Behind the Bastards - The Ballad of Eel Horse
Aired: 2021-11-23
Duration: 01:07:24


=== Money Control with Tiffany Aliche (01:38) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Aliche to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
[00:00:15]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
[00:00:21]  We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
[00:00:30]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
[00:00:36]  Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:00:47]  Ernest, what's up?
[00:00:47]  Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth.
[00:00:53]  On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship.
[00:01:00]  From stocks to real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, our goal is simple.
[00:01:05]  Make financial literacy accessible for everyone.
[00:01:08]  Because when you understand the system, you can start to build within it.
[00:01:11]  Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Earn Your Leisure, and listen now.
[00:01:16]  Readers, Katie's finalists, Publicists.
[00:01:19]  We have an incredible new episode this week for you guys.
[00:01:21]  We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode.
[00:01:25]  They put on Lizzie McGuire at 2 a.m. video on demand.
[00:01:28]  This guy's 2 a.m.
[00:01:29]  2 a.m.
[00:01:30]  Whatever time it is.
[00:01:30]  Lizzie McGuire and I'm wild bastard.
[00:01:34]  It was like a first closet moment for me where I was like, you're like, I don't feel like she's hot like the rest of them.

=== Wild Bastard and Lizzie McGuire (15:20) ===

[00:01:38]  No, no, no.
[00:01:39]  I was like, she's beautiful.
[00:01:40]  I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are.
[00:01:43]  I'm not like.
[00:01:45]  Listen to Las Co Triistas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:55]  You know the famous author Roald Dahl.
[00:01:57]  He thought up Willie Wonka and the BFG.
[00:02:00]  But did you know he was a spy?
[00:02:02]  Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
[00:02:08]  All episodes are out now.
[00:02:10]  Was this before he wrote his stories?
[00:02:12]  It must have been.
[00:02:13]  What?
[00:02:14]  Okay, I don't think that's true.
[00:02:15]  I'm telling you, the guy was a spy.
[00:02:17]  Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:02:28]  What's riddled with gonorrhea?
[00:02:31]  My Sophie, how do I finish this?
[00:02:34]  I don't want to know.
[00:02:35]  Well, that is slightly applicable for today.
[00:02:38]  Oh, good.
[00:02:38]  Okay, well, this is Behind the Bastards, the podcast with a slightly applicable introduction for the first time in quite a while.
[00:02:44]  I'm Robert Evans, your host, normally, but not today, because today, my buddy Garrison is here.
[00:02:50]  Hi, Gary.
[00:02:51]  Greetings.
[00:02:52]  Garrison has a very special story.
[00:02:55]  I really don't know what to expect here.
[00:02:56]  Should I start by giving the background?
[00:02:59]  Yeah.
[00:03:00]  Yeah.
[00:03:00]  Ever since I've known Robert, Roberts had a dream.
[00:03:06]  Yeah, Robert.
[00:03:08]  What is that?
[00:03:09]  So for a little bit of background on me, I spent a lot of time living in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, and I developed a love for cooking food in pits buried under the ground.
[00:03:17]  You like, you wrap up a bunch of meat, like a turkey stuffed with stuff, and you wrap it in a foil and you bury it and you build a fire around it and you cook it over the course of like a day while you're drinking heavily.
[00:03:26]  It's a great way to like make a turkey.
[00:03:29]  I do it around the holidays a couple of times a year when I have the opportunity.
[00:03:33]  And several years ago, I had a dream and I saw a vision of a horse stuffed with eels and cooked underground in a pit fire.
[00:03:42]  And I've never been able to get it out of my head.
[00:03:44]  I am still working on, I was briefly in contact with someone who thought they could get me one last year and I fucked that up because my mom got cancer and I wound up like, I don't know, just not being great at correspondence for a while.
[00:03:56]  Let's not call that.
[00:03:57]  You fucked it up.
[00:03:58]  You were dealing off.
[00:03:59]  If you're that person, hit me up again because I still want the horse.
[00:04:03]  But my dream is to get a horse that has been obviously gutted, stuff it full of eels.
[00:04:08]  Lampreys are acceptable.
[00:04:09]  That's a kind of eel.
[00:04:10]  Any kind of eel will be fine.
[00:04:12]  Stuff it full of eels.
[00:04:14]  Wrap the fucker up in either foil or maybe even like banana leafs if we want to do it like really, you know, pro or burlap or something.
[00:04:21]  And then bury it, you know, a foot, well, not even a foot underground, like just bury it to where it's at like ground level, cover it in dirt, and keep a big circular fire going around it for probably like 20 hours.
[00:04:33]  I'm guessing that's how it works.
[00:04:34]  I seriously wish the listeners could see Gar's face right now.
[00:04:38]  What?
[00:04:39]  What is it?
[00:04:40]  Oh, sorry.
[00:04:40]  My camera's on you.
[00:04:41]  What does Garrison look like?
[00:04:43]  Just an absolute smirk.
[00:04:48]  Anyway, this has been my dream for some time.
[00:04:51]  Yeah, you constantly talk about it.
[00:04:53]  It's all I want out of the world.
[00:04:56]  Yeah.
[00:04:59]  Well, kind of.
[00:05:01]  We'll see.
[00:05:01]  So little taste of my own medicine.
[00:05:04]  So, yeah.
[00:05:05]  Well, one night I was doing an extremely hardcore gaming session with a friend of mine.
[00:05:11]  And for some reason, eel horse came up because just Robert talks about it all the time.
[00:05:16]  So for some reason, this idea of eel horse came up over the course of our very intense gaming session.
[00:05:23]  And so my friend had the bravery to put the words eel and horse into Google.
[00:05:29]  And that led us down a pretty nightmarish rabbit hole that I knew had to become a bastard episode.
[00:05:36]  Which leads us to now our discussion of the real life eel horse and the eel-wielding bastards of today.
[00:05:44]  Oh, I'm very excited.
[00:05:46]  Yeah, so we're going to start off by going way back to the late medieval period in England.
[00:05:52]  Good time.
[00:05:52]  And breathing was fine.
[00:05:54]  And the bustling business of selling horses.
[00:05:57]  So let's say you're an old-timey horse salesman.
[00:06:00]  You got yourself some horses that you want to sell, but the problem.
[00:06:03]  Some of them get 16 apples to the league.
[00:06:06]  Yeah, but the problem is that some of your horses are getting a bit old, you know, a little sluggish.
[00:06:10]  They're not as lively as they used to be in their youth.
[00:06:13]  Sure.
[00:06:14]  That's what happens to horses.
[00:06:16]  Sorry, I'm already laughing because I know where this is going.
[00:06:20]  So you're thinking, like, what could I do to make these horses a bit more spry and lively?
[00:06:25]  And then very similar to your vision, what I'm guessing happened is basically you're thinking, what can I do?
[00:06:32]  And then God comes down to you from the clouds and says, my child, my horse salesman child, have you considered putting a live eel up the horse's butt?
[00:06:40]  Oh my God.
[00:06:44]  Yes.
[00:06:45]  Wait, what, you reply to God?
[00:06:47]  How will that solve my problem?
[00:06:49]  And then God, in his divine wisdom, speaks to you from the heavens and says, Well, a live eel inserted up the horse's anus might stimulate the horse and make it appear to be younger and in its more active years, thus fetching a higher price for your, in actuality, older horses.
[00:07:03]  You are telling me, Garrison, that shoving a live eel up the ass of an aging horse was the old-timey equivalent of like turning back the odometer on a used car.
[00:07:13]  Oh, yeah, baby.
[00:07:16]  That fucking rules.
[00:07:18]  So, so upon comprehending your godly enlightenment, you thank the Lord for gifting you a piece of his everlasting wisdom in your divine vision.
[00:07:26]  You said, Oh, Father in heaven, I, your humble servant, am internally grateful for your blessing me with this prosperous inspiration.
[00:07:32]  I will go forth and place as many eels up the rectum of elder horses, just as you say it, and I shall spread this gospel of eel horse to the other horse sellers so we may all share in your holy riches.
[00:07:43]  And I'm pretty sure that's how it went, because throughout the 1500s, possibly earlier, it's unclear when this started, but it definitely was very popular throughout the 1500s and early 1800s.
[00:07:55]  That's amazing.
[00:07:57]  Yeah.
[00:07:57]  So inserting live eels up the back ends of horses, the horses that were past their prime to make them appear more like frisky and young.
[00:08:04]  Yes, because they have an eel that's moving around in their asses.
[00:08:08]  The phrase that keeps coming up is that when they were looking to buy horses, a good sign of a horse was that it carries its tail well.
[00:08:16]  It means the tail is like upright and like almost erect.
[00:08:19]  It's very fluffy.
[00:08:20]  And the same thing's true of people.
[00:08:22]  Sure.
[00:08:22]  Well, furries, at least.
[00:08:24]  Furries, yeah.
[00:08:24]  So the eel thing very much, the phrase that they kept using was like that putting the eel up helps keep the tail held well.
[00:08:34]  Because it's an eel of the horse.
[00:08:38]  I'm just imagining generations of like marks buying lemon horses and like, god damn it, they eeled this one too.
[00:08:46]  That is exactly what happened.
[00:08:48]  You gotta check the asshole, Mitch.
[00:08:49]  I told you that.
[00:08:50]  Never buy a used horse without checking the asshole.
[00:08:53]  So yeah, so yeah, inserting live eels up the back ends of horses, the pastor prime was very common to make them appear more frisky and young.
[00:09:00]  And you know, I mean, whatever eels were available in England, it's probably lambraised.
[00:09:08]  It's hard to say because there's not extremely thorough documentation of this.
[00:09:12]  Most of the documentation comes from dictionaries and literary references.
[00:09:17]  So you hear this appearing in like poems and stories.
[00:09:19]  It'd be like describing what selling horses was like.
[00:09:23]  Wow, it's definitely...
[00:09:24]  So there's two kinds of eels in the UK, silver and conjure.
[00:09:28]  It's not a conjure eel.
[00:09:30]  Look up the conjure eel.
[00:09:32]  Look up the size of this thing.
[00:09:35]  I mean, I'm not sure.
[00:09:36]  Conjure like the size of horses.
[00:09:39]  My god.
[00:09:41]  She's massive.
[00:09:43]  Yeah, no.
[00:09:45]  It's not a conjure eel.
[00:09:46]  It's not a conjure eel.
[00:09:47]  That looks like an alligator.
[00:09:48]  Wow.
[00:09:51]  That is discomfortingly large.
[00:09:53]  That's upset at how big that eel is.
[00:09:55]  No, that is.
[00:09:56]  That is.
[00:09:57]  I'm generally pro-eel, but that is too much.
[00:09:59]  Okay, it's probably a silver eel looks more manageable.
[00:10:02]  So I'm guessing it's a silver eel.
[00:10:04]  Yeah, you could fit one of those up a horse's ass, no problem.
[00:10:07]  So often what would happen is often what.
[00:10:11]  Can I just say this was not what I thought was going to be happening today?
[00:10:16]  I couldn't be happier.
[00:10:18]  So yeah, often what would happen would be when people would come into the showroom to see the horses, the stable boys would be like, would shove the eels up there really quickly when people were coming to visit.
[00:10:31]  Wow.
[00:10:37]  So this fucking rule.
[00:10:40]  So there is a word for this.
[00:10:43]  The process was called feeging or to fee a horse.
[00:10:48]  Jesus Christ.
[00:10:49]  We find reference to this process in the excellent classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue.
[00:10:56]  A few copies of this have feeging.
[00:10:58]  I'm going to read from one from 1785.
[00:11:01]  It says to fee is to put a live eel up the horse's fundament to make him lively and carry his tail well.
[00:11:09]  The author goes on to note that the practice was so widespread that it quote, it is said, a forfeit is incurred by any horse dealer's servant who shall shoe a horse without feeing him first.
[00:11:21]  So pretty good.
[00:11:22]  Jesus Christ.
[00:11:23]  Pretty good stuff.
[00:11:24]  Incredible.
[00:11:26]  You know, I make a lot of jokes about the war against the horses, but like, it's hard to name an animal that's taken more hits for the team, the team being humanity, than the horse.
[00:11:37]  We have fucked them over for so.
[00:11:40]  Like dogs, we're like, yeah, you want to be best friends and like hunt together and hang out and we'll give you food with horses.
[00:11:46]  We're like, you know what machine guns are?
[00:11:48]  You're about to learn.
[00:11:50]  It's your job to run towards them.
[00:11:53]  Yeah, horses have taken a decent decent amount of abuse.
[00:11:56]  We've really, yeah.
[00:11:58]  I didn't know that this had happened, but this is.
[00:11:59]  Figing.
[00:12:00]  Yeah, Feeging.
[00:12:02]  What's really fun is that you can find a good number of references to this phenomenon in literary writing from the time.
[00:12:08]  In 1616, there was a book of poems published by the then late poet Thomas Overbury, and it included an array of poetic character sketches of unsavory types of people written by various anonymous authors.
[00:12:23]  One of these poems details the character.
[00:12:30]  One of these poems details the characteristics of an errant horse courser and noted that among other unsavory habits, the man knows how to cover up diseases and defects of all sorts for pounding his horse's arse with quicksilver and giving him suppositories of live eels.
[00:12:48]  He's an expert.
[00:12:50]  Pretty decent.
[00:12:51]  My goodness.
[00:12:52]  Referring to putting a live eel up an ass as a suppository.
[00:12:55]  Suppository of live eels, yeah.
[00:12:57]  That is incredible.
[00:12:59]  That is amazing.
[00:13:00]  Garrison, I'm very proud of you.
[00:13:02]  He is expert.
[00:13:03]  Expert at.
[00:13:06]  An errant horse courser.
[00:13:09]  Aw, man.
[00:13:10]  Man, maybe this is how I prepare the eel horse.
[00:13:12]  I didn't think of starting it while the horse was alive.
[00:13:15]  No, I wouldn't do that.
[00:13:16]  I wouldn't do that.
[00:13:17]  No.
[00:13:17]  You realize that these are supposed to be bad guys, right?
[00:13:20]  Like the whole, like they're the used, they're literally the used car salesmen of the medieval period.
[00:13:27]  Of the medieval period, yes.
[00:13:28]  And they're shoving live eels up the horse's butts.
[00:13:32]  Come down to Slick Joe's discount horse depot.
[00:13:35]  Absolutely no eels up their assholes.
[00:13:39]  A young John Milton mentioned Feeging in a 1628 Latin poem while mocking his fellow Cambridge students.
[00:13:49]  He describes a certain Irish bird as, quote, more useful to grooms because they are by nature lively and brisk and prancing.
[00:13:57]  And if they were forced into the anus of a scraggly horse, they would make them livelier and quicker than had ten than if they had ten live eels up their bellies.
[00:14:06]  Wow.
[00:14:07]  Garrison, I want to congratulate you here because for years, Sophie will back me up on this.
[00:14:12]  I have been trying to work in Paradise Lost connections to Behind the Bastards.
[00:14:17]  Hasn't happened yet.
[00:14:18]  We just don't go far back enough.
[00:14:20]  But you finally brought old J-Milt into it.
[00:14:22]  Yeah, and I applauded.
[00:14:23]  J-Milt.
[00:14:24]  Sharola.
[00:14:28]  Kanye West of literature.
[00:14:32]  Yeah.
[00:14:33]  That's what everyone says.
[00:14:35]  The humorist poet Edward Ward in his 1700 A Song Upon Dancing wrote that dancers skip with a nimble force as eels it's the belly of a horse, which jockeys use each market day to make him dance, as people say.
[00:14:51]  So that's nice.
[00:14:52]  That's a nice little rhyme, actually.
[00:14:53]  Yeah, he had a decent little thing going.
[00:14:56]  So yeah, unfortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, by the late 1700s and early 1800s, the eel anal insertion had begun to fall out of fashion.
[00:15:08]  As horse salesmen realized, probably again via divine revelation from the Lord, that the same effect, or at least a similar effect, could be achieved by instead inserting a piece of spicy ginger up the horse's arse.
[00:15:21]  And this is apparently still an issue at horse shows that people have to enforce.
[00:15:26]  Stop people from shoving ginger.
[00:15:27]  Ginger up the butt of horses to make.
[00:15:30]  Yeah.
[00:15:31]  This is still an ongoing problem that needs enforcement at horse shows.
[00:15:35]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:36]  The ginger police.
[00:15:37]  Yeah.
[00:15:38]  But that means, though, if you went back to shoving eels up their asses, nobody would catch it.
[00:15:42]  They're not still checking for eel.
[00:15:43]  I'm just telling you, if you want to cheat at having nice horses, eels, that's wide open, baby.
[00:15:49]  Yeah.
[00:15:49]  Yeah.
[00:15:49]  Get an eel.
[00:15:50]  Try an electric one.
[00:15:51]  Maybe that's how I'll cook it, Garrison.
[00:15:54]  I don't think so.
[00:15:55]  Okay, well, we'll talk about it.
[00:15:57]  Yeah.
[00:15:57]  But we still do actually have the modern phrase to ginger up or to spice up a horse.
[00:16:04]  This comes from figing.
[00:16:06]  I've never heard of that phrase, but I'll trust you on that.
[00:16:09]  It's a phrase.
[00:16:11]  And this is also where we get to the modern BDSM practice called figging.
[00:16:17]  Again, driving from the figing.
[00:16:20]  But figging is usually a butt plug made of ginger placed up someone's anus.
[00:16:26]  And we will circle back to this at the end because this will help us explain a modern eel issue we have.
[00:16:35]  Yes, modern eel issues are very serious.
[00:16:38]  Yeah, speaking of eel shoes.
[00:16:39]  Eel shoes.
[00:16:40]  Speaking of eel shoes, do you know who else wants you to buy live eels to stick up the butts of horses?
[00:16:47]  Oh, gosh.
[00:16:48]  I mean, Jesus, bad.
[00:16:51]  Our friends at, I don't know, one of the food.
[00:16:56]  Yeah, we call it stimulation therapy.

=== Modern Eel Issues Explained (04:31) ===

[00:16:59]  Yeah, stimulation, people who make those fucking with all of our sponsors.
[00:17:07]  Oh, my gosh.
[00:17:10]  Obviously, they are all huge fans of shoving eels and assholes.
[00:17:14]  In fact, that's the only requirement we have of our sponsors.
[00:17:17]  Have you put an eel in something's butt?
[00:17:19]  Doesn't have to be a horse.
[00:17:20]  And in fact, oftentimes it's a completely different species.
[00:17:24]  We like it when they get creative.
[00:17:25]  And that's the Hide in the Bastards guarantee.
[00:17:31]  On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budgetista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
[00:17:42]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
[00:17:48]  We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
[00:17:58]  Financial education is not always about like, I'm gonna get rich.
[00:18:02]  That's great.
[00:18:03]  It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.
[00:18:13]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
[00:18:19]  Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:18:29]  I'm Ana Navarro, and on my new podcast, Bleep with Ana Navarro, I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world.
[00:18:38]  Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on.
[00:18:46]  I'm talking to people like Julie Kay Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018.
[00:18:52]  These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after administration.
[00:19:06]  The Justice Department, through, I think we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims.
[00:19:14]  Listen to Bleep with Ana Navarro as part of the Michael Tura Podcast Network.
[00:19:18]  Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:19:27]  Will Farrell's Big Money Players and iHeart Podcast presents soccer moms.
[00:19:32]  So I'm Leanne.
[00:19:33]  This is my best friend Janet.
[00:19:34]  Hey.
[00:19:34]  And we have been joined at the hip since high school.
[00:19:36]  Absolutely.
[00:19:37]  Now a redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip.
[00:19:41]  Just a little bit bigger hips, wider.
[00:19:43]  This is a podcast.
[00:19:44]  We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey with all the snacks and drinks.
[00:19:51]  Sidebar.
[00:19:51]  Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer?
[00:19:54]  Oh, they had a BOGO.
[00:19:55]  Well then you got it.
[00:19:56]  You want a white clouds up here?
[00:19:57]  Just what are y'all doing?
[00:19:58]  Microphones?
[00:19:59]  Are you making a rap album?
[00:20:01]  I will.
[00:20:02]  Couldn't you believe I would buy it?
[00:20:04]  Cuts through the defense like a hot knife through sponge cake.
[00:20:09]  That sounds delicious.
[00:20:11]  Oh, you're lucky.
[00:20:12]  I'm not a drug addict.
[00:20:13]  You're lucky.
[00:20:14]  I'm not an alcoholic.
[00:20:15]  You're lucky I'm not a killer.
[00:20:17]  I love this team, and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on.
[00:20:22]  Oh.
[00:20:26]  Listen to soccer moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:20:32]  Hey, Ernest, what's up?
[00:20:33]  Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth.
[00:20:39]  On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship.
[00:20:46]  From stocks and real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, we translate complex financial topics into real conversations everyone can understand.
[00:20:55]  Because the truth is, most people were never taught how money really works.
[00:21:00]  But once you understand the system, you can start to build within it.
[00:21:03]  That means ownership, smarter investing, and creating opportunities not just for yourself, but for the next generation.
[00:21:10]  If you want to learn how to build wealth, understand the market, and think like an owner, Earn Your Leisure is the podcast for you.
[00:21:17]  Listen to Earn Your Leisure on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:21:27]  Ah, we're back.
[00:21:28]  All right, Garrison.

=== Financial Literacy for Everyone (15:05) ===

[00:21:30]  I'm ready.
[00:21:30]  Uh-huh.
[00:21:32]  So, so yeah.
[00:21:33]  So the first bastards of today are the 14th through 17th century horse salesmen.
[00:21:39]  But unfortunately, unfortunately, we still have some time left in this episode, as you can tell.
[00:21:46]  And once me and my friends started googling eel and anus, this led us down a dark rabbit hole that forever scarred my mind.
[00:21:53]  Yeah, I can see how that would go to some bad places, actually.
[00:21:56]  Unfortunately, we're going to be briefly moving away from horses and towards another H species called humans.
[00:22:06]  Which leads us to probably the darkest, most evil segment of today's episode.
[00:22:10]  Excellent.
[00:22:11]  The Phoenix program.
[00:22:12]  Oh.
[00:22:13]  That sounds like a good thing to be involved in assholes being filled with eels.
[00:22:18]  So the Phoenix program was the brutal counterinsurgency program started in 1968 and run by William Colby, later head of the CIA.
[00:22:26]  It was aimed at reading out Viet Cong or anyone deemed Viet Cong sympathizers.
[00:22:31]  The Viet Cong was anybody that we happened to bomb.
[00:22:35]  Yeah.
[00:22:37]  Yeah, so weeding out anyone deemed Viet Cong sympathizers by identification and neutralization with the methodology of infiltration, capture, terrorism, torture, and assassination.
[00:22:48]  The Phoenix program was designed, coordinated, and executed primarily by the CIA with some help by the United States Special Operations Forces during the war in Vietnam.
[00:22:58]  Versions of the program were kind of in operation between 1965 and 1972, but the official program and the official body count begun in 68.
[00:23:11]  Similar programs existed both before and after that period.
[00:23:16]  But for the official Phoenix program, it starts in 68, goes to 72.
[00:23:23]  By 1972, Phoenix operatives had quote-unquote neutralized at least 81,640 people suspected of being operatives or sympathizers of the Viet Cong.
[00:23:36]  At least 26,000 of whom were officially killed, but South Vietnamese officials estimate over 40,000 were killed.
[00:23:44]  Military intelligence officer Kay Milton Osborne witnessed the wrote a book about his time there and witnessed the following forms of torture, including the use of inserting a six-inch dowel into the cavity of a detainee's ears and tapping the dowel through the brain until the person dies.
[00:24:04]  A few tax dollars at work, people.
[00:24:06]  A lot of starvation to death inside a cage.
[00:24:10]  And other, I'm going to read a quote now, other methods of torture used in the interrogation centers include rape, gang rape, rape using hard objects, rape followed by murder, electric shock by attaching wires to the genitals, and rape using eels and snakes.
[00:24:25]  So this is like the most fucking evil humanity can do.
[00:24:29]  Like the Phoenix program is up there on the most evil.
[00:24:34]  It's Nazi level shit.
[00:24:35]  No, yeah.
[00:24:36]  That's straight up on the same level.
[00:24:39]  It's like the most bastard you can be.
[00:24:42]  The horrific abuses done in the Phoenix program by the American government.
[00:24:46]  And there was assistance from the South Vietnamese government, assistance from Australia, but it was mostly the American government.
[00:24:53]  It is like the most possibly evil thing if you read about the Phoenix program in detail.
[00:24:58]  That's the highest.
[00:25:00]  We'll do a whole thing.
[00:25:01]  No, yeah, they deserve their own series, honestly.
[00:25:04]  Several episodes.
[00:25:05]  Yeah, we'll pair it after the nine-part Kissinger series.
[00:25:08]  Like William Colby and the CIA in the Vietnam War, it's extremely fucking nightmare.
[00:25:15]  I mean, it's like people talk rightly about Unit 731, which was a Japanese military detachment that did biological and chemical warfare research that involved some of the worst stories of torture and experiment.
[00:25:33]  And like Dr. Mengele, and we talk about these as if these are unique horrors of fascist countries.
[00:25:40]  I guess you could say they're unique horrors of fascist countries because certainly within the context of our policies in Vietnam, the United States was doing some fashion as hell shit.
[00:25:49]  But the shit that U.S., that the CIA pulled in Vietnam is that same level.
[00:25:55]  Like that exact same level.
[00:25:57]  It is not devaluing the horrors of the Holocaust or of Japanese war crimes in Manchuria to put this kind of shit.
[00:26:05]  I mean, they're raping people with eels.
[00:26:08]  Until they die.
[00:26:09]  Raping people to death with eels.
[00:26:11]  Like, what do you...
[00:26:12]  Yeah.
[00:26:14]  I was aware of this sort of thing, mainly with snakes and stuff.
[00:26:17]  Yeah.
[00:26:18]  So after some of the details of the abuses.
[00:26:21]  I like this less than the horse.
[00:26:23]  No, yeah, this is definitely less fun.
[00:26:25]  It's less fun, guys.
[00:26:26]  It's less fun.
[00:26:27]  So after some of the details of the horrific abuses by the CAA and Army that was carried out in Vietnam, they slowly came to light in the early 70s.
[00:26:33]  The program was officially shut down under public pressure, but in actuality, it just continued under a different name.
[00:26:41]  And some of the control of the program was handed to the South Vietnam government.
[00:26:45]  And yeah, it's kind of hard to pivot away from something this dark, but I'm going to think of it as a way to help kind of wash down the human filth that we just discussed.
[00:26:54]  Because now we are going to discuss the modern eel anus problem.
[00:27:01]  So good.
[00:27:01]  And this is...
[00:27:02]  I'm glad we're getting up to the modern day.
[00:27:05]  Exciting.
[00:27:06]  This is a thing with multiple facets, and a sizable portion of which is an extension of the figging-figging connection.
[00:27:14]  Jesus Christ.
[00:27:16]  Well good, actually, this is good.
[00:27:17]  I would prefer an extension of that.
[00:27:19]  It goes back to the horses.
[00:27:20]  Yeah, so in April 2013, in the Guangdong province of China, a destructively horny, single 39-year-old man was watching everything's coming together for this story.
[00:27:33]  Was watching an eel figging porn, and he had the uncontrollable urge to try it himself.
[00:27:38]  Wait, wait, watching?
[00:27:40]  He was watching an eel figging porn.
[00:27:42]  What year is this?
[00:27:43]  I thought you said 1813.
[00:27:44]  No, this is 2013.
[00:27:46]  Oh, 2013.
[00:27:47]  I misheard.
[00:27:49]  Watching porn.
[00:27:50]  No, no, no.
[00:27:51]  Okay.
[00:27:51]  Yeah, 2013.
[00:27:53]  Horribly horny.
[00:27:54]  39-year-old man was watching an eel thinking porn, and he had the uncontrollable urge to try it himself.
[00:28:00]  That exists.
[00:28:02]  From researching this episode, I've seen about every video of eels going into bodies on the internet.
[00:28:06]  Yeah, okay.
[00:28:07]  Well, that's good.
[00:28:08]  It's a lot.
[00:28:09]  We should watch Zoo together, Garrison.
[00:28:12]  Anyway, so he had there to try it himself, and he tried to just, he tried to grab, he tried to keep holding the eel for the duration of the period, but he lost it.
[00:28:22]  That's probably a good idea if he can, you know.
[00:28:24]  But he lost grip of the slippery little fucker.
[00:28:26]  See, that's rookie shit.
[00:28:29]  You got to get a, get a, get a, get a, like, rope around that eel.
[00:28:33]  And it's, it swam all the way up there.
[00:28:35]  Yeah, that's going to happen.
[00:28:37]  After failed attempts to remove the eel, the man went to the emergency room for medical assistance.
[00:28:41]  Um, and he told the presumably confused medics, please, please help me.
[00:28:46]  The eel is moving through my body.
[00:28:48]  Um, imagine that's just your fucking day, right?
[00:28:53]  Like, you're six hours into a shift, you're getting ready to go home, you're tired, you've already seen some shit, and this kid's like, there is an eel moving inside of me for undetermined reasons.
[00:29:04]  And, like, that's the rest of your fucking night.
[00:29:06]  Yep.
[00:29:07]  So, the 20-centimeter long eel chewed the way through the man's colon, perforated his large intestine, and became stuck in the body cavity.
[00:29:16]  The medical team that treated the man reportedly said that the eel, which weighed about a pound, was, quote, simply trying to find its way out.
[00:29:23]  Yeah, let's see.
[00:29:23]  And fair play by the eel.
[00:29:25]  Yeah, the mental's not doing anything.
[00:29:27]  No, none of the things we're talking about today is the eel's fault.
[00:29:31]  None of what we're talking about today is the culture of the eel.
[00:29:34]  To say that nothing has ever been an eel's fault because they're eels.
[00:29:37]  No.
[00:29:39]  This is just on us.
[00:29:41]  Totally on us.
[00:29:43]  The medical team said the eel was still alive when we got it out, but it died soon afterwards, which was probably a mercy.
[00:29:50]  So yeah, I have read every single story of eels going up people's butts that you can find on the internet.
[00:29:57]  And a decent amount of these incidents track, I think a decent amount of them do track back to getting the idea from porn.
[00:30:05]  But that is far from the only cause of eel anal penetration.
[00:30:09]  Oh, good.
[00:30:10]  Okay.
[00:30:11]  Because that would be unreasonable.
[00:30:12]  Yeah.
[00:30:13]  So three years prior, back in 2010, a 59-year-old chef from the Zigong city of China went to the hospital complaining of abdominal pain, dehydration, and a great deal of anal bleeding.
[00:30:29]  And he truly did not know what was going on.
[00:30:32]  He actually had no idea.
[00:30:34]  So doctors also had no idea what was the cause of this, and they resorted to cutting open his innards, in which they discovered a 50-centimeter-long Asian swamp eel lodged in his rectum.
[00:30:47]  It was already dead, but the eel had apparently already wreaked havoc through the inside of his body, biting the way through his intestines prior to dying.
[00:30:55]  Internal bleeding and infection rapidly set in.
[00:30:57]  The man was hospitalized.
[00:30:58]  That's a big eel.
[00:30:59]  That is not a small eel to have.
[00:31:01]  It's large.
[00:31:02]  So again.
[00:31:03]  That's slightly too big to get in a horse's asshole, is my favorite.
[00:31:09]  So I've not included pictures in the script here, but basically for every story from the Chinese hospitals, Chinese hospitals upload all of these pictures.
[00:31:19]  It is kind of silly.
[00:31:20]  It is absurd how many pictures of, and like videos of these procedures they upload themselves.
[00:31:25]  Like entire videos of them surgically doing this.
[00:31:30]  It's pretty nightmarish.
[00:31:31]  So yeah, the man was hospitalized for 10 days, but he eventually died.
[00:31:36]  So this did kill him.
[00:31:39]  Yeah, that sounds about right.
[00:31:41]  Again, we should watch Zoo.
[00:31:43]  Afterwards, the probable cause was actually established.
[00:31:48]  So the chef had been drinking with friends and he had passed out.
[00:31:52]  His friends then decided it would be an amusing prank.
[00:31:54]  Oh God, no.
[00:31:56]  They decided it would be an amusing prank to insert a live eel up his anus while he was comatose and not tell him.
[00:32:03]  Oh my god.
[00:32:04]  I mean, look, I've done some things I regret while drinking, but I have always informed people when I've put a live eel inside them.
[00:32:12]  That's just basic decency.
[00:32:14]  We have a friend who falls asleep often while watching movies, and we sometimes mess with them, but I think that's a good idea.
[00:32:19]  I think things on their head, all sorts of things.
[00:32:21]  But I think this is too far.
[00:32:23]  Honestly, I would say killing them via an eel eating their internal organs is taking.
[00:32:29]  I think it's too much.
[00:32:30]  I'm all for committing to the bit, but honestly, I think this is too far.
[00:32:34]  I think it's too much.
[00:32:36]  You know what?
[00:32:37]  You know where I think they went wrong is when they were shoving a live animal up their friend's asshole.
[00:32:41]  As this person was asleep?
[00:32:43]  Yeah, I think maybe that was where they went awry.
[00:32:47]  Yeah.
[00:32:48]  So this is one of the few instances that is totally not this person's fault.
[00:32:53]  And his friends, I think, were investigated and prosecuted by whatever authorities.
[00:32:58]  Anyway.
[00:33:00]  But before we get to the big kicker, there is some other general kind of eel news worth mentioning.
[00:33:06]  2012, a man in New Zealand got an eel removed via surgery after the slippery fucker got stuck up his rectum.
[00:33:12]  It wasn't officially revealed how or why it got up there.
[00:33:16]  So that is left to us to decide.
[00:33:20]  But the unique aspect of this story is that 33 hospital staff all got in trouble for sharing x-ray photos of the eel and leaking the story to the media.
[00:33:29]  Which is interesting.
[00:33:30]  That's kind of shitty.
[00:33:33]  But it's totally different in China.
[00:33:34]  In China, all this stuff gets uploaded.
[00:33:38]  But in New Zealand, the hospital got mad that the employees were leaking pictures of this incident.
[00:33:45]  Yeah, that's going to mean the next person who gets an eel stuck up their ass won't go to the doctor.
[00:33:49]  See, that is the thing.
[00:33:50]  Which, although I will say, if you're the kind of person who tortures a live animal to get off, I don't really care if you get medical treatment.
[00:33:59]  I guess.
[00:34:00]  Yeah, not really.
[00:34:02]  Oh, and in 2014, a Brazilian man had emergency surgery to remove an eel from his backside.
[00:34:08]  Again, the exact reasoning being unknown, but I'm pretty sure both these incidents are related to kink stuff.
[00:34:16]  That sounds right.
[00:34:17]  We're going to discuss this more towards the end because there is one other reason people claim once they go to the doctor how they explain why an eel is up their butt.
[00:34:28]  So onto the main eel analysis epidemic.
[00:34:32]  So this starts in 2003, actually, is the first instance I can find of this, specifically in our modern documentation.
[00:34:40]  I'm going to read directly from the hospital report.
[00:34:43]  Now, this is somewhere in China.
[00:34:44]  I'm not quite sure where, because the report doesn't specify exactly.
[00:34:48]  And there isn't any other reporting of this incident besides this one hospital report.
[00:34:52]  So it's just this hospital report.
[00:34:54]  Anyway, 50-year-old man was seen at the accident and emergency department because of abdominal pain.
[00:35:00]  The physical examination revealed redness and swelling around the tissue around the abdomen.
[00:35:05]  A shadow of an eel was noticed on the abdominal radiograph.
[00:35:09]  Upon further questioning, the patient admitted that an eel was inserted into the rectum in an attempt to relieve constipation.
[00:35:16]  I mean, on a moral level, that's, I guess, better than putting an eel up your ass for sexual gratification.
[00:35:22]  On an intellectual level, why if it's true.
[00:35:28]  Anyway, emergency laparotomy found that the 50 centimeter long eel was biting the splenic flexure of the colon.
[00:35:36]  Multiple perforations were found around the walls of the rectum, and the post-operative course was uneventful.
[00:35:42]  The patient was discharged onto home on like day seven.
[00:35:48]  So this appears to be the most claimed reason given by people found to have an eel up their butt on why said eel is up their butt.
[00:35:57]  They most often claim constipation.
[00:36:00]  And there has been a conf a decent uptick in reported incidence of eel up the anus to cure constipation since 2017.
[00:36:14]  In April 2017.
[00:36:15]  April 2017, a 49-year-old factory worker from the capital of South China's Guangdong province was rushed to the hospital complaining of constipation and a stomach ache.
[00:36:25]  Upon the doctors opening up the man's stomach to discover both feces and a foot and a half long eel, the man claimed it's time up there by it.
[00:36:33]  The man claimed it's time up there by itself.

=== The Accidental Eel Incident (03:38) ===

[00:36:36]  Okay, well, so I'm gonna get a couple of notes.
[00:36:41]  He suffered from a puncture pancreas, and according to the doctors, the eel managed to break through the man's intestines and generated a mess in the man's stomach, almost killed.
[00:36:51]  Killing him.
[00:36:52]  That's right.
[00:36:53]  Don't do that with an eel.
[00:36:55]  Yeah.
[00:36:56]  So the man later, according to the doctors, the man later gave more details post-operation, quoting said doctors.
[00:37:03]  But he later admitted that he put it up there himself following a quote folk remedy for bowel obstruction.
[00:37:10]  As a medical expert, the doctor noted that there was no scientific basis for such a treatment involving live eels.
[00:37:16]  That's a bummer.
[00:37:17]  Yeah.
[00:37:18]  Well, I, okay, so do you know how to cancel an Amazon order?
[00:37:22]  Because I just had, I was just trying to rush a shipment of eels to my house, but I guess I don't need them now.
[00:37:27]  You can cancel.
[00:37:28]  You go to the orders page.
[00:37:29]  Usually there we go.
[00:37:31]  Yeah.
[00:37:32]  So yeah, the man survived this.
[00:37:35]  It was unclear what happened to the eel.
[00:37:37]  Probably not a great story.
[00:37:39]  Yeah.
[00:37:40]  Would you want to live after that, though?
[00:37:42]  No.
[00:37:43]  No.
[00:37:44]  So apparently what happened upon further interviewing, he said that he went to his friends for medical advice, and they told him about a quote, folklore method of curing constipation, which involved a live eel to help smooth bowel movement.
[00:38:02]  So he found a 20-inch Asian swamp eel, and after the deed had been done, he got him into the hospital after he started experiencing unbearable stomach aches.
[00:38:12]  So and what's really upsetting is that this is by no means an isolated incident.
[00:38:17]  Next time we're talking about is September 2018, again reading from a hospital report.
[00:38:23]  Colonic perforation is a common presentation at the emergency department.
[00:38:28]  However, foreign body related perforation is responsible for less than 1% of these cases.
[00:38:33]  Here we describe the case of colonic perforation secondary to the self-introduction of an eel into the anus.
[00:38:41]  A 54-year-old previously healthy male presented himself to the emergency department with a 12-hour history of abdominal pain.
[00:38:49]  Physical examination revealed tenderness, rebound tenderness, and involuntary guarding.
[00:38:55]  A CT scan of his abdomen and pelvis revealed a foreign body in his cavity.
[00:39:01]  Upon further questioning, the patient admitted the eel was inserted into his anus by accident.
[00:39:06]  Well, yeah, okay.
[00:39:08]  Look, we've all put some things up our assholes by accident.
[00:39:11]  By accid by accident!
[00:39:13]  Not living animals.
[00:39:15]  Quote-unquote accident.
[00:39:17]  Shoes.
[00:39:17]  Pieces of the Monopoly board game?
[00:39:19]  Of course.
[00:39:20]  Accidents.
[00:39:21]  Pieces of firearms.
[00:39:22]  Absolutely.
[00:39:24]  Accident.
[00:39:24]  Knives.
[00:39:25]  Yes, it happens.
[00:39:26]  But not a live animal.
[00:39:28]  That's all.
[00:39:29]  That was the entire...
[00:39:30]  It was an accident.
[00:39:31]  There was no clarification.
[00:39:32]  That's it.
[00:39:33]  Uh-huh.
[00:39:34]  Crazy.
[00:39:34]  So he underwent...
[00:39:37]  He underwent a laparotomy and the eel was subsequently removed.
[00:39:42]  He was transferred to the standard ward from the emergency ward after seven days of observation.
[00:39:48]  Diagnostic, diagnosing a colonic foreign body can be challenging as patients often deny the insertion.
[00:39:54]  Yeah, a CT scan is recommended.
[00:39:57]  I wouldn't want to admit to that.
[00:39:58]  A CT scan is recommended for patients having a suspected colonic foreign body.
[00:40:03]  So that's a hospital report.
[00:40:05]  But this, it's this, you know, you know what else you want to deny the presence of, Robert?

=== Removing the Colonic Foreign Body (04:19) ===

[00:40:14]  Washington State Patrol ads, black rifle coffee ads, chevron ads.
[00:40:19]  Wait, what is it?
[00:40:20]  Chevron.
[00:40:20]  Oh, I hope it's Chevron.
[00:40:21]  I love Chevron.
[00:40:22]  Let's get some Chev ads.
[00:40:25]  Our next season of podcasts is going to be entirely supported by Chevron.
[00:40:29]  Chevron, fuck it.
[00:40:31]  Why not?
[00:40:34]  On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Bajanista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
[00:40:45]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
[00:40:51]  We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
[00:41:01]  Financial education is not always about like, I'm gonna get rich.
[00:41:05]  That's great.
[00:41:06]  It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.
[00:41:16]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
[00:41:21]  Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:41:32]  Will Farrell's Big Money Players and iHeart Podcast presents soccer moms.
[00:41:36]  So I'm Leanne.
[00:41:37]  This is my best friend Janet.
[00:41:38]  Hey, and we have been joined at the hip since high school.
[00:41:41]  Absolutely.
[00:41:41]  Now a redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip.
[00:41:46]  Just a little bit bigger hips, wider.
[00:41:47]  This is a podcast.
[00:41:48]  We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey with all the snacks and drinks.
[00:41:55]  Sidebar, why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer?
[00:41:58]  Oh, they had a BOGO.
[00:41:59]  Well, then you got it.
[00:42:00]  You want a white cloth or something here?
[00:42:01]  Just hit.
[00:42:02]  What are y'all doing?
[00:42:03]  Microphones?
[00:42:04]  Are you making a rap album?
[00:42:06]  I would.
[00:42:08]  I would buy it.
[00:42:09]  Cuts through the defense like a hot knife through sponge cake.
[00:42:14]  That sounds delicious.
[00:42:15]  Oh, you're lucky.
[00:42:16]  I'm not a drug addict.
[00:42:18]  You're lucky.
[00:42:18]  I'm not an alcoholic.
[00:42:19]  You're lucky.
[00:42:20]  I'm not a killer.
[00:42:21]  I love this team, and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on.
[00:42:26]  Oh.
[00:42:30]  Listen to soccer moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:42:36]  I'm Ana Navarro, and on my new podcast, Bleep with Ana Navarro.
[00:42:40]  I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world.
[00:42:45]  Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on.
[00:42:53]  I'm talking to people like Julie Kay Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018.
[00:42:59]  These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after administration.
[00:43:12]  The Justice Department, through, I think we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims.
[00:43:20]  Listen to Bleep with Ana Navarro as part of the Michael Tura Podcast Network.
[00:43:25]  Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:43:35]  Hey Ernst, what's up?
[00:43:36]  Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth.
[00:43:41]  On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship.
[00:43:49]  From stocks and real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, we translate complex financial topics into real conversations everyone can understand.
[00:43:58]  Because the truth is, most people were never taught how money really works.
[00:44:03]  But once you understand the system, you can start to build within it.
[00:44:06]  That means ownership, smarter investing, and creating opportunities not just for yourself, but for the next generation.
[00:44:13]  If you want to learn how to build wealth, understand the markets, and think like an owner, Earn Your Leisure is the podcast for you.
[00:44:20]  Listen to Earn Your Leisure on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:44:30]  And we're back.
[00:44:33]  Yep.

=== Fragile Intestines and Live Eels (14:40) ===

[00:44:34]  Talking about eels still.
[00:44:37]  Still.
[00:44:37]  Wow.
[00:44:38]  I watched eels up inside you.
[00:44:40]  I spent so long on this episode doing research.
[00:44:43]  Mighty Boosh, anybody?
[00:44:44]  Too much time.
[00:44:46]  I spent too much time researching this.
[00:44:49]  Anyway, January of 2020, there was another similar incident, but with a fun twist.
[00:44:54]  Instead of boofing the eels, a 51-year-old construction worker in East China's Guangzhou province swallowed two live eels to reportedly treat his constipation.
[00:45:05]  Well, I guess that's better.
[00:45:07]  It's different.
[00:45:08]  It's not better.
[00:45:09]  It's definitely.
[00:45:10]  What I'll say is better is it's there's no question that it wasn't a sex thing.
[00:45:15]  That is true.
[00:45:16]  That is true.
[00:45:17]  It probably legitimately wasn't a sex thing.
[00:45:20]  Because again, I think part of the problem here is once this constipation myth got started or lie got started, people are going to hear about it and then, you know, people might start actually doing it genuinely.
[00:45:32]  People might start doing it genuinely.
[00:45:34]  Yeah.
[00:45:34]  So people take Joe Rogan's advice on how to treat diseases.
[00:45:38]  They're very stupid.
[00:45:39]  So yeah, he was rushed to the hospital by his colleagues where it was where he revealed that he consumed the eels the day before.
[00:45:45]  During surgery, they found a quote, very thick eels lodged outside his intestines in the lower part of his abdomen.
[00:45:52]  Oh, wow.
[00:45:54]  Because a lot, quoting the doctor, because the eels were alive while being swallowed, a person's intestines are fragile.
[00:46:01]  Therefore, they will be ruptured as soon as the eels bite them, said the doctor.
[00:46:05]  Really?
[00:46:05]  Amazing.
[00:46:06]  So our intestines are not, we did not evolve to have our intestines bitten by eels.
[00:46:11]  This is shocking to me.
[00:46:12]  They found a two-centimeter-wide hole in the sigmoid colon.
[00:46:15]  Medic said he was in a state of shock due to life-threatening bacterial infection around the ruptured colon.
[00:46:20]  He was left in critical condition.
[00:46:23]  The 51-year-old man was allegedly following a folk remedy, which claims that gobbling live eels could help pass solid waste, according to the surgeon.
[00:46:33]  Yes.
[00:46:34]  Yeah.
[00:46:34]  Good.
[00:46:34]  So great.
[00:46:36]  Yep.
[00:46:36]  Based.
[00:46:37]  June 2020.
[00:46:39]  An unnamed patient aged in his 50s.
[00:46:42]  Sought medical attention again in China's southern province of Guangdong after suffering a pain in his abdomen for about a week.
[00:46:51]  Jesus Christ.
[00:46:52]  Good God.
[00:46:53]  Good God in heaven.
[00:46:56]  By this time, he had severe sepsis leading to septic shock and was unable to communicate.
[00:47:02]  It was unable to communicate coherently, according to the surgeon.
[00:47:06]  Shocking.
[00:47:07]  Very surprised.
[00:47:08]  Again, quoting said surgeon during a CT.
[00:47:11]  During a CT scan, we suspected a foreign body in his abdominal cavity, but we couldn't tell what it was.
[00:47:20]  Then, while performing a colonoscopy, we discovered it was an Asian swamp field that entered the cavity.
[00:47:27]  Yeah.
[00:47:28]  Yeah.
[00:47:30]  The patient then had an emergency operation to have the eel removed from his gut, with doctors opening up his abdomen and discovering it filled with waste matter, including excrement and pus from his severe infection.
[00:47:40]  Yeah.
[00:47:41]  The hospital image shows the uh again, not included in the document for Sophie's sake, a 15-inch freshwater eel removed intact in the procedure.
[00:47:50]  I can send you pictures afterwards, Robert.
[00:47:51]  Please.
[00:47:52]  I have a lot.
[00:47:54]  That sounds hot as hell.
[00:47:55]  I'm great.
[00:47:56]  This is how it starts, Robert.
[00:47:58]  This is how it starts.
[00:48:00]  I'm now eel curious.
[00:48:02]  No.
[00:48:02]  No, you're not.
[00:48:04]  Stop it.
[00:48:05]  You can buy things that do the same thing.
[00:48:08]  You can buy things that are not live eels to do the same thing.
[00:48:12]  You can get robotic stuff that does the same exact thing.
[00:48:15]  You could also get an ovipositor if you're really into that.
[00:48:18]  That is completely different.
[00:48:23]  I object to you doing this comparison.
[00:48:27]  Those are classy.
[00:48:28]  Okay.
[00:48:29]  I think they're neat.
[00:48:30]  All right.
[00:48:30]  Anyway.
[00:48:32]  Quoting the doctor, the eel's already dead, but it's caused severe bacterial contamination in his abdomen due to buildup of feces and pus.
[00:48:43]  It was only after surgery when we were inquiring after his medical, when we were inquiring about his medical history, that he told us he used the eel to cure his constipation.
[00:48:54]  He inserted it up his anus into his rectum.
[00:48:56]  I suspect it was then that the perforation of his sigmoid colon occurred.
[00:49:00]  I also suspect that.
[00:49:01]  That is also my guess, is that it occurred afterwards.
[00:49:05]  Yeah.
[00:49:05]  Yeah, that sounds right.
[00:49:07]  Because he had inserted the live eel into himself, the chances of him dying were quite high had he not had the surgery in time.
[00:49:13]  Again, quoting the doctor.
[00:49:16]  The doctor said that the constipation cure folk remedy thing is he warned members of the public against doing this for some reason.
[00:49:27]  Yeah.
[00:49:28]  The patient got discharged days later and then allegedly purchased the common freshwater eel from a wet market, according to the hospital.
[00:49:34]  So we got one more.
[00:49:37]  One more.
[00:49:38]  A man, again, in the Guangzhou province of East China, inserted a 20-centimeter long eel into his rectum on July 20th, 2021, allegedly in hopes of relieving constipation.
[00:49:49]  But instead, it almost took his life after the eel entered his abdomen.
[00:49:53]  He finally went to the doctor after enduring pain on the first day, as he was, but on the first day, he didn't go.
[00:50:01]  Basically, he didn't go on the first day, but went on the second day because he was too shy to see a doctor.
[00:50:06]  Yeah, well, okay.
[00:50:07]  Tough to explain this to the doc.
[00:50:10]  That keeps being an issue in these.
[00:50:11]  This is an issue in these.
[00:50:13]  I would say the primary issue is putting a drug.
[00:50:15]  Putting eels up your butt.
[00:50:17]  Yeah.
[00:50:17]  Okay.
[00:50:18]  The doctor who did the operation said that he could have lost his life as the bacteria in the large intestine may have caused hemollosis when it reached the abdominal Jesus Christ. Abdominal cavity.
[00:50:31]  There we go.
[00:50:32]  There we go.
[00:50:32]  You did it.
[00:50:33]  According to the Chinese news outlet Global Times, what motivated the man to do so was a folk remedy that says the eel can help with bowel movement.
[00:50:40]  But instead of curing the constipation, the eel went inside the man's rectum into the colon and bit through it entering from the colon into the abdomen.
[00:50:48]  The eel was still alive by the time it was removed during operation.
[00:50:51]  Good for the eel.
[00:50:52]  I hope it's lived a full life.
[00:50:54]  So this is where things are going to kind of tie back to eel horse.
[00:50:58]  I was waiting for that.
[00:50:59]  I think a lot of these incidents are in fact not due to constipation.
[00:51:03]  And are people just using that as an excuse?
[00:51:06]  So they don't have to admit the slightly more embarrassing reasoning being that they thought it was hot.
[00:51:12]  Because remember, only the first guy you mentioned actually admitted it to being a kink thing back in 2013.
[00:51:17]  But ever since the first story in 2017 of a guy claiming it's constipation, everyone is using this reason now.
[00:51:24]  And I think a lot of these incidents are actually also kink stuff.
[00:51:29]  So, back to the figging, again, derived from figing with the horse.
[00:51:35]  With the rise of internet and porn, I think, you know, this stuff's been getting more popular.
[00:51:43]  And once the ginger figging isn't exciting you anymore, you know what you're going to do.
[00:51:48]  That's right, baby.
[00:51:49]  Return to tradition and use the original horse figging tool, the live eel.
[00:51:53]  And that's what's going on.
[00:51:55]  So, I talked to our doctor friend Kava, who specializes in colon.
[00:52:01]  Yeah, who specializes in like colon.
[00:52:03]  He's the kind of doctor.
[00:52:04]  You want to do that?
[00:52:05]  He is the exact doctor to deal with this.
[00:52:07]  So, I talked to him about this, and he said he's heard of this constipation excuse before, but he too and he and his and his colleagues are skeptical and think that the constipation excuse is actually bullshit.
[00:52:20]  Sure.
[00:52:21]  He told me that people get pretty creative when they start coming up with excuses for things they put in their rectum.
[00:52:27]  Like, he gave them examples as I was doing pull-ups over a shampoo bottle, or I had an itch as you know, reasons people bullshit for why they find weird things up their butt.
[00:52:40]  So, Kava says that this is probably, probably a sex thing, and he doesn't, he could not find any basis for this folk remedy.
[00:52:50]  Like, he could not see where this idea actually comes from.
[00:52:53]  He talked to like, to like Chinese doctor, friends of his, like, no, like, this isn't a thing.
[00:52:58]  Like, we don't know where this, this isn't actually a thing.
[00:53:01]  Um, and like, from my cursory examination, um, eel and more broadly, like, tentacle stuff is generally more popular in Asia and Japan and China than it is in the States.
[00:53:12]  Generally.
[00:53:13]  I mean, it's, there is definitely its own thing here, but a lot of that also does come from anime.
[00:53:19]  Most of most of the tentacle stuff is a red anime.
[00:53:23]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:53:23]  And so, I also talked with our friend Chris about this, and we surmised that the reason why this may be way more common in the Guangdong and eastern Chinese provinces is because those two areas produce an absurd amount of the world's eel exports.
[00:53:40]  And then the amount of eel exports have been rapidly increasing over the past 20 years, which means the people in those provinces have eels just around like way, and like they're way more common and way more easily accessible than anywhere else in the world, basically.
[00:53:54]  So, like, you can actually.
[00:53:55]  And they're a lot cheaper than whatever eel-based sex toys you're about to suggest, Garrison.
[00:53:59]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:54:00]  Thinking people ought to pay money when there's free eels lying around to get off with.
[00:54:06]  Because the other thing is, I've tried to really find all references to this folk remedy, folklore, method of curing constipation, and it only tracks back to this one 2017 article.
[00:54:19]  And anything before that, and the one 2003 incident as well.
[00:54:24]  But that's it.
[00:54:25]  There's no other, there's really no other basis for there actually being of folklore origin.
[00:54:30]  So, like, if any listeners have knowledge of this tracking back before 2003, please, please let me know.
[00:54:37]  Because I've tried looking, I've spent days, days, days looking for information about eel anal constipation cures pre-2003 and pre-2017, and it's just I can't find anything.
[00:54:53]  So, and doctors in China also agree with this assessment.
[00:54:57]  I'm gonna read, this is one final thing.
[00:55:00]  I'm gonna be looking at there is one study from China looking at the eel anus phenomenon.
[00:55:08]  So, they did an actual study on this because it kept being a problem.
[00:55:12]  Self-introduction of an eel into the anus causing colonic perforation is uncommon.
[00:55:17]  But when it occurs, the reason may be due to a bizarre belief, an inadvertent sexual behavior, or a criminal assault.
[00:55:24]  The situation is more common in men, about four to one.
[00:55:28]  And once a live eel is inserted into the colon, it will bite through the wall of the colon, migrating into the abdominal cavity through perforation, resulting in an accidental or opportunistic human pathogen similar to the Vibrio volithinicus infection.
[00:55:45]  Cool.
[00:55:46]  Okay.
[00:55:47]  Diagnosing a colonic foreign body can be challenging because patients often deny the insertion.
[00:55:52]  They may have obscure anal pain, mucus discharge, lax anal tone, and fresh bleeding from the rectum.
[00:55:58]  Man, just an incredible number of band names in that sentence you just said.
[00:56:04]  The most common presenting clinical features of colotic perforation are peritonal irritation with rebound tenderness and rigidity of the abdomen accompanied by fever and rapid heartbeat.
[00:56:14]  These features should raise the suspicion of a presence of a colonic foreign body.
[00:56:18]  Plain radiographs are useful in diagnosing the perforations.
[00:56:21]  However, a CT scan is recommended if the findings are not definitive or if the presence of a foreign body cannot be ruled in or out by radiographs alone.
[00:56:29]  So yeah, this is how we get from putting eels up horses' butts to make them seem younger and carry their tail high and well to people dying and almost dying from eels eating their insides because you saw it in a porn video.
[00:56:43]  Excellent.
[00:56:43]  But I just really do love the actual linguistic pathway of feeging and then feeging changing from eels to ginger, then the ginger thing changing from feeging to figging for sex, and then it going back to eels.
[00:56:59]  It's like full circle.
[00:57:00]  It's just a beautiful beauty of life.
[00:57:03]  It's like poetry.
[00:57:04]  I know.
[00:57:04]  It rhymes.
[00:57:05]  It's like poetry.
[00:57:05]  It rhymes.
[00:57:06]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:57:06]  Yeah.
[00:57:07]  It's amazing how just a complete full circle moment of starting with eels with feeging and ending with eels with figging.
[00:57:15]  I love the human language.
[00:57:17]  Humans are great, except for all the horrible things that we do.
[00:57:20]  So yeah, this is, again, we probably shouldn't be doing this as there's like a global pandemic and wasting hospital space because you keep shoving eels up your butt.
[00:57:28]  Like a lot of these were from like three.
[00:57:30]  Three of these were from 2020.
[00:57:32]  Like guys, recommendation officially.
[00:57:37]  No, stop.
[00:57:38]  Stop doing it.
[00:57:39]  It's funny.
[00:57:40]  Get it up in there.
[00:57:41]  Robert, you can buy.
[00:57:43]  You can buy toys that do the same thing.
[00:57:45]  Robert.
[00:57:45]  You're going to do eels.
[00:57:47]  Eels can't consent.
[00:57:48]  Respectfully, Robert.
[00:57:50]  Shut the fuck up.
[00:57:51]  The eels can't consent.
[00:57:52]  Get them in you.
[00:57:53]  The eels can't consent.
[00:57:55]  Listen to Garrison.
[00:57:56]  Do not listen to Robert.
[00:57:57]  That is the fastest way.
[00:58:00]  This actually does bring us full circle because what is perfectly safe and what is perfectly ethical is using ethically slaughtered horse and ethically fished eels to make an eel horse.
[00:58:12]  I mean, it is more ethical.
[00:58:14]  It is more ethical than shoving an eel up your friend's butt as they are asleep and then them dying.
[00:58:19]  That is true.
[00:58:20]  So anyway, that is the ballad of eel horse and how we get from eel horse to our modern eel anal epidemic.
[00:58:28]  Perfect, perfect lineage, just amazing lineage.
[00:58:31]  Ah.
[00:58:31]  If you're out there and you've got a horse that's about to die of natural causes, we want to put eels in it and cook it.
[00:58:38]  God.
[00:58:39]  So hit us up.
[00:58:39]  I would like to know.
[00:58:40]  Find us somebody.
[00:58:40]  Sophie, what's our email?
[00:58:42]  I would like to be excluded from this narrative, but it is.
[00:58:45]  It is coolzone media at iHeartMedia.com.
[00:58:49]  CoolZone Media at iHeartMedia.com.
[00:58:52]  Find us.
[00:58:52]  It's horribly, horribly, horribly named D-Mail.
[00:58:56]  If you've got a lion on a significant quantity of raw eels, we might need that too, but I think I can probably.
[00:59:04]  I'm going to end the call.
[00:59:06]  You're going to cook the eel horse with me, Garrison.
[00:59:08]  That's going to happen when we finally get the horse and the eels.
[00:59:13]  Can I just say, Garrison?

=== CIA Crimes Against Humanity Debate (05:45) ===

[00:59:14]  I'm sorry.
[00:59:16]  I'm sorry I had to watch so many of these videos.
[00:59:18]  I'm sorry you had to watch so many of those videos, too.
[00:59:20]  Purely academic.
[00:59:21]  Purely academic.
[00:59:22]  In fairness, absolutely no one asked you to do this.
[00:59:29]  No one ever would have asked you to do this.
[00:59:35]  We're asking you, the listener at home, to check us out wherever podcasts are found.
[00:59:41]  Behind the bastards, that could happen here.
[00:59:47]  I wrote a book called After the Revolution.
[00:59:50]  Maybe the sequel will include an eel horse if it's tasty.
[00:59:53]  Maybe that's the future of food.
[00:59:54]  There's no way to know.
[00:59:55]  I do like that this is, I know we've covered a lot of darker topics on Behind the Bastards more recently.
[01:00:00]  I do like this.
[01:00:00]  This is a very nice light beacon in like the bastard's totem pole.
[01:00:04]  We are pretty low relatively.
[01:00:07]  I mean, still, it's like the Phoenix program is pretty high, but like the horse salesman thing, they're pretty bad, but they're on the lower end.
[01:00:16]  I mean, it is, it is animals.
[01:00:19]  They're on the lower end of bastards.
[01:00:21]  So I do like to have a bit of a lighter presence in this episode.
[01:00:25]  So you're welcome for that.
[01:00:27]  And yep, I'm done talking about this topic.
[01:00:29]  We're done.
[01:00:30]  Bye.
[01:00:30]  Awesome.
[01:00:30]  All right.
[01:00:31]  Come over, Garrison.
[01:00:32]  I'm going to cook Crocodile tonight.
[01:00:34]  I found a place that'll sell.
[01:00:35]  I am coming.
[01:00:36]  I'm coming right over, actually.
[01:00:38]  Incredible.
[01:00:38]  Excellent.
[01:00:39]  Bye, Brady.
[01:00:40]  Bye.
[01:00:40]  Bye.
[01:00:44]  Hey, everybody.
[01:00:44]  Wanted to record a note.
[01:00:46]  Some people on the subreddit got quite frustrated about some of the claims about the Phoenix program.
[01:00:53]  They pointed out an Ask Historians thread, which doesn't put any shade on the specific claims made by the author, Douglas Valentine's, about the eels and whatnot, but does generally have issues with his sourcing.
[01:01:08]  At least one of his sources was a guy that's very common when you're talking about Vietnam, which is like some dude who pretended to have done something that he hadn't or to have had a position that he hadn't.
[01:01:18]  You find this a lot on like both sides of the war crimes discussion.
[01:01:21]  I wanted to note that, number one, I'm not entirely convinced by that Ask Historians thread because it's just a guy talking about why he doesn't think this is particularly credible.
[01:01:32]  In that thread, he talks about one of his justifications is that eliminating insurgent infrastructure at a ground level is a basic counterinsurgency tactic, which, yeah, it is a basic counterinsurgency tactic.
[01:01:44]  Counterinsurgency operations nearly always involve significant war crimes.
[01:01:48]  And you can see that no matter who is doing the counterinsurgency, whether it's Kenya or Afghanistan with the Russians, you know, it's war crimes are part and parcel of counterinsurgency.
[01:02:00]  The mess is kind of one of the reasons why we don't generally delve into this territory too much without doing it in a dedicated episode is that when you're talking about like crimes against humanity, specifically ones the CIA was involved in, you've got a couple of different sources.
[01:02:18]  Some of them are going to be declassified documents, which, you know, in a lot of cases you actually do have.
[01:02:22]  Here's the CIA talking about fucked up shit they did.
[01:02:25]  But a lot of information was destroyed.
[01:02:27]  A lot of stuff never got written down.
[01:02:28]  And so a lot of times when you're talking about war crimes in a variety of countries, you're getting human sources.
[01:02:34]  Some of those will be victims.
[01:02:36]  Some of those will be guys who were in the CIA or who were in another military branch and who there's always different kind of levels of credibility and kind of shortcomings and inconsistencies in their stories.
[01:02:48]  And it's all sort of complicated by the fact that debate over U.S. war crimes in Vietnam within the United States is incredibly political.
[01:02:57]  You can look at this when you're just trying to determine the actual body count, right?
[01:03:00]  There's a massive ongoing debate about how many civilians were killed, specifically and how many civilians were killed by the United States, but just how many died in general in Vietnam and Cambodia.
[01:03:11]  And you can find historians arguing ad nauseum about this.
[01:03:16]  One of the big debates with a lot of the kind of ground-level war crimes, because on any objective level, the majority of war crimes, the U.S. is responsible in Vietnam were committed from the air.
[01:03:25]  But when you're talking about ground-level war crimes, like we were talking about here, you'll run into a couple of different books, Nick Terce's Kill Anything That Moves and Gary Kulik's War Stories.
[01:03:35]  And these are very opposed books, and you can find a lot of criticism about Terce's book online by historians.
[01:03:43]  Kulik, who's critical of Terce, is generally seen as more credible.
[01:03:47]  Kulik was also a U.S. soldier in Vietnam.
[01:03:52]  And again, so there's always this tremendous amount of bias, kind of no matter where you come at it from.
[01:03:58]  And other people will point out that a lot of the early like push to talk about U.S. war crimes in Vietnam was funded by Hanoi, which you can say, yeah, and of course they have an agenda, but also, but yeah, they were also the victims of a lot of war crimes.
[01:04:10]  So this is just, I don't know.
[01:04:12]  This is not a case where I feel like we necessarily got something wrong because I'm not convinced that the Douglas Valentine book is wrong, especially based on the evidence that we have.
[01:04:24]  But it is worth noting that there is a tremendous amount of debate over all of this.
[01:04:28]  And as a general rule, when we delve into stuff like this, we will try to make sure that it's in a thing focused on that so that we can actually cover the swath of historiography on the subject rather than kind of pass over a little bit of it and then lead people to think that, okay, well, what about this?
[01:04:49]  What about this argument?
[01:04:50]  What about that argument?
[01:04:52]  This is all incredibly political history.
[01:04:54]  So that's what you get.

=== Covering the Full Historiography (02:24) ===

[01:04:59]  On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budgetista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
[01:05:10]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
[01:05:16]  We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never ever taught.
[01:05:25]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
[01:05:31]  Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[01:05:41]  Earners, what's up?
[01:05:42]  Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth.
[01:05:48]  On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship.
[01:05:55]  From stocks to real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, our goal is simple: make financial literacy accessible for everyone.
[01:06:03]  Because when you understand the system, you can start to build within it.
[01:06:06]  Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Earn Your Leisure, and listen now.
[01:06:11]  Readers, Katie's finalists, Publicists.
[01:06:13]  We have an incredible new episode this week for you guys.
[01:06:16]  We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode.
[01:06:20]  They put on Lizzie McGuire at 2 a.m. video on demand.
[01:06:23]  This guy's 2 a.m.
[01:06:24]  2 a.m.
[01:06:25]  Whatever time it is.
[01:06:25]  Lizzie McGuire and I'm wild.
[01:06:27]  Wild Back to the Lake.
[01:06:28]  It was like a first closet moment for me where I was like, you're like, I don't feel like she's hot like the rest of them.
[01:06:33]  No, no, no.
[01:06:34]  I was like, she's beautiful, but I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are.
[01:06:38]  I'm not like, listen to Las Culturistas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:06:50]  You know the famous author Roald Dahl.
[01:06:52]  He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG.
[01:06:54]  But did you know he was a spy?
[01:06:57]  Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
[01:07:03]  All episodes are out now.
[01:07:05]  Was this before he wrote his stories?
[01:07:07]  It must have been.
[01:07:08]  What?
[01:07:09]  Okay, I don't think that's true.
[01:07:10]  I'm telling you, the guy was a spy.
[01:07:12]  All 10 episodes of The Secret World of Rolled Dahl now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:07:20]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:07:22]  Guaranteed human.