November 9, 2024 • 32 mins
California was admitted to the United States as the 31st state in 1850, but it acquired its unique name much, much earlier. Join Ben and Noel as they trace the strange story behind California's name, from the fiction that inspired it to the loss and rediscovery of the story and, of course, adventures on a legendary Amazonian island. Tune in to learn more in this week's Classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, we have an absolute banger of a
classic episode for you today. No fooling California doesn't just
know how to party. It was also named in a
really ridiculous way.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Do you think Anthony Ketis knows about this? I hope
he does. He really likes California. Yeah, we gotta check
the bridge he's under there somewhere. California was in fact
admitted to the United States as the thirty first date
of eighteen fifty, but it acquired its own unique name
a lot earlier. And the provenance of this name is
a little more ridiculous than you might think, and it
(00:38):
comes from the realms of fiction.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And we'll tell you the facts behind it.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Let's jump in.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hellow Ridiculous Historians.
(01:16):
Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Ben.
I have a question for you as well as my compatriots.
Lay it honest brother, all right, Noel super producer Casey
Pegrim here's the question. I noticed recently that we have
been doing a lot of cool stuff with US states,
(01:39):
and today we're going to look at another US state,
a large one, a big one. And it inspired me
to pitch the following idea. I propose that we Ridiculous
History endeavor to do an episode at least one about
every US.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
State, like Sufi Stephens style.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, but we'll actually do You think we will though, Yeah,
because we're not making a whole album.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
That's true, and we do kind of have to do
the show until we keel over. So it's in our contract.
That's the language which we signed in blood. Yeah, I'm okay, Ben,
I'll raise you one. Let's do one on every state
and territory, every state and territory. Yeah, historical territories are
current territory. You got me, Ben, I don't know what
(02:23):
the difference is. You know what. We'll be there. I
bet you will.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
We'll wrap up our fiftieth state episode and then we'll
say we want to do more territories. It'll be a
learning adventure. It will be, and we're off to the races.
We are traveling today in spirit, in mind to place
that both of us love the state of California.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I'm a huge fan of California. Yeah, I love it
despite the traffic, am I right? Bumper to bumper? The one,
the five, the four five, the five oh one. You
know what, that's not real? You know yours what's real?
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I gotta tell you, though, Los Angeles makes me tired.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well, it's such sprawl that it's like it takes forever
to get anywhere. I mean, not that we're not used
to that here in Atlanta. The traffic's quite bad, but
the geography of Los Angeles very spread out. And yeah,
it's a bit of a slog to get anywhere. But
boy do I enjoy it when I find a cool
area that I dig. Like. I've got a friend who
was in Highland Park really like that whole area and
(03:25):
like Silver Lake and all that stuff. And we actually
have a studio there with our comedy division that's right
in the heart of Hollywood Boulevard.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yes, yes, it's headed by our pal Jack O'Brien, who
was a founder of Cracked dot com.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I wonder if Jack O'Brien knows the mythical history of
California the name at least he might.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
He's one smart hostess, Cupcake, but he if he knows
this history, he is an exceptional person. Because this was
new a hazard to both of us.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Hazard away because you're right.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, So one thing that I think occurs to many
school children here in the States, is this moment of
epiphany where you're looking around at the name of the
state in which you reside, or the names of other states,
and you go, hey, that's.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
A weird word.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
You know Oklahoma, for instance, that's.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
A weird word.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, right, California we just all accept as normal. Sure,
but it's a strange word.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It is. And I think there's this overarching notion that
most of the weird word states come from Native American words, right,
But that's not entirely true, especially not in today's case.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yes, today we are exploring the strange story of how
California became, you know, California, California, California. Yeah, I love
that sketch.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
It's a good sketch.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yes, So right now it's used by the The term
California is used by three different places. It's used here
in the US. It's the name of the state of California.
In Mexico, there are two states. One is called Baja
California and then Baja California, sir, So like South Baja California.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
That's right. I think originally California was called Las California's
province of the Vice Royalty of New Spain.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, a mouthful doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
No it doesn't. But where did all this California business
come from? Then?
Speaker 1 (05:31):
We were startled to find There were several explanations, but
one of the strongest, and the one we want to
focus on today, is the idea that the name California
came from a work of fiction.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
It's right, a work of fiction by a gentleman by
the name of Garcie Rodriguez de Montevallo. I think that's okay, Casees, Now,
we're not gonna consult. He's a Francophone. Yeah, he's not
a spania phone. Is that a word? Doesn't matter? Mark
(06:09):
Tavallo and he wrote a novel, a romantic, swashbuckling kind
of epic, part of a series called Las Sergas Esplandion,
which means the Exploits or Adventures of Esplandion.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah. This was around the turn of the sixteenth century
and largely thought to be inspired by real life stories
of explorers traveling to what they called the New World
in the fourteen hundreds. Noel, as you said, this is
part of a five part series. This was the final
book and it featured a specific land. We can go
(06:46):
ahead and let's see.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
You want to hear a quote. We got a little
quote about this from the book. Quote away, my man,
all right.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Know that on the right hand from the Indies exist
in islands called California, very close to a side of
the earthly Paradise, and it was populated by black women
without any man existing there because they lived in the
way of the Amazons. They had beautiful and robust bodies
and were brave and very strong. Their island was the
strongest in the world, with its steep cliffs and rocky shores.
(07:17):
Their weapons were golden, and so were the harnesses of
the wild beast that they were accustomed to taming, so
that they could be ridden, because there was no other
metal in the island than gold.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
That, my friend, was a summary of the recent DC
Comics film A Wonder Woman.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Right, there are some there are some clear parallels.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
That is from the Exploits of Esplandian, which, as we said,
turn in the century. He published it in Severe in
fifteen ten.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
In fact, it's actually it predates Don Quixote by Cervantes,
and it's cited in that work as a list of
one of the books in Don Quixote's library. So it
was a very popular work and folk like, uh oh,
I don't know. Hernan Cortes, the famous conquistador, would have
(08:06):
been intimately familiar with this story, right.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Hernan Cortes, who was a conquistador who led the expedition
that brought about the fall of the Aztec Empire and
brought lots of what is modern day Mexico under the
rule of Spain, he would have been aware of this book.
And when the Spanish forces were exploring California, they originally
(08:34):
thought that southern peninsula that they ran into, Aha, right,
they thought it was an island exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think it was. It was quite a long time
before they realized there was more.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, it was a long time. And you can you
can see maps from the mid sixteen hundreds and so
that depict it as an island. A sort of just
imagine the peninsula as if the rest of the.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Top of California it doesn't exist exactly. And Cortes was
in fact the governor of Mexico at the time, and
he sent an expedition to the western coast of California.
Pilot Fortune Jimenez actually there was a mutiny too, involving
the murder of the expedition leader, Diego Bessera. But this
(09:17):
was the first European to sail near what you just described,
Ben Baja, California. This was in the year fifteen thirty four,
and as you said, mistook it for an island and
decided to call it California. Why why Ben, We talked
about this story a minute ago. Did we name the
character the Queen Ah? Yes, the queen We mentioned her
(09:39):
in the quotation Khalifa Khalifa. And the island is called California,
and it is ruled by this badass Amazonian type woman
with weaponized griffins and all kinds of crazy golden armor
and spears. And I think there was a there was
a note about they only allowed to come to the
(10:00):
island one day a year so they could procreate, and
if ever an offspring was a male, they would they
would give it the axe or the spear right or
drowning in the sea. I don't know. They would cut
the kid's life off very early. Take time.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And here's one of the fascinating things. This was a
work of fiction, right, that's we know clearly it was
a work of fiction, but it still inspired Cortes enough
to think of this later as California. Now, it's not
clear if California had already been named at the time
(10:41):
when Cortes led that expedition, but we do know that
he had. Originally he had also thought it was an island.
He named it Santa Cruz, but the historical records pretty
soon after that referred to it as California, named after
the fictional land Rodriguez's book. And there's another weird part here.
(11:05):
For a long time afterward, it would appear that the
connection between this fictional novel and the state what would
become the state of California, was lost to history. The
novel languish, it was obscure, nobody connected it with the
name of California until around eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
That's what I read as well. Yeah, interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
A guy named Edward Everett Hale was translating this novel
for the Antiquarian Society, and this translation they did was
printed in The Atlantic, and so Hale was trying to
figure out how this caliph entered the author's mind at all,
and he was thinking, well, maybe it was he was
(11:53):
taken a term for a leader of an Islamic community.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Oh, you mean like a caliph. Yeah, that's right. There's
actually two different ways you'll see it spelled. One is
klafia s c A l a fia. Sometimes you'll see
it Khalifia. But it does date back to that term caliph,
which the Arabic is spelled kh a l I f
a h. And then we mangle it up to be
(12:16):
c a l iph here in English, but that would
be the leader of an Islamic religion or a group
or a state, which is interesting. A lot of times
religious leaders end up being political leaders as well in
that culture.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, and you can read in depth about the Conquistador
in California in a book by W. Michael Mathis called
The Conquistador in California. This strange relationship between fiction and
fact reminds me a little bit of the inspirations we've
(12:51):
seen in earlier episodes. But let's stick with Cortes for
a second, because he did not have the happiest of live.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
This is not at all and just a quick aside.
Spain does have a big relationship with the Islamic culture.
The Iberian Peninsula was actually invaded by Muslim forces in
the year seven eleven and eventually conquered the peninsula. So
it would make sense that that language would be floating
around in the ether there.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And there would be what are called loan words, right,
that came from Arabic and were incorporated into Spanish. Absolutely,
And you know, I really appreciate you bringing up that
point because for a long time from what seven eleven, well,
at various times between seven eleven and fourteen ninety two,
(13:40):
there was a caliphate of Cordoba, right, and Islamic Iberia's
another name you'll hear thrown around. This was not a
solidly Spanish place.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Now, and fourteen ninety two, as it turns out, was
when a Montevallo wrote the book in question. So give
us Cortes, my friend.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Ah Cortes, unhappy life.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
So this expedition to California is one of his last
big plays. This in the fifteen thirties. You'll hear anywhere
between fifteen thirty four to fifteen thirty six. He was
not super popular in Spain. He returned a few years later.
And this is just an aside because I just want
(14:21):
to show that it wasn't all trumpets and angel farts
for this guy. When he returned to Spain in fifteen
forty one. He kept trying to get the Emperor to
meet with him, means like, I've won so much land
for Spain, I've conquered so much territory for you, and
no one would talk to him. And it got so
(14:43):
bad that he had to follow the Emperor's carriage through
town one day and there was a crowd surrounding him.
He forced himself through the crowd. He jumped up on
the carriage, which you know, imagine a presidential motorcade and
and seeing someone run up and try to jump in
the car It's essentially what he did. And the Emperor said,
(15:06):
who is this man? Who is this incredibly, I guess,
rude audacious fellow, and Cortes, according to the record, said,
I am a man who has giving you more provinces
than your ancestors left you cities. He spent a lot
of his own money to finance his expeditions. He was heavily, heavily,
(15:27):
heavily in debt, and when he died in fifteen forty seven,
his body would later be moved multiple times after his burial,
around eight times ugh insult to injury, and when Mexico
became independent, it was thought that his body might be desecrated.
Just a couple of Cortes facts here. The strangest thing, though,
(15:51):
is that when we think of this idea of an
island that's so close to the Garden of e right,
and it's full of gold, we know the Spanish expeditions
were very, very focused on finding those material riches, right.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
It seems strange though that they would name this island
after something that they had to know to be fictional, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I mean it's sort of the way. We recently went
to a wrestling match out in kind of a rural
part of Georgia, and I really got the sense that
some of the folks there did not know that it
wasn't real, and they were acting accordingly. So you got
to wonder, back in these days, even if something was
a quote unquote work of fiction, was there maybe a
(16:44):
sense that it was written from a place of real
discovery and this was like a mythical land they could find,
Because that's certainly what I'm seeing that they saw this
island and they were like, surely this is the place
of note from this the story.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Right, yeah, Because it's not as if they could hop
on snopes dot com or something and check whether this
was real. And we know that the idea of an
Amazonian legend would have been very familiar to people. We
also have to remember that at this time it was
much much more difficult to differentiate fiction from fact, and
(17:24):
there were a lot of allegorical works of antiquity that
were taken to be literal truths.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Tell you what else is interesting about the book, it's
actually pretty radical. Montevallo really injected this story with a
lot of characteristics that kind of mirrored the experience of
conquered indigenous people and colonized indigenous people throughout the Americas.
Later in the novel, Calafia actually converts to Christianity, coming
(17:54):
from much more of a pagan tradition. It's hard to
say if he was doing this the writer in in
protest or as like satire in some way, or if
it was sort of meant to be almost that's the
word propaganda, right, because that was certainly what the Spanish
conquistadors were all about when they found these indigenous people,
(18:14):
was setting up all these missions, you know, all the
missions that are in California and the presidios and the like,
all about converting the native people to Catholicism, So pretty
interesting trajectory the story has, yeah, and we.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Also can see how this would have been seen as
inspirational to Spanish explorers because they had expelled at the
time the dominant Muslim forces that were ruling Spain and
there was nothing left to conquer unless they set out
to find a western route to India. But no, why
(18:50):
don't we learn a little bit more about Montalvo's book,
because he's a relatively obscure author himself in real life,
but we know a little bit about his care.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
We do, and I have not read it myself, but
I learned a lot of really cool stuff from an
article on Miss Magazine's blog from a Beanie Morino entitled
Klafia Reappropriating the Amazon Queen. And there's a pretty incredible
quote here. So apparently later in the story, Klafia gets
married and she gives her title of queen to one
(19:25):
of her bodyguards, and then this is what she says
to her. She says, you shall be my signor, and
you shall rule over my state. On account of you,
the island will change the style of living. Whereas the
island has been isolated from men for many ages. Henceforth
it will adopt the practice of natural generation of men
and women. So this idea of being outside of the
(19:48):
patriarchy and kind of there was even like when they
were in battle, they would take men as their prisoners
and execute them or keep them around for approcreation purposes.
Now they're kind of opening up their borders to allow
men to live amongst them. And there's this sense that
a lot of this had to do with Montevalo's need
to kind of tame the character. So it is I
(20:11):
think less, I think unfortunately, it is less of a
satire and a little more of the propaganda vibe that
I was talking about earlier, where he kind of has
this strong female character that don't need men and turns
it to the point where they kind of become more
beholden to men and also more Christian ideology.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Oh, in speaking of appropriation, very important point here. Montalvo
did not write all of the books in that series.
The first three books were written by an unknown author.
He picked it up, wrote the fourth book and the
fifth book, which would be The Exploits or the Adventures,
and then after him. The saga continued that there was
a sixth novel, a seventh novel, an eighth, and a
(20:57):
ninth novel that we know of. Jeez, and it's strange
when we think of it alternating between different authors, you know,
especially when those first three books are unknown today.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Could you even get away with it?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
All? Right?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
My my dyslexia is showing. I don't really have dyslexia.
But I've been mispronouncing this man's last name entirely and
correctly for the entire episode, which is fine. When we
need to correct it. I'm just gonna go ahead and
say it right now. I said, I'm Manta Valo and
it's Montalvo. But I just I switched up the the
V and the and the A. It's fine, it's fine.
(21:29):
I just wanted to put it out there now and
then fix it from here on out. But just don't
email us about it. I didn't, you know, I think
you're beating yourself up. I did not, for my part, notice.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
But what I did notice, no, is that there were
a couple of other competing theories about the etymology of
California's name.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, there's one of like a a poem, I think, yes,
the song of Rolling Yeah, give it to us.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Also, the inspiration in part for Stephen King's The Dark
Tower series or a thing based on that child.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Into the Doug Dunslinger. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, So the Song of Roland is an eleventh century
old French epic poem, and people who believe that it
inspired the name California.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I can't not say a California in the set, Stuart.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Sorry, Please do check out the Californians on Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
You heard it? Great show? Yeah right, you should really
check it out.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
It's a it's a weekly sketch show in case anybody
somehow doesn't know.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Been running since like the seventies at the least, right.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
So this poem, the Song of Roland, is about the
defeat of Charlemagne's army by the Muslim army and a
battle in the Pyrenees in seven seventy eight. And in
if let's get specific, in line tw twenty four of
the poem again it's an epic poem. In verse two
(22:59):
o nine, the word Califerne c A l I f
E r n e is one of the lands that's mentioned,
but they don't say in the poem where it is.
They don't tell you what it's next to or you
know it's named after a reference to what people believe
is Africa. Cool, So people are saying, maybe Montalvo found
(23:23):
that somewhere, and maybe that's where he found the name California.
And then there's the other idea that the term could
derive from a Spanish phrase, an old Spanish phrase call
it fournee, an alteration of the old Latin term kalida fornax,
which means hot furnace.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I don't you know what.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
I think we stick with the novel. I think that's
the most interesting answer.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, I think the thing two is it really is
kind of up in the air. It's not clear when
California was named, and there was no like documentation of
I hear my name this land California, right, you know,
like like like the way you get in other foundings.
You know, it's much more of a thing like that
Mitchell and websketch that we keep referencing ad nauseum. Go
(24:07):
to Ridiculous Historians and join our Facebook group and you
can see it for yourself, or you know, just google it.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
It's not ad nauseum yet, No, it's ad nausium.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
If I think if we do it four times, oh no,
I think it's I think it's it applies, because it
really is. It's very much like I will call this
the West Indies, like why it makes sense, or this
shall be named henceforth New Connecticut.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Or of no, not North Wales, no South Wales.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
But yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
This what's interesting here is that it's also a story
of cartography, because maps were bibles of geography right at
this time, and they didn't agree nearly as often as
maps do nowadays. And maps don't agree here as often
as you might think even in the modern day.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
For sure. I want to backtick it a little bit
to Montalvo. I got it right there, I go, I'm
on the right track. He absolutely eroticized and exoticized this
woman and other people and her her body and her
strength and the like, in almost a fetishistic kind of way.
(25:19):
There's a quote in this fabulous article from a blog
called afro dot com that that reads as such, and
this is a little rough language, but I just want
to it also is it's quite racist? He was quite racist? Yes,
So here here it goes. He describes Queen Califia as
such as a queen quote queen of majestic proportions, more
(25:43):
beautiful than all others and in the very vigor of
her womanhood. She was not petite, nor blonde, nor golden haired.
She was large and black as the ace of clubs. Oof.
That's rough. That's a hard that's a big oof. And
I'm just saying I think it, really it makes sense
(26:03):
that this would have been written in such a way
as to take these characters and twist them to this
particular kind of worldview of the Spanish at the time.
He would have been around during like the Spanish Inquisition
and a lot of the kind of medieval thinking around
some of this stuff, and it shows.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, it calls to mind the person for whom both
New World continents are named after. America is named after
Amerigo Vespucci. Not a good guy, not the best, not
the best one. But luckily, California as a modern state
has moved well beyond the othering racist descriptions found in
(26:53):
ma Tavo's novel It's true, and become not only one
of the most progressive states in the United States, but
also the largest economy I believe.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Oh my god, for sure. Here's a one more thing
from this afro dot com piece. It talks about there's
a woman that's interviewed for this piece, whose name is
Tamra El Dickis, and she is actually mounting, or at
least at the time of this article, was mounting a
(27:24):
campaign to change the seal of California to include an
image of Califia as opposed to Minerva, who was the
Roman goddess of wisdom, and also in the Greek tradition
she would have been Athena exactly. And so she is
(27:45):
featured on the seal that was designed by a Confederate
soldier who just kind of made the seal on his
own and then he even used, according to the article,
a false name and it just kind of stuck. And
this woman, Tamara al Dickas Is mounted a campaign called
(28:05):
Cali is Me to quote right the wrong and put
Califia on the seal, to you know, have this beautiful
black woman featured and to show kind of the history
of the naming. But again all of the stuff that
we've just discussed about that history, right nah exactly on
(28:26):
shall we say yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:27):
And speaking the name One quick correction here, I believe
it was me who said that once. By a time
Cortes tried to name the island quote unquote island Santa
Cruz no, no, no, no, no no. He went back
and tried to rename it Santa Cruz and everybody said, sorry, buddy,
(28:49):
you took your shot. It's California, gotcha. And that's how
it's always been, So think about it. Things went a
little bit differently in history. We would not have the
fine state of California. We'd have the fine state of
Santa Cruz.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
It's very true. And Khalifia is actually featured in a
kind of a multimedia exhibition that ended in two thousand
and eight at Disney's California Adventure Park in Anaheim, where
Whoopi Goldberg actually plays her in sort of projection mapped form,
where there are these busts, these statues of the goddess,
(29:22):
well really a goddess. I guess she was more of
a warrior queen, sure, and she narrates kind of this
history of California with all these you know, Disney bells
and whistles and stuff. But they retired that in eight,
but it was kind of the centerpiece of the whole production,
so they clearly felt pretty good about having that heritage there.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And we feel pretty good about the name California overall,
despite its dodgy beginnings. We hope this has been as
fascinating and strange for you all as it is for us.
And this concludes our episode today. But we have a
couple of questions for you. First, have you ever seen
a griffin in real life?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
That they're not real? No? Cool? Okay, just make sure
it's not like you know how I feel about birds.
I don't really keep up with them, so maybe I
figure out maybe I missed. But you, like, you know,
what isn't a griffin like a like a bird lion
or something like that. That's what it is.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
They're super cool too, So yeah, surprise us if you
have actually seen a griffin.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Let us know. We will be astounded.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Also, let us know what states you think we should
cover next in an upcoming episode of Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Now we got to keep track. Well, we we're good
so far. Yeah. Yeah, we haven't doubled up, have we? No?
Not yet? Are you certain? Yes? Okay?
Speaker 1 (30:41):
And we are going to uh, we're going to have
so much fun with this.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
It's going to be so strange.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
If you'd like to have fun with us, then check
out our community page on Facebook Ridiculous Historians, where you
can hang out with your fellow listeners and learn some
very strange facts. You can also give us topics suggestinen
who knows they might appear on the air. You can
find us on Instagram and Twitter as well.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
You can also write to us at ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
dot com and we might even read one of your
letters on the show.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
But we have one last thing to do. We hope
you will join us in doing this. Wherever you're listening
to this podcast, say it out loud with us. We
are going to, on the count of three, bid our
super producer Casey Pegram bon voyage. All right, one, two, three.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
A bon voyage Casey.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
He will return very soon. We have a cavalcade of
super producers who will be sitting in.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
A cadre, a cadre stable of them, yes, a roster
of battalion. And again Twist and Casey's arm hopefully is
going to send us some cool audio postcards from a Perry.
I'm gonna make eye contact real quick with him. You
already said, yes, he's nodding. Okay, We'll see you next time.
(32:02):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, we have an absolute banger of a
classic episode for you today. No fooling California doesn't just
know how to party. It was also named in a
really ridiculous way.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Do you think Anthony Ketis knows about this? I hope
he does. He really likes California. Yeah, we gotta check
the bridge he's under there somewhere. California was in fact
admitted to the United States as the thirty first date
of eighteen fifty, but it acquired its own unique name
a lot earlier. And the provenance of this name is
a little more ridiculous than you might think, and it
(00:38):
comes from the realms of fiction.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
And we'll tell you the facts behind it.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Let's jump in.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hellow Ridiculous Historians.
(01:16):
Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Ben.
I have a question for you as well as my compatriots.
Lay it honest brother, all right, Noel super producer Casey
Pegrim here's the question. I noticed recently that we have
been doing a lot of cool stuff with US states,
(01:39):
and today we're going to look at another US state,
a large one, a big one. And it inspired me
to pitch the following idea. I propose that we Ridiculous
History endeavor to do an episode at least one about
every US.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
State, like Sufi Stephens style.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, but we'll actually do You think we will though, Yeah,
because we're not making a whole album.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
That's true, and we do kind of have to do
the show until we keel over. So it's in our contract.
That's the language which we signed in blood. Yeah, I'm okay, Ben,
I'll raise you one. Let's do one on every state
and territory, every state and territory. Yeah, historical territories are
current territory. You got me, Ben, I don't know what
(02:23):
the difference is. You know what. We'll be there. I
bet you will.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
We'll wrap up our fiftieth state episode and then we'll
say we want to do more territories. It'll be a
learning adventure. It will be, and we're off to the races.
We are traveling today in spirit, in mind to place
that both of us love the state of California.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
I'm a huge fan of California. Yeah, I love it
despite the traffic, am I right? Bumper to bumper? The one,
the five, the four five, the five oh one. You
know what, that's not real? You know yours what's real?
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I gotta tell you, though, Los Angeles makes me tired.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well, it's such sprawl that it's like it takes forever
to get anywhere. I mean, not that we're not used
to that here in Atlanta. The traffic's quite bad, but
the geography of Los Angeles very spread out. And yeah,
it's a bit of a slog to get anywhere. But
boy do I enjoy it when I find a cool
area that I dig. Like. I've got a friend who
was in Highland Park really like that whole area and
(03:25):
like Silver Lake and all that stuff. And we actually
have a studio there with our comedy division that's right
in the heart of Hollywood Boulevard.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yes, yes, it's headed by our pal Jack O'Brien, who
was a founder of Cracked dot com.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I wonder if Jack O'Brien knows the mythical history of
California the name at least he might.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
He's one smart hostess, Cupcake, but he if he knows
this history, he is an exceptional person. Because this was
new a hazard to both of us.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Hazard away because you're right.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah, So one thing that I think occurs to many
school children here in the States, is this moment of
epiphany where you're looking around at the name of the
state in which you reside, or the names of other states,
and you go, hey, that's.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
A weird word.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
You know Oklahoma, for instance, that's.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
A weird word.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, right, California we just all accept as normal. Sure,
but it's a strange word.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It is. And I think there's this overarching notion that
most of the weird word states come from Native American words, right,
But that's not entirely true, especially not in today's case.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yes, today we are exploring the strange story of how
California became, you know, California, California, California. Yeah, I love
that sketch.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
It's a good sketch.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yes, So right now it's used by the The term
California is used by three different places. It's used here
in the US. It's the name of the state of California.
In Mexico, there are two states. One is called Baja
California and then Baja California, sir, So like South Baja California.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
That's right. I think originally California was called Las California's
province of the Vice Royalty of New Spain.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, a mouthful doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
No it doesn't. But where did all this California business
come from? Then?
Speaker 1 (05:31):
We were startled to find There were several explanations, but
one of the strongest, and the one we want to
focus on today, is the idea that the name California
came from a work of fiction.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
It's right, a work of fiction by a gentleman by
the name of Garcie Rodriguez de Montevallo. I think that's okay, Casees, Now,
we're not gonna consult. He's a Francophone. Yeah, he's not
a spania phone. Is that a word? Doesn't matter? Mark
(06:09):
Tavallo and he wrote a novel, a romantic, swashbuckling kind
of epic, part of a series called Las Sergas Esplandion,
which means the Exploits or Adventures of Esplandion.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah. This was around the turn of the sixteenth century
and largely thought to be inspired by real life stories
of explorers traveling to what they called the New World
in the fourteen hundreds. Noel, as you said, this is
part of a five part series. This was the final
book and it featured a specific land. We can go
(06:46):
ahead and let's see.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
You want to hear a quote. We got a little
quote about this from the book. Quote away, my man,
all right.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Know that on the right hand from the Indies exist
in islands called California, very close to a side of
the earthly Paradise, and it was populated by black women
without any man existing there because they lived in the
way of the Amazons. They had beautiful and robust bodies
and were brave and very strong. Their island was the
strongest in the world, with its steep cliffs and rocky shores.
(07:17):
Their weapons were golden, and so were the harnesses of
the wild beast that they were accustomed to taming, so
that they could be ridden, because there was no other
metal in the island than gold.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
That, my friend, was a summary of the recent DC
Comics film A Wonder Woman.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Right, there are some there are some clear parallels.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
That is from the Exploits of Esplandian, which, as we said,
turn in the century. He published it in Severe in
fifteen ten.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
In fact, it's actually it predates Don Quixote by Cervantes,
and it's cited in that work as a list of
one of the books in Don Quixote's library. So it
was a very popular work and folk like, uh oh,
I don't know. Hernan Cortes, the famous conquistador, would have
(08:06):
been intimately familiar with this story, right.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Hernan Cortes, who was a conquistador who led the expedition
that brought about the fall of the Aztec Empire and
brought lots of what is modern day Mexico under the
rule of Spain, he would have been aware of this book.
And when the Spanish forces were exploring California, they originally
(08:34):
thought that southern peninsula that they ran into, Aha, right,
they thought it was an island exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think it was. It was quite a long time
before they realized there was more.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, it was a long time. And you can you
can see maps from the mid sixteen hundreds and so
that depict it as an island. A sort of just
imagine the peninsula as if the rest of the.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Top of California it doesn't exist exactly. And Cortes was
in fact the governor of Mexico at the time, and
he sent an expedition to the western coast of California.
Pilot Fortune Jimenez actually there was a mutiny too, involving
the murder of the expedition leader, Diego Bessera. But this
(09:17):
was the first European to sail near what you just described,
Ben Baja, California. This was in the year fifteen thirty four,
and as you said, mistook it for an island and
decided to call it California. Why why Ben, We talked
about this story a minute ago. Did we name the
character the Queen Ah? Yes, the queen We mentioned her
(09:39):
in the quotation Khalifa Khalifa. And the island is called California,
and it is ruled by this badass Amazonian type woman
with weaponized griffins and all kinds of crazy golden armor
and spears. And I think there was a there was
a note about they only allowed to come to the
(10:00):
island one day a year so they could procreate, and
if ever an offspring was a male, they would they
would give it the axe or the spear right or
drowning in the sea. I don't know. They would cut
the kid's life off very early. Take time.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And here's one of the fascinating things. This was a
work of fiction, right, that's we know clearly it was
a work of fiction, but it still inspired Cortes enough
to think of this later as California. Now, it's not
clear if California had already been named at the time
(10:41):
when Cortes led that expedition, but we do know that
he had. Originally he had also thought it was an island.
He named it Santa Cruz, but the historical records pretty
soon after that referred to it as California, named after
the fictional land Rodriguez's book. And there's another weird part here.
(11:05):
For a long time afterward, it would appear that the
connection between this fictional novel and the state what would
become the state of California, was lost to history. The
novel languish, it was obscure, nobody connected it with the
name of California until around eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
That's what I read as well. Yeah, interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
A guy named Edward Everett Hale was translating this novel
for the Antiquarian Society, and this translation they did was
printed in The Atlantic, and so Hale was trying to
figure out how this caliph entered the author's mind at all,
and he was thinking, well, maybe it was he was
(11:53):
taken a term for a leader of an Islamic community.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Oh, you mean like a caliph. Yeah, that's right. There's
actually two different ways you'll see it spelled. One is
klafia s c A l a fia. Sometimes you'll see
it Khalifia. But it does date back to that term caliph,
which the Arabic is spelled kh a l I f
a h. And then we mangle it up to be
(12:16):
c a l iph here in English, but that would
be the leader of an Islamic religion or a group
or a state, which is interesting. A lot of times
religious leaders end up being political leaders as well in
that culture.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, and you can read in depth about the Conquistador
in California in a book by W. Michael Mathis called
The Conquistador in California. This strange relationship between fiction and
fact reminds me a little bit of the inspirations we've
(12:51):
seen in earlier episodes. But let's stick with Cortes for
a second, because he did not have the happiest of live.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
This is not at all and just a quick aside.
Spain does have a big relationship with the Islamic culture.
The Iberian Peninsula was actually invaded by Muslim forces in
the year seven eleven and eventually conquered the peninsula. So
it would make sense that that language would be floating
around in the ether there.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And there would be what are called loan words, right,
that came from Arabic and were incorporated into Spanish. Absolutely,
And you know, I really appreciate you bringing up that
point because for a long time from what seven eleven, well,
at various times between seven eleven and fourteen ninety two,
(13:40):
there was a caliphate of Cordoba, right, and Islamic Iberia's
another name you'll hear thrown around. This was not a
solidly Spanish place.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Now, and fourteen ninety two, as it turns out, was
when a Montevallo wrote the book in question. So give
us Cortes, my friend.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Ah Cortes, unhappy life.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
So this expedition to California is one of his last
big plays. This in the fifteen thirties. You'll hear anywhere
between fifteen thirty four to fifteen thirty six. He was
not super popular in Spain. He returned a few years later.
And this is just an aside because I just want
(14:21):
to show that it wasn't all trumpets and angel farts
for this guy. When he returned to Spain in fifteen
forty one. He kept trying to get the Emperor to
meet with him, means like, I've won so much land
for Spain, I've conquered so much territory for you, and
no one would talk to him. And it got so
(14:43):
bad that he had to follow the Emperor's carriage through
town one day and there was a crowd surrounding him.
He forced himself through the crowd. He jumped up on
the carriage, which you know, imagine a presidential motorcade and
and seeing someone run up and try to jump in
the car It's essentially what he did. And the Emperor said,
(15:06):
who is this man? Who is this incredibly, I guess,
rude audacious fellow, and Cortes, according to the record, said,
I am a man who has giving you more provinces
than your ancestors left you cities. He spent a lot
of his own money to finance his expeditions. He was heavily, heavily,
(15:27):
heavily in debt, and when he died in fifteen forty seven,
his body would later be moved multiple times after his burial,
around eight times ugh insult to injury, and when Mexico
became independent, it was thought that his body might be desecrated.
Just a couple of Cortes facts here. The strangest thing, though,
(15:51):
is that when we think of this idea of an
island that's so close to the Garden of e right,
and it's full of gold, we know the Spanish expeditions
were very, very focused on finding those material riches, right.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
It seems strange though that they would name this island
after something that they had to know to be fictional, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
I mean it's sort of the way. We recently went
to a wrestling match out in kind of a rural
part of Georgia, and I really got the sense that
some of the folks there did not know that it
wasn't real, and they were acting accordingly. So you got
to wonder, back in these days, even if something was
a quote unquote work of fiction, was there maybe a
(16:44):
sense that it was written from a place of real
discovery and this was like a mythical land they could find,
Because that's certainly what I'm seeing that they saw this
island and they were like, surely this is the place
of note from this the story.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Right, yeah, Because it's not as if they could hop
on snopes dot com or something and check whether this
was real. And we know that the idea of an
Amazonian legend would have been very familiar to people. We
also have to remember that at this time it was
much much more difficult to differentiate fiction from fact, and
(17:24):
there were a lot of allegorical works of antiquity that
were taken to be literal truths.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Tell you what else is interesting about the book, it's
actually pretty radical. Montevallo really injected this story with a
lot of characteristics that kind of mirrored the experience of
conquered indigenous people and colonized indigenous people throughout the Americas.
Later in the novel, Calafia actually converts to Christianity, coming
(17:54):
from much more of a pagan tradition. It's hard to
say if he was doing this the writer in in
protest or as like satire in some way, or if
it was sort of meant to be almost that's the
word propaganda, right, because that was certainly what the Spanish
conquistadors were all about when they found these indigenous people,
(18:14):
was setting up all these missions, you know, all the
missions that are in California and the presidios and the like,
all about converting the native people to Catholicism, So pretty
interesting trajectory the story has, yeah, and we.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Also can see how this would have been seen as
inspirational to Spanish explorers because they had expelled at the
time the dominant Muslim forces that were ruling Spain and
there was nothing left to conquer unless they set out
to find a western route to India. But no, why
(18:50):
don't we learn a little bit more about Montalvo's book,
because he's a relatively obscure author himself in real life,
but we know a little bit about his care.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
We do, and I have not read it myself, but
I learned a lot of really cool stuff from an
article on Miss Magazine's blog from a Beanie Morino entitled
Klafia Reappropriating the Amazon Queen. And there's a pretty incredible
quote here. So apparently later in the story, Klafia gets
married and she gives her title of queen to one
(19:25):
of her bodyguards, and then this is what she says
to her. She says, you shall be my signor, and
you shall rule over my state. On account of you,
the island will change the style of living. Whereas the
island has been isolated from men for many ages. Henceforth
it will adopt the practice of natural generation of men
and women. So this idea of being outside of the
(19:48):
patriarchy and kind of there was even like when they
were in battle, they would take men as their prisoners
and execute them or keep them around for approcreation purposes.
Now they're kind of opening up their borders to allow
men to live amongst them. And there's this sense that
a lot of this had to do with Montevalo's need
to kind of tame the character. So it is I
(20:11):
think less, I think unfortunately, it is less of a
satire and a little more of the propaganda vibe that
I was talking about earlier, where he kind of has
this strong female character that don't need men and turns
it to the point where they kind of become more
beholden to men and also more Christian ideology.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Oh, in speaking of appropriation, very important point here. Montalvo
did not write all of the books in that series.
The first three books were written by an unknown author.
He picked it up, wrote the fourth book and the
fifth book, which would be The Exploits or the Adventures,
and then after him. The saga continued that there was
a sixth novel, a seventh novel, an eighth, and a
(20:57):
ninth novel that we know of. Jeez, and it's strange
when we think of it alternating between different authors, you know,
especially when those first three books are unknown today.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Could you even get away with it?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
All? Right?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
My my dyslexia is showing. I don't really have dyslexia.
But I've been mispronouncing this man's last name entirely and
correctly for the entire episode, which is fine. When we
need to correct it. I'm just gonna go ahead and
say it right now. I said, I'm Manta Valo and
it's Montalvo. But I just I switched up the the
V and the and the A. It's fine, it's fine.
(21:29):
I just wanted to put it out there now and
then fix it from here on out. But just don't
email us about it. I didn't, you know, I think
you're beating yourself up. I did not, for my part, notice.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
But what I did notice, no, is that there were
a couple of other competing theories about the etymology of
California's name.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, there's one of like a a poem, I think, yes,
the song of Rolling Yeah, give it to us.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Also, the inspiration in part for Stephen King's The Dark
Tower series or a thing based on that child.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Into the Doug Dunslinger. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, So the Song of Roland is an eleventh century
old French epic poem, and people who believe that it
inspired the name California.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I can't not say a California in the set, Stuart.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Sorry, Please do check out the Californians on Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
You heard it? Great show? Yeah right, you should really
check it out.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
It's a it's a weekly sketch show in case anybody
somehow doesn't know.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Been running since like the seventies at the least, right.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
So this poem, the Song of Roland, is about the
defeat of Charlemagne's army by the Muslim army and a
battle in the Pyrenees in seven seventy eight. And in
if let's get specific, in line tw twenty four of
the poem again it's an epic poem. In verse two
(22:59):
o nine, the word Califerne c A l I f
E r n e is one of the lands that's mentioned,
but they don't say in the poem where it is.
They don't tell you what it's next to or you
know it's named after a reference to what people believe
is Africa. Cool, So people are saying, maybe Montalvo found
(23:23):
that somewhere, and maybe that's where he found the name California.
And then there's the other idea that the term could
derive from a Spanish phrase, an old Spanish phrase call
it fournee, an alteration of the old Latin term kalida fornax,
which means hot furnace.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I don't you know what.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
I think we stick with the novel. I think that's
the most interesting answer.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Yeah, I think the thing two is it really is
kind of up in the air. It's not clear when
California was named, and there was no like documentation of
I hear my name this land California, right, you know,
like like like the way you get in other foundings.
You know, it's much more of a thing like that
Mitchell and websketch that we keep referencing ad nauseum. Go
(24:07):
to Ridiculous Historians and join our Facebook group and you
can see it for yourself, or you know, just google it.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
It's not ad nauseum yet, No, it's ad nausium.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
If I think if we do it four times, oh no,
I think it's I think it's it applies, because it
really is. It's very much like I will call this
the West Indies, like why it makes sense, or this
shall be named henceforth New Connecticut.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Or of no, not North Wales, no South Wales.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
But yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
This what's interesting here is that it's also a story
of cartography, because maps were bibles of geography right at
this time, and they didn't agree nearly as often as
maps do nowadays. And maps don't agree here as often
as you might think even in the modern day.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
For sure. I want to backtick it a little bit
to Montalvo. I got it right there, I go, I'm
on the right track. He absolutely eroticized and exoticized this
woman and other people and her her body and her
strength and the like, in almost a fetishistic kind of way.
(25:19):
There's a quote in this fabulous article from a blog
called afro dot com that that reads as such, and
this is a little rough language, but I just want
to it also is it's quite racist? He was quite racist? Yes,
So here here it goes. He describes Queen Califia as
such as a queen quote queen of majestic proportions, more
(25:43):
beautiful than all others and in the very vigor of
her womanhood. She was not petite, nor blonde, nor golden haired.
She was large and black as the ace of clubs. Oof.
That's rough. That's a hard that's a big oof. And
I'm just saying I think it, really it makes sense
(26:03):
that this would have been written in such a way
as to take these characters and twist them to this
particular kind of worldview of the Spanish at the time.
He would have been around during like the Spanish Inquisition
and a lot of the kind of medieval thinking around
some of this stuff, and it shows.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, it calls to mind the person for whom both
New World continents are named after. America is named after
Amerigo Vespucci. Not a good guy, not the best, not
the best one. But luckily, California as a modern state
has moved well beyond the othering racist descriptions found in
(26:53):
ma Tavo's novel It's true, and become not only one
of the most progressive states in the United States, but
also the largest economy I believe.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Oh my god, for sure. Here's a one more thing
from this afro dot com piece. It talks about there's
a woman that's interviewed for this piece, whose name is
Tamra El Dickis, and she is actually mounting, or at
least at the time of this article, was mounting a
(27:24):
campaign to change the seal of California to include an
image of Califia as opposed to Minerva, who was the
Roman goddess of wisdom, and also in the Greek tradition
she would have been Athena exactly. And so she is
(27:45):
featured on the seal that was designed by a Confederate
soldier who just kind of made the seal on his
own and then he even used, according to the article,
a false name and it just kind of stuck. And
this woman, Tamara al Dickas Is mounted a campaign called
(28:05):
Cali is Me to quote right the wrong and put
Califia on the seal, to you know, have this beautiful
black woman featured and to show kind of the history
of the naming. But again all of the stuff that
we've just discussed about that history, right nah exactly on
(28:26):
shall we say yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:27):
And speaking the name One quick correction here, I believe
it was me who said that once. By a time
Cortes tried to name the island quote unquote island Santa
Cruz no, no, no, no, no no. He went back
and tried to rename it Santa Cruz and everybody said, sorry, buddy,
(28:49):
you took your shot. It's California, gotcha. And that's how
it's always been, So think about it. Things went a
little bit differently in history. We would not have the
fine state of California. We'd have the fine state of
Santa Cruz.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
It's very true. And Khalifia is actually featured in a
kind of a multimedia exhibition that ended in two thousand
and eight at Disney's California Adventure Park in Anaheim, where
Whoopi Goldberg actually plays her in sort of projection mapped form,
where there are these busts, these statues of the goddess,
(29:22):
well really a goddess. I guess she was more of
a warrior queen, sure, and she narrates kind of this
history of California with all these you know, Disney bells
and whistles and stuff. But they retired that in eight,
but it was kind of the centerpiece of the whole production,
so they clearly felt pretty good about having that heritage there.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
And we feel pretty good about the name California overall,
despite its dodgy beginnings. We hope this has been as
fascinating and strange for you all as it is for us.
And this concludes our episode today. But we have a
couple of questions for you. First, have you ever seen
a griffin in real life?
Speaker 2 (30:02):
That they're not real? No? Cool? Okay, just make sure
it's not like you know how I feel about birds.
I don't really keep up with them, so maybe I
figure out maybe I missed. But you, like, you know,
what isn't a griffin like a like a bird lion
or something like that. That's what it is.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
They're super cool too, So yeah, surprise us if you
have actually seen a griffin.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Let us know. We will be astounded.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Also, let us know what states you think we should
cover next in an upcoming episode of Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Now we got to keep track. Well, we we're good
so far. Yeah. Yeah, we haven't doubled up, have we? No?
Not yet? Are you certain? Yes? Okay?
Speaker 1 (30:41):
And we are going to uh, we're going to have
so much fun with this.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
It's going to be so strange.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
If you'd like to have fun with us, then check
out our community page on Facebook Ridiculous Historians, where you
can hang out with your fellow listeners and learn some
very strange facts. You can also give us topics suggestinen
who knows they might appear on the air. You can
find us on Instagram and Twitter as well.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
You can also write to us at ridiculous at HowStuffWorks
dot com and we might even read one of your
letters on the show.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
But we have one last thing to do. We hope
you will join us in doing this. Wherever you're listening
to this podcast, say it out loud with us. We
are going to, on the count of three, bid our
super producer Casey Pegram bon voyage. All right, one, two, three.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
A bon voyage Casey.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
He will return very soon. We have a cavalcade of
super producers who will be sitting in.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
A cadre, a cadre stable of them, yes, a roster
of battalion. And again Twist and Casey's arm hopefully is
going to send us some cool audio postcards from a Perry.
I'm gonna make eye contact real quick with him. You
already said, yes, he's nodding. Okay, We'll see you next time.
(32:02):
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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