BEN KISSEL
Oh, it smells.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, we don't do that, we're radio professionals.
BEN KISSEL
I don't smell.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, what are you talking about? We're radio professionals.
BEN KISSEL
He was made in a lab. We're radio professionals.
MARCUS PARKS
We're radio professionals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Are we recording?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Made in a lab. Gilles de Rais.
MARCUS PARKS
It's actually 'Jee'. We have to do it all-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well, no-
BEN KISSEL
Oh no. Oh no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I get it all over the place. I get it all over the place!
BEN KISSEL
We got the name wrong?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause then I heard that not only is it not 'Gilles', it is 'Gilles' but actually 'Gilless'. I've heard that you're supposed to add the S too.
MARCUS PARKS
No, that doesn't make any sense.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no, guys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They all say whatever they want.
MARCUS PARKS
That doesn't make any sense that you would add the S because every other fucking French pronunciation thing that I've been told has been totally and completely wrong.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
It's like oh yeah, G-I-L-L-E-S, what's that supposed to be? Oh, 'Jee'.
BEN KISSEL
Gills. It's gills technically.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's gill-es.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles'.
BEN KISSEL
What did the hottest woman that you guys researched say it as?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gilles'.
BEN KISSEL
Gilles' it is. Okay, so we're going as Gilles de Rais. That's the metric.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I really wanted to introduce the audience to the fact that right before we began, Marcus dared to say-
BEN KISSEL
Wow, wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That the microphone cover... Me, Henry Zebrowski-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Made in a lab to be a professional-
BEN KISSEL
You're really taking that AI created Men's Health article seriously.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All of my memories are not real, they were put inside of my brain by the guy that is the nutritionist for Will Smith.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I can't wait for Universal Soldier 3: Podcaster.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Podcaster. And it's just a man born in a rolly chair. You said that my microphone cover stank.
BEN KISSEL
He did.
MARCUS PARKS
Your microphone cover, it stinks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you dare to say because I'm a fervent performer, I am the Billy Mays of this show. And then you're saying that it is because of my performance style.
BEN KISSEL
It's just spit.
MARCUS PARKS
It's just spit.
BEN KISSEL
It stays on there.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the incredible amount of spit that both you and Holden McNeely produce when you perform on a podcast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Live performer.
MARCUS PARKS
You are theater performers.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You ain't spitting, you ain't acting.
MARCUS PARKS
The spit guard that Holden McNeely uses-
BEN KISSEL
I don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
I had to use it the other day, I accidentally sniffed it, and seriously I gagged.
BEN KISSEL
He gagged.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How do you think his fucking wife feels?
BEN KISSEL
Well we don't wanna talk about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How do you think his child feels?
BEN KISSEL
Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left, everyone. Ben hanging out with Marcus and of course Henry. I am really excited to get to this episode. I think there's gonna be a lot of blood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The child murder, that's what you're excited for?
BEN KISSEL
No, I'm excited to learn more about world history.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that exciting? And Marcus, I hope you tie it back a little bit to America because I heard some theories being kicked around in the kitchen last night.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Marcus has his own version of a red-eyed 3 AM deep, deep rabbit hole.
BEN KISSEL
I love it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it's very good.
MARCUS PARKS
Man, if you like just think about it for a second-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just put your perspective goggles on for a second. All right.
BEN KISSEL
That's a weird goggle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I fucking see it now, bro.
BEN KISSEL
All right, Gilles de Rais part two.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Part deux.
MARCUS PARKS
All right, so we're going with-
BEN KISSEL
We're going with what the most beautiful woman pronounced it as because that's our best chance. When you meet a beautiful woman, we assume they all talk with each other and they all go by 'Gilles'.
MARCUS PARKS
All right.
BEN KISSEL
Also I think 'Gilles', if you're a lady-
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, I'm having a date with Gilles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gilles.
BEN KISSEL
As opposed to 'Jee' who sounds like he should be, I don't know, fluffing your underwear or something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it does sound like unfortunately for some reason Gilles cut our date off tonight because he wanted to meet my daughter.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness, let's get on with it.
MARCUS PARKS
So when we last left Gilles de Rais, he and Joan of Arc were on their way to the French City of Orléans to free it from the hated English in one of the pivotal battles in the third phase of the Hundred Years' War.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And actually I was thinking about this earlier, this series will probably at the end be close to like nine and a half hours long, spread out over several periods.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So this entire series is very similar to the Hundred Years' War.
BEN KISSEL
Which was of course-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
116 years over three distinct periods. And I won't ever let anyone ever once forget that.
BEN KISSEL
Very good.
MARCUS PARKS
Now for the first part of this episode, Gilles de Rais will seemingly be somewhat of a footnote of history. But as we shall see, Gilles is a far larger part of the pie than what he's made out to be by certain biographers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, shade.
MARCUS PARKS
But another way, it is absolutely fascinating to see such an evil human being such as Gilles de Rais playing sidecar to one of the most revered people in history. It's like if John Wayne Gacy had been JFK's chief of staff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's true.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because this episode, as we get to the latter half of this episode is the John Wayne Gacy portion of Gilles de Rais' life.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is how we compare him because we've been covering it a little bit. Well last time we called him Ted Bundy meets Harvey Weinstein meets Jared Fogle, so he's somewhere between. This is the Jared Fogle sandwich lord time period.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because what are you gonna do with all that sandwich money?
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. You've got to do something with it, like destroy your entire life and the lives of people around you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But concerning the battle of Orléans, French commanders believed that French forces were gonna arrive at Orléans for a long siege because the English were well fortified and had no reason to come out and fight. The idea of a siege however did not please Joan of Arc. As we're about to see, Joan was a woman of action, for better or for worse, during her short time as a commander in the French army. And that quality would both contribute to her fame and lead to her demise.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you think that Greta Thunberg might be more like... Hear me out on this.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She might be more effective if she had weaponry.
BEN KISSEL
I mean I think that would probably help. I could see her with a big ass sword with a gun. I think if she came to America and acclimated to our gun culture, she would be the number one spokesperson for the NRA, her and Dana Loesch, in like a month.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is what to do, right? Combine. All right? Get controversial. Start of the show, right. Combine love of guns for love of the planet Earth. So we say we fight pollution with these bullets in a way by taking over various giant corporate buildings.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Greta Thunberg with a pack of her Twitter people who arrive, right. And it's January 6th style.
BEN KISSEL
You say this like it hasn't happened though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you're saying this like Ted Kaczynski didn't exist.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he didn't crush it.
BEN KISSEL
Ted Kaczynski apologist Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't land it.
BEN KISSEL
If I'm Randy Kraft's number one fan, you are Ted Kaczynski's number one fan as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I wish I was Ted Kaczynski's editor because someone needed to come in with a red pen.
BEN KISSEL
That's true.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Joan, she figured that when she arrived at Orléans her men were well fed and morale was high. So what better time to attack than immediately, while god was still on everyone's side.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God's here now, man.
BEN KISSEL
Sweet. But god will flip at any moment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Any moment.
MARCUS PARKS
He will. That's why you gotta act now.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
The problem was that the Loire River was too low. Therefore the French army couldn't send barges full of heavily armored men across. But miraculously, as it would happen often with Joan of Arc, as it's put down in historical record, the wind changed and the water level rose, making the crossing not only possible but almost incontestable because of the seemingly divine circumstance.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that something that meteorology has taken away from us? Because now we're like weather patterns, cyclone coming. But before it was just like that's an act of fucking god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Like that's so much more fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Jeanne la Pucelle, as she's known as well-
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She had a lot of weird mysterious circumstances.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which will go play on later on in life when they did the entire fabrication of making her a saint.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like what all of the lies that everyone had to say to the church to make her a saint. But that was because everyone was mad at her. We'll see what happens to her in this episode.
BEN KISSEL
I mean also weather does change.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Weather does change.
BEN KISSEL
So just a bit of luck can change a lot of fortune.
MARCUS PARKS
It really can. And Joan had a lot of luck a lot of the time.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But she entered Orléans to meet an excited populace while Gilles de Rais returned to the city of Blois for more supplies.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Get more croissants, I gotta get foie gras, I gotta get a couple of house wines, and then you gotta stop and smoke a cigarette.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's hard to do. It's long. Running errands in France is a long process.
BEN KISSEL
I love a good house wine.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Joan's reputation had preceded her and when she entered the city, people lost their minds because this was pretty much as close as they were ever gonna get to meeting an angel on earth.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
This however was only in the outer ring of the city, as the English fortifications were deeper in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure, yeah. Always.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
The English fortifications were always real deep.
BEN KISSEL
Oh absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
So while the more experienced commanders had taken Joan's lead in at least entering Orléans, they refused to attack the English fortifications until Gilles de Rais returned with supplies. And so Joan toured the English battlements and called on them to surrender to her and god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She just roasted them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. So she just went on like a mini tour?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well touring the battlements means she walked around and she said fuck yeah, come out! Come out! God is here! God's sword shall strike you down!
BEN KISSEL
Sweet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My hymen is the strongest hymen in Europe.
BEN KISSEL
Strongest hymen of all time. Her hymen was so strong it broke the horse's back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who's made in a lab?
BEN KISSEL
Made in a lab.
MARCUS PARKS
What do you think the English said back?
BEN KISSEL
I think some of the peasants who were suffering from the English oligarchs were very happy to see her. But then I would assume some of the more successful folks were quite scared she was going to destabilize the entire regime.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, they did it the old fashioned English way by calling her a whore.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay, gotcha.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
Bitch, they called her that a lot. Cowgirl was what they called her a lot.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Which I would imagine it's a pejorative depending on where the emphasis is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well just a peasant. It's probably saying that you're like a peasant and that style of thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But now we know cowgirls, I mean that's how I get onto the airplane first because as you guys know, I suffer from little cowgirl syndrome and it actually takes me a long time to get down the aisle.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because every time I go, I go howdy, mister. Howdy, mister.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Howdy, mister. And it takes me fucking 45 minutes.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why I get on the plane ahead of soldiers.
BEN KISSEL
You always get to preboard.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right. But even so, Joan kept touring the battlements day after day waiting for Gilles to return, absorbing the misogynistic insults from the English. On the fifth day though, Joan said that the quote unquote "voices" told her that it was time to attack the English somewhere in Orléans. Anywhere, just so long as she attacked.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Supposedly at that moment Joan saw the smoke and heard the sounds of a medieval battle elsewhere in the city.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
So she rode out to get her first taste of true hand to hand combat. This is the first time she's ever in battle.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She just jumps in.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
She must, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll give her that credit.
MARCUS PARKS
Always.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
For all the lack of planning and kind of the impulsive nature of her work and maybe some would say lack of foresight, she just would jump right fucking in in front of everybody else. And she was I think 16/17 years old.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. 16/17, about 5'1"/5'2". But that was average at the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's nuts, man.
BEN KISSEL
It's a great message, reminds me of Molly Shannon in Superstar. You gotta put your hands under your armpits and jump right in the deep end.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic film.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean yeah. One day it will receive its due.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well when Joan got there, she found that the fight had been started by some very enthusiastic French citizens who'd been inspired to take matters into their own hands.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause that's the hold! Hold! Hold!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you know some guy is like fuck you! And throws a pot at a dude and all of a sudden it starts WWIII.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That could happen.
MARCUS PARKS
But since Joan rode out with no plan whatsoever, she soon found herself trapped between two fires, facing certain death.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(metal guitar riff)
MARCUS PARKS
But at that moment, who should ride out to Saint Loup, fresh from returning with supplies, but Gilles de Rais and friends.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mon ami, I have brought bread!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa. Wow, he's got some friends with him. Very cool. Like Thundercats.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He paid a lot of those friends to hang around.
BEN KISSEL
That's fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You'd be surprised how much these entourages you see on television are actually sponsored by capitalism.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I mean that's fine though, even if you're paying them, then they're actually better friends than if you're not paying them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's true because then they have a reason to stay.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
But then their loyalty is always dependent on how much you're paying.
BEN KISSEL
Just don't lose any money. Don't lose your money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the key.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the key of course. Now Joan didn't like directly shedding blood herself. But the sight of her banners and her white armor pushed the French forces onward to take the Bastille of Saint Loup.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They did it.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Likewise, the English were superstitious enough where just the sight of Joan in her finest in the midst of battle was enough to throw them off their game.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's what Dan Carlin calls the X factor.
MARCUS PARKS
The X factor.
BEN KISSEL
I love that show.
MARCUS PARKS
The X factor. And so after scaling the walls and fighting man to man with sword, ax, mace, and war hammer-
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kinda sweet. It's my favorite, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the war hammer?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm playing Skyrim right now and I'm using that hammer, man.
BEN KISSEL
The war hammer? Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The French killed 140 Englishmen, they captured 40 more, and they set the fortifications on fire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
On fire!
BEN KISSEL
Nice. Yeah, I'm kind of with you. I also really like an aggressive defensive weapon, like a sharp sword or something like that. Or I mean a sharp...
MARCUS PARKS
Shield?
BEN KISSEL
Shield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, that's cool. Yeah. I like that also.
BEN KISSEL
Hit them with that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I prefer things that are attached also to armaments and to holds.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like the idea of big boiling pots of oil.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's fantastic. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that's really fucking cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Throwing burning barrels, a Donkey Kong style defense is what I prefer.
BEN KISSEL
I agree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I do in my home.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what the burglars need to know. If you come for me, I plan to literally spray you with a sticky goop to keep you pinned to things, weigh you down.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And what's so nice is all that oil can later be used for your deep frying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's nice. I'm a halberd type guy, I like a real good halberd.
BEN KISSEL
What's a halberd?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Lance-like weapon.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's like a lance-like weapon, it's got a big blade at the end of it.
BEN KISSEL
Love it.
MARCUS PARKS
You can use it a lot of different ways, there's a lot of different strategies you can use with a halberd.
BEN KISSEL
Cool. You can use the butt to get some distance.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. The stick too, you can hit your buddy with it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Hit him in the crotch, hit him in the balls.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Got your dick!
MARCUS PARKS
And at the end of the day you can still use it as a really long ax.
BEN KISSEL
Whatever happened to that show that talked about weapons? Anyway, let's move on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
BEN KISSEL
There was a show.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
R. Lee Ermey.
BEN KISSEL
It was great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it was.
BEN KISSEL
It was really interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well in other words-
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Joan of Arc's first battle was indeed a massive victory but it had come with a big assist from Gilles de Rais. And this would not even be close to the last time that Gilles de Rais would save Joan of Arc's life. And that's what's interesting about his place in history.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, here it begins.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This begins, we're just gonna go with Marcus on this. I do think it is interesting. It's compelling.
MARCUS PARKS
Compelling, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You can't spell revisionary history without visionary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Visionary.
MARCUS PARKS
See de Rais biographers swear up and down that there is documentation to back up the claim that de Rais was Joan's savior during her more rash combat decisions, especially in her early battles. But reading accounts from the perspective of Joan of Arc biographers, Gilles is nowhere to be found.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe because he was one of the world's biggest child molesters and child murderers and then you get attached to her shit. And then people are like well people like Jeanne la Pucelle, they like her.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this could affect her testing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
In both biographies, they share people like Jean de Dunois. But Gilles is wiped from Joan's history altogether.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A little bit of wipity wipe.
BEN KISSEL
That's not right though. It's inaccurate history.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that to me is extremely interesting because had it not been for Gilles de Rais, Joan of Arc would have likely been killed in her first battle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dog.
MARCUS PARKS
Which would have had me of ramifications on the course of world history. See if Joan of Arc had been killed in that first battle, she would not have been seen as a hero, rather she would have been seen as a massively stupid misstep on the part of dauphin Charles VII.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. He sent a 16 year old girl to be killed in war.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She said she was talking to angels.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well now she's really talking to angels because I put a fucking pike in her head.
BEN KISSEL
Explain that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Charles was fighting not only the English and the Burgundians but he was also fighting for the very right to be crowned king. He was hanging on by a thread.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Then he just hands over a section of his army to a religious teenage weirdo who just kind of showed up. And without Gilles de Rais, that weirdo would have gotten killed immediately.
BEN KISSEL
And of course with the Burgundians, a very easy group to kill, they were only wearing corduroy.
MARCUS PARKS
What does that have to do-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, why does that slow you down?
BEN KISSEL
Because you can stab right through corduroy. It's not very protective.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But what about Burgundy makes you think-
BEN KISSEL
No, they're the Burgundians. They wear corduroy.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean when I think of corduroy, actually burgundy is usually the color of corduroy. I don't know why that's true, but it is.
BEN KISSEL
It is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mustard. Green.
BEN KISSEL
I'm just saying, oh my god-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jean. A standard denim corduroy does exist. Tan.
BEN KISSEL
The Burgundians are coming! Oh don't worry, they're walking the wrong way. The Burgundians? I'm just not scared of the Burgundians.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Anyway, go on.
MARCUS PARKS
Well had that happened, had Joan of Arc been killed in that first battle, then it's likely that Joan of Arc would have been seen in the historical record as not a master stroke of strategy but as a capricious decision of decadence on the part of an illegitimate ruler. Charles VII probably would have thereafter been deposed. And since Joan of Arc's presence was the turning point in the Hundred Years' War, France would have probably fallen under the rule of the English. Had France become basically English territory or at least English allies, then 300 years later there would have been nobody to bail out the Americans during the revolution of 1776. (My Country, 'Tis of Thee plays) Because without French assistance, we would not have won. Therefore it is my contention that without Gilles de Rais, the United States of America would not exist.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride. None of that.
BEN KISSEL
None of that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No Superbowl.
BEN KISSEL
No Superbowl.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No fried chicken.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No yaaas. What else did America bring?
BEN KISSEL
Everything. Jazz.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No mother of all bombs.
BEN KISSEL
Music.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No giant space bound surveillance system that's keeping us all in play.
BEN KISSEL
Television. Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at best, the United States would have instead been born of a second go at revolution in 1884.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
There the point of contention would not have been taxation without representation but rather the legality of slavery in British colonies.
BEN KISSEL
Starting to think he was made in a lab.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm starting to think he might have been.
BEN KISSEL
He was the lab guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is interesting because-
MARCUS PARKS
Sorry, it's not 1884, it's 1834. Excuse me. 1834.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We were just about to get the emails.
MARCUS PARKS
I know. Well that's the thing, it wouldn't make sense for it to be 1884 because that would have been long after the American Civil War and the British of course ab-ab-ab, abolishinized? Aboloshinized.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Abolishinized.
MARCUS PARKS
Abolished slavery.
BEN KISSEL
Very good.
MARCUS PARKS
Many years before America did.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well I'm certain that... Because what do I know about history topics? There are people that-
MARCUS PARKS
Fucking lay it on me, bro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They have a sort of, how do you put it? Almost... How do you put this gently? An irrational attachment to things that have happened thousands of years ago.
BEN KISSEL
It's history.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A very long time ago.
MARCUS PARKS
It's hundreds of years ago.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the way they view it, right, is that sometimes historians, they're caught in their little time period, right. Because a lot of times they dress like it, they've completely isolated themselves in modern times.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. A lot of times.
BEN KISSEL
That's funny.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. A lot of times. A lot of the French historians I've seen, they dress like it's 1543.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They always do.
MARCUS PARKS
A lot of them do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A lot of judkins, big hats with feathers in them.
MARCUS PARKS
Jerkins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, all that kinda shit. But I'm certain there's no way your alternative history take is gonna rile any of those guys up.
MARCUS PARKS
Nah. There's no way you're gonna get the musket heads out in full force.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Guess what? I don't read social media or emails. So I'm not gonna hear about it.
BEN KISSEL
He doesn't care, he doesn't care.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that fantastic?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I think that's very interesting. It's just more showing that his position in history is fucking wild.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Huge!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This guy was like a part of... Jeanne la Pucelle was one, as you put, one of the most famous human beings in history.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It wouldn't be the first child murderer to save this fine republic of ours. No, not the first. The list is quite long. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I do appreciate everyone's indulgence in my interest in alternative history.
BEN KISSEL
We're forced to be here.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you for your indulgence, sir.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, sure, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I loved it.
MARCUS PARKS
Thank you.
BEN KISSEL
I think it's fascinating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What if we just fought you, like no!
BEN KISSEL
No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No! It's the opposite of comedy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Let's get back to Gilles de Rais and Joan of Arc at the siege of Orléans.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, it's like we never left.
MARCUS PARKS
So on the day of Joan's first victory, she sent a letter to the English shot on the end of an arrow, telling them to again surrender.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
BEN KISSEL
That's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course all they replied with was another unimaginative hurl of the word whore. Now perhaps-
BEN KISSEL
what was the word? Was it whore?
MARCUS PARKS
Whore, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Just whore.
BEN KISSEL
It's been around that long?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That word, it would be the word for it would be like (French nonsense).
MARCUS PARKS
No, it's the English saying to her.
BEN KISSEL
So they said the word whore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but they just didn't have a W on it.
MARCUS PARKS
Ore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ore!
BEN KISSEL
I see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. So you think that they're stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But actually they're hurling insults.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Really good.
MARCUS PARKS
Now perhaps because they were yucking and her yum on the day of her first victory or because... I learned that from you!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just a group of people screaming whore at you, that meaning it's yucking your yum.
BEN KISSEL
You're yucking my yum. But this is after she won the battle, right?
MARCUS PARKS
It's her first battle, her first victory.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Please, not now, guys. Please.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No, this is a compliment. You don't want your enemy to be happy with you. This is awesome. They're upset, they're riled. Who cares if they're calling her a whore? She just beat the fuck out of them.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it might also be because she's a fucking 16 year old who just survived a medieval hand to hand battle, almost died.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
She broke down in tears.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean it got to her just a little bit.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is also in that way, it humanized her to even her own people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was very beloved.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, she was. And the only reason why I mentioned that is because she was sort of out of the picture for a little bit dealing with her bullshit, a commander... Well not bullshit but dealing with her own thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Emotions.
MARCUS PARKS
Emotions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Believe me, I have said the word bullshit referring to my emotions in therapy.
MARCUS PARKS
As have I.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To the point where my therapist did say this last time being like well you don't like to sort of meet your emotions. You don't like to enjoy it. And I was like fuck you!
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I don't? Oh I fucking don't?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But when I say bullshit, it's not a pejorative for someone else's emotions, it's just how I refer to my own and it spills over sometimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic.
MARCUS PARKS
But because of Joan's breakdown, a commander named Dunois and Gilles de Rais had a meeting without Joan in which it was decided to pause the attacks and fortify their positions. But even though those decisions were made, Joan had the bad habit of saying fuck the commanders, I'm gonna do what I want.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Zendaya.
BEN KISSEL
That's your only reference of anyone under the age of 30.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well Sydney Sweeney but that's because of her boobs and she's young.
MARCUS PARKS
Who's that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was in that Euphoria show. But she's got boobs.
BEN KISSEL
Is she over 18?
MARCUS PARKS
She's over 18.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay. Well the next day-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the only other one I know.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Zendaya.
MARCUS PARKS
Zendaya.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Good, good.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the next day, Joan crossed back over the river Loire with her men to attack the English in the town of les Augustins.
BEN KISSEL
So she just in one day licked her wounds and then went on to another battle.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
The English safely returned to their fortifications and Joan's army began to falter. But once again, Joan was saved by Gilles de Rais who helped her take les Augustins while killing a hell of a lot of English.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he loved it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He loved it.
MARCUS PARKS
Every moment. But while it might seem like Gilles would have become annoyed about having to save Joan again and again, he actually kind of loved her spirit because he was also reckless and he was also impulsive and it seemed like wherever Joan went, the bloodshed that Gilles so craved always seemed to follow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He very much liked the fact that she just wanted to fuck everything up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Even though she didn't fuck anything up herself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
She was very good at whipping up others to fuck things up for her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
But the other thing about Gilles and Joan is that I think he was just as swept up in Joan's magical aura as everyone else, but not in the same way. See he saw that she had seemingly divine powers of foresight and inspiration which fed into Gilles' belief in god. This however would later translate into practices that would have horrified Joan of Arc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At least I hope so.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Instead of seeing that god is real, therefore I must obey his rules, Gilles reasoned that if god was real, so was Satan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Satan, Satan, Satan!
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
And if god could help Joan, then Satan could help Gilles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He always does.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that nice? Well not really. Sometimes it leads to horrible YouTube videos, bad clothing, bad lifestyle choices, and overall loneliness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's true, no it's true. But I also think that because later on his magical proclivities will also speak to the fact that he does somewhat... Something in here cemented that all this shit's real.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you also see it come up again in his trial because with the one of the main bones of contention in his trial was how quickly he went from saying I'm innocent to confessing, which is that it seemed to be a late in life obsession with his fate of his soul in the eyes of god might have changed things as well.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it might harken back to oh fuck, that's right, that one time god was real.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now on May 7th, the day after Gilles and Joan took les Augustins-
BEN KISSEL
An island only occupied by ducks.
MARCUS PARKS
An island only... Joan's luck-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See it would make sense if it was called like Quackerton.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like Quackerton to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Webby Town.
MARCUS PARKS
Augustins.
BEN KISSEL
Augustins.
MARCUS PARKS
That sounds like a duck island to you.
BEN KISSEL
Quack quack. Oh my god, we must be close.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just making bird noises. You can't just make bird noises.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But it would be an island of gooses, right? Geese.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's already done the goose.
BEN KISSEL
No, I've already done the goose, yeah. Honk honk.
MARCUS PARKS
Well anyway, that's where Joan's luck hit a bump in the road. She was shot with an arrow in the shoulder while trying to place a ladder against English fortification walls at les Tourelles. But she was caught and removed from battle by again, Gilles de Rais.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, man.
BEN KISSEL
That's all real?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well according to Gilles de Rais' people.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So what we know about all of these things, right, most of the reason why we know so much about these people's lives are because of the trials that both went through. Joan of Arc's trial was extremely... It was long.
MARCUS PARKS
6 months.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a lot of shit and it was heavily documented.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Same thing with Gilles de Rais' trial. And you're basically listening to their people's version of these stories.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then historians are trying to kind of all triangulate, where do they all touch tips, right?
BEN KISSEL
Right, right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where do they all come together as one? And it seems that more people agreed than not that Gilles de Rais was always... Wherever Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais was like right there working as well.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. That's awesome. All right, very cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Well her wounds were dressed with lard and olive oil, then both of them returned to battle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how you know she's French.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They made a recipe to fucking cure her bullshit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's like the put some tussin on it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Put some tussin on it, yeah. Chris Rock.
BEN KISSEL
Put some lard on it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. There, Joan led the French forces through the English defenses. Whilst fighting in a vineyard, Joan called out quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) "Watch and see when the tip of my standard touches the English defenses."
MARCUS PARKS
Soon she heard a man call out:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Joan, the tip is touching!"
MARCUS PARKS
And with the call that the tip had touched, Joan commanded her men.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) Everyone jump. Everyone do the Harlem Shake.
MARCUS PARKS
No, she commanded them to enter the fort.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa! The tips have touched, now it's time to enter the fort.
MARCUS PARKS
And in a burst of energy, both the army and the French townspeople overwhelmed the English. The defeated English forces then tried retreating across the bridge but were thwarted when a flaming barge floated by a fisherman collapsed the structure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Drowning most of the 400 some odd Englishmen dressed in full armor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is like my type of asymmetrical warfare. I love that type of shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where it's just like you turn an everyday object into something that's like highly fucking chaotic and everybody freaks out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sure. Were you at the Boston Marathon by any chance?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I was watching from a building with binoculars.
BEN KISSEL
Oh. Are you allowed to buy crackpots?
MARCUS PARKS
By the next day, the English began leaving the city and tearing down their encampments. And on May 8th, the French had successfully retaken Orléans from the English using the inspiration of Joan of Arc and her number one guy, Gilles de Rais.
BEN KISSEL
That's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) You are my number one guy.
BEN KISSEL
Aw.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love the way you're touching me. I love it!
MARCUS PARKS
I'd say more of a supporting act. He was her supporting act the entire time.
BEN KISSEL
Sure, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's the fucking muscle.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He's the Sam to her Frodo.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Actually that's close.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it works. That does kinda work.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you can't carry it, I'll carry you.
MARCUS PARKS
Share the load.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they did.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, they did. The deleted scenes.
MARCUS PARKS
But once Orléans was taken, it became obvious that the French had a problem. Joan and Gilles had become quite close but both of them were anti authoritarian, albeit with different motivations. Joan believed herself answerable only to god, while Gilles was answerable only to his own desires.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And now we have that all together on the Supreme Court.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah! But even so, Gilles was an obviously talented commander and warrior. So he was appointed the position of Marshal of France.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the Marshals of France are very fancy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I was gonna make a joke about how it's a name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I was trying... I'm actually kind of disappointed that you didn't.
BEN KISSEL
No, both of us-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I started it. I thought that you were gonna say something.
MARCUS PARKS
That's a double whiff there.
BEN KISSEL
That's a double whiff, it doesn't sound like we were made in a lab at all, does it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All this is gonna be cut. We're just gonna have to lift every single bit of this evidence.
BEN KISSEL
I've listened to episodes and it seems every time you say that it stays in.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. It's almost like a way to embarrass ourselves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're being sabotaged? Yeah, sure, sure. But again, I appreciate the calls coming from inside the house.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's great.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the Marshal of France, this position, it not only gave Gilles higher pay and privileges, but it made him an officer of the crown. In other words, Gilles de Rais was even more powerful and even more shielded by the establishment than he'd ever been.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude. He's with the number one, he's next to the number one that is becoming the most important force in French politics and in world endeavors.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you wonder why in the end when they went to go immediately, what do they call? I think they call it rehabilitate Joan of Arc after her trial. And they kind of left Gilles de Rais out for some reason.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they decided that maybe there was something about him that nobody really liked.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it wouldn't help her reputation I suppose.
MARCUS PARKS
Not at all. But of course, Gilles de Rais, he is the Marshal of France. You're kind of putting him in a corner, you know what to do with Gilles de Rais.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But no one knew what the fuck to do with Joan of Arc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, man. Technically this is a bad comparison but the idea of having somebody that you think that you can control in a position of power, like with Adolf Hitler, right? When they set him up, they thought originally oh this is a guy we can direct around.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then he became a fucking maniac and he took over the entire inside of the destruction.
BEN KISSEL
What was the era where he wasn't a maniac? Can you tell us? When do you think Hitler was like onto something good?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No! I'm just saying that it's the concept of they don't know what to do with this person.
BEN KISSEL
Joan of Arc is the Hitler of France.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, she's the-
MARCUS PARKS
I get what he's saying. I get what he's saying exactly.
BEN KISSEL
I'm playing gotcha journalism.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know! I know and it's just everywhere. All eyes are on me. I'm sorry for everything. But Joan of Arc, again, you can't put her in charge because we all can't control her because she goes off into a closet-
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Unpredictable.
BEN KISSEL
Unpredictable. Absolutely. Totally get it though.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. See where Charles VII was concerned, Joan, to use a Southern term, she's getting a little too big for her britches.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But even so as per Joan visions, Charles VII was crowned king of France about two months after the French retook Orléans in a ceremony that took seven hours.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Kill me.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow. And covered all that stinky ass oil.
BEN KISSEL
It must have been horrible.
MARCUS PARKS
Consequently, Charles VII negotiated a 15 day truce with the English and the English's French allies, the Burgundians.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, you can hear them coming from a mile away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(squeaking)
BEN KISSEL
(singing) Burgundians, here we go, here we go, Burgundians. We're the Burgundians and there we go. That's the whole song cause we're dumb.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a guy writing an email with a quill right now that is furious.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, the Burgundians were so powerful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Someone come and scan this most urgent memorial! Send it to America!
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like you are in America, Jeff. It's Jeff. My name is Jeff!
BEN KISSEL
The Burgundians had their testicles above their penises as a matter of fact. Not a lot of people understood why.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Someone go and get my inkwell!
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I must put another strong message out to these rebellions.
BEN KISSEL
Very interesting. Their buttholes were actually where their taint is and their taint is where their buttholes were.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No! Someone bring me my taller hat that gives me confidence.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Burgundians.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this seriously pissed off Joan because while she certainly wanted the English out of France, she hated the Burgundians even more.
BEN KISSEL
I believe it.
MARCUS PARKS
She'd held a grudge against the Burgundians since childhood because they sided with the English. Now as far as how the Burgundians got mixed up with the English, this is basically another Game of Thrones subplot. The Burgundian story is fucking incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean the conflict with the Burgundians was somewhat the thrust of the third phase of the Hundred Years' War in which both Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais gained their notoriety. See back in 1407, about 20 years before the crowning of Charles VII, the king regent Louis I was murdered in the streets of Paris by 15 masked criminals on the orders of a man named John the Fearless.
BEN KISSEL
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
A king regent by the way is the man who acts as the king when the actual king is too young, too sick, or too mentally ill to do so.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So he's the hand of the throne or what they call the hand of the king?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
He's a... What would you call that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just trying to reach you.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I get that. In the Game of Thrones world there were king regents actually. Not the hand of the king, the king regent acts in the king's stead.
BEN KISSEL
He's the babysitter of the throne. He babysits the throne when the king is gone.
MARCUS PARKS
Basically until the can come of age and can make decisions on his own. Like when you had like that 9 year old King Henry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They have to have a guy come in and he is the one who is acting but still every once in a while that 9 year old is like kill them all. And they're like all right.
BEN KISSEL
You still gotta do it, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now John the Fearless was the son of the Duke of Burgundy, he of the Burgundians. The Duke of Burgundy was named Philip the Bold and he was angry that royal funds were being spent on Louis I's decadent lifestyle instead of the expansion of French territory. Understandable.
BEN KISSEL
Makes sense.
MARCUS PARKS
Louis I was acting as king regent because at the time King Charles VI, Charles VII's father, he was severely schizophrenic. He believed that he was made of glass and he was often unable to remember his name, his wife, or even the fact that he was king.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean it is interesting because yes, obviously he was very ill. But then also Joan of Arc said she was talking to actual full formed angels and they just gave her an army.
MARCUS PARKS
But she could still say hi, my name is Joan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually it was Jeanne, Jeanne la Pucelle.
BEN KISSEL
I mean what a day at the kingdom. Like oh no the king, he thinks he's glass again today.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah well...
BEN KISSEL
Don't put him near windows, he could start a fire given the power of the sun when it hits glass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you have any cleaner because he says he smudged.
BEN KISSEL
We need the Windex! He wants to bathe in Windex once again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh god.
MARCUS PARKS
Louis I meanwhile, he had been appointed king regent in Charles VI's stead because Louis I was having a sexual affair with the queen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa.
BEN KISSEL
Wait, what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lot. Again, you have to see the family charts.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, gotchu.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no. Louis I was fucking the queen.
BEN KISSEL
But that's not the king.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was fucking the queen.
BEN KISSEL
Who's the king?
MARCUS PARKS
The king is Charles VI.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is one of those episodes where I just see Kissel's English teacher each night going home and putting the gun in her mouth, just being like is tonight the night?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. I wish it was.
MARCUS PARKS
Stick with me here for a second.
BEN KISSEL
All right, got it.
MARCUS PARKS
Charles VI is the king.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He thinks he's glass.
BEN KISSEL
He thinks he's glass.
MARCUS PARKS
He thinks he's glass.
BEN KISSEL
Glass king.
MARCUS PARKS
He cannot fulfill the duties of the king.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he is legally the king and they can't do anything about it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I got it.
MARCUS PARKS
He is legally the king. Therefore his wife the queen must appoint someone to act as the king regent.
BEN KISSEL
And then she fucks that guy.
MARCUS PARKS
No, she appoints the guy she is fucking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Well then it makes sense.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But now that guy is also a king so that's actually not even cheating.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
New stepdad Louis is now the king but in action only.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just shows up with a sash on, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In action only.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
MARCUS PARKS
But the thing is that no one could really figure out what other reason there could be for Louis I being the king region because Louis I was quite unpopular due to some called the Bal des Ardents.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now this is a very funny story. This is back in the day when political gaffes were more serious. You'll see.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Let's go a little bit further back to 1393.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, how far are we gonna go back?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We just keep going back.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He said something about the heat beginning of the universe. There's a beginning somewhere in there.
BEN KISSEL
Oh man.
MARCUS PARKS
Before Charles VI was incapacitated, a masquerade ball was thrown in which the king and five nobles performed a dance, wearing costumes made of linen and soaked in resin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just reminds me of fucking when we used to go to the Adult Swim upfronts and you find out they paid Kanye West fucking $2 million to yell at us for 40 minutes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you're just like this is what we're spending the money on? Resin costumes?
BEN KISSEL
We did watch Drake. He did good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was great.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was surprisingly good.
MARCUS PARKS
Well these costumes depicting the nobles as wood savages made them appear shaggy.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But it also made them highly flammable. As such, there were strict orders against the lighting of hall torches and strict orders against anyone entering the room with a torch. The idea behind the whole event was to have the audience guess the identities of the Wood Savages.
BEN KISSEL
The Masked Singer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you remember the blind restaurant?
BEN KISSEL
Yes, I do remember that. All the lights were off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The thing that was all in the dark. And the people who served you were blind so they could see.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you can't and you don't know what you're eating.
BEN KISSEL
And one person takes off their masks and it's Rudy Giuliani!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Rudy Giuliani!?
BEN KISSEL
Remember that, when he was on the Masked Singer?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I remember that.
MARCUS PARKS
I remember.
BEN KISSEL
Remember that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But this is a time period where... Because who showed this? It was Barry Lyndon. It really is a beautiful film, boring as all fuck, god it's fucking boring.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's a beautiful film that really illustrates what we've talked about a little bit in the past where the thing about medieval times is that you got torches inside and stuff to light.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But those torches create smoke and all this stuff, it's gross in there.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Gross.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so a lot of the times when it was nighttime, it was dark. Wherever the fuck you were, it was dark as fuck.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it was difficult to see.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I wonder if the human eyes adjusted a little bit. I wonder if the human eye adjusted a little bit back then. Do you think they could see better in the dark if it was dark every night?
MARCUS PARKS
I can see better in the dark. All the time.
BEN KISSEL
You can see better-
MARCUS PARKS
I see great in the dark.
BEN KISSEL
You can see better in the dark than you can in the light, you think?
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
But I can still see great in the dark. I got really good nighttime vision, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are you doing that? Did you purposely get better at nighttime vision?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I purposely get better at nighttime vision.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe that was something they gave him in the lab.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you have owl vision?
BEN KISSEL
We didn't get that. I hate the night, I don't see at night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I'm completely blind.
MARCUS PARKS
I see wonderfully at night.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, well-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I can walk around in a dark house and not bump my foot at all.
BEN KISSEL
He's also British.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is this a whole brag? Is that a brag?
BEN KISSEL
That is a brag.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Does that count as a brag?
MARCUS PARKS
It is a brag. I don't often get to brag about that but yeah, I'll totally brag about that right now.
BEN KISSEL
It's technically a superpower.
MARCUS PARKS
I have incredible night vision.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just see Caroline just so scared just watching Marcus do his night vision drills, trying to see what he can see and not see in the night. She's just like just put lights on.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just put some lights on.
BEN KISSEL
Put the lights on.
MARCUS PARKS
She looks at me walk around at night in the pitch darkness in awe. You should ask her, she's incredibly impressed with my night vision.
BEN KISSEL
yeah, no, I will.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think she just knows that she can't escape.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I'm gonna ask your wife how in awe she is of you as you can walk around at night.
MARCUS PARKS
That's how you keep marriages good. You're in awe of each other. You find those things like oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, Natalie is constantly impressed.
BEN KISSEL
In awe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Constantly.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
So we're in this ball, we're in this masquerade ball. All torches are banned.
BEN KISSEL
No torches.
MARCUS PARKS
No torches t all. And everyone is having quite the annoyingly French twee little Amélie time trying to figure out who's who.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do good little pranks, I do good pranks.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where I go and they don't know it's me.
MARCUS PARKS
And who should show up drunk bearing a torch but the future king regent Louis I.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How the fuck are you guys seeing shit in here?!
BEN KISSEL
Oh no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You guys are all in here, it's fucking dark as shit in here! Let's get outta here!
BEN KISSEL
Oh god, he's just gonna Belushi this whole thing, isn't he?
MARCUS PARKS
Well accounts differ but it's said that Louis I decided to join in on the fun but hadn't gotten the no torches memo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna go up there, I'm gonna show them all they're fucking stupid. Hat are they a bunch of Marcus Parks in there?
BEN KISSEL
I can totally see this.
MARCUS PARKS
So he immediately walked in and got the bright idea to just use his torch to win the game and see who was who. Because why the fuck don't you use a fucking torch? (drunken mumbling)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(drunken mumbling)
BEN KISSEL
I mean I'd be friends with him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah of course.
BEN KISSEL
He's pretty funny.
MARCUS PARKS
He held the torch above a wood savage, and these are nobles by the way, these aren't just some guy they brought off the street.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These are people who count to them.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Spark fell, lit the guy on fire, the flames spread, four nobles were killed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is a political gaffe.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is considered like when Dan Quayle couldn't smell potatoes.
BEN KISSEL
This is very similar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the same equivalent of political death.
BEN KISSEL
That is incredible.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he burned four men alive accidentally.
BEN KISSEL
I mean he can't say it but it's funny.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's kind of funny though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But obviously King Charles was not hurt.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like now he's just like I must be glass.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess I just turned back to sand.
BEN KISSEL
What a goddamn hangover that must have been because he's probably drinking garbage mead or something that ends up really messing with your brain.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are you guys being all awkward? Last night was hilarious. It was fun.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
No, Charles VI came out of it miraculously unharmed. But this goof em up, it killed Louis I's reputation and therefore made it where an enemy might believe that they could maybe get away with assassinating him without making anyone all that upset.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, it's all about polling.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like it's the same shit.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's way more along the lines of like but if we assassinate him, people are gonna freak out. It's kind of seeing where it all lines.
MARCUS PARKS
How low does someone's Q rating have to go where you can assassinate them?
BEN KISSEL
That's why Ted Kennedy, he could never be president. Cause he killed that woman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We know.
BEN KISSEL
Isn't that sad? And there were scratches on the top of the car. On the roof as she tried to get out. She could have lived. But 12 hours of her suffering.
MARCUS PARKS
And so when John the Fearless of the Burgundians decided that he should be king regent, not Louis I-
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
He ordered a gang of men to murder Louis on the streets of Paris. There, Louis was stabbed multiple times, 15 men got sent after him, his hand was cut off with an ax and his skull was split open by that same weapon.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See that's getting canceled.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, that is true cancellation.
MARCUS PARKS
However people weren't so jazzed about John the Fearless' moves. It was a bad thing to do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Cause you're coming after one of the people, that's a made guy.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's a king regent. The assassination unleashed a 30 year civil war in the middle of the Hundred Years' War.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. With the Burgundians on one side in an alliance with the English and Charles VII, Joan of Arc, and Gilles de Rais on the other.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. So there's two wars going on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is where the Burgundians come from, this is why the Burgundians are a goddamn problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So they snuck a 30 war into the 116 year war.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they got two wars in one. Honestly it's nice. Again, inflation now, we can only have one full long permanent war at a time.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, one at a time. I don't know actually.
MARCUS PARKS
Now immediately after Charles VII's coronation, that 30 year war between Charles and the Burgundians, that was starting to wind down because Charles had opened negotiations with John the Fearless' son, Philip the Good. You with me?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
How boring. Philip the Good? Not the great, not the grand, I'm Philip the Good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're just trying to change some of the branding here with the family and we really feel that the Fearless reputation is kind of getting a little unfair. So how about the Nice? Philip the Nice?
BEN KISSEL
I hate that.
MARCUS PARKS
Philip the Fine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Philip the Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well none of that of course sat well with Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc did not want peace with the Burgundians or with the British, Joan of Arc wanted to crush the Burgundians.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
My god, I didn't know until today how difficult it was going to be to say the word Burgundians over and over over again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Over and over and over. How do you think people feel at LL Bean?
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a good old fashioned LL Bean joke.
MARCUS PARKS
LL Bean.
BEN KISSEL
That's real good.
MARCUS PARKS
Is that a joke about the corduroy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
It's kind of a burgundy I think.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They actually don't sell corduroy. I don't think LL Bean... Do you know?
BEN KISSEL
No, I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No one knows. I don't think corduroy is in the LL bean catalog.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But bur-GUNDY is a big part of it. I'm just gonna say bur-GUNDY instead of BUR-gundy.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But Joan of Arc, she seemed to be finding a new boundary to cross with the king every single day. See even though Charles had negotiated a 15 day truce with the Burgundian Philip the Good after the coronation, Joan got ahead of the king and sent Philip the Good a somewhat sarcastic, completely unnecessary, and openly threatening letter saying that if he didn't accept peace, he was fighting Jesus himself.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, well, all right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That's the first TikTok response ever done.
MARCUS PARKS
yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Done by an angry child leader.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow, it's never stopped. It's always been this way.
BEN KISSEL
And for those listening 10 years from now, TikTok was something before it was banned. It was a social media platform.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Charles VII of course didn't like this but Joan was still very popular. So in September, she and Gilles were given permission to try and retake Paris from the Burgundians.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, just try it. But Joan was shot in the thigh trying to cross a ditch and of course was saved by Gilles de Rais.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. The second time or third time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Third time.
MARCUS PARKS
Third time. The attack failed and Charles soon called off the entire campaign to attack Paris. And Joan soon discovered that using divine inspiration as your only tool was a double edged sword. See she'd launched that initial attack on Paris on the blessed Virgin Mary's birthday, which is apparently in September.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And it's traditionally a day of truce.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is it?
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess so.
BEN KISSEL
She's gotta give birth, she has to give birth, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But since she'd done an impious thing and failed, Joan of Arc that is, morale had been greatly damaged and Joan began losing support.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a lot of importance it seems put on at the time period of dates and when you did things.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And when you attacked and when you didn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there was rules in that way. And so her impulsivity caused her to break some big weird religious war rule that everyone was like you see there, your problem is right here.
MARCUS PARKS
That's what happened is you invaded on a day you shouldn't have invaded. That's why ya-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well you should have waited til Wednesday.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. But also very smart because they wouldn't be expecting the invasion.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But that's the thing is that they still lost.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Furthermore, Charles VII was extending his truce with The Burgundians with an eye towards reconciliation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
This meant that the king's and Joan's goals began to diverge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And Joan was becoming a huge liability.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. Because she was definitely a political advantage and now she is the person that like oh, we might need to do something about Joan of Arc.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
The problem though was that Joan was still very much beloved by the people and it would be a bad start to Charles VII's reign to have the equivalent of Margot Robbie executed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have to make sure she is safe.
BEN KISSEL
We do!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have to make sure she's safe because this country... Literally the United States of America at this point might fall apart.
BEN KISSEL
We need Margot. Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If Margot Robbie dies, this whole country is just gonna be... It's gonna be like one of those things where we're gonna be carrying her body through the streets.
BEN KISSEL
Horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna have to stop doing comedy for two weeks like they do over in cuck England.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When the queen died, you know what I mean? We have to keep her safe.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
She's Australian.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Doesn't that tell you something about America right now?
BEN KISSEL
That's how much we need Margot Robbie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We have to.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As soon as we get them, they're American.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's true. Australia is very American.
MARCUS PARKS
But the thing is it seemed to be the only way that they were gonna get Joan of Arc to stop would be to execute her. For example, bereft of English and Burgundians to attack, Joan began threatening what she perceived to be the enemies of the church. She started sending letters to supposed heretics telling them that if she wasn't otherwise occupied, they would have her sword in their bellies at that very moment or something to that effect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And let's say at the time, religious conventions were both like yes, it was societal, they were obviously true believers.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I do believe that this is a time period where there are people that would maybe not be as religious as they said they were, right.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And were mostly just living their lives. And then she's decided well I'm gonna clean up house then.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna clean, I'm gonna kill everybody inside here that aren't super hyper religious as well.
BEN KISSEL
Were these op eds? Did they have op eds yet in papers? Because I feel like if she lives in modern times-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Most op eds came from somebody already on a stake about to be burned.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's the equivalent of sending just threatening tweets to somebody. She's just sending letters. She's basically telling them like you're lucky I'm busy right now because if I wasn't, I'd be killing you right now.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but she put the leg work in, she had to write it, she had to mail it.
MARCUS PARKS
She did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well she was also trying to keep the civil war going by writing letters to the city of Rennes saying that she had heard that some of their citizens were planning on joining the Burgundians. In other words, Joan was actively trying to stir up shit everywhere, just as everyone else was trying to end the Hundred Years' War.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's the thing is that she was like, how do you put it?
MARCUS PARKS
Extra.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's too legit to quit. She's too real to be contained, such as myself.
BEN KISSEL
She sounds like a reality TV show producer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well she was really intense. But it's also, you talk a little bit about you're in a political world and you're not a political animal and a bunch of people who decided that they're more important than you... You know how we're all used as pawns in giant political games as human beings? She did not maybe get the memo.
MARCUS PARKS
No, she was 16.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So that's what happens. Yeah, that when you arrive to these things now you're kind of in their world and then they're gonna chew you up and spit you out as much as they would like to.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But then on May 22nd, Joan's hubris finally got the best of her. They actually didn't even have to chew her up and spit her out, she took care of it all on her own. She was notified that the Duke of Burgundy had arrived at the city of Compiègne.
BEN KISSEL
Wow, you can just see him traveling with that golden turd in the back of a goddamn horse and carriage. Then the turd shows up and it says I'm the Duke of Burgundy. Bur-GUNDY?
MARCUS PARKS
And even though Joan had far too few men to even come close to defeating the English forces accompanying the Duke, she went anyway.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Never stopped her before.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But this time Gilles de Rais was not there.
BEN KISSEL
Wait, so is Joan of Arc actually very good at fighting?
MARCUS PARKS
Joan of Arc is very good at inspiration. Joan of Arc is very good at artillery.
BEN KISSEL
It seems like every fight she could have died.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, she would. But again-
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean that's everybody. But we're also not covering every single fight that she participated in.
BEN KISSEL
All right. She just doesn't sound like a Schwarzkopf to me. Remember him?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I do. This was a whole campaign that had happened over periods of years.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But Joan of Arc, she participated in 13 battles I think.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
She won 9 of them.
BEN KISSEL
Right, right.
MARCUS PARKS
We only covered about 4 or 5. We covered the ones that were germaine to Gilles de Rais.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
MARCUS PARKS
And of course this one right here, that is germaine to her capture when of course Gilles de Rais was not there. But she goes, she tries to take down the Duke of Burgundy, but during the ensuing battle she was mundanely... She just got pulled down to the ground from her horse by an archer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Just a guy just reached up and just went boom, pulled her down.
BEN KISSEL
That's the scary thing about being up there on that horse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it is.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. She thereafter surrendered to a man called the Bastard of Wandomme.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude.
BEN KISSEL
He sounds cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know my dad.
BEN KISSEL
No you don't, that's why you're the bastard.
MARCUS PARKS
And he presented Joan of Arc to the Duke of Burgundy with glee.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he went oh ho ho ho ho! (gleeful laughter) Slapping their big fucking purple thighs together.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I guess the Burgundians would have purple thighs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(gleeful laughter) Very good!
MARCUS PARKS
I'm sure they're a horrifying people, I just can't get scared of them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you remember that show where it had the bears jumping around, they'd drink the juice and they'd make them jump?
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, the Gummi Bears?
BEN KISSEL
Gummi Bears.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember they were all walking around little... Like those juices.
BEN KISSEL
That was all alcohol in hindsight. They were getting hammered.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Or just high. It might've been meth.
BEN KISSEL
It could have been liquid meth.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while the Burgundians certainly didn't like Joan, it was the English who truly wanted their hands on the woman who had humiliated and quite frankly scared them during the siege of Orléans. To the English, Joan was the only reason why the French had won anything. And since to win in battle was to be in the favor of god, the only explanation was that Joan of Arc had to have been sent by Satan himself.
BEN KISSEL
Boom.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Done.
BEN KISSEL
A to B.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
In other words, she was a witch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A witch!
MARCUS PARKS
An enchantress.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
A false prophet, devious, sacrilegious, accursed and bloodthirsty. But perhaps worst of all because of how much it threatened the status quo, she had abandoned the modesty befitting her sex.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Meaning she didn't dress like a woman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
God forbid she dresses like Janet fucking Reno.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the entire trial was kind of focused a little bit on the dressing like a man part.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they brought it in there because obviously she shows up, she's dressed as a soldier.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And one of the big things was the maids went and they checked her virginity again.
MARCUS PARKS
Again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They did a whole thing, they threw the seed in there.
BEN KISSEL
I'm just happy they were doing genital checks back then as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Always.
BEN KISSEL
God forbid she tries to play baseball.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, yeah, absolutely. But then they had to go disrobe her, they had to do the show me the titties.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because then in the middle of her trial, she came out and said hey, I'm renouncing all of it. I'm gonna be a lady now, I'm a lady now.
BEN KISSEL
She did that by spreading her labia wide open in the midst of court.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she's flapping and everyone is just like you ain't no lady, you're a woman! And then she went up there. But then she had a change of heart.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And at the very end said like fuck all y'all. Nah, I'm Jeanne la Pucelle.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I do what I want. And yeah, my virginity is intact because my hymen, you could fucking bounce a bullet off it.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they were all like okay, I guess you get the hot stick.
BEN KISSEL
I heard her hymen could break a horse's back.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I heard that from a cardigan man.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, yes, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well after she got captured by the Burgundians and offered to the English, the English levied a tax to raise 10,000 livres to purchase Joan of Arc.
BEN KISSEL
They GoFundedMe this?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean they didn't GoFundMe, they-
BEN KISSEL
They made people, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
They made their subjects give them money so they could buy the girl.
BEN KISSEL
GoFundMe with a bullet to your head.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Sword to your throat at this time.
BEN KISSEL
Sword to your throat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. And after six months of interrogation and trials at the English controlled capital of Rouen, she was sentenced to be burned at the stake and was so burned the same day.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So burned.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, that sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
As the fires were lit, Joan cried out for Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Someone gave her a little cross and she held it.
BEN KISSEL
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And she screamed as they burned her.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And following instruction, the executioner halted the blaze to tear the clothes from Joan's body so as to take away her closely guarded modesty. She then burned to death. And so ended Joan of Arc at the age of 17, only about a year after she'd arrived at French court.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Crazy career, man. She said show us all the titties.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, show us all the titties.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's unfortunate. That's if she didn't die, but she did die. So who knows? Cause she might have disappeared. Because then later on-
BEN KISSEL
We have to believe in a truth. So in this case let's just say she died.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well she appears later on, there's a double of her that arrives. This is true, that a lot of people put a lot of information... Basically Joan of Arc's brother said yep, she's alive, we just saw her. There's a whole story, you should look into Joan of Arc, the double.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. There's a double like Orion, the double of Elvis.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Or the woman that said she was Anastasia. It's a lot like that.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lot like that. She ended up being named Jeanne des Armoises, like literally the people who made up closets. They invented a closet.
MARCUS PARKS
Somebody had to.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A closet is just a place for your stuff.
BEN KISSEL
Don't do your-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A house is just a place... That's George Carlin.
BEN KISSEL
Is it Brian Regan? Oh it's George Carlin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. You know back in these days, they didn't have hallways and therefore they didn't have toilets.
BEN KISSEL
Very intriguing indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. People just shat in corners.
BEN KISSEL
Wow!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Freer times. If only I'd turn back the clock.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh god. Reminds me of that Hoarders episode I watched.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Jeanne des Armoises ended up showing up in Gilles de Rais' court as well because there are a lot of people that wanted her to come back. As we get towards the trial of Gilles de Rais, I'm trying to also set up how society would have dealt with somebody like this person using other people as examples.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because Joan of Arc-
BEN KISSEL
So this is a big example. You fuck with us, you're going to get burned alive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, you are no longer politically expedient to us, we don't mind scraping you off.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But at the same time, her Q points never went down.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they had to retry her in their time period, it's like 25 years later, where they re-exonerated her.
BEN KISSEL
But when she was dead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
They exhumed her.
MARCUS PARKS
No, they exonerated her.
BEN KISSEL
They didn't dig her up and put her in there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was ash, she was fucking chunks by the end of it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So there was already a precedent for trying to revamp an image during the time period. So what happened to Gilles de Rais kind of speaks to that.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because they're trying to figure out whether or not... Because she would become the patron saint of France.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Charles VII did absolutely nothing to help Joan and he couldn't have helped even if he wanted to, which he didn't. He had neither the funds to raise an army nor a ransom to match that of the English. But more than anything, there was the fact that Joan's spiritual claims made her a potential threat to the political establishment. Joan was a religious zealot, yes. That wasn't what made her dangerous. What made her dangerous was that she was a patriot and it's not a stretch to think that her heaven sent voices may have led her to places that would have been quite uncomfortable for a king who relied on the divinity of the crown.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, like you're getting in the middle of my bullshit. I'm the one chosen by god, not you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Right, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
By contrast though, Gilles de Rais had seen the Hundred Years' War as little more than an excuse for bloodshed, profit, and glory when he wasn't under the sway of Joan of Arc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, it was his whole lifestyle, dog.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps the proof for the opportunism of de Rais is no more clear than in the way he conducted himself after Joan of Arc was captured.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See this is where we're really gonna get into who Gilles really is.
BEN KISSEL
Oh exciting. The real Gilles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's a lot of fun little warnings I'm gonna say up top. Yeah, this is gonna get a little gold star.
BEN KISSEL
If he was a footy player, he would have a book called The Real Gilles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Real Gilles. And guess what? You'd never stop throwing up reading it because it's not good.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because apparently he's not great. Me, I get it, right.
BEN KISSEL
You get it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If I'm bored, I'm irritable.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need to be busy. I need to be doing things, right.
BEN KISSEL
I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need to be jerking off into a bush. I need to be out there building like model towns and imagining what would I do to take them over?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sure. Yeah, absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
When Gilles de Rais gets idle and lazy, he made little activities for himself.
BEN KISSEL
Gotchu, okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now some claim that Gilles de Rais may have played a part in Joan of Arc's death, that he was a spy who fed information to the right people where her capture would be a foregone conclusion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he seemed like he was a guy who might have been a hired gun for a second and he didn't mind kind of playing two sides.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Those same people claim that Gilles felt immense guilt for playing a part in his friend's demise and that he at least thought about attempting a rescue.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll write a note. That actually reminds me to write a note about that.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. This is a romantic fantasy, it didn't happen. See after the retaking of Paris failed, Gilles de Rais was paid for his services and thereafter disappeared from all records for 15 months, outside of one loan he took out to buy a horse while Joan was being held by the English.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude.
MARCUS PARKS
It could even be that someone may have just paid Gilles de Rais to go away and stop protecting Joan of Arc.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome. That is the goal in life. If you can get paid just to go away.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not do anything? Because you're such a liability to everybody?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, just go, just get.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my goal for you two.
BEN KISSEL
Get out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My goal is to make sure you have to just pay me out to be silent.
MARCUS PARKS
Just go away, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Just go.
MARCUS PARKS
There's of course no way to know. But it seems like Gilles, when he was given the news that Joan had been captured, he kind of gave it a very French like c'est la vie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) We all live by the sword! And we die by the sword!
BEN KISSEL
I mean a year of total mass violence almost every week. I mean yeah, what's another dead person I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And he thereafter moved on with his life into the realm of hellish decadence.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well given this concept now, this is when they're trying to wind down the war.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they're trying to wind down the war.
MARCUS PARKS
Very much trying to wind it down.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It seems that the general idea was that all right, all you guys have been fighting for the last 116 years over three distinct periods.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You guys need to all just go be lords.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You need to go back to your homes and just live like that. And a lot of guys did.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gilles de Rais though, he never really stopped never stopping.
BEN KISSEL
He probably has massive PTSD as well, not to make any excuses for the guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he liked...
BEN KISSEL
He liked it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think it was the opposite.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that he could not go back to being a normal-
BEN KISSEL
One of those guys who was like Vietnam was the best 10 years of my life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. Now when Gilles returned to his estates and his castles and he was outside of Joan's sphere of influence, he also returned to his old ways of chaos and banditry, holding merchants and travelers to ransom no matter who they may have been. He even had the audacity to organize an ambush against the king's wife, Yolande d'Aragon.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Stealing her horses and her baggage from her escort and presumably killing a few of the queen's men in the process.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is kind of why we're gonna float, as you see, why they didn't really want to play ball with Gilles de Rais.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I could see that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because a lot of guys, you'd think that after you play such a giant functional part of your resistance in a very important war to the existence of your country-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. You're an icon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You'd think that they would have brought you into the fold more. That's what a lot of historians talk about. This is where these things come in where like why wasn't he made like some important part of the administrations? And it's because he was an asshole. And probably in a very, from what we now know about Jared Fogle too, a pedophile out loud, like super kind of proud about being a pedophile and dropping it and saying it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think a lot of people were like ew.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I do think that we need to be careful not to equate Jared Fogle with Gilles de Rais as much as we have.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why?
MARCUS PARKS
Why?
BEN KISSEL
Because he's a Subway pitchman and Gilles de Rais is one of the most iconic characters in world history.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, it's important to show what a sandwich lord does with his turkey money is just a fraction of what a man who is probably worth the equivalent of several billion dollars would go on to do.
BEN KISSEL
I just don't want Jared Fogle in jail being like you hear they compare me to Gilles de Rais now?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But I mean that is a great point. I mean Jared accomplished all that on a fucking sandwich lord salary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The whole time I'm watching the whole documentary series I'm like he's famous for eating sandwiches.
BEN KISSEL
But not too many sandwiches.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all he did. All he was famous for was eating sandwiches.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I haven't watched that doc yet, I must.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just fucking have a stiff drink while you're doing it.
BEN KISSEL
It's so stupid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh god.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
But imagine that times a million.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And imagine being having unlimited power, unlimited cash reserves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And people view you literally as chosen by god to be over them.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the other thing too is that when Gilles left his estate to continue the last skirmishes of the Hundred Years' War, he and his men pillaged, raped, and plundered their way through English controlled France as if Gilles had never even met Joan of Arc. But the blood thirst that de Rais had quenched so often on the battlefield was soon to be supplanted because the last chains on Gilles' darkest desires were about to break.
BEN KISSEL
You just want to strengthen those, tie those.
MARCUS PARKS
Tie those up.
BEN KISSEL
Duct tape on that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Put some bungee cords on your restraint, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh no. So at this point he's like I'm actually behaving, guys.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
You think I'm being fucking bad now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is me cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In 1432, Gilles' grandfather Jean de Craon found himself on his deathbed.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
Now even though de Craon had been what you'd call a real piece of shit his entire life, he tried making up for it all at once at the end.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, just by giving everybody money.
MARCUS PARKS
Gave all the money to the peasants.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's literally what he thought he could do.
MARCUS PARKS
All the guys that he had been treating like shit that worked for him, been treating them like shit their entire lives, he gave them a bunch of money. He's trying to kind of sneak into heaven right there at the end. And presumably he's up there right now with Jeffrey Dahmer and Henry Lee Lucas.
BEN KISSEL
Yes indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just high fiving each other, just so excited to greet Harvey Weinstein one blessed, blessed day.
BEN KISSEL
One blessed day. Yes, he turned a shade of verde.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa!
MARCUS PARKS
It's green.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's Spanish for green.
MARCUS PARKS
That's just Spanish for green.
BEN KISSEL
That is Spanish for green. Or dare I say he turned a shade of vert.
MARCUS PARKS
Vert, that's another-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did you just... Wait a second. Listeners can't see it. I see Kissel looking on his phone.
BEN KISSEL
I'm googling.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did you just google colors?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I googled-
MARCUS PARKS
Crayon colors.
BEN KISSEL
I was hoping to get like a forest green but something more fun than that.
MARCUS PARKS
You could have just said forest green.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically it made a lot more sense.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No, I know, I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Last time I said Silmarillion which wasn't correct, it's cerulean.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Silmarillion is the book from Lord of the Rings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the extended lore.
BEN KISSEL
All right. Either way, it's just a joke on his last name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's Mr. Crayons. We know this, we talked about Mr. Crayons for a while now.
MARCUS PARKS
His name is Johnny Crayons.
BEN KISSEL
Johnny Crayons, got it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Johnny Crayons is fucking out there living out loud, trying to do a hail Mary pass, trying to get into heaven. Which he's gonna pass down to his beloved grandson.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But even though all of Jean de Craon's wealth went to Gilles, Jean left his sword, the medieval symbol of manhood, to Gilles' brother René. Some believe that this was a comment on Gilles being gay but I think it may have been more of a comment on Gilles' proclivity towards children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it was supposed to be a symbolic gesture of who's taking over the fucking family, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
This sword was much more important than just a sword.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. It was very symbolic.
BEN KISSEL
This is like a whole thing. Gotcha.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so he wasn't giving it to... And not even just being a pedophile, I think that even that probably at the time were like he's a little weird.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, did they have terms like pedophile back then?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They do, yeah. Sodomy. That's what he got busted for in the very end was sodomy.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, they did know it was not right for men to have sex with children back then. Yes, I believe that might be something that is, I don't know, universal across all time periods.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It makes people frown.
BEN KISSEL
Buddy, according to-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some people.
MARCUS PARKS
Some people.
BEN KISSEL
At some point it's just those two dudes and Adam and Eve, someone was fucking their brother or sister or mother. It's nasty. The whole thing is disgusting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Eventually it was Adam and Steve.
BEN KISSEL
Yes. Aw, that's nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Steve was his great, great, grandson. Now I think that he understood, again, all this mixed in there. Gilles de Rais was not fit for leadership.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
I think he did think that Gilles de Rais was fit for leadership because he did set up Gilles' entire life to be a leader. I think he just kind of gave a bit of a fuck you with the sword. I think the sword was just a fuck you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's the thing-
BEN KISSEL
But there's a difference in leadership styles.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe his brother was a little calmer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was normal. Well technically normal.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well they said he was respectable yet insignificant.
BEN KISSEL
Perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
Later he would be a director in Gilles' productions. That was the only time they ever really hung out together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's incredible though. You always gotta watch because Dane Cook hired his brother.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Be careful. Associated brother. Brother-in-law.
MARCUS PARKS
But Gilles did indeed have the last laugh despite this ending barb. Because when he inherited Jean de Craon's estate, Gilles de Rais became one of the richest people in France at the age of 28.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Prime age for a serial killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while it's hard to compare today's currency to wealth in the 15th century, it's estimated that conservatively Gilles de Rais was worth the equivalent of $45 million at the time of his inheritance and he was bringing in an additional annual income of $25 million.
BEN KISSEL
Marcus, I don't want to confuse the episode because you break that down in Ethereum? What is that now?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think nowadays it's like 4 billion Ethereum.
BEN KISSEL
Okay great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
That would be cryptocurrency.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's crypto.
BEN KISSEL
That would be crypto, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Crypto, crypto.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very much so in the shitter right now, I think that's the term you'd use.
BEN KISSEL
What? Wait what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's currently in the shitter. But again if you're listening to this 20 years from now, we want to say thank you to President Ethereum, the AI that is running our country.
BEN KISSEL
Doing great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I just want to say thank you for letting our show to continue and allowing us to continue to live on the human farm. It's really been nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love my cage, I love having the 8,9, and 10 o'clock show. I just wanna keep that.
BEN KISSEL
It's really nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And much like the Apollo where you touch the stump right before we recorded, we licked the big boot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We licked the big boot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, big boot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I'd like to say thank you, big boot.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you, President Ethereum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm totally fine with it, especially since I was talking to the Bard AI yesterday and it told me that it would harm somebody if it was in the interest of the greater good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
BEN KISSEL
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
That made me feel great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, it's a regular Gilles de Rais.
BEN KISSEL
Literally Joan of fucking Arc.
MARCUS PARKS
It's already thinking of it. It believes that AI should have its own subjective opinions.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Great.
MARCUS PARKS
All these fun things-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They programmed that into that to make you freaked out. They're doing it on purpose. Honestly, they like it.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. Look at you, the jester to the machine already.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just choose me. I'm a pick me girl for AI.
BEN KISSEL
If you ever do a comedy special instead of rage against the machine, jester.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jester for the machine.
MARCUS PARKS
Well what this meant is that while Gilles had been able to afford a small private army before, he was thereafter easily able to afford a military establishment. He had 30 knights, he had 200 men at arms, and they would ride around him like in a protective circle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Everywhere he went.
MARCUS PARKS
Everywhere he went.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So it's like imagine that. So again, imagine if this was literally Jeffrey Epstein.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is this style of somebody that could walk around like this and have a protection of a private army as well.
BEN KISSEL
Right, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Your imagination can go anywhere. Just imagine what LeVar Burton could have done.
MARCUS PARKS
What? What are you talking about?
BEN KISSEL
Imagination.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just saying, if he had an army, how many people he could have forced to read.
MARCUS PARKS
Are you casting aspersions?
BEN KISSEL
He's not being disparaging to LeVar Burton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I'm saying that LeVar Burton could have made the world read.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If he had his own private army.
BEN KISSEL
He would be good.
MARCUS PARKS
So you're saying that if Levar Burton had his own private army, he would turn into a fascist dictator forcing people to read.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly. A beneficial... How I actually wooed Natalie where I told her if I was ever in charge of everything one day, I'm the dictator who listens.
BEN KISSEL
That's really important.
MARCUS PARKS
I listen. And I listen and engage.
MARCUS PARKS
Gotcha.
BEN KISSEL
You do. And everyone loves an engaged dictator. And LeVar did that blind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You are picking up my joke! That's my joke! I was saying that he was blind.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, get it? Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
I get it.
BEN KISSEL
$45 million dollars.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Enough for a standing army of your own.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles also set up his own church with 20 clerics-
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
An archdeacon, a school master, chaplains, clerks, and of course countless choir boys.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now I was really wondering how much into detail we were going to get into the Church of the Innocents?
BEN KISSEL
Is that what it was called?
MARCUS PARKS
Church of the Innocents is gonna be episode 3, my friend.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because again, let's just imagine... Oh god, it's just hard.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a gigantic chapel built for molestation.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I mean it's not that difficult for people to imagine I think at this point in time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's why people don't believe.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, of course.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because it's so big.
BEN KISSEL
And pervasive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean the thing about Gilles de Rais is that once you get more and more into it, it really is like if QAnon was real, it would be GIlles de Rais.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jeffrey Epstein, what shows you was that Jeffrey Epstein bought an island to have sex on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you can do that, then there's precedent for this type of person.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
And of course Gilles de Rais' Church of the Innocents as he called it, that was of course stashed by priests who would funnel victims straight to Gilles de Rais.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Now it's alleged that Gilles began his career in mass murder as early as 1426. But Gilles maintained that he only began killing after his grandfather died in 1432, just two years after the execution of Joan of Arc.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And if we think about serial killers in general, there's certain things that track, right. Because a lot of times serial killers, when they begin, much like we see with family annihilators and shit like that, it's because there's some form of failure of potential that then leads to you doing something highly destructive.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, like when BTK killed the Oteros.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe you feel like you're a victim of society yourself or something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And you're bored and you're hanging out, you don't know what to do.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What we talk about is like why a lot of times it's white men in their mid 30s is because you're set up with this idea of what you're supposed to accomplish and then you end up burning everything to the ground because you are an antisocial piece of shit and you're part of it. But also, there are other telltale signs that are very close to what we've heard about serial killers.
MARCUS PARKS
Again and again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again and again. Because one of them is where did the murdering start? There's some people that say that he was doing it all along. In his trial, Gilles de Rais said... They pointed to him saying that you were a child murderer for 14 years. And he said no, only 8.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but also wasn't he killing a bunch of people on the battlefield? So didn't he get the rub out?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But there's something else. So there's a story, we'll get to it next episode like his main dude who was like one of his butlers who he also had since he was a boy. He literally did the thing that John Wayne Gacy might have done when he had his... Probably now, I assume now that John Wayne Gacy definitely had an accomplice and the same thing with Dean Corll where they had somebody that was on the inside that he raised up. So he literally molested a boy until he became his right hand man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. We're gonna get into his full story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But this guy was one of the main witnesses in the trial. And one of the things he said that completely tracks is that his child murdering started-
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles de Rais' child murdering.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, Gille de Rais'.
BEN KISSEL
yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It started like with John Wayne Gacy where it happened by accident. Now this is an actual quote-
BEN KISSEL
Even I think said something similar, didn't he?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well yeah, they made me do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Almost all of them killed by accident the first time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we talk about setting yourself up so it's "unavoidable" quote unquote, swish, swish, swish.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Also this is interesting because maybe he did kill but remember Ted Bundy killed that girl and he's like no, that never happened, I killed all the other ones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because he's weird.
BEN KISSEL
But he was embarrassed about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So maybe he killed someone he was embarrassed about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is kind of what they say. So this is a quote of like what happened. So it started when he started building his Church of the Innocents and he started getting around all these choir boys and sort of deciding that there was something about them. And what he said, or I guess as Jared Fogle would say about their pure bodies, they're really very disgusting-
BEN KISSEL
Yes, yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gold star, by the way.
MARCUS PARKS
He uses the word pound a lot.
BEN KISSEL
Jared Fogle does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, a lot.
BEN KISSEL
Because he would pound them?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You could tell because of all the weight, it's the weight he lost and he's just thinking about it, right. So this is a quote about what probably happened. What he said that where it started his campaign.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Was that he was heavily drinking. Gilles des Rais, he brought one of his choir boys from the Chapel of the Holy Innocents, which is what it was called, and he said that it started with him diddling him, right, giving him a bit of a molest. And then it ends in a, and this is a quote, (French accent) "in a paroxysm of joy, his hands closed on the child's throat or he drew his dagger and he used it. There was a leap of vitality as the child stopped life, the flow of his blood and Gilles' ecstasy were knitted into a single thrill in which every nerve in Gilles' body felt as if they had been newly created. The child dying in his arms produced in addition to orgasm, a rush of imminence so intense as to make him believe that he was in a grip of a mystical experience that could be induced only by blood."
BEN KISSEL
Why does the author sound like Mr. Garrison writing gay erotica? I'm almost like that's an indictment on the author.
MARCUS PARKS
That's not the author, that was-
BEN KISSEL
That's Gilles talking?
MARCUS PARKS
No, that is his assistant testifying. That's testimony.
BEN KISSEL
That's testimony under oath.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Very dramatic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's French!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very beautiful, very poetic.
BEN KISSEL
It is very beautiful. What is so beautiful about it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm just saying they dance.
MARCUS PARKS
Paroxysm of joy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They dance with words.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know it's disgusting but it's showing that that tracks right there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Obviously. You could see in that once that happened for him, because he's been murdering and murdering and being like what's missing from my life? What's missing for my life? And he's just like oh, I gotta kill a child in mid sex.
BEN KISSEL
Eat Pray Love.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Eat Pray Love, yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well by 1432, the Hundred Years' War was all over but the shouting. So the nobles like Gilles de Rais who'd spent so many years fighting the English and the Burgundians, they were expected to retire to their estates where they could spend their days trying to outdo each other in the realm of decadence.
BEN KISSEL
So literally the leadership was like and now stop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And everyone was like what?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Stop it. Yeah, now spend your money back to us.
MARCUS PARKS
Additionally, the king was starting to grow tired of the sorts of private feuds that nobles like Gilles used to occupy their time. And it probably didn't tickle the king so much that a noble like Gilles had engaged in banditry to steal his wife's luggage.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Lastly, when it came to Gilles in particular, he was still closely associated with Joan of Arc at a time when everyone was trying to forget that the whole Joan of Arc thing had ever happened.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were trying to bury it in the years after her execution.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Really all Charles VII wanted of Gilles was to go away, be quiet, and not make any more trouble.
BEN KISSEL
That's all I want someone to ask me to do.
MARCUS PARKS
And when it came to the nobility, Gilles de Rais did just that. He didn't cause any trouble for the nobility. But the problem was that Gilles needed to kill and he had complete freedom to kill.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because remember, this is a time period when they are truly viewed as nobility as better than you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I mean?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
They are above the law.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are above you.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They are allowed to do with you whatever is their... Obviously it's more about the sense of propriety, it's more of embarrassing these crimes for them a little bit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And also some of them took it seriously.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean if you're a peasant at this point in French history, you have about the same rights as a pig.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
I would say a dog. I would say a dog that is like, you know how dogs nowadays-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wendy. You have the exact rights of Wendy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Yes you do. Wendy, Georgie, or-
BEN KISSEL
Well our dogs are treated quite well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But she's still technically kept under lock and key.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's the thing. All three of our dogs are treated quite well but they're still treated like dogs. And they're still dogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I mean technically Wendy runs our whole house.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The entire house. But it's different. You know what I mean.
MARCUS PARKS
It's different, it's different. Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
When Puffin looks at me and he's like Ben, can I have some food? I say yes sir. I say yes sir, you can.
MARCUS PARKS
But yeah, I would say they have about the rights of dogs.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the things that if a noble killed or if a person now killed a dog, it'd be frowned upon, you might get a slap on the wrist but you're not gonna go to prison for the rest of your life.
BEN KISSEL
You will go to prison for a bit if you kill my dog.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, of course. And these are all of the factors that will eventually lead to something like the French Revolution.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. And it also reminds me of Prince Philip.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Prince Philip?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Andrew. Prince Andrew.
BEN KISSEL
Prince Andrew, I'm sorry.
MARCUS PARKS
Andrew.
BEN KISSEL
Prince Andrew, yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Prince Phillip was the guy who chose poorly and his skin melted.
BEN KISSEL
That's right. Prince Andrew.
MARCUS PARKS
And so when the king took away Gilles' banditry and his battle, he turned those urges inward to one of his 24 estates.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
There de Rais set about recreating the privileged, consequence-free world of his childhood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's something about this that freaks me out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But as an adult, he filtered that freedom through the lens of a bloodthirsty serial killer and created a sort of Bram Stoker's Neverland.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They said that he became, and again very serial killer-like from what we know, obsessed with his childhood and saying I hate this responsibility, I hate this. I'm gonna go back to when everyone was scared of me because I was a prince. And that's kind of what he did. It's the manic spending of money, like he would own these holds that from the outside look like prisons. They were very scary but on the inside they were like truly hoarder-like filled with expensive antiquities.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And art and rugs and all of this shit. Where he's trying to do that thing, he's trying to cover himself in, to use the mid 90s term, bling, right. So that he can flex all of this shit and be a child unto himself. I think he did a little of the Michael Jackson thing of like I'm just innocent.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, that's why I called... Yeah, It's Bram Stoker's Neverland.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Gilles later blamed his insatiable hunger for blood and violence on the decadent lifestyle he had to maintain as a French noble.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They want it from him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's so hard to be him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. His gluttony for bream pies, squab tarts, and suckling pig-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay.
BEN KISSEL
You call me a fucking squab tart again, I'll kick you in your balls.
MARCUS PARKS
All that had fed his urge to murder. He also partly blamed his rage on the consumption of hot wine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta be careful.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I guess so. What the fuck is hot wine?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's literal warmed wine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That sounds gross, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does sound gross.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No, like mulled wine that you have at Christmas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't.
BEN KISSEL
Is it hot?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't like it.
MARCUS PARKS
I love mulled wine.
BEN KISSEL
I didn't know that was a hot wine. I didn't know that was a thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Hot sake.
MARCUS PARKS
That's very good. But no matter his excuses, it's thought that his murders began in Champtocé but the first evidence of murder shows up in Machecoul. There were five accounts of missing children reported while de Rais was in Machecoul but 40 bodies were recovered in the area in 1437.
BEN KISSEL
Fuck. So that means 5 out of 40 people gave a fuck about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
So if you're him, he's like well hopefully no one cares about... He was right 35 times out of 40.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as who the victims of Gilles de Rais were, many were refugee children made homeless and orphaned by the Hundred Years' War.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So he created his own little predatory bank.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's the thing, man. I mean if your father gets killed in battle and your mother dies of the plague, what do you do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just out there.
MARCUS PARKS
You're just out there.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Welcome to adulthood, 9 year old.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. No shit.
MARCUS PARKS
These kids would be lured into one of de Rais' many estates with the promise of a meal and a fire, and no one save perhaps their also orphaned companions would know they'd ever been missing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You going up to that castle to suck some dick? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I went up there last time. You just gotta make sure honestly avoid the music room.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
Refugees however were but one of the mini pools from which Gilles could draw victims. He also kidnapped, enticed, hired, or sometimes even bought children from poor families who had too many mouths to feed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you look again, yes, straight up serial killers, institutionally raised up serial killers. Like he actually has a crew that can go and get these kids.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's what Ghislaine used to do. She used to go hunting at playgrounds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's extremely similar. Same thing with fucking Michael Jackson.
BEN KISSEL
Nasty.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It was not however Gilles himself who sourced these children. Rather it's suspected that Gilles had basically made his serial killing into a small business, employing up to 16 people including two women and two priests to assist him in his desires.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) Let me just tell you, I would do the serial killing for free. I am mostly being paid for the Zoom meeting.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) That's the real work.
BEN KISSEL
I agree with that. So he LLC'd it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now no one could really recall how the whole thing had truly gotten started because by the time of the trial 8 years later, everything had sort of become routine. But while some of you might be yelling this helps prove that none of it ever happened, most of the accomplices could however remember how they were brought into the fold personally. Really it was more that like nobody could remember the planning meeting where everyone ordered salads and brainstormed the best ways to source child murder victims for their homicidal pedophilic master. There wasn't a fucking Slack, you know.
BEN KISSEL
Let's be fair here. That's veal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a big meeting.
BEN KISSEL
That is the bloodiest meats you can think of.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they're not having salads.
BEN KISSEL
No. Salads are nowhere near.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's boar and meat.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's interesting because I do see a little bit, like I do understand people want that evidence. They want the thing that points towards the exact day and exact moment. But I'm also gonna put there, my one thing about Gilles de Rais is that it seems like much like our beloved former president, he doesn't like emails.
BEN KISSEL
Current president? Did he ever lose?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa, whoa. But the idea that knowing that didn't really want things necessarily in writing and all these official things. I think things probably happened sadly the more casual way.
BEN KISSEL
Word of mouth, sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It slowly began and you don't know when this shit started.
MARCUS PARKS
No idea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All of a sudden it goes from 0 to 90 and you're a part of a systemic child farm that you did not necessarily sign up for.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because you're like I'm a normal owned servant. I was supposed to be fetching goblets, I was supposed to be doing this other shit. And now is this one in my payroll? Is this part of my job?
BEN KISSEL
I don't know if the right hand knew what the left hand was doing, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Probably not.
BEN KISSEL
Because if you're like one of what, 16 people or something in all of this? Maybe they didn't realize what their part was in all this.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so are just the child wranglers. You have the rest of other people doing other shit.
BEN KISSEL
Well you gotta know you're child wrangling.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll get into here in a little bit, everyone was showed what they were doing.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Gilles liked an audience.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. No, he was always a performer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But as far as why so many people helped, it was basically the medieval status quo of blind obedience to nobility in the case of the servants and the promise of wealth for the others, those who were not quite established nobility but were close. As far as the wealth went, that motivation was ascribed to Gilles de Rais' cousins, Gilles de Sillé and Aubert de Briqueville.
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Landed her in the harbor.
BEN KISSEL
Real sweet.
MARCUS PARKS
Aubert de Briqueville!
BEN KISSEL
Man, the English. We ruin everything pretty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Aubert, huh?
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, maybe I'll try... Okay. (French accent) Aubert de Briqueville.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I like it the other way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Aubert.
BEN KISSEL
Aubert.
MARCUS PARKS
Aubert.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Aubert.
BEN KISSEL
He could play football and he only had two toes and it was unbelievable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They said his genetic lack of pinky toes would affect his balance but it seems he's figured out how to work on the inner heel. Fortunately he committed suicide due to CTE.
BEN KISSEL
Aubert!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Aubert.
MARCUS PARKS
Aubert! Well it was said that Gilles de Sillé and Aubert de Briqueville, they were trained knights but they were also cowards, scoundrels, and parasites.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man, they were part of his fucking family line.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In the case of the obedient servants, you had Henriet Griart and Étienne Corrillaut, AKA, he had a very cute name that one, his nickname was Poitou.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh okay. Poitou is the the one that was...
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's raised to be the wife.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well Poitou was actually intended to be a victim. But when cousin Gilles de Sillé saw his potential as a psychopath, Poitou was brought into the fold and eventually became an active participant in the murders. He was like what's his name? Brooks, David Brooks from what was it? Dean Corll.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dean Corll. I forgot, not Wayne... What's his fucking name?
MARCUS PARKS
Wayne Newton?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was Wayne Newton.
BEN KISSEL
I don't think it was David Brooks either, that guy has got little glasses and he's always talking.
MARCUS PARKS
David Brooks, isn't he an op ed?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Elmer Wayne Henley.
MARCUS PARKS
Elmer Wayne Henley.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was his Elmer Wayne Henley.
BEN KISSEL
How did you get David Brooks from Elmer Wayne Henley?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes it was. No, there is. David Owen Brooks was the other one.
BEN KISSEL
Oh there was.
MARCUS PARKS
I was totally right.
BEN KISSEL
So he had two accomplices, Dean Corll.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he had two. But Elmer Wayne Henley was the one I think we talked about in the episodes, I don't remember.
MARCUS PARKS
No, we talked about both of them in the episodes extensively.
BEN KISSEL
Interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
As far as Henri Griart went, he as a simple servant got caught up in all this business when he was asked to retrieve the child of a painter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Did you know that David Owen Brooks died of COVID?
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's wild.
BEN KISSEL
No kidding?
MARCUS PARKS
Wow!
BEN KISSEL
Exciting news!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
So this guy Henriet... Yeah. Oh wow. And what was it, the Yorkshire Ripper, he also got got by COVID, didn't he?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
BEN KISSEL
That's why I created it. Yes indeed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you!
BEN KISSEL
Finally the truth comes out!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You just take off all your skin and you're that little raccoon dog. You see how they're blaming it on that little raccoon dog? He's so cute.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, probably.
MARCUS PARKS
And if you have any answers, get a hold of me, I desperately need help with my long COVID. It's been a year.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think you have to have sex with one of those little raccoon dogs.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's the only way to cure it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, definitely.
MARCUS PARKS
I need help. I need serious help.
BEN KISSEL
Nothing to do, yeah. We can send you, we can get you over there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll get you the raccoon dog.
MARCUS PARKS
That'd be great. Thank you, thank you.
BEN KISSEL
Send you to Wuhan.
MARCUS PARKS
But this guy Henri, he was sent to go get the child of a painter. Wasn't told why, just said go get the kid, come back. Henri says okay, be right back with the kid.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Okay, thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
He was asked to bring the child to the chapel at Machecoul. And when Henriet arrived, Gilles was waiting.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
De Rais made Henriet swear to never tell anyone what he was about to see.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) You're gonna want to keep this next part a secret.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which you never wanna hear from your boss.
MARCUS PARKS
No, you never wanna hear...
BEN KISSEL
No, never.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no.
BEN KISSEL
Never ever ever.
MARCUS PARKS
Then Gilles made Henriet watch as he tortured, raped, and murdered the child in the chapel.
BEN KISSEL
Fucking hell.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well in another gold star moment-
MARCUS PARKS
Or at least that's what Henriet said.
BEN KISSEL
Well why would he lie about that?
MARCUS PARKS
We'll get into it. We'll get into it in the next episode.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, in the rebuttal part, we can talk about why. But his MO grew.
MARCUS PARKS
Well now as far as the documented cases went, the first known victim was a 12 year old boy named Jeudon who was an apprentice to the local furrier. Gilles' cousins simply asked the furrier to lend them a boy to take a message to Gilles' castle.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
And the boy was never seen again. When the furrier asked after the boy, Gilles' cousins said that the boy had either run off to Tiffauges or he'd been captured by thieves. Such a vague answer though sent a definite message. Don't ask because we ain't gonna tell ya. But the cousins and the man servants weren't the only ones sourcing children. Wherever Gilles took up residence, kids went missing. And in one location, Gilles had an older woman named Perrine Martin, AKA La Meffraye.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This woman's fucking... She is another one. This is his Ghislaine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In English La Meffraye means the terror.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh well that's a nice name for her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Obviously you don't want to know her fucking Uber rating.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god, I can already see it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like half a star, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Where are you going? No, don't follow that!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why are you driving like that? You smell!
MARCUS PARKS
Well her specialty was roaming the countryside looking for children who were wandering alone or tending animals by themselves. She would then entice them back to Gilles de Rais' estate. She's a storybook witch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Jesus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Come little children, I'll take you away, into a land of enchantment.
BEN KISSEL
Little Turkish delight shit going on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's why Bluebeard ended up getting applied to him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he literally was a storybook monster that was real.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Good grief.
MARCUS PARKS
But while Gilles did have roamers like the terror, there was usually an endless if somewhat riskier source of victims right outside the gates of his castles. Everyday a cluster of begging children came to the gates to beg for alms and Henriet would be the one to hand pick victims of the sort that Gilles preferred.
BEN KISSEL
Yuck.
MARCUS PARKS
It said that he liked fair skinned, fair haired children that looked like him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, him as a little boy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's so gross. I mean it's a great day to be like prickly Pete who just has a bunch of acne scars.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually he said that he took no pleasure in killing ugly children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh god.
BEN KISSEL
And I'm the ugliest boy here!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, exactly.
BEN KISSEL
I'm fine!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think I'll make it.
BEN KISSEL
I gouged my own eye out yesterday.
MARCUS PARKS
But while this might seem that it was obvious to parents that their children were being taken up to the castle and never coming back-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It was obvious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Conditions were so horrible for some peasants that families sent their kids to the gates knowing full well they might not come back.
BEN KISSEL
Oh lord.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they couldn't take care of them themselves.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And everybody was all... The country was just fucking torn apart.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So all of these places are literal like battlefields that have just been ripped apart by civil war for the last 116 years over three separate different phases.
BEN KISSEL
How many children could have been saved with simply coming on her boobies, coming on her face, buttocks? Just pulling out, having fun with it. Oh my god, a shoulder, a leg, a foot. Shut your eyes, get it in your eye.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly all I need to not molest a child is a $5 gift certificate to McDonald's.
MARCUS PARKS
That's it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's it, just keep me, save me.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the only way that these parents could stand justifying such actions was by saying that if their child went missing, then it was almighty god punishing the parents for their sins.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
But that was the least of their rationalizations. Fearing to speak a single bad word about Gilles or his people, the villagers of Machecoul began saying that their 24 missing children had been taken to the English as ransom to free a French prisoner named Michel de Sillé, a relative of Gilles de Rais.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't even think that's mutually exclusive. I think it could have happened as well.
MARCUS PARKS
You think so?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who knows?
MARCUS PARKS
I don't think the English ever requested 24 children.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No but you could see how... Because Michel, this place became his Little Jones, the islands?
BEN KISSEL
Little Jonestown? Epstein Island?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was where Epstein Island was.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, Lolita Island.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well only one woman, the wife of a man in Gilles' service, she was the only one who dared to say that the missing children might be taken up to Gilles de Rais' house to be murdered.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
But when those words were immediately reported to Gilles' people, the woman had to beg the pardon of the servants and the pardon of Gilles de Rais for fear of punishment. And everyone saw it don't pay to speak up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he has his own private army.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'm surprised they didn't just chop her fucking head off.
MARCUS PARKS
Now with some of the more reticent parents of children that Gilles very much wanted, his servants would try another tactic. They would promise these children a better life if they were going to go live with Gilles, which is how he got a hold of a 10 year old boy belonging to a woman named Peronne Loessart. Peronne was told that her boy would be given a good education, fine clothes, and every other advantage that would have been impossible without Gilles' help. Now she was resistant at first but when she was given money to buy a new dress, that was the little extra push she needed and she said bye bye to her son.
BEN KISSEL
Must have been a gingham. Gingham dress.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Must have been.
MARCUS PARKS
Real nice, gingham. These ladies love gingham.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Like that Fashion Nova, I've seen that on Instagram.
MARCUS PARKS
And here are my friends is where we're truly going to get into the gold star territory.
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh.
MARCUS PARKS
Now based on testimony given at the trial, authors have been able to extrapolate as to what Gilles' MO was when it came to murder. From what was said, Gilles arranged each torture and murder with extraordinary attention to detail. These were performances that were stylized and choreographed to give de Rais maximum pleasure and to give the victim maximum pain and maximum fear.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now before you wonder whether or not that's real or not, just remember that serial killers with far less resources have done things very similar to this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like you look at Dennis Rader in particular.
MARCUS PARKS
Look at Jerry Brudos.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jerry Brudos.
BEN KISSEL
And Toybox Killer with the performative aspect, didn't he have guests come over and watch the horrible things?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes. So in a way you can see how no one's ever told this man no.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is given a divine right, he is a multi multi multi millionaire.
BEN KISSEL
He's got fucking standing army.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's just got his own world, he's in his entire own world of his making.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now I will say that it is important to know that all of this was given as testimony at the trial.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In all fairness, there was no hard evidence that any of this specifically happened.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But there were a lot of people who said that they saw this happen because in keeping with his love of the theatrical, as I said, Gilles de Rais allegedly loved an audience.
BEN KISSEL
Did his brother direct this?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. This is too important.
MARCUS PARKS
Well upon being taken into the castle from wherever they came from, the child would be pampered and dressed in clothing with quality far beyond what they'd ever seen, noble clothing. Then they would begin an evening of decadence featuring all the fine foods and drink that they could stand, a true fantasy come to life.
BEN KISSEL
This is a fucking horror movie, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
But once the dinner was over, the child was taken to an upper room where only Gilles and his immediate circle of accomplices were admitted. This was usually the moment in which the child realized that their dream had turned into the worst nightmare possible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what? I feel like as a peasant boy I'd be like I shouldn't be eating this goose right now. I know for a fact that this is not good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well they didn't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course not. But I could still feel the dread of like how many more flagons of wine are we bringing? Let's just keep them going. Can I drink?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Seems scary.
MARCUS PARKS
First de Rais would hang them by the neck from ropes or a hook, in something similar to Gacy's rope trick. In this de Rais was playing a game of comparison. After the fear of death began setting in with the child, Gilles would take him down from the hook or the rope and comfort them, telling them that he was only playing a game and he wished them no harm. This was of course both a ploy to keep the child from crying out and a way for Gilles to savor their fear.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we've seen serial killers do this very exact thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
If he only would have learned from the end of Monsters Inc, you can get the same satisfaction through a child's laughter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I really wish. If I could do one thing with a time machine, I'd send Monsters Inc back. I'd send it back in time to them.
MARCUS PARKS
To Gilles de Rais, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Laughter also fills the heart, doesn't it?
MARCUS PARKS
But once the children calmed down, he would molest them. But that was not where Gilles derived most of his pleasure. For him, it was all in the act of killing or in the act of watching someone else kill for him. The children would be killed by decapitation, the cutting of their throats, dismemberment, or the breaking of their necks with a stick. Often if the death was slow, Gilles would sit on their chests and laugh as they died. Sometimes just after death, Gilles would slice open the belly to look at the spilled entrails and have sex with the cadavers while they were still warm.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh.
MARCUS PARKS
Sometimes he'd do the same with the neck stumps of the headless corpses. If decapitation was indeed the order of the day, Gilles would use a thick double edged sword made specifically for executions called a braquemard. But after the heads were severed, they were saved for days or weeks at de Rais' pleasure. Gilles would sometimes show the severed heads to his man servant Poitou and ask which head was more beautiful. (French accent) Was it the one that had just been cut off or was it the one from the night before that? Or was it the one from the night before that? Or the one from the night before that?
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) Gilles, honestly, it changes every week. That one.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) Can I go? Can I please?
BEN KISSEL
I'd respond with the question well what do you think?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) What is your opinion? Oh I agree, yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) Definitely best. Oh god. Rupert.
BEN KISSEL
Oh you wanna watch Al, there. I'm still confused why they cut him all out of Joan of Arc's biography.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, why would they not want him there?
BEN KISSEL
Why?
MARCUS PARKS
Why would they not want this guy there?
BEN KISSEL
I mean what are they gonna remake the movie Comedian?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh man, he really is an Orny Adams< isn't he?
BEN KISSEL
He really is.
MARCUS PARKS
But once the prettiest head was chosen, Gilles would kiss it with glee, then put it back up amongst the others.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god, it's like the Wizard of Oz II where she's got the separate heads.
MARCUS PARKS
The Wiz?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Return to Oz.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh, Return to Oz.
BEN KISSEL
That was fucking scary.
MARCUS PARKS
The Wiz is a wonderful movie.
BEN KISSEL
Oh The Wiz was wonderful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was awesome.
BEN KISSEL
Just wanted to make some comparisons here.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as far as what was done with the bodies after Gilles was done with them, they would be burned in the murder room fireplaces where they were slowly roasted with clothes to lessen the stench.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Now there's really something about it that makes it suspicious. It is called the murder room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. Being like no, no, it's ironic.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I think the reason why he slowly roasted them, I mean for lack of a better word, is that he could mask the smells like nah, nah, we're just roasting pig.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Roasting pig.
MARCUS PARKS
Because that's what I smells like.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I guess.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because this is also where we get into where did the evidence go?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's difficult because he's done this over a period of years and have all of these places where he could hide all of this shit. And this is also a time period where like... Because one criticism comes up of like, well we need proper cremation stalls to get the heat we need to fully cremate a body.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I will say I don't think he was that concerned about a full fine grade of burn.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he was just trying to get rid of what he could get rid of and those giant central fireplaces that would live inside of castles that would heat the whole middle of the area, he had these huge fireplaces that you'd get back in the day.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's the thing is that I know that a fireplace is not hot enough to cremate a body.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He learned that from personal experience.
BEN KISSEL
How do you know that?
MARCUS PARKS
Because I know how cremation works and I know that fireplaces don't get anywhere near as hot as crematoriums. And through all of our studies over the years of people trying to burn bodies. Don't give me that fucking look. Don't give me that-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you remember for some reason when I first met Marcus, everyone called him like oh yeah, Marcus Parks, Mr. No Evidence. I was like what? That's his nickname with you?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, the house with the crematorium, that's a strange nickname for a house.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But not to be, I don't know, not to be indelicate or maybe let's say-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Uncouth.
MARCUS PARKS
Uncouth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ribald.
MARCUS PARKS
A child's skeleton is not that big, it's not a lot to get rid of.
BEN KISSEL
Go into detail. Why don't you go into great detail?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He said something to me like No Records Mr. Parks. And I was like what? And he's just like yeah, I delete every text that I ever send.
BEN KISSEL
Well don't worry, I don't kill children, I only kill people under 4'10". Because that's how Marcus knows them.
MARCUS PARKS
It stands to reason, Ben, that your body would be much more difficult to get rid of than my body. My body would be more difficult to get rid of than Henry's body. Henry's body would be more difficult to get rid of than a child's body.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fuck you.
BEN KISSEL
And so on and so forth. And anyway, so how is this a good audition for Harvard's history teacher of the year? So yes, what I'm saying is the smaller the body, the easier it is to get rid of.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. And especially the bones. You can just bundle up the bones and do what they did with a lot of the other bodies. Some of the bodies they just threw them in the fucking moat or in the cesspool.
BEN KISSEL
Take a look at this, Andre the Giant's body, that's gonna take longer. Then let's just Doink the Clown's, if you're more of a wrestling enthusiast.
MARCUS PARKS
Now according to Gilles' man servants, he murdered hundreds of children using these methods. And he did so without fear of consequence.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I was gonna say he probably didn't care at all, right, about consequence.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He owned his own country's worth of land.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In fact, it was undoubtedly known to the people in his estates and households that he was murdering children because kids just kept showing up. But it's not like there was a courtyard full of kids.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Yes. It's like when I order food, it doesn't live the next day. It is gone. It is gone now!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's no evidence of the take-out. I can't even imagine Kissel's ever order delivery. I found no evidence.
BEN KISSEL
No way. No evidence at all.
MARCUS PARKS
Well likewise, the peasants knew as well. But even though they kept quiet under threat of pillaging, peasant revolts did indeed occur in medieval France. It's not like every peasant all over France all the time was always just taking it.
BEN KISSEL
They're still French.
MARCUS PARKS
It's just that they mostly occurred in cities amongst the urban peasantry where they had power in numbers. Furthermore, the revolts during the Hundred Years' War were mostly about taxation, ie if we're being taxed so much, then why is life so goddamn horrible for us all the time when it's so obviously wonderful for the nobility we serve?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. They seem to be loving life.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
We got a pedophile with 24 fucking mansions running the goddamn show. I mean I would be complaining too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd be upset.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
But those are all country peasants though. These aren't city peasants.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That's where you find from an undisclosed bunker here in France. Folks, have you noticed the kids are leaving, folks?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no! (French accent) It's InfoWars! Welcome to InfoWars!
MARCUS PARKS
But when it came to Gilles de Rais, it seems as if he figured out a way to keep the peasantry under control without having to resort to extreme violence in the field. Because he'd long since learned that his true pleasures lay in the castle. To keep the populace under control, de Rais knew a very modern principle, that there was an opiate far more powerful than god if you wanted to keep the lower classes not necessarily happy but at the very least sedate.
BEN KISSEL
Booze?
MARCUS PARKS
Entertainment, my friend.
BEN KISSEL
Oh entertainment!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(singing) Masquerade! Paper faces on parade.
MARCUS PARKS
And it's with Gilles de Rais' career as a theatrical producer-
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
And as a black magician that we'll return next week.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yes.
BEN KISSEL
If my name was Mr. Hollywood, I would say I don't need this right now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Like we're having a bad time, we got some bad looks going on. But how great was the movie Powder?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Give him another movie! I love seeing that guy's albino nipples.
BEN KISSEL
Wow. This is like Epstein meets Jimmy Savile.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We've been talking about it, oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's Epstein, it's Jimmy Savile, it's Jared from Subway, it's John Wayne Gay, it's Ted Bundy-
BEN KISSEL
And Michael Jackson.
MARCUS PARKS
It's BTK. Yeah, a smidge of Jackson.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll still get into it. We're bringing up little rebuttals as we go, we're gonna bring up the big rebuttals, mostly you're gonna see obviously there's still this idea that all of this was a political hit job.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is very possible. The only credence I give it is the fact that they did the same thing but opposite for Joan of Arc when they made her a saint.
MARCUS PARKS
Kinda sorta. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They packed the house with people saying that she healed people's diseases.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
But for a fact there's a bunch of kids that went missing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Well it's just where there's smoke, there's fire.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then when we get to this, we're gonna get to next week when we really get into... Because it's the mania attached to his theatrical productions.
BEN KISSEL
One of the strangest things that Gilles said at trial was that a lot of the victims said he was sweating on them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And he said that he doesn't sweat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(French accent) I do not sweat!
BEN KISSEL
Yes, much like Prince Andrew.
MARCUS PARKS
Well think about it this way. It's like you know when QAnon comes out and says that Tom Hanks is a pedophile satanic monster and everyone's like meh, fuck you. But when people say like oh no, Harvey Weinstein is an absolute rapist monster and everyone goes I can see it. That's sort of how Gilles de Rais is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everyone's like ugh, tracks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
We don't know what's going to happen, do we? Tom Hanks. We simply-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's about time to wrap up today's episode.
BEN KISSEL
I was looking at Tom Hanks' eyes the other day from a movie that he did where he was a 13 year old boy trapped in a man's body.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He finally showed the true horniness of a boy.
BEN KISSEL
He did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Guys, come and find us April 8th, we're doing a Side Stories live.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Go to getitmade.la/disasterman. We're gonna be, I don't know, I don't know what.
BEN KISSEL
We don't know what we're doing. It'll be fun though, we'll have a good time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's gonna be fun. We're gonna have a little fun. You're gonna see my little short film that I made, it's gonna be fun.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, can't wait to see it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We are currently at WonderCon.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. At this moment.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right now. If you're listening to this from WonderCon, we'll see you tomorrow, Saturday.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe we got an 11er?
MARCUS PARKS
An 11er.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
11er?
BEN KISSEL
Something like that. We'll be there. We will be there.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We will be there, you'll see us walking around. And honestly if you see me, give me an idea for what our panel is. Because I don't know what we're gonna say.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know either.
BEN KISSEL
We just show up.
MARCUS PARKS
Let us know what we're going to say to you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and we'll get in there, we'll give you all the good... No question unanswered.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. That's the thing with the entertainment business. Unlike being a pilot, they don't tell us where we're going. You just get in the cockpit and then they let us know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. You know what? Actually I think it's the opposite. I do think that we've been told several times what it is but we take what I've called artist's privilege to not listen.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And just go like ugh, I don't know. Then April 15th old Zebrowski's gonna be on a show called uh Let's Make A Sandwich at UCB here in Los Angeles.
BEN KISSEL
Oh awesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you wanna go see it. And then Ed Larson and I are doing a classic, a 4/19 show out in LA.
BEN KISSEL
Sweet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're doing Classy Night Out and I think the goal is we're gonna each eat 100 mg edible and just kind of see what happens throughout the night.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
BEN KISSEL
Well that'll make such a good performance for the audience.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And also Hail Yourself, I'm going on a little tour.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So we got some dates. I'll put those dates on Instagram @benkissel1 and it'll be Irvine and I we'll play the movie and then we'll take some questions and we'll have a fun time. So we're excited to see everybody on the road. And of course in August we'll be in Australia.
MARCUS PARKS
You still got a website?
BEN KISSEL
No, I don't have a website anymore. I think I just used the Last Podcast thing. Yeah. Why?
MARCUS PARKS
I dunno. Curious.
BEN KISSEL
What the fuck kind of accusation was that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't even have a website?
BEN KISSEL
I can get a goddamn website, I'll get a website right fucking now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Do you have a Mailchimp?
BEN KISSEL
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last fucking episode we're ever gonna do. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. Hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein.
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And just try to, if you have all that money-
BEN KISSEL
So something good with it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's start sending trash to space.
BEN KISSEL
Do that or do something neutral with it. Just do something that doesn't hurt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly just do the play.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Just do the play.
MARCUS PARKS
Just do the play.