Chuck
Appearances
Embedded
Alternate Realities: Down the Rabbit Hole
We had an interesting conversation. He did share with me his prophecies.
Embedded
Alternate Realities: Down the Rabbit Hole
Your father had frosted hair when I first met him. He was a fun guy and pretty liberal and smoked pot more than I did. And he lived with this drag queen. And so, you know, there was a wild kind of party atmosphere around him.
Embedded
Alternate Realities: Down the Rabbit Hole
I always take your dad in small doses. Maybe part of the reason I don't reach out as much is because I am afraid. that we get to a point where it would be like drawing a line in the sand and I wouldn't be able to cross it. You know, deep down in my heart, I would love to understand it, and I don't.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
At this point, I'm more... Confused and curious, then scared. I'm 6'2", and I weigh, like, 240. I'm a big dude. Like, I'm not intimidated. But I'm trying to think, like, why somebody would be up there. I didn't even know you could go up there. So I decide, well, I'm going to go up there, too. I'm going to go figure this out on my own.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
So I throw my stuff in my bag and start making my way up this slick rock next to the bridal veil. Now it took me, it took me close to an hour to navigate through all this slick rock. This stuff is pretty serious. It's kind of tough to navigate. And I'm trying to catch my breath and then I hear from the bottom of the falls. This time it was definitely a voice.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
I heard it really clearly and it just said, hey. And so I turn and look and now she is at the bottom of the falls where I had just been. Now I'm trying to figure out how she would have gotten down there past me when I was coming up because I couldn't find any other trails. Something's not right here. And I was like, this person's following me.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
What my brain and body said was, get out of there, dude. Like, we don't need to be here. Like, let's get out of here. Already had my pack on. So I just kind of stepped off of the bridal veil. And I just kind of went crashing through the bushes until I finally found the trail that I'd come in on. So I scramble up those rope assists, crest back over the ridge. And so now I'm heading back down.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
I mean, I'm trucking pretty hard downhill back toward that split in the trail where I saw the foot initially. So I blow past that point and I'm running pretty much full speed down this hill. And I come back to that point where the big boulder is, that big house size rock. And of course now it's on my right side.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
And as I come around this blind corner around this rock, she's standing right there in the trail in front of me. And I almost ran smack into her. I took a tumble to avoid hitting her. Hit the ground pretty hard. It winded me pretty good. When I came to a stop, I had basically rolled kind of up against this rock.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
So I'm rolled up against, my back's against the rock, and I'm kind of sitting up, and she is standing over top of me, just looking at me. No expression on her face at all. And her eyes were, they were so white-blue that they were almost white, like the irises. They almost blended right into the whites of her eyes.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
The rest of her was really old looking, but her eyes were very, very youthful looking, just piercing. Scared me to death. We could stare at each other for a second. Felt like an eternity. Like time slowed down a little bit. I break contact, break eye contact with her and kind of roll, get my feet under me and I take off. And she just kind of watched me. She watched me get my feet under me and go.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
Now I'm really running. I mean, I'm terrified at this point. The whole time I'm trying to tell myself like, this is all, like you're making this up. Like there's nothing weird going on here. Even though I'm in a dead sprint running from something. Finally get right about down closer to base camp and slowed down, checked behind me, stopped, didn't hear anything. I figured I was not being followed.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
And so I just continued my walk. I got to a point in the trail where there's this down tree and I cross over this log, come around a corner and there's a bobcat sitting in the middle of the trail. Ears were not moving, eyes were not moving, not a whisk or flinched. And that's very out of character for that animal.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
I mean, I've been in the woods for a long time, over 15 years, and I've only ever seen one actual wild bobcat. You're lucky to ever see one, much less one sitting just in the trail looking at you. So I stop, and I'm staring at this cat, and I notice the eyes. They weren't like cat eyes. The pupils, they weren't slitted. Wasn't the same shape. I mean, they were shaped like human eyes.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
The pupils were, I mean, almost dead white, like very, very light blue, almost dead white. So I knew right away as soon as I saw that cat's eyes. I was like, oh, that's her right there. And I was terrified. I was looking this thing dead in its eyes. And it's kind of looking at me. And I knew, I felt it like deep down in my being that she could do whatever she wanted to to me. I was at her mercy.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
So I started talking to her. I was like, look, I was like, you got a beautiful mountain here. I was like, well, I will never go back to your waterfall. Just like, just please let me go. Like, just let me go. I didn't even speak that out loud. That was just something I thought. And no sooner had I thought that this, this bobcat turned, walked off the trail. Let me go.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
After that, it did take some time to process it. But really, that's when it all kind of clicked for me right there. It sunk in for me. And I was like, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. It's just like, it's like, yeah, that was really, really weird. Like, I think I ran into a witch. I don't know. That's kind of just it was very organic in the way that it just like my brain automatically was like, yep.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
So, I mean, an experience like that, it humbles you a lot, especially in the position that I was in. I mean, you're a big, bad guy. Like, I've squared up with – I've punched a bear in the jaw.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
Like, I'm not intimidated by a lot of things, but sure enough, yeah, it humbled me a lot because that was probably one of the few times in my life where I felt, like, truly helpless when I was laying up against that wall looking at this – what seemed to be like an 80-year-old woman. This was an old witch, and I think she's been there for a long time. Longer than 80 years, I would think.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
I think she's much older than that. And I think that's just, that's where she lives. That's her stomping ground. And it's way out of the way for a reason. So, I mean, when I go out in the woods, like I'm picking up trash, I'm taking care of the woods. And I think she saw that.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
I think she was just kind of like letting me know that she was there, like she was making her presence known more than anything else. And yeah, really, that's what I got from it for the most part. Because like I said, I mean, she could have done whatever she wanted to while I was laid up against that rock wall. It sounds crazy, but I think she stopped me on that trail to judge my character.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
She decided for whatever reason not to harm me and just to see if I was worthy enough to be in her woods. And I think she determined that I must have been.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
My name is Chuck. I've been hanging out in the woods since I was really young. Kind of been out there ever since. Between backpacking tours and wilderness therapy, ended up making it what I do for a living at this point. So this happened in 2015, it was summertime. And the camp that we were working out of, our main base camp, from what I understand, it was an old Christian summer camp.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
I'm not sure the details, but it was pretty old camp. A lot of the cabins that we used had been kind of redone a little bit. And then of course we had the horse stables And we had, I want to say like probably 15 or 16 of them, older horses, a lot of them. And the horses were actually essentially in therapy as well. The kids would work with them for part of their therapy.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
And then the horses were also being rehabilitated from abusive homes at the same time. At night, you would hear, down by the stables, the donkey. His name was Stanley. It was a mini donkey. And he would start going off at night down there. I don't know if anybody out there has ever heard a donkey freaking out, but it can be kind of weird, a little bit scary.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
But he would do that pretty consistently. And then usually the next day when we would go down to do horses, first thing we do is groom them. And when you go to groom them, their manes and tails would be just completely in knots. Even if we had brushed them the day before, the horses would be in poor shape.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
So at the time, I really didn't think a lot of it, but I would have kids going to be like, look at this. Like, I didn't do this. I'd be like, okay, like, what's your point? They'd be like, we were the last group here. Like, I didn't do this. And I'm like, well, maybe Miss Ann did it. You know, like, it's not part of my pay grade right now to worry about the horses' names.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
I don't know a whole ton about horses, but I do remember... Growing up, my great-grandma would talk about that happening and she said it meant there was a witch on your farm. I guess it was because she would go out and every single day the manes and the tails on the livestock were tangled up. It was like somebody had gone out and just went haywire on these animals.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
And they'd be skittish and they would be jumpy and they just were not in a good mood at all. That was one of the few things she ever talked about was she said, I swear there's a witch out here. And she would, I mean, she'd say it all the time. From the first time it happened down by the horse stables, I mean, I definitely thought of that. I remembered her saying that immediately. That damn witch.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
But I was like, well, you know, if it happens a couple of times, whatever. It's not a big deal. You know, like, well, it's coyotes or something like that. But with how consistently it happened there, I did start to wonder a little bit about that. I'd heard about Dismal Falls. I'd read about it. I read about it initially on a photography website.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
And I saw pictures of it, and I was like, man, that's a beautiful waterfall. I want to get out there and go see this. And I got linked over to a book called Land of Waterfalls. And this is by a guy named Jim Bob Tensley. He wrote it in 88. And he wrote it about Transylvania County mainly. Which is the land of waterfalls, as they call it. There's tons of waterfalls out there, charted, uncharted.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
There's some that don't even have names. And he describes it as one of the most foreboding places in the southern Appalachians. I was mainly reading to get directions. I just want to know how to get out there. Decided I was going to go check it out the next day. And so I drove up and I parked there at the base camp and started my hike up there.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
It's almost like a tunnel made out of rhododendron and mountain laurels that are so low to the ground that they're almost over your head. Very thick to get through. You're kind of on hands and knees. And that goes on for some time. Then you pop out of that. It opens up a little bit for you. And you're still going up a really steep grade. Pretty blind. You can't see a whole lot.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
And you come around this corner and on your left side, there's this really large boulder. I mean, it's got to be the size of a house. It's a big boulder. So I took note of that and kept on moving. And not too long after that, you come to this point where the trail splits into two. At that point, I stopped and got my map out. I was not sure which way to go 100%.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
The lower route that stayed pretty flat, according to the map, would go to the dismal wall. But the other trail that goes, I mean, from where I was at, it looked like it went straight uphill. That's the one that goes to the waterfall. I mean, it is really steep. So I start the climb up that way. I get probably about halfway up it and just felt like I was being watched.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
I got that, just that pit of your stomach feeling and hair on the back of my neck kind of stood up. And weirdly enough, my nose actually started bleeding right then too. I kind of turned around to where this kind of sense was coming from. And all I could see was just this foot and part of a robe disappear into the rhododendron thicket. Just caught a glimpse of it.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
At the time, I mean, we had been out the night before. I was dehydrated a little bit, kind of tired, and a little bit hungover. And so I was like, I'm definitely seeing things. Like, I should take a break. And I'm thinking, I'm like, well, how is that possible? Because I didn't hear anything. And with how thick the leaf litter is there, you can hear anything. It was quiet.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
It's very quiet out there. So I'm thinking about all this and it's just, it's getting me flustered. So I'm just like, all right, I'm going to keep going. Kept on moving and eventually I got to the top of this hill that I've been climbing, and I crested over the top of it, and there's a tree there.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
The tree has got a rope coming down from it that goes to another tree, and that tree has a rope, and then from there, it kind of puts you down in the rhododendron by the banks of Dismal Falls. It's just a big, long bridal veil. Really, really pretty waterfall.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
it drops 40 feet with a nice cascade and then it hits it hits down and it just runs down this I mean it's got to be a couple hundred feet of just slick rock so I hike in go sit at the bottom of the falls I sat down to just chill out have some water look at the falls Water was nice and cool, so I'm enjoying that. I was chewing on some mint. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling really good.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
I'm not even stressing on the foot. Not too long after I got there and kind of had settled in, I get that feeling again, like I was being watched. And kind of as I have this feeling I hear what sounded like a voice. So I turn and look and up at the very top of the cascade, there's a woman standing on top of the waterfall. I could see her plain as day.
Otherworld
"Dismal Falls" from Spooked
She had kind of curly gray hair down to her shoulders. I would say she was in her 80s and was wearing a cloak, a black one or at least a dark colored one. It seemed to be in spectacular condition for somebody who runs around the woods in it. And that's about all I could make out from where I was. But no sooner had I looked at her, she turns and walks off into the rhododendron bushes.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
But then when you scale up to 100 to 1,000 to 10,000, it becomes less manageable. And you're... infrastructure cost also is scaling up fairly proportionally.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So the issue that I've seen is when a microservice stops becoming a microservice and it becomes a monolith service. to where you have now these 20 different or 40 different microservices that just have grown and grown and grown.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And now you have 40 separate full-fledged Ruby on Rails applications that are so highly coupled and dependent on each other that would it have been better to just have built it into one beautiful, majestic monolith?
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
I think that's where Netflix is at. I don't know how many they have, but I've seen their data map of their microservices and communications. It looks like a whole globe of just jumbled spaghetti mess.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
The infrastructure scaling pricing that I was referring to is more on the database side. Because on a small tier database, that's really all the application needs. But because you have scaled it up to 50 or 100 microservices, you're not going to be able to connect to that same database instance.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
with the lower tier plan because of the number of max connections that's available on those various plans. You would have to either spin up multiple database servers, in which case you incur scaling costs there, or have one really large database server where you have multiple databases within there. And then you still incur a higher cost just for that max number of connections.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Now, AWS may have something different now where you can allow more connections, but each microservice would need at least its one own dedicated connection to the database instance.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Yeah, and the whole container idea instead of the virtual machines, I really do like. And I think that especially, even if you stick with a monolith version of your application to do auto scaling, you can more instantaneously respond to the demand coming in, opposed to provisioning a whole new virtual machine. So I'm really with you on there with using Docker containers and stuff like that.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Because I think that's... the proper way to do auto-scaling because you get instant reaction to your users instead of having to wait. Okay, we're at a 50% CPU usage load across all our VMs. We need to hurry up and add more servers, all automatically, of course. But then 15 minutes later, the server's provisioned and now it's ready. Well, that traffic's all said and done now.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Until you get half the developers using ARM, the other half using x86 platforms.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Yeah. I couldn't have said it better myself. I have an 8-core Mac Pro, 192 gigs of RAM. Thing is a monster. Then I have a 13-inch MacBook Pro M1 with 16 gigs of RAM, whatever it comes with. I can't tell a difference in performance. On my day-to-day tasks, I really cannot tell. The difference there is a huge price tag difference. It's insane.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So the M1, the whole arm movement that Apple is doing, I think is amazing. And if they can keep it cost effective, then it's going to really make a huge difference in how we approach things.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So I basically have a general rule of thumb when it comes to microservices. If this feature, so let's give a real world example. Let's say if I'm in the business of PDFs and whether I'm a government or whomever, and I want to have the ability to take in a PDF and then have it automatically do the form fill out based on the parameters that are coming in.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So this is a very useful feature for one of the applications I'm developing. Within our same organization, this feature is also very useful for five other applications that we're developing. So because this feature can provide a lot of usefulness to these five different applications. And we can come to some kind of compromise or agreement on its API of how it should look.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
It should be taking a form post with a list of parameters. It should have an ID of a PDF that is stored on the database or wherever it's stored. Then we can have one code base that serves five applications. So I think that's a good use case of a microservice. It does one thing. It does it really well. And it is highly reusable, not only in my application, but in multiple other applications.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Yeah. So I have a little story that I'll try to make tangible to this. So I've had a number of dogs growing up and one of the dogs, you know, was a Border Collie. So the nature of the Border Collie is a herding animal.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And if we had installed an invisible fence around our yard, it really would have confused the dog because that dog is meant to be more free and it would have hurt its nature, essentially. So we got a chain link fence, which was a physical, visible boundary around the yard. And I had another dog who was not a herding dog. They're more of a guard dog.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So that dog wanted to be around me all the time. It was a Rottweiler Doberman mix, which I named her Kitty. But that's a different story. And I could let that dog... out of the yard, you know, into a open backyard and run free. And we never had to worry about her because she always quickly came right back to us because she wanted to be right there next to us.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
She wasn't interested in hunting or herding. So the idea of, in translating this back over to what we're talking about with microservices versus monoliths, I think that the monolith is more like that big open backyard without any boundaries.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And if you're not careful, it's not a matter of if, but just a matter of when are you going to have an accident or a mistake on your hands because you have now gotten too much cross-contamination within your application. You weren't careful with the boundaries and And you broke a lot of single responsibility principles.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And now things are too tightly coupled and intertwined in together and you have a mess. Whereas the fenced-in backyard is more like the microservices where you are forced to stay within this confined area. Which means you are forced to... think about and write the single responsibility principles because you don't have access to the outside world beyond your gated fence.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And I think that if we are talking about a single application, that its code base is never reused anywhere else. So I think that we can train ourselves as developers to have more responsibility in how we are writing our code to not introduce a lot of this cross-contamination of logic, which really should be separated out.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And by doing that, like Chuck said, with the lib or app services or interactors, whatever kind of naming you want to call it, but these plain old Ruby objects where you're encapsulating and building these virtual fences around that bit of logic, then you're able to create the idea of the microservices without breaking up the majestic monolith.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
I mean, let's face it. If you have a really pro team that follows wonderful practices, they're very consistent. And there's no hidden surprises. And if you create a monolith, then it's going to be very maintainable. It's going to be well-tested. And you're not going to have any problems. Take that and compare it to a team that is not very well-versed. They...
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
are not consistent and they're creating microservices, now you have an application which consists of 100 microservices and each one is its own nightmare. And it can go either way. You can have a team that's great with microservices, they're great with practices, and everything is consistent and isolated in these microservices, and this could be a great application.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
But then you have a team that's not as well-versed, and they are just creating an insane monolith that is just unmaintainable. So it's a healthy balance of choosing the right tool for the job and making sure that you have the team and budget to match as well as the infrastructure budget to host, because as we said, there could be differences in which direction you go.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So overall, I think that because I work primarily on Ruby on Rails applications,
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
microservices doesn't really have a fit in my world because i think the convention over configuration that rails has provided me plus the practices that i have developed over the past 10 12 years has really negated the need for microservices in my world but that could be a different story for someone else where microservices is the answer for them yeah i also just want to uh
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Yeah, sure. So my first pick is a Pack Tool Gecko Gauge. If you've ever had to work with hardy board, which is the cement fiber boards that you put on the side of houses, then this tool is amazing. It allows you to just clamp on to the previous fiber board that you installed and then set the new one just right on top. It'll be completely leveled to the other one.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
It is a life-saving tool for working with hardy board. And the whole reason why I picked this up is because I'm building a shed underneath our deck. And I'm now getting around to the part where I'm doing the siding to make it look like the rest of the house. I was not going to be able to do this job without that tool. So it's amazing. And on the date of recording this podcast, today is April 1st.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
I launched a new tutorial site. So I've been doing Drift and Ruby for many, many years, over 280 episodes I've recorded on Ruby and Ruby on Rails. And so today I've launched a new training site and that is Drifting Cobalt. So you can go to driftingcobalt.com and you'll see that it's a completely satire site for April 1st. But...
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Hey, if it picks up one subscriber, that's like 10% of the entire Cobalt user base. So I'd say that's when.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Nice. It's not a real punch card. The real punch cards were more like the... This is... This looks like a copybook description.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And so just because I can, I want to push back just a little bit and just to get some more clarification. So when we deploy a now isolated bit of code as a microservice,
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
infrastructure speaking what is that going to look like as far as the database level is concerned are we going to spin up an additional database so now we have a whole new database server with a new database on there or would we just create a new database within a server and
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So if we're running Postgres, we have one instance of Postgres or a cluster, and then we have a new database for this microservice, and that microservice only communicates to the one database, or do they all share the same global database?
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Yeah, so kind of where I'm going with the whole database side of things, because I agree, if you do have a microservices environment, then you should have a separate database for each microservice. But the issue kind of comes into play is when you start off with just a few microservices, it's fine. It's easy to manage.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, I've never understood this whole thing of rewriting stuff that does the exact same thing, but in a new stack. I'm like, what's the point? It's just wasted effort. So yeah, if it works, just leave it, let it work.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, the simplicity side of things is huge for me. And I also have an allergy for dependencies. I hate pulling dependencies. I will need to have a really, really good reason before I add something to my gem file. it would be like, literally, I do not want to solve this problem by myself. And that's when I'll pull in a gym.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Because I think most of the time, you could just spend two or three hours and build something yourself that specifically solves your problem. And it'll save you so much time in the long run, because you don't have an external dependency that you don't control.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, just pulling on this dependency thread a little bit more, like going back to your authentication example, I do my own auth. I don't like devices. I don't like pulling in anything for that, but the way I see it,
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Once I've built it once, I can then, I know this is blasphemous to some people, but just copy paste the code into other apps and then tweak it as necessary because sometimes you need to just tweak things a little bit for the use case at hand is, And once you have something working, if you've written it well, that code should be reusable, I think.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
And that's something I kind of think about a lot is that trying to maximize the reusability of code. That's not necessarily... in a way that it can be extracted to a library because it's different when you've got code living in your app and when you're kind of extracting something because when you put it in the gem, it's more of a black box. But yeah, copy paste code.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Once you've solved the problem of authentication on your own, you know everything about how that code works and you can just copy it into other projects. I don't know what you think about that kind of approach.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Feels like it maybe should. There's going to be something in Rails 8, some kind of generator, I think, that gives you a skeleton of authentication. And I think I remember seeing a tweet from DHH a couple of years ago that they might do something similar to has secure password, but for one-time pass keys. There's an authenticator app. What's it called? TOTP, I think, the time-based ones. Yeah.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
I think there's some, I saw some chatter about like a has secure password flavor of that kind of thing. I don't think anything's actually gone in, but yeah, it'd be good to have for sure.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, most apps are crud apps. I think it's just something people don't like saying. My client at the moment is actually is a startup and we're completely rails. So there is at least one startup. And I had briefly spoken to another startup a couple of months ago about working with them and they were going to be completely Rails as well.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
The way I see it, if there's something that you can't really do in Ruby or in Rails, it's usually something with quite a small footprint and you can just extract that into its own service and build it using something else. Like the PDF thing you said, you can't do that in Ruby. Build that one tiny thing using something else and then just call it.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, I think boot camps have just kind of generally moved away from teaching web fundamentals. It'd be good just to have them go back to teaching literally the basics of web development, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and obviously I'm biased, but Ruby and Rails. Because last year I helped out with the Rails World website because the Rails Foundation wanted a junior developer to build it.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
And they wanted someone to mentor the juniors. I helped out with the mentoring. And she was a boot camp graduate. She graduated from LeWagon quite recently. And they had a little bit of Rails and quite a lot of React in the curriculum, if I remember correctly. And I remember showing her what you could do with just a custom element in JavaScript. And it was like, whoa, this is so easy.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
And it's like, yeah, I just wish boot camps would teach that kind of stuff a bit more. Yeah.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, it's also adding a little bit of just short-term versus long-term. Like, yeah, learning React will get you a job in the short-term, but then when React goes out of vogue, you won't have that foundation of basics to kind of fall back on and then learn something else. But that's a different discussion, I think.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, I'm a customer and I just love it because I'm completely technical. This bookkeeping accounting stuff is just so alien to me and I can just click around and learn stuff from free agents. So it's been a boon for me as a freelancer to have that. So what was the motivation behind going to the cloud? Because obviously with 37signals, all the rage is going the other way.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
then it would that's it it's kind of like it's almost game over at that point i think but yep i'm a big fan of render.com they're a bit expensive but uh in terms of like ease of deployment i just uh i find it to be heroku but for 2024 right yeah seems to be pretty popular
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, easy one this week. Haggis Ruby, new conference in Edinburgh on the 24th of October. Both Oli and I are speaking, so come for his talk, stay for mine. what else is there anything else I'm about to re-watch the big short with my friend this evening so non-tech big short if you haven't seen it go watch it yeah I think don't think about anything else today awesome Valentino what are your picks
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Now that's very, very thorough. And so yeah, you left in 2022, and then did you go immediately to 37signals after that?
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
The reason I asked about the timing was because I was curious about, did you just help free agent get onto the cloud, then switch jobs and help another company get off the cloud?
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Fair enough. So I'm not saying this just to blow smoke up your ass, but FreeAgent has one of the best web UIs of modern software as a service app that I've used. And I was chatting with some of the FreeAgent guys at Brighton Ruby a couple of months ago, and I said this to them as well. I'm curious from your point of view as a leader, because you grew the company through the 2010s.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
How did you avoid this whole hype cycle of React and stuff? Because the way I see it, most web UIs are shit because people use React and shoved it where it has no business being. It's a great tool for the right job. But obviously, I'll avoid the rant right now. But how did you avoid the hype cycle? Just keep things simple. And as such, it's got a very snappy UI.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Sounds like it was a people problem because they snoozed the alert.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Yeah, I think we've all been there before where we get an alert from whatever monitoring that we're doing and the error looks serious, but you kind of read it and like, oh, you know what, this is probably just a one-off situation. And then turns out it is actually a big deal that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. So I know I've been there before and
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
And, you know, the hard times to really track this, I use Sentry for my error tracking. And so I get email text notifications with that. And one of the nice things about it is that it'll show the number of occurrences, whether they are unique or not. So I can see if, okay, this particular error is only coming from one user.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Or I could see we're getting 100 errors that's coming from 100 different users. So there's a more widespread problem. So I think definitely getting the notifications, but then having proper analytics on your errors so you can actually see the scope of how big this is can really kind of weigh in on the importance.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
I think it all depends on what you're doing. So if you have a heavy JavaScript front end kind of deal, and if you also have a lot of Ruby backend code, I know Sentry can handle both of those situations. Other people will go with another solution. So I personally found Sentry to be my flavor of choice, but mileage will vary based on what other people have.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
And if you're going to use Slack for your error notification, I'm not dissing that at all. I have a few applications that actually do that. It just triggers a Slack notification. But if you're only capturing the error message and not a stack trace along with it, then that error message is pretty much useless.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Because it tells you you have a problem somewhere in your millions of lines of code, but we're not going to tell you where it's at.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
There's a little off topic, but you know what issue I found with that is I use my cell phone for everything. It's where I have my email, get my text messages, phone calls, and all that stuff. And so I would like to keep it on full volume late at night when I'm sleeping. So if a critical does arrive, then I can get notified.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
But my issue is that I would never get any sleep because my phone would just go off. So I need to figure out some way that I can set up for a particular phone number or something to override any kind of sleep mode or whatever that I have on my phone right now or get a different phone for that purpose. That seems a bit overkill.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
All right. I need to quit being lazy then and just do that.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Well, that's no fun.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Yeah, that should work well for my use case because no one ever calls me.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Now, I have the Verizon call filter, which actually works pretty well. It's reduced the 15, 20 phone calls I would get a day down to like one.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Yeah, I got burned by that pretty bad one time. My wife was over at the pool. She had forgotten her phone or she had lost it. And so she borrowed someone's phone there. And because that random person wasn't in my contacts, I never got her phone call. My phone just stayed silent. So I had to disable that pretty quick. That'll teach you.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Yeah, sure. So went to the doctor the other week and they said I had high blood pressure, which I attribute to raising kids and them stressing me out. So I got this blood pressure monitor that syncs up with my iPhone. So it keeps a historical track of it. And it's been really nice. And I guess it's accurate. I don't know. It says it's high. So I guess it's doing something.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
So it is the Withings and it's a wireless rechargeable blood pressure monitor.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
No, it's just like the doctor's one where they put it, roll up your sleeve, put it on your arm and, you know, it starts to squeeze your arm. It's not like a wristwatch or anything. So I do it a couple of times a day. That'll raise your blood pressure.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
And so was this something that could have been caught by automated tests?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah, and the Boddingtons, Murphys, Beamish, Tetleys, what else, Wexford, Bellhaven, and I'm sure we've missed some, but they all use the widget technology to deliver that pub-drawn flavor to your lips right there at home.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
You got anything else? I got nothing else. I'm sure we got some stuff wrong. There's some beer aficionados that are like, not quite right, guys. Whatever. I think you should say the thing. Okay. Short Stuff is out.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
That's right. They make it really easy to sell access to content on your websites like online courses, blogs, videos, and memberships. You can earn recurring revenue by gating your content behind a paywall even. Simply set the price and choose whether to charge a one-time fee or subscription for access.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
OK. Anyway, get widgets. Everybody thinks it's basically a spinoff of the word gadget, which is probably true. We don't know the true etymology, but I believe it was in a play in 1924 where they specifically in the play talked about, like, we're in the widget business. And that may be, like, the first time that anyone had ever used it like that. But then Guinness came along and said –
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
well, you know what, everyone talks about widgets as just a thing you make, a nameless thing you make at any company. We're going to make a real thing, and we're really going to call it a widget and get it patented as such.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
That's right. I think we should prep people that this simple, simple little short stuff was a cause of a lot of emails and consternation between us today, right? Is it simple?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I doubt it because it's not full of air. Okay. And it's heavier. I was just making a joke.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I bet they've done that in Ireland. And by the way, Guinness calls these officially within the Guinness company. They call it a smoothifier.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Well, let's talk a little bit about a guy named Michael Ash. In 1951, Michael Ash joined the Guinness Company. He was a mathematician. He was a master brewer. He was a big believer in science. And he was like, hey, there's all these beers that are made with carbon dioxide, and it's that CO2 that dissolves in the beer. that makes it fizzy when you open it up.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
When the can is closed, the pressure inside is much higher than the pressure outside. So when you open that thing up, there's a pressure drop, and the agitation of pouring it makes that CO2 come bubbling out, and that's where you get your foamy head on a beer.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
He was like, this cask Guinness is smooth and creamy, and CO2 just doesn't do it if we're going to try and put this stuff in pubs and eventually in cans. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
That's right. And you know what? I think that's a good little cliffhanger.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
So let's take a break and we'll talk about the magic inside the Guinness can and glass right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
All right. So where we left off, Michael Ash had discovered that nitrogen, along with – it doesn't replace the CO2. It's a mixture of the carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Right. But nitrogen isn't absorbed into the beer like carbon dioxide is. So it has the same pressure of just a regular beer, but it has a lot less – CO2.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
And so it's not as fizzy, which is not what you want out of a Guinness anyway, because that nitrogen is making up a great deal of that pressure inside the can.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
That's right. So the next step was like, how do I make this happen in a can? It seemed like an impossibility until a guy named John Lunn, L-U-N-N, a master distiller, created the widget. The patent, I believe Guinness eventually filed for the patent in 69. for an improved method of and means of dispensing carbonated liquids from containers.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
It began as Project Dynamite, but apparently that was problematic for customs because it said Project Dynamite on all the paperwork and stuff. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they changed it to Project Oak Tree.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Right. They changed it to Project Nuclear Waste. No, Project Oak Tree I think was a reference to the original Project Acorn from Guinness. So – They wanted to get these cans right. You can get Guinness in a bottle, but it's not the same beer at all. It's a completely different beer.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Oh, Josh. I'm taking you to England next week.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Well, maybe you just don't understand the concept of Guinness. I mean, Guinness is supposed to go down like a milk and not a fizzy carbonated beverage. They call it the surge and settle. It pours in and you just see it gently falling to the bottom and you get this milky foam at the top.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah. And like that's why I could always drink a lot of Guinness because it didn't it didn't fill you up and make you super gassy and burpy.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah. Oh, man. Go out and get a four-pack and crack the can open and then just dump it in the glass as hard as you can. Just turn it upside down.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
And it won't overflow or anything. It will get to the top and just stop and then start settling.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah, I saw the Nitro Surge. I don't think they sell them here yet. But it's like a – I think it's like a mechanical device. Like does it have a battery in it even? I'm not fully sure. I stopped looking into it when I realized how much further it was taking me away from the widget. You know what I mean?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah, I mean, there was the word, first of all, we need to thank our old buddy Brian Didsbury. Oh, right. The boom operator on the Stuff You Should Know TV show. So great. Who comes to our live shows, still a friend. He texts me all the time trying to get me to play Red Dead Redemption with him online. He texts me Simpsons quotes. Does he really? Mm-hmm. Oh, did he text you about this too?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
All right. Let's get back to the widget. Okay. So the widget is a little plastic ball. And I think this is where we got hung up earlier. I don't know if you saw my most recent email. I think it's a matter of semantics because I kept saying that the – and Guinness on their website says it's a nitrogen-filled sphere. And you're like, it's not filled with nitrogen.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I think it's just semantics because they don't literally fill this ball with nitrogen and then drop it in the can. Okay.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
It is – because it has a hole in it. You drop it in there and then fill the can with nitrogen, and then that ball fills up with nitrogen and beer.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
And it stays in this tiny, it's basically a little mini turbo jet. So when you crack that beer, it's a little mini ball with higher pressure than the rest, than even what's inside the rest of the can.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
And so when you crack that beer and all that pressure changes, just like a regular beer, it comes shooting out of that little tiny hole in the plastic ball and provides this little extra boost of nitrogen, like a little beer jet, agitating everything to create even more bubbles.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I think it was the semantical thing when people say it's filled with nitrogen. It is. But as a virtue of the canning process.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
They don't like fill it up and go like, quick, throw it in there.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah, it's really ingenious, though. I mean, it's got this tiny little hole. And imagine a little ball filled with like nitrogen infused beer being jetted out of this tiny little hole as you're pouring as you open and pouring this beer. It's so simple.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
It's ingenious and so ingenious that in 2004, they did a survey of almost 9000 people and they voted that the Guinness widget was a greater invention than the Internet.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I mean, it's something to put on your website.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Let me ask you this. Have you ever had any like cream stouts? Yeah. Like Boddington's or Murphy's or any of those?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I think that's, to my mind, it's a misnomer because stout sounds heavy because it's a big dark beer. But it's because it's not heavily carbonated like a lager. Like it doesn't fill you up like that. It doesn't make you gassy and burpy. It's like drinking a big thick milk, which may make you feel full, but it's not from like gassy full.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I haven't. I mean, I don't drink a lot of beer anymore, period. And I went through a big Guinness phase in the 90s, starting in college and through New Jersey. And in fact, that brings me to another little factoid here. The Guinness uses a floating widget since 1997. And I was like, oh, that explains it. Because in the 90s, we cut open the can because we were like, what is that in there?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
OK. Yeah. He texted me a couple of days ago and he's like, hey, man, how about one on the Guinness widget? I was like, done, buddy. It's a good idea for sure. It is. And thanks to Guinness dot com. How stuff works. Conservable, conversable economist, petroleum service company. Where else? YouTube.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
And it was fixed to the bottom of the can. So it was pre-97. And during COVID with supply issues, they fixed it to the bottom of the can then as well. But otherwise, it's been a floating widget.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
That's right. It popped up in the 1950s in the snack bars of rural Quebec and started gaining in popularity, kind of spread out from there. As we'll learn, it eventually started popping up in fast food menus in the 1980s, like McDonald's and Burger King and stuff like that in Quebec. And then eventually... over the border into Ontario. And nowadays you can find it all over the world.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Even though if you want, you know, if you want that OG, you got to get it somewhere in Quebec.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
But he did it anyway, served it in a paper bag. It became pretty popular and people started kind of customizing it, adding vinegar and ketchup and stuff. And then six years into that, he started to serve that on a plate because it was such a mess. And customers were like, hey, they're on the plate now. They're not in this bag staying warm. They're getting cold.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
So he said, oh, dump some brown gravy on that stuff and said, how you like that for warm? Yeah. But in French.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Yeah, that's when poutine, complete poutine was 1963. But our next guy comes from in Drummondville, Jean-Paul Roy, and he said, no, I had a place, a drive-in restaurant called Leroy Jusep, and in 1964, which was clearly a year later, He said, I've been serving fries with this sauce though since 1958. I called it patat sauce. And he said, customers started adding cheese curds.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
I was selling those at the snack counter. And they started dumping those in there. So he started doing that and added it to the regular menu and named it fromage patat sauce. And kind of a fun little side note there, apparently he couldn't find a container for In his province, like that could even hold this stuff, it was so heavy.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
So he had to go to Toronto to source a vendor who could provide these sturdy containers.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
That's right. Big thanks to HowStuffWorks.com, the Canadian Encyclopedia, and Food & Wine Magazine. Yes, I love poutine. How about you? What's not to like? I don't. Of course I love poutine. I can't eat a lot of that kind of thing. Well, now, who can't? Because, you know, I'm trying to look, be healthier and look better. And poutine does not lend itself to that. You look both, by the way.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Yeah, or maybe one of the other like 10 to 15 explanations of root words, like French words like pâté or how would you say that one? Poutine. Poutine, which is a potato ragout. So, you know, no one agrees on that, kind of like a lot of the stuff that we talk about with these origin stories of foods.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
A lot of people will lay claim and no one agrees on who the person is, although I'm sure there will be people write and say, no, it's definitely for sure one of these people or maybe even someone else.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
All right. So where we left off, poutine was spreading like brown gravy through the streets all over Canada. Different variations started to pop up, like Italian poutine with spaghetti sauce or sausage instead of like the gravy, veggie poutine. There are regional variations. Apparently Montreal style has smoked meat. I've had that. Have you?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Yeah. But, you know, as far as traditionalists go, it's just the straight up curds and gravy.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
All right, I'll try that. By the 70s, poutine had spread to the United States, in New York and New Jersey. They called it disco fries and used shredded mozz instead of those cheese curds. Because, you know, one thing we mentioned, it was made where it was made because you get those cheese curds fresh.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
And they say like, hey man, if you're keeping these curds for a couple of days, they don't squeak anymore and it's not the same. So this disco fries thing is an abomination.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Yeah, McDonald's followed suit afterward. They added it to the menu in 1990 and then in Quebec only and then expanded to the rest of Canada. And gotta shout out Harvey's. Canadian fast food joint Harvey's started doing so in 1992.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
And then something happened in the 2000s when sort of elevated comfort food became a thing and people were like, let's try and charge, you know, 35 bucks for chicken pot pie.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Yeah, Edison bulbs, you know, lighting up rooms all over the place, like barely. So they said, yeah, let's do that with poutine. And I think Martine Picard of, what's that restaurant, Josh?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Das stimmt. Er war der erste, oder zumindest der erste, der bekannt wurde, dass er Elevated Poutine serviert hat, als er seine Foie Gras Poutine entworfen hat. Ja.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Oh, I don't believe that one. Hugh Atchison, great person. He has restaurants here in Atlanta and Athens, Georgia. So he's a he's a top chef guy, too. So I love all.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Well, I mean, you remember the coffee shop at Pond City Market? That was his.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Downstairs in his Empire State South in Atlanta is Hugh Atchison's. Edison Bulbs. Yeah, Edison Bulbs. And then 5 and 10 in Athens is his restaurant. Oh, yeah. Because Athens has got some legit good restaurants now.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Oh, I don't know. I was just there. I tried to go to 5 and 10, but they were booked up because I went to those REM shows again this year. And then Athens is just still one of my favorite places to go.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Yeah, but this is about Quebec and Canada. And Hugh Atchison closes out his quote by saying, it's just really comforting garbage food.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Which I love. So I guess that's it, right? Yeah, I got nothing else. You know, go visit Canada, go to Quebec and order some poutine.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Yeah, I think General Muir here in Atlanta serves poutine. So, you know, I might give that a shot.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
I love them. I love that Fanta orange. I just, you know, you can't drink that stuff a lot.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
I think I like dabbled in the grape and knee-high grape and stuff when I was a kid. But it's really that – and I like Sunkist, preferred Sunkist as a kid here and there. Sunkist soda, right? Yeah, yeah. But Fanta Orange is one of my rare, rare guilty pleasures.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
And I also never have – drank any of the clear or yellows like I've never tasted Mountain Dew didn't drink Mellow Yellow or Sprite or 7-Up or anything like that you missed out you've never tasted Mountain Dew or Mellow Yellow I just want to make sure I have that correct I don't think so wow I can't remember ever doing it. I mean, I don't even know what it tastes like. It looks lemon limey, but.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
But what we're talking about is whether or not Fanta is a Nazi drink. And we're going to go into the history of that. And we're going to start out talking a little bit about Coca-Cola, the parent company. As most people know by now, it was invented by Dr. John Stith Pemberton in 1886. He was a morphine-addicted Civil War veteran looking for a better way to feel better than morphine.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
And put together some cocoa leaves and kola nuts, which had, you know, were stimulants because of cocaine and caffeine. And said, hey, this is like a new kind of medicine. And after he died, it went on to be a very, very popular drink.
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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Yes, for sure. There's a guy named Mark Pendergrast who wrote a book called For God, Country, and Coca-Cola. No colon. Way to go, Mark. That's incredible. And he said that this guy loved Coke so much he really just wanted to weave it into – Every aspect of German life, including the Nazi party, even though supposedly he never was officially joined the Nazi party.
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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
And you think like, well, Koch probably wasn't super stoked about this. They didn't care. Robert Woodruff was running Koch at the time. And he was like, hey, this is all good. We're going to co-sponsor the 1936 Berlin Olympics. We're going to hang up some banners there with our logo right next to the swastika. And it's all good, everybody.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
I haven't been to the World of Coke Museum, but I bet right here in Atlanta, I bet it's not in there.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Well, yeah, because once the war started, we were like, oh, well, I guess we can't do business with Germany anymore. And Germany was seizing enemy-owned businesses at will. I think General Motors actually got out of Germany, but they did seize IBM eventually. And Coca-Cola said, sorry, Kite, we got to stop sending you our 7X flavoring. And he said, but that is the secret.
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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
And they went, I know, and I'm really sorry. But even though we're friends, our countries aren't friends right now. And that was a huge hit on Coca-Cola LLC, GmbH, Germany. He couldn't make Coke. So he was like, I got to come up with a new plan.
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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Yeah, I mean, not only was he not getting that sweet, sweet 7X Coke syrup, but He didn't have sugar or at least much. They were rationing sugar at the time. So he said, all right. He ended up saying the recipe was made from the leftovers of the leftovers. The first Fanta, which, by the way, is the German word for fantasy or imagination, was
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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
And supposedly he said, hey, marketing team, use your fantasy to think of a good name. And they said, how about Fanta? And he went, that's great. I think it was a guy named Joe Nip who officially thought of the name. But he got apple pulp from leftover apple cider making, beet sugar, and whey. And by all accounts, it was not orange at all. And it tasted like sweet garbage.
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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Oh, don't you wanna? Yeah, yeah, I remember that now.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Don't you Fanta, don't you wanna? Was that it?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Yeah, it was their own. They're like, we have Fanta and beer. And like, we're going to claim those and love those and drink those until we fall over. So he did, even though, like I said, he officially supposedly never joined the Nazi party. He did work very closely with the Nazi party because he needed their help. He needed their help making sure that production continued.
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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
And, you know, the cooperation with the Nazis was a key part of that. But that was able to keep the doors open, at least. Officially, Coca-Cola in April of 1955, post-war, said, why don't we rejigger Fanta and make it taste good? And we've got the name. We have it copyrighted, and it's already sort of got a little bit of a cred, at least in Europe.
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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
So let's just keep the name, and hopefully no one will remember the Nazi ties.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Well, yeah, of course I do if I love it. Okay. I think I've mentioned plenty of times that I did not grow up drinking much soda because as a family, we didn't have the kind of money to just load up the house with sodas. So sodas were only reserved for my mom to drink Chab. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Yeah, I think what the deal was is it wasn't widely known outside of Germany. So it's not like the word Fanta had some negative connotation all over the world. And the Germans loved it. So it actually had a positive connotation in at least one market. So, yeah, I get it. I mean, maybe it would have been a good PR move to change it because it's a Nazi thing.
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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
But I don't think it was like some otherwise tainted name.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Yeah. Until, you know, people started calling it a Nazi drink and, you know, on the Internet. Right. And the idea kind of spread. And it was, you know, it was Fanta and not Fanta. But, yeah, people largely didn't think much about it. And I still don't think much about it. I mean, it's not like if you buy a Fanta or something today, you're supporting Nazis.
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Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
But as far as Kite goes, he stuck around and the Coca-Cola company said, you know what? Even though your drink was garbage, you did the yeoman's work way back then and kept that brand alive. And so he was made eventually the head of Coca-Cola Europe. And, you know, seems like had a pretty good career as a soda guy.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Yeah. I mean, who better to lead the Coca-Cola Europe, you know? I guess he was already in place.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Fanta - Nazi Favorite?
Yeah, we had money for that. But I didn't drink much soda growing up, so I don't drink soda now, thankfully, because that stuff is so bad for you, generally speaking. But I will hammer down six Cokes a year and maybe four or five Fanta oranges.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
And he actually was one of those deals where you sell the patent rights, but then you come on board. as a sort of spokesman and salesperson. So he led the Rovetta Bakery machine division, selling these things to more and more bakeries. But he never became like some huge name. I think there are many, many more inventors of very common items that are much more well-known.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
He lived a very quiet life in Louisiana. And I think he retired in 71 and passed away at, what, close to 80?
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Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
I don't know what year it was, though. Do you know?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah, so there you have it with sliced bread, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
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Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
That's amazing. I think it's pronounced bink.
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Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Well, it may have been since they were in Iowa. A lot of people, you know, change their very German or French or whatever pronounced names to more American sounding. Sure. Like Clark. What was Clark? Flark. I think Bryant was probably O'Brient at some point.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Well, how weirdly inappropriate.
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Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
I said tens of thousands, but yeah, that's a little more specific.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah. So, I mean, you can listen to our bread episode. We don't need to go over all that. But suffice it to say, for 29,900 years-ish, people were generally tearing off chunks of bread. That's where we get the term breaking bread. There were sandwiches. I believe the first, like –
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Credit for the real sandwich goes to Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who put lamb and bitter herbs in between two pieces of matzo, the Hillel sandwich. And then in 1840, a woman, Miss Leslie, Eliza Leslie, published Directions for Cookery, in which she talked about what's thought to be the first ham sandwich. where she talks about cutting slices of bread very neatly.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
So people were slicing their bread at home. It's not like they were like, I want to make a sandwich, but I just tear it off in these big chunks and I don't understand. People were home slicing bread to make sandwiches. But that all changed on July 7th, 1928, right?
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Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
You're calling him Rohwetter.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
That's right. It's very sad. It took him a long time to get back up to speed. I do think we should point out that this guy was a jeweler. He was not in the food business at all. He had an ophthalmology degree. Yet he became a jeweler and had three jewelry stores that he owned. But he was an inventor and he would sell those jewelry stores.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
And that's what financed his, I guess, just strange idea to slice and package bread.
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Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Should we take a break? Yes. All right. I'll be right back.
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Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
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Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah, they were half inch slices because he did a lot of research and came up with a half inch is sort of like the perfect uniform width for a piece of bread for a sandwich or whatever else you want to do with it, I guess. Yeah. And he sold that first slicer to a guy named a friend of his named Frank Bench, who was a baker in Missouri at a place called the Chillicothe Baking Company.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
And that was the first one sold. The second was sold to another baker named Gustav Poppendick. And this is the guy who improved it. He was like, hey, you got these slices that are coming out, but they're all falling apart. He came up with a way to slice it where they stayed, you know, packaged together. They stayed fresher longer, and it just made the wrapping process much easier.
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Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
That's right. Big thanks to historyofbread.com, history.com, our old friends at howstuffworks.com, and the surprisingly instructive goldmedalbakery.com.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah, I wonder if Rowbetter was like, have you seen a king cake? They got a freaking plastic baby in those things. Right. You can deal with a hat pin.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
It wouldn't surprise me. So the reference, the first reference to sliced bread in print apparently was in 1928 when that local paper from Frank Bench's bread company there in Missouri had an article that said sliced bread is made here. That was the headline. I'm sorry. It was an advertisement. Sliced bread is made here.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
And they are, of course, the home of the original sliced bread there in Missouri, which is quite a claim to fame, I'm sure. But when this stuff came out, it wasn't like everyone was like, oh, my God, this is the best thing since whatever the previous best thing was. People are like, this is weird because they had been slicing their own bread. They didn't know what to think about it.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
They had to convince people to get on board, to get bakeries on board. And who got on board was – And generally, homemakers, which at the time was largely women, these women who were packing lunches for husbands and kids, they were like, this is incredible. You have no idea how much easier this is. And I don't have kids arguing about different size slices. And Johnny's thing is bigger than me.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
And this sandwich looks janky because the bread slopes at the end. And I got a small piece and a big piece. And it's made everything quicker and streamlined my routine. And this is the new best thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Great, because this is about sliced bread. You've heard the term, of course, the best thing since sliced bread. And oddly enough, well, not oddly, but sliced bread has been around less than 100 years, even though bread has been around for tens of thousands of years.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah, I got six kids. I got a husband. I got a divorced neighbor who doesn't understand how to make a sandwich. Art. Yeah, Art's divorced. He doesn't know how to make a sandwich. Everyone wants toast. Everyone wants sandwiches. You can't take this away from us.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah. I mean, didn't the government step in and literally try to stop sliced bread?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah. He put on his canvas wax, his wax canvas field jacket. Right. And he marched out of the room. His veiled backet. Thank you for getting on board. So back to Roveta. He sold his patent rights to a company called the Micro Westo Company in Iowa. I think we didn't mention he was – I think he was from Iowa, right? Davenport. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
I sous-vided some Wagyu steaks. I provided the camp. I think it finally dawned on everyone that that was kind of a big deal. I, you know, I partied in just the right way to impress everybody. Nice. And, you know, some other things. And that's generally how you win it. You kind of go above and beyond. And my comedy was on point. I was just on fire with the jokes. Wow. And DJing.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Like, yeah, I kind of had it in the bag. But... Long way of saying my buddy Justin, whom you know from London, England, who raises chickens, he always supplies the eggs. And he showed up with some olive eggs, some brown speckled eggs, a couple of sort of light tan eggs. And I just started wondering about it.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
And now I know, and I told Justin the deal as well, why his chickens are making different eggs. Did he want to know that? Yeah, he was very curious.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
No, those brown eggs, you gotta get those brown eggs. They're natural, Josh. They don't bleach them.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Yeah, and most eggs in the commercial egg industry in the United States are from leghorns, so most are white. So when you see, like, a fancy brown egg, it's the same egg. Well, that's if it's, you know, not, you know, the pasture-raised and the stuff that were already expensive.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Yeah, and we'll talk about that later. But a white egg is the same as a brown egg, nutritionally speaking. They come from the leghorns, Orpingtons, and Plymouth Rocks. Those are varieties of chickens. They're going to lay the browns. There's a chicken called an Americana, and not Americana because it has an A-U in there.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
That is a breed which gives the, it permeates, that pigment goes all the way through, and so the inside color of the egg is bluish as well as the outside, which is a pretty cool fact.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
I knew you were going to say that because, you know what, I told Justin that. He has chickens and he said the same thing.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Can you imagine if his name was Greg Fowler?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Anyway, if you've got a white chicken, it's going to lay a white egg because they probably have white earlobes or generally lighter earlobes or lighter feathers. If they have colored feathers and colored earlobes, they're going to have colored eggs.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Yeah, for sure. In the oviduct, on that conveyor belt, there are going to be five different sort of in order, because it's a conveyor belt, segments that they're going to go through, that yoke is going to go through, or the ovum. And it's in the fourth one of those five where that shell is formed. It's a calcium carbonate shell that comes from the shell gland, and that is where –
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
That's right. And for this episode, we're going to pretend that eggs are not super expensive. Because we're going to talk about buying eggs and stuff like that. Right. And that's just a fact of life. Eggs are really expensive right now. So let's just put that to the side for a moment.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
The shell forms around the ovum, and that's where it gets pigmented. Right.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Yeah. And do you know, by the way, I heard a recording of the actual sound. They got a microphone inside a chicken. The sound of the pigment being placed on it is kind of like this. Let me try another take just in case.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Well, sure. You can call it that. Gross. All right. So back to, sorry about that. 12-year-old Chuck showed up for a minute. Those two pigments that, like you said, are the ones responsible for the different shades are biliverdin, biliverdin?
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
And protoporphyrin or protoporphyrin. Porphyrin.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Yeah, that's a solid point. This came about because I just went on our annual, fifth annual rather, Frigid Fiesta, which is my buddies and I try to get together and go to my camp on the coldest, one of the coldest days of the year. I make an MVC, Most Valuable Camper trophy. I earned that trophy for the first time this year. I'm very proud to say.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
I totally agree. And here's the thing. We talked about nutrition earlier, and you said it's all the same, and that's true. The inside of a white egg is the same as the inside of a brown egg. If you get like the really – now they're super expensive.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Not the free range because I worked in the chicken industry, and I've tried to dispel that myth that generally if it says free range, that just means that – The door is open to the barn, but they're not really out there.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Yeah, cage-free. But a genuine pasture-raised chicken, they can actually be more nutritious. If they're foraging on greens and eating insects and things, just a better variety of stuff that even the cage-free and the free-range aren't getting. If you get those really, really expensive pasture-raised ones, they may have slightly higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Yeah, and I'm going to recommend, especially now that eggs are so expensive, like try and source them locally. I guarantee you in your town there is a farmer's market with some stinky hippie that's going to sell you some eggs in a funny-looking container or at the very least a used egg carton from somewhere else. Mm-hmm.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Or if you have a friend like I do that, you know, they'll give us eggs because those used to be like, oh, gosh, they're so pricey. But their prices aren't jacked up because they're not, you know, the locals aren't suffering from the commercial egg industry's woes. So now some of those are cheaper than grocery store eggs. Yeah. And you know where they're coming from.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
And they're walking around eating insects and grass.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
I would not recommend using Dawn, but that's just me.
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Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Yeah, I'm sure it's free and clear. It is. The good thing, though, about getting eggs from your friends or someone that doesn't wash their eggs is you can just leave them out. They don't need to be refrigerated. True that.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: All About Egg Colors
Yeah. But I'll tell you, I've eaten dozens and dozens of those eggs from Justin. Never washed them. Never had a problem.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Like it's got to be a and as you'll see with the Waffle House index, if a Waffle House is closed, that is that is very bad news for the area that that place is in because they stay open at all costs.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Yeah, for sure. We're going to talk about a few of them here and there. One of them is they have a limited menu, and it's not like, oh, what do we have on hand? It's like, all right, we're going to – I don't know what they call it on the inside, but let's just say we're going to plan B or something, and that means we're switching to the official limited menu.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
When there are food shortages, when the power's out and stuff like that, most, I don't think all of them do at this point, but most of them, and I'm sure they want to have them all on backup generators, that's been a thing for a while. So if the power's out, you can still probably go to a Waffle House and not only get power, but get a hot meal.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
I know I've asked you how you got yours. How do you get yours? Your hash browns? Oh, you do? So chunked is ham, right?
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Yeah, I think I told, I mean, I just get mine straight up. I'm the weirdo that gets unadorned hash browns at Waffle House. But I do get a double order because I just, two of those, one isn't enough.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
But I don't go anymore. I think I mentioned on an episode last time I went, it was actually with Hodgman after he went camping with a group of dudes here on the way out. I was like, we're stopping at Waffle House, right? And he went, oh, yeah, we definitely are.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
No, I mean, that was the only time I've been in years.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
That was just a year and a half ago. But I just, it's just, you know, I went a lot in college, like, you know, late night after the bars. But, you know, you grow up a little bit and you realize you can't eat Waffle House every week. That's true. It's a sad realization, everybody. It's coming your way, though, if you're young.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
That's right. We've talked about Waffle House here and there quite a bit over the years, and I was going to do a full Waffle House episode. That was in the pipeline. Maybe still, but maybe not after this.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
So, you know, we talked about Waffle House being set up with generators and jump teams and limited menus. They also have temporary warehouses where they can store stuff, you know, on that limited menu at least. And this all started after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I think seven of the restaurants were completely destroyed, very sadly. A hundred of them shut down.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
But they got up and running again very, very fast. And the company – basically decided like, hey, this is such a valuable thing. We need to come up with that official plan, like a literal book of how to open as quickly as possible during an emergency or stay open during an emergency.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Yeah, for sure, which leads us finally to the Waffle House Index, which is a pretty unique thing. It was the brainchild of a guy named Craig Fugate, who was the FEMA administrator back in the early 2010s. And he had that position after the Joplin tornado of 2011. in May of that year.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
And he had kind of had this idea for a little while because he had noticed after, you know, various hurricanes that Waffle House was one of, if not the only thing open. And he started to notice this sort of trend like, hey, your community doesn't have water, you don't have power, yet the Waffle House was open. And he started looking at maps and realized that like, hey, if you actually look at where
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
The weather hit it the hardest and the damage was the most severe. You can kind of rate that according to whether or not that Waffle House is either open, closed or serving a full menu, limited menu and just how they're doing. And he really like that was sort of like the the light bulb above the head moment when he said this could be a real thing. The Waffle House index could really help us out.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Yeah, absolutely. You don't get the red index a lot. But again, if you do, then that's, you know, that's the really bad sign. If, you know, they know a hurricane or something like that is coming and they like there's evacuation orders and stuff like that. You know, if it's mandatory, a Waffle House might close.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
But the very first chance they get to open that thing up, they're going to open it back up.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Yeah, I love that story. But I was so ready when I was reading it to hear they cooked by candlelight through the night.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Sorry. Sorry, Chuck. I didn't say I expected them to. I just that that would have been even more amazing, but maybe also dangerous. So that that might have had something to do with it.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
I looked up, by the way, I tried to find that they have a. A mobile emergency, what is it?
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Yeah, but the only thing I could find looked like a food truck. Oh, is that right? Yeah, I mean, I tried to find a picture, and everything, it just kept showing me this food truck. And I couldn't, when it was called the command center, I was like, is it dressed to look like a Waffle House? Because it looks like a little tiny Waffle House. Oh, does it? And is there, like, communications inside?
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Or are they showing up and cooking? Like, I couldn't figure that part out.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
That's right. And a lot of restaurants and chains may claim to be open 365 days a year. And they, you know, a lot of them are in general. But the Waffle House in particular prides itself and has taken great, great, great efforts to really stay open.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Oh, Stripes is great, I think. It's a movie in two parts, so the first half is a lot better than when they go on the mission in the RV. Gotcha. Okay. But, you know, not the best movie in the world, but I love Harold Ramis.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Yeah, I mean, that stuff, I wasn't allowed to watch any of that at the time, so I had to sneak it a little later.
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Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
I learned two things about your mom this week, that and that she played the banjo, which just floors me how cool that is.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Waffle House Index
Yeah. If you've never been, if you're ever in the South, go check out a Waffle House. The coolest, most awesome, fun people work there. And you might be able to get into a fistfight with Kid Rock. You never know.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, for sure. If you look at the current use of the term, as we know and love it, it came about in the 18th century, pretty late in 18, well, I guess kind of mid. In 1853, that's when they were talking about feed and starve as far as cold and fever go.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah. You know, that is proof to me that people back then were dumb. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, I guess they were basing it on if you have a fever, then you don't want to eat hot food. I guess they didn't eat a lot of cold foods back then.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
And if you're cold, you want to warm yourself up because there was only hot food available.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
That's right. Squarespace also makes it really easy to sell access to content on the website that you build, like online courses, blogs, videos, and memberships.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
S-Y-Y-Y-Y-S-K-S-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K Okay, so people have basically always said that this was a bad idea. There was a writer in Gentleman's Magazine in 1785 that said it was perhaps more destructive to mankind than the plague itself, this advice, which is definitely overstating things. But – People these days say, no, that's not good advice.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
That's right. Call it old wives tale edition because this is about feeding a cold and starving a fever, which is the old wives tale that when you have a cold, you should, and originally started out as stuff a cold, like eat as much as you can. And then if you have a fever, you should try and not eat very much at all.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
First of all, if you have a cold, you may not want to eat very much. You may not be very hungry. So, like, for God's sake, don't just make someone stuff themselves full just because they're sick with a cold. It's not going to do anything for you.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, if your metabolism is kicking in in a substantial way, it's going to, you know, if you're just laying around in bed, that'll make you eat up more of your calories and nutrients than you that you have in your body. So you're going to want as much as you can. So if you're hungry, cold, fever or whatever, by God, eat something or drink something.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
You definitely need to stay hydrated, even if you're not hungry. There are plenty of ways to get, you know, nutrients and liquid into you.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah. Pretty neat. Fevers are no fun, but I love when I'm sick and the fever happens, I'm like, okay, this is my body doing its thing, so I feel good about it.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Exactly. It didn't feel great, but there's no better feeling than like breaking that fever, you know?
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, that same article from Gentleman's Magazine from way back when suggested some other things of the time. Barley water, which sounds not too bad. Small beer. You ever seen those little baby beers that are like eight ounces or whatever?
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Well, I don't know, but that makes sense.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
We called, me and my friends, Eddie and Allison, called those tiny beers queets. I don't know. I think Allison made up the word, and it just kind of stuck. And the fun thing about drinking those is you look like Andre the Giant.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
What else? Apple water, linseed tea, toast in water. That may be the toast in water. Remember that?
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
That's right. They starved. Well, I guess fasted. Same thing. Sure. For both groups for 24 hours. And then the cold feeders, they gave a meal replacement drink. So not hot food in this case. And so after they had this sustenance, I guess, their blood levels of an immune protein called interferon gamma increased. Went really, really sky high. Average increase of 450 percent.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
And interferon plays a role in regulating our response to infections in our immune system. So you would think like, hey, eating is like exactly what you want to do.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, by an average of almost 400 percent compared to the 450 for the other. And I think there was one patient whose fasting levels rose more than 1100 percent.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
And this is also an important part of our immune response, but it's different kinds of immune responses. So if you're thinking like – Well, hey, if I starve myself, then this one's going to go up. You don't know which cells you need. So it's not sort of a roulette game you should try and play by starving yourself.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, because what you want is a little bit of both and ideally more of both, but not a whole lot of one and a lot less of the other.
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Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, I'm not sure about this one. He said the most exquisitely slender diet you should have when the disease is very sharp. So I'm not quite sure what disease he's talking about there. So I'm not sure if that counts.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
Yeah. And, you know, that's not the kind of thing we usually highlight when we're talking about women on the show. But you can't ignore that with Morgana the Kissing Bandit. Right. Most notably because it comes up later in a potential defense in court, which if you're wondering how in the world is that does that work, then you'll find out in Act Two.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
And I think the fact that we mentioned it just goes to show how much you can't ignore it. I hope so. She was introduced to baseball by her grandfather who raised her. You said she had a rough childhood, which very sadly she did. She was a runaway at age 13. She was unhoused for a while. Eventually, she became an exotic dancer as a teenager.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
And in 1969 at Crossley Field during a Cincinnati Reds game, when she was 17, she was with a couple of friends sitting, you know, near the field level. And, you know, the baseball players were checking these girls out because it was 1969. And that's what you did when you were a baseball player. You get a little bored in outfield and look to the stands at teenage girls, I guess.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
And everyone was sort of, you know, the players were sort of paying them some attention except for Pete Rose. And they were like, what gives with this guy? And her friend said, hey, I bet you I'll give you five bucks if you run out on the field and, you know, confront him, which she did. Pete Rose played outfield at the time before his move to the infield. She ran out there.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
Yeah, yeah. He was an outfielder at first, but he played everywhere but I think shortstop and catcher and pitcher. Yeah. Anyway, Pete Rose had a brief chat with her. He was endorsing Ballpark Frank's hot dogs at the time. And she said, hey, I buy those hot dogs. Gave him a kiss on the cheek. He said, you're nuts. You're going to get in trouble. But she didn't at the time.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
She went back to her seat and security didn't come by. And she watched the rest of the game with her friends. And a sports writer in Cincinnati the next day dubbed her the kissing bandit.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
Let's do it. S-Y-L-Y-S-K-S-K-K-K-K-K.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
All right, so Morgana is kissing athletes all over the place. She's getting more and more famous. I mentioned that she did this with most of the sports, but baseball was her number one love. But she would show up at a NASCAR race. She'd kiss an NBA player. She'd go to an NFL game. She went to NHL games. I don't know if she kissed a horse or a jockey, but she did this at a horse race once.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
Apparently, George Brett... sort of got back at her in a playful way when he showed up at the club where she was dancing and jumped up on stage and kissed her.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
Yeah, because if you grew up in the 70s and 80s, and you were a sports fan, in particular a baseball fan of Major League Baseball here in the United States, then no doubt at some point you either saw on the news or saw live during a game a woman wearing
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
Yeah, it was this weird cultural moment in time where someone got really famous for doing something just sort of unusual and something that a lot of people did. Like these days when you see somebody run down on a field, especially since the stabbing of Monica Sellis on the tennis court years ago.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
This is all sort of scary stuff, and you never know what someone's going to do. You know, when Hank Aaron hit his home run, the guys ran down on the field. You know, we're patting him on the back. But that was sort of the first like, oh, boy, what's happening here? Like these white guys are rushing, you know, the black man who broke the white guy's record.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
Well, that was what first started. I mean, Morgana came after this, so it clearly didn't change that much. Oh, OK. I think Monica Sellis is what really, really changed it because that was an actual act of violence. Everyone else had good intentions.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
But these days when somebody rushes the field, it's usually a protester and they usually get tackled in a pretty violent manner and they won't show it on TV immediately. All cameras are off. directed to not show any of this stuff so no one's incentivized to actually do this right but not back then man everyone like she was good for baseball you know
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
Yeah. And, you know, I said that's ridiculous because it's different these days and it is a genuine security risk because you never know what someone's going to do because the world is crazy now. Yeah. But back then, like everyone knew who Morgana was. Everyone knew she was going to run out there. It would take less than a minute.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
run out onto the baseball field and chatted up for a moment with a professional baseball player and then kiss them on the cheek and then run back to the stands waving at least for a while until she started getting arrested for doing this. And that was Morgana the Kissing Bandit.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
She would kiss the player on the cheek, not even on the lips, because she didn't like the chewing tobacco in baseball. And there's absolutely no reason to throw this woman on the ground and kick her for sort of a minor disruption. This is a different time. So if people are like, oh, I don't know, man, you can't do something like that. Like, it's just different these days.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
Everyone knew her and knew she meant no ill will.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
yeah this guy his name was richard haynes they call him the racehorse and he was you know one of the sort of showboaty uh would take wealthy clients accused of everything from murder to you know embezzling and stuff like that and uh apparently one time in court he zapped himself with a cattle prod to prove that it wasn't a lethal weapon so he was that kind of guy yeah uh and this is where
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
We mentioned that he used her bust size as part of the defense because he was going to use the gravity defense, he called it, wherein he would argue that she would just lean over the railings as a sports fan and that the weight of her bust would drag her over the rail onto the field. And I guess the court was like, oh, boy, let's just drop the charges so we don't have to go through that.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
That's right. Scotty Pippen of the Bulls was the last player to get that kiss, and that was in the early 90s. And then she was in the movie Kingpin and in a cameo in 96, retired officially in 2000, even though Scottie Pippen was years before that. But I don't think we mentioned she made millions of bucks off this persona. Yeah.
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Short Stuff: Morganna the Kissing Bandit
But eventually, you know, like all entertainers, even even kind of oddball pseudo entertainers has to leave eventually and really went underground. And it's hard to find a lot of recent information there. about her, even though we think she is still alive, probably in her late 70s. But who knows? Because she's never been very truthful about her age. You got anything else? I got nothing else.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And these have been the fascination of like everyone from engineers to historians to physicists over the years because they're just so kind of confusing and how they actually work. And I'm still not entirely sure how it works. It seems to be a little magic involved.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
One thing I know goes a long way toward keeping this ice, and we got to say some of this ice is mined from the mountains and brought down and preserved. Some is made on site. We'll get to that. But one big factor is the insulation of the structure itself, which is made from a mortar called cerouge.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
Yeah. Sand, clay, egg whites, lime, goat hair, and ash. Mm-hmm. Quite a mixture.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
Yeah, probably so. So I mentioned that sometimes the ice was brought in from the mountains and kept there throughout the year. But usually what would happen is they would make ice. They would bring in water. They would divert water from an aqueduct. through these underground water channels called canots. And they would channel them to the north side of this wall.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
It's another thing we haven't mentioned yet is they have these very, very high walls that act as shade for these channels to keep, you know, the wind off of it because stuff isn't going to freeze as fast if it's moving. So to keep the water still and to keep it cooler away from that sun.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
Yeah. Another way that helps us out is that dome shape. It's not domed because they like domes, even though domes are nice. It's conical because that optimizes what's called the solar chimney effect. That's when you create a convection current, letting that heat go up, up, up, and out. through these openings at the top and bringing in that cool air from the bottom.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
That's right. And that feels like a good time for a break. And we'll come back and talk about what the heck they're doing with all this ice right after this.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
All right, so they're making ice. They're preserving ice. What are they doing with all this ice? One of the things they're doing is using it as a refrigerator. You know, they'll store food in there that they don't want to go bad and just using it as a cold house. They will also just use the ice to eat in a treat. They have something called faluda over there. It's a Persian traditional dessert.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
It has thin vermicelli noodles made from cornstarch. And then you mix that up with a little semi-frozen syrup of sugar and rose water and then serve it up with a little lime juice and maybe some ground pistachios. And it's like a little Persian icee.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
Yeah, I'm going to say it's spelled Y-A-K-H, you know, as most words are. C-H-A-A-L. I'm going to say YAKALS.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
Yeah, for sure. They would make those delicious faluda. They would make sherberts and preserve them. Isn't that nuts? Fruit and ice. And they would put them on a donkey and go sell them at market and stuff like that. They would sell ice directly from those places sometimes. And, you know, one of the things they're also taking advantage of is the greenhouse effect.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
You know, the earth is going to stay fairly warm at night because of the greenhouse effect trapping those gases in the atmosphere. But if it's low humidity and if it's a really clear night, that effect is going to be weaker and that heat can dissipate and disappear more readily.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
And so that's when they discovered like, hey, we can make these little thin layers of ice and kind of build, you know, day by day, night by night on these clear, low humidity nights eventually to get, you know, some pretty significant ice.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
Depends on how big those cubes were. Were they big, fancy cocktail cubes? That's a lot more ice than an ice nugget.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
Yeah, I mean, these went away, obviously, because of modern refrigeration came on the scene. And also, one thing that was happening was they were making this ice kind of out in the open, and a lot of it would get contaminated with dust, and it wasn't, like, the healthiest ice in the world.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
And so that combined with modern refrigeration coming along, they were like, maybe we should just not have these much anymore. But like you mentioned, there is one still around at least today. And there are groups there that are trying to preserve this way of life and at least keep it, you know, not like a chief refrigerating method, but like, hey, we can't lose our culture.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
And so let's work to take some of these old ones and restore them at least, even if only for like museum and touring purposes.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
That's right. Get some egg whites too. No one likes those.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
We'll see. But what we're talking about is the promise from our refrigeration episode a little bit more on these ancient – basically ancient refrigerators or cooling systems. They were found across ancient Persia at least as old as 400 B.C. This is modern-day Iran.
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Short Stuff: Yakhchāls - Ancient Fridges
And this is – these are places where, believe it or not, the climate enables freezing of ice when you would not think you should be able to freeze ice.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Can you believe that? I mean, they're venomous, they're giant, and they are invading, but come on.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Yeah, for sure. So the scientific name of these beautiful, beautiful spiders are Nephila clavata. And they are from East Asia. And they got over here like a lot of things get over here, which is in like shipping containers and stuff. A lot of times it's like lumber. That's how you get a lot of insects coming in.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
And they came over from East Asia and really made a home here in the southeast since I think 2013 is when they first spotted them in Georgia.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Well, you're also seeing a lot of them now because the adults come out and spin their webs in August, September, October.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Yeah, I mean, they're big, they're orb weavers, so they're going to weave those big, beautiful webs that, I mean, their webs can be 10 feet wide. The one I almost walked into the other day, like face first, was probably about four feet wide and strung between two outdoor umbrellas that were not close to each other. So I don't know if that part counts as the width or not.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
If that does, it was more like eight feet wide. But if you've seen these things and you said like, oh, that's just a garden spider. We have those when I was growing up. What are you talking about, guys? Not the same spider. The garden spider looks a lot like it, but there are some differences because they're, well, different spiders. Garden spiders, the females are bigger than the males.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
And as far as the markings go, the garden spiders have yellow and black basically only. And the Joros have yellow and dark blue with a little bit of red on their belly.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Um, I mean, I've walked through some some spider webs in my day. Like you do that a lot when you're like backup backpacking because you don't see him on the trail. So that happens a lot. And here that like I walked through one earlier just kind of on my arms. But it wasn't, you know, the nightmare scene where it's you realize it three inches from the spider being on your face kind of thing.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
That is. Is that a good time for a break? I think so. All right. We'll take a break and we'll be right back after I go take a quick shower.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
That's right. And if you think, you know, how far north are they going to get right now? And I read an article, I think, from June 24 that said West Virginia is about as far north as they've gone so far, except for a satellite population in Baltimore. So they, I guess, got on a container, went to Baltimore, and were like, this isn't so bad.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
I think one of the things we didn't mention that, you know, since they're so native to Georgia especially, or not native, I guess, but invaded in Georgia first, the University of Georgia has done a lot of studying on them. And they found that it turns out these guys can live in a lot colder weather than they previously thought they could. So they'll be to you soon, New Jersey, New York, and beyond.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
You know, I just saw a Joro spider today eating, either eating a bee or fighting a bee. I don't know what was going on, but it was tangling with a bee.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
I think a lot of people have that reaction. There's something. And not only that, but the phrase, take a lover, it's just like. Yes. It's so gross to me.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Oh, goodness me. You need some of that. Eye bleach. Studio 54 joke.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Oh, goodness. How did this get so dirty all of a sudden? All right. So they live close to each other. The males are trying to get the attention. They may float on little cobwebby type things and just be like, hey, look over here. And the reason they don't just jump up in a web and say, let's get this thing over with. is because the female will probably kill the male and eat it.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
So they're walking a very fine line trying to get some attention without being eaten. So the University of Georgia professor said, you know, a lot of times, like while the female is eating something, they might just walk up and say, hey, are you enjoying that? What do you think of me?
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
But, my friend, should people be killing these things because they're invasive?
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
No. I think they're basically saying, hey, there's plenty of stink bugs, so that's fine. It's not like they're killing off the honeybees. And if they do bite you, you might get a little local reaction, but it's not the kind of venom that's going to do any kind of harm to you, really.
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Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
You should reach into all the hidey holes with those things on.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Brown noise is deeper, has lower frequencies, it's got more bass, minimalizes that higher frequency. And I didn't really know this, but apparently you can liken some of these to sounds in nature. And apparently brown noise is more akin to like a river rapid or a heavy rainfall or thunder sound.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Yeah, and this is a part, like, I don't know, this is way above my scientific pay grade, so I'm not sure how you go about this, but he devised this mathematical formula to predict the movements of the pollen and used that to generate an electronic sound, and that was Brown Noise.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Yeah, so the sound of brown noise is literally the formula for the sound of pollen moving, which is just kooky to think about.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Yeah, we're doing one on the different color noises, you know, white noise, brown noise, pink noise. And Jerry literally just said, hey, I'm listening to brown noise right now, which I've never heard of anyone just listening to noise unless they were trying to sleep or, you know, at a place where they were trying to block out other noise.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Well, we just had a great conversation about brown noise offline, but now we're going to talk about white noise, the higher cousin to brown noise. Obviously, it does have a range. It's not like it's just high frequency, but it's not as bass heavy. They have the lows in there. They have the The mids and the highs.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
But white noise is used, aside from just sleeping a lot of times with like noise-canceling headphones and stuff, masking other sounds. This one is akin naturally to like a light rain or a gentle breeze through the trees. Very nice. Sounds kind of nice too. Mm-hmm.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Yeah, I think I remember talking about that game I played, Ghost of Tsushima. I think that's what it's called. It was the sort of feudal Japanese warrior PS4 game that I played. The sounds in that game, it's a gorgeous game, but the sounds of the wind blowing through the poppy fields and through the bamboo forest, you could tell it was a thing that they really wanted to capture, and they did so.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Yeah. Dying. Dying. All right. What about pink noise?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Yeah. And, you know, I just realized I have my app here. I might as well figure out what pink noise sounds like because I wasn't exactly sure. So we can just play this if that's all right with you. Yeah, go ahead. So that's pink. Yeah. That's white. Yeah, it could be pink. I mean, that does sound like ocean waves. That's brown. Okay.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
But my app has a bunch of other colors, and I'm not sure if this is like, hey, let's just go crazy, but there's also purple noise, blue noise. Which app? Are you talking about Dwellspring? No, no, no. This is a different one. But, yeah, our friend actually developed a white noise app, right?
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
That's the one I use on my app. But I forgot Brandon had his. I'm going to switch over just to support.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Oh, buddy. That is niche. Yeah, exactly. So that just put me to sleep thinking about it.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
I'm sure it is. Nice work, Brandon. So back to the noises, like as far as which one is best for sleep, there have been some very middling studies over the years. We'll mention a few of them, but the problem with these is, you know, in 2017, they were like, hey, let's get eight people in here and watch them sleep. Or the one in 2016, they got 16 people. There's just never a lot of folks, you know.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
But I think Jerry just said it like helped her relax or something or concentrate.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
I guess, you know, bed space is probably not the easiest thing to do unless people are doing this at home. But at Oxford in 2017, they got those eight people, and they said that they fell asleep 40% faster listening to white noise, but their overall sleep was about the same.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Yeah. Kind of the same thing I said, but with a different word.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
They were like the green thing that was a cucumber once.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
There was a study in 2017 from Northwestern of 13 older adults, and they said pink noise provided deeper sleep overall and improved, again, ability to recall words.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
No, it's tough if you've ever had to be at a hospital for a long time supporting somebody or just, you know, being the patient. It is hard to sleep. The beds are not great. And they're always throwing on those fluorescent lights right when you're dosing off.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Yeah, that's a good point. And we should say the results of the study in the control group, they found the quality of sleep degraded as they obviously spent multiple nights there with all those beeps and, you know, let me check your blood pressures happening. Once they had the ones who had the white noise, their quality of sleep remained basically the same throughout their stay.
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Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, there there there's that app. There's other apps. There are. Stand-alone sound machines that you can get. You know, that's just a little thing that you put beside your bed or maybe Jerry has beside her desk at work so she can sleep on the job. And then as far as like how to use it, like that's up to you.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Depending on what noise does best for you, try different ones out. The volume, try some different ones out. I find that I get my very best sort of put-me-to-sleep stuff online. When I run it through an actual speaker instead of just through my phone speaker because you get some more deep bass resonance. Oh, yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
And my napping trick is I will put a pillow over my head and face and stick that phone under there with me, and it creates this sort of echoey – not echoey, but like just sort of a – it traps the sound. It's like a cavern of sound, and that really gets me out.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
Yeah, and I have been on record before. I'm a brown nose adherent. Brown noise, I didn't know. Apparently, did Alma say brown nose?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Colorful Noises
It can also be called red nose or red noise, which I didn't know. But brown noise, as I've demonstrated on the show, if this is white noise, this is brown noise.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
I think one foot was bigger than the other one too. Good Lord. I thought it was a very strange little add on.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
So they contend he was never like a Swedish resident? No.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah. So he could have spoke Swedish. That's what I just wonder about like ice wall climbing and stuff. He could probably do that in Sweden.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yes. Yeah. All right. So maybe one day we'll know. Maybe. I mean, we found out the Somerton man's identity, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, it's not like Somerton, man, because that was the most interesting thing about that was the mystery of who he was. It wouldn't care. It wouldn't matter if this guy was indeed Albert Johnson, who was his alias. It's a remarkable story that started in July 1931 when this guy, Albert Johnson, came and moved there. They think he may have come from Sweden.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, I think we read a listener mail because we got like 10,000 Australians writing us.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
according to certain people who talked to him here and there. But he was a man of very few words, as we'll see, when he arrived in the vast remote area of the Northwest Territories near Fort McPherson and built a little 8-by-10-foot cabin near the Rat River.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, I mean, these are the Mounties. So these guys are not messing around. The story is a little confusing because everywhere you look, it's a little different. But from what I gathered, there were three total visits. One visit when he basically said, get the heck out of here and pointed a gun at them. A second visit when two guys came back. And this time he supposedly refused to talk at all.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
And when they went to look through his windows, he just covered his windows up and ignored them.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
I guess four total because the third one was when those two guys plus two more, I think it was Alfred King and Joe Bernard and two more guys, came back with warrants, forced the door over, and he shot King and a brief firefight ensued. And then finally the fourth visit when they brought a bunch of guys with dynamite and camped out for three days outside his cabin.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, I saw that it was like a 60-mile hike just to get to his place. So the fact that they came back four times when this guy probably could have opened the door the first time and said, all right, I won't mess with their traps anymore. And that probably would have been the end of it.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
But, yeah, he managed to evade them on this manhunt by stepping in caribou tracks and from these storms that would come through. And maybe that's a good time for a break.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Hey, everybody. Chuck and Josh here. And I was recently a guest once again on one of my favorite podcasts. It's called The Puzzler with old pal and friend of the show, AJ Jacobs. AJ gives really fun and funny word puzzles to guests like me, like Ken Jennings, like Dax Shepard, and hopefully like Josh because he would be so great on this show.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Oh, you got to be on it. It's a lot of fun. It's sort of like Wordle or Connections, but for your ears. And I think we should play everyone just a little clip. It's a puzzle that I have to convert movie titles from the metric system back to their actual title. Oh, wow. From my second appearance on the puzzler right now. Nice.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
That's right. The mad trapper of Rat River, a.k.a. perhaps, I don't even know about perhaps, almost certainly Canada's most infamous unknown person on the lam and the largest manhunt in Canada's history conducted to try and get this guy.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
All right, this is going to be great.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
So subscribe to The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs to tease your mind and tickle your funny bone.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
That's right. They got a pretty legendary WW1 Canadian fighter pilot named Wilfred Wap May to come in. A little side note here, Wap May was in the dogfight that ended the Red Baron's life. So a very sort of famous Canadian fighter pilot flying above for the first time, seeing if he could just spot trails from above.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, supposedly this is one of the really first big news stories to be broken via electronic media. So you've got your first search and rescue, or I guess not search and rescue, search and destroy mission featuring a plane. You've got the first big news stories breaking on radio for the first time.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
One of the weird parts of this case, I said he was a man of few words, is as the story goes, this guy didn't say a word. The whole time. Like there was never like, you know, it's my right to be here. You know, get away. I'm just trying to live. Like supposedly this guy said nothing to any of them.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, I think the Lusho people were the ones who initially filed the complaint. Did you see which tribes helped out in the search?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
So another part of the kind of a fun fact of this story is or at least part of the lore is that at one point they had him pinned in a steep canyon and he supposedly scaled a near vertical wall of ice basically to get out of there.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
That's right. They got him finally after this long, long manhunt, a very successful evasion for a long time. But, yeah, they eventually got him. No one. I mean, part of the you know, the second part of this is just the mystery. Like not only who was he literally, but like who was this guy to move way out there?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
To not, you know, they supposedly back, you know, closer to town, even though I'm sure that was super small as well. It was like a very friendly place. And he was known as a loner and very unfriendly, which was not the norm. And like, who was this guy who just moved out to the middle of nowhere and like didn't speak a word this entire time? Right. Yeah. Why would he do this?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, for sure. I wouldn't would want nothing to do with this guy.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
So like you said, they exhumed his body in 2007 once DNA sampling was, you know, a viable thing. And that has enabled some genetic comparisons to possible relatives. They obviously didn't, you know, no one has come forward with it like a perfect match or anything. But they made comparisons with more than two dozen families.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
And they have some strong circumstantial evidence that what family he may have been from and where they have landed now is that they're pretty sure that his background is Swedish. And he has been linked to multiple descendants of Jews. A gentleman named Gustav Magnusson, who died in 1853, and Britta Svendater, who passed away in 1846. And they are pretty sure that he's a descendant of them.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
But nobody from any of those bloodlines has come forward either.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
Yeah. It was a long time ago, though. So who knows what was going on back then? Sure. Mainly medieval England is what we're talking about. But the earliest kind of this outlaw status became a law in 6th century Frankish law called the Lex Salica. This was under King Clovis, early 500s. So this is a long, long time ago. And this is basically like, yeah, if you don't respond to a summons –
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
then you're outside of the king's protection. This kind of started the legal basis for that. But medieval England is where it's sort of most known. If you were over the age of 14 and you were a man, if you were a woman, you were said to be waived, even though it was basically the same thing. But if you were over 14 and you were a male, you could be outlawed.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
And basically say, like you said, like, hey, anything you do or anything anyone does to you, rather, like we're not even going to prosecute them. Somebody could break into your house and steal your stuff and you're an outlaw. So sorry, T.S. for you.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
Exactly. And you mentioned a process. There was a process. It wasn't immediate. It was a pretty slow process even. But what would happen is the sheriff of wherever you were would locate these fugitives. They would do some investigating, see if they owned any property that they could get. to basically say like, hey, we've got your, you know, your stash of chickens.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
Come to court, maybe you'll get those chickens back. If that never happens and they can't get them to come to court or whatever, then the sheriff has to sit through this five different times in court calling, you know, the fugitive to come forward. And after the fifth non-appearance, then they hit the gavel or drop the glove or whatever the heck they did back then and said, you, sir, are an outlaw.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
Yeah. Every once in a while, a colleague will drum up the nerve to approach us very sheepishly with head bowed, say, what do you guys think about this idea? And Josh will wave them away and say, it shall be on the list in seven years time. Yes. Or so.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
Yeah, and even if someone, you know, your neighbor didn't come and rob your house or try and kill you or something, if you had outlaw status, you were definitely not a part of the community anymore. You were totally ostracized and shunned. Sometimes it was just sort of the way that, you know, everyone shuns somebody, which is very quietly and passive-aggressively.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
Sometimes it was very much official, though. If they had an outlaw they captured... They could say like, hey, we're going to really ostracize you. We're going to send you to Australia. Have fun over there.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
So this was, you know, usually like real outlaws, like real criminals, even if it was something like not appearing in court. You said it was oftentimes a lot worse. But it wasn't always that. In some countries, I know we talked about it in our, I think we had a leprosy episode many years ago, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
Yeah. In India, if you had leprosy, you could be banned and ostracized and essentially get something akin to an outlaw status by being sent to a leper colony where you had where you didn't have the same rights as everyone else. I think they call leprosy Hansen's disease now. Is that right?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
But no one would know what we meant if we just said that. So.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Outlawry
And I knew the leper was not something that people say anymore.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
Yeah, and also, like, I feel so bad that... That he had that hope that he thought like, oh, wait a minute. So you'll you'll betray the mafia if I just buy you out of this thing. Like, yeah, totally. That's no big deal. And then he actually believed that. I mean, what a what a awful way to die. Desperate and also hopeful at the same time.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
Yeah. Well, let's just describe the crime scene. This guy was found deceased at the scene wearing a bulletproof vest from a gunshot wound from his own handgun to the back of his head. And it did not have his fingerprints on his own gun.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
Yeah. So the sheriff was like, well, it looks like a suicide to me. You know, the guy put on surgical gloves and, you know, shot himself in the back of the head as one does. And then Managed to somehow to take those gloves off and hide them.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
Yeah. His wife said, no, there's no way that this was a suicide. That's impossible. And now we're going to tell you a little bit about Charles Morgan and things will become pretty clear as we do.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
Yeah. Like just putting money in escrow, all of a sudden it's got a little bit more legitimacy to it. Yeah. It's not the most regulated industry, so it's a little easier to get away with something like that probably as an escrow agent, or at least certainly it was in 1977. Yeah. And that's what he was doing, it seems like. You know, from all accounts, it didn't seem like he was a bad dude.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
It seems like somebody – Maybe like in a Sopranos episode where he got in a little over his head, maybe ended up feeling like he had to do certain things once the mafia got their, you know, their finger in his pie.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
But he was doing this for the mafia, and there's a journalist for Unsolved Mysteries at the time named Don Devereaux, who basically was like, this guy was helping the mafia launder money through Arizona as an escrow agent by... buying and selling platinum and gold is how they were doing it.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
That's right. This is the case of a sort of a lesser known unsolved true crime murder, in fact. Yeah. I hope that didn't spoil anything. I don't think so. In this thing you put together, called it bizarre. I take issue with that. I don't think it's bizarre at all. But it is unsolved and interesting.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
Yeah, he's missing a shoe. His hands are zip tied together. There are another set of zip ties that I guess he got out of, but on one of his ankles. And she immediately is like, oh, my God, the mafia has their fingers in your pie. That's right. I know what this means. He was refusing to speak and wrote down on a piece of paper. And this is the part that I just find interesting.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
And I don't take issue with it, but I'll tell you what I mean. He wrote down that his throat had been painted with a hallucinogenic drug that could either drive him insane or his words or destroy his nervous system and kill him. So don't call the cops. and don't say anything out loud, and move my car, go hide my car, because I don't want them to know I'm back.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
All right, we're in agreement then, because I don't think that's a thing, is it?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
Yeah, what I really tried to dig up, and, again, there's just not a lot, is, like, did he experience any, you know, drug effects?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
Yeah, for sure. Super scary stuff, obviously. After about a week, like you said, his Ruth had nursed him back to health and things sort of returned to normal in his life, except that he started wearing a bulletproof vest. He started he grew a beard out to try and kind of disguise himself.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
He started driving his daughters to and from school every day when they used to walk because he was worried for their safety. And he wouldn't tell his wife what was going on. He was just like business as usual. And the excuse was like, hey, I can't tell you what's going on because I have to keep you safe. He might have hinted that he was a government agent. But basically, Ruth, don't ask.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
It sounds like any episode of The Sopranos to me.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
No, no, for sure. I mean, this stuff is a little weird. She got the call from a woman who said he's okay. I think she called him Chuck even. Chuck is okay. He's all right. She also mentioned Ecclesiastes from the Bible, chapter 12, verses 1 through 8. This would pop up again in a second, but I'm sure you went and read Ecclesiastes 12, 1 through 8 as I did.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
The only thing I can sum up is that it sounded like some Sam Jackson kind of stuff in Pulp Fiction.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
Like just sort of a scary, ominous biblical passage is how I interpreted that.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
That's right. Did you say that was in his underwear?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
I was leaving that for you. It was clipped to the inside of his underwear. The bill also had seven Hispanic last names written on it. There was a map showing a known drug smuggling route between Mexico and Tucson. And then the founders on that bill, the founders are signing the Declaration of Independence. They numbered them one through seven. And then the biblical stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
They also found one of his teeth wrapped up in a handkerchief in the car. There was a piece of paper with directions of where he was buried and handwritten handwriting. And someone else's sunglasses were in the car.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
I don't know. Maybe they intended to send it as like you would a lopped finger as a warning and they never got around to it. That'd be what I would say. But why did he have it? Well, that's what I'm saying. I mean, someone clearly was out there in the desert with him in that car.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
Here's the scene. The two mafia guys are driving away, and they're like, hey, nobody's ever going to find this body, right? Hey, not out here, they're not. And you got the tooth to mail to the broad, right? Oh, Vinny, I left the tooth. You left the tooth? Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
So that's what I think happened. But, yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense. A couple of days after the body was discovered, a woman called the sheriff's department said, I am the person who called Ruth Morgan a few days earlier. My name is Green Eyes. And they said, how pretty. And she said, thank you. And they said, are your eyes green? She said, they're actually a shade of blue.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Death of Charles Morgan
She said, but that's not important. She said, I met with Chuck at a local motel recently. He had been hiding out there for about a week and he was on the run. He had a briefcase, like had a ton of money. He said that someone put a hit out on him and he was getting in touch with the hit man to buy back that contract. Obviously, that did not happen.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
That's right. And when you said tulip mania. Yeah. That's really what it was called. You weren't just being cheeky.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
So a little bit about tulips, native to places like Kazakhstan and Eastern Europe and the Himalayas. They don't look like the tulips in their original form that we think of today. But they have been cultivated over the years and, you know, crossbred to where they look like they look like tulips now. These beautiful tulips popping up here in Atlanta already this spring. Yeah. And they're lovely.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
They're grown from bulbs. And they're, I don't know about how easy or hard it is, but they, like I said, are crossbred to create new and exciting varieties and colors.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
So in this case, you had, economically speaking, you had a big time demand all of a sudden. But not only was it a big time demand, it was a big time demand of people that had a lot of money. So the price went through the roof very, very quickly. A bulb, a single bulb, One tulip bulb would fetch 2,000 florin.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
And just to put it into perspective, what you could buy back then for 2,000 florin, 16,000 pounds of cheese. 250 tons of beer, a couple of hundred sheep or maybe 16 grown oxen.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
And they were paying prices in today's dollars. Thank you, Investopedia, for doing this weird translation. But in today's dollars for a single tulip bulb, they were paying 50 grand, 150 grand, even sometimes for the rarest varieties up to a million dollars for a single bulb.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
That's right. Tulip mania was perhaps the first financial bubble to happen and then burst. And we should probably talk a little bit about what an economic bubble is, don't you think?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
Yeah, they're writing out a giant check with a feathered pen and they're just like, I can't believe I'm paying this amount of money for a tulip.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
Yeah, for sure. They were actually sold on the Dutch Stock Exchange. And these were, you know, some wealthy investors. But everybody got in on the gang, like the gang, the game, just regular middle working class people, even like people of the lower classes.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
They started cashing in everything they could, selling their houses in some cases, selling the tools of their trade that they were previously making money on to invest in these tulips. And, you know, what's going to happen is that eventually it's going to burst. And it did so less than two years after this frenzied investment stuff started in 1636.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
Yeah, I mean, it affected the wealthy, obviously, in some cases, but it also affected a lot of those people that were looking to get wealthy and did sometimes, you know, make a lot of money during this, you know, less than two-year period. But, you know, like I said, some people sold their homes and all of a sudden they don't have a home and they're stuck with all these tulips.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
The trades people who, you know, sold their tools Because they were like, hey, I'm in the tulip game now. I don't need these ironworking skills or tools. All of a sudden, they couldn't even go back to that trade because they didn't have the stuff they needed to do it. And the people who bought those future contracts were the people that were really, really in trouble, right? Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
Well, they tried to, yeah, not to much effect. But the courts finally said, all right, we have to do something here. So why don't we work out a deal where the traders pay 10 percent of the contract's face value? But nobody was happy with that because the suppliers were still losing tons of money. The buyers still – were in bad shape because the value of those tulips just, you know, plummeted.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
That's right. Because as anyone who's ever been to a bubble rave or played bubbles with your kids or just adult friends who enjoy bubbling... That bubble is going to burst. They all will eventually. And that's what happens with an economic bubble too. The price will drop usually pretty quickly. And a lot of people start selling off very quickly.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
And 10 percent of a future contract was a lot more than they were worth now. And so, you know, nobody really won in the end. And it wrecked the Dutch economy for, you know, it took a couple of decades to sort of naturally heal itself back to where it was.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
Yeah, it's gorgeous. And I can also recommend a classic Conan O'Brien bit when he used to go on location and do remote stuff. He has a very, very funny one from, I believe, his first iteration of his show where he and Andy went to Amsterdam and went out with a camera to the tulip farms and the tulip markets. And it was very, very funny.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
You got anything else? I have no other recommendations other than plant tulip bulbs. They're gorgeous.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Tulipmania
And those who get out early enough can usually avoid it. But every single time someone is going to be left holding that asset that is all of a sudden not worth much of anything. And a lot of times people have invested their entire life savings in this stuff. A lot of times they bought this stuff on credit. And all of a sudden, this thing isn't worth that much money.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Hey guys, it's Chuck from Stuff You Should Know. When it comes to finding the best financial products, have you ever wished someone would do the heavy lifting for you? Take all that research off your plate? Same. Let me introduce NerdWallet's 2025 Best Of Awards.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I think you're great. They did another study at the University of Leicester where they found that childhood traumas can really affect you later in life in terms of gullibility, like any kind of bullying, a death of a family member or something like that. It leads you more susceptible to fall for tricks later in life.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And apparently they say it could be because that kind of trauma just makes it hard to trust your own judgments and, you know, I guess everyone else's intent.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Oh, I know. I mean, we're pretty good parents, but I often think, like, how are we messing her up? Because I know we are in some way.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I think just try to limit that stuff as a parent. Like, you can't be perfect. I mean, my brother's a perfect parent, but there's only one. Scott. Another thing I thought was interesting, and this makes total sense, is if you rely on your intuition a lot, you're a lot more vulnerable to being duped by something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Just like, you know, some people have a good gut and some people think they have a good gut, but do not.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, it's funny. I'm okay. You know, things subside in the early afternoon, so I'm actually feeling a little better than I was like 20 minutes ago even.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. And I think, you know, that kind of suggests that if there's like a country with an authoritarian leader in place, like the simple sort of easy to understand radical solutions that are pitched out oftentimes in those situations are very easy to fall for if you're a gullible person, because that itself is a mental shortcut. Well, we just got we just got to do this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I just got to go to the doctor and just get it over with.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll take a break and talk about mood right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
The nerds already did the heavy lifting, reviewing over 1,100 financial products like credit cards, savings accounts, and more to bring you only the best of the best. Check out the 2025 Best Of Awards today at nerdwallet.com slash awards.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
All right, we're back. We promised to talk a little bit about mood because the fact is you are not always gullible or always not gullible. Everybody could get duped at any time from, you know, that changes from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, depending on a lot of factors like mood. If you're really, really tired, if you're super distracted, if you're upset.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
You may not notice something that can, you know, make you fall for a scam. Also, the same holds if you're in a really good mood. You know, if you're just feeling great about everything, you're like, yeah, yes to life, yes to everything. There was a study in 1938 by a researcher named Gregory Razran. who found that giving a free lunch made people more receptive to a political message.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I'll try. But I'm hanging in there. I am working on less than 300 calories a day for five days now. So I am a shell of a human.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And apparently that is sort of where like the sales lunch started, taking people out to sell them something and feeding them. You were more likely to close a deal. And I'm sure the same thing, like golf course sales things, like the salesperson's not out there beating the person in golf that they're selling to. I guarantee it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I don't know how that works, but I imagine you're letting them win and feel good about stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Right. So overall, if you think about people who might be gullible, you might think, you know, if you're going to stereotype it like people like kids, very young people, very old people and people that aren't very well educated.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
But it's not necessarily true. What? Yeah. There is a lot of factors, one of which I mentioned earlier. You can get a lot of skewed studies about the gullibility of someone who's older because if you're older, you're more likely to have a cognitive ability that's literally keeping you from being able to determine whether something is true.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Have you been doing push-ups? I can't do one push-up right now.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
But they've also conversely found that sometimes they're a little more protected because they're constantly have their children and everyone else saying like, no, no, no, watch out for scams. They're trying to scam you. Everyone's trying to scam you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, thankfully, nothing like that's ever happened to my parents. But it's you hear the stories all the time and it's just, you know, it's tragic and shameful.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
There was a study in 2018 that I thought was pretty interesting. A woman named Monica T. Witte, another Aussie. When you talk about like being catfished, which is if I guess I threw that word out, assuming everyone knows it. That's like when you get scammed in a sort of a romantic thing online by someone who's pretending to be someone they're not generally.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. Let's put that down. That would be super interesting.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
No, I don't think he's in the league anymore. He played in the NFL for a little while, but he was a linebacker for Notre Dame that was famously catfished and like, you know, smart, handsome, young athlete guy. So it's not like just, you know, the lonely loser in the basement that falls for stuff like that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Oh, man. Little River Man. So good. 2018, Monica Witte did one on sort of catfishing, but really just romance scams is what they called it. And she said if you fall for something like that, you obviously will be a little more impulsive and sensation seeking. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And so if someone's building up about all these great stories and these big travels and, you know, it's always it's never just like, well, I just kind of sit around at home like,
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
they always present themselves as offering some uh new exciting life it seems like right uh but she also found that they were more highly educated than average uh and livia i think is on the money kind of speculates that could be uh i and i think it's true when we did our thing on online dating it's generally people that are college educated that participate in online dating a little more right statistically but um also maybe that
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
If you're more educated, you just think like, I'm not going to fall for catfishing. I know all about that. And this is not that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I agree with that. In the old days, I think that's changing because I've never seen a generation as phone addicted as boomers are. Oh, really? Oh, man. You don't hang around a lot of boomers, do you? They have Gen Z beat? Every boomer I know just obsessively stares at their phone and looks things up and, yeah. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
No, no, no. They want to show you all the information in the moment.
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The Gullibility Episode
Right in the middle of dinner at a nice restaurant even.
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The Gullibility Episode
That's right. This is on gullibility. We were just talking offline that there are, I think, a hundred different ways to approach this kind of topic, and sometimes that's freeing, and sometimes that's really frustrating. And I think this one is a little frustrating. Livia put together a great article, I think, but It's just a hard one. When I pitched it to her, I was like, you know what?
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, which I think we'll get to in a minute before or after the next break. But can we talk about science? Because this is one thing when I sent Libby the idea, I was like, I think I'd read an article about scientists being gullible. And I was like, no, not scientists.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
But it turns out they very much can be because a lot of times when you are that well versed in a field, you might kind of think you know it all. And like, oh, no, I know what I'm doing. And so you might be more apt to believe a result that isn't accurate because you think you did it the right way. Like, that's just one aspect of it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Well, that was probably a scientific method, huh? Maybe.
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The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. Or like the little student in Rushmore that picked the results.
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The Gullibility Episode
You know, Max has his sort of little budding girlfriend at the end. And he says something about she won some science award, and I think she had to give it back or something. And he's like, why? She said, I faked the results. It didn't work, so I faked it.
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The Gullibility Episode
No, I don't think she does. They were on Charlie's Angels together and had some words.
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The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I was being sort of opposite with my Lucy Liu joke.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
You know, I'm not firing on all cylinders. I'm doing my best. I'm not either, apparently. All right, we'll be right back, and Josh will lead off with a little bit on trust.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I feel like, especially here in America, we're at peak gullibility as a nation. And I just wondered, is there any science to that? Are people more gullible than others? And can science be gullible? And this is what we came up with.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
That's right. LinkedIn knows hiring is a big deal for small businesses, not only because small businesses are wearing so many hats, but also because every hire is crucial for a growing company. And that's why LinkedIn pairs you with the best candidates using data that you won't find anywhere else.
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The Gullibility Episode
So post your job for free at linkedin.com slash sysk. That's linkedin.com slash sysk to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
You can trust people and think the best of people and still not be gullible.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I kind of understand this, but not 100 percent. But I think I get it. So what he would say is, Bill, your friend Bill stayed at a hotel for a week. He was only charged one day. Do you think he would tell the cashier about this, even though there's like no chance? Let's say there's no chance of him getting caught later on. Do you think he would do that?
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And people who scored high on their trustworthy score, like people who were trustworthy, they were more likely to say that Bill would do the honest thing. But when he added in a twist here, which is to tell them some negative things about Bill, like, by the way, just want to let you know, Bill also cut in line the other day.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
It makes his stepson feel stupid. But if they added in a couple of nuggets like that, negative things about Bill, the people who had high trust in people generally put a lot more weight on that additional information than the other people did, the people that were low in trustworthiness.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. And that can be a very freeing thing. And that's how Yamagishi sort of thought about it when he talked about his emancipation theory, which is if you're trusting, you're kind of or if you're untrusting, I guess you're kind of shackled in a way. Because you may just be stuck in a place because why hire a different person to do it because they're just going to be a scammer too.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And so you can get stuck in this cycle. But if you free yourself from that with his emancipation theory and you break those shackles and you start trusting people, it makes you much more apt to make a positive change in life because you trust somebody or something or some situation.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, for sure. There are people that think we are actually not as gullible as everyone thinks. There's this writer, Hugo Mercier, who wrote a book in 2020 called Not Born Yesterday. Great title for a book like that. And he's like, people are less gullible than we think.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And there are a lot of criteria people use to work out if they believe something or not, and we're better at it than we all think we are. Most people, or I guess in his idea, most people are actually looking for well-informed or well-intentioned information or if it has logic to it, if it's logically strong information.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
That's right. I guess we can start by talking about, I mean, we're going to talk about a lot of different people, a lot of different people that study this kind of stuff, a lot of different studies, some of which make more sense than others. But this guy, Stephen Greenspan, is an author. He wrote a book. He wrote the book on it, Annals of Gullibility, colon, Why We Are Duped and How to Avoid It.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Or, you know, maybe people are less like this, which is I'm just going to accept something or I'm sorry, I'm not going to accept something as a new piece of information because it's not something that I have found to be true. He argues that people are less like that than they say.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, exactly. He also points out in the book when it comes to like propaganda, that propaganda isn't something that can usually really completely changed someone's mind. What propaganda is good at is taking someone who already has those beliefs and putting them on turbo speed and reinforcing them. Even like the Nazi propaganda machine, he contends probably wasn't making someone anti-Semitic.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
But if you were anti-Semitic, then it really drove you down that road at a pretty fast pace.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. I mean, I think political ads are terrible and ridiculous and so overvalued. But I feel like these days it's less like it's more just beating that drum of like, aren't you mad? Aren't you mad? Go vote. Go vote. I know, man. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And one sort of important thing he does up front is say, hey, there's a difference between credulity and gullibility. Credulity is if, you know, you'll believe something just without looking at all the evidence. And gullibility means you have an active response to perhaps being conned.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Uh, we get, I'm sure anyone, um, who works for big companies get these and maybe even small companies do this, but when they send out the, the test, like the test fishing emails and then like the next day you'll get an email that's like, did you fall for it? Right. Uh, it's always, I'm always nervous. I'm like, Oh God, did I click on that thing that, you know, from, you know, facebook.gold.au.
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The Gullibility Episode
I got nothing else. I think, you know, we did a pretty good job on this one.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
This is a great current listener mail from Thursday's episode yesterday to us on Automats. Hey, guys. Two friends and I gave each other a graduation present from high school in 1970 and spent a week by ourselves in New York where we went to the Automat, and it was still great in 70. Four years later, this gets so good.
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The Gullibility Episode
Four years later, as a senior in college, a group of us did an independent study in humor and music as an excuse to do a concert of Bach stuff. I got to be the soloist in the concerto for horn and hard art. Nice. And he sent a video. Unfortunately, it was just audio. I mean, it sounded like a hoot, and really, it was great, but I wanted to see everything. Because here's what they did.
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The Gullibility Episode
This piece is for orchestra and also a table filled with various household items to play. Ideally, they should have been picked out of an automat on stage in order to play them. However, this is beyond our set construction abilities. We did have the recommended...
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
We did at least have the recommended banner overhead reading, in Latin, Less Work for Mother, along with trying to master the rather challenging music. It involved me running around Gettysburg with a pitch pipe, trying to find bells, pots, uh... Ooga horns and lots of other items that played specific notes. This is so great. Thanks for speaking those wonder, sparking those wonderful memories.
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The Gullibility Episode
I discovered you during COVID and have been an extremely faithful listener ever since. Nice. And that is from the Reverend Dr. Mark Oldenburg, Steckmiller Professor Emeritus of the Art of Worship and the music chair at Gettysburg United Lutheran Cemetery. Pronouns he, him.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I totally agree. I thought that definition was really weird. And I'm glad both are in here, though, because sometimes it's a nice contrast. But along the lines of what you were saying, there's a group of researchers, social psychologists from Macquarie University. There can be a lot of Aussies in this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Alessandra K. Tunis, maybe? That's what I'm going with. Defined it much in the way you would and I would and I think a lot of people would, which is simply the propensity to accept a false premise in the presence of untrustworthy clues. That's it. That's it. You don't have to act on it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
No. And there's a lot of factors. And this is where I think Greenspan did kind of hit on something is four factors of gullibility situational. Like if there's a lot of if everyone else is doing it and there's a lot of social pressure, like all the bros are investing in the same cryptocurrency and it's at a great price. And you're like, oh, man, I got to get in there. All the guys are right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
You know, everyone's in on that. So there's social pressure where you can fall for something. And cognitive issues like, well, as we'll get to later with, you know, our senior friends, sometimes there's like legit brain cognitive issues. That's a different thing than this. But this is just lacking expertise.
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The Gullibility Episode
And, you know, you can't evaluate what you're being told because you're just not I don't want to say smart enough. You're just not an expert in whatever that is.
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The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I totally think it makes sense, you know, because it happened to his cousin. That's right. Emotion can play a big factor in a lot of ways. And we'll talk about some of those with some studies later on. But one way is like if if let's say we're specifically talking about being kind, if it gives you a positive feeling, whether it's a.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
So somebody catfishing you and making you feel loved or, you know, some sort of financial thing that you think might provide for your long term security or like, oh, man, no one else knows about this deal but me. I'm so smart for getting in on the ground floor here. That kind of thing.
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The Gullibility Episode
I love that you barely use an accent. You just say it seriously. And that gets the point across.
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The Gullibility Episode
uh yeah so this gullibility scale was self-reported uh basically like do you self-reported meaning um do you think others do you perceive yourself as gullible and do you think others perceive you as gullible uh and then they you know they filled in with some other questions like how persuadable are you and stuff like that and it actually for a self-reported study which you know a lot of those can be tough um this seemed to work out pretty good for them don't you think
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The Gullibility Episode
I didn't think you would take advantage of this today.
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The Gullibility Episode
It's okay, buddy. All for the show. On that scale, they found some traits that were common among those that scored high in gullibility. Social intelligence was one of them. That'll keep coming back over and over. Vulnerability, emotionality, which we've talked about a little bit. Weak sense of self, which also comes up in different ways.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I think you found an article about how parents can wreck kids by not giving them self-confidence, right? And they'll end up gullible.
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The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I have a good friend who had a pretty bad stepfather, and the abuse in this situation was exclusively he made him feel stupid at every opportunity.
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The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I mean, this is kind of, I mean, I don't like playing it this close, but it's kind of fun to be a little more current with, like, listener mails and updates and stuff.
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The Gullibility Episode
he's passed on now, but it's, I can't think of any, I mean, there are all kinds of things that are worse, obviously, but something so damaging for such a small person to do that to a child.
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The Gullibility Episode
And literally like, oh, you think so? Like, you know, just that's how he was talked to his whole life growing up. It's awful.
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The Gullibility Episode
One thing we should mention, though, because this pops up a couple of times and I think it's super fascinating, is another trait they found on the gullibility scale, if you're very gullible, was belief in paranormal activity.
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The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, so this will be out on Tuesday, I guess. And in real time, this is the day after the automat oyster stew debacle. I don't know if it was a debacle. That turned out to be a pretty good ep. And Aaron Cooper already came through. Oh, good.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. And it's a trait I think that you can't necessarily teach, but is really beneficial to have as a human.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, from visiting the museums, but it's certainly not something I don't think that's like super widely known.
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, I mean, I'll go ahead and read it. He talked about not being around. He said, like anybody who would like to live a long life, longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain and I've looked over and I've seen the promised land.
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So a definite sort of eerie thing to happen the night before his murder.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, I mean, he had seen what happened with Kennedy, obviously what happened with Robert Kennedy afterward. But yeah, it was those kind of things, you know, very sadly, were just much more common back then.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, King, Malcolm X, the two Kennedys. Yeah, it's just a very fraught time in our history, for sure. For sure. So he's back in town to hold a march to set the previous march right, and one of the things he had to do was get the invaders on board with not doing this again, so... At the Lorraine Motel, he was actually meeting with them.
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
One of the things he did there was meet with them and negotiate a deal where like, hey, you guys don't turn this thing violent. And they said, okay, we can do that. Give us some money, give us some cars and give us a little more influence. And we'll do that. So they were negotiating that. The march was actually planned for April 4th. And this is one of those sort of sliding doors thing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
It was actually put on hold because the city got an injunction to stop it from a federal court. And if that hadn't happened and he would have been marching on April 4th, perhaps James Earl Ray would have continued to sort of pursue King because, as we'll see, he had been following him around for about a month. Or maybe not. Maybe that assassination never happens.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
But because of that injunction, the march was delayed from April 4th. King stayed in town to go to court to help appeal that injunction, was in court on April 4th through the day. And then late that afternoon, the judges said, all right, we can do this march. It'll be next Monday.
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
And King, so late that afternoon, the judges said, all right, the march can go forward, but it's going to go forward next Monday.
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, did you know they corrected it?
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, I never listened to much of it, but they put out reimaginings of a bunch of their songs called Songs of Surrender. And like you said, it was early morning, April 4th, shot rings out in the Memphis sky, and the song cried in the name of love. And he changed it to in the evening, April 4th.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, we'll talk about it some, but I went to I've been to the King Center. I've been to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel. And like I've thought I knew a lot about this stuff. But until we do our job like we do, I learned a lot more. So it's pretty great.
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, sort of in the chin and jaw area and the neckline. There's that very famous photograph of the people, you know, his group standing on the balcony. I think like three guys are pointing across Mulberry Street, which ran between the Lorraine Motel and the, what was it, the Bessie what boarding house?
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, Bessie Brewer's boarding house. And they were like, that's where the shot came from. The picture was taken by a South African photographer named Joseph Lau, L-O-U-W, became one of the most famous photographs in American history, of course. And the gentleman kneeling, attending to King. trying to do whatever he could.
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
That was a guy named Merrill McCullough, and he was an undercover cop who had infiltrated the invaders. So just by chance, he was on hand as an undercover cop there. And he's the one that's kneeling, kind of trying to tend to King. Again, he was shot at 6.01, was alive, even at the hospital, barely. But he died just an hour later. He's pronounced dead at the age of 39 at 7.05 p.m.
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, he was apparently just hanging on. He was alive in the ambulance. He was alive, I think, shortly after he got to the hospital.
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, but when Francisco, that doctor, he described the gunshot wound, but he didn't fully dissect the path of the bullet. He said he did that because he didn't want to deform the body any further. But that, of course, would help out later with conspiracy theories as far as not having a full accounting of the path of the bullet.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
uh which we'll get into all that i believe in part two yeah um but right after the shooting like literally the minutes right afterward there were two men in that boarding house who saw a guy leaving with a suitcase and like a blanket bundled up that had a bunch of stuff in it big enough to where it could have held a rifle
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
And what happened was, well, there was another witness that said they saw a man passing, I don't know how it's pronounced, K-A-N-I-P-E, K-N-I-P-E.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
That's what I'm going with. Knieps? Okay. Knieps Amusement Company. And just drop this bundle on the front door of the store. You can, you know, there's a picture of it if you look that up. And you can kind of see the rifle poking out even. And that's what they found. They found some aftershave. They found
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
portable radio, they found some brand new binoculars, a couple of cans of beer, and precisely a .30-06 Remington 760 Game Master rifle with a scope, which is a hunting rifle. It's kind of a unique gun in that it's a long-range rifle that's a pump-action rifle, which usually they are bolt-action rifles.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Also, like two minutes later, the shooting had been radioed into the police. And just five minutes later, at 6.08, the owner of that amusement company told police that he saw a white man running through the alley and like actually saw him drop that bundle and then flee the scene in a white Ford Mustang.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, for sure. And all this is just, you know, so we're setting the table kind of as a lead-in to where things were in April of 1968. Yes. So like you said, you know, 12-ish years earlier is when he really rose to prominence, and so much so that in February of 57— He was on the cover of Time magazine. Yeah.
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
so uh you know very famously walter cronkite came on the news and very somberly told the nation what had happened on the cbs nightly news president johnson declared the next day april 7th the national day of mourning flags went to half staff a lot of businesses around the country closed for the day and he said johnson said on tv the dream of dr martin luther king jr has not died with him
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Men who are white, men who are black must and will now join together as never in the past to let all the forces of divisiveness know that America should not be ruled by the bullet, but only by the ballot of free and of just men.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah. And hey, we did do a good episode on Roberto Clemente. Remember that one?
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
So all across the country, You know, people react with extreme upset, which led to violence and some rioting and uprising in like 125 cities over the course of a few days. 39 people were killed. 3,500 people were injured. 50,000 federal troops, you know, dispatched all over the country, basically, except New York and Los Angeles.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
They were a couple of the only major cities that they managed to kind of talk people down. Atlanta, too. Oh, Atlanta as well. That's great.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
So in 1963, he was Times Man of the Year after being on the cover just a handful of years earlier. And in 1964, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. So he was one of the most famous Americans by the early 1960s.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
So despite the fact that, you know, black folks and a lot of white folks are mourning this this death, it also sort of widened the rift because it became a symbol all of a sudden as white America's rejection of equal rights, basically, and white Americans rejection of nonviolence. by literally dying by a bullet, a nonviolent man. But there were, you know, it wasn't just this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
This was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back with just sort of every, the state of things in 1968 with race relations.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Thank you. Thank you for watching.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, and we haven't done one on Malcolm X yet, so maybe we should hit that up as a follow-up at some point.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
But, yes, this was, you know, sort of the other side of the coin. Malcolm X believed in black separatism. He was like this nonviolent approach isn't isn't working. And black people cannot integrate into white America. It's a racist society and it's just not possible. So we need.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Self-determination, violence, you know, by any means necessary is an acceptable sort of avenue to achieve the goals of black determination. And especially considering violence is being inflicted upon black people by white people constantly. So it's time to fight back, like with fists and clubs and whatever else.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, I mean, and we know this because they did polls back then. There were Gallup polls that found in 1963 through 1966 each year found that fewer than 40 percent of white Americans viewed Martin Luther King Jr. favorably. So one of the other things that didn't help besides his work in civil rights was his stance on Vietnam and the war in Vietnam.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
He was always against it, but really changed his stance in 1967, started being really, really vocal about it as far as publicly condemning the war. started leading anti-war marches, giving speeches against the war.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
One very famous one was Beyond Vietnam, colon, A Time to Break the Silence, a speech he gave in New York City at Riverside Church in April, actually exactly one year, April 4th, 1967, before his murder. Mm-hmm. And it was a very controversial speech because it was his most adamant anti-war, anti-Vietnam speech yet. And he specifically called out America and the U.S.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
military by sending a disproportionate number of, you know, kind of poor black American boys to fight that war.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Right. Yeah. And, you know, this ship. So he already had, you know, people coming at him from all sides. And now even within his own camp, they didn't love it either. His advisors and his staff didn't love this change of direction. So, you know, by the time April of 1968 rolls around. He's exhausted. He's tired. He's got people coming at him from every angle, even within his own camp.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
And he just wasn't at his peak personally or with his career.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah. We've set the stage with where King was, and we'll come back and then set the stage with Memphis and where Memphis was. Well, it was in Tennessee, but how Memphis was in April of 1968.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
That's right. We haven't done a two-parter in a while, but as we got into the originally one-parter of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., you were like, man, there's a lot more here that we can just kind of explode this into a two-parter.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Yeah, but before these marches, there was, you know, there was already a strike going on. It just wasn't, you know, full throttle at this point. What would really kick that into gear were the very tragic deaths of two sanitation workers, Echo Cole and Robert Walker. They were crushed to death. Their truck malfunctioned. They were trying to take shelter from the rain and were crushed by the truck.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
And the city didn't pay any compensation to their families at all. So this is what really kind of triggered the mass walk-off the job. Almost all the workers, black sanitation workers, went on strike at the time.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
And King was like, all right, I got to get to Memphis. It's in trouble. It's an opportunity for me as well, like you said, to sort of help me segue into this other movement. And there were a couple of different marches. On March 28th, he led a march. of 5,000 people through Memphis, and almost right away, it turned violent, not by his hand, but it was a group called the Invaders.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
It was a militant group of young African Americans who were not on board with King. They were not on board with nonviolence, obviously, and they started looting. They started breaking windows in stores. Police came in and, you know, we all know the drill at this point. People scatter. Police are beating people, shooting at people.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
There was a 16 year old named Larry Payne that was shot and killed by a police officer named Leslie Dean Jones. 60 people injured. And then all of a sudden Memphis is under curfew and close to 4000 National Guardsmen are brought in.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Hey, real quick before we get started, and this just hit me. I went to a work function yesterday wherein we celebrated... Jonathan Strickland, still our colleague, but our old buddy from the old HowStuffWorks Early Stuff podcast days, who was the long, long, long, long, long time host of Tech Stuff. And he has hung up his tech boots as far as hosting that show.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
No, I get it. I don't know if you have your phone, but I just texted you a picture of and I just want to shout it out because it looks so darn good on Etsy. A hand of glory candle.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
The company is Wailing Dip Candles, and it is a frighteningly realistic old hand with candle wicks coming out of each of the fingers in the thumb.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
It looks like a real hand. And I'm hoping we move these things for this company. It's kind of pricey. It's $85, but I reckon if you amortize that over like 10 Halloweens, that's not too bad. It's like $8.50 a year to have a good spook.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Unfortunately, attaching the word glory to other objects is just not so good.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah, just ask Jerry Jones. So... The idea that it's witchcraft was, like we said, really just sort of invented by Margaret Murray, who happened to be there investigating another case altogether.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah, that's right. So that wasn't witchy either. It was just like, I'm pitchforking your hay and I get mad at you. And so I'm going to kill you with the thing in my hand.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
He's still around and executive producing a slate of shows, but... He decided not to host Tech Stuff any longer. And we just, it was great seeing him. It's been quite a while and he's doing great. And just hats off to Jonathan and what a great body of work he's given the world over all those years.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
All right. So I mentioned a cliffhanger. It wasn't really a cliffhanger. I'm not sure why I said that. But let's jump forward a little bit to 1953, where the story takes a turn. There was a journalist there named Wilfred Wilfred Byford Jones apparently had a pen name that was Quaistar. It's basically, yeah. Q-U-A-E-S-T-O-R.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah, I could see that. But old Wilfred wrote a bunch of very speculative articles about Bella's murder, which only led to confusion and falsehoods. A lot of it had to do with witches, of course, and blaming stuff on the Romani people, you know, what they called gypsies at the time, like coming through town, doing something like that.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And all this to say, one of these stories was caught by a reader who wrote in to Byford Jones under the name of Anna of Claverley. And basically it was like, I know the deal. I'll just read it real quick. Finish your articles, R.E. The Witch Elm Crimes. By all means, they are interesting to your readers, but you will never solve the mystery.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
The one person who could give you the answer is now beyond the jurisdiction of earthly courts – in other words, dead – The affair is closed and involves no witches, black magic or moonlight rights. The only clues I can give you are that the person responsible for the crime died insane in 1942 and the victim was Dutch and arrived illegally in England about 1941. I have no wish to recall anymore.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah, I guess they they found Anna and like brought her in for an interview.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
But keep your head on, Strickland, because you got that bald head. We don't want to get sunburned.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Right. Said, you know, pale as a ghost. He said he'd been at a pub with Van Ralt and what he called a Dutch piece. Who is this Dutch woman? I didn't know they use that kind of language back then. Or maybe it meant something else. I have no idea. But that's those were the words that he used. And then he said things got awkward. We can just chalk that up to understatement of the year.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
She, I guess, was also drunk, passed out in Van Ralt's car. And Van Ralt supposedly, as this story goes, had a very strange idea was, hey, let's go stick this woman in that tree and she'll she'll sober up in the morning and come to her senses. And Jack, apparently, Una said, was never the same. He started drinking more and more, quit working, still had this money.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
But eventually Una said, I'm out of here and I'm leaving you. I'm taking our kid. She saw him again about a year later in 1942 when he was really coming apart at the seams, saying that he keeps seeing this woman in his mind, in the tree. She was leering at him and he was eventually committed to a mental hospital where he died about eight months before Bella's body was discovered.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah, it was good. I saw some of the old crew and it's just, it's been too long. Uh, cause you know, we don't go to the office much anymore and nobody does. So it's not like if I went there, we, I would see all the old gang, but, uh, it was good. It was nice to catch up with some people.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah, I mean, it's a weird thing to do to have that idea like, hey, let's go stuff that woman in a tree. I mean, it's. Oh, God. Beyond the. No, that's weird. And then it's a weird thing for that not to have happened. And for this woman to sort of invent it, it's all just beyond the pale.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
No, I agree. You know, cops obviously searched for Van Ralt. They searched for, you know, records wise, a Dutch national who may have fit the description that Una gave. But it went cold yet again. And then we flash forward to 1968. There's a writer named Donald McCormick who picked up the case for a book he was writing called Murder by Witchcraft.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And this is when he I mean, this guy doesn't have a very good reputation as a writer because it seems like he would just they call them a fantasy historian, like he would just make stuff up, make a lot of weird claims and theories. He would say things like, you know, I was able to interview someone exclusively who was anonymous and that no one else could talk to. And here is that interview.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And in this case, he said, you know, this interview that I got with this guy that no one else knows about or will talk to and who shall remain anonymous was a former Nazi spy recruiter hiding in Paraguay. And Bella was a Dutch born German spy named Clara or Clara Bella. And I've even got Nazi intelligence files on this. I'm not going to show you.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
But it says that she parachuted into Birmingham in March or April 1941. So the timeline fits. And she happened to look just exactly like who was described by Una.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
That's it. Smells awful. It makes much more sense because you were talking in those sort of ways about it. And I thought it was recent. And I was like, that's a weird nostalgia for something that happened a few weeks ago. It makes me nostalgic for yesterday. I can still remember that moment in December. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
All right. So that's that book aside. Another twist came in 2013. The Independent ran a story about Bella connecting it to a spy named Joseph Jacobs, who is a German spy who evidently parachuted into a field near Cambridge in February 1941. Got hurt really badly. Could not walk. Fired his pistol in the air to attract some help, ideally. He said, hey, fuzz. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
So the cops come and he's in police custody. He has a wireless transmitter, a fake ID, almost 500 pounds in cash. But also a headshot, a photograph of a woman, but like a professional headshot of this, you know, attractive, smiling woman. And on the back of it in English, it said, my dear, I love you forever. You're Clara Landau, July 1940.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah, they they did some research. They looked for obviously for records for Clara Bowerly. And they did find information and confirm, yes, she was a cabaret singer in Germany. She would have been 35 years old at the time of the murder, just like the skeleton, you know, seemingly confirmed. But had she had she come to England was the big question.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
All they found was a Clara with a K, Clara Sophie Bowerly, who was 35, who did go to Germany. I'm sorry, from Germany to England and stayed from 1930 to 32. But that was kind of it. No information at all about what she did in England. But they ran with it anyway.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah. Uh, they said, uh, here's what she did. She parachuted into England in 1941. Um, she was, you know, trying to catch up with her parachuting boyfriend, Joseph Yakups. And they thought that was the only way to get into a country, I guess, to drop into the middle of a field. Um, and they said, Hey, what if this Clara was, who was in that tree who was killed by Van Ralt?
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Um, like we think that that's who was in the witch Elm and that graffiti artist, uh, had to have known that Clarabella or Bella was her name and tried to get justice for this murder.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah. Those two very large problems with this story that did not keep them from running the story.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah, finally, which is great. If you're wondering about DNA, you know, sometimes they can, you know, find DNA on old stuff. But everything has been lost, apparently. Everything was being passed around and moved around in different boxes and different labs. And this is in the 1940s and 50s.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And no one knows if it even exists at all anymore, if it's, you know, hidden away besides the Ark of the Covenant in some warehouse or something. You know, I mean, it's possible that someone will find it at some point, you know? Yeah, it might still be out there or it could have been lost or a building could have burned down. Like, who knows? Like our lost episode, Jerry has no idea.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
I'm going to read this and preface it with, we got quite a few emails. Remember when you tied John Williams, I guess Star Wars people are going to be so mad. Is it Darth Vader's theme or the Imperial Death March, one of those?
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
imperial something or other something like that uh you tied that to um who was it bach i don't remember chopin's funeral march and i said that's right that's right and we got quite a few uh music people that wrote in and were you know gave us the old hey well actually uh these differences here and there and here and there fair enough not knocking those people for knowing much more about that kind of thing than us you just know what your ears told you
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
He wrote our theme song, too, by the way. Sure. No one knows that. No. But this is from Ladd, who gets your back. Hey, guys, hope all is well. Finally, somebody said it. Josh, John Williams likes to borrow heavily from classic works.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Please listen to La Sacre du Printemps, The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, and you will hear the theme from Jaws, as well as many other hits that Mr. Williams has taken on loan. Not saying he hasn't done a lot for the genre, but if this is a sampling issue, he'd be paying a lot of money to those composers. Keep up the work and stay sexy. And that is from Lad. Thanks, Lad. Appreciate that.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah. And I, by the way, we watched the Lost Boys with Ruby the other night. What'd she think? That's her second sort of adult movie in a row after Terminator 2. She loved it. I looked it up beforehand. I was like, surely Lost Boys has some gratuitous nudity or some awful, like, sexy stuff. And it really doesn't. It's some kind of gruesome stuff, but she's totally good with that.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And a little bit of language, and she knows all that stuff. Sure. And she really dug the Lost Boys because she likes all that spooky, witchy stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And, you know, it was pretty fun. It holds up in the way that 80s movies like that hold up.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah, this definitely smacked of like Tales from the Crypt or a Weird Stories entry or something like that. This goes back to World War II in April of 1943 specifically. Robert Hart, Bob Farmer, Tommy Willits, and Fred Payne, four teenage boys, went to what was called the, or what is called, I guess, Hagley Wood.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
This was a time in World War II where they were rationing things like food in Britain. So they were looking for food. They were looking to catch some rabbits or maybe get some eggs from bird's nest. And 15-year-old Bob Farmer saw an opening in a tree, went up to check it out, and it looked like an eggshell. Um, it turned out it was a skull.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And so he got a stick, wrapped it with some cloth and lifted the skull up out of there. And they were like, what kind of animal is this? Um, turns out it was a human animal. It had a clump of hair, a couple of crooked teeth had clearly been munched on by some animals. And so they were like, we're trespassing and we don't want to get like most kids would do like, uh, we don't want to get in trouble.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
So we're just going to put it back and never talk about it.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
That's right. So he cut this tree open. He found most of the skeleton in there. It was missing some small bones, and I think they got a tibia nearby. There was pieces of clothing. There was a shoe. There was a wedding ring.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And they, you know, when you get a skeleton like that, you're going to reconstruct it and try and figure out who this person was or what they may have been, you know, shaped like. And they said, well, this is a woman, probably about 35, five feet tall. So, you know, quite, quite short with brown hair, because I think I mentioned there was a little bit of hair very gruesomely still on the skull.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah. Did you see the picture of that? I did. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And she's probably been gone about 18 months, maybe longer. And like I mentioned, animals had gotten into these bones and, you know, munched on them some.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
The other thing they had to go on was, as far as clues go, was they had most of the jaw intact. And so they thought, hey, maybe we can find a dental match. They were not able to. Now that they had this kind of rough physical description, they thought, well, let's come through missing persons reports. Did not find anything matching that. And so the case went cold for a while.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
They just kind of put it on the shelf. Hagley Wood itself, we should describe it a little bit. It is on a private estate, but it wasn't like gated and walled up such that you couldn't access it because people would use it. People would have picnics there while the Blitz was going on and cities were being bombed.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
People would leave Birmingham sometimes and even sleep out there around Hagley Wood where it was a little quieter. And then a weird thing happened in March of 1944. So this is about almost a year afterward. Graffiti started popping up around town, around Birmingham, and we'll see elsewhere, with white chalk letters in all caps on these brick walls. Two messages at first.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
One said, HAGLEY WOOD BELLA. And another said, WHO PUT BELLA DOWN THE WITCH ELM WYCH-HAGLEY WOOD?
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Totally. And by the way, I don't know when credit cards came about. Maybe that's a good shorty. So if I'm wrong, I imagine they sprung from credit accounts like with a store or something. But yeah, maybe we should do one on that. I bet it's Diners Club.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Oh, yeah, yeah. Was it? Okay, because he was a player.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah, you noted some other graffitis. One of the ones that seemed to be from the same hand. This was in Hale's Owen in another town nearby. This is different just because it had a different name. And this one said, who put Lubella, L-U-E-B-E-L-L-A, Lubella, in the witch elm?
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And we mentioned that even though it seems like a copycat had done it because it was in different script, it just gave them another name to look for. And so they looked for Lubella as well and came up cold as well.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
You never know when he's going to pop up on the show.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Pretty good. If you don't know what we're talking about, it's just an Easter egg and listen to every episode and you'll learn.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
Yeah. So she wrote a book, a prominent folklorist and archaeologist. She wrote a book, you know, many books, but one of them was called The Witch Cult in Western Europe. So she was really into this this thing and this kind of idea.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
And she had a theory that she had been promoting that European witches were in part of this ancient fertility cult where they had, you know, sacrifices and things like that made. And she was there in Birmingham in 1945 investigating a different occult murder where a farmer had been killed through the chest and pinned down with a pitchfork.
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
While she was there, she hears about Bella in the witch elm, and she's like, well, that's right up my alley. And very quickly was like, oh, well, this was clearly some kind of witchy witchcraft occult sacrifice that happened because putting corpses in a tree is a form of ancient tree worship. And so that's obviously what happened here. Also, you know, this severed hand that we found near the tree
Stuff You Should Know
Who Put Bella In the Wych Elm?
With the bones, I guess the hand bones, that's part of an ancient thing called the Hand of Glory, which you dug up some stuff on, which I thought was super interesting.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Did you ever, I mean, I'm going to ask you two questions. Did you ever read High Times much, and did you ever subscribe? Yes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. I love my Bombas socks. They are super cozy and the secret is in their fabrics. We're talking about the really good stuff like Merino wool, which feels as cozy as a ski lodge. But if you want to brave the cold on the slopes or on a snowy run, Bombas has athletic socks built for that, too.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. And if you get cold feet, then you got to try those slippers that they have. They're warm because they have that fluffy, sharp aligning and the marshmallow-like cushioning. Really good stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
All right. So we've introduced our protagonist, I guess, in the in the first act. We can't. And, you know, Dave helped us put together this article. And he he points out that if you try to get I mean, you could do a whole article on this guy and talk about all the all the wacky things he did over the years, like concert festival promotion.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
He snuck allegedly pipe bombs into the 72 Republican convention.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, so he was a busy guy doing a lot of stuff. But this is about High Times. So the origin story officially for High Times magazine is that he thought of it with his friends while he was huffing nitrous oxide. Other people say it might have been an acid trip. But either way, the early idea was, hey, how about a magazine, like a marijuana-themed magazine? They've got Playboy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And some people say, like, the initial idea was just a one-off kind of spoof of Playboy. Right. Everyone that worked there said, no, no, no. The idea was always to have like a real magazine that was cheeky and fun, but also like real journalism and tackle real topics about activism and marijuana and growing it and all that stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, I think for one year in college, I actually subscribed because and this is High Times magazine. We're talking about everybody. I was going to say notorious, but not really notorious. The infamous Weed magazine. Sure. But I subscribed for, I think, a year because it just seemed like, you know, I wanted to have that house that had that on the coffee table with our address on it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And I think I mean, I think it absolutely did that. I think one of the missions was, hey, let's really convince people that. Not convinced, but let's really show people what the truth is, which is that this is a plant that can be grown like plant versus, you know, illicit drug, you know.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, absolutely. So that very first issue came out summer of 74 is when it debuted. I had a 10,000 copy print run and it didn't really light the world on fire. I guess no pun intended at first. It was it had like an excerpt from a Timothy Leary novel, of course, articles about hemp and marijuana and how great they thought it was.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Um, there were some interviews and very importantly, they had a, uh, something that would, you know, stay in the magazine, which was a feature called the trans high market, uh, market quotation, which is a, uh, a listing of like, Hey, in Chicago, this is how much a dime bag costs. This is how much it costs in New York. This is what an ounce of weed cost in Phoenix.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Um, you know what they use, I guess they still call it street value, which I always thought was really funny.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I just thought it was like the cool thing to do, you know.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But that's what it was, and it stayed in there for a long time, even though, as we'll talk about later, it changed a little bit over the years. But this first issue, like I said, was not – I mean, they did eventually sell out of that $10,000, but it wasn't through – it was through a lot of hustling. It wasn't like, hey, it's on your newsstand. Farsad said – Here, let me get it into head shops.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Let me send them to record stores. Apparently, drug dealers bought copies and gave them away to people. So it eventually did sell out the two printings. But it was the second issue is when it really, really took off because of their, you know, kind of ingenious promotion.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I could see that. Apparently it was also, if not the first, one of the first times live television showed people doing drugs. There was one of the local news stations, according to Rolling Stone, showed people on camera, on the news, snorting cocaine, And I'm sure people at home are watching this just going like, what is going on? But it was huge publicity.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And they sold out their 50, this time 50,000 copy run in four weeks. And it became like a genuine sensation. That's when also the second issue is when they started Also as an homage to Playboy magazine, their centerfold. But of course, their centerfold was always these big, beautifully photographed pictures of buds, marijuana buds.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Hey, that could have been the original lyric. You never know. It depends on the day, probably.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Have you seen the Yacht Rock documentary yet on Max?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Well, I mean, the people who came up with the term yacht rock are featured in it, but it's about the genre of music.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Watch what you say, though. I've learned from recent emails there may be a 50-year-old out there that thinks side time is cool that's going to be very upset.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Oh, you mean like the Yacht Rock Review? Yes. No, no, no, no.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
The term Yacht Rock came about in the early 2000s from a web comedy series. Okay. Which I never knew until I saw this documentary. But no, it's about just, you know, Christopher Cross and Michael McDonald and Seals and Croft. All the great people. You'd enjoy it, I think.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I mean, you can say more, but I just mean I'm into that kind of thing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Well, see, I always say these things in a recording, and then I don't remember afterward.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Why don't you text me right now while I talk? Black does.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I'm sorry. That's right. So mid-70s, when high times rolls out, Those very first years, the magazine was doing really well as sort of a new magazine, but Forsad was not. He was on the FBI surveillance list. He was very paranoid because of the massive amounts of drugs that he was taking.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, absolutely. The magazine itself was doing well. Like I said, the staff, I mean, it was just, I mean, if you think like the Lampoon and Mad Magazine was kind of crazy in their office, like everybody in the High Times office was huffing nitrous and smoking weed and snorting blow. Like as they were working. But it was, you know, it was creating like some really relevant journalism.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Even when I did read it occasionally, I even at the time was like, this is the articles, the way they're written. There were so many puns. So kind of corny. Yeah. And so it never felt like as good as I think they might have thought it was. Does that make sense?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
They were exposing, you know, government activities as far as the drug war goes. Like when putting Paraquat, which I cannot help but think of Big Lebowski when I hear that word. I don't remember that part. It's when the dude called the real Lebowski a human paraquat when he was mad. I think he said human even. Human paraquat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But paraquat was the pesticide that was in marijuana fields under orders from the U.S. And this article helped promote a congressional investigation. They interviewed the Dalai Lama about drugs. There was Hunter S. Thompson and Of course, William S. Burroughs doing writing. There was Truman Capote did a guest interview with Andy Warhol. Bob Marley was in it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Like it was really the heyday of that magazine as far as being like a real like they achieve what they wanted to achieve in the first few years.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, I mean, by year four, they had a subscribership that was about the same as Rolling Stone magazine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Which is, yeah, it's just nuts. In 1978, Forsythe had previous attempts at suicide, but he succeeded in November of 1978, very sadly, when he was just 33 years old. I saw different things that he, you know, it was after the death of a friend. that had him really upset. And like I said, there were previous attempts. So he was a troubled guy, to say the least.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But they held his memorial atop the World Trade Center at the Windows of the World restaurant. And as legend has it, smoked, I think Keith Richards snorted his dad's ashes supposedly, but they rolled up some of Forsad's ashes in joints and smoked them as a staff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
It's weird for Claire to be judgy like that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I wonder if she was upset about her art class at the time.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
So High Times, this is before, as far as the magazine itself, before Forsyth died, they did start to sort of stray from their mission statement a little bit as far as coverage of harder drugs. They started writing a lot about cocaine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Like in a big, big way, they even started including cocaine and and meth and LSD in that trans high market quotation as far as how much it should cost in different cities. And it was sort of like I think the adherence of the magazine even were a little bit like, hey, this is not what I signed up for. Like this was a weed magazine. So they kind of got back to the weed thing more in the 80s.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Cocaine, you know, the reputation started to get a little bit more like, hey, wait a minute. This stuff is, like, really dangerous, and there's a lot of violence attached to it in the trade. And so they really got back to the pot thing again in a big way.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And they were just getting going again in the 80s, back to their mission statement, when the DEA launched something called Operation Green Merchant,
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
in which they really wanted to target marijuana growth and not the growth of marijuana, like growing marijuana plants and advertisements for this equipment that was sort of thinly veiled as like, oh no, these lights just help you grow your oregano at home or whatever, your lettuce.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And so Operation Green Merchant was to target those ads and the publications that sort of taught you step-by-step how to do this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. And High Times Magazine, I mean, they rolled right with it. I mean, right into the 90s, all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, now we can put Ice Cube on the cover and, you know, write about this other sort of I mean, I guess you call it a subculture that, you know, we hadn't been highlighting in the past.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And, you know, beyond making it relevant again, I think they they found out they were missing out on an entire like readership that they had never targeted before.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I was talking to my friend Clay the other day because he is who introduced us to the Chronic when we would, I think I've said this before, but we went over to his house and played like the Nintendo, whatever the system was. What was the one back then?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, so we'd go over there and play Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, and Clay one day was like, dude, listen to this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Puts on the Chronic, and Snoop Dogg's voice came out of the speaker. And we were all into hip-hop at the time, but Snoop Dogg, he didn't sound like anybody else at the time.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
So when his voice came out, we were like, who is this guy? Yeah. It's like, oh, my God. And, like, how funny. And I was talking to him the other day. I was like, how funny. And back then, like, would you ever think that now Snoop Dogg is like this – I mean, one of the most famous people in the world.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. I mean, working with Martha Stewart, it's like I don't think anybody saw that coming.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Oh, I haven't seen that one yet. It's good. Is it good? Hey, I don't know if everyone knows this. Jerry's been to Martha Stewart's house.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, she told us a while ago. At one point she was doing something with the company. I don't know if whatever happened with that, but Jerry, like, went to her house. And she said it was a real mess.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Hodgepodge bottles just spilled all over the place. No, it was perfect. So high times, back to high times. From 88 to 2013, there was an editor-in-chief named Stephen Hager that ran the joint. And he was, God, man, I'm not even meaning to. I swear I'm not. He ran High Times Magazine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
This is when they I mean, they had always talked about legalization, but this is when they really, really got into writing and beating that drum about about not decriminalizing, but like legalizing weed for everybody.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. The normal N-O-R-M-L. That was it, right?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I went to one of the Atlanta Piedmont Park used to have in the 90s, the normal pot rally concerts. You went to that? I went to one of them one year when the Black Crows played, and it was a lot of fun. It was a great show. I liked them for a little while back then, and it was really good.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. Well, nobody was smoking weed. It was really weird.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
So, yeah, they were advocating it such that there was an article in 2013 in The Nation that said High Times Magazine may be the most influential publication of our era. So it wasn't just, you know, cheeky articles and pictures of beautiful buds. It was like they were doing real work toward sea change, and it worked.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
No, no, no. It's funny. I'm not saying it wasn't. I'm just saying like, yeah, that's got to be the sketches that he he has no memory.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I feel like I saw it back then. But I do remember that one of the issues I had and this had to be from the 2000s was Tenacious D was on the cover.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, let's just get into it then. Okay. No more needs to be added.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Well, I mean, he is one half of Tenacious D. But I mean, just without Kyle, he's like, let me do one without that guy. Yes. All right. We have been remiss and not taking a second break. So we're going to do that now. And we're going to talk about what has happened over the last decade or 20 years or so right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Hey guys, it's Chuck and Josh from Stuff You Should Know. If you're anything like us, you've got a lot on your plate this new year. You've got summer beach trips to plan, a work-life balance to balance, and pickleball opponents to beat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. The nerds have done the work for you, everybody, researching and reviewing over 1,100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a lower rate on your auto insurance? They've got a winner for that. Or a balance transfer credit card with 0% APR? They've got a winner for that, too.
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The Ballad of High Times Magazine
You know, we've all been there. You're sick, you're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold, and then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people. And don't get me started about the prescriptions. That's a whole other story.
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The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. And with Amazon Pharmacy, your prescriptions are delivered directly to you quickly and affordably. That means no more trips to the pharmacy and no more surprise costs at the cash register.
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The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, I might have said 2013, too, which was it was probably 2003.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I thought you were going to talk about editor-in-chief bona fides.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, it was ill-conceived. I think they didn't quite know where to go after the sort of – it's not like the hip-hop era ended any mention of weed or anything like that. But it was sort of past that. You know, everything changes from decade to decade culturally, and they didn't quite know what to do, I think. So they said, hey, why don't we do this?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Why don't we try and sort of change the image of the magazine and become just more of a sort of a cultural magazine? Like, essentially, let's stop writing about weed exclusively and let's really stop writing about weed almost altogether. And that lasted for about a year. They did not stop.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
like that the readership was like what are you doing the whole point of this magazine is that it's high times and it's not you know about freedom it's about freedom to smoke weed specifically and grow it specifically and like i said about a year later in fact it was one year later i think they were like we really screwed up here and so they went back in 2005 with a big cover that said the buds are back
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
All right. Great. He looks like if you look up this guy, you know, when I went to look up, I'd never seen a picture of him. I expected I didn't expect to see someone so cool looking. I mean, he looks like he stepped right out of the Allman Brothers band or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
and 30 pages of pot picks on the inside. And everyone was like, oh, thank God. And it was one of their best-selling issues of all time.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, I mean, that's the irony of this whole thing is right when they achieved all that is when they tanked because of what's called the green gold rush. Wall Street, of course, anytime they're like, oh, wait a minute, somebody's making money over there doing something? A lot of money? Well, how can we get involved? And that's exactly what happened.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Investors started throwing money at every cannabis startup you could think of as states were rolling out legalization and making tons and tons of money. And so they realize, hey, this High Times magazine is just sitting there. It's a very recognizable brand. The magazine's okay. Their website's all right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But they make like 80% of their dough from what's called the cannabis cup, which is, I think it started out as a smaller thing in Amsterdam, but then became the official High Times Cannabis Cup in the United States in 2010, which is a weed-growing competition. So bring in your new strains of exotic crossbreeds and high-potency buds, and you can win the Cannabis Cup, and it's a big deal.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
It received a lot of coverage. They did concerts. They did festivals. They did trade shows. And it was a big moneymaker. So I think they were like, hey, we can invest in High Times. We can open up a casino in Vegas maybe. They bought up a dozen dispensaries and made them high-time smoke shops. They talked about delivery services. And they talked about an IPO for a while, which never happened.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But all of this stuff – A lot of these big deals never came to fruition. And so they found themselves eventually $100 million in debt as these deals fell apart after going through just a string of CEOs, which is never, it's always a bad sign for a company, you know, when you have that kind of CEO turnover.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, for sure. And if you're thinking like, what do you mean? It was like a pot magazine. Why do you think it'd be cool? It's because I usually expect them to look sort of like wavy gravy. Any like weed activists to be just decked out in tie dye and kind of just wearing some sort of wacky handmade hat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And a lot of those dispensaries closed. And in the middle of the boom of the real marijuana industry, High Times was struggling and basically dead.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. Seven million bucks will get you the magazine, the cannabis cup, the dispensaries that we still have open. Nobody came forward, which is shocking. I think the most shocking thing to me, and I'm going to say this publicly, I'm going to call out publicly even. Why hasn't Snoop Dogg and and freaking Martha Stewart? They would miss seven million dollars. They wouldn't even know it's gone.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Why have they not bought this brand? Because that sort of public like purchase with those two names or even if it's just a Snoop Dogg. But Martha Stewart would add a funny sort of cachet to it. Yeah. Like it would all of a sudden be a relevant thing again. And I don't know. It's just it's shocking that nobody came forward to buy it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Maybe somebody who knows Snoop hears this and they're like, hey, Snoop, he may not even know it's for sale, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And this guy, like he looked like he could jump off of a chopper and like hit the stage or something, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, for sure. I also just realized with the ultimate 50-something-year-old white guy, I think it would probably be for shizzle and not for schnizzle. Because for sure would be for shizzle, right?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
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Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Ignominious? Ignominious? Ignoramus, I think is what you meant.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. Maybe Jack Black, he's not going to miss seven million bucks. Maybe. Maybe. I mean, he might miss it for the afternoon, but then he would say, but I've got this magazine now.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, this is from Rosalie, and it's just a very kind sort of gentle reminder, which is always nice to hear. Hey, guys, it's taken me a while to get this into words, and I hope it comes across with care. It does.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, he's wearing his own handmade knit hat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, exactly. As a woman in science who does science every day, I just want to point out that technicians are still scientists. In your episode on chemistry sets, you rightly pointed out all the sexism in the past and present and how science is presented to girls versus boys.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But you also feed into it a little bit when you said that girls were funneled into technician jobs instead of being the scientists. There are a lot of ways to be a scientist, and technician is definitely one of them. That's like saying that nurses aren't healers like doctors are.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
A more accurate description is that women were and are funneled into technician and now communication jobs in the sciences and men to the professors and principal investigators. It is better than it has ever been, I have to say, but academia still hasn't figured it out, among other things. And that I'm glad to know that, Rosalie. And that's from Rosalie Maltmead.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, so, I mean, regardless of how you feel about that or him or any of it, he wasn't just some guy saying, like, hey, let's try and make a little dough off of this marijuana people are smoking. Like, he was knee-deep in the business. Right. This was after coming out of...
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
seemingly to avoid the Vietnam draft, a short stint in the Air Guard, where he was discharged after convincing them that he had schizophrenia. And at that point, he went back to Arizona in Phoenix, changed that name, which was his mother's, I'm sorry, grandmother's maiden name, And, you know, got into the underground zine scene.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
You know, that was a big thing back in the late 60s because of the ubiquity of like being able to print your own stuff in an office or I don't know if they had Kinkos back then, but he got into those and founded his own first underground magazine called Orpheus, which had some politics to it, but it was kind of just a little groovy psychedelic thing that covered like music and pot and stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, there was a peace sign on the cover that actually had a real bullet hole. So instead of just drawing a bullet hole, he shot them up himself.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I'm not sure. I always saw it called UPS. UPS.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, and he eventually worked his way up to national coordinator for the Underground Press Syndicate. And that's where he learned how to run a magazine, basically. That's how he learned about ad deals, distribution, printing, like efficient printing, real printing, for a little while. And I figure we should probably do something on Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies at some point. All right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
You don't want to highlight boomers, do you?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Hey, if you want to learn about Abbie Hoffman, you're not going to learn about it here, everybody. Go steal his book. Yeah. Very nice. I got that one. So he did join up with Hoffman, though, and his yippies.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Again, if you want to read about them, they were a group that did a lot of like kind of social pranks and media grab, you know, activist stuff for their radical causes in 1970 for said for side, he said.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I think you're probably right. But I'm just I've been saying it wrong all day. So it's in my head. So it's going to take a minute.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Wow. You also sent me a lot of fun ads for cocaine paraphernalia. Dude. That was crazy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, and then McDonald's hired them to develop their Happy Meal prizes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
They're like, this guy's really good at these tiny little baubles.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
All right. So 1970, that's where we were for Saad testified before Nixon's presidential commission on obscenity and pornography. And this is when he got a real chance to, you know, take the national stage and talk about, well, the quote was the only obscenity is censorship. And it's the first and I feel like we talked about this in our pie in the face episode. It had to.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But it's the first incident that we know of where a protest pie in the face happened when he pulled out a cream pie and face pied Dr. Dr. Larson, Dr. Otto Larson.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. And that must be the first one. I mean, it's cited as the first time, you know, not in a Marx Brothers movie. Somebody's like, let me make a point with this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, and he also let that pie sit out the day before in Phoenix, so it was rotten green.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
All right. Let's take a break, and we'll talk about the beginnings of the magazine right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. They make it really easy to sell access to content on your websites like online courses, blogs, videos, and memberships. You can earn recurring revenue by gating your content behind a paywall even. Simply set the price and choose whether to charge a one-time fee or subscription for access.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Hey guys, it's Chuck and Josh from Stuff You Should Know. If you're anything like us, you've got a lot on your plate this new year.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
You've got summer beach trips to plan, a work-life balance to balance, and pickleball opponents to beat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. The nerds have done the work for you, everybody, researching and reviewing over 1,100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a lower rate on your auto insurance? They've got a winner for that. Or a balance transfer credit card with 0% APR? They've got a winner for that, too.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, exactly. All right. We should take a break. And we'll come back and talk about David and Stanley Bard right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah. I mean, Chelsea is a neighborhood and every hotel in there is a Hotel Chelsea.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And Chelsea. Yeah, I like it as well. And I have stayed at the Hotel Chelsea a couple of times.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, and I found this funny little fact that, you know, how little things can change history. David, in 1943, the elder Bard, he got together with some other investors to buy the hotel out of foreclosure. And the reason he did that is because he was a furrier who was allergic to fur and couldn't take it anymore.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
So the reason the Chelsea Hotel, one of the reasons that it kind of stayed that thing is because when David Bard took the reins in 1943, he kept that spirit alive with the artist and like taking a painting in lieu of rent, like had it gone to just some money hungry, greedy people. It may have completely changed in 1943, and we wouldn't even be talking about it today.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
So had he not been a furry or allergic to fur, it may have been a completely different scene there. But he ran the hotel until he died in 64. And like you said, Stanley, his son, took over. And Stanley Bard was great. He was, I've got a pretty fun, like, apparently there was never any, like, problem he couldn't handle.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
He was known for being able to handle like whatever weirdness was going on there at the time. And Arthur Miller, when he was divorced from Marilyn Monroe, lived there for a period of years and wrote a lot about the Chelsea Hotel. Here's one good example about Stanley Bard.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Arthur Miller called down after being so frustrated with how disgusting his carpet was, said, for Christ's sake, Stanley, don't you have a vacuum cleaner in the house? And he said, of course, we have lots of them. He said, well, why aren't they ever used? He said, they're not used? Stanley, you know GD well that you don't use them. I've never heard such a thing. Why don't they use them?
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Well, you're asking me why they don't use them? Well, you're the one who brought it up. Look, Stanley, just get a vacuum cleaner up here and let's just forget this conversation, please. Fine, how are you otherwise? Truthfully, there is no otherwise. All I am is a man waiting desperately for a vacuum cleaner. And then Arthur Miller said, and then he would laugh, grateful for another happy tenant.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And that was like, And nothing was like ever wrong at the Chelsea. People were dying and being wheeled out of there and overdoses. And he would make jokes that like, no, the cops were here because they live there. And the body bags and the gurneys are just props.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah. And Stanley ran it for 40 years after his dad died. But like I said, his dad had the same attitude. They asked David, the elder bard, why he didn't ever evict a tenant who apparently was playing the drums and everyone was complaining and it was even driving him nuts. And his answer was, I like people.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah. I got to read this other Arthur Miller quote is pretty good, too. He said the Chelsea and this is, by the way, from the Chelsea affect a FFCT about the bards. He said the Chelsea, whatever else it was, was a house of infinite toleration. Yeah. This was the bards genius, I thought, to have achieved an operating chaos, which at the same time could be home to people who are not crazy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
No. Bob Dylan, if anybody. I got you. No, I mean, from staying there semi-recently, and that's the great thing about our job. I was like, yeah, I wish I knew a little bit more about this place. And here we are.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah. So let's jump into the 60s and 70s, because that's when the Chelsea seemed like it had some of its most notable events and residents, even if they were part time. My my favorite guy, Bob Dylan. Um, stayed at the Chelsea, stayed in room 211 for about three years, you know, off and on.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Cause he was going up to Woodstock as well, but 61 to 64, uh, is when he was hanging out with Ginsburg and, and doing his thing. Uh, he wrote most of, if not all of, uh, blonde on blonde, which is his seventh album. And very specifically in the song, Sarah, which was about his wife, uh, his first wife, Sarah, that he married in 65, uh, There's a great line in that song.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
No difference here. This one is very scathing, tough song. Bob Dylan was the champion of the anti love song. And this is kind of one of them. But he said he writes about staying up for days in the Chelsea hotel. writing a sad-eyed lady of the lowlands for you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, it's a song to his ex-wife, and he said, basically, I remember staying up for days writing sad-eyed lady of the lowlands for you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Have you seen the Dylan movie? Do you care about that at all?
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Well, you know, as you'll learn, if you don't know, the Chelsea Hotel was renovated over the course of many, many, many years after being closed for those renovations. We'll get into all the ins and outs of that. But I thought, that it was a top-notch renovation that, from what I've read, even though it's a fancy-pants place now, everything I've read says that they did a very tasteful job.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, for sure. And it's also mind-blowing to know, while Bob Dylan's up there in room 211, literally typing out one of the seminal albums of all time, at the same time, Arthur C. Clarke is adapting the screenplay for 2001 A Space Odyssey on a different floor in a different room. So, like, these kind of creative, you know, and Andy Warhol is in there shooting parts of Chelsea Girls, like...
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Stuff was really, really happening. It didn't earn its reputation. Just it wasn't overblown at all, you know.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, for sure. I mean, Gabby Hoffman, the actor, she was raised there from birth till she was 11 years old. Her mom was Viva, who was another one of Warhol's superstars. And little Gabby Hoffman from Sleepless in Seattle, you know, she's a grown lady, you know, middle-aged woman now and has talked a lot about it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
She loved living there, but, you know, she was stepping over people, you know, passed out with heroin needles in their arms and you know, on her roller skates and just, you know, kind of a crazy life. But to her, it was just like, yeah, I just lived in this sort of legendary divey apartment building. Like there was a gazillion non-famous ones in New York. This one just happened to be famous.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
I did see where her mom, Viva, eventually, I don't think it was ever published, but she wrote a book called Uh, because writers always like very cheekily say that like Gabby Hoffman was sort of the Chelsea, uh, hotels answer to Eloise, uh, the children's book. And apparently her mom wrote a book called Gabby at the Chelsea, but I don't think I've tried to find, I don't think it was ever released.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah. Like liaisons, uh, Janice Joplin and Leonard Cohen. That's a big one.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
In fact, let me read, in fact, so I'm not just talking out of my butt. But one of the people in the New Yorker or something that wrote about it said, it presents itself subtly and doesn't scream, I've changed. Due largely to the fact that the building was landmarked in 1977. So many elements such as its facade and famous stairwell cannot be changed in accordance with this landmark status.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
That's right. I have that book. I haven't read it yet. It's on the shelf with a bunch of other rock and roll books that I have yet to get to.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, exactly. What a rock and roll story. Patti Smith's book that she wrote about her time with Mapplethorpe. I think it's called Just Kids that I'm looking forward to getting into. But, boy, can I tell a quick Patti Smith, Bob Dylan story?
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Well, you know what? I'm going to say it does. I'll say she told him here. Okay. If you're a Dylan fan, you'll like this. You can just check out for a second. But on Bob Dylan's very famous Rolling Thunder tour that he took up in 75, 76, some people look at that as like some peak Dylan live performance. Unbelievable stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
But he has a performance of his song Isis, one of his great songs off the record Desire where – It's just one of the great live performances of anyone ever is his performance on Rolling Thunder of ISIS. And he doesn't play the guitar and he's just standing there and he didn't do that a lot. And he, Patti Smith is the one who encouraged him.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
He said, Bob, you should, you should do ISIS without the guitar. And he said, Patti, I don't know what to do with my hands. And she said, make them into fists.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And Patti Smith wrote also about the Chelsea a lot in the restaurant there. It's not officially part of it, but it's connected. You can get to it through the hotel El Quixote. underwent a lot of renovations to reopen. It was a pretty big dive of a place back then, but it was cheap food and it was Spanish food. And so people ate there, even though apparently the food wasn't good.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
I saw it described, was it the paella could have been consistency of yesterday's oatmeal. The taste of the sangria might be best described as purple. Yeah. Uh, but before the Woodstock Music Festival, Patti Smith went to the Chelsea or was living there, I guess.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And she said, I walked into El Cajote's bar one afternoon in 1969 to find musicians everywhere sitting before tables laid with mounds of shrimp and green sauce, paella, pitchers of sangria and bottles of tequila. Jefferson Airplane was there. So was Janis Joplin and her band. Jimi Hendrix sat by the door. Like, can you, like, just walking into a restaurant and seeing something like that happening?
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Incredible. Yeah. You'd be like, I don't really care about any of these people.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Right. You were like, one day, you don't know it yet, you're going to write a song called Sarah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
All right. We'll be right back and we'll finish up on the Chelsea Hotel right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Current owners instead have worked with it and around its physical history and the enhancements are fitting.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
158 rooms in 15 room categories from 200 square feet to 1700 square feet. And there you go.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
All right. We talked about people dying at the Chelsea. So we we should probably talk more specifically about this because it seemed to happen a lot. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, that's a good point. There was a very notorious death there, depending on who you ask. Sid Vicious murdered his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, there in room 100 in October of 1978. We can't say for sure because he denied it to his last days, which was before he went to court. He died of a heroin overdose before he was able to go to trial for that. But what we do know is that Nancy Spungen Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, I know Rockets Red Glare from a lot of those early Jim Jarmusch movies. Interesting dude. Rufus Wainwright lived there in 2000 to work on a record. And there's a pretty funny story there where he was he called down to the front desk and asked if they could send up a quart of milk.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And apparently the bellman arrived with a tray full of just tons and tons of drugs because milk, unbeknownst to Rufus, was the code word at the Chelsea for drugs.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And you mentioned Ethan Hawke. I was about to say our old friend. We have nothing to do with him. I know. I love Ethan Hawke. I think he's a great, passionate, artistic dude. But he lived there for three years when he was sort of, I don't know, I think he was fully divorced, but when he was with Uma Thurman, they were kind of on the rocks. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And he made the movie Chelsea Walls in 2001, which is a series of short films about a day in the life of people at the Chelsea Hotel. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
I think he's, I like the guy a lot. And I like his daughter and I like Uma. I think I'm a big fan of that family.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Up and coming. She's on Stranger Things. It's probably what most people know her from these days.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, it's really funny. I mean, a little bit of Ethan in there, but she's got Uma's mannerisms and voice. It's pretty cool. Nice.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah. And I should also say, too, that a lot of people, I'm sure, think it's an abomination. And a lot of times these are the same people that were like, you know, Times Square was better or New York was better when it was a dirtbag city crumbling. And you were as likely to get mugged walking the streets or spray painted on if you stood still for too long as anything else.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, it's a very controversial renovation because, like you said, there are still people living there. Some of those residents held out and fought it for as long as they could. Some other residents were mad at those residents because they were like, we're just living under construction because it's taking forever because you're fighting this. Like, it's going to happen.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Just give up so we can at least get this finished and live a normal life again. So it really, you know, depends on your perspective. There's a really, really good documentary that I highly recommend called Dreaming Walls from 2022, where they go inside a lot of these original residents apartments, see what they're like. There are also some good books about this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
From what I found as of now, I think there's about 40 of them still there. original residents in those apartments. And when you stay there, you're walking down the hall to your room and all the doors look the same. And then you'll come across a door that's not the same. And that's an original resident.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, oh, for sure. Yeah, and it's just one of those things where I really like staying there, but I feel like, man, I bet these people hate people like me that like staying here.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
I know, and like, you know, with my nine-year-old daughter, who's not Gabby Hoffman.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
I know, so I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing, about, like, does staying there support that kind of action in general?
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
I know I'm with you. And also the notion of like it's a pretty easy target, but like. You know, I bet the Holiday Inn Express in Times Square kicked out some residents for whatever building they took over. You know, like, is there any hotel group on the earth that isn't gross and did things like that in these dense cities?
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, for sure. But, you know, El Quixote is awesome now. They've got some really good chefs that work there. You know, big shout out to John Pacini. He's the general manager there. He's a stuff you should know listener. He's always been very kind to me. So big shout out to him. And he's just he's done a great job. And the pie is good now.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And I've had some really great experiences in that restaurant and in that hotel. The lobby bar there is amazing. Like it's a truly great place to go have a drink. And if you if you stay there, you can get in. But if you don't stay there, you can still go get a drink there. I would recommend it. Um, so I don't know.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
It's, it's definitely makes me question things, but like I said, is, is there a place in New York where original residents weren't screwed over in some way or another to make way for some new expensive thing?
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
I know. I know. And a lot of those 40 residents or some of them are still artists making art there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
They just got to. I don't know if that documentary was accurate, but I think that the residents either aren't allowed to use the main entrance or maybe they just prefer not to. I could see either one, actually. I really could, too, actually.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah. I mean, let's quickly mention that there were some very famous things auctioned off, like some of the famous doors. Bob Dylan's door was auctioned off. I think either Leonard Cohen or Janis Joplin's door was auctioned. And that iconic sign, as best I can figure, was renovated. But part of that renovation included replacing the letters and those original letters were sold off.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, I think just pieces of the original. You know, you got a C on both sides, an H and E on both sides. And, you know, I think you found even that they had them wired so you could put it in your loft and light it up. Pretty awesome.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
That's right. And to prevent another listener mail, yes, we know Naked Lunch was written there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And a lot of other stuff was written there. You can't cover it all. No. Hey, guys, this is about inner monologues, too, because I mentioned, aside from me thinking weird things when I'm falling asleep, I mentioned Emily's thumb spelling. And it turns out a ton of people do stuff like that. And I told her and she was just delighted to find out that she is in a club.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Hey, guys, after a decade, I finally have the inspiration to write. In the latest episode, Chuck mentioned Emily spells out words with her thumb. While stressed, I do something extremely similar. Instead of tracing the letters, I spell them out in the sign language alphabet. Wow. And there were all kinds of variations. Some people air type. Sometimes it's cursive. Sometimes it's sign language.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Like, it's really interesting. Mm-hmm. I spell them out in sign language alphabet, been doing it since I was at least 11, and I've never heard of anyone else spelling out words while stressed. I would love to know the reason, but I'm also just content to know that someone else has a similar eccentricity. Thanks for sharing such a lovely anecdote of what it means to love someone.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
with all their little oddities and peccadillos. One of my favorite words. It's the acceptance and joy in the mundane and extraordinary in life that keeps me coming back every week for a new episode. I'm a sandwich listener. I'm sure you're going to get dozens of these emails claiming to be Emily's long-lost finger-spelling twin, but I had to write in because I've always wanted to stay weird.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, it seemed to have a very familial quality to it. And for good reason. So let's jump back to the beginning when it was built. First of all, it's right there at West 23rd Street in the Chelsea neighborhood. And it started in 1884 as the Chelsea Association Building. Nuts and bolts, it is a 12-story building. It was one of the taller buildings in New York at the time. It is Victorian Gothic.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And Lauren Neider, or Neider, I'm not sure how you pronounce it, you are in a larger club because we heard from a lot of you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
I feel like these are always me, so I'm sorry if I'm foisting these.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
It is a beautiful, gorgeous building if you look at it from across the street. It's just one of the one of New York's greatest landmarks designed by architect Philip. Is it Hubert or Hubert?
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
All right. We'll go with that. And Hubert designed it on the philosophy of a French philosopher that he was a fan of named Charles. What is it? I think Fourier. Yeah. Fourier, who was a utopian socialist and kind of thought this concept of a co-op of a community should work in co-ops called phalanxes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And that's what the Chelsea started out as was one of the first housing co-ops in New York City, where if you live in a co-op, then you own a share of that building along with all the other owners. And you also are responsible for the monies that help maintain and keep up that building.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
They're also in that very first iteration. And this is very key. You mentioned artists, but there were the top floor had 15 artist studios up there. And that really kind of carried on throughout the history of the Chelsea until most recently. That version of the Chelsea was around for about 21 years. It went bankrupt in 1905. Some of those residents stuck around and then the rest became a hotel.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
But it's I heart New York. It didn't say you heart New York. I took it all wrong. But now I love that city. So I want to know more about it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And the Chelsea for decades functioned as a place where you could stay there as a hotel. You could stay there for a month. You could stay there for a week, like weekly and monthly rates, or you could be a resident and live there. It's a very unique situation.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
And also, you know, the human brain works in funny ways. And once a place and gets a reputation is that you go in there and that in itself, you may think you're being inspired just by being there. And that ends up inspiring you. You know what I mean?
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
I know exactly what you're talking about. We're not talking about O. Henry, though, who stayed there a lot, or Mark Twain, who stayed there a lot, or Sarah Bernhardt, who stayed there when she came to New York to perform. Yeah. Those were all, like, frequent guests in those early years. They were artists, you know, very famous artists at the time, occupying those artist studios on the top floor.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
From the very beginning, they even – held some Titanic survivors in 1912. That's where they went when they were brought in, shivering in the cold.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, like a bohemian. You'll hear those words thrown out a lot when the Chelsea Hotel is described or its tenancy over the years.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Right. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Thomas Wolfe was a frequenter there. In fact, he died. He spent the last years of his life there in room 829 writing things like you can't go home again. And he died very young, though, from tuberculosis at the age of 37 and was known to kind of, you know, pace the halls looking for inspiration or that next paragraph or sentence.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Oh, OK. Yeah, that's pretty cool. We still haven't done one on Hunter S. Thompson either.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
So you mentioned a lot of people have, you know, done their odes to the hotel, whether it's movies or songs or whatever. Perhaps the first one was a guy named Edgar Lee Masters lived there from 31 to 44 and wrote a poem called The Hotel Chelsea. So he kind of got the ball rolling.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Well, let's read this first couple of lines then. Anita, don't know who that is, but he's writing it to Anita. Soon this Chelsea hotel will vanish before the city's merchant greed. Wreckers will wreck it, and in its stead, more lofty walls will swell.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah. You know, it's kind of had its ups and downs as far as how nice it was, I guess. It fell in pretty hard times after World War Two. But it was always, you know, Dave described it as gruff, but lovable. I mean, it never lost that charm, it seems like. Yeah. Even at its diviest. Dylan Thomas, the famous author, was a heavy drinker, as I think everyone knows.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
He drank himself to death there at the Chelsea in 1953. And they have a plaque. They don't have plaques for everybody, but there's a Dylan Thomas plaque. Dylan Thomas lived and rode at the Chelsea Hotel. And from here, he sailed out to die.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
Yeah, it can be a little confusing. Same place, though. So don't sweat it. So you can say either one.
Stuff You Should Know
The Chelsea Hotel
No, but that makes that joke a very deep cut. So I don't even feel bad this time.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
No. I mean, you can freshen it up, but it's not stale.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, 1954, best featured actor in a musical. And not only that, but around the same time, in 53, he made his first two movies with Dorothy Dandridge. And the second of those, Carmen Jones, Dorothy Dandridge, became the first African-American woman nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
So he's among this group of young African-American entertainers that are just knocking doors down left and right and getting, you know, real recognition kind of for the first time.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, and we should mention before we break here that his marriage to Marguerite was dissolving at the time. But he would go on to marry again, as we'll see. But maybe we should take that break. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be right back. We will.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. And, you know, Banana Boat was a cover song. It's an old school song that had been around since the turn of the 20th century. And like you said, they they had a more upbeat version and it was a huge, huge hit. He got a little, you know, as we'll see, there are people within some of the communities even admired and worked with it often didn't love him back as much.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Calypso was one of them, some traditional Calypso purist, apparently, especially like in Trinidad, where Calypso was born. We're like, hey, this guy's coming in. He's in New York. He's not a real Calypsonian. And, you know, he's kind of changing it up, adding like American folk music. sort of interest to it. And he was like, you know what?
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
He, I think in 1959 in a New York times interview, he said, purism is the best coverup for mediocrity. There's no change. We might as well just go back to the first, which may have been the first song or which must've been the first song. Uh, and I think at which time took, took a tear rolled down his cheek and he went back to the fire.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, and he's awesome. And, you know, I watched that We Are the World documentary not too long ago. Oh, yeah? Is it good? Yeah, it's really good. I think you would enjoy it.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. But Harry was like, you know, I'm taking it. I'm making it popular. I'm making it my own. I'm finding my own voice. And it's, you know, it's my version of Calypso folk music.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
His 1956 album, Calypso, came out after that TV special. It was a huge, huge hit. It stayed number one for 38 weeks, knocked Elvis out of the number one spot at the time, and became the very first record in history to sell one million copies in its first year out.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, it was incredible. He was one of the biggest performers in America all of a sudden. One of the biggest singing stars. Big crossover success, obviously. And for all of that, this is how he was treated on the road. He would not be allowed to stay in the hotels when he performed in Vegas because of segregation.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
When he was touring the South with a Broadway show, Almanac, a state trooper threatened to shoot him in a whites only bathroom in L.A. He was stopped by the cops for just taking a walk through Beverly Hills at night. So these are the kinds of this. This was the world he was living in. Even one of the biggest stars in the world was not immune to the just blatant racism that was going on.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, it's actually really, really good. And you walk away from it thinking, well, thinking like Harry Belafonte is awesome along with a lot of other people. But you walk away thinking, man, I just want to be friends with Lionel Richie. Oh, yeah. I can imagine. He's just the coolest. And he tells really great story. He's a great storyteller and funny.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, for sure. In real life, IRL, he married his second wife around the same time. Her name was Julie Robinson. She was a dancer and she was white. And they were probably, I would not even say one of the most, they were probably the most prominent interracial couple in America at the time.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Look out, Marlon. Harry Belafonte. Pretty handsome guy.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. I mean, he was offered and that's just kind of what I was alluding to earlier. He was offered roles. He called them Uncle Tom roles. And he said that's about all you could get at one point in Hollywood or on stage. And he just wouldn't play those roles. He you know, it depends on who you are and where you draw the line. And I mean, that's where he drew his line.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
His good friend Sidney Poitier would take not necessarily those roles, but other roles that Harry Belafonte didn't think had enough sort of nuance for a black actor or spoke to his truth. Sometimes his friend Sidney Poitier would take those roles, not in any way like a sellout or anything like that.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
And like I was like, man, Lionel Richie is awesome and fun.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
He had his own ideas of how to advance the cause and advance his career and stay in the limelight so he could do his good work as well. But they were rivals in a way, but also best friends.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. Highly principled decision making career wise.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
That's very tough to do, period, but very tough to do trying to make it in a cutthroat business like Hollywood, you know, for sure, man. So in 56, this was kind of right around the time he had gotten married and that Islands in the Sun had come out. Just before that, he got a phone call from Martin Luther King Jr.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
And they ended up meeting in person and having a four-hour meeting on their first meeting. And this is sort of what lit the fire for Belafonte to really, really get into very public civil rights work. It was his awakening in a lot of ways. And he wasn't just like, yeah, you know, I'll show up and I'll be a celebrity face here and there. He was bailing civil rights leaders out of jail.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
I don't know what Kylie Jenner looks like. Does she look like, is it sort of like Frank Sinatra's son, Ronan Farrow?
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
He and Sidney Poitier were smuggling cash, 70 grand into Mississippi during the Freedom Rides. And, you know, with the Freedom Schools, we I think we did a whole episode on the Freedom Schools at one point. He helped. He didn't just show up at the March on Washington. He was one of the organizers. So he was he was in deep doing the hard work.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, absolutely. So his, you know, entertaining or entertainment career kept blossoming as well, kind of in conjunction with this. And he would use that to sort of, you know, help subtly raise awareness just about his community and what he's like and what his people are like. And The Tonight Show is a big example in 1968.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Johnny Carson invited him to host for a week to host The Tonight Show, you know, take Johnny's seat. First black guest host in the history of the show. And this is in 1968. You know, everything going on in 1968 seems fraught and race relations certainly were a part of that.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
And he wasn't like, all right, I'll go host the show and I'll get in and just kind of tried out the usual guests that Johnny might have. He said, no, I'm going to have Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
and Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick and, you know, Paul Newman and Nipsey Russell and all these people who had these progressive causes or were just famous black entertainers who didn't get that kind of stage very often. And opened every night with a song. Obviously, Johnny didn't do anything like that. So it was still fun and entertaining.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
But it was also educating people and talking about serious issues in these interviews.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Well, let's talk about Harry B then, the guy. I love this guy.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, for sure. I mean, all of the major causes that you've heard from, you know, basically starting then even and especially through the 80s with apartheid in South Africa, South Africa, Kenyan independence. And, you know, I mentioned early on, we are the world. Ethiopia and the famines there, he was the guy that, you know, called up Quincy Jones and was like, hey, we need to do something here.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
And We Are the World was a huge, huge hit that sold, I think, 20 million copies and raised 65 million bucks for famine relief. And if you were a kid in 1985, We Are the World was like... That and Live Aid were two of the biggest deals in music history. And, you know, I was 14 years old at the time, and it was just, like, it was incredible to see all these people together.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
And, like, even as a kid, even as a, like, little snot-nosed 14-year-old white kid from the South, I knew that I was watching was important. I didn't maybe fully understand it. I had seen stuff about the famine on television, but... It was it was raising awareness for everybody, including little white suburban kids from Georgia.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
That's right. And including just I accounted for one of those.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
All right. Maybe we should take our second break and come up and talk some more about Harry Belafonte. Okay.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
All right. So Harry's doing his activism. He is still an entertainer. He never, you know, sort of fully left that behind. And, you know, he started doing less and less of that as like through the sort of 80s and 90s when his activism was, I think, at its peak. But he was still doing his thing. 1960, he became the first black American to win an Emmy.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
for Tonight with Belafonte, one of his TV specials. Again, which they were all super big hits, even though people loved them and the ratings were through the roof. It was that silent majority complaining about Petula Clark holding his arm, a white woman holding his arm in a special that drove away some advertisers, which is... Just, you know, very sad to say the least.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
But he was still serving up this sort of Caribbean tinge folk music to people. CBS ordered five more episodes after Tonight with Belafonte was such a big success. But, of course, that was one of the ones where sponsorship was pulled because he had black people and white people dancing and singing together. They said, no, no, no, no, you cannot do that.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. I mean, he was doing those things back then, too. The CNN documentary that Kamau Bell did was... Very upsetting to see. But the way they did it, I think I mentioned it before, was it was they were just sort of tracking his career and like and he was the biggest star and on TV at the time. And this was 1960 something. And then it was like in 1960, whatever, he sexually assaulted this woman.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Right. And it was it was happening the whole time. Yeah. So I'm with you. It's impossible to watch that stuff, but you can watch Buck and the Preacher, though. Right. He's not in that. That's right.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
So hearing all this, you're like, wow, Harry Belafonte was Superman, and he never got in a bad mood, and he never got tired, and he was never frustrated, and it was just wine and roses all the time for Harry Belafonte, and that is not the case. It was a serious...
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
fatigue on his life um to to do what he did was hard work um emotionally hard work physically demanding um going all over the place doing his thing while also being an entertainer um and you know in 1968 i think this is a little bit after martin luther king jr was was murdered he was belafonte was asked what it's like being such a prominent civil rights leader And he was pretty testy.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
He said, you know, I'd like to take my family and go live in Africa and be able to stop answering questions as though I were a spokesman for my people. I hate marching and getting called at 3 a.m. to bail some cats out of jail. And this is just the toll that that takes on anybody, even like a Superman like Harry Belafonte.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, for sure. And it wasn't always a love affair with within the black community with Harry Belafonte. He he was criticized at various times for marrying white women. He married two white women after splitting up with Julie Robinson in 2004. He married Pamela Frank in 2008.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
uh he don't he doesn't think you know uh he was of mixed race himself so he didn't feel like uh at times he was always fully accepted by the black community um and he would you know be critical of that uh in 1996 in the new yorker he said And again, that's a great, great read. He said, let me tell you something.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. And as you'll see, you know, throughout his career, he missed opportunities because he refused to cave, lost opportunities, had opportunities taken away from him. And he was just like, you know, I'm going to be Harry Belafonte and no one is going to change that. Yeah. Career be damned.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
I don't know of any artist at my level who has ever been as much on the line for black liberation as I have and has as few black people in attendance at anything he does as I do. And he described one of his typical concerts. I never saw so many white people in my life. So he never felt like he got the support. from the black community that he thought he deserved and he thought he earned.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
And when it came to who he married, he said, you know, I didn't marry anyone to further an integration cause. Like I married who I fell in love with and they married me because they fell in love with me.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, he passed away just a couple of years ago in April, April 25th of 2023 at 96. So just a very full, long life and received lots of accolades during that lifetime. I mentioned that he got part of that included. The Oscar was the Gene Herschelt Humanitarian Award in 2014 and a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2000. You can add the Kennedy Center Honor in 1989 to that list.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
And the National Medal of the Arts, old Billy Clinton gave him that one in 1994. And what else? In Harlem, he had a library named after him. In 2017, near his childhood home, it was renamed the Harry Belafonte 115th Street Library.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, and there were plenty of non-quote-unquote rock and roll bands in that Hall of Fame.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, like is anyone going to really protest that?
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Oh, did he have something to do with Beetlejuice? Yeah, obviously people were already typing their emails. Beetlejuice featured not only the Banana Boat song, but Jumping the Line, which I like more than the Banana Boat song. I love that song. To great effect. I think Tim Burton apparently wasn't super keen. He didn't think it was funny enough. And I'm like, dude, it's not funny. It's fun.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
You added two extra letters. It's it's not supposed to be like slap your knee funny, but it is certainly fun. And the little dance routines, they're almost like apart from the movie itself, like additional like an additional music video or something like in the movie. But they are part one small part or I guess a large part, really, of what makes that movie so great were those two numbers.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. Go listen to some of his stuff. I've been listening to it for two days. Harry Belafonte and the Belafonte folk singers. Mm-hmm.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
This is just a little quickie. Hey guys, I heard on a recent Christmas episode that you're desperate for new Christmas material. A few months ago, I sent in a show idea about the Halifax explosion. Did you know that this has a Christmas connection? Halifax was so thankful for the help from the city of Boston that we continue to send Halifax their city's Christmas tree to this very day.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Pretty cool. Boston does or Halifax does? Boston sends, I don't know, Halifax sends Boston the tree, I guess.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, yeah, it is. All the best from your neighbors in Canada.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, I mean, we did a whole episode on it, but it's a nice addendum.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Well, I mean, there's an H in there. I don't know if it's pronounced that way.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. You know, actor, stage performer, Broadway star, EGOT winner. Yeah. If you don't know what he got, that's if you have won the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony in your lifetime, which Mr. Belafonte did. It's a rare feat indeed. But he was born to, you know, a very humble upbringing in March of 1927. Harold George Belafonte Jr. in Harlem, New York City, to Caribbean parents.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
His father, Harold, who was actually a cook on a banana boat, was from Martinique, and his mother, Melveen, was from Jamaica. And he was raised in Harlem until he was eight, at which time his mom Said you and your little brother, Dennis, are going to live near in my hometown in Jamaica. And so from the ages of eight to what, like 12 ish, he lived in Jamaica.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
And that's where he really sort of saw the light as far as this, you know, Caribbean folk music that would become his staple.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. So, um, he hears this music down there, the, the sort of call and response work songs that, um, I mean, that's where the song, should we talk about Deo real quick? I mean, as we're getting going. Yeah, let's. Yeah, because if you've heard the song, you might be thinking, and you never, like, did any research, you wonder, what in the heck is he singing about? Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
You know, come Mr. Tally Man, tally me banana, daylight comes and we want to go home. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
It was a work song, and it was a call and response song of these guys who worked on banana boats, and, you know, they would work through the night, and the morning is when they were allowed to leave if the tally man, the person who counted the bananas, tallied that they had enough bananas to, you know, tally the end of their workday.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. I mean, I didn't know what a tally man was, but it makes perfect sense to someone who tallies.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, pretty cool. So he ends up back in Harlem, though, supposedly had dyslexia. So he wasn't a great student. So at 17 years old, he quit school. He joined the Navy in 1944. And this was another sort of eye opening experience because he served in World War II in an all black unit. And at first was like, you know, I don't like the segregation of the army here.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
But he met a lot of guys in that unit that turned him on to a lot of stuff that kind of laid the groundwork for what would be his social awareness and activism.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, he had two daughters with Marguerite, Adrienne and, of course, Sherry, who went on to become a successful actor herself. And then served his time in the Navy. They eventually lived in Harlem, you know, as a family. And he worked as a janitor's assistant at an apartment building. And that's when another sort of monumental moment in his life happened.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
He fixed the blinds in someone's apartment, in a tenant's apartment there. And Just as a thank you, they gifted him some tickets to the theater, to the American Negro Theater, which he had never seen live theater before like that, never seen black actors on stage performing. And to say he caught the bug is an understatement.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
He immediately tried to get a job there, applied to be a stagehand at that theater. And this is one of those life things where you're just like, are you kidding me? This really happened? He got that job and another young janitor there, his name was Sidney Poitier. And it's just incredible.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Like, what are the odds that these two incredible, talented performers, you know, get jobs as like stagehands and janitors at this theater when they were just in their, I guess, early 20s?
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Oh, if you just go to one act and split it with your friend?
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
I didn't know Matthau was a singer. No, I didn't see that yet. It's good. I'm going to.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Except he looked 50. Yeah, pretty much already. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah. And I'm sure Belafonte was like, this Brando guy's got some promise.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Yeah, Brando's. He's worth an episode at some point, to say the least.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
Right. So Harry Belafonte is in the new school. He's, you know, doing what you do in theater school like that. You're doing movement and voice and eventually like some singing. And he was like, oh, wait a minute. I can sing pretty good, too. And everyone else said, yeah, you can sing pretty good. And you're handsome to a fault. So you've kind of got it all going on.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
There weren't a ton of roles for black men in the theater at the time, or at least, and this is something that we'll see he did throughout his career, not the kind of roles that he wanted to take that he thought were, you know, dignified, I guess is the right word. Yeah. So he's like, I'm not going to play the parts that are available to me. I'm going to start singing.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
So he went to jazz clubs like the, you know, the legendary Blue Note. would sing jazz standards on stage. And then in the 1940s, spurred by the interest in, it was like a renewed interest in square dancing and folk dancing at the time that led to what was called the folk music revival.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
This was in the early 1940s in Greenwich Village, which, you know, would eventually culminate in the sort of the peak of that movement in the mid-60s with people like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. Mm-hmm.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
It all started in the early 1940s with people like Harry Belafonte going to the Village Vanguard, this legendary folk music club, and seeing Lead Belly perform and was like, all right, well, now we're on to something here. It's all happening, and I'm right in the epicenter of it.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
It was around this time that he met a pretty monumental figure in his life. It was one of his idols. It was an actor and singer named Paul Robeson.
Stuff You Should Know
Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal
and he was most famous probably at the time at least for uh his his version of old man river from showboat from the musical showboat and harry was like yeah nuts with this jazz stuff i'm into the traditional music i'm into folk i can you know i'm trying to find my own voice and he found that in what ended up being um sort of like the the calypso folk music of the caribbean um you know going back to his roots
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah. No, I just feel like I'm the one that's like 45 minutes and you're like, no, let's make it three hours.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
That's right. In this anecdote that he sort of preached around as if it were real, he said, then I did this. It worked so great. Schmidt was so happy and rolling in dough.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
I got all of his coworkers to jump aboard because I showed them what a Mr. Big Boy pants look like. And everybody wanted big boy pants. And so everybody, as long as you just do what your boss says, then you're going to make more dough. And forget the fact that I'm choosing, you know, the very strongest workers to set the standard for everyone. And then in 1911, a U.S.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
House committee said, yeah, but we can't just forget that because you can't just pick the strongest worker and say that's the standard for everyone. And so he got into a bit of a tit for tat in that process. committee meeting, I guess, with Chairman William Balshop Wilson. And he said, you know, what about if you don't have big boy pants men on your staff and like or all big boy pants men?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And he said, well, it has no place for a bird that can sing, but won't. And he kind of got smacked down for that because he was just lifting lines out of books that he had written.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
That's right. The long and short with Bethlehem Steel, at least, was that they fired him. They quit the Taylorism methods that he had brought in. And he said, all right, pay me $100,000 and we'll call it even. Yeah. Which is about three and a half million bucks today. And that's probably a good time for a break, eh? Agreed. All right.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
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Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
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Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Big thanks to Livia because she pushed out another banger here. Thanks in part by this great, great article in The New Yorker from Jill Lepore, who Livia calls a genius. Absolute genius, in fact, is a quote.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, for sure. And two of their kids wrote that book in 1948. And, you know, it was fun. It's a classic for a reason. They remade it for a reason. For sure. To make money. Frank was a bricklayer in his earlier life, and he was one of these people that thought, including too, but not limited to cat skinning, that there was one best way to do any task.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And so he was one of those guys where he was like, hey, that scaffold for laying bricks is kind of great. But what if there was a shelf on the scaffold for those bricks and mortar? You don't got to bend over and pick that stuff up. And what if you had some really low paid laborers that would stack the bricks on the frames for them positioned in the right direction?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
So they don't even have to turn the bricks like really drilling down on these efficiencies.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Do you think when they met Taylor initially, they were just like, oh, my God, you're into efficiency and so are we. And Taylor said, I think you mean a fish. And they just like fainted.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, Thurbligs. So they were also big into Rich Hall and Sniglets. Not to date myself, but yeah, they made up a word and they said, any action you can take is a Thurblig. And we want to get rid of as many Thurbligs as possible to make efficiency the most, to maximize it as much as one possibly can.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Great article anyway. I think the setup that Livia gave is kind of worthy of going over a little bit, because when you look at the, you know, 1900 through the 1920s and 30s, you looked at an America that was really changing in that these huge industrial revolution born industries were all of a sudden like, hey, now we're.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah. I mean, Taylor, you kind of talked about a little bit early on, but he did think it was a win-win. He was like, this is great because it'll run more efficiently and it'll trickle down, essentially.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
They didn't call it that yet, but that's sort of the same notion that it'll just trickle down to the worker, all this efficiency, and they'll get better wages and stuff will be cheaper and stuff like that. Management will never, ever take advantage of that and make you work harder just to increase profits. Exactly. And of course, that's exactly what happened in every case. But Um, I don't know.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Like, I'm kind of wondering about Taylor's heart and like what was in there, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
I don't know. I think he's one of those guys that was so brain obsessed on efficiency. I don't know that he had like, I don't know if he thought that part through such that he was like some evil person set out to exploit a worker.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
I wonder if he might have been in an age where there weren't certain diagnoses available for what he, you know, may have had going on.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
It'll be interesting. You mean like there's no perfect person and everyone has an issue that they're dealing with?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I don't know. I think sometimes that thing empowers people.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
I'll tell you all fair. Okay. Ironically, it was a Supreme Court justice who we've talked about, I feel like, quite a bit on this show, who kind of bumped Taylor up to celebrity status. Yeah. How did we pronounce his name the first 25 times we said it? It's Brandeis. Okay, that sounds right.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Now we're kind of corporations and now we have middle managers and CEOs and things. It's a little different than it used to be.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
What does it do with that? Ice brewed? What even was that?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Oh, okay. All right. Anyway, back to 1910. Brandeis, Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice, called a meeting with the Gilbreths. And the Taylorites, Taylor couldn't come, but he sent his representatives and said, I want to talk about what I'm calling scientific management. And I am concerned because I see what's happening with big business. And I think it's getting out of hand.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
I want to break up these monopolies. And I think the consumer and the worker should be served. And I think I called one couple here who's probably interested in that and another group of people who sounds like they probably aren't.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And so we need to start kind of really thinking about how to squeeze every dime out of this company we can and make these workers. We'll call it efficiency. But between us, let's say let's call it working them to the bone until they're near exhaustion so we can maximize profits.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, and there was a lot of press coverage on this, and this is really what pushed Taylor over the edge as far as becoming kind of famous for what he was doing. And that is the year – I'm sorry, the next year is when he put out The Principles of Scientific Management, which was –
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Probably easily the biggest business book, maybe at the 20th century, but at least the first half of the 20th century.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
That's right. And one thing about Taylorism that we would learn soon enough, and I guess Gilbreathism, did they even call it that?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Well, I'm going to call it that. Gilbreathism was that it didn't have to be kept to the workforce because Lillian Gilbreath found herself alone for the last 48 years of her life when Frank died of a heart attack at the age of 55 in 1924. And she said, all right, Don't tell anybody. I'm no homemaker myself. Not into it at all. I don't even do the cooking in my house.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
But I think I can shift these efficiency ideas to the house and make the home place a more efficient workplace for getting everything done from like vacuuming to baking biscuits.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, and eventually you could even find Taylorism in public schools. And it's interesting to think of it this way. There was a Massachusetts superintendent who told the National Education Association that educators needed to analyze the returns of their investment rationally. We ought to purchase no more Greek instruction at the rate of 5.9 pupil recitations for a dollar.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
The price must go down or we shall invest in something else. And it sounds silly, but I get that. It just sounds like a funny way to talk about it. Right. But it's basically like we need to invest in these kids the things that really matter and not necessarily reciting a Greek poem or something like that.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Shop, yeah. Yeah. I had shop. We didn't have auto shop, though. Did you guys have that?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
It felt like something that was in generations previous to us. We just had shop class where you made lamps and stuff like that.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
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Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
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Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Okay, we're back. By the way, I think the kitchen triangle is probably the fridge and not the dishwasher would be my guess.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Thank you. I bet you're right, though. I bet it's sink, stove, oven, and fridge would be my guess.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
All right, so we're going to talk a little bit about just sort of what did Taylorism accomplish ultimately. There is a lot of irony in that, you know, a lot of it was so scientific supposedly, but a lot of the stuff was made up or just sort of, you know. Yeah. Made up or kind of a sham. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
This wasn't new stuff like timing people on tasks and teaching people to do more specific things had been around for a long time. But one of the effects of Taylorism is definitely like. You know, de-skilling a worker, making them feel and not that working is all about emotions, but you don't want to make your employee feel like a robot that can be replaced by a robot.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
You want to give them a little bit of agency, ideally, in a job and not just say, move your body this way, move your hand that way, punch that thing and then return back to position one.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah. Another effect. I mean, I guess we've kind of said it in several different ways from the beginning. But, you know, the idea that the Gilbreths had that there would be a happiness quotient involved and where you could do work more efficiently so you could just have more time and better wages to spend with your family.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
That's right. And a lot of the work being done on efficiency can be laid at the feet of a person and then some other people. But initially, at least this guy that you mentioned, Frederick Winslow Taylor, who was from Philadelphia, born in 1856, had an attorney father, an abolitionist mother, a very smart guy and was all set to take Harvard by storm before his eyesight started to fail. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
It just, you know, it didn't work out that way, even though the whole idea of Taylorism and it's at its base isn't. inherently anti-worker, it sort of ends up being that way when the profits are being spread around the top tier and all they want is more and more of those profits.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, for sure. I mean, probably the most, you know, the biggest contribution was it just raised the awareness and an obsession with productivity and productivity is great. It's not like that's a bad thing. But again, like when you're dealing with human beings to feel like a cog and to feel completely replaceable.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
There's no way like you're not serving your own purpose as a as a business owner because you're not going to have good and happy employees ultimately and replacing employee after employee, even if you're just training them to put the oven door on. That's still an inefficiency, you know.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, for sure. And it created the management consultant industry. I think we should do one on that. I don't I'm sure you remember. And I won't be very specific here, but because we've been owned by a lot of companies over the years. But one of one time, one of the companies that just hired a dude that came in and we're like, who's this guy?
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
After that got better, he may not have gone to Harvard, but he was still a really smart guy and ended up studying engineering at night and became a chief engineer for the Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philly and then Midvale Steel Company.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And I can't remember someone who knows how these things work took us aside and they were like, he's, I guess, I don't know if he was a management consultant or what his official job was, but they're like, his job is to come in here and fire people and rip this place apart and then probably get a nice exit and move on to another job where he'll do that exact same thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
I know Jerry is like screaming his name off air right now.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
That wouldn't have worked with the other guy that I mentioned. He was unflappable.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
This is just a nice thank you. Hey, guys. Heartfelt thank you. Started listening in 2012, and although my time spent listening to podcasts has fluctuated, yours has been one of the constants.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Started listening to keep my mind occupied when I had hours of mundane tasks in the lab where I worked after college, and I've continued to listen through a career change, relationship changes, getting my first dog, Luna. He sent a picture of Luna this week. And becoming a homeowner. I'm listening still as I'm planning a second career change and going through a little lonelier stretch of my life.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And your podcast has kept me laughing and feeling connected to the world through challenging times. And I sometimes feel like there isn't the right combination of words to express my gratitude completely.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
I feel like you're right. Some of my favorite moments in recent shows have been Chuck's throwaway line about a fairy hoax confession happening at a Men Without Hats concert. I got Josh chuckled not once, twice, but three times.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And in the 15th annual SYSK Halloween Spooktacular, the curious sound like laughter, yet not laughter that Josh made, which sounded like it had Chuck literally crying with laughter, which is absolutely true. That may be the... Most I've ever laughed at something that you did. I think it is, man.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
I hope that you know for some of your listeners, your podcast has been as meaningful to us as The Simpsons or Peanuts may have been to you.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Stanley knows how to drive it home. He signs it all the best. Stanley, a hayseed.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, I think this is a certain kind of brain because I am on that spectrum a little bit in trying to weed out inefficiencies with certain things. But I'm on the side of the spectrum that is also it comes from laziness. So I'll try and do that because I'm inherently kind of lazy, I think. So I'm like, I look for ways to cut corners to still get the job done.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And I've had people compliment me in the old days, like on film sets. Like, hey, you know, I see what you're doing there and you're the kid I would hire twice. Whereas the guy next to you who's just like, no, man, let's just make eight trips and just hump it and do it.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
He's like, I know he thinks he's getting it done just the old fashioned way. He's like, but you're the guy we would hire a second time.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
But that was always my aim. But it's interesting that, you know, I had that a little bit in my brain. But not like this guy did. Like he was obsessed with efficiencies such that he thought and he's kind of right in some ways that one of the biggest threats to getting something done in a productive, efficient way was slacking off and what he called systematic soldiering.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah. And to be clear, because I think it seems like I might have been mischaracterized here. The film set thing, I was I wasn't like, let's just do the minimum. I was I was in a situation in this specific incident where I was trying to do a little extra work by getting a cart loaded rather than just making a ton of trips. And the guys and he was like, no, don't mess with getting that card out.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Let's just hump all this stuff back and forth. Right. And they were like, hey, guys, or to me, hey, guy. And I said, my name's Chuck.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And they said, hey, Chuck, you're the guy I would hire twice because you were taking the time to do it more efficiently. Not like, hey, I admire like the lazy side of you. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Right. But it was lazy and that I didn't want to do all those trips. That's where it initially sprang from was I don't want to have to tote all that stuff eight times. Does that make sense?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, but you only do that if you've got a little laziness in you.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Uh, well, I'm going to look it up. Go ahead. We'll do a rare, uh, a rare look. Okay.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Oh, well, no, that doesn't make any sense either. Like soldiering on. Right. Persevering. Yeah, I don't, doesn't make any sense to me officially as well.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
That's right. So he was at Midvale and he sort of started breaking down the operations of the jobs that they had there at Midvale. And he was like, you know, there are some elementary operations that happen here. So we're going to form an estimating department where we're going to sit around and do time studies, which he got from class at Phillips Exeter.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And we're going to time workers doing all these little small tasks. We're going to add that up to the to the whole. And kind of average it out and say, hey, you should be able to do this in that amount of time. And we'll adjust accordingly. We'll incentivize accordingly. And he said, and you know what else? This is now a new career. I'm going to be a consulting engineer in management.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And I'm going to charge you to tell you how bad you're doing things.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah. And you know what? We should we should give a good example here, because what he was really most or not most well known for, but something he became very well known for was his work at Bethlehem Steel.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And he started looking at the process of loading iron onto rail cars, pig iron, and said, all right, we need to figure out how much of this stuff is reasonable for one of these men to load onto a rail car. The average right now is 12 and a half tons a day. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get 10 large, powerful Hungarian workers to and say, hey, load as much as you can, as fast as you can.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
16 and a half tons is your goal. And they did that in 14 minutes, whereas 12 and a half tons was the daily rate for their average worker. So that's 71 tons in a 10-hour day. He rounds it up to 75 and then said, yeah, but you know what? People get tired and they need breaks. So let's whack off 40% of that.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And we'll just call it even at 47.5 tons per day, which is four times as much as you've usually been doing. That's the new expectation.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
All right. So when this happened, some people said, I ain't doing this. They quit. They got fired. Some people tried and couldn't do it. Some people were so tired from trying to load that much or that they couldn't come back the next day. And things got really heated. He needed he hired armed guards to walk him home at night. Taylor did because he was so worried.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And then he said, all right, I'm going to create a new fake scenario. And this is something that I've seen businesses do that I hate when they create like, you know, here's our worker, Todd. And Todd, you know, and it's all just made up BS. And that's what he did with Schmidt.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Was that me or Jerry? That was Jerry. Okay. I'm usually the timekeeper.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, you know, I looked up this James Bruneau, and, you know, we get a lot of great information a lot of times from New York Times obituaries. And he was a friend of Butts, and so they used to play Scrabble together on occasion, like their homemade version. And once this guy took it over, he and his wife Helen, like, operated out of their house
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
And he was like, at a certain point, like, all that was in our house was boxes of tiles and racks and boards. And we couldn't move around. So they had to, they moved to an abandoned schoolhouse. And then eventually a converted woodworking shop. And they had 35 employees working two shifts, producing 6,000 Scrabble sets a week. Wow. By 53, by 1953. Wow.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I mean, we should probably just say that Scrabble, if you don't know, it's a board game in which two to four players use letters, little tiles, to spell out words on a board in a crossword-like fashion.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah. Or like a T-O-N-N-E of bricks, which is worth more than T-O-N.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
So that's selling pretty good. I think they've sold they estimate about 150 million total sets as of, you know, kind of now. Yeah. Even though it's hard to get a real firm number on that. But they bought that trademark sell show and writer. I want to say Richter there, but it is writer.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Bought that trademark from them in 72. Bruno got a million and a half bucks, which would be about 12 million today. And this, by the way, was like he was looking for something to do in retirement. So he really scored. That's a triple letter retirement gig, I would say. Right. Or triple word even. And then the inventor, Mr. Butts, got 265 grand, which would be about 2 million bucks.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Plus he got a very small royalty that he seemed to be pretty happy with.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I think so too. He would have been in his 80s then too because I think he died in the early 90s in his 90s.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
In other words, you know, the words have to intersect each other. You can't just throw a random word out there in the corner if you feel like it. They have to touch and use a letter, or I guess a blank space, for another word. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Oh, really? And I was like, that's so weird. Like, I grew up with Coleco toys. Yeah. And I just kept seeing it as Colco. And I was like, wait a minute. Dummy, it's Coleco.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
And, by the way, I just want to go ahead and – because Scrabble people are probably going to get mad at us, but I'm going to go ahead and throw out a suggested rule change. Okay. There is a word, Scrabble, and that means to – as a verb, to scratch or grope, to try and collect something, or as a noun, the act of doing that. And I propose –
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah. No, it's interesting. I mean, I mean, have you ever dug into like TV rights for professional sports leagues?
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, it is. And it's gotten really, really expensive. Like when you see the numbers like, you know, Amazon acquires the right to air whatever Sunday night football or something. It's just.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Anyway, I guess we can move on to competitive Scrabble because, you know, a lot of people just play for funsies at home. I know our bud John Hodgman and his lovely wife Catherine play like for decades now because they're high school sweethearts. So they're long, long, long term Scrabblers, you know, against each other.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I kind of wanted to find out if there was a lifetime record that they keep up with. Surely. But then I just decided not to ask.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I bet they're both good because Catherine's an English teacher and John knows a lot of words.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, he would smoke me. In fact, I feel like I might have played him once on one of these trips that I used to do with him for maximum fun. But I don't know. If we did play, it was not even competitive at all.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I don't see why he would have played me because I'm really just, you know, I'm like Steve Carell and Anchorman. I like I'll try to spell lamp just because I looked at one. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, you and I would probably be a pretty good matchup.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
that if you play that eight-letter word, that not only do you get your bingo bonus for playing a seven-letter word, I think you should, if you play the word Scrabble, you should get an extra bonus on top of that. Of how many points? A million? Whatever's fair. That's where I just step back and say you guys handle it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah. And before anyone writes in, technically, they didn't completely shut down the NSA. They just stopped there. They weren't in charge of the tournaments anymore. They just they moved them over to another program called School Scrabble.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
You mentioned ups and downs over the years. You know, I guess all board games go through kind of boom periods and bust periods or at least low periods. And Scrabble is no different. There was an early 2000s boom. There were televised tournaments. It's interesting what drives this stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I don't know if they know on the inside, but I couldn't figure out why it would have had a boom in the 2000s, early 2000s.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Oh, I bet the New York Times crossword documentary, too, kicked that up a notch.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
But we're not talking crosswords again, so don't worry.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
There were 75,000 rated Scrabble tournament games in 2004, and that number by 2019 was cut almost in half. That went down to 40,000, and the Nationals went from 837 players to 280 over that same span. So it just seems like that documentary really caused a resurgence, I guess, and then it kind of went back to level set maybe.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, or play Scrabble with. Right. If you're in a tournament, you're going to see some big scores. They have scores over 800 points at times in tournaments. The highest scoring legal word, I don't think it's ever been played officially, but that would be a 1,784-point score.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
score if that was across three different triple word scores right that word is oxy oxyfin butazone yeah it's a now banned um nsaid pain reliever that's right and since i know you looked it up because i did too i'll let you give the definition of kazik which is the highest score ever for a word played in a tournament 392 points for kazik
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah. I saw that the Taino people like the indigenous Bahamians.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, I think it's almost like Tetris-like in their brains at a certain point. Like they might as well just be Tetris blocks that are trying to fit in. Obviously not Tetris because you can't make, you know, your own size and shaped things, but you know what I mean? Sure. I know what you mean.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
There's some other cool studies that there are, you know, kind of findings they found from different studies. The setup of this one is basically that if you have a college degree, They have found that you're less likely than those with less education to get age-related memory loss and Alzheimer's. But in terms of Scrabble, they found that that gap can be closed a lot.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
If you don't have that college degree and you play a lot of Scrabble, You can close that gap to where it's almost the same as people with higher levels of education as far as acquiring that memory loss and Alzheimer's. Pretty great. Take that, college boy. What about the Ruskies? That was interesting, too, I thought.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, that's super cool. They've also found that for tournament play, men dominate tournament Scrabble tournaments, generally speaking. But they've done studies of this and they're like, hey, it's not because men have big brains and women have little tiny brains. It's not because guys can learn words better than women. It has nothing to do with any of that. It has to do with
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
The fact that in general, overall, men start younger than women do. Boys, I guess, start younger than girls when it comes to Scrabble. And women generally and girls play more Scrabble, but they say that's not necessarily how to get better at Scrabble. They're playing for fun and just having a good time.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Whereas to get better at Scrabble, what these boys and men seem to be doing more of is like anagramming stuff and analyzing everything. And instead of just like, hey, let's just play some Scrabble and have some fun. Like, let me research and analyze this stuff so I can dominate in a tournament.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, and I think it's changed a lot over the past couple of decades too.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah. When it comes to like, all right, what words, like what dictionary do you use? There is a Scrabble dictionary. It's called the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. It was released in 1978, again, by Selchow and Ryder, even though they worked with Merriam-Webster to produce the game because, you know, they're dictionary people.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
And this has caused a lot of controversy over the years because words have been added, words have been taken away. And every time that happens, the Scrabble community, you know, some people are like, great, great change. And some people are like, no, I hate that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Right. And as I said, that seven tiles played at once is called a bingo. You add up your score at the end and tack on 50 points at that point. Right. Or however many you get. Apparently, experts can play like... you know, three, four or five of those in a game sometimes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Some of the worst and the worst racial slurs out there have been in the Scrabble dictionary.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Well, I mean, I'm not going to say those, but there is a list. I think there was a woman named Judith Grad in the 90s who kind of. It got on her, I don't want to say got on her soapbox because that indicates a bad thing. She got a campaign going to have the slurs removed. The Anti-Defamation League got involved.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Hasbro eventually said, all right, we're going to remove these words from the next edition of the dictionary. Booby, gringo, farted, honky, defamation. Whitey's, Pissed, Fatso, Redneck, and Wazoo.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, and that was in the early 2000s. And then in 2020, the official tournament removed a lot of those slurs that they previously allowed for tournament play. Right. And I also mentioned, you know, adding words. Over the past few years, they've added hundreds of words. Jedi, subtweet, Vax have been added. Birria, as in Birria tacos, has been added.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
All right, do it. They also had slang from time to time. Apparently, I'm a, I-M-M-A. As in, I'm going to. Like, I'm about to do something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
There has been some cheating over the years. We'll talk about a couple of these incidents. In 2011, there was a world Scrabble championship between a Thai player named Cholapat Etare and a British guy named Ed Martin because it was a missing G tile. And there's a lot of versions of this story. Apparently, Time magazine and some Scrabble websites say that E.T.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Ari called for Martin to be stripped, searched for that G. And the tournament officials were like, no, we're not going to do that. We don't want to see that. In Mental Floss, they said that, you know, they asked them to turn their pockets inside out. And that eventually just escalated to like, hey, maybe they hid it in their pants. They should be stripped, searched.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
And then what they eventually found out was that the missing G was in the pocket of another player from a previous game. And what I want to know is like, who who's running these tournaments? Like, how are you not counting the letters before the game or cracking open a brand new Scrabble factory sealed Scrabble? Like you got to count those letters.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
You got to make sure that's like playing chess without like a pawn and just being like, oh, it looks good to me.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, they should have made that kid pay that money back with interest. Yeah, they should have. What else? They had their own little Me Too incident at one point, too, didn't they?
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, I mean, if you're just sort of amateur, funsies, Scrabble people, one big bingo like that can seal the game for you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
By the way, we live update. We did text John Hodgman just to find out. I was kind of curious about a couple of things and about his highest Scrabble total ever. And if he and Catherine have a running record between them and he says we have old notebooks full of score sheets, but we never go back and look at them because as we know, John Hodgman only looks forward. Time does not go backwards.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
We were both consistently in the 300 to 350 pretty good mode. Okay, that sounds high to me.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
He said that's good enough to make me happy. He said we had both probably broken 400 a couple of times. I remember words better than scores. 25 years ago, I added S-T-E-R to joke to make jokester on a triple word square while playing with some friends of my parents. And I don't remember the points, but I was really proud of myself.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Oh, man. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for the show. Live updates.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I don't remember Scrabble. It was a long time ago. I love this one. Frank, old Frank, the chairman of the board, Mr. Sinatra, in his version of the 12 Days of Christmas added nine games of Scrabble. Yeah, that's right. Which is actually Joe Piscopo doing, Frank.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
In France, by the way, the bingo is called a scrabble. Just other nuts and bolts. You know, the tiles come in a little. They're little wooden tiles, little wooden square tiles. And on the tile is a letter and then a point value sort of as a subscript. And then you keep your letters on a little wooden tile rack. And you ideally your opponent does not see those. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah. And then they brought in, I can't remember his name, but he was the dad in Arthur and Oh, was he the dad in Arthur? He was Liza Minnelli's father in Arthur, yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Oh, God, I used to know his name because Arthur's, you know, one of my, like, top ever comedies.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Oh, you. Hi, guys. or basically just the voices that live in my head permanently because I listen to you two all the time. Nice. A while back, I have no idea where the idea came from. I wonder whether everyone sees concepts the same way in their head as I do and started asking around because she's referencing like the inner dialogue gap where people don't hear words, they see images.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
And Daisy says this, and this is very interesting, I think. I noticed that for me, the calendar months of the year in my brain are arranged like this, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, December, November, October, August. On the line below, it's very important the way it's spaced out, I think. And it's also indented.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
So December, November, October, August is on the line below and indented to about mid-February. So going from left to right and then making a curve to continue from right to left. No need to point out how weird this is, guys, because no calendar ever was drawn this way. However, this is how it is normal for me in my head.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
You can imagine the weird faces I got when asking this question enthusiastically to find out about other people's head calendars, especially when I told them about mine. Anyway, all this to ask, when you picture a yearly calendar in your head, what does it look like? Immediately when...
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I read that the only thing that popped into my head was a like the back of a of a like a wall calendar you would get as a teenager where it had all all of them listed. That's what I picture.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I don't know, but I guess it would just be four, four and four. OK, that's how I picture it in my head. January, February, March, April, and then four more than four more in order because I'm not weird.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Like, you know, it's they're facing away from you if you're opposite your opponent. and that's a big part of like an expert or at least an accomplished or experienced scrabblist is dummies like me and i guess you if you and i played we'd just sit down and try and spell fart every chance we got If you're an experienced Scrabblist, you're almost like counting cards.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
That is Daisy, and Daisy is from Belgium. Thanks, Daisy. That's the problem.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Like, you know how many letters are in the bag of like how many of each letter in the bag and you see them being played. You know how many are on your rack. You know how many are still in the pile. So you're sort of trying to figure out mathematical possibilities of what's still out there and what can be played. Like that's the next level stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, you've also got your blank tiles, which are worth zero points, but those really help out in making words possible that you couldn't get ordinarily. And then you've got your one-pointers, A-E-I-L-N-O-R-S-T, and you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
All right. The two pointers are D and G. Dave and Gary. Okay. I would say doggone. Three points are B, C, M, and P. That is be chewing and masticating pizza. Does someone really suggest like, hey, use these and don't make up your own? No, I'm making this up. I got you. This is all a bit.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Okay. Four points. We got F, H, V, and W, and Y. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
That was probably it. A big thanks to Laura for her help on this one. What was your nickname for her? Dr. Claw. Dr. Claw. Do you play Scrabble? Are you a Scrabbler? I just kind of wanted to get that out of the way.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
And then your 10-pointer, Josh. What are we going to end up with, Q and Z?
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I think I got it. You got it? Yeah, give me a quiz at the end. I'll put this away, and then you can just quiz me.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
There is a statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon, Andrew Thomas, who, who says if you go first, you have an advantage of 14 points. If you have that blank tile ever in the game, that's an advantage of 30 points if you're good at Scrabble, not like me.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I wonder about that. I'd like to hear from from Scrabblers. I mean, if it's fair game, it's fair game.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, that's a good point. Let me see here. What else do we have? We have X and Z give you a three to five point advantage. Mm hmm. even though they're tougher to use. And the Q is a five-point disadvantage because, I mean, I was about to say you always have to have that U, but I'm sure there are weird Scrabble words that don't have a QU. There's two that I know of. One is key. QI?
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, I wonder if, because I did the same thing you did. Every time Laura found an example of a word that's unusual or high-scoring, I always looked it up because I was curious. I wonder if that's part of the love of Scrabble is actually learning what these words mean or if they're like, I really don't care. I just care how much it's worth.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
That's true. The highest scoring three-letter word is Zach's, a 19-pointer. And Zach is 16. Quiz is a four-letter word worth the most at 22. That means like a test of sorts. Okay. And then Zippy, what does that mean?
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, same. I mean, we own it, and I have played Scrabble here and there. If somebody's like, hey, let's play Scrabble, I won't go like, no, sorry, not going to do it. But, you know, I'll play very occasionally, but I've never been a regular Scrabbler.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Ah, okay, good point. Thanks. You can't use proper nouns. No, you can't. Might as well go ahead and say that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
See, I'm a house rules guy, so I can, you know, as long as everyone's on board, I think you can have your own house rules for stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, but like if I were to play with Ruby, and I'd probably say like, hey, we can use proper nouns because she'll want to put our dog's name or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
I did look up the highest scoring bingo, and that is Muzjiks, M-U-Z-J-I-K-S, which is a Russian peasant.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Well, what's weird is your college band, I know for a fact, was Jay Clark and the Muzz Chicks.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
And we should also say that Scrabble, I think, is now up to 30 languages all over the world. And apparently that can be problematic. Like in France, you can add an E and an S to many, many words. So it can kind of get out of hand with the score totals there. And in our beloved Germany.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
And I never really thought about this, but German words are long, so there's not a lot of, I mean, sure, there are obviously words shorter than seven words in Germany, but a lot less than a lot of other languages.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
So it must just be bingo city or whatever bingo city is in German.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Nor am I very good at it at all, especially if I'm playing against somebody who, you know, because there's a lot more to it than just like knowing words.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
All right, we're back. And if you're going to talk about Scrabble, you got to talk about Alfred Mosher Butts, because he is the gentleman who invented this game. This is in 1938. He was an unemployed architect at the time and just into games. He's from Poughkeepsie, but I believe the game was actually invented.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Actually, I know this for a fact in Jackson Heights, Queens, because at 81st Street and 35th Avenue, I believe, is a Scrabble style street sign. I think it's I think it's 35th Avenue has below each of the letters is the little number value subscript, which is kind of just a little nice, fun, cute nod.
Stuff You Should Know
The Scribble on Scrabble
Yeah, at the time. And he was just into gaming and wanted to invent a game that was part chance, part skill.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Like, I don't see Jerry. She has a setting on her on her setup where it's like show camera only to Josh and not Chuck.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Two things. You just name checked Mainers. That's another one.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
That's true. But one thing I did want to mention, and that's a nice little segue, was just to plug a little Instagram post I made recently. I was cleaning out my closet and I found a bunch of old schoolwork from elementary school. And while this part was from high school, I did a satire, an extra credit satire on Thoreau about someone who went to live deliberately in the woods.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And, you know, the big joke at the end is they made it like 30 minutes or something. Yeah. It wasn't the best comedy work, you know, for a ninth grader. It was OK. Sure. But people should go check it out. I did a bunch of screenshots of various projects, a lot of space travel stuff and book reports. But one big one was on ancient Egypt. Mm hmm.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And I literally in the thing was like, hi, my name is Chuck Bryant and I'm going to be your guide through ancient Egypt. And at the end, it was like, I hope you enjoyed your tour. And once again, signing off, I've been your guide. And people are like, oh, my God, you are doing stuff you should know as a fifth grader. That's awesome, man.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
It's really pretty cute, but you can go to Chuck the Podcaster Instagram to check that stuff out. People got a real kick out of it.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
I just don't go on Instagram much, okay? I know that, buddy. I know you're telling everyone else that, but I know that's not your jam. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, but she has you can't smell her. She has a button to allow me to smell her. Oh, even though she's in L.A. and you know what it smells like? Miso. Yep. But she may have gotten that miso from the fridge.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Also, before people write in, they were definitely pickling things before they were canning. So you could still pickle things.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
What, for canning? Yeah. I don't know. Maybe how to seal something properly would be my guess. Although, I don't know. Maybe like wax sealing. Maybe canning should be an episode. And we can figure that out.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
I can regale everyone with more tales of being drugged to the cannery as a child.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Which is actually true. It makes me sound 100 years old, but that's actually true. So, yeah, when artificial cold came on the scene, that really, really, really changed the game. There was a physician and chemist from the University of Glasgow in the 18th century, 1748, named William Cullen.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
who it looks like did the first experiment on artificial cooling and kind of demonstrating how that was possible. And he, like you said, it was just sort of a version of what they had done in ancient times with those water in the clay jars and exploiting that phase change from liquid to gas using the thermal energy. But he used instead of water, diethyl, diethyl, diethyl ether. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And he would pump it out of of a container and it would come to a boil and that heat would pull all the heat from the surrounding area, just like it did back in old days. It was just sort of different, different medium. And that would cool things down.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, for sure. A guy, an American this time named Jacob Perkins, came along about 50-ish years later in 1834. And he's credited basically for developing the first working what we would call refrigerator in his machine. And, you know, again, it's just not too different from how they do it today. They just do it a lot better. But he used a vapor compression cycle. Again, it's all about the...
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
the thermal loss of that phase change. But in this case, they're just exploiting it, you know, because if you move the pressure back and forth between the two, it keeps a constant cool.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah. Big thanks to Livia for her help with this. And this was a me idea because I think after our history of dentistry, I just sort of got turned on by the idea of the history of like certain just commonplace practices and things these days. And maybe I got something out of the fridge one day and was like, oh, man, refrigerators, they really changed the game.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, that's super cool. I love that. They've used various liquids over the years. Ammonia is one they use for a while. Methyl chloride for a while. All of these things were toxic, though. So until they figured out a safer way, which they would soon enough, people would actually die. In the 1920s, there were cases where Methyl chloride leaks happened, actually killed people.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And then they said, you know what, maybe we should come up with a synthetic substance that does basically the same thing. So they came up with dichlorofluoromethane, a.k.a. Freon. And until the 1990s, Freon was the go to. And then we said, hey, that's not so great either because of our environment and the ozone layer. And so let's develop even newer, safer chemicals to keep things cool.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, that's probably true. To me, this is where this episode gets super interesting. And this is kind of what I was really after when it came to the assignment, which is when things started moving around, cooling systems started getting better and better. People were developing this stuff. And at the same time, railroads were growing and growing and expanding and expanding.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And all of a sudden, people in the Midwest, farmers could, you know, they were like, hey, I want to be able to ship my stuff and sell it to the East Coast. So the whole food scene was changing because of this. In the 1850s, they started, and this to me is just like super ingenious, they started keeping railroad cars cool by using ice. So they would, they were called reefers, R-E-E-F-E-R.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
A reefer was a refrigerated, you know, rail car. And they had these big hatches in the roof. They would load just these huge, huge blocks of ice. And then fans that were driven... by, you know, powered by the turning of the axle on the train or on the train car, rather. And that just, you know, it just blew on them like a breeze past a cool towel in your window.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And all of a sudden you had refrigerated train cars. They were lined in like flax and sawdust, like we mentioned, sometimes dirt, sometimes cow hair. And
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Even though people were a little bit at first like, I don't know about this, the meatpacking industry really got on board because they said, we've been shipping live cows across country for people to take care of when they get there, when we can butcher everything in one place and ship out this what they call dead meat. It's disgusting, but that's what they called it.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
I think I did. And Emily said, what the heck are you talking about? And of course they did. But I was kind of curious, like, I bet it's changed the game in more ways than I think. And that was sort of Libby's charge. And here we go with that, because I think it did change in more ways than I thought it would have.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, it's a lot of dead cows. It completely changed Chicago as a city, and it completely changed the way we were eating as a nation all of a sudden. We had refrigerated cars also shipping produce. It wasn't just about the cows and the beef, even though it was a big part of it. Right. But all of a sudden you could be like, hey, I'm growing this fruit in Florida.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And have you have you ever had not just an orange in your stocking for Christmas? You ever had a big bag of oranges sitting around your house? Well, we're happy to provide that for you. And U.S. Fruit, I think, was one of the first companies that. to get involved in, like, sending their good stuff all over the place. And, you know, as a result, obviously, the prices really, really dropped.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
There was an article in the New York Sun in 1894 that talked about the price of pears went from 40 cents to two for a nickel in just a couple of decades, thanks to refrigerated cars.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
I feel like I would remember that. Our stockings were a couple of little fun things, like a little top or some silly putty, but usually just like socks and stuff like that. Sure.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Uh, trains eventually, uh, shipping wise gave way to trucks and they said, Hey, now we got these trucks that, uh, we can, you know, refrigerate as well. And so we're not, um, you know, things were built around industries, entire industries, separate industries were built near rail yards because rail shipping was the only, only game, you know, for a long time. So, and I think it was in the net, uh,
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
What did we eat episode when we talked about Chicago, like the whole meatpacking area was around the rail yards because they could, you know, they wanted to have it super close. So now all of a sudden you could say, hey, stuff is, you know, it's really much cheaper to raise cattle or grow vegetables way out in the boonies. You get cheaper labor, cheaper land. So now we can do that.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Just throw it on a refrigerated truck to get it across country.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, absolutely. There was an engineer early on who who did not realize his dream, but he was sort of the first visionary in the mid 19th century. His name was Charles Tellier. Oh, nailed it. He was the guy that kind of envisioned this and said, hey. The cold chain is a thing that we could make a reality and then we can sort of reorganize rationally on how we grow food and how we ship food.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And it was his idea. He apparently died in extreme poverty. because he never realized the dream to its fullest, but he tried. He actually got a British steamer ship and outfitted it with a refrigerator, even named it Le Frigorifique.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Like magnifique, but refrigerator. The fantastic refrigerator concern. Right. And this was in 1877. And he was bringing beef across the ocean from Uruguay to Paris. And when they got there, he was like, everyone's going to love this. And the French were like, you think I'm eating meat that's been dead for a month? Yeah. You're crazy.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And we're going to pass a bunch of laws that ban this kind of thing for the next 20 years. Until you're screeched. I'm not crazy.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, so we're going to start early, way, way before mechanical refrigeration. There was still refrigeration, which just means keeping something cold. A refrigerator is a mechanical version of that. But in olden times, one might even say ancient times, people were still trying to keep things cold. Like since we figured out... That cold things lasted longer.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah. Yeah. Like a meatpacker storage facility, I think. By the way, second Rocky reference in here. That was another very subtle one. We'll see if the listeners can pick that out.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
It sounded like you were acting just then, and you kind of were, but I really did just tell Josh. But yes, let's leave that as an Easter egg. Anyway, yeah, cold warehouses started becoming a thing. Again, that sawdust insulation provided a lot of the, you know, insulation, I guess. These were in the 1860s.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And, you know, it wasn't like your refrigerator cold, but they were storing like fruit and produce. So it basically is like, hey, you don't get too warm and spoil is what they were trying to accomplish there.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
No, no, no. But by 1904, this was a legitimate thing. There were more than 600 huge storage, you know, cold storage facilities. I think 102 million cubic feet and, you know, mainly based around cities. But they were holding everything from, you know, produce to namely eggs because people wanted their eggs year round.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And back then, before they started breeding chickens to lay eggs year round, they were basically laying in the spring and people wanted those eggs in the winter.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
That's right. But, you know, we said the French were kind of grossed out by this. It wasn't just the French. A lot of people had a hard time kind of coming around to this idea of eating things that had been around for a while. And false rumors spread that, you know, that stuff could make you sick. It could cause cancer.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
So in 1911, as a PR rebuttal, I guess, the Poultry, Butter and Egg Association had a cold storage banquet at the Hotel Sherman in Chicago where they served an entire meal of foods that had been preserved through refrigeration to a lot of folks, including the mayor and the health commissioner, as sort of like, hey, here's where we are now. You don't need to be grossed out.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And people said, OK, I may not be grossed out, but I'm also like I have to get used to the idea of not buying the eggs from the farmer down the street or getting my milk from down the street or the produce from the farmer down the street. And so it took a while for people to come around to just getting food away from a source they really sort of knew personally and trusted.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
People have been trying to keep things cold in various ways.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
That's right. We should take our second break here at minute 42. And we're going to come back finally with home refrigeration right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
All right. So iceboxes had been a thing since, you know, at least the 19th century. They started to become more and more common. And this is, you know, a big wooden sort of cabinet in your kitchen, usually wood. And it was lined with something like a tin lining or zinc, maybe. And the ice man would come around, deliver a big block of ice to your house.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And that's how things were kept cool in the icebox. And if you are a Gen Xer or older, you're Grandparents may have even said the word icebox. My grandmother certainly did because she lived to be 100 and was around when they were iceboxes.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, yeah. Lemon icebox pie. But finally, in 1914, we get our first mechanical refrigerator in the house. The domestic electric refrigerator or the D-O-M-E-L-R-E fridge made its debut. And this was still not a fully integrated refrigerator. It was a device that you got to put in your icebox to keep things cool and to keep that ice from melting.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, it's kind of cool looking. If you want to look up a photo, I mean, it looks as described. Leftovers, and this was something I was really curious about, that had been a thing. It was 1878, I think, when that term was coined. But leftovers back then meant like you got to eat this stuff the next day because people didn't want their food to go bad.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
People didn't waste stuff like they do now and just throw stuff away if they didn't eat it. So dinner went into the breakfast or the lunch or it went into a big pot the next day that was on the stove. And you just had these big sort of stews of leftover things. Now that you had the mechanical electric refrigerator, all of a sudden you could preserve stuff and you could serve.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
You didn't have to transform something. You could like warm up and serve the same meal that you ate a few days ago. And that was a pretty radical thing at the time.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
That's right. It's pretty great. You know, the cold chain is what really changed the game early on. But it also changed, like, not just availability, but, like, literally creating new kinds of foods, like inventing new foods. Iceberg lettuce is so named because it could hold up to being shipped on ice.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Hey, man, I'll go to bat for iceberg lettuce. Really? Really? Yeah, I think it's unfairly labeled as junk. And like iceberg in with some arugula and a little romaine and some leafy greens. That went a little iceberg because it's so crunchy.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And you don't get that kind of texture from, I mean, maybe a little bit, but it's the crunchiest lettuce to me. So I think it gets a very snobby sort of people look down on it for bad reasons is my take. But I like a little iceberg.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
The polyester of lettuce. Yeah. But I was also raised a lower middle class kid who grew up eating iceberg lettuce. Okay. I was too. It has a fond place in my heart for that reason.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, I find it interesting that and, you know, I've traveled my fair share around Europe and I was I was shocked early on in my 20s when a lot of the drinks came without ice. And they said, you know, that's sort of the European way, because in Italy and ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
I would party on an old school 80s iceberg salad so hard.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, I mean, that's the only kind of, you know, I mean, it's probably not even vegetable, but I considered it a vegetable. I didn't like a lot of vegetables, but I would eat a salad.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
The other thing I like to use iceberg for now is like if you're making something in a lettuce cup, iceberg works really well. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Like chicken larb or, you know, something like that.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
So frozen foods obviously wasn't a thing for a long, long time. But finally, in the 1950s, they said, hey, you know what? We can cool things. We can freeze things. We can freeze meals and we can freeze orange juice. And I know we've already talked about TV dinners and concentrated frozen concentrate orange juice.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
But those were two really big game changers only made possible for advances in refrigeration and freezing and chipping.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
That's right. Betty Cronin, unsurprisingly, not forgotten, but doesn't get nearly the accolades she should have gotten.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, way to correct the record, friend. Uh, so yeah, TV dinners. I mean, I would go listen to that episode. It was pretty great, but it definitely, uh, you know, came along as TV was coming along and it was a big deal.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And even though, I mean, there are still TV dinners sort of like that, but, um, if you go in the frozen food, I mean, I don't get any of this stuff, but if you go to the frozen food section, I mean, you can get almost any kind of meal frozen these days.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
The people that had the dough, they were putting ice in those drinks, and that's because iced drinks are better. Yeah, across the board. To me, they are. I know everyone has their own thing. Some people have sensitivities, teeth-wise and things like that, so I get that. But I've always been a super icy drink guy. I love them cold, cold, cold.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Oh, no. I'm not going to let someone ruin. Hawking up a loogie for everybody. That's one of life's great pleasures. Sure.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
This is about the pink house. Hey, guys, I can't believe there is finally a subject I can share some information about. Every year I would visit my cousins who live about 20 minutes away from Plum Island, and heading to the beach was a yearly activity.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
As we all grew and we had our own families, the yearly gathering at Plum Island got bigger and better, and passing the pink house has always been the tell that you're just a few minutes away from the beach. I grew up hearing the same story you guys shared about it being a spite house and believed it to be true as it truly sits alone on the salt marsh. It's pretty weird looking.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Just last month, though, being a new homeowner on the island, I was sent a town newsletter in which a tribute to the Pink House gave a different history. I've attached the article for you to read. While it wasn't quite built with spite, there seems to have been some spite in the story. Our family loves the show and even flew to Boston...
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
to take our two adult girls who live in Boston to see you live. Thanks to you, we are walking local experts on the Biosphere 2. And that is from Amy Sandy, who is wonderful.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Hey, unless you just like a straight up warm room temperature neat whiskey, which is your prerogative. Sure, of course. You need to be cooling those drinks down really well. Like a cool drink isn't great. You got to have it cold.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah. And I know we're going to get people that say, like, I don't like things that cold. So even if they don't have teeth sensitivity. So, again, people like what they like. But I'm an ice since I was a kid. A tall glass of the iciest ice water is the most refreshing thing I can put in my mouth.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Well, actually, the studio is the only place where I don't drink iced water because it makes noise. So I have a, you know, out of the refrigerator cooled, so it's still pretty cold. Sure.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
I love that. But supposedly that's not the way. But I love that.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Oh, and we're getting so sidetracked over these drinks. We're not even through like the first paragraph here. But the martini, the ultimate martini is when they do that. And then they bring you the tiny, you know, little half pitcher sitting in a little tiny bowl of ice.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
All right, so people are cooling their drinks with ice in ancient times and places. Around the 7th century, of course, the Chinese are always discovering the biggest and best ways to do things way back in the day. You hedged yourself right then. And I was like, oh, be careful. Saltpeter, which is used in making gunpowder, was found to absorb heat when dissolved in water.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
So they would, maybe one of the first artificial cooling methods was to make a little saltpeter bath and you would just sit a jar of whatever you wanted to keep cool in that cooler water. Pretty cool. Get it?
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, I've heard that before. This is something that has been done in India for centuries and centuries. And, you know, it's not refrigerator cold, but if you're looking to keep something cool and something a little bit fresher, it's not a bad way to do it, for sure.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, I imagine knocking something down a few degrees makes a big difference in the pre-AC days.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Bearing things in the ground is also a good way to keep things cool. You know, like three to five feet down, you're going to find pretty consistent temperatures, depending on where you are. If you're in the north, it can be 45, 50 degrees down there. More like 70 in the south, and, you know, that's Fahrenheit.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And, of course, anyone who's ever spent any time camping or hiking knows, as I did when I was a kid, my dad would build a little, like – cordoned off area with stacked rocks in a very cold mountain river to put like jugs of milk and stuff like that in when we were camping as a family.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah. So far, I'm keeping track now, you have name-checked eggheads, laypeople, and hayseeds. And mountain folk. Yeah, and mountain folk. That's what we do here. Yeah. So in the 17th century in Europe, they had official ice houses and they were, you know, you'd bring down ice from where you could get ice, like literal just ice from the wild, like in Scandinavia.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And they were using it to preserve food, obviously. Also for like the medical community would use it for different things and also chilling those drinks still. But, you know, you would you could use ice to treat burns and things like that to bring down a fever. You know, making things cooler was a big benefit to a doctor.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah. Or, of course, any, you know, sprains and, you know, muscle pulls, things like that, heat and ice can be used in various ways. Sure. The rice method, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah. So it's either just out or coming out soon. It's getting its own short stuff because it was just kind of too much there. It was pretty cool.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
Yeah, totally. I think it's super cool. If you want to talk about like real ice and there's this really extensive in-depth long New Yorker thing, which, you know, most New Yorker things are about Frederick Tudor, the Ice King, who's around in the 19th century. And he was the guy that was like, hey, we got all this ice up in New England, like our lakes are literally frozen.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
And why don't we try and make some money by shipping this ice out? He had, you know, he tried to get investors and they were like, I don't know. It seems that stuff is going to melt. Right. If you put it on a ship and try and send it to Cuba. And he said, oh, watch me. And he put some on a ship and sent some toward Cuba and it melted. And he was like, oh, man, they were totally right.
Stuff You Should Know
The History of Refrigeration
But he kept at it and kept at it. And, you know, they used to keep use things like straw to help keep the ice a little more insulated. And he said sawdust actually works a whole lot better. And he and other people got in on the game. And that was like American ice being shipped all over the world in the 19th century, which is and making it there, which is kind of hard to believe.
Stuff You Should Know
Editorial Cartoons: Art as Satire
Oh, man. Stink lines. Who's the first person to do the stink lines?
Stuff You Should Know
Editorial Cartoons: Art as Satire
Each week, we're going to rewatch and discuss an episode from the series.
Stuff You Should Know
Editorial Cartoons: Art as Satire
Right, right. I didn't even, like, who are these people?
Stuff You Should Know
Editorial Cartoons: Art as Satire
Who's Michael Dukakis? Yeah. I remember. And Kitty. That's funny stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
Editorial Cartoons: Art as Satire
It's so funny to kind of think about the greatest political hits of our childhood.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah. And so obviously the next thing to conquer would be the LD, long distance. At the time, if you wanted to pick up a phone, in New York City and call San Francisco, you couldn't do it.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah. What's a chippy? That's right. We are going to be talking about telephone switchboards. Some overlap with a couple of other episodes we've done. But this is all about the, you know, the advancement of the telephone system in the United States and abroad and how the telephone switchboard was a crucial, crucial part of that.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
You were using the Miles Davis rebreathing technique.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
You're breathing through your nose so you don't have to stop talking.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Oh, okay. That's the Dizzy Gillespie method.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yes. It's amazing. I guess we'll spoil it and say eventually New York was able to talk to San Francisco. And, in fact, I think that was – Well, no, the first long line was between New York and Philly in 1885. New York to San Francisco finally came around, finally, I say, in 1915, which is incredible.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Classic Watson. You know, it didn't just work with like magic. You can't send something that you're used to going like a mile or let's say 100 miles, all of a sudden sending it, you know, close to 3,000 miles. So they had boosters. They had loading coils, which are like electromagnets that would boost the transmission. They had these vacuum tubes.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
that would regenerate a weak signal those were called repeaters so it needed help along the way to finally get you know across country but the fact that they were able to do that by 1915 is is remarkable um while this is happening i mean i think you said that he was uh bell was an old fat rich guy by this point that is because
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Through even the late 1800s, Bell consistently swatted away rivals with lawsuits, with shutting people down, with saying like, no, you know, I have a patent here till 1894. So like there are people out there building in their own phones and even their own switchboards. But like I'm going to go after them as fast as they can build them.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, and AT&T, American Telephone and Telegraph, we should point out that they were approached before that patent expired. And the reason they were initially approached was, I mean, it was part of the plan just to, you know, snap up other companies. But part of it was, hey, I need AT&T to help me build these long distance lines because that's the future. If we control long distance.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
and no one else has it, then we can, even if new companies pop up after this patent expires, if we're the only ones doing long distance, then we can lease those to other companies or not lease them to other companies.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
I love old telephones. I would like to check that out.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah. Can we talk about phone numbers real quick?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Because I don't have a complete handle on – because how phone numbers expanded was, you know, it wasn't just one exact uniform way in every place. It kind of depended on how big the city was as far as how many digits they were using and stuff like that. So what I've gathered is that from the beginning, it was two to four numbers depending on how big your community was.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
So you could literally be living in a community and your phone number was – Seven. Yeah, it could be 07, I guess. Well, I don't know if zero counts, but let's just say 11. No, I want to say seven. Okay, your phone number's seven. Mine's 11. Okay. We should get together and make a convenience store. But as things started to expand and grow, obviously you needed more and more numbers.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
And I remember seeing in like... even like happy days and stuff and TV shows like into the sixties and seventies when they would say, you know, uh, um, a word followed by numbers. Give me Klondike five, 6,000. Exactly. And so from this, how I understand it is, and if you found something different, let me know. But Klondike would have been the, uh,
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
either the switchboard or the central, you know, hub for that town. And then whatever the numbers you said would be the actual number.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
As that got busier, cities started using what they called 2L and 4N format. So two letter, four number. Okay. So it would still be Klondike 5555 or whatever, but it would be KL and then you would use the four numbers. And then eventually it was, I think, Two L, five N. They just kept taking away letters and adding numbers the bigger and bigger your city got.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, which I was told recently in a script I wrote to take that out.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Well, I mean, any kind of script note is just there is no right answer. But this person said, yeah, it just I don't it bugs me because it always takes me out and makes me feel like I'm watching a movie. So I was like, oh, OK.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
No, I did not. I got a lot of good notes from this person. So I was on their side.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah. Then you went seven digits and then eventually in most places you needed the area code as well. And we went to 10 digit.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
From the moment you could remember?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
What if those two numbers called each other, like, and some weird portal opened?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Oh, Adam Curry. Dressed as a gnome.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Okay. I knew you weren't going to be satisfied until I picked one of your two. Should we talk a little bit about who the switchboard operators were? All right. Or should we take our break?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
All right, well, most of these switchboard operators were women. Initially, they tried teenage boys, but I love this little factoid Kyle dug up. Apparently, there was a quote that said, unfortunately, they matched insult for insult for Canadian boys that were operators. So if like...
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
And as we'll see, you know, people call up and be surly or in a bad mood or if it didn't work right, they'd be cussing. These teenage boys will give it right back to them. Yeah. And so customer service is suffering in the 1880s because all these, you know, wise mouth kids. So they started hiring mostly women in the early 20th century. I think 80 percent of all operators were women here and abroad.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
They were called Hello Girls. Ironic since apparently they weren't even allowed to say hello. We'll get to that in a second. And Emma Nutt was the first phone operator, switchboard operator hired by AGB in 1878 at a whopping wage of about a nickel an hour.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Actually, you know what? We had a landline for that reason for a while, but no longer.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, it took everything I had not to make a nut job.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
joke can we hear it but i guess i sort of just did well i don't know her name was emma nutt and everyone's like i want i want a nut job that was good sorry you got me uh so here's the deal though it was very specific criteria you couldn't just waltz in there and get this job because like you said there wasn't a lot of choice for women in the workplace
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
And eventually they would pay them, you know, OK, not as much as their male counterparts, of course, because that's just how things worked, very sadly. But it was a very it was it was known as a pretty good job to get in the U.S. You had to be well-spoken. You had to be a high school graduate. In Canada, they sought women with good eyesight, no cough.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
You had to be of sufficient height and were physically fit in order to tackle the exacting work at the switchboard. And also, this is in Canada, also a reference of moral character from their clergyman.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah. What about in the UK? Because that's pretty fun, too.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
I guess nostalgia is not a good enough reason, huh?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, we talked about this on one episode. It was a long time ago, but I used to have Ahoy Ahoy written on my first flip phone when you opened it up, the little home screen, because before they had pictures and graphics, just said Ahoy Ahoy.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
No, no, no. It was typed out instead of like Chuck's phone or something.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, well, these were early flip phones.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
No, no, no, no. It was typed letters.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Oh, yeah, man. I mean, lots of, it's dumb. It's just my, our Gen X selves, like looking back with joy about walking around your bedroom with a long phone cord and.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah. I never did telemarketing in college, but that was a big – Dial America was a big job in Athens. I'm sure you remember. You probably worked for Dial America.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, it was a big, easy job to get in Athens and I'm sure many colleges. But the central benefit of any job like this is being able to put your hand over the receiver and roll your eyes to the person next to you and go, oh, my God, you got to get a load of this guy or you should hear this lady's voice. Like if you deny your worker that. then you're not going to have a happy workforce.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
That's the one perk you get when you're not right in front of someone is that you can say something quietly and have a quick laugh.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Or your mom literally being able to go to every point in the kitchen with like a 25 foot stretchy phone cord that you're ducking under and it's knocking things over and.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
They were. And they, in the face of, you know, like I said, some people would call in cursing. There were men who would use foul language. Sometimes they would get charged extra for their call. They would, sometimes people would call and say like, hey, do you know what time it is? Or do you know what goes in this recipe? Or do you know what time the train runs from the station?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, exactly. And they're acting like... information, basically, rather than just connecting calls. Right. You know, I guess they weren't being as reined in everywhere because or maybe they were taught the customer is always right. I don't know.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Well, if they got asked something in a recipe and they can only say five things, it really hems them in.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Here's one fun little thing. In World War I, there were 223 American women who served in Europe as switchboard operators because France's phone system was wrecked. So the U.S. Army Signal Corps literally built its own phone system
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
And had bilingual American switchboard operators working there and sometimes giving like really important direct orders about, you know, bombings and raids and things like that.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
You thought that's what I was saying?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Exactly. But this is the cool part. After 60 years, finally in 1979, these women were recognized as veterans.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
All right. Now we're going to take our break. We're running a bit long, so we're going to come back and finish up on how it all ended with automation right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
That's right. I think you mean pulses, don't you?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Hey, I'm not just sitting here as correct you guy. I think it's kind of funny. Somebody would have written in and was like, why are these phones having impulses?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Here is where my mind exploded because I didn't learn this yesterday. Are you still liking that one? I didn't learn this yesterday, but I learned it, I think, the last time you explained this because we explained that in another episode about how you dial.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Oh, yeah. How you dial a rotary phone. I did not know that it was the retreat of that dial back to its original position was what was being quantified and and pulsed.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah. I wonder if they're they're safer like for like government systems, you know, because you literally have to tap the wire physically. It's not just in the airwaves. True that. So I don't know.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, you put your finger in it and you dial the four over. You know, as a kid, you just think, well, like, yep, I'm hitting the four and I just take it out and it goes back to its place. It going back to its place is the key.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
It's pretty cool, though. I mean, that's just a fun little fact for anyone who still understands what those are.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah. I mean, that's the one that led to the rotary switch that we're talking about, though, right? Yes.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Do you know how his worked specifically or what the difference was?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Well, let's hear it. We got one minute.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah. And, you know, we didn't even really mention, it seems obvious, but I guess we should say the reason they were looking to phase out and go into automation is kind of like every reason always is money, you know, less overhead. As more and more switchboards grew, you had, well, A, the switchboards cost a lot of money.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
I'm curious. Surely someone knows. But let's talk about Alexander Graham Bell because he is the OG. He's the guy that invented, well, patented the telephone at least. Right. And from Boston in 1876 where he was not trying to invent a telephone. He was trying to work out the problem with the electrical telegraph, which was it was just getting bunched up.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
They cost, you know, you had to have land in a building and you had to have people to operate them. And They just couldn't keep hiring more and more people. I think at one point they said, you know, we need a million switchboard operators. And that just wasn't even a possibility at the time. So automation was always on the horizon. Interestingly, along those lines, long distance automation,
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
switching took a lot longer. Like it was into the late 1960s and even some places in the 70s where you still had operators that had to connect long distance lines because it was, as Kyle said, that it was just no alternative to human intelligence. It was too complex at the time. But eventually, you know, they figured all that out.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
What happens when you dial zero today from a landline? Is there an operator?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, there's a couple of competing last switchboard, last operators. One that you'll see a lot online is widely recognized from 1983, Bryant Pond, Maine. I think the specification here is it was the last hand-cranked telephone system and switchboard. Like, you know, like you see in the old movies, there's a box on the wall and you go, you crank a thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
And Susan Glines was the last operator there. London's, thank you, Kyle, was at Enfield. And this was 1960, I think, when it was retired. But the last caretaker telephone operator in the UK retired in 84. But then you found one in California that was 91. Yeah. And as best I could tell, that was a private company. a sort of very small customer-based private phone company.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Too many people are sending too many, you know, telegraphs. And it's a problem. So there's too much traffic. So all of a sudden, Bell, who was a sound guy anyway, realized that you could send tones. And once he realized you could send a tone along a wire, he was like, OK. forget the telegraph. I'm going to come up with the harmonic telegraph.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, not even the final one, all of their operators were bilingual.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
I think that was their specialty.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
No, I mean, I think that's honestly, they had most of their customer base were people with family in Mexico. And so they just had a niche, from my understanding.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Because you keep laughing at it, going, that's funny.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Here's our Joe Theismann follow-up. We got quite a few emails, in fact, a few from people whose parents went to school with Joe Theismann, the former quarterback of the former Washington Redskins football team, now the Commanders. Hey, guys, I used to freelance for a video company that did a lot of conferences, and one time Joe Theismann was the keynote speaker.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
The way he told the story about his last name is as follows. Growing up, his dad was very firm that their last name was pronounced Theismann. Apparently, his dad would get quite cross when folks would pronounce it wrong. People often said it wrong, so Joe would call his dad and have him correct them.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
According to Joe's story, when he was a candidate for the Heisman Trophy, his college coaches thought it would be better if it was pronounced Theismann to rhyme, obviously. So again, Joe called his dad to ask him, and his dad responded, I've told you, it's Theismann. So it sounds like Joe has made kind of a fun little apocryphal story about this, but it seems confirmed.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
It was these men heard it from the man's own mouth. And that's from Karen and Gil Pennington.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
And one day I'm going to speak to somebody on the other end of a wire.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
What if all of the calls went into a central location and there was a human being there that would connect those two wires? It's a very elegant, very simple sort of system. It's, you know, it's literally connecting two calls by, you know, by connecting them, by plugging them into the same system. What would you even call that? Switchboard? Jack? Yeah, the same Jack.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
The first switchboard commercially was in 1878. So only, geez, like a year after... The Bell Telephone Company was founded. This is in New Haven, Connecticut. And it connected 21 different subscribers in this case. And this is a very old-fashioned, primitive thing. Before long, they were like, why don't we wrap these cords in cloth? It's like insulated.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
And why don't we make the board look a little nicer? And we'll call them a cord board, but everyone's still going to call them a switchboard.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
You're not too far off. That is if my jack is on that board. If it was a big enough community, that switchboard operator might say, I don't have Chuck on this board, but he's on another board. So I'm going to contact that switchboard and, you know, patch it in that way.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Well, early on, they just knew, you know, in a 21 person situation, they just knew everybody. In fact, for a little while, they weren't even saying phone numbers. They were just like Chuck Bryant.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, because this is when making a call costs money. And up until, I mean, not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, making a long-distance call cost extra money. So you had to bill people, and it was pretty ingenious. Things started growing, growing, growing. You said the word exponentially, and that is the truth.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Because between 1880 and just 13 years later, we went from 60,000 phones to 260. And then just another 10 years later... There were 3 million phones in the United States only. Kyle points out that in the UK, they were a little bit behind us. In 1914, there were fewer than two telephones per 100 people compared to 10 in the U.S., but they eventually caught up to it. And everyone had phones.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah. And, you know, something else we should point out, too, is this is a time where the phone company controlled the phones themselves. So you couldn't just go to a store and buy some cool looking Mickey Mouse phone or a Garfield phone. Man. Or what do I have?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
I did get that for free, actually, but those are always garbage. It was the ones that look like push button, but when you hit it, it dialed. Oh, really? Do you remember those? You know, it had the keypad, but when you hit nine, it went...
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
It was a big bait and switch. But you rented your phone at the time. I guess if you had a – or maybe they didn't sell them at all at first. But I know for a long time they rented phones to people like – Into the 70s, right? Yeah. I mean, like you used to rent your – some people still probably rent their modem from their cable or whatever, their Wi-Fi provider. Am I saying all the wrong words?
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
But yeah, anyway, they were controlling the flow of money in more ways than just the bill. They wanted as many people to have phones as possible because they were renting those phones and eventually, I guess, selling those phones.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
That's right. But I got us a little off track. You were talking about some new techniques because these switchboards all of a sudden were getting just more and more ubiquitous. And they started to get a little clunky in like how long it would take to connect calls. So one of the things they did is came up with a concept of what's called the divided exchange.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
which is really just an organizational structural thing where people got more specialized. You might have operators just answering the phone. You might have people just connecting instead of the person going, oh, hey, Josh, let me see if Chuck's available.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Like all of that was really streamlined eventually until they came up with what was called the Express system that had a lot of letter B boards that converged on a letter A board. And there was an operator linking between those two.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
That's right. This is a Kyle joint. So a little British factor, too, in here. Because Kyle likes to throw those in because that's where he lives.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, they also just improved the signals, like signal strength. All of a sudden, operators weren't, like, yelling at each other, which can cause just chaos in a room with a bunch of switchboard operators.
Stuff You Should Know
Switchboards: Please Hold While We Connect You
Yeah, exactly. So just improving the signal really optimized how those things function such, you know, even just making the little signal lamps, the little lights brighter. Right. Responding to the current in the line, like everything just got a little better.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Look around, everyone. Every car you see is probably on AutoTrader. Like that sleek convertible that turned heads when it picked you up from the airport, or the custom ride from your favorite van life couple on social media. Even that vintage sports car that's tailing you a little too closely. New cars, used cars, electric cars, even flying cars.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
You're going to go a long way, baby. Stick with me. Should we take a break or you got something else?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Dear diary, today I went to the catacombs. I found my solace there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Hey, everyone. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that grinds just as hard as you do. And that hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. Those qualified candidates, you know, at the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is going to be the quality of those candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're going to be getting the best.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Just post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash S-Y-S-K. That's LinkedIn.com slash S-Y-S-K. And you can post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. Big thanks to Anna for the contribution here on the Paris Catacombs. Have you ever toured the Paris Catacombs? Yes, I have. Have you? I have not, and I think I remember you telling me that you had. I've been to Paris three times, have not yet done this. It was not on my radar. The first two, didn't have time the third trip. So if and when I ever get back to Paris, it's on the list.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yes, for sure. And I don't want to make you feel self-conscious. I was laughing at a dirty joke that I couldn't say out loud.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I'll tell you later. Oh, I know. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of, I mean, monks used to make chartreuse down there. Was that the birthplace of chartreuse? Yeah. In the catacombs?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, for sure. So that's one thing that happened back then. Mushroom farming, there's been a great tradition of alcohol brewing actually over the years. Because, I mean, one of the great things about having an underground system like that is it's very stable temperature wise. It's about 60 degrees Fahrenheit always.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. And so that means you can do a lot of stuff from like storing wine to brewing beer. Storing beer.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Mushroom farming was another big deal because one thing you don't need a ton of for most mushrooms is light. Sometimes, you know, you want them to fruit. You may be able to manipulate light or something like that. But generally, mushroom growing can be done in very dark places.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And so starting in the 19th century, actual mushroom farming and not just like I'm going to grow a few mushrooms like they were producing about a thousand tons of catacomb mushrooms a year.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, I'm finally feeling well. I had some fruity mushrooms and everything's fine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
It's also been a good hidey spot over the years, depending on what's going on with the government during the French Revolution. Revolutionaries hid out down there and were chased down there. Sure. There was an alt-right group in the 30s called... How would you pronounce that, Josh?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
La Cagoule. They... not only hid down there, but would use it as a way to get around and potentially break into government buildings, I guess, from, you know, from the bottom.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
No, of course not. During World War II, obviously, there's going to be either Nazis down there or the French resistance might be down there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
But what they're most famous for now is being able to go down there with your niece, the movie star. Yeah. It's been a tourist attraction since Napoleon said, you know what would be great? The year is 1809. I think it's high time we start letting people down there to tour this pretty cool thing. And it's sort of... Uh, vacillated over the years.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
It used to be like, you know, you could go down there once a month. If you were a citizen of Paris only, uh, sometimes it was like quarterly. Um, finally, uh, they said, you know what, let's just, let's just make money on this. And it's open what, uh, Tuesday to Sunday. I guess they close on Monday. Like a lot of museums do, uh, nine 45 to eight 30. It'll cost you 31 euros these days.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
which is about the same in dollars, I think, right, right now?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Okay, so pretty close. Man, you really keep up with that. Not bad. Thanks. Let me see how my Euro stocks are doing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Well, I just came back from Mexico City, so I basically just divide by 20.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Oh, I don't know. But I think you divide by 20-ish now. But my friends that we were with were like, I can't even think of it that way. I heard all you have to do is drop a zero and then divide that in half. So everyone has their own way of thinking about it. And shout, how much is this? Exactly.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Okay. That sounds about right. You go down a big spiral staircase. There's a lot of stair climbing, obviously, right?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, so you're walking down, down, down. Before you enter, you go through something called the Port Mahon Corridor, which has a replica of the Port Mahon Fortress. I imagine that looks kind of cool, right? Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Oh, so many skulls that it's just like, whatever, there's another skull?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
You can just stay right there if you die. Like you mentioned, 72 is when electricity came along. There is something called Ariadne's Thread, a black line. to ensure that you don't get lost. And I thought, well, what a strange name that is.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Okay, no flying cars yet, but as soon as those things get invented, they'll be on AutoTrader. If you see a car you like, it's probably on AutoTrader. That's kind of their thing. AutoTrader.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
So Ariadne was the daughter of King Minus and was associated with mazes and labyrinths. And while it is a literal thing painted there, it's also, you know, ties back to Ariadne and the While she was a person, it's also like a logic, like applying logic to all possible routes of a maze to get out is Ariadne as well.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, what does this look like, though? I couldn't find any pictures of this actually in the catacombs.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
You mentioned, well, let's talk about some of these chambers. A lot of them are like the coolest parts of the catacombs are not open to the public and technically, officially illegal and off limits.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Because they weren't the super cool ones were not on the tour.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Well, I looked at some pictures of some of these. The La Plage, which means the beach, is a really cool room because it's got a sandy floor and they painted like a beach scene on the wall. But it looks, I mean, all these places look like where the Lost Boys might hang out, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's totally what it was. Super cool. Yeah. What else? What other cool rooms are off limits?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, that is super cool. That was... a subset of a group called UX short for urban experiment. And there are these, it's an artist collective in Paris founded in 1981 and by a group of teenagers back then that like, they'll do this cool stuff. Like they snuck into the Pantheon for months in a row to restore a clock there, but like on the, on the down low.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, just like the group that did the movie theater. They were a subgroup.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, that is really something. But all of these people who sneak down there and do stuff are known as cataphiles. And those are the people, the urban adventurers, who illegally find their way into the catacombs to party, to hang out, to show movies, to have concerts and parties. And show movies. All kinds of things are going on down there over the decades. And it seems to have really kicked off.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
So the JSAT, the Josh SAT would be Moulin Rouge is to boobs as the Paris catacombs is to blank.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I mean, they've been doing it since the 1800s. I think they had a Chopin, like 45-piece orchestra did a Chopin concert down there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
In the 70s and 80s is when it seems like the the cataphiles really kind of, you know, took roost down there because it was a great place to go hide. Like the punk rock movement kind of moved downstairs underground, literally underground. Hey. And they tried to keep people out over the years. But like you said, people are going to find a way in if they want to.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Oh, man. I don't know. I haven't taken a test like that in so long. That'd be fun to take the SAT again. Would it? I think so.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
So, yeah, people do find their way in, like I said, and they've been doing that a lot since the beginning. And, you know, besides partying and doing drugs, like there are all kinds of like cool works of art. There's murals painted on some walls, obviously all kinds of graffiti. Sometimes they leave messages and leaflets and things for each other to find and try to avoid.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
The cataflicks, which is literally translated as catacops.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
The raspberry. The fine, the 60 euros you mentioned, I saw 65. I mean, that's just like double the cost of legal entry. So it's not the biggest fine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
There's got to be one close one. Like grave site or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, for sure. The IGC, that inspection group with the French name, still maintains it. They've been doing so since 1777. And there are still collapses here and there, but it is mainly shored up. Oh, this other thing I thought was fun, the ways that people have found their way in. When they close off an area, sometimes the cataphiles will go in there and reopen it and make a way to get in.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And they're called... I don't know how you would say it in French, but it translates as cat flaps, like a cat door.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah. It's been in a bunch of movies and stuff too, right?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Do you remember that from back in the day? Is that the human goop that seeps out?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Do you know if the water, is it continually filling up?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
You ruined the story, but... Gamers might recognize... The catacombs from Assassin's Creed Unity.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
No, I didn't play that one. Do you play any of them? Assassin's Creed? No. Do you have something against them? No, I just, you know, my gaming is limited.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I'm playing a horror game right now called Alan Wake 2. It's the second Alan Wake. And I'd never played a horror game before. And it is pretty scary.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, like when you're playing this game, they look so good now and they're so realistic. So you're creeping around with a flashlight in these rooms and you hear noises and see things and it's like, it's super creepy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
All right. That's a great JSAT. We should have our own Stuff You Should Know SAT. That'd be a fun thing to design.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's masterful. Definitely ongoing dread. And then when the jump scare happens, when a bad person comes out, it's just, yeah, it scares big grown boy Chucky. Fantastic.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Here's one cool thing, and this guy might be worth a podcast on his own. But there was a photographer. He went by the name Nadar, I guess, N-A-D-A-R. And this is in the 1860s. His real name is Felix, I guess. How would you pronounce that last name?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Tournachon. He was a very accomplished dude, sort of the pioneer of the medium. This is early photography and the guy in Paris photography wise at the time. But he invented a battery operated light, basically, and is one of the first people ever in the history of photography to use artificial light to take a picture.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And over the course of three months, starting in 1861, he went down into the catacombs. with 18 minutes per exposure, took a lot of pictures of the catacombs, and they are super cool and creepy pictures from 1861. They are creepy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, and those head bones weren't moving, so they're fine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah. Well, at the very least, it's going to up the creep factor because that just dead-eyed expression of a dummy is pretty great.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I'm going to have to ask Emily. You know, she took a solo trip there a couple of years ago. I need to see if she went there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Probably not because I feel like I would have remembered her telling me about that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah. She was like, were there paintings there? Then I didn't go.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Oh, that's true. What about crime? There's been a lot of crime there over the years because, like you said, that's a good place to pop underground and then pop up into somebody's expensive wine cellar or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah. Not cool. People have been stealing bones down there since there have been bones down there. Highly illegal.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, I think that a lot of them back in the day were to sell to sort of like cadavers, sell to medical students like, hey, here's a headband for however many Franks.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, of course there's going to be ghosts down there. There's a couple of more well-known than others. I think the most well-known is a guy named Philibert Aspert.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
No, and you didn't shout that one out, so I'm glad you are.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I know I'm wrong, but when it comes to French, I just want to drop the last letter of everything.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Anyway, he worked at a military hospital in the late 18th century and apparently in 1793 got lost in the catacombs with his own lone candle and never found his way out and just like Like I said, the convenient thing about dying down there is you just stay there. And apparently if you bring a candle there, you hear his voice just before the candle goes out.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Were you creeped out down there or was it just like, oh, this is a cool thing?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, I got to go check it out next time. Did you look at that video, by the way, the one that's like highly likely faked?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
No, there's this videotape that I think it was like 2017 that circulated that was like, you know, it's like a Blair Witch thing. Like, is it real? Is it not? It was a guy walking through the catacombs and apparently gets lost and starts to freak out and run and hear sounds. And then the last shot you see is like the camera falling to the ground and into like a puddle.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And some people say it's real. Some people say it's not. I don't know. It feels like it's probably faked. But I wasn't like, oh, my God. It was kind of not that interesting.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Here's a correction to our gong show episode. Hey, guys, there was one big error in this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I thought we had, but apparently we didn't. But yeah, big shout out to Gene Gene, a legend of that show.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, no disrespect intended. We both loved Gene Gene. How do you not? Exactly. So this was an error, though. Chuck Beres, guys, did not invent syndication. It has been around in television forever, with some notable 1950s shows such as Sea Hunt and Life with Elizabeth. Nor was The Parent Game the first syndicated game show or even Chuck's first syndicated show.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
First syndicated game shows came in 1965, Everything's Relative and PDQ, and Chuck Beres' first foray in 1969, The Game Game. Initially, that was to give local stations some color options since old sitcoms wouldn't be in color. But syndication exploded in 1972 because the FCC gave the 7.30 time slot back to the local stations.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And for those stations, it was cheaper to buy a game show than to make local content. I know this, guys, because I'm a bit of a semi-pro TV historian. Oh, yeah? Yeah, with an emphasis on game shows in particular, so I feel a duty when something is broadly misstated. As that was, I have to try and correct the record.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I had hoped you'd use Gong, this book, as one of your sources, as it was written by a real-life TV historian named Adam Nediff, who I've done some research for in the past. Okay. Hope you're enjoying the snow today. So this came a little while ago. But that is from Mike Berger in Livonia, Michigan.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And Mike, I'm going to hang on to your email, and we might hit you up if we ever need any insight on TV history.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I have to check it out. And I'm also going to forgive you for when I said Mary, Mary, for not saying.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
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Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, so this is, I mean, let's go back in time, I guess. I mean, we know already what it is. It's a series of underground tunnels where more than 6 million Parisians are there, you know, forever. Unless they decide to move them again.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, yeah. So if you go back in time, let's say 45 million years during the Lutetian period, there was an erosion event that caused a lot of what became to be known as Lutetian or Paris rock or Paris limestone or Parisian limestone deposited there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And that is, if you go to Paris and you see everything as that sort of creamy gray, that's what that is. And that's what gives Paris its distinct look because they had loads and loads and loads of it. And the reason we're starting with this is because the mining of that lutetian limestone is where these tunnels started.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
About 2,000 years ago, on the banks of the rivers there, they had these quarries where they would mine the heck out of this stuff. And before you know it, Paris is sitting on top of a vast network of tunnels.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. And that presents a couple of very big problems. First of all, if you've got a city growing and growing and getting built on and built on and getting heavier and heavier, and a lot of the underground has been dug out, that is a problem. And there were numerous incidents of...
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
sinkholes of buildings collapsing into themselves of all kinds of you know tragedies happening over the years throughout the history of Paris because it was built on you know hollow ground in a lot of places right that's why another very famous nickname for Paris is the Florida of Europe right I'm sure they love that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
The other big problem is that Parisians used to love burying themselves in Paris. Like you wanted to be laid to rest in the city where you grew up and lived your life.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, like very, very locally. And by the 18th century, late 18th century, this was a big, big problem. There were too many bodies. Disease was being spread. So this led to a couple of things. I think in the 1730s, there was an actual... A parliamentary commission study about how disease from these, you know, dead people everywhere in Paris was hurting the city. And then it took about 40 years.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Eventually, in 1777, King Louis, what is that, 16th, created the IGC. You want to pronounce that?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Right. So basically, hey, we got this report 40 years ago that no one's acted on. So we need to really start looking into this stuff. And Chief Inspector, can you pronounce his name?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
He came along as the chief inspector and said, all right, you know what? We're going to shore up these mines and make sure that they're not going to keep collapsing. And also, we're going to start moving bodies out of here. We got a body problem, not a three body problem. We have a millions body problem. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And we're going to start moving bodies out of, let's start with the oldest one, the Holy Innocence Cemetery, which has been around since 1186. Let's start moving things out of here and from other cemeteries, close these things down and start moving them into these old mine shafts.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. To the tunnels. And people are like, you're doing what? Yeah. And they said, don't worry about it. Just go back to sleep. And from 1785 to 1787, over a couple of years, not only from Holy Innocence, but all the nearby cemeteries, they moved these bodies. In April of 1786, the catacombs were consecrated officially.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
It was called the Paris Ossuary at first, but catacombs sounds creepier, I guess. Hey, have I been saying ossuary before?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Well, I wasn't sure how it was pronounced, to be honest.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
So catacombs took over as the sort of, you know, the go-to word. And they kind of just dumped them in there for a while until in 1810, there was a new quarry inspector who said, maybe we can have a little fun with this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. And I think from now to the end of time, a skull should be known as a head bone.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
So like you mentioned, there are no headstones there. So you don't know who is who. We do know there are some famous is there like Robespierre. Very famous statesman is there. There's a painter named Simon Vouet. Probably.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Oh, okay. And then this guy, I think we should maybe do a show on at some point. Charles, I would say Peralt as an American, but what is that, Peral?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I say ossuary, so I don't know why you're asking me. Well, you took French. I didn't. This guy was like the granddaddy of the modern fairy tale. So he wrote Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots and didn't know about this guy.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
All right, so I kind of teased out the importance of, or I'm sorry, importance. I soften T's here in the South, everybody, if you haven't noticed by now, and you're 17. Receiving communities are very important.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
How safe these people are going to be when they move to this place is, again, A, they're still going to be vulnerable to the impacts of climate where they go, most likely, or almost, you know, with 100 percent certainty.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
But just how safe they're going to be, period, because we talked about sometimes when they set up on the outskirts of towns and there's violence and they're more susceptible by being in a shanty or a tent or something to just even a hard rain. So it's almost like this. It's a vicious cycle that's happening where people are being displaced to places that also aren't safe.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah. Here's the thing, though. And this isn't like a bright side sort of thing. It puts a strain on resources when a lot of new people come to a place. But they can also be an asset because most of those migrants are going to end up performing a lot of very important jobs in that area. A lot of them work in agriculture. Some work in construction. Some work in child care.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
But those same people are also not necessarily – it depends on the receiving community – even down to that community level and how they're going to take care of those people. And what I mean by take care in this case is just see that they get a fair shot at like earning a wage by performing a job. If you face a lot of potential workplace abuse,
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
If you're one of those migrants in the United Arab Emirates is a striking example. Eighty eight percent of the population there is made up of migrants, mainly from Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh. And it's very hot there as well. And so they're not taking care of their migrant population of workers.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
And they can just sometimes some companies might be like, you know, we're not going to pay you for that. What are you going to do about it?
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, potentially. So under the United Nations, they have a refugee convention from 1951 that specifically defines the good thing it does. It defines that refugees are entitled to legal rights, entitled to travel, some kinds of support, housing, that kind of thing. But the.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
I guess kind of the downside of what it did is it very narrowly defined what a refugee was in the wake of World War II, which was you have to be fleeing persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or group membership. And only if you're fleeing from one border to the next.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
We already mentioned that a lot of this is happening within their home country, so they don't have any of those UN guaranteed rights. But a lot of people, legal scholars, are saying, hey, we need to expand that definition to include maybe not necessarily only cross-border and people who are climate refugees.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Well, yeah, and that's just, you know, that's the UN definition. There are other places in the world, the Organization of African Unity Convention in the Latin America, Cartagena. Is that Cartagena? Yeah, I know that from romancing the stone. We just watched that with Ruby last weekend.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
It holds up. And if you have a kid that's around that age that's into sort of like action-adventure kind of movies, which she is, it's a great one, man. She had a really good time. And it's not like super inappropriate for an 80s movie.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Not yet, but yeah, that'll be coming. It's just Danny DeVito, man. What a national treasure that guy is.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Ira! I forgot how much I love Remains in the Stone. All right. So back to Cartagena Declaration, they have an expanded definition of refugee that is more broad than the U.N., where they say events that are seriously disturbing public order, which obviously could include climate events.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Like there's an animal climate migration we're not even going to talk about.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, the writing is on the wall there, very sadly.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah. And Fiji kind of stepped up and were like, hey, we have some underdeveloped land. I guess it was undeveloped land that we can sell you. This is in 2014. And the president at the time of Kiribati was Enote Tonga.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
All right. And Tongs, you know, was all over this. Like, let's buy this land. Let's move people like not just, you know, a few families. Like, let's start moving en masse over there because, you know, the writing is on the wall here. And these islands just aren't going to be around at some point. Right. He was calling it migration with dignity.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
And then in 2016, Tong lost the president to Teneti Mamao. And this it was just, you know, sometimes when a new administration comes in, Josh, things can shift in radical directions. I don't know if you knew that or not.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, well, in that case, it was billions of dollars to physically re-engineer these islands and build those walls, and they didn't have that kind of dough. So China stepped up and said, You've got that marine protected zone where you don't allow fishing. Give us those fishing rights. So this is just sort of another good example of the domino effect that can happen.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
All of a sudden, you're wrecking that part of the sea because it was a protected zone that's no longer protected because China said, hey, we'll help you re-engineer those islands if you let us fish there. But they only ended up giving a fraction of the cost of what's needed. I think New Zealand is also stepping up, right? Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, I mean, I think people are of two minds here, and it seems like there are way more people that are so attached to their home they don't want to leave it.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
But I've heard just anecdotally stories of people that are like, I'm getting the heck out of California, or I'm getting the heck out of a hurricane-prone area, like if you live around the Gulf of Mexico or something like that, and those panhandle-y areas. or in Houston or Miami, we're getting out of Dodge.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
So some people are doing that, but it definitely doesn't seem like people are taking it seriously enough yet.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we'll get to some studies and stats and things. But the stats you got to keep in mind are kind of a guess because, as Libya points out, or maybe we'll just talk about that when we get to the stats part.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Oh, did I see that all the way? I think I might have seen that all the way through back when it came out, but that was it.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
No, I'm the same way. There's something about Zodiac that is just endlessly watchable to me.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
I should check it out again. Oh, and I think I have a good reason to coming up, hinted.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
I know, you know. I have a couple of stats as far as the United States goes. This is at this point already here in 2025, two or three million Americans leave their homes every year, every single year, two to three million due to natural disasters that happen, floods, earthquakes, fires. hurricanes, all the stuff that happens here. We don't have volcanoes.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Oh, yeah, yeah. True. But generally in the lower 48, we don't have volcanoes.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
No, no, no. Most of those people do return. But over the past couple of decades, about 3 million people have moved just to avoid flooding, which is a long period of time. But those are people that are just like, yeah, this place floods. I remember after Katrina, I feel like Atlanta got a pretty decent amount of displaced New Orleans residents that stayed here.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, we being specifically the United States, because there are other parts of the world that are already sort of proactive rather than kind of, like you said, being reactive and waiting when potential refugees are just sort of at the border saying, like, we have no place to go because our place almost said habitat. I guess humans have a habitat, right? Yeah, sure. Is that true?
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, every animal has a habitat. Okay, I didn't know if I was being callous by considering us all just animals.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Maybe so. But speaking of the U.S., you know, you do hear a lot of talk about that kind of thing, like, oh, people are going to be coming into our country. You know, depending on who you talk to in this country, some people might welcome them, some people might not.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Oh, that makes sense. 20 degrees higher than the temperature of the egg interior. Washing an egg at too high will potentially cook it. Washing at a temperature lower than the shell contents and the permeable nature of the shell will actually absorb the exterior contents so you're eating whatever soap that you are using.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
This knowledge is gained from keeping my own backyard flock for over a decade. And that is from the wonderful Meg.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
But as Livia is very astute to point out, generally what we're talking about nowadays, the more common thing that you're seeing is people – people don't want to leave their home, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
They'll move as kind of close as they can to where they're from rather than say, hey, let's just pick up and go to a completely different country where I know nothing about it and I don't speak the language.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Like, what's generally happening is if there's a climate issue, like, let's say, which could look like a lot of things, and we're going to talk about a lot of them, it could mean I just can't farm here anymore because it's so drought-prone or... There was a my coastline is disappearing or there was a natural disaster here. So I have to leave. People want to move close to where they are.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
So they're generally saying, like, all right, I can't be out here in the farm area anymore. So let's move toward the urban centers. And that's why a lot of these urban centers in the global south are popping at the seams.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Right. And but the idea is that I guess if you're moving away from where wildfires are more rampant, you're going to move to a place probably as close as you can. Unless, you know, in America, if you have like family on the other side of the country or something where those wildfires generally don't happen, maybe you'll do that. But we're talking about countries.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
You're probably moving within your country. And within your country, it's not like, oh, well, I'm at a place where the climate problem isn't a problem. So it's not solving a bigger problem. You know what I'm saying?
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah. And also you're you're living like perhaps in like a shanty town on the outskirts of town and you're going to see increased poverty. That's going to be an unstable situation. And then violence comes along oftentimes in these places. She found one study from 2022 of Central African migrants. Five percent reported that they moved specifically for environmental reasons.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
But 50 percent said, yeah, but that played a part in the decision to leave. Like whether or not they're saying like, no, the drought's too bad here, I'm leaving. Or some places are just the extreme heat is becoming so bad as people just can't live there anymore.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
They're not saying I'm moving just because of that, but half of them were saying like, yeah, that was a factor that led to this whole mess.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, I mean, over an eight-year period from 2002 to 2010, the urban population in Syria went from just under 9 million people to almost 14 million. That's nuts. That is a lot of people to add. But, and this isn't like, I'm in full agreement, so this isn't a counterpoint, but Syria mishandled that.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
And there are other countries in the region that suffered through the same drought, specifically Jordan and Lebanon, that had a government that was more proactive and responsive. And they had policies that were put in place that they didn't have the same kind of, you know, destructive outcomes that Syria had. So it's, you know, it all depends on how you're handling the situation.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
We're going to talk a lot about countries, you know, people leaving countries and then especially the receiving countries, because that's really where the rubber meets the road.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
That's right. And if the road is still intact and not cracked to pieces.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, true. Well, this is probably a good place since I promised to talk about something stat related. One of the reasons it's hard or one of the reasons you get something like anywhere from 50 to 250 million people, this pretty big swing is because we don't know how effective our efforts are going to be to curb emissions and to get things, you know, sort of on the right track again.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
How successful we're going to be at, you know, some wealthier countries doing things like seawalls and, you redistributing water resources and things like that, because as you'll see, a lot of and we talked about before that, you know, the most precious resource in the future is love is it's it is love. Oh, man, I needed that. Water, unfortunately.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
So, you know, there have been people that talk about, you know, the wars of the future will be fought over water. And as we'll see, a lot of climate migration happens either because of a lack of water or lack of water that's, you know, useful for humans or too much water and other parts like rising seawaters and such.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, that's right. Well, you know what we can do? We can just migrate to another part of the iHeart offices here. Yeah, nice. A nice, cool studio.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, I think you meant North Africa, not North America.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
I think people who listen to the show know us enough now to where we're like old pals and they're like, oh, Josh, Chuck, you don't even need to point that out. We know what he meant.
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
All right. Well, how about this? Why don't we take a break? You said Latin America was 17 million, right?
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Five million. So, you know, not nearly as many as the others, but there are, again, water scarcity. Yeah. In places like Mongolia and Kazakhstan. So now can we take a break?
Stuff You Should Know
How Climate Migration Works
Yeah, and that's the last fun we're going to have on this episode because this is not so fun.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Well, I think the Beatles one has the least amount of meat on the bone.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
It's a very, very famous story. But the one that's really interesting to me is Ford vs. Ferrari because that is a terrific movie that I highly recommend.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I doubt it, but I'm sure you can stream it somewhere. The great James Mangold directed it, and I'm always a fan of his work. He did the new Bob Dylan movie. What else? He did the last Indiana Jones movie, which was better than the one before. What else? I don't know. James Mangold's good. He sort of has a very varied resume, which I always appreciate in a director.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I am, and I do recommend it. He also did the Wolverine movie and the Logan movie. So yeah, he's all over the place.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
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Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. And their very famous founder, Enzo Ferrari, pitched a deal for 18 million bucks for 90 percent interest in the company. And as the movie portrays it, this isn't in this article, but as the movie portrays it, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not sure if it's true or not, but at least it was in the movie.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I don't see why they would make this part up, is that he was using that deal to get a better deal from Fiat. Right. So playing one against the other, which will really make someone mad in business. Sure.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Oh, it's fine. It's a top ten. We haven't done those in forever.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Apparently, when Ford showed up to sign the paperwork, Ferrari said that, you know what, you're this Ford assembly line, this bureaucracy that you've got in this company is this is not how we do it over here. So no deal.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
It's always kind of a fun throwback, and it seems like we never do ten. With our three-act structure, nine is probably a great number, but I guess we'll see what happens, right?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So they won first, second, and third. So they really bested Ferrari. They also won in subsequent years. So they swept, or not swept, but they won in 66, 67, 68, and 69. That's a sweep. Well, I meant not sweep first, second and third place necessarily. Or they may have. I don't know.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
But I think we should do one on the 24 hours of Le Mans because that's that's I'm not a car race guy, but that to me is the most interesting one.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And it's not just like a circular NASCAR thing. They're driving through streets.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. Apparently the founder of Lamborghini, John Smith... His name was Ferruccio Lamborghini. He was a tractor maker in the 60s, and he had a Ferrari. And he was like, this clutch is kind of janky.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And as the story goes, he got in touch with Enzo Ferrari and was like, hey, you know, I think I can help make your clutch better because you got this problem here with this spawn divot, and I can help make that thing better. And apparently, as the story goes, Ferrari did not receive that phone call well and was basically like, get lost.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Exactly. What a weird name for a car.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
You and I are not car guys, but like if I see a Lamborghini on the street or something or like the old Magnum Ferrari, I'd love that stuff.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
A little bit. I mean, you know, I'm not a sports car guy, but I just can't help but see those and think, like, what an amazing machine that is.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yes. And I feel like we did this on an Internet roundup or something. Maybe it sounded really familiar. This story did. It did. OK. Not to you.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, I mean, considering how much they were, that is a song, you know.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, I mean, I think every guy, I mean, Thomas Magna fitted him.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Really? Well, when it showed him in the car, his knees were up toward his chin a bit.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, because he was a tall guy. But that Ferrari, I feel like for guys of our generation, that Ferrari and the Porsche from Risky Business are like two of the top five probably dream cars.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, it had the lights that popped up. It was one of the not as lauded versions, I think. But man, it's something about that movie. It just sort of locked it in. I mean, it's like a little hatchback. It's not even that special. When you look at it now.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Oh, yeah. We got to get going.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. And I feel like I've seen this in more than one place in the world where. Oh, really? Yeah, not even necessarily a road, but like where like, well, you don't want to give up your house. So we're just going to build these skyscrapers all around it.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Oh, yeah. This is the extreme because this happened in China to this couple in 2012. The man's name was Luo Bogan. Bogan? Bogan. He and his wife refused to – they tried to come in and take their house to make a highway. And they were like, no, we're not going to do it. You didn't offer us enough money. And so we're not going anywhere. And so they built –
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, but you would remember this one because it involves self-mutilation.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I mean, if you're visualizing a house literally sort of in the middle of a road and the road just goes around it, that's what they did.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I mean, this is the most extreme case of something like this that I've heard. You know, it didn't take long for them to give in, obviously, because it was, well, dangerous and awful. Yeah. And so they got they did eventually give in and got a larger offer than they originally asked for. But I don't get the feeling that they thought they won.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. I mean, it's really egregious when you look at this picture.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. Through it practically.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That was a spiteful road, and now we're going to talk about a spiteful statue.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Because in Germany, between the towns of Bonn and Buehl, there's the old Rhine River and the Rhine River Bridge that connects the two.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And so the Little Bridge Man or the Brückenmanken, it's kind of a mouthful, is the Little Bridge Man. And that is a sculpture of a guy sort of bent over, sticking his butt out. And that became the subject of a lot of contention, eventually backfiring. Is that right?
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
But like I said, it backfired because that statue became a bit of a local icon. So it was on banknotes. It was on people took pictures of it. It was on local postcards. It was a little tourist attraction. But what they did was they put attacks on the bridge, but only attacks going one way and not back into your own place. Right.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So what happened was from the Buell side, they could see the statue because it was pointing, you know, their butt was pointing at them. So they got all the benefits of seeing this thing without having to pay to cross the bridge to see it. If you're on the other side and you wanted to go like actually see this statue, you had to pay to get across.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And that's what Bonnebule.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yes, there is a book, and this is, as the story goes, the book in 1904 called A Dictionary of Saintly Women. Mm-hmm. The story is that Viking, you know, berserker raider types came pillaging southward to the British Isles at one point. Well, not at one point, in 867 CE specifically.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
All right. And I think that's break number two. And we'll be back to finish up with three more right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And while they were doing their berserkering and ravaging of the villages and things, there was obviously the kind of thing that would happen would be assaults on people physically, sexually, and otherwise. And so when they went to a monastery in Scotland, the Coldingham Monastery, the lead nun, St. A.B. the Younger, said, hey, here's what we'll do.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
All right, we're going to talk about, and I've seen stories sort of like this, but this one seems to take the cake. When a Christmas display goes too far and all of a sudden people or neighbors are like, hey, this is getting out of hand. It's too bright or it's, you know, people are driving in to see these things now and I can't even get down my own street. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And this happened in the mid-2000s in Ross Township, Pennsylvania, when a dude named Bill, an electrician, key, named Bill Ansell did a pretty, you know, audacious Christmas display in his front yard there in Ross Township such that people were driving in and neighbors started to get annoyed.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. And apparently left it up year round. Santa urinating in the front yard. A choir that was beheaded. Frosty the Snowman getting run over by a car. Also up in lights, F. Ross Township. Yeah. Yeah. Just just right there in string lights. A sign that said this display is dedicated to Ross Township.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Shame on you for destroying my display that brought so much joy and happiness to so many people.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. And then he built a kill desert.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. Be a good neighbor, everyone. Be a good neighbor to your neighbor. That's all you got to do. You don't have to. You can go above and beyond if you want, but just be like base level good.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
We want to keep our chastity and our covenant to God. It's a big deal for us nuns. We should cut off our noses to keep that from happening because they won't assault us then.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. And let's not tank everyone's property values. We're all in this together.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. This is super spite.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. We'll move on to Prince Rogers Nelson, a.k.a. Prince, a.k.a. for a little while, the artist formerly known as Prince. Mm-hmm. Because very famously, Prince changed his name in 1993 to an unrecognizable symbol. It was sort of the symbol for man and woman. And it had some other flourishes and had kind of been tweaked and redesigned over the years. It was on different pieces.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
You know, he had a guitar shaped like that previously. I think it was on his motorcycle in Purple Rain, maybe. Oh, yeah. But it was a symbol that had been around his world for a while. And Prince said, yep, that's my name now. Don't wear it out. Don't wear it out because you can't say it. So that's impossible.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
But I think at the time, I remember everyone just thought it was Prince being Prince and being strange and being eccentric. But it is now pretty widely accepted that he did that to spite Warner Brothers records. Because he was in a record contract he didn't like for numerous reasons.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
He had re-signed it too, by the way.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
No, no, no. He re-signed before this one. This was the second version. He re-signed a third time later.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. Not even to spite, I think. I think it's to protect themselves from sexual assault. Sure. I mean, this is all horrific.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. He also wrote the word slave on his cheek in a lot of performances at the time. And it didn't work. He had to see the contract through, which just another few years, I think in 2000, it expired. And then he was Prince again. And like you said, you know, bygones were bygones, I guess, because he re-signed yet again 20 years later with Warner Brothers.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
it right work around yeah exactly so rip prince man he was pretty great yes uh my friend and your friend scotty got to go to his final performance the solo atlanta performance at the fox theater just days before he died yeah and it always makes me so mad because scotty didn't even really love prince yeah I'm glad he got to go.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
No, no, no. I didn't think you were.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So that's one of those. We almost went and pulled the trigger to scalp tickets. And it was just like, I don't know why we didn't, because it was special enough to be a piano solo concert by Prince. I was like, man, we got to go. And we didn't. And then he died.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I saw Prince when I lived in L.A. in the late 90s or I'm sorry. Yeah, I guess it was early 2000s. And that was amazing just being able to see him once with a full band. It was something else.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
He was. I also saw Tom Petty on that last tour. I saw him quite a few times, but I was really glad to be at that last one.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
One of the best. He's one of my faves.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. This is another image search quality or image search worthy kind of thing to look up. If you're in a place where you can do that, just type in Plum Island pink house and you will see a quite large pink house sitting in the middle of nothing.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Made out of spite. A lot of times these spite houses happen when a couple gets divorced. It should come as no surprise. Or I should say probably couples with a lot of money get divorced. Because what I've learned is in order to have a spite house, you have to be rich. Well, I'm just going to build that huge house to get back at someone. It's a very privileged position to be in. For sure.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So, you know, I am judging. But in 2015, there was a New York Times article that talked about this thing that was built, like you said, in the middle of nowhere. It said it was overlooking a vast landscape of pristine salt marsh. And it apparently happened in 1925 when a couple got divorced and the wife said, all right, we can get a divorce.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
But you have to rebuild an exact duplicate of the house we live in if you're kicking me out of it because I love it so much. And he went, no problem. And so he built it and he said, you didn't say where. And he said it just like that, I bet.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Just clapping the dust off your hands.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, I mean, I guess if you're a loner and you like nature, it's not the worst place to be. I just saw a sunset picture. It looked pretty nice.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, and I'm sure upkeep on that thing is you're probably repainting that thing every couple of years, right?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, you would have to. Apparently, it was lived in until 2011 and then eventually was sold to the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in 2012. And you can't get to it now. It's off limits to the public. But they're trying to make it an official protected house so it will stand forever. Yeah.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I don't know. Well, some people say that that was just an urban legend and it was just a family who lived out there.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So another recent one from Automatt. I love this real-time stuff. This, you know, I mentioned some sort of episode on currency and how it affects things. And this is from Tree. Tree, okay, awesome. Not a tree, but Tree. Tree. Hey guys, Chuck. Specifically, you mentioned in the Automat episode you were trying to formulate something around how change affects things, or currency rather.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Look into the situation in Zimbabwe, that might help, where it was too expensive to import metal coins. They had adopted the US dollar. It was too expensive to import the metal because of weight. So there was a huge change shortage because store owners couldn't give shoppers change.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Shoppers would have to purchase additional items to try and get their total purchase as close to the whole dollar amount. And he sent a New York Times article. And that, my friend, Tree, is exactly what I was talking about as something that could be a part of that episode. So I appreciate that direction. And that is specifically Tree Marchink. Great name, Tree.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That was crazy. I remember that.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, there's got to be more to it.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, it gets even worse because what the Vikings did was burn the place down with them inside and killed them all.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. And they just burned them down. They didn't spite anybody.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. Oh, wait, but doesn't it mean to spite your own face? Right. So you're harming yourself. Yeah, I got you.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, I just got confused.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Wow, that's really good. I like that.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
All right. Let's talk about Henry Clay Frick because he was a Gilded Age character. I don't know about Robert Barron, but he was very least a mogul. And along with Andrew Carnegie, they made quite a lot of money together as partners in the steel industry. That relationship went south and Carnegie got him out of the picture, got Frick out of the picture.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And, you know, to the point where he was, Carnegie was sued and Frick actually won a lawsuit and won compensation and everything. But it wasn't like he was like, all right, we're all even now. He hated Andrew Carnegie for the rest of his life.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, for sure. Anything you can do, I can do bigger and better. And so you would think at the end of their lives, they could just let bygones be bygones. And that's what Andrew Carnegie tried to do when he was in failing health.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
He said, can you get in touch with my old partner, Frick, Mr. Henry Clay Frick, and tell him he's got a great name and tell him that I'd like to meet up with him and patch this thing up before we're gone off of this earth. And so they brought the letter. He dispatched his personal secretary, James Bridge, to send this to Frick personally.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And Frick apparently balled up the letter and threw it back at him and said, tell him I'll see him in hell where we were both going.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Oh, man, if you I know you're getting into some old TV and you always have been. But if you do you have Criterion, the Criterion channel streamer?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Highly recommended, by the way. Sure. Like it's really the only great one out there as far as quality stuff. But they have old Mary Tyler Moore or maybe that was on Max. I can't remember, but anyway, Emily and I started watching old Mary Tyler Moore episodes.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. And it is, I watched a little bit when I was a kid, but man, it is so good and it's so funny and charming and witty and like still great.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So good. Ted Knight and who's the woman who played Rhoda?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Oh, it's killing me. Valerie Harper. There you go. Valerie Harper. Ed Asner. It's really a great, great show. And Mary Tyler Moore is just a gem of a human. I hope she's still good as a person.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I watched the documentary about her. It's worthwhile.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, it's excellent, in fact.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Hey, sure. I feel like we've killed some time. Should we do a third and then take a break? I think that's a great idea, Chuck. All right, we're going to talk about Saddam Hussein. And Saddam Hussein didn't like one George H.W. Bush, who was the guy who said his name that way because of the first Gulf War.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Right. And if you walked around it, you were given a bad room.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Did you look at a picture of this?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
You totally tell who it is. It's big old George Bush senior right there on the floor of the hotel of the lobby. It's a very strange thing to see in a nice hotel. Yeah. But W came along later on, went back to Iraq for the, you know, the war there on the basis of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Right. And he had them smash that up.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
He's like, Daddy, I'm not going to let him do that to you. here's some sledgehammers. And so they went in there and they smashed that thing up and chiseled it up and supposedly laid a portrait of Saddam. They didn't do that in mosaic tile, did they?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
He's like, here's some sledgehammers and I need a good tile guy in Baghdad.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I think so. To ruin your hotel lobby, your nicest hotel lobby. Yeah.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
All right. We'll be right back with three more.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
That's probably the right route to take. So Ray took it. It was a two-hour affair in court. No one got the satisfaction of hearing any of the evidence. It also meant he wouldn't be eligible for parole for 30 years, whereas if he had gotten a life sentence and not the 99, he could have gotten out in 12 and a half.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
But just three days after he pleaded guilty, he recanted and tried for the rest of his life to get a new trial, tried to escape. He did escape. In fact, if you listen to our Barkley Marathon episode, he escaped successfully for three days in 1977 and was picked up in Brushy Mountain where that race takes place.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
But he would eventually die in prison in 1998 at the age of 70, which would also been the year he was first eligible for parole.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
And it was all just a bit awkward because, as we all know, or maybe some people don't know this, but the FBI. had been tracking Martin Luther King Jr. since 1956. So for 12 years under a program called Racial Matters.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, he joined the Army. Yeah, he dropped out of high school at 16. King was in college at 15. So just contrast the two situations. In 46, he joined the Army after being laid off from his civilian job in the Army. He was charged with drunkenness, with breaking arrest. He served three months in the Army clink, hard labor for that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
He was discharged less than honorably for, quote, ineptness and lack of adaptability to military service in 1948. So just a couple of years in the Army. And then was a drifter and a petty criminal who was in and out of jail over and over.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah. And, you know, it was it was really a 20 year prison sentence for everything because it was a pretty small like robbery at Kroger that wouldn't have gotten a 20 year. But he had other armed robbery convictions. He had mail fraud convictions and escape attempts. So it was like, hey, we're just going to try and put you away for a while. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
And if you're curious how he escaped, he hid in a bread delivery truck that was leaving the prison.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
With your little portable radio, prison radio.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, who are apparently surprised. I imagine they were like, oh, wait a minute. Is that him coming back?
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Another time he came back to re-rob a place he had already robbed, re-entered the window to get more stuff. That is a no-no.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah. Like, get out of there. I'm not a criminal, but I would get out of there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
No, I think they meant the other way, like the matters of race. And then in 1963, they started tapping his phones under the Communist Infiltration Program. And J. Edgar Hoover was still around at the time because it seems like he was there for 300 years. And he didn't like Martin Luther King Jr.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
And these are the Londoners. They're not used to knocking guns out of hands. And this guy still managed to do it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah. And, you know, we don't lend our show and ourselves to conspiracy. We're not conspiracy minded generally. But you don't have to be to to look at this and say he probably didn't act alone. It just doesn't add up, like you said. So there have been congressional committees over the years that have been. family members of Martin Luther King Jr. that said, yeah, this was part of a conspiracy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
There's never been any solid agreement on what kind of conspiracy and who else was behind it. And we're not going to get into the nitty-gritty of all the – there's a lot of discounted stuff and stuff that rabbit holes you shouldn't even go down. So we're not going to get into those, but we are going to talk about – The legit idea of a conspiracy and who could have been involved, like, for real.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
He called him the most notorious liar in the country publicly at a press conference because King had been criticizing the FBI because they, you know, weren't protecting the civil rights of black Americans. And so Hoover didn't like the guy, yet he was the guy kind of at the top of this huge investigation.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah. So after he retracted that confession, just days after his conviction, he started saying, I was set up and I was set up by a guy named Raul. So supposedly he had a lot of interactions with this Raul guy, but he went from describing him as a Latino with blonde hair to a French Canadian with red hair. Nobody ever witnessed him with anyone that looked like either one of those people.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
A lot of people think there is no Raul at all, but he still could have had help from someone else.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah. As far as Martin Luther King Jr. 's widow, Coretta Scott King, she was She always thought the FBI might have had something to do with it. She knew that they had been surveilled and their phones had been tapped. She thought they, you know, were a possible suspect. you know, bad actors. They even, you know, this is sort of startling. And in fact, it startled the country in the late 90s.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
But they came around to believing James Earl Ray, Dexter Scott King, one of his sons, visited James Earl Ray in prison. They pushed for him to get an appeal. He apparently asked him point blank, like, did you kill my father? And James Earl Ray said, no, I didn't know. And then apparently he also said, but like I say, sometimes these questions are difficult to answer.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Sometimes you have to make your own evaluation and maybe come to the conclusion. I think that could be done today, but not 30 years ago. None of that makes any sense.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, but as shocking as this meeting was, They they got on board and said, I don't think you did this. I think you were patsy. I think you were set up. And a lot of Americans were confused and a lot were offended. Pulitzer Prize winning biographer of Martin Luther King Jr. David Garrow said that Dexter King's support was of Ray was egregious and embarrassing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Jeez, let's talk about the high road, man.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
So there's an attorney named William Pepper who is a very conspiracy theory-minded attorney. He became James Earl Ray's attorney eventually. And he's not someone that a lot of people thought a lot of in his career. He had been described as disgraceful by some, the most gullible person I've ever met by someone else. He was –
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
All right, so the FBI gets a hold of that .30-06 rifle that was— determined to be the murder weapon. They couldn't actually conclusively link that bullet to the gun because the shell had been fragmented, but it was the same caliber, and everybody was like, come on, it's the gun. Can we all just agree to that?
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
readily and willing to just malign innocent people to get his theories out there. And I remember this happening. I didn't watch it. But on the 25th anniversary of King's murder, so I guess somewhere in the mid 90s, he sold HBO on producing and broadcasting a mock trial TV special of James Earl Ray in which Ray was acquitted by the mock jury.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, I feel like if you're floating a conspiracy about an assassination, if you just throw out like local cops and mafia, then you're probably halfway there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
So Martin Luther King Jr. 's family sued him for wrongful death in civil court. Again, this is not a criminal trial or anything. They didn't want money. They wanted 100 bucks. They basically wanted to get all these claims heard in court and have it, you know, published, you know, out in public. And they this is sort of shocking as well.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
The family was represented by that attorney, William Pepper, who had represented James Earl Ray. The jury did decide that Jowers and others, including government agencies, had been responsible for King's death. So they actually won that civil trial.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, dumped minutes after by a guy who sped away in a Mustang.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, along with a scope and a gentleman who said that he was going hunting on a hunting trip with his brother.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, and under an alias under the name Harvey Lohmeyer.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah. So he was like, that's the guy. There were witnesses we mentioned earlier in part one at the Bessie Brewer boarding house. They also looked at pictures and they were like, yeah, that's the guy we saw running away. And they went to the hotel clerk and or the boarding house clerk and they said, yeah, this guy signed in. That's him for sure. Under the name John Willard.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
So he had multiple aliases. Oh, yeah. And. that portable radio that they found in the bundle had a scratched out ID number, and they eventually figured out that that was his prison radio. It had his inmate number on it. So he escaped prison and was like, I'm taking my radio.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
So the FBI started tracking his movements. He's got all these aliases. In that year that he was on the lam after the shooting, He was into politics for a little while, supporting Alabama Governor George Wallace, his presidential campaign. He was in L.A. for a little while. He took dance lessons. He went to bartending school.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
He lived in Mexico for like a month or so, trying to become a pornography director. under the name Eric Salvo Galt. That didn't work out. So he left Mexico, came back to the States, and apparently in like the month or so before the assassination, he had been stalking King and had followed him from Atlanta to Memphis.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
I think you mean Toronto.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, and this time his alias was, because, you know, it was a real dude. In fact, the guy was a cop. Pretty ironic. But his name was Raymond George, I guess, Sneed, S-N-E-Y-D.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Okay, well, it's good that we spelled it out because that will come into play in a minute here. But from Toronto, he went to London. He was actually in London a couple of times. He passed through London on his way to Lisbon after that first flight from Canada. And he was going to Lisbon because he was hoping to go to Africa before the murder.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
And then afterward, his long-term plan was to go to Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, because in 1965, a 5% white minority there had assumed independence from the UK. And he was like, I'm going to go to Rhodesia and I'm going to integrate into this small white minority and become a paid mercenary.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, we'll get to who Ray was a little bit, but. The one takeaway from everything that I've read is he was not a very smart person.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
No. Also because he did not throw that first passport away, and that would be his undoing. Like we said, he could not secure that passage to Africa, so he went back to London to figure out what his next move was. This is sort of a weird part of the story. He called... a reporter named Ian Colvin at the Daily Mail's Foreign Desk.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
And I don't know if this guy had written articles about it, mercenaries or something. I don't know either. That's the only thing I can figure out because he called this random reporter and said, hey, you got any contacts for these mercenaries?
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
It's a very strange little side part of this story, for sure.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, two different names.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
That's right. Where we left off with part one was the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., and we're going to pick up now with the investigation and the manhunt. And while we're talking about that, we might as well go ahead and say it's still perhaps the largest manhunt in FBI history, depending on who you ask. Cost a couple of million bucks in those dollars. 3,500 investigators.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II
Yeah, his attorney at the time, Percy Foreman, said, well, you know, if you go to a jury trial, you're probably going to get a death sentence because of, you know, because of the murder and its impact on the country, basically. Like, you're not going to avoid the electric chair. So if you plead guilty, you can get the maximum life sentence, which is 99 years in prison in Tennessee. And he said...
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
That's right. And we are going to take a couple of minutes here at the head of the show to pay tribute to HowStuffWorks.com founder Marshall Brain, who passed away last November at the age of 63.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
All right, so if you want to geolocate something or somebody, you're going to need, and you're on Earth, you know, you can just use longitude and latitude, and that'll do a pretty good job. Sure. GPS is like, hey, what if you want to find out where you are relative to sea level? We can do that. And you can't, longitude and latitude. Yeah. And GPS does that with microwaves.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
They decided not to use radio waves for reasons we'll talk about, but they use microwaves. sent down to Earth.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
That's right. And that is in the form of a pseudo-random code. And one of the cool parts about that is it's going to tell you like, yeah, it's coming from this satellite. Here's my pseudo-random code. But it also uses a slightly differently altered frequency. So the frequencies don't jam one another.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
So all these satellites, because the frequencies are just slightly varied, can all talk to each other because you don't want satellites up there jamming each other.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Right. And this is one final bit of key, key information here. All these satellites, great. They're beaming microwaves down, fine. If we didn't know how fast those microwaves traveled, then none of that would do us any good. We have to know exactly how fast that stuff travels in order to measure a distance.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
And in this case, we know that electromagnetic waves, microwaves, travel at speed of light, 186,282 miles per,
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, 100%. Just about Marshall. He was an electrical engineer, had a Bachelor of Science. He was a longtime professor at NC State. And in 1998, he founded, as a hobby, HowStuffWorks.com because he wanted to... He had a very pure goal, which was to make complex things understandable and relatable to everyday people. And that is, you know, that's what we still do. We were hired as writers there.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
That's right. And you might be thinking like, yeah, but what about stuff getting in the way? Like if this stuff is supposed to be exact, then, you know, what about a tall building or what about, you know, weather and space like that can throw all this off, right, guys? And that's true, but they have a very pretty brilliant workaround for that.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
One method is called differential GPS, and they have these antennae on Earth that are locked in. They're stationary. They're not going anywhere. We know exactly where they are. They're called known points for that reason. And since we know exactly where those are, they're receiving these transmissions from GPS. And so they can calculate whether or not the location is off.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
If this thing is locked in place, but the calculation coming from the GPS is off by a little bit, hey, it must have gone through some thick shrubbery or bounced off a building or something. But either way, we're locked in place so we know exactly what that should be. And thus, we'll know what that discrepancy is and we can account for that.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah. And hey, listen, I won't tell everybody. I'll just adjust it on my end and they'll never know that you screwed up.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Too much kale, like a salad with only kale or like, God forbid, you eat a bag of kale chips. You would die.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
It's too much at once. Yes. Oh, boy. All right. So now we get to trilateration. Take it away, friend.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Well, first of all. Let me explain that trilateration is not the same as triangulation because we're not talking about ankles. We're talking about distance. And somewhere in there is the key of where I was screwing up because you had sent me this in a very elegant, sort of simple to explain way.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
It was explained about, you know, like a Venn diagram, three circles overlapping and then the point where they overlap is where you are. We'll explain that more thoroughly. But I was just drawing three random circles. And I'm like, three random circles don't always intersect at a point. Right. Like they might overlap in an area. And so the center of that area maybe is what we're talking about.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
But then I realized you can't just draw three random circles and expect them to have a tangent point because they don't always. In the case of GPS, I guess it's just a very exact measurement from one place to another. And in that case, they will intersect.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
No, I'm sure there's a name for it. Some science person is going to say, oh, Chuck, that's just blank.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
I got a freaking compass at one point because you were like, it's because the circles are willy nilly.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
I never met Marshall personally. I think I saw him come through the office a couple of times early on, but I never had the pleasure of actually sitting down with the guy.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah. Hey, well, I'm not going to tell you that. But how about this? You're 690 miles from Minneapolis.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Right. So you're like, is there one more Wiseacre in this town? Yeah. Who will tell me by not telling me where I am, where I am.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
And so you go into this final, the only other gas station in town. And you say, guys, someone told me I was 625 from Boise. Didn't help much. Someone else said 690 from Minneapolis. Please just tell me where I am. They said, oh, you're 650 miles from Tucson, pal.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
All right. So now you got three circles, though. And this is where I got super tripped up because I was like, oh, cool. Let me draw this out. And I drew it out. And I was like, these don't intersect at a common point.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
But if you're using exact GPS calculations, distance from a satellite, or in this case, points on a map, then you know exactly where you are because it's going to intersect at only one place at three points.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, but you knew you were in Denver because you can't catch your breath and it smells like weed everywhere.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah. And liberals and conservatives are smashed together and everyone's like, what kind of state is this? It is. It's crazy like that, isn't it? Yeah. I love Colorado. I think it's interesting that way.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
And one guy goes, hey, you ever try to shoot a hacky sack in midair? Watch this. It's kind of fun. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
My friend, I hate to break it to you, but you did the old Josh Clark insert and extra consonant thing.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Right. And I think you mentioned the spheres while I was obsessing about the extra L, right? Yes, I did. Okay, great.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, for both of us. He was also an author. One of his books is called The Doomsday Book, colon, The Science Behind Humanity's Greatest Threats, something that Josh has particular interest in.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
I say this out loud at the risk of losing listeners that might be new listeners are like, I can't listen to this guy. Oh, this is really dumb. Up until yesterday, whenever my phone or my car or something said, you know, turn on your Wi-Fi to improve accuracy of your location. It's like, I'm not near my house. What is this thing asking me to do? I'm not near my Wi-Fi.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
You weren't like, you're not the boss of me. No, I was just, that's pretty dumb.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah. So Marshall was also a TV host. He eventually was the director of NC State's Engineering Opportunities Program, which helped mentor aspiring inventors. And Marshall was survived by his wife, Leanne, his four kids, David, Irina, Johnny.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
It's like, they don't know. I'm not near my house. Why is it asking me to turn on my Wi-Fi? This phone is so stupid. Oh boy. All right. So speaking of, The opposite of stupid, your smartphone. How accurate are those things?
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
When GPS first started, they said, and this was, again, like 95-ish, they said, it's going to be accurate to within 100 meters 95% of the time, which at the time was like, hey, that's not bad at all. Like that gets me in the neighborhood of where I want to be. They've gotten much, much better. Now they say within two meters of 6.6 feet, but it's really closer than that.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
They did some measuring in 2021, and the global average across all users was about just a little more than two feet. And, you know, again, that depends on a lot of things. If it's got tall buildings in the way, space weather, atmospheric conditions, apparently like a really dense like jungle canopy or thick shrubbery can – actually degrade the accuracy of that signal.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah. And I get I mean, it's amazing we're here because if you're like GPS to just say this is good. If you're if you're five feet away from the restaurant or your friend and you don't see them, that's on you.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, no, it's getting – I mean, I imagine they're going to have it, I think, March 24th. If you're an ideal, if it's clear skies, you're out in the middle of the desert or something, they can be as accurate as 30 centimeters.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
and ian and their dog summer and it was just really sad to hear the news because like like you said marshall if it wasn't for him we wouldn't be here now and we'd like to think we're still carrying on his tradition of making complex things accessible i like to think that too
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, that's right. And your parents and grandparents might be using their Garmin still. So just have patience with them.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah. And it's still being used in certain cars in certain people's families. Are those things even supported any longer? I don't know, man. It's pretty funny, though. It's like looking at a MySpace web page or something when you look at it.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
But, yes, I took us off task. You were talking about other things that this is used for. A lot. We talked about landing airplanes. That's pretty important. Accuracy is pretty important. Maybe not down to the centimeter, but if you want to track soil moisture, you can do that via GPS.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
If you want to measure the size of a glacier and whether it's shrinking or moving, you can do that very, very accurately and not just sort of ballpark things anymore. Migration patterns. If you want to see where that school of whales is headed and how they know when they get there and how far they are from where they started, you can do that with great accuracy.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, I thought the thing on tunneling was kind of cool. I never really thought about that. But if you're tunneling through two sides of a mountain to ideally meet in the middle and have a one long tunnel, that's not one tunnel with a little zigzag in the middle because they were off by a little bit. You can do that down to the centimeter, you know, or 30 centimeters rather.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, that was a little disconcerting to learn. I thought like, oh, well, surely this thing has just some weird, robust government shield that cannot be hacked, right? And that's not true.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
In fact, the military, I mean, it's part of military, just regular operations to jam GPS for another country, their planes and drones, or to spoof it is when you send it, you know, jam it and make it non-operable, but you... You're like, ooh, here's some fake coordinates that you're going to think are real.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Like they do that all the time. Countries do that to us all the time. But like you said, any schmo that's got 300 bucks can get a software-defined radio and figure out how to use it and jam somebody's GPS. And so your neighbor's walking around wondering where that restaurant is.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, that is a little odd. I'm sure somebody knows. Or maybe it was a flex.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
I mean, Ruby says things I don't understand and I just don't even ask.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah. Hey, you know, all we did in the 80s was shorten awesome to awesome and un-awesome.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
That was as sophisticated as we got. I don't know about the skippity stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, it's, you know, kids and teens come up with their own language, so adults don't know what the heck we're talking about, and they can laugh behind our backs.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
We said, that's very un-oss, and our parents were like, what are they saying?
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Uh, airlines can get jammed. Uh, there was a study that found intentional jamming of airlines was a problem, uh, in three regions, only three, uh, more than 70,000 flights were jammed between February and August of 2022. And, um, that, you know, once you jam it up, you can't reset it. Like that plane lands and then the unjamming happens.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, classic Marshall, classic How Stuff Works. And even though our show has kind of grown and morphed, it's fun to go back and do these every now and then.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah. And you have no idea how much I put my hand over my mouth when you said bad actors, and I almost shouted out a few names of actors. Who are you going to name? No, I can't because, you know, you never know. People might listen to this. I'm sensitive to hurting people's feelings now here in my 50s.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Or a skibbity toilet. I hope that doesn't mean something dirty, right?
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Well, I'm just glad that you have someone in your life that's down with that kind of stuff because it's pretty vital these days.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Maybe not that, but Skibbity Toilet has its own Wikipedia entry.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, it actually sounds intimidating, but it's really not at all. It's a pretty simple process, believe it or not.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Uh, that would be 27 years old? Is that right? Yeah. Yes. That thing has sarcopenia.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, this was more fun than I thought. And you know what? I'm glad we had some fun and had some laughs because that feels like a lighter tribute for Marshall than something else.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
I'm going to call this Forget Rice. How about some peace and love? Hey, guys, big fan of the show. I love listening when training for marathons and love the recent marathon episodes. While listening to the history of refrigeration, the rice method for managing a musculoskeletal injury was mentioned.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Did you know, guys, that in 2020, the medical world threw out the rice method and transitioned it to peace and love?
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
I think I probably did. So for peace and love, we have protection. Avoid activities that cause pain for two to three days. Elevation. The A is avoid anti-inflammatories because apparently that reduces healing and you should avoid ice too.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
But what it is overall, GPS, is a, as Marshall wrote, a space-based radio navigation system that technically GPS is the one that the U.S. government owns. If you live in another country, it's not called GPS. It's called a GNSS.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
I just, I never take those anyway because I don't really need to, but yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
I know, I'm sure. Where was I? A, so down to C, compression, E, education, which is avoid unnecessary passive treatments. Your body will heal, so I guess educate yourself.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, basically. And then we, and is not spelled out, but love is load, let your pain be your guide, optimism, condition your brain, vascularization, pain-free cardio, And exercise, restore mobility through active approach. And Sarah says, this is a lot. I hope people can learn to avoid ice and anti-inflammatories for optimal recovery, but it's having a hard time catching on.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
That is from Sarah, PT bird nerd Hollingsworth, and she's a bird nerd and loves our bird episodes.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, exactly. But, you know, that's what the system is that tells you where you are. When you take out your little smartphone and say, where in the world am I or how in the world do I get somewhere? If you want to get somewhere, they got to know where you are at that moment. And that's why you can do that 24-7. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens with that. You never know. But right now, that's the current situation. They do this with satellites, at least 24. Usually there's more than 30. And wherever you are on Earth, if you had super, super long vision, you could look up and see four of these bad boys with your eyeballs because you've got to have those four to tell you where you are.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, that's the important part because I've tried. I've gone out there without a phone and just shouted up, where am I?
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
One of the cool things about GPS is this was kind of roughly figured out a long time before we even had satellites. There was a doctor, Dr. Ivan Getting, who was a physicist and American, who basically said, hey, you know what?
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
You could find out someone's 3D coordinates if you use radio signals and just calculated the time it takes for those signals from different sources to reach a single point on Earth. And that's GPS, basically.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, literally off the ground and into space. Sputnik was October of 57. And a couple of years later, we said, oh yeah, we'll see your Sputnik and we'll raise it five satellites. or I guess raise it for, for a total of five satellites. Sure, all ACES. That's right. And this was 1960, I'm sorry, in 1967, they had really precise clocks on board these satellites.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
And then just five years, six years after that, in 73, NAVSTAR was formed. And that is the system, the program that, you know, that is GPS, basically. And then we said, all right, now it's just going to take us about 20 years to figure all this out.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, that was a flight intended to go from New York to Seoul to get there. They were flying over Alaska. And still today, we don't really know why, but it veered off course about 200 miles into Soviet airspace. This is not a great area of Soviet airspace to be near because it was near some secret military installations. And so they scrambled a couple of fighter jets, Soviets did, MiGs, I reckon.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
And they tried to contact the plane, could not get in touch, and then downed the plane with a missile and killed everybody, 269 people. I remember this. I was 12. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I mean, you know, of course I didn't understand something like that fully at 12, but I remember it being, you know, all across the news. Mm-hmm.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Oh, man. Oh, man. There was probably a song on FM radio that, you know, encapsulated this. Oh, I'm sure. Like that a DJ made, you know, not a real song.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, probably what I don't fully get now. What I do get is that, you know, airplanes and airlines have GPS on their airplanes, so they don't do this now. But why did that like broaden it to the public at large? Like, couldn't they have just said, all right, it's for the military and for the FAA?
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
So we have one GPS system, which is kind of a problem. We don't have a backup yet, which, you know, we'll talk a little bit about that more later. But there is more than one GPS because it's not like China and Russia are like, hey, we'll just, you know, use your GPS when we want to bomb something.
Stuff You Should Know
How GPS Works
Yeah, exactly. So China and Russia and the EU all have their own GPS. And I think they all have backups even, and we don't.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
They weren't quite chiclet white, but they were enough to where they looked a little different than the others, and the others are just going to, as teeth do, continue to stain a bit. So it's like, yeah, why don't we go ahead and knock it down a notch?
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
That's right. I love my Bombas socks. They are super cozy and the secret is in their fabrics. We're talking about the really good stuff like Merino wool, which feels as cozy as a ski lodge. But if you want to brave the cold on the slopes or on a snowy run, Bombas has athletic socks built for that, too.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
That's right. And if you get cold feet, then you got to try those slippers that they have. They're warm because they have that fluffy, sharp aligning and the marshmallow-like cushioning. Really good stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, and with something this old, if DNA isn't readily available, mDNA, mitochondrial DNA, can also be very useful.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
All right. So now this is where things get a little hinky because we're going to talk about the other aspect of forensic dentistry, which is the very controversial, very complex bite mark analysis, which and we'll get to the admissibility of it now in a bit. But they still do collect the evidence, which, you know, you should do.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
I don't think these implants will – that's the problem is they don't stain while the others are.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
I don't think anyone's saying like, hey, stop even doing this as far as evidence collection goes. Right. But here's how they do that. If you see a bite mark or anything you think is a bite mark in a like a murder case, let's say you call in that forensic dentist who's just sitting around like so happy they don't have their hands in a live human being's mouth at the time. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
And they got to do it quick because time is of the essence because bite marks can change a lot pretty quickly, especially if a body has been deteriorating for a few days. Like the location of that bite may be entirely different because the skin is slipping and shrinking.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. They're going to take pictures with a ruler next to it. You've probably seen that in some movies.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Oh, yeah, that's right. Bite photography is very specific and very precise, or at least it should be. And then you can magnify those photos and stuff. But while they're doing this, the first thing that they're going to identify is, like, was it a human bite or not? And it seems like a no-brainer. Like, I could even tell. Sure. But you found a study from 2015 that – doesn't quite hold up.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. I'm like, why have I just smoked 80 cigarettes? So today, another and I thought we were done with forensics, but who knew that lurking out there was the topic of forensic dentistry.
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Forensic Dentistry
The easiest thing in the world. Was this a dog or an adult human biting this person?
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, I would think human and animal would be pretty easy to tell the difference of, but, you know, apparently not.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Well, this is a pretty disturbing but I guess helpful thing that I never knew. After they inspect the body for the bite marks and all that stuff, they will actually cut out the bite mark and preserve it.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. So they will cut the bite mark from the skin, preserve it in formaldehyde, and then make a silicone cast of the bite mark, which makes total sense. I just never thought about how gross that would seem.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
uh which we will learn very quickly as in right now um kind of can be divided up into two things which is um identification of uh deceased people or peoples from dental records like when you hear like you know they perished in the fire but they were able to identify the body uh and the much more controversial uh bite mark analysis
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, I was about to say Mike Tyson bite. He's got a fight on Friday. Oh, is he fighting that guy Friday? Yeah, on Netflix. Shoot, I'm not even going to be here. I wanted to see that.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
We also have avulsions. That is when just some of the skin is removed, and I guess not an entire piece of the body. You have contusions, which is, of course, a bruise. If it's profusely bleeding, it's a hemorrhage. If it's a nice, clean, neat wound, then you have a very precise biter, and they call that an incision. And then a puncture wound is a laceration.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, it should be obvious. Oh, my God. And... holy crap, for the love of God, what was this person doing?
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Well, I think forensic dentistry is a creepy enough title. Or maybe I'll title it forensic dentistry colon enter at your own risk or something like that.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, for sure. I mean, if I would have bitten somebody in a violent episode when I had my front tooth or my two front teeth missing, it would be pretty obvious when you saw that bite mark. Ted Bundy, like you said, had crooked teeth, and so that will leave a crooked impression. Obviously, any chips on your teeth are going to make a more sort of jagged impression.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
that had been widely used in court and is now generally thought of by most dentists and people in this line of work as junk science.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. Here's an earlobe and some Dorito, so let's put that in an evidence baggie.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
And then braces, you know, braces or implants or something or a bridge that can leave a pretty distinctive impression. For sure. Once and this is sort of how it used to work. But once they identify a subject, they're going to get a warrant to take a mold of a suspect's teeth so they can compare it. They'll take a lot of pictures of their mouth and stuff. opening, closing, biting, stuff like that.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
And then in the old days, they would go to court and compare those and a forensic dentist would take the stand and say, hey, that bite mark looks like that person's mouth to me, jury. That can be a major reason why you convict.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, I mean, there are some professional dentists and forensic dentists that still believe that. I mean, that thing I sent you is from last year and is on the National Institutes of Health U.S. government website, and those four accredited dental experts flat out say like a person's bite mark is unique, like DNA or fingerprints.
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Forensic Dentistry
And I guess we should probably take a break and get into the studies and stuff like that. But it seems like study after study is kind of confirmed that it's just not the case.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
All right. So you did some extra digging and, you know, it's pretty clear from doing the research that this is basically known as junk science now to most most people, despite those four people who wrote the article on the National Institutes of Health. But there was a review in 2022 and a report from the NIST.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, okay, so they released this report that said, and there were previous reports that we'll talk about too, I guess, but this is the most recent, that said bite mark analysis is not real science, and it's based on these three sort of faulty premises. One, which you already mentioned, which is that a person's dental pattern is unique to that person.
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Forensic Dentistry
And, you know, there haven't been any studies that really confirm this. There was a 2013 study from the United Arab Emirates that found, and I think there's, is that a sort of a dental capital of the world? Because I saw a lot of dentists from like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
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Forensic Dentistry
I have a hunch that that's the case. So maybe someone will confirm or deny that. But that study found that 51% Of the 2,000 dental charts that they examined were unique, one more than half, and the rest were identical to at least one other.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
The only thing I'll say in defense is that it may not be truly unique, but if 49% are unique, then that's unique enough to talk about, maybe not to be used in court, but enough to talk about.
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Forensic Dentistry
Seems like about half of them are if you go by the data here.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. And, you know, that's the kind of situation, too, where you also have to really educate a jury over like the data on what that really means. You know what I'm saying? And say like, hey, half the time these aren't unique. So you have to understand that going in. So, you know, that that was the first thing. And, you know, that there was that one case that you sent.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Where and this kind of factors into number two. Number one was that they're unique. Number two is that the patterns can be accurately transferred to the human skin. Because we've already talked about the fact that there can be a lot of distortion by skin's elasticity. And if the person like sort of does a sawing motion, it completely distort the bite mark.
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Forensic Dentistry
But you said that one case of the guy who was convicted, who was. missing a tooth entirely, which should show a pretty clear like, hey, we can exclude this one because the bite mark didn't have a gap. But they were like, yeah, but if he grinded his teeth and kind of did a sawing motion, it could look like this. And he was found guilty, you know, and he was not guilty.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. And and the both forensic dentists that worked on that case recanted their testimony. Right. Like completely.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, at least 26 that DNA evidence is now cleared where bite mark analysis was, if not the smoking gun, like a pretty key part of the jury's, you know, findings.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the big change that you were talking about with just excluding that came about in 2016. We've mentioned some other studies. There was one we didn't mention in 2009 when the National Academy of Sciences released a report about a lot of problems with a lot of forensic science. But one of those was bite mark analysis.
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Forensic Dentistry
And they basically said, and this was in 2009, and it still took until 2016 to make that change official, was they said there's no scientific studies that support the assertion that bite marks provide sufficient detail for positive identification. And then a few years after that,
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Forensic Dentistry
Doctors from the American Board of Forensic Odontology, like we said, that's sort of the main body or is the main body. Participants in a study there of certified dentists, overwhelming number of them couldn't even agree whether they were looking at a bite mark at all.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, and even if the teeth themselves are struggling to hang in there, tooth pulp or dental tissue on the inside of that tooth is very resistant to environmental attacks like incineration, immersion. Like you can be underwater for, I was about to say a million years, but that's probably not true.
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Forensic Dentistry
They throw tomatoes at them. For sure. There was another case you found, a pretty striking one, a guy named John Kunco. He was convicted of rape and assault in 1991, and the main evidence that got him convicted was identification of his voice by the victim, a comment he supposedly made at a party, and then bite marks on the victim's shoulder.
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Forensic Dentistry
all the evidence was was a problem the um the comment that the party that he supposedly made was not corroborated by i always have trouble with that word it's a hard word corroborated by any other people at the party. The voice ID was made from a police officer's imitation of Kunco and his lisp to the victim. So I have no idea how that got through.
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Forensic Dentistry
And then I believe the bite mark was infrared light analysis of a bite mark that had already healed.
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Forensic Dentistry
But immersion, trauma, decomposition, so extracting DNA from the inside of a tooth is a pretty viable thing. But before 1974, all you really had going was identifying victims of a disaster, usually a natural disaster or a human-caused disaster. They did not really get into crime scene stuff.
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Forensic Dentistry
It was a picture of him with his looking at his hand and the bones.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, this is everything changed in 2016. One of the big things that happened, I think there was a case in Texas. A guy named Stephen Cheney was released by the Texas Court of Appeals. And this is the Texas Court of Appeals. They're not big on releasing. Right. You know, convicted criminals.
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Forensic Dentistry
But the Texas Forensic Science Commission in 2016, because of this, you know, kind of fraudulent bite mark evidence in Stephen Cheney's case, they were like, we need to stop this. And I think that was kind of a big case that kind of, you know, really jumpstarted the whole. We maybe not scrapped the whole thing, but where they ended up, which is it can exclude, but it can't positively identify.
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Forensic Dentistry
No, but hey, it's a good little historical cherry on top, right?
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, and man, that may be it for our long, long-running forensic suite. I can't believe that there could be anything else, but I also said that last time.
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Forensic Dentistry
Maybe. I mean, someone will write in and be like, guys, you've covered crime scene cleanup, blood spatter analysis, fingerprinting, DNA. I mean, the list goes on and on.
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Forensic Dentistry
What I didn't know about. That's it. It was the dog. I smell Fritos.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, one of the rare articles that we didn't cover that is still good for us.
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Forensic Dentistry
All right, I'm going to call this another ADHD follow-up. This is a good one. Hey, guys, I had to write in after the ADHD episode during the first episode. I had to pull over into a parking lot because, honestly, guys, I started crying.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. I have ADHD, and I have never had my life explained on a podcast before. Everyone's experiences are different for sure, and I think you did an incredible job explaining the base challenges. I also appreciated Chuck's hesitancy to call it a disorder. It is defined as a disorder, so there's nothing wrong medically with calling it one, but...
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Forensic Dentistry
It does hurt just a little even as an adult when people call it a disorder without thinking about the person who has it. I appreciated the optimism with which you both spoke about the challenges and how they can be managed, especially Josh. The only thing I would add to that is the subtopic would be to find people who accept you before they try and change you.
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Forensic Dentistry
When I feel that people love and accept me as me, I am far more willing to accept their help with managing my ADHD Don't approach someone like you're going to fix them. Approach them because you love them. And they will receive your honest offer to assist.
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Forensic Dentistry
And just good life advice. Your podcast reminded me that there are a lot of people out there like me. And I hope that a lot of people out there who are trying to take this particular challenge do amazingly positive things with it. And that is from Steve.
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Forensic Dentistry
Because in 1975 is when that first became permissible in court where a murder victim had a bite on her nose and three forensic dentists came along and said, hey, it's pretty clear this bite came from this person. It should be maybe the exception to the rule, but we should allow it in court this time.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, appreciate it, Steve. Those episodes were a big deal for us for a lot of reasons, and it seems like people responded, so we're proud of them. For sure.
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Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
That's right. And if you get cold feet, then you got to try those slippers that they have. They're warm because they have that fluffy, sharp aligning and the marshmallow-like cushioning. Really good stuff.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, dozens of people, according to the Innocence Project. And we should point out, from 1975 until just recently, 2016 is when they finally made a firm decision, which, we'll hold onto that one, but that's really when things changed. But I think the case that you were talking about is Ted Bundy.
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Forensic Dentistry
In 1978, notorious serial killer Ted Bundy would sort of wind up his serial killing career by wandering into the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University and bludgeoning and killing four students, sorority sisters there, including one victim where he bit her and left very clear bite marks And those bite marks were instrumental in Ted Bundy's conviction.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, that's right. So that's a good setup. We should just mention sort of as far as the identification, the non-controversial part. Adults usually have 32 teeth, four incisors, four canines, eight premolars, 12 molars and four wisdom, depending on if you still have those. And when you go to the dentist, they, you know, we've been to the dentist and they do a lot of notating.
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Forensic Dentistry
They notate your teeth, variations in your teeth, changes in your teeth. If you chip a tooth, any dental work you've gotten like crowns or fillings or bridges or in my case for implants. periodontal disease, receding gums. There are x-rays and there are just the tooth charts.
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Forensic Dentistry
And these are the dental records that we speak of when they say, you know, a body was identified, you know, via dental records. It's because of all this work that you get over the years at the dentist. I guess if you, well, this doesn't have so much to do with bite mark analysis. I guess it could, but the records it seemed like are mainly about identification.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, we mentioned all the ways teeth can hang in there and stay, you know, a part of your skull when other parts of your body have deteriorated. Teeth can shrink. They can become fragile. But if you handle them gently and with care, you can preserve them in lacquer. And what will happen if you need to identify a corpse usually is a dentist will go to the morgue.
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Forensic Dentistry
They will surgically expose the jaw and examine things. That's if you have a pretty recent dead body that hasn't decomposed too much. If all you've got is a handful of teeth, That still may be enough due to those X-rays and charts. But if it's mass casualties, a dentist is going to and these are forensic dentists, by the way, it's a specialty. Right. They get a list of possible victims.
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Forensic Dentistry
And then, you know, you start comparing different records of the different people to try and sort out who is who.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's a lot of things you can sort of glean from looking at a person's teeth about that person. It's not the most exact science, but we know generally how fast teeth grow, about four micrometers per day. So you can estimate someone's age based on their teeth.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, exactly. They can get it in a wheelhouse. Sometimes you can learn a little bit about someone's ethnicity because, you know, some ethnicities have teeth that are a little different. Apparently some Native Americans and some Asian people have incisors that have scooped out backs.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
You can determine sometimes some socioeconomic background if there's, you know, a lot of really expensive restoration work. That'll tell you that they probably had a lot of money or, you know, at least money to afford that. Also, the methods that are used are used in some parts of the world and not in others, like some geographic areas.
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Forensic Dentistry
That's right. Or in my case, the front four are my pearly off-whites because when they made me my new set of four teeth to go up front to replace my four teeth, they were too white and they looked weird. Oh, really? And they said, we can send them back and have them stained just a bit more. And I went, yeah, we're going to have to do that.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
A person's lifestyle, like if they were a smoker, this is kind of fun. If you're a pipe smoker or if you play the bagpipes, you have a very distinctive wear pattern on your teeth.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. And then just sort of the obvious stuff, like a family member saying like, no, they were definitely missing that tooth or that that, you know, that distinctive crown with the diamond CWB for Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
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Forensic Dentistry
That was definitely their mouth or that tooth was broken. So beyond just dental records like family members can sometimes help out.
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Forensic Dentistry
All right. We'll take a break and we'll talk about the Black Death and then dive into the more controversial bite mark analysis.
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Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
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Okay, we're back. I did not throw up. I think I'm good. It's been subsiding every day in the afternoon and I feel fine.
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How Automats Worked
And then in the morning again, I'm nauseous. So that's why I think it's a diverticulitis.
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How Automats Worked
We'll see. All right. No, I'll be okay. I'll be fine. Good. I'm going to do a lot of studying after this.
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How Automats Worked
All right, so we were talking about the busyness of New York and why it worked out there. And one of the other reasons it was really popular, because like I mentioned, it was a very clean place. They prided themselves, at least in the heyday decades, they did go downhill and kind of fall into a little bit of shabbiness.
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How Automats Worked
I last threw up about an hour ago. Man. And the main problem is it's just, I've been in like a fugue state, man. I have nothing in my body for three days now.
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How Automats Worked
But in the heyday, they were known as being really, really, really clean, safe places. And believe it or not, at the time, there were a lot of cafeterias that like, if you were an unaccompanied woman, They would not serve you. You had to be in there with your husband or they just serve men like businessmen. So a woman could go in by herself. Children could go in and it wasn't like a seedy thing.
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How Automats Worked
Families could feel safe and like they were in a clean place with good food. And also a lot of these are really, really beautiful restaurants on the inside.
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How Automats Worked
It's a beautiful, like I would love to find one of those on eBay.
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How Automats Worked
Well, I think in the, I mean, it's been a while since I've seen the doc, but I think there was someone that is getting like the automat machines too and collecting and restoring them.
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How Automats Worked
So I'm just like spacey and can, I told you on email, you guys will love this, that like I'll go 30 minutes where I just like, I'm just so zoned out. I can't have a, I don't even have a coherent thought for a half hour. I know. Josh said, well, that part sounds kind of nice.
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How Automats Worked
That's right. Burger King will come back again in this episode, believe it or not.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, I think it was as fresh as food could be for that format.
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How Automats Worked
Let's say that. The coffee... was super fresh. Like, after 20 minutes, they would throw the coffee out and put new coffee in. The food, they did not sell the next day. And if you're thinking, God, what a lot of food waste, because they're pre-making this stuff, and, you know, we'll get to that in a sec, but a little bit of genius here is they had three different day-old shops
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How Automats Worked
In lower income neighborhoods in New York. So the next day they would sell the food there at a discount. So even if you didn't have the nickel for the piece of pie or whatever, you might be able to get it for like two or three cents the next day.
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How Automats Worked
That's right. They sold so much coffee that they ended up losing money on it because they kept it locked into that nickel price for 38 years? Yeah.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, for sure. So they were losing money. They eventually had to raise the price. The only thing they could do was double it to 10 cents because their slots took nickels and their sales dropped a lot from 70 million cups a year to 45 million. They still came out on top revenue-wise, if you do the math. But I remember watching the documentary and they were talking about this.
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How Automats Worked
I've wondered, and I haven't found a way to wrap my head around how to actually do this topic, but something about change Like coins and how they established so much commerce, like a coin slot only taking a nickel. The only thing you can do is double it. So what does that mean to the economy? Like there's something there, but I'm just not quite sure how to frame it.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah. But, you know, I love that city. I'm going to keep going back. I'm going to maybe next time drink only bottled things and not even cocktails with ice. I'm trying to figure out what what's triggering me. It may just be my biome and some of the food. I don't know.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, because, I mean, the idea of, like, doubling the cost of something is crazy, even if it's a nickel to a dime at the time. Like doubling your price is just insanity for a business, but there was nothing else it could do.
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How Automats Worked
They also sold a lot of pie. And I do remember this from the doc. Pie was a very big deal at H&H in 1964. Here's a pretty fun stat. They sold an average of 822 pieces of pie in New York City. between 8 and 11 a.m. And there are some people who said, some historians that have said that, I don't know about this, but maybe, that there was a desire for people to do things like eat pie for breakfast.
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How Automats Worked
But if you had to order it from a server, you might be like, oh, you know, I can't order apple pie for breakfast.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, exactly. But at the automat, you could just do it on, you know, on the down low and be quiet about it. I just, I didn't know people would be judgy like that back then, but maybe.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, because it's a dessert. It's a little weird. I mean, I like the idea, but it is a dessert.
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How Automats Worked
So after your steak dinner, you get a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit?
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How Automats Worked
All right. Still getting to know each other after all these years. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the nickel throwers, because if you're going to require a bunch of nickels, you're going to have to have a bunch of nickels and you don't often come in with a bunch of nickels as a consumer. So they had changed people. They were women. Basically, they called them nickel throwers.
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How Automats Worked
And they just sat there all day long shoving nickels across the counter, just like when I would go to the 99 cent movie when I was a kid. They had a big stack of tickets and a big stack of pennies, and they would just shove it back to you in the window. And it was always a lot of fun, I thought.
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How Automats Worked
Maybe. And I'm curious how much they would lose in a year on those pennies.
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How Automats Worked
It's not a bad idea, but I'm still going to go back. I'm going to try it again. This may have also triggered my diverticulitis. So that may be why it's extending here into day three. I don't know, but I'm here. And this gives us, dude, a rare opportunity to do anything newsy or like current, if you want to mention anything.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, like you said, it conveyed a sense of the future. Like kids loved it for that reason, because they were it was like being in the Jetsons or something. But kids also loved it because that gave them a sense of autonomy to to go in there and get a couple of nickels from their parents and to be able to walk up and pick something out.
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Neil Simon. I take issue with this quote, or the end of it.
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How Automats Worked
Neil Simon, the great Neil Simon, said this when he was a child about going there, or as an adult about going there as a child.
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How Automats Worked
To have your own stack of nickels placed in your tiny hands, to be able to choose your own food richly on display like museum pieces, to make quick and final decisions at the age of eight, that was a lesson in financial dealings that not even two years at the Wharton School could buy today. Yeah. Maybe a little hyperbole there.
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How Automats Worked
I bet it was pretty good if for no other reason than in the 1920s and 30s and 40s and 50s. They use real food. Right. And real ingredients. And it wasn't like it is today. So I just think by virtue of that, it was probably not bad.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah. And that was one of the selling points that, you know, another piece of pie on a tiny plate would pop into that window when one went out. It's not like it just stayed empty. I guess if they ran out of pie, it would or they probably put, you know, something else in there. But they had a huge actually a few different central commissaries in the city where they would make all this stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
They would ship it over there. And they had tons and tons and tons of worker bees behind the scenes doing all that stuff. They had these rotating drums that would do the work of filling the actual slots, but there had to be someone filling those drums. So it wasn't a bunch of robots back there. It was not George Jetson.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
It was just a bunch of people plating stuff up and putting it in the drum to put in the window.
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How Automats Worked
I don't remember if it was a lever, but that sounds about right.
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How Automats Worked
Well, I didn't like you did, but sure, I saw the bad kids doing that.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
That's right. Automats. And we need to give a big shout out to a documentary called The Automat by from director Lisa Hurwitz. Because it's great. And I saw it a couple of years ago. And that's what inspired this episode. But I wanted to, I don't want to like right on the heels of this great doc, you know, kind of swoop in and do a podcast episode about it. But great documentary.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
I'm struggling. I'm sorry. I know you're doing it on purpose. It's all fun.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
For a while there, they didn't have hot windows. They just had the cold windows. So the hot food was served from a steam table. But it was not too long until they had the hot windows and the cold windows or the hot cases, probably.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
How they treated their workers is a matter of debate. They they struck a couple of times. In 1937, they struck. They had 3000 employees at the time that failed. That organizing effort did not hold. Then again, in 1952, they struck again and eventual New York State Supreme Court Justice Melvin Barash.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
uh was one of the people trying to organize at the time in 1952 and in 1991 he said the conditions were straight out of the 19th century um that effort failed other people if you watch the documentary the the son of the president of the company said no it was great we had company picnics and christmas parties and like every it was really really really great
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. This reminds me of a childhood trauma that I suffered because growing up, my sister had a best friend whose father worked for Kraft Foods. And they had a big Kraft, like... They rented Six Flags or something. It was some big thing every year. My brother's best friend worked for Coca-Cola. And every year they had the big Coca-Cola picnic thing.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
I had nobody and I never got to go. And every single year I had to watch Scott and Michelle go to the craft event and the Coke event.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Should we take another break? Yeah. All right, we'll take another break and talk about the inclusivity of the automat right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
It's streaming on Max. Highly recommend it. She did a great job. I can't wait to see what she does next. And it was a big help here.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
You know, we've all been there. You're sick. You're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold. And then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people. And don't get me started about the prescriptions. That's a whole other story.
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How Automats Worked
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How Automats Worked
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Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
So, yeah, welcome aboard, Laura. Laura came to us through Livia, which is all the recommendation we needed, right?
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
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How Automats Worked
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How Automats Worked
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, for sure. They had a motto, which was serve everybody and serve everybody in the same way, which is a great quote. And Colin Powell, former secretary of state, is in the documentary. And it's a great, really sweet interview. And he said the one we would usually go to is the automat on 42nd Street. I never even thought about the fact that I'm a black kid. Should I go into horn and hard art?
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Is it OK? To go to the automat, all the automats had that beautiful diversity that didn't exist in most of the rest of the country of economic standing, of color, of ethnicity, of language. You never knew what you'd run into in an automat.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
They were also known for their celebrity fans. They had those one very famous Esquire spread. Of course, this is for Esquire. So it was all set up. But in 1951, Audrey Hepburn was photographed for Esquire. So cute. Shopping at an automat. Very cute. But in the documentary, Reiner and Brooks, you know, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks love the automat.
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How Automats Worked
And they talk with great adoration about their childhood of going to those restaurants.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
So I guess we're at the sad point, like so many of these episodes that we do on a cool thing from the past where the decline begins. Right. The 1960s is when that started, although they were still like a huge deal culturally. You know, everyone knew about the automat.
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How Automats Worked
And I don't think we mentioned, you know, at a certain point in New York City, they were so famous that it was like when you go to visit New York, you would go to an automat just for that experience.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Oh, yeah. My band did one gig at the Hard Rock Cafe here in Atlanta one time.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
But the 60s is where things really started to struggle, even though they were, again, still popular culturally. Stockholders were involved by that point, obviously. Just revenues started dropping, obviously. The suburbs was a big cause of it.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
You know, when people started moving out to the suburbs, offices and office complexes started getting built in the suburbs and people started shopping at malls in the suburbs. And there were fewer and fewer people just, you know, walking around New York doing things like shopping and going to their office.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
So it just it started to sort of slowly drop and slowly drop until they got a little weird with some of their ideas. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Not a wild restroom. That's every restroom in New York City.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Right. They also tried a beer garden. They tried the roller skate waiters thing. They tried, you know, live bands and dancing and stuff like that. But eventually Horn and Hardart looked at each other and they said, well, this has clearly seen its best days. The silver lining is, is we are sitting on a bunch of really valuable real estate.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
I was just about to improvise one of those terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible Burger King commercial songs.
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How Automats Worked
Well, it's this whole new campaign with a guy that's singing.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So Burger Kings went in. Automats were going downhill. Another thing that happened was as they started going downhill, a different kind of shopper started coming in there. People that were itinerant to people that were.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
were unhoused, people that were vagrants and just sort of coming through town who knew that they could hang out there for that nickel cup of coffee for hours and hours and hours. And when that starts happening, families stop coming in and it just creates this sort of vicious cycle where your clientele is different and it's not seen as that safe middle class space any longer.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah, another big part of that is like these huge central commissary kitchens where they were cooking all this stuff is an excellent, excellent, efficient way to do it when you are booming with business. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Once business drops and you're not cooking, you're not needing to cook as much, all of a sudden the economy of scale isn't there any longer and you have these huge places with fewer employees and less food being pumped out.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah, basically. That last one that closed in 91, it was the last one starting in 1977 at 200 East 42nd Street. So right there, you know, sort of near Times Square. Sure. And it lasted 14 years on its own as a nostalgia piece, basically, before becoming a Gap.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Where, is this in your off-grid panic room? Like, where are you watching antenna TV?
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
That's right. The Flintstones, they even had a Flintstone automat in a 1962 episode.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Oh, that's fun. And I did not know he totally. Yeah. Let's call an homage. You're kinder than I am.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
That's right. That's right. Pat Boone tried his version of the automat called the Dynomat in 1962, which was frozen food that was then microwaved. That did not work out too well. That's surprising. But there were a few other things over the years that were tried like this that did not take off like the automat did.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Oh, that's funny. But that never happened at all, right? Just an idea.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah. I mean, there are things like this. I mean, Japan has stuff like this, right? They have what's called katin sushi. Okay. What's that?
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
No, but I've seen little windows as well of things. It may not be hot food. Maybe it's other things.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah, there's a place in Brooklyn called the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop. I think there are like 12 of them in here in Canada. And they I just looked up a picture of them and they they had these little automat kind of like cubbies that you order through an app like a locker system.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
And I've also seen I think it was a shark tank product that I ended up seeing in a hotel where it's like a machine that gives you like a cheeseburger or a pizza like but made to order and. So, like, you can say what kind of pizza you want, and it's just got this machine inside that'll, you know, load it up with whatever and then bake it, and then it spits it out in 15 minutes or whatever.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
And then they have a hidden camera on you. Right. And spit out a picture of you going, ah!
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
I have nothing else. I don't think I have to puke. I think this is the best I've felt in a few days. So hopefully that holds.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Just a little Josh, a little side cup of oyster stew. I'm back on my feet again.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
That's right. This is short and sweet. This is kind of fun because this is coming out tomorrow and it's a correction on an episode that was just out. Awesome. So maybe for a change we won't get like 400 emails from crafters.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Oh, yeah. Hey, guys. RE, the High Times episode and Martha Stewart. Hodgepodge is a big jumble of things that don't go together. Modgepodge is the craft supply. Just don't want you to embarrass yourselves at the craft store. That is from Kelly.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Heck yeah, man. I've had free TV for many, many, many, many years. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
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Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
All right. I'll check it out. Should we talk automats or did you have another announcement?
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
That's right. And if you get cold feet, then you got to try those slippers that they have. They're warm because they have that fluffy, sharp aligning and the marshmallow-like cushioning. Really good stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
By the way, this is going to be a tough one for me to get through for obvious reasons. Yeah, yeah. Because in the first paragraph, I saw the words oyster stew earlier, and I almost vomited in my mouth.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
I have not eaten food in three days, but I used to eat food.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
That's right, and we've been at it for six minutes. We might as well go ahead and say that the automat was a grouping of chain restaurants, self-serve restaurants, sort of like a cafeteria, but instead of being served in a line where people would dump food on a tray, they had these walls filled with glass-fronted compartments, and you would put in some money.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
And a slot, and you would open the door and get your piece of pie or your chicken pot pie or your pot roast or whatever have you.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
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Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah. I mean, the last one, this is remarkable. The very last one in New York closed in 91.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Which is hard to believe. They saw a couple of sad decades, a few sad decades before that. But we'll get to all that. But should we go to the beginning?
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How Automats Worked
And where else are we going to go but our old friend, Germany? Because the first automat popped up in Berlin in 1895, and the word automat was just more of a general term for a vending machine in Germany. But it won a gold medal a couple of years later at the Brussels World Fair.
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How Automats Worked
Europe kind of got into them a little bit, and they spread around Europe over the next five or so years before making the leap to the United States.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah, their first one in Philly, which was the first one overall, was 1902. But the equipment, you know, because it started in Europe, was in Europe. And they tried to get some of the stuff shipped over there. You know, these big, beautiful cases with the coin slots and the little windows and everything. And the ship sunk in the Atlantic. So they lost all that gear. They tried again.
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How Automats Worked
And these were victim to a warehouse fire, but salvageable. They repaired that stuff. They got them up and working, and they beat out their closest competitor. There was one card, Harcombe, in New York that went out of business. I think it was a little fancier. And H&H definitely leaned toward, as we'll see, serving just sort of solid, affordable comfort food to the masses. Yeah.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, and this is like – that's funny, by the way. This is like during the Great Depression, like people were going out of business right and left. And they actually – H&H thrived during the Depression because, again, everything was really cheap. It was comforting stuff. As you'll see, the coffee was great. The food was fresh.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
And, well, maybe not more than anything, but additionally, it was a great place to go. They were beautiful places, generally. They were clean and they were safe. And we'll get to a bunch of other ways that they were inclusive as we go on.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of hard to believe in a way because they were so successful there. You would think in the other places, like, of course, the obvious ones, they went to Chicago, Boston, D.C. and Detroit and some other places. But, you know, those are big cities and it's just odd that they didn't take off there.
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How Automats Worked
No. Well, that's good. Here's the story, everybody. I went to Mexico City again and got sick again, thankfully at the end, and... I couldn't record yesterday, but we were in danger of missing a publish date for the first time. Yes. In 17 years?
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How Automats Worked
But we do have a quote here from New York history from a guy or an idea rather from this guy named Nicholas Brommel, who basically was like, you know what, in New York, it's so dense. And they they really concentrated the restaurants around offices like in the garment district, in the financial district, in Midtown, where people were either shopping or like going to work far less.
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How Automats Worked
And like, you know, the the quieter neighborhood streets and stuff like that. So it was just so densely packed and everyone knows how how busy New York foot traffic is around those places. And that was at least Nicholas Brommel's take on why they took off in New York and Philly.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Oh, yeah. I mean, I kind of like the off-brand stuff, but yeah, that's definitely weirdly vague.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
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How Automats Worked
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. You know, we've all been there. You're sick. You're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold. And then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
And don't get me started about the prescriptions. That's a whole other story.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah. And, you know, if you look into these cases and people, you know, the volunteers that are working with some of these, you know, a lot of them are run by families of victims. They will say that it's probably more like, you know, 50 people. Advocates say that, you know, the total is way higher than they're saying it is, you know, kind of for all the reasons that we've mentioned so far.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And that seems like a good time to take our first break. And we'll be right back.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, it's, you know, as you'll see, it's and, you know, there are many reasons for this, but it's a heavily hitchhiked road and that can be very dangerous. And so a lot of times these are hitchhikers, people just trying to get from one place to another. And like you said, they are, you know, either sexually assaulted or murdered or both.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
All right. So when we left off, we were saying that the total number could be as high as 50 if you look at all these cases. And not a lot of them have been solved. There are a few exceptions here and there that definitely show that there were serial killers, killer or killers operating there. There was one big one in 2012 with Colleen McMillan. She was murdered hitchhiking. She was 16 years old.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
This is 1974. But they had, you know, in some of the evidence boxes had her blouse still. And with the improvement in DNA matching and databases and stuff like that, they were able to find a match on Interpol. It was an American named Bobby Jack Fowler who had died in prison in 2006 where he was serving time for attempted kidnapping and attempted murder on another woman in 1995.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And these are the people that, you know, like they found bodies. There are, you know, dozens and dozens more than these dozens who have survived attacks and rapes along that stretch of highway. So, you know, it's no secret why it's called the Highway of Tears. Big thanks to Livia for enduring this topic and helping us out with it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And they found that he had been working as a roofer in Canada when this murder and others took place. And, you know, basically we're like, it was probably two other women as well on the list, Pamela Darlington and Gail Weiss. And they were both murdered in 1973, but he died in prison before they could officially pin that on him.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, there's another guy. In fact, he's the only living person convicted of one of these murders from someone on the e-panelist. His name is Gary Taylor Handlin. He, you know, going back to the 1960s, had committed multiple rapes, been in jail multiple times for these rapes. One was a hitchhiker in 1978, and he became a suspect.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And the youngest victim, 12-year-old Monica Jack that you had mentioned earlier. Mm-hmm. Uh, and also, uh, Catherine Mary Herbert, uh, 11 years old.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Uh, she just was not one of the E Panna cases, but they caught him, uh, by setting up a sting operation in which they kind of created this, this fake, uh, crime enterprise where he was answering to a undercover, um, cop playing a crime boss who got him to confess that he abducted and strangled Monica Jack. Uh, and this is when he also confessed to killing, uh, Catherine Mary Herbert.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
But that confession was ruled inadmissible. But he was convicted of Jack's murder in 2019.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah. So, you know, we mentioned 2006 is when they stopped officially tagging names onto the official e-panelist. There have still been plenty of murders and sexual assaults along that stretch of highway since then. Cody Lejebukov, I believe is how you pronounce that. It sounds right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And big thanks to Al Jazeera, where she got a lot of information from a six-part series they did in 2021.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
uh killed three women and a 15 year old girl between 2009 and 2010 so that was after the official list two of those victims were indigenous and the cops caught him when they just pulled him over for a speeding violation and found blood on him and they found the body of a 15 year old lauren don leslie uh and then you know realized that they could link him to and i believe he was convicted too of killings of three other women jill stacy
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, so you mentioned Florence Nazeel earlier having organized her own walk. This was in 2006. They call it the Highway of Tears Awareness Walk. And they walked two weeks. They walked through snowstorms. They walked through some terrible weather and conditions. And eventually ended at the Highway of Tears Symposium in Prince George.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And again, this wasn't something organized by the cops or anything. It was organized by indigenous groups and victims' families themselves. But they did have 500 delegates from the Mounties there, as well as some representative from the Canadian government there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And it was basically a symposium where they had recommendations on what they could do, you know, not only to help solve these crimes, but to prevent more of this from happening. And we'll get to, you know, what's happened since then, because they have done some things that seem like they should probably help.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
But also, you know, how to support these families, how to support these communities a little better, because it was, you know, not well funded and any kind of work was very sparse up until that point.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, and, you know, there's a lot of distrust for the Mounties there and for good reasons in a lot of cases. We'll see. There's a woman named Gladys Raddick who was an aunt of Tamara Chipman, one of the victims, and she leads a cause called Tears for Justice, the number four. She has a lot of distrust of the police because as a teenager she ran away and was hitchhiking
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The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
and was picked up two different times by RCMP officers who raped her. So... I mean, as far as the RCMP is concerned, they're like, we're going to investigate this stuff and we're going to treat anyone within our ranks who does something like this just like we would any common criminal.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
But the fact that that stuff happens, period, and that there's a human rights watch report that came out in 2012 that documented police abuse against indigenous women and girls. And that's like literal abuse and sexual assault that cops are taking part in. At the worst, then all the way down to just being hostile or uninterested in what happened to these crime victims and families.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah. And not only that, but they've been shown to get rid of information. So in 2015, Elizabeth Denham, she is the commissioner for the information and privacy for British Columbia. She put out a report that said officials removed like 150 emails about the Highway of Tears from their database, which was a violation of the Freedom and Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah. So what this represents, though, is a larger population seen not only in Canada, but the United States and all over the world where minority communities are. Although they represent, you know, sometimes a small part of the population, they make up a much larger part of people in prison, of people who were killed by police. And that's certainly the case in Canada.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
I think, you know, part of the reason that EPANA has gotten mixed, not only results, but mixed reviews over the year for their work is because they've just been, you know, they came out with a bang and then they've sort of been slowly waning over the years. I think they went from 60 assigned officers down to six by 2022. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, and, you know, along the lines of what I was talking about before, this is not just a Canada problem. There's an official name for something like this, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, MMIWG. And that has happened, you know, all over North America and other places in the world. There's some estimates that, say, indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely murdered.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
than the general population to go missing or to be murdered. In Canada, and 10 times more likely in the U.S., and there have been people trying to bring attention to this as well. There's an artist named Jamie Black who made these really powerful installations that is sometimes the most powerful ones are very simple. And that's the case here where it would hang empty red dresses in public places.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, the Zero Laughs edition, because we're talking about the Highway of Tears. And there's no other way around it. This is just a devastating topic.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And it really caught on. And since 2010, Canada has recognized May 5th as Red Dress Day.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah. And I mean, this is horrific to look at, but one of the problems is they found that whenever they have a very large group of only men around in a desolate area for one reason or another. Sexual assaults and murders happen. And that is the case in these isolated parts of Canada where the fossil fuel industry is.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
So what will happen is they'll go to work on a pipeline or something, and they have what's called a man camp. With like a thousand dudes on site working out in the middle of nowhere together. And historically speaking, not just here, but kind of everywhere this has happened, dating back to the 1800s.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
When this happens, there are going to be sexual assaults and murdered and disappeared women and girls nearby.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, I mean, this happens everywhere all over the world that that is the case. It's not just North America. They've taken some steps. I mentioned earlier some of the things that they're doing that seem like they would help out. One is... We've got to stop people from hitchhiking or at least reduce the rate of hitchhikers. They don't have any other way to get around sometimes, like you mentioned.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
So in 2017, British Columbia Transit moved forward on something that came out of that 2006 summit. So 11 years later, that launched three new bus routes along Highway 16. But that didn't work for very long because that worked in conjunction with Greyhound.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And just two years after that, and like 5,000 people were now using the service, Greyhound cut back on the routes there because they weren't turning a profit. And so all of a sudden, hitchhiking was back on the map again.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, I mean, just not being able to call 911 very simply is a problem. So in 2021, I mean, just four years ago, it's astounding that it took this long.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And the provincial and federal governments said, all right, we'll chip in four and a half million bucks out of what will eventually cost 11 and a half million total to get Rogers Communications to get coverage all along this highway with cell phone towers. And I think by the end of last year, the good news is nine of those 11 towers were up.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And hopefully soon the entire 450-ish mile stretch, you'll at least be able to call the cops.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yes, absolutely. While this was going on, you know, when the cops were sort of slowly coming around to the idea that there was a specific problem along the stretch, the families were getting involved, the families of the missing, the families of those who were found dead. And, you know, they organized their own efforts.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, they say we are hope, we are strength, keep Highway 16 safe. And, you know, they're obviously critics of that messaging because they're saying we don't want to say that there's hope because right now with the way things are going with the Mounties and the investigations, like there is no hope. So why say that if it's not hopeful? Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
I'm going to call this mushroom fruit, and this is from Mike. Hey, guys, I'm a mushroom farmer from St. Louis and thought I needed to write in and give Josh some bad news. Listening to the Catacombs episode, the mushroom, guys, is the fruit of its organism.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
The plant that it is grown from is called mycelium. Furthermore, not all fungi produce fruit, a.k.a. mushrooms. If you or your family use mushrooms in supplement form, like mushroom berries, powder or something like that. Be sure to look for made with fruiting bodies only on the packaging or something of that nature.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
A lot of manufacturers are using myceliated grain without any mushrooms to make these products. That's like going to the grocery store for apples and leaving with most of an apple tree. There's a lot more to that discussion, but at the moment and with the current data, I say that if it advertises mushrooms, then it needs to have mushrooms. I've included some pics of the farm and my fur babies.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
One case that really kind of brought everything to even more of a head was the case of Ramona Wilson. This was in June of 1994. She was 16 years old, and she went to go meet up with a friend to go to some, you know, end-of-the-year school graduation parties. She never got there, and her mom, Matilda, was like, the cops— Don't really seem to care much that this happened.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
If you come to St. Louis, please come to the farm for a tour. And there are some great pictures of these beautiful fruiting mushrooms. One terribly lazy, looks like golden, long-haired golden retriever type laying with a candy cane lovey. and an awful, terrible tabby cat laying on a box, as cats do.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And so the locals got together and they started organizing. They started doing, you know, going on search parties and and looking out for her. They ultimately, you know, very sadly discovered her body about 10 months later at an airport. Her clothes were found near her with some rope and some cabling.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And so her mom and her older sister, Brenda, and, you know, other members of her family in the community got together and said, all right, the least we can do is try and raise some awareness since no one seems to be paying attention. So they got a memorial walk together in June of 95, which became an annual thing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, absolutely. She had already been working, you know, to raise awareness when very tragically it hit home for her in a more personal way when one of her family members, a woman named Tamara Chipman, went missing in 2005. And, you know, all this is going on through the, you know, I think it was 1981 when the cops finally started sort of getting together and comparing notes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And that was after at least 12 years since the first known murder. And it took all the way into the 2000s. um, for things to really take a turn. And that was, uh, when, uh, very tragically a woman named Nicole, uh, Hoer, um, was killed. She was 25 years old and she was white. Uh, she disappeared in 2002, uh, And this is what really brought the national attention.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
You've heard a journalist named Gwen Ifill in the United States coined the term missing white woman syndrome, which is the idea that it takes a white person to be, you know, the victim of a crime for anyone to kind of sit up and take notice. And members of indigenous communities or marginalized communities are often
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
overlooked and underfunded and under-resourced, and the cases are kind of swept under the rug. And that's exactly what was going on in Canada for many, many years, and still is to a certain degree.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah. So in 2005, this is just a few years after Nicole Hower brought more attention to the issue. The RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, we'll probably call them that. RCMP, maybe Mounties. Do they still go by that?
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah. They launched what was called the Unsolved Homicide Unit, launched something called Project E-PANA. The letter E, that was just the division of the RCMP. And PANA is named after an Inuit goddess who cares for souls in the afterworld. And they – their official designation was, hey, we think we have a serial killer, maybe more than one, out there on this highway of tears.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
It's a pretty – like you said, a pretty great place to get away with a crime like that because it's so desolate. Up until recently, there were – Long, long, long, long, long stretches where you had no cell phone service even. So you couldn't call anyone if you were in trouble. Not very many people around and plenty of animals around to take care of bodies and the remains.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
So they found some commonalities in three teenage girls, Ramona Wilson, who I mentioned earlier. a woman named Roxanne Thiera, 15 years old, from Prince George. This is a very sad case. She was in the foster system and the juvenile incarceration system, and she eventually had to turn to survival sex, which is a term for women who are forced to resort to sex work to feed and clothe themselves.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And it usually means, like, instead of getting money, they get food and clothing and, you know, items to live and survive. In 1994, she told a friend she was going to meet one of her clients. She disappeared, and her body was discovered off Highway 16. And then finally, Alicia Germain disappeared. was 15 years old, last seen in 1994 at a Christmas dinner.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
And she was discovered close to Highway 16. So that's when they came up with their criteria to see if they could sort of narrow this down, right?
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Yeah, so once they narrowed down this criteria, they found more cases that sort of fit that and were lumped into the Highway of Tears murders. Alberta Williams was 24, and she was celebrating at a pub at the end of summer after working there seasonally with her sister. This was 1989. Her body was found about a month after her disappearance.
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Delphine Nicol was 16 years old, disappeared in 1990 while hitchhiking. Lana Derrick, a 19-year-old college student, disappeared in October of 95. We mentioned Tamara Chipman. That was the relative of Florence and Azil. She was 22. And the mother of a two-year-old boy disappeared while hitchhiking in 2005. And then 14-year-old
Stuff You Should Know
The Highway of Tears (And Maybe Hope)
Alia Sarek Auger went missing from Prince George in 2006, and she was found deceased in a ditch right beside the highway, Highway 16.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I know. What about the others emotionally ticking?
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
All right. Well, we'll take a break and see if we can rein this puppy in right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, for sure. There was one person, a researcher, who actually endeavored to find out how fast that can get. This is in 1990, and they found that some participants in the study could think more than 4,000 words a minute. And, you know, just for context, the world record for fastest out loud talker as a Canadian guy who went to 655 words per minute.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
So this is basically, you can think up to six times faster than the fastest talker on the planet.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, I actually did the math. It's roughly six.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
No, it's unfortunately just some, I mean, hey, I love this guy.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
His name is Sean Shannon. He's a Canadian guy who did the To Be or Not To Be soliloquy in 23.8 seconds. Wow.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
You can't understand anything he's saying, but I think you have judges, you know, that are like, yeah, he's still saying those words.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, or inner voice. And it turns out this is kind of a tough one in some ways because it's like, I imagine Anna was up against it because there are many, many, many, many facets to this. And it can serve a lot of different purposes. It's very common, but also some people don't have it. Yeah. We can look at brain scans and say like, hey, this is lighting up.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, I thought this was super interesting. Child development is just fascinating to me, like going through it now, like more than ever, obviously. But for most kids, and by the way, this Lev Vitgotsky, who you said we would meet. You know what? Let's just bring him in. Come on in, Lev. Hey, I'm dead. Yeah, exactly. This is in the 1930s, so he has left us earthwise.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
But a lot of this has been borne out in modern research. But in the 30s, he was looking at like basically it starts out as private speech, like kids saying things out loud to themselves. And, you know, first they start talking just to communicate like I'm hungry. I need to whatever, go to sleep. Actually, kids never say that. I want to stay up. And, you know, that's just social communication.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
But then as they get older, they start. sort of privately talking to themselves as an internal motivator. And then eventually that I think around that's between like three and four and then around six or seven is when kids take that private voice inside their head. And that's when the inner monologue kicks off more or less.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Right. He's the one that coined the term inner voice, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I think it's a property of the Soviet Union. I don't know why I said that as a German.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
You know, we mentioned that not everyone has inner speech or develops that. It exists like a lot of things do on a spectrum. Some people, Emily is a very, very, she's like, I'm constantly talking to people in my head.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I know. I see it happening. Uh, you know, the other interesting thing she does, I don't think I've ever mentioned on the show. And she was like, you can say all this. I don't really care. Um, she spells out when she's stressed, she'll spell out things with her thumb in cursive.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Like on a table, like just sitting there, like we'll be watching a TV show and I'll know she's stressed and her, her thumb will be going. And now I'll not only know what she's doing for years now, I'll be like, what are you writing? And if it's a scene about like, uh, a tense standoff in an office or something, she might spell typewriter or office or something just that she sees.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
It's not always like I'm nervous, never like I'm stressed or anything like that.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
When you couple up with people and you really dig in, you don't have any of those barriers up. It turns out that we're all just a little strange.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
She's great. I can read it all. I can look at her, you know, thumb and just I can spell it right out in my head.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Wow. It looks like thumb's gone wild.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Anyway, but that's kind of her inner voice, too, you know, in a way, just manifesting itself physically. But it's still, you know, not out loud. But some people constantly are doing this kind of thing, talking to themselves. Others sometimes, some never. These two researchers, Johan Nedergaard and Gary Lupien, if you have zero inner speech, they have termed that anendophagia.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
But it's like it's also really hard to study and get a consensus on because a lot of it is self-reported as far as. when people do it and why people do it and what function it could serve or doesn't serve. And if you don't have one, what does that mean? So there's just a lot of different avenues, and it's tough to kind of make this a real tidy package.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
And they say, and this is another kind of frustration, like between 5 to 10 percent of people don't have inner speech, whereas Russell Hurlburt, who we've met, said, no, it's more like 50 to 70 percent have inner speech.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Right. Well, that got me thinking, like, if you have no inner dialogue, does that mean, like, do sociopaths have that? But I found no correlation there. It seems like sociopaths quite often have an inner dialogue saying, like, do this awful thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, and they've also found, this is Nettergaard and Lepien in a study just last year in 2024, where they tested, they wanted to know how it related to memory, and apparently verbal memory of groups with very, they tested people with very high and very low rates of inner speech and found that if you have a very low rate of inner speech, you're not going to be as good at just remembering stuff, like your lines in a play or a grocery list or anything.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Huh. All right. That that study from last year where they were talking about verbal memory made me wonder about dyslexia because, you know, my daughter has dyslexia. And I was like, I bet you there's a tie there. And I was actually right on the money with this one. Supposedly, if you have dyslexia, you have very little to no inner voice.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
So that was fascinating. Yeah, because a lot of times they think in images and they think in they call it kind of like 3D thinking. Gotcha. So it's less word based.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
You know how it gets so complicated.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Wow. That is fascinating. And I would imagine hard to do kind of like Ghostbusters, you know, don't clear your mind. Right. And then you get the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man like that. Yeah. If anything is suggested, I will immediately see the word. If it says, like, don't think of the word, I'll think of that word.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
No, she's at school, so it didn't come to me, but I'll ask her later and let you know.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, it says Ruby says that her inner voice just says, find Josh, kill Josh.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I love her too, I think. That's what I thought you were saying.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, Josh, it was very sweet. Got a text and he said, hey, I got this new artist that I've been listening to. I think Ruby might like it.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Oh, I could have sworn I texted you. But yeah, we listened to it together and she dug it.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
So, hey, big plug for Magdalena Bay. Also a nice place to visit from what I hear.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Back to Russell Hurlburt. That's just so hard. It doesn't roll off the tongue. Sorry.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah. Oh, yeah. In my inner voice, it's hard to say, too.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
He developed a tool called the Descriptive Experience Sampling. I would call it the sampler, but DES. That is when he sits you down and puts, I guess, a device in the room and just like, hey, just sit there and chill out and do whatever and think about whatever. And anytime you hear a beep, though, you got to write down whatever is in your brain at that exact moment.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I guess in the idea of just sorting to try and hit on the randomness of like what you might be thinking at any given time and just log those thoughts right then. And then they would talk about those. And he said, maybe this could give me a good framework. And when he got the results back, he was like, wow, this is fascinating how just all over the place it was. It's so multilayered.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
It's so varied. People can be thinking of a watering can and be saying the words flower pot at the same time with no explanation at all. Right. Sometimes you have multiple voices all talking over each other. And he was just like, this is he just put the device away and walk slowly out of the room, I think.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Oh, I got one, too. Okay. Youth is wasted on the young.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, this is just a tough one because there are so many little nuggets to uncover. Like after I had done all the research and I was kind of like, all right, let's go do this. I was like, wait, wait a minute though.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Like when my grandfather had a stroke when I was a kid, he had aphasia, which is some stroke patients, you know, can't, you know, they're talking, but they're not saying the words that you understand. Right. I was like, I wonder what's going on in their head and what that has to do with your inner voice. And I saw some things that said like,
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Nope, you're it or it completely disturbs your inner voice as well. And then in other studies, it said, no, your inner speech can be preserved relative to the spoken language if you have aphasia. So it's just it can be frustrating. But it's also I shouldn't look at it that way and just think of it as like just super fascinating. And maybe, you know, we don't always have all the answers.
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Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
, , , , , , ,, P P P P P P P P P P實 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , the a and P P P P P P P P P P P P P
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Sure. And we've kind of touched on them here and there. You know, when kids are developing it, they believe that it's a way to sort of grow and mature into being responsible. Like you start out hearing your parents say to go do something, go clean up your room. And eventually, the more you hear that, you'll start thinking.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I should really go clean up my room or I'm not sure when that's supposed to start. But yeah, at some point, eventually that will lead to you saying those things to yourself like you would as a responsible adult, like I got to clean this mess up.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah. And, you know, I already mentioned sort of the performance aspect. Like if you're if you're about to play a game or run a race or something like talking to yourself, you got this. You're the best. You can do this. You're going to run fast. You might have a routine that you run over in your head. That's all your voice. Yeah, exactly. And that can be that can really pay off.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
obviously much more than negative self-talk and motivation.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah. Mine comes and goes, too. And I haven't thought too much about when or why. So I think that's interesting.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I don't know. I think it's more used as like a verb, like when I game. Gaming.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah. But I think if you said, hey, do you play video games? It'd be a very Gen X way to say that.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Um, if you're wondering about, you know, cause we've talked about whether you dream in other languages, if you learn a second language, uh, is that a mark of fluency, uh, kind of ties into inner voice. Um, generally speaking, you, you think in your, or you talk to yourself in your first language. Um, but if you are fluent in, you know, let's say I was fluent in German.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Oh, if only, and I moved to Germany, um, at times there, or eventually I could have an inner voice, uh, is that is talking in a different way. Yeah. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Well, yeah. And just in the case of the stroke thing with my grandfather, I remember very specifically being a kid and seeing the frustration and thinking as a 10 year old, like he in his head, he's saying what he's trying to say.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's totally fascinating.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Oh, we don't know his name?
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Well, interestingly, I know that I'm drifting towards sleep when my inner voice gets really weird.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Like I can tell because he's getting really frustrated that it's coming out as something that is unintelligible to us. But, you know, all these years later, I got two answers.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Like I'll be thinking of things and when I start thinking about things and I can tell that are just absolute weird nonsense. It's almost like pre-dreaming. But the problem is now I know that sleep is coming and I know that's what that signals. So in my brain, I will start inner talking going, all right, baby, I'm about to fall asleep. And that takes me out of it.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I'll be drifting. And all of a sudden, like, I mean, I'm just making this up because I can't I don't get up and write it down. What I should do is write it down. But then I've ruined my nap or whatever.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Uh, but it's, you know, all of a sudden, if I'm just hear words or I'm saying, hear my voice saying words like, you know, uh, you know, the chicken put on a cape and, uh, and played a little basketball and jumped in a pot of chili, like complete nonsense. And I will recognize it's happening and go, all right, that means I'm, I'm about there. And then that takes me out of it.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Or note it and then just not let it rouse me too much and it'll lead to sleep. Gotcha.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Oh, boy. But every time I've said something weird about myself like that on the air, like stepping on cracks with the same place of my foot every time with OCD, I've had people write in and say, I do the same thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I mean, there's a bazillion other things, but we'll just park it right here.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
That's right. I'm going to call this Toledo. And this is from Alexander Nozar or Alex. Alex says, you know, every time Josh talks about having come from Toledo, I was thinking about Tony Paco's, which he mentioned in the fan theory episode. What wasn't mentioned, however, was and Tony Paco's is what it was a restaurant, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
That's right. What wasn't mentioned, however, was what makes Tony Paco's awesome. First and foremost, it was founded by a Hungarian immigrant, making it a significant place for Hungarian-Americans, especially here in Ohio, which has a pretty large Hungarian population in Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, and I believe Cleveland.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
My family is Hungarian on both sides, with great-grandfathers coming over here in the 1900s, early 1900s. Tony Paco serves not just Hungarian food like spätzl, but they're well-known for their homemade pickles, and most importantly, their hot dogs. But what makes it truly unique as a fun place to visit is that any time a celebrity visits, they're asked to sign a hot dog bun,
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
which is then encased in plastic and hung on the wall. It's been a while since I've been there, but I remember Leslie Odom Jr. 's name and, of course, Jamie Farr. So I think you two should go up there on some sort of tour, and you can experience our awesome food, but also sign a hot dog bun.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, I think that was good, Chuck.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
No, I'm just joking. There have been plenty of people that have studied this, though, and, you know, we're going to talk about some of these people here and there. There was a pair of researchers in 2011, Simon McCarthy-Jones and Charles Ferneyhough, maybe?
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Right. Right. uh they developed a survey and where they kind of categorize different varieties of inner speech and their survey was called the visc the varieties of inner speech questionnaire visq and they also along with others have other categories and we're kind of just gonna go through these now but um one can be dialogic which means you're like you're having a back and forth with yourself um
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Or others. I asked Emily if I could talk about this because she talks out loud, which I guess isn't quite the same thing. But I'll see her talking to herself sometimes, having a conversation with someone. Much more common when she was having frustrations with her business, talking like out loud to people. But it would be in her head, but then I would also see her talking out loud.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
And I'll walk into her room and say, who are you talking to? And she'd tell me. But that's dialogic because there's someone else involved, even if that someone else is another you.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, Anna's example for that is, you know, you're leaving the house and, you know, phone, keys, wallet in your head, that kind of thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah. I see your point. Other people is another one. That's when your voice, not when you're speaking to someone else, but when it takes on the voice of someone else. It could be Abraham Lincoln. It could be Josh Clark. And that's when you're imagining a conversation with someone else where your own inner voice sounds like someone else.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
It's different than like Emily having a conversation with another person.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, it's very fascinating. One can be motivational or evaluative, either, you know, am I doing a good job here or do a good job? They found that, you know, with like sports performance and any kind of like public speaking or any kind of performative thing, you know, that inner voice pumping you up can lead to real results, usually good.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
When I play basketball, all I hear in my head is what I hear on the court, which is swish.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Ruby expressed interest in playing basketball the other day and I had a hard time containing myself. I was like, you know, that's the only sport I was actually pretty good at. Like, I can actually teach you something here.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
But I didn't want to say it too positively because then she'd be like, eh, maybe not.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I'm working on it. Another is prompted. No, no, no, I'm sorry, expanded speech, which is like if you have to have a tough conversation with someone and you're literally kind of just rehearsing that in your head as one or both, that is like when you're speaking not in any kind of abbreviated way.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Right. Which that got me on a sidetrack of like, oh, that's like, why do people, when you hear your voice played on a recording, why does that sound different? Does this have anything to do with that? And I just had to park that because that gets into a whole other thing, which should probably be a shorty.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
No, no, no. Like when I listen to a podcast of us, like why does your voice never match when you hear it out loud as it does in your own brain?
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
No, it has to do with like the way your skull reverberates.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Actual physical stuff. But I think that could be a shorty.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
It is. And we'll get to Efferent's copy later on.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah, but it's a prompt from an outside source. Right. Whereas the next one, which logically follows, thankfully, pristine or spontaneous. That was Russell Hurlburt, kind of a mouthful, a researcher that coined this one. That is that's just unprompted, spontaneous. And it's a part of like what makes us us. Yes.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
That's right. And well, except when he gets excited about something, then he yells out, Bernie Ho!
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Maybe before we break, we should talk about these other four. Yeah. Because that VISC is still, they've been revising it over the years and it's still in use for some researchers. But in 2015, there was another researcher named, what a great name, Mal Gorzada, Polchaska Wasil? Wasil? Wasil, maybe?
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
They were like, all right, let's categorize it by emotional types. And these are the faithful friend, which has a nice ring to it. That's like your personal strength, positive feelings about yourself.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Sure. Saying it out loud, which means it's not inner monologue or dialogue.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Yeah. The ambivalent parent, which is awful, otherwise known as Gen X parent, associated with strength and love and caring criticism. So wait a minute.
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
I would say the parent. I mean, weren't most of our parents fairly ambivalent about us?
Stuff You Should Know
Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
It's like, oh, this is weird because it associated with strength, love and care and criticism.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Hey guys, it's Chuck and Josh from Stuff You Should Know. If you're anything like us, you've got a lot on your plate this new year.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
You've got summer beach trips to plan, a work-life balance to balance, and pickleball opponents to beat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. The nerds have done the work for you, everybody, researching and reviewing over 1,100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a lower rate on your auto insurance? They've got a winner for that. Or a balance transfer credit card with 0% APR? They've got a winner for that, too.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
But he'd need a ride back. Are you kidding? He said, it might take a while, but I could probably run a hundred miles. And I'm just like floored by this idea of, That people can do this. And he said, man, you should do a – I guess you should do an episode on the Barkley Marathons, which I had heard of before.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah. And they showed up there. There was a park ranger that was like, you guys should leave. Like, you shouldn't be out there. It's like it's not like you think you're going to get lost. You're going to get hurt. You're going to need rescue. They ignored him. They did make it through. They did an eight mile.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
uh they made this eight mile hike uh this loop but it took him a full day which is you know you should be able to hike much more than eight miles in a day and it required a lot of orienteering like you said and paying attention to that kind of thing and he said all right i think i have an idea here for a race uh let's make a nearly impossible to finish race um i think it's kind of hard to tell
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Because there's not a website for this. You can't get, like, historical. I mean, people have written about it since then. But you can't get, like, the official website documentation on this race in history because it doesn't exist. They keep it very much under wraps.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
So the way he tells it on the documentary, it was always supposed to be 100 miles, but no one ever did more than the first three loops out of the five. Yeah. I think, though, that maybe this first version was shorter. It was about a 50 to 55 mile course. It was held over April Fool's Day weekend, 1986. And the initial cutoff was 24 hours with 13 participants and zero people finishing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, I mean, he changes the route every year a little bit. That's why it varies. But the year they did the documentary, it was documented at 130. And everybody is like, it's not 100. Just stop saying that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Which is this – yeah, which is this ultra marathon plus a trail run plus in the mountains of northeastern Tennessee that is known for just being a crazy – race, a crazy hard race, and having a really unusual origin story, an unusual founder, and just how it's all done. It's just this remarkable story, and I agree.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, and I guess we can go ahead and tell everybody the current iteration, like we said, is supposedly 100, but it's really more like 130 miles. It's got a 60-hour time limit. And the elevation is the total elevation climb over that race, if you finish it, is 60,000 feet, which is equivalent to walking up and back down Mount Everest twice. Yes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, I mean, their legs are all just... Because these briars, they have to go through one part, which is a really heavy briar area.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Oh, yeah, like disgusting, bleeding. Their feet are disgusting and blistered and just riddled with... I think the one guy that... We'll get to the stops, but the one guy, they were like, it would take you eight hours to fully dry your feet out. So, you know, you can't... You're not going to get dry feet. Right. Which is a big problem. And... They're basically not sleeping. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
When you complete a loop, you have what's called an interlooper period where you can do whatever you want. You can take however much time you want. You can get first aid. You can eat. You can drink. You can rest. You can change your clothes and socks. You can take a nap if you want. But that clock is still running. So how long you wait is up to you. Mm-hmm.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I think the winner that year said he slept about an hour total. So just try staying up and awake for 60 hours in a chair.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, exactly. People are doing this. And, you know, we say it's a run like a lot of this is hiking and bouldering and walking and crawling. So it's not like they're running the whole time, but it's just brutal.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, I think so. So finishing the three loops, if you finish three loops, that is considered a fun run, and that is a designation, and that is a huge accomplishment just to finish the fun run. We should add he also has a baby Barkley in the fall, the Barkley Fall Classic, which is a 50K, so 31 miles, and that has about 400 runners.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
But only about 35 to 40 participants are allowed per year to compete in this thing because of, you know, it's out in nature. So the state won't let them have like hundreds of people, like not a ton of people can go watch. It's just like family. And I think some, you know, former winners can be there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And, you know, it's a pretty small operation because they just can't, you know, run roughshod over the area. But they had the 60 hours to complete. Now, 12 hours per loop. The first loop is run clockwise. The second loop, which is at night, will go counterclockwise. And then again, day, night, clockwise, counterclockwise. And then this is pretty devious.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
The final fifth loop, if you get there, the first person to finish the fourth gets a choice which way they want to run. And then they start splitting people up because almost everybody runs with a buddy or two. It really, really helps to have someone out there and they're really helping each other. But at the end, he's like, you're going to lose your buddy. Which way do you want to run?
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And the first person will say, I'll go clockwise. The next person has to go counterclockwise. And then they alternate. So at some point, if they finish that fifth loop, they're going to pass their former buddy going in the opposite direction. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, I think it's probably it makes it a lot tougher. But I get the idea that if you make it, if you're one of the maybe two, maybe three, maximum four people that are even on the fifth loop, then that's when things get serious. That's when it turns into an actual race.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, and it definitely doesn't seem like it gets easier because they were finishing, when they were fresh-legged at loop one, they were finishing in about eight or nine hours for the fastest times, and then those fastest people were doing like 12 and 13 hours on the next loop. Through the darkness.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And we should mention the weather, you know. With these huge elevation changes, you're going to go from temperatures sometimes in April in the 80s where it's low to like 10 degrees at night. They have about 100 gallons of water they put out randomly on the course. Like there are no technical water stations, but you'll just happen upon a jug of water.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And Laz said that, you know, one year they were 140. eight pound blocks of ice because it was 10 degrees at elevation.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Hey guys, it's Chuck and Josh from Stuff You Should Know. If you're anything like us, you've got a lot on your plate this new year. You've got summer beach trips to plan, a work-life balance to balance, and pickleball opponents to beat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. The nerds have done the work for you, everybody, researching and reviewing over 1,100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a lower rate on your auto insurance? They've got a winner for that. Or a balance transfer credit card with 0% APR? They've got a winner for that, too.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. I love my Bombas socks. They are super cozy and the secret is in their fabrics. We're talking about the really good stuff like Merino wool, which feels as cozy as a ski lodge. But if you want to brave the cold on the slopes or on a snowy run, Bombas has athletic socks built for that, too.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. And if you get cold feet, then you got to try those slippers that they have. They're warm because they have that fluffy, sharp aligning and the marshmallow-like cushioning. Really good stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
All right, so we're back. The race is about to begin. We should point out, too, the other thing to keep in mind is if you quit, quit near the start-finish line. Right. Because, like, a lot of people finish, like, a loop and are like, I'm out. Or maybe the two or a lot of people get to that third fun run and they say, that's good enough for me.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
The one guy in the documentary quit and it took him 10 hours to navigate back. Cause it's not like they send somebody out, you don't tap out on radio and they come and get you. Yeah. You just decide I can't do this anymore. And then you very slowly walk back to the finish line.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, no, totally. Or if there, I mean, it depends on where you are. If you're below the halfway point, a lot of people come back the way they came.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, it was really well done. It's on YouTube. And I recommend watching it because it really there's a lot of drama that takes place the year that they did the documentary. I think they did it on 2012 or 2013, maybe.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, that's a non-refundable application fee. I think most people send in two single dollar bills because he says they don't give change. And he every year chooses, you know, he chooses a range of people. Some of them are very experienced. Some of them are random. Every year he chooses one human sacrifice. that he said the runners even appreciate, even at the expense of not getting in themselves.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
He chooses one person that has no business being there. In the year of the documentary, that poor guy made it six hours. Yeah. And I knew as soon as that guy headed out in his camouflage cargo pants. Right. I was like, this guy, what is he doing? What's he wearing? So he didn't make it very far.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
No, I don't think so. No, it was pretty funny and sad. He took it on the chin like a big boy, though.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
A little bit more about the application process. Everyone knows it takes place generally around April Fool's Day. They send in an essay to get in with weird prompts. Like one year it was what's the most important vegetable group. And one of the women, I think she was in the documentary that year, Beverly Abs, who, by the way, that year completed the fun run. So quite an achievement.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
She said she was told to send the application in exactly at midnight on Christmas Day in the time zone where Lazarus Lake was. So she had to figure out where he was at the time. And then she wrote a poem as her essay and she got in.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And then once you get in, you get a letter that says, I'm sorry to inform you that you have been accepted. Basically, misery awaits you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I think it was 2012 or 2013, and there's a lot of good drama, so we don't want to spoil some of the stories that happen. But I recommend watching, and here we go with Barkley Marathons.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, he's one of the great eccentrics of the world, and sometimes those people are hard to pin down, you know, because they don't fit into a box.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Right. Some other fun things. If you're a first-time runner, you bring a license plate from your home state or home country, and he makes these cool signs out of them and hangs them up. You have to bring a gift as well if you were part of the race. If you are... A first-time runner, you have to bring an article of clothing. In the documentary, it was very funny.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
He said it kind of depends on what he needs. One year it was a bunch of white Oxford shirts. Another year it was socks. Another year it was flannel shirts. And then if you have finished the race and you come back to race again, you have to bring him a pack of Camel cigarettes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, when you get accepted, you know what day it's going to be on. You go, you camp out in the campground, and you're just sort of waiting for him to blow the conch. He blows a conch sometime between midnight and noon on the Saturday of that weekend. You don't know when it's coming. So if he blows it at, you know, 7 a.m. or sometime in the morning, you're up all night.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
You're not getting sleep because you're so amped up and ready for this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And apprehensive because you don't know when it starts. Again, he's just sort of messing with people. Yeah. And so when he decides to blow the conch, he blows the conch. That means you have one hour. And everybody, you know, starts getting ready to go at that point. There is no prize, we should also mention. The prize is just finishing this thing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, totally. I like that one dude, the long-haired guy from Arizona, in the documentary, that was his first one. He just had a cool vibe. Like, everyone had a pretty cool vibe. Like, it's a really... It has a great spirit of helping one another out, and during the interloper periods where they're, which is, by the way, the only time they're allowed to have their sort of aid crew with them.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Like, they don't, you know, they can't get help along the way.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
So this is when they see other people, and there's other former winners there, and when people drop out, they stick around, and they're really helping people get their feet together, and they're giving them dry socks, and... feeding them. And it's just a real great spirit of sort of camaraderie and helping one another out, it feels like.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
They can wear a little cheap or they're given a little cheap watch. And I think they banned altimeters in 2014 or 12 or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
To me, this is kind of one of the coolest things because the whole time until we had gotten to this part, I was like, well, how do they know that people are running that route? Because they're not staked out along the way.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
In the documentary, they had some people staked out a little bit just to get some footage, but it's not like they have people at checkpoints that are making sure they're on the route and all that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
He did something pretty lo-fi and genius, which was he puts 10 books out, 10 to 12, depending on the year, at different points along the way, and you have to rip the page out corresponding to your bib number, and that is the proof that you ran the real route.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
You have to show up with, depending on how many books, 10 or 11 pages when you touch that start-finish line, and you have to turn them over to Cantrell, and he has to look them over and verify it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah. I mean, the one guy, the year of the documentary that won and set the record, I think he said he spent a couple of hours looking for the book at one stop.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, and I think there was a story just last year, in fact, there was a French runner who got to the final loop to find that a book was gone. There was a day hiker that thought the race was over and took the book as a memento. So he's like, what do I do? He completed the race, and when he got back to the gate, they had turned the book in, so they counted that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
You know, I bet that he feels a great sense of accomplishment, though.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Like he finished that thing, six seconds be damned, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I think there was one more piece of housekeeping here. Housekeeping? Oh, that's right. When a runner gives up, a guy named Dave Henn, who is a race volunteer, plays taps on a bugle.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah. It's really fun to watch. It was. Someone just like on their last leg, literally like you bleeding at the legs. And he's like, hit the button. Right. Because that was easy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Oh, man. The one guy that couldn't in the documentary that that tapped out and was just like crying.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Oh boy, that was tough. He had kind of dark curly hair and he was pretty pumped up going into it about his chances. And yeah, I mean, what can you say about a race where like, whatever, probably 98% of the people never finish it. Right. Maybe more, maybe 99.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Let me see. Last – I'm sorry. This year there were a record five people completed it, and that is – I think the maximum before that may have been three, maybe four, but usually it's one, maybe two or zero. Last, I'm sorry, this year, a woman was a finisher for the first time. Yasmin Paris or Perry, I don't know how she pronounces it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
She came in two minutes short of the deadline to finish that race.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, I got that. And I don't know if I'm being an apologist, but I got the idea that a lot of that was sort of goading someone to finish.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, like deep down, he's like, there's going to be a woman that's going to do this, and maybe I need to stoke the fire a little bit.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Who else? In 2024, a mechanical engineer named Jared Campbell became the first four-time finisher. He's in the documentary. And an interesting just sort of side note in this, and Livia pointed it out, but then when you watch the documentary, it really hits home, is that it seems like this race and ultra-marathoning and this sort of endurance thing attracts people of very, very high intelligence.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
We're still getting emails on that one. So yes, I do. Okay. All right. Cool. What LA marathon are you talking about?
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I felt like every person they interviewed were like, I'm an engineer, I'm a scientist. And they talked to, I almost called him Barkley, to Lazarus about this, to Cantrell in the documentary. And he said, yeah, he said, those are the achievers in life. Those are the people that go to graduate school and go to get their doctoral thesis and people who set hard goals and accomplish them.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
It just sort of fits, and I never really thought about that tie, but I don't think there's a lot of dum-dums that do stuff like this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I do want to shout out the record, though. Brett Mahn, who has won it a few times now, I think he's a physicist. The current record right now lies with Brett at 52 hours, 3 minutes, and 8 seconds. Very nice. Just incredible.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. Sorry, John. Go back to sleep. Here's your chubby hubby.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I can't find it anymore. I can't either. People say it exists. I get pictures, occasionally emails, but it doesn't exist in Atlanta.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I don't know. I don't eat ice cream anymore anyway, which is the saddest part of this story. All right. I'm going to call this Lake versus Pond. We got quite a few emails. By the way, I want to mention one differentiator we saw said that the difference they heard between Lake versus Pond is if sunlight can reach the bottom. If it can, then it's a pond. If it can't, then it's a lake.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
But this comes from Mark. Hey, guys. The answer, I think, depends on who you ask. But as an ambassador from the land of 10,000 lakes, Minnesota, which is technically 11,842 lakes, perhaps I have a bit of clout. Most folks would assume the difference has something to do with size and depth. It's not quite that simple though.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
According to a 2012 CBS News article, a retired DNR water supervisor, Glenn Yackel, suggests that a lake needs to be large enough and deep enough to allow for wave action to be considered a lake that can clear vegetation from its shoreline. A pond, on the other hand, lacks this wave action, meaning its shoreline is typically surrounded by vegetation without clear boundaries.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I don't remember what it was. Yeah. Oh, boy. People are just screaming at their – pod player right now.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
But guys, it gets even more complicated. Government agencies often have regulatory thresholds that lead to discrepancies per state. For example, here in Minnesota, with our 11,842 lakes, has fewer lakes than Wisconsin, And any Wisconsinite will gleefully point out that they have 15,000. But here's where the differences come into play.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
While they do have 15,000 lakes, their definition includes a body of water with an area of at least 2.5 acres. In Minnesota, our standards are higher. And to qualify as a lake here, we must cover at least 10 acres. If we lowered our threshold to match Wisconsin's, we wouldn't dare dream of it, though. We'd have over 20,000 lakes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
For real. That is from Mark. Mark said, always a pleasure to listen to you guys with my boys who are six and seven and big fans. And Mark had replied with their names. And I'm very frustrated because I cannot find that reply. So let me just say, Mark and sons of Mark, thank you for the support.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Sorry, guys. But there's six and seven. So maybe that's for the best.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Anyway, let's not even do that. Marathon's been along a long time. Ultramarathon started in the 1970s, and that's what we're really talking about. And this guy, Gary Kintrell, a.k.a. Lazarus Lake, or Laz, he's in his 70s now. He is our... He is the creator, along with his friend of the Barkley Marathon, whom he named after his friend, a farmer named Barry Barkley.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
In the documentary, very sweetly over the end credits, they ask him with Barry why he named it after Barry. And he said, well, he used to help me with a lot of races. And I don't know. It just fit.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, so there's no real reason, but they're called the Barkley Marathons. And Cantrell has an interesting story in that he is a former athlete. He's run supposedly over about 150,000 miles in his life, but he smokes Camel cigarettes. He just floods his body with Dr. Pepper. He's an older gentleman now and has kind of wrecked his legs from all that running.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
So he hasn't run for a while, but he got interested in this as a Boy Scout in Tennessee as a teenager, or preteen, I guess, when he started doing backpacking trips that he hated until he found out there is a great joy in overcoming a hardship and doing something tough, physically and completing a goal and got kind of hooked on that feeling.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, exactly. They first took the form of what he called journey runs, which is this all sounds fun. If I was into running, I would do something like this. But he and his friends would get together and be like, all right, let's run from Knoxville to Nashville or let's run. I love the through run.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Their idea of a through run was either from Alabama or Kentucky running to the other just straight through Tennessee. Let's run through the state of Tennessee.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Pretty fun idea. They were doing these. They led to some other kind of legit races. I think one of the two is still around. He called it, and he's always had a sense of humor. You can tell by the way he names these things. The last annual Vol State, obviously Volunteer State, road race, which is a 311-mile run from Missouri to Georgia in 10 days.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Exactly. A 10-day cutoff time, no comfort stations along the way. You have to source all your own food and water and shelter along the way. And then another one called the Idiot's Run, which I don't think is around, 123-mile gravel, all gravel road run. Oh, my God. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah. I mean, many, many years, the Barkley marathon has no finisher at all. Uh, many years, no one makes it to the fifth loop. Uh, there are four loops that we'll get into all this in a second. Um, it's happening more and more now. I think just.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
There are more veterans that come back that once you kind of know the deal, I say it gets a little easier, but you know, a little easier in that it's possible to finish. It's never easy, but I think the veterans have an advantage for sure.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
No, totally. And if you look at, you know, they do these aerial shots in the documentary of this prison that we're about to talk about. And it's just, you know, it's in the middle of nowhere, like at the bottom of, you know, sort of a ravine and very inhospitable. I mean, you'd like to think about places like Alaska being like, you know, some of the most inhospitable places in the United States.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
But I mean, the mountains of northeastern Tennessee are no joke.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. Our friend Chad, we want to shout out our friend Chad Crowley, who we've talked about before, who was the producer and director and showrunner of our TV show back in the day. Right. I got this idea from Chad because we had coffee over the holidays and he is running ultra marathons now.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Exactly. And they needed somewhere to put those prisoners. So our workers, I guess, slash prisoners. So they built a new prison. It is called Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. And in the 1930s, a lot of that land eventually became that great conservation area that we were talking about, those 24000 acres. And the New Deal era Civilian Conservation Corps built a lot of trails.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
it became a natural area you know officially in the 1970s but there are these trails there now um not like again like you said not like a lot of state park trails that you go to a lot of these trails are still pretty rough um the prison uh stayed open but what why we're telling you all this is for a couple of reasons uh one is at one point in the race they navigate through a
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
tunnel like a little water channel that goes under the prison and that's part of the race route where you're definitely gonna get your feet wet I don't think we mentioned you're running through rivers and things so like wet feet and it's just a part of the the challenge of this race yeah But the prison remained open.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., was sent there with six other men. He escaped in 1977 from Brushy Mountain and spent 54 hours in that rugged terrain, eventually being recaptured about eight miles from the prison. And. And Lazarus Lake, old Laz Cantrell, heard this story, heard they made it only eight miles in that 54 hours.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And he said, man, I could travel 100 miles through that terrain in 54 hours. So he invents this race.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
sort of inspired by this uh he said that he still gets hate mail every year and angry letters for people that think it's some sort of tribute to james earl ray and he's like no it's the opposite like it it was started because i'm making fun of the fact that this guy only made it eight miles and we're doing a hundred right right 130 really uh you want to take a break Yeah, let's take a break.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
We know the name of the marathon. We know where it takes place. We know who started it and where it came from. And we'll be back with more of the Barclay Marathons right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
which is a very Chad thing to do. Like he starts running a handful of years ago and then now he's running ultras. And I was like, Chad, how long is that? And he said, 60 miles generally. And I said, could you run to Athens? He said, how far is Athens? And I said, I don't know, I can't remember how far I said, like 80 miles. He said, I could run a hundred miles.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
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How Antidepressants Work
All right, so we promised to start off with SSRIs, and we're starting off with that. We're kind of going to jump around, starting with the most frequently prescribed sort of modern version of antidepressants, and then we'll jump back in time and talk about drugs that, you know, maybe your parents took. Who knows? But these came around in the mid-1980s.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
I think the very first one to become available was fluoxetine in 1988. And we're going to, I guess we'll say both their regular name and their trade name or trademark name, just so everyone knows kind of what we're talking about.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, exactly. Fluoxetine is Prozac. Peroxetine is Paxil. Sertraline is Zoloft. Fluvoxamine is Lubox. These are a challenge for me.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
I appreciate it. Citalopram is Celexa. And why don't you take that Lexapro for me? What is that?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Escatalopram. Oh, okay. I just had a little yes at the beginning of that.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, so these are the SSRIs that are going to block. They're called reuptake inhibitors, and what that means is they're going to block that bus trip that serotonin takes back to that original cell, the presynaptic cell, the one who sent that transmission, and it leaves it floating around in that space in between. I believe that's probably you that said that's where all the action happens.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
But that's in what's called the synaptic cleft. So it sends that serotonin out. And when it comes back, instead of uptaking it or re-uptaking it, it blocks that from happening. So that just means there's more of it where you need it.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
You're trying to wedge in jokes in an unfunny episode.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
That's what we try and do. Wedge in jokes where they're not appropriate.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, I don't think I even read out what it stands for, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, or I may have, but there it is again.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, I think you're right. And I think that... When it comes to getting that, if you're on more than one, either that cocktail right or that single SSRI correct, that is where your doctor comes into play.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
But even though I've never been through this, I know plenty of people who have, I believe it's safe to say that's also where you come into play, though, as advocating for yourself in concert with your doctor.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
yeah i uh if you suffer from depression and you feel a little lost um and you are a fan of comedy um i can highly highly recommend the great comedian gary gullman um he's a comedian who has he's been around a long long time and it's not like that's his act but he did have one tour and one sort of set where he really really dug into this and one special
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How Antidepressants Work
Uh, and then lately, uh, he wrote about it in his book, which is great. I read the book. Uh, this is all about his childhood growing up, but lately on Instagram, he has been, um, posting just daily things. He's kind of written down on a paper that helped him when he was at his darkest and, you know, take a walk, things like that, but, but drill down and got more specific and, um, uh,
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Advice on if you're a friend of someone, like what you can do, like it's really, really, really helpful. So Gary Goldman's awesome. And I encourage you to check out that Instagram. As silly as that sounds, it can really help. It doesn't sound silly at all. Well, anytime you're like, oh, go to a social media thing and look at what this comedian said. But you know what I mean?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
That's right. And the listener will never hear where we edit out when Jerry bursts into the room in two minutes. We'll just cut that out. Nice and clean.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, for sure. All right. So that's a quick overview of the SSRIs and how they work. Now we're going to move on to, we're going to jump back in time. Oh, we can get in the Wayback Machine. That's fun.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
To the 1950s and 60s when tricyclic antidepressants made their debut.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
All right, that's one way to put it. All right, we're going to name these. And these, again, might be things you saw if you're a Gen Xer. You might have seen them in your grandparents' house. medicine cabinet even.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Let me see here. Here's the first one. Nortriptyline. Nortriptyline.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
I even practice these. Nortriptyline. Why am I getting all these? That's Pamelaure. How about you take the next one?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, I mean, yeah, we could go through them, but it sounds like one of those commercials. But you're way more likely to experience those with those than the SSRIs. It's also, they were, the tricyclic were easier to overdose on.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
And you're just not going to see them a lot for depression these days. They're still around. I think neuropathic pain is something they found use for. Yeah. And if you don't tolerate SSRIs, they might say, you know, they might pitch you a drug from the 1950s.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, for sure. I mean, that was a long time ago. So this was early sort of medicine at work. We have SNRIs, serotonin, not just serotonin, but serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors. They came around in the mid-90s, so after the SSRIs, a little bit after. And they do exactly what you would think. They block the reuptake of both of those in the same way.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, and those are, there's only a couple of those, Effexor and Cymbalta. And in Cymbalta's case, that's Duloxetine. And Effexor is Venlafaxine.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
The next thing we're going to talk about are MAOIs, or monoamine. Is that right? Monoamines? Monoamine, oxidase inhibitors.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
And yeah, I don't think we've mentioned yet that that's what that group is called. Serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine are all monoamines because of the molecular structure of those things.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Do you think anyone ever goes in and they're like, can I just do the SSRIs because everyone kind of knows those?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Oh, yeah, that's right. This is one where... I think it was in the early 1950s, they were testing drugs for TB, for tuberculosis. And it was one of those deals where they said, hey, these people over here taking this thing, they're sleeping pretty good. They have a good appetite. They're bouncing around the room. They seem pretty happy. And so that's how it was born.
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How Antidepressants Work
They found that I think that when they gave it to patients with depression, that 70% of them showed an improvement. So they said, I guess we've got a new thing here.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
I guess now we can jump over to, or should we take a break or should we cover nutraceuticals?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
All right. We'll take a break and then we'll come back and talk about something that you can just get over the counter. It's called a nutraceutical right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah. I mean, that's so like us to hit stuff like bipolar first. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
I think it makes sense maybe to cover this first. So how about that?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah. Put that in your palm and wash it down with some water. How's that for a segue?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, this is a real shame because a lot of these studies on these have come back with some results that look pretty good. Some of them show, you know, can kind of be all over the place again, maybe because it's not regulated is the reason, because some studies show that results can treat MDD pretty effectively. Others show it's not any better than a placebo.
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How Antidepressants Work
They can also have side effects. So it's not like, oh, it's just a supplement. So I don't, you know. I don't hear the commercial listing, you know, a laundry list of things that could go wrong. And I can buy it just over the counter, then there can't be any side effects, right? But that's not true at all. There are side effects to supplements as well.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
And it can, you know, there have been plenty of situations where there's a supplement that becomes kind of the, The all the rage. Yeah. And people just start like St. John's where it used to be when people were just like, hey, St. John's works the best. We just should take tons of it. And that can result in its own set of issues.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, I remember my parents even at one point signed up for one of the supplement, you know, pyramid schemes, I guess it was.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Sort of like the Avon Laney, but it's supplements. I remember a short time. I mean, they were always trying to hustle some side gig because they were teachers. But I specifically remember when I was a kid that we just had like a house full of this stuff for a while. And I can't remember which system or brand this was. But if someone wrote in and told me, I would be like, oh, yep, that's the one.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, that leads very nicely into psychedelics. We promised talk of those earlier with ketamine and psilocybin, and here we are. They At least for ketamine, that is one that is way out in front of psilocybin as far as like official studies and the government kind of getting behind some of this stuff.
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How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, they love K. Yeah, they love that K. They're being tested, ketamine that is, as a breakthrough treatment and breakthrough is a label. or a designation rather that the FDA says, hey, we can fast track this through the approval process because we think it has so much potential.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
And these still though, even though like ketamine has shown a lot of promise, it's still looked at and studied as a last resort if you're resistant to other more traditional treatments.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, exactly. They started to develop ketamine in the 1960s in Belgium. And, you know, they've been, like you said, I think starting in 2000. It's when they really started kind of looking into stuff. So it had a big jump on psilocybin. That's one that's just now starting to kind of people are starting to say, hey, you know, you know, magic mushrooms.
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How Antidepressants Work
I know has a has a bad connotation for a lot of people. So let's call it psilocybin, you know, the medical or, you know, I guess, biological name. And let's let's study this stuff.
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How Antidepressants Work
Yeah. Do you know what the dose was before I give this number?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Two handfuls. I'm very curious, but this is, I think it was a depression rating scale they were using where 24 was severe and seven or below was no depression. And before they had the psilocybin, they scored 22, an average of 22.8 out of 24, as far as being severely depressed. And then afterward, it went all the way down to 7.7, which is just a skosh above no depression.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah. And I think they did try to follow up with those people, but they got no self-service out there in Joshua Tree.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
That's right. And that's after remission has begun. And that is when they're trying to, you know, knock down or outright eliminate the symptoms that are still sticking around and get you back to where you were before your MDD episode. So after six months of that, if there's no relapse, then they may wean you down or completely off of something. You know, it just sort of depends.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Like, again, like talk, talk a lot to your doctor through all this stuff. So you really have a good handle on what what's going on.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah. I mean, that's a good overview, you know, without getting into the weeds as far as numbers go. Symptoms, as you might imagine, are they're sad. Disrupted sleep. feeling like you're worthless. Sometimes it affects your concentration. Sometimes it affects your ability to even experience pleasure at all. Even when you're doing something that might ordinarily be fun for you, it's not fun.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, for sure. Which kind of all leads to the question, are these being prescribed too much? That's, you know, you can't hardly bring this up without hearing somebody say, yeah, they're just doctors are just willy nilly prescribing this stuff to everybody, like young children all the way to senior citizens, like they'll just throw anyone on that.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
And that's just a very sort of dumbed down way to look at this. There are critics who, you know, have valid points about stuff. But you have to look at real numbers as far as like an increase in prescriptions. If you look at the numbers, part of it is that they are staying on something for longer.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
So if they're keeping you on something for six months rather than just switching something out at six weeks, then the numbers for that prescription are going to be higher over a six-month period. So there's just a lot more nuance in those numbers. numbers as far as there's been a big increase, like a sweeping statement, like there's been a big increase in the number of prescriptions.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, I mean, 2016 to 2022 is also a period of a lot of upheaval in the United States and starting in 2020 with COVID around the world. So all of that stuff comes into play for sure.
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How Antidepressants Work
Kids pulled out of school and their entire social structure sometimes.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, I was curious, too, about kids. I wondered if there was just a minimum age. And from what I found, each drug is FDA approved starting at a certain age.
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How Antidepressants Work
Yeah. I mean, it may be simple misdiagnosis. It could be bipolar disorder. It could be BPD, which we've talked about, borderline personality disorder. But those are not the same things. So you just might be misdiagnosed.
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How Antidepressants Work
Yeah. Your metabolism might affect it if some people just don't clear drugs out of their system as quickly. Yeah. So if it's taking longer than usual, then it usually a dose adjustment can help with that. But that could imbalance things even more.
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How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, polypharmacy. Pretty good band name, but not a great thing to live with because, you know, things interacting with other drugs is a real thing. And if you're on a lot of them, then it sometimes can be hard to even tell what might be affecting what at a certain point.
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How Antidepressants Work
It's not being sad in a moment or being blue for a little while. It is a persistent thing where it disrupts your life. It interferes with your life. It can interfere with your relationships and interfere with your relationship with yourself in a big, big way.
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How Antidepressants Work
This is one of a couple I'm going to read in the next few episodes about the inner monologue episode. We heard a lot from people about that. Yeah. And specifically in this case, my inner monologue when I'm falling asleep getting really weird. Hey, guys, Chuck mentioned before falling asleep, his thoughts start to get weird, and that's how he knows he's falling asleep.
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How Antidepressants Work
Right away, I knew what he was talking about. And the reason I read this one, because I had dozens and dozens of people that had the same thing, is because it's very common. But this person names it. There's a term called hypnagogic imagery, which I think we've talked about that in something. It might have been lucid dreaming.
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How Antidepressants Work
which I learned about from Jeff Warren's awesome book, The Head Trip. It's basically the stage before falling asleep when our brains start to produce hallucination-like images. This happens to me, though I'm not consciously aware of it on nights when I fall asleep quickly.
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How Antidepressants Work
Often I'll drift into the hypnagogic stage and then catch myself and think, that was weird, which is what happens to me, and then drift back in. Chuck described his experience as a series of nonsensical thoughts, so I wonder if his is truly verbal versus visual. I would love to hear more. I think mine are a little bit of both, Jill, and that is Jill in Connecticut.
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How Antidepressants Work
yeah for sure and those things very much help and i'm glad you said that what you said just a second ago because when i said i sounded very very down when i said that the symptoms are and i paused and just said sad um there is a lot of hope but you know i have everybody you know has if they don't suffer from the depression you have people in your life and your family and your friends that do and it and it makes me very sad because these are you know great people who
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
have a hill they need to consistently hike up. And I imagine it is something that drains your life force. And we're here to talk about some of the ways that you can change that.
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How Antidepressants Work
That was a one-timer for me. Yeah. It's not the kind of movie you watch over and over, but Lars von Trier can make a great, great flick. And I love Kirsten Dunst. She's great.
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How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, and it's accepted, and it's not like it's accepted through gritted teeth. I think most people agree that's – what most people agree on is they don't really understand what might be the underlying issue or the mechanism behind that is. We do know, like, a lot of the things that may lead to depression, if you're a woman, you're more likely to get – what did you call it, MDD?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah. Major depressive disorder. If you have suffered a loss or unresolved grief. And these are things that can compound. It's not like, again, that's different than being sad about, you know, losing a loved one or something like that. But it can help contribute to MDD. Same as if you suffer through a stress early in your life, that can all contribute.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
So we know some of those things, but we don't know that underlying mechanism. that actually causes it. And because that we don't exactly know how antidepressants work. We know that they do work and we know what they do.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
But if you really don't know the underlying cause, you can't just say like, yeah, we have antidepressants completely figured out because we know they work and we know how they function.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Well, thankfully, we know that's not 100 percent true because they are still studying and trying to figure this out. There was a study that I guess you dug this one up from last year.
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How Antidepressants Work
from the University of Colorado, go Buffaloes, that hypothesized that increasing, well, increasing serotonin, we know that alleviates symptoms, but it's not like it's just rebalancing your brain and picking up a level that you had that was low. They are saying from the study that maybe it's helping to repair the neuroplasticity in the brain and just sort of like
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How Antidepressants Work
their brain circuits that become just sort of stuck and lodged in that depressed state, and it helps to unstick those.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Yeah, for sure. And we also know, you know, you mentioned serotonin and norepinephrine and, you know, messing or balancing out the brain chemistry. What's literally going on and what they're designed to do, antidepressants that is, and we're going to talk about, I guess, all of them probably, right?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
They interfere with what's called the synaptic transmission of these things, of serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine. And that transmission is the movement of neurotransmitters from one neuron to another. They're leaping from one to another. They're talking to each other. They're getting to know one another. And it's that transmission that we know is what antidepressants affect.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
That's right, with the ultimate goal for all of these to increase levels of those things. Usually, I mean, some norepinephrine, as you'll see as we talk about, but more along the lines of serotonin.
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How Antidepressants Work
That feels like a good break point. That's a big old table setting.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
I don't know which is which, pal. Can you help me out?
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Well, no, I mean when I reach for the wrong one, just give my hand a little smack.
Stuff You Should Know
How Antidepressants Work
Perfect. All right, well, we'll be right back and start off with the star of the show, the SSRI.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
If you're a criminal and you ever think something might be shady and it might be a sting operation, just look at any name that they've given you and, like, read it backwards or see if it spells an acronym that says, like, we nabbed you, buddy, or something like that. Like, that's how cutesy they got. And you'll see. I'll just throw that out there, and we'll talk about them as they pop up.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
This was thought up. It was a brainchild of a guy named Howard Safir. He was head of enforcement operations at the time. FIS 7 was a big, big success. And he's like, what at the Christmas party? He's a little toasty and said, what does everybody got? He had too much of grandma's Christmas breath. And he said, what's everyone got? I need some fun ideas.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
And Robert Leshorn, the guy, the Brooklyn Bridge Delivery Service guy, still basking in the glow of those tailor made packages to the criminals. He apparently came up with this idea and it was football tickets. One of the hottest tickets in football at the time in 1985 was there at RFK Stadium. for what was then the Washington Redskins, now the Washington Commanders since the name changed.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
But they were the Redskins then. They had won the Super Bowl, beat the Dolphins in 83, lost to the Raiders in the Super Bowl in 84. In 85, expectations were high. Season tickets, 25-year waiting list for season tickets. Every game is sold out at RFK. And so offering up free tickets to criminals in the D.C. area seemed like a no-brainer.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
I feel like, I don't know, you should get a little gold star for your football knowledge right there.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. The story goes it was Joe Theismann. And in college, he changed it to Theismann to rhyme with Heisman. Oh, really? That's what they say. Huh. I'm not sure. Did he win the Heisman? I mean, the Heisman? Oh, you know, I'm actually not sure if he did or not, but his leg got snapped on national TV. I was watching that game. It was horrific.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
I don't think it was his thigh. I think it was a lower leg. But I just I remember it was that was the first horrific injury that I saw on TV that even though I didn't know it at the time, activated my mirror neurons in a way that was quite striking.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, they did that for up until not too, too long ago. And then they stopped anytime there's a serious injury like that. They're like, we're not, you know, we don't show the replays of these things anymore.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
All right. So we're back to Robert Leshorn. He's the one that came up with this idea to give away these tickets. He said, here's what we'll do. We'll create a fake TV station, like a rock music TV station, like a local MTV, basically. W-R-O-C video. Yeah. And that's going to head up this whole thing. And this is where they get cute again.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
The prize letters that they sent out were signed by station manager. I am Detnaw. If you'd spell that backwards, it is I am wanted. Get it? Yeah. And then the guy who they said you had to call in or whatever, the business manager that took the phone call, his name was Marcus Cran, C-R-A-N spelled backwards as Narc.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. Was that what I was doing? I certainly was. All right. Moving on.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yes. And supposedly, and I did not verify this, but there was one source that said the whole music when you called was I Fought the Law and the Law Won by Bobby Fuller.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's in the NFL Films documentary. You see the guy typing that name in a computer.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, yeah. They mailed out 3,000 of these letters to fugitives for a total of 5,117 outstanding warrants between those 3,000. Said, you won this thing, plus a grand prize drawing for Super Bowl tickets that year. The flagship international sports television was the fake station, FIST. So they did it again. About half the letters came back returned to sender.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
The others, again, were told to call Marcus Cran. to confirm their attendance. And a few of the people that called in were like, wait a minute, this is the cops. But out of the 3,000, it's not very many, apparently about 160 people RSVP'd, which would still be a pretty good take, I guess. And they said, all right, come on down to the Washington Convention Center at 9 a.m. on game day.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
We're going to have a big brunch and a big party and then shuttle you over to the game.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
They were all cops. Everyone there was a cop. Like the busboy was a cop. The person serving your drink was a cop.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. You know what? I'm not sure. Now that I think of it, this may have been a listener request. And I'm going to look that up real quick because I hate not shouting people out. Yeah, I'm with you when that happens.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, they had to shave a lot of about half of their mustaches. If you watch, I mean, you can see this whole thing. It's only like 12 minutes long, an NFL Films documentary on this on YouTube or wherever. And you can watch the whole thing play out. It's incredible. But it looks like a room staffed with 166 cops dressed up as different things.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. Even the cheerleaders who were not dressed as cheerleaders, they were dressed in tuxedos. Like everyone there was wearing a tux, which was hysterical. Right. Because, you know, it was 1985. That's the epitome of class. But they were all cops. And one of the women... that was interviewed, she was like, I didn't want to do a cheerleader. She was like, I was in this. I was a U.S. marshal.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
I want to I was rough and tumble and I wanted to, you know, throw some guys on the ground and put the cuffs on them. But they were like, no, we need you to be a cheerleader. And you're actually the first line of defense, because what they did was they hugged these guys upon greeting like, hey, we're cheerleaders. Hug, hug, hug.
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D'oh! Operation Flagship
And they're sort of patting them down and feeling for weapons, which is amazing.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, because the chicken was for the Padres, not the Chargers even at the time. The only explanation I saw in the video was they said something about Santa Claus was going to be there. And I don't know why. This is the part that has no explanation. He said, oh, we were like, we can't have Santa Claus, so let's get the San Diego chicken.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
I was like, he said that as if that was the most reasonable statement he could make.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Oh, sure. I bet there are. And I bet that's their whole act.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, I bet it's not Alfie. All right, so I'm a Bobby, right?
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Leshorn, as for his part, he's in the video. He's saying, like, nobody can act like a cop here. We got to smile. And he says in the NFL film scene, he goes, I know we're not used to smiling at bandits, but today we need to. I was like, bandits? What is happening in 1985? That's right.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
All righty. We are back. It is not Christmas, but it certainly feels like it in 1985. It's December 15th. The Washington Convention Center is decked out. There's a big TV playing highlights of the Redskins season thus far. There's music playing. Everyone's in those tuxes. They got red and gold balloons they're handing out. It's really fun to watch this thing play out.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
You've got these cheerleaders hugging and patting these guys down. One guy is, like, leaning in trying to kiss one of the women, and she's just, like, pulling her face away. Oh, yeah. And still has her armor on. In fact, she actually, Stacia Hilton, she was a U.S. Marshal, the cheerleader that they interviewed, or fake cheerleader.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
And later on, she had gotten out and was brought back into the service as an appointment as director of U.S. Marshal service by President Obama.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
He said, you're dangerously close to winning the Super Bowl tickets, too. That was great. That's how they do it in the movie, at least. So one person came that was not expected. It was an attorney from a local TV station that had the local broadcast rights to the games. Yeah. He heard about this flagship international sports television, a.k.a.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Thist, and he was like, wait a minute, they can't do this. I'm going to go give them a piece of my mind. Exactly. He shows up with a cease and desist letter, and the cops got him out of there. They were like, here, why don't you go have a talk with these two cheerleaders? They're like, buddy, you're going to blow our cover here.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, this is Louis McKinney. He's on a stage. And then again, this is just like, hey, this is the party room where you're going to get your actual tickets. And he's the emcee. He's the master of ceremonies. He's wearing a top hat, a literal black top hat. And he doesn't just go up there and say you're all under arrest. He settles everyone down.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
He said he wanted everyone to kind of get settled in and calm. So he's just doing a bit. He's doing stage work about how excited everyone is and getting everyone, like, pumped up. And then... And you can literally watch this happen. He says, on behalf of Flagship International, we have a big surprise for you this morning. Everybody's under arrest.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
And you see behind the doors, you see all these like SWAT cops is their version of the SWAT, their SOG, Special Operations Group. That doesn't spell anything clever.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
They have literal shotguns, and they're just like, right behind the door. Yeah, exactly. They rappel in through the windows, break through the windows. No, they literally just kick in the door and go running in with shotguns. And you see these guys that like... About a third of them like immediately sort of put their hands on their heads as they were being directed to and get on the ground.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
And about a third of them are like, what's happening here?
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, they didn't know what was going on. But, you know, soon enough, they had them, you know, face down on the floor.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Fifteen people at a time. Then escort them out a different door and just, you know, keep doing that over and over until they got everybody.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. So they did a lot of things. They found a lot of busy work for them to do over the years. These days, did you mention witness protection? Not yet. Yeah. I mean, basically these days they take care of witness, the witness, they run the witness security program, AKA witness protection. Uh, if you see prisoners being transported, um, like to court or something, those are marshals doing that.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
I mean, I imagine it was. I've got some bad news and some more bad news. Like there is no good news. It's like your friend has been arrested and you're also not going to this football game. And you also have to find your way home somehow. Exactly. Surely they gave him a ride home at least.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
I mean, I was laughing about they're their victims, but they really are. I mean, what a bummer.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, I mean, that's the... That's why you do it like this, for the safety and for the money savings, or the efficiency, rather, I guess, financially. But the PR aspect of this should not be overlooked. They wanted them to film this. They wanted them to know all the cutesy stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
So one day NFL Films would release a mini doc and future podcasters would talk about it and sort of make fun of it, but also bring them some attention. So the PR part of it was a very purposeful big deal. The guy I've seen lots of different numbers bandied about by how many people they actually got. I think one hundred and forty four arrests.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
is what Dave saw, but in the documentary, the guy whose brainchild it was said it was 101. Really? But if you do the math on 101 arrests, it cost them $22,100 to pull this off. That breaks down to just $218 if they got 101 arrests. And the average cost of just a per fugitive cost of nabbing a single fugitive is about almost $1,300.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
So that's a, you know, that's a big, efficient haul if you really look at it that way.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Um, and they're since 79, they've been in charge of, uh, fugitive investigations, which is to say basically anybody with an outstanding warrant is a fugitive. Um, you don't have to have like escaped prison. Um, if you're charged with a crime or, have been summoned to testify or something like that, and you jump bail, you don't appear in court, if you escape from custody, then you're a fugitive.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. I mean, he's probably right as far as Charles Watkins goes in – And Dave got some of this, by the way. He wanted to shout out the podcast Criminal. Huge shout out. Yeah, because they covered this, and I think Dave listened to that and got a couple of these things in the end here from there.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So go check that out for criminals point of view. I'm sure it's pretty great because it's a great podcast. But apparently there was a producer from CBS News named Alan Goldberg. who went back at the footage and was like, I think he just thought some of this stuff was a little fishier than it was made out to be as some big, huge success.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
And he saw footage on there of Charles Watkins, a 50-year-old man, saying like, you got the wrong guy, you got the wrong guy. And it turns out they got the wrong guy. They got Charles Watkins Sr. Charles Watkins, the murderer that was the felon, or rather fugitive and felon, was his son. He was 20 years old. They got the wrong person.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. I mean, it was mainly misdemeanor offenders, a lot of parole violations. There were six traffic offenses in there.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, exactly. There was one guy and you can see him in the NFL film stock as they're bringing him out. He was like, man, he's like, you know where I live. You could have come to my house. Basically, like, why did you drag me down here? Right. And make me go through all this. Just come knock on my door and arrest me.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
This turned out to be sort of the beginning of the end, though. It is, again, still praised as a success if you look at any U.S. marshal stuff. But they I think like this nine was just regular police work over a period of eight weeks. They got a bunch of more fugitives, which is great.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
And the U.S. Marshals are going to try and find you and either put you back in jail or put you in jail for your very first time.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, no scams. But they don't do this stuff anymore. I guess this was sort of the golden age of that kind of thing. They're still out getting fugitives. I think last year they captured more than 3,000 violent fugitives in Operation North Star, but that did not involve culture club tickets or sweepstakes prizes or anything like that.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. Have you seen it? No. Okay. I just want to talk for one quick minute about this because I heard this movie on two different movie podcasts I listened to. Scott hasn't seen. He covered this with Mike Castle, husband to Lauren Lapkus as the guest. And then it was also on The Flophouse, one of my favorite shows that I've listened to forever on the Max Fund Network where they cover bad movies.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, yeah. It's wonderfully bad, though. Like, I heard both of these before I saw it, and I was like, I've got to watch this movie now because it's so funny bad. Wow. And it is. I highly recommend it. The M. Night Shyamalan, Josh Hartnett movie trap, because it is so ridiculous and awful. And the choices that are made as a movie are just bonkers and hysterical.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, I like the Unbreakable movie and the Split, whatever. There was like a trilogy in that world.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, I thought all those were pretty good. But yeah, a lot of his movies are really bad, but still well-made enough to the... be worthwhile, even if it's just sort of like a cringe fun watch. And Trap is one of them. And, you know, whenever he pops up in his own movies, it's always so bad and dumb and obvious. And he does so in the funniest, worst way in Trap. Okay, good. I got to see this.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
It's really a fun, bad movie watch. I highly recommend it.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, we cannot finish, though, even though I did mention Homer Simpson earlier, one of the great, great Simpsons episodes. They had a sting operation where they were giving away a boat, right?
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Hello. Why are the pretty ones always insane? Favorites. Also, a little nugget on the end. If you're ever in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and why else would you be there? But going to the U.S. Marshall Museum, you can see Louis McKinney's M.C. Black Top Hat on display. Very nice.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Hey, guys. Love the show. I just started listening around 2018. I'm now realizing that was seven years ago. My commute to work is about 15 minutes in each direction, so your release schedule is perfect to listen to a fresh SYSK episode all the time. So fresh.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
I was listening to Automats and hearing Chuck weirded out about pie for breakfast is so funny to me because I'm a chef and I will never understand why pie, sweetened, thickened fruit in a pastry, is dessert. But a Danish or jelly donut, sweetened, thickened fruit in a pastry, are breakfast.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
And by the way, this totally vindicates you because when you were like pie for breakfast and I was like, that sounds so crazy. And you said most breakfast foods are dessert. And I was like, what are you talking about? You're completely right. I wasn't thinking about all this stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
I was thinking about eggs and bacon, but I forgot about the sweet side of breakfast, and all that stuff is dessert. Same goes for cake and pancakes. Flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder with a sweet condiment. French toast is plain white bread dipped in a sweet cinnamon custard, griddled, and then you drizzle sugar syrup on top of it.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
So, guys, Josh is right. Lots of breakfast foods are pretty much dessert, and I say if it makes you happy, there's no reason to keep it. away from dessert foods at breakfast. Your stomach doesn't know what time of day it is. Thanks for all the amazing information. I've learned so much from you guys and always have a great time listening. That is from Aaron Brittingham.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
And Aaron, thanks for proving me wrong. I forgot about all this sweet breakfast stuff. Thanks for proving me right. Yeah, and not to even mention cereal. I mean, what is Captain Crunch besides a bowl of dessert?
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
I, breakfast is my favorite meal that I never eat. But when I do, by God, I love it.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, I don't eat that stuff anymore. But if I'm on vacation and there's a good breakfast place, I'm going to party down and then I'll skip lunch.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. They said, hey, guys, let's have a little fun with this.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, for sure. We'll start with our first QT acronym. In 1981, they launched a program called the Fugitive Investigative Strike Team, a.k.a. FIST, because they're going to use their fist to get you. Right up your bum. That's right.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
And their goal was to do fugitive investigations, not just like one person at a time, but like, let's see if we can get a lot of these people at one time, high concentrations of these fugitives and round them up and bring them in. And how are we going to do that? We're going to do that with these really kind of wacky sting operations, which, you know, it's not like...
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
They were just out to have fun. There's a lot of merit to doing something this way. They're generally cheaper than just one at a time going after somebody resource-wise. They're safer because usually when you launch something like this, they're going to be unaware. They're not going to have a weapon on them like they might behind the door of their own home that they barely crack open.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
So it's cheaper. It's generally a little safer. We're going to talk about a few examples of these before we get to flagship. One very successful one was a program called Mr. Zip. And this is just very lo-fi. They would have marshals dressed up as U.S. mail carriers and they would just knock on your door and say, I got a package for Mr. Homer Simpson. And they would produce their I.D.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
and sign their name and they would say, thank you. You're under arrest.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
It's just it's also like it's almost like they wanted people to figure it out.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, it did. They mailed these fake letters saying they had won that trip plus 350 bucks in spending money. 14 fugitives fell for it. And, you know, they send a limo to your house. It's like a big sweepstakes, basically. And most of them were arrested in the limo, like the limo driver is a cop and they just pull over and say you're under arrest.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
One guy did make it to the airport at Miami International and they did have a fake Puno Airlines ticket counter. So they saw it through. I'll give them that much.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Right. No, for real. Oh, was it? Yeah. I never know when you're joking anymore. So.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
That's right. That was one of them. One was a job scam. It was called the Prior Offenders Employment Opportunity Program, where they would say like, hey, are you a prior offender? Like, I know it's hard for you to get a job. We can get you a job, 15 bucks an hour. Just call our number and tell us who you are and where you are. And we'll set you right up.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Because you might think it's mean to say you've won tickets to the Bahamas, but it's really mean for someone to be like, I really want to start my life over and get a regular job.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Oh, man, I thought you were going on the flagship. I was like, are you not going to mention this one?
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, this is part of Fist 7 in Hartford, Connecticut. This was, hey, let's do a fake TV station giveaway where you can win two tickets to a concert plus dinner and a limo ride. And, hey, it's 1984. You're going to see Van Halen on their big, huge rock tour. No, no, no. Boy, George. And Culture Club. You have won tickets to see Culture Club in 1984. Wow. And it worked.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
I don't know why they chose. I don't know if it was geographical, if boy George was just like, sure, I'll take part in this. He probably didn't know anything about it. Or if they did some research, did a little re and found out that these dudes love boy, love culture club. I don't know. I have no idea. But that's who it was.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
I wonder if they said bad karma chameleon for you, my friend. I love all the extras, too. It wasn't just like tickets to a concert. It was always like and dinner and a photo shoot. Like, I guess they really thought they needed to make it something someone couldn't refuse, I guess.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah. But we laugh. Fist seven knitted thirty three hundred arrests and is the largest fugitive roundup in American history still to this day.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
Yeah, you know what the edition this is? This is the law enforcement sometimes thinks they're so cute and clever edition. Right. Man, I can't wait to point out how many cutesy little names and acronyms pop up in this story. And this, and a lesson.
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
That feels like we have to take a break right there, right?
Stuff You Should Know
D'oh! Operation Flagship
All right. We're going to come back and talk about one that netted fewer arrests, but was definitely fun in Operation Flagship right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
I really wish I hadn't have told you that. I think I've told you that before, though, so you forgot the first time, so maybe you'll forget again.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
All right. So we're back, as promised. We're going to talk a little bit about the media and politics. Hopefully, in a way, that's just sort of quick and easy and doesn't ruffle too many feathers, because what we've seen is that is media of all stripes do this and politicians of all stripes to this. So it's not singling anybody out.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
But when the media gets involved in this kind of thing to shape public opinion. They do so with sort of a three pronged fork, which is agenda setting, framing and priming agenda setting being like, hey, what's what are we going to focus on editorially, maybe in today's paper or every day until the election? How are you going to frame this thing to suit what we feel is probably our slant?
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
And then priming. It's basically, you know, it's similar to the first two, but this is the subconscious things where we're going to repeat things. We're going to use certain words, certain images as to just sort of reinforce how we framed it.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
That's right. I'd vote for you, by the way.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Oh, of course you wouldn't. But I would. Never. I would vote for you for like, you know, Neighborhood Watch or something.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Oh, man. I mean, you got that one in the bag, buddy. You don't need my vote. Thank you. Dog whistling is something that, you know, you've heard more and more as a sort of a term used in, you know, social media, politics on the news, stuff like that. And that is when you use a word or a phrase that you sort of are in. Not sort of. You are very much intentionally whistling.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
associating with a negative racial stereotype but it's not explicit so it operates on the unconscious level and this is where they tap into um implicit bias something that everybody has and you know using these coded words basically uh there are things that i i will never take one of these it scares me to death so i would never sit down for an implicit bias test
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
because I don't want to know what my implicit biases are. It's absolutely terrifying because we all have them. I guess that's probably cowardly and I should know what my implicit biases are so I can try and correct those. But it's basically when they sit you down and you say, all right, respond very quickly, as quick as you can to a series of images or words.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
And anything within 200 and 600 milliseconds is your implicit memory. Anything after that you're thinking about, and that's explicit memory.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah. Oh, boy. That really lets us all off the hook, I guess.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Well, here's the thing, though, is when they when people sit down for these tests, they found that even people who explicitly disagree with any kind of racial stereotyping, like I would never do that. I don't have those at all. They even was about to say fail those tests. They even chart on those tests as showing implicit bias.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
yeah and you know we're about to take through a series of little things like that that might be mind-blowing for you where you're like oh my god i can't believe that works but just you know sort of put that in your pocket for now uh there was one study where it was again it was um unscrambling sentences half the people were given sentences that had words that were you know like healthier healthy and active lifestyle words um the other half got neutral words and afterward
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
They said, all right, you guys are great. You can go ahead and leave there. You can you can go up the stairs there and get out of here to the parking deck up there or you can take the elevator. And people who unscrambled the healthy words were more likely to take the stairs afterward. So, you know, they're like, hey, that's pretty much proof right there.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
They've been primed with these healthy words to make a healthier decision afterward.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah, I thought that was interesting because it was like they'd use words and finally like, hey, I wonder if words worked, if images only alone could work. And then he was like, hold my beer. Right. What about just temperature alone? So in this one, he asked participants to hold a something warm, like a cup of coffee or warm cup of soup or something or a frosty cold beverage. And then they.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah, exactly. And this is a big, big thing in cognitive psychology. And, you know, we're going to kind of get into the ins and outs of it. Some of it, there's a lot of, for some of it, there's a lot of studies that sort of indicate that there's a lot to it.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Bring them in a room where they have a conversation with a stranger. And they found that or he found he claimed to find that people who were primed with that warm beverage had a warmer impression of that stranger afterward. And people who had that cold beverage frostier had a you know, they felt frostier toward that person.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah, and here's my – I mean, I hope I'm not giving anything away for Act 3 when we sort of rain down our judgment upon this stuff. But, like, even when I was first going through this, I was like, I even know there are so many variables to account for in these experiments that there's no way they're accounting for them. Like the taking the stairs or taking the elevator.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Like, who was tired that day? Who had a bum ankle or who – You know, there's just so many different variables to account for on why someone would take the stairs or an elevator or why somebody would walk slower down the hall. Maybe they were super bored by this experiment. And so they walked a little more sluggish or something like that.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
And those types of variables, they weren't accounting for ever, it seems like.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
There's another part of this that we'll get to where there's a lot of studies that aren't so great or that have been fudged or data's been massaged or completely fabricated where it seems like sometimes they've been found out as far as researchers go. But it all comes down to memory.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah, but, you know, let's tick through a few of these that you found kind of quickly because I think it just illustrates, though, how a company or a political party would really latch on to this when they see stuff like this without kind of like critically thinking on how they got there. One study, exposure to fishy smells would induce suspicion on trust-based economic exchanges in a trust game.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
In other words, like they smelled something fishy, so they're going to carry that over as in something smells fishy. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
I would say this paper smells like tuna.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Oh, man. Did you text him and say, you're full of crap?
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah. Here's one that's interesting to me. Money primed people are more selfish. So if you're I guess they did this experiment with people who made a lot of money and people who didn't.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Oh, OK. OK. But the long and short of it is if you were one of the money people, quote unquote, then you would not. If someone spilled their pencils like one of the researchers like, oh, look at me, I spilled all these pencils. They wouldn't pick up as many pencils as someone who didn't have the money. So people without money are kinder. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
And if you're if you're talking to a cognitive psychologist, they'll say that you have a couple of ways that you remember things. One is your explicit memory or your active or conscious memory. Like if you're trying to think of something and you're actively engage your memory to think of a thing. That's what that is.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
I can see where that's going in a way, but there are also just so many variables in that, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Uh, okay. If, uh, if you were in this experiment, you were induced to lie to an imaginary person, uh, either in an email or a phone call.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
And then in a test that followed that, uh, of the desirability of different products, people who lied on the people who lied on the telephone, they actually said the lie out loud preferred mouthwash over soap and people who typed it out and lied in the email preferred soap to mouthwash.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Is it going to be one of those? And then implicit memory is the other one. And that's just what you remember on an unconscious level. So if someone asked me, what was your senior superlative? Wouldn't even have to think about it. Best all around boy. Boom. It just pops right out as if it were my name.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah, I mean, I sort of get it in a way, and we've talked about this in our Scientific Method show and other episodes too, where, you know, you put all this time and you want your thing to pan out that you think is true. So I get the inclination, but you can't, You can't fudge numbers. You can't look at stuff that just backs up your conclusion.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
You can't throw stuff in the file drawer that doesn't. And this is one of the things they talked about, the file drawer. You've got to make all this stuff public. And part of the problem is the media because they want to write about something splashy and super interesting.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
And so, like, there's a lot of things at play here that go into why somebody would do this beyond just being like, you know, you're a bad person.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. Let's do that. So because I think if we give some of these examples, it'll make a little more sense. For instance, this first exercise that Dave helped us out with this day found this one is called the lexical decision. And that is the idea that if you put a word up on a screen for a couple of seconds as a priming word, then.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Even the same person will react on a different day to the same exact experiment depending on a host of factors.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah. I mean, we've talked about the Stanford prison experiment a few times. And looking back, like, especially when you see the movie, I talk about who's presenting the experiment. It's like... Those guards showed up. It's like, you guys, you look ridiculous.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
You know, you look like an 18 year old who painted on a mustache and put on some, you know, mirror aviator sunglasses trying to be a prison guard.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah, which is very easy to market and sell to.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
I have to say, though, we've said the word cheeseburger so many times. I can't remember the last cheeseburger I had. All I want right now is a cheeseburger.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Well, you know, Dave said something about nasty McDonald's cheeseburgers. I saw that. I was like, what are you talking about?
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
You as the subject will indicate the next word on the screen, if it's real word or if it's a nonsense word, but that will be influenced, that's your lexical decision you're making, but that will be influenced by that priming word that you saw. So in this case, Dave, do you see example, doctor. You're sitting there in the lab, Bill Murray's on the other side, got the shocker already,
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah. Well, you know, Dave may not like it. Maybe he's a Hardee's guy.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
I got nothing else. These are always fun. I like these.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Hey guys, I listen to your wonderful podcast about three hours a day on my way to and from work. I want to say thank you for all of that over the years. I had a very funny incident the other day listening to the Sea Monkeys episode. I was coming home after a long day and that episode came on. I was really tired.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
And when I originally fell asleep against the window, I take it the person isn't driving. I hope not. When I originally fell asleep, I was listening to the history of Sea Monkeys. To my surprise, though, I woke up and heard white supremacists and the KKK.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
I panic and jumped out of my seat thinking I had missed my stop by a long shot, and I had finished an episode and started a completely different one. I was not expecting the Sea Monkey episode to take that turn, you guys.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
I was relieved to find out that not much time had passed and I didn't miss my stop, but also a little distressed to find out the dark history of such an innocent children's product.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
I live in Istanbul as a foreigner, and your podcast gives me a little taste of home. It's comforting on those days when I want to tune in to two smart guys talking about something interesting. Really appreciate you for all the work you do and all the fun moments you've given me on the bus. And that is from Katie Sezenler.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
uh doctor pops up on the screen for a couple of seconds that's your priming word and then all of a sudden uh other words pop up after that and our job as a subject is to see is to say whether that's a real word or a nonsense word and obviously you would think if the word nurse pops up, you're going to be recognizing that a lot faster.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
So it's all about sort of the speed at which you recognize this as a real or nonsense word. Nurse would be a much faster decision than if it was basketball.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Right. Or in another example of the same missing letter, if it was shower, water. Wash, S-O blank P. You might say poop there too, actually. Soap would probably be the word.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
So, you know, it's just a very intuitive kind of thing happening because your brain is working in a very unconscious way because, or I guess non-conscious, because it is primed by the words that precede the one with the missing letter.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah, and these are all really super basic examples of cognitive priming. But it does show a lot about how our memory works, that we're not just computers where we can just access a file by clicking on it very easily. We develop shortcuts in our brain. We take shortcuts when we see words relating them to other words. And so it just makes sense.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
You know, you could access something much, much faster because you have been primed. In other words, our implicit memory can be tapped into a lot quicker than our explicit memory.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah, and Deion Sanders just moonwalks through the background.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
I thought that was fairly entertaining for a not great movie, by the way. The Gorge? Yeah, it was highly watchable on like a rainy, not feeling so great day kind of movie way.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Oh, yeah, yeah, the chest one? Yeah. That's great.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
I wonder if when they go into the fMRI wonder machine room now, the person running it just goes, I'm telling you what's going to happen, a part will light up and then another part will light up and you'll all be super happy. Right. You've been primed. You've been primed and then Dion just very slowly moonwalks. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah, and that's, you know, it's all fun and games to just sort of look at these little experiments on a campus somewhere. But if it has a real world use, especially when it comes to marketing and advertising and stuff like that, you can bet corporations are going to sink some money into doing that.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Yeah. As long as you beat them over the head with it over and over and over again, because repetition is one of the real keys here. Yeah. Your brain just being repeatedly exposed to that stimuli is going to strengthen that association over time. And brands know that.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
And that's why it drives you crazy during, you know, especially like sports playoffs or something when you see those same ads over and over and over again. Yeah, it's a, it's big business. They're putting a lot of money into, into, you know, sort of manipulating your brain essentially.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
There had to be some research into their viewership or something, right? Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
Well, you know, our senior friends in the world are very concerned about their health and their health care. And they still love those cheeseburgers. That's two things we know.
Stuff You Should Know
Behavioral Priming: Buy, Robot Human!
All right. Why don't we take a break here? That's a good table setting, I think. And we'll get back to how this is used in media and politics. Should be no surprise right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And there was a bartender there named Betty who said he was a really well-dressed guy. He clearly had money. He was really sort of fascinating and charming. He asked me out like the second he met me, which is, I assume, what you do if you – Three days after you have left your wife and soon to be four kids. Oh, well, probably ask out the first woman you see.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
That's right. I don't want to give away what this one contains. So let's just say it is the strange tale of a man named Larry Bader.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. I mean, didn't people see that coming?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
OK, so this guy, John Johnson, a.k.a. Fritz, gets a job not there, but at Ross's Steakhouse. And basically it was like, hey, I came from an orphanage in Boston. There were 22 boys in this orphanage. They named us all John Johnson and gave us all nicknames so they could tell us apart instead of just naming us different things. It's very strange.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
But they called me Fritz because I reminded them of a character from a comic, the Cats and Jammer comic, Cats and Jammer Kids comic. Different times during that period, he also – would say that his Navy buddies thought his haircut made him look like a German soldier. So he went by Fritz. But either way, this is some new dude in town. And he was like, all of a sudden, the talk of Omaha.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
No, no, no. I know, but do you think he had it licensed as a hunting vehicle because he was hunting ladies and he just wanted to be able to tell people that?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
He's an eccentric dude. He wears a leather beret. His apartment apparently was just a bunch of like beanbags and throw pillows. He had champagne parties. He had Siamese fighting fish. He was an archer. He said, you know, I hurt my back. And so archery really helps strengthen the back. And so I took up archery. And then five weeks later,
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
He's won a state championship in Nebraska and then won 13, I believe 12 more, 13 total archery titles in the state. And at parties would do the eat the whole chicken, including the bone trick.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Well, you just gave it away. Not really. This guy, Lawrence Joseph Bader, he was an Akron native. So shout out to my people, my wife's folks in Akron, Akron, Akron, Akron, as she says, because of that bridge. If you've been through there, you know what I'm talking about. He was born in 1926 to a Catholic, pretty well-to-do Catholic family. His father was a dentist.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Uh, that's right. So he's, uh, he's working at the bar, but he, he buddies up with a guy that works at a radio station, uh, KBO in, and he, he lets him come in there to kind of just monkey around because he was interested in broadcasting and he's monkeying around enough to where he figures it out and dears himself. Like he seems to be doing to everybody gets a job as a DJ, uh, reading the news.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, for sure. Um, he, I mean, we can talk about some more of his flamboyance just because it's simply really funny and interesting. Um, when he wrote a personal check to someone, he would sign it Fritz only, and then he wouldn't put it in a date. I don't know why I love this so much. He wouldn't put a date. He would just put a season.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
So he would write a check to someone on the date of, you know, autumn. And then he would just sign it Fritz.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Well, it's the 1950s, I guess. Stuff like that would happen. It was also the 1950s. So you could collect your tip money as a bartender in a milk bottle and then just go hand that milk bottle to the uncounted, to the person working at the bank and fill out the deposit slip, one quart of money. And I'm sure they thought, oh, he's such a character, but like, now I got to count on this stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. So he's working part time at the radio station, eventually works full time there and then transfers over to TV when he got a job at KETV, the local affiliate there, eventually getting promoted up to sports director. And also on the side, he was advising like consulting, I guess, for archery companies because he was just so good at it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I did some archery at the camp. We took a big family trip with a bunch of families, and I got the archery set out, and it was quite fun. And I'm a pretty good shot. Oh, yeah? Any bullseyes? Yeah, I was hitting some bullseyes on the rag, and I've never even done much archery. It just seems intuitive, you know? Just kind of hold it steady and aim at the thing and then let it go.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And Livia dug up some dirt from a family friend who was like, you know, Larry and his brothers and sisters were spoiled little rich kids. Larry was pretty careless with his money because he could just get more anytime he needed it. Mm-hmm. But he was a pretty funny guy. He was a pretty fun dude. Had a lot of personality. And he used to do weird things.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I mean, I don't know what standard archery is. I was shooting, I bet, from about... Probably from about 35 feet would be my guess.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I don't know what standard is, but everyone's like, oh, yeah, you can come up here all the time and do this. I was like, I actually never do this. I'm just good at it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I know. Like, don't compliment me because you think I've worked at this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Let me ask you something. Are you saying that there are people who wear eye patches just for attention that don't need them?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Oh, man. I hope someone writes in that knows somebody or maybe that even did that for a time. If you did this in middle school, you get a pass. Like it seems like something John Hodgman might have done in middle school.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
All right, we've got another big reveal coming up right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
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Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Like one of his party tricks, he would eat a whole chicken, including the bones.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
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Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
All right, so I promised a big reveal. Things are going great for old Fritzy. He's in a town. He's scoring with the ladies in the back of a hearse. He's eating chickens through the bone, and people think it's the best thing they've ever seen. He's on TV, for goodness sakes, with an eye patch. Can I say one more thing about the chicken-eating thing? Yeah, like how do you eat bones?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. But put a pin in that. We're not just mentioning that strange fact for no reason.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. I mean, the only party trick I ever did is that thing with the hat against the wall, and that takes like two seconds.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
You put like a baseball cap on backwards, and then you kind of get up against a wall, and then you act like you're blowing your cheeks out. And what you're doing is putting the brim against the wall such that the hat kind of levitates off your head like you're blowing it off your head.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Hey, buddy. Next time I see you, the only... I mean, I haven't done it for years because I refuse to put a baseball cap on backwards because I'm a human adult. But I'll do it for you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
The guys out there with their hat on backwards right now are like, what's wrong? Is that not cool? No, it's not.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I did it once, and this is something you should not do. It's dangerous.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Did you ever actually pass out? Yeah. Yeah, I did one time, and that was the only time I had ever passed out up until that point, and it was very, very strange.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, do not try this. It is such a bad idea. I can't believe we were even talking about it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
All right, so like I said, he's living his best life. Then on February 2nd, 1965, a guy who knew John Bader, disappeared man, saw Fritzie, at an archery demonstration at a sporting goods show in Chicago and was like, that's Larry Bader. Like, I would bet my life on it. And his niece lives nearby. And I know this. So I'm going to call her. She's 21 years old. Her name is Susanna.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
She drives over and she's like, Uncle Larry, basically.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
That's right. So Fritzie said it came as a literal physical shock. He said, I don't know anything about that other fellow. And he said, why would I have volunteered to give my fingerprint if I was trying to get some scam new double life and new identity? Like I wouldn't have gotten fingerprinted. It seemed genuinely like he didn't know and didn't realize this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
He's like, I've got all these memories. I remember the orphanage. I remember growing up as Fritz Johnson. You're saying these memories are all fake. And this is really starting to bum me out, to be quite honest.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Oh, I could literally smell that. I was so in that scene.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Maybe. But he also didn't have wasn't like he had some awful family life like everyone. But by all accounts, he liked his wife and kids and enjoyed being around them as much as any dad did in the 1950s. I'm not saying he was doting, but he wasn't like, oh, God, I hate these kids and my wife's a real drag.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, he's a little bit in debt, but it wasn't like his world was crumbling down around him such that he had to escape. It was all debt that he could get out of with a little bit of work. So none of this was making any sense.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I got to say, if you're known for money-making schemes after a semester, you must have been doing a lot of money-making. Well, highly visible money-making schemes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, let me see. The largest city? Omaha? I said a large-ish. Oh. I was like, oh, man, that's not what I know.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. So none of this is adding up. He, yeah, you would want to keep a low profile.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
No, I liked it. The whole Omaha thing was great. So he hires an attorney, a guy named Harry Farnham. This attorney gets a team of psychologists on board. They examine Larry and test him along with the neurologist over about a week and a half. They used hypnosis on him. They're like, we can't see anything medically wrong with this guy. It doesn't seem like a scam.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Back home, Mary is or I'm sorry, Mary Lou is she gets this news. And she was like, oh, I mean, I'd kind of moved on with my life. I'm I'm engaged to somebody new who I've been dating for a few years. But I can't like I'm a good Catholic. I'm not going to like divorce Larry, who is seems to be back in my life now.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, no, not at all. So Mary, all of a sudden, her life is upended with, you know, every regional news outlet is banging on her door. The insurance company was like, that $40,000, which will be $400,000 in 2024, basically life-changing money, we're going to need that back. All those Social Security payments, we're going to need that back.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Even Eddie and his boat rental company, it's like, you owe us for boat damages, right? Um, Johnson, uh, Fritzie, you know, he loses that job. The TV station fires him. He gets that marriage annulled. He moves into a YMCA. It starts working at the bar again, making a hundred bucks a week. And he's sending money to Mary Lou and Nancy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And I think keeping about, uh, what, like 70 or 30 bucks for himself to live on. And it's just, it's upheaval everywhere you look.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. All my suits look like that. You know. Hey. Nothing?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
The whole Akron thing. Yeah. I mean, and his kids, I don't think we mentioned their ages. They were two, four, six and unborn when he disappeared. So maybe that six year old has a memory. The others probably had not even any memory of former dad.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
You threw me off. All right. So he's not lasting in college. He didn't last long in the Navy. But while he was in college, he did accomplish something because he got married. He met a woman named Mary Lou Knapp with a K. They got married in 1952 and within five years had three kids with a fourth on the way. And he was doing pretty well for himself.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
The drugs started to kick in around Barstow. Right. But what are you doing at Barstow?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Wow. I did not see that quote. Here's just the tip. Don't I'm not a big superstitious guy, but if you believe stuff like that, don't say it out loud.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
September 16th, 1966 is when he died. Did you say it was the tumor?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, that tumor came back, passed away. First Methodist Omaha had a memorial for him. Then he was transported back to Akron, buried in his family plot. And now how many of these explanations do you want to go over? Because I almost feel like we should. Just skip to the one that you dug up. That sounds the most plausible to me.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
That is super cool and a nice little footnote. But like we said, there were some theories that don't seem to hold water about different kinds of amnesia. But then you did some digging and then I went back and did some further digging once you gave me what you dug.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
and it seems like a lot of people on the internet uh and of course these are internet people so it's not like like science isn't studying this it's just sort of one of those things that's left to smart people on on reddit um but what the the general consensus seems to be on the internet is that he suffered from what is known as a disassociative fugue
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
which is a very strange syndrome in which you can have very, very sudden, really significant retrograde memory loss that can't be attributed to like being hit on the head really hard or something like other kinds of amnesia can be explained away in other ways. And this one can't.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
He was making the equivalent of about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year these days. as a cookware salesman. And that was about twice the median income at the time. So he's doing pretty good, but he still had some debts. He had a pretty hefty mortgage. He had a new car and was about $2,400 in debt.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
and stressed out from that or uh i mean here's what i think i think it could that whole boat trip and fishing expedition was just on the level and that's really just what he was doing he had all that cash and the briefcase the suitcase because maybe he just didn't want to keep that stuff in the car and he went out in a really bad storm and had a traumatic event happen out there
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
uh like maybe being tossed overboard uh i think that could have been the the stressful event um so that's one thing another thing too is when this disassociative fugue ends um you will probably remember your real life but you're not going to remember what happened in the fugue state my explanation there is that he died of a tumor so that might have happened to him given enough time and he just died before that that memory of the real life came back to him
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I mean, that seems plausible for what little I know about it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, this could I was wondering if this could be a movie, if there's enough there. And then I decided it probably couldn't be a movie, but it could be like probably like a 10 part Netflix show.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I got nothing else. Thanks to Olivia. This is a interesting one.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I am convinced. I know that this came from a listener, but I could not find it anywhere in email. So I don't think it did actually. I think I might've just been searching for like, you know, kind of crazy stories or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I'm going to call this Rare Shoutout. We don't really give shoutouts on Listener Mail. because we get inundated with people saying, like, hi, can you say my sister's name? But we're going to grant this one because it is for a nana, and we like to honor the nanas of the world. Hey, guys, hope this message found you well. I'm reaching out to request a shout-out for Nana, my nana.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Basically, you can multiply most stuff from this era by 10 and arrive at our modern conversion rate. So, you know, roughly $24,000 in debt is pretty hefty.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
She's such a huge fan of you both. Every time I call, she always mentions your show. And you would think you guys are family members. If you get into her car, the Bluetooth speaker automatically starts playing an episode.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Your show has brought her so much joy over the years and kept her sharp at the age of 81 and has given us something to connect over because Nana's high praise has got me hooked as well.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
For the last few years, she's always dreamed of going to one of your live shows, but it's never worked out. Now with her age, it would be difficult for her to travel to any future potential shows. My Nana is the most important person in my life, and I know it would mean the world to hear a message from you guys. It might be a shot in the dark, but I thought I would try...
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Thanks for your time and for considering the request. And that is from Nori Schalles or Schalles. I'm not sure how you pronounce it. But Nana, we just want to say thank you. And you're great. And we appreciate you. And I'm not sure where you live. Maybe either you or Nori can write in and we can find out kind of how close you are. and get you to a show somehow.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Maybe we'll go do one at your house or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Um, and he was also, and put a pin in this, we just, we're not mentioning this for no reason. He was also very good at archery, had won, uh, some, some competitions. So he was in archery. He was a fun guy and everything's swimming along in his life. making a pretty good living, a little bit in debt.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And then on Wednesday, May 15th, 1957, he had collected some bad payment checks from vendors from his business and said, you know what, I got to go to Cleveland to kind of clear up these bad checks with these vendors. He tells this to his wife, Mary Lou, who was, keep in mind, four months pregnant. And he said, so I'm going up to Cleveland. It's going to be the morning.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
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Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And then I'm going to probably do a little fishing in the afternoon in Lake Erie. And so I'll be home late. And she said what any partner should say in that situation, which is maybe you could also come home and be a father and husband instead of going fishing after you do your work. And he supposedly replied with, yeah, maybe I will. Maybe I won't. All right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
So I'm not saying he's some really bad guy. It may have been a cheeky response. That may have been how things went in their marriage. But he just was a little vague. And that will come into play.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, he paid it and he was like, all right, whatever, buddy. He did notice. And this is stuff that, you know, they interviewed Lawrence afterward for reasons that we still don't know because we're keeping this a secret. Well, we know. Well, we know. Yeah, sure. But he did notice that he had a suitcase with him. He thought that was a little bit weird. He said, you know. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
You got a storm coming. You might not want to be out there after dark. That is not what people in Cleveland sound like. Sure it is.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
So people don't go in there. That's why the Browns play. So he warned him about the storm. He goes out on Lake Erie. The Coast Guard sees him and says, hey, there you know, there's a big storm coming in after sunset. And I've noticed you have some running lights. So you clearly plan on being out after dark. And he was like, it's fine. And so they said, all right, go about your way.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Three hours later, that storm does come in. And Larry Bader has disappeared. They find the boat the next day about five miles away. The life jackets are all on board. There was a some scratches like it had hit some rocks. There was a bent propeller. And some accounts say that it was either a gas line had been disconnected or the gas cans were empty.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
But either way, and I guess it's the kind where the gas line runs directly into like a gas can. The sitting on the boat must have been. one of those kind of boats. But basically they were like, but nothing shows the kind of distress where a human would be completely missing. Like it wasn't capsized or sunk or anything like that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, one of the oars was missing, but, you know, just do with that what you will.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And you thought, I won't run into that body now. I might become one, but it's worth the risk. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
What's Catawba Island like? What do you do there?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Oh, the vacation date. That's always great. Man, that's nice. I love young Josh stories. All right. So they look for Larry Bader for a couple of months. The Coast Guard was like, no one's going to survive that storm if they don't have a life jacket. But they looked anyway. And they were also were like, well, he was a strong swimmer, though.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
So it's a little weird that like the boat wasn't that damaged and he's just nowhere to be found. Some people thought, you know, he had this big wad of cash. I don't think we said, but he cashed a $400 check. So if you do the math, you know, that's probably like $4,000. A lot of dough. So he may have been, you know, robbed and murdered or something. And also the suitcase was gone.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
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Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
So that could also explain that. But either way, they said, we just got to put this one to rest. And so in 1960, he was declared dead. And his wife got that $40,000 insurance policy and Social Security started rolling in. She went kaching. That's right. And I believe that's where we should take a break and see what happened to Larry Bader.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
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Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
That's right. Oh, I was so busy trying to work up a Saturn joke about that 800 miles, but I couldn't do it in time. We'll wait. I'll give you an hour. 800 miles between Omaha and Akron, roughly one-third the size of the distance between, and then I couldn't remember what it was on Saturn. The Cassini Division? The Cassini Division.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I know. So here's what happens. Three days after Larry Bader disappears, 800 miles away, a dude shows up in Omaha at the Roundtable Bar. You said his name was John Johnson. He said, I got this driver's license here. It's got my name on it. I was a 14-year veteran of the Navy. It's a Navy license, as you'll see. I got out because of a bad back, and I go by the name Fritz.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Oh, was this a recommendation? I'm so bad about that. I don't know. But we also have to thank a reporter for GQ magazine named Alex W. Palmer, who in 2018 wrote a pretty
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
For sure. So let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about what China was going to do about this officially right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
a banger of an article as well about these art heists of cultural, very specific cultural and art artifacts from China that have been stolen from museums in the 2010s and basically pose the question, is the Chinese government behind this?
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
All right. So we're back and wondering what China was going to officially do about this. In 2009, the government said, you know what? We're all bets are off now. We're officially going to get a treasure hunting team together and we're going to go send them around the world and investigate all this art that's in the United States, that's in Europe, that's in the UK.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
One of these guys, one of the chief detectives, his name was Liu Yang.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
and he went all over the place and he was like hey um this was in the summer palace this was in the summer palace you guys have our stuff and they noticed kind of not too long after that a lot of these museums on their website started sort of quietly removing mentions and web pages about these chinese artifacts on their websites
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, for sure. I did want to point out, though, when I was making the previous point that they took down these websites, but not everybody, because the Fontainebleau in France was one of those that were like, no, you can see right here on our website and we'll tell you like what this is and when and where it was looted, like what palace was sacked at the time.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
So they kind of, you know, held held firm in their belief that it was theirs, I guess. But yeah, these these robberies started in 2010. And we don't know exactly how many of these have happened. We're going to talk about quite a few of these, but they were detailed in the GQ article. And then since 2018, there's also been more. And it seems like it there may have been a concerted effort.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
And then other people just started, you know, because they became really valuable and there was a market for it. People kind of piggybacked on stealing this Chinese art and that the entire thing may not be some, you know, complete masterminded by one group or government kind of thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Do you think the Swedish police were like, guys, we might have our first riot in the country's history? Like, I've been waiting for this since I was a boy. I've been told a car fire means a riot. And they're like, what is a riot? And I said, well, Sven will explain it to you.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
So, yeah, smash and grab, six minutes in and out. They hopped on some mopeds. They drove those over to a lake and they got on a boat and they got out of there. And this was a very sort of, you know, clearly professional job, knew exactly what they were going for. And you'll see, you know, in a lot of these cases, it's pretty similar. Like they knew where the stuff was.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
They knew exactly what they wanted on their little grocery list, like you mentioned. Right. The next one was a few months after that at the Code Museum in Norway. They busted a glass ceiling and not in a good way and rappelled down just like a movie.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
That's right. And took 56 things from the China collection there. A lot of this stuff was from a Norwegian army officer named Johan Wilhelm Norman Mundt. who was a big art guy, eventually fought on China's side in the Sino-Japanese Wars in 1894 and 1895.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
But he was big into art, had a lot of this stuff, including stuff from the Summer Palace, and that stuff was taken in the first of the Code Museum's burglaries.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah. And this was a case where they used the car fire thing again, which is really surprising to use sort of the same method.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
I guess so. But it just seems like that would be a tip off. Maybe like watch the museum because, you know, Sweden and Norway aren't big riot countries as far as I know.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
After two? Yeah. Yeah, I would think after one. But anyway, they use the same method. They ended up the museum code closed the China collection for renovation when that was in 2013. And it's still closed for renovation. So if that tells you anything, I don't I'm not sure if that thing's opening again anytime soon.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Exactly. So that was Scandinavia and England around the same time. This is April of 2012. Meanwhile, in England, the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge was robbed. There were 18 items taken from here. Again, very specific Chinese artifacts. These were valued between eight and twenty three million bucks. The same month in England, the Malcolm McDonald Gallery was
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
at Durham University's Oriental Museum was hit. And they took two items this time, but they were super valuable. They were $3 million between the two of them. But these guys were caught. They finally nabbed somebody.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
The judge said in sentencing that they displayed crass ineptitude because they stashed the stuff in a sort of a swamp, a parcel of land that was super swampy, went back to get it, couldn't find where they put it,
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
And a witness saw somebody like searching the area and was really agitated on their cell phone, seemed suspicious, phoned it in and authorities searched the area and not only found the objects, but eventually arrested dudes.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
uh i don't think so um yeah i mean they figured this stuff was just successfully smuggled and eventually sold and private collectors have them but this was um i was i was sort of just surprised for some reason that these were you know irish travelers and i just figured they would all be chinese people uh but yeah they were just hired robbers basically so i was like oh okay once i wrap my head around that they were just doing a job for money
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah. Should we take another break? Yeah. All right. We'll take a break and we'll talk about more heists right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, and it was, you know, sort of the same pattern as before as far as getting in and out of there. And this time it was, you know, they were pretty good at what they were doing, even though, like you said, they got six of them. They questioned them. They still couldn't get the big fish. You know, I guess they're maybe not good at questioning. But they couldn't land the whale, unfortunately.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Paul Harris is an art dealer from Britain who he thought it was French professional criminals who did this. Again, just hired people. In one case, Irish travelers. In this case, French art thieves, I guess.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, I don't think almost seem like it. That seems like a certainty to me.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
So if you look at, you know, research on this, a lot of the research will say like, hey, all of these events are sort of part of this larger operation like we've been talking about. Since that article, though, I mentioned there have been other other art heists, other crimes. There was one in June of 2019 at the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Switzerland, this time in Geneva.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
uh took some couple of things from the uh ming dynasty in less than a minute this time uh they had dna evidence in this case and they did catch the people these were british dudes they said they were just trying to make money to pay off a debt so again it looks like another um either hired people to return these or just people being hired out because this stuff's valuable or just guys doing it because they know it's valuable
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, it's just too, it's just. You just can't, you don't know for sure, you know.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
No, of course not. As far as the Chinese government, you know, this whole time they've maintained like, hey, this isn't us that's doing this. The polyculture group, I believe the general manager even talked to the Global Times about it and said it was a nonsense story, the GQ story. We may sue. I don't think anything ever became of that.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, do with that what you will. But, you know, their official position as a government is like all of that stuff is illegitimate. Like everything you own, you own illegally. There's nothing like... If you have one like they had one in the airport, like you mentioned, if you have something like this in your private collection, the Chinese government doesn't dissuade any of that.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
I don't know that they officially encourage it, but they they definitely don't say like, hey, you have the stolen thing in your private collection.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, and some not so great. But we'll get to that. We should do a little back story here to kind of set this all up. And we are going to go back to about close to 110-year period known as the century of humiliation. And this is when China was kind of getting – just beat up on all fronts back then.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, I think if every piece of ill-gotten art, whether it was through looting or stealing or even started out that way and then were purchased and repurchased, there'd be a lot of half-empty museums if only super legitimately acquired art was on display.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, they're like, what are we going to put in the Chinese art wing of the Met?
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
All right, this is on swamp coolers. Hey, guys, you talked about swamp coolers in the history of refrigeration episode. We live in Santa Fe, New Mexico at 7000 feet elevation, where it's historically hasn't gotten hot enough to need air conditioning. Although summers are getting hotter here with a couple of weeks in the high to mid 90s every year now. It's pretty hot.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Our house was a custom-built house in 2005 and it does not have AC. So we bought a portable swamp cooler last summer to help just on those handful of really hot days when it's too hot to sleep. And it's really effective, I have to say, in the dry desert air. Some people have whole house swamp coolers on the roof with thermostats inside. They use a lot less energy than AC.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
So they're a good option in places where it's dry and not too hot. They only lower the temperature 10 to 15 degrees. That's not bad at all. So anything 95 we get for a short time wouldn't really work. I disagree. 80 to 95 is pretty substantial. Yeah, for sure. But that is from Chandra.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
A lot of global powers at the time were kind of coming in and saying, you know what, China, you should just sort of listen to us and do what we say. Particularly during the opium wars from 1841 to 1860, a lot of European countries in the UK forced China to, you know, to accept treaties they didn't want to accept, forced them to accept opium imports. I think it was...
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, sounds like a record name too, like an album title.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, like the Chickasaw Mud Puppies or something.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
19 different countries, you know, opening these treaty ports for imports from those 19 countries and accept them and basically said, you have no choice in the matter. Add to this later that century in the 1890s to 1900s, when China battled with Japan which ended up losing parts of Manchuria, losing Taiwan, had a lot of control over Korea at the time that they no longer had control over.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
And this all sort of leads up to the Chinese Communist Party taking power and Chairman Mao Zedong saying in 1949, we're not going to be subject to insult and humiliation any longer. That century of humiliation was a dark part of our past and we need to forget about it.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, it was. And these aren't the only things. I mean, all Chinese artifacts and cultural relics were looked at this way. But this was just a pretty notable space at the time. It was built in 1709 and then for the next century and a half, basically just got bigger and bigger. And it had temples, it had gardens and pools, and it had a lot of art, all kinds of art, like you name it, they had it.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Some of the most important art of, you know, that period of China and preceding it. And during the Second Opium War in 1860, the Europeans, you know, were again coming in and kind of doing their thing against China. And the government of China said, you know what? You have some people here on a negotiating mission. We're going to capture them. We're going to torture them.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
And so British, I think about 5,000 British and French forces took part in what has been kind of looked back on now as one of the greatest acts of cultural vandalism in modern history. When they looted and either stole or could just outright destroy or vandalize everything at the Old Summer Palace, essentially.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, a lot of this stuff, as you would imagine, like a lot of looted things during wartime, ended up in control of royalty in other countries. Private collections sometimes, but a lot of royal palaces in Europe ended up with this stuff. Queen Victoria even, and this is a great little find from Livia. Besides art, Queen Victoria apparently also got a Pekingese dog that she named Looty, as in loot.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Well, one of the most prized sort of things at this palace was this water clock. And it was, you know, don't think of it as a normal clock because it was what it really was, was a big fountain. And the 12 spouts were carved in the shape of the heads of the animals of the Chinese zodiac. And whenever one of the fountains squirted, that was what time it was.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
So that became a really big symbol of this whole looting, basically. It was in the European wing of the palace, but it went away, and part of, and again, they were, you know, some of these, some of the repatriation and these thefts, as we'll see, was all kinds of stuff, but it seems like that these fountain heads hold particular significance.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah. And one good way to do that is to have a ton of money. So a lot of billionaires from China obviously stepped forward and showed a lot of interest in growing their collections or probably even starting and then growing their collections of Chinese art from history. And some of them even opened private museums to showcase this stuff. They were working with the auction houses very closely.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
And like you mentioned earlier, the Chinese art market, it went from really not much of anything in the year 2000 to about a billion dollars a year in value by 2018. Wow. Especially the stuff that was looted by the UK and by Europe and the United States. And like I said, it's everything you can think of. It's statues, paintings, carvings, any kind of art you can imagine.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
According to UNESCO, close to 1.7 million Chinese objects are currently held in 47 countries other than China in 200 different museums.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, but we're going to ask for our stuff back and get most of it.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
Yeah, which we'll talk more about that, I guess, in a little bit. But as far as the government's involvement, officially, there was one group called the China Poly Group. It's a state-owned industrial company, and it was originally part of the Chinese military, and they traded arms. But in 2000, they said, you know what, let's diversify. And let's start a wing of this company called Poly Culture.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
And let's make it one of our missions to go and get some of these artifacts. They had their own museum to put some of these in in Beijing. So that was one of the big sort of groups trying to head up this effort. Right. Along with the Chinese billionaires. And then in 2000. Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses in Hong Kong auctioned off three of those heads, three of those Zodiac fountain heads.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
And this was a big deal. The Chinese Bureau of Cultural Relics was like, you can't sell this stuff. Like, this stuff's really important to us. It was stolen. It was looted. They They had no luck. I think they were trying to get it back for free. And they eventually said, all right, well, we'll just bid on it and get it the old-fashioned way, which they did.
Stuff You Should Know
Why is Chinese art being stolen?
That's right. Big thanks to Livia. She did a banger of an article for us.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, and that eventually led to just the term private eyes, right?
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, I imagine Lincoln was a pretty hard guy to disguise now that I think about his height, that mustache-less beard, and that hat. Like they're probably like take off the hat to begin with.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
First things first, get that hat off your head.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And they got a Sharpie. They drew on a mustache. And then they probably put him, if they would have been smart, they would have put him like in a wheelchair or something, which they may have done.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Oh, there you go. Oh, and told him to lower his voice. It was a very good movie, too. It was very shocking still when everyone saw Lincoln and Daniel Day-Lewis came out like this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And I clapped, but this time I also said, Schlemiel, hoping you would say.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
You don't question him. So you mentioned Kate Warren. Is it Warren and not Warney?
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
OK. W.A.R.N.E. She's very notable, too, though, aside from just assisting in this plot to save Lincoln or I guess action to save Lincoln against the plot. She was a detective like Pinkerton in a very forward thinking sort of way in 1856.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
hired her after she convinced him, like, hey, you know, there are things that women can do, places we can infiltrate, information we can get in ways that men cannot. And he saw the value in that, hired her, and then I think but four years later made her head of the female detective bureau. So they kind of staffed up with some women to work in these undercover roles.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And just super smart, you know, because she was right on the money. I'm sure there were great assets to their cause.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
All right. So we're back with more on Pinkerton. The Civil War would begin. And Lincoln put George McClellan, who we've previously mentioned as someone who knew Pinkerton through the railroad business. Put him in charge of the Army of the Potomac. And he said, hey, Pinkerton does pretty good work. I'm going to bring this guy in as sort of a head spy. We'll call it like a secret service division.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And he worked under Alan Pinkerton that has worked under the codename Major E.J. Allen and was pretty good at rooting out spies, but not so good at intelligence gathering and interpretation.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Oh, I think I said William too, didn't I? Or did I?
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
So Pinkerton would eventually leave his role in military intelligence. I think this was in 1862 after McClellan, who had hired him, was demoted. Essentially, he lost his whatever. Not role. Huh? Position.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, I guess he lost his position as rank leader or whatever. Those are made up terms. Not going to be emailed by Civil War buffs at all. And then he said, all right, let me go back. You know, he still had his private detective agency. So let me go back to doing that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And I guess we can talk a little bit about some of the other innovations, you know, aside from hiring women to work as as infiltrators and moles. He and I believe we've talked about this in one of our crime episodes. Yes. Did we do one on mugshots or just. I think it came up because criminal databases, maybe.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah. But when he brought it to the United States, he wanted to sort of codify it, I guess, and make it a more usable system and standardize everything. So he made all the pictures the same size. He essentially made little yearbooks. He made got handwriting samples and he would make these books and he would send them out. And they called it the Rogues Gallery.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And it was sort of the beginning of the, you know, the United States criminal database.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
We had fun ones and then real ones, like official ones. And I got one of each.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
I got actually I got two of the unofficials for the unofficials. I got best style. Oh, nice. That's really saying something in high school, man. I guess so. I don't I'm not sure how I won that one, actually. And then I got most fun on a date, which was very ironic because I literally dated one person my senior year. And I was just the good friend to all the girls that I wanted to date.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
I was that guy. But then the official ones that were in the yearbook, best all round boy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Well, you know, it's pretty. I still got my T-shirt. I'll wear it occasionally.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
So, best B-A-R-B, right? Yeah. All right. Just call me Barb from now on.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
I have a beloved aunt named Barb. I do too. Or Emily does. So she's sort of my aunt as well.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency technically was the name of it, but they were generally called the Pinkertons, led by Alan Pinkerton. And they're, you know, what they're known for is being one of the first or perhaps the first detectives And I say private detective agency, but not like we think of PIs. Not Sam Spade stuff. No, no, no.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, pretty stand up. They also turned down reward money and he paid his agents pretty well, apparently. And this is just sort of business nuts and bolts. But he had a pledge to never raise fees without the client knowing. Like, in other words, I'm not going to hand you a bill at the end. That's not what we talked about. And also would just keep all of his clients very well informed.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
They had internal rules that were like, I think in the pamphlet, the general principles of Pinkerton's National Detective Agency. They said things like the agent must be of a high order of mind, must possess clear and honest, comprehensive understanding, force of will, vigor of body. And you can't drink on the job unless you absolutely have to.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
As assumed, assumingly, some part of like some mole situation where you're like, hey, do you want to go to the bar with us?
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
I don't know. But I mean, it was it was early on in the going for sure.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yes. And that is one in which he as the character and Kate Warren as her character, they catch a murderer. They go undercover, of course, and catch a murderer and a bank robber using a Pinkerton agent, as always, that posed as a ghost to get a confession.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Just a detective agency that's privatized, like police kind of detective work.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, and a book potentially being like a character in a book would be, you know, back then as sort of tantamount to like they made a TV show about us or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And, you know, they did a lot of stuff, including, as we'll see, busting up bank robbers and then later busting up unions.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah. I mean, you got these, like you said earlier, it's a pretty good take when you rob a train and, you know, you get them out in the middle of nowhere, which is kind of the great the great thing about robbing trains. Everybody is you can just, you know, ride your horses up. You've seen all the movies in the middle of nowhere where there's no one around to help.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
But in this case, the Pinkertons are there. One of the first gangs that they got was the Reno gang. After the Civil War, they started robbing trains in Indiana and Missouri and banks and other places. But not from Reno, but they were the Renos, John Frank Simeon and William Reno. And in October 1866, for instance.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
They robbed the Ohio and Mississippi Express to the tune of $15,000 in 1866 money, which is a huge, huge haul. We're arrested, but they posted bail and then started robbing again kind of right away trains and banks. And so the Pinkertons were like, we're on the job. I think the Adams Express Company was like, we've had enough. We got to hire these guys.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, but they got their start doing, you know, God's work by working in the abolitionist movement, by helping to free enslaved people.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of those guys were lynched and hanged. And yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure if that's a good question, actually, if that was I mean, obviously it wasn't his call, but after he hands him over. But I wonder if he was like, oh, boy, I mean, how about how about a trial at least?
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, I bet they weren't cheap, though. I tried to find out kind of how much they were paid. But if he was paying his agents well, which he supposedly did, then I'm sure they were not a cheap hire.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, after the war, of course, they gained further notoriety by robbing everything in sight, you know, trains, banks, stagecoaches, you name it. And Jesse sort of built up this... Thank you. Thank you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
It's 1819 in Scotland, so it's not a pretty sight. No. Giving birth back then. But little Alan Pinkerton is born in Scotland. He is the son of a police sergeant. So, you know, law enforcement was in his family roots. And he went to the United States in 1842 at the age of 23.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah. I mean, it is shocking that only a dozen people died. I guess it's a testament to how bad of a shot they were. It really was. Collectively. Of course, the workers, you know, they surrendered, the Pinkertons did, because they were just so far outnumbered, even though most of the, I think most of the dozen were the workers that died, but the Pinkertons knew that they were vastly outnumbered.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
So they surrendered, but the workers lost because Henry Clay Frick, man, I have a hard time with that one.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
I know, Henry Clay people. Got 8,500 National Guard troops sent in after the Pinkertons left. And of course, you know, they broke the union and said, we're going to decrease your wages. We're going to increase how much you have to work. And this just became sort of a cyclical thing that was happening. The Pinkertons, early on, they were pretty good at infiltrating.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
But when it came to breaking these unions, the federal government would come in with the troops and do a far better job at doing so.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And we should kind of mention just one thing he was involved in early on in Scotland before he left was something called the Chartist Movement. which was, we're not going to get super into it, but it was basically a movement of the working class over there that tried, one of the main things they tried to do was extend voting rights to all men, non-landowners, that is.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. So, I mean, that really changed everything for the Pinkertons there. As far as strike breaking goes, it took a huge hit. Couldn't get a lot of work after that. But they did go on. They did anti-union espionage work, of course. This is something I never knew at all was that they they just they kept going. They were acquired in 1999. Yeah. By Securitas.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And I had no idea that they went on that much further after Pinkerton's death, after Alan Pinkerton's death.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Well, which is, you know, they could probably just do that under an overcoat. That thing's pretty small.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
They very much are. Figure very heavily into that storyline if you play the story part of that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
No, because I haven't played that in a long time. I'm not sure where I got it. It may have been, I don't know. I'm not really sure. They also figure in a bunch of movies, of course. They were in Deadwood. They were in The Long Riders in the 80s. And friend of the show, Paul Schneider, was in the great, great movie from 2007, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And the Pinkertons figure pretty heavily in that movie, too.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, it's pretty unusual. He died July 1st, 1884, right before his 65th birthday. And as the story goes, he slipped on a street in Chicago and bit his tongue, something which I did when I was a kid. I had 12 stitches across the center of my tongue to put that thing back together when I was like 12. But I did not die because I'm still here.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
But Pinkerton died as a result of this because it turned gangrenous.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
That's super cool. So she's there with him. Maybe I guess some of his sons are there and his wife, Joan.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
That's right. This is a little follow up on the GPS episode. Toward the end, I kind of poked fun at Garmin as being something that, you know, like my mom uses and not like a more modern system. But it turns out Garmin is still very popular because Deanna sent me an email saying, hey, a lot of cyclists use this stuff. And I asked her why. I was like, oh, that's super interesting.
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The Pinkerton Detective Agency
I said, do you know why they have, you know, their views by cyclists are still around in that capacity? And she said, good question. I think there are a couple of reasons why it's still the go-to for GPS. They've been around forever. They've been making GPS for planes and boats since the late 80s. So they had a really big head start. And then number two, constant refinement.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
While others are just starting to develop their products, Garmin was already fine-tuning theirs, and they had a 20-year head start, so they packed in a ton of extra features. For example, they introduced the first bike radar system years before anyone else, and the radar still blows the competition away. I even have a buddy who works for Wahoo, and he still uses a Garmin radar. Very nice.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Also, Deanna says they built a lot of brand loyalty, especially in the cycling world. Many of us still use them, even though the quality has slipped just a bit in recent years. We don't like using phones on our bikes because they're bulky and drain the batteries really fast, and Garmin just feels more polished and reliable for our needs. Who was that from? That was from Deanna.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, it's a trade he learned in Scotland. So he opened up that cooperage in Dundee, like you said. And a fortuitous incident happened as a cooper when he was on apparently this sort of abandoned or maybe just not claimed land, cutting wood, looking for wood for barrels. And he discovered a hideout of some counterfeiters. He rustled up a posse, got some citizens together and captured them.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And for his efforts, got a lot of local notoriety. And they said, hey, how about you become deputy sheriff here in Kane County, Illinois? And this is in 1846. And he said, well, I guess dad was a was a copper. And so maybe I should be, too, or a quasi copper, at least.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
I believe you. I just, I don't, I shamefully don't know Blues Brothers as well as clearly you do.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah, so that's what happened. Eventually, he would also be a special agent for the U.S. Post Office. And finally, in 1850, he started the detective agency, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. It apparently was the first detective agency He was named the first detective in Chicago, I think, previous to this, at just 31 years old.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And from the beginning, from 1850 till the end of emancipation, like I mentioned from the outset, he worked to assist the escape and freeing of enslaved people. I think he even had a volunteer to stop on the Underground Railroad.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So a lot of the other work they were doing, they were doing other work as an agency besides working in the emancipate or I guess the abolitionist movement. But this was, you know, again, in and around Chicago that didn't have a real police department at the time. And he they didn't exactly work.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Work as cops, though, it was sort of this weird hybrid of a thing like they were. It wasn't like police. It wasn't like a private detective agency, but they also weren't like full on cops. It was kind of hard to define at the time.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah. If you've ever seen there weren't a lot of photographs back then, but there's a very famous photograph of Lincoln at Antietam. Have you ever seen this one?
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah. So that's Pinkerton on the left. He's with two dudes standing in front of that canvas tent. And that's Pinkerton on the left and Major General John McLaren and. on the right of Lincoln, who I always just not forget, but anytime you see a photo like that, and there aren't many where you see like full size, the full size Lincoln doll. Right, yeah. Or cardboard cutout.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
He's just impossibly tall for back then. And then that stove pipe hat just adds to it, obviously. But I don't know if he wore that hat to further intimidate people, but he was just such a tall, lanky guy. It's just odd looking for that time period.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Yeah. We never got to eat that stuff. My mom didn't buy that stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
You just mix it with some, or put it on a casserole topper?
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Well, this episode is clearly brought to you by Stove Top Stuffing instead of potatoes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Well, you led me down the right path with Black Dove, so I'll give it a shot.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
Mm-hmm. Huh. I liked it. Maybe you just don't like things ending.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
We do our usual countdown, everyone, so we can sync sound. And you do that. Here's a little how the sausage is made. You do that by counting down and then each of us clapping. So you have a spike in the audio wave file that the engineers and editors can align so we match up.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
All right. Back to who are we talking about here? Pinkerton, not stovepipe or stuffing. So, like I said, he was, or like you said, I guess, he was buddies with Lincoln pre-Civil War and had gotten to know, what was his name?
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
That's right. So that leads us to a story, a pretty major story early on. I guess it's not that early on. It's about 11 years into the detective agency. But Pinkerton learned of a assassination plot against President-elect Lincoln at the time. And there was a barber in Baltimore from Corsica. His name was Cipriano Farandini.
Stuff You Should Know
The Pinkerton Detective Agency
And he wanted to kill Abraham Lincoln when he was coming through Baltimore, when Lincoln was on his way to Washington. And Pinkerton, you know, found out about this and was like, you're not going to kill my buddy. I'm going to thwart your plan.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Well, yeah, that's a slippery slope right there because then all of a sudden if things go wrong, you can say, well, the doula told me to do that. And the doula is like, I'm toast. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Yeah. And I mean, if you already have an idea of what you want, the doula can kind of tell you how to make that happen. Or if you have no idea what you want, the doula can also tell you some other alternatives that you might not have thought of. I saw a Parents Magazine article about doulas. They laid out basically what you can expect from the average doula for the doula's fees.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
One to two in-person prenatal visits. And then access to the doula for follow-up questions through email or phone calls. Their full attention and presence during your labor. And then sometimes frequently I get the idea, a follow-up visit at your house after the baby comes home. that typically if you hire a doula, this is about the average you can expect to them.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
There's definitely a lot of differences. Some will give you a little more, some will give you a little less. Some will charge more, some will do it for free. It's just all over the place as far as what you're actually going to shell out and what you're going to get from a doula. But for the most part, you...
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
The doula is going to have met you before you give birth, and then the doula will be there throughout the whole labor and delivery process.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
I found, I think it was through a Buzzfeed article, I stumbled upon a, there's a huge rift in the doula community, actually, between the typical traditional approach to being a doula, which is, I'll work with you on a sliding scale for how much you can afford, or this is my fee, but I'll throw in an extra visit just to, you know, make you feel like you're getting your money's worth.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Or I'll do it for free. I just want to help you. Because Dona's mission is a doula for every mother who wants one. Like every mother should have a doula, basically, right? And then there's this other group called Pro Doula. And they are...
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
can't stand doulas who who charge less than like a a decent amount for their services or do it for free they actually call uh doulas who who do this for free oxytocin vampires like they're just there to to bask in the reflective glow of this this amazing experience that the mother just went through the parents just went through um and they're really kind of
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
kicking other doulas around and they're kind of bullies in a really weird way. But there's like this big debate over whether doulas are undervalued or underselling themselves. But I mean, I definitely get the idea that
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
I guess is what I'm trying to say. You can be a male doula. You can, although this is the only article I ran across that in. Did you find anything about that anywhere else? No, I mean, it happens. It's just super rare.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
every woman who wants to have a doula should be able to have a doula regardless of her income you know yeah that makes sense to me like a pro bono for uh for people that don't have as much money yeah on the other hand i also get that if you are a doula and you're doing your job really well that yeah you should expect to be paid um i think there's a happy medium i don't think it has to be like nope this is the price and anybody who goes underneath it should be ostracized from the doula community
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
And then so during labor, this is where the doula shines, right? They're there to help with alternatives to pain, right? Treatment, right? So again, they can't administer any kind of drugs or anything. I would guess that they could even get in trouble for giving you an Advil. But they can do other things, like they can massage you in ways that you had not ever heard of before.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
That helps with labor pains. I came across this one technique where they pull on a couple of toes, specific toes, and it helps actually move the labor along if you have a slow labor. There's kneading techniques, there's stroking techniques, pressure on the bottom of your feet.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
There's all sorts of stuff they can do at various times throughout the labor and delivery process that can help alleviate the pain that you're going through. And that's one of the big roles that they play during labor.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
That's cool, man. Yeah, it was amazing. Did I ever tell you the story for when my niece Mila was born and my sister-in-law was giving birth and she let everybody in the –
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
labor room i was surprised you can have a party in there yeah and um when she really was going into into she was delivering um i stood back behind this curtain right and um the doctor comes in and walks past me and kind of gives me a nod and i hear him go to the crowd he's like you know there's like some guy standing behind that curtain right they're like yeah he's supposed to be there
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
I'm like, okay, I've heard enough here. I'm going to the next room.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Yeah, yeah. And this is actually, so this is an ancient thing that's kind of come back around full circle. And even the name doula is a Greek term used way back in the classical Greek days. when a woman giving birth would have female servants attending to her during birth, helping her with it, probably feeding her some grapes, waving palm fronds on her, that kind of thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
All right, Chuck. So if you wanted to become a doula, basically you start in training at age three. You're sent off to Europe to apprentice at the one doula school in the world. And they make you eat a lot of magic cake. And then when you're 60, you get to actually start out on your own.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
You don't even have to be certified. It's not law that you have to be certified.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Right. So when you're when you're starting out, you would go to if you wanted to get certified, you would go to one of the certifying bodies like Dona or what are the other two that are mentioned in here? There's one called CAPPA. Sure. And then the American Pregnancy Association. All three of those certify and train doulas. Donut, from what I could tell, is the oldest, obviously.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
It was the first one. And it seems to be the most respected. But I would guess if you get your training from any of those three, you're probably doing pretty good. They'll offer online classes, in-person classes, self-paced study, and you typically need to go take a birthing class, a breastfeeding class. Because, again, you need to be current on all the stuff that's going on with breastfeeding.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
So doula means female servant or female slave, depending on who you're talking about. And after, you know, ancient Greece fell, Rome and the Roman Empire fell, and all of civilization took this weird course, throughout it all, women were helped by other women while they were giving birth. Basically up until about the first third, first half of the 20th century in the West, where
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
labor and delivery, right? If you took these classes 10 years ago and then did it again today, you would probably find some real differences in new stuff that's been discovered in the last 10 years. So you would need to be pretty current, even if you've had kids of your own before. And then you also need to attend at least one, I have the impression that multiple
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
births under the apprenticeship of another doula who's already certified or trained or experienced before you really go off on your own to become certified yeah and and that's I mean that's just I would I would say how many births have you been a part of you know, already before I hired a doula? That's a pretty big question if you ask me.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
So they would want to say, well, I've been, you know, I've assisted in like three or five or however many, but you're going to be my first solo. Your first solo flight?
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
I saw like $3,500 at least for each of those cities.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
But again, if this is the doula's first time on their own, you're probably not going to be paying top dollar. And if you say, look, I really, really, really want to have a doula, at my child's birth, but I really genuinely don't have this money.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
I actually got a lift once from a doula, and she was talking about having to deal with this family who clearly was very well off, but was pleading poverty. And she was like, I'm the one who's a doula and driving a lift here, and these guys are trying to shortchange me. Interesting. I don't know. Thank you. Thank you.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
hospitals entered and all of a sudden it was just the mom giving birth surrounded by a bunch of nurses and doctors is that true yeah because i could see scenarios where there were uh women in the birth room helping along
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
I think once you started to get into hospitals and the physicians in the hospital starting asserting their authority more and more, especially through drugs, like I saw that when hospitals kind of took over the birthing process or took responsibility for it from the family and from midwives and moved it into the hospital, they used to administer a lot of sedatives.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
as part of the birthing process, as part of labor. You could understand why they would, but then there were all sorts of complications from it, problems from it. So they stopped giving sedatives as much. And about that time, women who were giving birth Started to like kind of come out of it and look around and say whoa.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
It's just me and you guys in here I need some family members in here right and at the time like if you were a dad You were not in there. You were not in the delivery room at all. You were out in what was called the stork club handing out cigars maybe pacing and And the reason why was because to the doctors involved, it was just another medical procedure, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
So you're not going to have randos who have nothing to do with the actual procedure in the room during a procedure. They treated childbirth the same way. But women started to say, no, I need more than just you people who I've never met before really attending to the birth of my child. And so dads started to come in and then more family members. And then now doulas have definitely kind of come back
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
like they were originally. That's my understanding of the whole thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Right. And I think at first, what was the name of the woman who brought it back?
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
So she had like a pretty good idea that was actually ahead of its time. When doulas really started to come into use and come into their own as a profession was in the 80s. And the reason why they came into wider use was because hospitals were going to C-sections a lot earlier. C-sections went up from 1970, 4.2% of live births in the U.S. involved C-sections.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
16 years later, in 1986, a quarter of live births in the U.S. involved C-sections. And there were a lot of complications with C-sections. And so... You could have your husband in there, you could have your mom in there, you could have friends, but they're just there for you. One of the first services that doulas started offering was to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, does she really need that C-section?
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Are you sure about that or are you just doing it because you can charge more money? I think that was overstating exactly the interaction they had, but that was the role they had was to basically provide a barrier between a doctor who wanted to just give a C-section because he wanted to go home and the mom who really didn't want a C-section.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Yeah, and is coming from a place of empathy and sympathy and, most importantly, experience. Like you said, most doulas have had children of their own, but they've also, after a while, attended other births, too. So they know what they're talking about.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
They know what to expect, and they can tell you what to expect, which can make the whole process easier, I would imagine, for any mother giving birth.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Yeah, that was question eight. Would you like to use a doula?
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Yeah. Twenty seven percent said yes. And so if you get the impression that like a doctor would not really prefer a doula to be in the labor and delivery room, you've kind of read between the lines there.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Especially at first, the medical community saw doulas as they were starting to really kind of come into use in the 80s as basically meddling busybodies who could potentially put their patient's life in jeopardy, right? But then in 1992, Doulas of North America was founded, DONA. It's like the first doula licensing body, certification and training and licensing body.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
And they were founded, it was founded by medical professionals, which kind of created a bridge. It bridged the gap or... kind of smoothed over the rough feelings between the medical community and the doula community. And it also added a real air of legitimacy to the profession of being a doula.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Yeah. Now all love doula. That's right. One of the other reasons or functions that doulas provide you kind of hit on is that they provide a service that hospitals used to provide through nurses, right? Where if you had a nurse in a labor and delivery room. They wouldn't spend as much time or give you as much attention as, say, like your mom would or a friend or your husband even.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
But they gave you a lot more early on than they did as surveillance of patients moved to electronics, right? to where somebody could just kind of sit at the nurse's station and check on everybody and they didn't have to go into the rooms. And now you nurses were charged with watching even more people at once, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
So the personal attention dropped dramatically as electronic surveillance of patients increased and the doulas kind of came in to fill that role as well.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
So you want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break, and then we'll come back and talk about what to expect when you're expecting to work with a doula.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Childbirth edition. Yeah, we are traipsing into more territory. What does that mean? I don't know. I mean, we've done two on, you know, feeding babies. Yeah. Done female puberty. Yeah. This will get into childbirth a little bit.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
Right. Yeah, they're not allowed anywhere near the medical stuff. But they need to know what the medical stuff is so that they can say, well, this is what they're about to do, or this is what they're suggesting right now, and here are your options.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Deal With Doulas
And then also, when they're administering the medical stuff, which can be pretty uncomfortable pretty frequently, I would imagine, the doula's there to kind of tell the mom what to expect and to comfort her in all sorts of ways.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
Look around, everyone. Every car you see is probably on AutoTrader. Like that sleek convertible that turned heads when it picked you up from the airport, or the custom ride from your favorite van life couple on social media. Even that vintage sports car that's tailing you a little too closely. New cars, used cars, electric cars, even flying cars.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
All right, so we're back. There were 25,000 total patients in the system in Michigan State, in Michigan State hospitals. And he went through all of these, you know, he sort of tried to cull them down to, ideally, to Christ figures. He found a man who thought he was Cinderella. He found a Mrs. God. And then about six people who thought they were Christ, and three of them
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
were really into this idea and really consistent with their belief that they were Jesus. And two of them happened to be at Ypsilanti. So he was like, this is perfect. I'll just transfer the third in and we'll get going.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
Yeah, exactly. So they were willing participants. In so far as, yeah, they got these great perks. Worth pointing out. So he changed the names of the guys to protect their families and to protect them to some degree. But we should go over sort of the bios of the three men. Should we say who played them in the movies? Will that help people?
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
Well, I mean, the acting, they did a good job. It was just the material. They're all great actors, you know.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
It's just when you write – I don't want to call out the script writer, but it wasn't that good.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
The Queen movie, that's what I called it.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
It wasn't so much that. And again, I only watched the first act before I realized it was just really sanitized and like a feel-good type of thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
No, I mean, there was some tough stuff in there. It's not like it was completely like, hey, this is great, but it kind of reeked of like an Awakenings kind of thing, and I liked Awakenings.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
We're comfortable doing that at times.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
So the first guy was in his late 50s, Joseph Cassell, 58. He had been in the hospital for about 20 years and was Canadian, born and raised in Quebec. And he was named after Josephine, his female relative in his family, named Joseph. And I think the... The big takeaway from his childhood was that it was not good.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
A very abusive father, very quick-tempered man who abused his mom, and his mom actually died while giving birth to her ninth kid. And so he had a rough go of it from the beginning.
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It's funny. My daughter finally lost her first tooth, and it's changing the way she talks. She's got a little funny little lisp, and she's always tonguing on it, and I'm like, I'm going to be there with you soon. I've got to get this front one redone.
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Yeah, and by the time he got around to Rokic or Rokic found him, he was in a pretty bad state after those 20 years. He had about half of his teeth left in his mouth. He was still hoarding books, carrying around books everywhere. And when asked who he was, he said his name was Joseph. And he said that I am God. And I guess Rokic said, well, you'll do just fine.
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Yeah, and it seems like the drinking was the – anytime you have an undiagnosed condition like this and you pour alcoholism on top of it or any kind of drug addiction, it's just going to be even worse. And eventually he was arrested for public drunkenness. It was a pretty violent arrest, and in jail he was violent, and he was saying he was Jesus Christ, that he was God.
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and that he was reborn through his first wife, Shirley. I believe she had passed away and he did get remarried. And it was Shirley, the queen of heaven. And at this point, they committed him to a mental hospital when he was 53, where he got that diagnosis. And he was the one that was easily the most far gone and toughest to reach and sort of walked around mumbling.
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Yeah, I'm going to wait until right before we have live shows so I can pull that front tooth again.
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He also didn't have many, if any, of his teeth. And but occasionally would like still had that violence in him where he would have these sort of violent outbursts, but then kind of calm down again.
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I don't think so. I think it just could be scary at times.
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Okay, no flying cars yet, but as soon as those things get invented, they'll be on AutoTrader. If you see a car you like, it's probably on AutoTrader. That's kind of their thing. AutoTrader.
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So Leon was perhaps one of the saddest of the three cases in that he was had only been hospitalized for about five years. He was younger. He was 38 years old. And he was the snap judgment is great because they had his two initial graduate assistants on Richard Bonnier and Ron Hoppe. So like real firsthand experience on the podcast.
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And they were saying that he was the one that broke their heart the most because he was the one that most likely could have been rehabilitated. And it just tore them up. And they liked him a lot. He was a real personable guy. And it was very engaging with his stories. And they really thought that they could have helped him had it not been, you know, in part by what happened with Rokeach.
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Yeah, so Leon's deal was his mother was almost certainly schizophrenic as well and had delusions, religious delusions. So he was raised in a household with basically a religious fanatic, and that impacted him from the very beginning. Of course, he ended up diagnosed with schizophrenia as well. But growing up in that kind of environment definitely, I think, led to the Christ thing.
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Yeah. I gave up after the first one on wearing that thing. I was just like, who cares?
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Right. And that was Walton Goggins.
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Yeah. So this is when he hires those two grad assistants is when he finds the guys, gets this experiment going in earnest. And, um, You know, his hypothesis was that if I can have these three men confront one another about them being the real Christ, that it could rock them into what he saw as reality and get them out of these delusions.
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It was, as is this podcast episode.
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And that didn't happen – well, it didn't happen at all through the experiment, but initially – They what they did was they really dug in and they each had their own way of doing so. But they each dug in and said, no, no, no. I am the real Christ. And they each had different sort of methods of dealing with the others. But none of them wavered initially. Right.
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Yeah, for sure. I think Joseph said Joseph was more one to sort of laugh it off. He said, there's nothing wrong. Yesterday, I knew I was what I am. Today, I am what I am. I'm not worried about losing my identity. And we also should point out that Joseph and this was portrayed in the movie, too, by Peter Dinklage. He was spoke with an English accent.
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He thought he was convinced himself that he was from England. that he was descendant of royalty, and that the hospital was an English stronghold.
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It is, and that was one of the things that came through on that snap judgment with the two research assistants. was that their take was that these men were generally, like after the initial sort of denial stuff, that they were generally pretty respectful and wanted to give each other the space to believe that they were Christ if they wanted to.
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And what that showed was empathy, and that's something that none of them saw coming. At this point, Rokic is being – kind of, uh, hassled by these two grad assistants saying, Hey, listen, man, these guys are kind of okay with this and you're taking this thing too far. And eventually he was, he ignored them basically. And eventually they quit before this next phase starts.
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Yeah, The Three Christs of Hypsilanti. And I studied this. I remember this from studying it in psychology class in college and got kind of into it at the time.
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And, uh, because they didn't agree with what was going on because they saw these three guys that were generally respectful for one another. They saw, um, Rokeach would do things like, uh, a journalist wrote a story about them at one point, uh, that was really, obviously not flattering at all to the three Christs.
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And Rokic read this aloud to them, like he was just trying to push their buttons and initiate this conflict. And the two grad assistants eventually were like, we're out of here.
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Totally. Should we take a break before phase two?
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All right, we'll be right back.
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I followed them on tour. It was great. I don't—for some reason, I thought I read the book, but— I don't think I read the book. I think we just covered the book in college and in a psychology class. Like, I don't think they made you read the whole book. We basically just kind of went over it. But I had been pretty fascinated for years.
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So before stage two starts, when things get really unethical, well, not before. This is kind of part of the unethical. The two grad assistants had left and he hires this new young pretty woman as a grad assistant and basically tells her to flirt with Leon and to see if he can make her make him fall in love with her. And that's exactly what happened.
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And, you know, eventually when Hollywood made a movie about it four years ago, I was excited and even paid to rent that thing.
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And Leon fell in love with her and was destroyed when he basically came to realize on his own that that was never going to happen for him.
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Yeah, this just kept getting worse and worse. So he identified these authority figures in all three of them. I guess, to his credit, he laid off of Clyde because, I mean, I don't know if it was so much empathy as it was he knew he wasn't getting very far with Clyde.
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Yeah, because Clyde definitely could be a little scary. So he laid off of Clyde, but he found that – Joseph said that a superintendent of the hospital named Dr. Yoder, Y-O-D-E-R, was his dad. And Leon said that he had a wife. He had a couple, his wife, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was an uncle reincarnated as Michael, the archangel. Archangel?
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pretty good i watched the first half hour and realized oh man they've just sort of disneyfied this thing and it's not good yeah although our buddy kevin pollack is in it and he's always great hey that guy can steal a scene better than the hamburglar yeah the movie uh just so everyone knows is called the three christs of hypsilani from john abnett starring richard gear is the name changed dr
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Right. It sounds a little confusing, but when you're dealing with stuff like this, I think it has to be a little confusing. Yeah.
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Yeah. And he we should point out that he supposedly had gotten not supposedly. I think he did get the hospital's permission to sign off on this as long as he said, listen, it's all going to be positive stuff. I'm not going to be writing them letters saying to go start a fight or anything like that.
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So I'm going to send them positive message messages and I'm going to stop if this becomes upsetting to these guys. And so they said, sure, go ahead.
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Yeah, and eventually what broke it was, as posing as Madame Yeti Woman, asked Leon to stop using the name Dr. Dung. The name thing seems to have been a sticking point with a lot of people. Or maybe he just thought that that would, since he... held onto that so strongly, that would have been like the toughest thing to make him do. And that was sort of it.
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He was asked about the letter and Leon doesn't really say anything about asking to be, to drop the name Dr. Dung. He just starts talking more and more about God being both male and female and insane and sane and said, I don't care for the insanity of God. And then said, I don't want any more letters and basically kind of shut it down.
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And then the three Christs in the movie are portrayed by Peter Dinklage, one of my favorite actors, Walton Goggins.
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Yeah, and when he said, I don't want these letters anymore, I don't want to receive them, you would think that that's when Rokic would say, all right, well, let's just stop this altogether. But he didn't because he remembered that Leon had another authority figure in his life, which was his uncle, George Bernard Brown, a.k.a. the Archangel Michael.
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And so he said, hey, I'll have someone call and pose as his uncle now. And this didn't work from the beginning. Leon – I guess the voice was just so far off or maybe Leon was just really wise to it at this point, said, you know, no, no, no, this isn't even close to the voice. Goodbye and hung up. And then they asked him about the call and he said, I don't believe in mental torture, sir.
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So it seems like he was sort of onto him at this point or, you know, was onto him from the beginning, but onto him about this ruse.
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I think that he— No, I mean from the beginning of the experiments. He was wary of him.
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Yeah. So this was the one where the superintendent, the fictional Dr. Yoder. was the authority figure for Joseph, who he saw as a father figure. And so, of course, Rokic is going to play up this whole father figure thing in the letters, saying that he loved him like a son. He just wanted the best things for him.
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And if you remember from the original sort of quick bio, Joseph's father was awful and abusive. So he's really playing into his deepest sort of insecurities here.
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It's really tough to even research this stuff.
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He's just the best. And then what's the guy's name? Bradley Whitford, who's also great. Everyone in it is good. It's just one of those movies that they – I think just over-sanitized and should have made a documentary instead.
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Yeah, so the stomach pills, placebos supposedly worked. And then he said, all right, well, that worked. So I'm going to give you pills to basically cure your mind. And if you want to fix yourself for good, take these pills, which is – I mean, this is so far off the charts of unethical. Like, I can't even describe how far off the charts it is.
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And he said, basically, I think he said he gave him an ultimatum. He says, I'm only going to continue to give these pills that will supposedly make your mind right. If you admit that you're in a mental hospital and it's not an English stronghold, And Joseph finally said, like signed something. And Joseph said, no, I'm not going to sign this.
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And he cut off this placebo medication that he believed might be fixing his brain. And it kind of petered out after that. And it was just like, it's just brutal to think about these guys going through this, like hope that they're getting better. And it was all fake.
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Yeah, it took Rokeach a long time, though, to really kind of come to terms with what he had done. And he eventually did, though. About 17 years later, they reissued the book in 1981. And he wrote a new foreword. He admitted in interviews and other places as well. that he was also, you know, in a sense suffering from godlike delusions and that he was playing God with these men and regretted it.
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He regretted publishing. He said, I regret having written and published a study when I did. I don't know if that means that he wishes he could have reflected more on it or what.
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He did sort of recant and say he didn't do the right thing. It's worth pointing out that this was – six years into his suffering from spinal cancer. So I don't know if that had, you know, if knowing the end was near for him had something to do with his sort of self-reflection. But he eventually died in 1988 at the age of 70 after a 13-year battle with spinal cancer and, you know, left the...
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Social psychology world sort of rocked. Like I said, I studied this in college and it became sort of like the Stanford prison experiment.
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It became worth studying, but not for the reasons that they initially launched the study to begin with.
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Yeah, and I got to tell you, when you read some of his – regret about it. Uh, he says things like, or he said things like, you know, and in, in, in the end someone was cured and it was me. Uh, it, it's, it just, that all bothered me a little bit too, how he, he still made it about himself somehow, even though he did say he regretted it and everything.
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I just, I never heard as much, um, regret about these three men, uh, And just in and putting them in the positions of like they were the ones who helped me out in the end. It was just I didn't like that.
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No. I mean, if you want to see some of his later work that you were talking about, the value stuff, there are all kinds of really wacky YouTube videos from people about that stuff.
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I'm going to call this a guy who has the same step on a crack thing as I do.
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This is from Jared Miller. Hey, guys. I've got to say, Chuck is the only other person I've heard to express the same compulsion that I have. If I step on a surface that is different from the majority of where I'm walking, I try to get my other foot to have the same sensation. This can be the line between the sidewalk segments or a traction sticker, an unpaved patch, etc.,
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I got to say, Jared, it's the same with me. It's not just cracks. It can be anything.
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Even which part of the foot is affected, same with me, dude. If I do it on my heel, I have to do the next one with my heel. It's very interesting. I've even found myself doing it with the colors of tiles on a patterned floor. Same here. For me, it's about symmetrical sensations. I sometimes realize I'm doing it when I'm eating and have equal chewing time on each side. I don't do that. Okay.
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You're like Jerry, you're so weird. Yeah, you're really out there. Once I became aware of it at a fully conscious level, I also became self-conscious about it and tried different things to break myself of the habit. At times it's been as extreme as forcing myself to maintain an even gait no matter what. Yeah, I've done that.
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While consciously reminding myself that sensations are temporary and that it will even out or go away, especially if I ignore it. Thanks for all the hours of entertainment. You were an early discovery of mine in the podcast world back in 2009, and almost none of the shows I started listening to back then are still going. That's our motto, Jared. Just keep doing it.
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So that's Jared in Anaheim by way of Idaho.
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Or was it Iowa? I don't remember. Sorry.
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That's the worst thing to confuse. I apologize.
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No, because we just listen to each other. Uh, yeah, at first, and it was a little fun game. And then I think the five-year-old even said, you know, this is just a game, right? Dad and dad said, no, it's real. And, uh, I hear him saying it in that voice and, you know, pretty soon they were begging for him to stop.
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And I can verify that this is a thing I've been, uh, I think as a parent, sometimes you'll call your kid by another name as a joke, like I know I've done it like called my daughter my dog's name. If she's like she'll come into the room and like bark or something as a joke. I'll say, oh, you're Nico. And she'll say, yeah, I'm Nico. And then for a few minutes later, I'm like, hey, come here, Nico.
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And then it's fun for about five minutes. And then she's like, no. I am not. So there is very much a thing to a child's identity, especially from their parents, where they kind of get their identity and seek their identity. When that is challenged, it is very quickly kind of traumatic.
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We just call each other Jerry. I think it would cancel each other out.
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Yeah. And that is the very bedrock and foundation of how we think about ourselves. And he already saw messing with that can be bad. So he was like, hey, why not take it a step further? Yeah.
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Yeah, there's a quote here from the book, and big thanks to Dave Ruse for putting this one together. I know this was a tough one to wrangle, but he did a great job. Here's the quote from the book.
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Because it is not feasible to study such phenomena with normal people, he didn't even put it in quotes, it seemed reasonable to focus on delusional systems of belief in the hope that in subjecting them to strain, there would be little to lose and hopefully a great deal to gain. And, like, I read that sentence, and I'm like, Stop there, dude.
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Yeah. He like indicted himself with that one quote.
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Yeah, there's – I don't know if you listened to the snap judgment on this. Did you hear that?
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That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
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It was good. Snap, you know, great podcast or public radio program turned podcast.
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I used to listen to a lot more of it.
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When is Terry Gross going to have us on? Do we need to get to 20 years?
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And then we just start asking.
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Yeah. So in that snap judgment, they pointed out that he that Rokic actually read a Harper's article about two women who believe they were the Virgin Mary. And that put an idea into his head. And I know that in his book, he also talked about being inspired a little bit by some some stuff that Voltaire wrote about it. Right.
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Yeah, and I'm sure he was, you know— He was turned on a little bit about the idea of three Christs or however many Christs he could find.
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Well, I mean, not even like that. You know what I mean, though? But as a social psychologist, he was probably like, you know, this would make for a pretty mind-blowing experiment.
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Yeah, it's not like the three Richard Nixons of Hispalanti.
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Yeah, I'm sure all three of those towns are like, is he insulting all of us or none of us?
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I know you don't. And I think generally back then that's where a lot of these institutions were because they needed like lots of land and so they'll just leave it at that. Okay. Maybe take a break.
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We'll take a break and we'll find out how he found his patients right after this.
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Okay, so we got a nice background on Mount St. Helens. It had been very active for about – or on and off active for 40,000 years, including I believe the last sort of big one was in 1857. Not too long after that, in 1908, about a million acres of land became part of Columbia National Forest, which was hence renamed Gifford Pinchot or Pinchot. I never know how to say that.
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National Forest, and that was in 1949, and Mount St. Helens is inside that National Forest. All this is sort of a long way of saying it wasn't, like, super populated. It didn't have – it wasn't surrounded by neighborhoods and suburbs and stuff like that. Right.
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But there was something – or is still something called Spirit Lake there near the base of the mountain, which is – they have, like, youth camps there. People had cabins here and there. There were – recreational activities that all over the place. So it's not like no one was there, but it wasn't heavily populated.
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Yeah. So they, you know, the word gets out and they did come running from far and wide and they, you know, set up camp there at various places. Other just sort of as I learned from watching this A&E special that there are like volcano chasers even that. They hear about this stuff. They're fascinated by it. I guess it's just sort of amateur geo enthusiasts.
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And people started kind of coming in there because they got wind that something may be brewing at Mount St. Helens, including – and this is – there are all kinds of people we could feature story-wise. But one gentleman we are going to feature, his name was David Johnston. And he was a volcanologist at the USGS, the United States Geographical Survey.
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I wish you all knew him, but we do, and so he's ours.
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And he was one of the – there were some great interviews with him in this A&E special. He was a very young guy, super excited to be there. And he was one of the ones kind of sounding the alarm along with his partner, this guy named Don Swanson, about, hey, like, you know, the S is getting real here, everybody. And it looks like people need to start leaving. Yeah.
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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they did eventually set up what they called a red zone. And a lot of people did evacuate. There were some notable people who didn't. Certainly, we need to mention Harry Truman, obviously not the president, but he was this old codger who ran the lodge there.
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And he became a folk hero because he famously thumbed his nose and stayed and said, you know, I'm a part of this place. It's a part of me. If the mountain... goes, I'm going to go with it. Art Carney played him in the movie version.
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He got a lot of media attention, along with his 16 cats, which is the only part of the story like, hey, man, I'm all for people evacuating to keep people safe, but I'm also like... Some old mountain man wants to stay up there and go down with the volcano. Like, that's his right, but send the cats away. Don't say, like, I'm going to go down and kill these 16 cats at the same time.
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Yeah, I just, I don't know, man. Once I heard about the cats, because I was all into this guy.
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And then I heard about the cats. I was like, oh, dude, you should have at least sent the cats away.
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Yeah, this is a good one. This is, I mean, this is so bread and butter stuff you should know. It is. I don't know why it took us almost 16 years to get to it.
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Yeah, so this was, I mean, compared to what eventually ended up happening, you could call this sort of mini-eruption. even though it sent – it made a big boom. Apparently it was a pretty cloudy day, so it wasn't super visible. But the ash column went up 6,500 feet into the air. That's nothing to sneeze at. And a new crater formed at the summit, which grew to about 1,600 feet wide.
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So it was a major thing. There was another one on the 28th, again throwing ash into the air. And this is like basically from that point – through the big one in mid-May, it was just constant warning, constant upheaval, mudslides, avalanches, craters growing, and, like, the mountain is saying, like, it's going to happen, people. This is not a false alarm.
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Until things calm down, and that's what you were talking about earlier, like, things kind of settle down on, what was that, like,
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Yeah, around the 15th of May to where the people got antsy that were evacuated and said, hey, listen, we want to go back and check on our stuff.
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And the governor eventually was like, all right, I think, you know, at the time, and I think Washington still is a little bit of one of those, like, not quite live free or die, but, you know, like, all right, listen, these people pay taxes. They want to go back to their homes. Sign a waiver that you're not going to sue us and let them go back there. And that's what they did.
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Yeah. Well, I mean, just prior to this, I guess let's back up one half second and let you know about what happened when David Johnson and Don Swanson, they had moved from their initial base at Coldwater 1, which was about, I think, eight or nine miles away, to their second station, which was called Coldwater 2, which is about five to six miles from the mountain.
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And notably, it was on the northeast side of the mountain, which...
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turned out to be the wrong spot to be um but you know these guys knew what was going on uh they know it's a dangerous job and apparently they were swapping um taking shifts and don swanson got the call from johnston and he said hey listen i've got tonight and tomorrow if you come and relieve me the next day and then on may 18th 1980 is when johnston was there when everything went boom
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Yeah, mainly with like baking and cooking. It's like that's when it matters.
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Yeah. So, you know, like we said earlier, that pressure is building up a lot under the surface. There's a lot of moisture down there. Some of it was, like you mentioned, from that initial plate subduction. That's called magmatic water. Some of it is just regular old groundwater from rain and snow and everything because it is the mountains. That's called meteoric water.
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And all of that stuff is just heating up. It's got pressure from below because it's heating. It's got pressure from above because all of that weight of the rock is just pushing it down. Yeah. And all of this magma is just... like boiling under there.
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Oh, boy, it depends. I mean, I love to get the, I hate to be that guy, but I do love to get the local butter when we go to our farmer's market and get it from our CSA.
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But I know we talked about this before, I guess it was in one of the volcano episodes, but it's not allowed to turn to steam because there's no room for it. Like steam is expansive and it can't expand. So it's just this superheated beyond the boiling point level of liquid that's just distributed all throughout the upper half and notably sort of the north side of this mountain.
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Yeah, and it's like you should really go check out the footage of this stuff. It's some of the most amazing like natural geologic disaster footage I've ever seen. Just to see this mountain and then, you know, especially in the A&E thing to see people interviewed describing like seeing this with their eyeballs.
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It was just like it was incomprehensible what they were witnessing, like a mountain that large and part of it just going away immediately. Yeah.
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Well, I don't know, Pete. You can't just say parquet, can you?
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Yeah, where's her quote? Should we read that? Yeah. This is Dorothy Stoffel in 2019. She said, Amazing. I saw somebody else describe it as like a zipper opening along the mountain. Yeah, and, you know, there were amateur photographers around for some of this stuff.
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Some of these hikers, like that guy you mentioned that was telling the story in Funny Voices and Volcano Chasers, like, they got some, like, one guy got, like, 22 pictures in a row, and this is when it eventually blew. The other guy got, like, six or eight pictures.
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I do like that. What's the stuff, the Irish butter in the grocery store? That's my brand. Kerrygold. Kerrygold. That's good, too.
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there was a family camping with their two young daughters.
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And that guy, they were, you know, on the north side, you know, well below it, but, you know, within the range. And he was like, you know, speaking to how it didn't blow from the top, he said it looked like somebody shot a shotgun out of the side of this mountain pointed at us. So ash was raining down, but it was raining like at people and less down from the sky.
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Yeah, I mean it was – if you look at it, it looks almost like a controlled demolition blast or something. It definitely doesn't look like any kind of volcano blast that you might think of in your head. It happened kind of all at once, and it was a 24-megaton blast, which I know everyone always tries to compare it to like Hiroshima. It was 1,600 times as powerful as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
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Yeah, he obviously didn't make it there. I think they found pieces of his trailer like a decade later. He had time to send out one signal, which was over his radio, Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it. The only person to pick that up was a ham radio operator nearby. And they renamed that area Johnston Ridge in his honor. Obviously, Harry Truman perished along with those 16 cats.
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And he was close enough to where I saw that they said that he and everything around him was basically instantly vaporized. Like he wouldn't have felt anything. It would have happened. His death and vaporization would have happened in like less than a second. Yeah.
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Yeah, I totally agree. I love Kerrygold. I take that stuff camping.
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Well, I like that you can get a tub. It's a smaller tub, but I do like a spreadable tub as opposed to a stick.
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Yeah, because what you've got, you know, beyond this avalanche happening is you've got all of a sudden all this heat happens in a place where there's a lot of snow. So that snow melts, all that glacier ice melts, and you have flooding and you have mudslides. And you have a word that I had never even heard of before Ed included it in here, which was lahar.
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which sounds like just a mudslide on steroids. Yeah. Like a mudslide carrying ammunition with it. Right. And this is just raining down everywhere and causing a path of destruction that hasn't been seen in modern times in this country.
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Yeah, we'll take a break and talk a little bit more about the After Effects right after this.
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Yeah, I was nine and I remember it being a big deal. But it's funny when I was researching this and then watching, there's a really, really great thing on YouTube that I recommend that A&E put out recently. Years ago, it had to be. It was called Minute by Minute, colon, The Eruption of Mount St. Helens. Really gripping stuff, as A&E used to do. They probably still do that kind of stuff.
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Well, we talked a little bit about it. Obviously, Spirit Lake, which we mentioned at the beginning, which was at the base of the mountain. that has very strange effects on bodies of water. It did two things. It made the lake larger, but it also made it shallower because it just flooded all this water down there and raised it such that the outlet was basically dammed up.
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And so the lake got a whole lot bigger, but it reduced its depth by about 80 feet. I think five years later, they built a spillway tunnel to control the depth of the lake. 200 homes and cabins and about 200 miles of road and railways were completely obliterated.
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And I think it lowered the ultimate height of Mount St. Helens, right?
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And a young Trey Anastasio said, one day I shall play at the base of that amphitheater. Oh, did he? And bore people with noodling on my guitar.
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No, I don't think so. I don't think there's anything there. I was just kidding.
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Oh, yeah. I never will miss a chance to take a ticket fish. I'm with you. So ash is raining down and out. It literally darkened the skies. When this ash, if you were close enough to it, it would literally burn you alive. If you're far away, it can just create a lot of problems. Everything from... You know, just equipment not working, electrical outages and blackouts and brownouts.
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Visibility is obviously terrible. As far as crops go, certain crops were wiped out by this ash and the toxic gases. Some of them did a little bit better because they just got a little bit of the ash in it. Ash will help promote rainfall and hold moisture in the ground better. So apparently wheat crops and apple crops fared pretty well. Yeah, that was surprising. Yeah.
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All of the media around it, I was thinking, man, I don't know if it was more regional or if it truly was nationwide, but I remember the eruption, but I didn't remember the six weeks leading up to it, which was a very big deal.
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I mean, that's what will happen, right? If the earth ever just burns up into a fiery ball, that'll just become a big mushroom field, right?
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Yeah. The the other thing I want to point out, too, about Spirit Lake was if you look at footage of the lake and now these kind of rivers that were just happening and it literally like rerouted. you know, the Columbia River and the Cowlitz River in sections. But it looks like, it looks like a logging operation is happening.
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And like you could almost, and may have been able, well, obviously it would have been too dangerous, but it looks like you could have walked over these logs. They were so like packed and these were just trees, you know, an hour before.
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Yeah, they said it just picked them up and all of, they were driving and then they were floating. And they said that they're, you know, they're, she said like my instinct was to get out of the car, but there was like nowhere to go.
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Yeah. And this is, you know, these are just sort of that's what was so cool about the special is it really brought in the human element of these people that were around there.
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And, you know, they all survived because they were being interviewed, obviously. Dorothy Stoffel, who was the the geologist that was flying with, I guess, her husband, Keith. Was that her brother?
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Okay. They survived that plane flight. Like, they got out of there. There were stories of people that literally, it was like from a movie, drove, you know, 110 miles an hour, like, outrunning this ash debris slide coming at them.
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Yeah, it started sort of getting a little more active again. This time, though, you know, one of the things that to the benefit of the surrounding area when a volcano blows like that is that pressure is released. And it's going to take a long time to build back up to that level again, kind of depending on how it reforms on top of it. But this time, apparently, there are
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There are more ways for this pressure to be released. So I think it's just sort of the pressure is being released a little more gradually since 2004.
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But they do say that like, oh, no, like it will happen again. Like things are there is a new lava dome growing and the pressure is going to build up. And it could be in a thousand years or it could be in 10 years.
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No, but they are studying it. Like there's a lot of active research and study going on at Mount St. Helens now.
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This is following up on an email that you particularly liked from our Spooktacular.
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Hey, guys. Thoroughly enjoying the most recent Spooktacular. The accents are comedy genius. Meagle, do you want to pop in and say hi? Hello. Perfect. I'm going to bring Miegel back every now and then, by the way. I just want to prepare you and the audience.
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I wanted to address a couple of 1800s diction issues that cause some puzzlement. When you guys talked about toilet, it's basically what Josh said. I've always thought of it as freshening up in the bathroom, washing your face and hands when first waking up or going to bed. I double-checked with Merriam-Webster, though, and it's more generally dressing and grooming. Okay. That makes sense.
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Yeah, sure. On the other hand, the strangers in the beverage from the toll house is a lot more puzzling. I had no idea what it meant. And although Josh's guess that beverage meant the pub was clever, it doesn't really make sense.
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Just as a reminder, the sentence is talking about some men drinking tea in an inn and pausing to, quote, discover the sex and dates of arrival of the strangers, which floated in some numbers in the beverage, end quote. I think I found the answer, though, guys, in a dictionary of Scottish dialect. We love this stuff by the way. Yeah, this is amazing.
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Tea leaves floating on the surface of your drink are considered omens that you'll meet someone new. So these tea leaves are called strangers. If you pick up a stranger and bite it, the toughness will tell you whether the new acquaintance will be male or female.
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Amazing. I'm going to guess there's also a way to predict the date you meet this person, although I didn't see reference to that. So that's what the characters are doing, guys, using tea leaves to predict the future. By the way, other omens can also be strangers, like unburned candle wicks or soot on grates. I've loved the show for years, look forward to many more.
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Yeah. I mean, because like you said, Mount St. Helens is basically saying, it's coming, everyone. Would you like to document this?
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That is a great email, Nat Jacobs. Fantastic sleuthing, and we are super grateful.
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I'm telling you, again, it's coming. Yeah. And I'll show you in lots of different scary ways that it's coming. Yeah. And people left, people stayed, people came there.
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APU is committed to making education affordable for everyone. For active duty military and their families, the preferred military rate is just $250 per credit hour. Veterans and their families can benefit from the Veteran Grant, which provides 10% off undergrad and master's level tuition.
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Like tourists came to see this thing. So for sure. Let's get into it.
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Yeah. 2010 was volcanoes. 2017 was super volcanoes.
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Yeah. It's a part of the Cascade Arc arranged there in the Pacific Northwest. And all of this happened. And, you know, geologically speaking, pretty quickly. Yeah. It happened over the course of about 40,000 years in the case of Mount St. Helens, which is pretty speedy. And Ed helped us out with this. We did a great job on this article.
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And Ed points out that, you know, in the Pacific Northwest, that's why you see so many, you know, sort of coney mountains like that is because of this Cascade Arc and how these mountains were formed, you know, not too long ago.
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40,000 for St. Helens, and I think the whole arc is less than 100.
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Yeah, this is pretty notable. This magma chamber is – well, is and was quite large. And like you said, it's looking for a place to go. But if it doesn't have a place to go, what will happen – and as you'll see, this is what happened in the case of Mount St. Helens – is it starts bulging. And like the mountain –
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If you're a geologist, it's super exciting to see this happen, even though it's very scary and dangerous. But when a geologist sees an actual mountain start to bulge out in a direction, and we're talking hundreds of feet of bulge over the course of a pretty short period of time, then it's a pretty notable thing.
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And that's exactly what was happening in the case of the magma chamber there in Washington. Yeah.
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Yeah, I mean, it had been an active volcano for 40,000 years, but the big one before 1980 was... Yeah, like you said, I was trying to look at a specific year, but let's just say 4,000 years ago. Yeah. Because once you get back that far, you know.
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Who cares? But it became, like you said, part of folklore. The indigenous people there, especially the Puyallup people, called the mountain Luit, L-O-O-W-I-T. And there is a Luit brewing company. So I wanted to shout them out. This is one of those things where – I thought, I wonder why, because there's been such a push to change names of things over the past decade or so.
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This is one that seems so sort of egregious. that we should call it Lewitt and not Mount St. Helens. Right. I'm pretty curious. I'm sure there's been pushes over the years to get it changed, but the Europeans, of course, named it Mount St. Helens in 1792 after Captain George Vancouver, if that name rings a bell, it should, gave the name of it because of a diplomat named Alan Fitzherbert.
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Didn't call it Fitz... Herbert Peake or anything like that because his noble title was Baron St. Helens. Thank God. But here's the rub is that Alan Fitzherbert never even saw Mount St. Helens, the mountain named after him. So, like, I don't know. Maybe let's call this one Lewitt.
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That's huge. And all this to say that Mount St. Helens, which has an S, by the way. Did you know that? Yeah, I did. You keep saying Helen. I just wondered.
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Oh, that's good. That reminds me of the guy in college who fell on the sidewalk and his books splayed out and then he acted like he was reading.
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All this to say is that Mount St. Helens had a long history of activity, so it's not like anyone ever thought, well, that thing is done and it's never going to happen again.
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All right. Shall we take a break? Yeah, that's a nice prelude. I think so, too. All right. We'll be back right after this.
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So Girl with a Pearl Earring, everyone has seen it. Like I said, it's very famous. It's of a young girl, looks to be sort of like mid-teenage years, looking over her shoulder. She's wearing a dress. She's wearing that turban, very prominent earrings, large pearl earrings, and pearls factored into quite a few of his works over the years.
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And it's one of those paintings where the eyes follow you, supposedly, which we've talked about in one of our short stuff episodes. Yeah.
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I think so, yeah. It's, you know, the effect of the eyes following, which doesn't happen in all paintings with eyes.
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Was it? Yeah. All right. So he paints this painting. And then, of course, the mystery of this one is who is this person? There has been speculation that it might be a mistress. A lot of people think it was his daughter, Maria, who would have been about 15 or 16.
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You know what I just realized? We record these in twos, and we just recorded the Pogs episode. Right. And you didn't say, welcome to the podcast.
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And like you said, who some people believe painted about a fifth of the works attributed to him because about a fifth of his collected works were I mean, this sounds mean to say, but they aren't up to snuff compared to his other works. So they sort of stand out from the rest. So they think that they may have been Maria's. Good painting still.
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Yeah, they're still a lot better than anything I could do. Yeah, it's not like they were stick figures, you know, out of nowhere. They're like, this Vermeer seems off. But... There was a 1999 novel from Tracy Chevalier, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, and then the 2000 film adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson, who was perfectly cast. She looks quite a bit like the girl with the pearl earring.
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But this was historical fiction. If you've seen that movie and you're like, no, she was the family's maid's assistant and love interest to Vermeer, that was just – I don't even think that was based on anything. It's just historical fiction. Yeah.
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Maybe she was an improv comedian and she was yes anding.
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You never know. But this is a mystery that will never be solved, which sometimes I like those kind of mysteries when it comes to stuff like this.
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What a missed opportunity for a great dad joke.
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And we would have found out by now, I think.
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Or I could see you pulling the trigger and then making fun of yourself.
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Yeah, so the mystery here, and this is one of our – this actually has a Simpsons crossover as well, which is kind of fun. Because Raphael painted a very famous painting called Portrait of a Young Man and is largely described as one of the most famous, if not the most famous, pieces of art to go missing during the plundering of great art in World War II by Hitler and the gang.
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And this is a crossover with The Simpsons in that in the Fighting Hellfish episode, when Grandpa Abe and Burns are stealing art, this is one of the paintings, Portrait of a Young Man.
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It's one of the paintings that they stole. Wow. Which shows that, you know, Simpsons writers back then at least were definitely doing their work, like their research work, because that's a nice little Easter egg, I think.
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I don't know. I don't remember. I mean, it's been a long time since I've seen that one, but it was one of the great episodes, I think.
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Well, retroactively, I'm going to say I hope everyone enjoyed the podcast. Now let's talk about art mysteries.
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Yeah, and, you know, they almost got these hidden away successfully. When Poland was being invaded, they knew that the art was going to be plundered. And so those three paintings were actually rescued by the prince and hidden away in a house in a place that I can't even pronounce. Sienawa? I'm not sure what that is. But they were ultimately found by the Gestapo and handed over to Frank.
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And Frank, you know, they were supposed to go to Hitler. Hitler was going to open a museum, the Führer Museum in Linz. And Frank actually kind of kept it for a little while, hung it in his residence. And then eventually this thing went to Germany and then Austria for a little while and then back with Frank in 1945. Wow.
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Yeah, they found a lot of other stuff, too.
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Yeah. And they, you know, along with I think over 800 other artifacts, they got from him and they could not go on to question him very long because he was executed just a year later. And since then, there have been a lot of rumors about where this thing ended up. Who has it? A lot of speculation that maybe a private collector in another country has it.
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Well, it's because we don't do these top lists anymore. That's part of it. You know, very famously, we used to have top tens on our Old House Stuff Works website, of which usually there were maybe seven decent entries. So we never did. I don't think we ever did a full ten on anything. Maybe somebody could probably correct us. But this one actually came in. At seven. They didn't even try.
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I think in 2012, there was a false report that it was supposedly in some bank vault. And they really don't know. It's just sort of one of those great mysteries of a disappeared painting. And my money is on a private collector probably has this thing stashed away. But you would also think that at some point somebody would talk.
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Unless it's really stashed.
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Yeah. And I think this is oil on panel, so I don't think this could even be like rolled up in a tube and put under your bed or anything.
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Yeah, it turns out that's a thing I didn't know was a thing. Empty frames in galleries. It's kind of sad.
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I'm Tom Brokaw. We'll leave the light on for you. All right. Well, that means it's time for another break. And we'll be back right after this to talk a little bit about Van Gogh.
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And I don't even know. We may do like five of these. We haven't even figured it out yet.
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I don't know. It was from the filmmaker who dare not speak his name. It was from a Woody Allen movie. I think it was in the most problematic movie, Manhattan, when he's with Diane Keaton and some obnoxious person says, or I think it's Diane Keaton says, Van Gogh, and he's, you know, he's incensed. He's like, Van Gogh, like how pretentious.
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Yeah, sure. Yeah. And we can cut all that out if we don't even want to talk about Woody Allen. That's fine.
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Yeah. So he suffered from definitely depression. There is speculation that he had bipolar disorder.
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But never furious.
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Was, you know, just sort of long suffering as an artist. He didn't, he only sold one painting before he died in 1890 at the age of 37. And the story goes is that he shot himself in the chest with a revolver, but it gets a little more complicated than that. And in what year was the book? In 2011, there was a book written called Van Gogh, colon, The Life, written by Stephen, I'm going to say, Meifa?
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No. Because he wants to be mad.
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And Gregory White Smith, and it seems like they sort of launched this idea, or at least really put it in the public forefront, that he was actually killed almost certainly accidentally by one of two boys, a younger gentleman that he was hanging out with that day.
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They should have called that series Fast and Loose. Tokyo Drift.
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Yeah, so this bullet misses all of his internal organs very improbably because it deflected off his rib cage. And he walked, like you said, to the doctor. They didn't have a surgeon on duty, so they couldn't remove the bullet. He lived a total of 30 hours after the shot and died of infection. Got to talk with his brother, you know, was speaking to people.
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So he had every opportunity to say that these two boys that I was hanging out with, that I was drinking, and I say boys, I think they were maybe late teens, early 20s. No, they were 16.
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I saw early 20s in another thing. Oh, yeah. But, you know, hanging out, getting drunk with them. One of these boys, Rene Sacretin, had a gun that apparently misfired a lot, and he liked playing with this thing. He liked to play cowboy, supposedly. He did. Yeah. And so it all just seems – and even his statement, he said – he didn't say, I shot myself. He said, do not accuse anyone.
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Yeah, you know what's funny is at one point we were – this was years ago. We were talking with Ludacris about doing something with the network. And I – because he's a local guy here in Atlanta. That's right. And I talked to our boss and said – what's he doing these days? Like, I haven't heard any music. And he went, he makes Fast and Furious movies. Like, that's his job now.
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It was I who wanted to kill myself.
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It's ambiguous, I think, as far as like – because the idea is that maybe he was accidentally shot, and then after he was shot, he was like, this is kind of what I wanted all along. I've been heading down this road. toward suicide, and then now it's just done for me.
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Yeah, and these two authors, they put forth some other circumstantial evidence like – That the bullet went in at a weird angle that would not have been the angle if you shot yourself in the chest. That his more recent works were a little more upbeat and a little more positive. And that he was not in that kind of mindset at the time.
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And that he had recently even written his thoughts about suicide, that he thought it was sinful and immoral. And so they sort of use all this as evidence that he would not have done it himself and that it was, you know, they believe it was an accident. His last words, very sad, were the sadness will last forever. He spoke to his brother, which that's tough.
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And I think Secretan came out in the 50s even and denied it, right? Like finally, once and for all.
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Right, but hey, that ain't my fault.
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Yeah, and it makes sense what he said was do not accuse anyone. Like that really seems like he's trying to cover for these kids that he didn't want to get in trouble.
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Because he's just getting rich off of making these movies.
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Yeah. I'm going to that immersive Van Gogh thing in July. Yeah.
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It is here in Atlanta. It's at the Pullman Yards.
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Over in Kirkwood where they shoot like every movie in Atlanta shoots there. Right, yeah. So, yeah, it's supposed to be pretty cool.
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I think that's the deal. I think you go in and you are surrounded by projected art in different ways. from what I can gather.
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Yeah, it looks kind of cool.
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Don't you mean Hilter? Did you notice that?
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Oh, my gosh, yes, in the headline. In the headline. Did Hilter really do these paintings? Do these paintings? Who wrote that? I feel bad, but, like, did Hilter really do these paintings?
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by the music industry. I never really kind of really thought of that parallel. But in 1909, Hitler is traipsing around Vienna and he is selling watercolors copied from postcards to tourists. So... If you've ever traveled to Europe, he was one of those guys that was down by the river, the river bank. In a van. Yeah, in a van selling these and literally copied from postcards.
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So he did that for a little while, made a little bit of money. Because, you know, if you look at his art, it's way better than I could do. It's, you know, it's okay. Oh, yeah. But like modern – and it's hard to tell if modern art critics like – so much goes into looking at a Hitler painting and reviewing it. Like, it's really hard to kind of separate those things.
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But the general thought is that he had – nothing exceptional about him at all. It was, he was the kind of artist that would sell stuff down by the river to tourists. He was, they were fine. He was capable, but they were copycat paintings. He was copying things. He had no point of view. He did this in 1913 as well in Munich, painting Munich cityscapes and landscapes and selling them to tourists.
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And then in 1914, got hauled in by the police of all things for failing to register for the military.
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I only saw one of those, I think.
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Yeah, I mean, and that was one of the major reasons that he was such an art plunderer during the war and stole as much art as he could from real famous artists and famous paintings because he had all this backstory as a failed artist. And it was interesting. I did see that, like, one of his major – I mean, because he wasn't an utter failure at first.
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He had a backer early on, I think, who was a Jewish man.
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Yeah, which was really interesting. And there was – I don't know, man. There's a lot of speculation about what that all meant to him. And, like, people try and draw parallels to, like, some of the paintings. I mean, some of it feels like a stretch. Definitely like the –
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You know, the cold streets of Munich, like, were painted, like, clearly with a future cleansing in mind to make it look like this. That's a stretch. Yeah, some of that stuff seems like a stretch, but you could definitely read into the backstory, at least, I think, with some accuracy.
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No, I think any sociopath, you can look at their past and see the dots connected, you know? Yeah. So like you said, there was this kind of just was the deal for a long time. And then like anything else, like people wanting to get original Charles Manson music reels in the early late 90s, early 2000s, there was a market for for Hitler's work. I think in 2009, a British auction house opened.
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That's a great note. I love it. I've always wanted Bob Newhart as my podcasting partner.
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Someone paid $150,000 for 15 early sketches and watercolors, including a self-portrait. And then in 2015, some unnamed investors paid $450,000 for a set of watercolors. I think there were 12 or 13 that survived. Yeah.
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Unbelievable, but totally believable.
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All right, number one on the list. You want to talk a little Caravaggio?
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I got nothing else. That was a good five. I think we have committed to doing a robust episode on the Gardner Museum heist because that's a good one, and that was on this list and way underplayed.
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Yeah, I'm going to call this... Middle names, because we had a little discussion in our John Muir episode about how Emily and I and our friends, Justin and Melissa, one night were going by our middle names as a joke. And I had the theory that you have no emotional connection to your middle name if you don't have a reaction when you hear it said out loud.
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And I just meant sort of the non-dominant name. It didn't necessarily mean middle names because my brother goes by his middle name. Scott is his middle name and some people do that. It's a thing. And certainly Amy does. She said, I was listening to the show and at the end you were chatting about using middle names and how you don't have an emotional connection when you hear it.
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I have an interesting situation that everyone, everyone in my family uses their middle names. So I've always been called Amy ever since I was born. But my first name is Helen. This causes an interesting situation at airports and doctor's appointments. where they refer to me as Helen, and I always have to remember that they're talking to me.
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Big fan of the show, kept me curious, and my curious spirit satisfied over the last three or four years. And it's such a comfort knowing there's always another episode to listen to. Best wishes from the UK. They're always so nice. And that is from Amy. Helen Amy.
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Yeah, because we say Helen, she's like, who?
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That's right. That wasn't even forced. Nice work, Bob. So Michelangelo Marisi da Caravaggio was an Italian Baroque painter. He, at one point in 1606, killed a man named Romuccio Tomassoni and said, I got to get out of here because I'm in big trouble now, and went away from Rome and fled to Malta where he had a pretty brief but – I guess, notable stay.
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He was only there about six months and kind of hiding out and quickly hooked up with the Knights of Malta and was briefly one of the Knights of Malta.
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Yeah. And painted one of his most famous paintings there, the oil on canvas, 12 feet by 17 feet, the beheading of John the Baptist.
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Well, at any rate— Because they really, in this How Stuff Works article, they called it a petty squabble, and that really doesn't tell the story.
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Yeah, and it kind of took a while for it to be even very visible because it underwent some restorations over the years. And in the 1950s, they did a restoration where they really could see the signature and what it said. I don't know about for the first time, but like super clearly at least. And it said F period dot F Michelang, M-I-C-H-E-L-A-N-G. And then, you know, of course –
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Everyone's like, well, what does this mean? Because there is no F in his name. It's not like his initial. Is he saying, you know, hey, screw Michelangelo, myself, screw me, or I'm screwed? No, no one really said that.
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They thought the F, there are a couple of different theories, thought it was shorthand for fratter, or which means brother, because he was one of the knights, and maybe he just meant like brother, brother. or whatever. Uh, and then some other people said, no, maybe it means, stands for, uh, FECIT, F-E-C-I-T, uh, which is Latin for did, translating basically into, uh, I did it.
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And it's spelled out in blood, kind of confessing to his crime.
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Right. Like before God.
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That painting still hangs at St. John's Coe Cathedral in Malta too.
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But they said, nice try, buddy. And they kicked him out for being a, quote, foul and rotten member, end quote. So it didn't work. A month later.
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Well, I think we should take a break.
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And we'll be back right after this.
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All right. We had a great cliffhanger with Vermeer. Vermeer, the very famous Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, had a very famous painting, a lot of very famous paintings, but one in particular that has had a bunch of names over the years. In fact, it did not get the name Girl with a Pearl Earring until the 20th century. It was called everything from Girl with a Turban to Girl with an Earring.
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It had lots of different names because it was not officially titled by Vermeer, nor dated, even though they think it was around 1665.
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Yeah, and a true show of American spirit and determination. just love of the game, these men got together, they formed their own teams, and they did what's called barnstorming.
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And they would load up in cars or on a bus, and they would go from town to town and take their show on the road, and they would get a game up wherever they could. and wherever people would pay a couple of pennies to come watch a baseball game, they were playing white players in these barnstorming games or black players or Latino players.
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Yep, and one white guy. All right, so barnstorming's going on. Like I said, they would roll into town. They would play whatever teams they could play. And it started to gain some momentum. Like, people started to follow these players. Yeah. And they actually got fans. And there was a former player named Andrew Rube Foster who owned one of those teams. And he said, you know what?
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I think we need our own league. Yeah. They won't let us in their league. Let's start our own. Because besides the fact that people want it, there's money to be made here.
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Oh, I don't even think he was in as a player. Oh, really? Yeah, I think just for his achievement. I gotcha. Although it may have been both. I don't know. But in 1920, he said, all right, here's what we'll do. Let me get these seven team owners of the Midwestern League that are doing these barnstorming traveling shows, basically.
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Let's get together in Kansas City, seven all-black teams, in addition to those two Chicago Giants, You have the Cuban Stars, the Dayton Marcos, the Indianapolis ABCs, and the very famous Kansas City Monarchs and St. Louis Giants. And this is the really great thing about this story. All of these teams, except for the Monarchs, were black-owned teams.
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Well, I even put a note in here. If you don't like sports, listen to this one anyway. Yeah. Because this is about much more than baseball.
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Yeah. And not only that, like the Major League Baseball site points out like this was – It should be embraced in some ways because this, at a time, was one of the only ways that minorities could fully excel to their fullest potential. Right.
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Right. Sure. Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Christy Matheson. Like, we know they were good. Like, we're not knocking their talent, but. who knows what it would have been like in a truly integrated league.
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This is about history and about... Overcoming adversity? Yeah, like it's a very interesting story because, and we'll get into this, but I think people tend to think of the Negro Leagues, and that's what this is about, the baseball Negro Leagues, which is what they were called. We don't use that word anymore. No. But you call this that because that's what it was. Right.
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I'm not doubting you, of course. I just want to... Sure, no, I'm with you.
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So we talked about the integration of the Negro Leagues, which was awesome. Pretty soon, other leagues formed, not just teams. There was one right here in the South, the Negro Southern League. With teams from right here in Atlanta.
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Yeah, I don't think this was the first team in Atlanta that played in the Negro Southern League because they folded that same year. But the Atlanta Black Crackers, we also had the Atlanta Crackers, which was the white team. We had the Atlanta Black Crackers, and it sounds funny that we say Ponce de Leon, not Ponce de Leon, but that's how we say it here.
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It's the street that fronts our office building.
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But that's the street in Atlanta that fronts our office. And if you go and look on the Internet, you can see these awesome pictures of this cool little office. Baseball stadium right there hundreds of feet from where we sit. Yeah, really neat. Yeah And now you have Whole Foods Now you just have to listen close to pay seven dollars for artisan mayonnaise. Yeah
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Oh, that's just for the... Just for one smear? Yeah, just one smear.
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Yeah. You know, never get anything with bones at one of those. Oh, never. Or liquid. What a waste.
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You throw half of that chicken leg away.
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You paid for it. Sure. Or just, you know, grind that chicken bone up and eat it and get your money's worth.
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That's a great idea. And you can say, I'm no chump. Yeah. Just go around screaming, I'm not paying for that bone. All right, so where are we? The Negro Southern League folded. The Eastern Colored League opened in 1923. And then finally, in 1928, the American Negro League formed, and that was...
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That was when things like they called eventually the American Negro League and the American, I'm sorry, the National Negro League, the majors of the Negro Leagues. Right. Like that was where the creme de la creme played.
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You tend to think of it in a certain way, which is only... Yeah, well, baseball was segregated, and they couldn't play in the white leagues, and that's awful, which it is and was. But there's another side to it, too.
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They profited on certain days of the week. Sundays were big days because they played double-headers. But the fact is, black Americans didn't have a lot of expendable money to throw at going to baseball games, even though they were pretty cheap. It was commiserate with what people made at the time.
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Guessless. So they were making a little money on Sundays. They weren't hugely profitable overall, even though they were known as somewhat successful.
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Where these men and these business owners were empowered. And the players. Yeah, and it's, yeah, that's just a tease. I just wanted to whet their appetite. Oh, you did. For people who hate sports. You whetted my appetite.
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Yeah, and these are the players trying to make ends meet. The owners themselves were struggling here and there. White people came to see games sometimes, especially when they were exhibition games against white teams. Right. Because they loved to go out there and see something they had never seen before.
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Which many times was the black team mopping the floor with the white team. Yeah. Although... it seemed pretty evenly matched. Like from what I gathered, it wasn't like lopsided one way or the other. Yeah. Like they were good competitive games.
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Right. So they list out four things here on the site. They said the two leagues the the American and National Negro leagues were northern and basically city dwelling teams all right couple that with There weren't a lot of black people living in northern cities at the time the South was you know was way more well, I want to say integrated but
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wasn't integrated way more black people living in the south at the time yeah which is I wonder why the southern negro league didn't take off like a rocket then yeah I mean probably for the other reasons like you couldn't afford to go to the games and all that stuff yeah that's a good point black people that were in the north didn't have a whole lot of money and so basically all that adds up to not a lot of audience buying tickets and the only way to keep a league afloat is to sell tickets and to sell concessions same as it is today yeah
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So all those things coupled with Rube Foster. And the depression. Their greatest champion and probably sharpest mind, sadly, succumbing to mental illness. And then the depression, and that was the end of the beginning of the Negro Leagues, right?
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All right, so it didn't take long. The old saying, you can't keep a good man down. People wanted to play baseball. They were good at it. They thought there was more money to be made in leagues. And so what happens is these numbers guys get involved. And a numbers man is... The numbers game was basically like an illegal, unsanctioned street lottery.
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So numbers guys had a lot of money. And some of them said, you know what? Let's put money into starting baseball teams and leagues.
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And one guy in particular in Pittsburgh, Gus Greenlee. Great name. He was a bar owner in Pittsburgh. He bought the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1931. He said, well, I've got a team, but I don't have a league. So two years later, he formed the second Negro National League. And other numbers guys bought in, and all of a sudden they had another league going.
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Yeah, they eventually migrated back to Pittsburgh. Did they? Over to Pittsburgh, yeah.
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No, I think there was still the other Pittsburgh team. But from what I understand, the Homestead Grays eventually became part of Pittsburgh.
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Or maybe there was another team. I'm not sure. But I do know they eventually went to Pittsburgh. Because you know Homestead. We've been there. We did a show there.
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Yeah, nine years in a row. Josh Gibson, cool Papa Bell, and Buck Leonard, some of their stars.
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Well, some of the Yankees teams did over the years, but I don't think anything right now.
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No, like, even the best team right now doesn't have five future Hall of Famers.
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No, I mean, he's our best player, but... Come on, Freddie. The best player on the worst team in baseball? Right. Not very good. Casey at the bat. All right, so we did mention that there were exhibition games going on, and things really picked up with the exhibition games now, because they were a little well-funded, and this is when...
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So players are starting to make some, like the top players are starting to make some pretty good money at the time. You can't go any further without talking about Satchel Paige, Leroy Satchel Paige. Dude. He was a pitcher? Yeah. Very interesting dude.
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So have you ever seen video or, I guess, film of him pitching?
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Yeah, that was the style. But he had a weird wind-up. He had this sort of double windmill that he would do with his pitching arm. And then... When he was younger, he had a great fastball, and he was noted for his control, like Greg Maddux-like in his pinpoint control. Yeah. Supposedly could just put a baseball within a half inch of where he wanted it to be, which is a big, big deal for a pitcher.
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Sure. As he lost his fastball over the years, he learned... Basically every pitch under the sun. He pitched until he was 59 years old.
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He was even older than Gaylord Perry. How old was he? No, he was in his 40s. Oh, was he? Like Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry. Gaylord. A few pitchers. Nolan Ryan made it to 50? No, not 50, but. He came close. Like pitchers notably have been a little older. Which is crazy because like. Their arms. Yeah. But they're not, you know, they're not like running around and batting like other players.
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Shutouts, right? Yeah. If you don't know baseball, shutout means you have pitched a game where no one scored a run. Right. And back then, they were probably complete game shutouts, meaning he never came out and was relieved by another pitcher.
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yeah to put that into perspective for non-baseball fans again if you have 300 wins wins not shutouts wins then you're a hall of famer yeah and in fact they don't think there will ever be another 300 game winner again because of they are more pitchers in the rotation now they usually have five guys instead of four they don't pitch as deep into games they rest them a lot more so it's just we may not ever see that happen again right just because of the way it's built right
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And that's counting his entire career, I assume.
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Yeah, like, let's say that people don't count the Negro Leagues as being in the top league at the time. Like, cut it in half, and he's still way ahead of everybody else. If you subtract 50% of everything he did.
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Yeah, so he learned all sorts of pitches. By the end of his career, he was pitching knuckleballs, and he was famous for the— The hesitation pitch, which he invented, which was when he got to the white major leagues, they were like, that's illegal. You can't do that. It's called a balk. And he was like, all right.
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It was very sneaky. You know, it's like you act like you're pitching, then you stop. Because he was like, you know, I got guys up there that are starting to swing. Cause I'm so fast. Like when they see me winding up, they're starting to swing.
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So if I just put a little slight pause there, then they're swinging and then the ball comes. So it was very, very tricky little pitch. Um, and he was making between 30 and 40 grand a year and the Negro. And this is also with, uh, appearances and stuff like that. Right. But in the Negro leagues, which is about half a million dollars today.
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Yeah, to be a draw. Yeah. And here's one little cool thing about our own Atlanta Braves. In 1968, Satchel Paige was lacking one more season to get his Major League Baseball pension and was out of the league and retired. And the Atlanta Braves signed him as a player-coach contract Like Terry Pendleton. Yeah. He was never a player coach, was he? No, but he was a player and then a coach. Oh, yeah.
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Pete Rose was a player coach. Was he really? Like he managed the Reds and played for them. I did not. And bet on them. Yeah. But they signed him to a one-year deal so he could get his Major League Baseball pension.
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Yeah. Go Braves. So if you see a picture, when I saw a picture of him in the Braves uniform, I was like, wait a minute. He never played for the Braves. And he really didn't. It was sort of, you know, just a little sneaky way to get him in there.
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Which is great. All right. So Satchel Paige is killing it. Other players are killing it. It would not be long before somebody... in the white leagues, somebody said the talent is too good. Somebody has to be the first to make this move and break the color barrier.
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Maybe. Well, I didn't see the most recent Jackie Robinson movie. That's what I'm thinking of. Was it Harrison Ford? Maybe. I've seen him portrayed in other movies before.
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Yeah, that's a huge point. Because like I said, Roy Campanella was probably a better player at the time than Jackie Robinson. But if you see the Jackie Robinson story, I didn't see the recent one, like I said, but I just know a lot about his story. was the right guy. He had the temperament. He had the leadership. Roy Campanella would take your head off. Yeah, he did. He was a tough guy.
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But Jackie Robinson was the man in every way. And we should also shout out to The Road Being Paved. by people like Joe Louis and Jesse Owens before Jackie Robinson.
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As far as just white America accepting mainstream black athletes into their lives.
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For sure. Yeah. So Branch Rickey was... He was a very puritanical guy. He would often lecture players on sex and drinking and stuff. And he was... He wasn't just some benevolent champion of the black man.
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Exactly. Let's put it this way. If Branch Rickey... hadn't wanted to sell tickets by fielding a good team, he would have never signed Jackie Robinson. He was a businessman. That's a good point. The Dodgers sucked at the time. Did they? But he was an idealist. I mean, he was very much like, no, this is wrong, and they should be allowed to play. Yeah.
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Yeah, Jackie Robinson played one year in the minors, which was ridiculous. They should have just, like, he spent his entire life playing in the minors. They should have just promoted him right away. But I think they just wanted to ease that transition. He won the batting title in the minors, his only year there, and then won Rookie of the Year in his very first year with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
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Yeah. And that was April 15th, 1947, was when he made his debut, which was a very, very historic day.
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An amazing day. Major League Baseball has really honored Jackie Robinson to the fullest now.
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Yeah. Larry Doby, Cleveland Indians. Willard Brown, the St. Louis Browns. Henry Hank Thompson, the St. Louis Browns. Dan Bankhead. Leroy Satchel Paige made it finally. And, of course, Roy Campanella, among others. These were the first African Americans in Major League Baseball. And by 1952, just a few years later, there were 150 black players.
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And by 1954, all but four major league teams had black players. There were a few holdouts.
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So with the signing of Jackie Robinson and all the players to follow, like you hinted at earlier, and like this article plainly says, it was a very bittersweet end Um, in one way it was great. The color barrier was smashed. League was being integrated and they were getting their due.
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Um, although it was a struggle, but in another way, it was also sad that this league that had so much gumption and such a, a great, like, we'll do it ourselves then, attitude, and empower these men to play and these people to own these teams and start their own leagues. So it was definitely like a weird time in history. Yeah, it is.
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I think nowadays there's much more of a reverence and a bit of mourning for the disappearance of that league. But, you know, in another way, like I said, it was smashing the color barrier was way more better.
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Oh, actually, you know what the best possible thing could have been was if the white major leagues absorbed those teams and owners and ownership as part of one big league. Nice. But they were like, no, we're just going to take your players.
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Yep, officially disbanded in 1948. And this article says into the 1950s, there were still a few teams playing here and there. And in the early 1960s even, there was like one final team, or I guess one final pair of teams. I guess they had to play somebody. Still playing.
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Yeah, it says the Negro American League was the last to throw in the town in the early 60s. Yeah. So, yeah, more than one team.
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Yeah. And, you know, there's a big push. I think like one of the least represented demographics now in pro baseball are African-Americans.
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Yeah. Partially because of the rise of Latino players and then partially because they've. there's not a big a push to play baseball these days as kids in America. And so there's a lot of concerted efforts to try and get baseball going again in black communities, which is awesome.
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Oh, yeah. Should we rattle off a few of those? Sure. All right. Boy, these are some good nicknames. How about Jelly Gardener or Spoonie Palm? Turkey Stearns. Turkey Stearns. He's a Hall of Famer. Copper Knee Thompson or Steel Arm Davis?
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Yeah. And boy, we need to do one. I've had it on my list for a while on Jim Crow, period. Yeah. How about this? First of all, where did you get this other good, really good article?
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Possum Poles, Ace Adams, King Tut. Smokey Joe Williams. Bullet Joe Rogan. Yeah, Joe Rogan. Did you know that? Ratz Henderson? Boy, Turkey Stearns. That might be the best. That might be my new hotel pseudonym. Cool Papa Joe. Yeah, but no one would buy that at a hotel registry.
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This one I'm going to call Short and Sweet. What do you call it when you... remember something with a pneumatic device?
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Was it nomadic? You remember it while you're wandering around? Pneumatic, of course. Nice. I feel like a dummy. Uh, howdy Josh and Chuck. A friend recommended your show to me recently and I love it. Love it. Uh, you satisfy all my nerdy entertainment requirements while I'm at work. Um, you seem to have a bit of trouble recalling the order of, uh, taxonomic taxonomic there you go categories
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Boy, I'm going to have trouble in this next show. Categories. During woolly mammoths. Not woolly mammoths, as our typo originally said. Yeah, it was my fault. That's all right. You just forgot to know. Wally. Here's an easy memory trick we learned in high school biology. Kings play chess on fine green silk. Kingdom phylum class order family genus species.
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I love that stuff because I will never forget it now.
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I have no idea why this is still in my head over 10 years later. Well, that's exactly why.
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Katie. So I hope that helps. And that is Katie from West Texas.
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In the prehistory section of that one, and this is just to show you the tone of things, in 1857 there was a Supreme Court Chief Justice, Roger Taney, who, it's funny the way this writer put it, he said he's campaigning hard for a spot in the American Scum Hall of Fame. I like that. It's pretty funny.
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In his official writing, this is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, said, Negroes were so far inferior to whites that that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect. This is the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
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I think I need to say that like four more times before it sinks in. That was two or three. This is what was going on despite the Emancipation Proclamation, despite the 14th Amendment. Well, that was actually before it.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to excuse that guy. But after... After that, despite the amendments to the Constitution, despite all of that, it took to the 1960s to even begin the slightest bit of real progress. Yeah. That's true. Not quite true because history is littered with people who've made advancements. They did. And I don't want to knock that.
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Yeah, totally. You're right. It wasn't until the 60s. But part of the problem, too, was – and this is a valid point – Other courts had said, like there was this Justice Henry Billings Brown, said legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences.
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Basically what he's saying is like we can create laws, but you're not going to change public's mind by creating laws. You can't like abolish prejudice.
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I think 99% of people think that Jackie Robinson was the first black American to play pro baseball.
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Yeah, I mean, I'm a big baseball fan and a bit of a student of its history, so I knew.
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Yeah. I mean, not within a couple of decades, a couple of years. Oh, really? Yeah. Like literally two years after the end of the Civil War, there was an African-American team called – I actually don't know what their name was, but they were out of Philadelphia – And they said, we want to join your league, which was the National Association of Baseball Players at the time.
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And they were rejected as a team, of course, at the time. But that didn't mean that there were not players individually. Right.
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Yeah. It was a little bit later, in 1886, finally, and not for too long, we had two brothers, Moses Fleetwood Walker and Welday Walker. Who did they play for? The Toledo Blue Stockings.
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You are totally right. Moses was older. He played 42 games for the team. Well, they only came along and played in six games. Moses hit .263 that season. And they were the son of a physician. Oh, yeah? Like the first black physician in Toledo.
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And went to college, played baseball at Oberlin in Michigan. Yeah. So I know the Wolverines. I didn't know Oberlin even had sports.
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Phased him out in favor of acoustic guitars and debate. I know a lot of people that went to Oberlin, weirdly.
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Well, my good friend Robert Shahadi from Boston that you met that came to our show. Lucy Wainwright went to Oberlin. Didn't know that. David Reese went to Oberlin. Okay. And I feel like a couple of other people. Yeah. He's got a nice reputation. Yeah. Great name, too. Oberlin? Oberlin. It sounds Ivy League. Yeah, Oberlin. The sound of quality. Oberlin. Sounds Ivy League-ish. Right.
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That's on their t-shirts. Although, we do need to give a shout-out. There was one guy in 1879, William Edward White. who substituted and played one game. Oh, yeah? Who was officially, and this is a little murky history-wise because we don't know much about him or how it happened, but supposedly he played one game as a professional baseball player as a black man.
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Yeah. There was another player too. I read another story about, and we'll get to Roy Campanella. He was a, He was better than Jackie Robinson at the time. A catcher who was just amazing, Hall of Famer. And he had a, there was a white pitcher. It was like, you know, he was a great catcher, but I didn't want to play with him.
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So I would, when I pitched to him, I would just ignore his signs and threw whatever I want. Like to his own detriment and to the team's detriment. He just wouldn't take the signs. What a putz. I know. Career sabotage, essentially. I don't think he lasted long either. And Campanella's in the Hall of Fame, so he can say that.
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I want to give these names all out, though. The four black men in the minors in 1866, besides Moses Walker, we had Bud Fowler, Frank Grant, and George Stovey. And as far as I'm concerned, all these dudes are American heroes. So, all of a sudden, they succumb to pressure in 1890 after hate mail and death threats to...
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Coaches and managers and umpires and, you know, basically everybody, the players themselves. And they said, you know what? We're going to shut it down. Officially in 1890, we can no longer have any black men in our league.
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Well, and it was never on the rule books either. It was an unofficial non-gentleman's agreement. Right. Because eventually when it was broken, it wasn't like a rule was broken. Right, right. It was just an unwritten rule.
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You should have said that in a British accent.
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Yeah, one of the other causes, it can be from the onset of MS, from multiple sclerosis. This one woman that we'll talk about in more detail suffered from chronic migraines but had a migraine attack so severe that it spurred this, and we'll get to her. But all of these in a bucket from some sort of trauma or an event are called neurogenic type.
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And for a long time, they used to think that was the only way that you could get foreign accident syndrome.
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Yeah. So there's another kind called psychogenic, also non-organic or functional or psychosomatic. But one of the leading experts said that they prefer psychogenic.
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He said because, quote, this term has the advantage of stating positively based on an exploration of its causes that the disorder is a manifestation of psychological disequilibrium like anxiety, depression, personality disorder, or conversion reaction, end quote.
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Yeah, but what was the name of her character?
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And, you know, we're talking about Could be bipolar disorder. It could be some other form of mental illness. And this really kind of rocked. I mean, it's not a huge community studying this, but the people that do are obviously super fascinated by it.
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And it kind of rocked their world when they found out that someone that had no head injury, no stroke or anything like that would could have something like this.
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I knew I had some. Like they said that every time, right?
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That was pretty funny. She's great. Yeah, she was. Pretty lady.
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Yeah, it's also, the neurogenic is also much more common. Out of the cases, I think it's about 86% are from some sort of neurological damage.
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So what does that leave, 14%? Unless, I guess, you're accounting for the new super odd one that could be both.
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Yeah, this one's the most recent case, actually.
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Funny, smart. Yeah. Good actor. What else? That's all I got on her. She can macrame. Oh, really?
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Yeah, I wonder, I didn't see anything in there about her if she, like, had a, I mean, is it another personality? Is it multiple personality disorder?
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Oh, because that would make sense, you know, if you have just a British personality that came out that's violent maybe or something.
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Yeah. Another case that I said we were going to get to, this one is really weird and super sad. This woman named Sarah Caldwell in England She is the one that had the migraine that set it off. And this one is super odd because she's an English woman who now has a Chinese accent. I mean, just straight up sounds Chinese. And like broken English Chinese.
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Yeah, I mean, her case is really sad. It was, I think, 2010 when she was diagnosed after this migraine incident. And in 2015, she couldn't work anymore. And she has a lot more issues going on than just the speech with these migraines that have come on. She's got a whole range of physical problems. She's had to stop work. She's in a wheelchair.
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Even though her limbs completely work, her brain basically can't tell her limbs to do what they should do.
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Yeah, from, I think, these really extreme migraines. I think they even likened it to, like, having a stroke. They were so severe. So she's had to sell her house, and I think her husband is afflicted with something, too. It's just a really, really sad case. But, you know, there's all kinds of interviews with her, and it's just so strange to hear that accent coming out of this white lady.
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Oh, yeah. You know? And, you know, I saw videos where they would sit down and play her. And before I looked up further that she was having even more troubled times, it seemed like she was getting a little better throughout the interview through therapy because they were
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Playing her, one of the things they do is they play old recordings of herself, and she would sit down and listen to them and try and mimic it, which kind of brought up one of my questions is, can you even mimic an accent? Like, you know, people can fake an accent. Like, can you even do that?
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and I didn't get an answer on that but Then you're just mimicking an accent your entire life too, even if you could yeah, you know So that's problematic on its own sure, but um it seemed like she was getting a little bit better in that interview But apparently not it's really sad.
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So one of the other things that's really troubling is you can't just go to a neurologist and get it cleared up. There are a whole range of doctors that you'll probably see along the way, including a neurologist. You talked about a speech language pathologist. You might go to a clinical psychologist to deal with the fallout from everything. maybe a neuropsychologist, maybe a radiologist.
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You might see six and eight doctors and still not get anywhere.
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Yes, and we're specifically not talking about... There's a thing sometimes that certain people do when they meet someone with an accent different than their own, where they accidentally, or sometimes purposely, adopt it momentarily. Yes, it's called code switching. My mom's done this before. That I remember it happened when I was a kid. My brother and I thought it was so funny. Yeah? Yeah.
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You know, we've all been there. You're sick. You're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold. And then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people. And don't get me started about the prescriptions. That's a whole other story.
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That's right. And with Amazon Pharmacy, your prescriptions are delivered directly to you quickly and affordably. That means no more trips to the pharmacy and no more surprise costs at the cash register.
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In Orlando, meetings reach another level thanks to a growing list of award-winning restaurants, a world-class convention center, a great hotel community, easy access through the airport, and, of course, the weather. That's right, Chuck.
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They are super cozy and the secret is in their fabrics. We're talking about the really good stuff like Merino wool, which feels as cozy as a ski lodge. But if you want to brave the cold on the slopes or on a snowy run, Bombas has athletic socks built for that, too.
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I don't know. Yeah, I think I have a little trouble wrapping my head around this whole idea that it's only in the ear of the person. Because, you know, that lady clearly has a Chinese accent. It's not, oh, I'm just hearing it that way.
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Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that makes sense in some cases, I think. But I don't see how anyone could hear this woman and say, she sounds British to me.
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And it seems like it's usually a parent of an embarrassed child. Sure. Is there an explanation behind it?
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that's the difference yeah i still don't get that what i do get though is we take second nature just when we open our mouth we talk we don't realize the complex uh series of events that's going on to make your voice come out the way it does so you know you're you're well in the brain they think um and again the mysteries of the brain they're the what how you create speech is really complex and involves all kind of uh areas of the brain but
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specifically damage in the left hemisphere and the cerebral artery, they know a lot of times can cause foreign accent syndrome.
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But when you're speaking, you're using your tongue, you're using your lips, your jaw, your larynx, and the way all these things combine and who you are is going to make you have, and we should do one on accents, period.
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It's going to control how your speech comes out. The one example they use in here is if you have a little too much to drink, you might lose some of that muscle control and you might slur your words or talk funny or differently.
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So that's a pretty basic way of understanding it. But I know vowels are sort of a big deal when it comes to foreign accent syndrome.
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Yeah, I get that, but that happens within the Mandarin accent between people, too.
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I just don't get it. All right. One thing I do get is that there's no, like... And this is probably what's so frustrating, or one of the things that's so frustrating, is it's not like they wake up with a new cultural identity, either.
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I mean, this woman... still wants to have her tea and biscuits every afternoon. But when she says that, she says it with, Chuck would call it a Chinese accent. A neurologist would say, well, you're just hearing that. Right, right. So, you know, like you said, people suffer a bit from their own, like, sense of self.
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You know? Because, see, here's what I wonder, is in their... Do they hear it in their head as their own regular accent?
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Well, because the reason I say that is because when, and I think I've talked about this, when my grandfather had a stroke, he still talked.
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but it just came out as gibberish but in his head he was saying the things that he was trying to say which is you know one of the most frustrating things I think yeah after a stroke victim is I remember seeing him talk and getting so frustrated yeah he would just you know say things out loud and it would come out as gibberish to us but in his head he's still saying you know his English words right it's got to make you feel trapped in your body yeah however
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FAS is a little all over the map because there have been other weird cases because we've been saying this whole time. There's not a new identity. It's the same. You're saying the same words and everything. But there have been cases where people do substitute out words like you would say lift instead of an elevator.
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Yeah, they'll just make up a new name. Yeah. This one other case I thought was interesting about the Dutch woman.
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She was Dutch, is Dutch, and she developed a French accent, but she spoke Dutch using French syntax and occasionally French words as if she was a French person learning Dutch. And it turns out that she was a Dutch language teacher who taught French people to speak Dutch. Right. And I don't know, was her psychogenic or neurogenic?
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Like you never use different words and things?
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That's right. I'm going to start off with Nathan Ferlazzo.
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He sent us some really lovely hand-drawn calendars and bookmarks, and you can find those at wildlife.com. Wildlife.mariniferlazzo.com.au. And that's M-A-R-I-N-I-F-E-R-L-A-Z-Z-O.com.au. And it was really, really beautiful work. And it's a cool thing because a portion of every sale is donated to a nonprofit wildlife organization.
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Well, I got a couple of more coffees. I'll just knock them both out. You have one sitting. Actually, you have two of them sitting on your desk right now, my friend.
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True Stone Coffee Roasters from St. Paul, Minnesota sent us their medium blend. And I can't vouch for the taste yet because it just got here, but it smells good. And then Devin from True Coffee Roasters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin sent us Dark Roasted Sumatra and a Mexico Alutra.
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We've got coffee coming out of our ears. That's great.
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Meg from Seattle, she sent me a card about Leron's passing, my cat, which I lost last year, which is very, very sweet. And while I'm on that. Buckley, my old boy, passed away a couple of weeks ago, and everyone on Facebook was beyond supportive and sweet, and that really helped out. So thanks for that.
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Thank you. It was a very dark time.
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That's okay. We'll always come back to them. Okay. Our buddy Jeff Barney was kind enough, and I still haven't tried it. It's in my fridge. But you said it's the best. He sent us Kewpie Japanese Mayo.
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Well, I'm finishing up a gallon of Duke's.
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Yeah, I'm just going to shoot it down, and then I'm going to dive into the Kewpie and see what's going on there. Got to see what the difference is.
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All right. Well, thanks, Jeff Barney, for that.
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Ian Newton of the Baltimore Whiskey Company sent us some ginger apple liqueur and gin.
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I think they got what they wanted out of this, which is for us to say Soylent 12 times. Soylent. This came in today. Thomas Kregel, K-R-E-G-E-L. He sent me a frigging monocle. Oh, that's neat. And he heard me talking about my eyes going and how I just need him to read things close up. And he said, buddy.
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Here's what you need to do because you will one day embarrass your daughter like I embarrass my children. You need to rock a monocle. And it's a monocle.
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Yeah, I mean, I tried it, and it's kind of like a reader. It works about the same as my prescription. But he uses one. He sent a little picture of himself.
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And I guess I should plug the company. It's Nearsights Monocles is what he used.
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And, yeah, I got a monocle now. Nice job, Chuck.
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Bridget Massoth, M-A-S-S-O-T-H, sent us some really cute, along with an extra large handwritten note, sent us some really cute Josh and Chuck cutouts, like kind of paper cut and paste cutouts. Nice. And yours is on your desk. Thank you. You've got to get out of this room and go over to your desk. You've got a bounty.
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Well, I got a few letters, actually. I'll just knock those out because Sandra, maybe this was because of International Correspondence Writing Month that we got these because apparently that happened.
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But Sandra sent us a nice handwritten letter in honor of that specifically. And then Austin from Bakersfield sent us a very nice handwritten note. And then Kristen Cook sent us a Valentine's Day card to all of us, including Harry Knoll. Not Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News, but our own Noel, who is just Harry.
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I got it. It's handwritten. You can't, you know.
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uh i've got two more um megan moon waltzman that's megan with two g's oddly she sent us a copy of uh this really cool thing she made it's a book it's called song book a book of music for all levels all ages and it is 11 songs uh kind of written out as chords and things and illustrated for different instruments like there'll be a song for guitar an intro song for
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Hopefully that doesn't happen because Doyle is one of our oldest, and I don't mean by age, but one of our longest time listeners.
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I got one more, and this one... Boy, you have no idea what's waiting in there. You just came right into the recording studio for a change. Yeah. On your desk right now, Josh. I can't wait. You have a handmade cutting board. Awesome. And it's really, really nice. This is from Christopher at The Timbered Wolf. And it's just, you know, it's gorgeous.
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He sent a couple of these in, and they're really, really nice.
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So you got to take care of it, though. I left the instructions for you.
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Yeah, someone needs to send Josh a wheelbarrow.
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They are super cozy and the secret is in their fabrics. We're talking about the really good stuff like Merino wool, which feels as cozy as a ski lodge. But if you want to brave the cold on the slopes or on a snowy run, Bombas has athletic socks built for that, too.
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Well, I just remember – The only one I remember specifically, and, you know, you just have these random childhood moments that sort of stick with you, was we were in Florida and we were talking with an Irish woman, I believe. She may have been from England, but I think she was Irish. And the other thing, too, is, you know,
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I don't think my mom had probably talked to a lot of Irish people at that point. She's from West Tennessee. They moved to Georgia. We didn't have Irish people all over the place. She wasn't super well-traveled back then, although she is much more now. So it was probably a bit novel to her. And I remember very specifically the woman said something about going to Disney instead of Disney World.
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And my mom said, she got kind of proper, and she says, you know, we haven't been to Disney yet. And I remember my brother and I just thought that was so funny. Instead of saying Disney World.
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No, I don't think so. We may have laughed a little under our breath. But, I mean, I don't think we even teased her. I'm teasing her now a bit.
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But I don't think, like, we made fun of her, really. I think we just kind of, like my brother and I want to do, very quietly looked at each other and in that way that brothers do.
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But it's funny. I was listening to the great Judge John Hodgman podcast with our pal John and Jesse Thorne, Bailiff Jesse. And they had an actual case a few weeks ago that was very funny where this mom does this on purpose. She's a trained actor and loves to put on accents when she goes to places. And the daughter was just she took her to the Internet court and was just like, stop doing this.
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Like, you've got to stop doing this. And the mom's whole thing, she was very just fun and whimsical and having a lot of fun with it. So it was really hard to. to rule against her. But I think Hodgman ultimately did rule against her. He's tough, but fair. Well, I think his whole thing was like, you know, I think he ruled partially in her favor.
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Like you got to let them know where you're from and you can't do it to like waiters and service people because their job is to like,
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take your dumb jokes and and have a stiff upper lip about it and it just kind of makes their job harder if they think maybe you're making fun of them and right you know like you may not realize the unintended consequence of this is somebody may feel uncomfortable that they have to put up with this
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No, it did. I mean, that's what's great about that show is they're funny cases, but he adjudicates seriously. I think that's why it works.
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Yeah. Beehaw. So anyway, I just thought it was pretty weird that this article came up and then that episode had just aired. But that's different than what we were talking about. Totally. Like I started saying, this is not that at all. This is a legitimate super rare. This reminded me of alien hand syndrome and its rarity. Yeah.
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Because I've seen different numbers, but the most I've seen is about 150 described official cases of foreign accent syndrome.
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Yeah, so I guess we should just go ahead and talk about a couple of cases so people know what we're talking about. The first one mentioned in our own article is really interesting for a few reasons, and it's the most recent case that's documented. Oh, I'm sorry, it's not the most recent, but it is fairly recent. A woman named Lisa Alamia, she had jaw surgery because of an overbite.
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And then when she came out of surgery, even though she was from Texas and had never been to England, she spoke with a British accent.
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Well, I'm known on the show for doing the bad accent, so I'm glad you're taking it. No, yours are good. No, I don't know. Mine are... They verge on decent at times.
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So she woke up, had that accent, and her husband and three kids thought it was a joke. She had only been outside the country to go to Mexico, and it was a real thing called foreign accent syndrome.
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Oh, really? I didn't hear. I didn't see this one on YouTube.
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Yeah, this one had a much darker turn because it was during World War II. A Norwegian woman named Astrid suffered injury. And the ironies here are really sad. She suffered a brain injury from shrapnel from a German bomb and a bombing raid. And then when she came to, she had a German accent.
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Yeah, she was shunned. She couldn't even speak German, but she had that accent and was... obviously very distraught by this, and she went to a neurologist named Jorg-Erman Monrad Krohn. Nice job. It's a great name. And he coined the first term for this, which is dysprosity, which is, prosody is like the tone and rhythm of your speech. Yeah. And the prefix dys, obviously, is like abnormal or ill.
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Yeah, but foreign accent syndrome is way more catchy. Oh, it's sexy. In 1982, a neurologist named Harry Whitaker came up with that. So Whitaker coined it in the 80s. I think 1982 was when he coined that official term.
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Well, yeah, because that's one of the factors in foreign accent syndrome. It's not like in a case where you might have a stroke and lose the ability to speak. You still can speak in perfect dialect, whatever that dialect is, as far as being articulate and coherent.
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I appreciate that. I mean, trust me, we're in this tiny studio now, the three of us. I know. I'm trying not to breathe. You've done all this on one breath. It's impressive. I know. Well, quickly, before we take a break so you can breathe again, we're going to talk about symptoms afterward.
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Before you get these symptoms, though, what's happening is your respiratory system is going to become inflamed. And this inflammation might stick around for a few weeks. But from there, it moves into your bloodstream. And then that's when you're going to get these symptoms once it sort of moves into the bloodstream. Right. And we're going to talk about the symptoms as promised right after this.
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Oh, God. Hi, everybody. It's Chuck here. Oh, boy. My selection this week is How the Flu Works. And I'll give you one reason why. This is from November 14th, 2017. I hope you like it. I'm going back to bed.
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It will get everybody else sick except you and Jerry. So the symptoms sound a lot like a cold because the symptoms are kind of the same. A cold is usually not as fraught with potential complications and maybe a little less severe. But they're pretty close, which is why you couldn't tell earlier if you had a cold or flu. Right.
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Yeah. I think that's kind of the way I just distinguish it, right? Yeah.
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Do you remember when Peter Sarsgaard was on Saturday Night Live years ago? No. You know the actor? Sure. He was on there during the SARS, when there was that SARS scare in the United States. And one of their skits was he had developed the SARS card, SARS card, which was just basically a surgical mask. But it was just funny. They said SARS card, SARS card like 30 times, and I laughed every time.
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I didn't know there were two different things. Well, there are the Skarsgaards, which is like Stellan Skarsgaard is the dad.
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And then the son was the dude on... True Blood, The Vampire Show, and then recently on that Pretty Little Liars, I think. I don't know. One with Nicole Kidman. Okay. That's Alexander Skarsgard. I think that might be him. Is Sarsgard the one who's in Fargo?
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All right, here's the deal. Okay. The guy in Fargo, man, this is such a bad sidetrack already. It's pretty bad. The guy in Fargo was Peter Stormare.
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No, but I definitely know that there is Peter Sarsgaard. Okay. Because he either was or is married to Maggie Gyllenhaal.
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And then there's Stellan and Alexander Skarsgård, and I don't know who It the Clown was. It's Bill Skarsgård. And is he related to the Skarsgårds? I guess so.
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No, actually, we never looked stuff up, but I did look that up.
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Because the headline here says Alexander Skarsgård's reaction to his brother Bill's clown costume.
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Oh, yeah, it was good. I know there were so many people screaming at their phones, but I think we finally got it right. Yeah, sorry about that, everybody.
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All right, this all got started with Sarsgaard Sarsgaards.
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That's correct. And the symptoms, like a cold or coughing, sneezing, the fever, which is different, like we said, with the flu, achy body, which usually comes with that fever, and then Josh's runny nose and congestion that you can hear and your overall lethargy.
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Severe dehydration is another secondary symptom of the flu. That's why, of course, you always want to drink plenty of water when you have a cold or a flu. I looked that one up too, Chuck, because if you think about it, why?
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That's right. Ear infections, especially if you're a kid. Sinus issues. Emily always gets bad sinus problems along with this stuff. I know. She was starting to get a little sniffly. Is she sick? She did get sick. Oh, that poor lady. Yeah, New York, man. Yeah. It killed everyone I love. And then if you, like in Emily's case, she's slightly asthmatic.
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But if you are asthmatic, you have like diabetes, it can make that stuff worse. Yeah.
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Well, actually, in the episode coming up about the silly one about the 10 cursed movies, remember the little girl from Poltergeist died at 12 from a heart attack brought on by the flu. Yeah. Right?
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Oh, okay. But I thought it was never like a virus like that? I don't think so. I think they mistook it. All right. Well, then forget all that.
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Okay. So how you get the flu. Is this. Like you said, it's generally about November through March. January and February tend to be the worst of it here in the United States. And as we mentioned, offices and schools especially because children are filthy monsters.
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I think the difference that I can tell, and I don't get the flu much. You know, I always get the stomach bug, which, as it turns out, is not a flu. I just learned. But I don't get the flu flu much. But I can always tell, though, when I'm super achy. Like, the flu just makes me feel like dog doo-doo. Right. Whereas a cold is just a big inconvenience.
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who just don't wash hands and they breathe on each other and touch each other and they don't cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze. But it's pretty cute when they hug each other. It's very cute, actually. It's worth all the sickness in the world. It's pretty great. But...
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That's the reason that kids tend to spread it more because as much as you try and teach them to cover their mouth when they cough and sneeze and wash their hands a lot, it's just not really on their radar like it is for adults.
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And then, you know, the kid then in turn brings it home and the family gets infected pretty quickly because try as you might, there's just a lot of close contact with kids that you can't avoid. And even if you're washing your hands, they will find a way to infect you. Right.
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Yeah, that's right. As far as, and you know, a lot of that was just spread from bird poop.
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Yeah, as far as the regular flu, the garden variety flu that we're talking about mainly here, it spreads from... Well, like we said, from touching stuff, from coughing and sneezing, when you cough and sneeze, even if you think you're covering your mouth pretty well, there may be little fluids squirting out between your fingers up to a few feet. Like a firehouse. It's in the air around you.
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That stuff can travel, you know. So if that lands on a doorknob or if someone covers their mouth like a normal and then opens a door or borrows a stapler or whatever, it's going to be on that doorknob. And then you touch it. And that's why like handwashing by the sick and by the non-sick is so crucial.
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You are toast. And as you mentioned earlier, it bears repeating, you can be sick a day before symptoms and you can – or you can be contagious a day before symptoms and still remain contagious up to seven days after death. the symptoms start. Right. So even if you feel better after day four, you could still be spreading that junk around for a few more days.
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And that's when you just lay in bed and watch Stranger Things 2. Right. I haven't seen it yet. Is it good? Yeah, we just finished it last night. Cool. Did you see the first season? Oh, yeah. That was great. Season 2 is... Just as great, if not better, I'm happy to say. I'm glad to say that, too. I was a little nervous, you know, because it was something I loved. And it's like, oh, man.
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Yeah, so great. I want to get those Duffer Brothers on Movie Crush. Oh, yeah, that'd be cool. Those guys would be great. Should we take a break? Yeah, I think so. All right, we'll come back and talk a little bit about pandemics.
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Yeah, and I think also in a pandemic, doesn't that mean it has left the country? Yeah, I think that is kind of one of the indicators of it, too. 1918, these numbers are staggering. This is the worst flu pandemic in world history in 1918. Mm-hmm. I don't know what months exactly, but 1918 and 19. And it killed more than 20 million people around the world.
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More lives were lost than all 20th century wars combined to the flu. Yeah. You said 20 million? 20 million worldwide, about half a million in the United States.
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Yeah. I mean, it's scary to think about. I mean, surely that couldn't happen today, could it? Or could it? Oh, yeah.
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Man, you'd think that we could head something like that off these days.
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All right, so as far as your risk of getting the flu, if you're a kid, like there's different risk groups, like high risk, low risk, whatever, medium or average risk. But if you're under two years old, your little immune system isn't quite smart enough yet to know how to fight things off. So you're definitely more at risk. And as always, what affects the children also affect the elderly.
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So if you're over 65... Seniors. Is elderly wrong to say? I think elderly is technically 81. Oh, really? Yeah. All right, so we'll go with seniors. Seniors. Active senior adults who have decades left ahead of them. That's right. Who else? Anyone who has any kind of chronic, like I mentioned, asthma or diabetes, any kind of chronic condition.
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If you're pregnant, if you work in a hospital or a doctor's office or a nursing home.
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Yeah, sure is. It's also a recipe for tapioca pudding. It is. The best around. Yeah. Remedy-wise, and we'll talk about vaccinations here in a minute because I thought that was kind of one of the most interesting parts of this. But as far as remedies, if you get the flu, it's a virus, so you can't take antibiotics. No. You can't take a pill that's going to cure you.
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There are some antiviral drugs, which I've never tried any of these. Have you? No. No? No. I tried Zycam last year once. I think that's for colds.
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Well, I mean, I had a few people say, oh, you know, you should try Zycam. It helps knock out your cold faster. It killed my sense of taste and smell. Oh, no. For several days to the point where I was scared. I don't remember that. I'll bet you were scared. Yeah, and I looked it up, and it's a thing.
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Yeah, it was pretty freaky. Yeah, I'll bet. And super noticeable. It wasn't like a subtle thing. You'd be like, chilly.
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So that was my experience. I'm not making some sweeping statement about that medication.
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But there are antiviral drugs called, there's one called Tamiflu, Relenza, Flumidine. A little on the nose if you ask me. Right.
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Yeah. How about a stat right off the get-go here? Okay. The flu, the CDC.
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Yeah, and that's what they do. What they try to do is just keep the spread, cellular spread from happening as much as it can. Right. And that's sort of the easiest way to say it.
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Yeah. I didn't get flu shots for many, many, many, many years until I had a kid.
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Yeah, like our close family, the grand-grands and the abbas, and the pop-pops and the papas and the poopas and the meemings and the momos.
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Yeah, Momo got a flu shot. That was nice of her. She's very kind. So, yeah, we all got flu shots, and I just wasn't, you know, I never got the flu much. I didn't have a disbelief in the flu vaccine. I was just like, nah, I don't really need to bother with that. Yeah. I was fine.
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Well, yeah, now they just sort of recommend it when you have kids. Up until they're a certain age, you should get vaccinated as a family.
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Right. Which is also what I said in my very first episode.
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I don't remember the schedule. Yeah, I don't remember the schedule. Well, ask your doctor, okay? We're not doctors. Stop pressuring us. Well, they'll tell you. Like when you go to get your little kiddie checkups, they say, you know, come back in this month and get your flu shot. Right. Number one and then flu shot number two.
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Remember that? Yep. It's not any funnier now. So the CDC right here in Atlanta, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not the CDCP. No, they just stuck with the original. They reckon that between 5% and 20% of United States peoples get the flu each year compared to about 10% to 25% in dirty, cold Canada. Right, I know. Yeah.
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Well, and when they were doing it, when we say kids, you had to be over five because it was a, like you said, a live virus. Right. It was a live weakened virus. Yeah, and that's different. Like if you think – all right, I'm going to get a flu shot, so that means I'm going to get the flu virus shot into me, and so I might feel like I have the flu. That's not really the case.
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It's really kind of neat how they do it. These scientists and doctors, like you said, track what's going on in the world of flu all over the world, and they... They sort of make a – well, they don't sort of. They very definitely make a prediction and say here's the flu strain specific to the United States, let's say, that I think we're going to be faced with this year.
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And they make their best scientific guess possible. And that is the – You get a not live version of that virus injected into your body. Your body sees, hey, foreign invaders here. Let me produce antibodies. Then if that virus or if the real flu knocks on your door later that winter, your body says, wait, I've met you before. I know how to fight you. Yeah. But it's pretty cool.
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Like and it literally the effectiveness. I looked up this year, and it's a year-to-year thing. It's 40% to 60% on this year's strain, and it varies because it really just depends on how well, those scientists have predicted how much they get it right.
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Well, and they say there's a list of people who should not receive the flu shot. And one of those qualifications is if you are allergic to chicken eggs, then you shouldn't get a flu shot. Right.
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Yeah, if you currently have a fever, wait on your flu shot. Under six months, of course, we said you cannot. If you have had flu shots in the past and you had a bad reaction, because like I said, it's not going to make you sick, but you might feel a little achy or have sore muscles or something. But you can have a bad reaction. And if that's the case, then maybe flu shots aren't for you.
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Wow. Yeah. So you got anything else? No. I mean, I guess we're not going to cover the boogie-woogie flu. I thought that was boogie-woogie fever. No, it's the rock and pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu.
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Uh, yeah, this is a Simpsons overlooked, uh, overlooked Simpsons bit from us. And this is not one of those, we get plenty of things where people are like, how could you not have mentioned this quote or this episode? But the response was good. Then people weren't necessarily, uh, poo-pooing it.
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Totally. But this is something we failed to mention, which definitely deserves its own email. And this is from Rich, our man on Cape Cod, as he says. Hey guys, was listening to the Simpsons two-parter. Enjoyed it very much. You explained how an episode came to be from conception to animation, etc. And you paid respect to each portion.
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But then you slided off one of the most important men in the franchise, you just said. And then they slapped Danny Elfman's score on it and it's done. Well... As any true Simpsons aficionado would know, Danny Elfman has never once written a score to the Simpsons. He wrote, as we know, just the title or the theme song.
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So he says that job fell to the immensely talented and recently terminated via email, Alf Clausen. For 27 years, every score, every cue, every song was composed, orchestrated, and conducted by Clausen and his live orchestra. He's won two Emmys and seven Annie Awards for his work. The reason this is such a painful sight was because this omission has been happening for years.
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Clausen has worked insane hours writing music for a live orchestra to accompany an animated show. He's always played second fiddle. Nailed it, he said. to all those who think Elfman is any part of the show after he pinned the main title. In fact, the main title theme song we all know and love is actually Clausen's re-orchestration of Elfman's theme that took place mid-season three.
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with a lusher, more crisp orchestration. Wow. I bet you anything rich plays the oboe. Alf Clausen, I'm so sorry. I know. He said, I admire your podcast for bringing light to information that has been stuck lurking in the shadows. You always make sure credit is given to those who sometimes went their entire lives without getting the nod they deserve.
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Well, this guy's really turning the knife in our backs, isn't he? And I feel you, O'Clausen. That respect. So, Alf Clausen, for real. And then it was a bit of a longer email. He told the story of how he was recently fired by email, which is not cool. No, it's definitely not.
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Yeah. And apparently the World Health Organization says around the world, as many as a quarter of a million people to a half a million people can die every year from the flu. Right. There's a lot of folks.
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Yeah. So it is a respiratory illness. So like I said before, when you hear people say the stomach flu, which I've said a lot in my life because I get it once a year with the poopy butt and the vomitous mouth. In the ill belly. At the same time though, I can't, I think I've asked you this before, but I don't remember. Has it literally ever happened at the same time? Mm-hmm. I think once in my life.
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Man, that's rough. I was on the john with a bucket. Oh, God. It's so rough. Well, the worst time I ever had it, I may have told this story before, I was sick at a friend's house, which is the worst, when I was not living in Atlanta, but I was in Atlanta. Oh, no. And I was like, I just got to get to my mom's house.
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Yeah. I was like, I just was much more comfortably being sick there.
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And he was working. It was just one of those things. And so I got in my brother's car that I was borrowing while I was in town. I don't like where this story's going. And I drove... No lie, probably about 100 miles an hour to Snellville from Atlanta. Yeah. Thinking – and I pooped in my pants in the car.
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And I remember thinking if a cop pulls me over, he would have to be a cold, heartless individual to give me a ticket because I would just say, sir – Don't take me to prison. Take me to a hospital because I'm dying. Yeah. So I drove 100 miles an hour. It was kind of fun. So you made it home. You showed up with poopy pants and your mom took care of you? Yep. Showed up to Diane's house and I lived.
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But anyway. That was a long way of setting up this, which is that is actually not a flu. The stomach flu is not because the flu is 100% a respiratory illness. Right. And it's not something that happens in your stomach or in your butt.
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So A is the most common and most severe. That's the bad news. B is a little milder, a little less prevalent, and then we go all the way down to C. which is I get the feeling C doesn't happen a lot, and it definitely isn't the one that you're going to have like a big epidemic of the flu from a C. Yeah, I couldn't find much on C influenza either.
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Yeah, I mean, remember the avian flu? That scared the world. Oh, yeah. And that was A. Right. That was A strain.
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So, I mean, that's a good little factoid. I don't think anyone really understands what those letters mean. That's what they mean. You know? Yeah. But as far as you're concerned, just pay attention to the news and when they talk about the scary ones. they'll mention those letters and numbers and then you can impress your friends.
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So as far as the standard flu that we're talking about here, the virus. It gets into your body and it kind of makes a beeline to your respiratory tract. And it binds with your cells. It's viruses. Did we do a general one on viruses?
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It is. So they bind to the surface of the cells in that respiratory tract. And then they say, hey, I'd like you to meet my little friend, RNA. Why don't I inject my genetic information into your nucleus and see how you like it?
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Yeah, like this is happening so fast. It moves in there. It says, I'm in charge now. Yeah, out of the way. Yeah, completely out of the way. I'm running the show here. We're copying each other, and we're going to move out to the cell membrane because this cell is going to die very quickly. And then that's just going to poof me out into the body further to infect other cells.
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It's true, man. Like, my kid didn't get sick at all for the first 18 months of her life. And I thought, I've got a wonder baby. Yeah, really? I don't know what's going on. We put her in daycare a couple of days a week, and she was sick nonstop for the next six months. Man, that is rough. It is rough. And then they get the family sick. And we'll talk a little bit about that and how that happens.
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But all this is to say... During flu season, especially if you work in an office where when you hear the flu's going around or whatever, or anywhere you work or in school, if you hear about the flu going around, Even if you don't feel sick or your cube mate doesn't feel or look sick, just start washing your hands a lot.
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Yeah, and they don't really know what that means. They didn't know if it was just something to keep them busy, preoccupied. They didn't know if the person who was designing the scavenger hunt got interrupted or knew that the cops were around and they were doing it sort of in real time.
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But at any rate, unfortunately, the scavenger hunt just kind of fizzled out because that was kind of a cool part of the story.
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Yeah, and they very smartly said, well, wait a minute. Why don't we check out what that last delivery was supposed to be? There may be a clue there. And it was an interesting place. You could only get there by Dirt Road, and it was right next to a TV transmission tower in kind of a remote wooded area. And cops combed the area, found shoe prints that matched Wells.
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They found those classic, iconic Geo Metro tire tracks that everyone recognizes by sight. But there really weren't any more clues as far as the cops were concerned at that location.
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So where the cops had found a dead end, a reporter and photographer for the Erie Times News went and did a little investigating of his own and saw this house, you know, next door where the pizza was delivered and said, well, you know, I'm just going to go knock on the door. This guy answers the door and his name was Bill Rothstein. And he actually said, you know, you can look around if you want.
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He's 59 years old. He's a handyman, wasn't married, had lived there his whole life. And apparently he seemed really smart, had a very – articulate way of speaking and apparently was fluent in several different languages. And the journalist kind of did a little poking around and didn't really see much and took off. But he made contact with Bill Rothstein.
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Hey, man, we were we were dabbling on the periphery of true crime. when most of these people were wet in their diapers. That's right, man.
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He's the first person that kind of went to knocking.
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Right. And if you're like me and you start hearing wife of the ex-girlfriend's dad's cousin – Your brain gets a little jumbled. So just very plainly, he used to date this woman. This woman called him up and said, hey, I've murdered my current boyfriend or was it her husband?
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And she said, and I need your help here. I blasted him with a shotgun. And I know we dated, oh, 20 years ago. But will you come help me out? Because they were still in contact, I guess. They remained friends. I guess so. And this racked Bill Rothstein, apparently. He thought about committing suicide, apparently. There was even a note they found, a suicide note.
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We were occasionally doing a poor job of covering true crime 10 years ago. That's right. We're going to do it again. That's right. We continue that great, rich history.
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But he maintained, like you said with the cops, that he didn't have anything to do with anything but most of the cleanup.
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Yeah, but which the reason he held on the body, he was supposed to get— Apparently he's supposed to grind this body up. And that's where he finally stopped short and was like, Jesus, I can't do this.
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He's like, I dated this lady. Right. She's not a nice person.
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Well, extremely seriously because the next day they arrested her. That's pretty serious. For murder. And about a year and a half later, a little short of that, she pled guilty but mentally ill. She was sentenced to seven to 20. Okay. And then Rothstein, for his part, eventually died of cancer in 2004.
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Yeah, that's a weird thing to put if you had nothing to do with that, you know. Right. That's just a very odd thing to do. It's like when the cops come in and you go, there's nothing under the bed. There's no reason to look there.
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Yeah, she asked for the old Hannibal Lecter treatment.
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I mean, I think so. This is in the Wired article. It said that there was a phone call from a state cop who had just met with her about something unrelated, like a different homicide. And she just – and it kind of makes sense, though, now, actually, when we – as we will learn, she talked a lot. Yeah, a lot.
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So it doesn't surprise me that another cop was just meeting with her about something unrelated. She was like, by the way, that whole collar bomb thing, I got all the skinny on that.
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Yeah. And eventually, you know, when they met with her about this, She admitted that she was involved, but... Well, she didn't admit she was involved in the plot, but she said, I knew about it. I gave him those two kitchen timers. And I was really close by when it happened. And by the way... The guy who blew up with the collar bomb, Mr. Wells, he was actually in on it too.
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She asks for immunity at this point. Yeah. After she had basically completely incriminated herself. And previous to all this, a lot more happened. There were four different informants who had come forward and said that this lady's been talking about this for a while. She very much had everything to do with it.
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And then a couple of months after she had started talking to the feds, another big break came. This witness came forward and said, hey, there's this crack dealer named Kenny Barnes. That is a crack dealer's name. Kenneth Barnes. And he was involved. They used to go fishing together, Armstrong, Deal Armstrong and Barnes. And- She sang like a canary to him, basically, and said, here's what she did.
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You got homemade bombs. You got a scavenger hunt. You've got a crack dealer. Well, you've got to have a crack dealer. You've got prostitutes. You've got pizza. Yeah, and let's start with the pizza, shall we? You've got a Geo Metro. Right. Which, by the way, I just wanted to point out ahead of time, there is no more... pizza delivery car 2003 than a Geo Metro. A teal one, no less.
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She, her brother-in-law put him in touch with Barnes while he was already in jail. on unrelated charges, basically. And so Barnes was already in prison and said, hey, I think I can shorten my time, so I'm going to try and get a reduced sentence at least by spilling the beans on Deal Armstrong.
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Yeah, and before the trial even, he told, his story was, is that she wanted me to kill her father. He was spending what would end up being her inheritance, she felt, and so she wanted him dead. And so she was doing this collar bomb heist to raise money to pay me to kill her dad.
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Yeah, the thing is, it's almost like they rolled them right off the line in 2003 straight to a pizza place. With the pizza guy inside already. Yeah, and the little sign magneted on top.
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That's right. So previous to this, she she had gotten the indictment. But in that indictment, it's very important that she was not I mean, granted, she was the only one technically indicted. But they in the indictment, it said that Rothstein was definitely a conspirator. And Wells, the man who was who was the victim, supposedly, he was definitely involved in this thing from the beginning.
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Yeah, they said he agreed to rob this bank. He thought it was a fake bomb. And he was told the scavenger hunt was a ruse to fool the cops. And if and when he did get caught, he could say, you know, I was just following orders, basically what he did.
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Whether Wells was in on the thing from the beginning.
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Or whether or not he was in from the beginning and then at one point wanted out and was forced to do this or whether he was forced from the beginning. Everyone's telling a different story. And, you know, basically the trial is where we will learn, you know, if all that is true, what really happened.
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That's right. But before she took the stand a few days earlier is when they trotted out Ken Barnes and he took the stand and he said he had, you know, by the time she took the stand, he had given a different account of the story than she would later do. So he got up there and said she was behind all this. She was the mastermind. Rothstein was involved. She just recruited him basically.
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She recruited Wells because Wells needed money. And here's where the prostitutes come into play. Apparently Wells had a relationship with a prostitute who was also a crack addict. So he would buy crack to give her presumably – as trade for sex, he ended up falling into debt with these crack dealers and needed money.
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And so basically the plot of Boulan Rouge, uh, and he contends, um, Barnes did that, that, uh, Up until the day of the crime, Wells thought this whole thing was fake, realized that it was a double cross, it was a real bomb, and he tried to run away and was tackled, and they put a gun to his head and locked him into this device.
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Well, yeah, and on the final day of her trial, at the very, very end of her taking the stand, is when she finally said that she didn't know him, never met him. And the first time she had ever laid eyes on him was on the news that day.
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Yeah, the jury took about 11 hours, and she was convicted of armed bank robbery conspiracy and using a destructive device in a crime of violence.
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Yeah, and she would die in prison, just like her prognosis said. She didn't, I think she lasted a few years.
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Yeah, so she finally passed away. And, you know, that's kind of the end of the story, even though there is a retired FBI investigator named Jim Fisher who said, I think they got this all wrong. I think that Rothstein was the guy the whole time. And he makes a decently compelling case, but it's, you know, everyone's dead now.
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Yeah, I mean, it's kind of hard to tell with literally everyone having died. But for his money, he thinks it was Rothstein.
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Oh, man, I don't know. I mean, it sounds like I kind of believe the story that they were all in it together and he was probably double crossed. But this is just from reading about this thing many, many years later.
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I'm going to go with one on emoji and John Adams. Hey, guys, enjoy the recent podcast about the history of emojis and emoticons. Reminded me of a discovery I made in the diaries of John Adams that makes a historical figure who's sometimes described as aloof seem completely charming. When the future president was about 22 years old, he made an entry in his diary in 1756 saying a cloudy morning.
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about 10, and he drew a little sunshine, breakout, a warm day. He uses a little line drawing of the sun that I always call an 18th century emoji. He liked the little creation so much he reused it a month later in the same diary, a misty morning, little sunshine, breakout, about noon. On the Massachusetts Historical Society website, the text of his letters and diaries is faithfully transcribed.
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But in these cases, a parenthetical note tells readers that there are small drawings of the sun and advises them to refer to the scans of the handwritten page where you can actually see this. Apparently, he grew out of his habit, though, because his later diaries do not use the adorable little son. Keep up the great work. My wife and I host a local history podcast for Boston. Nice.
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It's tightly scripted. Oh, man, he didn't tell me what it was. I would have totally shouted it out.
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One of these days, we'll be confident enough to have an unscripted conversation like you guys do. And that is from Jake Sconyers.
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Yeah. So, first of all, he was walking with a cane, kind of a funny-looking cane.
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And then under his T-shirt, he had clearly, and if you've seen the footage and the photos, which you can see, warning, by the way, for video.
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For the future, it's quite graphic. It's out there. But it is out there. But he had clearly some large boxy looking thing. It looked like he was wearing a shoebox around his neck with a T-shirt pulled over it.
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Oh, really? So either an officially licensed or not licensed, but whatever brand shirt or a homemade janky spray painted version.
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Yeah, which is kind of a long time if you're a bank robber.
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Yeah, and importantly, we did not mention, he lifted his shirt up and showed this teller this bomb, what's called a collar bomb, strapped around his neck. Right.
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Yeah, so these coppers, these troopers come over, and he says, hey, guys, this is a bomb around my neck. A group of black men chained this bomb around my neck at gunpoint, forced me to rob this bank for them. I'm not lying here. This thing is going to go off. So the cops call the bomb squad, and they do – I saw, you know, his –
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The family of Wells is still angry about the fact that she says they did nothing to save them, but... I would be, too. By the way, we should shout out Wired Magazine. Oh, yes, we really, really should. A lot of this came from a great, heavily researched story by Rich Shapiro from about eight years ago called The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist.
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So thank you, Rich, for your work, but... The dude's on the ground. I mean, I kind of remember this happening because when I went and looked at the still images, I was like, wait a minute, I've seen this footage.
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And it's this guy sitting on the ground with this thing around his neck, kind of just waiting, seated on the pavement for about 25 minutes. He says very interestingly, like, did you call my boss at the pizza place?
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And then all of a sudden this bomb starts beeping fast, which is never a good sign. And when I was reading the story, I thought, well, that's just a ruse. But no, this thing detonated and killed him. It blasted a hole in his chest. It did not blow his head off like the Internet says. No. But it was a violent, awful death.
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Yeah, so the cops obviously check out that Geo Metro, and it's sweet, sweet styling, and they saw his cane in there. It turns out the reason why the cane was funny looking is because it was also a gun.
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Yeah, when you look at it. The bomb was clearly homemade. It had a couple of different parts to it. It was this banded metal collar that he wore around his neck. It was like locked to his neck. It had four keyholes and then a combination lock. Yeah, it was really locked to his neck. And then an iron box with two pipe bombs.
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Loaded up, ready to go, and then interestingly, and this will figure, put a pin in this one because this will figure in the case later, it had two kitchen timers in there in addition to an electronic countdown timer.
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Yeah, and then some decoy wires. You always got to have those if you're making a bomb.
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Hi everybody, Chuck here, curating a specially hand-picked, selected episode. This one's from May 2018, and boy oh boy, this is a good one. I forgot all about this one. This is part of our True Crime series. Not so grisly, as far as, like, you know, it's not about an axe murder or anything like that. It's about a heist, and I'd love me some heist. And this is called The Collar Bomb Heist.
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That's right. So the most important thing they found in this car, though, were some letters, some handwritten notes addressed to bomb hostage. So one of them said, I mean, these were instructions, basically, on what this guy should do, which further kind of cemented like, hey, this guy's probably telling the truth. It said, go rob this bank of 250 grand. And then, very strangely, outlined
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this little scavenger hunt, basically, to where eventually you will land upon the keys in combination to get you out of this thing by going all over town and finding these various hidden notes. And at the last note, you will be able to free yourself.
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Yeah, so the scavenger hunt was, like you said, he had gotten just to the one place. So the cops then say, well, here's what we're going to do. We're going to complete the scavenger hunt.
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All right. Scavenger hunt has just started by the coppers. We'll be right back.
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And they like to go off and do those things that teenage electrons do, and therefore it does conduct electricity.
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Yeah, like when you were a kid in elementary school, you probably did the little balloon trick where you make static electricity and make the balloon stick to your sweater. All you're doing, you're rubbing that balloon on your sweater and electrons are jumping from that balloon onto your sweater. And now there are two different charges going on.
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because you're overcharged, the balloon is now undercharged, and because opposite charges attract, it sticks to your sweater. Right. And that's static electricity.
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It sounds like you need to generate that electricity with a generator. Right.
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Yeah, it's funny just how basic some of these things are. Like you say a computer.
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Yeah, I think a lot of these words are like that. Like a generator or a... Corpuscle. Or a... What's it called when they stop down the electricity, which we'll get to? Transformer. Yeah, it transforms something. But you say them so much, you're like, what's a transformer do? Right. Anyway, I've been reading too much Science for Dummies, I think. All right, so generators.
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In the case of generators. And if you want to listen to two shows, Lightning and Magnetism, before this one, it might help you understand electricity a little bit more. All right. So just go listen to those. We'll wait. We'll do that right now. We'll wait two hours.
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Yeah, it's like what happens when you attract a paperclip to a magnet. It's just the transfer of electrons.
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Once, yeah. I think I vaguely remember that. Dude, I freaked. Yeah, you were crying. I was on the phone with Delta and everything. I was like, oh, here it is. It's on my head. In your back pocket.
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Yeah, it's the same concept as an old gristmill, except it's not creating energy. It's just moving energy. the stones that grind the wheat or corn.
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Yeah, and if you've ever been to the Hoover Dam or something, you don't have to have a waterfall or a river to make this thing work. That's why they build dams. You stop up the water, and then at the base of the dam, you have the means to release that water, and then it becomes that flowing water.
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And these are all just different methods, whether it's solar or steam or nuclear. I almost said it. Which is weird because I definitely don't say it that way. Well, you were very excited. I think I said it enough as a joke. Right. That it slips in. But anyway, all those are just means to turn that turbine. Right.
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Yeah, and this article, we used a few different articles for this one, like we said, including some Science for Kids websites, which, by the way, I highly recommend. If you don't get something... Yeah, it's a great place to go visit are these kids' websites because they break it down super simply.
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But in our article, it describes a generator as if it was water in a pump, which made a lot of sense to me. The generator... is the pump, but instead of pushing water through a pipe, it's pushing electrons down a line, a power line.
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Yeah, but you need something to push it. It's not a self-pusher. So you need that force, and that force is voltage. Right, yeah. Electromotive force.
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Oh really oh Yeah, it is. Okay. I wasn't even thinking of it as a math formula.
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Yeah, and I know it sounds a little confusing with volts, amps, and watts, but they are all different. Like, if you said... You know, that guy was shocked and he had 120 volts coursing through his body. That's not true at all because the volt is the force. Right. He's got amps coursing through his body. Yeah. But you'd be a huge geek to point that out to someone if someone said that.
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I thought you were going to say Once in a Lifetime. No, that's... What is that called? Once in a Lifetime? Yeah. Yeah, I've been singing the Schoolhouse Rock electricity song over and over in my head.
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In the United States, it's 120, but it's different in other countries.
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We acted like it was all either an insulator or a conductor, but you can be a resistor.
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Yeah, but if you're an official resistor, that means current moves. It just doesn't move as fast as it might in metal. Right. Or not at all, as in wood.
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I haven't been singing that. But do you remember it? Yeah, I was Electric Company over Sesame Street even.
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So all this is well and good. That's, you know, you can supply power, and we'll talk about this more in detail, too, to homes from a power plant. But you can also have a little battery... supplying that electrical energy to a iPhone, let's say.
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And in that case, you need something called a circuit, which is basically just a closed loop that allows the electrons to travel. And in most electronics, it's like you said, like copper wire maybe. And it travels from... There's a switch that turns it on and off, which is why a circuit is called a circuit breaker.
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If you break that circuit by turning the switch off, or if the wire snaps or something, no more electrons are going to be flowing.
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Yeah, it could be a light bulb or... whatever mechanical energy you're trying to create is your load.
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No, it's, in the correct answer there, it's the Who, by the way.
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that's great that you have electrons flowing, but it's not going to turn anything unless you have that motor. And, uh, electric motor is basically just a cylinder, uh, stuffed with magnets around the edge. And if you've ever used an electric drill and you fire it up, when you look and see in the vents, you can actually see sparks. It's pretty cool. It's very cool.
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No, I mean, yeah, I love the Who. Do you? But I'm with you. I don't see the need to rank things like that.
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It's like those little guns you used to get at the circus when you were a kid. Yeah. God, I love those. Um, so it's packed with those magnets around the edge and in the middle you've got your core, which is, you know, like an iron wire and, uh, It's wrapped around, you know, the copper is wrapped around the edges.
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So electricity flows to that core, creates magnetism, and then that pushes against the outer cylinder and makes that motor spin around, and then that's where you get your mechanical energy.
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Yeah, it skewed slightly older, I think. Sesame Street, to me, felt like, you know, six, seven, eight-year-olds. Electric companies were like eight, nine, ten, twelve.
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So like when you look at a power line and you see that bare wire coming down from the power line and driven into the ground by a stake, that is the ground and it goes down like six or ten feet. Or if you look at every house, you're going to see near the meter, the electrical meter, you're going to see a probably a copper rod driven into the ground, and that's your house's ground.
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Yeah, and Romper Room was kind of pre-Sesame Street even.
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Yeah, and we mentioned transformers earlier. Power plants create massive amounts of electricity, and you can't just shoot that down a power line and straight into a house because it will blow up everything in your home immediately. But they do need that kind of juice in order to transfer, like, hundreds of miles away from the power plant.
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You know, if you don't live close, it's still got to get to you.
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So the way they do that is through transformers. They transmit the power with a lot of voltage, so more force, less amperage. Less resistance. Less resistance.
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And then once they stop it down along the way, and by the time it gets to your home, it's transformed down to, here in the United States, 120 volts. Yeah.
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I don't remember. I just remember it was very immature.
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I think the Hot Pockets, too, they called it unsound meat, which is just a word that sounds weird in front of meat.
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All right, so now I think even though we've covered it in the Tesla podcast, we do need to go over ACDC a little bit.
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Great episode. Best Australian band of all time.
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Oh, okay. Tesla's all right. Sure. And they're not around.
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So there was a battle being waged between Tesla and Edison, and Tesla was all about the AC current, alternating current. Edison, as we know, said, no, no, no, that's far too dangerous, and I'll prove this to you by electrocuting animals. and dogs and cats, and even an elephant named Topsy. Yeah.
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Yeah. And I think I remember talking about there should be a movie, too, about that battle. Yeah, I can't believe there's not. It sounds super nerdy, but it would actually be interesting.
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So batteries these days use direct current power, DC power, and that means the positive and negative terminals are always positive and negative, and electricity always flows in the same direction.
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And then you have alternating current, or AC, which means the current reverses 60 times per second here in the U.S., 50 times per second in Europe. So it's just reversing back and forth, alternating that current. And I guess, so who won out in the end? Tesla? On a large scale.
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I mean, that's what power generation does. Yeah, but Edison has his batteries, I guess, that he could throw at Tesla.
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I guess we can finish with... If you get your power bill and you're amazed and you wonder how they calculate this stuff, it's pretty easy. Like we said, here in the U.S., we deliver electricity into your home at 120 volts. So you've got to remember that one, too. It's important. Our article uses a space heater as an example, which I think is pretty good. You plug in that space heater.
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Let's say it's the only thing going in your house, which is not realistic, but go with me. You plug in the space heater, and it comes out to 10 amps. So you multiply that 10 times 120, because that's your voltage, and you have got 1,200 watts of heat.
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Yes, because that's how the power company is going to measure it. Right. Because they deal in big chunks.
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And if they charge you a dime per kilowatt hour, it's going to cost you $0.12 an hour to run that space heater. Right. Pretty simple.
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And neat. And that's why when you go to buy an appliance, you should look at that little tag that says how many kilowatt hours you're going to be burning. That's right. The lower, the better. So electricity, huh?
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I'm going to call this Rare Birthday Shoutout. Hey guys, my name is Pearl, and I just wanted to tell you how much a fan I am of your show. I was introduced to the podcast by my best friend Molly. We've been best friends for 12 years, and many of our conversations begin by commenting on the podcast. For example, we could not stop laughing at your 1920s voice today.
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Toward the end of the Underground Tunnels episode, we laughed over and over. That is a good voice. I think she's talking about this one, see?
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Electricity, Tesla, Edison, killing animals. All right, that was for you, Molly and Pearl. Whenever we're in the car together, we find a podcast of yours to listen to so we can enjoy it together. I was wondering if you could help her out. Molly's 26th birthday is April 9th. I think it would be a totally awesome birthday gift if you would send her a shout-out.
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During listener mail, I would be forever in your debt. Thanks for doing the podcast. I'm a middle school teacher who always listens during my prep periods. And so happy birthday, Molly. Happy 26th. This should be close. Yeah, happy birthday. To April 9th.
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Yeah. And then conversely through us all together in their car. Nice. Yeah.
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That's my intro. Which is usually mechanical energy is what's produced. Right. By a machine.
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Yeah, it's pretty simple. Actually, it seems complicated, but it's not.
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Well, should we talk about the history of this stuff?
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Back in the olden days, in ancient times, there were dudes messing around with energy and static electricity without even knowing what they were doing. Right. They didn't understand it, but that doesn't mean that they weren't playing around with it.
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That's right, which we'll explain all that later, too. But there was one dude called Thallus of Miletus. He is a philosopher in Greece. And in 600 BC, he is thought to have been the first dude to mess around with electrostatics, static electricity, by rubbing amber. with fur, and he noticed that dust and feathers and things were attracted to it.
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He didn't know what the heck was going on, but he knew something was up.
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Yeah, and it was actually coined by a dude named William Gilbert. He was an Englishman, a physician. And he was studying sort of the same things with static electricity that Miletus was. And he was the first person to say it's electric when he saw these forces at work.
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Well, it was fluid. He was on the right track. Something is flowing, but they thought it was literally a fluid, which in those days was called a humor. And he said it leaves what he called then an effluvium, which is atmosphere around it. When you create this rubbing action, it removes that fluid. Right. But it wasn't fluid. They were...
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Not dummies back then, but they were just figuring it all out.
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Yeah, the old story of Ben Franklin flying his kite may or may not have happened. There are some people that think that didn't happen now.
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Yeah, that's sort of the story that he flew the kite with the key. And some people think it either didn't go down like that or didn't go down with him at all. But it's a great story either way.
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Well, yeah, and he was the first guy to say that electricity has a positive and negative charge and that it flows from positive to negative. So he's a smart guy.
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Then there was another smart dude named Coulomb, Charles Augustin de Coulomb, and he is the one that... wrote Coulomb's Law, and he said charges like charges repel, opposite charges attract, and that's kind of like the basis for it all.
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Yeah, he basically said you can now calculate this because of my handy-dandy little law.
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Okay. That came earlier. Later on, a guy named J.J. Thompson in 1897 said at a science conference, hey, I found something smaller than the atom. And everyone said, silly man, atoms are invisible. It even means invisible. You liar. And he said, no, I promise. There's something smaller. It's got a negative charge. And I'm going to call it a corpuscle. No, he didn't. Yeah.
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It's Latin for small bodies. And then I think, I don't know who later said, let's change it to electron.
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But the discovery of the electron was basically the birth of what we know as electricity today.
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The understanding of the electron is what it's all about.
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Can you even fathom how smart these people were to be that in the dark and figuring all this subatomic stuff out back then?
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We're not inventing this, figuring this stuff out for the first time.
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And it's a pretty dangerous field to try to figure out blind, too, you know? Yeah, I mean, more than one scientist got a shock from a Leyden jar. Oh, yeah. And you can make those. Do you make those in science class?
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Atoms are very tiny and they make up molecules and molecules make up everything you see.
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Yeah, there's no potential energy there. It's just in balance, and a lot of stuff is like that. A lot of stuff is in balance. Some stuff is not. Well, some stuff falls out of balance easier than other stuff. Well, yeah. The electrons, sometimes they're super tightly bound to the atom, and they don't want to leave the house. They want to stick around.
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Sometimes they're crazy teenagers, and the slightest energy and movement makes them... jump off from the atom and just say, I want to go attach myself to something else.
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Yeah, like if you pick up a stick off the ground... Its electrons like staying close to home, so it's not going to conduct electricity. If you pick up a metal rod, those electrons are crazy.
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That's good. But, see, the great thing about those books is that a 12-year-old doesn't really necessarily always pick up on those clues.
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I wasn't that great. I'd be curious to see if they would stump me now.
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But you cried a lot when you were a boy. Right, I knew. While staring in the mirror.
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And so then at the end, to wrap up the little genre sort of summary, you've got this great ending usually where everyone's gathered together and the detective kind of walks everyone through the big reveal of exactly how the killer did it. Right. And in her case, she did not – like when the killer is revealed, they didn't turn around and shoot them in the face. Like it's usually –
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Pretty nonviolent. They would be wrestled to the ground or arrested or maybe they might run away and you hear later that they had killed themselves or something like that.
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That's right, and she, Ed, takes great pains to point out that she did not invent this genre. There were people like Arthur Conan Doyle, obviously, and Poe before her that sort of established some of these rules, but she was very popular. She's very good at what she did. She wrote about what she knew, and we'll talk about her life coming up in a little bit, but...
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These manor houses and these estates and these English villages and even the exotic locales and these train trips and things were things that she actually experienced. And, you know, a lot of people are great at making stuff up and a lot of people are great about writing what they know. And it seems like she was really great at writing what she knew.
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Yeah, I don't have a super firm read on the history of literature, but I get the idea that this is sort of aligned with the beginnings of Pop Lit and like I call it the beach book. I don't know if there had been a ton of stuff like this that was just sort of pure comfort food and entertainment up to this point.
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But they were very entertaining books. They were humorous, a very dark sense of humor, great dialogue. All these verbal jousts between the detectives and the suspects is really key to that genre. Something Knives Out did really, really well. It was one of my favorite scripts of the year. Maybe my favorite script.
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But just really, really good, sharp writing. And it's no sort of no accident that she became so hugely popular.
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Yeah, and she... She was a business person, you know, like there's nothing wrong with saying, wow, people love this stuff and they sell a lot. And although it took a while for that to happen, as we'll see, but there's nothing wrong with any of that. I think people that call her a hack can go fly a kite.
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Well, and it's kind of like, what's the point of just sitting there? And I can't imagine any more boring than listening to us on headphones. Oh, wait a minute. That's our show.
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I think it is very much like Arizona.
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The legendary Devonshire cactus.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
Yeah, I mean, they had some dough. They were not wealthy, wealthy, but they were definitely upper middle class. They got an inheritance from her paternal grandfather such that her dad didn't need to work. Apparently, she is on record as saying that her dad wasn't around much, didn't really impact me much, so he can go fly a kite as well. There's a lot of kite flying.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
And she loved being out in the garden. She wasn't... I get the impression she wasn't like reclusive or anything, but she very much enjoyed time with herself alone, but also had friends and stuff when she eventually did go to school once her father passed and they couldn't afford that governess.
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How many novelists are the life of the party and super outgoing?
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
I just I don't know. You kind of picture like the Stephen Kings just locked in an attic somewhere and not like, well, let me write a little bit. Then I'm going to go, you know, go to a party.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
I don't know. It's sort of a solitary pastime. So sure, there are examples of of extroverted authors. But I think she kind of fits the mold that you generally think of, especially for a lady mystery writer.
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Oh, I just meant for Jerry's sake, you know?
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
Yeah, so she – like we said, she did some pretty – to us, dum-dums in America seem like exotic traveling trips. But if you lived in England at the time, it's no big deal to go to Egypt and check out the pyramids. That was – if you had a little dough, that was a pretty common vacation that you might take. So she did stuff like that, and she was exposed to exotic locales and used those in her work.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
In her very first novel even, Snow Upon the Desert – She wrote when she was like 22 or 23 years old, I think. And, you know, she had a hard time getting published at first because she was a young woman.
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Snow Upon the Desert. Yeah.
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Yeah, well, it makes sense.
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That's right. They were married in 1914. He was kind of promptly sent to fight in the Great War in France. And she worked at a pharmacist at a war hospital during that period. And this is where she learned a lot about potions and poisons and pharmaceuticals and things that she would – there's a lot of poisoning that goes on in her books.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
Um, and she later in her career, I think she actually would consult with doctors and stuff like that because she wanted everything to be really medically accurate. But early on, she learned a lot about this stuff from her work in the pharmacy.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
Yeah, and that's a good vehicle for a mystery novel because, you know, there's no murder weapon per se. I guess there's the poison bottle. But it can often be very vague, a poisoning death. Like could it have been a heart attack? Like you have to kind of suss out at first whether or not it was even a murder. It's not like an obvious thing where there's a –
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a bullet hole in their chest or something like that.
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Yeah, I met her when I was three.
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A little bit. She was nice enough. She signed my Murder on the Orient Express copy, first edition.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
Yeah, and this is the one that introduced the world to her chief detective for a lot of those novels, Mr. Poirot, like we mentioned. And later on they asked her why he was Belgian, and she said, why not, basically. Right. I don't think a whole lot of thought went into it.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
It turned out to be a really good choice because he had this kind of interesting accent, and everywhere he went, they were never set in Belgium. So everywhere he went, he was this sort of, a sort of strange foreigner that would come into town with this accent that no one quite understood. And he just had this sort of larger-than-life presence, I think, because of that.
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So it turned out to be a really smart choice.
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Oh, man, I want to talk about Knives Out so much.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
So she had a daughter, we should mention, in 1919 named Rosalind, and that's the only child she ever had. And it was in 1920, a year later. that they finally did publish the mysterious affair at Stiles after she agreed to change the ending. They said, we don't like Poirot revealing all this evidence in court. So she changed the ending. They said, great.
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That's when she went on to publish that novel every year for about 10 years. Right. Very, very big books, but they weren't, they were popular, but she wasn't like a superstar internationally at this point yet.
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Nah. I did some spring cleaning here a couple weeks ago. I didn't even recycle or put it in a little free library. I just threw it in the trash.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
Yeah, it's... So here's the backstory. She and Archie... were not meant to be together, as it turns out. He revealed that he was having an affair with a lady named Nancy Neal, who was a friend of the family. And obviously that was the end of their marriage. So at the end of 1926, they decided they were gonna take a trip together a weekender.
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Archie went to be with his friends instead, and then she vanished into seemingly thin air. They found her car near a rock quarry with her fur coat and her driver's license there, and no Agatha Christie.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
And still spinning. Yeah.
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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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No, we weren't big comic book people. We don't have anything valuable like that.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
We have this series of books, children's books, about awesome women in history from Frida to Coco Chanel to Amelia Earhart to Agatha Christie. And so I was reading this one the other night and thought, hey, Let's do one on Agatha Christie. I haven't read any of her work. Seen a couple of her movies. Love the genre, though. Yeah. As films.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
racially insensitive language, some would call anti-Semitic at times, anti-Catholic, through parts of her career such that the Anti-Defamation League complained to her agent at one point. And because of that, American publishers were given the ability to change that stuff out sort of at will.
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Yeah, and I read a lot about this, and there are different takes. One take is that the old, you know, she was a product of her time thing, which people – you know, rightfully point out. Another is that oftentimes she's doing this to show characters are sort of underdeveloped as humans and sort of backward. So there's that as well.
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But you also can't dance around the fact that she did use some pretty bad words. And, you know, we just got to point that stuff out.
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I've never read murder mysteries, although I'm going to now.
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I didn't until I read Ed Sayett.
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Occasional racism. Yeah, and a lot of the racist stuff, just to put a final pin on that, was... A lot of it was character descriptions, which can be some of the ugliest kinds of stuff like that. Yeah. Because it wasn't just like talking about philosophies. It was just like literally physically describing a character. Sometimes she would use some pretty derogatory language.
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I'm glad we're doing our great work in the time of wokeness. Right, exactly. No one can ever go back. I mean, we've made missteps here and there, but they can't go back and talk about when Josh and Chuck were big racists at the beginning.
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Yeah, and also a very cool, good idea to write those books early on just in case because you never know.
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Besides the bombing thing. I mean, she could walk off a ledge or get hit by a bus or die of natural causes early. Like, you never know. And then you've got this legacy cemented.
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I have that DVD sitting on my desk.
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You're going to love it.
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Selects: Agatha Christie: Queen of the Murder Mystery
So I guess we should say that she did die eventually five years or three years after I met her in 1976 at the age of 85 at her home in Oxfordshire. And it was natural causes, not poison.
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I do not have anything else.
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All right, I'm going to call this Letter from a Kid because we love reading these letters from kids. Hey, guys. I've been listening to your podcast for about eight months now, and I'd like to say I am a huge fan. This is Emmett. He's 10 years old.
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My dad is even more of a fan of you guys than me, and he told me about your podcast. I am a huge fan of the Atlanta Falcons and pretty much everything Atlanta related, including your podcast, which is weird because I live in Iowa.
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I think, you know, when you grow up in a place like Iowa with no professional sports, you know, you do that thing where you just pick out a team in a city.
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That's right. And now I'm really worried there's a professional team in Iowa, but there is not.
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I've been listening to your podcast a ton during this coronavirus outbreak to keep me from going crazy and it's worked. My birthday is actually coming up so I'll not be able to see my friends or even have a party. It would be totally awesome and make my year if you said happy birthday to me but I want to bet you won't read this on the air.
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Well played, Emmett. I love your grass podcast. And last year, me and my best friend Oliver started a lawn care business, and I made enough money to buy Beats headphones to listen to your podcast on.
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That's right. He says, I made sure to wrap this letter up and spank it on the bottom before I sent it. So happy, happy, big, I guess, 11th birthday, Emmett. Best to your dad. Hello, Oliver and everyone there in Atlanta, Iowa.
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I've never seen that show. What?
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We've had this conversation before.
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No, we have because you said that the first time. Okay. Yeah, I've never seen it, but I'm a huge fan of murder mystery movies, especially cozy mysteries like Clue is one of my favorite films. And this year's or last year's Knives Out was one of my top like three or four films of the year.
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All right, well, film professionals out there, please do not take offense to all your hard work.
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Well, yes. Do you actually do the math of how much you pay for Amazon Prime to see how much you're paying for that movie?
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All right. Well, that's an eight minute intro. So, so far, so good. Okay. She is perhaps, again, it's kind of hard to tell with book sales because they can be a little dodgy, but she is often quoted as the, or seen as the bestselling novelist of all time. And I did a little check to compare, like I thought, well, Stephen King sold a book or two. Sure.
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They tag his book sales at about $350 million. Her 66 novels and 14 collected works of short stories supposedly have sold to the tune of $2 billion.
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Yeah, that is a ton of books. I don't think our Stuff You Should Know book will approach those numbers.
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So let's talk about this cozy mystery or just mystery novels in general. They are very much formulaic, which Ed helped us put this together. Ed points out that's why people like them, because the familiarity and it's sort of a comfort food thing, like a good beach book. You know what you're going to get.
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Yeah, so you've got that murder. You usually don't see this murder occur. She doesn't usually, and in general in murder mysteries, you don't see the murder. That's kind of not the point of how grisly or gruesome the act is. It's sort of all about finding that body. And, uh, I won't, I had a bunch of knives out things to say, but I won't say any of them now.
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Uh, but then you've got your detective that arrives on the scene. And, uh, I will say this knives out very much follows this formula very smartly. So, okay. So you've got this master detective who usually arrives upon the scene, um, but they may already be there and they are generally very eccentric and sort of, um, They always have these quirky sort of characteristics.
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In Christie's case, we have the very formidable Hercule Poirot and then Miss Marple, Jane Marple. In Hercule's case, he's Belgian and has this big mustache and is just sort of eccentric and Belgian. He's not French. There's something about being Belgian that makes it slightly different. Sure.
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And Miss Marple apparently is just a very ordinary and people underestimate her and that's how she sort of wins of the day.
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Like Angela Lansbury. Yeah.
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Right. So you've got your setting in the cozy mystery setting. Like you said, it's usually like an estate or a home, maybe a hotel. Maybe it might be a small English village. Orient Express obviously is on a train, another sort of confined space. By the way, have you seen Train to Busan? No.
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They're kind of very similar, but Busan is Zombies on a Train, Korean film.
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You should check out Train to Busan. I will. If you think you've seen it all with the zombie genre, then think again.
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Yeah, I'm a couple of episodes into the latest season.
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Yeah, I love it. That's like Hartwell, you know.
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I've tried to get Bateman and Laura Linney on Movie Crush, and it's always, thank you, no.
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All right. So you've got your setting with Agatha Christie. She did include her travels in some of her later novels when they became like super popular, but it was still not like a globetrotting like James Bond kind of thing.
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That's right. You got your suspects. They are questioned by the detective. They usually all have a motive. They usually all... have the means because everyone, you know, in a great novel like this, everyone's got to be a suspect from the beginning. And then you can kind of quickly whittle or slowly whittle that list down.
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Yeah, I mean, that goes back to Encyclopedia Brown. The whole point is to try and figure that stuff out.
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Yeah. For sure. But that also means you can unlearn it too. Well, if big cricket has anything to do with it. Why don't we take a quick break and we're going to come back and talk about a UN report that kind of changed a lot of things about four years ago.
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Hey, everybody. Chuck and Josh here. And I was recently a guest once again on one of my favorite podcasts. It's called The Puzzler with old pal and friend of the show, AJ Jacobs. AJ gives really fun and funny word puzzles to guests like me, like Ken Jennings, like Dax Shepard, and hopefully like Josh because he would be so great on this show.
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Oh, you got to be honest. A lot of fun. It's sort of like Wordle or Connections, but for your ears. And I think we should play everyone just a little clip. It's a puzzle that I have to convert movie titles from the metric system back to their actual title. Oh, wow. From my second appearance on The Puzzler right now. Nice.
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All right, this is going to be great.
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So subscribe to The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs to tease your mind and tickle your funny bone.
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All right, so I promised you a UN report. 2013, there was a big kind of sea change. I don't know about sea change. It was the beginning. Beginning of a sea change. They issued a report called Edible Insects, colon, Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security.
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And it was basically just championing entomophagy and all the benefits that surround it, like how nutrient-dense crickets and other insects are, the fact that it's socially sustainable, economically viable and friendly, environmentally friendly. And it kind of...
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you know, kind of paints it as like, hey, this is the future or it could be part of the future at least of getting protein into, you know, Americans.
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Yeah, it's funny. They put in this article that it was the most popular document in the history of the UN.
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Yeah, he spoke at a TEDx Youngstown, Ohio, because that's where he's based. That's where his company is.
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All right, so let's talk about crickets. Well, all insects in particular are very rich in protein, like we've talked about. They have a lot of healthy fats.
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A lot of zinc, a lot of iron, a lot of calcium. And there's something called, I guess... Well, yeah. I mean, this is when vegetarians and vegans are, like, these kind of terms make their skin crawl, I'm sure. But the kind of efficiency you get out of raising and killing and eating an animal is on a spectrum.
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That sounds like an Aaron Cooper poster gone bad. Yeah. Already.
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And, you know, from cows, like you talked about, it's probably the worst, I would guess, don't you think? Yeah.
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Yeah. So like you said, not a lot of the cow is used to eat.
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And I think the chicken is about the most efficient animal protein right now.
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It's funny. We had an office visitor a couple weeks ago, and I don't think you were here. In fact, I know you weren't here because you would have been in here. That's right. But there's our great stepbrothers. You know, the movie Stepbrothers, for those of you out there, there's a promo for of John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell with an Olin Mills type posed photograph.
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Yeah, a lot of that has to do with the fact that crickets are cold-blooded, so they're very much more efficient at converting that feed into protein. And crickets aren't even the most efficient insect. No, no. I'm not sure which one is, actually. I think mealworms are pretty efficient.
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You just said that because you're eating a mealworm. Right.
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Is that a mealworm farm in your pocket?
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I pocket mulch. So, like we mentioned, Mr. Bach-Ruber is... If he's not German, he should be.
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It's spelled K-V-N, though, so we're just inserting vowels for him. Right, like D-N-C-E.
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No wonder I don't know. But he is one of, I think they're about, and this has probably changed even since this is written, about 25 or so cricket startup farms here in the United States.
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Well, and their output right now is still really small in the early years here. But, you know, the dream for... For him and all these cricket farmers is that one day it will – I don't think they have designs that will ever be like in some parts of the world where it's on every menu in every restaurant.
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But they would certainly like to see cricket snacks in grocery stores and menu offerings in some of the more wacky hipster restaurants at least. Right.
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I'm not like... I'm not an adventurous eater, as you know, but I would totally try fried crickets and things. It doesn't gross me out for some reason.
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And Aaron Cooper, our buddy from Kansas who does our great Photoshop stuff, made us into, I was John C. Reilly and you were Will Ferrell. And the guy came in and was looking around and was like, oh man, these are great. And he went... look at that. And he went, that looks like, I don't know. It looks like it could be like something like the movie stepbrother or something.
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Well, I think it's very funny that you, I remember your shrimp years in that you had an allergic reaction to shrimp. But you wanted to eat shrimp so bad, you started to eat shrimp a little bit just to see if you could eat shrimp.
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I just love that you were so dedicated to eating shrimp.
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This is a great time to bring up one of my big pet peeves.
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I know that cooking with shrimp heads and tails on increases the flavor quite a bit. Does it? Yeah.
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Which is why they do it. Mm-hmm. It's one thing if you get an appetizer with like a prawn with the head left on or something. But if you, like I get pasta dishes sometimes.
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That have like heads and tails on them.
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No, like you literally have to dig them out of the pasta, take the head and tail off, and then put them back in your food. Right. Which is just, I don't get why restaurants do that. Like maybe cook it in there and then take it off for us.
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And I said, Oh, that's exactly what it is. Yeah. I tried to make him not feel bad.
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Well, I mean, I'll eat a soft-shell crab until the cows come home. But I'm not eating a shrimp tail. Yeah, it sounds gross. Well, it's just not like they don't soften up enough, you know.
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Well, yeah, but I throw that in the soft-shell crab zone. So you eat the shell of the soft-shell crab? Yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. That's what it is.
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Oh, my friend. Is that like a blue crab? No, I think it's a special kind of crab. Oh, its parents must love it very much. I might be wrong. I think it's a special kind of crab. And then you prepare it with the shell. But I think the shell is soft to begin with, though. I don't think it's just from cooking. But like spider roll is one of my favorite sushi rolls. That's soft shell crab.
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No, no. Like, the little legs are coming out of the end and everything. What? That's why they call it a spider roll, because it looks like little spider legs.
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And then, like, a soft-shell crab sandwich is, I mean, you open the bun, and there's just, like, this crab staring at you.
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Yeah. Like he didn't quite zone in on all of them were us. You should have like clapped loudly beside his ear. Uh, man, I had a little scary thing today.
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Uh... Well, quickly before, we just should mention that they did get a deal on Shark Tank.
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That's right. We get our kickback coming.
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Hey, everybody. Chuck and Josh here. And I was recently a guest once again on one of my favorite podcasts. It's called The Puzzler with old pal and friend of the show, AJ Jacobs. AJ gives really fun and funny word puzzles to guests like me, like Ken Jennings, like Dax Shepard, and hopefully like Josh because he would be so great on this show.
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Selects: Are crickets the future of food?
Oh, you got to be honest. A lot of fun. It's sort of like Wordle or Connections, but for your ears. And I think we should play everyone just a little clip. It's a puzzle that I have to convert movie titles from the metric system back to their actual title. Oh, wow. From my second appearance on The Puzzler right now. Nice.
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Selects: Are crickets the future of food?
All right, this is going to be great.
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So subscribe to The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs to tease your mind and tickle your funny bone.
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If I may, this is kind of part PSA. This has nothing to do with cricket farming.
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But we're getting our basement waterproofed because for 13 years it's been leaking water like really bad. So much so that we have mold now.
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Yes. Oh, no. And we're also getting mold remediation done at the same time.
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So crickets live about seven weeks. I mean, that right there shows you a big difference between that and like the beef industry. Sure. So during that seven-week life cycle, they have three different environments that they reside in. And they basically live and hang out on what they call cricket high-rises, which are little egg cartons.
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So needless to say, that's a fun, fun way to spend a lot of money. But I come home today, and my carbon monoxide alarm is going off. Oh, man. Because these yahoos are using a gas-powered concrete saw in our basement.
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And what they eat is, because I was kind of wondering that, they eat grain-based feed, organic grain-based feed, fruits and vegetables. And they... Some of them will reach that breeding stage. Some won't. And if they do, they're going to lay a lot of eggs, like several thousand eggs a mommy cricket will lay in her lifetime.
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Drowning in cricket eggs. He probably wakes up every night sweating.
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Yeah, it can be. So they like hot, humid environments, or at least warm, depending on your definition of hot. It's hot to me, 85 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit with about a 40% humidity level. Yep. And the whole process from soup to nuts or from eggs to chirps is about 56 days.
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And it's like full on saying, you know, get out of the house. And my animals are in there.
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I bet Aristotle pillow talk was something else.
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So harvesting, I mean, there's no way around it. At some point, like any live thing that you're raising, you're going to have to kill it. And instead of like what we see on factory farms with cows and pigs, What you do on a cricket farm is you cool them down and then freeze them. And so what happens is they they get cold. They start to get a little chilly.
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Their temperature drops and they go into what's called a diapause, sort of a hibernation like state. And then pretty much after that, they go, it is sure as chilly in here. And then they're gone and frozen.
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And I just happened to go home after I went to a coffee shop to study because— I needed to grab something, but like I literally could have come home to dead animals.
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Yeah, I kind of wonder when I was reading this, I was like, how do vegans and vegetarians feel about eating insects?
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Well, it depends on who you ask. I didn't get any, like there is no official rule book. There's not? I don't think so. I'm surprised. But basically, I just went to a bunch of vegan, vegetarian websites and looked to see what people said. And it kind of ranged from, well, sure, I'll eat insects. And this is a much better way to get protein in your body than animals.
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to where other people said, no, it's a living thing. Not going to eat it. I get all the protein I need from plants. If you're eating something, a live animal, then you're not a vegan or a vegetarian.
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Well, they'd be a pescatarian, right?
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And that's when you go, technically, you're a pescatarian, and then you get punched in the face. Right. So eating crickets, some people say it's sort of nutty. Some people say it's a little sweet, like sweet corn. I would like to know for myself. I wish we could have gotten our hand on some chirps beforehand.
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But maybe we can follow up in the future.
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Yeah, like we did with— Soylent? Yeah, with a soylent. Soylent. We'll do a follow-up. Soylent. So there's this lady, Daniela Martin, and she has a travel show. Well, it's an insect cooking and travel show called Girl Meets Bug. Very cute. And we should say the chirps ladies called crickets the gateway bug. I also thought that was kind of funny.
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in punny and daniela says that she started eating crickets and kind of became fascinated with insects in general when she was in mexico and yucatan and kind of became i don't think obsessed but just super interested in this as a as her protein of choice and said you know i started cooking them up with a little little butter little onion little salt and
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And like with anything, if you put it in a pan with some butter and onion and salt, maybe a little garlic, it's probably going to taste pretty darn good.
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It was weird, man. And they were down there. I mean, not only did they not have on so much as a dust mask for the gas, but like concrete dust is really dangerous too. They're like, I don't care. I've got Obamacare. It was so weird, man. And just it freaked me out to the point where Emily, she wanted to like fire the guy.
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Yeah, even when you hear stories of these creepy cannibal people. They usually cook it in butter with a little salt and onion and garlic.
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He ate penis like that. He did. Man, that was a very disturbing case. Sure. So she says crisping them in the oven is another, besides grinding them into powder, cooking them up like broiling them in the oven. Don't overcook it. A little olive oil, a little garlic salt. Throw them in about 250 for about 15 minutes. And a little sea salt on top maybe.
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And you're going to have a crunchy, delicious, nutrient-rich snack.
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What do you do? Just, like, wash them in a colander?
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Yeah, I remember being alarmed when I briefly worked in the chicken industry when I found out that a lot of chicken feed is made from chickens.
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Uh, he wasn't even there like the, you know, the foreman or owner of the company.
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I'm going to call this Kevin Spacey's Accent Explained. Oh, and before I read this, there is a House of Cards spoiler. Spoiler. So alert to that. Hey, guys, just listened to the episode on accents. I'm happy you brought up Kevin Spacey's accent from House of Cards. Because I have a theory. Spacey plays the character Frank Underwood.
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Yeah. And she wanted to be like, man, if he doesn't understand that this is dangerous. Uh, and he said, you know, open up your windows. It'll be clear in 15 minutes. And it took two hours for that alarm to stop going off. Oh my gosh. Wow. That is really scary. It was really bad, man. I was out on my deck basically for the rest of the morning until I came in with my dogs and my cat in a crate.
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grew up poor in Gaffney, South Carolina, but then went on to the Citadel in Charleston and created a persona that eventually lands him president. His accent does not sound like a bad attempt at the R-less, old-money Charleston accent, but I think it fits the character.
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Instead of a twangy R-full accent that he'd have from Gaffney, Spacey's playing Frank Underwood, who was playing someone with noble Southern roots, and that's why it sounds fake. Am I giving Kevin Spacey too much credit? Possibly. But being from Greenville, South Carolina, I enjoy dissecting his Carolina accent.
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Actually, I don't have much of an accent myself, except with words like lawyer and oil. Jerry just laughed. Because my brother, who's 10 years older, trained it out of me when I was very young. He said he didn't want people to underestimate my intelligence because of our accent. He would correct me every time I would say things like, turn the lights on.
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instead of turn the lights on, or naked instead of naked. Yeah. If you're saying naked.
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I sort of wish I sounded more like the rest of my family, but what a considerate thing for my big brother to have done when he was a teenager. Seriously. And that is from Mary Jean Murphy.
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Yeah, it was weird. Yeah, anyway, so I'm slightly shaken.
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I just got to calm down here. The sound of the crickets on our miniature cricket farm here are soothing me at least.
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Yeah, we covered entomophagy. I meant to look up when, but it was... it seems like a long time ago. Right. And that's eating bugs and insects. Uh, but this is focusing specifically on crickets because by all accounts, they seem like sort of the, uh, our best bet at trying to get something like this going in America for real.
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Yeah, I'm kind of not surprised, but it goes to show you the population boom. If meat consumption has increased that much in the face of probably more vegetarianism and veganism than ever before, too, you know.
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I'd like, we should, I mean, we've been dancing around doing episodes on vegetarianism and veganism for a while, so we should probably tackle that at some point. All right. I'm kind of curious about the history. Cause it seems like in the, like probably since the onset of America until the
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And then I'm talking off the top of my head here, but until probably the 90s, it seemed like everybody was just like meat, meat, meat, meat, meat.
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Well, like the 50s, it seems like they would eat steak for lunch.
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And I can't imagine like a steak for lunch that seems so indulgent. Yeah, I think it is. You know?
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Like, yeah, just give me the 20-ounce ribeye for lunch. Right. It's just, I don't know. I can't imagine that. And three martinis.
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Oh, man. I know we talked about the ending of that show. Crazy.
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Yeah. I think you still owe it to yourself just to watch the finale. Okay. So this dude, Kevin, how would you pronounce that? Bachuber. B-A-C-H, which is fine, that's clearly Bach, and H-U-B-R, you just don't often see two H's side by side.
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So anyway, Kevin Bakuba is a dude that is kind of championing, well, not kind of, very much championing this movement. In 2007, he went to Thailand and tasted crickets, deep fried crickets. And he's from California. And he was like, hey, this is really good. He's so far out. They've been doing this in Thailand since the late 90s.
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The king established a big growing program for crickets and cricket farms, education and schools. Like, you know, this is a good way to get protein in your diet. And he said, I think this is the direction America should go. And I'm going to get in on the money side of it.
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Yeah, he's woven throughout this thing, though. Yeah. And, you know, if you listen to the entomophagy episode, episode? No, it's episode. We pointed out then, and it bears repeating, that America is new to this, but I think it was Canada and the United States and Western Europe are literally the only places on Earth that don't consume insects as a regular part of their diet these days. Yeah.
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Hi, everyone. I hope you're having a great weekend so far. Do you want to know about crickets and how you can sustain yourself on them? Well, then listen to this episode, Are Crickets the Future of Food? And this is from September 7th, 2017. I hope you enjoy it all over again.
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In a droid rage? I think I was probably not the best husband, though. I see. Over that time period. Yeah. Judging from Emily saying... hey, you're a real a-hole. Get off the steroids. Get off the juice.
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So long story short, I experienced this recently, and it was awful, and I can't imagine like shooting a TV show or something or like doing anything or performing live.
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Like I would have to address it because I would scratch and smack it was what I usually do.
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Yeah, I didn't do – you know what really did it was the – We have a handheld implement in the shower along with a regular shower head.
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And put that sucker on the tightest, hardest, most penetrating flow. Right. And just put that hot water on it, man. And that was like... I think I spent half my days in the shower over that week and a half.
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No, it felt so good, man. I was just like I couldn't get enough of it. And then the cortisone and all that junk too.
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Yeah, well, we ran across that in Poison Ivy and Scabies for sure.
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And talked about some of this stuff, but I think itch. We had an itch we needed to scratch with this particular topic.
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I thought it was poison ivy because that area has some poison ivy. But each of us, Scotty and I, had it just on the arm that we sunk in cement. And then we researched and found out that could happen.
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Yeah, which C-fibers aren't just limited to itching. I think only about 5% handle that, and most of the rest are for pain.
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Yeah, you did a video about this, right? Yes. A short video.
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Okay. If I remember correctly. Does that mean we have to do this? Do I have to be here for the next four hours?
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Yeah, it was pretty interesting, too. There's a signature pattern in the brain when you get an itch, and a few specific areas light up. One is a cortex, and it all makes sense when you put it together. The cortex, in this case, just sort of geolocates where on your body you're getting that sensation.
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Yeah, or in my case, from right elbow to wrist. Right. And then a little bit in other places, but not too bad. That was the main area.
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Yeah. Very complex conversation going on. And then the region, I thought this was interesting, the region that governs emotional response. So basically this is your brain saying, I don't like this. This makes me feel bad. Yeah.
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And then finally, the limbic and motor areas, and I thought this was the most interesting. Those areas process irresistible urges. The same ones that say, I want to smoke crack or I want to eat too much cake, says... you have an itch that is unbearable and you need to scratch it.
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So I just, I don't know, I thought that was all very super interesting when you combine that pattern.
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Well, it is. You know, they kind of found that out. And Gawande, Dr. Gawande, pointed out something interesting, too, that I never thought about is that you can have like that short collar rubs against your neck all day and you might never notice it. But if there's like one little string that's just poking one little area, that might trigger an itch.
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Down to like millimeters. Yeah. And the other thing they found out too is that Not only can they sense it from a few inches away, but it's a very slow acting thing, which as opposed to like heat on the hand, like a candle on your hand. I almost said candle in the wind. That's super fast, but that explains why an itch is kind of slow to come and then slow to resolve by scratching.
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It's not like you scratch it and you're like, oh, it's all better now. It helps a little bit.
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Yeah, so I got that, but what does that do to sort of like... say, hey, body, don't worry about that for a minute. I think so. A pain receptor is now active.
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Folk prog? Well, they'd have to be German, probably.
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Another interesting thing they learned, too, was that – I guess we're kind of jumping around, but who cares, right? If you scratch, you don't have to scratch the point of the itch to relieve it, apparently. Right.
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Like, if you have, I had that itch on my right forearm, and I could scratch maybe, it doesn't even have to be the left forearm, so it's not like you have to mirror it, but I could scratch, like, my neck, and apparently that might help relieve it.
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Well, and I think they did find that, like, your back and your ankles, supposedly, are some of the most rewarding places to scratch. Exactly. And I don't know. I've never really thought about the ankles, but... My mom would give me back scratches when I was a kid. That's nice. And it was always like one of my favorite things ever. Sure.
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And so I don't get those anymore now that I'm a grown up because it's gross. Mom, scratch my back. I'm 46 years old. Lay down. But yeah, it was like I think I prefer to back scratch to a back rub even. when I was younger, but now a massage is probably way better. But if a masseuse could include a little back scratch in there, Get ready for a huge tip from me.
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Yeah, I get that. Once skin cells are involved under the nails, then you're a murder suspect.
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All right, well, should we take another break and talk a little bit about one of the most distressing articles I've ever read?
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All right, so we've referenced this article from The New Yorker from Dr. Atul Gawande. And he talked a lot about itching and just had good information on the science of it all.
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But most of the article was focused on a patient, a woman in Massachusetts that they named M for the article. Just M. The letter M. Right. In other words, you know, she's anonymous. And I think she was anonymous because she kind of had a rough go after her divorce. She ended up getting HIV from getting on heroin. Kind of spun out, it seems like. But then got her life back by all accounts.
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But ended up getting shingles as a result of HIV complications. Right. And... The shingles went away, but the itching did not, to say the least.
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Yeah, it was on her head, and she kind of managed to control it during the day, but like you said, at night she couldn't control it to the point where I think she was restrained in her sleep.
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Oh, okay. After they realized it's a problem because your brain is oozing out of your head.
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I don't even think that would excite mirror neurons like a leg break would. No.
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The doctor's like, very interesting. Just give me a second here. Oh, my God. Well, they gathered up all the other doctors and nurses. Sure. Yeah, you got to come see this.
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You sourced a couple of, well, we had our own article on HowStuffWorks.com, but you also sent this great New Yorker article written by Dr. Atul Gawande.
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I didn't see much follow-up on this. I did read one article that... a follow-up with Dr. Gawande because there were a lot of skeptics after that article came out that said it's impossible with your fingernail because she said she didn't use an implement. It's not like she got out a metal file to scratch through your skull.
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And he said that his theory was that bacteria that became infected had eaten it away such that the skull became soft.
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And then people also said, you know, you don't have men and women in the same room in hospitals or asylums. That's false. And he said that it was like the room next door and quit being pedantic. Yeah, really? Man. I think people just didn't believe it. So all these folks wrote into The New Yorker. All these coastal elites said, no way.
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Well, and they also then said at some point she had a psychogenic itch.
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So they basically covered three out of the four kinds of itches The last one being, man, I have such a hard time. Pre-receptive. And that's what you get from like a mosquito bite or if you have a skin disorder like eczema or something. Sure. So they basically ruled out the most common one and at various stages said, no, you've got this other one for the other three.
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yeah you can reduce that response and then your itch will go away well i took a benadryl at night and they also make this benadryl spray uh a topical spray that just it really helps right so between that and cortisone and then the benadryl at night i did okay right and those awesome showers so the like the pro-receptive itch we've got treatment for basically yeah
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Yeah, that one, what is it, can help regulate your blood pressure as well? Yeah, right. You can't just switch that off. Right. Just turn off the gene that produces that. You won't itch, but you might die early. Right. Not worth it. Right. The one that really, I mean, they're all sad, but the psychogenic, when you have a mental illness where you feel like you have parasites and bugs on your skin.
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I can't remember. I know that I said it the way everyone else says it, though. That's all I remember.
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Man, but all this stuff, it just had so much empathy for Em.
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Actually, I've never used an alias at a hotel. That's dumb. And I don't even know if you can, can you? I guess if you're a big shot, you can.
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And wanted to follow up so bad to see how she was doing. You know?
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Did you ever see the Todd Haynes movie, Safe, with Julianne Moore? No. It was one of his first movies after the Karen Carpenter thing he did. I mean, it was a real movie, but it wasn't released. But Safe was very disturbing. It was about a woman who kind of slowly drifted into madness from believing that the world was poisoning her. Wow.
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And household chemicals and everything, and it kind of started slow, and eventually she ended up at this kind of safe camp for people like her. Right. Very distressing movie. And one of her first movies, too.
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Yeah, it's really good. Oh, it's old? Yeah, it was... It was early 90s, I think.
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But we'll get to some of the more interesting aspects of that article later, specifically a very specific patient that's quite distressing.
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And that wasn't necessarily itching, but it was just like that psychogenic thing of like, I think everything in my house is killing me.
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No, I don't really get like that. Oh, no? No, I'm very easily kind of led on to the next shiny thing. I got you. I'm like a bird. Yeah, basically. That's probably for the best. It is. It has its drawbacks, though. What else you got? Well, one thing it says in here is that having someone else scratch your itch apparently does not do the trick. So you have to scratch your own itch.
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Oh, man. Not you, them saying. Oh, right. Like, I think it definitely helps.
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Oh, yeah. And if you could reach that area of your back, it would be better than that.
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No, it's metal, but it's telescoping, so it's not two feet long.
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Yeah, it looks like a bear claw. Not the pastry, but a real bear claw, which actually looks like the pastry.
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Why did you think it was called that? I'm just kidding. They actually should call it a bear paw. It looks more like a bear paw than a bear claw. I'm going to try and bring that around.
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Yes. And not just haphazardly scattered about the bear paw. Exactly. Yeah.
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He did include a couple of neat historical tidbits. Like in 1660, and Germans are all over this thing for some reason. Yeah. Researchers, they're all German.
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Well... Maybe the Germans will get active on this again.
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Nice work. Thanks, man. Same to you. Thank you. And you haven't scratched in a while, so.
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Man, there's nothing worse than a movie. I feel like I've seen this a few times in movies where someone is compulsively scratching until it becomes a sore, and then they're scratching it. It's just like, ugh, I can't watch that.
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I'm going to call this one of the many emails we got on the swearing episode. Did you notice that? People really seemed to like that one. Yeah, they did. Got a lot of response. Yeah. Mostly from fellow potty mouths, which were very filthy emails too, which were great.
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And I responded in turn by cursing at them in my replies. Sure. Which I hope they enjoyed. In all caps? No. I didn't want to be too aggressive. So this is from Emily Allen. Hey guys, long time listener. First time writing in. Um, writing about swearing, I should start by saying that it's funny I'm writing about this episode because I almost never curse.
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And when I do, it's normally not a very offensive swear. However, your intro made me think of something interesting I wanted to share. You talked about how you really censor yourself during recording in order to keep your show family friendly. It got me thinking about how our jobs really shape our vocabulary, how we express ourselves.
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I noticed a major change in the way I speak since becoming a teacher. I primarily teach kindergarten to second grade students, and I found this really changed the way I express myself. For example, I try to avoid even saying things are dumb or stupid around kids. I'll often say, well, isn't that silly instead?
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This works in the classroom, but I often get laughs from friends and family when I refer to a situation as silly, like a disagreement with a colleague or something a politician does. There are other expressions I use with the kids that often slip into regular conversation as well. The most embarrassing, when I'm out and excuse myself to go potty. That always gets a laugh.
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The itch. Right. But there was a physician in 1660 named Samuel Hoffenreffer. Actually, that's my new hotel name. Yeah, it is. That's a good one. He kind of, well, he defined it by saying an itch is an unpleasant sensation that provokes the desire to scratch. Pretty simple.
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Anyway, I just wanted to share and thank you for all the great work you do. I learn so much from listening each week, and I'm always excited to see the new episode offerings every Tuesday and Thursday. That is from Emily. Alan. Thank you, Ms.
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I think Haffenreffer, he felt that was implied. Right. He's like, it goes without saying.
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I don't know if I just noticed more because as I was doing it, I was thinking, well, now I'm scratching. Then I thought, do I always scratch this much or itch this much?
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Maybe we can get an intern to follow us around and just record our scratching.
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I don't notice it. All right, moving on to Dante's Inferno. It was in Dante's Inferno, the burning rage of fierce itching that nothing could relieve is how falsifiers were punished.
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Oh, I thought you were going to tell me. You were just wondering.
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All right. Well, I don't know what Dante meant, but they're bad people.
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Oh, very nice. So itching scientifically is known as pruritus. P-R-U-R-I-T-I-S. Yeah. It's one of those tough to pronounce things, for me at least. And for well actually they still believe that the evolution of the itch was to help humans survive basically because so many things that can kill you and nature
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or things like mosquitoes or flies or spiders or fleas that can have malaria or the plague or any number of diseases attached to their tiny little insect bodies. So, hey, human, you've got a mosquito on your neck that could kill you. You might want to slap it or scratch.
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who was the bear in jungle book was that baloo yes he would do the baloo where he would get up against a tree or a wall yeah and then i did it probably because of that i'm sure that's where i got it and realized that it works and i still do it every now and then oh yeah yeah i look kind of silly but do you sing while you do it yeah bear necessities right that's still my favorite what else are you gonna sing
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I'm going to start doing that, actually. You'd be like, I think something's wrong with Chuck. Yeah. So like you said, though, it was up until almost, what was it, 1987? The mid to late 80s.
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That another German, H.O. Handwerker. and his gang of toughs, they started to do actual research about it. They were puzzled and wanted to solve it.
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Hi, everybody. Chuck here. It's May 9th, 2017 and podcast time. I know it's really 2025, but we're going all the way back. to May of 2017 to talk about itching. Oh boy, just seeing that title probably makes you itch. And that's one of the deals with itching, if I remember correctly. So I hope you dig it and I hope you're not too itchy right now.
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Yeah, like even though they ramped it up to 11, no one ever said like, holy crap, that hurts.
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Yeah, they said this is not worth the five Deutschmarks that I'm getting for this lousy study.
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I traveled to Europe in 1997, and I was still on all that weird money. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, so it was a while after that. So now scientists... I think this sort of introduced an itch to the scientific community because after... hundreds and hundreds of years, Handvoca sort of disrupted the thought process of the itch and the scratch.
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And all of a sudden, scientists were like, oh, well, maybe we should start looking into this. Maybe we can actually isolate the nerve and figure this thing out.
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I wonder if all of this was under the notion that they were trying to cure itching.
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I wonder – I never really thought about it until just now, but I wonder what happens when a performer – or somebody that is in the public eye or on TV or on stage or the president giving an address, what do they do if they have poison ivy or some other kind of contact dermatitis? Have you ever thought about that? What if Lin-Manuel Miranda has a really bad case of poison ivy?
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I guess they can get an understudy in that case. But you can't have an understudy as president.
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Or like a news anchor when they're just like, oh my God, I'm dying. I don't know. I guess a news anchor can tape things. But I'm talking about live. What does Tom Petty do, for God's sakes?
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We're meeting for coffee. He's not performing. Anyway, I was just curious about that.
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No one can look at you anymore. People are writing in. You're disgusting them. It was gross. One thing that made me think of that is I had recently – you can still kind of see it on my forearm, the scars – But I did a cement job. I was building this fence, putting in a gate at my house. And Scotty, you know Scotty. Sure. Pippin. Huh?
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Not Scotty Pippin. He and I built this thing together. And we sank these huge posts for this gate. And I didn't know that cement could cause contact dermatitis or even burns. Never knew this. And we were... it was kind of a tight spot and we couldn't get shovels in there in the hole. So we were literally mixing this stuff like up to our elbows with our arms.
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And I was like, this kind of feels good. I even said like, you know, like oatmeal or something. And then two days later, my right arm was just covered in, The nastiest dermatitis I've ever seen.
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And then he got it. Yeah, it's still kind of hanging around. So I went and got a prescription for steroids, which made me a little crazy for a week and a half. Okay.