With the newly formed Free Congo State in his possession, Leopold II was determined to extract all the ivory and rubber he could. But in the process, his colonial agents wreaked havoc on the indigenous people, slaughtering, torturing, and enslaving Africans.
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Nov 2022
Thanksgiving Special: Just Add Arsenic
Over the ages, arsenic has had many lives — beauty fad, household product, medical prescription… and weapon of choice wielded by killers everywhere from Alabama to ancient Rome. Brine your turkey, knead your dough, and listen to our Thanksgiving Special on the regime-changing, as ... Show More
42m 41s
Feb 2025
539. Horror in the Congo: The Crimes of Empire (Part 2)
“A secret society of murderers with a king for a ringleader”.
In 1885 King Leopold of Belgium; an awkward, ruthless, selfish man, was recognised as the sovereign of the Congo. Long determined to carve out his very own private colonial domain, he had alighted upon the Congo - Afr ... Show More
58m 59s
Aug 2020
The Red Paint on Leopold II
<p>Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was a man obsessed with the profits that came with colonization. Using smokescreens of charities and shell corporations, he claimed a private landholding 76x larger than his own nation, and unleashed decades of horror on the land's inhabitants ... Show More
43m 9s
Feb 2025
540. Horror in the Congo: A Conspiracy Unmasked (Part 3)
Exposing the dark pit of human suffering, cruelty and corruption that had long been secretly festering in King Leopold’s Congo, would reveal one of the greatest abuses of human rights in all history, and instigate a human rights campaign that would change the world. Having establ ... Show More
1h 4m
Feb 2025
538. Horror in the Congo: The Nightmare Begins (Part 1)
The story of King Leopold of Belgium’s brutal regime in the Congo Free State, during the late 19th century, is one of the darkest and most important in global history. It is a story of horror - the murky depths of the human soul pushed to its primal limits, European colonialism a ... Show More
1h 3m
Nov 2020
Reckoning with a colonial past
<p>As protests following the killing of George Floyd in the US reverberated around the world this summer, Belgium, like many other countries, experienced its own reckoning: with a brutal colonial past, with the systemic racism that inhibits its black citizens today and with the q ... Show More
26m 8s
Nov 2023
CZM Rewind: Part One: King Leopold II: The First Modern Bastard
<p>Original Air Date: June 12th, 2018</p> <p><br>Have you ever heard of King Leopold II? In Episode 7, Robert is joined by Andrew Ti (Yo, Is This Racist?) and they discuss the King of Belgium, who was the first world leader to be crappy in the true modern sense of the word. His l ... Show More
1h 2m
Feb 2024
Friends of the Congo: The Congolese Struggle for Self-Determination
<p>Passy and Maurice from <em>Friends of the Congo</em> join Breht to discuss the history and the present of the Congo. Together, they discuss their organization, Passy's on-the-ground organizing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the history of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba a ... Show More
1h 20m