Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
(00:27):
show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. That's our super producer and venture capitalist partner,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hip hop heay ho it is I Noel Brown?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Oh and I am going by Ben Bolan as of
late and Noel we are. We are in the middle
of a story that I think has just tickled us
but also.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
To a degree captured us, no question, the story of
Samuel horn Clemens aka Josh Mark Twain and his absolutely
abysmal sense of business documen.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
So in his mind at this point, business is the
definition of success. And let's keep in mind. Mark Twain
is the guy who later goes on to coin the
term gilded age, so he he could this is such
a weird thing. He goes to a friend of his,
totally not funny guy named John McKay, who is the
(01:40):
superintendent of a local mind, and he pitches him and
he goes I say, I say, I say, hey, Joe,
why don't.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
You and I switch places? You could have my job
but to the enterprise and how run the mind. John
is by all accounts a good friend of Samuel Clemens,
and he says, well, how much do you make, you know,
writing the funnies at this paper?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Your little stories?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, your little stories, and Sam immediately improve the facts.
We say he was making twenty five dollars a week.
He told his buddy John, he's making forty dollars a week.
And John is not. You know, John is like one
of those guys at a comedy show who smiles and
nods along, but a lot of stuff goes over his
(02:28):
head because he's so honest. And he says, well, this
business is not worth forty dollars a week, and he
sounds concerned. He says, you stay where you are and
I will try to get a living out of this.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Okay, okay. So later Samuel Clemens, our buddy Mark Twain
would tell this tale, you know again varying degrees of consistency,
shall we say the man was a yarn spinner and
his buddy and in it is buddy John always agreed.
John was a hard another bit of a hard case,
(03:06):
kind of like his father, a bit imperfect, had his flaws,
but they did stay close friends all the way up
until nineteen oh two, when John sadly passed away, and
he was often asked to justify his friendship with sam
who kind of became a bit of a notorious crank
in his old age, which I could see. That's the
(03:27):
thing that often happens with Comediansudgeon, Yeah, curmudgeony, I mean, honestly,
I was referenced, guys, I just love him. Jason Parkin
the writer, and he's does a lot of TikTok. Yeah,
he's been on Daily Zeitgey's great channel to follow. He
pointed out that in general, oftentimes comedians aren't nice people
(03:47):
because comedy is sort of a stand in for being
nice in social situations. And I just thought that was
so well said and inaccurate. And oftentimes they're they're tortured,
you know, they do the whole thing because they are
struggling with demons. In its sort of a way of
finding light in the darkness.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Right, there's a crack in everything. That's how the light
gets in. Shout out. So I'm gonna change voices for
John when he let's make him a little more western, uh,
Like you said, as Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens becomes more
contankerous over time, and people ask John McKay about him.
(04:30):
He would inevitably go to the matt to defend his
pal Sam, and he would say, I'll addict you to
the Society of Literary Meal.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Oh that's a tough that's a tough one to kick man.
That's society considerary man. He's had a real monkey on
your back. They don't make methadone for that. There we go.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It's like tricky soda. So uh, Sam, like we said,
goes on to become Mark Twain. John goes on to
become John McKay, the mining tycoon. You have to wonder, though, nol,
what would history be like today if those been had
switched places. Samuel Clemens was a terrible minor John McKay,
not funny, right, very dry to say the least. And honestly,
(05:15):
it sounds like the plot of a Buddy comedy. You
know what it really does? I would watch it.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I would too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So okay, So again we see this is a failed
business venture. This is one of the first things in
the world of business that Sam Clemens gets wrong. He
loves being an author, he's a real cracker jack at it,
but he defined success as success in business and capitalism.
Again smoking that pipe of the American dream. We got
(05:45):
to say it though. We do have to give the
man his flowers, right, Noel, because he is you know,
oh yeah successful.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
No, he certainly was successful. And again we have I
think we set this up from the top. It's just
a different set of skills. I mean, comedy takes a
certain kind of intuition. Satire takes a certain kind of observational,
you know, intuition, and so does business. It's not something
that you can necessarily just learn on paper. You can
learn the nuts and bolts of it and kind of,
(06:13):
you know, go to business school or whatever. But some
people just don't have the acumen that it takes, you know,
to kind of like read the room and figure out
which way the wind is blowing.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, and Mark Twain is an exception. In the world
of writing. He gets national and then international fame with
his works in nineteenth century America. He is one of
the highest paid authors. His breakout to Be is a
story about betting on frogs. He is always at the
(06:44):
frog hop or it's like a Calamitus, County Calamachus, something
like that. It's a really crazy name for the calaveras,
the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County. And this is
a short story, right, yeah, yeah, it's published. It's published.
It gets him more and more attention. He's building his career,
(07:05):
kind of like an author for Cracked builds their career.
Shout out to our pal Jason. They mentioned earlier and
his and I say that with great affection. Jason Parkin
is an awesome writer. By the way, Yeah what do
you re? The John Dies in the End series, that's
his most famous work.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
But I really just love him as Like, again, this
is something I don't think you're allowed to call yourself,
but I would call him a media critic. The way
he makes these takes you on certain pop cultural things
and the Internet, And I think it's the kind of
thing where you earn your stripes by doing and by
saying and by being correct, not necessarily something you would say.
I am a humorist. You earn that title by being
(07:42):
humorous and putting stuff out into the world and creating
a body of work.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
If anyone describes themself as a humorist and they don't
have a Mark Twain Award, I would question their credibility.
It's like how you check the health score of a restaurant.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
That's right, what's the lowest health score that you will die?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
And I don't remember on a stuff they don't want
you to know. I think, okay, eighties good is acceptable.
It's an eighty is not going to be like rats
crawling out of the woodwork. I would like to see
what led to that demotion, but typically you know that's
usually written on the card which here comes back.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
So as a manager of restaurants in the city Atlanta
for five years, I will tell you that the health
score and the health checks are I hate to say
there's They really depend on how on the person grading
you and how they feel that day because and they
I'm not saying this in a way of like inflame,
there are.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
No no, I'm not saying that.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I'm saying there are things that restaurants should really get
dinged for that sometimes don't get dinged for. And another
big thing is the score you see at a restaurant.
Usually it can be the first score. But also if
you get a bad score at a restaurant, they will
come back in like a certain amount of time offhat
exactly right, and they'll regrade you ye, and they'll get
(09:04):
rid of the original score. And there's just like weird things.
So like I know, like basically an insta fail which
makes total sense is if you have eggs placed above
anything else in the h it's just there. It's one
of these things that unfortunately is not accurate enough. Like
there's too many places that have good scores that should
not have good scores in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Right right, and there are too many places that probably
got dinged when they shouldn't get dinged.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
This segment brought to you by Max with the facts
that seeming inn and peace fallen knowledge. It's just for
you right now with the fact Wait, no, that is
the segment Max with the facts. I love that.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I can't believe we do an episode about Mark Twain,
we learn about restaurant health scores. It's just a cornucopia
of knowledge here on ridiculous sistory.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Right, Like I almost said Vittman, my Germans coming out,
like Whitman said, we are vast, We've malton we can take.
We are vast, we contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman said,
uh in Twain. Going back to Mark Twain, his debut novel,
His Real Breakout, is a work called innocence abroad. This
(10:20):
paves the way for things like Tom Sawyer, Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn and so on. But at the same time,
concurrently he is patenting and inventing things. He patents a
scrap book that he doesn't ever manufacture. He comes up
with the idea of a baby bed clamp, which is
(10:42):
where does the clamp go?
Speaker 2 (10:43):
What is its purpose?
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Supposed to keep kids from kicking off their sheets. He
makes a spiral pin that helps women keep their hats
on when the winds are high.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
He also this is so dumb. In eighteen eighty three,
he makes his own board game because he's trying to
dodge work on Huckleberry Finn. He calls it, in a
burst of humility, mark Twain's Fact and Date game and
endure historical diversion. And he does manufacture this. This gets
to the shelves and people don't like it. In eighteen
(11:18):
ninety one, one person who bought it called it a
quote cross between an income tax form and a table
of logarithms.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Now, I would argue that today this game would kill
There's so many niche, pedantic, weird, little mathy board games
like Catan and stuff and some of them I love,
but some of them. Of them are way over my head.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
But I like the ones where you have to spend
the first night just learning the rules.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Man, I gotta tell you, Ben, I know that you're
a bit of a D and D er. My buddy Peyton,
friend of the show and friend of both of us,
is visiting and he convinced me to download Balder's Gate. Yes,
Balder's Gates, Yeah, exactly for the PS five. I actually
quite enjoy watching other people play games, and apparently this
game is a great entry into the rules set and
(12:09):
character building of D and D. Yes, so I much
got it. So I can watch Peyton play it and
sort of get my head around with a little bit.
Then I'll make my own character.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
You know what's going to crack you up, man, M
boulders Gate three is super horny. I heard it was
really horny. I heard there was like lots of like passionate,
not like a wholesome way, it'll some affirming way, but
accent on the holes.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yes, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry everybody. I apologize to everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
No, no, that's that's the asshole of the picture. Right.
So he also Mark Twayne going back to Mark Twayne,
he also makes a lot of friends. He's a gregarious dude,
and he marries well, he marries a cole heiress named
Olivia Langdon, and when they jumped the broom, his new
father in law as like a wedding gift, get this.
(13:00):
They give him a mansion with a retinue of household
servants including a butler and a carriage and a full
time carriage driver. That's pretty okay as a wedding gift.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Not bad, not bad Mark Twain. And he of course
was wealthy in his own right, so now he's super wealthy.
So in eighteen seventy three, the family moved to Hartford, Connecticut,
which was a really big deal kind of plays at
the time like a real seat of culture and influence.
They stayed there for seventeen years, while summering in their
(13:36):
summer home in Elmira. During this time, Twain wrote some
of his most well known and by many beloved works.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, and he still wasn't done because again he coins
the term gilded age. She's existing in this time and
so he is a first hand witness to wealth that
most of America can only imagine. And he would later
write something invisive but entirely troublingly correct, And I feel
(14:08):
like I've accidentally parallel thought myself into this. He says, man,
we'll do many things to get himself loved. He will
do all things to get himself envied. So the idea
like the idea that people will do things to be admired,
(14:30):
but really they want to do things to seem better
than other folks. He had some complex thoughts about altruism.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I guess, so, yeah, that is very interesting. And so
for all of his talents and his many gifts as
a student and observer of the human condition, for all
his absolutely wizard like, godlike talents with the written word
and the spoken word, he was also a fantastic deliverer
(15:00):
of fine speeches. He was, however, as we have indicated already,
really awful at picking winners when it came to business.
So bad, it's so bad.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
It was like a classic tech bros. Stereotype or just
you know, to me, there's something a vunkiler about Twaying, obviously,
but I also picture him as the neighbor that you
have that's just unreasonably positive with you, Like they'll say
terrible things about the world. But they're like, but you, buddy,
(15:41):
come on, man, I love your ideas. Remember that time
you were telling me that thing about shoelaces. I have
a million dollars. I think we should do it. Like
if a friend of his gave him even the lightest
of elevator pitches, Sam Clemens was it. He was light
on details, He didn't do a lot of research. He
(16:03):
bet heavy on crazy ideas that were bad.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
And that comes from a certain or belies, I guess,
a certain kind of confidence, unshakable confidence and bravado. You
know where it's like I am the sh and I
inherently know what's right. And usually the difference between people
that kind of like make a couple of bad choices
and neither stop or move on and the people that
(16:28):
continuously make bad choices, one of them has a bit
more self awareness than the other. It would seem for
all of his observations of the human's condition, he maybe
did not observe himself as much as he should have. Ah.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, and that's I think that's an insightful point. I mean,
if we go back to type setting, we see that
his history as an up and coming type setter as
a printer's apprentice, which is just a wonderful phrase when
that is combined with his addiction to this American dream ideology.
(17:03):
He knows a typewriter is coming or something like it,
but he backs the wrong horse. He throws so much
money in a thing called the page compositor or page typesetter.
It weighs almost four tons, and it is able to.
It is able to, I think, do the labor six
(17:24):
times faster than early manual type setting.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
It works. It's like the guy that's investing in a fancier,
more upgraded saddle when the car is right around the corner,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah, yeah, because he could have, you know, he could
have maybe put some money into the later, more successful
version of the same idea or the multiple versions of that.
But yeah, he backed the wrong typewriter. And let's go
back to Time Magazine, a different article by Richard Zachs
(17:59):
thought we'd all enjoy this quotation. I don't know what
Richard Zax's voice sounds like.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Yeah, I'm gonna do it just in if we can
only split it up. It's a little bit long one.
I just do it in my own voice because I
think this is very insightful. When the machine worked, it
ran much faster than its rival. When it worked. Twain
was unfortunate enough to witness a successful trial on January fifth,
eighteen eighty nine, and sank his money into the company.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
At first, Twain it called Page. That's the inventor who
would run through four different sets of backers. He called
Page the Shakespeare of mechanical invention.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Kind of funny that the guy's name was Page, the
page compositor nomin I mean, I just said, like, the
page compositor just sounds like kind of a dry name
for a typesetting machine. These are things that are composited
onto pages. Let mean to say it, it goes on
by the end. He fantasized about catching a certain part
of Page's anatomy in a steel trap and watching him
(19:01):
slowly bleed to death. Wow. I wonder how Twain himself
put it, because been one thing, I bet you in
his private time, Twain's had some very colorful language. Swore
like a sailor. I bet you, if he got mad,
he could rip you apart and say some pretty filthy stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
I've read so many of his statements with invention and
business deals gone wrong that I am persuaded. You can
make a pretty short but healthy compilation, like a book
of just quotations of Mark Twain talking trash when things
went wrong. This is a writer, a guy who came
(19:40):
up in print technology. He understood the vast horizon of
democratizing the ability to write and distribute information, and yet
still he fumbled the bag. He continued, He made a
publishing company speaking of bad decisions in eighteen eighty four.
He makes his own company kind of similar to you.
(20:01):
Remember how back in the day and even now a
lot of musicians will get a record deal and then
attempt to form their own record label to get a
bigger piece of the pie.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Well sure, I mean after I think a famous example,
whether it's that model exactly, would be Prince. He didn't
exactly form his own record label, but he formed his
own recording studio and demanded to own like the masters
of his work. Yeah, it was smartin absolutelyis right, and
also has led to the potential of a lot of
(20:32):
amazing unheard Prince material that hopefully the world will get
to here one day.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, And and Twain is making this publishing company partly
out of inspiration and wants to be a big businessman,
but partially I think because of Spike. He hires his
completely unqualified thirty three year old nephew, Charles L. Webster
and basically says, hey, you're in charge. We're naming this
(20:59):
after you, so five the figurehead. Yeah. Charles L. Webster
and Twain does this entirely because he was convinced that
he had been screwed over by publishers for years. Like
he only got a five percent royalty on Innocence Abroad,
which was a breakout success. He was told that he
(21:21):
would be given half of all the profits on future books.
Never got it. Charles L. Webster and co. Started off
with two publications. They were The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S.
Grant Max You'll Love This and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
(21:41):
One was a modest success, the other was a huge success.
Can we guess which one was the huge success? Ridiculously
the question who's buried in Grant's tomb? You are correct?
You are You're correct? Nolan max NaNs memoirs racked up
(22:02):
phenomenal sales because a lot of what they did to
sell this, a lot of war veterans would go door
to door and sell it on commission.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So you're saying that Huck Finn in its day wasn't
as successful and legendary as it went on to be.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Uh yeah, I mean also, I'm gonna walk out to
the territories for this one. But you can see similar
things happening with a lot of political publications, right, because
a politician in the in the Western world almost always
needs to have a book that appears to be written
(22:41):
by them, and then their campaigns by it, or they
mobilize a base to gin up the sales numbers. Anyway,
Twain is happy with this. Yeah, so that seems like
a pretty smart bet. I thought we were talking about
business fails. Oh gosh, yeah, Okay, here's what happened. So
gives the at the time the largest royalty check in
(23:05):
all of American publishing history to Grant's widow, Julia Dent Grant,
and then in the months to come they also write
more checks to Grant's family, which breaks more publishing records.
If we're looking at if we're looking at the money
that Twain gets, he gets about two hundred grand for
(23:28):
his work with Grant's Memoirs in Our Time. The way
the math works out, is eleven million dollars for Grant's widow, Julia,
and something like four point eight million for Mark Twain.
And this is so much money. Like back around this time,
if you're a coal miner, you make a dollar fifty
(23:49):
a day.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, and we were talking about forty bucks a week
feeling like a decent wage, right, this is yeah, this
is like Bill Gates's money.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Here's why the company goes wrong. To your question, The
publishing company has a floppity dop on a lot of
their other books. They had a book by Pope Leo
the thirteenth and they thought that was a surefire hit,
and then later internally they said, and don't get mad
(24:17):
at as folks we're quoting here. Later internally they said,
we forgot how many Catholics can't read Wow, which outs
kind of anti papist to me.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
It does, but it does seem to have been a
gross miscalculation on their part. Twain also, don't get mad
us for this. Twain's words, He referred to the company
as a lingering suicide, not particularly confident words there. It
does not bode well for this publishing venture, yeah, and
it doesn't bode well for his other adventures.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Noel, could you tell us a little bit about the
other stuff that he unwisely invested in.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, he's just a real a set writing and losing money.
He lost money on an engraving process, not a business,
but once again betting on the wrong horse, on a
magnetic telegraph, on a something called a steam pulley, which
I didn't know we needed that, I guess. So it
seems like the pulley is one thing, and then a
(25:18):
steam like a motor or an engine, is another thing.
But he wanted to combine them. So don't guess it
didn't take because I've never heard of such a thing.
Also the Fredonio watch company, once again not a household
name in this day. And also on railroad stocks, the
railroad being such a how could you lose on the
(25:38):
rail betting on the railroad? That seems like that would
take some skill to lose at that, right, I ate
the wrong bets, the wrong companies. I guess he just
backed the wrong Maybe he must have put money into
a railroad company that folded because there was so much competition.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
He also had an opportunity to buy early stock and
Bell Telephone, which would go on to become you know.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
The Everything Company, I mean, right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Right, and he didn't buy it to it. But he's
super into telephones. I didn't know this until visiting the
Mark Twain house in Hartford, but he had one of
the nation's first home telephones. How could you be that yeah,
a hoy hoy, indeed, how could you be that aware
of the technology? And also miss on Bell anyway, So,
(26:25):
as a result of all these unfortuitous investments, it becomes
untenable for the Clemens family to live in their fancy
Hartford home. And just like when his parents moved from Florida,
Missouri to Hannibal in eighteen ninety one, the Twain family moves,
(26:46):
or the Clemens family moves in. Twain sells the house
at a loss, just.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
For a fraction of what he paid for, so Mega
lost there as well. Then in eighteen ninety four, surprise, surprise,
Mark Twain follows in the path his father trod and
declares bankruptcy. I don't think I don't know that this
father declared bankruptcy, but it certainly feels like he forged
a path that was like a ten x version of
(27:13):
what his father did, simply because of how much means
he had that he It's hard to say squandered, because
it's not like he was like drinking it away or
gambling exactly. But investment after a certain point, if you're
really bad at it, is about as bad as gambling.
It's that addiction that you referred to. Ben.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, maybe you're right there. I do see a thematic parallel,
like we're saying with the father and the son. He
has a lot of friends, of course, and one of
his friends is a guy who's really good at money,
Henry H. Rogers of Standard Oil. They stuck around her
to them, so Henry is okay. Back in this time,
(27:55):
filing for bankruptcy was called assignment. A month before Mark Twain,
Samuel Clemens files for bankruptcy, Henry H. Rogers, his buddy,
who's a really good money guy, says, here's what you
gotta do. You got to shift all of your assets
to your wife's name, Okay, and then we're going to
(28:20):
figure out our next plan, because you sam owe eighty
thousand dollars to a bunch of people, and if we
get inflation, Yeah, eighty thousand dollars in.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Debt today is not great. It's quite bad, in fact,
but yeah, shall we inflation calculator.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
It guys, boop boop boop. Yeah, so eighty thousand dollars
in eighteen ninety four money is equal to a dude
two million, nine hundred and twenty eight, three hundred and
thirty four dollars and eighty eight cents in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Okay, it's still not quite at the bank has a
problem levels Yeah, but still this st this ain't good. Yeah,
it's definitely Twain's problem. And of course referring to the
idea that if you owe the bank a million dollars,
it's your problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars,
it's the bank's.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Problem, and the public opinion turns against them. They're headlines
saying Mack Twade is ruined and failure of Marck Twage.
He gets called a boy boy. What was that thing
from mischievous? You're sickly, mischievous.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Overgrown boy. Yeah, he is in business. When lawyer snipes
just a big overgrown boy, he gracefully left out the
sickly and mischievous bit, but frankly those are sort of
irrelevant in this context. Isn't that weird? Though?
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Because we see this pattern again with modern American celebrities.
The public wants someone raised high and then laid low
and worshiped only.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
A million percent in their time. You know, so many
great artists, painters, writers, composers, they do not. They're grinding
it out man, you know, like to get by, to
scrape a living, and then only after their death and
reassessments of their work are they revered.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
But what do you what do you I agree? What
do you think though about this idea that the American
public wants to see a celebrity fall?
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Oh a million percent? Dude, We're trained for it. I
mean with all these reality shows, and I mean honestly,
the reality shows and that whole thing is really just
giving the people what they want. You know, Historically, before
any of that stuff, we've seen just the idea of
even like things like gladiator battles. You know, like people
want blood, they have a thirst for it, and they
(31:00):
want to see great men, great individuals, figures fall from
grace because it makes them feel better about their lot
in life. A lot of times.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Uh, okay, I think you've added That's what I was
looking for. You added the missing piece of the puzzle there,
because for me, like I understand the pattern and the trend.
I didn't understand the motivation, but I think that does
make sense. Nol and Twayne is taking this on the chin.
He is well aware how it must have stung. This
(31:32):
probably contributes a lot to his contankerous, curmudgeonly nature later on.
But his buddy Henry, that's why you get by with
a little help from your friends. His buddy Henry has
a pitch for him, and he says, Sam Clemens.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I got you man.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
You want to make some money fast. You don't need
to waste your time on inventions and silver mines and
newspaper gigs. We got to get you on the road.
Let's do a live show. And so, despite health problems,
on Henry's advice, Samuel Clements, Mark Twain does one hundred
and twenty two shows in a world tour across seventy
(32:10):
one cities Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa. He uses
the money to pay his debts, his public opinion tied,
his turns, his former critics are praising him.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
I do love that, honestly, because I mean I'm a
fan of the guy, you know, and obviously his legacy,
whatever checkered you know, parts of his body of work,
you know, might exist is really really important. And then
he definitely set the tone for a lot of very
very important pop culture and incredible comedians and just the idea.
(32:43):
And he sort of in a lot of ways invented
modern satire in many ways.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
I would argue, yeah, heh here's the thing though. No,
he went back to the casino. Of course he did.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
He can't keep him away this guy, especially after a
win like that, and a guy who seems to get
high on his own supply a little bit in terms
of ego, kind of pushing him to maybe have a
little bit of delusions of grandeur. Yeah, it would make
sense that he would hit back at that dopamine casino.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah. He poured a lot of money into a protein
powder called plasmon, and he said, this gives you. He believed,
based on the pitches that have formed his investment, that plasmon,
derived from dairy products could deliver sixteen times the nutritional
(33:36):
value of a steak at a cost of a penny
a day. And he is quoted as saying, you know,
when he was excited about it, that this could end
the famine in India.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Okay, heart in the right place. And one could also
argue a little ahead of his time. Protein powders are huge,
It's some billion dollar industry. Things like soy lns even,
or like the kind of stuff that folks drink when
they go to the gym, you know, like protein shirts
or whatever. So I don't think that was a booming
industry at this time. So one could argue he was
just maybe a little early to the game in this case.
(34:09):
And there's a couple in this list that you made
then of inventions and kind of rackets that he attempted
to get into that I could also fit into that
category of being maybe a little ahead of its time. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
The thing is Mark Twain. He put about thirty grand
in his day or north of seven hundred and fifty
thousand today into plasma and they became so they were fraudulent.
They became the subject of a fraud trial in nineteen
o seven, and Twain said the company president should be
(34:44):
paid three dollars a century. And Twain called him, you'll
love this stallion in intention a unuch in action?
Speaker 2 (34:55):
What yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I packed out a stallion
And okay, so he's just saying it's neutered or whatever.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
He's like, Yeah, this guy talks big and he he's
gotten old dick. And so the judge asked Twayne if
this is the first time he's been swindled in business,
and he says, no, my first rodeo. He literally says,
I've been swindled out of more money than that is.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Hold the planet yard. Oh I see, I say, I say,
I say he does.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
So, you know, this is a two part series for us.
But there are a couple of things, like you were saying,
we've got this list that we wanted to talk about,
just to give you a sense of all the stuff, uh,
all the stuff that he took a swing and a
miss on.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah. Man, when I was kind of half joking when
I said that a couple of these other ones were
ahead of their time, because the one that popped to
me immediately is called the vaporizer, and I'm like, he
would have been huge. Vapes are everywhere, you know, that's
not what this is. Much more of an old timing
kind of vaporizer essentially designed to I think, like absorb
(36:07):
steam from a furnace. Okay, so it was an engine
or a furnace or something of that. Kind which would
get out ninety nine percent of all the steam that
was in a pound of coal, but.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
A better process for burning coal.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
For burning coal okay, but apparently much like the type
setting machine that he invested in, on a good day
it would work, but most of the time it just didn't.
So this one didn't do. Y, yeah, promise. We talked
about the steam pulley, whatever the frick that is. I
believe we mentioned the engraving process, but here's some more
info on that. The Koala type. You know, I like
(36:45):
that better. I this is COOLO type, COWLO type.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
And it doesn't matter really because it didn't work. Right.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
What was the idea though? We talked about it being
like a way of revolutionizing or removing some of the
hard labor parts of type setting.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, the issue and that's like the similar to the
page page compositor. Twain believed this would annihilate and sweep
out of existence one of the minor industries of civilization
and take its place. Turns out he.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Got got it was literally a scam. It was literally
a scam. That's the thing, man. Some of these it's like,
you know, you bet on the wrong horse. Things don't
pan out, but bro definitely got taken. He's got full
of times.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
So solar Bridge. He also tried to market coca leaves
as a kind of predecessor to an energy drinker, and
once again, it's huge.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
But today everyone loves cocaine. It's really popular. It's really
popular stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
So his plan fizzled when there were no ships that
would sail to South America for Oh there would be soon, right,
and homemade submarines. We mentioned plasma, but we haven't mentioned Oh,
maybe this is a nice way to end. No, did
you know one of Twain's close friends was Nikola Tesla.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yeah, you had mentioned that to me off Mike. He
also was buddies with Thomas Edison, so definitely, you know,
he was that level of luminary that he was keeping
company with some pretty important people. But there's a great
Tesla story that I think is wonderful for us to
end on today.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah, yeah, agreed. So we know you and I have
you and I have laid out the broad strokes of
Twain's fascination with big ideas and innovation. He's visiting New
York in the eighteen nineties and this is where he
befriends Nicola Tesla because Nikola Tesla, also a sickly mischievous child,
(38:49):
was recoll Yeah, was on death's door back in the
eighteen seventies before he came over to the United States,
And while he was calm, blessing, he read a lot
of books by Mark Twain and he loved them. And
he said, the stories, the stuff that you write, it's
so captivating. It made me quote utterly forget my hopeless state.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Bro. Can I just say that is at his heart
the goal of great writing, wouldn't you say, Or of
entertainment in general.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah, to be in another world, if only for a time.
And so Tesla and Twain get together. They hang out
on the regular. You can see photographs of Twain in
Tesla's lab, even participating in experiments because we are full
grown adults. This story that Nola and I are talking
(39:44):
about here, the one they captured us, is, according to
a couple of anecdotes, Tesla used his technology to cure
Twain of constipation.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah, he just vibrated that stuff right out of him, right,
didn't He hang out on an electro mechanical oscillator, which
is essentially like generates high frequency vibrations or whatever. No, yeah,
it was. It was generated high frequency AC current that's redundant.
That's like saying ATM machine alternating current, and it would
(40:19):
cause a plate to vibrate. It was known as an
earthquake machine, and it shook, rattled and rolled the poops
right out of Old Samuel Clemens's But.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Which is what better basis for friendship? Because god, they
they uh he got Tesla got invited to go to
Twain's daughter's wedding and stuff. They were they were.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Definitely bring the earthquake machine, like like let let the
let the wedding get s try.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
There we go. We first we're doing carry okay, then
we're doing the earthquake machine.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
It was that era's form of gooning.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Oh god, I still man, you keep freaking up. I
still don't fully want to understand it.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
It's like edging. Great, We're a family show the next Yeah,
y'all don't google any of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Also, uh, this is the end of our two part
series on Mark Twain and how he's cartoonishly bad at investing.
We have other stuff we'd love to explore about Mark
Twain in the future. As we know. I gotta tell
you I found and I'm gonna bug folks on stuff
they once you know about this. I found the best
(41:31):
palindrome I learned recently, and I thought of you, would
you like to hear it?
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Please satan oscillate my metallic sonatas. How did that not
make it into long legs?
Speaker 2 (41:44):
How did satan magnetics?
Speaker 1 (41:50):
And yes itallics? But I love these? Yeah, but that's
just goes to show we have adventures ahead?
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Do we have?
Speaker 1 (42:00):
What a right big big thanks for our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Who else will oh, Alex wallashose this bang in bop
of a theme that you're bopping to right this very second.
We just know it's true. Jonathan Strickland, the quiztor, aj Bahamas,
Jacobs the Puzzler.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Christopher rossiotis Eves Jeffcoat who is on the road I
think pretty soon and here in spirit and here in
spirit of course, so say we all, as well as
our pal Matt Frederick who made a cameo in Max
with the Facts, and Rachel Big Spinach, Lance and Noel.
Thanks to you, we can visit the Mark Twain House
(42:42):
a museum any old time you want.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Bro, I would love to. And thanks to you for
assembling such a thoughtful and educational research dossier on mister
Samuel Clements aka Josh aka Mark twentieth.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
That's right. Yeah, shout out to josh.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
See you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.