Imelda Marcos: Corruption, Power, & 6,000 Pairs of Shoes

[00:00:00] Kyle Risi: a bunch of protesters from the University of the Philippines commandeer the campus radio station where they broadcast the sex tape audio for an entire week on loop.

[00:00:10] Adam Cox: A whole week!? imagine just tuning in and be like, this bit, this is really good. 

[00:00:13] Kyle Risi: Listen, listen, listen, oh, it's going to drop in a second. And then there's a climax. You know how it builds. And then there's a drop. 

[00:00:22] Adam Cox: That's my favorite bit. 

[00:00:25] Kyle Risi: of course this is humiliating for Imelda. Since then, she uses the threat of replaying the tapes again anytime she doesn't get what she wanted from him.

[00:00:33] Adam Cox: And maybe the tape only lasts like a few minutes and it's like, I'll play this again and everyone will know you can't last the night. 

[00:00:40] Kyle Risi: Everyone will be reminded of that pathetic climax that ended in like a...

[00:00:45] Adam Cox: ...thank you. 

[00:00:46]

[00:00:48] Adam Cox: And then the weeping. 

[00:00:51]

[00:00:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah. 

[00:00:55] Jesus [00:01:00]

[00:01:22] Welcome to The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. We're a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering. We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the annuls of your old unread history books, and the who's who of extraordinary people. 

[00:01:40] I'm of course your ringmaster in today's saga, Kyle Reese. 

[00:01:44] And I'm your, toilet attendant in today's episode. Were you not? You were the toilet attendant last week.

[00:01:49] Was I? I'm 

[00:01:50] sure you were. 

[00:01:51] Well, this week I'm doing the female toilets. Last week it was the men's. It's 

[00:01:55] a recurring gig, right? You're no longer a temp. This could be a promising, permanent [00:02:00] role. 

[00:02:00] Adam Cox: It's the only job I can do. I failed at all the other jobs. 

[00:02:02] Kyle Risi: So what are you doing as a toilet attendant this week, Adam? 

[00:02:05] Adam Cox: Um, just a little bit dusting. 

[00:02:10] Kyle Risi: Famously, famously, Females. Pee dust. It just gets everywhere. It's like a construction site in here. Yeah, just make it nice. 

[00:02:18] Adam Cox: Rearrange the flowers. 

[00:02:21] Kyle Risi: Adam, in today's compendium, we are diving into an assembly of glamour, grit, and a closet full of secrets. 

[00:02:29] Adam Cox: Okay. Is this your childhood? 

[00:02:32] Kyle Risi: What are you trying to unpack here? Stop trying to make me unpack my feelings.

[00:02:37] Today I'm telling you the story of the first lady of the Philippines, once a humble beauty pageant winner who married the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos. Now, while he spent his days having countless affairs with hundreds of women. She spent her days spending all of their money on skyscrapers, Picassos, chewing [00:03:00] gum, and even a private safari park on a remote island where she shipped hundreds of wild animals only for them to become so inbred that they would eat them. There are now thousands of these mongoloid animals wandering this remote island in the Philippines. 

[00:03:15] Adam Cox: What a weird bunch of things to spend your money on. Chewing gum to skyscrapers. Skyscrapers for a rich person is probably not that unusual, 

[00:03:23] Kyle Risi: right?

[00:03:23] Adam Cox: Isn't it? Oh, I don't know. 

[00:03:24] Kyle Risi: But the chewing gum, yes, that is. And I'm going to get into that. How much gum is she buying? A lot. But now, Adam, if none of that rings any bells to you, then probably the thing Imelda is most famous for owning is 6, 000 pairs of shoes. Does that ring any bells to you?

[00:03:41] What, do you know anything about the story? Have you heard of it before? 

[00:03:44] Adam Cox: I mean, do you even have to ask? 

[00:03:46] Kyle Risi: No, I really don't. I've learnt my lesson well and truly after 82 episodes. But while the world was distracted by Imelda's Imelda's ostentatious spending and lavish lifestyle, rubbing shoulders with Princess Margaret, President [00:04:00] Nixon And Colonel Gaddafi? The Philippines was falling deeper and deeper into poverty as Imelda continued to plunder her people's treasury reserves. 

[00:04:08] She and her husband stole an estimated 10 billion dollars over the course of their reign, earning them the Guinness World Record for the biggest robbery of a government of all time.

[00:04:19] As the walls closed in on them, desperate to maintain control, Imelda and her husband enacted martial law across the Philippines. Effectively, they made themselves dictators, and together they seized control of the media, they stole even more of their country's wealth, and they imprisoned, tortured, and murdered hundreds of thousands of their people, sparking a revolution leading to the ultimate downfall. Or did it? Because in today's episode of the Compendium, Adam, 

[00:04:48] I'm going to tell you about the extravagant life of Imelda Marcos and the destitution that she drove her people into. I'm going to tell you about their right to power, their outrageous spending antics, and [00:05:00] her infamous reputation. I

[00:05:04] Adam Cox: don't understand what you're saying. These are really quite obscure things. How do you go from 6, 000 shoes to destroying a country? 

[00:05:11] Kyle Risi: I know, man. That's what will happen when you've got wealth and influence and greed you become a dictator and you buy some bloody chewing gum.

[00:05:19] Adam Cox: But you look great in a pair of, um, 

[00:05:22] Kyle Risi: Malone of Balonics? 

[00:05:23] Adam Cox: Oh, I don't know. Maybe like a four inch, a kitten heel, anything. A kitten heel! Some slippers. 

[00:05:28] Kyle Risi: But Adam, most importantly, today I'm going to explain how they went about stealing all of that money, leading to the eventual revolution. And how the story, Adam, is a reminder that even though you cut off that serpent's head, it doesn't mean anything. It's dead. 

[00:05:42] So it's a, it's a bit of a serious episode today, but there is some ridiculousness in it, so that will give us license to laugh at her, 

[00:05:51] Adam Cox: has there been a TV show about this yet? 

[00:05:53] Kyle Risi: Well, there is, um, a couple documentaries. So, the resources that I used today was the film, The [00:06:00] Kingmaker, which is basically a documentary about her life, so it's really worth watching. And there's some real gold bits in there as well. But then also Ruby Wax. Remember Ruby Wax? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So she did an episode called Ruby Wax meets Imelda Marcos.

[00:06:16] And it is just gold because of course, Ruby Wax has no filter, right? So she's asking all these kind of really direct questions about some of these awful things that she had done in her life, obviously shrouded in humor, and her responses are just magical, but of course, Adam, before we get on with the saga that is Imelda Marcos. It's time for 

[00:06:37] Adam Cox: All the Latest Things.

[00:06:38] Kyle Risi: This is a segment of our show where we tell you all about the things we have discovered over the last seven days from weird news to mind boggling facts. This is the compendium of all the latest things. So Adam, what have you got for us today? 

[00:06:55] Adam Cox: Well, I've got some more animal news.

[00:06:57] Kyle Risi: Oh, it's always animal news with you. You're obsessed. 

[00:06:59] Adam Cox: [00:07:00] I love some animal news. Because I know you grew up on the wild plains of South Africa. Running wild and free, of course. Yeah, but did you ever, would you ever, like, go out into your backyard and just, like, feed any animals that were just, I don't know. end up in your backyard, 

[00:07:13] Kyle Risi: well, other than our dogs, that's the only animal I go outside and feed. And even then I probably wouldn't feed him. 

[00:07:19] It would be my mum and dad. Fine, fair enough. So they always say if you start throwing food into your back garden you should be wary of, rats or, I don't know, inviting other sort of pests into your garden.

[00:07:30] Yes, of course. Yeah. Well, a woman started to feed raccoons in her garden. I think it was several decades ago that she started feeding this family of raccoons. 

[00:07:40] Jesus, so she must be a pretty old lady, like in her 70s, 80s, feeding these raccoons. Middle aged to, older. And, there would just be like a handful and she would just give them a few bits of food. And then over time, They would obviously grow and, populate and it's got to a point that more recently she has had to flee her [00:08:00] home because there's been so many raccoons that are just camping out in her back garden waiting to be fed.

[00:08:05] Oh my god, 

[00:08:06] Adam Cox: how many are there? They say up to a hundred and they are hounding her day and night. So she would like 

[00:08:12] Kyle Risi: Lady! Lady! 

[00:08:14] Adam Cox: Hey lady, what about 

[00:08:15] Kyle Risi: now? Lady, you got our food? What about now? 

[00:08:17] Adam Cox: So like, they're scratching at her door or as soon as she drives home and she pulls up into her driveway, they are like scratching at her car, and stuff like that because they're like, literally, they're desperate for food because they're so reliant on her feeding these animals now.

[00:08:31] Kyle Risi: How can she afford to even feed a hundred raccoons like every day? 

[00:08:34] Adam Cox: I don't know because they have must have, grown over a series of years. It's not just all of a sudden a hundred, turn up. But there's a video of them all in her backyard and I don't know, you might not be able to see this very well.

[00:08:45] Kyle Risi: Okay, that's a lot of raccoons. They all look the same though. So weird, isn't it? And they all look like little crooks. Yeah, adam, that's quite terrifying. 

[00:08:55] Adam Cox: Yeah, so she can't leave her house because 

[00:08:58] Kyle Risi: There's a military guy there as 

[00:08:59] Adam Cox: well.

[00:08:59] They've [00:09:00] called the military. That's how bad it's got. So she can't leave her house. She's blocked in at some points, but she's now had to leave her home because they're just too much of a problem to deal with. So what's the plan? What are they going to do? Well, supposedly it's actually illegal to feed large carnivores, such as bears or cougars in the area she is.

[00:09:18] So she perhaps shouldn't have been feeding them in the first place because they carry diseases and things like that. But I think they've had to get pest control into, not kill them, I don't think, but just to take them off their property and find them somewhere else to live. But I just think That is crazy that you've got this many raccoons just, banging on your door.

[00:09:38] Do you remember in Friends when Monica, decided to make, candy for Halloween or whatever it was?

[00:09:43] Kyle Risi: Oh yes, oh yes. 

[00:09:44] Adam Cox: And I just, she tried to do a really nice thing, feed some of her neighbours, and her neighbours just become really unruly and start, demanding candy. 

[00:09:51] Kyle Risi: They don't even know her name. They're like, I bet you don't even know this lady's name. And someone goes, Candy Lady? No, not Candy [00:10:00] Lady. It's a classic episode. That's crazy. But I mean, there are certain animals where I wouldn't grumble too much about. Like if it was cats, I'd be like, more cats, please. 

[00:10:10] Adam Cox: More cats the better. More, 

[00:10:12] Kyle Risi: more. I'm gonna be Cat Lady. I bet you don't even know this guy's name! Cat Man? 

[00:10:17] Adam Cox: Yes. They start scratching at your legs though. So yeah, that's my latest thing for this week. What have you got for us, Kyle? 

[00:10:23] Kyle Risi: So Adam, let me tell you about Tuyoyo. She is the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize winner in medicine for her discovery for the cure for malaria.

[00:10:34] Now this is a story that straddles the fine line between coincidences and destiny. So on destiny, Do you believe that you are here fulfilling a purpose like maybe having to deal with me day in and day out? 

[00:10:49] Adam Cox: I, yeah, I feel like I am doing the world good 

[00:10:54] Kyle Risi: By looking after me, by being my carer.

[00:10:55] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:10:56] Kyle Risi: Well, I mean, you could argue that there are clues to your [00:11:00] destiny hiding in plain sight. All right. And I think the clues lie in our names. Because I'm obviously Kyle Reesey, you are Adam Cox, combine our surnames and you have Greasy Cox, right? Some could say that is a definitive clue of our combined destiny together. 

[00:11:17] Adam Cox: That's, I mean, I don't want to brag about that ever. 

[00:11:21] Kyle Risi: Well, when it comes to Tu Youyou, her name is incredibly unusual, her father was inspired by a line from his favorite poem in a Chinese book of odes. Youyou Lu Ming Shi Yi Xing Hao, which translates to yo yo, the sound that a deer makes, right? While eating wild, Qin Hao. So yo yo is essentially the name that the deer makes, it's like your name being rivets after the sound of a frog. 

[00:11:50] Now, what makes her Nobel Prize win even more unlikely is that Tzu didn't even have a medical degree in medicine. She earned it through her work looking into ancient [00:12:00] Chinese medicine, which many at the time considered pseudoscience. Meaning, like, in the academic world, this wouldn't have gone down very well at all. 

[00:12:07] So the story goes that in the 1960s, during China's Cultural Revolution, Tu Youyou was a young scientist at a time when being an academic was extremely dangerous. Intellects were often persecuted and so she could have been executed for being a scientist.

[00:12:25] So when the Communist Party Luckily, it wasn't to stop her work. They were there to recruit her for a secret project aiming to find a treatment for malaria. And at the time, chinese forces in North Vietnam were being decimated by the disease, the current treatment at the time, chloroquine, was failing due to kind of drug resistance.

[00:12:47] And the thing about malaria is like, it is one of the oldest diseases in the world. It traces back like, 30 million years ago from what they found from mosquitoes trapped in amber. And it is estimated to have killed 5 percent [00:13:00] of all humans who have ever lived on the planet. Wow, that many? 

[00:13:03] Yeah, it's, it's horrendous. So two set out to find an effective treatment. Instead of reviewing, the 240, 000 compounds already screened for malaria, she turned to ancient Chinese medical texts from, like, the Han, the Zhao, and the Qi dynasties from over 2, 000 years ago.

[00:13:21] So For two years, she met with various practitioners and academics to track down these medical manuscripts, and remarkably, she found over 1, 800 traditional recipes. One of those was a remedy on how to fight intermittent fevers, now the directions were to soak a single bunch of leaves from the Qin Hao plant, also known as sweet wormwood, in water and then drink the juice.

[00:13:45] But the remedy was inconsistent. So through trial and error, she discovered that the secret was how the remedy was prepared, including that the leaves needed to be picked before the plant flowered, but most importantly you needed to use cold [00:14:00] water, not warm water. So when Chew then conducted animal trials, it had a 100 percent cure rate. And basically this cure worked by rapidly killing the malaria parasites preventing it from adapting to the treatment. 

[00:14:16] Now due to the secrets of nature of project 253 Chu wouldn't receive credit until 2015 when of she finally won the Nobel Peace Prize in medicine. So Basically, this is a really remarkable story of how this discovery was found in the most unlikely place by probably the most unlikely person, right? Yeah. 

[00:14:39] Adam Cox: Or was it? 

[00:14:40] So you're saying, going back to your original point, she was destined to find this? 

[00:14:44] Kyle Risi: So this is where the question of coincidence versus destiny comes into play, right? many believe that we are put on this planet to fulfill a specific destiny, and sometimes these clues can be hidden in plain sight. Because in the poem where Chew's father took her name from, that [00:15:00] bleating deer, Was actually chewing on a single plant. It was the very same plant that you would later discover to be the cure for malaria. No way! Isn't that incredible? 

[00:15:11] Adam Cox: How like, he probably just, what, liked the name of the plant or whatever and just done that on a whim?

[00:15:16] Kyle Risi: Mm hmm. 

[00:15:17] Adam Cox: And that's ended up being the key to curing malaria. 

[00:15:22] Kyle Risi: Is that a coincidence or is that destiny? But here's another twist, because the drug Chew discovered was later named Artemizin in the West by Western scientists. Now the root of that word comes from the Greek goddess Artemis, who was always depicted being accompanied by one animal, and that was a deer. 

[00:15:41] Adam Cox: Ah, that's just, that is a very weird coincidence if that isn't destiny.

[00:15:45] Kyle Risi: I think it's destiny, man. It's definitely destiny. 

[00:15:48] Adam Cox: So she's only just got the Nobel Peace Prize 

[00:15:51] Kyle Risi: Yeah, so it took recognised as essentially the person who'd come up with a cure for malaria, that it killed historically. 5 percent [00:16:00] of every single human being that has ever lived. 

[00:16:01] Adam Cox: It's kind of crazy to think that 2, 000 years ago, when this ancient medicine books or whatever scrolls were written, we'd already solved it. But we'd forgotten. All about it, almost. It's just crazy, isn't it? Yeah. 

[00:16:14] Kyle Risi: And again, I got this incredible story from The Theory of Everything Else by Dan Schreiber, which is just, at this moment in time, one of my favourite books.

[00:16:22] Absolutely just outstanding. I think I'm going to be potentially doing a few more. All the latest things from his book as the series goes on. But yeah, Adam, that is all my latest things. 

[00:16:33] Should we get on with, uh, Imelda Marcos and her glorious shoes?

[00:16:37] Adam Cox: Let's do it. 

[00:16:38] Kyle Risi: So Adam, Imelda Marcos was known as the Iron Butterfly she was born in 1929. She was one of 11 children in a very well respected family who, when she was born, were fairly wealthy. However, As she got older, the family's financial situation started to wane. [00:17:00] When she was eight years old, Imelda's mother died.

[00:17:03] So her father moved the family from Manila to Laiete, which is a largest kind of island in central Philippines. And it's here she went to university, where she majored in educational studies, landing herself a scholarship to study in Manila. Now, this is where she develops this idea that she has this phenomenal singing voice, which wasn't quite accurate. But the fact that Imelda never wavered in this belief, I think tells us a lot about who she was. 

[00:17:34] Adam Cox: So her parents never said, you know what, maybe you should look at another career choice. 

[00:17:39] Kyle Risi: No, they never did and people will continue to not speak out against that and I think that is probably the root cause of everything that's about to happen.

[00:17:48] Adam Cox: Well, you just have to think about X Factor when all those kids thinking they're like gonna be the next biggest thing because probably their parents or their friends couldn't tell them honestly that they were a terrible singer 

[00:17:58] Kyle Risi: I just love that moment as well when they [00:18:00] finally get told by Simon Cowell that you are not good and the shock There's like all these things happening at the same time.

[00:18:07] They're like, they're going, how can this be? And then they're questioning like, whether or not their parents lied to them and how did they let them get to this point? It's a bit like Ray Gunn from the Olympics, right? The break dancer, where none of her friends ever said, do you not Ray Gunn? No, no, no, no, no. I don't think you should do this. But no, they let her go all the way to the Olympic games. And still they still did not say, 

[00:18:28] Adam Cox: I know, yeah. I guess, I don't know, maybe love is blind? Love is blind! They don't see that their child is, or friend is, that bad? 

[00:18:36] Kyle Risi: I think so. There's something in there and I think it should definitely be studied as a psychological kind of field in psychology.

[00:18:42] Adam Cox: The whole family's deluded perhaps. 

[00:18:44] Kyle Risi: So it's at university where she gets her first taste of politics, running and winning the presidency for the university student council. Overall, she's a great student and she's very popular. She was most remembered for being exceptionally beautiful. She had like these really fine, [00:19:00] delicate features, really high cheekbones. People describe her skin as being like porcelain.

[00:19:05] What made her stand out even more was that she was a lot taller than the average Filipino woman standing around five foot seven. So like a whole six inches taller than the average. So Filipino women are really tiny. Of course, if you're rich and well educated and beautiful, then the most obvious thing that you do is enter beauty pageants, right?

[00:19:23] Right. Which is what she did. And in 1949, she won the title of Rose of Tacloban. When she graduates in 1952, she decides to move back to Manila.

[00:19:35] She figures that this will be the best place to capitalize on her newfound fame as the Rose of Tacloban. So she enters the Miss Manila beauty pageant of that year, which she wins, but It's a bit controversial because someone else also won that year, and the judges couldn't quite decide who to award the title to, so they just declared them both winners, essentially.

[00:19:56] This meant that both of them qualified to compete in the Miss [00:20:00] Philippines pageant, the big one later that year, which she does not win. But, the scandal is enough to make her very famous. So much so, that she became very recognizable to a man named Ferdinand Marcos. This is where our story really takes off.

[00:20:17] So in 1954, Amelda was visiting one of her cousins, who back then was the speaker of the house at Congress. Now one evening at a political dinner, Ferdinand spots her from across the room and immediately recognizes her as Miss Manila, that beauty pageant winner, who caused a bit of a controversial stir the previous year.

[00:20:35] Right, right. So Fernan gets someone to introduce him to her. And as the story goes, within 20 minutes of meeting, despite him already having a common law wife, he proposes. What? 

[00:20:48] Adam Cox: Already? 

[00:20:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah! 20 minutes, Adam. Is his wife also just standing next to him? Ha 

[00:20:53] Adam Cox: ha ha ha ha! 

[00:20:54] Kyle Risi: God damn! Guys, I'm right here.

[00:20:57] Ha ha ha ha! Can nobody see me? Ha [00:21:00] ha ha ha ha! Of course, Imelda, not the type to give away the cream so easily, she rejects his proposal and decides that Ferdinand needs to work a lot harder if he wanted to marry her. So she tells him that she's going away for Easter holidays and he offers to drive her, which she accepts.

[00:21:16] Yes. While his wife is standing there. 

[00:21:19] Adam Cox: Yeah, the wife's gonna be in the back whilst driving her. 

[00:21:22] Kyle Risi: So along with his friend slash wife, potentially, he drives her where she's going. And when they get there, he books into a hotel and every single day he shows up with flowers and gifts. And every single day he proposes again and again. This went on for 11 days, Adam, until finally, she was like, Yes, fine. I'll marry you. Wow, that only took 11 days? 11 days, yeah, to give away the cream, man. 

[00:21:45] So on the 17th of April, 1954, they get married in secret. They don't tell any of the families because, of course, he hadn't done the proper thing and asked for permission. Because he's already married. No, it's common law wife. 

[00:21:56] Adam Cox: Oh, okay, 

[00:21:56] Kyle Risi: fine. Common law. So they're just living together like we are. We're living in sin, [00:22:00] essentially. So when he finally did, they went ahead and had this huge official Catholic wedding. So it really was like a whirlwind kind of marriage.

[00:22:08] So pretty much immediately. Imelda settles into a role as a politician's wife, being very active in helping Ferdinand build his career as a politician. Mostly though, she's just helping out with campaigning where she would visit people, she would host dinners, entertaining other local politicians, basically, anything she could do to try and secure votes and help pass bills that he was interested in passing. 

[00:22:30] Very often during these dinners, she would feel compelled to provide the evening's entertainment herself. And she's going to sing, 

[00:22:37] Adam Cox: isn't she? 

[00:22:38] Kyle Risi: Yes. And let me tell you, Adam, she's not a good singer. When you watch footage of her singing, it's literally cringey because it's, it's not that it's bad. It's that you can tell that she believes that she's phenomenal. She's obviously the wife of a very important politician, so of course nobody's bloody telling her that she can't actually sing. But her confidence is [00:23:00] just so refreshing, and I kind of love her for it.

[00:23:03] It's just that blind, unadulterated confidence and that delusion that comes with that, it's just fantastic. It's just chef's kiss. 

[00:23:11] Adam Cox: And is the whole audience just like smiling and nodding? Probably. Yes, exactly. 

[00:23:16] Kyle Risi: So eventually in 1965, Ferdinand runs for president of the Philippines and with Imelda's help in campaigning, he becomes the 10th president of the Philippines and Imelda Marcos becomes his first lady.

[00:23:28] And it's from this point onwards that Imelda starts to step into the global spotlight. Increasingly, Ferdinand is sending her off to all these different diplomatic meetings with different dignitaries from around the world. He doesn't go with her though, because around this time the cold war is in full swing and so communism was spreading across Asia.

[00:23:49] Ferdinand had become increasingly more and more paranoid that there was going to be some kind of attempt at a coup to establish communism in the country and so because of this he just very rarely left [00:24:00] the country. The palace.

[00:24:00] And because Imelda was just setting off around the globe, this made it very easy for him to become a serial philanderer. Like he's constantly having affairs right there in the palace that he's sharing with Imelda He, I tell you, Adam, is a very busy man because he ends up fathering 17 illegitimate children. No way! That's a lot, right? Shit! And does Imelda know about this? Yes, she does. And of course, sending her on these diplomatic missions wasn't just to get her out of the way.

[00:24:29] Like, she was really And it's how she conducted herself that earns her this nickname as the Iron Butterfly, not just because obviously she was extremely beautiful, but she knew how to charm people. She knew how to charm these men that she was meeting. Very rarely did she ever return without getting what she wanted out of those meetings. And she met with the likes of Saddam Hussein, Colonel Gaddafi, Fidel Castro, Chairman Mao, like Presidents of the United States, the Queen of England. She met with a lot of these dignitaries from around the world. 

[00:24:59] Adam Cox: So is she [00:25:00] doing his business essentially, like going to meet them and like do, I don't know, trade deals, whatever it might be?

[00:25:05] Kyle Risi: Hey, come on, like politics is like a a team game, right? He's leaning into the best of her abilities because she's really good at it. Um, while he can stay home and doing these other things, 

[00:25:16] Adam Cox: like the paperwork and also nailing the maids. 

[00:25:18] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Her biggest diplomatic success was negotiating trade lines between the Philippines and Russia. And in interviews later in life, she said that she would go into these meetings without any preconceived notion about the person that she was meeting.

[00:25:31] She just treated everyone exactly the same, regardless of whether or not they were like a feared dictator or the Queen of England. Which I think is more of a symptom of her ignorance rather than her smart diplomatic kind of intelligence or any strategy. 

[00:25:46] Adam Cox: Yeah, because you'd think that, oh god, I'm meeting this guy who's, I don't know, killed this many people. I've got to try and get a deal. No, she's just there to get the deal, 

[00:25:54] Kyle Risi: and she doesn't care about what you've done or who you are. Like, She's not the type of woman who would spend even five [00:26:00] minutes opening a textbook, right? It was all about charming guests and she would just know just enough about them to get what she needed.

[00:26:07] People would describe her as A woman whose beguiling smiles could charm the scowls of the world's most cantankerous leaders. And to be honest, even though Ferdinand was doing the dirty on her with all of these affairs, it was fair to say that she also did have her own way of controlling Ferdinand as well.

[00:26:26] She 100 percent knew what Ferdinand was up to back home. But she understood that this was just something that she had to put up with in order to further her own wealth and power within his political sphere. 

[00:26:37] Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess otherwise she risks losing everything if she, like, oh, I want a divorce, but then she's not going to be 

[00:26:43] Kyle Risi: the best thing. Yeah, So as long as his affairs remained discreet, she was fine with whatever he was doing. But whenever an affair would hit the headlines, she would become extremely humiliated. What would she do? 

[00:26:55] So one time Ferdinand hired an actress from Nashville named Dovi [00:27:00] Beams and she was there to pretty much star in a propaganda film about himself which of course was totally fictitious. It was all about his war exploits that supposedly happened in the jungle when he was fighting the Japanese in World War II. Anyway, he ends up having a two year affair and after he breaks things off, Dovi is vengeful. She releases a series of sex tapes that she had secretly recorded along with all of their love letters.

[00:27:27] Adam Cox: I guess if she's not the first one, maybe she knows that. I could get thrown or cast aside. 

[00:27:31] Kyle Risi: Exactly. And also she knows that she is the mistress. She knows that there is a chance that he will never leave his wife for her. She's like an American actress and the president of the Philippines should be seen with another good Catholic Filipino woman. 

[00:27:46] Adam Cox: Sure. And what better to build your bank balance than a bit of blackmail. Exactly. 

[00:27:51] Kyle Risi: So What happens following this release is a bunch of protesters from the University of the Philippines get hold of these tapes and what they do is they commandeer the campus [00:28:00] radio station where they lock themselves in and they broadcast the sex tape audio for an entire week on loop.

[00:28:06] Adam Cox: A whole week! 

[00:28:07] Kyle Risi: yes. 

[00:28:08] Adam Cox: Imagine just tuning in and be like, this bit, this is really good. 

[00:28:11] Kyle Risi: Listen, listen, listen, listen 

[00:28:15] to the beat. Oh, it's going to drop in a second. And then there's a climax. You know how it builds. 

[00:28:19] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[00:28:20] Kyle Risi: And then there's a drop. 

[00:28:22] Adam Cox: That's my favorite bit. Tune in again in 20 minutes.

[00:28:25] Kyle Risi: Of course this is humiliating for Imelda. She then uses the threat of replaying the tapes again anytime she doesn't get what she wanted from him. So, she knows how to play it, man. 

[00:28:35] Adam Cox: And maybe the tape actually only lasts like a few minutes and it's like, I'll play this again and everyone will know you can't last the night. 

[00:28:43] Kyle Risi: Everyone will be reminded of that pathetic climax that ended in like a,

[00:28:47] Adam Cox: thank you. 

[00:28:50] Kyle Risi: It's 

[00:28:50] Adam Cox: the last bit, it's the, it's, it's, it's 

[00:28:53] Kyle Risi: the gracious thank you at the end.

[00:28:54] Adam Cox: And then the weeping. 

[00:28:57] Kyle Risi: [00:29:00] It's the mournful weeping that comes like directly from the middle of the chest that gets me every time. 

[00:29:04] Yeah. 

[00:29:05] Jesus. 

[00:29:07] So the thing is though, throughout her diplomatic missions she becomes extremely well traveled, like she's visiting dignitaries all around the world. The problem was she wasn't always invited.

[00:29:18] She develops this reputation for being a serial gay crasher, where she would literally show up at palaces and government buildings completely unannounced. And then act really shocked when they aren't ready to receive her. Adam, it's gold. There's so many stories about how she would just turn up uninvited that I couldn't fit them all in. the thing is though, she would use these unannounced visits to her own gain. She would tell her PR team back home that she was off to go meet this big important leader for some kind of really important diplomatic mission, knowing that the papers back home would report on it when in reality, she was just showing up uninvited.

[00:29:51] She famously gate crashed the dedication ceremony for the Sydney Opera House in Australia. There were no other foreign dignitaries invited, right? It was a [00:30:00] celebration for Australians only, as RuPaul would say, just family, just family. So this meant that she was the only foreign dignitary there. And of course, she's completely shocked when there's just no one there to be like, Oh, Mrs. Marcos, come on, like, here's a red carpet. She was just like, people are like, who is she?

[00:30:17] And she's like, I'm Imelda. 

[00:30:19] Adam Cox: I'm Imelda Marcos. Do you reckon she's on the list? Like, um, yeah, it's Imelda Marcos. I'm sorry, you're not on the list, lady. I'm like, no, check again. 

[00:30:27] Kyle Risi: Sweetheart, there's no list. Like, you are either here as a regular Australian or you're not here at all.

[00:30:36] When she was invited, of course, she would behave really badly. Like she and Ferdinand, along with hundreds of other dignitaries from around the world, were invited to attend a banquet in the Queen's Honour at Buckingham Palace. When she shows up, Adam, she is wearing a crown. 

[00:30:50] Adam Cox: Is it bigger than Elizabeth's?

[00:30:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah, probably. 

[00:30:55] Adam Cox: You can't wear that. No, no, no. Yes, I can. 

[00:30:57] Kyle Risi: You can't wear your crown. [00:31:00] so she really sees herself as royalty. But the best thing is that following this banquet at the palace, she really hits it off with Princess Margaret, whom she then invites to come and stay with her at her palace in Manila.

[00:31:12] Now, Imelda specifically requested that Princess Margaret arrive on a Sunday so that Imelda could arrange for thousands of children to line the streets waving little flags as Margaret arrived. 

[00:31:23] Adam Cox: Oh wow, so she's going to go all out for Margaret. 

[00:31:25] Kyle Risi: Big fanfare. However, Margaret gets sick just a few days before she was supposed to arrive, so she ends up arriving on a weekday.

[00:31:33] But because all the kids were back at school, Imelda lines the streets with prisoners that she'd let out for the day. 

[00:31:39] Adam Cox: So, originally it was gonna be this really nice, all these kids waving probably UK or Union Jack flags, right? And then actually she gets a bunch of criminals.

[00:31:48] Kyle Risi: Yes, drug lords and murderers 

[00:31:50] Adam Cox: and rapists. Oh, so not even just like, um, petty thieves, right? theft criminals or anything. 

[00:31:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah. 

[00:31:54] Adam Cox: What about the security? Did no one think to check, like? Oh, no. So, because obviously they're all prisoners, 

[00:31:59] Kyle Risi: they [00:32:00] had to also have loads of sharpshooters everywhere just in case any of them escaped.

[00:32:03] Adam Cox: I can imagine just all these, criminals waving their flags, and literally behind them, they've got guns in their back. Way harder! Way

[00:32:10] Kyle Risi: faster! Like, okay! Jeez. Another time during Pope John Paul II's visit to the Philippines in 1981, Imelda Marcos had built a bunch of walls to obscure the site of the slums across the route that the Pope would travel. So when the Pope finds out about this, he publicly chastises her, telling her how important it was to care for the poor rather than just hide them away. Like, that's horrible. How could she do that? Because she's all about optics.

[00:32:36] Adam Cox: Yeah, I it feels like she sort of means well, but she does go about it in really the wrong way. 

[00:32:42] Kyle Risi: I think also this makes sense once you understand what she's been doing in the country, right? Because she's getting increasingly more and more rich. Filipinos are getting increasingly more and more poor. I think she was afraid that this would kind of magnify the fact that she had this gross wealth where the people in the country were getting more and more poor. Highlights the fact that she was potentially [00:33:00] doing something dodgy, right? 

[00:33:01] Adam Cox: Right, okay.

[00:33:02] Kyle Risi: Another time she announces to the media that the Beatles were going to be attending a very private exclusive party at the palace during their visit to the country. Of course she doesn't tell the Beatles this and they had always obviously made a point to stay well away from politics. It's only when they're actually in the country getting ready to go home that they find out about this apparent appointment that they had at the palace. Of course they decline the invitation. 

[00:33:30] So Furious, Imelda then goes on live television and makes a huge fuss about it. There's these very dramatic scenes where she's literally shoving crying children in front of the cameras, saying that the Beatles had let down the Philippines, they'd made all these children cry, and that they should be ashamed of themselves!

[00:33:45] It's like, but you never sent them an invite! I know! She's, she's loco! So this broadcast causes outrage towards the Beatles who are still in the country by the way And people are literally rioting and looting shops While all this is going on, the Beatles are at the [00:34:00] airport trying to leave the country And the protests just make it nearly impossible for them to leave Because when they arrived, of course they had the military guard to help them get from the airport But when they're leaving, it's like, They were just left to their own devices because all the government support had been pulled in protest of what they had done.

[00:34:16] Adam Cox: Really? I assume they managed to get away, obviously, eventually. But then people are rioting because the Beatles weren't playing at the palace? Or was that a combination of everything? 

[00:34:24] Kyle Risi: I think it's because a male had gone on live television and made it seem like they had insulted, the Philippines and kind of withdrawn from this invite that they were supposed to be attending.

[00:34:32] Adam Cox: So then you go steal a TV? 

[00:34:34] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I mean, hey, the logic when it comes to looting and rioting is just gone. The image that comes to mind, though, is that episode of The Simpsons where Tom Jones is chained up to the stage and is forced to perform a private concert after Mr. Burns falls in love with Marge, do you remember that?

[00:34:48] Adam Cox: I remember that episode, yeah. 

[00:34:50] Kyle Risi: And he's like singing on stage like, It's not unusual to be loved by an and then the camera flips and you just see him chained to the stage, he's like, 

[00:34:58] Adam Cox: I'm surprised they somehow didn't, I don't know, [00:35:00] force them to play somehow and take them hostage.

[00:35:01] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I know. I mean, this is what they should have done. I wouldn't be surprised. If she could, she probably would have done that. Yeah.

[00:35:06] Then Another time, she shows up at the White House, completely uninvited, of course. They didn't even know that she was in the country, Adam. She shows up. She's very upset that she's forced to wait at the gate.

[00:35:17] The First Lady, Betty Ford, is gracious enough to stop whatever she's doing and have tea with Imelda. That wasn't good enough because Imelda is furious that the president himself doesn't actually come out to say hello. 

[00:35:30] Adam Cox: But why is she doing this? 

[00:35:31] Kyle Risi: I don't know, she's just mental. It's like, 

[00:35:33] Adam Cox: do you have a meeting?

[00:35:34] No, I'm here, why is I'm Imelda Marcos, motherfucker. She, yeah, they should be at my beck and call. That's the mentality that she has here. And who'd you say his wife betty Ford. Oh, right. So I bet she's probably doing something really like, I don't know, baking a cake and she's like, oh, Melda.

[00:35:49] I think the First Lady does more than that. She was baking a cake. 

[00:35:53] For poor people. 

[00:35:55] Kyle Risi: It's better. And of course, during these diplomatic visits, it's [00:36:00] often customary to exchange gifts. So when Betty just gives us some random trinket that's lying around the White House, 

[00:36:05] like a spoon. Yeah, I think it's like a teapot or something. Imelda's very disappointed and so she just ends up just leaving it behind. She was furious over the fact that she hadn't been received in the way deserving of the First Lady of the Philippines. 

[00:36:20] Adam Cox: Yeah, she really needs like a better secretary or something.

[00:36:23] Kyle Risi: Probably. So throughout the years, she becomes incredibly famous around the world for being one of the most glamorous women in the world. There was this instant where Cosmopolitan 10 richest women in the world. And obviously Imelda was One of them but the Marcos's didn't want people in the Philippines to know how wealthy they were So rather than have the issue pulled because of course That would draw more unwanted media attention They instead arranged for all their people to go to every single shop and buy up every single copy that they could 

[00:36:56] Adam Cox: So people in the Philippines would never get to read this then.

[00:36:59] Kyle Risi: [00:37:00] Exactly, they wanted to keep it secret, but of course, they couldn't do this around the world. Nor did they want to, because outside of the country, they really wanted to show off how incredibly resource rich the Philippines was. To people outside, she claimed that her appearance was something that benefited her people, especially the poor.

[00:37:16] She's quoted as saying, The poor always look for a star in the dark of the night and she believed that she was the star who was going to be giving them hope and optimism through the way that she dressed and surrounded herself with all these beautiful things. 

[00:37:30] Adam Cox: Yeah, no, give them some money and give them some food. That's what they're looking for. They're not looking for you, you crazy bitch. So I'm guessing then she must be doing something a bit corrupt or her and her husband in order to, if they're concerned they're going to be pissing off their people. Then they, they're taking, what, backhanders and stuff like that?

[00:37:48] Kyle Risi: Exactly, Adam. This is all leading towards something fishy going on, right? So you have the situation where she's clearly presenting herself in one way on the global stage, but yet completely differently back home. her [00:38:00] spending was outrageous, Adam.

[00:38:01] And I think she knew that if her people knew the extent of her spending, they would just be completely outraged as well. And just to highlight how outrageous her spending was, around this time in history, the world came up with a brand new word of Imeldafic. 

[00:38:16] Adam Cox: Imeldafic? 

[00:38:18] Kyle Risi: Basically, it was inspired by Imelda and her antics that were being reported on the global stage. And it came to mean something that was opulent, ostentatious, lavish, flamboyant, excess of everything, basically, that Imelda was.

[00:38:32] Adam Cox: She must have loved that.

[00:38:33] Kyle Risi: There was obviously an undertone to it. male defic also came to me something that was a bit tacky, because of course, she wasn't exactly the most tasteful with it. So let me talk about some of the things that she spent her money on. Okay. Once she spent 2, 000 on chewing gum at San Francisco Airport during a quick stopover. 

[00:38:54] Adam Cox: How much gum is this? Because, what, a pack of ten, pieces of chewing gum was like a quid now. [00:39:00]

[00:39:00] Kyle Risi: Is it? Yeah, I think at the time, like, 20p.

[00:39:02] Adam Cox: Exactly. I can't imagine they have that much air, like, or true income. She literally just must have, like, took everything they had. of chewing gum? Why does she need that? 

[00:39:10] Kyle Risi: I don't know. In the span of two years, she bought more than 200 artworks from artists like Picasso, Manet, Botticelli. It's difficult to estimate the collection's worth, but people say it could be at least between 500 million and 1 billion. That's how much this artwork would have cost.

[00:39:29] One time, she got in touch with Sotheby's, who were holding a very exclusive auction showcasing tons of artwork. Now, she couldn't attend, and because they wouldn't reschedule the auction, she told them to cancel the auction, and that she would buy everything, just so that she could possibly get some of the pieces she was actually interested in.

[00:39:50] Adam Cox: Wow. That is having more money than sense, isn't it? That is. 

[00:39:53] Kyle Risi: It's crazy. Once, just after her plane had taken off from Rome, she'd asked it to turn around because she'd forgotten to buy [00:40:00] cheese. 

[00:40:00] Adam Cox: Cheese?! And did the plane turn around? Of course there's a private jet! Of course they're gonna do exactly what she tells them to do! I imagine the pilot must be so sick of her. Like, ugh. Do you know Kif? From Futurama. The alien. 

[00:40:12] Kyle Risi: Oh yeah, yeah, the green guy. Yeah, 

[00:40:14] Adam Cox: and he always has to like put up with Zap Brownigan and his antics. I imagine who weathers around Imelda is just like that, where they just have to do whatever she says and they're just completely like eye rolling, sighing, hating their life. 

[00:40:26] Kyle Risi: Probably, I, the thing is though, I have to say, if I had that kind of money, I'd probably Probably pulling exactly the same shit. 100%!

[00:40:32] Adam Cox: Turn this plane around! 

[00:40:34] Kyle Risi: When her daughter got married, they spent 10. 3 million dollars to renovate an entire town, refacing the facades of the building so it would look like a 17th century Spanish villa. And Adam, she loved property, which included various skyscrapers, just, just because she wanted them, by the way. Not for any practical business opportunity or commercial intent, just because she wanted them. 

[00:40:55] Adam Cox: She's able to buy outright a skyscraper. 

[00:40:58] Kyle Risi: One of the most famous [00:41:00] buildings that she purchased, just because, was the Woolworth building in New York City.

[00:41:05] Adam Cox: No way. 

[00:41:06] Kyle Risi: This is gold. There was a moment where she was offered the chance to buy the Empire State Building But she turns it down because it was too Imeldafic for her That's too me. It's too campy even for me. 

[00:41:22] Adam Cox: Maybe it was too expensive for her

[00:41:24] Kyle Risi: I don't think so. I think she could have Bought it if she wanted to.

[00:41:27] Whenever she would stay at a fancy hotel like the Ward or Forsoria, she would have custom bed linen made and prepared ahead of a stay. And they weren't very practical at all. They would be covered in different colored pearls only just to leave them behind when she then checked out. Sometimes she wouldn't even check into the hotel. 

[00:41:44] Adam Cox: This woman is crazy. 

[00:41:45] Kyle Risi: Probably the craziest thing that she's ever done was a time that she went on safari to Africa. When she got back, she wanted her own safari park. So she cleared out the residents of a small island in the Philippines, displacing literally [00:42:00] hundreds of families. What? She then bribed the president of Kenya to bend the rules on wildlife exports Then shipped dozens and dozens of giraffes, zebras, monkeys, antelopes, the works to this island so she could play safari for a while.

[00:42:16] And I say, a while, because it wasn't, long before she lost interest and just stopped funding the care of the animals. 

[00:42:23] Adam Cox: That's horrendous, because these are animals that obviously are probably not going to naturally survive on this island. More than likely. 

[00:42:27] Kyle Risi: So for the last few decades, these animals have just been left to their own devices. And it's a big problem, because there are only a handful of each animal, so they're inbreeding. So there's all sorts of genetic issues. Most of them are also infected with something called screwworm, where the maggots burrow into the flesh. So it's really heartbreaking to see these animals not having a great quality of life. 

[00:42:47] Adam Cox: The problem is, no one has told her no, clearly, her whole life. And she just gets everything she wants. Fair enough, she's, I don't know, a bit annoying. She turns up at parties, this, that and the other, unwanted. But when she starts, like, screwing around with [00:43:00] people's lives, that's pretty horrendous. 

[00:43:03] Kyle Risi: Of course, after she abandons the island, the original locals return. And they've been really struggling to live alongside these wild animals that are roaming this island. 

[00:43:11] Adam Cox: Trying to eat them. 

[00:43:12] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yes, exactly that. I mean, the biggest issue is they keep destroying their infrastructure and decimating their crops. And even today the government doesn't have a solution, like killing them would be considered cruel, but also returning them back to the wild in Africa would introduce these different genetic issues into a wider population and bring obviously with them these diseases that are affecting these animals. So it's a real tricky situation. But basically, yeah, no one has ever told her no. 

[00:43:42] Adam Cox: Until. 

[00:43:43] Kyle Risi: Until, that's it. so I think it's a perfect time to take a quick break. And when we get back, I'll tell you how Imelda got all of her cash. And I'll also say this, when someone tells you they found hidden treasure, what they really mean is that they found access to the [00:44:00] country's treasury.

[00:44:01] Adam Cox: Is that what she's done? 

[00:44:03] Kyle Risi: Oh god. See you in a second. So Adam, we're back. Where's your mind at? What are you thinking? What do you think of 

[00:44:10] Adam Cox: this Imelda chick? I think, I feel like it should be fun at a party. But I don't want to deal with her other than that. No, you don't want to have to deal with the bullshit. You don't want to be her staff. No, I just want, I want to watch from afar as she's causing chaos.

[00:44:24] Kyle Risi: So Adam, it's estimated that Imelda and Ferdinand's lavish spending amounts to more than 10 billion dollars. So the question is, where's all this money coming from? Because In an official capacity, the salary of a president is only 13, 500 a year, which doesn't sound like much, but then also you must keep in mind that most Filipinos earn 2 a day, which means that they're making less than 800 a year, but still 13, 000 a year. isn't 10 billion dollars, is it? 

[00:44:56] Adam Cox: No, so where are they getting this money from? 

[00:44:59] Kyle Risi: Well, I mean, [00:45:00] there were accusations that they were taking money from the federal government, which of course Imelda vehemently deny. And so they were forced to come clean about where their immense wealth was actually coming from.

[00:45:12] This is when they tell everyone that Ferdinand had actually discovered the legendary Yamashita gold. Which basically was a legendary treasure that was hidden by a Japanese general somewhere in the Philippines at the end of World War II. 

[00:45:27] Adam Cox: Right, okay. 

[00:45:28] Kyle Risi: So remember Ruby Wax, right? I mentioned her earlier on. Well, back in the 1990s she does this special called Ruby Wax Meets Imelda Marcos. And in it, there is this immense scene Where Imelda is explaining the time she found out where Ferdinand had gotten all of his money.

[00:45:46] She says that one day she was unwittingly knocking down one of the walls in the house because she wanted just a bit more space. As she was knocking down the wall, she realized that the walls were actually made of gold bricks, which would have just been covered in [00:46:00] plaster and painted over to look like regular bricks.

[00:46:03] So she asked Ferdinand, How could it be possible that our house is made from these gold bricks? And that's when he finally told her, that he had discovered the Yamashita treasure that had been lost since the end of World War II. 

[00:46:15] Adam Cox: Okay, so I, I started to doubt this story when, She said that she was knocking down the wall. I know! She ain't lifting up a hammer. Yeah. When does she think, you know what, I'm going to make a new window here. No. 

[00:46:28] Kyle Risi: No, not at all. Obviously, all of this is nonsense. And of course, they've been siphoning money from the country's reserve for years. What they've basically been doing is that every time they need to do a bit of public spending, like build a road or whatever, Ugh.

[00:46:40] They would collude with the contractors to skimp on the materials and the quality of the build, and then they would just pocket the difference. And they did this on a huge scale, like it's almost impossible to know how much they end up skimming off the top. But 10 billion dollars is the best estimate.

[00:46:56] Adam Cox: That is a lot, like what were they making like buildings out [00:47:00] of? So like 

[00:47:00] Kyle Risi: a good example would be like they would build a road and normally there would be like a good 12 inches worth of concrete and asphalt and stuff like that. But they would just say, Hey, Cut back on the concrete, maybe fill it two inches, and they would then keep the money that they would have spent on the other, like, eight inches of concrete.

[00:47:17] Adam Cox: But that is a lot, considering, his annual salary is, what, thirty and a half thousand dollars. Mm hmm. And they have all this money that they're trying to invest in the country. There's so much to be skimming. 

[00:47:28] Kyle Risi: And so before long, of course, people start smelling a rat. For one, nobody believes this bogus story of this legendary treasure. Infrastructure all around them is kind of starting to erode due to obviously all the shoddy workmanship. His affairs are regularly doing the rounds in the papers. And so Filipinos were increasingly more and more dissatisfied with how they were running the So for Ferdinand and Imelda, They knew that if there was an election, they would 100 percent lose, and so they needed to take drastic action if [00:48:00] they wanted to continue to cling to power and keep hold of all this wealth that they had access to.

[00:48:04] Adam Cox: So how long have they been in power at this point? 

[00:48:06] Kyle Risi: So they do have a term limit. So I think at this point, it must be around about the eight year term limit. Right. At this point. So they've been in power for about eight years. 

[00:48:16] So remember I said Ferdinand was becoming increasingly paranoid that communism was coming for the Philippines? Mm hmm. I'm not sure. He says that this had finally reached a climax and that because of this the Philippines was now in imminent danger of communists looking to destroy their way of life.

[00:48:32] So to fight this he announces martial law across the Philippines as a necessary measure to protect the republic from this looming threat. And so when martial law is enacted this allowed Ferdinand to essentially centralize all state powers and resources making him the de facto chief executive, the Chief Legislator, Chief Justice, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, all simultaneously. Basically, he was now a dictator. And he did this [00:49:00] all on this premise that communism was going to be taking over the country. and he needed to protect the people. So His first act as a dictator was to shut down 14 of the country's 15 newspapers. He takes control of the remaining one so that he can now control whatever information the country has access to, including finally putting a stop to all the papers constantly reporting on his affairs.

[00:49:20] Yeah. But above all, he can now suppress his opponents, right?

[00:49:24] He appoints Imelda as governor of Manila and the minister of human settlements, meaning that she now legally has complete control of some serious financial budgets. They dismantle any democratic rights that the people of the Philippines previously had because, of course, you know, communism. 

[00:49:40] This means they revoke people's right to freedom of movement. Speech is now heavily regulated. Soldiers now have the right to search anyone under suspicion and even confiscate their belongings. 

[00:49:51] Adam Cox: Hang on, for a guy that's so against communism, Sounds awful like communism. It does, doesn't it? 

[00:49:58] Kyle Risi: Of course all the courts [00:50:00] were disbanded which meant that Filipinos no longer had the right to a fair trial and if they were tried it was now under military law.

[00:50:07] Freedom of assembly was revoked so nobody could protest, of course they did try, but over the span of 8 years more than 70, 000 Filipinos were jailed, 35, 000 were tortured and more than 3, 000 were executed. And when this would happen, their bodies would just be dumped in the streets as a warning against anyone looking to protest the regime in the future. The awful thing is, most of the people who were executed, they were journalists and teachers who were the very people who were able to influence kind of the public's opinion against Ferdinand or Imelda. They would be very strategic with who they were taking out. 

[00:50:44] But even though they cracked down on their opponents, there were still a few who were actively trying to oppose them. One of them in particular was a guy called Nino Aquino? He actually once dated Imelda briefly before she married Ferdinand and he had been [00:51:00] very outspoken against the Marcoses in the run up to their implementation of martial law.

[00:51:05] If martial law had not been introduced he would have likely won the next election. So, of course, the Mako says they knew this, and so Ninoi, he was sent to prison for subversion. He had been in prison for around about seven years, up until the point where he was out in the prison yard one day, and he started to get these really bad chest pains.

[00:51:25] While at the hospital, he was diagnosed with a pretty serious heart condition. But because of their history, Imelda comes to visit him in secret and she tells him that she would send him to New York City to get the best treatment in the world. She tells him though that if she does this for him, he had to promise to come back to Manila as soon as he was better to go back to jail. So naturally, he's like, yes, of course, I'll do exactly that. 

[00:51:51] Adam Cox: Not! Yeah, so take me to New York and then I won't come back. 

[00:51:55] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So she leaves thinking that he will be true to his word. And when he's [00:52:00] better, he says like a pact with the devil is no pact at all. So he just stays in the United States.

[00:52:04] Adam Cox: Is there no, like, extradition on him? Or could they not, like, somehow bring him back? Because if he's a prisoner

[00:52:09] Kyle Risi: Probably not, because look what's happening in the country, right? You could just say, I'm a prisoner of war, I was in jail. For subversion. And in terms of Western kind of principles, of course is not going to send you back to the Philippines. 

[00:52:21] So during those three years that he is in the United States leading up to 1983, Imelda and Ferdinand have a firm stranglehold on the country to the point that they've now purged all of their political opponents. So they decide now's probably a good time to lift martial law.

[00:52:37] By this point, the people of the Philippines are about three times as poor as they were when they first came to power. That's how much money they've just been plundering from their people. Really? 

[00:52:46] Adam Cox: Wow. 

[00:52:47] Kyle Risi: Around this time, Ferdinand was suffering from lupus. He had undergone a kidney transplant, which his body was now rejecting. And so, it was Imelda essentially running the country alongside a guy called General Vur. 

[00:52:58] And so with people [00:53:00] sensing the cracks in the regime, Ninoy starts getting inundated with all these pleas to return back to the Philippines to run for the presidency. But of course, he's fully aware that if he does, he will be imprisoned. Or even worse, they'll execute him. 

[00:53:15] But against his better judgement, he decides that he will go back, so he flies back to the Philippines, and when he lands in Manila, within seconds of exiting the aeroplane, he is shot dead.

[00:53:26] Adam Cox: No way, I was hoping that he'd somehow, I don't know, cause an uprising. 

[00:53:30] Kyle Risi: Be the freedom fighter that they needed, right? That's it, of course this across the country because he was seen as the saviour coming to rescue them. Is of course instantly accused of assassinating him in the documentary She's asked if she had anything to do with his death and she just says why would I do that? I had nothing against him other than the fact that maybe he spoke too much 

[00:53:55] Adam Cox: Yeah things that you didn't like about her And you're pissed that [00:54:00] he didn't come back after you told him to and so of course you did this. 

[00:54:03] Kyle Risi: Of course the remaining political opponents called for a fact finding committee to investigate, what had happened to Ninoy. Of course The committee is appointed by the Marcoses, and their findings are that Imelda had nothing to do with his murder. But in spite of that, the public are not convinced, and a protest erupts all over the country sparking the beginning. of a revolution. 

[00:54:23] Adam Cox: I guess that's how all revolutions start, right? You've been oppressed for so long. Someone usually ends up dying. 

[00:54:29] Kyle Risi: Yeah, you take away their last hope. 

[00:54:30] Adam Cox: Yeah, and then that's, that's, that spurs people on. It's a tipping point, I would say. 

[00:54:35] Kyle Risi: The person who is going to lead this revolution was a woman called Corazan, who also happened to be wife. So Corazan nicknamed Cori, she announces that she's going to run in the upcoming election. And she's the polar opposite of Imelda. She dresses very simply. She didn't wear jewelry or makeup. She had no political experience. The only thing that she had was that she was the widow of the man [00:55:00] pegged to come and save the Philippines. 

[00:55:02] And quite frankly, Adam, that was enough. to the Filipinos, she was better than any other opponent and far better than nothing at all. 

[00:55:10] Adam Cox: I was going to say, like, it didn't matter that she had no experience. She's just not corrupt. 

[00:55:14] Kyle Risi: When challenged on her lack of political experience, she simply said, yes, I have no experience in politics. I also have no experience in cheating, stealing, lying, or assassinating political opponents. I'm probably going to do a better job. Yeah. so that was a massive hit.

[00:55:29] And when that leaked, she became outrageously popular. But Cory knows though that if she runs in the upcoming election, there's no doubt that the Marcos's are going to try and steal the election in some way. And she's absolutely right. 

[00:55:41] On the day of the election, camera crews catch Marcos loyalists buying people's votes with food. and then busing thousands of people to different polling stations to cast their votes. Basically, they were doing everything they could to coerce people into voting for them. 

[00:55:57] And when you have all these poor people who are [00:56:00] living a life of destitute, it doesn't take much. right. And you'll very often see these images of, going into the slums with wads of money, just handing out bills to all these poor people 

[00:56:12] Adam Cox: yeah They're thinking all this will get me through the night or the week or whatever. It might be and I'm guessing that that really helps get a lot of votes for them. 

[00:56:19] Kyle Risi: Well, when they're tallying up the votes, it's so obvious that something was fishy because everyone knew how wildly unpopular they were. Imelda and Ferdinand were, yet there were so many votes coming in for Ferdinand. So it was just ridiculously obvious that some kind of fraud was at play. It was so bad that the volunteers just stopped counting, because they knew that they were just counting fake votes. And so Ferdinand won the election, and it was just a travesty.

[00:56:45] Adam Cox: So despite this being a bit of a revolution, it fails then, they don't win. 

[00:56:49] Kyle Risi: No, it doesn't. The next day on the 25th of February, Ferdinand claims victory. They hadn't learnt their lesson, because his inauguration ceremony would go on to be one of the most lavish affairs [00:57:00] yet. And Imelda was there, of course as part of the entertainment, showing off her beautiful voice with a little number.

[00:57:06] Adam Cox: They didn't get her singing again, did they? They did! So they've been in power for like, at least 16 years by the sounds of things, because if they were in martial law for eight, That is a long time. It is. I should never, no one should ever lead a company or country for that long. 

[00:57:19] Kyle Risi: And can you just imagine the insult that this must be as well because of course they obviously were pegging Ninoy to be their saviour. He gets assassinated. They turn to his wife. She then leads this kind of presidential campaign, which looks like it's going to be a slam dunk. Turns out they were fudging the votes. Election day comes, nothing. It's just the same old, same old. 

[00:57:40] So by morning, there are literal protests and riots all over the country. It reached the point that Ferdinand and Imelda knew that they just had to admit defeat, like they were fearing for their lives, and so sensing what was looming, They just fled the country and Corey was handed the presidency.

[00:57:57] Adam Cox: Hang on, so the riots were so [00:58:00] much, and I guess they feared for their life that they actually gave it up.

[00:58:03] Kyle Risi: So it did work. But, get this, they fly to Hawaii with 80 of their people in tow, bringing with them all of their valuables, including stacks and stacks of gold, which are all inscribed with the The words to my husband on our 24th wedding anniversary. 

[00:58:19] To this day, Imelda claims that they didn't hand the presidency over to Corrie at all. She says that they were actually kidnapped by Corey and flown out of the country and it was Corey who stole the election. She says that she thought that they were just going to another part of the Philippines when they boarded that plane and that someone had hijacked it and took them to Hawaii. 

[00:58:40] Adam Cox: What with all their money? 

[00:58:41] Kyle Risi: Exactly, with all their money, their passports, all their stuff, all their gold, all their jewelry, artwork, everything.

[00:58:46] Adam Cox: And there's no reason that you couldn't have returned? 

[00:58:48] Kyle Risi: No. She's just full Of Of course, when this news breaks, thousands of Filipinos, they storm the palaces and they strip it of everything of value. And for the next few weeks, Corrie and her new [00:59:00] government, they invite the poorest people in the country to come and visit the palace to see how extravagantly the Marcosas were living.

[00:59:06] They also made it very, very clear. That it wasn't some lost treasure that they had discovered in the jungle. It was actually their money that they had stolen. And this was a smart move by Corey because a lot of people lived in houses that were literally smaller than Imelda's bed. So of course, when framed in that way, it just amplified their outrage. 

[00:59:28] Adam Cox: I guess this is really good for Corey because she's being very open, very transparent. And that's going to get people on her side, even if she makes some mistakes along the way. She's getting some goodwill and faith. 

[00:59:38] Kyle Risi: Exactly. She's got no experience in the political sphere. All she has is like, I'm like you, I am just another you at the end of the day. 

[00:59:47] Adam Cox: Although I am a bit concerned that she could like, get to the palace or whatever. She's Oh, this is quite a nice bed. Or maybe I could live like this. 

[00:59:54] Kyle Risi: Adam. I dunno too much about her rule, but I can tell you now that every other president that follows on from [01:00:00] here, they're the worst. Really? Yeah. They, it doesn't get better. There's no reform. She might have come from noble intent, she may have been great, but she can't stay in power for very long. So the corruption still inflict the country today. It's really sad.

[01:00:13] But when the people storm the palaces, the media fixate on all the items that were left behind they find more than a thousand custom made ball gowns, 1, 500 handbags, dozens and dozens of mink coats, 2, 600 pairs of shoes. And this is what most people remember today. It's the shoes. 

[01:00:33] They use this as a way to point out her excessiveness. Some reports said that her collection was close to 6, 000 pairs, but in her defense Imelda says no no only had 1, 600 pairs of shoes as if 1, 600 pairs of shoes makes her seem more humble 

[01:00:50] Adam Cox: She has two feet.

[01:00:51] I know how many shoes does she need like you can't even Like, how many years would you have to, like, go through in order to wear them all? 

[01:00:58] Kyle Risi: That's what I was thinking. I was trying to calculate [01:01:00] how many times could she wear each pair of one of those shoes as she rotated it? 

[01:01:03] Adam Cox: And, like, some of them she's probably only worn for, like, an hour. If that, she's probably not even worn most of them. 

[01:01:08] Kyle Risi: Get this. I love her. She knows no shame. When asked why she had so many shoes, she says that she wanted to promote the Filipino shoe making industry. All of the shoes were from France or Italy. 

[01:01:19] Adam Cox: I was gonna say, I bet none of them were from the Philippines. God, she is batshit. 

[01:01:23] Kyle Risi: Obviously, since Annette Corey's new government was going to start coming after her other assets, trucks were showing up outside all of her properties across the world to strip them of everything of value. The paintings that were hanging on the walls were all taken down. But they didn't want them to look like they were missing.

[01:01:39] So what they would do is they would pull out a Picasso from the frame and just chuck in a cheap print of Imelda like surrounded by kittens or rodents or something. 

[01:01:46] Adam Cox: Imagine some AI, some poor AI, just like all these other photos. So she was clearing out her other places because she didn't want them to come after her.

[01:01:54] Kyle Risi: Because the artworks are where the money is, right? 

[01:01:56] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[01:01:57] Kyle Risi: And so they stay in the USA for the next five [01:02:00] years and in that time Imelda is tried and then acquitted for racketeering in the USA which basically is just a bunch of like illegal activities like extortion, fraud, bribery and stuff like that.

[01:02:11] Adam Cox: Could she not have led a quiet life now? She's got all this money. Can she not just settle down 

[01:02:16] Kyle Risi: you would think, right? So while in exile, Ferdinand dies in 1989 And after his death, his loyalists start demanding his body and his family be allowed to return to the Philippines. Which, she does, and there's this really incredible footage of her coming home, and it's absolutely crazy. She's literally mobbed by thousands of adoring fans that have come out to see her return, which is crazy! She still has some serious diehard Imelda fans that are still living in the country. 

[01:02:47] But she is immediately arrested. She's fingerprinted and she's charged with more than 70 counts of fraud and corruption in the Philippines this is 1991, right? But the process of wading through [01:03:00] All of the charges will go on until 2018 when they finally are able to wrap up all the charges. 17 years? 

[01:03:06] Adam Cox: And why is she doing this all this time? She just has to go to the police station every now and again? 

[01:03:11] Kyle Risi: No, all of this time, even though she is disqualified from holding any public office, the bitch finds a way. Because in 1992, she has the gall to run for president. Obviously being unable to read the room, she has no idea just how unpopular she was, she ends up coming in third to last out of all the candidates in the election. 

[01:03:34] Adam Cox: But she didn't come in last. She probably sees it as a win, right? She's the people do love me. I was just thinking, did she not engineer the mob at the airport though? I feel like I 

[01:03:44] Kyle Risi: did question that, but I don't think she did. I think there are some loyalists, and there still are some today, really. Yeah, 

[01:03:50] Adam Cox: okay. 

[01:03:50] Kyle Risi: In 1995 though, she is successfully elected as a congresswoman in her hometown of Layette, which is where obviously her family had always [01:04:00] been really prominent, so that was kind of a really easy win for her anyway. In 1998, she runs for president again, this time coming in second to last out of 11 candidates.

[01:04:10] So worse. So I think she's finally realizing that she was never going to win the favor of the people. This is where she sacks off running for president and she diverts all of her efforts into helping her son Ferdinand Jr. nicknamed Bong Bong to win the vice presidency. 

[01:04:27] Adam Cox: Right, okay, so, trying to get another one of the family into power? 

[01:04:31] Kyle Risi: This pretty much takes us up to 2018, when she is finally found guilty of seven of the 70 charges that were filed against her back in 1991. so She is sentenced to serve between six to eleven years for each of the seven accounts.

[01:04:45] But of course, power and wealth meant that she was allowed to remain free while appealing the ruling. And even to this day, she has not served a single day in prison. She's still appealing. 

[01:04:55] But it's at this point, though, that she decides that she's going to step down from politics altogether. [01:05:00] But that's only because she doesn't need to do the heavy lifting anymore. She's managed to secure her daughter as a role of senator and Bong Bong is now governor. So she's got a finger pretty much well and truly in that pie. So it's very unlikely that she will ever go to jail now. 

[01:05:15] Adam Cox: Yeah, and I would have thought if you've got a family, that are potentially criminals or been found guilty, you shouldn't be allowed to do those jobs as a governor or senator or whatever it might be.

[01:05:25] Kyle Risi: Exactly. The whole country is corrupt. Since Corrie, the other presidents of the Philippines haven't been much better than Ferdinand. 

[01:05:32] In 2016, Rodrigo Duterte was elected, who was a former cabinet member under Ferdinand, and of course a loyalist to the family. And he's really famous for his zero tolerance on the war on drugs where even if you're under the suspicion of having drugs, the penalty is death. 

[01:05:52] And He has also publicly said That if Bongbong Marcos were his vice president, he would just simply resign as president so [01:06:00] that the Marcos could be reinstated back into power. It's just so corrupt. As for all of that stolen money, around 6 billion is still missing today. 

[01:06:11] Adam Cox: That is crazy, and so they only managed to get 3. 7 back, and, kinda, don't tell me that, actually, even though they got the money back, these new presidents come in, and start, I don't know, pinching from that pot.

[01:06:21] Of 

[01:06:21] Kyle Risi: course! Yeah. But another reason why we won't get a lot of that money back is because of how reckless Imelda was with spending. For example, she had bought a five million dollar property in Hollywood. Because she wasn't around to sign on the dotted line, she decided to put the property in her very good friend's name.

[01:06:39] He's a Hollywood actor called George Hamilton. When the Marcosas eventually fled Philippines, George just kept the property and there isn't anything anyone can do about it. It's in his name, like it's his property.

[01:06:53] Adam Cox: She probably doesn't even remember that she bought it. No, 

[01:06:55] Kyle Risi: she doesn't. She probably doesn't. 

[01:06:56] Adam Cox: There's probably so much out there. She probably could be a hell of a lot [01:07:00] wealthier. Had she kept track of her receipts. 

[01:07:02] Kyle Risi: The fact is, the family have now successfully clawed the way back to the very top of politics, so there's even now less hope of getting anything back. Because in 2022, Bon Bon ran for president alongside Rodrigo's daughter and they won in a landslide victory.

[01:07:19] Whether or not there was any cheating or malpractice or fraud going on there, who knows, but they're now both presidents. Two of these really horrific dictator families are now like running the country. The outrageous thing is that their campaign romanticized what life was like 50 years prior under the old regime. 

[01:07:37] Adam Cox: And so the people have just forgotten, or are they actually thinking, oh yeah, they were the good old days. There must be corruption there. 

[01:07:43] Kyle Risi: Well, that's an interesting point that you point out, because the population of the Philippines is now more than quadrupled in the last 50 years. So, From about 26 million in 1960 to 110 million today, more than half of those voters are between the age of 18 and 40 and they are too young to [01:08:00] remember the dark days of the old Marcos regime.

[01:08:03] So they are silently marching towards repeating history again. They don't remember how bad it was. 

[01:08:09] Adam Cox: They continue to target activists and journalists, bringing awareness to what's happening in the country. they continue to put people in detention centers, people magically still disappear. It's a really sad state of affairs and it's unlikely that anything is going to change anytime soon.

[01:08:24] Kyle Risi: As of July 2024, she's 95. And, Adam, she's still going. She's still around. Her most recent kerfuffle, though, was at her 90th birthday, where she invited 2, 000 guests and hundreds of them came down with a serious bout of food poisoning. 200 of them were admitted to hospital, yet Imelda completely denies that it was her catering responsible. Like, she's just priceless. 

[01:08:50] Adam Cox: God, I just doesn't That's really sad because, yes, she's quite, an interesting character, don't get me wrong, we've made fun of, like, some of the crazy stuff she's [01:09:00] done, but she's inflicted a lot of pain and corruption and suffering, and I didn't realise there's just this much corruption going on in the Philippines, if I'm honest. And I don't see how it can get better. If she's a free woman, then what hope is there?

[01:09:14] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Of course, if you want to know more about this entire saga, then you can watch the documentary The Kingmaker which tells the whole story in way more detail. It gives you kind of a real sense of how corrupt politics in the Philippines actually is even today and it just feels almost hopeless that it's ever going to end.

[01:09:32] One of the really fascinating aspects of the film is that early on when they are interviewing Imelda she is showing off a collection of Picassos and Michelangelos and Rembrandts that are hanging on the wall. 

[01:09:44] She recounts the story of how, when they were kidnapped, in inverted commas, from the Philippines following the election, her most loyal maids and servants hid the artworks in their own homes until the day she came back to the Philippines and they were able to kind of give her [01:10:00] paintings back.

[01:10:00] But then Later, halfway through the documentary, all the paintings that she was showing off earlier have all magically been switched out with portraits of the family because during filming, she was being investigated again for supposedly harboring kind of assets belonging to the state. So she had to put them into hiding.

[01:10:20] And of course, the person interviewing her mentions the missing paintings. And her response is just, 

[01:10:26] Adam Cox: what does she say? It's just, 

[01:10:27] Kyle Risi: I'm not going to spoil it for you. Go watch it. Oh, I really want to know. 

[01:10:30] Adam Cox: Just mental. I imagine she's just flipping them over, right? There's just one there. It's oh, let's turn it around. This is one that everyone can see. 

[01:10:37] Kyle Risi: They also confront her about the animals in her safari island, and she just outright denies that the island even exists, in spite of them showing a whole montage providing, like, evidence. that they very much do. 

[01:10:48] Do you reckon she actually believes what she says? 

[01:10:50] Probably. She is so delusional, Adam. She lives in this world where she can say one thing and it will then be true. She feels that she can revise history, and she does. [01:11:00] Like that's how they conducted their regime. They would change the history books. And in her mind, if she says something's true, it's true. 

[01:11:07] Adam Cox: Yeah. 

[01:11:07] Kyle Risi: In the film they film her out with her driver handing out just stacks of money to the poor which is really messed up as I mentioned earlier on, like, there are pockets of people in the Philippines who rely so much on the support of the wealthy that it makes them really easy targets for manipulation. And that's what's really sad. This is how they stole the election before with a promise of food.

[01:11:27] Adam Cox: That's the thing they're keeping the poor poor What they could have done is use that money to build, I don't know, create jobs, you know, give them the foundations to support themselves, whatever it might be, but they're not doing that. They're just giving these quick wins to make people react to what they want them to do.

[01:11:42] It's because 

[01:11:43] Kyle Risi: it's the only way they can stay in power, right? They need those votes from from their people. It's just crazy. 

[01:11:49] A last tidbit before we wrap up. When she was asked how rich she was, her response was, If you know how rich you are, you are not rich. But me, [01:12:00] I am unaware of the extent of my wealth. That is how rich I am. And that Adam, is the compendium of Imelda Marcos, the lady that Which is 1, 600 pairs of shoes. 

[01:12:13] Adam Cox: And some more. Wow, what a crazy ass bitch. 

[01:12:17] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's, you're really conflicted with the story, right? You want to kind of celebrate and laugh at how outrageous she was, but we also understand the absolute destitution at the heart of the story as well. So it makes it really difficult. What makes it even worse is that, The country is no better off she's clawed her way back up, right? You cut off the serpent's head. doesn't mean it's dead. It's still there. It's still wriggling. And even if Bongon wasn't there, like his other opponents would be just as corrupt because they've set this precedent that they can do that moving forward. 

[01:12:50] Adam Cox: Yeah, I mean, you see someone behave like that way and we're in power, you probably think I can replicate that. I can do it better even. 

[01:12:56] Kyle Risi: 100%. Yeah. Any [01:13:00] final words? Are you ready to wrap up for the day? 

[01:13:02] Adam Cox: This should be a Netflix drama. 

[01:13:05] Kyle Risi: You every week with 

[01:13:06] Adam Cox: every week. This is definitely a Netflix drama this one But the thing is I guess the story isn't over yet to be fair. There's probably more to happen 

[01:13:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah, I think bong bong will just Get a bribe from some other motherfucker who will then win the presidency after him who will be just as corrupt and Money will continue to funnel into their family. It's horrible. Should we run the outro? 

[01:13:27] Adam Cox: Let's do it 

[01:13:28] Kyle Risi: and that wraps up another journey into the fascinating and intriguing on the compendium If today's episode tickled your curiosity, don't forget to hit that podcasting app It really makes a world of difference when you do and for our die hard listeners next week's episode is waiting for you right here right on our Patreon completely free.

[01:13:47] If you're hungry for more then you can join our Certified Freaks tier to unlock our entire archive and enjoy exclusive content and sneak peeks of what's coming next. 

[01:13:56] New episodes drop every Tuesday and until then remember, [01:14:00] sometimes it's not the power suits but the thousands of shoes that really tell the story.

[01:14:05] See you next time. 

[01:14:06] Adam Cox: See you then.