December 27, 2025 • 43 mins
Returning special guest Christopher Hassiotis joins the guys today for a round-robin discussion of the very weird life of George Washington, first President of the United States. (As you may have guessed from the title, there's more weirdness than we could fit in a single episode.)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow Ridiculous Historians. We're bringing in the end of the
year the beginning of the next with one of our
favorite classic series guys, George Washington.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Just so weird Gosh Washington.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Check out they wants you to know YouTube for some
amazing little sketches of a Ben dressed up as a
time traveling George Washington. While that may be fiction or
it may not entirely George Washington, the man did indeed
lead a very unexpectedly varied and fascinating and yes weird,
(00:36):
ridiculous life.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, and so this is part one of our exploration
with none other than our special guest, our brother in arms,
longtime friend of the show, Christopher hasiotis Yeah Yeah's Rolling.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeart Read Deal. Welcome
(01:24):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
My name is Ben, My name is No.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
This is an interesting, kind of traditional traditional way to
start the show. If you threw me for a loop there.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, it took it hard. Somebody remembered you guys on
the internet recently referred to me as what's his name?
So I'm going to try to just play it straight
laced for a little while.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Ben, did they steal your thunder Have they robbed you
of your mojo?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
I don't know. I don't want to feel thunderless.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
How are we going to get your groove back?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Well, we're going to rely on the help of our
super producer, Casey Pegram as always.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
And that sound always gets my groove right up.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So we have a pretty fascinating show for you today, folks,
because it came about through a somewhat circuitous fashion. And
who better to help us explain the story of how
we got to this episode for today than our returning
special guest friends and neighbors Christopher Hasiotis.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Hey everybody, Hey, Casey, Hey Nole? What's your name?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Too soon? Yeah? Yeah, come on, we've got a nurture, Ben,
do we we do? Okay?
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Very my contract?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
This is a safe space? Is a safe space? Fine?
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Fine?
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So we love having you on the show, Christopher, and
we always have a bang up time whenever you bless
us with some historical knowledge. But in our conversations off air,
the four of us were, you know, we were kicking
around ideas what should we explore on air today? And
you recently returned from a trip to Washington.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah, that's Washington State. I was out in Seattle for
Podcon too, which is a podcast convention, podcast conference, so
kind of diving into the weird, strange, growing world of podcasting.
Headed out there was a very sort of DIY scene,
a lot of great creators, a lot of great podcasters.
Aaron Mankey, who's got some shows over here on our network.
(03:25):
He was out there, and it was my first time
in Seattle. And I know you've got your goal of
doing a show about every state. So I don't know
if this really counts that I was in Washington and
we're going to talk about what we're going to talk about.
I don't know that accounts for Washington, but that's up
to you. I don't make your rules. I just sit
in the back and judge from a distance. But yeah,
(03:46):
we were out there, and that trip to Seattle to
Washington State made me think, Hey, what's this place named after?
It's named after a guy.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Did you have a guess?
Speaker 4 (03:57):
You know, it wasn't named after an apple, Okay, wasn't
named after a city on the other side of the nation.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And it wasn't named after George Washington Carver.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
It wasn't no president numrouno. George Washington himself, he's our Yeah,
I thought there's a there's a lot of cool stuff
that we can talk about when it comes to George Washington.
He's a you know, revered statesman, our first president, a general,
super military commander. You may know him for his fake teeth,
(04:27):
his cherry tree. We can get into all of that
and whether that actually happens.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Quite a snappy dresser, well weren't, weren't they all sure?
I mean he had a particularly honed.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I mean during their paintings they did. Yeah, you don't
know what they wore on a regular Thursday.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Yeah, I mean the paintings, the things that are on
the dollar bill. That's essentially like the Instagram of the time.
It's what they wanted to put forth. You know, you
can be looking at someone's Instagram feed and they're happy,
they're with their significant other, and you have no idea
that they're going through a financial troubles and dealing with
a mortgage and they're about to break up. Looks like
the life is great. So I think it's just got real.
(05:05):
Not speaking from personal experience here, but yeah, so maybe
you know, that's one of the nice things about paintings.
You can put the best foot forward, you can work
a lot of symbolism into it. All of a sudden,
we're talking art theory. But let's uh, let's get back
to George.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, let's get back to George. One thing I want
to mention that I think is a very classy aspect
of his character. He refused to become king. Right. There
were proposals early on in the days of the founding
of the nation. People said George, you're great, and He's like, well,
stop keep going, stop, no, keep going, And they said
(05:40):
you should be king, and he said, nah, I guys,
we're kind of missing the point. And that is, in
my opinion, something that speaks very highly to his character
and his reputation. But along the way, as we decided
to explore the life of George Washington, we also decided
to not do the basic origin story, life and times
(06:03):
and then death. We decided to look into some of
the strangest, weirdest things the average person might not know
about George Washington. Previously on the show, Noel, You and
I had bantered back and forth about the misconception surrounding
Washington's teeth or his allegedly wooden teeth.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Seahorse teeth. It was straight seahorse teeth. Bringing it back,
bring it back, No, but seriously, I mean, that was
a time where it was absolutely a thing to have
animal teeth as dentures. Also, I think the episode in
question was about using the teeth of fallen soldiers for dentures.
And then we discovered that seahorse teeth weren't actually the
(06:47):
teeth of tiny, tiny sea horses. That was just what
they called hippopotamus as they called them seahorses.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And Christopher, in case you missed it now, straight seahorse
teeth is one of our new catchphrases.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
It's just like saying something dope, super dope, straight seahorse teeth.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah mm hmm yeah, Okay, you picked it up so quickly,
super easy. Somehow it sounds like it sounds better when
you say.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
It straight sea horse teeth, straight seahorse teeth.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
It's hard to say. See, friend, you could not do it.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
But no, that just means if I, if I had,
I would have conjured like a little demon seahorse right here.
That would have messed up the studio something fierce.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
It's sort of a homunculus type, a bit of a
bit of a quistor.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Please don't kidding, kidding, kidding.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Have you ever been present for the quist?
Speaker 4 (07:31):
I feel like he's here right now, Sorry, listeners, He's.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
He usually is. He kind of does sort of that
extra sisty type thing, or he just sort of clings
to the ceiling or in his head rotates and looks
at us downward. It's a whole thing.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
He's kind of the n essay of how stuff works.
You know, he's he's always around, but he would agree
with us. I hazard that George Washington is an amazing
guy who lived an astonishing life. We know the gist, Christopher.
I think you set it up quite nicely for us.
George Washington born February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, passed
(08:04):
away December fourteenth, seventeen ninety nine. But in that span
of time he lived quite a full life, and there
are so many facts about him. There are so many misconceptions.
He has moved from the realm of earthly creatures into
the world of myth in many ways. And we decided
(08:27):
to each find some lesser known aspects of George Washington's
life and times and share them with each other and
share them with you listening today?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
When did you say his birthday was man.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
February twenty second.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So apparently that in and of itself is a misconception.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Is that the case?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, according to this Mental Floss article twenty five things
he might not have known about George Washington, his actual
birthday was February eleventh. That's seventeen thirty one.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Well, but that's a calendar thing we're talking here, right.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
This is true because it has to do with the
Gregorian calendar versus the Julian game. But it's just that,
and I just thought that was fine. That is it
is great. The man is shrouded.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Mystery calendars are weird anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
True.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So you're right, the colonies switched from the Gregorian calendar
to the Julian calendar, and his birthday was moved eleven days.
I wonder which of those answers is the acceptable answer
in a trivia game.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
That's a good question.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
I think it depends on the trivia host and how
deep into nertitude you want to get.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I was about to put a call out to any
trivia host in the audience. Is there a code amongst
trivia hosts as to this kind of thing. How pedantic
is too pedantic.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
For some of the trivia games I've been to. It's
never too pedantic, that's fair, okay, And it depends on
how much beer you've had.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, oh, also true.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So February eleventh, seventeen thirty one, but then it changed
to February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, and actually also
changed in terms of the year. And as you said
and old, this is just the beginning of the of
the historical mysteries surrounding George Washington. We learned some fascinating
(10:02):
quick what off trivia things. You pointed out something interesting
about his name, Christopher.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
Yeah, George Washington. That's his name. That's it. No middle name.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
What are you saying?
Speaker 4 (10:13):
No middle name? Just George.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That's that's illegal, Just George. That's not It's not okay,
George Washington. What happened?
Speaker 4 (10:20):
What more do you need? That's he made a state.
You know, he's not prince, he's not Madonna. He's George Washington.
He is not George Steven Washington.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
This begs the question of when did the middle name
start and why? Why? Why people get so hung up
on a middle name. Because my reaction there was very
real in visceral, But now I'm questioning it.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
You know, there is another president who had a middle
name made up.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
It was are we talking Truman's situation here?
Speaker 1 (10:48):
It was, Yeah, it was a fake middle initial. Right.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Well, there's there's some dispute about Harry S. Truman, a
lot of and again this kind of gets back to
Nole's favorite pedantic trivia folks. But you know, people will
often claim Harry S. Truman, he did not have a
period after the S and his name, and that's the
way it is. And you know, it's the kind of
people who love to jump down your throat on the
Internet and say like, well, technically, actually, actually those.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Are our people.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Yeah, they can be, but those, you know, it can
be a little aggressive, It can be a little off
putting if you are always looking to correct other people
and to shape the world into the way you see
it in my opinion, So, yeah, Harry S. Truman sometimes
he signed his name with a period after the S.
So again it's one of those things that's not consistent
and left to the mysteries of the history.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And just to stay in keeping with the pedantry of
our of our people. Here, the middle name actually began
in the Middle Ages, and it had to do with
families not being able to decide whether to give their
kids a family name or a religious name, so they
were able to give them both.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And it's different in other cultures, right exactly. So not
to focus too much on on President Truman in our
George Washing episode, which we are endeavoring to get count
as our Washington State episode.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
I don't know, you know what, let's go.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Let's give it a go.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Let's give it a go.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I think we can. We can always leave the door
open to do another Washington episode. But while we're filling
out our fifty.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I say, who's gonna stop us?
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Who?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Not me?
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Apparently?
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Oh Chris So Harry S. Truman. According to the story,
when he was born in eighteen eighty four, his parents
couldn't decide on a middle name, so they went with
the letter S to honor his paternal grandfather and his
maternal grandfather, a Ship and a Solomon, respectively. When he
(12:38):
took the presidential oath of office, the Chief Justice Harlan F.
Stone said, I Harry Ship Truman, and the President replied,
I Harry S. Truman. So we've buttoned that up.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Well, does that mean he actually was never president, as
folks said about Obama when there was like a little
bit of a discrepancy during the swearing in. I don't know,
probably not, because cable news did not exist in a
day Twitter was not a thing. Thankfully for mister Harry S. Truman.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
This is a good point you make.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
And now we return to George Washington having solved the
case of Harry S. Truman's frankly fake presidency. Right, that's
not a sweeping statement.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
We had to make an appearance. He just couldn't couldn't
leave well enough alone, Harry S. Truman.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
He's the quist of He's the quister of American president.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Really, really is so, George Washington? Yeah, no, middle, I mean,
is there more behind the story or is that is
that where the story ends? There may be okay, and
I'll leave you with that. It'll be a cliffhanger, That's
what I know. I like it.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
I like it, I like I like this mysterious air
we are we are creating in today's episode, but we
are not just going to present mysteries for the entirety
of the show. We do have some fascinating facts that
you may not have learned in your school years. And
(13:59):
I think that I think we're we're all on the
same page. But how do we want to start?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Guys? Oh, I thought we were. We were already off
to the races.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
We'll off to the races.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Okay, yeah, let's was that your first one, Christopher?
Speaker 4 (14:10):
There wasn't no, that had nothing to do that.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
We're just bantering.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
That is trivia.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
This is just banters.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
This is good. Oh, this is going to be a
good one. You guys, who wants to go first? I
propose that Christopher goes fair here I am yep.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
All right.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Well, we started off talking about George Washington's birth, his
birth date and the change of that. So let's just
fast forward. Let's skip all the rest, and let's go
straight to the end of his life. So bummer, yeah, no,
I mean, he's not dead yet. He's not dead yet.
His twilight years, he's almost dead. He's not dead yet.
So in seventeen ninety seven, George Washington leaves the presidency,
what's he going to do with his life? He decides,
(14:49):
there's an actual quote from one of his biographers, George
Washington when he leaves the presidency, he wants his retirement
to be quote more tranquil and freer from cares end quote.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yeah sounds nice. He wants to chill.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Yeah, more tranquil, freer from cares.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And because of course, doing this on his palatial estate,
Mount Vernon, right, well.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Yeah, Mount Vernon, which is it's south of where DC
is now. It's on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.
It's his estate of tens of thousands of acres. And
while there, in his final days he's retired, he is
a man managing the plantation, a Scottish immigrant named James Anderson.
Now this plantation manager had a background and a training
(15:28):
in distillation. He made booze. So Anderson suggests to Washington,
Hey Washington, Hey, George Washington, if you're going to use
the full name, why not start making some booze. So
we almost had George Washington whiskey, and the country did
for a long time. So George Washington died in seventeen
ninety nine. He'd left the presidency in seventeen ninety seven.
(15:49):
For those last couple two and a half years of
his life, he started a distillery in Mount Vernon. It
ended up being one of the largest distilleries in the
Americas at the time. By seventeen ninety eight, By early
seventeen ninety nine, which is the year he ended up dying,
at the end of that year, in December, they were
producing eleven thousand gallons of whiskey. Now, whiskey became really
(16:09):
popular because in the seventeen eighties and during the Revolutionary period,
rum was the drink of choice. Soldiers were given rations
of rum, sometimes whiskey, but essentially it became problematic importing
a lot of the sugar cane from the West Indies
to create rum. So this homegrown liquor whiskey became much
more popular. And yeah, there's a distillery right there that
(16:32):
Washington ran. His signature whiskey was made with sixty five
percent rye, thirty percent corn, and five percent barley.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
And wasn't it considered an non aged rye.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Yeah, it was just it was it was distilled and
ready to go. It didn't last years and years. You
know a lot of the whiskeys you can buy now
in the rise they're aged in oak barrels. They're given
That's how it gets the color. Yeah, exactly, they're they
mature over a long period of time. They developed more flavor.
But no, I mean this stuff was distilled right away
and sold.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
So doesn't that mean it was almost a little bit
closer to something like moonshine or wing.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Yeah, pretty much pretty much. And it was sold, but
it wasn't bottled. It wasn't sold in cans or pouches
or anything like that. It was just packaged in barrels
and pouches. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to think of how
you could have like a juice box, Yeah, exactly, whiskey pouch,
like a you know, one of those little foil capri
sun kind of things Washington. So it's the kind of
(17:27):
thing you could find it like the I don't know,
fire festival or something.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Too soon too soon. Yeah, how was it sold?
Speaker 4 (17:32):
It was just sold in barrels straight straight to taverns.
They would buy a whole barrel of this of this whiskey.
They didn't just make whiskey though. They also made other
kinds of brandy on the side. There was a peach brandy,
and apple brandy, a per Simon brandy, and they would
also take the leavings of that and make vinegar. They
would take all the grains that had fermented and feed
(17:52):
those to the pigs that lived on Mount Vernon, So
it's a sort of cyclical, sustainable, good way to use
what you've grown. Also wildly successful. In his final days,
George Washington was becoming one of the pre eminent whiskey
barons in the United States. The only thing that really
derailed the company, and one of the reasons why we
don't have Washington Whiskey as a massive legacy institution in
(18:15):
the country today is he died in seventeen ninety nine.
So after he died, the distillery was passed to Martha,
his wife's granddaughter and her husband. But a fire in
eighteen fourteen burned down the distillery and that was pretty
much the end of the operation. So that really put
the final screw in the tombstone. It nail in the
coffin there you go.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I like screwing the tombstone.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
I like screwing the tombstone. Sure it's more secure than
a nail.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
It's one of those ikea tombstones, I think, and now correct.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Me if I'm wrong in this, or maybe you have
a better timeline. But they're back at it again at
Mount Vernon. They are.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
They're back at it. Yeah, A couple of years ago.
Within the last ten years, they reopened the distillery at
his historic home. I don't know if they're using the
exact same techniques and methods, but it's in same place.
And yeah, the Washington distilleries up and running. Probably not
going to give some of the other notable names in
the whiskey world today a run for their money, but
if you go visit Washington's historic Mount Vernon, you can
(19:11):
definitely sample the whiskey.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Come for the history, stay for the whiskey.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
I thought you were gonna say whiskery, whiskery.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I love pronouncing that hard age. According to Mount Vernon
dot org, you can buy a bottle of this stuff
for about ninety eight dollars, which right shade cheap, and
they refer to the recipe as the mash bill, which
must have been the old timy way of referring to
this whiskey recipe. And it is using the same recipe
that they found in the ledgers from the original distillery.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
That's great. I would love to take a road trip
up there. I think it would be a lot of
fun if we could buy not just a bottle, you know,
because you couldn't buy a bottle then, so they're being
a little a historical. I would just love to just
load up a barrel.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
And bring it back to the office.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Get a whole barrel.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
That's what the studio is missing.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
This would not be our first time sampling some tipple
from George Whiskey Pouch Washington. I believe we've mentioned on
previous episodes a good friend of ours, our coworker producer
Alex Williams, is known around how stuff works for making
toward the end of the year, making an historically accurate
(20:16):
version of George Washington's famous eggnog and just between us folks,
that stuff packs a punch.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Oh man, it's boozy. And the last little direction in
the recipe the best part. It says to let's set
in cool place for several days and taste frequently.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
As one does with just about anything in your cool place.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I think it would startle most of us in the
modern age to travel back in time to the days
of the Founding Fathers and see just how much and
how often they drank. Yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I would say, there was never a sober moment.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
I'll point out though, that you know, we were talking
about George Washington's distillery and his recipes. Again, this was
a man who commanded an entire plantation, so he was
kind of up at the head. This wasn't Washington himself
sitting in there in the distilling room tinkering with the recipe,
coming up with what he most favored. This wasn't really
a passion project for him. It was a way for
him to make money at the end of his life.
(21:13):
He wasn't nearly as rich as some people may have
thought he was. He wrote to a nephew who was
asking him for money, Yeah, I'll give you this loan,
but I'm not made of money like most people think
I am. So this was really a project of James Anderson,
the plantation manager, as well as six enslaved Africans who
were the ones doing the actual hard labor of making
this distilled liquor.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Getting none of the credit.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
No, and we'll get back to Washington's enslaved staff soon.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yes, that's foreshadowing. Also, before we get too into the
disturbing facts of Washington's life, I have a proposal for
us on the show. Why don't we hunt for a
middle name for George Washington. In the course of this episode,
as we learned stuff. So right now we've got mash Bill,
which you think is great.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
I'm a fan of seahorse Teeth, Sea horse Teeth.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
I think that's great.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
One word. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I also like whiskey Pouch just because it makes them
seem so disreputable.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
It's very good.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Can I can I suggest George.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
George George Washington.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That sounds like an eighties singer.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It's George George Washington. Uh yeah, let's see, let's see
what we find. These are all some great contenders, but
we are just setting off on our weird Washington journey.
What do you think? Do you have one? Do you
want to go?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Do you want to flip for it? You want to
Rochambeau for sure?
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Okay, it's one, two, three go. We've got Christopher as
a witness. All right, ready? One?
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Does that mean you get to choose what you do?
Does I mean you go that?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
I think up to you, man, I'd like you to go.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Man, Okay, I have something that is a bit strange
but will be old beans to people who also were
fans of our other show stuff. They don't want you
to know. George Washington, you see, had any number of
extracurricular activities, one of which was freemasonry. George Washington became
(23:13):
a Master Mason in seventeen fifty three, and ever since
this has driven more fringe or conspiratorial researchers further and
further into the depths of speculation. He was a young
Virginia planter when he became a Master Mason in Fredericksburg, Virginia,
Masonic Lodge number four. He was only twenty one years old,
(23:37):
and soon he would command his first military operation as
a major in the Virginia Colonial Militia. We know, I
think basically what freemasonry is. It's evolved from the practices
and rituals of Stonemason's guilds in the Middle Ages, and
it was still a powerful force in America even during
(24:01):
the time of tension in the later in the War
for Independence against the British Empire. The first American Masonic
Lodge was founded in Philadelphia in seventeen thirty and do
you know who was a founding member of that.
Speaker 6 (24:15):
It's pretty easy to guess, is it Old Benny Franks?
It is it is. It's the old Libertine himself. So
for a lot of people this association would seem to
indicate that there's something at work behind the behind the
screen of history, right, that Freemasonry was involved in the
(24:39):
American Revolution, or that people were acting under orders of
the Masonic organization. But really, for George Washington, joining the
Masons was a rite of passage, and it was sort
of an exercise of his civic responsibility. After he became
a master Mason again at the age of twenty one,
he had the option of passing through a number of
(25:00):
additional rights that would take him to higher degrees that
would place him higher in the hierarchy of Masonry. In
seventeen eighty eight, shortly before he became the first President
of the US, he was elected the first Worshipful Master
of Alexandria Lodge Number twenty two. And he was not
alone in this, as who pointed out Benjamin Franklin was
(25:21):
also a Mason. As where Paul Revere, John Hancock, the
Marquis de Lafayette of the Hamilton Musical Fame, and the
Boston Tea Party, saboteurs and Masonic rights were in play.
They were witnessed events like Washington's inauguration, the laying of
the cornerstone of the US Capitol Building in Washington, d C.
(25:42):
And DC again is a city supposedly designed with a
lot of Masonic symbols. In mind, you have to admit
the Washington Monument's pretty abstract, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Itfinitely looms large in the horizon in a very sinister way.
If you're walking around on the mall at night, he
kind of gives me the creeps. To be honest, I.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Think the whole idea of conspiracy and the Masonic lodge
and all that, it doesn't really take into account the
reality of the situation at the time. Now in the
two thousands, it's easy to look back and think, oh
my gosh, all these people knew each other, they were
all part of the same organization. Everything ties into everything.
But the reality is the population of the colonies at
(26:22):
the time was so small compared to what we have today, right,
So I mean, essentially you're talking about a population in
terms of the landowners and the white European immigrants or settlers.
We're talking tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. Essentially.
These are small towns or small cities, so everyone's going
to know everyone, especially if you're near the top of
the upper echelon of society. It's not quite as nefarious
(26:47):
cabal creating as it sounds.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Absolutely not. That's the thing. In many ways, it's a
social club. These people are sharing their interests. And do
they talk about things that they want to do? Do
they talk about political goals or business ideas? Of course
they do, because that's what friends do when they hang
out with each other, you know, they talk about the
things they care about and the things that they're working on.
(27:11):
I enjoy this theory, and I especially appreciate Christopher You're
pointing out that it's easy for us to look back
in retrospect and perhaps see patterns where none actually exist.
You know what I mean. A lot of history is coincidence.
The human species is not chock full of amazing planners
(27:33):
with very complicated schemes.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Now, everything in the past looks like it unfolded in
a way that it was meant to and in a
way that made sense. But that's because that's the way
we know how things unfolded. There are innumerable other ways
things could have happened, and other paths history could have
taken that if we travel down those timelines, would make
this one look particularly ridiculous or strange.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
But guys, you're completely overlooking the blood magic rituals to
molok oh, I mean they did on the regular.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
Yeah, but that's I mean, Oh, I think that I.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Thought you were talking about the one that I was
going to do later.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Oh oh, I didn't mean to blow up you all.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Spot you guys are coming right.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Well. I didn't get an invite.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
I brought snacks.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I love a good snack.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I mean, come for the mullick, stay for the snacks.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
That's what I'll do.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
One last thing about freemasonry and George Washington in DC.
I have such a fun time imagining the pitch meeting
for building the Washington Monument and say, okay, we think
he's the greatest president, we think he's the first president.
We need something that really says this man, what's the
(28:40):
first president? And you know, they go back and forth
and someone says, well, maybe a statue of the guy.
And they go, ah, I like the idea of something
like a big structure. Okay, okay, maybe like he's on a.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Horse or as you like to say, Ben, No, let's get.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Weird with it. That's exactly it. Yeah, they said, let's
get let's get with it. Have you guys heard of obelisk?
And then you mean obelisks like a dude like in Egypt?
Right on? And that was history. I am mostly kidding
because if you look into the story of the Washington Monument,
which could be its own episode, they had much more
(29:17):
ambitious plans, and what we see today is essentially a
compromise in scaling down.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Again, the story of our nation and the story of
our history is compromises, half baked plans that in retrospect
look like what should have happened, but in reality we're
just thrown together at the time with no real idea
of what ramifications would come to pass decades down the line.
I mean, look at anything involving well, we don't need
to get into health insurance and tax law and all
(29:46):
sorts of compromises made in Congress. But yeah, we are
just a collection of mistakes and bumbles through the years.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Some of which have incredible staying power.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Yes, very much, so much like a monument itself to
our first president, I would argue, maybe they just want
were like, how are we going to remind people that
he was the first president? Let's this This looks like
a big number one giant number one.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
So let's reset just a second here, because it occurs
to me that we may be well on the way
to making something that sounds like a hit piece on
George Washington. Because he's a whiskey tycoon, he's a freemason,
he's a slave owner. He's a slave owner. Yeah, we
can't forget that part. But it wasn't it wasn't all complicated, weird,
(30:35):
problematic stuff he had. He had some other notable wins.
And I don't think being a whiskey tycoon is that bad.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
I have nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I think there was a slave labor. I think that
bothers me.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, And it's also one of those things where it's
I can't even fall behind the whole. It was just
how everyone was doing it. It was that was a
different time.
Speaker 6 (30:54):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
The thing is, he also was a pretty forward thinking
individual in so many ways. In fact, he was so
influential in creating the structure that is very much still
a part of our military today that he was posthumously
given this title the General of the Armies of the
United States, that is forever un outrankable.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Yeah, it's total, total god mode. You know, you can't
let's say they create seven star generals, eight star generals,
nine star generals in the next couple of years, those
still will be underneath Washington.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Kind of similar in some ways to the Eternal President
of the DPRK Kim Il Sung, but we didn't call
him eternal President. We just called him General of Everything.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
Yeah, and I think it's important to remember about Washington
that and most of the men back then, this was
the first time they were doing the He was setting
the precedent for the president.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
The presidential president exactly.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
And so yeah, the way he acted, the choices he made,
the statements he put forth, they set the stage for
what we have, what we've had over the past several
hundred years leading up to today. And it's important to
keep in mind that anyone who's given that sort of
authority carries weight. They embody what a country is moving forward.
And that actually played into some of the misconceptions about Washington,
(32:13):
because his biographers said, we don't need just a man,
we need a myth. So we're going to invent this
whole thing about the cherry tree. We're going to make
up some stories to make him larger than life.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
That was his biographer weams beams, yeah, biographer slash mythologizers,
right absolutely, and just blatantly like made it up, not
fudged it a little bit.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Some of the stuff was just made up to make
him larger than life.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Oh absolutely. I mean, and I honestly, very very frequently
confuse the myth of the cherry tree with Abe Lincoln
because if everyone called him honest Abe, so I sometimes
conflate those stories because he also was a very larger
than my figure, who grew up poor in kind of
more of a rural setting.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
And is also similar to Washington. He has a real
underdog story because Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for office right multiple times? Right,
you know, so people love to see some perseverance. Oh man,
I think we're doing pretty well here so far. We've
got we're drawing in Truman, we're drawing in Lincoln.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Well remember earlier, Christopher, when you were talking about how
the United States was sort of a agglomeration of half
baked ideas.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
I remember that. I look forward to the emails.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Speaking of half baked ideas. Washington smoked a lot of weed.
No that's not true, but he grew a lot of hemp.
That is true.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
That part is true.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
I was waiting for that. I needed to do that.
Callback I had to do it. Thank you for supplying
me with that. No true. Hemp was one of his
main cash crops, well before he got into the whiskey trade.
On Mount Vernon, he grew copious amounts of hemp, which
is marijuana, but it is a slightly different strain of marijuana.
(33:56):
Doesn't contain the psychoactive substance thchc or it's very very
very low tetrahydro cannabinolls. And it was used historically for
making ropes. It was a fantastic fiber who used the
stem it had these They grew it so it would
have these elongated strands, these fibers in the stems, as
(34:17):
opposed to the plants that were grown to smoke, or
you would think of the ones that are grown today
to smoke are much shorter, less hardy plants. They look
a little more like little bushes. But he grew fields
of this stuff in an area on Mountain Vernon that
he called the muddy Hole, the muddy Hole, the muddy Hole,
and it was because it was a very sought after substance,
(34:41):
because it was used to make They even referred to
ropes in those days as hemps, they call them, like
sailing hemps, like for all the riggings in various types
of vessels. And he would have continued to grow it
if he hadn't have done some kind of shrewd calculations
and realized that act wheat was probably a more profitable
(35:02):
crop to use his land for. But yeah, he grew
it for quite some time. And as it turns out,
in the very same way that Mount Vernon is now
back to distilling whiskey. Mash bill, mash bill. Yeah, they're
also now growing hemp.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, as of twenty eighteen, right, right, they harvested their
first hemp crop in centuries, I believe.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
And the interesting thing is is that hemp, even though
it doesn't contain very high levels of the psychoactive substance
at all, were outlawed and made a Schedule one drug
right alongside the more you know, trippy counterparts. So growing
hemp was outlawed.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
But it's not the same thing, right, I mean, they're
if these plants are cousins, they're related. But that's like
if you had prohibition of alcohol and all of a
sudden you couldn't serve cough syrup at a drug store, right,
because just because it has a little bit of alcohol
in it, we're kind of on the same thing. People
are overreacting and bunching things together.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Very very very similar. But if you look at a
field of hemp, it looks like a field of marijuana plans.
I mean, they're very very similar. And in fact, so
what I was getting to is, in twenty fourteen, there
was a farm bill that passed that allowed research for
growing hemp, and some states have legalized essentially limited hemp farming,
(36:23):
and another bill that passed in the Senate in twenty
eighteen was going to allow for full legalization. I don't
know if that one has gone through yet or not.
I'll have to do a little more follow up on that,
But the point is you can get there's another substance
of compound that's in marijuana and hemp. It's called CBD,
which you may have read a lot of research about
people use it for anxiety. It can treat a lot
(36:47):
of different ailments and just kind of has become a
very popular kind of remedy that people are using. And
it is legal in states where marijuana is not legal
because you can get it from hemp. It's pretty interesting.
But yeah, now there's no evidence. A lot of other
Faunding fathers grew he too, like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,
but there is no evidence showing that any of them
(37:08):
ever tried to smoke.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
Yeah, it's a useful crop, and it might be a
disappointment to your stoner buddy out there who's saying, oh,
Washington and the founding Father's had hemp, we need to
legalize everything. It's not quite the same thing, but it
does argue for nuance, It argues for understanding the uses
of plants and that any one plant or one species
(37:30):
can have different applications.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Well said, and also just a soft historical note there.
I don't believe any form of cannabis was actually scheduled
one until the nineteen seventies, right, So it's relatively research.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Right, Yeah, And I mean we are definitely in a
sea change of legalizations sweeping the nation right now, which
is pretty fascinating time to be around with so many
of these changes coming so quickly. There's actually a pretty
great quote in this article from the Smithsonian that talks
about the first hemp crop being harvested at Mount Vernon
recently from this fellow by the name of John Hughdack,
(38:05):
who says, I think where we're at right now is
a situation in which finally a lot of members of
Congress that finally stopped buying drug war era rhetoric, stopped
thinking about the cannabis plant in a very uniform way.
So very much sad supports your point, Christopher.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
And fascinating for all of our listeners outside of the
US and my friends who live in different countries, it's
a weird process to explain to them that you can
be arrested for one thing in one state and it's
completely fine in another, and you can hop a flight
for a few hours and be in a place where
you're in the same country, but the laws are completely different.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
And I kind of have a feeling that old George
Washington might have had issues with prohibition of any kind,
you know, being that he liked his whiskey and he
liked as himp and you know, seem like a you know,
civil liberties kind of fellow. You know, I don't know,
I wonder what he would have to say.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
As long as it applied to white land owners.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Well, that's fair.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
It was a different time Yeah, and there is historical
record of Washington complaining about soldiers who were drunkards, who
consumed too much, who overindulged. And that's been argued by
some that Washington was a little more uptight than you
might be led to believe. But to me, in reading
what he actually said and wrote, it looks more like
he was against the over indulgence, not the actual substance itself.
(39:22):
He didn't assign a moral value to alcohol or to
whatever might have been smoked.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
You know what else was in evangelical He was actually
very a religious. He was a very moral man and
had a real code that he lived by. But he
was not a strict adherent to any form of religion.
That has been made clear in the record.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Which he had these sorts of beliefs placing rational morality
over spiritually motivated morality, in common with some other Founding
fathers like Jefferson and his famous Jefferson Bible where he
removes everything that he thought was remotely supernatural, which is
a story for another day. Okay, so we've painted a
(40:06):
pretty in depth picture right now, and just to recap,
we've got a whiskey tycoon who is also a freemason
who is also a hemp farmer hemp tycoon.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Is that fair? It seems like he was testing in
a little bit more and then he kind of like
switched over to grain. Yeah, but I don't know. He
definitely made some money. And it turns out too that
it became a very profitable export because the Brits really
relied on it. They were actually growing in a lot
when the colonies were still under British control, and they
(40:41):
relied on that from them. So when they split, they
turned it into a much more of a business like exchange.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Oh, hang on, guys, hang on, Casey, could we get
a like a game show out of time sound effect?
Speaker 4 (40:52):
A perfect what's going on?
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Well, it turns out, Christopher, that we have made a
game time decision. We are running low on times. We
want to give this topic the justice it deserves, which
means that we are in for a spontaneous two parter.
What do you guys say?
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Oh my gosh, I love it when you actually decide
it's going to be a two part or in real
time as opposed to post mortem.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
You know, wait, Ben, what's going on? It sounds like
you've just got to get out of here. You don't
want to hang out with us for another couple of
hours and talk about George Washington.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I do, I do, And through the magic of editing,
we'll do that in a later episode.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Okay, okay, okay, Because as we know in the podcast world,
time is but an illusion, a flat circle.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
Indeed, we've actually been here in the studio for about
twelve hours talking about George Washington.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
I've always been here here.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
We are check in anytime you like, but you can
never leave. We're kidding. This will mark the end of
part one of our George Washington and Washington State episode technically,
but this will not mark the end of the show.
Please tune in for our next episode, when we explore
even more strange, obscure facts about the first president of
(42:03):
the United States. In the meantime, you can say hello
to Casey, Noel, Christopher and myself on Instagram. You can
find us on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter.
Hit us up with your favorite strange historical facts, and
if you want to hang out with our favorite part
of the show, your fellow listeners, visit us on our
community page Ridiculous Historians on Facebook.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
You want a little tiny peek into our relatively run
of the mill lives, but you know, we do some
cool things every now and then. You can check me
out at Embryonic Insider on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
And I am at Ben Bullen on Instagram. One hundred
percent molock free photo content so far, it's good to know.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Until the next episode comes out, I'm just going to
be sitting here pulling dollar bills out of my wallet,
very very.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Few dollar bills, two money bags.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
Just staring at George. Staring at George, wanting to talk
about him with you guys again soon.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
I can't wait. Do you have any plugs you'd like
to plug?
Speaker 4 (42:52):
I do have some plugs. If you want to find
me on Instagram, I'm at Haciotis. That's Hassiotis, and we
all hang out on the Ridiculous System Facebook page. We'll
be there too.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
In the meantime, we would like to think, of course,
our super producer, Casey Pegram. We would like to thank
Alex Williams, who composed our track.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
We'd like to think our pal Gabe who helps us
out with research, and of course we'd like to thank
Christopher Haciotis, our incredible guest and lifelong pal.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
No thank you Casey. Thanks and if one of you
guys would think what's his name over here for me,
I'd appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow Ridiculous Historians. We're bringing in the end of the
year the beginning of the next with one of our
favorite classic series guys, George Washington.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Just so weird Gosh Washington.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Check out they wants you to know YouTube for some
amazing little sketches of a Ben dressed up as a
time traveling George Washington. While that may be fiction or
it may not entirely George Washington, the man did indeed
lead a very unexpectedly varied and fascinating and yes weird,
(00:36):
ridiculous life.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, and so this is part one of our exploration
with none other than our special guest, our brother in arms,
longtime friend of the show, Christopher hasiotis Yeah Yeah's Rolling.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeart Read Deal. Welcome
(01:24):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
My name is Ben, My name is No.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
This is an interesting, kind of traditional traditional way to
start the show. If you threw me for a loop there.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, it took it hard. Somebody remembered you guys on
the internet recently referred to me as what's his name?
So I'm going to try to just play it straight
laced for a little while.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Ben, did they steal your thunder Have they robbed you
of your mojo?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
I don't know. I don't want to feel thunderless.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
How are we going to get your groove back?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Well, we're going to rely on the help of our
super producer, Casey Pegram as always.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
And that sound always gets my groove right up.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So we have a pretty fascinating show for you today, folks,
because it came about through a somewhat circuitous fashion. And
who better to help us explain the story of how
we got to this episode for today than our returning
special guest friends and neighbors Christopher Hasiotis.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Hey everybody, Hey, Casey, Hey Nole? What's your name?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Too soon? Yeah? Yeah, come on, we've got a nurture, Ben,
do we we do? Okay?
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Very my contract?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
This is a safe space? Is a safe space? Fine?
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Fine?
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So we love having you on the show, Christopher, and
we always have a bang up time whenever you bless
us with some historical knowledge. But in our conversations off air,
the four of us were, you know, we were kicking
around ideas what should we explore on air today? And
you recently returned from a trip to Washington.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah, that's Washington State. I was out in Seattle for
Podcon too, which is a podcast convention, podcast conference, so
kind of diving into the weird, strange, growing world of podcasting.
Headed out there was a very sort of DIY scene,
a lot of great creators, a lot of great podcasters.
Aaron Mankey, who's got some shows over here on our network.
(03:25):
He was out there, and it was my first time
in Seattle. And I know you've got your goal of
doing a show about every state. So I don't know
if this really counts that I was in Washington and
we're going to talk about what we're going to talk about.
I don't know that accounts for Washington, but that's up
to you. I don't make your rules. I just sit
in the back and judge from a distance. But yeah,
(03:46):
we were out there, and that trip to Seattle to
Washington State made me think, Hey, what's this place named after?
It's named after a guy.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Did you have a guess?
Speaker 4 (03:57):
You know, it wasn't named after an apple, Okay, wasn't
named after a city on the other side of the nation.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And it wasn't named after George Washington Carver.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
It wasn't no president numrouno. George Washington himself, he's our Yeah,
I thought there's a there's a lot of cool stuff
that we can talk about when it comes to George Washington.
He's a you know, revered statesman, our first president, a general,
super military commander. You may know him for his fake teeth,
(04:27):
his cherry tree. We can get into all of that
and whether that actually happens.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Quite a snappy dresser, well weren't, weren't they all sure?
I mean he had a particularly honed.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I mean during their paintings they did. Yeah, you don't
know what they wore on a regular Thursday.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Yeah, I mean the paintings, the things that are on
the dollar bill. That's essentially like the Instagram of the time.
It's what they wanted to put forth. You know, you
can be looking at someone's Instagram feed and they're happy,
they're with their significant other, and you have no idea
that they're going through a financial troubles and dealing with
a mortgage and they're about to break up. Looks like
the life is great. So I think it's just got real.
(05:05):
Not speaking from personal experience here, but yeah, so maybe
you know, that's one of the nice things about paintings.
You can put the best foot forward, you can work
a lot of symbolism into it. All of a sudden,
we're talking art theory. But let's uh, let's get back
to George.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, let's get back to George. One thing I want
to mention that I think is a very classy aspect
of his character. He refused to become king. Right. There
were proposals early on in the days of the founding
of the nation. People said George, you're great, and He's like, well,
stop keep going, stop, no, keep going, And they said
(05:40):
you should be king, and he said, nah, I guys,
we're kind of missing the point. And that is, in
my opinion, something that speaks very highly to his character
and his reputation. But along the way, as we decided
to explore the life of George Washington, we also decided
to not do the basic origin story, life and times
(06:03):
and then death. We decided to look into some of
the strangest, weirdest things the average person might not know
about George Washington. Previously on the show, Noel, You and
I had bantered back and forth about the misconception surrounding
Washington's teeth or his allegedly wooden teeth.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Seahorse teeth. It was straight seahorse teeth. Bringing it back,
bring it back, No, but seriously, I mean, that was
a time where it was absolutely a thing to have
animal teeth as dentures. Also, I think the episode in
question was about using the teeth of fallen soldiers for dentures.
And then we discovered that seahorse teeth weren't actually the
(06:47):
teeth of tiny, tiny sea horses. That was just what
they called hippopotamus as they called them seahorses.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
And Christopher, in case you missed it now, straight seahorse
teeth is one of our new catchphrases.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
It's just like saying something dope, super dope, straight seahorse teeth.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah mm hmm yeah, Okay, you picked it up so quickly,
super easy. Somehow it sounds like it sounds better when
you say.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
It straight sea horse teeth, straight seahorse teeth.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
It's hard to say. See, friend, you could not do it.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
But no, that just means if I, if I had,
I would have conjured like a little demon seahorse right here.
That would have messed up the studio something fierce.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
It's sort of a homunculus type, a bit of a
bit of a quistor.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Please don't kidding, kidding, kidding.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Have you ever been present for the quist?
Speaker 4 (07:31):
I feel like he's here right now, Sorry, listeners, He's.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
He usually is. He kind of does sort of that
extra sisty type thing, or he just sort of clings
to the ceiling or in his head rotates and looks
at us downward. It's a whole thing.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
He's kind of the n essay of how stuff works.
You know, he's he's always around, but he would agree
with us. I hazard that George Washington is an amazing
guy who lived an astonishing life. We know the gist, Christopher.
I think you set it up quite nicely for us.
George Washington born February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, passed
(08:04):
away December fourteenth, seventeen ninety nine. But in that span
of time he lived quite a full life, and there
are so many facts about him. There are so many misconceptions.
He has moved from the realm of earthly creatures into
the world of myth in many ways. And we decided
(08:27):
to each find some lesser known aspects of George Washington's
life and times and share them with each other and
share them with you listening today?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
When did you say his birthday was man.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
February twenty second.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So apparently that in and of itself is a misconception.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Is that the case?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, according to this Mental Floss article twenty five things
he might not have known about George Washington, his actual
birthday was February eleventh. That's seventeen thirty one.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Well, but that's a calendar thing we're talking here, right.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
This is true because it has to do with the
Gregorian calendar versus the Julian game. But it's just that,
and I just thought that was fine. That is it
is great. The man is shrouded.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Mystery calendars are weird anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
True.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
So you're right, the colonies switched from the Gregorian calendar
to the Julian calendar, and his birthday was moved eleven days.
I wonder which of those answers is the acceptable answer
in a trivia game.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
That's a good question.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
I think it depends on the trivia host and how
deep into nertitude you want to get.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I was about to put a call out to any
trivia host in the audience. Is there a code amongst
trivia hosts as to this kind of thing. How pedantic
is too pedantic.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
For some of the trivia games I've been to. It's
never too pedantic, that's fair, okay, And it depends on
how much beer you've had.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, oh, also true.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So February eleventh, seventeen thirty one, but then it changed
to February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, and actually also
changed in terms of the year. And as you said
and old, this is just the beginning of the of
the historical mysteries surrounding George Washington. We learned some fascinating
(10:02):
quick what off trivia things. You pointed out something interesting
about his name, Christopher.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
Yeah, George Washington. That's his name. That's it. No middle name.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
What are you saying?
Speaker 4 (10:13):
No middle name? Just George.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That's that's illegal, Just George. That's not It's not okay,
George Washington. What happened?
Speaker 4 (10:20):
What more do you need? That's he made a state.
You know, he's not prince, he's not Madonna. He's George Washington.
He is not George Steven Washington.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
This begs the question of when did the middle name
start and why? Why? Why people get so hung up
on a middle name. Because my reaction there was very
real in visceral, But now I'm questioning it.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
You know, there is another president who had a middle
name made up.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
It was are we talking Truman's situation here?
Speaker 1 (10:48):
It was, Yeah, it was a fake middle initial. Right.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Well, there's there's some dispute about Harry S. Truman, a
lot of and again this kind of gets back to
Nole's favorite pedantic trivia folks. But you know, people will
often claim Harry S. Truman, he did not have a
period after the S and his name, and that's the
way it is. And you know, it's the kind of
people who love to jump down your throat on the
Internet and say like, well, technically, actually, actually those.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Are our people.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Yeah, they can be, but those, you know, it can
be a little aggressive, It can be a little off
putting if you are always looking to correct other people
and to shape the world into the way you see
it in my opinion, So, yeah, Harry S. Truman sometimes
he signed his name with a period after the S.
So again it's one of those things that's not consistent
and left to the mysteries of the history.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And just to stay in keeping with the pedantry of
our of our people. Here, the middle name actually began
in the Middle Ages, and it had to do with
families not being able to decide whether to give their
kids a family name or a religious name, so they
were able to give them both.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And it's different in other cultures, right exactly. So not
to focus too much on on President Truman in our
George Washing episode, which we are endeavoring to get count
as our Washington State episode.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
I don't know, you know what, let's go.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Let's give it a go.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Let's give it a go.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I think we can. We can always leave the door
open to do another Washington episode. But while we're filling
out our fifty.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I say, who's gonna stop us?
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Who?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Not me?
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Apparently?
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Oh Chris So Harry S. Truman. According to the story,
when he was born in eighteen eighty four, his parents
couldn't decide on a middle name, so they went with
the letter S to honor his paternal grandfather and his
maternal grandfather, a Ship and a Solomon, respectively. When he
(12:38):
took the presidential oath of office, the Chief Justice Harlan F.
Stone said, I Harry Ship Truman, and the President replied,
I Harry S. Truman. So we've buttoned that up.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Well, does that mean he actually was never president, as
folks said about Obama when there was like a little
bit of a discrepancy during the swearing in. I don't know,
probably not, because cable news did not exist in a
day Twitter was not a thing. Thankfully for mister Harry S. Truman.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
This is a good point you make.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
And now we return to George Washington having solved the
case of Harry S. Truman's frankly fake presidency. Right, that's
not a sweeping statement.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
We had to make an appearance. He just couldn't couldn't
leave well enough alone, Harry S. Truman.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
He's the quist of He's the quister of American president.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Really, really is so, George Washington? Yeah, no, middle, I mean,
is there more behind the story or is that is
that where the story ends? There may be okay, and
I'll leave you with that. It'll be a cliffhanger, That's
what I know. I like it.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
I like it, I like I like this mysterious air
we are we are creating in today's episode, but we
are not just going to present mysteries for the entirety
of the show. We do have some fascinating facts that
you may not have learned in your school years. And
(13:59):
I think that I think we're we're all on the
same page. But how do we want to start?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Guys? Oh, I thought we were. We were already off
to the races.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
We'll off to the races.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Okay, yeah, let's was that your first one, Christopher?
Speaker 4 (14:10):
There wasn't no, that had nothing to do that.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
We're just bantering.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
That is trivia.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
This is just banters.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
This is good. Oh, this is going to be a
good one. You guys, who wants to go first? I
propose that Christopher goes fair here I am yep.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
All right.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Well, we started off talking about George Washington's birth, his
birth date and the change of that. So let's just
fast forward. Let's skip all the rest, and let's go
straight to the end of his life. So bummer, yeah, no,
I mean, he's not dead yet. He's not dead yet.
His twilight years, he's almost dead. He's not dead yet.
So in seventeen ninety seven, George Washington leaves the presidency,
what's he going to do with his life? He decides,
(14:49):
there's an actual quote from one of his biographers, George
Washington when he leaves the presidency, he wants his retirement
to be quote more tranquil and freer from cares end quote.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yeah sounds nice. He wants to chill.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Yeah, more tranquil, freer from cares.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And because of course, doing this on his palatial estate,
Mount Vernon, right, well.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
Yeah, Mount Vernon, which is it's south of where DC
is now. It's on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.
It's his estate of tens of thousands of acres. And
while there, in his final days he's retired, he is
a man managing the plantation, a Scottish immigrant named James Anderson.
Now this plantation manager had a background and a training
(15:28):
in distillation. He made booze. So Anderson suggests to Washington,
Hey Washington, Hey, George Washington, if you're going to use
the full name, why not start making some booze. So
we almost had George Washington whiskey, and the country did
for a long time. So George Washington died in seventeen
ninety nine. He'd left the presidency in seventeen ninety seven.
(15:49):
For those last couple two and a half years of
his life, he started a distillery in Mount Vernon. It
ended up being one of the largest distilleries in the
Americas at the time. By seventeen ninety eight, By early
seventeen ninety nine, which is the year he ended up dying,
at the end of that year, in December, they were
producing eleven thousand gallons of whiskey. Now, whiskey became really
(16:09):
popular because in the seventeen eighties and during the Revolutionary period,
rum was the drink of choice. Soldiers were given rations
of rum, sometimes whiskey, but essentially it became problematic importing
a lot of the sugar cane from the West Indies
to create rum. So this homegrown liquor whiskey became much
more popular. And yeah, there's a distillery right there that
(16:32):
Washington ran. His signature whiskey was made with sixty five
percent rye, thirty percent corn, and five percent barley.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
And wasn't it considered an non aged rye.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Yeah, it was just it was it was distilled and
ready to go. It didn't last years and years. You
know a lot of the whiskeys you can buy now
in the rise they're aged in oak barrels. They're given
That's how it gets the color. Yeah, exactly, they're they
mature over a long period of time. They developed more flavor.
But no, I mean this stuff was distilled right away
and sold.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
So doesn't that mean it was almost a little bit
closer to something like moonshine or wing.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Yeah, pretty much pretty much. And it was sold, but
it wasn't bottled. It wasn't sold in cans or pouches
or anything like that. It was just packaged in barrels
and pouches. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to think of how
you could have like a juice box, Yeah, exactly, whiskey pouch,
like a you know, one of those little foil capri
sun kind of things Washington. So it's the kind of
(17:27):
thing you could find it like the I don't know,
fire festival or something.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Too soon too soon. Yeah, how was it sold?
Speaker 4 (17:32):
It was just sold in barrels straight straight to taverns.
They would buy a whole barrel of this of this whiskey.
They didn't just make whiskey though. They also made other
kinds of brandy on the side. There was a peach brandy,
and apple brandy, a per Simon brandy, and they would
also take the leavings of that and make vinegar. They
would take all the grains that had fermented and feed
(17:52):
those to the pigs that lived on Mount Vernon, So
it's a sort of cyclical, sustainable, good way to use
what you've grown. Also wildly successful. In his final days,
George Washington was becoming one of the pre eminent whiskey
barons in the United States. The only thing that really
derailed the company, and one of the reasons why we
don't have Washington Whiskey as a massive legacy institution in
(18:15):
the country today is he died in seventeen ninety nine.
So after he died, the distillery was passed to Martha,
his wife's granddaughter and her husband. But a fire in
eighteen fourteen burned down the distillery and that was pretty
much the end of the operation. So that really put
the final screw in the tombstone. It nail in the
coffin there you go.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I like screwing the tombstone.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
I like screwing the tombstone. Sure it's more secure than
a nail.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
It's one of those ikea tombstones, I think, and now correct.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Me if I'm wrong in this, or maybe you have
a better timeline. But they're back at it again at
Mount Vernon. They are.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
They're back at it. Yeah, A couple of years ago.
Within the last ten years, they reopened the distillery at
his historic home. I don't know if they're using the
exact same techniques and methods, but it's in same place.
And yeah, the Washington distilleries up and running. Probably not
going to give some of the other notable names in
the whiskey world today a run for their money, but
if you go visit Washington's historic Mount Vernon, you can
(19:11):
definitely sample the whiskey.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Come for the history, stay for the whiskey.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
I thought you were gonna say whiskery, whiskery.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
I love pronouncing that hard age. According to Mount Vernon
dot org, you can buy a bottle of this stuff
for about ninety eight dollars, which right shade cheap, and
they refer to the recipe as the mash bill, which
must have been the old timy way of referring to
this whiskey recipe. And it is using the same recipe
that they found in the ledgers from the original distillery.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
That's great. I would love to take a road trip
up there. I think it would be a lot of
fun if we could buy not just a bottle, you know,
because you couldn't buy a bottle then, so they're being
a little a historical. I would just love to just
load up a barrel.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
And bring it back to the office.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Get a whole barrel.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
That's what the studio is missing.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
This would not be our first time sampling some tipple
from George Whiskey Pouch Washington. I believe we've mentioned on
previous episodes a good friend of ours, our coworker producer
Alex Williams, is known around how stuff works for making
toward the end of the year, making an historically accurate
(20:16):
version of George Washington's famous eggnog and just between us folks,
that stuff packs a punch.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Oh man, it's boozy. And the last little direction in
the recipe the best part. It says to let's set
in cool place for several days and taste frequently.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
As one does with just about anything in your cool place.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I think it would startle most of us in the
modern age to travel back in time to the days
of the Founding Fathers and see just how much and
how often they drank. Yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I would say, there was never a sober moment.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
I'll point out though, that you know, we were talking
about George Washington's distillery and his recipes. Again, this was
a man who commanded an entire plantation, so he was
kind of up at the head. This wasn't Washington himself
sitting in there in the distilling room tinkering with the recipe,
coming up with what he most favored. This wasn't really
a passion project for him. It was a way for
him to make money at the end of his life.
(21:13):
He wasn't nearly as rich as some people may have
thought he was. He wrote to a nephew who was
asking him for money, Yeah, I'll give you this loan,
but I'm not made of money like most people think
I am. So this was really a project of James Anderson,
the plantation manager, as well as six enslaved Africans who
were the ones doing the actual hard labor of making
this distilled liquor.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Getting none of the credit.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
No, and we'll get back to Washington's enslaved staff soon.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yes, that's foreshadowing. Also, before we get too into the
disturbing facts of Washington's life, I have a proposal for
us on the show. Why don't we hunt for a
middle name for George Washington. In the course of this episode,
as we learned stuff. So right now we've got mash Bill,
which you think is great.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
I'm a fan of seahorse Teeth, Sea horse Teeth.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
I think that's great.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
One word. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
I also like whiskey Pouch just because it makes them
seem so disreputable.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
It's very good.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Can I can I suggest George.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
George George Washington.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That sounds like an eighties singer.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It's George George Washington. Uh yeah, let's see, let's see
what we find. These are all some great contenders, but
we are just setting off on our weird Washington journey.
What do you think? Do you have one? Do you
want to go?
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Do you want to flip for it? You want to
Rochambeau for sure?
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Okay, it's one, two, three go. We've got Christopher as
a witness. All right, ready? One?
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Does that mean you get to choose what you do?
Does I mean you go that?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
I think up to you, man, I'd like you to go.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Man, Okay, I have something that is a bit strange
but will be old beans to people who also were
fans of our other show stuff. They don't want you
to know. George Washington, you see, had any number of
extracurricular activities, one of which was freemasonry. George Washington became
(23:13):
a Master Mason in seventeen fifty three, and ever since
this has driven more fringe or conspiratorial researchers further and
further into the depths of speculation. He was a young
Virginia planter when he became a Master Mason in Fredericksburg, Virginia,
Masonic Lodge number four. He was only twenty one years old,
(23:37):
and soon he would command his first military operation as
a major in the Virginia Colonial Militia. We know, I
think basically what freemasonry is. It's evolved from the practices
and rituals of Stonemason's guilds in the Middle Ages, and
it was still a powerful force in America even during
(24:01):
the time of tension in the later in the War
for Independence against the British Empire. The first American Masonic
Lodge was founded in Philadelphia in seventeen thirty and do
you know who was a founding member of that.
Speaker 6 (24:15):
It's pretty easy to guess, is it Old Benny Franks?
It is it is. It's the old Libertine himself. So
for a lot of people this association would seem to
indicate that there's something at work behind the behind the
screen of history, right, that Freemasonry was involved in the
(24:39):
American Revolution, or that people were acting under orders of
the Masonic organization. But really, for George Washington, joining the
Masons was a rite of passage, and it was sort
of an exercise of his civic responsibility. After he became
a master Mason again at the age of twenty one,
he had the option of passing through a number of
(25:00):
additional rights that would take him to higher degrees that
would place him higher in the hierarchy of Masonry. In
seventeen eighty eight, shortly before he became the first President
of the US, he was elected the first Worshipful Master
of Alexandria Lodge Number twenty two. And he was not
alone in this, as who pointed out Benjamin Franklin was
(25:21):
also a Mason. As where Paul Revere, John Hancock, the
Marquis de Lafayette of the Hamilton Musical Fame, and the
Boston Tea Party, saboteurs and Masonic rights were in play.
They were witnessed events like Washington's inauguration, the laying of
the cornerstone of the US Capitol Building in Washington, d C.
(25:42):
And DC again is a city supposedly designed with a
lot of Masonic symbols. In mind, you have to admit
the Washington Monument's pretty abstract, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Itfinitely looms large in the horizon in a very sinister way.
If you're walking around on the mall at night, he
kind of gives me the creeps. To be honest, I.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Think the whole idea of conspiracy and the Masonic lodge
and all that, it doesn't really take into account the
reality of the situation at the time. Now in the
two thousands, it's easy to look back and think, oh
my gosh, all these people knew each other, they were
all part of the same organization. Everything ties into everything.
But the reality is the population of the colonies at
(26:22):
the time was so small compared to what we have today, right,
So I mean, essentially you're talking about a population in
terms of the landowners and the white European immigrants or settlers.
We're talking tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. Essentially.
These are small towns or small cities, so everyone's going
to know everyone, especially if you're near the top of
the upper echelon of society. It's not quite as nefarious
(26:47):
cabal creating as it sounds.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Absolutely not. That's the thing. In many ways, it's a
social club. These people are sharing their interests. And do
they talk about things that they want to do? Do
they talk about political goals or business ideas? Of course
they do, because that's what friends do when they hang
out with each other, you know, they talk about the
things they care about and the things that they're working on.
(27:11):
I enjoy this theory, and I especially appreciate Christopher You're
pointing out that it's easy for us to look back
in retrospect and perhaps see patterns where none actually exist.
You know what I mean. A lot of history is coincidence.
The human species is not chock full of amazing planners
(27:33):
with very complicated schemes.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Now, everything in the past looks like it unfolded in
a way that it was meant to and in a
way that made sense. But that's because that's the way
we know how things unfolded. There are innumerable other ways
things could have happened, and other paths history could have
taken that if we travel down those timelines, would make
this one look particularly ridiculous or strange.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
But guys, you're completely overlooking the blood magic rituals to
molok oh, I mean they did on the regular.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
Yeah, but that's I mean, Oh, I think that I.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Thought you were talking about the one that I was
going to do later.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Oh oh, I didn't mean to blow up you all.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Spot you guys are coming right.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Well. I didn't get an invite.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
I brought snacks.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
I love a good snack.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I mean, come for the mullick, stay for the snacks.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
That's what I'll do.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
One last thing about freemasonry and George Washington in DC.
I have such a fun time imagining the pitch meeting
for building the Washington Monument and say, okay, we think
he's the greatest president, we think he's the first president.
We need something that really says this man, what's the
(28:40):
first president? And you know, they go back and forth
and someone says, well, maybe a statue of the guy.
And they go, ah, I like the idea of something
like a big structure. Okay, okay, maybe like he's on a.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Horse or as you like to say, Ben, No, let's get.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Weird with it. That's exactly it. Yeah, they said, let's
get let's get with it. Have you guys heard of obelisk?
And then you mean obelisks like a dude like in Egypt?
Right on? And that was history. I am mostly kidding
because if you look into the story of the Washington Monument,
which could be its own episode, they had much more
(29:17):
ambitious plans, and what we see today is essentially a
compromise in scaling down.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Again, the story of our nation and the story of
our history is compromises, half baked plans that in retrospect
look like what should have happened, but in reality we're
just thrown together at the time with no real idea
of what ramifications would come to pass decades down the line.
I mean, look at anything involving well, we don't need
to get into health insurance and tax law and all
(29:46):
sorts of compromises made in Congress. But yeah, we are
just a collection of mistakes and bumbles through the years.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Some of which have incredible staying power.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Yes, very much, so much like a monument itself to
our first president, I would argue, maybe they just want
were like, how are we going to remind people that
he was the first president? Let's this This looks like
a big number one giant number one.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
So let's reset just a second here, because it occurs
to me that we may be well on the way
to making something that sounds like a hit piece on
George Washington. Because he's a whiskey tycoon, he's a freemason,
he's a slave owner. He's a slave owner. Yeah, we
can't forget that part. But it wasn't it wasn't all complicated, weird,
(30:35):
problematic stuff he had. He had some other notable wins.
And I don't think being a whiskey tycoon is that bad.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
I have nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I think there was a slave labor. I think that
bothers me.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, And it's also one of those things where it's
I can't even fall behind the whole. It was just
how everyone was doing it. It was that was a
different time.
Speaker 6 (30:54):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
The thing is, he also was a pretty forward thinking
individual in so many ways. In fact, he was so
influential in creating the structure that is very much still
a part of our military today that he was posthumously
given this title the General of the Armies of the
United States, that is forever un outrankable.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Yeah, it's total, total god mode. You know, you can't
let's say they create seven star generals, eight star generals,
nine star generals in the next couple of years, those
still will be underneath Washington.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Kind of similar in some ways to the Eternal President
of the DPRK Kim Il Sung, but we didn't call
him eternal President. We just called him General of Everything.
Speaker 4 (31:36):
Yeah, and I think it's important to remember about Washington
that and most of the men back then, this was
the first time they were doing the He was setting
the precedent for the president.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
The presidential president exactly.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
And so yeah, the way he acted, the choices he made,
the statements he put forth, they set the stage for
what we have, what we've had over the past several
hundred years leading up to today. And it's important to
keep in mind that anyone who's given that sort of
authority carries weight. They embody what a country is moving forward.
And that actually played into some of the misconceptions about Washington,
(32:13):
because his biographers said, we don't need just a man,
we need a myth. So we're going to invent this
whole thing about the cherry tree. We're going to make
up some stories to make him larger than life.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
That was his biographer weams beams, yeah, biographer slash mythologizers,
right absolutely, and just blatantly like made it up, not
fudged it a little bit.
Speaker 4 (32:35):
Some of the stuff was just made up to make
him larger than life.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Oh absolutely. I mean, and I honestly, very very frequently
confuse the myth of the cherry tree with Abe Lincoln
because if everyone called him honest Abe, so I sometimes
conflate those stories because he also was a very larger
than my figure, who grew up poor in kind of
more of a rural setting.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
And is also similar to Washington. He has a real
underdog story because Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for office right multiple times? Right,
you know, so people love to see some perseverance. Oh man,
I think we're doing pretty well here so far. We've
got we're drawing in Truman, we're drawing in Lincoln.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Well remember earlier, Christopher, when you were talking about how
the United States was sort of a agglomeration of half
baked ideas.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
I remember that. I look forward to the emails.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Speaking of half baked ideas. Washington smoked a lot of weed.
No that's not true, but he grew a lot of hemp.
That is true.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
That part is true.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
I was waiting for that. I needed to do that.
Callback I had to do it. Thank you for supplying
me with that. No true. Hemp was one of his
main cash crops, well before he got into the whiskey trade.
On Mount Vernon, he grew copious amounts of hemp, which
is marijuana, but it is a slightly different strain of marijuana.
(33:56):
Doesn't contain the psychoactive substance thchc or it's very very
very low tetrahydro cannabinolls. And it was used historically for
making ropes. It was a fantastic fiber who used the
stem it had these They grew it so it would
have these elongated strands, these fibers in the stems, as
(34:17):
opposed to the plants that were grown to smoke, or
you would think of the ones that are grown today
to smoke are much shorter, less hardy plants. They look
a little more like little bushes. But he grew fields
of this stuff in an area on Mountain Vernon that
he called the muddy Hole, the muddy Hole, the muddy Hole,
and it was because it was a very sought after substance,
(34:41):
because it was used to make They even referred to
ropes in those days as hemps, they call them, like
sailing hemps, like for all the riggings in various types
of vessels. And he would have continued to grow it
if he hadn't have done some kind of shrewd calculations
and realized that act wheat was probably a more profitable
(35:02):
crop to use his land for. But yeah, he grew
it for quite some time. And as it turns out,
in the very same way that Mount Vernon is now
back to distilling whiskey. Mash bill, mash bill. Yeah, they're
also now growing hemp.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, as of twenty eighteen, right, right, they harvested their
first hemp crop in centuries, I believe.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
And the interesting thing is is that hemp, even though
it doesn't contain very high levels of the psychoactive substance
at all, were outlawed and made a Schedule one drug
right alongside the more you know, trippy counterparts. So growing
hemp was outlawed.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
But it's not the same thing, right, I mean, they're
if these plants are cousins, they're related. But that's like
if you had prohibition of alcohol and all of a
sudden you couldn't serve cough syrup at a drug store, right,
because just because it has a little bit of alcohol
in it, we're kind of on the same thing. People
are overreacting and bunching things together.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Very very very similar. But if you look at a
field of hemp, it looks like a field of marijuana plans.
I mean, they're very very similar. And in fact, so
what I was getting to is, in twenty fourteen, there
was a farm bill that passed that allowed research for
growing hemp, and some states have legalized essentially limited hemp farming,
(36:23):
and another bill that passed in the Senate in twenty
eighteen was going to allow for full legalization. I don't
know if that one has gone through yet or not.
I'll have to do a little more follow up on that,
But the point is you can get there's another substance
of compound that's in marijuana and hemp. It's called CBD,
which you may have read a lot of research about
people use it for anxiety. It can treat a lot
(36:47):
of different ailments and just kind of has become a
very popular kind of remedy that people are using. And
it is legal in states where marijuana is not legal
because you can get it from hemp. It's pretty interesting.
But yeah, now there's no evidence. A lot of other
Faunding fathers grew he too, like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,
but there is no evidence showing that any of them
(37:08):
ever tried to smoke.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
Yeah, it's a useful crop, and it might be a
disappointment to your stoner buddy out there who's saying, oh,
Washington and the founding Father's had hemp, we need to
legalize everything. It's not quite the same thing, but it
does argue for nuance, It argues for understanding the uses
of plants and that any one plant or one species
(37:30):
can have different applications.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Well said, and also just a soft historical note there.
I don't believe any form of cannabis was actually scheduled
one until the nineteen seventies, right, So it's relatively research.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Right, Yeah, And I mean we are definitely in a
sea change of legalizations sweeping the nation right now, which
is pretty fascinating time to be around with so many
of these changes coming so quickly. There's actually a pretty
great quote in this article from the Smithsonian that talks
about the first hemp crop being harvested at Mount Vernon
recently from this fellow by the name of John Hughdack,
(38:05):
who says, I think where we're at right now is
a situation in which finally a lot of members of
Congress that finally stopped buying drug war era rhetoric, stopped
thinking about the cannabis plant in a very uniform way.
So very much sad supports your point, Christopher.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
And fascinating for all of our listeners outside of the
US and my friends who live in different countries, it's
a weird process to explain to them that you can
be arrested for one thing in one state and it's
completely fine in another, and you can hop a flight
for a few hours and be in a place where
you're in the same country, but the laws are completely different.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
And I kind of have a feeling that old George
Washington might have had issues with prohibition of any kind,
you know, being that he liked his whiskey and he
liked as himp and you know, seem like a you know,
civil liberties kind of fellow. You know, I don't know,
I wonder what he would have to say.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
As long as it applied to white land owners.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Well, that's fair.
Speaker 4 (39:00):
It was a different time Yeah, and there is historical
record of Washington complaining about soldiers who were drunkards, who
consumed too much, who overindulged. And that's been argued by
some that Washington was a little more uptight than you
might be led to believe. But to me, in reading
what he actually said and wrote, it looks more like
he was against the over indulgence, not the actual substance itself.
(39:22):
He didn't assign a moral value to alcohol or to
whatever might have been smoked.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
You know what else was in evangelical He was actually
very a religious. He was a very moral man and
had a real code that he lived by. But he
was not a strict adherent to any form of religion.
That has been made clear in the record.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Which he had these sorts of beliefs placing rational morality
over spiritually motivated morality, in common with some other Founding
fathers like Jefferson and his famous Jefferson Bible where he
removes everything that he thought was remotely supernatural, which is
a story for another day. Okay, so we've painted a
(40:06):
pretty in depth picture right now, and just to recap,
we've got a whiskey tycoon who is also a freemason
who is also a hemp farmer hemp tycoon.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Is that fair? It seems like he was testing in
a little bit more and then he kind of like
switched over to grain. Yeah, but I don't know. He
definitely made some money. And it turns out too that
it became a very profitable export because the Brits really
relied on it. They were actually growing in a lot
when the colonies were still under British control, and they
(40:41):
relied on that from them. So when they split, they
turned it into a much more of a business like exchange.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Oh, hang on, guys, hang on, Casey, could we get
a like a game show out of time sound effect?
Speaker 4 (40:52):
A perfect what's going on?
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Well, it turns out, Christopher, that we have made a
game time decision. We are running low on times. We
want to give this topic the justice it deserves, which
means that we are in for a spontaneous two parter.
What do you guys say?
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Oh my gosh, I love it when you actually decide
it's going to be a two part or in real
time as opposed to post mortem.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
You know, wait, Ben, what's going on? It sounds like
you've just got to get out of here. You don't
want to hang out with us for another couple of
hours and talk about George Washington.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I do, I do, And through the magic of editing,
we'll do that in a later episode.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Okay, okay, okay, Because as we know in the podcast world,
time is but an illusion, a flat circle.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
Indeed, we've actually been here in the studio for about
twelve hours talking about George Washington.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
I've always been here here.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
We are check in anytime you like, but you can
never leave. We're kidding. This will mark the end of
part one of our George Washington and Washington State episode technically,
but this will not mark the end of the show.
Please tune in for our next episode, when we explore
even more strange, obscure facts about the first president of
(42:03):
the United States. In the meantime, you can say hello
to Casey, Noel, Christopher and myself on Instagram. You can
find us on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter.
Hit us up with your favorite strange historical facts, and
if you want to hang out with our favorite part
of the show, your fellow listeners, visit us on our
community page Ridiculous Historians on Facebook.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
You want a little tiny peek into our relatively run
of the mill lives, but you know, we do some
cool things every now and then. You can check me
out at Embryonic Insider on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
And I am at Ben Bullen on Instagram. One hundred
percent molock free photo content so far, it's good to know.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Until the next episode comes out, I'm just going to
be sitting here pulling dollar bills out of my wallet,
very very.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Few dollar bills, two money bags.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
Just staring at George. Staring at George, wanting to talk
about him with you guys again soon.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
I can't wait. Do you have any plugs you'd like
to plug?
Speaker 4 (42:52):
I do have some plugs. If you want to find
me on Instagram, I'm at Haciotis. That's Hassiotis, and we
all hang out on the Ridiculous System Facebook page. We'll
be there too.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
In the meantime, we would like to think, of course,
our super producer, Casey Pegram. We would like to thank
Alex Williams, who composed our track.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
We'd like to think our pal Gabe who helps us
out with research, and of course we'd like to thank
Christopher Haciotis, our incredible guest and lifelong pal.
Speaker 4 (43:16):
No thank you Casey. Thanks and if one of you
guys would think what's his name over here for me,
I'd appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
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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