Weird Little Guys

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Latest Episodes:

Race Scientists and the Human Zoo Aug 27, 2026

Show notes

In 1904, men who believed in 'race science' put hundreds of people in a human zoo at the St. Louis world's fair. Today, those same racist, pseudoscientific views persist, and the men who hold them demand to be taken seriously in the name of academic freedom.
Sources & Further Reading:
Newkirk, Pamela (2015). Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga. Amistad.
Saini, Angela (2019). Superior: The Return of Race Science. Beacon Press.
McCray, Carrie Allen (2012). Ota Benga Under My Mother’s Roof. University of South Carolina Press.
Gould, Stephen Jay (1996). The Mismeasure of a Man. Penguin Books.
Nathan Cofnas’ Doctoral Thesis: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bd78170f-1131-47ef-af8d-7a3bb2ef41d0
https://jannalangholz.wordpress.com/2022/12/26/17-worlds-fair-deaths/
https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/specimen-days-human-zoos-at-the-1904-worlds-fair/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070610034510/http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Bontoc.html
https://ashp.cuny.edu/documentaries-list/savage-acts-wars-fairs-and-empire-1898-1904/#
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/how-i-became-the-scapegoat-in-the-jason-arday-affair-dc134088
https://investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/race-science-inc/
https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/2007046/ghent-university-under-fire-for-appointing-us-philosopher-with-ties-to-scientific-racism
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial-science/article/abs/reptiles-with-a-conscience-the-coevolution-of-religious-and-moral-doctrine-by-nathan-cofnas-pp-523-ulster-institute-for-social-research-press-london-2012-3000-isbn-9780956881151-paperback/4005A8AD3C5B21AC0A82A38D5D97BBF8
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/03/the-man-who-was-caged-in-a-zoo
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/nyregion/thecity/the-scandal-at-the-zoo.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cevmrjd9lj1o
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/06/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/largest-human-zoo-world-history

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Mississippi's Still Burning: Byron de la Beckwith Pt 7 Aug 20, 2026

Show notes

In 1994, Byron de la Beckwith was finally convicted of murder for killing Medgar Evers in 1963. He died in prison, his story is over. But history repeats itself.
Sources & Further Reading:
Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.
DeLaughter, Bobby (2001). Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case. Scribner.
Mitchell, Jerry (2020). Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era. Simon & Schuster.
Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.
Newton, Michael (2010). The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. McFarland & Company, Inc.
Dittmer, John (1994). Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. University of Illinois Press.
Ball, Howard (2004). Murder in Mississippi. University Press of Kansas.
Snipe, Tracy (2021). The 5th Little Girl: Soul Survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, The Sarah Collins Rudolph Story. Africa World Press.
Doyle, William (2001). An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi 1962. Doubleday.
Nossiter, Adam (1994). Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/719/1345/1438234/
https://shadowproof.com/2018/03/07/documents-reveal-police-targeting-anti-racists-charlottesville/
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/4404359-DHS-Bulletin-Aug-9/
https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2007/may/30/dredging-up-the-past-why-mississippians-must-tell/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/us-government-spied-anti-ice-protesters
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/us/politics/dhs-inquiry-immigration-protests-minnesota.html
https://abc7chicago.com/post/ice-minneapolis-news-agents-claim-alberto-castaeda-mondragn-hit-wall-shattered-skull-triggers-tension-hospital/18514566/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72504545/ge-v-immigration-and-customs-enforcement/

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No Golf No Masters: Celebrating Our Ungovernable Peccary Friends Aug 17, 2026

Show notes

James talks with Molly Conger about the javelina and their installable appetite for golf courses.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65x0RvhJNa8

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/nov/05/conservation.sciencenews

https://zoologicalbulletin.de/BzB_Volumes/Volume_56_1_2/049_054_BzB56_1_2_Moraves_Jiri_and_B%C3%B6hme_Wolfgang.pdf

https://www.azgfd.com/wildlife-conservation/living-with-wildlife/living-with-javelina/

https://content.civicplus.com/api/assets/8e8abbf4-6775-4575-9a10-fedacb7cb2c1

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The Fiery Cross: Byron de la Beckwith, Pt 6 Aug 13, 2026

Show notes

In 1964, crosses burned all over Mississippi, signaling a return of the Ku Klux Klan. Their big debut was perfectly timed as a show of support for Byron de la Beckwith.
Sources & Further Reading:
Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.
DeLaughter, Bobby (2001). Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case. Scribner.
Mitchell, Jerry (2020). Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era. Simon & Schuster.
Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.
Sims, Patsy (1978). Stein & Day.
Nelson, Stanley (2016). Devils Walking: Klan Murders Along the Mississippi in the 1960s. Louisiana State University Press.
Dirks, Annelieke. “Between Threat and Reality: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Emergence of Armed Self-Defense in Clarksdale and Natchez, Mississippi, 1960-1965.” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, pp. 71–98.
Ball, Howard (2004). Murder in Mississippi. University Press of Kansas.
Hamm, Mark (2017). The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism. Columbia University Press
Biondi, K., and J. Curtis. 2018. “From Structural to Stochastic Violence.” Association for Political and Legal Anthropology.
Newton, Michael (2010). The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. McFarland & Company, Inc.
Dittmer, John (1994). Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. University of Illinois Press.
Payne, Charles (1995). I’ve Got The Light of Freedom. University of California Press.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/accused-in-1964-mississippi-race-slayings-wrote-hate-letter-1.668898

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The First Trial: Byron de la Beckwith, Pt 5 Aug 06, 2026

Show notes

Byron de la Beckwith was tried for the same murder three times. In 1964, it just wasn't generally considered illegal for a white man to kill a black man in Mississippi.

Sources & Further Reading:

Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.

DeLaughter, Bobby (2001). Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case. Scribner.

Mitchell, Jerry (2020). Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era. Simon & Schuster.

Evers, Myrlie (1967). For Us, The Living. Doubleday & Company.

Tyson, Timothy (2017). The Blood of Emmett Till. Simon & Schuster

Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.

Martin, Ralph (1983). A Hero For Our Time. Bandwagon, Inc.

Baden, Michael (2006). Exhumation. in Spitz & Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death.

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Rabid on the Subject of Segregation: Byron de la Beckwith, Pt 4 Jul 30, 2026

Show notes

In the months leading up to the murder of Medgar Evers, the man who killed him was watching his world crumble. Byron de la Beckwith had dedicated his life to the cause of segregation, but it was a losing battle. The governor of Mississippi had backed down, allowing a second black student to enter Ole Miss. Governor George Wallace in Alabama backed down, too. Integration was creeping in all over. That, and his wife left him.

Sources & Further Reading:

Doyle, William (2001). An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi 1962. Doubleday.

Lambert, Frank (2010). The Battle of Ole Miss: Civil Rights vs States’ Rights. Oxford University Press.

Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.

Metzl, Jonathan (2009). The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became A Black Disease. Beacon Press.

Rolph, Stephanie (2018). Resisting Equality: The Citizens' Council, 1954-1989. Louisiana State University Press

Smith, Frank (1964). Congressman From Mississippi. Capricorn Books.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/race/100262race-ra.html

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/citizens_news/index.3.html

https://www.southernfoodways.org/the-greenwood-food-blockade/

https://snccdigital.org/events/leflore-county-cuts-off-surplus-commodities/

https://snccdigital.org/people/dick-gregory/

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/22/us/samuel-block-60-civil-rights-battler-dies.html

https://www.crmvet.org/docs/src/6210_src_ns.pdf

https://themilitant.com/1962/2633/MIL2633.pdf

https://snccdigital.org/people/lawrence-guyot/

https://snccdigital.org/events/jimmy-travis-shot-greenwood/

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/multimedia/medgar-evers-and-jackson-movement.html

https://www.wlbt.com/video/2026/07/15/medgar-evers-historic-1963-wlbt-speech-missing-over-six-decades/

https://da.mdah.ms.gov/vault/projects/OHtranscripts/AU_MP198001_119_098611.pdf

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Black Monday: Byron de la Beckwith, Pt. 3 Jul 23, 2026

Show notes

In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Segregated schools didn't react right away, but segregationists did. Within months, the Citizens' Councils began to form in counties across Mississippi. And Byron de la Beckwith was one of the group's earliest and most enthusiastic members.
Sources & Further Reading:
Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.
Rolph, Stephanie (2018). Resisting Equality: The Citizens' Council, 1954-1989. Louisiana State University Press
Silver, James W (1963). Mississippi: The Closed Society. Harcourt Brace & World Inc.
Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.
Williams, Michael Vinson (2011). Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr. The University of Arkansas Press
Cook, James Graham (1962). The Segregationists. Appleton Century Crofts
McMillen, Neil (1971). The Citizens’ Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction, 1954-1964. University of Illinois Press
Mendelsohn, Jack (1966). The Martyrs. Harper & Row
https://www.mississippifreepress.org/buried-truth-unresolved-disregarded-lamar-smith-murder-haunts-lincoln-county/
Cashion, S. A. (2013). "And So We Moved Quietly": Southern Methodist University and Desegregation, 1950-1970. Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Delao, Frank Delao, "Containing Communism in Texas: How the Right Interpreted the Cold War, 1945-1965" (2016).Open Access
Theses & Dissertations. 633
Rich, Evelyn (1988). "Ku Klux Klan Ideology, 1954-1988" Graduate Theses and Dissertations
https://supremecourthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Volume-37-Number-3-2012.pdf

https://usm.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/SO_eea548ac-a609-4b6f-be15-7ae300c2206b

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/7/27/al-aqsa-one-encroachment-too-many

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Sons of Mississippi: Byron de la Beckwith, Pt. 2 Jul 16, 2026

Show notes

Byron de la Beckwith and Medgar Evers never met. Evers didn’t even see the man who killed him. But the man and his killer grew up a hundred miles apart, fought in the same war, worked similar jobs, and were both deeply invested in the outcome over the fight for integration.

Sources & Further Reading:

Massengill, Reed (2024). Portrait of a racist: Byron De La Beckwith and the Assassination of Medgar Evers. Univ. of Tennessee Press.

Mendelsohn, Jack. (1966) The martyrs : sixteen who gave their lives for racial justice. Harper & Row

Vollers, Maryanne (1995). Ghosts of Mississippi. Little Brown & Company.

Rolph, Stephanie (2018). Resisting Equality: The Citizens' Council, 1954-1989. Louisiana State University Press

Williams, Michael Vinson (2011). Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr. The University of Arkansas Press

Evers, Charles and Andrew Szanton (1997). Have No Fear: The Charles Evers Story. John Wiley & Sons Inc

Tisale, John (1996). Medgar Evers (1925-1963) and the Mississippi Press. Doctoral Dissertation, University of North Texas

Sheridan, Louis (2021) "Patriotism Betrayed: How the U.S. Military Resegregated From 1913-1939," Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II : Vol. 26, Article 11.

Donaldson, Le'Trice, "A Legacy All Their Own: African American Soldiers Fight for Citizenship, Race, and
Manhood, 1870-1920" (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1167.
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/etd/1167

Hartgrove, W. B. “The Negro Soldier in the American Revolution.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. 1, no. 2, 1916, pp. 110–31. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3035634.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1963/07/06/where-is-the-voice-coming-from

https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/welty/welty-manuscripts/weltys08

https://press.bobmizer.org/releases/instant-gratification

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/20/books/my-uncle-the-bigot.html

https://www.history.com/articles/battle-of-tarawa

https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/Tarawa/InvasionCasualties

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/marine-killed-battle-tarawa-laid-rest-80-years-later

https://www.oyez.org/about-audio

https://www.army.mil/article/97705/black_soldiers_in_the_revolutionary_war

https://diaryofahistorian.com/2013/03/05/for-evers-his-is-a-story-that-must-be-told-and-retold-too-few-young-people-know-his-story-and-that-is-a-tragedy-greater-than-his-untimely-death/

https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2021/11/10/african-american-seamen-of-the-antebellum-era/

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/CombatMultipliers.pdf

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CZM Rewind: The Roommates & In Minecraft Jul 09, 2026

Show notes

It's a Weird Little Guys classic episode - the story of the Atomwaffen member who murdered two other Atomwaffen members. Stay tuned until the end for some updates to the story.
Sources & Further Reading:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67075979/united-states-v-clendaniel/

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71119306/united-states-v-brandon-russell/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/white-power-newsletter-neo-nazi-accelerationism-behind-bars/

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/13/fbi-surveillance-terrorist-attack-00141200

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-did-a-convicted-neo-nazi-release-propaganda-from-prison-628437/
The Roommates
In 2017, police investigating a double homicide found more than just bodies in a Tampa condo. The founder of a neonazi group was making bombs in the garage.

Original Air Date: 8.7.25
Sources:
https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-threat-is-the-network-the-multi-node-structure-of-neo-fascist-accelerationism/

https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/visions-chaos-weighing-violent-legacy-iron-march/

https://ironmarch.noblogs.org/post/2019/11/15/meet-lauren-paul-mit-alumni-and-neo-nazi-atomwaffen-division-propagandist/

https://www.bu.edu/articles/2016/police-release-video-of-suspect-in-hate-poster-distribution/

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2019/12/19/transnational-white-terror-exposing-atomwaffen-and-the-iron-march-networks/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/all-american-nazis-628023/

In Minecraft

After Devon Arthurs murdered his roommates, he claimed he'd only done it to prevent the loss of innocent lives. The man he said was planning a terrorist attack was arrested with a car full of guns, but not charged with any of the things Arthurs claimed their nazi terror cell had been working on.

Original Air Date: 8.14.25
Sources:
https://www.propublica.org/article/an-atomwaffen-member-sketched-a-map-to-take-the-neo-nazis-down-what-path-officials-took-is-a-mystery

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/three-murder-suspects-linked-to-atomwaffen-where-their-cases-stand/

https://www.bradenton.com/news/local/crime/article156282099.html

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nicholas-giampa-neo-nazi-teenager-murder-girlfriends-parents-virginia_n_5a4d0797e4b0b0e5a7aa4780

https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/academics/centers-initiatives/ctec/ctec-publications/dangerous-organizations-and-bad-actors-4

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/documenting-hate-new-american-nazis/transcript/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjEBXDfuBDE&ab_channel=COURTTV

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I Watched Uwe Boll's Far Right Power Fantasy So You Don't Have To Jul 02, 2026

Show notes

This week, Molly watched Citizen Vigilante, a new film from the world's worst director.
Sources & Further Reading:
https://scoutmagazine.ca/remembering-gastowns-ambitious-but-doomed-modern-german-restaurant/

https://www.dailysabah.com/arts/cinema/hanau-attack-film-angers-victims-families