June 3, 2020 • 39 mins
How did air conditioning fundamentally change the course of U.S. politics? What does the Y.M.C.A. have to do with cigarettes? Join Ben and Casey as they welcome special guest, Sean Braswell, to learn more about the strange stories of everything from air conditioning to kudzu in part one of this two-part series.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
so much for tuning in. I am Ben my rider Die.
Host Noel is off on an adventure, but returning very
soon and sends his regards. Super producer Casey Pegram is
here with us as well. Casey, this is an episode
(00:50):
that's been on our mind collectively for some for some time,
and I am excited to see what we find. But
it's it's something that I have been thinking about over
the course of this week and this weekend. Uh. Unintended consequences, man,
you know what I mean? History is full of them.
Oh yeah, I don't know where we're going with that.
(01:11):
It's an exciting theme. There's so many possibilities for I mean,
history is is literally the story of unintended consequences at
some level. I think so, um, it's gonna be a
great show today. I think I like the way you
you put that we're waxing poetic today. Man. That was nice. Uh.
We have decided to explore a cavalcade of unintended consequences, which,
(01:34):
as you said, Casey, is a really good way to
define history in general. But we are not venturing forth
into this land alone. Today. We are incredibly fortunate to
be joined with our special guests, the host of the
new podcast Flashback. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the
(01:56):
audio stage Sean braswell. Sean, thanks for coming on, glad
to be here, Ben, thanks for having me. Now, Sean,
you have quite a vested interest in a number of pursuits.
I believe you maybe the first Polly Math we've ever
had on Ridiculous History. Oh that's that's quite an honor.
It's true. I'm something of a renaissance man, someone who
(02:19):
went to college for way too long and did far
too many degrees, but it eventually pays off. I think
so agree with you. By the way, I was still
like I I think, like many of us, every so
often I think I should get a PhD, you know,
just just in something. So that's that's the dream. But
(02:42):
we wanted to ask you on this show today to
help us explore some of these unintended consequences throughout history,
and we've asked you to do so because this pertains
directly to your podcast, Flashback. Could you tell us a
little bit of about what Flashback is that's right. Um,
(03:02):
Flashback is a is a history podcast, and our first
season is all about unintended consequences, like you said, and uh,
you know, I like to think of history, and one
of the things I love most about it, in addition
to the great stories and and and the ridiculous stories
like you guys cover, is just to think of it
as one big giant laboratory experiment where you can sort
(03:23):
of see cause and effect unfold over time, and you
can figure out how things are connected. You know. Sometimes
change happens on a dime, sometimes it happens over centuries.
And uh, you know, the beautiful thing about the about
history is that it teaches us about how so much
of the world around us is contingent. You know, that
(03:43):
things don't have to be the way they are now
and uh, and they almost weren't. Yeah. There's so many
pivotal points in history, right, Decision points have been called
or a crossroads. It's something we spend a lot of
time thinking about on this show as well. You know,
what if something happens just a few minutes later on
a particular afternoon, right, what leads us to investigate the
(04:08):
largely invisible stories of some very common things. Throughout Season
one of Flashback, you've been exploring topics that might ostensibly
seem like something everyone is aware of, you know, like
air conditioning. We we get it, we know what air
conditioning is. But you explore the ripple effects caused by
(04:31):
some of these events, some actions of notable individuals like
Henry Ford, for instance, or the way in which a
controversial product might affect the world around us. I was
hoping that today we could we could explore a couple
of these things, because there's a lot of stuff in Flashback.
(04:52):
I I had no idea of I I had no
idea the entire story of cigarettes, Like when we think
of cigarettes today, this is a good starting point. When
we think of cigarettes today, you know, we think of
things like the massive health concerns right Uh, the tremendous
damage it can do to your body. We also think
(05:13):
of maybe the social aspect of cigarettes being cool in
nineteen sixties film and uh film and you know television, Uh,
ridiculous histories. You can't see it. But I got a
little too in character, and now I'm waving an invisible
cigarette that I have to keep for the rest of
the show. Uh. But this is this is where I'd
(05:35):
like to start today, Sean, cigarettes, What what are some
of the unintended consequences of cigarettes? Well, there are just
so many and uh, and cigarettes have such a rich
history and and one of the things I think, like
you mentioned that that we take for granted today is
we cigarettes are is basically synonymous with smoking and tobacco.
(05:56):
But it wasn't always that case throughout American history. I mean,
we have a long history with tobacco in this country,
going back to the Mayflower and the Pilgrims. But for
the most part, through the the early history of the
United States, we were talking about cigars and pipes and
chewing tobacco, not not manufactured cigarettes. And for for much
of our history, cigarettes were considered, you know, somewhat effeminate,
(06:19):
that you would be made fun of if you're a
man and you were smoking a little dainty cigarette, just
like you gesture a minute ago. So this is odd
because you know, for a lot of people, the idea
of the Marlborough man is pretty familiar, and that's something
that's supposed to be equated directly with say a more
(06:40):
masculine presentation. Right, How how did this switch occur? Yeah,
it's it's funny. It's a very masculine thing to do,
thanks in no small part to the Marlboro Man. But
in part that is all rolled up into the relationship
that smoking has with war in American history, going back
to the First World War in fact, right right, So
I imagine then it's a situation where tobacco was perhaps
(07:04):
a ration that's given to soldiers, similar to the way
you know, you would receive food rations. Is that correct? Yes,
but not, but not at first. It wasn't actually included
in the U. S. Army rations in World War One
until the very end of the war. Um the very
first group to hand out cigarettes, and they handed out
more than two billion of them to US soldiers, was
in fact that the y m c A way the
(07:26):
Young Men's Christian Association, that's right, one, one and the same,
These sort of Christian progressive temperance groups like y m
c A. They are the ones that helped get prohibition
past in America. They were very involved in the moral
health and reform of the country, and one of the
places that they were most concerned about war as the
(07:49):
environment that soldiers found themselves in. You know, we have
a certain view today that being uh, in the military
is a glorious, profound, and noble venture. But back you know,
in the days of the Civil War, mothers would fear
when their sons and it was mostly their sons who
went off to battle and would come back with all
(08:09):
manner of bad habits and vices, from pornography used to
to drug use, to alcohol abuse, all sorts of things
like that. So groups like the y m c A
grew up to kind of help protect against that kind
of concern with vice among the soldiering class. Yeah, yeah,
you know, this feels like it has the ring of truth.
(08:30):
I'm imagining what those what those vices might be. You know,
they're very serious things like someone becoming addicted to an
opiate of some sort for the treatment of you know,
chronic injuries or chronic pain. But then there's also stuff
that seems kind of I don't know, at the risk
of selling dismissive, seems kind of silly, Like little Johnny
(08:53):
ran off the war and now he came back and
he's got a hot hand in dice games, you know
what I mean. The kid just can't stop gambling. And
it's still it seems, though counterintuitive that a organization dedicated
to perpetuating its idea of morality would be associated with like,
you know, there's a Y M c A down the
(09:15):
street from from Casey and I, and I'm pretty sure
they're anti smoking. Now I haven't read all their literature.
That might be my assumption. I would I would assume
so as well. You just have to remember the context
of a century ago. And it was almost like smoking
was the lesser of many evils when it came to
World War One soldiers. For example, the British Army gave
(09:38):
their soldiers rum rations, state sanctioned rum rations UH, and
the French soldiers actually had state run brothels that they
could frequent during World War One. And UH. A lot
of the American public and the U. S. Army weren't
aboard but that sort of advice. But they felt like
cigarettes was one vice they could effectively sanction, and it
was because it had certain benefits or soldiers as well.
(10:01):
It was something that would calm and soothe their nerves.
It was something to do when you were bored and UH.
And one thing that often gets overlooked is just the
fact that smoking condole your sense of smell. And there
were some very bad smells on the on the World
War One battlefield. Yeah, that's that's a good point. I
I I had thought about maybe the recreational aspect of it, um,
(10:23):
But I think you're making a pretty profound insight about
the functionality of of smoking there. You know, I wouldn't
be surprised if there were soldiers who had taken up
the habit just so they wouldn't have to constantly smell
the terrible stenches of war. Absolutely, you would find people
(10:45):
who wouldn't normally take up habits like that, adopting them
in context of extreme stress like battle and uh. And
that is what basically hooks an entire generation of young
America and young male Americans on cigarettes is the fact
that they're put in a rather unusual circumstance. And those
(11:07):
who might not necessarily have addictive personalities or pursue that
sort of vice outside of such a circumstance would would
would do that in in in the in the millions.
And so when these soldiers return now veterans, right, they
return with their with their cigarette habit. And this is okay,
(11:30):
So this is like the close of World War One
and the interwar period. Correct, Yes, that's right. Okay. So
after after they return, what happens. How does American culture
sort of associate or you know, navigate the idea of
the cigarette. Well, I think it just becomes much more sanctioned,
(11:51):
much more accepted. And you have millions of new, now
very manly nicotine addicts coming back from the war. And
of course it's very pro fitable industry as as a
result in the and the tobacco industry is making crazy
profits in the nineteen twenties, and and it spreads to
other segments of the American public. And of course the
more profitable the industry, the more profitable it is to
(12:13):
tax that industry, which is how uh, state and the
federal government get first involved in cigarette taxas. Yes, okay,
so I have I have several questions about this because
when you said, you know, when you mentioned the potentially
massive profits from from tobacco industry in general, right all
(12:36):
the products, when you when you mentioned that, I was
immediately thinking, for a second you were going to say,
and of course, the more profit there is to be made,
the more likely you'll see a criminal element involved. Uh.
And I think that now I'm not saying that taxing
is a criminal element I'm just saying that the government
was not the only entity trying to make a little
(12:59):
something off the topless cigarettes. But weren't cigarette taxes controversial
at some point? I mean, people in general are not
big fans of taxes. No, they they they're not big
fans of the cigarette tax. But but initially, for the
first twenty years or so, they're you know, their pennies
on on a pack, they're they're relatively small, they're they're
(13:19):
they're minor additions to the cost of a pack of cigarettes.
And but it was a great revenue raiser for the government.
And you have to remember and during the nineteen twenties,
during Prohibition, the government was no longer taxing legal alcohol,
which just blew an enormous hole in the U. S.
Treasury not having alcohol taxes, and so the government was
(13:39):
looking for ways to recoup that revenue, and tobacco taxes
were one big way of doing that. And I think
about fift of the federal government's tax collections in the
nineteen thirties were tobacco taxes fifteen per cent. That's that's
an insanely high number. Uh in higherly from cigarettes. I
(14:02):
guess it's it's interesting because a lot of us in
the modern day, you know, we like there's still a
visible demographic of the population that smokes or maybe engages
in some kind of relationship with nicotine, like vaping or something.
But it's been on a steady decline for a number
(14:23):
of years here in the States. From what I understand,
it's it's just so it's startling to realize that not
that long ago, you know, it would seem more abnormal
for someone in a certain demographic to not smoke, right like,
even even doctors are recommending the smooth field of the
camel's cigarette or something like that, right absolutely. And uh
(14:46):
And just to take a microcosm event, you know, the
average military base today and you go down to Fort Bragg,
which is about an hour from where I live in
North Carolina, and you don't see people smoking anymore. You
hardly ever see a cigarette soldier with a cigarette in
his or her mouth. Um. But you know, back in
the is a different story. And especially in World War Two,
(15:07):
they were everywhere. They were the preferred coping mechanism for
the for the enlisted man. And then of course, who
are you to tell that veteran that they are somehow
effeminate because they have a cigarette instead of a you know,
a cigar or I don't know, I'm spitball in here
a hookah. Who knows? That's right? So when when you
(15:35):
look at this, do you think that the y m
c A knew just how popular this uh distribution plan
of theirs would be? Like there, it sounds like we
can tie them almost directly to the popularity of cigarettes
in America. Yes, I I don't think that the y
(15:56):
m c A had really any clue as to the
long term consequences of what was essentially an act of
generosity during World War One, trying to provide a mechanism
for soldiers to better cope with life on the battlefield. Yeah,
but I mean that that's one of the things we
we we talked about a lot in the podcast, is
(16:16):
just how these unintended consequences can play out over time
and often in directions you could not have fathomed at
the time, and in ways that create much bigger and
larger vices than the one that the y m c
A was trying to deal with during World War One.
And this, you know, this is sobering stuff. Uh, just
just so everyone knows the way we're kind of laying
(16:38):
out today's journey is to start with what I would
say is one of the most dangerous topics. Clearly, you know,
we can also we can also point out that the
y m c A was not on some insidious conspiracy,
you know, to to give people cancer or anything. It was,
as you said, an act of generosity by it had
(17:01):
significant and serious consequences on the American public, and those
consequences still reverberate with us today. But maybe we switch
topics here and and take a different path. Sean, why
don't we cool down the tone of the podcast a
little bit and talk about air conditioning. Just just to
(17:23):
set this up here, air conditioning is amazing. A lot
of people here in the US have lived their entire
lives with easy access to air conditioning. It's ubiquitous in
many parts of the world. But if you have ever
spent an extended amount of time in an area where
air conditioning is abnormal, you very quickly notice its absence. Casey,
(17:46):
I want to throw to you, actually, how common is
air conditioning in France? Yeah, and in Paris It's it's
very hit and myths, and it's sometimes used as marketing
for like a film. You know, movie theory there will
say the silids climatise, and it means it's climatized, it's
air conditioned, and so you you kind of have the
(18:07):
idea that maybe some people are buying tickets to go
in just a cool off for a couple of hours
and the movie doesn't matter so much. So um, yeah,
I mean, it's it's a whole way of life, right,
like you always have the windows open, You're always kind
of conscious of trying to keep some airflow going, stay fresh,
um where you know, light materials that breathe and so on.
It's it's a whole thing, casey on the case. Yeah.
(18:31):
You know, Sean, I had in a previous life, I
had lived in Central America for some time in Guatemala,
and you know, air conditioning was much less common, at
least the place in the place where I was living.
And the last thing I did before I returned to
the United States was to splurge a little and spend
(18:53):
the night in a in a hotel that had this
was very big to me, had both carpet and air canditioning.
Uh And and now returning with that, like I am
constantly amazed by air conditioning. I think it does affect
us in ways that we we don't really think about,
but you on flashback had mentioned it also played a
(19:15):
role in politics. Yes, that's that's right. You know. Um,
when comfort spreads over an entire country or over an
entire globe, eventually it changes the way people behave, often
in unexpected ways. And even though we come to think
of air conditioning as a creature comfort as an invention
(19:36):
that makes life easier, uh that that idea of comfort,
of having an easier life influences how people behave, for
for example, moving to different parts of the country that
they might normally not want to live in, for example
Houston or Phoenix, or or any of a number of
places in the U. S. Sun Belt that now have
(19:57):
cities with that are home to millions of p bowl
but at one time would be it would be absolutely
unthinkable to want to spend an entire year in a
place like that. Yeah, like the swamp lands of Florida,
you know, especially thinking very humid places where it just
SAPs your energy out. So we know, without getting too
(20:19):
into the weeds on the story of air conditionings invention,
we know the idea has been around for a long time, right,
how can we make the air in the environment around
us cooler? But what would you say, was like the
first wave of people empowered to move via air conditioning
availability in the US. Well, the big moment on that
(20:40):
front is in the early nineteen fifties with the advent
of the home air conditioning unit. Because even though air
conditioning had been available in large commercial places in America
for for most of the early twentieth century and department stores,
or like Casey said, in France, in movie theaters, there
was not something that was present at home. It was
(21:02):
it was an escape from the heat. Uh So, for example,
movie theaters in the nineteen twenties and thirties, they would
advertise with big icicles and polar bears, and some would
just prop open the lobby doors, so if you're walking
down the sidewalk, you could feel this breath of cool
air coming out, and it would entice you to buy
a ticket and come inside. And so that was the
(21:24):
reality of air conditioning for decades was it was a
it was a comfort in a in a public place.
But once the air conditioning unit comes into the home,
that's when people start to realize that they can live
in a variety of places across the country, and you
can see that start to shape population migration in the
United States starting in the fifties and sixties, and and
(21:47):
ultimately that effects political representation and where people are and
what type of people are in different places, right, right,
because the way that our you know, our voting and
electoral system works, means that the more people who live
(22:07):
in a given state, right, the more representation they have
in Congress via the House of Representatives, Right. And uh,
I guess that goes into municipal government as well. You
know now that you mentioned it, Sean, I'm just thinking
like Houston, Texas, for instance, without air conditioning, is a
(22:29):
automatically going to be a much much smaller town by
almost any measure. Is air conditioning responsible for these metropolis ees? Absolutely.
If you take Gulf cities like Houston, New Orleans, Tampa,
they were about less than half a million people in
those cities before nineteen fifty, which seems unfathomable today when
(22:50):
they're something more like twenty million people that live in
those Gulf cities. And that increase that mass migration to
the Sun Belt was as a result of air conditioning. Primarily,
you know, you have to wonder if any of the
politicians ever thanked air conditioning in a stump speech, you know,
or a an acceptance speech, like I'd like to thank
(23:12):
God the good voters of the Florida Panhandle and of
course air conditioning units the real soldiers of summer exactly
and uh, and some notable mostly Republican politicians probably should having,
including President Ronald Reagan, whose election in nineteen eighty was
sort of the tail end of a of a mass
(23:33):
migration south in the United States. I think what a
lot of people don't realize today, where we tend to
think of the Southern States is predominantly Republican states, is
that in you know, the first one hundred years, almost
after the Civil War, the Democratic Party dominated the South.
And so for example, they're about one House of representative
seats in the southern US, and the Southern States only
(23:56):
about seven of them, about a handful of them were
republic looking. For most of the twentieth century, those were
the sort of mountain ones in Tennessee and North Carolina.
And starting in nineteen fifty four in St. Petersburg, Florida,
you start to see that flip. St. Petersburg went from
being a democratic constituency to a Republican one. And the
main reason for that was that you had a lot
(24:18):
of wealthy northern Republicans who were migrating south, people who
might have wintered in Florida previously decided to just go
ahead and uproot and live there all year long. And
I'm wondering too, how this applies to other areas of
the world. I think we can. I think we can
even expand and go a bit closer to a macro level,
(24:39):
because you know, one of the first things people think
about when they think about crazy heat in the world
is going to be the Middle East, right, places like
Dubai or Saudi Arabia. And I'm I'm starting to think
that this link you have uncovered applies to in some
way to those cities, well, those centers of human capital
(25:02):
and learning. Um, it's it's fascinating to me, especially the
idea that air conditioning might be responsible for the rise
of republicanism. Uh. For for any one interested in learning
more about what what Sean and Casey and I are
exploring here, uh, just google the term dixiecrat, right. Uh
(25:24):
that I believe that is that a pejorative term. I
thought it was just sort of like a group name.
Not originally it has subsequently come to be somewhat pejorative, right,
the idea of being that UH, the Democratic Party of
the South at this time, in reconstruction and post Civil
War did not have much in common with the Democratic
(25:45):
Party as we understand it today. The Democrats are Dixiecrats
in the in the post Civil war realities of the South,
were very much an oppositional party. They wanted to maintain
what they saw as a political and cultural stronghold against
the victorious northern UH and largely Republican parties. So you said,
(26:11):
there's this massive migration south, and it's enabled by the
whole air conditioner, which is, you know, the newest thing
that you need to keep up with the joneses or
people moving from a specific part of the country like
the northeast or the cooler northwest. Where where did all
these people come from? Primarily from New England and New
(26:31):
York and the rest belt. And to put this in context,
about eighty six seats in Congress went from the North
to the South during this time period. And as the
South grew more populous, it's clout in Washington improved as well,
and those were predominantly Republican seats, sean permitting to just
(26:51):
brainstorm or conspire a bit here. But I'm also wondering
whether manufacturers of air conditioning equipment maybe not predicted this trend,
but I'm wondering whether they were able to see it,
because surely they noticed where most of their sales were
occurring or where things were um rising right in certain demographics.
(27:12):
Do we know if anyone in the air conditioning industry
clocked this or saw it or were they just thinking, man,
we're gonna be rich and at a low ambient temperature.
I'm sure they were keeping track of it, and it
was a bonanza for them. And you can see the
studies and the and the census figures and other things
(27:33):
during the time period for not only the growth of
the population in the South, but the percentage of American
homes that had air conditioning at this time. You know,
I think it goes from something like of households in
the sixties to fifty percent and seventy and and and
up and up from there too. I think it's about
or so today. And we can also see the effects
(27:56):
of air conditioning. I would pause it in the growth
of infrastructure, right, you have to have a much more
reliable energy system, especially you know in like a sweltering
New Orleans summer. New Orleans is a terrible example. There
are already a lot of people living there. But but
(28:16):
the uh maybe let's say, um, San Antonio another very
hot place. I'm wondering. I'm wondering what other effects happen here,
because I think it's an unfortunately common occurrence. A lot
of people have experience that uh stomach churning emotion when
(28:40):
you have the A c on too high, maybe your
campinging somewhere, or your cars getting overheated. Uh. There are
parts of the world now where we as a species
cannot envision living without air conditioning. But is it driving
energy infrastructure in these cities as well as driving voting
pop relations? Absolutely? I mean, I think you find that
(29:03):
this has gone from being a luxury to a necessity
in a lot of places like like San Antonio, or
like Phoenix, where you have to have an enormous infrastructure
to support millions of people, um that live in a
place that basically in the case of Phoenix, you know,
just over a century ago probably had twenty thousand UM
and and not two million or more, and you have
(29:26):
to have heat relief efforts on hand. You have to
have uh, you know, legions of h VACT repairman. It's
just a much different landscape, one that is geared towards
treating this particular home appliance. And air conditioning has changed
(29:49):
the US, it's changed the world. There were a couple
of things I wanted to chat with you about, because
we may be potentially in some situation, we may be
shooting ourselves in the climate controlled foot with air conditioning.
I'm thinking specifically with your excellent example of Phoenix, Arizona.
(30:10):
It's a great example of how the use of air
conditioning can actually make air conditioning more necessary in the future,
right because we're making cooler inside buildings and structures and
stores and so on, but we're doing that by expelling
hot air into into the environment. I found a study
(30:33):
that said the hot air pumped out of air conditioning
units in Phoenix, Arizona raise the city's average nighttime temperature
by something on the order of two degrees celsius. Again
that that's two degrees celsius for basically everybody on the
planet except for the United States. For US, US residents.
That's thirty five point six degrees fahrenheit. Nothing to sneeze at.
(30:56):
That's that's a pretty significant jump. Yeah, And like you said,
it's a it's a vicious cycle now where uh, you know,
the massive use of air conditioning does affect the climate
and does affect affect the temperature, and which in turn,
you know, just enhances the need for air conditioning. And
if you think it's bad as a result of cities
like Phoenix, you know, wait till air conditioning becomes far
(31:18):
more prevalent in places like Delhi or Jakarta or other
cities in the world. Yeah, that's a that's a prescient
and disturbing point, shot, especially when we consider the hundreds
of millions of people who live in these who live
in these areas. You know, it makes me wonder. I
am not the expert here, ma'am, but it makes me
(31:40):
wonder if maybe we should go back to the days
of having the ice trucks run. Right when when that
that was an industry in New England, Right, they would
literally drive these trucks all the way up to Canada.
I believe they would chop off chunks of ice, they
would cover it in hay, and they would be like, hurry, hurry, hurry,
We've got to put our foot on the gas and
it back down to New York. I don't know that
(32:04):
was a real thing though, right, That was a fairly
prevalent industry beforehand. Absolutely, And and just so many other
ways of keeping cool that we've kind of forgotten about today.
People used to spend lots of time outdoors in the shade,
under trees, you know. They had a lot of public
fountains where you could go cool off. There's just there's
a whole way of coping with the heat that we've
(32:25):
we've seemed to largely forget about. Yeah, you know, no,
I you know, I'm one of those people who's naturally
always kind of cold, So I have I have space
heaters distributed strategically around my house. Um, and I think
that's something that we as we as humans, uh, find
ourselves quarreling with pretty often. Like we're I think we've
(32:48):
become so adjusted to having this minute control over our
inner temperature that some people just can't find a good
temperature anymore. I mean, Casey, I said, I you've got
a knowing glint in your eye. Are you one of
those people who's always like too cold, too hot, or
do you know someone who is well. I was just
thinking of the dynamics here at the apartment. The thermostatic,
(33:11):
of course, is in the central living area, and there's
there's a little bit of a constant push pull on,
you know, bumping it up a degree, bumping it back
down a degree, and so on. Um. And it's funny
that the variance is literally just like a degree that
we kind of like go up or down on. So,
I don't know, it's just it was just funny to me.
What about what about you, Sean? Are you in a
(33:34):
oh this is so bad? Are you in a temperature
cold war? No? Not at home right now, But I
I am with respect to uh podcasting and having I
turned the A C off whenever I'm recording, And so
how I noticed myself getting progressively uncomfortable the longer I
I record the podcast. I don't know if you have
that experience, Oh oh yes, yeah. So we we've been
(33:56):
recording in our respective bunkers, you know, over the course
of the ongoing pandemic. But for most of our show's history,
Casey Nolan I recorded in something that looked very much
like an insulated shipping container like you would see on
a cargo ship, and it was exactly like sitting inside one.
(34:18):
It wasn't barbaric. There was a window, uh so that
Casey could see us and we could see him. You
still really did luck out. You got the catbird seed
on that one. Casey. Oh yeah, I was. I was
outside the sweat box, so it got hot out there,
but it was like probably ten fifteen degrees hotter it
seemed inside. When you guys finished after like an hour,
(34:39):
it was like a locker room in there was pretty bad.
It was very good for managing sound Sean, but it
was very bad for circulating air um. Probably the most
uh impactful anecdote I can share about that is, uh,
you know, was the first time recording in that in
that shipping container for this show and for other shows.
(35:00):
This is the first time in my life I walked
out of a room and thought, wow, you know, I
can feel the temperature drop. And then I realized, I'm like, whoa,
I smell like the people I was in there with
like and that's the and that's I believe, in the
parlance of our time, that's called the funk. I got
the funk uh. Um, but of course, you know, we
(35:24):
do these things for you all listening in the audience today. Now,
imagine if you had to do that and I will
invest in suit or multiple petticoats. Oh, you know, it's
the main thing. It's the main reason that I'm not
more into petticoats. Really, if I'm being honest, it's day.
I definitely have no objection to the aesthetic. Oh man, Casey,
(35:45):
I think we did it again. We did we? Uh,
this has a way of happening. I've noticed the impromptu
two partner. Yes, yes, we have another impromptu two parter,
assuming Sean Braswell will continue going on this strange journey
with us. There's just so much more we want to
(36:06):
get to. Uh, Sean, what what do you say? Are
you up for a part two? I would love to
come back and talk to you more about Unintended Consequences.
Been fantastic, good because I don't know what we would
have done if you said no. So I'm glad that
worked out. Uh. In the meantime, Well, while we're getting
to part two of our episode, we highly recommend you
(36:26):
check out Shawn's new podcast with I Heart Flashback, which
contains stories very much like this, uh, far deeper dives
than we're getting to today, about everything from air conditioning,
two cigarettes to Henry Ford in a very weird way,
and also spoiler alert kudzu, Sean. Where can people go
(36:48):
to find flashback? Sure, you can find Flashback History's Unintended
Consequences on Apple podcasts or the I Heart Radio podcast
app or or wherever you get your podcasts. And we'd
also like to hear your stories of unintended consequences, things
that you think your fellow listeners would enjoy. Ridiculous history
(37:09):
is well, you know, all over the internet. We've basically
got everything now but a Pinterest because of you know,
some ongoing litigation, but don't worry about that. Just find
us on Facebook, find us on Twitter, find us on Instagram.
You can talk to Casey and Noel and I directly. Uh.
We're also going to volunteer Sean here. Sean. If people
want to reach out to you about flashback and maybe
(37:31):
share some some of their stories, where should they find you?
Please email me at flashback at AUSSI dot com. That's
flashback at oz y dot com. We've been inviting our
own listeners to share with us their stories of unintended consequences,
as well as other stories from history that we might
not have covered or missed. Fantastic. I cannot wait to
read the stuff people are gonna send Casey, the stuff
(37:54):
they're gonna post. I mean it will hopefully be a
bit of a bomb to our wounded egos now that
we realize we chose the wrong career paths and are
not in fact cigarette tycoons. So as always, thanks to
Christopher Hasiotis, thanks to Jonathan Strickland a k a. The
Quister can get me, have forgotten to thank him on
(38:16):
this or a future outro us and uh we'll we'll
see him soon. Of course, we're also always glad to
shout out Eve's Jeff Cote, our pure podcaster for this
day in history. Let's see who else Casey we got?
Alex Williams, you compose this banger of a track where
we're listening to at the beginning and ending of pretty
much every episode. Who else we got? We got? No Brown? Um?
(38:41):
I think that's about it. Oh yeah, it'd be weird
if you thank yourself, right. Yeah? I can't. I can't.
I can't go that far. We're not at that Kanye level. Yet,
but we'll get it. We'll get there, Yes, of course.
Super producer Casey Pegram, thank you so much for going
on yet another ridiculous historical journey with us. We can't
wait to hear your stories, and we can't wait to
(39:02):
bring you part two of our series on Unintended Consequences.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
so much for tuning in. I am Ben my rider Die.
Host Noel is off on an adventure, but returning very
soon and sends his regards. Super producer Casey Pegram is
here with us as well. Casey, this is an episode
(00:50):
that's been on our mind collectively for some for some time,
and I am excited to see what we find. But
it's it's something that I have been thinking about over
the course of this week and this weekend. Uh. Unintended consequences, man,
you know what I mean? History is full of them.
Oh yeah, I don't know where we're going with that.
(01:11):
It's an exciting theme. There's so many possibilities for I mean,
history is is literally the story of unintended consequences at
some level. I think so, um, it's gonna be a
great show today. I think I like the way you
you put that we're waxing poetic today. Man. That was nice. Uh.
We have decided to explore a cavalcade of unintended consequences, which,
(01:34):
as you said, Casey, is a really good way to
define history in general. But we are not venturing forth
into this land alone. Today. We are incredibly fortunate to
be joined with our special guests, the host of the
new podcast Flashback. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the
(01:56):
audio stage Sean braswell. Sean, thanks for coming on, glad
to be here, Ben, thanks for having me. Now, Sean,
you have quite a vested interest in a number of pursuits.
I believe you maybe the first Polly Math we've ever
had on Ridiculous History. Oh that's that's quite an honor.
It's true. I'm something of a renaissance man, someone who
(02:19):
went to college for way too long and did far
too many degrees, but it eventually pays off. I think
so agree with you. By the way, I was still
like I I think, like many of us, every so
often I think I should get a PhD, you know,
just just in something. So that's that's the dream. But
(02:42):
we wanted to ask you on this show today to
help us explore some of these unintended consequences throughout history,
and we've asked you to do so because this pertains
directly to your podcast, Flashback. Could you tell us a
little bit of about what Flashback is that's right. Um,
(03:02):
Flashback is a is a history podcast, and our first
season is all about unintended consequences, like you said, and uh,
you know, I like to think of history, and one
of the things I love most about it, in addition
to the great stories and and and the ridiculous stories
like you guys cover, is just to think of it
as one big giant laboratory experiment where you can sort
(03:23):
of see cause and effect unfold over time, and you
can figure out how things are connected. You know. Sometimes
change happens on a dime, sometimes it happens over centuries.
And uh, you know, the beautiful thing about the about
history is that it teaches us about how so much
of the world around us is contingent. You know, that
(03:43):
things don't have to be the way they are now
and uh, and they almost weren't. Yeah. There's so many
pivotal points in history, right, Decision points have been called
or a crossroads. It's something we spend a lot of
time thinking about on this show as well. You know,
what if something happens just a few minutes later on
a particular afternoon, right, what leads us to investigate the
(04:08):
largely invisible stories of some very common things. Throughout Season
one of Flashback, you've been exploring topics that might ostensibly
seem like something everyone is aware of, you know, like
air conditioning. We we get it, we know what air
conditioning is. But you explore the ripple effects caused by
(04:31):
some of these events, some actions of notable individuals like
Henry Ford, for instance, or the way in which a
controversial product might affect the world around us. I was
hoping that today we could we could explore a couple
of these things, because there's a lot of stuff in Flashback.
(04:52):
I I had no idea of I I had no
idea the entire story of cigarettes, Like when we think
of cigarettes today, this is a good starting point. When
we think of cigarettes today, you know, we think of
things like the massive health concerns right Uh, the tremendous
damage it can do to your body. We also think
(05:13):
of maybe the social aspect of cigarettes being cool in
nineteen sixties film and uh film and you know television, Uh,
ridiculous histories. You can't see it. But I got a
little too in character, and now I'm waving an invisible
cigarette that I have to keep for the rest of
the show. Uh. But this is this is where I'd
(05:35):
like to start today, Sean, cigarettes, What what are some
of the unintended consequences of cigarettes? Well, there are just
so many and uh, and cigarettes have such a rich
history and and one of the things I think, like
you mentioned that that we take for granted today is
we cigarettes are is basically synonymous with smoking and tobacco.
(05:56):
But it wasn't always that case throughout American history. I mean,
we have a long history with tobacco in this country,
going back to the Mayflower and the Pilgrims. But for
the most part, through the the early history of the
United States, we were talking about cigars and pipes and
chewing tobacco, not not manufactured cigarettes. And for for much
of our history, cigarettes were considered, you know, somewhat effeminate,
(06:19):
that you would be made fun of if you're a
man and you were smoking a little dainty cigarette, just
like you gesture a minute ago. So this is odd
because you know, for a lot of people, the idea
of the Marlborough man is pretty familiar, and that's something
that's supposed to be equated directly with say a more
(06:40):
masculine presentation. Right, How how did this switch occur? Yeah,
it's it's funny. It's a very masculine thing to do,
thanks in no small part to the Marlboro Man. But
in part that is all rolled up into the relationship
that smoking has with war in American history, going back
to the First World War in fact, right right, So
I imagine then it's a situation where tobacco was perhaps
(07:04):
a ration that's given to soldiers, similar to the way
you know, you would receive food rations. Is that correct? Yes,
but not, but not at first. It wasn't actually included
in the U. S. Army rations in World War One
until the very end of the war. Um the very
first group to hand out cigarettes, and they handed out
more than two billion of them to US soldiers, was
in fact that the y m c A way the
(07:26):
Young Men's Christian Association, that's right, one, one and the same,
These sort of Christian progressive temperance groups like y m
c A. They are the ones that helped get prohibition
past in America. They were very involved in the moral
health and reform of the country, and one of the
places that they were most concerned about war as the
(07:49):
environment that soldiers found themselves in. You know, we have
a certain view today that being uh, in the military
is a glorious, profound, and noble venture. But back you know,
in the days of the Civil War, mothers would fear
when their sons and it was mostly their sons who
went off to battle and would come back with all
(08:09):
manner of bad habits and vices, from pornography used to
to drug use, to alcohol abuse, all sorts of things
like that. So groups like the y m c A
grew up to kind of help protect against that kind
of concern with vice among the soldiering class. Yeah, yeah,
you know, this feels like it has the ring of truth.
(08:30):
I'm imagining what those what those vices might be. You know,
they're very serious things like someone becoming addicted to an
opiate of some sort for the treatment of you know,
chronic injuries or chronic pain. But then there's also stuff
that seems kind of I don't know, at the risk
of selling dismissive, seems kind of silly, Like little Johnny
(08:53):
ran off the war and now he came back and
he's got a hot hand in dice games, you know
what I mean. The kid just can't stop gambling. And
it's still it seems, though counterintuitive that a organization dedicated
to perpetuating its idea of morality would be associated with like,
you know, there's a Y M c A down the
(09:15):
street from from Casey and I, and I'm pretty sure
they're anti smoking. Now I haven't read all their literature.
That might be my assumption. I would I would assume
so as well. You just have to remember the context
of a century ago. And it was almost like smoking
was the lesser of many evils when it came to
World War One soldiers. For example, the British Army gave
(09:38):
their soldiers rum rations, state sanctioned rum rations UH, and
the French soldiers actually had state run brothels that they
could frequent during World War One. And UH. A lot
of the American public and the U. S. Army weren't
aboard but that sort of advice. But they felt like
cigarettes was one vice they could effectively sanction, and it
was because it had certain benefits or soldiers as well.
(10:01):
It was something that would calm and soothe their nerves.
It was something to do when you were bored and UH.
And one thing that often gets overlooked is just the
fact that smoking condole your sense of smell. And there
were some very bad smells on the on the World
War One battlefield. Yeah, that's that's a good point. I
I I had thought about maybe the recreational aspect of it, um,
(10:23):
But I think you're making a pretty profound insight about
the functionality of of smoking there. You know, I wouldn't
be surprised if there were soldiers who had taken up
the habit just so they wouldn't have to constantly smell
the terrible stenches of war. Absolutely, you would find people
(10:45):
who wouldn't normally take up habits like that, adopting them
in context of extreme stress like battle and uh. And
that is what basically hooks an entire generation of young
America and young male Americans on cigarettes is the fact
that they're put in a rather unusual circumstance. And those
(11:07):
who might not necessarily have addictive personalities or pursue that
sort of vice outside of such a circumstance would would
would do that in in in the in the millions.
And so when these soldiers return now veterans, right, they
return with their with their cigarette habit. And this is okay,
(11:30):
So this is like the close of World War One
and the interwar period. Correct, Yes, that's right. Okay. So
after after they return, what happens. How does American culture
sort of associate or you know, navigate the idea of
the cigarette. Well, I think it just becomes much more sanctioned,
(11:51):
much more accepted. And you have millions of new, now
very manly nicotine addicts coming back from the war. And
of course it's very pro fitable industry as as a
result in the and the tobacco industry is making crazy
profits in the nineteen twenties, and and it spreads to
other segments of the American public. And of course the
more profitable the industry, the more profitable it is to
(12:13):
tax that industry, which is how uh, state and the
federal government get first involved in cigarette taxas. Yes, okay,
so I have I have several questions about this because
when you said, you know, when you mentioned the potentially
massive profits from from tobacco industry in general, right all
(12:36):
the products, when you when you mentioned that, I was
immediately thinking, for a second you were going to say,
and of course, the more profit there is to be made,
the more likely you'll see a criminal element involved. Uh.
And I think that now I'm not saying that taxing
is a criminal element I'm just saying that the government
was not the only entity trying to make a little
(12:59):
something off the topless cigarettes. But weren't cigarette taxes controversial
at some point? I mean, people in general are not
big fans of taxes. No, they they they're not big
fans of the cigarette tax. But but initially, for the
first twenty years or so, they're you know, their pennies
on on a pack, they're they're relatively small, they're they're
(13:19):
they're minor additions to the cost of a pack of cigarettes.
And but it was a great revenue raiser for the government.
And you have to remember and during the nineteen twenties,
during Prohibition, the government was no longer taxing legal alcohol,
which just blew an enormous hole in the U. S.
Treasury not having alcohol taxes, and so the government was
(13:39):
looking for ways to recoup that revenue, and tobacco taxes
were one big way of doing that. And I think
about fift of the federal government's tax collections in the
nineteen thirties were tobacco taxes fifteen per cent. That's that's
an insanely high number. Uh in higherly from cigarettes. I
(14:02):
guess it's it's interesting because a lot of us in
the modern day, you know, we like there's still a
visible demographic of the population that smokes or maybe engages
in some kind of relationship with nicotine, like vaping or something.
But it's been on a steady decline for a number
(14:23):
of years here in the States. From what I understand,
it's it's just so it's startling to realize that not
that long ago, you know, it would seem more abnormal
for someone in a certain demographic to not smoke, right like,
even even doctors are recommending the smooth field of the
camel's cigarette or something like that, right absolutely. And uh
(14:46):
And just to take a microcosm event, you know, the
average military base today and you go down to Fort Bragg,
which is about an hour from where I live in
North Carolina, and you don't see people smoking anymore. You
hardly ever see a cigarette soldier with a cigarette in
his or her mouth. Um. But you know, back in
the is a different story. And especially in World War Two,
(15:07):
they were everywhere. They were the preferred coping mechanism for
the for the enlisted man. And then of course, who
are you to tell that veteran that they are somehow
effeminate because they have a cigarette instead of a you know,
a cigar or I don't know, I'm spitball in here
a hookah. Who knows? That's right? So when when you
(15:35):
look at this, do you think that the y m
c A knew just how popular this uh distribution plan
of theirs would be? Like there, it sounds like we
can tie them almost directly to the popularity of cigarettes
in America. Yes, I I don't think that the y
(15:56):
m c A had really any clue as to the
long term consequences of what was essentially an act of
generosity during World War One, trying to provide a mechanism
for soldiers to better cope with life on the battlefield. Yeah,
but I mean that that's one of the things we
we we talked about a lot in the podcast, is
(16:16):
just how these unintended consequences can play out over time
and often in directions you could not have fathomed at
the time, and in ways that create much bigger and
larger vices than the one that the y m c
A was trying to deal with during World War One.
And this, you know, this is sobering stuff. Uh, just
just so everyone knows the way we're kind of laying
(16:38):
out today's journey is to start with what I would
say is one of the most dangerous topics. Clearly, you know,
we can also we can also point out that the
y m c A was not on some insidious conspiracy,
you know, to to give people cancer or anything. It was,
as you said, an act of generosity by it had
(17:01):
significant and serious consequences on the American public, and those
consequences still reverberate with us today. But maybe we switch
topics here and and take a different path. Sean, why
don't we cool down the tone of the podcast a
little bit and talk about air conditioning. Just just to
(17:23):
set this up here, air conditioning is amazing. A lot
of people here in the US have lived their entire
lives with easy access to air conditioning. It's ubiquitous in
many parts of the world. But if you have ever
spent an extended amount of time in an area where
air conditioning is abnormal, you very quickly notice its absence. Casey,
(17:46):
I want to throw to you, actually, how common is
air conditioning in France? Yeah, and in Paris It's it's
very hit and myths, and it's sometimes used as marketing
for like a film. You know, movie theory there will
say the silids climatise, and it means it's climatized, it's
air conditioned, and so you you kind of have the
(18:07):
idea that maybe some people are buying tickets to go
in just a cool off for a couple of hours
and the movie doesn't matter so much. So um, yeah,
I mean, it's it's a whole way of life, right,
like you always have the windows open, You're always kind
of conscious of trying to keep some airflow going, stay fresh,
um where you know, light materials that breathe and so on.
It's it's a whole thing, casey on the case. Yeah.
(18:31):
You know, Sean, I had in a previous life, I
had lived in Central America for some time in Guatemala,
and you know, air conditioning was much less common, at
least the place in the place where I was living.
And the last thing I did before I returned to
the United States was to splurge a little and spend
(18:53):
the night in a in a hotel that had this
was very big to me, had both carpet and air canditioning.
Uh And and now returning with that, like I am
constantly amazed by air conditioning. I think it does affect
us in ways that we we don't really think about,
but you on flashback had mentioned it also played a
(19:15):
role in politics. Yes, that's that's right. You know. Um,
when comfort spreads over an entire country or over an
entire globe, eventually it changes the way people behave, often
in unexpected ways. And even though we come to think
of air conditioning as a creature comfort as an invention
(19:36):
that makes life easier, uh that that idea of comfort,
of having an easier life influences how people behave, for
for example, moving to different parts of the country that
they might normally not want to live in, for example
Houston or Phoenix, or or any of a number of
places in the U. S. Sun Belt that now have
(19:57):
cities with that are home to millions of p bowl
but at one time would be it would be absolutely
unthinkable to want to spend an entire year in a
place like that. Yeah, like the swamp lands of Florida,
you know, especially thinking very humid places where it just
SAPs your energy out. So we know, without getting too
(20:19):
into the weeds on the story of air conditionings invention,
we know the idea has been around for a long time, right,
how can we make the air in the environment around
us cooler? But what would you say, was like the
first wave of people empowered to move via air conditioning
availability in the US. Well, the big moment on that
(20:40):
front is in the early nineteen fifties with the advent
of the home air conditioning unit. Because even though air
conditioning had been available in large commercial places in America
for for most of the early twentieth century and department stores,
or like Casey said, in France, in movie theaters, there
was not something that was present at home. It was
(21:02):
it was an escape from the heat. Uh So, for example,
movie theaters in the nineteen twenties and thirties, they would
advertise with big icicles and polar bears, and some would
just prop open the lobby doors, so if you're walking
down the sidewalk, you could feel this breath of cool
air coming out, and it would entice you to buy
a ticket and come inside. And so that was the
(21:24):
reality of air conditioning for decades was it was a
it was a comfort in a in a public place.
But once the air conditioning unit comes into the home,
that's when people start to realize that they can live
in a variety of places across the country, and you
can see that start to shape population migration in the
United States starting in the fifties and sixties, and and
(21:47):
ultimately that effects political representation and where people are and
what type of people are in different places, right, right,
because the way that our you know, our voting and
electoral system works, means that the more people who live
(22:07):
in a given state, right, the more representation they have
in Congress via the House of Representatives, Right. And uh,
I guess that goes into municipal government as well. You
know now that you mentioned it, Sean, I'm just thinking
like Houston, Texas, for instance, without air conditioning, is a
(22:29):
automatically going to be a much much smaller town by
almost any measure. Is air conditioning responsible for these metropolis ees? Absolutely.
If you take Gulf cities like Houston, New Orleans, Tampa,
they were about less than half a million people in
those cities before nineteen fifty, which seems unfathomable today when
(22:50):
they're something more like twenty million people that live in
those Gulf cities. And that increase that mass migration to
the Sun Belt was as a result of air conditioning. Primarily,
you know, you have to wonder if any of the
politicians ever thanked air conditioning in a stump speech, you know,
or a an acceptance speech, like I'd like to thank
(23:12):
God the good voters of the Florida Panhandle and of
course air conditioning units the real soldiers of summer exactly
and uh, and some notable mostly Republican politicians probably should having,
including President Ronald Reagan, whose election in nineteen eighty was
sort of the tail end of a of a mass
(23:33):
migration south in the United States. I think what a
lot of people don't realize today, where we tend to
think of the Southern States is predominantly Republican states, is
that in you know, the first one hundred years, almost
after the Civil War, the Democratic Party dominated the South.
And so for example, they're about one House of representative
seats in the southern US, and the Southern States only
(23:56):
about seven of them, about a handful of them were
republic looking. For most of the twentieth century, those were
the sort of mountain ones in Tennessee and North Carolina.
And starting in nineteen fifty four in St. Petersburg, Florida,
you start to see that flip. St. Petersburg went from
being a democratic constituency to a Republican one. And the
main reason for that was that you had a lot
(24:18):
of wealthy northern Republicans who were migrating south, people who
might have wintered in Florida previously decided to just go
ahead and uproot and live there all year long. And
I'm wondering too, how this applies to other areas of
the world. I think we can. I think we can
even expand and go a bit closer to a macro level,
(24:39):
because you know, one of the first things people think
about when they think about crazy heat in the world
is going to be the Middle East, right, places like
Dubai or Saudi Arabia. And I'm I'm starting to think
that this link you have uncovered applies to in some
way to those cities, well, those centers of human capital
(25:02):
and learning. Um, it's it's fascinating to me, especially the
idea that air conditioning might be responsible for the rise
of republicanism. Uh. For for any one interested in learning
more about what what Sean and Casey and I are
exploring here, uh, just google the term dixiecrat, right. Uh
(25:24):
that I believe that is that a pejorative term. I
thought it was just sort of like a group name.
Not originally it has subsequently come to be somewhat pejorative, right,
the idea of being that UH, the Democratic Party of
the South at this time, in reconstruction and post Civil
War did not have much in common with the Democratic
(25:45):
Party as we understand it today. The Democrats are Dixiecrats
in the in the post Civil war realities of the South,
were very much an oppositional party. They wanted to maintain
what they saw as a political and cultural stronghold against
the victorious northern UH and largely Republican parties. So you said,
(26:11):
there's this massive migration south, and it's enabled by the
whole air conditioner, which is, you know, the newest thing
that you need to keep up with the joneses or
people moving from a specific part of the country like
the northeast or the cooler northwest. Where where did all
these people come from? Primarily from New England and New
(26:31):
York and the rest belt. And to put this in context,
about eighty six seats in Congress went from the North
to the South during this time period. And as the
South grew more populous, it's clout in Washington improved as well,
and those were predominantly Republican seats, sean permitting to just
(26:51):
brainstorm or conspire a bit here. But I'm also wondering
whether manufacturers of air conditioning equipment maybe not predicted this trend,
but I'm wondering whether they were able to see it,
because surely they noticed where most of their sales were
occurring or where things were um rising right in certain demographics.
(27:12):
Do we know if anyone in the air conditioning industry
clocked this or saw it or were they just thinking, man,
we're gonna be rich and at a low ambient temperature.
I'm sure they were keeping track of it, and it
was a bonanza for them. And you can see the
studies and the and the census figures and other things
(27:33):
during the time period for not only the growth of
the population in the South, but the percentage of American
homes that had air conditioning at this time. You know,
I think it goes from something like of households in
the sixties to fifty percent and seventy and and and
up and up from there too. I think it's about
or so today. And we can also see the effects
(27:56):
of air conditioning. I would pause it in the growth
of infrastructure, right, you have to have a much more
reliable energy system, especially you know in like a sweltering
New Orleans summer. New Orleans is a terrible example. There
are already a lot of people living there. But but
(28:16):
the uh maybe let's say, um, San Antonio another very
hot place. I'm wondering. I'm wondering what other effects happen here,
because I think it's an unfortunately common occurrence. A lot
of people have experience that uh stomach churning emotion when
(28:40):
you have the A c on too high, maybe your
campinging somewhere, or your cars getting overheated. Uh. There are
parts of the world now where we as a species
cannot envision living without air conditioning. But is it driving
energy infrastructure in these cities as well as driving voting
pop relations? Absolutely? I mean, I think you find that
(29:03):
this has gone from being a luxury to a necessity
in a lot of places like like San Antonio, or
like Phoenix, where you have to have an enormous infrastructure
to support millions of people, um that live in a
place that basically in the case of Phoenix, you know,
just over a century ago probably had twenty thousand UM
and and not two million or more, and you have
(29:26):
to have heat relief efforts on hand. You have to
have uh, you know, legions of h VACT repairman. It's
just a much different landscape, one that is geared towards
treating this particular home appliance. And air conditioning has changed
(29:49):
the US, it's changed the world. There were a couple
of things I wanted to chat with you about, because
we may be potentially in some situation, we may be
shooting ourselves in the climate controlled foot with air conditioning.
I'm thinking specifically with your excellent example of Phoenix, Arizona.
(30:10):
It's a great example of how the use of air
conditioning can actually make air conditioning more necessary in the future,
right because we're making cooler inside buildings and structures and
stores and so on, but we're doing that by expelling
hot air into into the environment. I found a study
(30:33):
that said the hot air pumped out of air conditioning
units in Phoenix, Arizona raise the city's average nighttime temperature
by something on the order of two degrees celsius. Again
that that's two degrees celsius for basically everybody on the
planet except for the United States. For US, US residents.
That's thirty five point six degrees fahrenheit. Nothing to sneeze at.
(30:56):
That's that's a pretty significant jump. Yeah, And like you said,
it's a it's a vicious cycle now where uh, you know,
the massive use of air conditioning does affect the climate
and does affect affect the temperature, and which in turn,
you know, just enhances the need for air conditioning. And
if you think it's bad as a result of cities
like Phoenix, you know, wait till air conditioning becomes far
(31:18):
more prevalent in places like Delhi or Jakarta or other
cities in the world. Yeah, that's a that's a prescient
and disturbing point, shot, especially when we consider the hundreds
of millions of people who live in these who live
in these areas. You know, it makes me wonder. I
am not the expert here, ma'am, but it makes me
(31:40):
wonder if maybe we should go back to the days
of having the ice trucks run. Right when when that
that was an industry in New England, Right, they would
literally drive these trucks all the way up to Canada.
I believe they would chop off chunks of ice, they
would cover it in hay, and they would be like, hurry, hurry, hurry,
We've got to put our foot on the gas and
it back down to New York. I don't know that
(32:04):
was a real thing though, right, That was a fairly
prevalent industry beforehand. Absolutely, And and just so many other
ways of keeping cool that we've kind of forgotten about today.
People used to spend lots of time outdoors in the shade,
under trees, you know. They had a lot of public
fountains where you could go cool off. There's just there's
a whole way of coping with the heat that we've
(32:25):
we've seemed to largely forget about. Yeah, you know, no,
I you know, I'm one of those people who's naturally
always kind of cold, So I have I have space
heaters distributed strategically around my house. Um, and I think
that's something that we as we as humans, uh, find
ourselves quarreling with pretty often. Like we're I think we've
(32:48):
become so adjusted to having this minute control over our
inner temperature that some people just can't find a good
temperature anymore. I mean, Casey, I said, I you've got
a knowing glint in your eye. Are you one of
those people who's always like too cold, too hot, or
do you know someone who is well. I was just
thinking of the dynamics here at the apartment. The thermostatic,
(33:11):
of course, is in the central living area, and there's
there's a little bit of a constant push pull on,
you know, bumping it up a degree, bumping it back
down a degree, and so on. Um. And it's funny
that the variance is literally just like a degree that
we kind of like go up or down on. So,
I don't know, it's just it was just funny to me.
What about what about you, Sean? Are you in a
(33:34):
oh this is so bad? Are you in a temperature
cold war? No? Not at home right now, But I
I am with respect to uh podcasting and having I
turned the A C off whenever I'm recording, And so
how I noticed myself getting progressively uncomfortable the longer I
I record the podcast. I don't know if you have
that experience, Oh oh yes, yeah. So we we've been
(33:56):
recording in our respective bunkers, you know, over the course
of the ongoing pandemic. But for most of our show's history,
Casey Nolan I recorded in something that looked very much
like an insulated shipping container like you would see on
a cargo ship, and it was exactly like sitting inside one.
(34:18):
It wasn't barbaric. There was a window, uh so that
Casey could see us and we could see him. You
still really did luck out. You got the catbird seed
on that one. Casey. Oh yeah, I was. I was
outside the sweat box, so it got hot out there,
but it was like probably ten fifteen degrees hotter it
seemed inside. When you guys finished after like an hour,
(34:39):
it was like a locker room in there was pretty bad.
It was very good for managing sound Sean, but it
was very bad for circulating air um. Probably the most
uh impactful anecdote I can share about that is, uh,
you know, was the first time recording in that in
that shipping container for this show and for other shows.
(35:00):
This is the first time in my life I walked
out of a room and thought, wow, you know, I
can feel the temperature drop. And then I realized, I'm like, whoa,
I smell like the people I was in there with
like and that's the and that's I believe, in the
parlance of our time, that's called the funk. I got
the funk uh. Um, but of course, you know, we
(35:24):
do these things for you all listening in the audience today. Now,
imagine if you had to do that and I will
invest in suit or multiple petticoats. Oh, you know, it's
the main thing. It's the main reason that I'm not
more into petticoats. Really, if I'm being honest, it's day.
I definitely have no objection to the aesthetic. Oh man, Casey,
(35:45):
I think we did it again. We did we? Uh,
this has a way of happening. I've noticed the impromptu
two partner. Yes, yes, we have another impromptu two parter,
assuming Sean Braswell will continue going on this strange journey
with us. There's just so much more we want to
(36:06):
get to. Uh, Sean, what what do you say? Are
you up for a part two? I would love to
come back and talk to you more about Unintended Consequences.
Been fantastic, good because I don't know what we would
have done if you said no. So I'm glad that
worked out. Uh. In the meantime, Well, while we're getting
to part two of our episode, we highly recommend you
(36:26):
check out Shawn's new podcast with I Heart Flashback, which
contains stories very much like this, uh, far deeper dives
than we're getting to today, about everything from air conditioning,
two cigarettes to Henry Ford in a very weird way,
and also spoiler alert kudzu, Sean. Where can people go
(36:48):
to find flashback? Sure, you can find Flashback History's Unintended
Consequences on Apple podcasts or the I Heart Radio podcast
app or or wherever you get your podcasts. And we'd
also like to hear your stories of unintended consequences, things
that you think your fellow listeners would enjoy. Ridiculous history
(37:09):
is well, you know, all over the internet. We've basically
got everything now but a Pinterest because of you know,
some ongoing litigation, but don't worry about that. Just find
us on Facebook, find us on Twitter, find us on Instagram.
You can talk to Casey and Noel and I directly. Uh.
We're also going to volunteer Sean here. Sean. If people
want to reach out to you about flashback and maybe
(37:31):
share some some of their stories, where should they find you?
Please email me at flashback at AUSSI dot com. That's
flashback at oz y dot com. We've been inviting our
own listeners to share with us their stories of unintended consequences,
as well as other stories from history that we might
not have covered or missed. Fantastic. I cannot wait to
read the stuff people are gonna send Casey, the stuff
(37:54):
they're gonna post. I mean it will hopefully be a
bit of a bomb to our wounded egos now that
we realize we chose the wrong career paths and are
not in fact cigarette tycoons. So as always, thanks to
Christopher Hasiotis, thanks to Jonathan Strickland a k a. The
Quister can get me, have forgotten to thank him on
(38:16):
this or a future outro us and uh we'll we'll
see him soon. Of course, we're also always glad to
shout out Eve's Jeff Cote, our pure podcaster for this
day in history. Let's see who else Casey we got?
Alex Williams, you compose this banger of a track where
we're listening to at the beginning and ending of pretty
much every episode. Who else we got? We got? No Brown? Um?
(38:41):
I think that's about it. Oh yeah, it'd be weird
if you thank yourself, right. Yeah? I can't. I can't.
I can't go that far. We're not at that Kanye level. Yet,
but we'll get it. We'll get there, Yes, of course.
Super producer Casey Pegram, thank you so much for going
on yet another ridiculous historical journey with us. We can't
wait to hear your stories, and we can't wait to
(39:02):
bring you part two of our series on Unintended Consequences.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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