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Plenty of times I just didn't realize. I always assumed
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: it meant like biblical and end of time. Oh, interesting,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: because it's resemblance to apocalypse. I've got one more for you.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: What's that?
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I just this week learned what coude gras actually means.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I thought it meant like the cream of the crop,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the ultimate it's the death blow, like there's nothing after
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: it not because it's the best, right, because you just
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: had your head cut off.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Coup de Grass. Yeah, yeah, the Final Blow.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Just learned that this week.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I knew that. You know, A word
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: I used to always get wrong was dubious?
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Did you think about pot?
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, can you score me some dubious?
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Did you ever listen to Funk Dubious? They were like
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: this rap group from the nineties. Yeah, I remember they
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: were great. They were they All they want to do
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: is have fun in the midst of like the whole
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: gangster at Funks.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: You remember that? Yeah, boy, they they just went away.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: I haven't heard that name.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: And I think they had like one album and that
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: was it.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: What was their big hit?
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I don't remember, but but it had to do with pot.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Probably, so all right, So he's got Mongolia pretty well
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: taken care of it.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Wait, what did you think dubious meant? I made a
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: joke instead of letting your answer.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: No, I don't I don't remember what I thought it meant.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: But I think I just used to get it wrong.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: We'll go back to Funk dvs.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: So he's got Mongolia pretty well under control, and he
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: is insatiable though, Genghis Khan is. He starts looking around
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: and he's like, China is big.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: You look pretty pretty pretty.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: And I think even though they are wealthy and tough
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: and have a lot of dudes to fight, I think
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: I can take him because I'm Genghis Khan.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Which is a nutso thing to say at that time. Sure,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: especially depending on which of the dynasties in China you
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: were talking about, because I think there were at least
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: three major ones.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Well, he's like all of them, let's just go one
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: at a time.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's what he did.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what he did.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: He started with the and there's I'm sorry everybody, I'm
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: having trouble keeping up with all of the names, but
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the ten Goods.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Kingdom of ji Jia is how I would
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: probably pronounce.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: It, right, dixiea chang No, yeah, thinking about that.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Jija, yeah, Jija and the Tanguts. And I think this
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: was sort of a test, his biggest test militarily at
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: the time.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. He'd been fighting other tribes on the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: steps to consolidate them and killing off the resistors. They
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: didn't have cities. The Tangats were the first ones that
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: he encountered that had like cities with walls that were
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: fortified that he needed to figure out how to lay
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: siege to.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he did, to the point where the king
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: finally said, all right, you were my master. Here are
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: my troops, and here's the princess bride as well, right,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: because I've heard you get around.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Genghis Khan said, as you wish, that's right,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: isn't that what he said?
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: I think?
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: So? Okay.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: So the next he said, all right, how about this
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: other region, the Chin Kingdom, And he faced a seventy
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: man army and it said virtually wiped it out in this.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Article, so he's working his way up here now.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: So he actually hit the Chins twice from what I understand,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and this How Stuff Works article says it happened in
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, so I'll bet the Chins were quite surprised
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: to see Genghis Khan show up five years ago.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I wonder why. I mean, it says that he
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: came back and got a bunch of silk and gold
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: and got a bunch of engineers. I wonder if that
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: was the purpose of that mission. Maybe it was like, hey,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: I don't think we properly rated them.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because this was two years after the first one.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I guess that's all. It was that he wanted some
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: more silk and gold.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: And again appropriating weapons like crossbows, catapults, and because it's China,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: early versions of explosives.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Right, And so he's using all this stuff. He's not
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: married to just the hook poll in, just the saber.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: He'll try out anything he sees works, right. Yeah, So
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: he's knocked out the first two dynasties, he's brought them
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: under him control. He now controls a significant portion of China,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: all of the steps around Mongolia. Yeah, and he's got
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: his sets, his sights set on the biggest one of
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: the three, the Jin dynasty. Yes, and he actually got
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: in contact with them, or else they got in contact
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: with him first. But the emperor of the Jin dynasty,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: this is an advanced civilization at this point, very wealthy,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: maybe the most advanced and wealthy civilization on the planet
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: at the time, maybe. Ginghis Khan is a backwoods redneck
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: horse rider who just happened to get lucky a couple
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: of times, caught the other two dynasties slippin'. That's what
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: the emperor of the of the Jin dynasty is thinking.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's thinking, you're going to be my slave.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, He's like, you've done pretty good, kid. I'll tell
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: you what. I'll let you. I'll let you look over
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: my land in the south. You'll be my vassal. And
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: here here's the princess bride. I hear you like him.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it did not work out that way.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: No, it didn't. He actually successfully defeated the most advanced,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: wealthiest society on the planet at the time, the Jinns.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Yep slaughtered thousands and thousands of people.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Well that's how you do it, I guess. And these
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: three campaigns, these are huge, enormous campaigns. China was extremely
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: populous at the time, and the number of people who died,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: most of the people who died under ginghis Khan's rule
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: through war and conquest happened during these three China campaigns. Yeah,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: about thirty about thirty million people died. And this is
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: over I mean ten years, I think, less than ten years.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: So it's nuts man.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so he wanted to continue going, I guess. West
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: twelve nineteen. He made his way through modern day Central
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Asia like Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Shah Muhammad there
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: said he killed an ambassador that they had sent forward
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: from a trading caravan, and he had a big walled
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: city and he's like, I'm going to be fine. I'm
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: not sweating this guy, right, And he burned the city
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: down Genghis Khan did and including a thousand of the
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: soldiers who were in a mosque hiding out, killed about
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: one hundred thousand people. But of course, like you said earlier,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: he spared the skilled craftsmen and workers, right.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: And this is the Karsam Quaras and didn't even practiced
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: this one, the Karism quarism. I think so empire, which
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: it's capital city that he sacked, is now in Uzbekistan.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: But I've seen it called mostly like Afghanistan Iran for
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: the most part. This is the area it covered, Iran
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: is what I see it mostly compared to these days.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and things are starting to get a little out
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: of hand at this point, and it's basically sort of
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: due to the fact that there was he went too far,
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: there were too many people, too much land. When you
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: control your I think that the guy who wrote that
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: article you sent said that they weren't producers of anything,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: the Mongols, yeah, right, or tradesmen.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: They were conquerors. That's it.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's not like you got to diversify.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: From what I understand, they didn't have a written language,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: they didn't do anything. They just conquered people and took
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: over your land and then leeched off of you.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is a good skill to get going. But
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: if that's all you can do, I think he likened
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: it to a shark needing to feed, like, eventually you
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: run out of lands to conquer, and then in the
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: interior it's such a huge corporation at this point it
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: gets unwieldy.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: So Genghas kind of recognized this. At some point. I
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: saw that he had basically a chain range of heart
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: about agriculture, about walled cities, about a sedentary lifestyle, and
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I think he mostly saw like, oh, you can make
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: way more wealth this way. So he turned from conquering
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: as much toward figuring out how to administer this area
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: that he conquered. Again, Eurasia is conquered, it's under this guy's.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: This guy's had never never been united before and hasn't
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: been united since, even under Soviet Soviet rule. The Genghis
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Khans Empire was bigger than that, right, and so he's
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: put it together and he's like, what do I do now?
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that after this message. How about that?
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, chuck, So Genghis Khan has conquered your Asia and
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: said what now? What now Eurasia? What do you guys
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: want to do now? I'm done with killing? Not really?
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Well he died, yeah, I guess that's right. Yeah, And
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: this is no one knows quite how he died. Still.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: Some people say he had a fall from a horse
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: and was injured eventually died. Other people said it might
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: have been typhus. There are a few other theories floating
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: around out there, but.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like shot in the knee with an arrow is
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: my favorite. Yeah, which I guess just well, infection, I
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: would die from pain. Yeah.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: It's interesting though. In August of twelve, twenty seven, when
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: he was on his deathbed, like one of the last
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: things he did was say, you remember the Tanguts, go
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: kill all of them.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: That's what he did. I think they were the first
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: people he conquered, right, They were the Jija people.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, the first people in China and when he went.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: To go go attack the kar Zem Empire. Yeah, he
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: demanded that they send some troops as reinforcement, and they
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: said no. He defeated the Koora Zem and turned around
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: and went right over to Jija and was like, you
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: guys are your toast. You're in trouble. And that was
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: his last act as a living person.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He was succeeded by one of his son, Ogadai.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Who took that stuff all the way to Europe.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: Oh. Yeah, he hit a bunch of sons, and I
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: guess we might as well talk about his lineage. It's
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: very famously the Genghis Khan. I mean, what is it
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: like one of every two hundred men, something like.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Zero point five percent of the total global population is
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: directly descended from him. That's amazing, It's amazing and gross.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of people.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was about sixty five ish when he died,
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: and no one knows where he's buried. No, because they
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: killed everyone on the way to the funeral.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: That's one. And then also they rode over his grave
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: with horses. I looked up. Do you ever grown Cora? Uh?
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: Sure, every now and then.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: It's great man. Yeah, like you can you can usually
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: tell who knows what they're talking about. Of the answers,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: the multiply and frequently it's most of the people. It's
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: a very it's a good serious like, it's a good
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: place to get info that you should then go double check.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I agree though, it's not like the old
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: days of what was the Terrible one years and years ago,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: where you would ask a question, yeah, who questions? Yeah,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: probably are you out here?
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, something like that, Yeah there, And there are a
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: lot of platforms like this. This is a pretty good
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: it's not corrupt yet, how about that?
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Korra is pretty good.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Actually, so I want to encore this one's you can't
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: really look up. But this one guy two people like.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: The question was why was ginghis Khan buried in secret?
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: I think? And two people said they didn't want his
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: grave robbed. Sense They wanted to make sure that the
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: transfer of power to his son was complete, so they
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: had to keep his death of secret. That makes sense,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: YadA ya da. This one guy said, don't be idiots.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: He was a little arrogant, but he said, like, don't
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: be idiots. Ginghis Khan was a shamanistic person, religiously fervent.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: He would have gone one of two ways. They would
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: have cremated him and just spread his ashes, or they
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: would have done a sky burial. Remember we talked about
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: those before, where they just left him on the mountain
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: side for the vultures to pick over. They it wouldn't
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: have buried him with grave goods. He would have been
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: embarrassed with that. So he's the only person I saw
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: say something like that. But it gave me pause. It
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: made me wonder if the hidden grave is just, you know,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: just more lore about Genghis Khan and off the mark.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah, well, his legacy looms large still, not only
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: in his his lineage, from his loins.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: His overactive loin just leeching out goop.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: But depending on who you're talking to, well, he definitely
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: did some things. He opened up trade right the west,
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: got things like noodles and tea and playing cards. He
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: perhaps founded the very first version of what would later
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: be a post office, which is what was it called
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: the yam Yeah, like a pony Express. Yeah, like what
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: different stations the pony Express, Yeah, like straight.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Up, but like six hundred years before the Pony Express.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. But depending on who you're talking to. Some
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: people lay almost all of modern warfare at his feet, Yeah,
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: which is sort of interesting because you can sort of
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: draw a line back to his tactics that eventually would
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: become the Crusades or the slaughtering of the Aztecs and
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: the Incas. Yeah, so they would learn from him and
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: then do that.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Right, because it was more of that cultural conveyor belt. Right.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: So they say that he conquered the Karzam Empire, came
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: in contact with Islam, and taught them ferocity, which the
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Europeans learned during the Crusade, and they took that ferocity
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: back to Europe and then eventually to the New World,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: which they used on the Native Americans they found there.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: And somebody said, no, the Europeans were already well versed
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: in ferocity and brutality and warfare. They didn't need to
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: learn it from Gingis Khan. That doesn't mean that's wrong, right,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: But it's the suggestion that the Europeans were naive to
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: brutality and warfare is incorrect.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Well, it's complete bs And the author of that article
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: also so makes a good point, and like you can't
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: you can't look and judge him by today's lens. He
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: wasn't any more brutal than anyone else back then.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: It was just the number.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he just did it better that to me though.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: So I guess then maybe my problem is is like
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: celebrating people who've killed tons of people. Yeah, like that's
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: what I have a problem at at base sure, because
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: it's a great man, great man history. Yeah, it bugs me.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: It bugs me too. So we didn't come. We didn't
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: come across the way, did we.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: So, but just just just by carrying on the tradition
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: of talking about this guy, and you know, there's you
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: definitely keep his little flame burning.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Well, and there's a what one hundred and fifty foot
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: statue of him. Yeah, like he's still very much revered.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about it that there. Like, if you
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: were in Mongolia right now, you're probably pretty mad at
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: me and Chuck apologies for that. We're really it's the
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: great man history thing we have a problem with. But Mongolia,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: he is known as the founder of Mongolia. Yeah, the
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: great basically the great, the greatest leader Mongolia has ever known,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: and possibly the world if you're a Mongolian. And during
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: that during the Soviet occupation of Mongolia, you were not
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: allowed to talk about him.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they like took him out of history books.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because they were trying to stamp out any kind
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: of nationalism in Mongolia at the time. So the moment
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: the Soviets left the Soviet Union dissolved, they were like
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Ginghis Khan, Gigis Khan, ginghis Khan. Yeah, they built a
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: statue of him, they named an airport after him, they
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: put him on currency. So he's definitely revered over there.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: But I think that the art that the author of
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: the article, I think his name is Frank mclinn almost
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: positive Ale, Yeah, it's great. Frank mclinn. He wrote this
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: wonderful article called the Brutal Brilliance of Ginghis Khan. But
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: he points out, like, whatever you think of the guy,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: even if he was the same his contemporaries, and it
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: still seems alien to you. Yeah, Like think about your
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: own leaders. Your own leaders send people to die on
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the battlefield too, Yeah, if they're revered as.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Well, sure for causes that aren't not noble.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Right. So the the the point is is, I guess,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: don't hate on Genghis Khan, hate the game, not the player, right,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: I guess. So, wow, boy, this guy took a deep
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: left turn, didn't it.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Well, it is interesting.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can talk about this dude forever.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He also makes the point too that the Mongols
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: were what he called culturally unbalanced. So he's like, you know,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: at least the Europeans, while they were slaughtering and killing,
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: were giving us the divine comedy and Carmena Barana and
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: these great cathedrals and operas, whereas the Mongols were just
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: barbarian raiders and butchers.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: All slaughter, no substance.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: That's a T shirt. Yeah, very famous. In the movies,
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Kingis Khan was played twice, once by John Wayne believe
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: it or not, in the Conqueror, and then Omar Shariff. Okay,
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: he said Egyptian also not close to Mongolian. Right, I
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: don't know if it's better worse than John Wayne. It's
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: probably the same.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: I think it's worse or no better better.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: Well, now it'll be Hugh Jackman. Now. I think hollywoods
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: changed somewhat, But like five years ago they would have
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: been like, what about Jason Momoa.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Matt Damon two mustaches on him, But they.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: Just picked Momoa because like he looks tough. Who's he
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: and he looks sort of ethnic. He's a guy that
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: plays aquaman and is on a very versatile of thrones. Probably,
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: but and I even looked up Mongolian American actors to
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: see if there was anyone out there, uh huh who
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: they could tap into. And I don't think there are
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: a lot of them. Oh, okay, probably have to be
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: some good unknown So.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Speaking of looking like a Mongolian, Okay, got one last thing,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: are you done?
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: I'm done.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: The Mongolians were really really good at propaganda and one
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: of the ways that they showed this was in Iran
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: in modern day Iran koorism Man Empire, when they subjugated it.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: One of the things they did that they said, we
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: are we don't have an alphabet, we don't write things down,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: but you guys do, and we want to put that
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: to good use. You have great artists. We want you
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: to do a history of the Mongols. And the scribe said, sure,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: we'll do that, and we want you to do a
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: history of the world. All the great leaders in the world,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: all the great civilizations in the world. We want you
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: to do those. So they did. They built this. They
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: wrote this huge compendium, a universal History of the World,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: but the Mongols had them illustrate, like illuminate the text,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: and they had them whenever they drew a leader or
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: a conqueror or an army, they drew them as Mongols.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Interesting, So they insinuated themselves into history as basically the
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: progenitors of all greatness and thus justified the subjugation of
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: this area.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: And they did it through propaganda. They had like all
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: that like copied, you know, hand copied and distributed as
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: widely as they could.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Isn't that interesting?
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: There you go. That's it all right. If you want
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: to know more about Mongolia or Genghis Khan or any
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: of that stuff, you can type those words into the
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: search bar.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: House stuff works, pick up a book, you dingus. And
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: since Chuck said that, it's time for listener man, Hey, guys,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: recently listened to the show about bearing Ferraris one share
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: a cool story about an almost buried car. In twenty thirteen,
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: Brazilian billionaire Count Chinquing host Scarfa made headlines when he
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: announced he wanted to bury his five hundred thousand dollars
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: Bentley like the Pharaohs did with their precious possessions, so
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: he could supposedly ride around the afterlife and style attracted
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: tons of press and social media buzz, with many people
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: outraged he.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: Would do something so selfish. On the day of the burial,
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: tons of Brazilian press and media crew show up to
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: his house to see him buries Bentley, But moments before
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: the car is lowered in the ground, the count pulls
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: a major plot twist and announces he won't be bearing
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: the car and he reveals cheue intention to create awareness
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: for organ donation.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Because people are buried with something valuable, they're organs and
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: it was all a stunt and a use of social
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: media and buzz marketing and create awareness for organ donation.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: That is fantastic. Man, what a cool guy.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: Really interesting anyway, guys, A big fan of your show,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: learned a lot from your stories over the years. I
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: want to take this chance to share this cool story
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: with you. And that is from Kate Miller, who's looking
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: forward to more stories.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Kate, I definitely had not heard
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: about that.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: It's a good one.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: If you want to let us know a cool story,
• 49:17
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• 49:19
  Speaker 1: an email to Stuff Podcasts at Houstuffworks dot com and
• 49:22
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• 49:25
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• 49:25
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• 49:31
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