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Coronation Quiche
31 Plays1 year ago
Josh and M "celebrate" the coronation by looking at some crownly conspiracies, whilst also revisiting an old favourite...
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Transcript
Apocalyptic Prophecy Discourse
00:00:00
Speaker
And with the crown sitting upon his forehead, the end times can commence. Yes, quick question. Yes? Why exactly are we seeking to engineer an apocalypse? Why? Because of the prophecy. Yes, I get that the book says that in the years after the death of the two great musicians. Long rest, Prince and David.
00:00:23
Speaker
that a troublesome tyrant will rise and fall in the West only to threaten to rise again. Long may the brow of Trump be troubled. And so into this time a queen will die and a king will rise. Glory be to the death of Lizzie. Hail to her son, Chuck Princey Saxe-Coburg. Yes, but, well, isn't a prophecy meant to be like,
00:00:44
Speaker
Prophetic? Yes, and we have seen the signs, read the omens, ingested the intestines. Yes, and very gory it was, but it's not prophecy if we're actually killing people now, is it? I don't quite understand.
00:01:02
Speaker
Well, I was put in charge of killing the prince and giving David Bowie cancer. Really, we didn't have to do anything to make Trump make a fool of himself, but still. Yes. Well, and you killed Queen Elizabeth II with a shovel. And it was well coming up, too. Frankly, I was surprised just how well they pretended the whole affair in Aberdeen didn't go down.
00:01:25
Speaker
Yeah, but so how is this prophecy? If we're just going around murdering people to fill out some kind of apocalyptic check sheet, I'm not sure how it's all foretold. Ah, but you see, you don't know about the prophecies prophecy. Sorry, the what? The text that says we two plotters will engage in acts which bring about the end of the world. There's a prophecy about the prophecy. Yes. Can I see it? Sure. It's in this ring binder.
00:01:56
Speaker
Let's see. And in the year of our Lord 2023, the other plotter will ask, but how is this a prophecy? And they shall find out that their actions were foretold in this prophecy, thus making all their actions predestined.
00:02:10
Speaker
and seems to sort that out. The prophecy is indeed a prophecy, which luckily absolves me of all my guilt, given that this proves I have no free will, and thus will suffer no desert due to my actions. Yes, well, if that's all in order, I have to now go and engineer another papal scandal. Just leave the prophecy's prophecy on the disk when you're done with it, will you? Okay. Let's see what else is in here. A prediction about the space goats eating the sun, recipe for vegan clam chowder,
Introduction to Conspiracy Theories
00:02:56
Speaker
The podcast's guide to the conspiracy featuring Josh Edison and Em Dent.
00:03:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Addison. They are Dr. M. Denta. Three are both in Auckland, New Zealand. And that's all I'm going to say on the matter. It's wet here. So, so wet. So, so cold.
00:03:23
Speaker
Now, I assume that, like me, you spent a good six hours standing to attention singing God Save the King over and over again during the entire coronation last week. Let's assume that I did, and then you can tell me why you would possibly think there was a good use of your time. I just didn't think there was any other possibility. There just wasn't an option.
00:03:52
Speaker
where you had to witness him being given the gloves of rectitude and the trousers of peace. I can't even remember what it all was. He got all his keys, he was a cord and all. I don't know. Yes, no, it was in a fear full of pomp and pageantry and circumstance. I assume I didn't watch it either. I'm aware it happened. Did you at least make a quiche?
00:04:17
Speaker
No, I did not make a coronation quiche. I did absolutely nothing to mark the occasion, I'm afraid to say. I went out for dinner, had a drink.
00:04:25
Speaker
Not to celebrate the King, though. Just to celebrate romantic love. What we could do is
Kings, Crowns, and Conspiracy
00:04:32
Speaker
devote an entire episode of a podcast to Meta's coronation-y. Well, I mean, we are people with our fingers on the pulse of the nation and also people who are behind the time. So this seems like a really great use of our time.
00:04:48
Speaker
and the time of our listeners who of course might be listening to it the week after the coronation or listening to it 30,000 years after the death of our son and thus want to know what a coronation is and why we keep talking about Chuckie Prince Charlie.
00:05:05
Speaker
So we have for you this week a bit of a grab bag of various conspiratorial things we could find that sort of relate to kings and crowns and what have you. And we're going to shove them all in your face right now. Indeed we are after this message from Sting. Stirring.
00:05:28
Speaker
stirring speech from staying there. Yeah, so we have a bit of stuff of kingly conspiracies throughout the ages. Some of it old, some of it new, some of it new, but referring to old things. It's all very confusing, but I'm sure we'll get through it. So unfortunately for me, you might recall it wasn't very long ago that we said goodbye to what the conspiracy segment
00:05:52
Speaker
and rattled through a bunch of conspiracy things that we came up with that we didn't think would quite fill out an entire episode. And one of those things that I was thinking that I might tell him about at some stage was the death of William II. So given that he was the second actual King of England after William the Conqueror. And the second person to be called William as well, I believe. Yes, no, they invented the name, but it was the divine, divine right of kings to be called William or something like that.
00:06:22
Speaker
Yeah, so I thought, in case you happen to miss that one, it was quite a fun little story. So I thought maybe we could start with that one. Let's go back to Want the Conspiracy. Do you want to play another sting? Do you still have the Want the Conspiracy sting? It's time to play Want the Conspiracy.
00:06:47
Speaker
Ah, that was one of your better stings, I have to say. Yeah, I really, really do like that tune. So anyway, William II, son of William the Conqueror, he's the fella who came over in 1066, the Norman King, and turned into an inventor of the lollipop. Wait, you know, sorry, Prince Harold invented the lollipop. But Battle of Hastings, arrow to the eye, you know, you know, there's a bit of confusion around whether or not.
00:07:14
Speaker
Don't you get me involved to buy you tapestry again? I mean really, we had enough trouble the last time. Yes, no so his son William II seems to be more commonly known as William Rufus, which is Latin for William the Red, he had red here at some stage or something like that.
00:07:31
Speaker
He eventually became the King of England after the death of his father, William the Conqueror. Interesting philosophical footnote, William II is the man who appointed Ansel, the famous medieval philosopher, as archbishop at the time, and was kind of on the outs with the church a little bit. This will come into it, but he was at odds with the
00:07:55
Speaker
clergy for various churchy reasons that I don't really understand. But the interesting and possibly conspiratorial thing is what happened on the 2nd of August 1100 AD, according to records, which is that William Rufus was out with a bunch of his noble friends doing a bit of hunting when he took an arrow in the chest.
00:08:14
Speaker
and as is traditional, died. So there's a lot of question about was this a hunting accident? I mean, the sort of thing that happens to this day, people misidentifying a target or something and shooting something they shouldn't have. Was it murder?
00:08:29
Speaker
So what we do know is that he got shot and everybody leaked it. Everybody was just like, oh Christ, we're getting the hell out of here and just waiting for it. I think it actually shows that the seeing someone get shot and not wanting to be at the scene of the crime goes back to the very moment that someone learnt to hurl a spear in someone else's direction.
00:08:55
Speaker
So, I mean, that sort of a reaction in and of itself, I think, is consistent with possibly with a plot that they wanted to remove themselves from, or possibly an accident. I mean, it's the sort of that behavior. I'm more used to seeing it in children, but the something goes wrong and they're all, God, I'm not going to be around to take the blame for this one. So the king's body was left lying in the middle of the forest with an arrow in his chest.
00:09:19
Speaker
he got found by someone else and dragged out. But the thing that makes it more suspicious is that his younger brother Henry immediately was straight off to Winchester to secure the treasury and then got himself crowned post haste almost almost suspiciously quickly. He got himself made King of England. So some people take this to be
00:09:44
Speaker
this seems like premeditation so I'm gonna just kill my brother and then take the crown of England for myself but other people might go hmm there are other families and other claimants to the crown who if I don't get the succession plan done right quick smart I might be having a lengthy battle about who exactly gets to succeed my brother to the British crown
00:10:10
Speaker
Mm, exactly. So, and at the time, at the time, there was no suspicion at all as far as I can gather, because like I say, William wasn't very beloved by the church. And so they were they were quite happy to see him dead. Basically, this this sort of thing was was as far as they were concerned, it was, you know, divine providence, it was a wicked king, getting his just desserts. And so they were, they were, frankly, quite happy for it to have happened.
00:10:35
Speaker
In later times, people have sort of wondered a little bit. The one thing that I've heard people bring up in favor of it maybe being on purpose is that supposedly the arrow that killed William II was fired by a nobleman called Walter Tyrell.
00:10:51
Speaker
who was apparently known for being an expert bowman who was not the sort of person who would carelessly just loose an arrow without having identified his target first.
Royal Rumors and Vampires
00:11:03
Speaker
So there's nothing at all conclusive, but the whole thing has a bit of a fishy look to it.
00:11:09
Speaker
Things just kind of add up a brother who rushes too quickly to claim a crown, an expert bowman who's never known to miss a target in the past. I mean, it does sound like it's an ocean to live in style heist.
00:11:25
Speaker
We've got an Ocean's Eleven style heist coming up. But before we get there, we should probably talk about the perennial question that's on everybody's list. Is King Charles a vampire? Yes, now this is a topic that we brought up in a bonus episode quite some time ago. I don't even recall which episode it was attached to. But this is one of the many
00:11:47
Speaker
royal conspiracy theories going around is Charles the, what is he? Second? Third? Third. Charles the Third lost his head. Charles the Second was the king coronated as part of the restoration after Cromwell died. And Charles the Third is the new one.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I try to think of any accolade that we can give to Charles the third other than he waited a very long time to be king. He waited a very so maybe he'll be known as Charles the patient, although apparently not particularly patient when it comes to any method of state that you require him to use a fountain pen.
00:12:24
Speaker
No, no, so Chucky 3. If we're going to rank our Chucky films, Child's Play 1, good film. Child's Play 2, good film. Child's Play 3, not such a good film. And then the Chucky films, which are no longer the Child's Play films, but your Bride of Chucky, great film.
00:12:49
Speaker
Is it Son of Chucky? Seed of Chucky. Because of course the whole point of Seed of Chucky is the gender of the child, a Glenn versus Glenda situation. Good film. Then we get to the first straight to
00:13:06
Speaker
streaming film Curse of Chucky, which I actually think is quite a good low-budget thriller, which initially seems to have no relationship to the mainstream films at all, and then turns out to be very much a sequel to the last film that we saw. Then we get the Asylum Chucky film, The Neighbourhood of Chucky, Audacious film,
00:13:32
Speaker
Not entirely sure, it's a great film, but I like what they're trying to do with it. Then we get season one of Chucky, which was par excellence. And then season two, which once again, great idea, not entirely sure about the execution, also filmed during a pandemic. So possibly the fact that it's filmed in a school with virtually no students around, probably explained by not being able to have many cast members on set at any given time.
00:13:59
Speaker
As far as horror franchises go, I think the Child's Play ones are one of the more consistent, really. There are only these total duds apart from that sort of reboot one that the other people with the other rights did, which I understand was pretty terrible. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't terrible. It just wasn't great. I think the art of the Chucky film is it's always reinventing itself. It's never the same film twice, which means sometimes
00:14:27
Speaker
they go for an audacious plotline which doesn't quite work but I always seem to bring it back in the next film.
00:14:32
Speaker
Anyway, obviously, this leads us to the important question of whether or not King Charles is a vampire. Now, there are reasons why people say this. One is that according to genealogy records, Prince Charles is possibly descended from Vlad the Impaler himself, the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. Apparently, the prince can trace his lineage back through his great-grandmother Queen Mary to Vlad IV, who was the half-brother
00:15:02
Speaker
of Vlad the Impaler. So there's probably several million people who are who are related to Vlad the Impaler at least. And the thing is, the royal families of Europe are all interconnected, because the thing about royalty is it really only marries itself. So of course, it would turn out that Prince Charles would be a distant relative of a ruler of Romania imposed upon the Romanian people.
00:15:32
Speaker
by the Turks for the sheer fact that, of course, all those families just kept on marrying and intermarrying and intermarrying into the genetic melange, which is the British royal family as we know it today. I saw a thing the other day actually talking about royals and it was mentioning when they found the body of Richard III under a car park in Leicester or wherever it was. You're getting drunk one night, you fall asleep, you don't know where you're going to wake up.
00:16:00
Speaker
But because of that, they were able to get a sample of his DNA, which is partly how they were able to identify the body from based on people who they knew were descended from Richard III. And they were talking to a person who sort of worked on it and says she often gets requests from people saying, you know, can you, if I send you my DNA, can you tell me if I'm related to Richard III? And she was sort of like, well, I mean,
00:16:24
Speaker
Several million people are related to Richard III. That's just how time works. But anyway, so apart from the genealogy, of course, the other thing is old King Charles. He's a big fan of Romania and Transylvania in particular, isn't he?
00:16:40
Speaker
Yes, he was even offered the honorific title of Prince of Transylvania due to his links to the region and promotion of Transylvania as a tourist destination, which makes sense because as a vampire, he must return to his ancestral home to lie in the dirt to re-energize himself.
00:16:59
Speaker
So he is a big fan of the country. He apparently has two 400 year old retreats in Romania and I think this Christ is being rustic. I think rustic means it probably only has about 18 bedrooms as opposed to standard 27 and probably only has 14 servants as opposed to the standard 56.
00:17:22
Speaker
And so much does he love Romania, he was once in a promotional video for the Romania National Tourist Office, which included him joking that Transylvania is in my blood. Now, you've written in the notes here, joking Transylvania is in my blood. Is King Charles capable of making jokes?
00:17:42
Speaker
Or are we simply taking... He's capable of reading a scripted joke, I'm sure. ...three years in my blood and assuming it's a joke when he may have just said it with all due seriousness. Hiding in plain sight. Yes, I don't know. And then there's the whole thing about porphyria, the iron deficiency disease that makes your skin sensitive to sunlight and stuff, which some people have suggested that might be the basis of some of your sort of vampire or werewolfy folklore of people who can't stand to go outside during the day.
00:18:11
Speaker
Although other people have pointed out that this doesn't really make a lot of sense, because that particular disease is actually very rare, but vampire stories are quite common across a whole bunch of cultures. So who knows? King Charles Vampire? Yeah, probably, but we'll leave another one.
00:18:27
Speaker
but also an alien shapeshifting reptile, which just goes to show that maybe your favorite film is right after all. My favorite film, Life Force. Yes. Space vampires from Out Out of Space. Where do alien shapeshifting reptiles come from? Out of Space. Yes. I don't. I mean, once again, I do have to emphasize you all should see the film Life Force from 1984 or something. I can't remember when it came out in 1980s.
00:18:58
Speaker
because it's an excellent, excellent film. Prince King Charles is a vampire. I think if you take any moral from this episode, see life force, the kings of empire. That's true. But you'll always be thinking of Patrick Stewart. I will. I really will.
00:19:14
Speaker
Okay, is it heist time? It is heist time. It's time for the Thomas Blood crown affair.
The Thomas Blood Jewel Heist
00:19:22
Speaker
Kind of, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yes, no. In 1671, there was an attempt to steal the crown jewels of England by just the most fabulously named villain you could think of, Thomas Blood, who was also known as Colonel Blood. I mean, that's a Jo villain, surely.
00:19:41
Speaker
I am thinking now of a joke I heard on the podcast of Bontavista Social Club, where they were talking about a story from the UK, and one of the hosts said, you know, there's a theory about how everyone is kind of named after their profession. And they're going, oh, yeah, you just read the next name of the list. And the next name of this was a someone drink water, in case at all. They must have known how to really drink their water, if that's what they're named after.
00:20:10
Speaker
Why is Thomas Blood named after Blood? I don't know, but that's his name. He was a bit noble, I think. He was sort of Irish English. He was a bit of a scoundrel. He got up to all sorts of stuff, but he was relatively powerful, had a bit of a following. But at some point, after various schemes and a roguery of his
00:20:35
Speaker
didn't pan out he decided he was going to steal the crown jewels because what else is a young man to do?
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah. And this story, this story is going to get very complex very quickly because you're going to think the crown jewels are about to be stolen. And the thing is, they're not. So let's start. It's 1671 and Colonel Blood pretending to be a parson, as colonels are want to do, and a woman who's pretending to be his wife decide to go and visit the jewels. Oh, Josh, where were the jewels located at this time?
00:21:08
Speaker
I think it was the Tower of London. There was a specific building, the House of the Jewels or the Jewel House. I believe when they weren't on display, they were sort of kept down in a vault. And when they were on display, they were out in a room behind sort of a metal grate or something. So anyone could pay to go in and view the Crown Jewels at that particular time. Especially a passer and his wife.
00:21:33
Speaker
And there was the man in charge of the Crown Jewels, basically the master of the Jewel House, a fellow called Talbot Edwards. He was there now. So the start of the scheme is blood and a woman under assumed identities go in to see the Jewels, his fake wife, then fake some sort of a stomach complaint and asked Mr. Edwards to go and fetch her some help or fetch her some sort of medicine to ease her condition.
00:22:03
Speaker
Which means he wanders away from the crown jewels, which Colonel Blood and his fake wife do not steal.
00:22:12
Speaker
No, you'd think that's the point. They've got him out of the room. They're alone with the jewels. It's heist in time. But no, no, they're just getting started. This was just the beginning of their plan. So while Mr. Edwards was away fetching out his wife, the two of them, their quarters were in the building. They lived in the same thing. So his wife invited Mr. Blood and his fake wife into the quarters to help her sort of convalesce while she was recuperating.
00:22:41
Speaker
which was all according to their plan. For after she had helped them out, they were incredibly grateful to her and went away and then came back a little bit late. It came back a day or two later and to say, oh, thank you so much for all your help. When my wife had her little spell earlier, they gave her a gift. I think they had some, a bunch of fine gloves that they presented to her as a gift to say, oh, thank you so much. And basically struck up a friendship with the two of them, with Mr. Edwards and his wife.
00:23:10
Speaker
And this is quite an involved friendship, because eventually they kind of come to an agreement that there should be a marriage between their families, between the Edwards' actual daughter and Colonel Parson's blood's
00:23:29
Speaker
So it's not just they become friends, they become close enough friends that over, say, a meal and drinks, they talk about uniting their families in holy matrimony, and blood says, oh, I've got a nephew. My nephew would be perfect for your daughter. And of course, in these days, you wouldn't actually ask the daughter, do you want to get married to this person you've never met? The parents would go, oh,
00:23:53
Speaker
What a capital idea. Yes, we shall marry our daughter to your nephew you've never met. There was a sort of, you know, promised some sort of a financial incentive. The nephew apparent was well enough to do that, you know, the woman, that their daughter would be well looked after and what have you.
00:24:10
Speaker
And so again, everything was going according to plan. He'd gotten goods with the person in charge of the dual house, and now he had an excuse to bring a bunch of other people that he knew over to their house on the pretext of going to have a nice dinner with their soon-to-be in-laws.
00:24:32
Speaker
So one of the people they bring in is the fictitious nephew. It's the fictitious nephew, not his actual nephew, but just a man pretending to be his nephew. And a couple of others, I think his brother in, Colonel Blood's actual brother-in-law and a couple of other guys, they all come on the 9th of May, 1961, they all come to have dinner with the Edwardses. And while Mrs. Edwards is off preparing dinner,
00:24:55
Speaker
colonel, the good colonel slash parson slash thomas blood, convinces edwards hey can you can you show us all the jewels just just just us blokes can we can we get in and have a look at them and so he did he took the he took these the the entire party off to the the vault
00:25:14
Speaker
where the jewels were kept out of hours. And finally, finally, after all this preparation and laying groundwork and what have you, it was finally time for them to act. So they got into the vault. As soon as the door was open, they chucked a cloak over Mr. Edwards. They knocked him down. They hit him with a mallet. They tied him up and gagged him and stabbed him, just for good measure, and then took to swiping the jewels, which they didn't
00:25:43
Speaker
treat with a lot of respect, it has to be said. No, having decided to go through this rather audacious plan to steal the crown jewels, the first thing they do is use a mallet to flatten St Edward's crown so they could just easily put it beneath, and bloodstool pertain to be a person, beneath his clerical cloak.
00:26:01
Speaker
And another conspirator blood's brother-in-law decides to basically cut the scepter and the cross in twain to be able to fit them into his bag. What a third man, and this is I think the best part, takes a sovereign orb and stuffs it down his trousers. He sure does.
00:26:22
Speaker
So there you go, they've mashed the they've mashed the crown, they've filed the scepter and cross in two and yeah one and and then finally the the the sovereign orb is is next to this other fella's crown jewels as it were. Now Mr Edwards who I should point out was apparently 77 years old
00:26:43
Speaker
Which is actually immensely old in the 17th century. That's pretty old. I feel like I should check that again. I'm pretty sure that almost doesn't quite sound right. But he was 77 years old. He's tied up. He's gagged. He's been beaten and stabbed. But he basically says whatever they would say in that time, the equivalent of, not on my watch, you sons of bitches. He was not. Altutanker. Altutanker.
00:27:09
Speaker
not going to take this lying down despite the fact that he was presumably at that time lying down, having been knocked to the ground and tied up. Nevertheless, he struggled against his bonds. He managed to get himself free and get his gag out enough that he could make a racket and raise the alarm. Now, there are a couple of versions of the story. It seems slightly uncertain exactly what happened. Some versions of events also say that in a stroke of bad luck for the thieves, Mr. Edward's son,
00:27:39
Speaker
who was in the military and had just recently returned home, just happened to come in at the time, sort of challenged the man who the thieves had left outside the room to be their lookout. Sort of, you know, who the hell are you? Where's my dad? Sort of thing.
00:27:56
Speaker
And so between Mr. Edwards and his son, they were able to raise the alarm. Other people think maybe it was just Mr. Edwards yelling blue murder on his own. But the point is the alarm was raised and the thieves had to get out of their quick smart. They had horses waiting and they made a run for it, but not successfully, basically. They were caught and the jewels were recovered. I think all that was missing was a couple of actual jewels had been knocked out of
00:28:23
Speaker
the orb or something that fell out of the guy's pants and banged off the ground or something. Basically they got the they got the jewels back, presumably banged the crown back into shape and and and welded together the the other bits. Now, Josh, I'm assuming after such an audacious robbery, which included attempted murder, that Blood and his cohort were
00:28:48
Speaker
killed by the British Crown as a demonstration that one does not steal the Crown Jewels of England. Yes, that's practically treason. I don't know if it's officially. You know, you'd think so. You'd think this would end badly for Colonel Blood. But he kind of got away with it. He went before the King. King Charles, yeah, was King Charles II. That's right. He went before the King.
00:29:14
Speaker
And the king sort of spoke to him, and he ended up spearing him, and not just spearing him, but giving him land in Ireland that was worth a decent amount of money. Indeed, a lot more money, apparently, than old Mr. Edwards, who actually, you know, is mostly responsible for foiling the theft. He was promised 300 pounds, and he never got most of it, apparently.
00:29:39
Speaker
Although he did apparently, he dined out on the story of being the man who foiled the theft of the crown jewels for the rest of his life. But yeah, blood actually ended up doing quite well out of this attempted theft, not to mention attempted murder and grievous bodily harm.
00:29:58
Speaker
I know you might think doing quite well was his life was spared but no his life was not just spared he was given land in Ireland. He was yeah and people are like so why why would the king have done this we're not quite sure there are a bunch of theories some people might have thought that as we said blood was like although this was sort of 1670 and in this day and age um
00:30:23
Speaker
a public figure is likely to have their image all over the place. Many people know what they look like. You could, in 1671, be a relatively well-known person and yet still manage to disguise yourself as a parson, and some dude's not going to recognise you.
00:30:41
Speaker
He did actually, as we said, have a bit of a following. He may have been able to sneak into the Jewels' house in Cognito, but there are enough people who were fans of him and indeed follows of him that some people have thought, well, maybe the king might have been a little bit afraid that if he did actually kill Mr. Blood, all of his followers would mount some sort of an uprising.
00:31:04
Speaker
some sort of a revolt. So that's one theory. Another theory is that the king was just sort of, just liked the cut of his gib. Just, um, he had a bit of a fondness for scoundrels and was amused, you know, just was like, ah, kid, you got moxie. I like you. I liked the way you think. Apparently at one point blood claimed that, um,
00:31:30
Speaker
the crown jewels, which had been valued at a hundred thousand pounds at the time, which a hundred thousand pounds in 1671. That's like a shitload of money. Yeah. I mean, we could put that into the inflation calculator, but we've just seen the coronation of King Charles where they spent so much more money than ever needed to be spent to crown an old man and say, it's all right, Derry, you're king now. It's fine.
00:32:00
Speaker
But yes, no, apparently blood had claimed that they were only worth 6,000 pounds and the king was like, ah, you scamp, you rapscallion. Ah, get out, I can't stay mad at that face. You get it, get out of here. Go live on this land and island. So that's one, that's one possibility. There's a suggestion that
00:32:18
Speaker
blood, blood, obviously, if he if he can amass a bit of a following, he was a fairly charming fellow. And what one suggestion is that he just basically flattered to the king and and said that, you know, what a lovely, kingly king he was. And supposedly that what one one theory is that he had done, he confessed to the king, that he had actually intended to kill the king at one point. Obviously, the fact that he was stealing the crown jewels was because he wasn't a fan of the
00:32:44
Speaker
royalty at the time and claimed that at one point he was planning to kill the king while he was bathing in the Thames but then found himself in awe in awe of the king's majesty and couldn't bring himself to come through with it and again the king was like oh
00:32:59
Speaker
Oh you, oh you silver tongue together, ah get out of here take this lantern island. That's another, another possibility. And one more, one more sort of conspiratorial, more more conspiratorial theory is that perhaps, perhaps the king was in on it a little bit.
00:33:15
Speaker
There was a suggestion that the king was a bit short of money at the time, which has led some people to suggest that maybe it was all part of the con, all part of the plan, get him to steal the jewels and then live like a king, as we're on the, I don't know, insurance money or go halves in the cash after blood fenced to the crown jewels or something, I don't know.
00:33:39
Speaker
I mean that theory doesn't make much sense in that once you've lost your crown jewels you kind of have to create new ones and of course part of the problem after the restoration.
00:33:53
Speaker
was that there really weren't any crown jewels left. Cromwell had disposed of almost everything that had been part of the Royal Treasury in the past, which is kind of why the crown jewels were being kept in the Tower of London under
Papal Conspiracy Theories
00:34:08
Speaker
lock and key, because it turned out they weren't when Cromwell's revolution occurred. They were just, the fans of the royals were not able to spirit the crown jewels away with ease.
00:34:21
Speaker
seized by the revolutionaries so now they were being kept under lock and key and once you've had them stolen on your behalf
00:34:31
Speaker
you kind of have to make new ones and they just made those new ones. So I'm not entirely sure I'm buying that particular theory. Yeah. So, so like I say, we don't actually know. We know he, we know that blood basically got away with his cunning plan. Um, we're not a hundred percent sure why, but I think, um, no matter, no, no matter why it was probably an interesting story. Had we been there? Indeed. Indeed. Had we been there, had you played Colonel Blood and I played your fictitious wife?
00:35:01
Speaker
If only. If only. We can own, we can all but dream. Now, other kings, or at least other, other, other rulers, with conspiracies related to them, there's a court, you can't, you can't go past ancient Rome. I'm gonna stop you there because you've, you've wandered into my trap. It's time to play Want the Conspiracy.
00:35:33
Speaker
Have you, have you fooled me? Have you pulled the wool over my eyes? Have you pulled a cloak over my head, beaten me with a mallet, tied me up and stabbed me metaphorically? And now I'm malleting your crown like it's nobody's business. Yes, it's time to play a short, what the conspiracy is. And you've got a bit of a hint because the notes say Ancient Rome, Julius Caesar, and Caligula, which of course both had conspiracies around their demises. Actually, there's been, so,
00:36:03
Speaker
I need you to do the three questions. Who the conspiracy? What the conspiracy? Oh, sorry. When? Yeah, when the conspiracy? What the conspiracy and why the conspiracy? It's been such a long time. Such a long time getting a bit rusty with my what the conspiracy question. When and where and whatever. Okay, well.
00:36:24
Speaker
You would have me believe that the idea that it's to do with ancient Rome is a misdirection, but I'm going to call your bluff. I'm going to say it's a cunning double bluff, and we are actually talking about ancient Rome. So that's the when and the where. And as for the what, I assume you're going to be talking about the assassinations of Julius Caesar and Caligula, who are actually the pets.
00:36:48
Speaker
of the other emperor Claudius. They were his hamsters, Julius and Caligula. Do you realize that Claudius wasn't alive during the reign of Julius Caesar? Yeah, because a forward-thinking man. Very forward-thinking. I mean, he would have known that eventually there would be a Julius Caesar, and he named one of his hamsters after him. Claudius is after Julius Caesar.
00:37:12
Speaker
But there was a backwards thinking then, what's your problem? Well, I mean, many Romans did think that was true of poor Claude, Claude. So you're right on one measure, although we shouldn't put ancient in front of Rome there. We are talking about Rome.
00:37:27
Speaker
And I guess because we're talking about Vatican Hill, we are talking about the bounds of ancient Rome. And now we're talking about Vatican Hill. It's quite clear we're talking about the modern Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church, and who is the leader of the modern Catholic Church? Why it's the Pope surrounded by his princes, the red hats, the Cardinals.
00:37:53
Speaker
So the location is ancient Rome. The what are papal conspiracies? And the when is 1958 and possibly also 1963. Josh, tell me about the enclave of 1958.
00:38:08
Speaker
It's a thing that I don't know anything about. Precisely my point. So 1958 is the enclave that voted in as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, won Pope John XXIII, who previously was known as Cardinal Angelo Roncali.
00:38:29
Speaker
However, this is not true, for there was another man who was voted Pope in that enclave, and who's been denied the title of true Pope, and that man is Cardinal Guisepi Seri.
00:38:45
Speaker
Okay, and he was assassinated? No, no, no. He died of natural causes in the late 80s. So Siri was a contender. We know in the 1978 conclaves, there were two of them because the
00:39:04
Speaker
The poker was first voted in 1978, only lasted two months before he died. That he was definitely in the running. He was actually said to be a front runner for the initial ballots, but never got quite enough votes in the first count.
00:39:22
Speaker
and ended up being superseded by other cardinals who managed to kind of get their groupings and become the ones who were in the running in the third and fourth days of Enclave. But this is a claim that actually in 1958, someone who wasn't Pope John XXIII was elected Pope and then was covered up. And we know this because on the first day of balancing,
00:39:50
Speaker
In 1958, there was white smoke emanating from the Chinle of the Sistine Chapel, and if the smoke was white, you know that someone has been elected Pope. However, after a few minutes of white smoke, suddenly the smoke turned dark, suggesting
00:40:14
Speaker
that there was a last-minute change of mind. And the claim is, Guiseppe Sirri was the person who was voted in Pope, and was then persuaded to change his mind and not accept papacy so that someone else could become Pope instead.
00:40:34
Speaker
It wasn't a, it wasn't a miscount or something. It wasn't a case of the, um, what was it giving the Oscar to La La Land when it actually should have gone to the other one? I can't remember. That was a few years ago now. Wasn't it a Tomé situation? These people don't make mistakes, Josh. No, no, there was something suspicious going on. And why would Siri be denied? So every time I say that, I think my phone is going to start reacting. If I had to say that, if I say,
00:41:01
Speaker
the wrong sound at the beginning of Siri, my watch is going to start making a lot of claims. Why was Siri denied the papacy? Because Josh, he was a staunch conservative. In fact, he was such a staunch conservative that during, sorry, in the aftermath of World War II, he ignored the fact that some members of his diocese assisted people like say, Adolf Eichmann,
00:41:27
Speaker
help flee Europe to go and live in South America. That's how staunch a conservative Gusepi Siri was. So was it an actual Nazi sympathiser or just didn't really give a shit?
00:41:40
Speaker
Well, people claim he probably wasn't an actual Nazi sympathiser because he financially supported the Italian resistance during the Second World War and was known to aid and shelter priests who themselves helped Jewish people escape Italy to Spain during World War II.
00:41:57
Speaker
It seems to be more the case that Siri was, this is a weird thing to say, a kindly man who cared about people so much that he wasn't going to dob them in for helping other people escape their fate.
00:42:13
Speaker
So he seems like he's a fairly complex character, but he was a staunch conservative compared to the rather progressive Pope John XXIII. He was also in a kind of a very weird situation towards the end of his life. So there was a radical French cleric, Marcel Lebriev, who was a Catholic archbishop and founder of the Society of St. Pius X, which is a very
00:42:42
Speaker
very, very traditionalist Roman Catholic society, which is against things such as mass in the Vulgate, and very much against any form of progressivism. The Society of St. Pius X got into trouble with Rome for ordaining bishops against the wishes of the Holy See, which meant that Libreev ended up being schismatic with Rome. Siri was a good friend with Libreev,
00:43:11
Speaker
and actually found it rather difficult to negotiate that relationship, given that Roam was saying, this guy needs to be excommunicated with Siri being, well, I'm kind of sympathetic towards his traditionalist values. At the same time, I kind of don't like people disagreeing with the Pope because one of my traditional values is whatever the Pope says goes.
00:43:37
Speaker
So, I mean, is this sort of something that has been found out after the fact, or is it something that was always sort of known but we just kind of glossed over it because we've got a pope now and whatever, let's not make a fuss? Well, so on the 25th of October, when the smoke went up, which was white and then turned black, it was reported in the media
00:44:01
Speaker
in Italy, particularly in Rome, particularly on Vatican radio, the radio station of Vatican City, that white smoke had gone up and a pope had been elected. And it was only after the smoke went black that people went
00:44:18
Speaker
or we probably should try and find out what's going on inside, which is difficult, because when the cardinals are in enclaves, there needs to be no information in, no information out. But essentially, they spoke to some of the papal guards and said, oh, no, there's been a bit of an accident. We didn't really mean to send up the white smoke. The election is still ongoing, but it was reported in the media at the time.
00:44:47
Speaker
Right, so what happened to Mr, what was his name? Siri? Giuseppe? No, not Mr, Cardinal, please. Cardinal, of course, okay, yeah. I don't know, Giuseppe is Italian for Joseph, so I'm just gonna call him Joey, Joey C's. Joe Siri, Joe Siri.
00:45:04
Speaker
Well, I mean, he continued on working in the papacy. He actually played a role in John XXIII's regime. He played a role in Pope John Paul II's regime. But Josh, you're not asking the pertinent question. Why would Guseppe Suri be denied the papacy?
00:45:27
Speaker
Well, I suppose I was going to say, didn't you just say it's because he was too conservative or not conservative enough or something? But I suppose the question is, why would he be voted and then they change their mind? Yes, that is an odd state of affairs.
00:45:43
Speaker
Because, Josh, upon his being voted in as the chief cleric of the Roman Catholic Church... Turned out he was actually a woman. No. Turns out the Freemasons and a Jewish conspiracy told the Holy See that the Holy See would be destroyed by thermonuclear devastation. Right. They were going to blow up Rome. So who? What? What? Yes, I know. Stunning, isn't it? It's just blowing your mind.
00:46:13
Speaker
Well, it is a little bit because it makes no bloody sense. What is it? How how did if if if they're an enclave and no information gets in or out for starters, how would a secret society be in any position to tell them to threaten them with thermonuclear annihilation? Because Josh, because Cardinal Angelo Ron Kelly, who had become Pope John the 23rd, was himself a secret Freemason. Right.
00:46:41
Speaker
At this point I'm starting to have to wonder where your information is coming from.
00:46:45
Speaker
Some of this is coming from Hutton Gibson, the father of Mel Gibson. Ah, right. Well, an estimable source of all church-related information. But yes, you ask a good question. Where have these claims been made? Well, they've mostly been made by Catholic conservatives who really don't like the fact that after Vatican II, the Catholic Church somewhat liberalised. We need to put the word somewhat there. Yes, relative to what had come before it.
00:47:13
Speaker
Yes. In the same way that Aotearoa New Zealand is less racist towards Indigenous people than Australia, which is to not say that we're not racist towards our Indigenous people. We're just slightly better than our neighbours who are so much worse. So, so much worse. And being slightly better than someone who's truly terrible doesn't actually make you good. It just makes you
00:47:43
Speaker
not as bad as a really, really bad person. So yeah, so these claims emerge in the 1980s. We get Gary Jiffrey, who claimed in the 1980s that Siri was the true Pope and was being held against his will in the Vatican.
00:48:02
Speaker
which seems rather strange because Pope John Paul II had actually promoted Siri to a fairly senior position within the church and Siri was roving around Italy, if not the world. So if he was being kept against his will... I didn't get that.
00:48:23
Speaker
So it seems that being kept against as well must have been some kind of mental prison as opposed to a physical one. Louis Herbert Ramey claimed in 1986 that actually the Benai breath
00:48:38
Speaker
the Benai Brith were involved, they were the messengers that go between the Freemasons and the people involved in the Jewish conspiracy to blow up the Holy See, and Malachi Martin made similar claims
00:48:55
Speaker
but also claimed that Siri was also the winner of the 1978 papal election, but bowed out due to threats. And it's Malachi Martin who claims that we even know what the papal name of Gusepi Siri would have been if he had been elected Pope, which is Pope Gregory the 17th. Paul L. Williams, who also talks about Pope Gregory the 17th, agrees that
00:49:25
Speaker
Ciri should have won at least three papal elections, but it wasn't the Jews or the freemasons with a benign breath who were responsible for threatening the papacy. Can you guess who actually was the true threat to the Holy See in Rome?
00:49:42
Speaker
Um, I'm gonna go with that wacky scoundrel Thomas Blood. I mean it's a good guess. It's the sort of thing you do, surely. You should be thinking the Soviet Union comrade. They were the true threat to the Roman Catholic Church. I mean I guess, somehow. They had thermonuclear weapons at least. You can't, you can't. That is true. That is true. They did have thermonuclear weapons.
00:50:09
Speaker
So yeah, we've got a variety of different claims largely based upon absolute hearsay. Actually, hearsay is the wrong word, based upon confabulation. Suri himself never made any claim about being a contender in the 1958 or 1963 papal elections. In fact, crucially,
00:50:33
Speaker
At the time, people thought he was far too young to be a papal contender back in 1958 and 1963 for the sheer fact he was only 52. And it was considered that a 52-year-old would be far too young because A,
00:50:49
Speaker
You need old popes to allow for the church to progress because as one pope dies, a new pope comes in and they bring with them the theories of the moment. And two, old men wanted the chance to be pope. So voting in a young man as pope basically meant the other cardinals didn't have a chance of ever becoming pope afterwards.
00:51:11
Speaker
With respect to the so-called evidence that shows that he was elected, the radio broadcast itself means nothing because with no information in, no information out, Vatican Radio was relying on smoke signals like the rest of the world. And as people have pointed out, the problem with smoke signals is that
00:51:33
Speaker
It's a little easy to get them wrong. In fact, in 1939, which led to the election of Pope Pius XI, there was a similar issue with the signals being let out. Except this time round, it was the wrong way around. When they were going to announce the election of Pope Pius XI, the smoke started out as black.
00:51:59
Speaker
and then eventually turned white which led to a large amount of confusion then as to sorry do we do we not have a pope or we do have a pope which meant that after the same situation occurred in 1963 the Catholic Church looked into finding a different way to generate color out of smoke in the old days it was basically wheat hay versus dry hay
00:52:25
Speaker
Now they actually just add a chemical compound to the fire to generate the smoke so technically they could announce the papacy with any colour that you would choose and yet they stick with plain old black and white because those dang conservative Catholics they're never going to get with it. No, no that's probably true.
00:52:49
Speaker
Now, I think we're about out of time. Before we go, I do have to address the fact that I cast dispersions on Marisa Tomei a minute ago, suggesting, referring to the thing that she was never supposed to win an Oscar when, in fact, she did. When, of course, we all know that she gave an excellent performance in My Cousin Vinny. And I think people's eyes were merely raised by the fact that it was other well-known actresses were up against her. But frankly, I stand by Marisa Tomei. Give her the Oscar. There was no mistake there.
00:53:19
Speaker
As I've never seen, my cousin Vinny, I have no opinion on this matter. And indeed, apparently, of all films that sort of center around a court case, my cousin Vinny is the one that's most often used in actual law schools to show a good example, a good and realistic example of a lawyer advancing a case and proving their client was innocent. Good. Good, I say, about a film I've never watched, and probably
00:53:48
Speaker
will never watch. So the morals then of this episode are three-fold. See Life Force, see My Cousin Vinny, Chucky 3's a vampire.
Humorous Wrap-Up and Film Recommendations
00:54:00
Speaker
If only Child's Play 3 had been about a Vinper, Chucky may have made that weak film slightly stronger. But it didn't. So
00:54:10
Speaker
We're at the end of this episode, which is, I guess, a commemoration of the coronation of our new sovereign in a way, sort of. That's our excuse anyway. I mean, we talked about Charles II. We talked about, we talked about, we talked about, we definitely talked about, we talked about Charles III.
00:54:35
Speaker
I guess, I mean, we could have talked about the death of Charles I and made it a Charles trifecta. No, we didn't. We did not. And now we've done. We've done except for the fact, of course, that we're going to go and record a bonus episode for our bonus patrons, the most bonusy of bonus people there are. And we're just going to talk. We're all going to plan. We will not mention coronations or kings at all, I think. Or even Kesh.
00:55:01
Speaker
We might have to talk about Tucker Carlson. We might have to talk about books. We might have to talk about the moon. Could be literally anything, but probably literally those three things. Yeah, I suspect actually you've summarised the bonus episode in the words you chose to use. Well now in that case, the only word I choose to use from now on is
00:55:25
Speaker
Goodbye.