January 10, 2025 • 38 mins
From Mark Twain's bizarre hatred of Jane Austen, to the heated argument that launched two great grocery stores, to the strange prank that ended two comedians' legendary partnership, this episode, Mango and super-producer Mary go looking for historical beef and find plenty of sizzle!
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what, Mary, what's that mango? Did you
know that Mark Twain absolutely hated Jane Austen?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Let me guess he thought Elizabeth Bennett would have ditched
mister Darcy and gone rafting down the Thames.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I mean, that would have been an amazing book. But no,
he just thought Austin was a terrible writer. He wants
to hold a friend. Quote. Every time I read Pride
and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and beat
her over the skull with her own shin bone.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Oh my god, I know, right, yikes. But wait a minute,
Wait a minute. He read it multiple times, this book
that he hated so much.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I guess Mark Twain invented hate reading. I mean, it's
one of his lesser known accomplishments. But it got me
thinking about other crazy feuds. And then I realized, Twain
versus Austin isn't actually a feud at all.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
What do you mean?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
So? According to the Day Dictionary, a feud is quote
a mutual enmity or quarrel that is often prolonged and
Jane Austen died years before Mark Twain was born, so
there was nothing mutual about it. He was just being
snarky after her death.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
So rule number one a feuding make sure your opponent
is still alive.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I mean, it is a good rule. But we've got
some actual feuds to talk about on today's episode, and
some of them are pretty wild. So let's get started. Hey,
(01:47):
their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm mongas Shittigula,
and today I'm joined by my producer extraordinary Mary Philip Sandy.
And over there behind that soundproof glass sticking pins through
photos of his enemies, and he sure has a lot
of enemies. That's our producer, Dylan Fagan. I gotta say,
I did not expect Dylan to have beef with the
(02:08):
great character actor Judy Greer.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, or Olympic figure skater Brian Boyce. Out what what
is happening?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Oh he's holding off a sign now it says Brian
and Judy know what they did? Good?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Ah, Okay, well it sort of makes sense now, I guess,
but I am curious.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
You know, today's episode is all about feuds. Have you
ever had a feud of any sort?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I had a feud in first grade, and it was
very serious and should we bleep his name?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
His name was Kenny lives in Still we can bleep that,
we can bleep that.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
There was a competition to read books, and there were
paper ice cream cones put on the walls of the
classroom and every time you read a book, you had
a scoop out of your ice cream cone. Whoever had
the highest scoop at the end of the year was
going to get a prize. Kevin was reading little kid
books I'm talking bored books, and he was racking. I
was reading chapter books in first grade. I was reading
(03:03):
Little House on the Prairie. It's longer, it takes more time.
And I went to my first grade teacher, Missus Davis,
if you're listening, and I said, this isn't fair, and
she said, a book is a book and sat there
and laughed.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
You know what I noticed. Yeah, we didn't have to
beat missus Davis's name out.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
She's dead.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Oh no, well, miss David, Yes, I carry a grudge
about that to this day. I learned an important lesson
at age seven in first grade, and.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
That's that life is very unfair. Yeah about you? How
about you?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
I mean, you know that scene I don't know if
you've seen it, but in the Bulls documentary where Michael
Jordan makes up that feud with someone and he's like,
and I took that personally, like it's an event that
never takes place. He makes it up in his mind,
so he plays better. I feel like I have a
lot of feuds with people don't know they're in fuds
(04:01):
with me. Huh, Okay, not a lot, but like when
we started Mental Flaws, there was another magazine that was
so much shinier and so much prettier and so much
better made, and we had this like rivalry with them,
but it was so one sided and they never knew
about us, and so like, I feel like that type
of thing happened.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
A well, maybe they're kicking themselves now looking back on it.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, you know maybe. Anyway, let's talk about some real feuds.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Let's talk about some.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Real feuds that don't involve magazines or you know, cheating
seven year olds. Okay, well, here's a ninety four year
old literary feud that is still being debated today, and
it involves the authors Langston Hughes and Zora Neil Hurston.
So they met in New York during the Harlem Renaissance,
and they became close friends and really great supporters of
each other's work, which I think is probably the opposite
(04:56):
of a feud, right yeah, yeah, that was actually a
beautiful friendship.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Is the technical death of what that was.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
But it all began to fall apart in nineteen thirty
when they tried to write a play together. So it
was a comedy ostensibly based on one of Hurston's unpublished
short stories called The Bone of Contention Foreshadowing, which in
turn was based on a folk tale that she had
heard in her Florida hometown. And then here's where things
get murky. Hughes thought they would finish the play together,
(05:23):
but while she was away on a trip, Hurston rewrote
the script herself. She titled it Mule Bone and submitted
it for copyright registration in her name only. She also
sent her draft to the author Carl van Vechten, who
turned around and sent it to the Theater Guild, which
was an organization that produced plays on Broadway, including many
by well known authors at the time.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
And so did herson know he was going to do
this like submit it to this group?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
No, No, she had no idea he was going to
share it with anyone, But now all of a sudden
it's out there and people are talking about this play
and Langston Hughes is like, wait, what I mean?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm sure he said it more more eloquently than that,
because he's Likenston used that was.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
The gist of it, right, And at first he said
he was just disappointed that the collaboration didn't continue. But
apparently he had stronger feelings than that, because next thing
you know, he has combined Hurston's second act of the
play with his versions of the first and the third acts.
And then he sent that whole thing off to the
copyright office again, this time with both of their names
on the cover.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
So there are two versions of the same play now,
like both copyright.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Now, Yeah, exactly exactly, And then he hired a lawyer
and started commanding credit and royalty. Sure, and Hurston pointed
out that the story was her idea in the first place,
and Hughes hadn't participated in the rewrite that she had
done herself. She also added that he'd borrowed some of
her ideas for his novel Not Without Laughter, and she
hadn't been going around demanding credit.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
And you know, looking back on.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
It, some people today read this as Hurston being selfish
or petty. But if you look at the context and
you look at it another way, what she was doing
was fighting for control of her work, and that was
the struggle she knew all too well.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
During her career.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
She had this wealthy white patron named Charlotte Osgood Mason
who gave her a lot of money, but it came
with a lot of strings attached. She owned a lot
of the work that she did. And this guy, Carl
van Vechten, he gave her play draft to producers without
even asking if it was okay to do that. So
maybe this question of authorship was just kind of the
final straw.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, that makes sense. But did the two of them
ever work it out? Like, did they conference?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Nope? That was the end of it.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
The hol debacle ended their friendship, and many years later,
in the eighties, Henry Lewis Gates dug out the different
versions of Mulebone and combined them into a production script,
and the play made its debut in New York in
nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Huh, I feel like I've never heard of this was
any good?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Not really it.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Got very mixed reviews, and basically critics felt that this
Franken script didn't accurately reflect either Hurston or Hughes's real talent.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That is a shame.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
A camel?
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Is a horse made by committee or something? Yeah, I
feel like maybe this is the camel of their play.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah, something like that. But you know, the way I
see it, this story behind the play is the most
compelling drama of all. So I am hoping that someday
someone will turn that into a play and we can
see it on Broadway.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Someday.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
I'm into it. Well, I've got another story of a
friendship gone wrong. This one takes us all the way
back to eighteenth century Europe and involves Jean Jacques Rousseau,
who is a philosopher from Geneva and wrote several popular novels,
but his radical views actually got him in trouble. For
one thing, he believed that all religions are equal, and
(08:30):
the Church obviously considered this heresy at the time, so
he was condemned by Genevan authorities and by many people
he'd consider friends. In fact, he actually had to skip
down to avoid being arrested.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
So it was like the Enlightenment version of getting canceled.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, I mean, cancel culture was so much worse back then. Meanwhile,
the Scottish philosopher David Hume heard about Rousseau's struggles and
he could actually relate. Hume was a religious skeptic and
the Catholic Church had banned his books, but unlike Rousseau,
he wasn't ostracized by his establishment friends. So Hume decided
to use his connections to help Russeau relocate to England.
(09:08):
He actually convinced King George the Third to provide a
pension for him. He arranged lodgings and even met him
in Paris to travel to the UK, and at first
Rousseau was pretty grateful. I mean he settled in a
house in Staffordshire where he seemed, you know, pretty happy,
And that could have been the end of it, except
two things happen. So one Russeau has a notoriously bad
(09:31):
temper and two there's an ill advised prank letter that
gets into play.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
A prank letter.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I did not see that coming. What happened. So this
letter began circulating in the British press. It was ostensibly
a message from Frederick to the Great, the King of Prussia,
and it offered Rousseau safe haven. But the whole thing
was just poking fun at the controversies. One of the
lines went quote, it is high time to grow prudent
and happy. You've made yourself sufficiently talked of for singularities
(10:00):
little becoming a truly great man.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
The King of Prussia wrote that.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
No, it was the English writer Horace Walpole, and he
was trying to be funny. Rousseau was furious by this,
but he also knew that Walpole and Hume were friends,
so he started with the accusations right now. Hume denied
knowing anything about this, but Rousseau was convinced he was involved,
and he got so mad he even refused to accept
(10:26):
the royal pension that Hume had arranged for him, which
you know, feels insane to me, but I guess he
was a man of principle anyway. After exchanging these scathing letters,
Rousseau accused Hume of plotting to destroy him.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
That sounds a bit paranoid.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, but remember he'd spent all those years being persecuted,
so I guess it'd become kind of had it by
this point to be that paranoid, but eventually Rousseau writes
a letter that's so angry Hume starts to think he's
really gone over the edge. His friends advise him to
let it go, but he ignores them, and in October
seventeen seventy six, less than a year after their friendship
(11:02):
had begun, Hume publishes his account of the conflict, including
the letters, and it becomes this giant he said, he
said scandal, with rumors flying about who knew what and
who said what, and in the end Rousseau actually leaves
England and he and Hume never speak again.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
You know, when I think of eighteenth century philosopher's juicy,
drama is not the first thing that comes to mind.
But I guess I've been wrong this whole time. Well,
from drama to comedy, although this comedy also involves drama.
Did you know that Abbott and Costello had an off
stage feud?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
So the main thing I knew about abd and Costello
other than the Who's on first routine is that Leu
Costello was a kleptomaniac, really, and I remember this from
an old mental article, that he used to steal so
much furniture and so many props from sets that people
used to claim his house was furnished in early Universal
as in Universal Studios. But I knew they weren't exactly
(12:01):
the best of friends.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
But tell me about this few Okay, So during their
heyday in the nineteen forties, Abbot and Costello they were
the most popular comedians in the country, in the highest paid, too.
But their act began as an accident. Luke Costello had
another partner who didn't show up for a performance one night.
So but Abbot stepped in to play the straight man
for him, and that's it.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
The rest is history.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Abbot was actually considered one of the best straight men
of all time, and so for a while he took
sixty percent of the duo's earnings. Eventually, Costello demanded more,
and there's even a rumor that he tried to get
the order of their names reversed in the credits of movies.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
That's amazing. First of all, it's amazing that like a
straight man could demand more money. You know, you don't
expect that. But also, Costello and Abbot just sounds wrong.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, that's why no one changed it.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I think if it had sounded right, we'd have heard
about it, but as their fame grew, their differences just
became more and more apparent. Abbot was kind of easy going,
he enjoyed the finer things in life. Costello was more
uptight and anxious. He sometimes worried that Abbot hadn't done
enough to prepare when they were rehearsing new material. And
it all came to a head in nineteen forty five,
but not because of anything showbiz related. Apparently, Costello fired
(13:10):
his maid and Abbot hired her. So I'm waiting for
a punchline yet, No, no, there isn't one.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
That's all it was. I mean, believe me.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I tried to find out if there's anything else, but
I think that's all it is. They just had an
argument about a maid, and for some reason they couldn't
get past it. And they were about to start a
run at the Roxy here in New York, so Costello
tried to rebook himself as a solo act. Abbot gets
wind of this and shows up at the theater. So
the shows go on as planned, but they only speak
to each other when they're on stage. The tension continued
(13:42):
into the fifties as their popularity declined, and in nineteen
fifty seven, they split up for real. Costello said later
that they had just gotten tired of the act doing
the same thing, but there may have been more to it.
Legendary film star Errol Flynn wrote in his memoir that
he had invited Abbot, Costello and their families to his
house for dinner, very nice. Afterwards, he offered to show
(14:03):
them a whole movie, but instead of vacation scenes, the
real ended up being a blue film like pornography. Yes,
just imagine Abbott Costello, their families unstar Errol Flynn with
surprise pornography. So everyone is horrified. Everyone is like, what
(14:23):
is going on? Errol Flynn pretended he didn't know what happened?
How did that get there? And so Abin and Costello
ended up blaming each other for the prank, the first
the maid thing and then the poor Yeah he was
the old one. Two made.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Such a weird way to end a business partnership.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, and it's not even a very creative prank if
you think about it.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Well, speaking of creativity, you know what it is creative
is painting your rival space into a famous fresco.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
That actually sounds more like a compliment to me.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it could be, but when
it came to Michelangelo and Rafael and obligatory note here
for our listeners, I am not referring to the Ninja turtles.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Okay, okay, okay, so the actual not teenage Renaissance artists.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Okay, So yeah, no martial arts here. Now. Michlangelo was
a legend in his own time, but he was not
an easygoing guy. He actually had these intense rivalries with
many other artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, and he was
known for being difficult and ill tempered. But Rafael, who
was nearly a decade younger, really really got under his skin.
(15:35):
So in fifteen oh eight, Pope Julius the Second chose
Rafael to paint a fresco in his private library. And
not only was Michelangelo offended that he didn't get the gig,
he then had to hear everyone praising Rafael's work, and
there were some people who said Rafael was the better artist,
even though they knew Michelangelo was one of his biggest influences. So,
(15:55):
according to one biographer, Michlangelo lashed out, making the younger
man quote bear the brunt of his unrelenting envy, contempt,
and anger.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
So how did Raphael take this?
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Not lying down? So, in one of his frescoes for
Pope Julius, Rafael painted Michelangelo's face onto the body of Heraclitis,
an ancient Greek philosopher who he depicted in a gathering
with Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
That still sounds like a compliment, though.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Except hera Clitis was widely known as a bitter and
arrogant misanthrowt.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Okay okay, okay, I get it now.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
But it turns out this was a real two way feud.
So Raphael snuck into the Cystinine Chapel before Michelangelo finished
the famous ceilings so he could see what his rival
was up to. And it said that the muscular figures
of God and Adam inspired Rafael to actually beef up
his own subjects. And the conflict grew as Rafael won
more and more commissions. And unlike Michelangelo, he was just
(16:53):
well liked and social. He's really good at old timey
schmoozing with patrons and important people in the clergy. And
in fifteen fifteen, just a few years after Michelangelo finished
the Sistine frescoes. Rafael was actually asked to design elaborate
tapestries for the chapel's walls. Now, some of them have
since been damaged or loss, but back then the complete tapestries,
(17:15):
which were woven with real gold and silver thread, were
probably the most eye catching art in the Cistine Chapel,
not the ceiling. Wow is actually hard to imagine, right,
but it is true anyway. It's safe to assume the
feud would have continued if Rafael hadn't died suddenly in
fifteen twenty. Of course, Michelangelo was not one to let
things go, and he summed up Rafael's life by writing, quote,
(17:38):
what he had of art he had for me?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Wow? Way to get the last word in.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Well, that's actually the perfect lead into our next feud
between the famous author Edgar Allan Poe and the much
less famous editor Rufus Griswold.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Which one of them? Have you heard of?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
The first?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
So they met in eighteen forty one, and apparently they
never really liked each other very much. Griswold, who came
from a religious New England family, looked down on Poe
as an immoral social climber whose talent didn't match his reputation,
and although he occasionally complimented his work, Poe thought Griswold
was just way too full of himself, which he kind
of was. But they kept up a polite appearance. They
moved in the same circles. They could be nice if
(18:17):
they had to, and Griswold even included some of Poe's
work in an anthology he published called The Poets and
Poetry of America. So Griswold was really into this idea
of defining a national literature, and of course he felt
he was the best person to do that. But Poe
was unimpressed, asking a friend, quote, have you seen Griswold's
book of poetry? It is a most outrageous humbug.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So there's only one problem here, right, Like, this is
the anthology that Poe himself is in.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, but he just disagreed with Griswold's other editorial choices.
And weirdly, despite knowing this, Griswald paid Poe to write
a review of the anthology, and then, perhaps because there
was money involved, Poe's review was a lot less harsh
than his private comments about the book, but a few
months later, another review of the anthology appeared in a
Philadelphia magazine. This one was anonymous, and in addition to
(19:06):
calling Griswold's book quote nonsense, it called Griswold himself a
toady who was destined to sink into oblivion.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
I love all these old time insults, right, like a
humbug tody sink into oblivion. Yeah, and so I leve
you guess was this Poe as well? Not exactly. That
vicious review turned out to have been written by a
guy named Henry B. Hurst, who was one of Poe's friends.
Griswold definitely thought Poe was behind it, and in a
way it might have been right. Hurst was probably repeating
(19:34):
a lot of things that Poe had told him. So
does Poe try to patch things up here? No?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
He did the opposite.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
No.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
He went on to criticize Griswold and his anthology at
every possible opportunity, Like anytime he was giving a lecture, anything,
he was sure to get in how bad Griswold and
his taste was. But there may have been a romantic
rivalry a play here too.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Let me guess it was at Costello's maid.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
No, no, God, that would have been perfect. But no,
both men had relationships with a poet named Francis sargent Osgoode,
who was separated from her husband.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
And I know we said earlier.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
That a feud involves two living parties, but this one
continued long after Pos's death in eighteen forty nine.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Is that tell me about it?
Speaker 3 (20:13):
So, days after Poe died, an obituary appeared in the
New York Tribune. It was attributed to someone named Ludwig,
but it did not read like a normal, respectful obituary.
What it said was, quote, Edgar Allan Poe is dead.
He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement
will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.
Oh Griswold, Yeah, yeah, yeah. The pseudonym did not fool anyone.
(20:37):
And from that point on, Griswold leaned into his role
of the world's number one Edgar Allan Poe hater, and
through some backhanded deals with Poe's mother in law, Griswold
actually managed to get the rights to some of his work,
and he published a posthumous collection in three volumes. He
claimed that sales of the books would benefit Pos's family,
but he kept the proceeds for himself. No, No, it
(20:58):
gets worse. Griswold and included in this collection a wildly
inaccurate biography of Poe titled Memoir of the Author, and
in it he depicted Poe as a raving lunatic who
was hopelessly addicted to drugs and alcohol. Weirdest of all,
he included a bunch of forged letters allegedly from Poe
to support his own lies. Others who knew Poe crazy,
(21:20):
Others who knew Poe tried to defend him in the press,
but Griswold's smear campaign was just incredibly effective and wide reaching.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
His facts air quote.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
About Poe influenced the way people saw him for years,
and it wasn't until decades later that other biographers came
along and started to correct the record.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
That is so funny, you know, I'd always heard that
Poe was an alcoholic, and there's this weird story about
him that I've seen written in a lot of books,
actually about him as a West Point cadet. Have you
heard this?
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I don't, I mean, listen, he did drink, but no,
I don't think so. Tell me about West Point.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
So apparently he was really unhappy there, So when the
cadets were ordered to show up to a parade in
some fancy belts, he showed up in nothing but the
belt and Tom got himself kicked out. But you know,
now I'm wondering if Griswold actually might have been behind
that story as well. Anyway, we are going to transfer
from the world of American letters to the world of
(22:13):
German grocery stores now, because our next feud begins in Essen,
Germany in the nineteen twenties. This is where a working
class family called the Albrechts ran a small grocery store.
They had two sons, Carl and Theodore, and they stood
out from other local shops by keeping prices as low
as possible. Now, Carl and Theo were conscripted during World
(22:34):
War Two. They were captured early on and survived as
prisoners and Allied pow camps. But when they got home
they take over the family business. They had no money,
and in a post war Germany there were constant food shorges.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Sounds like this was not the best time to go
into the grocery business.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Then, yeah, except it kind of was. So the Albrets
had no choice but to stock basics like noodles and soap,
and they developed a focus on cutting cops. So one
of the first things they did was to get rid
of counter clerks. Back then, you'd go up to a counter,
you tell a clerk what you wanted. They'd go back
on the shelves and bring it out to you. But
the Albrecks adopted the American self service approach to shopping,
(23:13):
and fewer employees meant a lower cost of business, and
I guess higher unemployment in the counter clerk demographic, but
I guess that wasn't really their concern.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
You know, if those self checkout machines had existed back then,
I guarantee the Albrech brothers would have been all over.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
It, definitely, And thanks to their capitalist savvy, the Allbreck's
business takes off right By the nineteen fifties, they owned
over a dozen stores. The enterprise continues to grow even
though they refused to spend money on advertising, and by
nineteen sixty they had hundreds of stores throughout Germany, and
they changed the name to ALDI, which is an abbreviation
(23:48):
of Albrech Discount or Allbrech Discount. But in nineteen sixty
one this grocery empire nearly collapses when the two brothers
have a falling out over cigarette. Apparently, THEO thought they
should carry them, and Carl said absolutely nine. Wow, So was.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Carl just like way ahead of his time in terms
of knowing about the dangers of smoking.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
No, he thought that cigarettes would actually attract shoplifters. Okay,
this debate actually splits the brothers and the company they
had built split apart. But in true Allbrech spirit, let's
focus on our own business for a minute and throw
to an ad break, and I'll tell you the rest
of the story right after. Welcome back to part time Genius,
(24:46):
where we're talking about a few of history's most fascinating feuds.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Okay, and before the break, you were telling me about
the Albreched brothers and their disagreement about selling cigarettes in
their grocery stores.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
So okay, what happens, Well, Carl and THEO never come
to an agreement, so they split the business in half.
Literally like they took a map and drew a line
through Germany, using their hometown of Essen as the boundary,
and THEO took all the stores north of the line,
calling them Aldi Nord and Carl takes the one south
of the line, Aldi Sud. From then on they operate
(25:17):
completely separately. The brothers developed different logos carry different products,
both under the name Aldi, but many believed the cigarettes
weren't the only reason for the split. Apparently, THEO was
a real micromanager and Carl, on the other hand, was
more laid back. He liked to delegate and he enjoyed
spending time with his own family.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yeah, I could see how that would cause friction. But still,
I mean they're brothers, right, So did they ever repair
the rift?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
I mean, they don't end up working together, but they
are on friendly terms. There was even a crazy situation
in nineteen seventy one where THEO got kidnapped and held
for ransom and Carl Yeah, I mean Karl pays millions
of Deutsche marks to secure his release. But to this day,
Aldia's two separate businesses. Both haves operate in Germany, but
(26:02):
elsewhere it's divided by country. So if you live in
Italy or the UK, you shop Aldi Sud. In France
and Spain, that's Aldi Nord.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Well, not to make everything about America, but what about America.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Well, if you're shopping in an Aldi in the States.
Aldi Sud expanded into the US in nineteen seventy six,
but not to be outdone, Aldi Nord actually purchased the
Trader Joe's chain in nineteen seventy nine to gain its
own foothold here. What.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah, I had no idea a German supermarket chain owned
Trader Joe's.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah. And it's all because a guy named Carl was
worried about shoplifters.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
He should have been worried about someone kidnapping his brothers.
What he should have been worried about. Well, anyway, that
is incredible. Okay, So I want to tell you about
a disk track that made history by setting off hip
hop's first recorded feud. And it all began in Queens
in the early eighties, where a young girl named Chante
Gooden heard people rhyming and holding impromptu rap battles. So
(26:59):
she started free styling too, and it turned out she
was a natural talent. Even as a middle schooler. She
was going out and winning battles at local clubs, beating
men twice her age.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
That's amazing and I can see how that might start
some funing.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Well, actually, this feud that I'm talking about began in
nineteen eighty four when a Brooklyn hip hop group called
UTFO released a single called Hanging Out, which flopped, but
the B side was a song called Roxanne Roxanne, and
it started getting a lot of radio play. In that song,
a woman named Roxanne gives the rappers her number, only
to stand them up at the end. So it's kind
(27:33):
of a twist. You know, they're not bragging about getting
the girl, they're explaining how they didn't. But with their
popularity growing, UTFO hottest ticket in town. They agreed to
perform at a concert promoted by Mister Magic, who's a
famous New York DJ with a radio show called Rap Attack,
and coincidentally, Chante Gooden's neighbor, Marlon Williams also worked on
Rap Attack and he and mister Magic were counting on
(27:55):
this concert to bring in some money. But then at
the last minute, UTFO cancel. I don't know. Chante happened
to hear Williams bemoaning the situation and just offered to
retaliate with the dis track.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
They recorded a song together.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Well, at first.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Williams was like, what are you talking about, kid, Just like,
let me record a distrack to make off rest situation.
This kid comes by, but he changed his mind. He said,
you know what, all right, kid, come up to my apartment.
We'll record a song, and he played the beat from Roxanne.
Roxanne and Chante freestyled over it, absolutely destroying the three
members of UTFO. And she did it from the perspective
(28:31):
of Roxanne, right, the woman in their song. And Williams,
who went by the name Marley Marl, called the song
Roxanne's Revenge, and he played the tape on Rap Attack.
It was an overnight sensation.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
First of all, that sounds so literary, like I'm going
to do it from the perspective of Roxanne and also
disalterate guy. It's amazing that she just went up there
and freestyled it.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Well, she came from the world of rap battles, right,
and so she said later quote in battles, I was
rhyming for thirty to forty minutes, so four minutes was
nothing for me. And this DIY track sent shockwaves through
the hip hop community. As Williams put it later, nobody
had ever heard a girl rap like that before. So
does UTFO answer back to oh, of course, of course,
what are you gonna do? Not respond? So one of
(29:13):
the members. The rapper Kengl Kid told Billboard magazine years
later that their first reaction to Roxane's revenge was, You're
not even the girl we were talking about. She doesn't
even exist. They just made up this character, right. The
problem was that Shante attacked the UTFO members by name,
and she does. She calls them out by name, one
by one, and as kennggl Kid put it, we do exist.
(29:36):
So we took that personally. So they went out and
found another female MC to record a response called the
Real ro Sand And people just couldn't get enough of
this feud. All the songs are climbing the charts and
responses start to pour in. It's like every rapper wants
to have a say in the Roxane wars. So there
are songs like Roxy Parenthesis, Roxanne's Sister, The Parents of
roxand and my personal favorite, the final word, no More
(29:59):
Roxanne Please, which includes this great line quote, don't you
know all the DJs are going insane because they're tired
of hearing that same old name.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
I love that people have a feud with this feud.
So what actually happens to a chante.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Well, she blew up.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
I mean she became famous and she started performing under
the stage name Roxanne Chante. She even went on tour.
Of course, listen, you got to ride it right. You
can't let an opportunity like that go. So she even
started touring and sharing a bill with UTFO because promoters
knew the feud would sell tickets. She and UTFO never
spoke backstage, and according to Kangole Kid, there were quote
(30:38):
lots of glares and snarls. She went on to release
a couple albums in the early nineties, but then her
career faded. She went through some really tough times. She
survived in an abusive relationship, and there were financial problems
caused by managers who she had trusted. I mean, remember
she was so young. But in recent years she's been
back in the spotlight. She released a few new singles,
and she's hosting a serious XM show called Have an
(30:59):
Eye Stay. And in just a few weeks she will
receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the twenty twenty five Grammys,
alongside Prince and the Clash.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
That is amazing and not bad company.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Well deserved, well deserved.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
So for our final feud, I want to make sure
we get a sports rivalry in here, and there are
so many sports feuds it is hard to choose just one,
but I decided to go with a feud between Andrea
Agassy and Pete Saprez. So I'm sure anyone who's our
age really knows. They dominated the men's tennis circuit in
the nineteen nineties, and they couldn't have been more different, right.
(31:33):
Agasy was flashy and aggressive, both in his playing style
and his wardrobe. He pushed the boundaries by wearing neon
and acid washed denin schwartz on the court. He also
kept his hair in a shaggy mullet that he held back
with this bandana.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Hey yeah, no, no, no, I know we all made fashion
mistakes in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
But people obviously loved it. And Pete Sampras meanwhile, had
this clean cut image. He stuck to traditionalness whites and
played with incredible precision, and while Agaze liked to win
by hitting powerful returns from the baseline, Sampress was known
for his punishing serve, which earned them the nickname Pistol Pete. Anyway,
they played each other for the first time in nineteen
(32:13):
ninety and went on to compete thirty four times until
they retired in the early two thousands, but while they
were active, sports writers described their relationship as a friendly
feud based on competition, not on personal grudges. In nineteen
ninety five, Sampress told a journalist that's just how Americans
perceive sports. He said, quote, I think people like to
see contrasts like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
That's a very astute comment. But this also doesn't sound
like a very exciting feud. It's just sports competition, right.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Yeah, I mean you're right, right, Like when they play
each other, it's something to watch. But it wasn't much
to it off the courts. That is until two thousand
and nine when Agassie publishes his memoir Open, which is
one of my favorite books, and in it he had
harsh words for Sampress, calling him quote more robotic than parrot.
I actually have to read you this other quote because
(33:03):
it is so incredible. Quote. I envy Pete's dullness. I
wish I could emulate his spectacular lack of inspiration and
his peculiar lack of need for inspiration.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Geez, tell what you really think, you know?
Speaker 1 (33:19):
So Agassi also called Sampras's stingy relating a story about
him tipping a valet a single dollar, and when reporters
asked Sampriss about it, he said he wanted to meet
with Agasy quote men to men. Now, this doesn't actually happen,
and in twenty ten, the feud really blows up. Sampras
and Agasy meet for a charity match in California. It's
(33:40):
this doubles game. Sapris is paired with Roger Fetter, Agassy
with Raphael and Nadal, and the players wear microphone headsets
so the crowd can hear their banter. And even though
it's just a charity match, Sampriss starts bashing his serves,
so Agassi starts teasing him, saying, quote, you always have
to get serious, and Sampress yells back, quote, I'll joke
(34:02):
around a little bit. I'll imitate you.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Whoever decided to put MIC's on these guys was either
panicking or cheering in that moment, like they were either
super excited or super terrified.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
So if you watch the tape, the audience is laughing
like they think this is all in great fun. But
Sampress starts doing this exaggerated pigeon tooe walk like if
you've ever seen an xy walk. He his feet are
turned in and he sort of walks that way, and
so Aggasi retaliates by pulling out the empty pockets of
his pants and whining, I don't have any money. Oh
no weight, I've got a dollar.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Was this a roaster a tennis match?
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Both apparently, so fetter and a doll are just standing
there awkwardly waiting for Sampris to serve. He's kind of chuckling,
but you can tell he's mad, and Agassi taunson. So
Sampress unleashes his serf, but not to Nadal, who's on
the receiving side, but directly at Agassy jumps out of
the way just in time.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Oh my god, I know.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And he's got a real bl of a serve right,
So this is incredible. Agassie just keeps going. He makes
another crack about Sampress and the valet before everyone calms
down and finishes the game, which Sampress and Feeder end
up winning. But luckily, this feud has a happy ending.
So the next day, Agassie tells ESPN that his jokes
(35:19):
were quote out of line, and he adds that he
had texted Sampras and has to apologize in person. It's
not clear if that happened, but a year later they
meet again for an exhibition match at Madison Square Garden.
Everyone was waiting for another outburst, but they were cordial.
They were even joking around together, like actually joking around
this time, and super friendly.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
I no one got hit with a serf.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Yeah that's right.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Okay, getting hit with a Sampras serve would have been
god terrifying.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, well that's great.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
You know what.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I like that story so much.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
I would be willing to give you today's trophy, except
you're the one who started this whole episode about feuds
by telling me about a thing that actually wasn't really
a feud.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Well, I had a feeling you might say that, so
I came with a backup fact, this one that comes
from nineteen eighty six. It's about the author Alice Hoffman,
who reviewed Richard Ford's novel The Sportswriter for the New
York Times and long story short, she didn't think it
was all that great. In response, Ford takes a copy
of one of Hoffman's novels into his backyard and shoots
(36:21):
a hole in it, and then mails it to her,
it became the stuff of literary legend, but Ford shrugged
it off, telling the Guardian, well, it's not like I
shot her. Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
That is a trophy worthy feud for sure, So congratulations,
it is all yours.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Well, I feel like we should end this on the
best of terms and share this week's trophy arguing about it.
But that is it for today's episode. Remember you can
follow us on Instagram at the handle part time Genius,
and you can still write Will's mom and my mom
at pggenius moms at gmail dot com. Seriously, it is
a brand new year and they are waiting for your mail.
(37:00):
But from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary, and myself, thank you
so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will
(37:23):
Pearson and me Mongaystikler, and research by our goodpal Mary
Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the
wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show
is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry,
with social media support from Sasha Gay trustee Dara Potts
(37:44):
and buy Me Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what, Mary, what's that mango? Did you
know that Mark Twain absolutely hated Jane Austen?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Let me guess he thought Elizabeth Bennett would have ditched
mister Darcy and gone rafting down the Thames.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I mean, that would have been an amazing book. But no,
he just thought Austin was a terrible writer. He wants
to hold a friend. Quote. Every time I read Pride
and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and beat
her over the skull with her own shin bone.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Oh my god, I know, right, yikes. But wait a minute,
Wait a minute. He read it multiple times, this book
that he hated so much.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I guess Mark Twain invented hate reading. I mean, it's
one of his lesser known accomplishments. But it got me
thinking about other crazy feuds. And then I realized, Twain
versus Austin isn't actually a feud at all.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
What do you mean?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
So? According to the Day Dictionary, a feud is quote
a mutual enmity or quarrel that is often prolonged and
Jane Austen died years before Mark Twain was born, so
there was nothing mutual about it. He was just being
snarky after her death.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
So rule number one a feuding make sure your opponent
is still alive.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I mean, it is a good rule. But we've got
some actual feuds to talk about on today's episode, and
some of them are pretty wild. So let's get started. Hey,
(01:47):
their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm mongas Shittigula,
and today I'm joined by my producer extraordinary Mary Philip Sandy.
And over there behind that soundproof glass sticking pins through
photos of his enemies, and he sure has a lot
of enemies. That's our producer, Dylan Fagan. I gotta say,
I did not expect Dylan to have beef with the
(02:08):
great character actor Judy Greer.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, or Olympic figure skater Brian Boyce. Out what what
is happening?
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Oh he's holding off a sign now it says Brian
and Judy know what they did? Good?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Ah, Okay, well it sort of makes sense now, I guess,
but I am curious.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
You know, today's episode is all about feuds. Have you
ever had a feud of any sort?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
I had a feud in first grade, and it was
very serious and should we bleep his name?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
His name was Kenny lives in Still we can bleep that,
we can bleep that.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
There was a competition to read books, and there were
paper ice cream cones put on the walls of the
classroom and every time you read a book, you had
a scoop out of your ice cream cone. Whoever had
the highest scoop at the end of the year was
going to get a prize. Kevin was reading little kid
books I'm talking bored books, and he was racking. I
was reading chapter books in first grade. I was reading
(03:03):
Little House on the Prairie. It's longer, it takes more time.
And I went to my first grade teacher, Missus Davis,
if you're listening, and I said, this isn't fair, and
she said, a book is a book and sat there
and laughed.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
You know what I noticed. Yeah, we didn't have to
beat missus Davis's name out.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
She's dead.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Oh no, well, miss David, Yes, I carry a grudge
about that to this day. I learned an important lesson
at age seven in first grade, and.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
That's that life is very unfair. Yeah about you? How
about you?
Speaker 1 (03:40):
I mean, you know that scene I don't know if
you've seen it, but in the Bulls documentary where Michael
Jordan makes up that feud with someone and he's like,
and I took that personally, like it's an event that
never takes place. He makes it up in his mind,
so he plays better. I feel like I have a
lot of feuds with people don't know they're in fuds
(04:01):
with me. Huh, Okay, not a lot, but like when
we started Mental Flaws, there was another magazine that was
so much shinier and so much prettier and so much
better made, and we had this like rivalry with them,
but it was so one sided and they never knew
about us, and so like, I feel like that type
of thing happened.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
A well, maybe they're kicking themselves now looking back on it.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, you know maybe. Anyway, let's talk about some real feuds.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Let's talk about some.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Real feuds that don't involve magazines or you know, cheating
seven year olds. Okay, well, here's a ninety four year
old literary feud that is still being debated today, and
it involves the authors Langston Hughes and Zora Neil Hurston.
So they met in New York during the Harlem Renaissance,
and they became close friends and really great supporters of
each other's work, which I think is probably the opposite
(04:56):
of a feud, right yeah, yeah, that was actually a
beautiful friendship.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Is the technical death of what that was.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
But it all began to fall apart in nineteen thirty
when they tried to write a play together. So it
was a comedy ostensibly based on one of Hurston's unpublished
short stories called The Bone of Contention Foreshadowing, which in
turn was based on a folk tale that she had
heard in her Florida hometown. And then here's where things
get murky. Hughes thought they would finish the play together,
(05:23):
but while she was away on a trip, Hurston rewrote
the script herself. She titled it Mule Bone and submitted
it for copyright registration in her name only. She also
sent her draft to the author Carl van Vechten, who
turned around and sent it to the Theater Guild, which
was an organization that produced plays on Broadway, including many
by well known authors at the time.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
And so did herson know he was going to do
this like submit it to this group?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
No, No, she had no idea he was going to
share it with anyone, But now all of a sudden
it's out there and people are talking about this play
and Langston Hughes is like, wait, what I mean?
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm sure he said it more more eloquently than that,
because he's Likenston used that was.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
The gist of it, right, And at first he said
he was just disappointed that the collaboration didn't continue. But
apparently he had stronger feelings than that, because next thing
you know, he has combined Hurston's second act of the
play with his versions of the first and the third acts.
And then he sent that whole thing off to the
copyright office again, this time with both of their names
on the cover.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
So there are two versions of the same play now,
like both copyright.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Now, Yeah, exactly exactly, And then he hired a lawyer
and started commanding credit and royalty. Sure, and Hurston pointed
out that the story was her idea in the first place,
and Hughes hadn't participated in the rewrite that she had
done herself. She also added that he'd borrowed some of
her ideas for his novel Not Without Laughter, and she
hadn't been going around demanding credit.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
And you know, looking back on.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
It, some people today read this as Hurston being selfish
or petty. But if you look at the context and
you look at it another way, what she was doing
was fighting for control of her work, and that was
the struggle she knew all too well.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
During her career.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
She had this wealthy white patron named Charlotte Osgood Mason
who gave her a lot of money, but it came
with a lot of strings attached. She owned a lot
of the work that she did. And this guy, Carl
van Vechten, he gave her play draft to producers without
even asking if it was okay to do that. So
maybe this question of authorship was just kind of the
final straw.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, that makes sense. But did the two of them
ever work it out? Like, did they conference?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Nope? That was the end of it.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
The hol debacle ended their friendship, and many years later,
in the eighties, Henry Lewis Gates dug out the different
versions of Mulebone and combined them into a production script,
and the play made its debut in New York in
nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Huh, I feel like I've never heard of this was
any good?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Not really it.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Got very mixed reviews, and basically critics felt that this
Franken script didn't accurately reflect either Hurston or Hughes's real talent.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That is a shame.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
What is it?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
A camel?
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Is a horse made by committee or something? Yeah, I
feel like maybe this is the camel of their play.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah, something like that. But you know, the way I
see it, this story behind the play is the most
compelling drama of all. So I am hoping that someday
someone will turn that into a play and we can
see it on Broadway.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Someday.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
I'm into it. Well, I've got another story of a
friendship gone wrong. This one takes us all the way
back to eighteenth century Europe and involves Jean Jacques Rousseau,
who is a philosopher from Geneva and wrote several popular novels,
but his radical views actually got him in trouble. For
one thing, he believed that all religions are equal, and
(08:30):
the Church obviously considered this heresy at the time, so
he was condemned by Genevan authorities and by many people
he'd consider friends. In fact, he actually had to skip
down to avoid being arrested.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
So it was like the Enlightenment version of getting canceled.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, I mean, cancel culture was so much worse back then. Meanwhile,
the Scottish philosopher David Hume heard about Rousseau's struggles and
he could actually relate. Hume was a religious skeptic and
the Catholic Church had banned his books, but unlike Rousseau,
he wasn't ostracized by his establishment friends. So Hume decided
to use his connections to help Russeau relocate to England.
(09:08):
He actually convinced King George the Third to provide a
pension for him. He arranged lodgings and even met him
in Paris to travel to the UK, and at first
Rousseau was pretty grateful. I mean he settled in a
house in Staffordshire where he seemed, you know, pretty happy,
And that could have been the end of it, except
two things happen. So one Russeau has a notoriously bad
(09:31):
temper and two there's an ill advised prank letter that
gets into play.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
A prank letter.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I did not see that coming. What happened. So this
letter began circulating in the British press. It was ostensibly
a message from Frederick to the Great, the King of Prussia,
and it offered Rousseau safe haven. But the whole thing
was just poking fun at the controversies. One of the
lines went quote, it is high time to grow prudent
and happy. You've made yourself sufficiently talked of for singularities
(10:00):
little becoming a truly great man.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
The King of Prussia wrote that.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
No, it was the English writer Horace Walpole, and he
was trying to be funny. Rousseau was furious by this,
but he also knew that Walpole and Hume were friends,
so he started with the accusations right now. Hume denied
knowing anything about this, but Rousseau was convinced he was involved,
and he got so mad he even refused to accept
(10:26):
the royal pension that Hume had arranged for him, which
you know, feels insane to me, but I guess he
was a man of principle anyway. After exchanging these scathing letters,
Rousseau accused Hume of plotting to destroy him.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
That sounds a bit paranoid.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, but remember he'd spent all those years being persecuted,
so I guess it'd become kind of had it by
this point to be that paranoid, but eventually Rousseau writes
a letter that's so angry Hume starts to think he's
really gone over the edge. His friends advise him to
let it go, but he ignores them, and in October
seventeen seventy six, less than a year after their friendship
(11:02):
had begun, Hume publishes his account of the conflict, including
the letters, and it becomes this giant he said, he
said scandal, with rumors flying about who knew what and
who said what, and in the end Rousseau actually leaves
England and he and Hume never speak again.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
You know, when I think of eighteenth century philosopher's juicy,
drama is not the first thing that comes to mind.
But I guess I've been wrong this whole time. Well,
from drama to comedy, although this comedy also involves drama.
Did you know that Abbott and Costello had an off
stage feud?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
So the main thing I knew about abd and Costello
other than the Who's on first routine is that Leu
Costello was a kleptomaniac, really, and I remember this from
an old mental article, that he used to steal so
much furniture and so many props from sets that people
used to claim his house was furnished in early Universal
as in Universal Studios. But I knew they weren't exactly
(12:01):
the best of friends.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
But tell me about this few Okay, So during their
heyday in the nineteen forties, Abbot and Costello they were
the most popular comedians in the country, in the highest paid, too.
But their act began as an accident. Luke Costello had
another partner who didn't show up for a performance one night.
So but Abbot stepped in to play the straight man
for him, and that's it.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
The rest is history.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Abbot was actually considered one of the best straight men
of all time, and so for a while he took
sixty percent of the duo's earnings. Eventually, Costello demanded more,
and there's even a rumor that he tried to get
the order of their names reversed in the credits of movies.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
That's amazing. First of all, it's amazing that like a
straight man could demand more money. You know, you don't
expect that. But also, Costello and Abbot just sounds wrong.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, that's why no one changed it.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I think if it had sounded right, we'd have heard
about it, but as their fame grew, their differences just
became more and more apparent. Abbot was kind of easy going,
he enjoyed the finer things in life. Costello was more
uptight and anxious. He sometimes worried that Abbot hadn't done
enough to prepare when they were rehearsing new material. And
it all came to a head in nineteen forty five,
but not because of anything showbiz related. Apparently, Costello fired
(13:10):
his maid and Abbot hired her. So I'm waiting for
a punchline yet, No, no, there isn't one.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
That's all it was. I mean, believe me.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I tried to find out if there's anything else, but
I think that's all it is. They just had an
argument about a maid, and for some reason they couldn't
get past it. And they were about to start a
run at the Roxy here in New York, so Costello
tried to rebook himself as a solo act. Abbot gets
wind of this and shows up at the theater. So
the shows go on as planned, but they only speak
to each other when they're on stage. The tension continued
(13:42):
into the fifties as their popularity declined, and in nineteen
fifty seven, they split up for real. Costello said later
that they had just gotten tired of the act doing
the same thing, but there may have been more to it.
Legendary film star Errol Flynn wrote in his memoir that
he had invited Abbot, Costello and their families to his
house for dinner, very nice. Afterwards, he offered to show
(14:03):
them a whole movie, but instead of vacation scenes, the
real ended up being a blue film like pornography. Yes,
just imagine Abbott Costello, their families unstar Errol Flynn with
surprise pornography. So everyone is horrified. Everyone is like, what
(14:23):
is going on? Errol Flynn pretended he didn't know what happened?
How did that get there? And so Abin and Costello
ended up blaming each other for the prank, the first
the maid thing and then the poor Yeah he was
the old one. Two made.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Such a weird way to end a business partnership.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, and it's not even a very creative prank if
you think about it.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Well, speaking of creativity, you know what it is creative
is painting your rival space into a famous fresco.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
That actually sounds more like a compliment to me.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it could be, but when
it came to Michelangelo and Rafael and obligatory note here
for our listeners, I am not referring to the Ninja turtles.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Okay, okay, okay, so the actual not teenage Renaissance artists.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Okay, So yeah, no martial arts here. Now. Michlangelo was
a legend in his own time, but he was not
an easygoing guy. He actually had these intense rivalries with
many other artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, and he was
known for being difficult and ill tempered. But Rafael, who
was nearly a decade younger, really really got under his skin.
(15:35):
So in fifteen oh eight, Pope Julius the Second chose
Rafael to paint a fresco in his private library. And
not only was Michelangelo offended that he didn't get the gig,
he then had to hear everyone praising Rafael's work, and
there were some people who said Rafael was the better artist,
even though they knew Michelangelo was one of his biggest influences. So,
(15:55):
according to one biographer, Michlangelo lashed out, making the younger
man quote bear the brunt of his unrelenting envy, contempt,
and anger.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
So how did Raphael take this?
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Not lying down? So, in one of his frescoes for
Pope Julius, Rafael painted Michelangelo's face onto the body of Heraclitis,
an ancient Greek philosopher who he depicted in a gathering
with Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
That still sounds like a compliment, though.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Except hera Clitis was widely known as a bitter and
arrogant misanthrowt.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Okay okay, okay, I get it now.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
But it turns out this was a real two way feud.
So Raphael snuck into the Cystinine Chapel before Michelangelo finished
the famous ceilings so he could see what his rival
was up to. And it said that the muscular figures
of God and Adam inspired Rafael to actually beef up
his own subjects. And the conflict grew as Rafael won
more and more commissions. And unlike Michelangelo, he was just
(16:53):
well liked and social. He's really good at old timey
schmoozing with patrons and important people in the clergy. And
in fifteen fifteen, just a few years after Michelangelo finished
the Sistine frescoes. Rafael was actually asked to design elaborate
tapestries for the chapel's walls. Now, some of them have
since been damaged or loss, but back then the complete tapestries,
(17:15):
which were woven with real gold and silver thread, were
probably the most eye catching art in the Cistine Chapel,
not the ceiling. Wow is actually hard to imagine, right,
but it is true anyway. It's safe to assume the
feud would have continued if Rafael hadn't died suddenly in
fifteen twenty. Of course, Michelangelo was not one to let
things go, and he summed up Rafael's life by writing, quote,
(17:38):
what he had of art he had for me?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Wow? Way to get the last word in.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Well, that's actually the perfect lead into our next feud
between the famous author Edgar Allan Poe and the much
less famous editor Rufus Griswold.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Which one of them? Have you heard of?
Speaker 1 (17:54):
The first?
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (17:56):
So they met in eighteen forty one, and apparently they
never really liked each other very much. Griswold, who came
from a religious New England family, looked down on Poe
as an immoral social climber whose talent didn't match his reputation,
and although he occasionally complimented his work, Poe thought Griswold
was just way too full of himself, which he kind
of was. But they kept up a polite appearance. They
moved in the same circles. They could be nice if
(18:17):
they had to, and Griswold even included some of Poe's
work in an anthology he published called The Poets and
Poetry of America. So Griswold was really into this idea
of defining a national literature, and of course he felt
he was the best person to do that. But Poe
was unimpressed, asking a friend, quote, have you seen Griswold's
book of poetry? It is a most outrageous humbug.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So there's only one problem here, right, Like, this is
the anthology that Poe himself is in.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah, but he just disagreed with Griswold's other editorial choices.
And weirdly, despite knowing this, Griswald paid Poe to write
a review of the anthology, and then, perhaps because there
was money involved, Poe's review was a lot less harsh
than his private comments about the book, but a few
months later, another review of the anthology appeared in a
Philadelphia magazine. This one was anonymous, and in addition to
(19:06):
calling Griswold's book quote nonsense, it called Griswold himself a
toady who was destined to sink into oblivion.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
I love all these old time insults, right, like a
humbug tody sink into oblivion. Yeah, and so I leve
you guess was this Poe as well? Not exactly. That
vicious review turned out to have been written by a
guy named Henry B. Hurst, who was one of Poe's friends.
Griswold definitely thought Poe was behind it, and in a
way it might have been right. Hurst was probably repeating
(19:34):
a lot of things that Poe had told him. So
does Poe try to patch things up here? No?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
He did the opposite.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
No.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
He went on to criticize Griswold and his anthology at
every possible opportunity, Like anytime he was giving a lecture, anything,
he was sure to get in how bad Griswold and
his taste was. But there may have been a romantic
rivalry a play here too.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Let me guess it was at Costello's maid.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
No, no, God, that would have been perfect. But no,
both men had relationships with a poet named Francis sargent Osgoode,
who was separated from her husband.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
And I know we said earlier.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
That a feud involves two living parties, but this one
continued long after Pos's death in eighteen forty nine.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Is that tell me about it?
Speaker 3 (20:13):
So, days after Poe died, an obituary appeared in the
New York Tribune. It was attributed to someone named Ludwig,
but it did not read like a normal, respectful obituary.
What it said was, quote, Edgar Allan Poe is dead.
He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement
will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.
Oh Griswold, Yeah, yeah, yeah. The pseudonym did not fool anyone.
(20:37):
And from that point on, Griswold leaned into his role
of the world's number one Edgar Allan Poe hater, and
through some backhanded deals with Poe's mother in law, Griswold
actually managed to get the rights to some of his work,
and he published a posthumous collection in three volumes. He
claimed that sales of the books would benefit Pos's family,
but he kept the proceeds for himself. No, No, it
(20:58):
gets worse. Griswold and included in this collection a wildly
inaccurate biography of Poe titled Memoir of the Author, and
in it he depicted Poe as a raving lunatic who
was hopelessly addicted to drugs and alcohol. Weirdest of all,
he included a bunch of forged letters allegedly from Poe
to support his own lies. Others who knew Poe crazy,
(21:20):
Others who knew Poe tried to defend him in the press,
but Griswold's smear campaign was just incredibly effective and wide reaching.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
His facts air quote.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
About Poe influenced the way people saw him for years,
and it wasn't until decades later that other biographers came
along and started to correct the record.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
That is so funny, you know, I'd always heard that
Poe was an alcoholic, and there's this weird story about
him that I've seen written in a lot of books,
actually about him as a West Point cadet. Have you
heard this?
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I don't, I mean, listen, he did drink, but no,
I don't think so. Tell me about West Point.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
So apparently he was really unhappy there, So when the
cadets were ordered to show up to a parade in
some fancy belts, he showed up in nothing but the
belt and Tom got himself kicked out. But you know,
now I'm wondering if Griswold actually might have been behind
that story as well. Anyway, we are going to transfer
from the world of American letters to the world of
(22:13):
German grocery stores now, because our next feud begins in Essen,
Germany in the nineteen twenties. This is where a working
class family called the Albrechts ran a small grocery store.
They had two sons, Carl and Theodore, and they stood
out from other local shops by keeping prices as low
as possible. Now, Carl and Theo were conscripted during World
(22:34):
War Two. They were captured early on and survived as
prisoners and Allied pow camps. But when they got home
they take over the family business. They had no money,
and in a post war Germany there were constant food shorges.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Sounds like this was not the best time to go
into the grocery business.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Then, yeah, except it kind of was. So the Albrets
had no choice but to stock basics like noodles and soap,
and they developed a focus on cutting cops. So one
of the first things they did was to get rid
of counter clerks. Back then, you'd go up to a counter,
you tell a clerk what you wanted. They'd go back
on the shelves and bring it out to you. But
the Albrecks adopted the American self service approach to shopping,
(23:13):
and fewer employees meant a lower cost of business, and
I guess higher unemployment in the counter clerk demographic, but
I guess that wasn't really their concern.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
You know, if those self checkout machines had existed back then,
I guarantee the Albrech brothers would have been all over.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
It, definitely, And thanks to their capitalist savvy, the Allbreck's
business takes off right By the nineteen fifties, they owned
over a dozen stores. The enterprise continues to grow even
though they refused to spend money on advertising, and by
nineteen sixty they had hundreds of stores throughout Germany, and
they changed the name to ALDI, which is an abbreviation
(23:48):
of Albrech Discount or Allbrech Discount. But in nineteen sixty
one this grocery empire nearly collapses when the two brothers
have a falling out over cigarette. Apparently, THEO thought they
should carry them, and Carl said absolutely nine. Wow, So was.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Carl just like way ahead of his time in terms
of knowing about the dangers of smoking.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
No, he thought that cigarettes would actually attract shoplifters. Okay,
this debate actually splits the brothers and the company they
had built split apart. But in true Allbrech spirit, let's
focus on our own business for a minute and throw
to an ad break, and I'll tell you the rest
of the story right after. Welcome back to part time Genius,
(24:46):
where we're talking about a few of history's most fascinating feuds.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Okay, and before the break, you were telling me about
the Albreched brothers and their disagreement about selling cigarettes in
their grocery stores.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
So okay, what happens, Well, Carl and THEO never come
to an agreement, so they split the business in half.
Literally like they took a map and drew a line
through Germany, using their hometown of Essen as the boundary,
and THEO took all the stores north of the line,
calling them Aldi Nord and Carl takes the one south
of the line, Aldi Sud. From then on they operate
(25:17):
completely separately. The brothers developed different logos carry different products,
both under the name Aldi, but many believed the cigarettes
weren't the only reason for the split. Apparently, THEO was
a real micromanager and Carl, on the other hand, was
more laid back. He liked to delegate and he enjoyed
spending time with his own family.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yeah, I could see how that would cause friction. But still,
I mean they're brothers, right, So did they ever repair
the rift?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
I mean, they don't end up working together, but they
are on friendly terms. There was even a crazy situation
in nineteen seventy one where THEO got kidnapped and held
for ransom and Carl Yeah, I mean Karl pays millions
of Deutsche marks to secure his release. But to this day,
Aldia's two separate businesses. Both haves operate in Germany, but
(26:02):
elsewhere it's divided by country. So if you live in
Italy or the UK, you shop Aldi Sud. In France
and Spain, that's Aldi Nord.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Well, not to make everything about America, but what about America.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Well, if you're shopping in an Aldi in the States.
Aldi Sud expanded into the US in nineteen seventy six,
but not to be outdone, Aldi Nord actually purchased the
Trader Joe's chain in nineteen seventy nine to gain its
own foothold here. What.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah, I had no idea a German supermarket chain owned
Trader Joe's.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah. And it's all because a guy named Carl was
worried about shoplifters.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
He should have been worried about someone kidnapping his brothers.
What he should have been worried about. Well, anyway, that
is incredible. Okay, So I want to tell you about
a disk track that made history by setting off hip
hop's first recorded feud. And it all began in Queens
in the early eighties, where a young girl named Chante
Gooden heard people rhyming and holding impromptu rap battles. So
(26:59):
she started free styling too, and it turned out she
was a natural talent. Even as a middle schooler. She
was going out and winning battles at local clubs, beating
men twice her age.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
That's amazing and I can see how that might start
some funing.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Well, actually, this feud that I'm talking about began in
nineteen eighty four when a Brooklyn hip hop group called
UTFO released a single called Hanging Out, which flopped, but
the B side was a song called Roxanne Roxanne, and
it started getting a lot of radio play. In that song,
a woman named Roxanne gives the rappers her number, only
to stand them up at the end. So it's kind
(27:33):
of a twist. You know, they're not bragging about getting
the girl, they're explaining how they didn't. But with their
popularity growing, UTFO hottest ticket in town. They agreed to
perform at a concert promoted by Mister Magic, who's a
famous New York DJ with a radio show called Rap Attack,
and coincidentally, Chante Gooden's neighbor, Marlon Williams also worked on
Rap Attack and he and mister Magic were counting on
(27:55):
this concert to bring in some money. But then at
the last minute, UTFO cancel. I don't know. Chante happened
to hear Williams bemoaning the situation and just offered to
retaliate with the dis track.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
They recorded a song together.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Well, at first.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Williams was like, what are you talking about, kid, Just like,
let me record a distrack to make off rest situation.
This kid comes by, but he changed his mind. He said,
you know what, all right, kid, come up to my apartment.
We'll record a song, and he played the beat from Roxanne.
Roxanne and Chante freestyled over it, absolutely destroying the three
members of UTFO. And she did it from the perspective
(28:31):
of Roxanne, right, the woman in their song. And Williams,
who went by the name Marley Marl, called the song
Roxanne's Revenge, and he played the tape on Rap Attack.
It was an overnight sensation.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
First of all, that sounds so literary, like I'm going
to do it from the perspective of Roxanne and also
disalterate guy. It's amazing that she just went up there
and freestyled it.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Well, she came from the world of rap battles, right,
and so she said later quote in battles, I was
rhyming for thirty to forty minutes, so four minutes was
nothing for me. And this DIY track sent shockwaves through
the hip hop community. As Williams put it later, nobody
had ever heard a girl rap like that before. So
does UTFO answer back to oh, of course, of course,
what are you gonna do? Not respond? So one of
(29:13):
the members. The rapper Kengl Kid told Billboard magazine years
later that their first reaction to Roxane's revenge was, You're
not even the girl we were talking about. She doesn't
even exist. They just made up this character, right. The
problem was that Shante attacked the UTFO members by name,
and she does. She calls them out by name, one
by one, and as kennggl Kid put it, we do exist.
(29:36):
So we took that personally. So they went out and
found another female MC to record a response called the
Real ro Sand And people just couldn't get enough of
this feud. All the songs are climbing the charts and
responses start to pour in. It's like every rapper wants
to have a say in the Roxane wars. So there
are songs like Roxy Parenthesis, Roxanne's Sister, The Parents of
roxand and my personal favorite, the final word, no More
(29:59):
Roxanne Please, which includes this great line quote, don't you
know all the DJs are going insane because they're tired
of hearing that same old name.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
I love that people have a feud with this feud.
So what actually happens to a chante.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
Well, she blew up.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
I mean she became famous and she started performing under
the stage name Roxanne Chante. She even went on tour.
Of course, listen, you got to ride it right. You
can't let an opportunity like that go. So she even
started touring and sharing a bill with UTFO because promoters
knew the feud would sell tickets. She and UTFO never
spoke backstage, and according to Kangole Kid, there were quote
(30:38):
lots of glares and snarls. She went on to release
a couple albums in the early nineties, but then her
career faded. She went through some really tough times. She
survived in an abusive relationship, and there were financial problems
caused by managers who she had trusted. I mean, remember
she was so young. But in recent years she's been
back in the spotlight. She released a few new singles,
and she's hosting a serious XM show called Have an
(30:59):
Eye Stay. And in just a few weeks she will
receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the twenty twenty five Grammys,
alongside Prince and the Clash.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
That is amazing and not bad company.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Well deserved, well deserved.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
So for our final feud, I want to make sure
we get a sports rivalry in here, and there are
so many sports feuds it is hard to choose just one,
but I decided to go with a feud between Andrea
Agassy and Pete Saprez. So I'm sure anyone who's our
age really knows. They dominated the men's tennis circuit in
the nineteen nineties, and they couldn't have been more different, right.
(31:33):
Agasy was flashy and aggressive, both in his playing style
and his wardrobe. He pushed the boundaries by wearing neon
and acid washed denin schwartz on the court. He also
kept his hair in a shaggy mullet that he held back
with this bandana.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Hey yeah, no, no, no, I know we all made fashion
mistakes in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
But people obviously loved it. And Pete Sampras meanwhile, had
this clean cut image. He stuck to traditionalness whites and
played with incredible precision, and while Agaze liked to win
by hitting powerful returns from the baseline, Sampress was known
for his punishing serve, which earned them the nickname Pistol Pete. Anyway,
they played each other for the first time in nineteen
(32:13):
ninety and went on to compete thirty four times until
they retired in the early two thousands, but while they
were active, sports writers described their relationship as a friendly
feud based on competition, not on personal grudges. In nineteen
ninety five, Sampress told a journalist that's just how Americans
perceive sports. He said, quote, I think people like to
see contrasts like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
That's a very astute comment. But this also doesn't sound
like a very exciting feud. It's just sports competition, right.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Yeah, I mean you're right, right, Like when they play
each other, it's something to watch. But it wasn't much
to it off the courts. That is until two thousand
and nine when Agassie publishes his memoir Open, which is
one of my favorite books, and in it he had
harsh words for Sampress, calling him quote more robotic than parrot.
I actually have to read you this other quote because
(33:03):
it is so incredible. Quote. I envy Pete's dullness. I
wish I could emulate his spectacular lack of inspiration and
his peculiar lack of need for inspiration.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Geez, tell what you really think, you know?
Speaker 1 (33:19):
So Agassi also called Sampras's stingy relating a story about
him tipping a valet a single dollar, and when reporters
asked Sampriss about it, he said he wanted to meet
with Agasy quote men to men. Now, this doesn't actually happen,
and in twenty ten, the feud really blows up. Sampras
and Agasy meet for a charity match in California. It's
(33:40):
this doubles game. Sapris is paired with Roger Fetter, Agassy
with Raphael and Nadal, and the players wear microphone headsets
so the crowd can hear their banter. And even though
it's just a charity match, Sampriss starts bashing his serves,
so Agassi starts teasing him, saying, quote, you always have
to get serious, and Sampress yells back, quote, I'll joke
(34:02):
around a little bit. I'll imitate you.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Whoever decided to put MIC's on these guys was either
panicking or cheering in that moment, like they were either
super excited or super terrified.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
So if you watch the tape, the audience is laughing
like they think this is all in great fun. But
Sampress starts doing this exaggerated pigeon tooe walk like if
you've ever seen an xy walk. He his feet are
turned in and he sort of walks that way, and
so Aggasi retaliates by pulling out the empty pockets of
his pants and whining, I don't have any money. Oh
no weight, I've got a dollar.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Was this a roaster a tennis match?
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Both apparently, so fetter and a doll are just standing
there awkwardly waiting for Sampris to serve. He's kind of chuckling,
but you can tell he's mad, and Agassi taunson. So
Sampress unleashes his serf, but not to Nadal, who's on
the receiving side, but directly at Agassy jumps out of
the way just in time.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Oh my god, I know.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
And he's got a real bl of a serve right,
So this is incredible. Agassie just keeps going. He makes
another crack about Sampress and the valet before everyone calms
down and finishes the game, which Sampress and Feeder end
up winning. But luckily, this feud has a happy ending.
So the next day, Agassie tells ESPN that his jokes
(35:19):
were quote out of line, and he adds that he
had texted Sampras and has to apologize in person. It's
not clear if that happened, but a year later they
meet again for an exhibition match at Madison Square Garden.
Everyone was waiting for another outburst, but they were cordial.
They were even joking around together, like actually joking around
this time, and super friendly.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
I no one got hit with a serf.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Yeah that's right.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Okay, getting hit with a Sampras serve would have been
god terrifying.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, well that's great.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
You know what.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I like that story so much.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
I would be willing to give you today's trophy, except
you're the one who started this whole episode about feuds
by telling me about a thing that actually wasn't really
a feud.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Well, I had a feeling you might say that, so
I came with a backup fact, this one that comes
from nineteen eighty six. It's about the author Alice Hoffman,
who reviewed Richard Ford's novel The Sportswriter for the New
York Times and long story short, she didn't think it
was all that great. In response, Ford takes a copy
of one of Hoffman's novels into his backyard and shoots
(36:21):
a hole in it, and then mails it to her,
it became the stuff of literary legend, but Ford shrugged
it off, telling the Guardian, well, it's not like I
shot her. Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
That is a trophy worthy feud for sure, So congratulations,
it is all yours.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Well, I feel like we should end this on the
best of terms and share this week's trophy arguing about it.
But that is it for today's episode. Remember you can
follow us on Instagram at the handle part time Genius,
and you can still write Will's mom and my mom
at pggenius moms at gmail dot com. Seriously, it is
a brand new year and they are waiting for your mail.
(37:00):
But from Will, Dylan, Gabe, Mary, and myself, thank you
so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production
of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will
(37:23):
Pearson and me Mongaystikler, and research by our goodpal Mary
Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the
wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show
is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry,
with social media support from Sasha Gay trustee Dara Potts
(37:44):
and buy Me Shorey. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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