March 12, 2024 • 44 mins
In the world of journalism and literature, there's nothing quite like the obituary. Sometimes called the first draft of history, an obituary can function as a love letter, a condemnation -- but, perhaps more than anything, a portrait of a person gone from this mortal plane. In the first part of this special two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max join the legendary journalist, author, correspondent and podcaster Mo Rocca, host of Mobituaries, to learn more about this unique genre of literature, from the history of obituaries to the art of crafting them. (Spoiler: Mo extemporaneously composes the definitive obituary of the pager in this one.)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Big shout out to our super producer
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Who uh, no, I did it wrong again? It's either
one works, man, No, I don't want to know the
right one. What's the proper military? It's hoorah, guys, whorah.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah we got there. We also have company. You're Noel Brown,
I'm Ben Bowling. We had an astonishing bit of luck recently, folks.
Funny thing happened on the way to this studio. As
they say, it all began when we started talking about obituaries.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
They're a genre of literature all their own sadness, but
surprisingly there's often a touch of whimsy and a little
bit of a spite at times. But yeah, more than anything, right,
I think we can all agree there's a profound humanness
to them, and they provide a unique insight into history.
This led us to know the absolute best exploration of
(01:29):
obituaries in all of podcastory, all of broadcasting.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
I would say, podcastdom.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, yeah, it's American English, right, we're freestyling. Uh, we
cannot wait to explore Mobituaries with Mo Raka, created and
hosted by none other than a personal hero of ours, Max.
Can I get some like drum like? Yeah, yeah, perfect? Uh,
the journals, the humorous, the author and all around top
(01:57):
notch man of letters, mister Moe Rocket get this, Nol,
the man himself is here with me.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Here.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, he's right here, Mo, thank you for joining.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Us, Thank you for having me. I'm sitting on my
throne in podcasting. I just yeah, I just made it
up myself, the throne. I'm actually standing. But thank you
for that introduction.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I've always been a fan of the word christendom, you know,
like in King Arthur Tales, and I've never fully understood
what I get the gist.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
It just has a weight to it.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
But I think applying that to the world of podcasting
is appropriate.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Mo.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Well, do you know what christendom means in that parliance?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
You know? But I don't know exactly, but I do
know that I hear like the strains of Camelot in
the back and ground. I just want Richard Burton to
come in here and start narrating this podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
This episode has something to do with Christianity.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, this is so.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
We are as as you could tell them what we like.
You are huge fans of history. You've always had this
abiding interest in history through a very i would say,
human perspective, like what is the soul of the story?
And that really shows that really comes out and presents
in mobituaries. I think Noel and me and our fellow
(03:22):
listeners playing along at home would love to hear a
bit of an origin story. How did mobituaries come to be?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Well? I did begin to love obituaries in part. I
think it was first of all, as I myself was
getting older, I inherited it from my father. My father
loved obituaries and he wasn't a gloomy guy at all.
Growing up and in the Washington, DC area, there were
(03:49):
two daily papers when I was a kid, and my
father would read them, both the Washington Star and the
Washington Post, and he'd say, oh boy, the obituaries is
my favorite section of the paper. And I think he
liked it because it had you know, if it's if
it's done right, there's like a real sense of romance
and of sweep, and it's sort of like the highs,
the lows, the triumphs, the tragedies, and when you read them,
(04:11):
you can if they're done right, it's it does sort
of feel like a like a like a trailer for
an Oscar winning biopic sort of. And I think that's
probably where I kind of got the like for them.
And then as I got older, I continued reading them
and it seemed like a great way to do a
profile of a person, to tell a person's story, you know.
(04:35):
And as I started meeting obituary writers, I found out
that it's a kind of a more and more coveted beat,
you know, I mean print journalism. Obviously things are really
really rough and not getting any better unfortunately. But I
think it used to be I guess pun intended sort
of a graveyard for writers where they'd end up at
the end of their careers. But but now I think,
(04:56):
you know, the o bit writers at the Washington Post,
they've got a really vibrant department there, and uh and
you know, the head over there said, look, it's like
you're you get to write for sports, you get to
write for business, you get to write for entertainment because
it depends who dies. And also just it's it's handy
having a first name like Mo because you can turn
it into a bunch of different things. And you know,
(05:18):
if my name were Cecil or something, I wouldn't have
a podcast. So yeah, way.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
And in the modern time too, it's interesting to think
about all of the ongoing iterations that an obituary goes
through before the person even dies. And there have been
cases where it accidentally got leaked or something and it
was mispublished. And you know, what must that be like
to be that person that's constantly updating the obituary of
(05:45):
a very prolific artist or a musician or you know, personality.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
And then finally when it's time to pull.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
The trigger, you've kind of been working on it ongoingly
for some time, right.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I know, you know it's there. There was this great
documentary I wish I could remember the name of it,
about the New York Times obituary department a few years ago.
It'll come to me. But there is the guy who
would go down basically into the dungeon and pull up
these obituaries when they needed updates. Some of them were
just print, they hadn't even been digitized. And I think
(06:15):
there's a record for how long the gap was between
something being written and something being published. And it was
an Ada trix of course, like remember Ada Trixes. And
it was some daredevil young woman who was a pilot
I think in her teens and then lived until her nineties,
so that it had been like over eighty years. What
(06:35):
I found fascinating with the obituary writers I met I'll
never get over this is one of the writers at
the Times told me that there are people who cold
call the Times to talk about their own obituary. I mean,
if that isn't confidence, crazy hutspell, Like, Hi, I'm calling
to talk about you know, I just thought I had
some free time, and I'm calling to talk about the
(06:56):
obituary you are already writing about me.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Is that confidence or conceitedness?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, you're right, it's worse than that. And I would
be so tempted to just say, you know, we're still
on the fence. We're just.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Yeah, this is our thing. Yeah, I would live your life.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
If you If you accomplish a little bit more in
these last years, then I think it'll push you over
the top into contention.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
As far as getting getting covered, it's almost like getting
your wedding covered by the New York Times.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Big get for so many people.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Who Yeah, uh, there's also Uh, it's funny to me
that you talk about that that record for our Avia tricks,
our aviator, right, because just clocked what you.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Meant by that word. By the way, I get it now,
demand of letters tell you that's good.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
I would say my money would have originally been on
Henry Kissinger because I feel like people kept writing that obituary.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
And uh, what a complex legacy. I mean, awful guy.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
I think we would maybe agree, maybe not, but very
complex and how do you sum that life up?
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Well? I know it's also interesting. It would be interesting
to see all the different versions to see where things fall,
like I you know, with Jimmy Carter, where his post
presidency falls versus his presidency itself. I mean, that's definitely
changed over the years. I think that Bill Clinton impeachment,
I'd be really curious where that falls at this point.
(08:31):
It's probably moved up down. I mean it'll probably be
in that first line, you know, you know William Jefferson
Clinton Comma, the forty second president who also Coma died today.
But that that clause, that's where everything's really packed in there.
But how it changes. Yeah, Another one that's wild is
(08:54):
is when somebody has lived so long that people have
forgotten who they are, but they were still important. So
Madame chen Kaishak, the wife of the Chinese nationalist leader,
I think she lived. I had to check this. I
think she lived until she was at one hundred and six,
and it had been so long since she was, you know,
at the center of the world. And news that I
(09:17):
was by one of four people who read the whole
oh bit, and it was incredibly long, this obek because
it clearly had been written at a time when her
death would have been really big news. But she just
lived so long.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And this is something that I think we all really
enjoy with mobituaries, because again I keep coming back to
the way that you explore history in such a human,
soulful perspective. I also have to give a shout out
to my Grandmother's Ravioli.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Thank you, not specifically yours, but the program. Yeah, my grandmother.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
It was just one of my mom's favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Kidding, no, no, I'm so happy to hear that I loved.
You know, both both the mobituaries and my grandmothers were
Abbioli were projects that I felt very very personally about,
and and hey, yeah, I loved doing it so much.
I went for those who don't know. I went around
the country learning to cook from grandmothers and grandfathers in
(10:17):
their kitchens. But it was really about learning who they
were in their life story and what mattered to them,
and just having fun with them. Also. I loved it
so much, So thank you Ben.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Oh Well, there's so much history and love and you know,
caring built into recipes, the way they're kept, you know,
the handwritten notes and the iterations, and maybe some of
them are just committed to memory and passed down through
family members. All of that I just think, in and
of it's another example much like obituaries, where it's sort
of a backdoor into.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
History in a very interesting way.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Have you encountered things in your in your work, because
we're four seasons in obituaries, have you encountered have you
encountered stories that really surprised you, like in an unexpected way,
because each each one feels so unique, you know, it
feels like every I feel almost like I'm asking you
(11:13):
if you have a favorite child, but I'm not, I promise,
like the ones that like hit you, similar to Madam,
to Madame Chang Kaishek's thing where you thought, oh, I
thought this would be pretty simple, but holy smokes, the
plotswist here.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yeah. I think there definitely have been those. I mean,
I think Chang and Aang, the original so called Siamese
twins where that that term came from, who were from
Siam what is now Thailand and moved to the United
States as teenagers and became from some of the first
celebrities in America when the only thing that Americans had
(11:54):
has past times in the nineteenth century early nineteenth century
was a cock fighting, you know, drinking hard cider and
card playing. And they became really famous, right right, all
at the same time, and they became really really famous,
and it was really sort of sweeping story about these
(12:18):
guys who were exploited and managed to make lives for themselves.
But as they became successful, they ended up owning a
plantation and owning slaves, and not just slaves, they bought
very young slaves almost as investment properties. So it was
obviously an incredibly ugly side to that story, but I
(12:38):
liked doing the story because it they kind of packed
all of America into their lives. They were an immigrant story.
They really had pulled themselves up from their bootstraps. It
was a story about celebrity, It was a story about
racial prejudice, and then it was against them, and then
it was a story about assimilation, and then about slavery.
(13:01):
So it was like whoa. It was like taking all
of American history and combining it into one story. And
you know, I like doing it because I don't think
I think we took care with that, but we didn't
tiptoe and I was very happy about that because I
don't think people want people tiptoeing around this stuff. And
you know, either.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
Way, it's interesting too because a lot of the purpose
and I would love to hear your thoughts on what
you think the purpose of an obituary is, but is
to kind of set the record straight in a way.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
It's like sort of to prevent in some ways as
a functional item, you know, people from spreading rumors about someone's.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Life or what they may or may not have done.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And it's sort of meant to be this pithy, definitive,
you know, declaration of what a person, who a person was.
Do you have any other maybe ways you could elaborate
on what the purpose of an obituary.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Is, well, that's interesting. I hadn't even I don't know
that I've really given it thought in that way. So
I'm I'm happy to do that. I mean, I think
it's a first draft of history because a lot of
them do have errors. So there have been there there
have been obituaries that I've loved, like Irving Berlin, and
I can't cite exactly what was wrong, but when you
go back and fact check it, now there were just
think that we're wrong. And uh. I think the trick though,
(14:24):
is that it kind of has to to be faithful
to the person. It does have to have head and
heart in it. So I think that's why it's important
that reporters when they do these obituaries, or we when
we do these these podcasts obituaries, try to talk to
(14:45):
relatives about how they felt about a person, because feeling
sounds really obviously inexact and uh, you know, undefinable. But
it is part of who the person is, what the
person meant to other people, So it's not it can't
just be just the basmam kind of writing. It does
(15:06):
actually have to it does have to have an emotional component.
I think actually to be accurate. So it sort of
seems counterintuitive, but I think it. I think it does
have to do that as opposed to say, just reporting
on like election returns or something.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, right right, and spoiler for later in today's program
by pal Noell found some obituaries that we would like
to share with you later on for some reactions, because again,
it's such a you know, it is inherently a tragedy
whenever someone passes, right, even if you don't particularly care
(15:44):
for them, But it also has this amazing opportunity. I
really do believe it is a genre of literature and
should be considered as such. But we could talk literature later.
We have as we tease the earlier we have thought arduously
(16:04):
mo about things of yesteryear. Our conversation was not just
obituaries for people, right well, we wanted to explore with
you are somewhat of a swan song for things that
have passed, and Noy Nolan and I were very excited
about this one. No where do where do you think
(16:25):
we start? Do we embarrass ourselves with our telling more
group text about pagers?
Speaker 4 (16:30):
You mean in general?
Speaker 5 (16:31):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, oh, in general?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Yeah, we do occasionally it's sort of professionals at embarrassing ourselves.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
But we're okay with that. We lead into it. Yeah, Pagers.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
You know, it's funny because I was thinking about the
idea of dead things, and sometimes a thing can be
dead in terms of its mainstream use, but it can
still be very much alive in more of a niche way.
And I think we live in this era where obsolescence
is so commonplace and because of the technological you know,
advancements exponential, I think there's a pushback against it. People
(17:02):
almost resent it, and a are like, you know, so
I want to hold on to the things of the past,
you know.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
And Ben found a great word.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I don't want to spoil it, but yeah, but that
refers to building things into modern designs that represent the
ways of the past, or something that might be what
was the word, Ben?
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Can you already knows it?
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Skew warfs, you know, like would you have the little
floppy disk icon on a computer for save? And who
uses floppy disk?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Not?
Speaker 4 (17:33):
I never thought of that, Yeah, And you pointed out.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I was like, you said it the word, and I
was like, oh, I immediately understand what that is. But
I'm trying to think of examples and Ben pointed out
in cars, there's a lot of like anachronistic things that
are built into modern car designs that don't do a thing,
but they're like mainly ornamental. But in an older model
car it would have been a very you know, crucial component.
But it's a way of sort of building the past
(17:57):
for folks that maybe it would give some comfort to
to the future. But pagers is such an interesting thing
because it we look at it now and it really
just screams the nineties, you know. I mean it's like
I had a clear green Motorola pager. You'd get little
charms for them and stuff, and you know, it went
from being a thing that only doctors had that almost
(18:19):
represented this position of prominence to this thing that everybody had.
I had one when I was, you know, a teenager,
and now it's back around to be you know, went
from tens of millions of people having pagers to now
it's just a hospital thing again.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
So it's sort of gone full circle in a weird way.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
But I just thought it would be interesting to talk
a little bit about the history of pagers. I didn't
realize they went back as far as nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Yeah, they were used.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
It was it was early examples, not a hand you know,
little thing you clip on your telegraph. It was more
like the wire yes, exactly. It was more like a
wire service almost. It was essentially a way of transmitting.
It was a lot more like a telegraph, exactly. Ben
it was the in nineteen forty nine act. Well, the
original one was used something akin to what we'd not
as pagers by the Detroit Police Department in nineteen twenty one,
(19:08):
But in nineteen forty nine, the very first telephonic pager
was used. The adventure was a guy named Al Gross,
and his pagers were used in New York City's Jewish Hospital.
And at this point, much like the early telephones, wasn't
a consumer device. It wasn't available. It was only available
to professional circles, and then of course into the eighties
(19:30):
and by the nineties they were everywhere. And I just
thought it'd be fun to briefly talk about do you
remember pager codes?
Speaker 1 (19:38):
MO? Did you have a pager? MO?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I don't think that I did. I think I'm sure
I wanted one, and if I did, well, you know,
when I worked at piezria UNO's and I was at
a form of a pager piece when I worked at
Pizzera Unos, which was very high stressed in Georgetown, because
they had something called the five minute lunch I think
(20:01):
that's what they called it.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
And if you didn't get it, if it arrives or
you get it free or something like that by clime exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
And I mean it would create like basically collisions like
in the in the you know, among the waiters because
you were rushing to get the personal sized pizza to
the table in five minutes. But I think were there
must have been some buzzer system that told us and
maybe when I when I actually delivered pizza also, But yeah,
(20:28):
but I don't think I ever had one kind of
yeah that would I just clip to my belt that
I'd just wear during during the day. Did either of
you guys have that?
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Or yeah I did, and I know Ben said he
had he had one as well.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
I feel like, I feel like I need to preface this, guys.
I had two pagers. I was not a drug dealer.
I was a very straight laced kid. I was also
not a doctor.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I was doogie houser.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I just had helicopter parents, you know. So, uh, the
the thing that's interesting too with the pagers, is now
we're not just talking about an artifact, a physical device.
We're talking about a medium of communication, right, And so
some of these codes, maybe I'm going to be quizzed
(21:17):
along with you. Mo nol is our quiz master for this.
We're going to see whether we can guess the meaning
of some codes, and I'll try to help out the
team as best that I could.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
But no, no, that's a great setup. Bend.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Just just to add, it wasn't until nineteen fifty eight
that the FCC approved the pager for public use, and
then Motorola swooped in in nineteen fifty nine, creating a
personal radio communicator's kind.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Of what they call it wasn't even called a pager.
They did coin the term.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
They coined the term pager Motorola Company. But these early
ones looked more like walkie talkies. I mean, they were
absolutely massive. But into the eighties and nineties, like I
was saying, you know, the whole purpose of a pager
is you also it required another thing, you know, you
had to have a phone, right, So I've always found
them to be a little clunky, but it made sense
because you would page somebody from a phone with the
(22:11):
number of the phone, and then they would call you back.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
That was the intent of the way it was originally
set up.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
But if you got a little clever, you could like
do an early form of texting just by using alpha numeric,
you know, things that maybe represented the way it would
sound when you'd say the numbers out loud, or maybe
it was meant to be flipped upside down, or a
one would represent a and the alphabet you know, et cetera.
(22:37):
You could you know, do like send kind of complex
messages like that, at least limited by the size of
the screen. So typically these were pithy, kind of three
to five characters. So one that I think maybe is
an easy one that most people might remember is one four.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Three, yeah, I do one one. People still use this today.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
It's a check mark if right. I'm just looking at
thinking of a phone like that.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Should that's good?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Think more in terms of the this is you'd have
to know what the thing was, and this couldn't be
interchange with other things. Each number represents the number of
letters in the word.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Oh, oh, yes, I love yeah, I love you very
yeah yeah. Next, can we get like applause or you win?
Kind of sorry going to full game show guys. All right? Uh?
That okay? That one I think stood out and that
was a great hint. Noal uh, it's the number of layers.
This reminds me of talking about ciphers and codes, because
(23:39):
that's really everybody with a pager becomes a cryptographer at
some point.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
It sounds like, right, it's weird though on this.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
I found this site like on Reddit where they're like
a like a listicle of all of these or some
of them kind of collated. And another version of I
love you is eight three one because it's eight letters,
three words one meaning it's kind it's a little hammy
and that's someone.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
But how did you know who the message was coming from?
Forgetting this? Did the pager indicate who was sending the message?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
I don't think so, because that would have been almost
like a like a caller ID thing by that point
would have been an extra charge if it was even available,
because a caller ID it was a special box you
had to get.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
It's still nice to get that message to know that someone.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Sorry, Well here yes, absolutely mo, and I remember now
people would have their own kind of sign offs. Yes,
so it might be then again, an alphanumeric approximation of
first your first or last name, and it would be
a known thing. And especially if you start thinking about
the way these were used for things like drug deals
or more under the radar kind of activities, it would
(24:43):
be like sending ciphers.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah, you know it. Also, you know, as someone with
cartoonish social anxiety, I'm surprised that I survived the pager
eraic is like if you guys get those texts sometimes
right where they just say, hey, call me. If they
don't say what.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Call who.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I'm going to do one more purely numerical one, and
I'm going to do one a different style, and then
I'm out. But you guys might know this, maybe from
hip hop lyrics. I believe it is a police code.
I know Mo's a big hip hop head, and you'd
likely are, uh, one eight seven.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Oh dirty pool, it's not good.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
It's bad news. The lyric and the in hip hop
would be one eight seven on a mother fing.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Cop or the Sublime song.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
He says that in that one too, doesn't he Yeah exactly,
but I believe isn't he is an he referencing something
in in another song?
Speaker 4 (25:37):
Maybe not, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Seven I just keep thinking over eating. I ate seven
of what like this?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
This would be a reference, Yeah, that is this would
be a reference to a literal I believe police code
like fifty one. Fifty is a code for someone who
is having a psychiatric break and needs to be committed
or something. So one eight seven is a police scanner
code for murder. Oh okay, wow, So if you send
(26:06):
somebody one eight seven, that's bad news.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Or if you're good.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Again, if you get that, if you have your pager
and you don't know exactly who's texting you and you
get what eight seven, that's terrified.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Right, Yeah, I mean it could being sure, it could
be rad as I'm going to kill you, right.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
If there's no other context.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
No, and that kind of aggression causes hypertension. It's like, yeah, anyway,
if you're on the receiving end of that, you don't
want that.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Kill you slowly by sending you cryptic Uh you know,
it's the spirited messages.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
It's up there with nine to one one.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
And by the way, that was a big thing.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
If any of my middle school friends are listening, you guys,
it was never an emergency.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
Never was it. Ever.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You could just send one, four three. People would just
done one one. At the end of the time, I
do think this is all coming back to me. Now
this is my last one. This is think of this
one in terms of like this. These are numbers that
represent letters visually. So we've got six thousand, asterisk eight
four three six oh oh oh asterisk just to just
(27:12):
to indicate a space.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Oh ass just for the space, yeah, six thousand space
and what was after the asterisk eight for to three.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
I feel like I need a little pad of paper.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Yeah, you probably always like.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Want it to be Teddy Roosevelt, because I feel like
it should be like glasses and a mustarda like vis
there's a way I think with like numbers to make
a Teddy Roosevelt or something. But anyway, oh gosh, yeah,
I want to know about this. Yeah, I don't know what.
These are so esoteric, weird, they're barely meant to be solved.
(27:47):
You're closed, go something. Think about this.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
The two o's in the middle represent one letter, and
the final O is meant to be a different letter,
but it's the same number.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
I'm gonna give.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Okay, it would be goodbye, goodbye, six thousand. Well, you
have to think about these two in terms of the blocky,
little little digity numbers. So the six looks a lot
like a G, and the o's you know, can be
a an O or a D. And then eight for
three the four is the Y and three is a
(28:20):
weird backwards E.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
I actually find goodbye more menacing than one eight seven.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
It's like I'll never see you again.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, he's already done.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, yeah, the hit Man is on the way. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
How I feel when people end the text with a period,
I feel period, See we are we are not the same, Ben,
we'd not you and I, but we are in many ways.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
That was my little.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Little blast from the past with page and then again
I thought it was an interesting twist MO because you know,
again there were millions of folks. This is there's a
you know, a massive moment for these things with consumers.
They started exclusively in hospitals, and now they're exclusively once
again in hospitals. So not dead, but certainly not alive
in the same way that it once was. So I
(29:09):
think that counts.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
It reminds you. By the way, a little bit of
CB radios, which I wanted to do them a victuary on,
but it turned out that they weren't dead. The CBE
radios still and I'm really bad with this, but they're
there if everything else goes down in the world.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
But screemon zombie shows all the time. Someone's got one
of those laying around zombie shows like Apocalyptos. Right, it's
a big deal if they have a CBE radio because
there are people that have them still and they work.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
And also the name Ham Radio just confused and bedeviled
me for a long time, as.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
It's not the same as CB is it. I'm confused too,
I think they're different.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Okay, but the one thing is that the Ham radio
name is misleading, especially for someone like me who is
always low key starving.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
You know, it's not powered by Ham.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Then they don't even talk about Ham most of the time.
It like occasionally comes up in their conversations. Anyway, I put,
do you go Ham? When you use the Ham radio,
you're just yelling at people and just being really aggressive.
This is a dumb and true story. As a boy scout,
I got a Ham radio and I figured out it
wasn't like a secret network of food fans.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
And I put it in the attic.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Can you look at this point, though, I suggest, with
this wonderful history of the Pager, mo, if you were
to be so kind, could you give our listeners playing
along at home a bit of an off the cuff
obituary for the Pager anything you'd like to say.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Okay, we should probably start with a cold open one
four three, I love you, I'm going to kill you,
six thousand asterisk something something something goodbye.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
That could be the whole thing. It's poetry.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
I'm Morocca, and this is mobituary. Is this moment you
go the patre a lost language and then we'll just
have to give it a date or something.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
You know, that's it. Yeah, poetry, poetry.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Is there a form though that you have to adhere to?
Is there like a number of word counts? Like what
is the kind of tried and true formula for a
good obituary?
Speaker 4 (31:26):
And like you know and all of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Well, I you know that all important first sentence that's
got to be like action packed, that's got to be
a winner, and that is and sometimes they're disappointing. Sometimes
people punt and just sort of say, you know, for
a world leader who lived many many years, I mean
I've seen some that are that are that are real letdowns,
But you got to pack it right in there. And
(31:50):
you know, in the mobituary's book, in the preface, I
wrote about how you know Bill Cosby's first line is
going to be packed with a lot because of how
much has happened in his life. So the first paragraph
is usually two sentences. Excuse me. So there's that first line.
So Moroka Kama who blankety blank blank bank bank Kamma
(32:13):
died today. Period he was one hundred and eight years old.
We hope period. But I think I think for the
written ones, the ones I like, they have a very
a detail usually about the person early in life that
was significant and kind of presaged predicted something larger. So
(32:37):
there's there's a great obituary for Alfred Hitchcock, and I'm
going to get the age wrong, but it has a
detail that when he was like six or seven in
the English village he was growing up in that the
local jailer and a kind of early version of a
Scared Straight program, took him to the local jail, threw
(32:58):
him into a cell, slammed the door behind him and
said that's what happens to bad little boys.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
And that he'd done something yeah, it was degation, no exactly.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah, And that that clanging sound of the door slamming
behind him reverberated in his memory and imprinted itself in
such a way that, at least in the view of
the obituary writer. This then shows up later in a
lot of his work about mistaken identity and crime and punishment.
(33:32):
And so, I mean, all I can say is, for
fans of Pitchcock, thank god he was traumatized as a child,
you know, because we wouldn't have had these great movies.
And I can't see a wisame way about like stars
like And this is a little bit of a tangent,
but I kind of do feel that way about like
Sammy Davis Junior and Judy Garland, like two of the
great entertainers of the twentieth century, they didn't have childhoods, and.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
That is wrong.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
On the other hand, I think if they had had
normal child elhood's, I don't know that we would have
gotten such great performances out of them.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
You know. That reminds me a little bit of the
obituary episode on Audrey Hepburn with the yeah, with the
the facts that the it's like the scars make the
person in a in a very real way, you know,
and here's something there's something deep, and you know I
(34:24):
hesitate to wax philosophical, but there's again there's there's a
an art, a craft to writing these. I got to
tell you about one of my favorite ones, uh, in
my favorite formats is the gallows humor of the satirical
or whimsical obituary. You know, like you're reading something that
(34:45):
says h William Jefferson Clinton Comma, amateur saxophonist Comma, Like
I love that kind of stuff. Have you run across
obituaries that surprised you with humor?
Speaker 3 (34:59):
It's hard me to think of them specifically, but I
know exactly what you're talking about. The British are really
good with that, are really kind of like, you know,
are kind of racing sometimes at the obits and are
are much are much less reverential. I think also in
this age of paid death notices obituary, obituary writers are
extremely sensitive about being lumped in with the paid death notices,
(35:22):
where you know, families put these things together and then
just buy space on.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
The paper such as a distinction.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Yeah, they're super sensitive about that, and uh, and it's
actually the paid death notices are frankly keeping a lot
of small town papers alive because it's a really important and.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
Consider that an obituary at all. It is and it isn't.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Kind of right, it's technically not an obituary. It's not reported,
it's a it's a it's submitted by a family member
or a loved one. But those sometimes are really funny.
I've read some. I wish I could give you more
specific examples, but but I've read some that are very,
very funny about you know, you know, one written very
life by a son about a mother I think in Florida,
(36:03):
who was She was just really profane, but the son
clearly loved her, and it really painted a picture that
it's like a future Oscar winner, like winning role if
somebody portrays that person.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
I just think that's such an important distinction, because I
think what most people think of obituaries as are those things.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, now they do, Yeah, because few people get the
real obituary.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, I've got I've got one that fits exactly what
we're talking about here, gentlemen, from the Fayetteville Observer, and
in depth thing will just give you the beginning. This
is an obituary for Renee mandel Horn, and it goes
like this, el Paso, Texas, a plus size Jewish lady
(36:46):
redneck died in El Paso on Saturday. Of itself, hardly
news or good news if you're the type that subscribes
to the notion that anybody not named you dying in
El Paso, Texas is.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
Good niece not named you?
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, in which case, have I got news for you?
The body fertile, redheaded matriarch of a sprawling Jewish Mexican
redneck American family has kicked it and this is this
is like written by her children, and there's so much
love in it. But it's almost like a Friar's Club
roast or something the way it just gets.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
And Ben, I have actually thank you for reading that
it is. People should go and find it. I have
read that it is really great.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Okay, so you like that one as well. It passes
like the obituaries test.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
What a great way to send off someone you love
with humor that way. Well, also because I remember reading
that it went viral, I think, and I'm pretty sure
it did. And I think the reason is that it's
so great is because it's written in the spirit with
which the woman lived your life. If you were really
just to give the facts of that woman's life, it
(37:56):
wouldn't do her justice, or even talking about how to
people felt about her would still not do her justice.
This family went one better and they actually wrote it
in the style in which in a style that reflected
who she was. I mean, that's that's like, really that
is really a tribute our literature.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Nerd stuff is coming out too, because you're talking about
how the aesthetic of the form.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Yeah, yeah, the form reflected her.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah, it's crafted in her image.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Wow, it was a roast, as you put it, It's
a roast of a woman who probably loved roasts, right, Like,
I always thought that Bob Barker's I had this image
for a long time that his would have been written
almost like like a plinko board from like trisis right?
Like the column. I always thought it would be kind
(38:47):
of interesting if like the first column and it kind
of shifted and then would like almost like the path
that the that the coin makes you're during a successful plinko?
Speaker 4 (38:57):
Is that done though? Like a house of leaves kind
of a approach?
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Right? Like?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
So is that a thing I would love to see
really mega out there weirdo creative obituaries.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Yeah, I think that. Yeah, I'm trying, Yeah, I think
it would be great. I'm trying to think, who is
a luminary now in what form their op it would take? Yeah,
that would reflect who they are. I mean, I just
suppose you like a poet should be kind of written
in poetry, right, Like you know, I hope Theodore guyse
ELL's I hope was in rhyme. You know, when doctor
(39:28):
Seuss died. I don't know, somebody hoped it that way.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Ezra Pounds was like twenty eight pages. It got edited
down to two lines or something.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
And at the end it was incredibly anti semitic, and
at the end it was super that's the lotrap with
just anti semitism.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Right, So we also see, like you know, I do
want to make sure we also mentioned the title of
the book. This is not just a podcast, folks, mobituaries
Great Lives worth reliving.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
This is.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Tell Us again at home, tell Us the order of operations?
Which came first? Was it the So we've got the
inspiration the interest. Growing up, your father is regularly reading
newspapers for obituaries in DC, and you have that lifelong
(40:25):
love of history coupled with this, do you create the
book first and then the podcast or.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Well, i'll give you a sort of the blunt sort
of business kind of background on it. I had this
interest in obits, and Simon and Schuster said, we'd love
you to do a book and a podcast about this,
but the book can't just be the podcast, which I
wouldn't want to do anyway. I wouldn't want to just
do a podcast and then take the transcripts and put
(40:52):
it into a book. So they were really done in parallel.
But what was interesting to me is I realized, and
I think you guys can understand, certainly understand this, is
that for an audio, for the audio medium, you know,
it's much it's much more satisfying to do subjects that
(41:13):
are from the recorded era, the sound recorded era, so
it's much harder. So when we did a podcast, I
love the creative challenge of doing the podcast episode about
Tom Payne, but you know, he died before there was
any recorded sound and so it required a different kind
of creativity. But for the most part, doing somebody like
a Sammy Davis Junior or an Audrey Hepburn, you know,
(41:36):
it made more sense for the podcast, and then for
the book, doing ancient things like you know, death of
cities and countries and things from the ancient world were
more appropriate. So that's kind of how some stuff ended
up in the book and some stuff ended up on
the podcast.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Okay, sense.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Also, I mean we've found too that you know, a
lot of times, despite the best efforts of you know,
voice performers who do the audiobook version, things that are
written to be read are often not the same as
things that are written to be spoken.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Well that's true. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And
and yeah, so things that were written to be read
it ended up in the book.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah, hold the payphone spoilers, folks, This is going to
be a two parter. We were so excited in a
wide ranging conversation with mister Moraka and Nola's just so
generous with his time. We get weird with it. This
guy knows a lot of stuff about a lot of things.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Well, that's the thing we went in with like this
whole format where we were going to do like all
of us, we're going to bring like a dead thing
and you know, do it like we do with some
other guests, where we each kind of have our own
little segment, but it ended up just organically having so
much to offer the conversation that we you know, sprinkle
that in here and there, you're gonna get some dead things.
You're gonna get some I don't even want to tease it.
(42:58):
It's too good. What a guy. I think we're all
fans already of his work, and just to see that
he's a genuinely lovely and generous guy.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
Was just a delight for all of us.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
So yeah, and with that, we can't wait for you
to join us on Thursday later this week when we
returned Mobituaries with Moe Raka Part two. In the meantime,
big big thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Huge thanks to our composer we have our own composers,
Max's brother, Alex Williams.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, he knew we were talking to Mo and said
he was a big fan, and it just organically came
up that I feel like there's a spiritual connection between
what Alex does on Ephemeral and most mobituaries, so I
just thought it was appropriate to shout him out in
that respect. Huge thanks to Christopherciotis, Eves, Jeff Coates here
in spirit a J. Jacobs, Bahamas Jacobs, whatever.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
That was, Where that comes from? I want to know,
but I'm never going to find out. And I love that.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
And of course, of course, let's think again. People like
Rebecca the raccoon spoiler. I'm sorry, pets are people too.
Let's thank Jonathan Strictly aka the Quist.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Gage the Yang to AJS Yen perhaps or vice versa.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Yeah, yeah, Ed, No, thanks to you. I can't wait
for this to get on the air.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Same, We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Big shout out to our super producer
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Who uh, no, I did it wrong again? It's either
one works, man, No, I don't want to know the
right one. What's the proper military? It's hoorah, guys, whorah.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Yeah we got there. We also have company. You're Noel Brown,
I'm Ben Bowling. We had an astonishing bit of luck recently, folks.
Funny thing happened on the way to this studio. As
they say, it all began when we started talking about obituaries.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
They're a genre of literature all their own sadness, but
surprisingly there's often a touch of whimsy and a little
bit of a spite at times. But yeah, more than anything, right,
I think we can all agree there's a profound humanness
to them, and they provide a unique insight into history.
This led us to know the absolute best exploration of
(01:29):
obituaries in all of podcastory, all of broadcasting.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
I would say, podcastdom.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, yeah, it's American English, right, we're freestyling. Uh, we
cannot wait to explore Mobituaries with Mo Raka, created and
hosted by none other than a personal hero of ours, Max.
Can I get some like drum like? Yeah, yeah, perfect? Uh,
the journals, the humorous, the author and all around top
(01:57):
notch man of letters, mister Moe Rocket get this, Nol,
the man himself is here with me.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Here.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, he's right here, Mo, thank you for joining.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Us, Thank you for having me. I'm sitting on my
throne in podcasting. I just yeah, I just made it
up myself, the throne. I'm actually standing. But thank you
for that introduction.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I've always been a fan of the word christendom, you know,
like in King Arthur Tales, and I've never fully understood
what I get the gist.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
It just has a weight to it.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
But I think applying that to the world of podcasting
is appropriate.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Mo.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Well, do you know what christendom means in that parliance?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
You know? But I don't know exactly, but I do
know that I hear like the strains of Camelot in
the back and ground. I just want Richard Burton to
come in here and start narrating this podcast.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
This episode has something to do with Christianity.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, this is so.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
We are as as you could tell them what we like.
You are huge fans of history. You've always had this
abiding interest in history through a very i would say,
human perspective, like what is the soul of the story?
And that really shows that really comes out and presents
in mobituaries. I think Noel and me and our fellow
(03:22):
listeners playing along at home would love to hear a
bit of an origin story. How did mobituaries come to be?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Well? I did begin to love obituaries in part. I
think it was first of all, as I myself was
getting older, I inherited it from my father. My father
loved obituaries and he wasn't a gloomy guy at all.
Growing up and in the Washington, DC area, there were
(03:49):
two daily papers when I was a kid, and my
father would read them, both the Washington Star and the
Washington Post, and he'd say, oh boy, the obituaries is
my favorite section of the paper. And I think he
liked it because it had you know, if it's if
it's done right, there's like a real sense of romance
and of sweep, and it's sort of like the highs,
the lows, the triumphs, the tragedies, and when you read them,
(04:11):
you can if they're done right, it's it does sort
of feel like a like a like a trailer for
an Oscar winning biopic sort of. And I think that's
probably where I kind of got the like for them.
And then as I got older, I continued reading them
and it seemed like a great way to do a
profile of a person, to tell a person's story, you know.
(04:35):
And as I started meeting obituary writers, I found out
that it's a kind of a more and more coveted beat,
you know, I mean print journalism. Obviously things are really
really rough and not getting any better unfortunately. But I
think it used to be I guess pun intended sort
of a graveyard for writers where they'd end up at
the end of their careers. But but now I think,
(04:56):
you know, the o bit writers at the Washington Post,
they've got a really vibrant department there, and uh and
you know, the head over there said, look, it's like
you're you get to write for sports, you get to
write for business, you get to write for entertainment because
it depends who dies. And also just it's it's handy
having a first name like Mo because you can turn
it into a bunch of different things. And you know,
(05:18):
if my name were Cecil or something, I wouldn't have
a podcast. So yeah, way.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
And in the modern time too, it's interesting to think
about all of the ongoing iterations that an obituary goes
through before the person even dies. And there have been
cases where it accidentally got leaked or something and it
was mispublished. And you know, what must that be like
to be that person that's constantly updating the obituary of
(05:45):
a very prolific artist or a musician or you know, personality.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
And then finally when it's time to pull.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
The trigger, you've kind of been working on it ongoingly
for some time, right.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I know, you know it's there. There was this great
documentary I wish I could remember the name of it,
about the New York Times obituary department a few years ago.
It'll come to me. But there is the guy who
would go down basically into the dungeon and pull up
these obituaries when they needed updates. Some of them were
just print, they hadn't even been digitized. And I think
(06:15):
there's a record for how long the gap was between
something being written and something being published. And it was
an Ada trix of course, like remember Ada Trixes. And
it was some daredevil young woman who was a pilot
I think in her teens and then lived until her nineties,
so that it had been like over eighty years. What
(06:35):
I found fascinating with the obituary writers I met I'll
never get over this is one of the writers at
the Times told me that there are people who cold
call the Times to talk about their own obituary. I mean,
if that isn't confidence, crazy hutspell, Like, Hi, I'm calling
to talk about you know, I just thought I had
some free time, and I'm calling to talk about the
(06:56):
obituary you are already writing about me.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Is that confidence or conceitedness?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, you're right, it's worse than that. And I would
be so tempted to just say, you know, we're still
on the fence. We're just.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Yeah, this is our thing. Yeah, I would live your life.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
If you If you accomplish a little bit more in
these last years, then I think it'll push you over
the top into contention.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
As far as getting getting covered, it's almost like getting
your wedding covered by the New York Times.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Big get for so many people.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Who Yeah, uh, there's also Uh, it's funny to me
that you talk about that that record for our Avia tricks,
our aviator, right, because just clocked what you.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Meant by that word. By the way, I get it now,
demand of letters tell you that's good.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
I would say my money would have originally been on
Henry Kissinger because I feel like people kept writing that obituary.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
And uh, what a complex legacy. I mean, awful guy.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
I think we would maybe agree, maybe not, but very
complex and how do you sum that life up?
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Well? I know it's also interesting. It would be interesting
to see all the different versions to see where things fall,
like I you know, with Jimmy Carter, where his post
presidency falls versus his presidency itself. I mean, that's definitely
changed over the years. I think that Bill Clinton impeachment,
I'd be really curious where that falls at this point.
(08:31):
It's probably moved up down. I mean it'll probably be
in that first line, you know, you know William Jefferson
Clinton Comma, the forty second president who also Coma died today.
But that that clause, that's where everything's really packed in there.
But how it changes. Yeah, Another one that's wild is
(08:54):
is when somebody has lived so long that people have
forgotten who they are, but they were still important. So
Madame chen Kaishak, the wife of the Chinese nationalist leader,
I think she lived. I had to check this. I
think she lived until she was at one hundred and six,
and it had been so long since she was, you know,
at the center of the world. And news that I
(09:17):
was by one of four people who read the whole
oh bit, and it was incredibly long, this obek because
it clearly had been written at a time when her
death would have been really big news. But she just
lived so long.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
And this is something that I think we all really
enjoy with mobituaries, because again I keep coming back to
the way that you explore history in such a human,
soulful perspective. I also have to give a shout out
to my Grandmother's Ravioli.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Thank you, not specifically yours, but the program. Yeah, my grandmother.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
It was just one of my mom's favorite shows.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Kidding, no, no, I'm so happy to hear that I loved.
You know, both both the mobituaries and my grandmothers were
Abbioli were projects that I felt very very personally about,
and and hey, yeah, I loved doing it so much.
I went for those who don't know. I went around
the country learning to cook from grandmothers and grandfathers in
(10:17):
their kitchens. But it was really about learning who they
were in their life story and what mattered to them,
and just having fun with them. Also. I loved it
so much, So thank you Ben.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Oh Well, there's so much history and love and you know,
caring built into recipes, the way they're kept, you know,
the handwritten notes and the iterations, and maybe some of
them are just committed to memory and passed down through
family members. All of that I just think, in and
of it's another example much like obituaries, where it's sort
of a backdoor into.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
History in a very interesting way.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Have you encountered things in your in your work, because
we're four seasons in obituaries, have you encountered have you
encountered stories that really surprised you, like in an unexpected way,
because each each one feels so unique, you know, it
feels like every I feel almost like I'm asking you
(11:13):
if you have a favorite child, but I'm not, I promise,
like the ones that like hit you, similar to Madam,
to Madame Chang Kaishek's thing where you thought, oh, I
thought this would be pretty simple, but holy smokes, the
plotswist here.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yeah. I think there definitely have been those. I mean,
I think Chang and Aang, the original so called Siamese
twins where that that term came from, who were from
Siam what is now Thailand and moved to the United
States as teenagers and became from some of the first
celebrities in America when the only thing that Americans had
(11:54):
has past times in the nineteenth century early nineteenth century
was a cock fighting, you know, drinking hard cider and
card playing. And they became really famous, right right, all
at the same time, and they became really really famous,
and it was really sort of sweeping story about these
(12:18):
guys who were exploited and managed to make lives for themselves.
But as they became successful, they ended up owning a
plantation and owning slaves, and not just slaves, they bought
very young slaves almost as investment properties. So it was
obviously an incredibly ugly side to that story, but I
(12:38):
liked doing the story because it they kind of packed
all of America into their lives. They were an immigrant story.
They really had pulled themselves up from their bootstraps. It
was a story about celebrity, It was a story about
racial prejudice, and then it was against them, and then
it was a story about assimilation, and then about slavery.
(13:01):
So it was like whoa. It was like taking all
of American history and combining it into one story. And
you know, I like doing it because I don't think
I think we took care with that, but we didn't
tiptoe and I was very happy about that because I
don't think people want people tiptoeing around this stuff. And
you know, either.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
Way, it's interesting too because a lot of the purpose
and I would love to hear your thoughts on what
you think the purpose of an obituary is, but is
to kind of set the record straight in a way.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
It's like sort of to prevent in some ways as
a functional item, you know, people from spreading rumors about someone's.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Life or what they may or may not have done.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And it's sort of meant to be this pithy, definitive,
you know, declaration of what a person, who a person was.
Do you have any other maybe ways you could elaborate
on what the purpose of an obituary.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Is, well, that's interesting. I hadn't even I don't know
that I've really given it thought in that way. So
I'm I'm happy to do that. I mean, I think
it's a first draft of history because a lot of
them do have errors. So there have been there there
have been obituaries that I've loved, like Irving Berlin, and
I can't cite exactly what was wrong, but when you
go back and fact check it, now there were just
think that we're wrong. And uh. I think the trick though,
(14:24):
is that it kind of has to to be faithful
to the person. It does have to have head and
heart in it. So I think that's why it's important
that reporters when they do these obituaries, or we when
we do these these podcasts obituaries, try to talk to
(14:45):
relatives about how they felt about a person, because feeling
sounds really obviously inexact and uh, you know, undefinable. But
it is part of who the person is, what the
person meant to other people, So it's not it can't
just be just the basmam kind of writing. It does
(15:06):
actually have to it does have to have an emotional component.
I think actually to be accurate. So it sort of
seems counterintuitive, but I think it. I think it does
have to do that as opposed to say, just reporting
on like election returns or something.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, right right, and spoiler for later in today's program
by pal Noell found some obituaries that we would like
to share with you later on for some reactions, because again,
it's such a you know, it is inherently a tragedy
whenever someone passes, right, even if you don't particularly care
(15:44):
for them, But it also has this amazing opportunity. I
really do believe it is a genre of literature and
should be considered as such. But we could talk literature later.
We have as we tease the earlier we have thought arduously
(16:04):
mo about things of yesteryear. Our conversation was not just
obituaries for people, right well, we wanted to explore with
you are somewhat of a swan song for things that
have passed, and Noy Nolan and I were very excited
about this one. No where do where do you think
(16:25):
we start? Do we embarrass ourselves with our telling more
group text about pagers?
Speaker 4 (16:30):
You mean in general?
Speaker 5 (16:31):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, oh, in general?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Yeah, we do occasionally it's sort of professionals at embarrassing ourselves.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
But we're okay with that. We lead into it. Yeah, Pagers.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
You know, it's funny because I was thinking about the
idea of dead things, and sometimes a thing can be
dead in terms of its mainstream use, but it can
still be very much alive in more of a niche way.
And I think we live in this era where obsolescence
is so commonplace and because of the technological you know,
advancements exponential, I think there's a pushback against it. People
(17:02):
almost resent it, and a are like, you know, so
I want to hold on to the things of the past,
you know.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
And Ben found a great word.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I don't want to spoil it, but yeah, but that
refers to building things into modern designs that represent the
ways of the past, or something that might be what
was the word, Ben?
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Can you already knows it?
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Skew warfs, you know, like would you have the little
floppy disk icon on a computer for save? And who
uses floppy disk?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Not?
Speaker 4 (17:33):
I never thought of that, Yeah, And you pointed out.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I was like, you said it the word, and I
was like, oh, I immediately understand what that is. But
I'm trying to think of examples and Ben pointed out
in cars, there's a lot of like anachronistic things that
are built into modern car designs that don't do a thing,
but they're like mainly ornamental. But in an older model
car it would have been a very you know, crucial component.
But it's a way of sort of building the past
(17:57):
for folks that maybe it would give some comfort to
to the future. But pagers is such an interesting thing
because it we look at it now and it really
just screams the nineties, you know. I mean it's like
I had a clear green Motorola pager. You'd get little
charms for them and stuff, and you know, it went
from being a thing that only doctors had that almost
(18:19):
represented this position of prominence to this thing that everybody had.
I had one when I was, you know, a teenager,
and now it's back around to be you know, went
from tens of millions of people having pagers to now
it's just a hospital thing again.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
So it's sort of gone full circle in a weird way.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
But I just thought it would be interesting to talk
a little bit about the history of pagers. I didn't
realize they went back as far as nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
Yeah, they were used.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
It was it was early examples, not a hand you know,
little thing you clip on your telegraph. It was more
like the wire yes, exactly. It was more like a
wire service almost. It was essentially a way of transmitting.
It was a lot more like a telegraph, exactly. Ben
it was the in nineteen forty nine act. Well, the
original one was used something akin to what we'd not
as pagers by the Detroit Police Department in nineteen twenty one,
(19:08):
But in nineteen forty nine, the very first telephonic pager
was used. The adventure was a guy named Al Gross,
and his pagers were used in New York City's Jewish Hospital.
And at this point, much like the early telephones, wasn't
a consumer device. It wasn't available. It was only available
to professional circles, and then of course into the eighties
(19:30):
and by the nineties they were everywhere. And I just
thought it'd be fun to briefly talk about do you
remember pager codes?
Speaker 1 (19:38):
MO? Did you have a pager? MO?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
I don't think that I did. I think I'm sure
I wanted one, and if I did, well, you know,
when I worked at piezria UNO's and I was at
a form of a pager piece when I worked at
Pizzera Unos, which was very high stressed in Georgetown, because
they had something called the five minute lunch I think
(20:01):
that's what they called it.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
And if you didn't get it, if it arrives or
you get it free or something like that by clime exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
And I mean it would create like basically collisions like
in the in the you know, among the waiters because
you were rushing to get the personal sized pizza to
the table in five minutes. But I think were there
must have been some buzzer system that told us and
maybe when I when I actually delivered pizza also, But yeah,
(20:28):
but I don't think I ever had one kind of
yeah that would I just clip to my belt that
I'd just wear during during the day. Did either of
you guys have that?
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Or yeah I did, and I know Ben said he
had he had one as well.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
I feel like, I feel like I need to preface this, guys.
I had two pagers. I was not a drug dealer.
I was a very straight laced kid. I was also
not a doctor.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
I was doogie houser.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I just had helicopter parents, you know. So, uh, the
the thing that's interesting too with the pagers, is now
we're not just talking about an artifact, a physical device.
We're talking about a medium of communication, right, And so
some of these codes, maybe I'm going to be quizzed
(21:17):
along with you. Mo nol is our quiz master for this.
We're going to see whether we can guess the meaning
of some codes, and I'll try to help out the
team as best that I could.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
But no, no, that's a great setup. Bend.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Just just to add, it wasn't until nineteen fifty eight
that the FCC approved the pager for public use, and
then Motorola swooped in in nineteen fifty nine, creating a
personal radio communicator's kind.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Of what they call it wasn't even called a pager.
They did coin the term.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
They coined the term pager Motorola Company. But these early
ones looked more like walkie talkies. I mean, they were
absolutely massive. But into the eighties and nineties, like I
was saying, you know, the whole purpose of a pager
is you also it required another thing, you know, you
had to have a phone, right, So I've always found
them to be a little clunky, but it made sense
because you would page somebody from a phone with the
(22:11):
number of the phone, and then they would call you back.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
That was the intent of the way it was originally
set up.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
But if you got a little clever, you could like
do an early form of texting just by using alpha numeric,
you know, things that maybe represented the way it would
sound when you'd say the numbers out loud, or maybe
it was meant to be flipped upside down, or a
one would represent a and the alphabet you know, et cetera.
(22:37):
You could you know, do like send kind of complex
messages like that, at least limited by the size of
the screen. So typically these were pithy, kind of three
to five characters. So one that I think maybe is
an easy one that most people might remember is one four.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Three, yeah, I do one one. People still use this today.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
It's a check mark if right. I'm just looking at
thinking of a phone like that.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Should that's good?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Think more in terms of the this is you'd have
to know what the thing was, and this couldn't be
interchange with other things. Each number represents the number of
letters in the word.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Oh, oh, yes, I love yeah, I love you very
yeah yeah. Next, can we get like applause or you win?
Kind of sorry going to full game show guys. All right? Uh?
That okay? That one I think stood out and that
was a great hint. Noal uh, it's the number of layers.
This reminds me of talking about ciphers and codes, because
(23:39):
that's really everybody with a pager becomes a cryptographer at
some point.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
It sounds like, right, it's weird though on this.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
I found this site like on Reddit where they're like
a like a listicle of all of these or some
of them kind of collated. And another version of I
love you is eight three one because it's eight letters,
three words one meaning it's kind it's a little hammy
and that's someone.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
But how did you know who the message was coming from?
Forgetting this? Did the pager indicate who was sending the message?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
I don't think so, because that would have been almost
like a like a caller ID thing by that point
would have been an extra charge if it was even available,
because a caller ID it was a special box you
had to get.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
It's still nice to get that message to know that someone.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Sorry, Well here yes, absolutely mo, and I remember now
people would have their own kind of sign offs. Yes,
so it might be then again, an alphanumeric approximation of
first your first or last name, and it would be
a known thing. And especially if you start thinking about
the way these were used for things like drug deals
or more under the radar kind of activities, it would
(24:43):
be like sending ciphers.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah, you know it. Also, you know, as someone with
cartoonish social anxiety, I'm surprised that I survived the pager
eraic is like if you guys get those texts sometimes
right where they just say, hey, call me. If they
don't say what.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
Call who.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I'm going to do one more purely numerical one, and
I'm going to do one a different style, and then
I'm out. But you guys might know this, maybe from
hip hop lyrics. I believe it is a police code.
I know Mo's a big hip hop head, and you'd
likely are, uh, one eight seven.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Oh dirty pool, it's not good.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
It's bad news. The lyric and the in hip hop
would be one eight seven on a mother fing.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Cop or the Sublime song.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
He says that in that one too, doesn't he Yeah exactly,
but I believe isn't he is an he referencing something
in in another song?
Speaker 4 (25:37):
Maybe not, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Seven I just keep thinking over eating. I ate seven
of what like this?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
This would be a reference, Yeah, that is this would
be a reference to a literal I believe police code
like fifty one. Fifty is a code for someone who
is having a psychiatric break and needs to be committed
or something. So one eight seven is a police scanner
code for murder. Oh okay, wow, So if you send
(26:06):
somebody one eight seven, that's bad news.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Or if you're good.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Again, if you get that, if you have your pager
and you don't know exactly who's texting you and you
get what eight seven, that's terrified.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Right, Yeah, I mean it could being sure, it could
be rad as I'm going to kill you, right.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
If there's no other context.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
No, and that kind of aggression causes hypertension. It's like, yeah, anyway,
if you're on the receiving end of that, you don't
want that.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Kill you slowly by sending you cryptic Uh you know,
it's the spirited messages.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
It's up there with nine to one one.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
And by the way, that was a big thing.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
If any of my middle school friends are listening, you guys,
it was never an emergency.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
Never was it. Ever.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You could just send one, four three. People would just
done one one. At the end of the time, I
do think this is all coming back to me. Now
this is my last one. This is think of this
one in terms of like this. These are numbers that
represent letters visually. So we've got six thousand, asterisk eight
four three six oh oh oh asterisk just to just
(27:12):
to indicate a space.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Oh ass just for the space, yeah, six thousand space
and what was after the asterisk eight for to three.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
I feel like I need a little pad of paper.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Yeah, you probably always like.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Want it to be Teddy Roosevelt, because I feel like
it should be like glasses and a mustarda like vis
there's a way I think with like numbers to make
a Teddy Roosevelt or something. But anyway, oh gosh, yeah,
I want to know about this. Yeah, I don't know what.
These are so esoteric, weird, they're barely meant to be solved.
(27:47):
You're closed, go something. Think about this.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
The two o's in the middle represent one letter, and
the final O is meant to be a different letter,
but it's the same number.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
I'm gonna give.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Okay, it would be goodbye, goodbye, six thousand. Well, you
have to think about these two in terms of the blocky,
little little digity numbers. So the six looks a lot
like a G, and the o's you know, can be
a an O or a D. And then eight for
three the four is the Y and three is a
(28:20):
weird backwards E.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
I actually find goodbye more menacing than one eight seven.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
It's like I'll never see you again.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, he's already done.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, yeah, the hit Man is on the way. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
How I feel when people end the text with a period,
I feel period, See we are we are not the same, Ben,
we'd not you and I, but we are in many ways.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
That was my little.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Little blast from the past with page and then again
I thought it was an interesting twist MO because you know,
again there were millions of folks. This is there's a
you know, a massive moment for these things with consumers.
They started exclusively in hospitals, and now they're exclusively once
again in hospitals. So not dead, but certainly not alive
in the same way that it once was. So I
(29:09):
think that counts.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
It reminds you. By the way, a little bit of
CB radios, which I wanted to do them a victuary on,
but it turned out that they weren't dead. The CBE
radios still and I'm really bad with this, but they're
there if everything else goes down in the world.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
But screemon zombie shows all the time. Someone's got one
of those laying around zombie shows like Apocalyptos. Right, it's
a big deal if they have a CBE radio because
there are people that have them still and they work.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
And also the name Ham Radio just confused and bedeviled
me for a long time, as.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
It's not the same as CB is it. I'm confused too,
I think they're different.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Okay, but the one thing is that the Ham radio
name is misleading, especially for someone like me who is
always low key starving.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
You know, it's not powered by Ham.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Then they don't even talk about Ham most of the time.
It like occasionally comes up in their conversations. Anyway, I put,
do you go Ham? When you use the Ham radio,
you're just yelling at people and just being really aggressive.
This is a dumb and true story. As a boy scout,
I got a Ham radio and I figured out it
wasn't like a secret network of food fans.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
And I put it in the attic.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
Can you look at this point, though, I suggest, with
this wonderful history of the Pager, mo, if you were
to be so kind, could you give our listeners playing
along at home a bit of an off the cuff
obituary for the Pager anything you'd like to say.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Okay, we should probably start with a cold open one
four three, I love you, I'm going to kill you,
six thousand asterisk something something something goodbye.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
That could be the whole thing. It's poetry.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
I'm Morocca, and this is mobituary. Is this moment you
go the patre a lost language and then we'll just
have to give it a date or something.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
You know, that's it. Yeah, poetry, poetry.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Is there a form though that you have to adhere to?
Is there like a number of word counts? Like what
is the kind of tried and true formula for a
good obituary?
Speaker 4 (31:26):
And like you know and all of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Well, I you know that all important first sentence that's
got to be like action packed, that's got to be
a winner, and that is and sometimes they're disappointing. Sometimes
people punt and just sort of say, you know, for
a world leader who lived many many years, I mean
I've seen some that are that are that are real letdowns,
But you got to pack it right in there. And
(31:50):
you know, in the mobituary's book, in the preface, I
wrote about how you know Bill Cosby's first line is
going to be packed with a lot because of how
much has happened in his life. So the first paragraph
is usually two sentences. Excuse me. So there's that first line.
So Moroka Kama who blankety blank blank bank bank Kamma
(32:13):
died today. Period he was one hundred and eight years old.
We hope period. But I think I think for the
written ones, the ones I like, they have a very
a detail usually about the person early in life that
was significant and kind of presaged predicted something larger. So
(32:37):
there's there's a great obituary for Alfred Hitchcock, and I'm
going to get the age wrong, but it has a
detail that when he was like six or seven in
the English village he was growing up in that the
local jailer and a kind of early version of a
Scared Straight program, took him to the local jail, threw
(32:58):
him into a cell, slammed the door behind him and
said that's what happens to bad little boys.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
And that he'd done something yeah, it was degation, no exactly.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah, And that that clanging sound of the door slamming
behind him reverberated in his memory and imprinted itself in
such a way that, at least in the view of
the obituary writer. This then shows up later in a
lot of his work about mistaken identity and crime and punishment.
(33:32):
And so, I mean, all I can say is, for
fans of Pitchcock, thank god he was traumatized as a child,
you know, because we wouldn't have had these great movies.
And I can't see a wisame way about like stars
like And this is a little bit of a tangent,
but I kind of do feel that way about like
Sammy Davis Junior and Judy Garland, like two of the
great entertainers of the twentieth century, they didn't have childhoods, and.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
That is wrong.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
On the other hand, I think if they had had
normal child elhood's, I don't know that we would have
gotten such great performances out of them.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
You know. That reminds me a little bit of the
obituary episode on Audrey Hepburn with the yeah, with the
the facts that the it's like the scars make the
person in a in a very real way, you know,
and here's something there's something deep, and you know I
(34:24):
hesitate to wax philosophical, but there's again there's there's a
an art, a craft to writing these. I got to
tell you about one of my favorite ones, uh, in
my favorite formats is the gallows humor of the satirical
or whimsical obituary. You know, like you're reading something that
(34:45):
says h William Jefferson Clinton Comma, amateur saxophonist Comma, Like
I love that kind of stuff. Have you run across
obituaries that surprised you with humor?
Speaker 3 (34:59):
It's hard me to think of them specifically, but I
know exactly what you're talking about. The British are really
good with that, are really kind of like, you know,
are kind of racing sometimes at the obits and are
are much are much less reverential. I think also in
this age of paid death notices obituary, obituary writers are
extremely sensitive about being lumped in with the paid death notices,
(35:22):
where you know, families put these things together and then
just buy space on.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
The paper such as a distinction.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Yeah, they're super sensitive about that, and uh, and it's
actually the paid death notices are frankly keeping a lot
of small town papers alive because it's a really important and.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
Consider that an obituary at all. It is and it isn't.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Kind of right, it's technically not an obituary. It's not reported,
it's a it's a it's submitted by a family member
or a loved one. But those sometimes are really funny.
I've read some. I wish I could give you more
specific examples, but but I've read some that are very,
very funny about you know, you know, one written very
life by a son about a mother I think in Florida,
(36:03):
who was She was just really profane, but the son
clearly loved her, and it really painted a picture that
it's like a future Oscar winner, like winning role if
somebody portrays that person.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
I just think that's such an important distinction, because I
think what most people think of obituaries as are those things.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, now they do, Yeah, because few people get the
real obituary.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, I've got I've got one that fits exactly what
we're talking about here, gentlemen, from the Fayetteville Observer, and
in depth thing will just give you the beginning. This
is an obituary for Renee mandel Horn, and it goes
like this, el Paso, Texas, a plus size Jewish lady
(36:46):
redneck died in El Paso on Saturday. Of itself, hardly
news or good news if you're the type that subscribes
to the notion that anybody not named you dying in
El Paso, Texas is.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
Good niece not named you?
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, in which case, have I got news for you?
The body fertile, redheaded matriarch of a sprawling Jewish Mexican
redneck American family has kicked it and this is this
is like written by her children, and there's so much
love in it. But it's almost like a Friar's Club
roast or something the way it just gets.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
And Ben, I have actually thank you for reading that
it is. People should go and find it. I have
read that it is really great.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Okay, so you like that one as well. It passes
like the obituaries test.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
What a great way to send off someone you love
with humor that way. Well, also because I remember reading
that it went viral, I think, and I'm pretty sure
it did. And I think the reason is that it's
so great is because it's written in the spirit with
which the woman lived your life. If you were really
just to give the facts of that woman's life, it
(37:56):
wouldn't do her justice, or even talking about how to
people felt about her would still not do her justice.
This family went one better and they actually wrote it
in the style in which in a style that reflected
who she was. I mean, that's that's like, really that
is really a tribute our literature.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Nerd stuff is coming out too, because you're talking about
how the aesthetic of the form.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Yeah, yeah, the form reflected her.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah, it's crafted in her image.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
Wow, it was a roast, as you put it, It's
a roast of a woman who probably loved roasts, right, Like,
I always thought that Bob Barker's I had this image
for a long time that his would have been written
almost like like a plinko board from like trisis right?
Like the column. I always thought it would be kind
(38:47):
of interesting if like the first column and it kind
of shifted and then would like almost like the path
that the that the coin makes you're during a successful plinko?
Speaker 4 (38:57):
Is that done though? Like a house of leaves kind
of a approach?
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Right? Like?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
So is that a thing I would love to see
really mega out there weirdo creative obituaries.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Yeah, I think that. Yeah, I'm trying, Yeah, I think
it would be great. I'm trying to think, who is
a luminary now in what form their op it would take? Yeah,
that would reflect who they are. I mean, I just
suppose you like a poet should be kind of written
in poetry, right, Like you know, I hope Theodore guyse
ELL's I hope was in rhyme. You know, when doctor
(39:28):
Seuss died. I don't know, somebody hoped it that way.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Ezra Pounds was like twenty eight pages. It got edited
down to two lines or something.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
And at the end it was incredibly anti semitic, and
at the end it was super that's the lotrap with
just anti semitism.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Right, So we also see, like you know, I do
want to make sure we also mentioned the title of
the book. This is not just a podcast, folks, mobituaries
Great Lives worth reliving.
Speaker 4 (40:03):
This is.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Tell Us again at home, tell Us the order of operations?
Which came first? Was it the So we've got the
inspiration the interest. Growing up, your father is regularly reading
newspapers for obituaries in DC, and you have that lifelong
(40:25):
love of history coupled with this, do you create the
book first and then the podcast or.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Well, i'll give you a sort of the blunt sort
of business kind of background on it. I had this
interest in obits, and Simon and Schuster said, we'd love
you to do a book and a podcast about this,
but the book can't just be the podcast, which I
wouldn't want to do anyway. I wouldn't want to just
do a podcast and then take the transcripts and put
(40:52):
it into a book. So they were really done in parallel.
But what was interesting to me is I realized, and
I think you guys can understand, certainly understand this, is
that for an audio, for the audio medium, you know,
it's much it's much more satisfying to do subjects that
(41:13):
are from the recorded era, the sound recorded era, so
it's much harder. So when we did a podcast, I
love the creative challenge of doing the podcast episode about
Tom Payne, but you know, he died before there was
any recorded sound and so it required a different kind
of creativity. But for the most part, doing somebody like
a Sammy Davis Junior or an Audrey Hepburn, you know,
(41:36):
it made more sense for the podcast, and then for
the book, doing ancient things like you know, death of
cities and countries and things from the ancient world were
more appropriate. So that's kind of how some stuff ended
up in the book and some stuff ended up on
the podcast.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Okay, sense.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Also, I mean we've found too that you know, a
lot of times, despite the best efforts of you know,
voice performers who do the audiobook version, things that are
written to be read are often not the same as
things that are written to be spoken.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Well that's true. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And
and yeah, so things that were written to be read
it ended up in the book.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah, hold the payphone spoilers, folks, This is going to
be a two parter. We were so excited in a
wide ranging conversation with mister Moraka and Nola's just so
generous with his time. We get weird with it. This
guy knows a lot of stuff about a lot of things.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Well, that's the thing we went in with like this
whole format where we were going to do like all
of us, we're going to bring like a dead thing
and you know, do it like we do with some
other guests, where we each kind of have our own
little segment, but it ended up just organically having so
much to offer the conversation that we you know, sprinkle
that in here and there, you're gonna get some dead things.
You're gonna get some I don't even want to tease it.
(42:58):
It's too good. What a guy. I think we're all
fans already of his work, and just to see that
he's a genuinely lovely and generous guy.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
Was just a delight for all of us.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
So yeah, and with that, we can't wait for you
to join us on Thursday later this week when we
returned Mobituaries with Moe Raka Part two. In the meantime,
big big thanks to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Huge thanks to our composer we have our own composers,
Max's brother, Alex Williams.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, he knew we were talking to Mo and said
he was a big fan, and it just organically came
up that I feel like there's a spiritual connection between
what Alex does on Ephemeral and most mobituaries, so I
just thought it was appropriate to shout him out in
that respect. Huge thanks to Christopherciotis, Eves, Jeff Coates here
in spirit a J. Jacobs, Bahamas Jacobs, whatever.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
That was, Where that comes from? I want to know,
but I'm never going to find out. And I love that.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
And of course, of course, let's think again. People like
Rebecca the raccoon spoiler. I'm sorry, pets are people too.
Let's thank Jonathan Strictly aka the Quist.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Gage the Yang to AJS Yen perhaps or vice versa.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Yeah, yeah, Ed, No, thanks to you. I can't wait
for this to get on the air.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Same, We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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