Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you
so much as always for joining us. Let's hear it
for the man, the myth, our one and only super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
It's me.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
No, I don't actually have the crazy voice any longer.
I am well again.
Speaker 5 (00:45):
Oh no, oh yeah, I'm sorry. I said no.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
I'm glad that you're feeling better Max, that you're on
the other side of the weather. Is that a thing?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Yeah, yeah, the other side of the massive Atlanta snowstorm.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
Oh jeez, yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah yeah, well not quite a snow apocalypse, because thankfully
our fair metropolis has dealt with it better than they
did in the past. Now you may be asking yourself,
if you're listening for the first time, who was that
person with a handsome voice who chimed in to talk
with Max. Why it's none other than mister Noel Brown.
(01:24):
It was me alone, very guisers say. They also called
me ben Bollen pretty often. It's a thing I can't shake.
We are back from a holiday break, and, as our
super producer Max alluded to, we all survived. I would
say we thrived during the recent snow in Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Oh absolutely, And to your point, Ben, are city managers
or powers that be or whatever they seem to have
learned from the aforementioned previous snow apocalypse, which was pretty awful,
and I think they may be overdated this time. I'm
letting us know that the inclement weather was coming and
getting their six salt trucks out on the streets, because
I drove around the next day and it was totally fine.
Speaker 5 (02:08):
So it was perfectly pleasant.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
And what were you saying, Bro, You were telling me
earlier that you felt you had received maybe too many
emergency notifications.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah, there were three. I think I was at IKEA.
Actually it's one of those things where you hear everybody's
phone go off at the same time. It was a
very wordy warning about winter weather. I did not intend
that to be as illiterative as it was, but I'm
here for it. But better to overworn than underworn. So yeah,
I think it was overall a weather success. We weathered
(02:44):
the weather successfully.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
And I would say, like, you know, one thing that
is beneficial from like you know, the COVID days is
working remote for many of us, especially here at our company,
is quite easy. I mean, it's like I remember Snowpocalypse
is back when I was still a bartender and they
found out I lived near a Morta.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
Station which Martyr was running, and I worked every day
for Snowpocalypse.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
It was fun. I bet well. I heard the italics. Indeed, well,
good good on you, Max. You were what they call
an essential worker. Said that in italics a little bit too.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, yeah, yes, I hope we think.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
They're not essential, Max. I just mean the idea of
essential workers was a little bit of a middle finger
kind of thing, because you know, they're essential when they're needed,
but they don't really get treated well other times of
the year.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Shout out to the firefighters in Los Angeles area. So
we are kicking off part of our new year with
a continuing series. You'll recall previously on Ridiculous History, our
exploration of inventors who, one way or another died at
(03:55):
the hand of their own creations or discoveries, and full
disclosure please be my account of Bill of Buddies here, guys,
I I one hundred percent thought it would be a
one off episode, and then just the fact that so
many inventors died trying to fly may part one, a
(04:20):
two part series.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, a real Icarus kind of situation.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Huh yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. In today's exploration, we're
going to start with some inventors you may not have
heard of. At least one we can ease into it.
I thought we'd all enjoy this with a man who
(04:45):
was often called the worst inventor ever, and not without good.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Reason, but also not because he was some kind of slouch.
I mean, the guy was brilliant. We're talking about Thomas
Midgley Junior born May eighteenth of eighteen nine and a
lovely little burg called beaver Falls in Pennsylvania. Really idyllic
little community, I imagine. I've never been there, but it
just you can't have a place called beaver Falls and
it not be a lovely, little family kind of town.
(05:13):
But this guy had some big ideas, and he's known
universally pretty much as one of the world's worst inventors.
Not because he was bad at inventing. He was quite good,
as we mentioned. The problem is some of the stuff
this guy decided to focus his immense talents on have
created long lasting health ramifications for just about everyone.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah. The thing is Tommy is really talented. His talents
are focused on creating inventions that are insidious. He specializes
in poisonous chemicals. It is not hyperbole to say his
inventions haunt the global population today, animals, humans, plants. We're
(05:58):
all involved. We have all been infected by this inventor.
We still don't know the full consequences of all the
crazy family show, of all the crazy poop he made.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, and it's not to say that he set out
to destroy the world.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Quite the opposite. He set out to improve the world.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
It's just as often as the case when inventions become
so incredibly valuable so quickly, often those ramifications or the
future fallout of said inventions are the last thing on
people's minds. So what are we talking about here?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, yeah, great point, Noel. To understand just how wild
this guy's story is, we have to learn a little
bit about automobiles, specifically internal combustion engines. Let's dawn our
old car stuff caps for a moment. Harnessed explosions, Yes, exactly, Max,
(06:54):
give us some crazy propaganda music, perfect behold the automobile.
Each day, billions of these contraptions harness explosions from a
special juice made of long dead plant and animal matter
powering the modern world. Look that cut the music perfect. Look.
(07:19):
If we try to explain the process of internal combustion
engines to any alien visiting Earth, the idea that we
take small amounts of high energy density fuel, we push
it into a very small space and ignite it and
make an expanding gas to explode, they would think we
(07:40):
were stupid.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, when you describe it like this, it sounds like
something that you'd see in like a wily coyote cartoon,
like made by Acme, like some sort of like wheel
with a series of rockets mounted on the outside of it.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
Somehow, it's still what we use today.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
There have certainly been improvements in the efficiency of combustion engines,
et cetera. But it's still you in that same dead
plant and animal juice, and it's still harnessing those same
many explosions.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, and it's still a work in progress. Humanity is
figuring out the kinks of this, and I mean kinks
as in malfunctions. Back in the day, these engines could
be incredibly loud, and they would experience something called engine.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Hello, who's dare knock?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, these engines could make sounds that for the driver
would appear to be knocks or taps, and our guy,
Tommy Midgley Junior, he took that personally, as the meme say,
he looked into it. He figured out a compound tetra
ethyl led. He discovered, yeah, could be added to gas
(08:51):
and it would make the engine run a bit more smoothly.
It would prevent that engine knocking in automobiles. That's right,
He's the guy who put lead in gasoline.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
It's because of this guy that we still to this
day weirdly, sort of like ashtrays on airplanes, see unleaded
gas on the gas pump, like just in case we
need to be reminded of this very dark time in
the history of the automobile. Because yeah, it's nothing special
about it. It's just led, the same stuff that poisoned
the Romans and apparently, according to a recent study, was
(09:26):
responsible for lowering their IQ over the course of generations.
This stuff is no joke. It is straight up poison
and has been phased out, I would say, nearly entirely
from American society, oh one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It also led to oh gosh, keep it. It led
to perhaps certain aspects of violence in the United States
and other previous civilizations. Our buddy Tommy is not done yet, Noel.
He also figures out that a certain chlorofluorocarbon makes an
(10:06):
excellent refrigerant CFC's.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
I believe he learned about those in ecology class, you know,
back in middle school, and at first people loved it.
Thomas received lots of metals, you know, and accolades for
his innovation, his work as a chemical company executive and researcher,
first for the chemical anti knock agent, also the extraction
(10:30):
of bromine from seawater what could go wrong?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (10:34):
And also the use of fluorine to produce refrigerating compounds.
All of these were very popular at the time, but
much like asbestos, turns out they were not good.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
For people's long term health.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
And yet at the time, I don't know, Ben, do
you think it was because the technology didn't exist to
look into these types of health ramifications or did people
just not care?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I mean, I would say ninety percent the former, ten
percent the latter. The answer is so easy right for
people living at the time, that the question becomes why
would we look too deeply into this?
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (11:17):
And we got this was known as a miracle material
you know.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
I mean that was literally what it was referred to
as in marketing, and I'm sure these innovations from Midgley
were treated much the same way. Like this guy is
single handedly propelling us forward into the future.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Absolutely, and to be fair, we can look back with
the benefit of retrospect and say, yes, his inventions and
discoveries were bad. It's important to realize at the same time,
Tommy himself is not an on purpose evil dude. In fact, Noel,
he was kind of a renaissance man to your earlier point.
(11:56):
He simply did not grock the full effects of the
things he created, and he never imagined the scale at
which his inventions would be deployed, which means he could
not logically understand the consequences involved. But what do we
mean whill we say he's a renaissance man despite being
(12:18):
an accidental sith lord Folks, Mitchelli is one of the
most creative chemists who ever lived.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Yeah, that's true. Not only that, he was a poet,
and I think he knew it. I'm never gonna not
make that joke. It's not gonna do it. Whoa that
kind of rhyme? Anyway, here's an example of some of
his work, which lends us a little bit of insight
into the dark future that he had a hand in creating,
a little foreshadowing here, Ben, you found this Jim Dandy
(12:46):
piece of work.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Why don't you bless us with a reading?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Ooh, let's round robin it. There's a there's a bit
of a excerpt here. M would I feel old age
approaching and it's his intended And my nerves are growing
roughten and my breath is growing short.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
And my eyes are growing dimmer, and my hair is
turning white. And I lack the old ambitions when I
wander out at night.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Too many men, my senior may remain when I am gone.
I have no regrets to offer, just because I'm passing on.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
We did a little Scottish brogue there, man, I like that.
Wrapping it up, bring it home. Let this epitaph be
graven on my tomb in simple style. This one did
a lot of living in a mighty little while.
Speaker 5 (13:43):
Huh.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Not really highly of himself there too, Huh yeah, so
best poet nah.
Speaker 5 (13:48):
But a rhyme he could he could turn a he
can you can bust out a rhyme?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
He could pat a couple.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
Yeah, as a poetry is supposed to be right.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
It's got a rhyme, Come at me, come out of
the Internet.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
So it was not lead poisoning from his gasoline experiments
that killed Tommy. Tommy is fifty one years old and
he contracts polio and loses the use of his legs.
And I want to shout out our pal Dylan Tennessee
pal Fagan from stuff. They want you to know who
was talking with me about this? This guy gets polio.
(14:26):
Polio is disastrous in his era, so he puts his brilliant,
tony starkish mind to the problem and he invents a
Pulley system over his bed. The idea being he can
lift himself into a sitting position and then from there
he can get into whatever apparatus he's using for mobility.
(14:51):
Unlike his other inventions that wrecked the human world, this
one had immediate, observable consequence, and so it came to pass.
On November second, nineteen forty four, Thomas Midgley Junior got
caught up in the ropes of the system he invented
(15:12):
and was strangled to death.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
I can't put my finger on it, but I've seen
this exact scenario like parodied in film and maybe TV,
like somebody you know having some sort of contraption that
was designed to help lift somebody you know what it
was in Twin Peaks. I recently saw it in an
episode of the first season of maybe the second season
of Twin Peaks, where a character built a doctor character
(15:39):
I can't remember the names, built something like this and
it had hilarious and disastrous consequences. Did not go well.
It's rife for physical comedy. But no, it did in
fact end the life of Thomas Midgley Junior. He seems
like he should be a Sir Thomas Midgley Junior.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yeah, yeah, well we can.
Speaker 5 (15:59):
Night him popously, can we? Can you do that? The
knighthood of ridiculous history bad Inventors?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
All right, there we go, yes, and before we feel
too bad, the guy is only fifty five years old.
His early death is definitely a tragedy for his loved ones.
Consider this again. His inventions, his big breakthroughs, greatly contributed
to the environmental problems everyone hearing this show faces today,
(16:31):
so much so that we still do not know the
full consequences of this. He poisoned three generations of children.
He increased the risk of skin cancer and other skin
problems related to the exposure of ultraviolet light. He is
a big player in the world of global warming, even
(16:53):
though he did not know that's what he was doing.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Well, And you mentioned Ben that he was also like
a chemical company executive. There's part of me that feels
like we maybe shouldn't always, you know, condemn the inventor
of the thing, but maybe more so the industry that
you know, took it and ran with it. And we
certainly know that there are inventors that often wish or
(17:17):
have mixed feelings about their inventions, like Oppenheimer. You know,
he certainly did not feel great about the way the
atomic bomb was used and had a very complicated relationship
with that legacy. So I don't know, Ben, was Thomas
Middley Junior also out there like pushing this stuff hard
in his role as an executive.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
M Yeah, it's a great question. Being an expert, even
world class in one discipline of science, say chemistry, does
not automatically make one a world expert in other fields
of science, such as ecology.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
It's a very American story kind of I don't know.
I just.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
And with this we're going to go to a story
that you have doubtlessly heard, perhaps not in full of
another inventor who died by their own hand. Noel, could
you do the honors?
Speaker 5 (18:17):
Yeah, we're talking about Marie Curry.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And if anybody saw that just okay, Beetlejuice sequel that
came out late last year, the character of Lydia Dietz's
daughter dresses up as Murray Currey for Halloween, or sort
of as the ghost of Marie Currey.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
It was okay, it was fine. It's a cute movie.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I've enjoyed it more than a lot of what Tim
Burton has been putting out there lately.
Speaker 5 (18:42):
But it wasn't the best. But I did think that
this costume was kind of.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Cute and very on brand for the demure gothy character
played by Jenna or Tega. I think she did a
fine job. So. Marie Currey born Maria Solemia Skladawska on
November seventh, eighteen sixty seven was a poish chemist, and
she and her husband essentially altered the course of humanity
(19:08):
when they discovered not just radium, but also polonium.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
Two very useful and deadly elements.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
One hundred percent. I think about this, How crazy is it?
How significant is it? How monumental is it to discover
an entirely new element, something that goes up on the
periodic table let alone? Two right right? Not once but
twice they did this. Ed Marikirie is the person who
(19:42):
coined the term radio active. Speaking of a two for
this scientist won the Nobel Prize not once, but twice,
first Nobel Prize nineteen oh three, when he and her
husband Pierre get the Nobel Prize in physics, and then
again in nineteen eleven when she wins the Nobel Prize
(20:05):
in chemistry. Everybody is over the moon about this, but
they're only supporting her after she becomes sort of a
scientific winner. Her original life was anything but cozy. Let's
go to our friends at grunge dot com, who have
(20:26):
a fantastic summation of the misogyny Cie faced pretty much
until she won that first Nobel Prize right.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Growing up in a time when new governments had banned
women from attending higher education facilities, Marie Currey was determined
to receive an education. Even though she was the top
of her class in Warsaw she was unable to continue
her education at the university. She sought education through a secret,
underground series of classes designed for continuing education for Polish women,
known as the Floating University. Working at a deal with
(20:58):
her sister where one would work and send the other
to college and then reverse roles, she was eventually able
to attend the Sorbonne in Paris, France, Sorbonne University, very
very famous institution of learning.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Dude, she prestiged it. No spoilers for prestige. I love
this quote you're sharing because she's a woman in a
male dominated field where dudes hate women. And you may
be asking yourself, as stute ridiculous historians, why did Marie
Curie and her husband win that first Nobel Prize? Why
(21:34):
did she win it herself in nineteen eleven. It's because
between that time her husband died in a street accident.
It was nineteen oh six, and so now, on top
of being discriminated against for her biological identity, she's also
a single mom. She's left to raise her their two
(21:57):
children alone, without a dad to walk down the street
for a second here. I recently read something nol that
really stuck with me. I don't think we should call
single parents single parents because they're doing twice the work, right,
So I think we should call them double parents.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
I love it, Ben count me in. So of course,
her groundbreaking discoveries ultimately led to her early passing. Similar
to Thomas Midgeley, Currie wasn't fully aware of what she
was playing with the consequences involved in the discoveries. After
her husband died, Currie took over his teaching position and
(22:37):
became the first female professor at Sorbonne, where she was
wholly committed to her research and is often known to
carry around test tubes of radium on her person, tucked
in her lab coat. Her work with radium ultimately led
to the discovery of the first portable X ray machine,
but she did not know the deadly ramifications of radioactive exposure.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Yeah, in nineteen thirty four, this groundbreaking scientist dies from
a condition we call a plastic anemia. It was look,
I'm supposed to say, almost certainly, but it was definitely
caused by the high radium exposure that she experienced throughout
her research. If you go to the Mayo Clinic, you'll
(23:25):
learn that a plastic anemia is a rare bone marrow disease.
It's essentially your bone marrow, which is supposed to produce
all your red blood cells. It stops, it falls short.
When you have this condition, and without having these red
blood cells, you'll get fatigue, shortness of breath, we're bruising,
(23:50):
other nasty symptoms. This is a true story. No, When
Marie Curi dies as a result of her own discoveries,
her body is so riddled with radioactive atoms that she
is buried in a casket made of lead, and the
public doesn't Yeah, right, and the public doesn't know about
(24:13):
this until way, way after the fact.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Because the French government wanted to move the curious bodies
to be honored at the Pantheon to celebrate them as
French history icons. However, when they approached the grave, they
detected traces of radium and polonium, which were the elements
that Curis studied. Workers initially came across a wooden coffin,
(24:38):
but when they opened them they saw an intact lead
coffin inside.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
And this was nineteen ninety five when this was discovered. Yeah,
the boffins look into the trace amounts of radium and polonium,
and they say, look, this is not enough to harm
anyone else. So thankfully, the authorities decide to move this
(25:07):
posthumous married couple to wooden caskets for burial at the
aforementioned pantheon. The curies changed the world. There's there's no
two ifs ands or butts about it. But oh there's
another butt, the third butt we've got. I think we
have time for one more story, which is super metal,
(25:39):
like metal in terms of vibe the horns.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Yeah, the name, this guy's name should be written in
illegible font let's just put it that way least. See
and the five pains trigger warning for anyone that doesn't
like nastiness. This is about torture, okay, And so if
you don't want to go on this, feel free to
skip ahead and will actually just feel free to maybe
(26:04):
get off right now. In two twenty one BCE, China unify,
putting an end to a chaotic period of warring states
and various fiefdoms, combining all of them under the control
of the Shin dynasty.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, and one of the pivotal figures in this expansion
in the rule of this dynasty is a guy named
Li Shi He's born to commoners, everyday people around two
to eighty BCE. Now, I love every day people. I
am everyday people. You are too. So on paper, this
(26:42):
guy's absolute success story. He starts off as a simple
clerk in local government and against all odds, he ascends
through the strict paranoid hierarchy of China at the time
to become one of the most most influential men in
the imperial court. He had the riz that's the best
(27:05):
thing we could say. He's a smooth talker.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
He was early. He was the proto rizzler, in fact,
a real cool customer at least. She gained a lot
of influence over the first Emperor Xiang, and he essentially
was kind of whispering in this dude's ear Machiavelli style.
He convinced the king to do all sorts of I
(27:30):
guess political maneuvers. He was responsible for all kinds of
innovations and political inventions, such as bribing enemies who could
be bought and assassinating the ones that couldn't. Also was
a big fan of tricking neighboring states into you know,
getting under the thumb of the emperor through just outright
(27:51):
subterfusion lies. He was also a fan of controlling information.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, yeah, he was. It's a huge advocate of collecting
and burning all books that were counter to the narrative
of jan. He said, the only books we got to
keep are the books about medicine, divination, and agriculture, essentially
(28:18):
for their time, the stem books, right.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
Yeah, put it that way, but you're right.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yeah. The king, by the way, was super down with
all of this. It's ethically disgusting, but it does kind
of make sense. Given the fragility of the new Empire.
They wanted to erase competing versions of history, and Leashi
was super good at doing that.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
And you know how we see this all the time.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
The kind of closer you are to a king figure
like this, the harder you fall when you fall out
of favor with said powerful individual. One thing that Lisha
she a little four shouting there. One thing that least
she is most remembered by in Chinese history. In addition
(29:07):
to his political savvy was his inventiveness when it comes
to methods of torture and execution. Enter the five Pains.
The five p's pretty gnarly. It looks like we're gonna
describe what well in your mind resemble an Accountibal Corpse
(29:29):
album cover.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
It is so gross. All right. So around this time
as he's as he's rising up in the ranks and
doing dangerous whispers. It's sometime between twenty nineteen and twenty
thirteen BCE when he becomes chancellor. He is one of
the two highest ranking non royal family members in the land,
(29:51):
and he pitches the following to the dynasty. He says, Look,
if we got a bad criminal, weset an example. So
the first thing is we cut off their nose, okay, one,
and then we cut off and then we cut off
a hand.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Just one okay, two pains?
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah, and then we cut off a foot.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
The same foot as the hand or opposite side or
a dealer's choice.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Interesting, right, So what makes it worse?
Speaker 5 (30:21):
Yeah, you're not gonna walk away from this spoiler alert.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
So that's three pains.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Yeah, we got three pains down.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah. The next one is we cast treat them okay cool? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
So they cut it like like the dela Phosaurus in
the Jurassic Park.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Not what an interesting reference for that.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Sorry, I always remember that they didn't do it in
the movie, but in the book. Uh Nedrie gets his
guts handed to him. Yeah, and that scene always stuck
with me. So that's four pains down.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah. The fifth and final pain is death not not
any reasonable form of death, literally cutting the body in half, a.
Speaker 5 (31:02):
Little baroque adding insult to injury if you.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Will, an example. Right, And so the five pains is
used multiple times to quell, you know, dangerous religious ideologies,
et cetera. Any outside forces find their leader, subject them
to the five pains, you know, and it is quite
(31:26):
successful in securing the or i should say, cementing the
power of the empire.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
It's weird though. Is it really loyalty if you are
just operating with fear?
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Right? Is it really love if you're operating out of fear?
Speaker 5 (31:44):
And Ben, I mean I just wanted to bring up too.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
I mean, in your studies of geopolitics and stuff, and
I know that you are very up on Chinese politics,
it's very interesting to me that this kind of tamping
down of descents and this type of tamping down and
control of information, it's.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
Not really that different.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
I mean, they don't do the five pains anymore, but
it's still information is kept under lock and key over there.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yes, sir, they're a little touchy. I think it's okay
to say that the PRC is a big fan of
a single, unified narrative. And this is what we're getting to.
Everything is swell from Leashy's perspective until about two eight BCE.
(32:34):
This guy is convicted of treason. His crimes are to
be held to account, says the governing power. He is
sentenced to death, ed Noel max Fellow ridiculous historians. Dare
we guess the manner of his execution?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Isn't it ironic? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I don't think.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
I really do think you got it his own invention,
the five Pains woof ouch, because he.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Was alive long enough to think about it. They cut
off his nose and he's probably thinking, damn.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
This is familiar, not just despite his face, despite his
entire existence, his entire body.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Get a hand and he's like, ah, maybe this is
just some wackado coincidence. Then they get a foot, then
they go for his Australia Dirty way to die.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Not good, not good. Fine, I think we navigated that
grizzly topic just fine. Ben, It wasn't I think it
was too gratuitous. But yeah, not cool weird thing to
be known for and also a really weird and horrific
way to die that you yourself were responsible for him.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yes, and in the spirit of continuing our explorations, we
want to tell you the following. First, there are many
inventors who invented many amazing things and did not die
as a result of their explorations. Second, there's a smaller
(34:08):
yet significant population of inventors who did indeed expire as
a result of their discoveries. Thinking of more recent examples
like James W. Hezelden in September of twenty ten, the
guy who bought the segue Company and then drove a
(34:28):
seguey off.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
A cliff off a cliff in equally wily coyote fashion.
Speaker 5 (34:33):
Yeah, quite acme, it's true.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
It's very acne indeed. But man, I think we got
a couple that we didn't get to today that I
think of being an ongoing series. Let's keep adding to Ben.
But thanks for bringing these to us today, Bud.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
And thanks for tuning in, fellow ridiculous historians. Big big
thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams, Big big
thanks to our our whole team of re search associates,
as well as Alex Tiajuana Williams, who composed this slap
and bop and has not died of a result of
(35:08):
his musical.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Acumen no no, nor from driving a segue off a cliff. Thankful,
We love that guy.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Huge thanks to Chris Frasciotis and Nave's chef cos Here
in Spirit, aj Bahamas, Jacobs the Puzzler, Jonathan Strickland the quiztor.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Big thanks to Rachel Big Spinach Lance, I should say,
Big Spinach thanks to Rachel Big Spinach Land.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Ooh ooh, and let's do a new thing we've been
doing for the new year, since we still haven't gotten
the keys back to our social media accounts for ridiculous
history as a show. Why not check us out as
individual human people because we are those and we exist
on the Internet. I am exclusively on Instagram at how Now,
Noel Brown, Ben. Where can folks find you?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Well, first off, say the right words to a mirror
in the dark, or call my name at a crossroads. Yeah,
I'll come back to you. Also, you can find me
at Ben Bullen. In a burst of creativity on Instagram
or some derivation thereof wherever apts are used. We also
(36:12):
want to thank our fellow rude dudes over Ridiculous Crime
and you know Noel Max. You guys, thank you for
not killing yourselves with these wonderful inventions.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
You're welcome.
Speaker 5 (36:27):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
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