May 28, 2026 • 31 mins
Do you know anyone who decided to show off in a weird way? While the phrase 'weird flex' may be relatively recent, it turns out that this phenomenon is as old as human civilization. Join the guys with special guests Miles and Jack from The Daily Zeitgeist as they explore some of the strangest (and most petty) flexes in human history.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. We are presenting two classic episodes that we
could not be more excited about.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
This one publishes on our day, where we typically get
a new episode, but we wanted to take a little
family time for the Memorial Day weekend. So you're getting
a classic, but followed up with our weekend classic being
part two of History's Weirdest Flexes with our buddies Miles
and Jack from the Daily Zeitgeist.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So let's roll the tape. Ridiculous Histories a production of iHeartRadio.
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, folks,
(01:09):
this is Ridiculous History.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
My name is Ben, my name is Nolan.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It's not Ridiculous Historians, it's not. That's our Facebook group.
But hey, look at us. We're getting the plug in early.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, join the Facebook group if you like the show.
We always say it for the end. Maybe we'll see
a giant spike in activity of flurry of activity on
our Facebook group, a.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Cavalcade of content. Speaking of cavalcades of awesomeness, we want
to give a shout out to our super producer Casey Pegram.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
There he is, Look at him. Look at our boy, Casey.
There he is a glint in his eye as always.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Oh, we should mention that today's episode is pretty fascinating
to us. We started talking with some friends of ours
off air about the most petty or strangest flexes in
human history.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Ben, you're gonna have to You're gonna have to hip
me to this lingo here. What is a flex? Ah?
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Well, who better to explain that than our friends that
we actually brought on the air for the episode today
of the host of one of our favorite podcasts, The
Daily Zeitgeist.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, we have Miles and Jack from the Daily Zeite
guys joining us as we speak.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Gentlemen, what's up guys? Hello Jack? How are you so?
Speaker 4 (02:19):
So?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
These guys us, Miles and Jack are the anchors of
our Los Angeles operation. They do a lot of comedy.
They have this amazing political comedy show that they do
every day of the week, and they're kind of the
cooler versions of us. So can you just explain what
a flex is?
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Yes, flex, if we go strictly by the Urban Dictionary definition,
would be a verb in which someone would show off
or gloat in a boastful display.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Wow, that was very official, Miles, Thank you so much.
Speaker 6 (02:52):
Yes, yeah, so that's what a flex is.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
How is a flex different than a stunt? I mean
it's kind of the same thing. A stunt, you're still
kind of showing out as you will. But sometimes a flex,
you know, it's really about, like you know, coming from
flexing your muscles, like showing how strong you are, showing
off that way.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I feel like a.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Flex can come from within maybe where a stunt can be.
A stunt would be more like showing off things.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
No, you nailed it, Thank you so much. But yeah,
I mean essentially it's all the same thing. It's just
sort of you know, and then the gave way to
the weird flex phenomenon, which are just sort of like, uh,
you know, just recontextualizing people's quotes or things to be
boastful moments.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Right.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Yeah, it's really just about showing off really or yeah,
unnecessarily showing your power or wealth or something like that.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
I love weird flex because it has taken over for
people used to say anytime they wanted to make fun
of someone for bragging about something weird, they'd be like,
humble brag and they just didn't know what humble brag meant, right,
I think they misunderstood. So weird flex is actually an
accurate way to make fun of somebody for bragging about something.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Weird, and we're happier here weird.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Flex like, for example, setting the record for eating the
largest amount of cheese in twenty four hours. That's a
weird flex.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
That is a weird flex. Yeah, and then bragging about
it and then bragging about it.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Well, and since this is a ridiculous history today, we're
talking about weird historical flexes. Ben, you brought this one
to the table, so I think maybe you should start. Sure.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, yeah, we're going to explore not all of but
some of the weirdest flexes and maybe the most petty
power moves throughout this ridiculous thing that we call human history.
So I'm going to lay one out just to set
the tone here. We've all heard of garden gnomes, right.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Which is already a weird flex in and of itself.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, it's a strange choice, very much landscaping.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
The fact that I have the second largest collection of
garden gnomes on the East side of Los Angeles. I'm
not going to brag about that, because that would be
a weird flex.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Right, I'll just leave it out there.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
But I know East LA is pretty competitive and cutthroat
in that regard, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Yeah, man, It's taken a lot of hard work, and
I just get thanks to my parents for you know,
raising me the way they did.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
And yeah, but go on with.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
I mean, yeah, I mean, Jessica Sable has not recovered
since you retook the throne.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Second second, Yeah, garden home Prince, the garden home King.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I'm never going to beat him.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
Vice garden home President.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yes, So this should be this should be close to
you personally, because it turns out that there is a
an historical precedent in the creation of this sort of
garden gnome. Uh well, I guess we can call it
an industry now, at least in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Culture, nome culture, what I'm going to call.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
The nomen culture life. So there was this moment, primarily
during the eighteenth century when wealthy landowners in Britain said,
you know, how can I show my fellow landed aristocrats
that I am somehow better than them, you know, without
actually doing something to improve myself. And they decided that
(06:01):
they would resurrect an old practice of paying someone to
be a professional hermit, an ornamental hermit in their garden.
And these guys had a really weird gig. First off,
they were expected to in some cases not bathe, not
talk to anyone for seven years. They had to dress like, quote,
(06:26):
a druid. But the problem was these wealthy landowners had
no clue what a druid actually looked like, so they
looked more like the modern version of train kids, you know,
minus the stick and pok face tattoos. And the weird
thing about it was it caught on. There's a great
book called The Hermit in the Garden from Imperial Rome
(06:47):
to ornamental gnome like the rhyme there that traces the
evolution of this from back in the fifteenth century when
Francis of Paula was one of the first paid hermits
in a cave on his own dad's estate. So how's
that for nepotism. Let me unpack this just briefly. I
(07:10):
just want to make sure that I'm getting the right
picture for it. So they're paying like smelly hobo types
to hang around in their yard.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yes, yep.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And in some case and they have their own special
kind of like hermit habitats, you know how if you
have fish, or sort of like if you have fish,
there's the fake ubiquitous sand castle. Of course the fish
quote unquote lives in.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, the little diver and a helmet or whatever. Yeah,
they had a small chest.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yes, yes, of course that has bubbles that come out
the course of the chest, because otherwise, what the hell
are you doing with this fish? So they I'm glad
you guys have my back on this. So they have
these different tiers of hermitage. Some of them are expected
to come out when visitors walk by and then do
things that you know, we would probably find offensive in
(08:01):
the modern day, like come up and recite spoken word
without an invitation or a solicitation.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
There's literally a dude that hangs out outside my neighborhood
bar that does that every time I walk past him,
and he thinks that I don't remember that I've already
heard the one poem that he has.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Oh you're talking about ticket, that's the guy.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Yeah, And it's like he's like, hey, I got a
new one. I'm like, bro, it's not a new one.
I've heard. I literally had memorized at this point and
I'm not giving you a dollar.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
At this point, I can do his ad libs.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
To flex on him, you should come up to him
and say I have a poem for you, and tell
him his own poem to his fate.
Speaker 6 (08:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
He might even say I love that. I've never heard
that before.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
That's also true.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
So the thing that they were attempting to do with
this was to recreate a sort of idealized time in
history that never actually existed. The hermits eventually became the
inspiration for the no sculptures that were so prominent and
(09:04):
prevalent today in Los Angeles. But the concept of these
being a normal thing in ancient Roman villas and so on,
isn't that accurate? Like so many eighteenth century British beliefs,
it was based on complete malarchy. It never actually happened
in a widespread fashion in ancient civilizations, but that didn't
(09:29):
stop people. The facts will never stop you from having
a good time with weird flex. The last thing. The
most famous of the ornamental hermits is a guy named
John Big with two g's. It's a nice surname, the
Denton Hermit. He was not himself a garden hermit, but
in a lot of the publications of the time, he
(09:52):
was called like the og hermit, and they explore, like
how you're supposed to interact with these people. You walk
up to them, even if you're the owner of this garden.
You walk up to the hermit's hideout or his heidi hole,
or his treasure chest and his equivalent of his treasure
chest in his castle, and then you ring a bell
(10:14):
or you knock, or you say a phrase, and then
the hermit comes out. And depending upon what the owners
want from this guy, they either of course start speaking
in weird riddles or spoken word, or they pretend not
to see you and maybe silently pray to themselves or
(10:35):
work on some like I kid you not arrangement of
shells in a way that is supposed to look purposeful
and super deep. As you can tell, Yeah, as you
can tell, this is a short lived trend. It died
out in the early nineteenth century or so when weirder
(10:55):
flexes rose. The thing was, we can only imagine that
this stuff was really a status symbol when not many
people were doing it. So when the ornamental hermit became
closer to being commonplace, its social value decreased because people
were like, oh, you've got a you got a hermit.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
You see, there was a hermit bubble basically, Yeah, like.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
People start getting cheap, knockoff garden hermits right then the
whole thing just went.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
I mean the hermit bubble really hurt a lot of people.
I remember someone I dated their family. Oh they were
they they were upside down.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Their entire.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
I feel like this is really a testament to how
like this is one of those pastimes from history. There
really is a testament to how boring life.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Used to be.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Like that that people would just go and see a
guy who didn't want you to interact with him and
like play like a weird like troll pass ord game
with them, and it was yeah, it's just And it's
also you know, the the economy was not overly diverse
(12:12):
back in the day, so you know, you needed to
create work for your weird son who didn't never wanted
to leave the house. And so it sounds like that
kind of got it started, was just having a kid
at home who you couldn't get off the couch, and
so you're like, what if we dressed them in weird
clothes and made him live under a rock in the
backyard and then.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Luckily that gave rise to art school.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Not only that, I feel like there's another analog here,
you guys, in the in the whole Hollywood universe where
you have these glitzy parties where people are kind of
paid to just wander around dressed in costumes, whatever the
theme is. I could see this being brought back for
some sort of weird flex Hollywood party where you just
have these oddly dressed kind of like court gestertypes just
(13:00):
wandering around and reciting riddles to people. How do you
guys feel about this? I mean, I think that makes sense.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
You know, it's we always it's always a flex, even
just to hire someone to do something that doesn't even
seem like a job, right, And you're like, yeah, I'm
paying somebody to do that.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
That's because that's where my wealth is acting.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
And it's the same thing reminds me of even like
at bar Mitzvah's there's like pump up dancers that you
hire for that.
Speaker 6 (13:21):
Yeah, it's like, yeah, they're just lighting up the mood.
Oh I don't know them, but I hired them because
I can.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
My social life currently is mostly mostly involved going to
two to three year old birthday parties not involving my
kids at all, just because that's what I'm into these days.
But they there's always like a Disney princess or some
actor who came to Hollywood to chase their dreams.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Who is playing.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Usually it's Elsa, although I actually saw the bubble.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Burst on Elsa.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
In the past couple of weeks, people just stopped really
caring about Elsa and she was literally chasing the kids
around because nobody would talk to.
Speaker 6 (14:01):
Her because they're like, oh, else is so three years ago?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Yeah. Yeah, she's like, I have to do something.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
This is too awkward.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Kids are so cruel.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, kids are very cool. It's not that different.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
I guess it's just that it's almost like creating, turning
a little part of your garden into a historical reenactment town,
which we also have.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
A woe right right, Yeah, a bit of a step
up from traditional slavery, like Hi, i'll clothe you, like and.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
You get to kind of just beat you or do
some weird.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Okay, I'll be back here. Food and a couple of shekels.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Yeah, were they just kind of paid or paid in
food and the shelter or.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
That they had room and board, they received a stipend.
The usual contract was for seven years. The stipend though,
you know, whenever somebody says stipend instead of a salary,
you know, it's not a huge chunk of wretch. But
the last thing that was fascinating about this to me,
and a very very damning comment on society at the time,
(15:10):
is that Britain at the time was full of incredibly destitute,
impoverished or homeless people. So of course someone would end
up taking this job. And it's not surprising if someone's
like telling their kids, all right, goodbye, you know, little
Darren or whatever, Dad has to go off and pretend
to be homeless mystic for seven years.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yep, so that we can get your leg fixed. Do
you think his children are allowed to visit little Tom
Tim No, no, no, no, no, don't have family, no contact,
it's a no contact. Yeah. That is a very very
weird flex. Just societally, I would say that's a weird flex.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
But I think it's kind of It could come back
around right where even in this country you have we
have growing populations of just the destitute or people who
are not faring well in the economy, and eventually people
at the very top could be like, oh, yeah, I
hired these five people to do pop patrol for my
kids for three years.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Right right exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
But that is that is my that that is my
first entry into our weird fleg show. And it sounds
like we can we can all agree. Oh maybe that's
what we can do at the end, we can we
can vote on whether or not that's a weird flex.
I think it is, obviously.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
I think it is too. And another thing that I
think is I think this might have enough weird flex
ammunition to make two weird flex episodes.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
This this is alone, Yes.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yes, alone. I'm just pointing, just putting that out there
right now, fingers crossed. I could be proven wrong, but
I would like to throw it to our guests. You
talk amongst yourselves, who would like to go next?
Speaker 4 (16:40):
I could go, by the way, if you guys are
George Saunders fans. He's a fiction writer and he has
a short story I think in tenth of December. Yes,
like sort of a weird futuristic version of this that
where it's like that there are people who are paid
to re enact lynchings in people's gardens in the near future,
(17:04):
in the American South and it's like this weird class
consciousness thing that that I don't.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Know goes off the rails.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
But it's very, very creepy and interesting story that makes
me think he knew about this phenomenon when he was
writing it. So I want to talk to you guys
about a time when the human species was still a
little bit insecure about our place on top of the
(17:33):
food chain. And this is back when Charles Darwin was
kicking around and you know, he was actually discovering that
we weren't all that different from our animal brethren, and that,
you know, we were all part of the same evolutionary
stew as a lot of animals. A thing that a
(17:56):
lot of people don't know about Darwin though, is that
he basically ate every animal that he ever documented like
that was his and it's I mean, he kind of
viewed it as part of the scientific process, but it
seems to go deeper than that, because even when he
(18:17):
was a kid at Cambridge. You know Harvard, if you've
seen the social network, you know that they have instead
of like sorority and fraternity houses, they have like dining clubs,
and at Cambridge they had something similar. But Darwin started
something called the Glutton Club, which was a group of
(18:37):
students devoted to devouring quote, birds and beasts which were
before unknown to human palate. They toasted hawk, they ate
a heron like wading bird called a bittern, and they
were dissolved after trying to eat a brown owl, which
(18:58):
you're not supposed to eat those. Darwin said the taste
was indescribable. Uh, So that that might seem strange for
a guy who then went on to devote his life to,
you know, documenting animals in that habitat.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Does it does it seem strange? He might just have
a thing.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Yeah, so, well so, I I kind of always associated
him with you know, science and biology and you know,
putting putting humans in there in their place on the
you know, in in natural history. But he was more
about putting us in our place, but then also reminding
(19:40):
every animal he encountered, uh that we could still eat
them if we wanted to. Because during the course of
his you know, journeys on the beagle, he ate puma,
he ate iguanas, armadillos. He not only ate giant tortoises,
he ate like so many of the giant giant tortoises.
(20:02):
He documented that there weren't any left when he got
back to England. He had eaten like twenty something of them.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Jesus, and he tried.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
He also tried drinking their bladder contents. He said the
fluid was quite limpid, you know, very societly bitter taste.
You gotta drink the bladder contents for science.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I have.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
It's on my license plate. This is incredible because I
think of him and this is obviously misguided, but I've
always thought of Darwin as like a conservationist. But that's
never even right. He was pitched as honestly. I mean,
he was a documentar and he you know, wrote down
detailed notes about all these things, but he wasn't exactly
out there to like save the wildlife. And this just
(20:44):
pushes that point home. Go on, man, this is fascinating
and bizarre to me.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
It's all it's all cover, right. I think we have
it all wrong thinking, oh, he was some kind of scientist, right.
His main goal was to eat as many animals as possible.
I think of him as actually the first guy Fieri.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Had nothing to do with science.
Speaker 6 (21:02):
The science bit was just a cover to be like
you see chuck again.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
Yeah, drinking, he's drinking turtle pea. I know he's talking.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
About his evolution thing.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah guy.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Because even if we're being generous, we can say, okay,
one turtle. You know, you might be in a situation
when you're like where am I going to? When am
I going to be here again? But twenty twenty?
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Right?
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Yeah, Look, we've all been to uh what's the the
Galapagos Island and you know, tried to eat one of
the turtles.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
First, you got to ride after the one.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
You got to ride the turtle and then my head
and then you eat it. That's just how you do.
That's the order of operation.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
They frown on that. In my experience, I mean, maybe
you had a cooler guide.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
The first thing I do when I see a turtle
is try and dump toxic ooze on it, right that
it will then turn into some kind of hero and
Nisa mutant.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
And it's a numbers you know, the s Miles is
wearing a cheese shredder on his face, Like, do you guys.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Have a guy for toxic ooze? That is my question
because oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
La man I can get to.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Market.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
We'll talk off air. Yeah, well specialized too.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
There's certain kinds for mammals, and there's other ones for
reptiles and ones for insects.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, as there should be. That makes sense. Did this
ever become a matter of controversy in Darwin's life? Like,
did anybody ever say, hey, man, you can just eat
run tortoise?
Speaker 4 (22:33):
I mean, I think right, So I think it was
actually more common, uh than you would expect, because there's
also a great scientist named William Buckland. He was the
first person to publish a scientific study of a dinosaur, uh,
and he made it his life's mission to eat everyone,
(22:56):
or eat one of every animal that existed, and even
at one point ate a human heart. So and they
exit they were around at the same time. So apparently
this was just a way to kind of flex your
scientific legitimacy to the world. Just be like, yo, this
(23:19):
this is how I get down showing my superiority over
the natural world by putting it in my stomach.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
You know it.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Also, it also occurs to me that this is kind
of a weird reverse Noah's Arc kind of scenario where
instead of like saving one of every animal, you're gonna
eat one of every animal. Just to show that you've
got one over on these dumb creatures and that you
are the top of the food chain. And they better
know that.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
I mean, as a scientist, when you spend that much
time around the animals, you really come to understand that
they think they're better than you. Yeah, that they need
to be put in their place. But just two quick
facts that I found particularly interesting. He ate a twenty
pound rodent and said it was the very best meat
(24:07):
he had ever tasted. So rodent meat is apparently underrated.
And at one point his hunger came into contrast with
his scientific drive because he had spent months trying to
find this ostrich like bird called a lesser rihea, and
(24:27):
he was eating what he thought to be a greater rea,
and about halfway through the portion, or about halfway through
his portion of greater rea, he realized, oh no, that
bone being there means this is actually a lesser rea,
the thing I've been looking for forever. So he had
to basically send this animal he was hoping to scientifically
(24:51):
document back to England as just a bunch of like
chicken bones and skin and feathers because he had eaten
most of.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
It, so he uh, he sent them leftovers.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
He did send it in a styrofoam clamshell container.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I have to do it, did he did? He then
get dia rhea? Imagine I had to. I had to,
I had to.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
You are absolved. That was necessary.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Somebody had to say it.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
They had it had to be said.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Was gonna feel unfulf the.
Speaker 6 (25:27):
Judges, and yes, we will accept it, we will thank you.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Thanks for taking one for the team.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Noyeah. Of course glad to do.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
It, so we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
So so far we have two. I would say legitimate
flex is legitimately weird at least, and both are somewhat
cruel when you think about it. Uh, you know, I
think the gambit was correct in the beginning. I think
this is a two part episode.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
And you know, I really hate it when Pete podcasters saying, well,
we're running out of time, so we're going to make
this a two parter shenanigans. No, our episodes can be
as long as we want. We just are trying to
get two episodes out of this because we're lazy.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
No Well, I mean maybe that's where you're coming from, Noel,
I'm not gonna lie. I was gonna walk outside and
see if there was some kind of rodent that I
could eat for science, because apparently that's okay now you know, well, Ben,
we went We're very different people, Ben, We're very different people.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Lazy and hungry, lazy and hungry.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
That's it. That's the that's our combo before before we
go on this episode, though, a very very important question
that I know everybody listening is waiting to hear, which
of the teenage mutant Ninja Turtles is your favorite or
which one do you identify with the most. I couldn't
let it be unset.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
I was more of a casual Turtles fan, So I
was more Michaelangelo, just the everybody's first choice when they're
young and first getting to know it.
Speaker 6 (26:52):
Yeah, Michael Angelo.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
He's like a rebel.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, he's a rebel who likes pizza.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Just like me.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
Maybe all love pizza, but he really loves he loves pizza.
Yeah for me, I was.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
I liked Michaelangelo for the swag, the confidence, yes, the
rebellious attitude, the weird flecks. But in the end I
kind of said I was more of a Donatello guy, Okay,
because I like blue.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Dona Tello is a smart one, right, didn't Donna Tello?
Wasn't he the sciencey guy?
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah? Don Tello has inventions. I yeah, and the bowstat.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Bowsta, which is which is admittedly the most boring of
the Ninja Turtles weapons. And in my opinion, really I
think Michaelangelo the nunchucks are obviously the most fun. He's
got two of them. He can swing him around, do
all kinds of crazy tricks.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
But he's got no reach. No, he's got no reach.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
What do you mean he's got no reach.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
He's got to reach with the nunchucks. You gotta be
really active to well Doe, Okay, I'm just my bias
is showing. I'm also team Donna Tello.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
You're on team don Tello.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Hell yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
I always liked to Actually I misspoke.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
I meant to say Leonardo is the one who is blue.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Oh, that's right, wear blue. Yes, But don Tello was
still the sciencey guy. Leonardo was sort of the de
facto leader. Yeah, he's like the cyclops, yes, of the Turtles.
That's right, that's right. I was always Michael Angelo. I'm
with that, And I was not a casual Turtles fan.
I've seen both the original film and the Secret of
the Use, and I know the Ninja wrap by heart.
(28:12):
And I had the cassette called Coming Out of Our
Shells that was distributed with Domino's pizzas back in the day.
Speaker 6 (28:18):
But yeah, wow, you did you? Do you remember that
Sam Rockwell is in the first Teenage?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yes, that's right. Isn't he in the Foot? Is he
in the Foot Clan?
Speaker 5 (28:27):
Yeah, he's like the main sort of like forward facing
foot guy.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
He's like Fagan from Oliver He's like recruiting little street
urchin kids. Totally. I forgot that.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
I still stand by that as his greatest work as
an act.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Oh, absolutely, he.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Agrees, he agrees. I think he has gone on record
with that.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Yeah, it's that. And then Moon Moon would be number
two for.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Me, distant number two.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Agreed.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
But so we we are going to pause for today's episode.
We'll be back with the second part of Weirdest Historical
Flexes in the meeting time will forego our usual This
is where you can find us on the internet because
we did that at the front up front.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
We still have to thank everybody though, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yes, we want to think of course, our super producer
Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed our.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Track, Yes, our fabulous research associate Gabe Lucier, our buddy
Christopher Hasciotis, who is due for an appearance. I actually
had lunch with Christopher of the day and he really
misses us and he's so happy to see the show
doing well. Whyte me it was in a different city.
Ice cold, I'm really sorry. Next time you're an ice
cold dude. I am not, man, I'm not. I'm a sweetheart.
(29:32):
But we'd also like to thank our incredible guests who
are going to stick around if you would, for part
two of this kind of anthology episode on Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah, thanks so much for coming. Guys, where can people
while they're waiting for this next episode, where can they
hear more from you? Miles and Jack?
Speaker 5 (29:48):
Oh, you can find us every day on this network
on our show The Daily Zeitgeist every morning or whenever
you want to listen to it.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
And if you're interested in social media, I mean you
can follow me at Miles of Gray wherever you wherever
you get your social media.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Yeah, and Jack underscore O Brian on Twitter and yes,
so much of us you can find so much of
us over at the Daily Zeitgeist, wherever find podcasts are
given away for free.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
And I guess we can drop our little social media
handles too. I on Instagram at Embryonic Insider you.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Can see me get kicked into and out of various
countries around the world at Ben Bullen on Instagram. So
that's all for now, Everybody run off. I'm gonna hunt.
I'm gonna hunt some rudents. We're gonna talk about the
turtles and maybe rewatch Secret of the Use, and we'll
be back very soon.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, apple pot podcast or wherever you
(31:01):
listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. We are presenting two classic episodes that we
could not be more excited about.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
This one publishes on our day, where we typically get
a new episode, but we wanted to take a little
family time for the Memorial Day weekend. So you're getting
a classic, but followed up with our weekend classic being
part two of History's Weirdest Flexes with our buddies Miles
and Jack from the Daily Zeitgeist.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So let's roll the tape. Ridiculous Histories a production of iHeartRadio.
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, folks,
(01:09):
this is Ridiculous History.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
My name is Ben, my name is Nolan.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It's not Ridiculous Historians, it's not. That's our Facebook group.
But hey, look at us. We're getting the plug in early.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, join the Facebook group if you like the show.
We always say it for the end. Maybe we'll see
a giant spike in activity of flurry of activity on
our Facebook group, a.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Cavalcade of content. Speaking of cavalcades of awesomeness, we want
to give a shout out to our super producer Casey Pegram.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
There he is, Look at him. Look at our boy, Casey.
There he is a glint in his eye as always.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Oh, we should mention that today's episode is pretty fascinating
to us. We started talking with some friends of ours
off air about the most petty or strangest flexes in
human history.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Ben, you're gonna have to You're gonna have to hip
me to this lingo here. What is a flex? Ah?
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Well, who better to explain that than our friends that
we actually brought on the air for the episode today
of the host of one of our favorite podcasts, The
Daily Zeitgeist.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, we have Miles and Jack from the Daily Zeite
guys joining us as we speak.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Gentlemen, what's up guys? Hello Jack? How are you so?
Speaker 4 (02:19):
So?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
These guys us, Miles and Jack are the anchors of
our Los Angeles operation. They do a lot of comedy.
They have this amazing political comedy show that they do
every day of the week, and they're kind of the
cooler versions of us. So can you just explain what
a flex is?
Speaker 5 (02:38):
Yes, flex, if we go strictly by the Urban Dictionary definition,
would be a verb in which someone would show off
or gloat in a boastful display.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Wow, that was very official, Miles, Thank you so much.
Speaker 6 (02:52):
Yes, yeah, so that's what a flex is.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
How is a flex different than a stunt? I mean
it's kind of the same thing. A stunt, you're still
kind of showing out as you will. But sometimes a flex,
you know, it's really about, like you know, coming from
flexing your muscles, like showing how strong you are, showing
off that way.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I feel like a.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Flex can come from within maybe where a stunt can be.
A stunt would be more like showing off things.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
No, you nailed it, Thank you so much. But yeah,
I mean essentially it's all the same thing. It's just
sort of you know, and then the gave way to
the weird flex phenomenon, which are just sort of like, uh,
you know, just recontextualizing people's quotes or things to be
boastful moments.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Right.
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Yeah, it's really just about showing off really or yeah,
unnecessarily showing your power or wealth or something like that.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
I love weird flex because it has taken over for
people used to say anytime they wanted to make fun
of someone for bragging about something weird, they'd be like,
humble brag and they just didn't know what humble brag meant, right,
I think they misunderstood. So weird flex is actually an
accurate way to make fun of somebody for bragging about something.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Weird, and we're happier here weird.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Flex like, for example, setting the record for eating the
largest amount of cheese in twenty four hours. That's a
weird flex.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
That is a weird flex. Yeah, and then bragging about
it and then bragging about it.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Well, and since this is a ridiculous history today, we're
talking about weird historical flexes. Ben, you brought this one
to the table, so I think maybe you should start. Sure.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, yeah, we're going to explore not all of but
some of the weirdest flexes and maybe the most petty
power moves throughout this ridiculous thing that we call human history.
So I'm going to lay one out just to set
the tone here. We've all heard of garden gnomes, right.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Which is already a weird flex in and of itself.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, it's a strange choice, very much landscaping.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
The fact that I have the second largest collection of
garden gnomes on the East side of Los Angeles. I'm
not going to brag about that, because that would be
a weird flex.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Right, I'll just leave it out there.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
But I know East LA is pretty competitive and cutthroat
in that regard, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Yeah, man, It's taken a lot of hard work, and
I just get thanks to my parents for you know,
raising me the way they did.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
And yeah, but go on with.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
I mean, yeah, I mean, Jessica Sable has not recovered
since you retook the throne.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Second second, Yeah, garden home Prince, the garden home King.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I'm never going to beat him.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
Vice garden home President.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yes, So this should be this should be close to
you personally, because it turns out that there is a
an historical precedent in the creation of this sort of
garden gnome. Uh well, I guess we can call it
an industry now, at least in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Culture, nome culture, what I'm going to call.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
The nomen culture life. So there was this moment, primarily
during the eighteenth century when wealthy landowners in Britain said,
you know, how can I show my fellow landed aristocrats
that I am somehow better than them, you know, without
actually doing something to improve myself. And they decided that
(06:01):
they would resurrect an old practice of paying someone to
be a professional hermit, an ornamental hermit in their garden.
And these guys had a really weird gig. First off,
they were expected to in some cases not bathe, not
talk to anyone for seven years. They had to dress like, quote,
(06:26):
a druid. But the problem was these wealthy landowners had
no clue what a druid actually looked like, so they
looked more like the modern version of train kids, you know,
minus the stick and pok face tattoos. And the weird
thing about it was it caught on. There's a great
book called The Hermit in the Garden from Imperial Rome
(06:47):
to ornamental gnome like the rhyme there that traces the
evolution of this from back in the fifteenth century when
Francis of Paula was one of the first paid hermits
in a cave on his own dad's estate. So how's
that for nepotism. Let me unpack this just briefly. I
(07:10):
just want to make sure that I'm getting the right
picture for it. So they're paying like smelly hobo types
to hang around in their yard.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yes, yep.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And in some case and they have their own special
kind of like hermit habitats, you know how if you
have fish, or sort of like if you have fish,
there's the fake ubiquitous sand castle. Of course the fish
quote unquote lives in.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, the little diver and a helmet or whatever. Yeah,
they had a small chest.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yes, yes, of course that has bubbles that come out
the course of the chest, because otherwise, what the hell
are you doing with this fish? So they I'm glad
you guys have my back on this. So they have
these different tiers of hermitage. Some of them are expected
to come out when visitors walk by and then do
things that you know, we would probably find offensive in
(08:01):
the modern day, like come up and recite spoken word
without an invitation or a solicitation.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
There's literally a dude that hangs out outside my neighborhood
bar that does that every time I walk past him,
and he thinks that I don't remember that I've already
heard the one poem that he has.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Oh you're talking about ticket, that's the guy.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Yeah, And it's like he's like, hey, I got a
new one. I'm like, bro, it's not a new one.
I've heard. I literally had memorized at this point and
I'm not giving you a dollar.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
At this point, I can do his ad libs.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
To flex on him, you should come up to him
and say I have a poem for you, and tell
him his own poem to his fate.
Speaker 6 (08:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
He might even say I love that. I've never heard
that before.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
That's also true.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
So the thing that they were attempting to do with
this was to recreate a sort of idealized time in
history that never actually existed. The hermits eventually became the
inspiration for the no sculptures that were so prominent and
(09:04):
prevalent today in Los Angeles. But the concept of these
being a normal thing in ancient Roman villas and so on,
isn't that accurate? Like so many eighteenth century British beliefs,
it was based on complete malarchy. It never actually happened
in a widespread fashion in ancient civilizations, but that didn't
(09:29):
stop people. The facts will never stop you from having
a good time with weird flex. The last thing. The
most famous of the ornamental hermits is a guy named
John Big with two g's. It's a nice surname, the
Denton Hermit. He was not himself a garden hermit, but
in a lot of the publications of the time, he
(09:52):
was called like the og hermit, and they explore, like
how you're supposed to interact with these people. You walk
up to them, even if you're the owner of this garden.
You walk up to the hermit's hideout or his heidi hole,
or his treasure chest and his equivalent of his treasure
chest in his castle, and then you ring a bell
(10:14):
or you knock, or you say a phrase, and then
the hermit comes out. And depending upon what the owners
want from this guy, they either of course start speaking
in weird riddles or spoken word, or they pretend not
to see you and maybe silently pray to themselves or
(10:35):
work on some like I kid you not arrangement of
shells in a way that is supposed to look purposeful
and super deep. As you can tell, Yeah, as you
can tell, this is a short lived trend. It died
out in the early nineteenth century or so when weirder
(10:55):
flexes rose. The thing was, we can only imagine that
this stuff was really a status symbol when not many
people were doing it. So when the ornamental hermit became
closer to being commonplace, its social value decreased because people
were like, oh, you've got a you got a hermit.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
You see, there was a hermit bubble basically, Yeah, like.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
People start getting cheap, knockoff garden hermits right then the
whole thing just went.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
I mean the hermit bubble really hurt a lot of people.
I remember someone I dated their family. Oh they were
they they were upside down.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Their entire.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
I feel like this is really a testament to how
like this is one of those pastimes from history. There
really is a testament to how boring life.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Used to be.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Like that that people would just go and see a
guy who didn't want you to interact with him and
like play like a weird like troll pass ord game
with them, and it was yeah, it's just And it's
also you know, the the economy was not overly diverse
(12:12):
back in the day, so you know, you needed to
create work for your weird son who didn't never wanted
to leave the house. And so it sounds like that
kind of got it started, was just having a kid
at home who you couldn't get off the couch, and
so you're like, what if we dressed them in weird
clothes and made him live under a rock in the
backyard and then.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Luckily that gave rise to art school.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Not only that, I feel like there's another analog here,
you guys, in the in the whole Hollywood universe where
you have these glitzy parties where people are kind of
paid to just wander around dressed in costumes, whatever the
theme is. I could see this being brought back for
some sort of weird flex Hollywood party where you just
have these oddly dressed kind of like court gestertypes just
(13:00):
wandering around and reciting riddles to people. How do you
guys feel about this? I mean, I think that makes sense.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
You know, it's we always it's always a flex, even
just to hire someone to do something that doesn't even
seem like a job, right, And you're like, yeah, I'm
paying somebody to do that.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
That's because that's where my wealth is acting.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
And it's the same thing reminds me of even like
at bar Mitzvah's there's like pump up dancers that you
hire for that.
Speaker 6 (13:21):
Yeah, it's like, yeah, they're just lighting up the mood.
Oh I don't know them, but I hired them because
I can.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
My social life currently is mostly mostly involved going to
two to three year old birthday parties not involving my
kids at all, just because that's what I'm into these days.
But they there's always like a Disney princess or some
actor who came to Hollywood to chase their dreams.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Who is playing.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Usually it's Elsa, although I actually saw the bubble.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Burst on Elsa.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
In the past couple of weeks, people just stopped really
caring about Elsa and she was literally chasing the kids
around because nobody would talk to.
Speaker 6 (14:01):
Her because they're like, oh, else is so three years ago?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Yeah. Yeah, she's like, I have to do something.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
This is too awkward.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Kids are so cruel.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, kids are very cool. It's not that different.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
I guess it's just that it's almost like creating, turning
a little part of your garden into a historical reenactment town,
which we also have.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
A woe right right, Yeah, a bit of a step
up from traditional slavery, like Hi, i'll clothe you, like and.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
You get to kind of just beat you or do
some weird.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Okay, I'll be back here. Food and a couple of shekels.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Yeah, were they just kind of paid or paid in
food and the shelter or.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
That they had room and board, they received a stipend.
The usual contract was for seven years. The stipend though,
you know, whenever somebody says stipend instead of a salary,
you know, it's not a huge chunk of wretch. But
the last thing that was fascinating about this to me,
and a very very damning comment on society at the time,
(15:10):
is that Britain at the time was full of incredibly destitute,
impoverished or homeless people. So of course someone would end
up taking this job. And it's not surprising if someone's
like telling their kids, all right, goodbye, you know, little
Darren or whatever, Dad has to go off and pretend
to be homeless mystic for seven years.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yep, so that we can get your leg fixed. Do
you think his children are allowed to visit little Tom
Tim No, no, no, no, no, don't have family, no contact,
it's a no contact. Yeah. That is a very very
weird flex. Just societally, I would say that's a weird flex.
Speaker 5 (15:47):
But I think it's kind of It could come back
around right where even in this country you have we
have growing populations of just the destitute or people who
are not faring well in the economy, and eventually people
at the very top could be like, oh, yeah, I
hired these five people to do pop patrol for my
kids for three years.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Right right exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
But that is that is my that that is my
first entry into our weird fleg show. And it sounds
like we can we can all agree. Oh maybe that's
what we can do at the end, we can we
can vote on whether or not that's a weird flex.
I think it is, obviously.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
I think it is too. And another thing that I
think is I think this might have enough weird flex
ammunition to make two weird flex episodes.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
This this is alone, Yes.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yes, alone. I'm just pointing, just putting that out there
right now, fingers crossed. I could be proven wrong, but
I would like to throw it to our guests. You
talk amongst yourselves, who would like to go next?
Speaker 4 (16:40):
I could go, by the way, if you guys are
George Saunders fans. He's a fiction writer and he has
a short story I think in tenth of December. Yes,
like sort of a weird futuristic version of this that
where it's like that there are people who are paid
to re enact lynchings in people's gardens in the near future,
(17:04):
in the American South and it's like this weird class
consciousness thing that that I don't.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Know goes off the rails.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
But it's very, very creepy and interesting story that makes
me think he knew about this phenomenon when he was
writing it. So I want to talk to you guys
about a time when the human species was still a
little bit insecure about our place on top of the
(17:33):
food chain. And this is back when Charles Darwin was
kicking around and you know, he was actually discovering that
we weren't all that different from our animal brethren, and that,
you know, we were all part of the same evolutionary
stew as a lot of animals. A thing that a
(17:56):
lot of people don't know about Darwin though, is that
he basically ate every animal that he ever documented like
that was his and it's I mean, he kind of
viewed it as part of the scientific process, but it
seems to go deeper than that, because even when he
(18:17):
was a kid at Cambridge. You know Harvard, if you've
seen the social network, you know that they have instead
of like sorority and fraternity houses, they have like dining clubs,
and at Cambridge they had something similar. But Darwin started
something called the Glutton Club, which was a group of
(18:37):
students devoted to devouring quote, birds and beasts which were
before unknown to human palate. They toasted hawk, they ate
a heron like wading bird called a bittern, and they
were dissolved after trying to eat a brown owl, which
(18:58):
you're not supposed to eat those. Darwin said the taste
was indescribable. Uh, So that that might seem strange for
a guy who then went on to devote his life to,
you know, documenting animals in that habitat.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Does it does it seem strange? He might just have
a thing.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Yeah, so, well so, I I kind of always associated
him with you know, science and biology and you know,
putting putting humans in there in their place on the
you know, in in natural history. But he was more
about putting us in our place, but then also reminding
(19:40):
every animal he encountered, uh that we could still eat
them if we wanted to. Because during the course of
his you know, journeys on the beagle, he ate puma,
he ate iguanas, armadillos. He not only ate giant tortoises,
he ate like so many of the giant giant tortoises.
(20:02):
He documented that there weren't any left when he got
back to England. He had eaten like twenty something of them.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Jesus, and he tried.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
He also tried drinking their bladder contents. He said the
fluid was quite limpid, you know, very societly bitter taste.
You gotta drink the bladder contents for science.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
I have.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
It's on my license plate. This is incredible because I
think of him and this is obviously misguided, but I've
always thought of Darwin as like a conservationist. But that's
never even right. He was pitched as honestly. I mean,
he was a documentar and he you know, wrote down
detailed notes about all these things, but he wasn't exactly
out there to like save the wildlife. And this just
(20:44):
pushes that point home. Go on, man, this is fascinating
and bizarre to me.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
It's all it's all cover, right. I think we have
it all wrong thinking, oh, he was some kind of scientist, right.
His main goal was to eat as many animals as possible.
I think of him as actually the first guy Fieri.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Had nothing to do with science.
Speaker 6 (21:02):
The science bit was just a cover to be like
you see chuck again.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
Yeah, drinking, he's drinking turtle pea. I know he's talking.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
About his evolution thing.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah guy.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Because even if we're being generous, we can say, okay,
one turtle. You know, you might be in a situation
when you're like where am I going to? When am
I going to be here again? But twenty twenty?
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Right?
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Yeah, Look, we've all been to uh what's the the
Galapagos Island and you know, tried to eat one of
the turtles.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
First, you got to ride after the one.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
You got to ride the turtle and then my head
and then you eat it. That's just how you do.
That's the order of operation.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
They frown on that. In my experience, I mean, maybe
you had a cooler guide.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
The first thing I do when I see a turtle
is try and dump toxic ooze on it, right that
it will then turn into some kind of hero and
Nisa mutant.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
And it's a numbers you know, the s Miles is
wearing a cheese shredder on his face, Like, do you guys.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Have a guy for toxic ooze? That is my question
because oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
La man I can get to.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Market.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
We'll talk off air. Yeah, well specialized too.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
There's certain kinds for mammals, and there's other ones for
reptiles and ones for insects.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Yeah, as there should be. That makes sense. Did this
ever become a matter of controversy in Darwin's life? Like,
did anybody ever say, hey, man, you can just eat
run tortoise?
Speaker 4 (22:33):
I mean, I think right, So I think it was
actually more common, uh than you would expect, because there's
also a great scientist named William Buckland. He was the
first person to publish a scientific study of a dinosaur, uh,
and he made it his life's mission to eat everyone,
(22:56):
or eat one of every animal that existed, and even
at one point ate a human heart. So and they
exit they were around at the same time. So apparently
this was just a way to kind of flex your
scientific legitimacy to the world. Just be like, yo, this
(23:19):
this is how I get down showing my superiority over
the natural world by putting it in my stomach.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
You know it.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Also, it also occurs to me that this is kind
of a weird reverse Noah's Arc kind of scenario where
instead of like saving one of every animal, you're gonna
eat one of every animal. Just to show that you've
got one over on these dumb creatures and that you
are the top of the food chain. And they better
know that.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
I mean, as a scientist, when you spend that much
time around the animals, you really come to understand that
they think they're better than you. Yeah, that they need
to be put in their place. But just two quick
facts that I found particularly interesting. He ate a twenty
pound rodent and said it was the very best meat
(24:07):
he had ever tasted. So rodent meat is apparently underrated.
And at one point his hunger came into contrast with
his scientific drive because he had spent months trying to
find this ostrich like bird called a lesser rihea, and
(24:27):
he was eating what he thought to be a greater rea,
and about halfway through the portion, or about halfway through
his portion of greater rea, he realized, oh no, that
bone being there means this is actually a lesser rea,
the thing I've been looking for forever. So he had
to basically send this animal he was hoping to scientifically
(24:51):
document back to England as just a bunch of like
chicken bones and skin and feathers because he had eaten
most of.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
It, so he uh, he sent them leftovers.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
He did send it in a styrofoam clamshell container.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I have to do it, did he did? He then
get dia rhea? Imagine I had to. I had to,
I had to.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
You are absolved. That was necessary.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Somebody had to say it.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
They had it had to be said.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Was gonna feel unfulf the.
Speaker 6 (25:27):
Judges, and yes, we will accept it, we will thank you.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Thanks for taking one for the team.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Noyeah. Of course glad to do.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
It, so we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
So so far we have two. I would say legitimate
flex is legitimately weird at least, and both are somewhat
cruel when you think about it. Uh, you know, I
think the gambit was correct in the beginning. I think
this is a two part episode.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
And you know, I really hate it when Pete podcasters saying, well,
we're running out of time, so we're going to make
this a two parter shenanigans. No, our episodes can be
as long as we want. We just are trying to
get two episodes out of this because we're lazy.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
No Well, I mean maybe that's where you're coming from, Noel,
I'm not gonna lie. I was gonna walk outside and
see if there was some kind of rodent that I
could eat for science, because apparently that's okay now you know, well, Ben,
we went We're very different people, Ben, We're very different people.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Lazy and hungry, lazy and hungry.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
That's it. That's the that's our combo before before we
go on this episode, though, a very very important question
that I know everybody listening is waiting to hear, which
of the teenage mutant Ninja Turtles is your favorite or
which one do you identify with the most. I couldn't
let it be unset.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
I was more of a casual Turtles fan, So I
was more Michaelangelo, just the everybody's first choice when they're
young and first getting to know it.
Speaker 6 (26:52):
Yeah, Michael Angelo.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
He's like a rebel.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, he's a rebel who likes pizza.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Just like me.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
Maybe all love pizza, but he really loves he loves pizza.
Yeah for me, I was.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
I liked Michaelangelo for the swag, the confidence, yes, the
rebellious attitude, the weird flecks. But in the end I
kind of said I was more of a Donatello guy, Okay,
because I like blue.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Dona Tello is a smart one, right, didn't Donna Tello?
Wasn't he the sciencey guy?
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah? Don Tello has inventions. I yeah, and the bowstat.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Bowsta, which is which is admittedly the most boring of
the Ninja Turtles weapons. And in my opinion, really I
think Michaelangelo the nunchucks are obviously the most fun. He's
got two of them. He can swing him around, do
all kinds of crazy tricks.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
But he's got no reach. No, he's got no reach.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
What do you mean he's got no reach.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
He's got to reach with the nunchucks. You gotta be
really active to well Doe, Okay, I'm just my bias
is showing. I'm also team Donna Tello.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
You're on team don Tello.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Hell yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
I always liked to Actually I misspoke.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
I meant to say Leonardo is the one who is blue.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Oh, that's right, wear blue. Yes, But don Tello was
still the sciencey guy. Leonardo was sort of the de
facto leader. Yeah, he's like the cyclops, yes, of the Turtles.
That's right, that's right. I was always Michael Angelo. I'm
with that, And I was not a casual Turtles fan.
I've seen both the original film and the Secret of
the Use, and I know the Ninja wrap by heart.
(28:12):
And I had the cassette called Coming Out of Our
Shells that was distributed with Domino's pizzas back in the day.
Speaker 6 (28:18):
But yeah, wow, you did you? Do you remember that
Sam Rockwell is in the first Teenage?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Yes, that's right. Isn't he in the Foot? Is he
in the Foot Clan?
Speaker 5 (28:27):
Yeah, he's like the main sort of like forward facing
foot guy.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
He's like Fagan from Oliver He's like recruiting little street
urchin kids. Totally. I forgot that.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
I still stand by that as his greatest work as
an act.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Oh, absolutely, he.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Agrees, he agrees. I think he has gone on record
with that.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Yeah, it's that. And then Moon Moon would be number
two for.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Me, distant number two.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Agreed.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
But so we we are going to pause for today's episode.
We'll be back with the second part of Weirdest Historical
Flexes in the meeting time will forego our usual This
is where you can find us on the internet because
we did that at the front up front.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
We still have to thank everybody though, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yes, we want to think of course, our super producer
Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed our.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Track, Yes, our fabulous research associate Gabe Lucier, our buddy
Christopher Hasciotis, who is due for an appearance. I actually
had lunch with Christopher of the day and he really
misses us and he's so happy to see the show
doing well. Whyte me it was in a different city.
Ice cold, I'm really sorry. Next time you're an ice
cold dude. I am not, man, I'm not. I'm a sweetheart.
(29:32):
But we'd also like to thank our incredible guests who
are going to stick around if you would, for part
two of this kind of anthology episode on Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Yeah, thanks so much for coming. Guys, where can people
while they're waiting for this next episode, where can they
hear more from you? Miles and Jack?
Speaker 5 (29:48):
Oh, you can find us every day on this network
on our show The Daily Zeitgeist every morning or whenever
you want to listen to it.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
And if you're interested in social media, I mean you
can follow me at Miles of Gray wherever you wherever
you get your social media.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Yeah, and Jack underscore O Brian on Twitter and yes,
so much of us you can find so much of
us over at the Daily Zeitgeist, wherever find podcasts are
given away for free.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
And I guess we can drop our little social media
handles too. I on Instagram at Embryonic Insider you.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Can see me get kicked into and out of various
countries around the world at Ben Bullen on Instagram. So
that's all for now, Everybody run off. I'm gonna hunt.
I'm gonna hunt some rudents. We're gonna talk about the
turtles and maybe rewatch Secret of the Use, and we'll
be back very soon.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, apple pot podcast or wherever you
(31:01):
listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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