July 1, 2025 • 48 mins
Heads-up, folks: this is a PG-13 episode. Ben and the legendary guest producer, also Ben, welcome author and journalist Ross Benes for a wide-ranging discussion on the ridiculous ways in which sex has altered the course of human civilization. We're talking about the origin story of the vibrator, the way the US military accidentally made San Francisco a 'gay mecca,' the fanatical drives of the Puritans, sex scandals and so much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for joining us. Let's hear a shout out for
the Man, the Myth, the legend, our guest super producer,
Ben the Sleeping Dog Hacket. And for the record, we
did ask Ben in advance what nickname he wanted, and
that that was the name that you wanted us to
(00:49):
give you, Right, Ben, that's me baby, Okay, So that's
the that's the Sleeping Dog himself. I am Ben Bullet.
My brother in podcast Crime. Noel Brown is on an
adventure but will be returning soon. In the meantime, we
are super excited to have a bit of a saucy
(01:09):
exploration through Ridiculous History. Through a part of history, a
phenomenon the waxes and wanes pops up in and out
of the news over the centuries. It's the concept of
the sex scandal. So parents listening with kiddos in the
crowd be aware that this might get a little more
(01:32):
PG thirteen than normal. But this is despite the way
we're beginning the show. This is not going to be
a monologue. You don't have to hear my weird opinions
on this the whole time. We are instead joined today
by the fantastic journalist Picture your favorite literary magazine, your
(01:53):
favorite publication. This man is written for it, along with
a bevy of books about this and many other subjects
the author have turned on the author of sex, weird
Opedia and so much more. Joined us and welcoming Ross
Benish to the show. Ross dude, thank you for coming
on today.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I can't wait to share my weird opinions with you guys.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
No, now, Ross, we were talking a bit off air
you been and myself and you have. You have been
such a prolific journalist and author and researcher. You have,
as some people may have just heard from that description,
you have more than one book dealing with some strange
(02:42):
history about sex. So could you tell us, first off
a little bit about how you got started as a
writer and particularly what fascinated you about what we call
sex scandals.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, well, you know, my books are just fun things.
I love so Nebraska politics, nineties pop culture, and sex.
Gotta have that triumviran there. And the way I got
started is after college, I didn't know what the hell
I wanted to do with my life. But I knew
I wanted to write a non fiction book in the
vein of freakonomics. So I started writing these essays and
(03:17):
I noticed a lot of them had to deal with sex,
which you know, I don't know what that says about me,
but whatever, And I set out to get a literary
agent to kind of write like a freakonomics of sex
sort of type book, and then to get published, I
knew I needed to have a lot of byline. So
then I started freelancing and interning at like Esquire and
(03:37):
you know, Mental Floss and Slate and all these places,
and that helped me get that first book. And then
after that first book, you know, I was able to
get more freelance pieces and more books. But the first
two books I wrote of my four were about the
strange history of sex and the way that it influences
our lives in strange and unpredictable ways. I've branched onto
(04:00):
the topics since then, but that was the one that
kind of got my career started.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Mmmm yeah, And this is this is a fascinating thing
from a even from just a publishing perspective. Without talking
too much about the business. I can clearly hear a
publisher and an agent, or I can see them in
my mind look at in each other and saying at
the same time, sex sales. You know, you know my
(04:27):
Tennessee came out. But yeah, sex Cells. I should have said.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
It's funny you said that because they wanted to title
the book sex Cells. But I thought a lot to
not have that be the title, because I thought that
would have been misleading.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, And it's weird how you have to if you're
in those kind of situations. This can happen with musicians
and albums. It's as well. It's weird how you have
to fight the powers that be sometimes over something as
small as a title. You know, I always before we
made a book for one of the other shows, we
(05:02):
do stuff they'll want you to know. I had just
assumed that the writers get to make the titles. I
didn't know how many strange phone calls would have to
transpire about that. So I will say the books themselves,
beyond the titles sex Weirdipedia, and Turned On are oh
(05:24):
with a forward everybody by our good friend aj Bahamas
Jacobsen turned On, These books are far more than the
title would suggest. I mean that as a tremendous compliment
because turned on. Maybe we start there as that's the
most recent work in this MILLU can you tell us
(05:47):
what we mean when we say investigation into how sex
has shaped our world?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, so what I wanted to title the book was
Invisible hand Jobs, and it was all about how sex
will guide our economies and our religion and our technology
in ways that aren't always appreciated. You know. One example
would be the influence that porn has had on Internet technology,
you know, like cookies and web browsing and streaming, e commerce.
(06:18):
A lot of that was started by pornographers before web
giants like Amazon and Google took it forward.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Another thing that I look at in the book is
how governments can influence birth rates and how that can
actually ultimately influence your economy, you know, if you want
to have young, productive workers and not have an aging workforce.
The government across the world, government across the world have
tried a lot of weird things to try to incentivize
(06:44):
people to have more kids, or in China's case, to
have less kids. You know, people don't think of sexuality
as a function a GDP, but you know, it kind
of is when you think about birth rates and what
that means for a working having a you know, young
workforce that can sustain and early base. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, what's what's the old rule of thumb, the replacement
rate of two point one kids. Yeah, and we see that,
we do see immediate, well, mid future, mid horizon consequences
of that. They can be dire, especially for talking about
you know, Japan or South Korea's birth rate. But I
(07:24):
love that you're bringing up the case of China because
that very much that pendulum swung further than they wanted
and I don't know if they really.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, and then they relaxed it so you could have
two kids. But when you were so restrictive for so long,
it's hard to encourage the behavior to start doing the
opposite of what you force people to do for you know,
a generation. And that's that really hinders the impact of
China's future growth. But you know, the investigations. The way
I would put it is, I was on a show
(07:57):
with Stephen Dubner of Economics after this book came out,
and he said, this sounds like this is the least
sexy book about sex ever written. That's it probably won't
actually turn you on, you all you'll learn things about like,
you know, the economy and religion and stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
And that's you know, we're all big fans of freakonomics,
so that's a that's a pretty cool compliment.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
For that complimentservation, it was an observation.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
One thing that I think, I mean, it's an astute
observation in that you're not writing just a bunch of
purple prose. This is very highly researched. This is uh,
this is spinning out and gaming through consequences and things
that are you could sometimes call anywhere from humorous anecdotes
(08:51):
to parables to cautionary tales such as the case of China.
One thing that often comes up when people are talking
about Turned On is going to be a story that
I was not aware of, which is well, I was
lightly aware of this the original invention of the humble vibrator.
(09:17):
It's an origin story, folks were an audio show. But
you should just see the solemn way that Ross nodded
on this one. So I'm sure you get this question
pretty often, but could you tell us a little bit
about the provenance or the origin story of this I
guess sexual stimulation device.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
No one's asked me about the vibrator and sometimes so
this is a refreshing to go through this. And back
in Victorian days, women were obviously well everyone was, you know,
told to not masturbate. Your sexuality was very repressed and
women were diagnosed with this disease which we now know
(09:56):
is a bogus disease called hysteria. So you know, it's
a really a sexist set of symptoms that would lead
a doctor at the time to say, oh, this woman's hysterical,
she needs to be treated for that. When one way
they would treat that is to sexually relieve the woman.
So instead of her doing it herself, she would have
(10:17):
a doctor manually massage her private parts for you know,
half hour, sometimes an hour. It would take a long
time for him to actually get these women off to
relieve their hysteria. So these guys set out about inventing
a tool that would help them do this quicker so
(10:38):
they could see more patients, and that contributed to the
birth of the vibrator. The first vibrator looks nothing like
something that you would buy Adam and Eve today, but
that's the origin goes back to sexual repression in a
medical device. So you know, they set off a revolution
(11:00):
and self stimulation through indirect way of forcing women to
come to their office to use this device.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
That's kind of creepy. It's very strange on the on
the doctor's side. And then also the fact that there
was clearly a an innovator in the field or some
guy have in the conversation and just saying, oh, heavens,
we simply have too many patients. We don't have enough time.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Honest on their hands would get tired because if you're
if you're having to you know, get if you if
you're having a well not it's not masturbate. I guess
you would be assisting these women. But if you're doing
patient after patient and this isn't like an intimate setting,
you know, it's it's it's manual work for them.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
It's clinical.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah, yeah, clinical, that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And uh so they're worried about carpal wrist tunnel syndrome
and even if they didn't have the phrase at that time,
So that I think is a good way for us
to sort of open that conversation on the unexpected tremendous
historical shifts that have occurred because of because of things
(12:14):
that we often in America is still kind of puritanical society.
Things that we often dismiss is like, oh, that's a naughty,
naughty thing dimension. So I want us to move to
(12:34):
another example. This is one that I was completely unaware
of until I started checking out turned on Ross. Is
it true that the US military played a role in
making San Francisco, as you as you call it a
gay mecca?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Yeah, the military, through its suppression of homosexuality, inadvertently helped
create the modern gay identity. So in San Francisco's case,
the way it did that is in World War Two,
if you were suspected to be gay, they would give
you a blue discharge and you could not serve in
the military. And these men were discharged proportionally, disproportionally in
(13:21):
port cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco. When
those guys were discharged, they were publicly outed at a
time when people weren't out publicly. So if you're coming
from a small town in the Midwest, it's hard for
you to go home with your blue discharge until your family.
I can't go serve in war because they suspect them gay.
(13:44):
So a lot of these guys stayed where they were discharged,
and they formed their own neighborhoods and societies, And one
of those is the Castro in San Francisco, which exploded
in population around the time of World War Two due
to all these gay men deciding to live there.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Oh man, So in one way, that's inspiring, you know,
the bravery of these people who said, look, I am
going to start my life anew right because I can't
go home. But in another way, it's absolutely horrifying. That
(14:24):
feels like a what we would call a violation of
human rights at this point because it's around this time.
Wouldn't it have been in some cases, almost like a
death sentence to send somebody back to rural America where
maybe the laws a little corrupt and so on.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, well, I mean it definitely leads to a lifetime
ostracization if they were home, And yeah, I mean it's
not out of the question to think that they would
have been targeted in that way. So these people are
making the best of their situation. But yeah, it's it's
a terrible situation by modern standards. But you know, they
(15:04):
didn't let the the oppression get the best of them.
They were able to use that as fuel to create
their own culture, which is beautiful in its own way,
even if there was a, you know, an unjust struggle
behind it.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, I hear what you're saying there. And it's also
I think, especially here in the West and in the
US in particular, there has always been this struggle between
sexuality and not even spirituality more like religious dogma. Yeah.
(15:48):
I think a lot of us are surprised when we
learn later in history class or when we check out
a good book that despite being known as very uptight folks,
the Puritans and the Victorians had these practices that would
seem downright unacceptable. You know here in the modern day.
(16:11):
I'm thinking, like for Puritanical society or Puritan society, I
should say, in particular, I'm thinking of the fact that
there were so many strict laws against who could do
what to whom when, or who could do what with
whom when. That I was surprised to learn. Yeah, a
(16:33):
lot of these big families lived in essentially one or
two room houses and structures, and they the parents did
sleep together while the kids were in the room. You
know what I mean. That's the law and order SVU stuff.
So could you tell us through your research historically, What
(16:57):
are some of the what are some of the strangest
ways that we haven't discussed yet that sex has shaped
society and history. Like, are there any things that you
or any events or phenomenon that you came up with
in your research that you later think about today?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Right? I think about this one more than I should.
So the first Canon of the Nicea Council. So this
is like, you know, the first huge council of the
modern Catholic Church where we get the Nicea and Creed.
If you go back and read, you will find that
the first canon is about making it illegal for men
(17:39):
who castrate themselves to become priests. So there were so
many guys back then that were castrating themselves to make
themselves unix for the sake of heaven. You know, like Origin,
he's one of the church fathers. He castrated himself. That
they had to put in a lot to say, like
if you're gonna do that, you know, we're gonna we're
(18:00):
gonna like restrict how high you can rise up. We
got to do something about all these guys cash straight
in themselves.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Oh man, that's frightening. And enough time has enough time
passed that I could say that's darkly hilarious.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Oh yeah, totally. I think enough time passed one thousand
years ago, or not a thousand, but five hundred years ago.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
You could say that, Okay, good, good, don't come for
us remaining members of that council that I see. It's
just you nailed something that I think always astonishes me
about those kind of laws. When we see them out
of context, we have to realize there's a story behind them,
like there was a this is totally unrelated, but this
(18:41):
is a good good example. Imagine if you've ever walked
into a store, maybe a restaurant, a mom and pop place,
or just like a little store on your main street
and they have the conventional sign, you know, no shirt,
no shoes, no service, But every so often they'll they'll
tack on another weird specific rule, you know what I mean.
(19:05):
I was in uh, I was in a place where
it said it had the no shirt, no shoes, no
no service thing, and then it also had a sign
that said no angry dogs.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Oh and I've seen I've seen like no animals. Yeah,
I've seen dogs specific though, Yeah, like.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
What happened? Is there just some real and please beat
me here, bed is there just some real dog named
Buster who was terrorizing the gas station? And soone was like,
we need a sign to stop this lunatic. So those
that's fascinating because it reminds us of all the you've
(19:43):
seen these before, to russ all the uh historical uh
compilate all the compilations of local historical laws that might
deal with odd, very odd specific circumstances like no drafts
in cars, it's gone too far. You know, Are there
any weird other weird specific sex laws that you ran across.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
There's weird laws on the books still to this day
in this country. So in Nebraska, this one actually was repealed,
but not for decades. They adopted a lot in the
twenties to cash straight sex offenders, and then it took
them a long time to get that off the books.
And there's like other ones that are even more bizarre
(20:28):
that still are technically there but not enforceable.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Okay, yeah, like the old I remember reading stuff like
I think it was Michigan. I want to say, where
some part of Michigan had passed the law that said
husband legally owns his wife's hair or something like that.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I don't think about all those states that still have sodomy.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Laws on the books.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, like it's completely unenforceable, but they fight tooth and
nail to keep them on there. That is a little
more recent history. But if those laws in the books,
that's say, one hundred years from now, someone will be like, well,
that's a weird historic artifact. Why why is it illegal
in Georgia?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
You know, Yeah, they'll be like us with say, like
how many guys were casually yeah that this this became
an item on the agenda, right, and they were like,
we cannot break for lunch until we figured this out.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I would love to see the meeting minutes of the
one where they passed those cannons.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yeah, right, and especially you know to that point. I'd
love to see how how the vote shakes out. I'd
love to see, you know, if there's how you know
how there's always like nine out of ten dentists recommend
this toothpaste. You have to wonder who that tenth dentist is. So,
was there a guy in Icia who was like, I
(21:51):
don't know, guys, no, let's really let's think this through. Okay,
we're reacting to the headline.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
And maybe it was a five to four vote, like
a scout this case, and it came down to the wire.
I don't know, that's that's all lost the history.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, that's all lost to history. That is still just
bizarre because it I think every every story we're telling
here in this in this kind of grab bag exploration,
it's just further further supporting your thesis that sex is
shaping uh, these what we call human society in all
(22:27):
these strange ways. It's still those possible ways. Yeah, Like
two thousand.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And nine, lawmakers in Egypt wanted to ban fake hymen's.
So it's like these like virginity kits, so you know,
you can make it seem like you haven't lost your
virginity if you have. So like they would import you know,
a hymen that is usually an animal drive product and
(22:53):
uh be used on the on the wedding day, and
they the fact that people have to use those, that's
that's crazy right there, that there's that there's a market
for that product, and then there's enough of a market
that there's a push to legislate it.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, because again somebody threw up their
hands and said, well, it's up with all these counterfeit hymens. Yeah,
that's that's uh, that's terrifying and it shows us too.
You know, many of these things we've mentioned, especially even now,
but especially as you go back further in history, a
(23:27):
lot of them were indicative of society's attempts to control.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Women, right, Yeah, I mean the history of vibrator. Even
even if it had the unintended consequence of giving them
a great masturbation device, the origin is controlling women's sexuality.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah, I yeah. I think there's an important lesson there,
and it's something that we we as a society, would
ignore to our peril. There's another one I wanted to
ask you about. Oh, this is where we want to shift. Okay,
now we're getting to Now we're getting to some even
(24:08):
more juicy stuff. Fellow ridiculous historians, Sex scandals. Ben, Can
I get like a sex scandal? Q? I leave it
up to your interpretation. Yeah, I got you perfect, The
Sleeping Dog, ladies and gentlemen. All right, So sex scandals again,
we said it at the top. This is a little
(24:29):
more Pg. Thirteen than some of our previous episodes. Ross,
you and I were catching up off air weather Palell
the Sleeping Dog and I asked you about sex scandals.
There's one that surprised you, and it surprised me. It
happened recently. We'll save that and get to it in
a moment. So first, can you tell us I know
(24:52):
this is very basic softball stuff, but can you tell
us what a sex scandal is, how you would define it.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I mean, the way I would define it is a
person of public interest, often a politician, but it could
be a celebrity has sex in a way that is
disapproved by their society at the time, and it blows
up in such a way that it threatens to derail
their career or reputation. You know, the most probably the
(25:22):
biggest one in our lifetime, would be like Clinton and
Monica Lensky and various other women Clinton had run ins with.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Okay that I think we can only agree with that
definition because it makes an important distinction between sexual activities
or proclivities in the past that were either normalized or
they were treated as just part and parcel of this
(25:51):
you know, large time or larger than life, religious leader
or royal member of political functionary. Because I'm thinking about,
you know the fact that there would be numerous acts
of adultery right, or even nefarious sexual activity on the
part of the aristocracy or various heads of royal families,
(26:17):
and those things didn't always result in a scandal. So
it sounds like the real operative difference, the umammy of
what makes something a scandal is when it endangers the
person's career.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, because what's a scandal in one generation may not
be a scandal in another generation. And part of the
way our perception is shaped on says scandals, is how
press operates at the time. So like for the in
the US, between like Jefferson and Clinton, there wasn't a
(26:55):
lot of reporting on it, or maybybe a little bit later. Definitely,
between like Eisenhower and Clinton, there's not a lot of
reporting of the sex scandal. So what presidents do in
their private lives is kind of just washing the rug
kept from the public. The same type of behavior could
be engaged though, but not lead to a scandal in
the way that it would by the nineties, or the
(27:16):
way that it would in America's early history when Alexander
Hamilton and Jefferson were caught in scandals. So like, it's
really it's not just the behavior of the sex itself,
it's like another huge part of it is how it's
that information is spread and how it's interpreted by the
(27:36):
people of that time.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
So it's the it's really it's not the actor acts themselves,
it's the context in which they occur.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, and what's permissible in one era isn't permissible in another,
And it can be kind of arbitrary. It's not like
things just get more progressive more permissive over time. It
waxes and wanes and you know, well, I think what
you find though, is, especially in the US, presidents have
(28:05):
had elicit affairs in the entire country's history. Those were
just not public or blown into a scandal for like
one hundred year period.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's sometimes this is a true story.
It takes a it takes an up and coming grad
student in history right to say, I really need my
thesis paper. What do I know about what's the most
obscure president and what did they do? Okay, this is
(28:37):
the way that the research can move forward. And I
think you're making some tremendous points there. With that being said,
now that we've eaten our proverbial vegetables of pointing out
the important stuff, the stuff that will be on the
test later. Let's get to it. Man, Can you tell
(28:58):
us about that really strange sex scandal from recent history
that stayed with you?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Well, so if you're a listener and you lived in
Michigan about ten years ago, you probably know where I'm
going with this. And State Representative Todd Curser was a
Republican family values type candidate in Michigan and the Michigan
House Representatives. He was having an affair with Cindy Gamrat,
(29:26):
who was also a House rep. Now, they both were
married to each other, so this would have been a scandal.
But rather than just come out with that information or
let their relationship be known, Curser asked his staff to
spread the rumor that he was seeking male prostitutes because
(29:49):
he thought that if they spread that rumor, it would
create a distraction from his affair that he was actually having.
But instead everyone found out that he was I was
having that affair and that he was instructing people to
lie about seeking male prostitutes, and he ended up getting
expelled from the house. But it's very strange for like
(30:11):
a family values candidate to spread the idea that they're
seeking sex with a prostitute when they aren't even doing that. Yeah, yeah,
like that's that's the worst of the two.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Right right, that's that's a very unorthodox spin doctor approach
or pr approach. You know, we were when when you
first brought this up, and I had I think I
had never heard of this because, like a lot of people,
when you get increasingly inundated by news in the age
of ubiquitous information, it's so easy to just skim past
(30:50):
the headline, especially with political scandal these days. Uh, but
when you've yeah, when when you first told me about this,
I remember immediately thinking, game, what a dumb idea? Like
how did this guy get this far? You know what
I mean? Uh? Or how how one how did you
get that far? Or two? How desperate do you have
(31:12):
to be to mistake that for a good strategy? You
know what?
Speaker 2 (31:17):
His chief of staff needed to step in there and say,
you know what, we're not gonna tell everyone you're you're
having sex with male prostitutes.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Right right, And he wasn't.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
He wasn't. Yeah, Okay, it's a weird thing to want
people to think.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
You're doing yeah with the phantom prostitute. That's that's so
bizarre because that also, you know, what that also touches
on something that really stood out in your most recent work,
and we haven't really talked too much about it yet,
but I believe I believe we should. Sex has a
(31:58):
huge influen wents on crime, right, and you dive into
some pretty fantastic research on the unexpected ways that not
just laws about sex like sodomy laws as you mentioned,
but social expectations about sex can influence rates of very
(32:21):
nasty things like assault or even homicide. What what's the
what's this connection? I sound like Andy Rooney of old Well,
what's the deal with But what's this connection between the
practice of polygamy and higher rates of crime?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Okay? Oh? Basically the idea and this is this is
some of the theory on how monogamy was instituted as
a social construct was that if more men are married,
they will commit less crimes collectively. So like if you
if a man gets married, he becomes domesticated, he ends
(33:03):
up having children, that man is less likely to commit
a violent crime than if he's unattached. So if you
you know, if you go from polygamy, if you go
from a society that's polygamous to a society that's monogamy,
more men will marry because most polygamist societies are polygynists,
(33:25):
they're not polyandris. There they are where you know, a
man has multiple wives. It's it's it's much rarer to
see a society where women have multiple husbands. And in
the societies where men can have multiple wives, it's usually
like the rich and successful and descendants of heirs that
have the most wives. It's often the man with the
(33:48):
most resources tends to have most women. So we know,
where there's a where there's a society where it's polygamists,
you have just way more men without mates, and they
have less incentive to not commit these crimes because they
don't have the attachments and they're not domesticated, you know,
in a way that a married man is. So there
(34:09):
are theories by some historians that monogamy began to be
instituted not as a religious practice, but as a political
one because these you know, leaders of ancient Rome, they
they wanted to quell disrest. They they didn't want to
have you know, all these single, violent men out there,
(34:32):
so they would you know, implement this rule. And they
would also use it as like almost like a recruiting
tactic in you know, military, like our society. You know
it's monogamous. You're you're more likely to have a mate
than you know elsewhere where, your your chances are are slim. Now,
you know, some of this is a speculation, and monogamy
(34:55):
legally doesn't mean monogamy in practice. There's still a lot
of extra marital activity happening.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Sure, yeah, and then that would lead to the crime
of I just think it's a fun word to say bigamy,
which is, you know, double tapping on a marriage, right,
having a couple of marriages and maybe not telling the
partners from those separate, separate events of matrimony.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Well, there's also the idea that you're competing for more
women too, if you're in a society that's polygamous.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, yeah, I see, yeah, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
So the men can become more violent with each other
because Batman wants to have his third wife or whatever.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
And there's this Yeah. I appreciate too how we're being
diplomatic and careful or cautious with the the implications, but
they're definitely out there. I mean, you freezed it perfectly.
But then also, I can't be the only person in
the audience tonight who immediately thought, yeah, when guys get married,
(35:55):
they have more to lose. They called out a little bit.
They're more integrated into society, like, Oh, I want to
rob the bank, but I've got to pick up Drayton
at three.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
So you're also tired. Oh yeah, yeah, I don't want
to assault anyone. I need a nap.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
If I can say it on air, big congratulations to you,
Russ because you have just welcomed your second child unto
the planet, right and and so you're probably a little
too tired to get back into the robbing banks hustle.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Oh, definitely too tired. You know, if I was a
single guy with no kids, I don't know who I'd
be assaulting. But now doing the dishes before I go
to sleep is my goal today.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Yeah, yeah, that's the herculean task of the day. But
I do think it is It is something that we
have to examine. Just historically, there's no shortage of cases
or arguments to be made. But we also have to
be cautious with the exploration of this idea in these implications,
(37:06):
because they can be used for nefarious purposes, for racism, right,
for religious prejudice, and so on. When we're talking about religion,
you also see you trace a lot of I guess
we call it inter religious implications or disagreements about sax
(37:28):
and society. And I was very surprised to learn, not
being a practitioner of Islam myself, I was very surprised
to learn things like the you know, you mentioned the
hymen law, but then also the idea of reproduction and
infertility you know, tied to I guess surrogate parents or
(37:51):
artificial insemination.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, so you see these weird instances where religious pluralism
can actually help people overcome an obstacle from their own religion. Now,
I gotta take my time here and remember what the
difference between Sunni and Shia. It's been a while, so basically,
(38:14):
in the there's a few Middle Eastern countries where they
Sunni and Shia are relying on each other for reproductive assistance.
So for the Sunni side, something like artificial insemination, you
have to be married and you're only allowed to use
(38:35):
your own eggs and sperm, and so it's more restrictive.
But in Shia there tends to be more lenience on
using other people's eggs and sperm for reproduction. So in
these areas where you have high end fertility, you will
(38:56):
have Sunni's relying on Shia. I mean, sorry, sorry, you
have Shia relying on Sooni's because if everyone followed the
more restrictive law there wouldn't you wouldn't be able to
use other people like they wouldn't donate. They wouldn't. So
you need a population that is more okay with this
(39:17):
if you're going to go out and do this. So
they kind of work together in this roundabout way of
you know, finding donors because one one denomination prohibits it
and one allows it. It's very confusing. I hope I
explained that worth the shit.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
No, no, you nailed it, and I'm thinking through it
because it's, uh, it's almost a I don't want to
sound like I'm in any way diminishing the importance of this,
but it's almost like a loophole that everybody figured out together.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, so you'll see the Sunnies going into like Shia
majority countries to do this. They'll like leave, you know,
it's usually a country that's close by, but they'll you know,
leave where they live to go where the other denomination
is more prevalent, so that they could get the reproductive
assistance they need because where they live they can't use
(40:17):
other people scam meats.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Jeez, this is this is a complication, but it's it's
a complication, uh that arrives successfully. It I I'm stuttering
a bit because I'm trying to get that Jeff Goldbloom
line from Jurassic Park out of my head. You know,
it finds a way. Yeah, there's so many of these
(40:42):
sex finds a way, right. This is bringing us to uh,
this is bringing us to maybe a little bit of
a denimond. There's so much stuff that I want to
ask you, and I know our Palnol has a lot
of questions to Ben. I I imagine your your fury
typing out some questions that we'll send to Ross off air.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Oh yeah, I'm getting ready.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
I didn't know. I didn't know if you were going
to take the bait on that one, bet, But thank
you so Russ. We talked about We talked about the
importance of understanding what makes something to scandal. We talked
about the ways in which top down sexual policies can
(41:29):
affect a country right for generations. We talked about some
specific episodes, some funny, some frightening, some inspiring, but one
thing we haven't yet talked about, and maybe this is
our big ticket item for our first episode with you, dude,
(41:50):
Why is the US so hung up on sex? Why
are we so weird about it?
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Man? I wish I had a good answer for that.
That's a great question. I've wondered that myself. You know,
I do think I know this is a long time ago,
but the people who decided to come here, the Europeans
who decided to come here, they were a lot of
them were crazy and repressed sexually. Okay, I don't think
(42:21):
we've gotten over that. It's just in the DNA. The
most chilled out Europeans of that era weren't the ones
come in here.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Right and uh and and those just go on. It's
a feedback loop. Uh man, hands misery on and everyone.
I know.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
I know we're multicultural society now, but you know, when
you're you're still stuck in the laws created by that system.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
M Yeah, that makes that makes sense. It's a systemic
problem now.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
You are in we're also very religious too.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, yeah, I was going to say, that's that's kind
of the.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Trade offs kind of go together.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
They very much team up right, like like a weird
wrestling team of repression, because you're it's history and religion
you're in. You're further north in upstate New York, and
I am and my palt Ben and I here are
further down in the American Southeast. And maybe you could
(43:27):
argue they the repression takes slightly different historical paths, but
we are We're very much in the Bible Belt. You know,
even in our fair metropolis of Atlanta or in other
really cool cities like Athens, you're never more than about
(43:48):
twenty five thirty minutes away from some really weird billboards,
like really in the arly stuff.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah, I mean if I'm rolling Nebraska, so oh.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah, so you get it.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We see then that history is always
closer than it looks in the rear view mirror, and
it has often unforeseen effects on the modern days. So
we want to thank you for all the work that
you have put into tracing these things. What they not
(44:21):
just what we know about the past, but what it
tells us about the future. With that, before we go,
I gotta do two things rost and I hope it's okay,
but I'm going to put you on the spot. Are
you ready? All right? All right, cool? All right? Your
game for it? Nice? First, can we have you back
on for a future episode?
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Oh yeah, I'd love that.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Okay, So we're thinking we talked a little bit off
air about ICP, the Juggalos. You've been doing a lot
of interviews and work on the nineteen nineties, so it'd
be it'd be fantastic for to reconvene in the future
with more from you on on those and other topics,
(45:06):
especially what do we call it? Low culture?
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, low culture, trashy entertainment, you know, yeah, whatever a
phrase you want to use.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
All right, yeah, Well, we're going to have you back
on to learn more about that. The second thing that
we have to ask is a question that's going to
be on the mind of everybody in the audience today.
Where can people learn more about your work?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
So you can just go to my website Ross Spinish
dot com and I'm occasionally on Twitter and LinkedIn, but
I have been inactive more recently.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
And that is spelled Ross r O S S B
E N E s dot com. So do check it out.
Check out the website folks, if you want to engage
in some Twitter stall care, just be nice, as we
always say, and in the meantime, thank you again so much.
But Russ, this has been a blast. I have learned
(46:05):
a lot. I'm not sure I wanted to learn everything
I just learned, but I had to appreciate it. And
we'll talk to you.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Soon, all right, see you later.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Man, what a what a ride we just had. There
been the sleeping dog hacke it. I gotta ask you
what stood out to you the most in some of
these strange stories of sex man other Ben.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
I think the the scandal in the what was that
Michigan ten years ago?
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Uh, I think it's pretty telling.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
What the representative thought was gonna be less scandalous, and
it just goes I don't know, maybe I'm maybe I'm
reaching a little far here, but it's like, maybe that's
it's a not uncommon behavior that he's a little desensitized to.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
But that's just me.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
That was just what I was thinking in the moment.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Oh my gosh, I didn't even connect that part, but
I'm tempted to agree. We can't wait to have Ross
Benish back on the show. We're going to be talking
about low culture trash TV, all kinds of things from that,
the halcyon days of the nineteen nineties, which sadly been
(47:31):
seemed to get further and further away. You guys should
see Ben the Sleeping Dog Hackett shake his head along
with me in response to that. So we are going
to call it a day. Big big thanks to our
guest super producer, Been the Sleeping Dog Hackett. Big thanks
to Ross Benish, who is going to earn his official
(47:53):
Ridiculous History Moniker, probably in his second appearance. Big thanks
to aj Bahamas Jacob, Big thanks to Alex Williams who
can posed our track, our producer Max Williams. Big thanks
of course to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister, the Rude Dudes,
Ridiculous Crime, my pal Noel Brown, who will be returning
(48:15):
soon and as Noel always likes to say, we'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for joining us. Let's hear a shout out for
the Man, the Myth, the legend, our guest super producer,
Ben the Sleeping Dog Hacket. And for the record, we
did ask Ben in advance what nickname he wanted, and
that that was the name that you wanted us to
(00:49):
give you, Right, Ben, that's me baby, Okay, So that's
the that's the Sleeping Dog himself. I am Ben Bullet.
My brother in podcast Crime. Noel Brown is on an
adventure but will be returning soon. In the meantime, we
are super excited to have a bit of a saucy
(01:09):
exploration through Ridiculous History. Through a part of history, a
phenomenon the waxes and wanes pops up in and out
of the news over the centuries. It's the concept of
the sex scandal. So parents listening with kiddos in the
crowd be aware that this might get a little more
(01:32):
PG thirteen than normal. But this is despite the way
we're beginning the show. This is not going to be
a monologue. You don't have to hear my weird opinions
on this the whole time. We are instead joined today
by the fantastic journalist Picture your favorite literary magazine, your
(01:53):
favorite publication. This man is written for it, along with
a bevy of books about this and many other subjects
the author have turned on the author of sex, weird
Opedia and so much more. Joined us and welcoming Ross
Benish to the show. Ross dude, thank you for coming
on today.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I can't wait to share my weird opinions with you guys.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
No, now, Ross, we were talking a bit off air
you been and myself and you have. You have been
such a prolific journalist and author and researcher. You have,
as some people may have just heard from that description,
you have more than one book dealing with some strange
(02:42):
history about sex. So could you tell us, first off
a little bit about how you got started as a
writer and particularly what fascinated you about what we call
sex scandals.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, well, you know, my books are just fun things.
I love so Nebraska politics, nineties pop culture, and sex.
Gotta have that triumviran there. And the way I got
started is after college, I didn't know what the hell
I wanted to do with my life. But I knew
I wanted to write a non fiction book in the
vein of freakonomics. So I started writing these essays and
(03:17):
I noticed a lot of them had to deal with sex,
which you know, I don't know what that says about me,
but whatever, And I set out to get a literary
agent to kind of write like a freakonomics of sex
sort of type book, and then to get published, I
knew I needed to have a lot of byline. So
then I started freelancing and interning at like Esquire and
(03:37):
you know, Mental Floss and Slate and all these places,
and that helped me get that first book. And then
after that first book, you know, I was able to
get more freelance pieces and more books. But the first
two books I wrote of my four were about the
strange history of sex and the way that it influences
our lives in strange and unpredictable ways. I've branched onto
(04:00):
the topics since then, but that was the one that
kind of got my career started.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Mmmm yeah, And this is this is a fascinating thing
from a even from just a publishing perspective. Without talking
too much about the business. I can clearly hear a
publisher and an agent, or I can see them in
my mind look at in each other and saying at
the same time, sex sales. You know, you know my
(04:27):
Tennessee came out. But yeah, sex Cells. I should have said.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
It's funny you said that because they wanted to title
the book sex Cells. But I thought a lot to
not have that be the title, because I thought that
would have been misleading.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, And it's weird how you have to if you're
in those kind of situations. This can happen with musicians
and albums. It's as well. It's weird how you have
to fight the powers that be sometimes over something as
small as a title. You know, I always before we
made a book for one of the other shows, we
(05:02):
do stuff they'll want you to know. I had just
assumed that the writers get to make the titles. I
didn't know how many strange phone calls would have to
transpire about that. So I will say the books themselves,
beyond the titles sex Weirdipedia, and Turned On are oh
(05:24):
with a forward everybody by our good friend aj Bahamas
Jacobsen turned On, These books are far more than the
title would suggest. I mean that as a tremendous compliment
because turned on. Maybe we start there as that's the
most recent work in this MILLU can you tell us
(05:47):
what we mean when we say investigation into how sex
has shaped our world?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, so what I wanted to title the book was
Invisible hand Jobs, and it was all about how sex
will guide our economies and our religion and our technology
in ways that aren't always appreciated. You know. One example
would be the influence that porn has had on Internet technology,
you know, like cookies and web browsing and streaming, e commerce.
(06:18):
A lot of that was started by pornographers before web
giants like Amazon and Google took it forward.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Another thing that I look at in the book is
how governments can influence birth rates and how that can
actually ultimately influence your economy, you know, if you want
to have young, productive workers and not have an aging workforce.
The government across the world, government across the world have
tried a lot of weird things to try to incentivize
(06:44):
people to have more kids, or in China's case, to
have less kids. You know, people don't think of sexuality
as a function a GDP, but you know, it kind
of is when you think about birth rates and what
that means for a working having a you know, young
workforce that can sustain and early base. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, what's what's the old rule of thumb, the replacement
rate of two point one kids. Yeah, and we see that,
we do see immediate, well, mid future, mid horizon consequences
of that. They can be dire, especially for talking about
you know, Japan or South Korea's birth rate. But I
(07:24):
love that you're bringing up the case of China because
that very much that pendulum swung further than they wanted
and I don't know if they really.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, and then they relaxed it so you could have
two kids. But when you were so restrictive for so long,
it's hard to encourage the behavior to start doing the
opposite of what you force people to do for you know,
a generation. And that's that really hinders the impact of
China's future growth. But you know, the investigations. The way
I would put it is, I was on a show
(07:57):
with Stephen Dubner of Economics after this book came out,
and he said, this sounds like this is the least
sexy book about sex ever written. That's it probably won't
actually turn you on, you all you'll learn things about like,
you know, the economy and religion and stuff.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
And that's you know, we're all big fans of freakonomics,
so that's a that's a pretty cool compliment.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
For that complimentservation, it was an observation.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
One thing that I think, I mean, it's an astute
observation in that you're not writing just a bunch of
purple prose. This is very highly researched. This is uh,
this is spinning out and gaming through consequences and things
that are you could sometimes call anywhere from humorous anecdotes
(08:51):
to parables to cautionary tales such as the case of China.
One thing that often comes up when people are talking
about Turned On is going to be a story that
I was not aware of, which is well, I was
lightly aware of this the original invention of the humble vibrator.
(09:17):
It's an origin story, folks were an audio show. But
you should just see the solemn way that Ross nodded
on this one. So I'm sure you get this question
pretty often, but could you tell us a little bit
about the provenance or the origin story of this I
guess sexual stimulation device.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
No one's asked me about the vibrator and sometimes so
this is a refreshing to go through this. And back
in Victorian days, women were obviously well everyone was, you know,
told to not masturbate. Your sexuality was very repressed and
women were diagnosed with this disease which we now know
(09:56):
is a bogus disease called hysteria. So you know, it's
a really a sexist set of symptoms that would lead
a doctor at the time to say, oh, this woman's hysterical,
she needs to be treated for that. When one way
they would treat that is to sexually relieve the woman.
So instead of her doing it herself, she would have
(10:17):
a doctor manually massage her private parts for you know,
half hour, sometimes an hour. It would take a long
time for him to actually get these women off to
relieve their hysteria. So these guys set out about inventing
a tool that would help them do this quicker so
(10:38):
they could see more patients, and that contributed to the
birth of the vibrator. The first vibrator looks nothing like
something that you would buy Adam and Eve today, but
that's the origin goes back to sexual repression in a
medical device. So you know, they set off a revolution
(11:00):
and self stimulation through indirect way of forcing women to
come to their office to use this device.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
That's kind of creepy. It's very strange on the on
the doctor's side. And then also the fact that there
was clearly a an innovator in the field or some
guy have in the conversation and just saying, oh, heavens,
we simply have too many patients. We don't have enough time.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Honest on their hands would get tired because if you're
if you're having to you know, get if you if
you're having a well not it's not masturbate. I guess
you would be assisting these women. But if you're doing
patient after patient and this isn't like an intimate setting,
you know, it's it's it's manual work for them.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
It's clinical.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah, yeah, clinical, that's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And uh so they're worried about carpal wrist tunnel syndrome
and even if they didn't have the phrase at that time,
So that I think is a good way for us
to sort of open that conversation on the unexpected tremendous
historical shifts that have occurred because of because of things
(12:14):
that we often in America is still kind of puritanical society.
Things that we often dismiss is like, oh, that's a naughty,
naughty thing dimension. So I want us to move to
(12:34):
another example. This is one that I was completely unaware
of until I started checking out turned on Ross. Is
it true that the US military played a role in
making San Francisco, as you as you call it a
gay mecca?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Yeah, the military, through its suppression of homosexuality, inadvertently helped
create the modern gay identity. So in San Francisco's case,
the way it did that is in World War Two,
if you were suspected to be gay, they would give
you a blue discharge and you could not serve in
the military. And these men were discharged proportionally, disproportionally in
(13:21):
port cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco. When
those guys were discharged, they were publicly outed at a
time when people weren't out publicly. So if you're coming
from a small town in the Midwest, it's hard for
you to go home with your blue discharge until your family.
I can't go serve in war because they suspect them gay.
(13:44):
So a lot of these guys stayed where they were discharged,
and they formed their own neighborhoods and societies, And one
of those is the Castro in San Francisco, which exploded
in population around the time of World War Two due
to all these gay men deciding to live there.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Oh man, So in one way, that's inspiring, you know,
the bravery of these people who said, look, I am
going to start my life anew right because I can't
go home. But in another way, it's absolutely horrifying. That
(14:24):
feels like a what we would call a violation of
human rights at this point because it's around this time.
Wouldn't it have been in some cases, almost like a
death sentence to send somebody back to rural America where
maybe the laws a little corrupt and so on.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, well, I mean it definitely leads to a lifetime
ostracization if they were home, And yeah, I mean it's
not out of the question to think that they would
have been targeted in that way. So these people are
making the best of their situation. But yeah, it's it's
a terrible situation by modern standards. But you know, they
(15:04):
didn't let the the oppression get the best of them.
They were able to use that as fuel to create
their own culture, which is beautiful in its own way,
even if there was a, you know, an unjust struggle
behind it.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, I hear what you're saying there. And it's also
I think, especially here in the West and in the
US in particular, there has always been this struggle between
sexuality and not even spirituality more like religious dogma. Yeah.
(15:48):
I think a lot of us are surprised when we
learn later in history class or when we check out
a good book that despite being known as very uptight folks,
the Puritans and the Victorians had these practices that would
seem downright unacceptable. You know here in the modern day.
(16:11):
I'm thinking, like for Puritanical society or Puritan society, I
should say, in particular, I'm thinking of the fact that
there were so many strict laws against who could do
what to whom when, or who could do what with
whom when. That I was surprised to learn. Yeah, a
(16:33):
lot of these big families lived in essentially one or
two room houses and structures, and they the parents did
sleep together while the kids were in the room. You
know what I mean. That's the law and order SVU stuff.
So could you tell us through your research historically, What
(16:57):
are some of the what are some of the strangest
ways that we haven't discussed yet that sex has shaped
society and history. Like, are there any things that you
or any events or phenomenon that you came up with
in your research that you later think about today?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Right? I think about this one more than I should.
So the first Canon of the Nicea Council. So this
is like, you know, the first huge council of the
modern Catholic Church where we get the Nicea and Creed.
If you go back and read, you will find that
the first canon is about making it illegal for men
(17:39):
who castrate themselves to become priests. So there were so
many guys back then that were castrating themselves to make
themselves unix for the sake of heaven. You know, like Origin,
he's one of the church fathers. He castrated himself. That
they had to put in a lot to say, like
if you're gonna do that, you know, we're gonna we're
(18:00):
gonna like restrict how high you can rise up. We
got to do something about all these guys cash straight
in themselves.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Oh man, that's frightening. And enough time has enough time
passed that I could say that's darkly hilarious.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Oh yeah, totally. I think enough time passed one thousand
years ago, or not a thousand, but five hundred years ago.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
You could say that, Okay, good, good, don't come for
us remaining members of that council that I see. It's
just you nailed something that I think always astonishes me
about those kind of laws. When we see them out
of context, we have to realize there's a story behind them,
like there was a this is totally unrelated, but this
(18:41):
is a good good example. Imagine if you've ever walked
into a store, maybe a restaurant, a mom and pop place,
or just like a little store on your main street
and they have the conventional sign, you know, no shirt,
no shoes, no service, But every so often they'll they'll
tack on another weird specific rule, you know what I mean.
(19:05):
I was in uh, I was in a place where
it said it had the no shirt, no shoes, no
no service thing, and then it also had a sign
that said no angry dogs.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Oh and I've seen I've seen like no animals. Yeah,
I've seen dogs specific though, Yeah, like.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
What happened? Is there just some real and please beat
me here, bed is there just some real dog named
Buster who was terrorizing the gas station? And soone was like,
we need a sign to stop this lunatic. So those
that's fascinating because it reminds us of all the you've
(19:43):
seen these before, to russ all the uh historical uh
compilate all the compilations of local historical laws that might
deal with odd, very odd specific circumstances like no drafts
in cars, it's gone too far. You know, Are there
any weird other weird specific sex laws that you ran across.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
There's weird laws on the books still to this day
in this country. So in Nebraska, this one actually was repealed,
but not for decades. They adopted a lot in the
twenties to cash straight sex offenders, and then it took
them a long time to get that off the books.
And there's like other ones that are even more bizarre
(20:28):
that still are technically there but not enforceable.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Okay, yeah, like the old I remember reading stuff like
I think it was Michigan. I want to say, where
some part of Michigan had passed the law that said
husband legally owns his wife's hair or something like that.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I don't think about all those states that still have sodomy.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Laws on the books.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, like it's completely unenforceable, but they fight tooth and
nail to keep them on there. That is a little
more recent history. But if those laws in the books,
that's say, one hundred years from now, someone will be like, well,
that's a weird historic artifact. Why why is it illegal
in Georgia?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
You know, Yeah, they'll be like us with say, like
how many guys were casually yeah that this this became
an item on the agenda, right, and they were like,
we cannot break for lunch until we figured this out.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I would love to see the meeting minutes of the
one where they passed those cannons.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yeah, right, and especially you know to that point. I'd
love to see how how the vote shakes out. I'd
love to see, you know, if there's how you know
how there's always like nine out of ten dentists recommend
this toothpaste. You have to wonder who that tenth dentist is. So,
was there a guy in Icia who was like, I
(21:51):
don't know, guys, no, let's really let's think this through. Okay,
we're reacting to the headline.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
And maybe it was a five to four vote, like
a scout this case, and it came down to the wire.
I don't know, that's that's all lost the history.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, that's all lost to history. That is still just
bizarre because it I think every every story we're telling
here in this in this kind of grab bag exploration,
it's just further further supporting your thesis that sex is
shaping uh, these what we call human society in all
(22:27):
these strange ways. It's still those possible ways. Yeah, Like
two thousand.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And nine, lawmakers in Egypt wanted to ban fake hymen's.
So it's like these like virginity kits, so you know,
you can make it seem like you haven't lost your
virginity if you have. So like they would import you know,
a hymen that is usually an animal drive product and
(22:53):
uh be used on the on the wedding day, and
they the fact that people have to use those, that's
that's crazy right there, that there's that there's a market
for that product, and then there's enough of a market
that there's a push to legislate it.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, because again somebody threw up their
hands and said, well, it's up with all these counterfeit hymens. Yeah,
that's that's uh, that's terrifying and it shows us too.
You know, many of these things we've mentioned, especially even now,
but especially as you go back further in history, a
(23:27):
lot of them were indicative of society's attempts to control.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Women, right, Yeah, I mean the history of vibrator. Even
even if it had the unintended consequence of giving them
a great masturbation device, the origin is controlling women's sexuality.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah, I yeah. I think there's an important lesson there,
and it's something that we we as a society, would
ignore to our peril. There's another one I wanted to
ask you about. Oh, this is where we want to shift. Okay,
now we're getting to Now we're getting to some even
(24:08):
more juicy stuff. Fellow ridiculous historians, Sex scandals. Ben, Can
I get like a sex scandal? Q? I leave it
up to your interpretation. Yeah, I got you perfect, The
Sleeping Dog, ladies and gentlemen. All right, So sex scandals again,
we said it at the top. This is a little
(24:29):
more Pg. Thirteen than some of our previous episodes. Ross,
you and I were catching up off air weather Palell
the Sleeping Dog and I asked you about sex scandals.
There's one that surprised you, and it surprised me. It
happened recently. We'll save that and get to it in
a moment. So first, can you tell us I know
(24:52):
this is very basic softball stuff, but can you tell
us what a sex scandal is, how you would define it.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
I mean, the way I would define it is a
person of public interest, often a politician, but it could
be a celebrity has sex in a way that is
disapproved by their society at the time, and it blows
up in such a way that it threatens to derail
their career or reputation. You know, the most probably the
(25:22):
biggest one in our lifetime, would be like Clinton and
Monica Lensky and various other women Clinton had run ins with.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Okay that I think we can only agree with that
definition because it makes an important distinction between sexual activities
or proclivities in the past that were either normalized or
they were treated as just part and parcel of this
(25:51):
you know, large time or larger than life, religious leader
or royal member of political functionary. Because I'm thinking about,
you know the fact that there would be numerous acts
of adultery right, or even nefarious sexual activity on the
part of the aristocracy or various heads of royal families,
(26:17):
and those things didn't always result in a scandal. So
it sounds like the real operative difference, the umammy of
what makes something a scandal is when it endangers the
person's career.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, because what's a scandal in one generation may not
be a scandal in another generation. And part of the
way our perception is shaped on says scandals, is how
press operates at the time. So like for the in
the US, between like Jefferson and Clinton, there wasn't a
(26:55):
lot of reporting on it, or maybybe a little bit later. Definitely,
between like Eisenhower and Clinton, there's not a lot of
reporting of the sex scandal. So what presidents do in
their private lives is kind of just washing the rug
kept from the public. The same type of behavior could
be engaged though, but not lead to a scandal in
the way that it would by the nineties, or the
(27:16):
way that it would in America's early history when Alexander
Hamilton and Jefferson were caught in scandals. So like, it's
really it's not just the behavior of the sex itself,
it's like another huge part of it is how it's
that information is spread and how it's interpreted by the
(27:36):
people of that time.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
So it's the it's really it's not the actor acts themselves,
it's the context in which they occur.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, and what's permissible in one era isn't permissible in another,
And it can be kind of arbitrary. It's not like
things just get more progressive more permissive over time. It
waxes and wanes and you know, well, I think what
you find though, is, especially in the US, presidents have
(28:05):
had elicit affairs in the entire country's history. Those were
just not public or blown into a scandal for like
one hundred year period.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's sometimes this is a true story.
It takes a it takes an up and coming grad
student in history right to say, I really need my
thesis paper. What do I know about what's the most
obscure president and what did they do? Okay, this is
(28:37):
the way that the research can move forward. And I
think you're making some tremendous points there. With that being said,
now that we've eaten our proverbial vegetables of pointing out
the important stuff, the stuff that will be on the
test later. Let's get to it. Man, Can you tell
(28:58):
us about that really strange sex scandal from recent history
that stayed with you?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Well, so if you're a listener and you lived in
Michigan about ten years ago, you probably know where I'm
going with this. And State Representative Todd Curser was a
Republican family values type candidate in Michigan and the Michigan
House Representatives. He was having an affair with Cindy Gamrat,
(29:26):
who was also a House rep. Now, they both were
married to each other, so this would have been a scandal.
But rather than just come out with that information or
let their relationship be known, Curser asked his staff to
spread the rumor that he was seeking male prostitutes because
(29:49):
he thought that if they spread that rumor, it would
create a distraction from his affair that he was actually having.
But instead everyone found out that he was I was
having that affair and that he was instructing people to
lie about seeking male prostitutes, and he ended up getting
expelled from the house. But it's very strange for like
(30:11):
a family values candidate to spread the idea that they're
seeking sex with a prostitute when they aren't even doing that. Yeah, yeah,
like that's that's the worst of the two.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Right right, that's that's a very unorthodox spin doctor approach
or pr approach. You know, we were when when you
first brought this up, and I had I think I
had never heard of this because, like a lot of people,
when you get increasingly inundated by news in the age
of ubiquitous information, it's so easy to just skim past
(30:50):
the headline, especially with political scandal these days. Uh, but
when you've yeah, when when you first told me about this,
I remember immediately thinking, game, what a dumb idea? Like
how did this guy get this far? You know what
I mean? Uh? Or how how one how did you
get that far? Or two? How desperate do you have
(31:12):
to be to mistake that for a good strategy? You
know what?
Speaker 2 (31:17):
His chief of staff needed to step in there and say,
you know what, we're not gonna tell everyone you're you're
having sex with male prostitutes.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Right right, And he wasn't.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
He wasn't. Yeah, Okay, it's a weird thing to want
people to think.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
You're doing yeah with the phantom prostitute. That's that's so
bizarre because that also, you know, what that also touches
on something that really stood out in your most recent work,
and we haven't really talked too much about it yet,
but I believe I believe we should. Sex has a
(31:58):
huge influen wents on crime, right, and you dive into
some pretty fantastic research on the unexpected ways that not
just laws about sex like sodomy laws as you mentioned,
but social expectations about sex can influence rates of very
(32:21):
nasty things like assault or even homicide. What what's the
what's this connection? I sound like Andy Rooney of old Well,
what's the deal with But what's this connection between the
practice of polygamy and higher rates of crime?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Okay? Oh? Basically the idea and this is this is
some of the theory on how monogamy was instituted as
a social construct was that if more men are married,
they will commit less crimes collectively. So like if you
if a man gets married, he becomes domesticated, he ends
(33:03):
up having children, that man is less likely to commit
a violent crime than if he's unattached. So if you
you know, if you go from polygamy, if you go
from a society that's polygamous to a society that's monogamy,
more men will marry because most polygamist societies are polygynists,
(33:25):
they're not polyandris. There they are where you know, a
man has multiple wives. It's it's it's much rarer to
see a society where women have multiple husbands. And in
the societies where men can have multiple wives, it's usually
like the rich and successful and descendants of heirs that
have the most wives. It's often the man with the
(33:48):
most resources tends to have most women. So we know,
where there's a where there's a society where it's polygamists,
you have just way more men without mates, and they
have less incentive to not commit these crimes because they
don't have the attachments and they're not domesticated, you know,
in a way that a married man is. So there
(34:09):
are theories by some historians that monogamy began to be
instituted not as a religious practice, but as a political
one because these you know, leaders of ancient Rome, they
they wanted to quell disrest. They they didn't want to
have you know, all these single, violent men out there,
(34:32):
so they would you know, implement this rule. And they
would also use it as like almost like a recruiting
tactic in you know, military, like our society. You know
it's monogamous. You're you're more likely to have a mate
than you know elsewhere where, your your chances are are slim. Now,
you know, some of this is a speculation, and monogamy
(34:55):
legally doesn't mean monogamy in practice. There's still a lot
of extra marital activity happening.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Sure, yeah, and then that would lead to the crime
of I just think it's a fun word to say bigamy,
which is, you know, double tapping on a marriage, right,
having a couple of marriages and maybe not telling the
partners from those separate, separate events of matrimony.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Well, there's also the idea that you're competing for more
women too, if you're in a society that's polygamous.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Yeah, yeah, I see, yeah, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
So the men can become more violent with each other
because Batman wants to have his third wife or whatever.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
And there's this Yeah. I appreciate too how we're being
diplomatic and careful or cautious with the the implications, but
they're definitely out there. I mean, you freezed it perfectly.
But then also, I can't be the only person in
the audience tonight who immediately thought, yeah, when guys get married,
(35:55):
they have more to lose. They called out a little bit.
They're more integrated into society, like, Oh, I want to
rob the bank, but I've got to pick up Drayton
at three.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
So you're also tired. Oh yeah, yeah, I don't want
to assault anyone. I need a nap.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
If I can say it on air, big congratulations to you,
Russ because you have just welcomed your second child unto
the planet, right and and so you're probably a little
too tired to get back into the robbing banks hustle.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Oh, definitely too tired. You know, if I was a
single guy with no kids, I don't know who I'd
be assaulting. But now doing the dishes before I go
to sleep is my goal today.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Yeah, yeah, that's the herculean task of the day. But
I do think it is It is something that we
have to examine. Just historically, there's no shortage of cases
or arguments to be made. But we also have to
be cautious with the exploration of this idea in these implications,
(37:06):
because they can be used for nefarious purposes, for racism, right,
for religious prejudice, and so on. When we're talking about religion,
you also see you trace a lot of I guess
we call it inter religious implications or disagreements about sax
(37:28):
and society. And I was very surprised to learn, not
being a practitioner of Islam myself, I was very surprised
to learn things like the you know, you mentioned the
hymen law, but then also the idea of reproduction and
infertility you know, tied to I guess surrogate parents or
(37:51):
artificial insemination.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, so you see these weird instances where religious pluralism
can actually help people overcome an obstacle from their own religion. Now,
I gotta take my time here and remember what the
difference between Sunni and Shia. It's been a while, so basically,
(38:14):
in the there's a few Middle Eastern countries where they
Sunni and Shia are relying on each other for reproductive assistance.
So for the Sunni side, something like artificial insemination, you
have to be married and you're only allowed to use
(38:35):
your own eggs and sperm, and so it's more restrictive.
But in Shia there tends to be more lenience on
using other people's eggs and sperm for reproduction. So in
these areas where you have high end fertility, you will
(38:56):
have Sunni's relying on Shia. I mean, sorry, sorry, you
have Shia relying on Sooni's because if everyone followed the
more restrictive law there wouldn't you wouldn't be able to
use other people like they wouldn't donate. They wouldn't. So
you need a population that is more okay with this
(39:17):
if you're going to go out and do this. So
they kind of work together in this roundabout way of
you know, finding donors because one one denomination prohibits it
and one allows it. It's very confusing. I hope I
explained that worth the shit.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
No, no, you nailed it, and I'm thinking through it
because it's, uh, it's almost a I don't want to
sound like I'm in any way diminishing the importance of this,
but it's almost like a loophole that everybody figured out together.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, so you'll see the Sunnies going into like Shia
majority countries to do this. They'll like leave, you know,
it's usually a country that's close by, but they'll you know,
leave where they live to go where the other denomination
is more prevalent, so that they could get the reproductive
assistance they need because where they live they can't use
(40:17):
other people scam meats.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Jeez, this is this is a complication, but it's it's
a complication, uh that arrives successfully. It I I'm stuttering
a bit because I'm trying to get that Jeff Goldbloom
line from Jurassic Park out of my head. You know,
it finds a way. Yeah, there's so many of these
(40:42):
sex finds a way, right. This is bringing us to uh,
this is bringing us to maybe a little bit of
a denimond. There's so much stuff that I want to
ask you, and I know our Palnol has a lot
of questions to Ben. I I imagine your your fury
typing out some questions that we'll send to Ross off air.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Oh yeah, I'm getting ready.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
I didn't know. I didn't know if you were going
to take the bait on that one, bet, But thank
you so Russ. We talked about We talked about the
importance of understanding what makes something to scandal. We talked
about the ways in which top down sexual policies can
(41:29):
affect a country right for generations. We talked about some
specific episodes, some funny, some frightening, some inspiring, but one
thing we haven't yet talked about, and maybe this is
our big ticket item for our first episode with you, dude,
(41:50):
Why is the US so hung up on sex? Why
are we so weird about it?
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Man? I wish I had a good answer for that.
That's a great question. I've wondered that myself. You know,
I do think I know this is a long time ago,
but the people who decided to come here, the Europeans
who decided to come here, they were a lot of
them were crazy and repressed sexually. Okay, I don't think
(42:21):
we've gotten over that. It's just in the DNA. The
most chilled out Europeans of that era weren't the ones
come in here.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Right and uh and and those just go on. It's
a feedback loop. Uh man, hands misery on and everyone.
I know.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
I know we're multicultural society now, but you know, when
you're you're still stuck in the laws created by that system.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
M Yeah, that makes that makes sense. It's a systemic
problem now.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
You are in we're also very religious too.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, yeah, I was going to say, that's that's kind
of the.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Trade offs kind of go together.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
They very much team up right, like like a weird
wrestling team of repression, because you're it's history and religion
you're in. You're further north in upstate New York, and
I am and my palt Ben and I here are
further down in the American Southeast. And maybe you could
(43:27):
argue they the repression takes slightly different historical paths, but
we are We're very much in the Bible Belt. You know,
even in our fair metropolis of Atlanta or in other
really cool cities like Athens, you're never more than about
(43:48):
twenty five thirty minutes away from some really weird billboards,
like really in the arly stuff.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah, I mean if I'm rolling Nebraska, so oh.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah, so you get it.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We see then that history is always
closer than it looks in the rear view mirror, and
it has often unforeseen effects on the modern days. So
we want to thank you for all the work that
you have put into tracing these things. What they not
(44:21):
just what we know about the past, but what it
tells us about the future. With that, before we go,
I gotta do two things rost and I hope it's okay,
but I'm going to put you on the spot. Are
you ready? All right? All right, cool? All right? Your
game for it? Nice? First, can we have you back
on for a future episode?
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Oh yeah, I'd love that.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Okay, So we're thinking we talked a little bit off
air about ICP, the Juggalos. You've been doing a lot
of interviews and work on the nineteen nineties, so it'd
be it'd be fantastic for to reconvene in the future
with more from you on on those and other topics,
(45:06):
especially what do we call it? Low culture?
Speaker 2 (45:09):
Yeah, low culture, trashy entertainment, you know, yeah, whatever a
phrase you want to use.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
All right, yeah, Well, we're going to have you back
on to learn more about that. The second thing that
we have to ask is a question that's going to
be on the mind of everybody in the audience today.
Where can people learn more about your work?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
So you can just go to my website Ross Spinish
dot com and I'm occasionally on Twitter and LinkedIn, but
I have been inactive more recently.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
And that is spelled Ross r O S S B
E N E s dot com. So do check it out.
Check out the website folks, if you want to engage
in some Twitter stall care, just be nice, as we
always say, and in the meantime, thank you again so much.
But Russ, this has been a blast. I have learned
(46:05):
a lot. I'm not sure I wanted to learn everything
I just learned, but I had to appreciate it. And
we'll talk to you.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Soon, all right, see you later.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Man, what a what a ride we just had. There
been the sleeping dog hacke it. I gotta ask you
what stood out to you the most in some of
these strange stories of sex man other Ben.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
I think the the scandal in the what was that
Michigan ten years ago?
Speaker 1 (46:45):
Uh, I think it's pretty telling.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
What the representative thought was gonna be less scandalous, and
it just goes I don't know, maybe I'm maybe I'm
reaching a little far here, but it's like, maybe that's
it's a not uncommon behavior that he's a little desensitized to.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
But that's just me.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
That was just what I was thinking in the moment.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Oh my gosh, I didn't even connect that part, but
I'm tempted to agree. We can't wait to have Ross
Benish back on the show. We're going to be talking
about low culture trash TV, all kinds of things from that,
the halcyon days of the nineteen nineties, which sadly been
(47:31):
seemed to get further and further away. You guys should
see Ben the Sleeping Dog Hackett shake his head along
with me in response to that. So we are going
to call it a day. Big big thanks to our
guest super producer, Been the Sleeping Dog Hackett. Big thanks
to Ross Benish, who is going to earn his official
(47:53):
Ridiculous History Moniker, probably in his second appearance. Big thanks
to aj Bahamas Jacob, Big thanks to Alex Williams who
can posed our track, our producer Max Williams. Big thanks
of course to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister, the Rude Dudes,
Ridiculous Crime, my pal Noel Brown, who will be returning
(48:15):
soon and as Noel always likes to say, we'll see
you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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