541. Heart of Darkness: Fear and Loathing in the Congo

The Rest Is History

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 18.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

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Summary

“The horror! The horror!” Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ - the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's ‘Apocalypse Now’ - is one of the most celebrated literary works of all time, though now increasingly contentious. Based on Conrad’s own terrible journey into the Congo in 1890, and the horrors he beheld there while it was under the sway of King Leopold of Belgium’s monstrous regime, the novella, published in 1899, delves into man’s capacity for evil - the primal beast lurking beneath the surface of all humans - and has long stood as the preeminent cultural representation of European colonialism. It tells the story of Mr Kurtz, a great ivory trader who has disappeared deep into the African interior, and appears to have lost his mind, having penetrated some terrifying, ancient truth. Initially, Conrad’s disturbing account was viewed as the ultimate attack on imperialism, though aspects of the novella have also invited accusations of racism and imperialism, in part owed to Conrad’s own sympathy for Empire. So what is the truth at the heart of 'Heart of Darkness'? And who was Joseph Conrad himself? What horrors did he behold to have inspired such a poignant account of the nightmares within and without…? Join Dominic and Tom as they discuss Joseph Conrad, ‘Heart of Darkness’ and the real life events that inspired it, and the long term reverberations of the novella in culture and literary criticism today. EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restishistory Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Editor: Jack Meek Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening,
0:05.3	early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com
0:12.1	and join the club. That is, the rest is history.com.
0:19.2	Hi, everybody, Dominic Sambrook from The Rest is History here. Now, as you can probably tell from the noise of the pool, I am joined by a friend of the show, Anthony Scaramucci, who is on his island, surrounded by the luxurious trappings of wealthy, is of course, the host of the rest is politics
0:38.6	US. And Anthony and I have a very special announcement. On Sunday, the 30th of March, Anthony is over
0:45.8	in the UK, and we have decided to do a live show together at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London.
0:53.7	Haven't we, Anthony?
0:54.8	We have.
0:55.4	You know, and thank God I'm not British,
0:57.1	because the Brits actually admire my American Arreveste attitude about life, okay?
1:03.3	But in any event, okay, it'd be the first time on stage with Dominic.
1:07.4	I am very excited.
1:08.7	We're going to be doing a show on U.S. political history called
1:12.9	The Rest is Assassinations from Lincoln to JFK, but Dominic and I both know on the 30th of March,
1:21.8	2025, it's the 44th anniversary of the attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan.
1:29.2	So there's not only assassinations here, which are terrible, but there's an attempted
1:33.3	assassination, several of them, Dominic, right, throughout U.S. history.
1:38.1	And so we're excited to go through this and what the impacts were on American history
1:43.4	and global history.
1:44.3	Right. And there's so many great stories. So obviously JFK, you and I disagree about JFK,
1:49.7	because I of course think it was Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone and you think differently.
1:53.8	But there are other stories. You mentioned attempted assassination. So for example, FDR. FDR was
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