September 13, 2025 • 34 mins
What are your favorite children's books? In this Classic episode, Ben and the gang acknowledge Dr. Seuss is one of the most well-known writers on the planet. "Green Eggs and Ham", one of his most successful books, sold over 8 million copies by 2016 -- but would you believe he wrote it based entirely on a bet?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, folks, we have a classic episode for you this week.
It's one of our favorite guys, commonly called Doctor Seuss,
and we think you will like it.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
On a log, we think you will like it. With
a frog, we think you will like it. Next to
a goose. We think you will like it writing on
a moose. We hope that you'd like it. We hope
it's your jam. You can eat it gluten free or
with ham.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
This is the story of Doctor Seuss's most famous book,
Green Eggs and Ham. By twenty sixteen, it had sold
over eight million copies. Buddy wrote it on a bet.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, try it, you might like it. Jump right in.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the
(01:15):
show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you for tuning in.
I am pumped about today's episode.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Are we gonna do it in a box? Are we
going to do it about a fox? Are we gonna
do it while eating some locks? Are we going to
do it in a basement beneath Fort Knox? Well, that
sounds like the plot of National Treasure right right?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Well, this is this is a show that's giving us
an excuse to talk about I don't know about you,
my friend. But one of my favorite authors when I
was growing up is just a we Ben Bowlin. I
love Shel Silverstein, Doctor Seuss and Stephen King.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Wow, that's explained so much about how you've turned out.
Thanks man, Hey, who are you? I'm Noel. It's good
to see and I'm gonna do it in a hole,
possibly while eating cereal from a bowl. I'm not as
good at this as Theodora Seuss Geisel. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
We have to also ask super producer Casey Pegram did
you read Doctor Seuss as a child?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Casey, absolutely I did. Yeah, what were some of your
favorite books?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I'm terrible at remembering anything childhood related. It kind of
all flew out of my brain at some point. But
I know I did. I know I had the books around.
I could not tell you titles. I would probably be
able to identify them if I went and looked at
covers online, but that'd be about it.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
The covers are a big giveaway that that's what gets
burned into my memory. I don't remember the titles very
much either, Casey, but lately I've been kind of exploring them,
especially during this research, and it was a real nostalgia
blast from the past. That's redundant. That was good the
nostalgia blast. Nostalgia blast is already a blast from.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
The well if it was a nostalgia blast that happened
in the past. If you're remembering a time nostalgia blast
hit you, so like even if it was just twenty
minutes ago, it still worked.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
That's a good point, Ben, Thank you for saving me.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
No No, I got asked before we go any further.
Did you have one book by Seuss that really like
stuck out in your brain?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I do. It was One Fish, Two Fish, Redfish, Bluefish,
because I distinctly remember that being the first thing where
I was aware of the fact that I could read.
Oh that's metacognition, yeut, there, But it really is.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
It really is.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And I might be manufacturing that memory, but it stuck
with me. I remember being very proud of myself that
I could read. But I also think it might have
been some combination of memorization as well, because it was
read to me, and I think I may have been
looking at it and reading it from memory and thinking
that I was actually reading the worst Because I was
very very little. This is a very early memory.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
And you also have a stunning innate sense of rhythm
and cadence.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
As does doctor Theodor Suth Keizel, Yes, Geisel, Geisel.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
For the record, my favorite for a long time was
The butter Battle Book. I thought that thing was an
epic tale of like tragedy and heartbreak and the human condition.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Well, that's the thing that's neat about this guy's books
is they kind of have these big, lofty themes, like
the Lora Acts, for example, which is sort of an
environmentalist look on conservation and like saving the forests and
how man is like raping and pillaging Mother Earth and
all that stuff, but not in a particularly heavy handed
(04:31):
or pedantic way, and in a way that's pretty approachable
to you know, youngsters or whatever, but still has some
pretty important messages.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah. I think that's a great point. And one thing,
one thing that a lot of kids don't know when
we're growing up and reading Doctor Seuss books is that
Theodor himself was allegedly not the biggest fan of children,
but he was a really interesting guy. And I think
you and I probably had a similar moment later in
(04:59):
life where we realized that his family originally pronounced the
name Seuss, as Zoyce like zo Icee yikes, which I
think is a great word. Zeikes is what I would say. Yeah,
he's interesting for a lot of reasons. He got his
start working in like advertising as a cartoonist, and there's
(05:20):
actually some rarely problematic cartoons you can dig up that
he did for It's like a mosquito spray called like
ze or something like that, or like bleep, I don't know,
but it's it's like all of these kind of like
African jungle scenes with his very recognizable elephant. It looks
like something out of one of his books, only it's
(05:40):
got a lot of like natives depicted in that horrible
way that you see in early you know, Disney animations
or Warner Brothers cartoons that are now considered completely embarrassing
to those companies that are responsible for all this, like
classic children's entertainment.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
The same was true for Guys Soul, and he also
did some propaganda around the Japanese with some pretty nasty
depictions of those folks during war during World War two exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, he was nothing if not prolific, But we did
feel would be remiss on our part if we did
not include the less than wonderful, whimsical aspects of his life.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
He was a great cartoonist and a great writer, but
still a person, and you might be surprised to learn
the process that he used to write a lot of
these books. The guy was so prolific. He has what
over forty children's books. Yeah, and that's not counting any
of his advertisement stuff. That's not counting the short lived
(06:46):
comic strip he did before called Hedgy I believe. But
the weird thing is, while we all kind of, I
think naturally want to have this romanticized idea of a
guy who just wakes up in a very bright, pastel
cartoony house and says, what wonderful lessons will I teach
children today, that's not the case. In fact, there was
(07:09):
a lot of calculation that went into the way he
wrote books. His first successful children's book was called Cat
and the Hat. And the story about Cat and the
Hat is really surprising. It starts with a guy named
John Hershey who was a big time journalist and in
nineteen fifty four, when writing in Life magazine, he put
(07:32):
out an article called why do students bog down?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
On first r?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
A local committee sheds light on national problem colon reading
that was colon the punctuation mark, not reading.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Colon's And is that the one that was kind of
a backlash against those super dull Dick and Jane primer books. Yes,
just the same, which is like see Dick walk, see
Jane walk too. Yeah, there is a dog. It is
spot watch Spot walk to Jane. Uh huh, stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, because they had a more rigid system of introducing
vocabulary words to children. And after reading this article, the
director of Houghton Mifflin, the publishing company, the director of
Houghton Mifflin's educational division, a guy named William Spaulding, got
Theodore Geisel in the room and he said, look, I
(08:20):
need you to write a story that first graders actually like.
The actual quote is I need you to write a
story that first graders can't put down. And then he
put on some weird restrictions.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I love this.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, this part was really interesting to me too. So
there was a list that Spaulding had, which I guess
came from the Educational Division, of three hundred and forty
eight words that were selected from a standard first grader's
vocabulary list, and Spalding said Okay, THEO, you've got to
write this book, but you can only use words from
(08:54):
this list, and you can't use them all. You can
only use what two hundred and twenty five exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, And I think originally he wanted the story to
be about like a queen cat and a king cat. Yeah,
but queen wasn't on the list, so he had to
like adjust, and then he realized that hat rhymed with
cat and that was a good starting point and the
rest is history.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Which, yeah, it took him nine months to write this book, primarily,
I believe because of that word restriction, and according to
the story, he didn't quite hit two twenty five.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
It was still a little bit longer, right, Yeah, I
think he, you know, if we're going to call that
a bet, then he sort of failed the exact parameters
that were given to him, but he came damn close.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, two hundred and thirty six words. And I get
the feeling this was almost more of a mandate from
his boss. I love thinking about what the original story
with the king cat and the Queen cat would have been,
because now I see this picture of Theodore Geisel like
pulling his hair out, gnashing his teeth and trying to
figure out how to depict this cat as somehow regal
(09:59):
or kingly, and then the best he to come up
with is all right, he's got a hat because we
can't use crown.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah. I feel like that's what happened. That's probably true.
That's a good point. And of course, you know when
I say the rest is history, I mean like literary history.
It's sold a million copies, like right off the rip,
I think in the first couple of years, and it
was out in print, right yeah, and he was able
to quit his day job as an ad guy an admin,
(10:26):
you know, and went on to become a whimsical children's
book writer full time. Zeyce, that's my new exclamation. Loved it.
That's quite good.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I also like, what was the name of that pesticide company?
Was his z to or was it something you know?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I actually looked at it. It's called flit flit. Yeah,
like you know bugs, they flipped and this is what
you scored at him to make them stop flitting forever.
Stop the flit.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I don't know why I'm feeling these catchphrases so much,
my friend, but we know that a lot of people
love the way Zeyce wrote, and so you know what,
I'm just gonna call him doctor Seuss for this show
for our purposes here. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Okay, it
just feels more comfortable, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
We all know who doctor Zeus say is right, but
this doctor Zeis guy. Yeah, it sounds like some sort
of mad scientists. So he does.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
So this guy's career takes off. He becomes a prolific
author of children's books that are loved around the world,
especially the English speaking world obviously. And then in nineteen sixty,
just about three years after Cat and the Hats come out,
he has a strange conversation with a guy named Bennett Surf,
(11:43):
the co founder of Random House.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
He does it very similar to the conversation he had
with mister Hershey that kicked off his career, you know,
in such a huge way. With Kat and the Hat.
This guy really ups the Annie here in terms of
what that first bet I guess or challenge would have been.
And he challenges SEUs to write a children's book that
uses fifty unique words or less unique being individual.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Words, which sounds like if you're just thinking about this
initially at first, blush, This could sound like, hey, that's
enough words for a children's book, it's not, because what
they mean by unique words is that let's say if
you had a word that was just I'll pick one admiral, sure, right,
then you can use that one word as many times
(12:31):
as you would like.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Right. It's like that vocabulary list we talked about earlier,
and I think you know it was around two hundred
and sixty words for cat and the hat. So that's
and that's a pretty relatively straightforward, sing songy, kind of
like simple language book. So that this is like really
taking it to the next level, because to use fifty
words and still have it ay tell a story and
(12:53):
not just be completely just see Dick Rudd right exactly.
So he took this as a challenge and he delivered.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I propose that we play a game with the listeners,
nol because we have this list. We did the fifty words, okay,
so let's let's read out some of these words, not
not all fifty, and let's like skip the ones that
automatically give it away, and let's see if you can
guess which book this is. Okay, are you ready, folks?
R A am and anywhere? Are b boat box car
(13:28):
could dark do eat here house? I if in let like,
I think that's pretty hard to guess. We didn't have
any really juicy.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
And there You're not going to finish? Is that it? Oh? No,
do you want to do? You want to do the
rest of them? Are you skipping the word green? Is
that in there? Oh? Yeah, casey on the case Wow, spoiler,
I love it. No, we hadn't gotten there yet, but yes,
in fact, green eggs and ham are all in this list.
(13:57):
And that's ham like the food, not ham like hard
as am off.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Right. That was a little bit before Susan's time, or
maybe that was part of his uncollected work.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
I actually read somewhere that he coined the word crunk,
did he? But it didn't mean the same thing as
it means in the parlance of today. Oh that's so cool.
But it appeared first in print in a doctor Seys's book.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
This book that he wrote on a bet is known
today as green eggs and ham. And I was thinking,
there's a there's a neat coincidence here when he has
this conversation with Ben at Surf when they make that
bet for what fifty dollars? Right, it works out to
a dollar a word which I thought was I don't
know if that's on purpose, but it's pretty neat.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
And I think a fifty dollars bet back then would
have been a couple hundred bucks now, right, three hundred
bucks maybe.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, a little close, maybe a little closer to four
oh okay, but yeah, so it's it's still a significant
amount of money, but to this guy who's a best
selling off now, it's not like a make or break
thing as far as his bank accounts can do.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
We know where this falls in the Doctor Seuss bibliography.
Is this sort of mid career.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
This was since nineteen sixty when the bet occurs, So
that's right after that's three years after Cat and the Hat.
Oh okay, this is relatively early lat koreer Y's for sure.
And so when he writes this book, we can only
imagine that it's a little less of a laborious process
because he's already been through it before with Cat in
the Hat.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, except this is like a little bit more challenging. Right,
This has been a parent like, you know, even limiting
his verbal palette even more. Right.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, So we mentioned that this has a One of
the brilliant things about this book is it does actually
have a plot that you can follow, you know what
I mean, there's some tension in there. What's the plot.
Our protagonist is named Sam i Am.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
He is Sam Sam he is well yeah, and then
there's him right, and then there's this other character who
is who goes nameless and he's sort of the sad
sack kind of fellow who Sam keeps trying to force
him to eat green eggs and ham. And he proceeds
to go through these various scenarios. As our buddy the
(16:12):
quizzer would say, there we go, and the guy just
keeps he's like running away from him. It's actually kind
of a stalker situation because the nameless character is literally
trying to escape this Sam i Am who keeps popping
up with green eggs and ham, you know. And then
he's like, you know, would you do it on a house,
a car, a tree, with all these different things with
(16:33):
a mouse? Would a mouse change the scene? And exactly exactly,
And at the end of the day, there there's you know,
they're surrounded by the carnage that's been caused by this
dude literally trying to run for his life from this
psychotic Sam i am character. I mean really is if
you look back up the book now, Sam I am
is very sinister. He goes hard on, he goes am,
(16:55):
yeah he really does. Yeah, and green eggs. And at
the end the moral of the story is the nameless
grumpy dude eats the green eggs and ham and he
likes it.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Right, Sam, if you will let me be, I will
try them. You will see. And then he tries them
and say, I like green eggs and ham.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I do.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I like them, Sam, i am. And then it goes
on the refrain flips and now he's talking, I want
to do it in all those places. Bring the mouse, please?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
A fox? You say, probably this green eggs and ham
with anything, But I know you can only be a
fox and mouse. And what else a goat? A goat?
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah, it's weird because if you look at the way.
One thing that's really impressive about this is if you
look at just the lyrics or the poetry itself typed out,
it's four pages long, which surprised me because it's four
pages fifty words.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
It's tough. It's all about placement. It's like a comic book.
I mean a lot of these things are like graphic novels,
and the text is very much incorporated into the design.
And you know, let's not forget Sus wrote the text
and he drew all the images, and he's single handedly
responsible for creating these worlds which are very uniquely him.
You know, I think he's a pretty interesting artist, kind
of a renaissance man in that way. I also think
(18:14):
it's funny that both Ham and Goat both have modern
day acronym equivalents. And krunk, you know, I think he
was onto something. I think he was too.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
We should do a deep dive read into the works
of doctor Seuss. We should also mention, by the way
that yes, doctor Seuss did succeed. This wasn't like a
cat and a hat thing where he went a little
over his word count. He managed to make a coherent
story with only fifty words. He turned it around really quickly.
It was published on August twelfth, nineteen sixty, and it
(18:46):
became his best selling book. You know, it's purposely meant
for beginning readers, right, But there is one one twist
to the story that I find hilarious just because of
its petty nature.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
There's a couple of good twists I want to hear yours. Okay, Well,
here's one. I think.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
This is the question that's on a lot of our
minds right now. What happened to the bet? It turns
out Bennett Sarah didn't pay up at all.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
What a jerk. And he was a co founder of
Random House. It's not like he was hurting for the scratch.
Did they publish the book? Yes, yes they did, old
Random House and the Living Books Company. So it stands
to reason that this dude not only didn't pay up,
he benefited from it. So he's the double cheapskate. Yeah,
massive benefits. What's one of your twists. There's a couple
of other good ones. One of them is that there
(19:32):
were some pretty bad reviews for this book, specifically from
some children's librarians. The New York Public Library actually had
a card catalog of hand typed children's book reviews by
their librarian staff. And here is a choice exerpt from
one of these reviews. Sam I am won't eat green
(19:53):
eggs and ham until after many pages of learning words,
he tries them. Book is typical of Seus's late period,
and his output, being as prolific as it is. It's
alarming to think of the onslaught that can ensue if
these books are continually added to the collection. This is
the best line. There must be better ways of teaching
a child to read than this not recommended.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
I saw that one too. It was it was strange
because we see this kind of harsh reviewing repeated. It's
a cyclical thing in children's literature, right, like Cloudy with
a Chance of Meatballs also got some shade thrown at it.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I think there was an issue with it being like
not vegan friendly. I it's like more of like our
PC police kind of situation that we're living in right now.
There's a good one here, Ben, that you told me
about where a federal judge actually referenced this work in
an opinion, an official judicial opinion. Yes it's true.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
In two thousand and seven, a US District court judge
named James Muirhead received a hard boiled egg in the
mail from an inmate, and the inmate was sending this
hard oiled egg through the post to protest his diet
while he was incarcerated. The judge ordered the egg destroyed
with the following with the following language in his court order,
(21:13):
I do not like eggs in the file. I do
not like them in any style. I will not take
them fried or boiled. I will not take them poached
or broiled. I will not take them soft or scrambled.
Despite an argument, well rambled, no fan, I am of
the egg at hand. Destroy that egg today, today, today,
I say, without delay, this judge must have had.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
A long week. He's a real character. You know what.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
We could also do an episode on bizarre judge rulings,
because there have been judges who respond with poetry, sometimes
in very serious situations, and there have been judges who,
because they have complete jurisdiction, have imposed some really weird,
unorthodox penalties for crimes.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah. Remember that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry has
to wear the sandwich board with the like I steal
forks from restaurants or whatever, a scarlet letter punishment. They
call that. That's a thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
And this is just one aspect of the tremendous influence
that Green eggs and ham specifically has had on modern culture.
I think now it's in sixty different formats. It's in
a multitude of languages, which confuses me because surely there
would be some languages where it's more difficult to do
(22:33):
that story just because of sentence structure or something.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Right, Oh yeah, it does seem that way. Well, still
they pulled it off.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
I would love to have a copy of Green Eggs
and Ham in a different language because it would help
me learn that language pretty easily, right, or.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Fifty words of it at least? Yeah, wow, Yeah, you
would have the like a first grader's grasp perhaps, now
last kindergarten maybe. And if you so desired, you could
potentially use the works of Doctor Zeus to learn Latin,
even though it's sort of incorrectly said that Latin is
a dead language. But you can definitely find different books
(23:12):
that are translated into Latin. But here's the thing. It's
hard to translate this kind of stylized writing like Doctor
Seuss into a language like that, isn't that. Yeah?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
According to Terrence Tunberg, who's been teaching Latin for decades
and decades, green Eggs and Ham was very difficult to translate.
He and his spouse Jennifer, had already translated several children's
books into Latin, and they tackled Green Eggs and Ham
with the title being can you help me out with
(23:45):
the Latin here?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
And oh boy, uh, variant ova verant parana with lots
of exclamation marks. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
The Tunbergs have also translated other Doctor Seuss books specific
but they said this wouldn't was one of the toughest
because of the simplified language and the short length. But
it's worth doing because it gives Latin a more contemporary
feel and it feels less like a dead language exactly.
(24:18):
And that is the story of Green Eggs and Ham
so far. However, that is not the end of these
Doctor Seuss facts. We found several. Some of them are darker,
some of them are just kind of hilarious. Yeah, Like
did you hear about how he's traumatized by Teddy Roosevelt?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, it did. Ben. I had to do with some
money he got from his grandfather, isn't that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:39):
World War One was in full swing and Doctor Seuss
was a boy scout and he went door to door
and eventually, because his grandfather bought one thousand dollars worth
of war bonds, he became one of the most successful
war bond salesmen in his town. And they were brought
(24:59):
on stage, him and nine other boy scouts to the
municipal auditorium. And who was there to present the award.
Theodore Roosevelt himself, the President of the United States.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah, he was there to officiate this ceremony to pana
metal on these plucky young lads and old Teddy Seuss
was the last one in line to receive this major award.
But it turns out that they didn't have enough medals.
And then Roosevelt gets to him and he doesn't have anything.
(25:33):
He just looks over at the people on stage. It's like,
who the hell is this kid? Get him out of here,
and they trundle him off stage and he gets nothing.
It's like Willie Walker style. Man. Wow.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
For the rest of his life he had a crippling
fear of crowds, and he actually skipped a lot of
speaking engagements when he was a famous author because he
was terrified they would be publicly humiliated.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Again. Well, there's also not a lot of interviews with him,
like video interviews with him that you can even find.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Right, let's see what else is. His first book was
The Complete and Unabridged pocket Book of Boners.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Wow, is it just like a visual compendium of different boners.
It was.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
This is back when a boner just meant an error,
Like that was a real bone. Oh okay, okay, So
the book was it was a compilation, but it was
a compilation of lists of silly, incorrect answers to questions
given by children. It did have a bunch of risque
jokes and illustrations. He knew the other meaning of boners.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
You know, he did.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
He was a bodie boy. He was, he was, And
I guess you could find a copy of that. It
first published in nineteen thirty one, and New York Times
called it hilarious.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I love sixcinct. New York Times reviews like that. They
usually so overly verbose. Have you ever seen Halloweens Grinch Night, Ben, Yeah,
I love it. It's so trippy, it's so cool. It's awesome,
and it's very psychedelic and hetty and strange. So if
you haven't seen that one, it's a quick one to
watch around Halloween time. It's actually pretty spooky. This little
(27:08):
kid and there's all these creatures, and Halloween is Grench
nine and the hacking sacks are yowling. We din't even
talk about that. He invents such great creature names. I love.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I'm glad you mentioned this because I have a little
bit of a bone to pick with this. I love
Halloween is Grench Knight. However, I think in some recent
years Doctor Seuss's good name has been besmirched with terrible
film adaptations such as The Cat and the Hat. Oh
with Mike Myers. Yeah, gross, grown, I know, And I
(27:39):
used to love Mike Myers when I was a kid.
You probably did too. With Wayne's World Sired Live all
that stuff, Austin Powers. But apparently behind the scenes, and
we have n't. I haven't met the guy at least,
so I can't confirm or deny this, But apparently behind
the scenes story is he's a real pill to work.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
I have heard this. You've heard it him, especially like
on Trek or whatever, like, yeah, yeah, no, I've definitely
heard that, which is a shame. You know what else
is quite bad? What's that how the Grinch Stole Christmas?
It was like a short little little book and a
short little cartoon and they try to stretch it into
like a two hour movie. It was a great cartoon also,
you know what I mean? I don't know, It's just
(28:16):
I wish they would stop.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Are we Does this mean that we're getting old? Isn't
there another Grinch? Reboot coming out there as we're recording this.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Well, I think it's animator. It's like it's like, you know,
CGI or whatever. Oh. He also invented the word nerd. Yep,
didn't he he did.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
This guy is a real wordsmith. So one last thing
I would like to contribute. I want to see your
opinion on this nool and we want to hear your opinion.
Ridiculous historians. Apparently doctor Seuss had dabbled in erotica. Excuse me, erotica?
Oh what I thought you said?
Speaker 2 (28:49):
He had contributed art to something called The Bedroom Companion
that had a comic showing. Uh.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Well, let's just say he contributed to that to that book,
and as a condition of his contract later on in life,
he said, Okay, i'll write children's books for you only
if you let me write an adult book first. The
Seven Lady Godivas a story about seven naked women.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah, and they're writing on one of his you know,
like signature, kind of nondescript beasts, like it's not it's
not a horse, it's not a hippo. I don't know,
it's it's got traits of all of those.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
It's probably got a name like a barkernof or something exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
There you go, Ben, and it is, you know, a stride.
This creature is uh two three four sixty seven naked
women of all shapes and sizes. Yeah, in his defense
of all shapes and sizes. Here's the thing, Why do
we need to defend them? This is this is delightful.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Well, the book flopped and he was kind of uh,
he was kind of peet about it because he had
to settle for a career as a children's writer. This
is a quote from doctor Seuss. Okay, it's not us say,
it's a quote from him. He said, I tried to
draw the sexiest babes I could, but they came out
looking absurd.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Well, what the what is it? They look like doctor
Seus's characters? What did he think? There's nothing sexy about them.
They've all got like who hair, they're all hooviy and
yeah big time. Well you can't say the guy wasn't interesting.
When did he pass? Ben?
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Doctor Zeuss actually lived a very long time. He did
not pass away until September twenty fourth, nineteen ninety one.
He was eighty seven years old.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
I remember that, I remember when it happened. I mean
I was very young, but I definitely distinctly remember the
death of doctor Zeuss.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
You know who else another personal legend of ours who
passed away recently, stan Lee. It's true, all right, p
stan You know it's it's strange because I'm sure that
he'll still be in cameos for a few more movies
because they must have filmed a bunch of I.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Guess they would have had to. Yeah, it makes sense
doing a batch.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
And this reminds me he was in his nineties, right, Yeah,
he did look great and he also growing up as
a kid who didn't have a ton of friends, I
think stan Lee taught me a ton about reading and
really added to my vocabulary, you know what I mean.
He's the guy who brought back excelsior.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah. I keep saying that. I don't know what that means.
It's like excellent, Oh okay, got it. There were a
lot of tributes to him when he passed away, and
everyone was saying excelsior. I thought it was some sort
of stomach medicine it's used to.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
I guess it means that something is of superior quality,
got it? Like a little more flashy way of saying
grade a number one. But the reason I'm bringing up
stan Lee here, Noel, is because you and I made
a mandate and we we got a kind of a
bumpy start. Our mandate was to recommend comic books. Remember,
(31:51):
we did do that.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
We did do that, We did say that, and we
kind of you know, this is a perfect episode to
do that in because I would argue that Sus is
kind of a graphic novel in some ways. I would agree,
I would agree. What do you dig in these days?
These days? I'm digging some.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Okay, I've been really into some horror comics because you know,
it's always kind of Halloween in my heart. And there's
a comic called Regression, which is terrifying, not for children,
it's about reincarnation. And then there's another comic series that's
complete called The Clean Room, which is about aliens. Or
(32:30):
maybe something different to say anymore would be to do
you a disservice coold.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Have you had a chance to check out Nameless? Nameless? Yes? Yeah,
yeah yeah. Nameless was the one shot four issues right, yes,
by Grant Morrison, who I'm always in love with everything
he does. I'm just really trippy out there, existential dread
almost he kind of veers into love crafty and territory,
and this one is no exception. This one's about like
(32:57):
space madness and just like demonic possession and narcissism and
all kinds of crazy stuff doorways to other dimensions. But
it's a tight little story and the art is insane,
insanely not for the feint of heart.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah, not only is not for children, I would say
it's not for you if you're already feeling a little bit,
you know, less than good.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
It's agreed. It's a bit of a bummer. I'm so
glad you read that one man.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
That's one of those that I keep buying copies of
and I keep giving them away.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah, I have a hardcover of it. And just the
art is just alone is fantastic. So we have met
our mandate for this episode. We talked about a crazy,
weird children's book, Guy recommended some comics, had a good
time learning the origins of the word crunk, and.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Nerd invented a new phrase to yell out and exclamation
zoice soice.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
It's also kind of like noise noise choice noy soyce.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
And we hope that you enjoyed this episode even half
as much as as we enjoyed exploring this story with you.
That's all for today. Stay tuned for our next episode,
when we examine beer, A lot of beer, A whole
lot of beer, like a dangerous amounts of beer.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
In the meantime, thanks of course to our super producer
Casey Pegram, Thanks to our research associate Gabe, Thanks.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
To Alex Williams our Pal who composed our theme, and
thanks to you Ben for being a dapper and intelligent
co host.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
As always, thanks man, I recently did my laundry. That's
probably probably way it smell fresh and clean, my man.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Thank you. No, you're welcome. Goodbye. Everyone. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Well, folks, we have a classic episode for you this week.
It's one of our favorite guys, commonly called Doctor Seuss,
and we think you will like it.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
On a log, we think you will like it. With
a frog, we think you will like it. Next to
a goose. We think you will like it writing on
a moose. We hope that you'd like it. We hope
it's your jam. You can eat it gluten free or
with ham.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
This is the story of Doctor Seuss's most famous book,
Green Eggs and Ham. By twenty sixteen, it had sold
over eight million copies. Buddy wrote it on a bet.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, try it, you might like it. Jump right in.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the
(01:15):
show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you for tuning in.
I am pumped about today's episode.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Are we gonna do it in a box? Are we
going to do it about a fox? Are we gonna
do it while eating some locks? Are we going to
do it in a basement beneath Fort Knox? Well, that
sounds like the plot of National Treasure right right?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Well, this is this is a show that's giving us
an excuse to talk about I don't know about you,
my friend. But one of my favorite authors when I
was growing up is just a we Ben Bowlin. I
love Shel Silverstein, Doctor Seuss and Stephen King.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Wow, that's explained so much about how you've turned out.
Thanks man, Hey, who are you? I'm Noel. It's good
to see and I'm gonna do it in a hole,
possibly while eating cereal from a bowl. I'm not as
good at this as Theodora Seuss Geisel. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
We have to also ask super producer Casey Pegram did
you read Doctor Seuss as a child?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Casey, absolutely I did. Yeah, what were some of your
favorite books?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I'm terrible at remembering anything childhood related. It kind of
all flew out of my brain at some point. But
I know I did. I know I had the books around.
I could not tell you titles. I would probably be
able to identify them if I went and looked at
covers online, but that'd be about it.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
The covers are a big giveaway that that's what gets
burned into my memory. I don't remember the titles very
much either, Casey, but lately I've been kind of exploring them,
especially during this research, and it was a real nostalgia
blast from the past. That's redundant. That was good the
nostalgia blast. Nostalgia blast is already a blast from.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
The well if it was a nostalgia blast that happened
in the past. If you're remembering a time nostalgia blast
hit you, so like even if it was just twenty
minutes ago, it still worked.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
That's a good point, Ben, Thank you for saving me.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
No No, I got asked before we go any further.
Did you have one book by Seuss that really like
stuck out in your brain?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I do. It was One Fish, Two Fish, Redfish, Bluefish,
because I distinctly remember that being the first thing where
I was aware of the fact that I could read.
Oh that's metacognition, yeut, there, But it really is.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
It really is.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And I might be manufacturing that memory, but it stuck
with me. I remember being very proud of myself that
I could read. But I also think it might have
been some combination of memorization as well, because it was
read to me, and I think I may have been
looking at it and reading it from memory and thinking
that I was actually reading the worst Because I was
very very little. This is a very early memory.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
And you also have a stunning innate sense of rhythm
and cadence.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
As does doctor Theodor Suth Keizel, Yes, Geisel, Geisel.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
For the record, my favorite for a long time was
The butter Battle Book. I thought that thing was an
epic tale of like tragedy and heartbreak and the human condition.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Well, that's the thing that's neat about this guy's books
is they kind of have these big, lofty themes, like
the Lora Acts, for example, which is sort of an
environmentalist look on conservation and like saving the forests and
how man is like raping and pillaging Mother Earth and
all that stuff, but not in a particularly heavy handed
(04:31):
or pedantic way, and in a way that's pretty approachable
to you know, youngsters or whatever, but still has some
pretty important messages.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah. I think that's a great point. And one thing,
one thing that a lot of kids don't know when
we're growing up and reading Doctor Seuss books is that
Theodor himself was allegedly not the biggest fan of children,
but he was a really interesting guy. And I think
you and I probably had a similar moment later in
(04:59):
life where we realized that his family originally pronounced the
name Seuss, as Zoyce like zo Icee yikes, which I
think is a great word. Zeikes is what I would say. Yeah,
he's interesting for a lot of reasons. He got his
start working in like advertising as a cartoonist, and there's
(05:20):
actually some rarely problematic cartoons you can dig up that
he did for It's like a mosquito spray called like
ze or something like that, or like bleep, I don't know,
but it's it's like all of these kind of like
African jungle scenes with his very recognizable elephant. It looks
like something out of one of his books, only it's
(05:40):
got a lot of like natives depicted in that horrible
way that you see in early you know, Disney animations
or Warner Brothers cartoons that are now considered completely embarrassing
to those companies that are responsible for all this, like
classic children's entertainment.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
The same was true for Guys Soul, and he also
did some propaganda around the Japanese with some pretty nasty
depictions of those folks during war during World War two exactly.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, he was nothing if not prolific, But we did
feel would be remiss on our part if we did
not include the less than wonderful, whimsical aspects of his life.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
He was a great cartoonist and a great writer, but
still a person, and you might be surprised to learn
the process that he used to write a lot of
these books. The guy was so prolific. He has what
over forty children's books. Yeah, and that's not counting any
of his advertisement stuff. That's not counting the short lived
(06:46):
comic strip he did before called Hedgy I believe. But
the weird thing is, while we all kind of, I
think naturally want to have this romanticized idea of a
guy who just wakes up in a very bright, pastel
cartoony house and says, what wonderful lessons will I teach
children today, that's not the case. In fact, there was
(07:09):
a lot of calculation that went into the way he
wrote books. His first successful children's book was called Cat
and the Hat. And the story about Cat and the
Hat is really surprising. It starts with a guy named
John Hershey who was a big time journalist and in
nineteen fifty four, when writing in Life magazine, he put
(07:32):
out an article called why do students bog down?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
On first r?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
A local committee sheds light on national problem colon reading
that was colon the punctuation mark, not reading.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Colon's And is that the one that was kind of
a backlash against those super dull Dick and Jane primer books. Yes,
just the same, which is like see Dick walk, see
Jane walk too. Yeah, there is a dog. It is
spot watch Spot walk to Jane. Uh huh, stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, because they had a more rigid system of introducing
vocabulary words to children. And after reading this article, the
director of Houghton Mifflin, the publishing company, the director of
Houghton Mifflin's educational division, a guy named William Spaulding, got
Theodore Geisel in the room and he said, look, I
(08:20):
need you to write a story that first graders actually like.
The actual quote is I need you to write a
story that first graders can't put down. And then he
put on some weird restrictions.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I love this.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Yeah, this part was really interesting to me too. So
there was a list that Spaulding had, which I guess
came from the Educational Division, of three hundred and forty
eight words that were selected from a standard first grader's
vocabulary list, and Spalding said Okay, THEO, you've got to
write this book, but you can only use words from
(08:54):
this list, and you can't use them all. You can
only use what two hundred and twenty five exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, And I think originally he wanted the story to
be about like a queen cat and a king cat. Yeah,
but queen wasn't on the list, so he had to
like adjust, and then he realized that hat rhymed with
cat and that was a good starting point and the
rest is history.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Which, yeah, it took him nine months to write this book, primarily,
I believe because of that word restriction, and according to
the story, he didn't quite hit two twenty five.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
It was still a little bit longer, right, Yeah, I
think he, you know, if we're going to call that
a bet, then he sort of failed the exact parameters
that were given to him, but he came damn close.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, two hundred and thirty six words. And I get
the feeling this was almost more of a mandate from
his boss. I love thinking about what the original story
with the king cat and the Queen cat would have been,
because now I see this picture of Theodore Geisel like
pulling his hair out, gnashing his teeth and trying to
figure out how to depict this cat as somehow regal
(09:59):
or kingly, and then the best he to come up
with is all right, he's got a hat because we
can't use crown.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah. I feel like that's what happened. That's probably true.
That's a good point. And of course, you know when
I say the rest is history, I mean like literary history.
It's sold a million copies, like right off the rip,
I think in the first couple of years, and it
was out in print, right yeah, and he was able
to quit his day job as an ad guy an admin,
(10:26):
you know, and went on to become a whimsical children's
book writer full time. Zeyce, that's my new exclamation. Loved it.
That's quite good.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
I also like, what was the name of that pesticide company?
Was his z to or was it something you know?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I actually looked at it. It's called flit flit. Yeah,
like you know bugs, they flipped and this is what
you scored at him to make them stop flitting forever.
Stop the flit.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I don't know why I'm feeling these catchphrases so much,
my friend, but we know that a lot of people
love the way Zeyce wrote, and so you know what,
I'm just gonna call him doctor Seuss for this show
for our purposes here. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Okay, it
just feels more comfortable, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
We all know who doctor Zeus say is right, but
this doctor Zeis guy. Yeah, it sounds like some sort
of mad scientists. So he does.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
So this guy's career takes off. He becomes a prolific
author of children's books that are loved around the world,
especially the English speaking world obviously. And then in nineteen sixty,
just about three years after Cat and the Hats come out,
he has a strange conversation with a guy named Bennett Surf,
(11:43):
the co founder of Random House.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
He does it very similar to the conversation he had
with mister Hershey that kicked off his career, you know,
in such a huge way. With Kat and the Hat.
This guy really ups the Annie here in terms of
what that first bet I guess or challenge would have been.
And he challenges SEUs to write a children's book that
uses fifty unique words or less unique being individual.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Words, which sounds like if you're just thinking about this
initially at first, blush, This could sound like, hey, that's
enough words for a children's book, it's not, because what
they mean by unique words is that let's say if
you had a word that was just I'll pick one admiral, sure, right,
then you can use that one word as many times
(12:31):
as you would like.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Right. It's like that vocabulary list we talked about earlier,
and I think you know it was around two hundred
and sixty words for cat and the hat. So that's
and that's a pretty relatively straightforward, sing songy, kind of
like simple language book. So that this is like really
taking it to the next level, because to use fifty
words and still have it ay tell a story and
(12:53):
not just be completely just see Dick Rudd right exactly.
So he took this as a challenge and he delivered.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I propose that we play a game with the listeners,
nol because we have this list. We did the fifty words, okay,
so let's let's read out some of these words, not
not all fifty, and let's like skip the ones that
automatically give it away, and let's see if you can
guess which book this is. Okay, are you ready, folks?
R A am and anywhere? Are b boat box car
(13:28):
could dark do eat here house? I if in let like,
I think that's pretty hard to guess. We didn't have
any really juicy.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
And there You're not going to finish? Is that it? Oh? No,
do you want to do? You want to do the
rest of them? Are you skipping the word green? Is
that in there? Oh? Yeah, casey on the case Wow, spoiler,
I love it. No, we hadn't gotten there yet, but yes,
in fact, green eggs and ham are all in this list.
(13:57):
And that's ham like the food, not ham like hard
as am off.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Right. That was a little bit before Susan's time, or
maybe that was part of his uncollected work.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
I actually read somewhere that he coined the word crunk,
did he? But it didn't mean the same thing as
it means in the parlance of today. Oh that's so cool.
But it appeared first in print in a doctor Seys's book.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
This book that he wrote on a bet is known
today as green eggs and ham. And I was thinking,
there's a there's a neat coincidence here when he has
this conversation with Ben at Surf when they make that
bet for what fifty dollars? Right, it works out to
a dollar a word which I thought was I don't
know if that's on purpose, but it's pretty neat.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
And I think a fifty dollars bet back then would
have been a couple hundred bucks now, right, three hundred
bucks maybe.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, a little close, maybe a little closer to four
oh okay, but yeah, so it's it's still a significant
amount of money, but to this guy who's a best
selling off now, it's not like a make or break
thing as far as his bank accounts can do.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
We know where this falls in the Doctor Seuss bibliography.
Is this sort of mid career.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
This was since nineteen sixty when the bet occurs, So
that's right after that's three years after Cat and the Hat.
Oh okay, this is relatively early lat koreer Y's for sure.
And so when he writes this book, we can only
imagine that it's a little less of a laborious process
because he's already been through it before with Cat in
the Hat.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah, except this is like a little bit more challenging. Right,
This has been a parent like, you know, even limiting
his verbal palette even more. Right.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, So we mentioned that this has a One of
the brilliant things about this book is it does actually
have a plot that you can follow, you know what
I mean, there's some tension in there. What's the plot.
Our protagonist is named Sam i Am.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
He is Sam Sam he is well yeah, and then
there's him right, and then there's this other character who
is who goes nameless and he's sort of the sad
sack kind of fellow who Sam keeps trying to force
him to eat green eggs and ham. And he proceeds
to go through these various scenarios. As our buddy the
(16:12):
quizzer would say, there we go, and the guy just
keeps he's like running away from him. It's actually kind
of a stalker situation because the nameless character is literally
trying to escape this Sam i Am who keeps popping
up with green eggs and ham, you know. And then
he's like, you know, would you do it on a house,
a car, a tree, with all these different things with
(16:33):
a mouse? Would a mouse change the scene? And exactly exactly,
And at the end of the day, there there's you know,
they're surrounded by the carnage that's been caused by this
dude literally trying to run for his life from this
psychotic Sam i am character. I mean really is if
you look back up the book now, Sam I am
is very sinister. He goes hard on, he goes am,
(16:55):
yeah he really does. Yeah, and green eggs. And at
the end the moral of the story is the nameless
grumpy dude eats the green eggs and ham and he
likes it.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Right, Sam, if you will let me be, I will
try them. You will see. And then he tries them
and say, I like green eggs and ham.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I do.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
I like them, Sam, i am. And then it goes
on the refrain flips and now he's talking, I want
to do it in all those places. Bring the mouse, please?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
A fox? You say, probably this green eggs and ham
with anything, But I know you can only be a
fox and mouse. And what else a goat? A goat?
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yeah, it's weird because if you look at the way.
One thing that's really impressive about this is if you
look at just the lyrics or the poetry itself typed out,
it's four pages long, which surprised me because it's four
pages fifty words.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
It's tough. It's all about placement. It's like a comic book.
I mean a lot of these things are like graphic novels,
and the text is very much incorporated into the design.
And you know, let's not forget Sus wrote the text
and he drew all the images, and he's single handedly
responsible for creating these worlds which are very uniquely him.
You know, I think he's a pretty interesting artist, kind
of a renaissance man in that way. I also think
(18:14):
it's funny that both Ham and Goat both have modern
day acronym equivalents. And krunk, you know, I think he
was onto something. I think he was too.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
We should do a deep dive read into the works
of doctor Seuss. We should also mention, by the way
that yes, doctor Seuss did succeed. This wasn't like a
cat and a hat thing where he went a little
over his word count. He managed to make a coherent
story with only fifty words. He turned it around really quickly.
It was published on August twelfth, nineteen sixty, and it
(18:46):
became his best selling book. You know, it's purposely meant
for beginning readers, right, But there is one one twist
to the story that I find hilarious just because of
its petty nature.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
There's a couple of good twists I want to hear yours. Okay, Well,
here's one. I think.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
This is the question that's on a lot of our
minds right now. What happened to the bet? It turns
out Bennett Sarah didn't pay up at all.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
What a jerk. And he was a co founder of
Random House. It's not like he was hurting for the scratch.
Did they publish the book? Yes, yes they did, old
Random House and the Living Books Company. So it stands
to reason that this dude not only didn't pay up,
he benefited from it. So he's the double cheapskate. Yeah,
massive benefits. What's one of your twists. There's a couple
of other good ones. One of them is that there
(19:32):
were some pretty bad reviews for this book, specifically from
some children's librarians. The New York Public Library actually had
a card catalog of hand typed children's book reviews by
their librarian staff. And here is a choice exerpt from
one of these reviews. Sam I am won't eat green
(19:53):
eggs and ham until after many pages of learning words,
he tries them. Book is typical of Seus's late period,
and his output, being as prolific as it is. It's
alarming to think of the onslaught that can ensue if
these books are continually added to the collection. This is
the best line. There must be better ways of teaching
a child to read than this not recommended.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
I saw that one too. It was it was strange
because we see this kind of harsh reviewing repeated. It's
a cyclical thing in children's literature, right, like Cloudy with
a Chance of Meatballs also got some shade thrown at it.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I think there was an issue with it being like
not vegan friendly. I it's like more of like our
PC police kind of situation that we're living in right now.
There's a good one here, Ben, that you told me
about where a federal judge actually referenced this work in
an opinion, an official judicial opinion. Yes it's true.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
In two thousand and seven, a US District court judge
named James Muirhead received a hard boiled egg in the
mail from an inmate, and the inmate was sending this
hard oiled egg through the post to protest his diet
while he was incarcerated. The judge ordered the egg destroyed
with the following with the following language in his court order,
(21:13):
I do not like eggs in the file. I do
not like them in any style. I will not take
them fried or boiled. I will not take them poached
or broiled. I will not take them soft or scrambled.
Despite an argument, well rambled, no fan, I am of
the egg at hand. Destroy that egg today, today, today,
I say, without delay, this judge must have had.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
A long week. He's a real character. You know what.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
We could also do an episode on bizarre judge rulings,
because there have been judges who respond with poetry, sometimes
in very serious situations, and there have been judges who,
because they have complete jurisdiction, have imposed some really weird,
unorthodox penalties for crimes.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah. Remember that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry has
to wear the sandwich board with the like I steal
forks from restaurants or whatever, a scarlet letter punishment. They
call that. That's a thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
And this is just one aspect of the tremendous influence
that Green eggs and ham specifically has had on modern culture.
I think now it's in sixty different formats. It's in
a multitude of languages, which confuses me because surely there
would be some languages where it's more difficult to do
(22:33):
that story just because of sentence structure or something.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Right, Oh yeah, it does seem that way. Well, still
they pulled it off.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
I would love to have a copy of Green Eggs
and Ham in a different language because it would help
me learn that language pretty easily, right, or.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Fifty words of it at least? Yeah, wow, Yeah, you
would have the like a first grader's grasp perhaps, now
last kindergarten maybe. And if you so desired, you could
potentially use the works of Doctor Zeus to learn Latin,
even though it's sort of incorrectly said that Latin is
a dead language. But you can definitely find different books
(23:12):
that are translated into Latin. But here's the thing. It's
hard to translate this kind of stylized writing like Doctor
Seuss into a language like that, isn't that. Yeah?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
According to Terrence Tunberg, who's been teaching Latin for decades
and decades, green Eggs and Ham was very difficult to translate.
He and his spouse Jennifer, had already translated several children's
books into Latin, and they tackled Green Eggs and Ham
with the title being can you help me out with
(23:45):
the Latin here?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
And oh boy, uh, variant ova verant parana with lots
of exclamation marks. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
The Tunbergs have also translated other Doctor Seuss books specific
but they said this wouldn't was one of the toughest
because of the simplified language and the short length. But
it's worth doing because it gives Latin a more contemporary
feel and it feels less like a dead language exactly.
(24:18):
And that is the story of Green Eggs and Ham
so far. However, that is not the end of these
Doctor Seuss facts. We found several. Some of them are darker,
some of them are just kind of hilarious. Yeah, Like
did you hear about how he's traumatized by Teddy Roosevelt?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Yeah, it did. Ben. I had to do with some
money he got from his grandfather, isn't that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:39):
World War One was in full swing and Doctor Seuss
was a boy scout and he went door to door
and eventually, because his grandfather bought one thousand dollars worth
of war bonds, he became one of the most successful
war bond salesmen in his town. And they were brought
(24:59):
on stage, him and nine other boy scouts to the
municipal auditorium. And who was there to present the award.
Theodore Roosevelt himself, the President of the United States.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah, he was there to officiate this ceremony to pana
metal on these plucky young lads and old Teddy Seuss
was the last one in line to receive this major award.
But it turns out that they didn't have enough medals.
And then Roosevelt gets to him and he doesn't have anything.
(25:33):
He just looks over at the people on stage. It's like,
who the hell is this kid? Get him out of here,
and they trundle him off stage and he gets nothing.
It's like Willie Walker style. Man. Wow.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
For the rest of his life he had a crippling
fear of crowds, and he actually skipped a lot of
speaking engagements when he was a famous author because he
was terrified they would be publicly humiliated.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Again. Well, there's also not a lot of interviews with him,
like video interviews with him that you can even find.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Right, let's see what else is. His first book was
The Complete and Unabridged pocket Book of Boners.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Wow, is it just like a visual compendium of different boners.
It was.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
This is back when a boner just meant an error,
Like that was a real bone. Oh okay, okay, So
the book was it was a compilation, but it was
a compilation of lists of silly, incorrect answers to questions
given by children. It did have a bunch of risque
jokes and illustrations. He knew the other meaning of boners.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
You know, he did.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
He was a bodie boy. He was, he was, And
I guess you could find a copy of that. It
first published in nineteen thirty one, and New York Times
called it hilarious.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
I love sixcinct. New York Times reviews like that. They
usually so overly verbose. Have you ever seen Halloweens Grinch Night, Ben, Yeah,
I love it. It's so trippy, it's so cool. It's awesome,
and it's very psychedelic and hetty and strange. So if
you haven't seen that one, it's a quick one to
watch around Halloween time. It's actually pretty spooky. This little
(27:08):
kid and there's all these creatures, and Halloween is Grench
nine and the hacking sacks are yowling. We din't even
talk about that. He invents such great creature names. I love.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I'm glad you mentioned this because I have a little
bit of a bone to pick with this. I love
Halloween is Grench Knight. However, I think in some recent
years Doctor Seuss's good name has been besmirched with terrible
film adaptations such as The Cat and the Hat. Oh
with Mike Myers. Yeah, gross, grown, I know, And I
(27:39):
used to love Mike Myers when I was a kid.
You probably did too. With Wayne's World Sired Live all
that stuff, Austin Powers. But apparently behind the scenes, and
we have n't. I haven't met the guy at least,
so I can't confirm or deny this, But apparently behind
the scenes story is he's a real pill to work.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
I have heard this. You've heard it him, especially like
on Trek or whatever, like, yeah, yeah, no, I've definitely
heard that, which is a shame. You know what else
is quite bad? What's that how the Grinch Stole Christmas?
It was like a short little little book and a
short little cartoon and they try to stretch it into
like a two hour movie. It was a great cartoon also,
you know what I mean? I don't know, It's just
(28:16):
I wish they would stop.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Are we Does this mean that we're getting old? Isn't
there another Grinch? Reboot coming out there as we're recording this.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Well, I think it's animator. It's like it's like, you know,
CGI or whatever. Oh. He also invented the word nerd. Yep,
didn't he he did.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
This guy is a real wordsmith. So one last thing
I would like to contribute. I want to see your
opinion on this nool and we want to hear your opinion.
Ridiculous historians. Apparently doctor Seuss had dabbled in erotica. Excuse me, erotica?
Oh what I thought you said?
Speaker 2 (28:49):
He had contributed art to something called The Bedroom Companion
that had a comic showing. Uh.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Well, let's just say he contributed to that to that book,
and as a condition of his contract later on in life,
he said, Okay, i'll write children's books for you only
if you let me write an adult book first. The
Seven Lady Godivas a story about seven naked women.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah, and they're writing on one of his you know,
like signature, kind of nondescript beasts, like it's not it's
not a horse, it's not a hippo. I don't know,
it's it's got traits of all of those.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
It's probably got a name like a barkernof or something exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
There you go, Ben, and it is, you know, a stride.
This creature is uh two three four sixty seven naked
women of all shapes and sizes. Yeah, in his defense
of all shapes and sizes. Here's the thing, Why do
we need to defend them? This is this is delightful.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Well, the book flopped and he was kind of uh,
he was kind of peet about it because he had
to settle for a career as a children's writer. This
is a quote from doctor Seuss. Okay, it's not us say,
it's a quote from him. He said, I tried to
draw the sexiest babes I could, but they came out
looking absurd.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Well, what the what is it? They look like doctor
Seus's characters? What did he think? There's nothing sexy about them.
They've all got like who hair, they're all hooviy and
yeah big time. Well you can't say the guy wasn't interesting.
When did he pass? Ben?
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Doctor Zeuss actually lived a very long time. He did
not pass away until September twenty fourth, nineteen ninety one.
He was eighty seven years old.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
I remember that, I remember when it happened. I mean
I was very young, but I definitely distinctly remember the
death of doctor Zeuss.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
You know who else another personal legend of ours who
passed away recently, stan Lee. It's true, all right, p
stan You know it's it's strange because I'm sure that
he'll still be in cameos for a few more movies
because they must have filmed a bunch of I.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Guess they would have had to. Yeah, it makes sense
doing a batch.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
And this reminds me he was in his nineties, right, Yeah,
he did look great and he also growing up as
a kid who didn't have a ton of friends, I
think stan Lee taught me a ton about reading and
really added to my vocabulary, you know what I mean.
He's the guy who brought back excelsior.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah. I keep saying that. I don't know what that means.
It's like excellent, Oh okay, got it. There were a
lot of tributes to him when he passed away, and
everyone was saying excelsior. I thought it was some sort
of stomach medicine it's used to.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
I guess it means that something is of superior quality,
got it? Like a little more flashy way of saying
grade a number one. But the reason I'm bringing up
stan Lee here, Noel, is because you and I made
a mandate and we we got a kind of a
bumpy start. Our mandate was to recommend comic books. Remember,
(31:51):
we did do that.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
We did do that, We did say that, and we
kind of you know, this is a perfect episode to
do that in because I would argue that Sus is
kind of a graphic novel in some ways. I would agree,
I would agree. What do you dig in these days?
These days? I'm digging some.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Okay, I've been really into some horror comics because you know,
it's always kind of Halloween in my heart. And there's
a comic called Regression, which is terrifying, not for children,
it's about reincarnation. And then there's another comic series that's
complete called The Clean Room, which is about aliens. Or
(32:30):
maybe something different to say anymore would be to do
you a disservice coold.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Have you had a chance to check out Nameless? Nameless? Yes? Yeah,
yeah yeah. Nameless was the one shot four issues right, yes,
by Grant Morrison, who I'm always in love with everything
he does. I'm just really trippy out there, existential dread
almost he kind of veers into love crafty and territory,
and this one is no exception. This one's about like
(32:57):
space madness and just like demonic possession and narcissism and
all kinds of crazy stuff doorways to other dimensions. But
it's a tight little story and the art is insane,
insanely not for the feint of heart.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah, not only is not for children, I would say
it's not for you if you're already feeling a little bit,
you know, less than good.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
It's agreed. It's a bit of a bummer. I'm so
glad you read that one man.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
That's one of those that I keep buying copies of
and I keep giving them away.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah, I have a hardcover of it. And just the
art is just alone is fantastic. So we have met
our mandate for this episode. We talked about a crazy,
weird children's book, Guy recommended some comics, had a good
time learning the origins of the word crunk, and.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Nerd invented a new phrase to yell out and exclamation
zoice soice.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
It's also kind of like noise noise choice noy soyce.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
And we hope that you enjoyed this episode even half
as much as as we enjoyed exploring this story with you.
That's all for today. Stay tuned for our next episode,
when we examine beer, A lot of beer, A whole
lot of beer, like a dangerous amounts of beer.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
In the meantime, thanks of course to our super producer
Casey Pegram, Thanks to our research associate Gabe, Thanks.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
To Alex Williams our Pal who composed our theme, and
thanks to you Ben for being a dapper and intelligent
co host.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
As always, thanks man, I recently did my laundry. That's
probably probably way it smell fresh and clean, my man.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Thank you. No, you're welcome. Goodbye. Everyone. 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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