August 6, 2026 • 31 mins
In today's episode, Ben, Noel, and Max want to begin by shouting out all new parents in the crowd (we hope you get some sleep)! These days, every expecting or new parent is endlessly inundated with advertisments for products, services, and treatments. And as the crew discovers in today's episode -- the past wasn't that different. In fact, a ton of this baby gear of yesteryear was patently ridiculous.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you,
as always so much for tuning in. Let's hear it
for the shiny, beautiful baby boy of our podcast. Super
producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I'm not gonna be able to bounce back from that one.
I can't give you a retort. I'm just baby, you
should be able to bounce back.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
He's just blushing.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
He's blushing. I think it's cherubic downright. Cherubic is the word.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
That's old brown. I'm Ben Bullen. We are super excited, folks,
uh to talk about a category of invention that's going
to be familiar to a lot of our ridiculous historians
in the crowd. Congratulations to all the new parents tuning in.
Hope you get some sleep here and there. We understand
(01:17):
that's a struggle. But Noel, when when you were a
new parent with your child, you and your partner doubtlessly
had to do this whole rigmarole about getting advice on
raising a baby. Probably had to keep buying clothing or
getting hand me downs as the kid just kept kept growing.
(01:41):
Did you go to baby showers. Did you all have
a baby shower?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Oh? Yeah, we did, and I've been to maybe one.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
But i'll tell you, Ben, I say this not in
any kind of like derogatory way, but that time in
my life was so stressful that I have largely like
men in black behind, erased it from my But one
thing I do remember, Ben distinctly, is the snot sucker.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yes, Edge, I didn't know it was branded.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
But as our wonderful research associate Wren pointed out, she
recently discovered some of these things in attending a baby
shower for her sister who recently had a little one,
and mentioned this idea of nasal congestion for the tykes. Well,
the answer to that is the snot sucker, and she
(02:34):
spelled it out the capital snot capital sucker capital s
connected right up to snot. And I just always thought
that was a pro pejorative. But it is in fact
a rubber bulb that you stick into the baby's nose
and you squeeze it and it sucks the snot right
out of it.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
She describes it as a slurpy straw for snot. Not
quite how I remember it. Yeah, some of them look
like bulbs.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
They look like the top of a turkey baster.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
That's the one that I had.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Maybe things have come a long way since my time
as a new parent. But she also mentions if your
baby is sassy and gassy, there's something for that too.
She should have been in baby product advertising. Colic is
no match for Windy the gas passer with an eye,
which may sound like a character from amany python film,
specifically fully Grail, but it is actually a sort of
(03:23):
an alien looking fart hose that's packaged up to look cutesy.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
It's pretty gross.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
And yet, you know, a comfort to new parents because
manacious exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, yeah, because it shows us the parents will do
anything to ensure that their newest addition to the family
is safe, healthy, is comfortable. And you know, there's a
lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of well
intentioned I'll say it, well intentioned hogwashed and it can
(03:57):
be challenging when you're a parent. You're already, especially in
the United States, you're already paying a lot of money
for various unexpected expenses. So it can be stressful, as
we said, to have a bunch of people coming out
of the woodwork and saying, I know this thing is
fifty to one hundred and fifty or more dollars, but
(04:19):
you absolutely must have.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It for sure.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
And I mean marketers know that they have parents kind
of by the jimmies. As you say, Ben, they are
in fact a captive audience in terms of like, they
gotta have some of this stuff, whether it's their version
or another version, things like car seats. We're going to
get into the history of that. But it occuraged to
Ren in going to her sister's baby shower and seeing
all of these new fangled products targeted parents who want
(04:46):
nothing but to do right by their new babies, that
this likely has been the case since the dawn of time.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
However, parents of yesteryear.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Relied on a lot of anecdotal advice from generations past
than science to care for their little ones, which resulted
in some admittedly creative, possibly ridiculous remedies for you know,
taking care of little ones.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, yeah, and Wren, we can't thank you enough for
this perspective and this excellent research, and we want to
represent you accurately to our fellow ridiculous historians. You like
some of us in the crowd. Tonight did end up
on the receiving end of some of these inventions, particularly
(05:34):
those human leashes that attached to a child's back. And
this is the beginning of the ridiculous history of baby gear.
We got to get to one real quick. No, this
reminds me of an episode I did years ago for
(05:56):
my very first official podcast, kar Stuff. Not the most
creative name, but it was a fun show. We hope
you tune in. No'll produced a lot of it. We
all know about car seats for babies. Now they're necessity.
There are tons of variations or brands out there, But
during the early nineteen hundreds, before automobiles were ubiquitous, the
(06:21):
car itself was a luxury item for the rich, the
decayed aristocracy, you know, the one percenters of the Gilded Age.
It wasn't until the Model T came out that the
automobile became increasingly mass produced and democratized.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, and in doing so, I mean, we know that
safety was not exactly the prime selling point for some
of these early automobiles, and in order to make it
safer for children, they needed a little bit of modification.
So nineteen thirties did, of course bring it a little
bit of a hiccup known as the Great Depression to
(07:02):
your point, but nothing great about it, which means that
a lot of the less fortunate folks in the United
States were more concerned with feeding their families than getting
the latest car. However, after World War Two, much like
the soft served craze that we talked about in the
last episode, the country was rescued from economic peril and
(07:24):
it gave folks some new options once they settled back
in after returning from the war. Families, mothers, fathers needed
larger vehicles to transport themselves and of course they're growing
heard of children and their groceries, of course, to and
from their home.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah, because grocery stores were also modernizing at this point, folks,
the days of the counter service are falling, falling into obscurity.
And now we've got the supermarket, which is entirely designed
to make it easier and more tempting to buy more
(08:01):
and more stuff. So you need room in your car.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Well.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
And like we said, Ben, while safety wasn't exactly top
of mind for the design of the first model TS,
neither was its top of mind with the design of
the first car seats that were invented during the nineteen
thirties by.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
The Bunny Bear Company. What is he man? Is he
a bunny or is he a bear? He needs to
make up his mind.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
It looked like something you might see in a sanatorium,
some sort of torture device. It was designed, however, for
the fun of the tyke, not for safety. It was
made from wood and fabric, and it was designed to
quote elevate children so they could see their surroundings during
(08:43):
car rides.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, and it also did something that we see time
and time again in children's toys. It allows you, the
tyke or the brood of the family, to emulate the
activities of adults, of your parents, of other grown people
you've encountered. That's why children's kitchen toys are so ubiquitous
(09:09):
even now. That's why this car seat would include stuff
like a dummy steering wheel and maybe some you know,
pretend buttons you could push. It does look like the
first model, which came out in nineteen thirty three from
Buddy Bear. It looks like one of those bring your
(09:31):
own lawn chairs that you would have at a concert
or a picnic.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah, but from hell right right.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
But it's canvas. It's got several straps to keep the
tike in and it has an elongated rack at the
bottom ending with a wooden bar that is probably too
far for the average kid's feet to reach. I hope
based on this image that Wren gave us, but it
(10:00):
I think it most likely was meant to securate it grace.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yeah yeah, yeah, but it also seems like in the
event of a crash, it would just be I don't know.
Rend pointed this out actually in the name of the
section car Seats aka the Artist formerly known as Little
Baby death Trap. And this big old hunk of chunk
of wood would likely become a deadly projectile in.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
The car, just like those steering wheels that were so
popular in the forties and fifties that had the torpedo
design pointing at the drivers.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Oh did yeah? Final destination? Anybody come on?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And in the nineteen forties a bunch of French guys
agreed with me and Noel here a company called ben
Hall fol decided that the current baby car seat models
that they were seeing were probably uncomfortable for kiddos. There
(10:56):
were also a pain in the keyster to install. They
made a new kind of baby car seat. It hooks
over the front passenger seat, the shotgun seat. Yep, babies
are still sitting in the front at this period of time,
and then you had a single strap across the waist.
Now this is totally in opposition to modern safety standards
(11:20):
because as we know, you're not supposed to put a
baby car seat in the front of the car because
airbags could really harm a child. But people liked being
able to see their kid next to them again, riding
shotgun as they.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Drive, and they like where like a little baby Maggie's
got their own little hack Hawk with marsh.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
It pops out. Yeah, and they also loved how easy
it was to install this. But if you look at
a picture of this French baby seat, what you'll see
is that the kid is strapped in at the top
of the seat, but the seat go down far enough
(12:01):
to put them on the actual car seat. They're just
hanging out, kind of like an extreme mountaineer who straps
themselves to the side of a rock face to sleep.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Yes, definitely, and it's equally treacherous just so, and we
know if we fast forward again, every company is aware
there's a huge market for this.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Parents will do anything they can for their children, so
car seat technology continues to innovate. Go to nineteen sixty two,
we see the Jena car seat. I am doing the
forest gumbaccent, but it is spelled jee inay.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I think that's the only way to say it.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Ben Frankly, this one would be the first model on
the market designed for backseat use, and it did have
safety in mind, so good on them. Moving on, we're
going to get into to the idea of you know, bassinets, cradles.
(13:04):
They don't really call them cradles as much anymore, play pins.
All of that is another category of baby gear, maybe
exactly like a crate for your baby. The first automatic cradles,
however colloquial all know as rockers, were created and patented
by a master mechanic and the serial tinkerer named John
(13:26):
Boulcolt in eighteen ninety seven. He used a clockwork mechanism
to automatically kind of swing the basinet to help lull
the baby to sleep. It was born out of a
request from his wife, who, being exhausted as a new mother,
dreamt of a machine that could rock her baby to
sleep so that she could focus on her household chores.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
I you know, I think really according to Bulkan, Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
According to the official story. But I'm with Ready here.
I think it was probably more realistically. Boo called spouse saying,
why do I have to stay up and rock the
kid to sleep? Like, when is it your turn?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Dude? And so he's busy tinkering, right, He's like.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I'm a serial tinkerer. He got to work and he
was literally investigating this in his garage over in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
And this research he was doing while he was not
rocking the baby, by the way, led him to patent
the first automated cradle. You can see pictures of this online.
(14:34):
You would not have considered it automatic by twenty twenty
six standards because you had to if your parent, you
have to hand crank the cradle to start the rocking motion.
You're powering up a spring and then the spring slowly,
you know, expands over time, creating that rocking sensation. Still
(14:56):
is way better than having to sit there for hours.
Just back for sure.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah, And like a lot of these types of things.
His original company name was Mega Dry if descriptive. It
was the automatic cradle manufacturing company. It did see some
pretty early success, and so you figured that was a
good que two rebrand. There's something a little more pleasant
the Lullaby Furniture Corporation.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
So, by nineteen thirty, the company sold three additional products.
They had bassinets, a three and one high share slash rocker,
and a go kart for children that seems super safe,
as well as something called the Flivver Flyver.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Uh, let's call it the fliver because of the CVS,
or we could call it the Fliur if we want
to shut out as the shitch. To be clear, that
go kart folks is not the go kart you're thinking
of from Andretti's or something like that. It's it's just
something they could sit in.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
That has wheels.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Got it so more like a power wheel minus the
power Yeah, yeah, just so.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And by the end of nineteen thirty, the Lullaby Furniture
Corporation is just mad cap with success. They're gross assets
in nineteen thirty are two hundred and seventeen thousand, two
hundred and twelve dollars and fourteen cents, which means it's
time for our inflation calculator.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Oh can we beep? Can we boop?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:25):
We must we mustop with deep there.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
We are, so a little bit north of two hundred
and seventy thousand dollars in nineteen thirty thanks to inflation,
is now in twenty twenty six four million, two hundred
and forty two one hundred thousand, ten dollars and sixty
three cents.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Nice one. Heck, yeah it is right.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
I mean, still modest by today's standards, but they're on
the way up. As his success grew, bull Colt had
his share of competitors, of course, entering the market, including
an inventor named Luther P. Jones who came up with
this spended baby hammock situation which could self rock for
up to two hours after being wound. Sorry, I got
(17:06):
to jumped the gun on this one. This was the
clock mechanism. So like a wristwatch that you wind and
it has power reserve, you wind this up and then
it will it will essentially rock itself for up to
two hours with that stored energy. So, judging from the
illustrations that we have here, that ren provided it was
pretty high up and the mechanism on top, you probably
(17:29):
would have had to have like some kind of step
ladder at the very least, if not a full a
frame ladder to get to Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
And also this is clearly for people who are a
little bit more well to do big time. This thing
is do you know what I mean? Like there you
can see the design clearly. It is definitely going to
dominate whatever room you put it in, just on an
interior decoration rate. So you probably need to afford your
(17:57):
own specific room in your domicile for this. And then
you know at some point you'd have to have somebody
service the machine, right.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Oh, clearly it's that level of machine and the ad
illustration it says at the bottom, don't waste time rocking
yo baby's cradle. Let theimoto rock it for you. And
when baby wakes he can watch the wheels go round.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Absolutely, and we know that bullcult soldiered on despite this
emerging competition. In nineteen thirty six, this guy buys an
island expressly for the purposes of logging hardwood. A few
years later, as to historians, you will remember, World War
Two began because Germany invaded Poland, which meant that the
(18:40):
Lullaby Corporation, like so many other Allied businesses, shifted to
the war effort, and so instead of building baby cradles,
now or flivvers. They ended up providing Allied countries the
raw materials that would later be used to build mosquito
(19:01):
bomber airplanes.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Yeah, and they were nicknamed wooden wonders. These airplanes, which
I hadn't heard of before the to Havel the land
d H ninety eight mosquito bomber airplanes, to be precise,
could reach a top speed of four hundred miles per
hour while carrying around four thousand pounds worth of explosives.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Absolutely, yet, is this is gonna sound kind of crazy
when we're saying that these are, you know, wooden planes,
But that's that's where the technology was at the time.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
For sure.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
We know a lot about what is it, the HH
Huntley or the HS Hunting. The wooden submarines was also
a thing.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Oh yeah, well, wood is a great way to start
building something. It's also real flammable. It's also really it's
not perfect, but it's a great way to start ed
for sure. So yeah, over time, the wars come and go.
The Lullaby Company has several name changes, ownership back and forth.
(20:01):
Eventually Lullaby ends their business, but they don't do that
until nineteen ninety five. So good on you, lullaby. I
think we've got time for one more we really wanted
to talk about. This is crazy, Nola Max. This reminds
me of an infamous viral photo from years and years
(20:24):
ago where the controversial legendary musician Michael Jackson held his
baby out a lot out of a wimbo style, Simba style,
lion king style to a bunch of reporters. And I
think he wanted it to be a wholesome moment. Look
(20:44):
at my child, look at what I had wrought. But
the reporters and the paparazzi immediately said, what the heck
are you doing? Hold it a child out the window?
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Well, bet he clearly wanted it to get fresh air
required to renew and purify the baby's blood, because those
who sleep out of doors are stronger children. Man, he
must have been reading.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
He must have been reading Luther Emmett Holtz eighteen ninety
four book The Care and Feeding of Children, which made
these very claims. That is delightful. That name alone is
worth the price of admission. That is talking about them
like their marmots or something.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And doctor Holt is a qualified pediatrician.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Tay, I really loved kids, the care and feeding your children.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah, it's also a it's still a practice in parts
of northern Europe to bundle a baby up and leave
them outdoors in the cold.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Sure, so they will die of exposure because they were
born the wrong sex or something. For their Viking tribe,
that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
It's to renew and purify the blood, just like dogholes.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
I see, if you sleep outdoors, you're a stronger child.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
It does occur to me, Ben, and it probably occurred
to the inventor Ernest J. Henry Pattent did the first
window crib in nineteen nineteen. That not only was this
maybe something that parents might glom onto because of the
Holt Book, but parents living in small apartments or tenement
buildings in New York City for example, or Chicago places
(22:23):
like that, you know, they might not have had much room,
so they take advantage of having like a little cage
that hangs out the window exactly. Because again these are practical.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, these are not the super well to do people
who can dedicate an entire room in a nursery. Often
they can't dedicate an entire room to individual bedroom for
their older kids. So a lot of these folks during
the second wave of the Industrial Revolution, leave their homes
in rural areas of the country to seek a job
(22:58):
opportunity in the big city. And this is compounded by
a lot of immigration at the time, mostly from Europe
at this point in US history, and those folks automatically
go to cities because typically they're going to have a
community that pre exists of people who are from their
(23:19):
home country. This means that real estate goes through the roof.
If you live in a major city at this time,
like your Chicago's or your New York's, you were probably
living in an apartment. You are probably, as you said,
no super super squeezed for any kind of space. You're
(23:39):
living in a tenement, right, you might share a bathroom
with an entire floor of people. I gotta say it.
The photo that Red has attached here of an actual
window crib. It looks like chicken wire. But the baby
looks happy, confused. The baby doesn't look angry.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
I don't think it looks angry. It doesn't look looks
a little bewildered in the mall. It's actually kind of
a creepy photo, Ben, because the mother's facing away and
the way the lighting is it almost looks like she
has no face or something like. It's a little bit
of a It looks like an art piece, like a
disturbing dystopian art piece, because I keep saying the cage,
because that's what it looks like. It is essentially a
(24:25):
cage like enclosure hanging out the window god knows how
many stories up. And they looked at this as not
only a way of saving space, but potentially in the
cities of a way of providing their children with fresh air. However,
during the Industrial Revolution and the Second Wave, the air
weren't so fresh, right. Yeah, we have to remember the
(24:46):
EPA wouldn't be established the Environmental Protection Agency until nineteen seventy,
and we don't know how long it's going to be
able to stick around the modern day. So a lot
of these folks, and these are all very well ent parents,
a lot of these folks in the city. They want
fresh air for their kiddos, but they are not aware
(25:07):
of the invisible dangers in polluted city air. We're talking
about toxic byproducts made by the smelting of metal, chromium, arsenic, benzene, lead,
all the nasty stuff in a terrible cocktail. And when
they were purchasing these window cribs, which were relatively affordable
(25:27):
by design, they were actually putting their kids, especially like
the higher you get as well, they were putting their
kids in the front lines in the atmospheric trenches of
stuff that history and health studies have conclusively proven is very,
very bad for humans for sure. So it is in
(25:50):
fact they wonder that any of our grandparents survived long
enough to have our parents and allow us to you know,
enjoy our own resh air.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, this is wild.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
A lot of these inventions, as Bren points out, could
be categorized as dumb, bad, and even deadly. And there
are of course plenty more where that came from. We're
going to talk about just a few more here at
the end and then save some for a future Tangents
and Trivia episode.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah. Yeah, So the window caage, just so you know, folks,
mounted just like a window based air conditioning unit, still
very common in cities across the planet, so that's kind
of its legacy. We talked about how our buddy Johnny B.
Buckolt was an inventor or what you called a serial tinker.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Ren.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Let's talk about one of the other things he invented.
He made an automatic cow milker, which is very unpleasant
for the cows. I imagine it latches onto the cows
utters and it uses a lot of them. The spring
mechanisms that he pioneered for the automatic cradle, you squeeze
the utter and get the milk out. He called it
(27:03):
the Western milky machine. It was super unpopular with cows
at being diplomatic.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
For sure, and that didn't really take off because farmers
didn't want to freak their cows out lest they kicked
the farmers in the teeth. That pollution, though, Ben, we
were talking about in American cities was so bad from
the late eighteen hundreds through nineteen twenties that carbon emissions
actually coated birds in soot, changing the colors of their feathers.
(27:30):
And to this day, scientists observe birds to gauge the
severity of pollution and other environmental factors that could negatively
impact human health. Ben, we've talked about this on stuff
that I want you to know. Another way scientists to
use animals to test for environmental contaminants is at nuclear
(27:51):
super fun sites like at Savannah River site near where
we live here in Atlanta, Georgia, where Legacy nuclear waste
from the creation of nuclear warheads was stored and disposed of,
contaminating the groundwater and buried in these open pits, and
so scientists there as part of I believe the Army
(28:11):
Corps of Engineers test wildlife on a regular basis with
Geiger counters. They tag them and then find them and
then test them to make sure that the decontamination processes
are going well.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
And further, folks, here's another look. This is my favorite
example of how crazy the pollution was during the Industrial Revolution.
If you go over to England, you see that the
soot was so widespread it actually caused the population of
peppered moths to shift their colors. As a species, they
(28:46):
used to be pale and speckled, and because the air
in their natural environment got so dark and sooty, they
began to become dark black. For so it actually changed
the color of some animals. This is nuts, And you
(29:06):
also shouted out stuff they don't want you to know.
This is a great thing for anybody who's interested in
some of the darker sides of pollution. In a previous
episode on Her sister show, we talk about the idea
of lead creating serial killers. So check out a book
called Murderland published twenty twenty five, wherein the author Caroline
(29:28):
Fraser talks about the pollution related to smelting and how
it could have been the cause of the Pacific Northwest
serial killer explosion during the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
We talked about this stuff that I want you to
know very recently. Yeah, and do.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Check out that episode, folks. We know it's a little
bit of a dark turn for a show about baby gear,
but we hope you enjoyed it well.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
But Ben, this also kind of ties into the notion
that pollution from smelting could have led to the downfall
of the Roman Empire because of you know, environmental contaminants
that led to cognitive decline.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Yeah, good call.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
And also check out our earlier Ridiculous History episode on
the fall of the Roman Empire as well as the
fall of the Ottoman Empire. And while you're on the internet,
why not give us a nice little rating on your
podcast platform of choice and stay tuned for our upcoming episodes.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Absolutely please do.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
You can find us on Apple Podcasts, where the reviews
really go a long way to helping people discover the show.
We're also on Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcast. Ben,
this was a fun one, man, a little on the
shorter side, but absolutely delightful.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, big, big thanks to our super producer Max the
Bouncing baby Boy Williams Bouncing Bleshing baby Boy Williams. Big
thanks to Alex Williams who composed this track, as well
as Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance and aj Bahamas Jacobs.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Thanks again to Wren for doing the research on this episode.
Will look forward to hearing more from her in the
not too distant.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Future as well.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Christopher Hasiotis and Eaves Jeffco Thanks to them here in spirit,
and Ben, thanks to you man.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
This was a fun one and.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
A hearty goo goo gaga to all our young ridiculous
historians tuning in.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you,
as always so much for tuning in. Let's hear it
for the shiny, beautiful baby boy of our podcast. Super
producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I'm not gonna be able to bounce back from that one.
I can't give you a retort. I'm just baby, you
should be able to bounce back.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
He's just blushing.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
He's blushing. I think it's cherubic downright. Cherubic is the word.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
That's old brown. I'm Ben Bullen. We are super excited, folks,
uh to talk about a category of invention that's going
to be familiar to a lot of our ridiculous historians
in the crowd. Congratulations to all the new parents tuning in.
Hope you get some sleep here and there. We understand
(01:17):
that's a struggle. But Noel, when when you were a
new parent with your child, you and your partner doubtlessly
had to do this whole rigmarole about getting advice on
raising a baby. Probably had to keep buying clothing or
getting hand me downs as the kid just kept kept growing.
(01:41):
Did you go to baby showers. Did you all have
a baby shower?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Oh? Yeah, we did, and I've been to maybe one.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
But i'll tell you, Ben, I say this not in
any kind of like derogatory way, but that time in
my life was so stressful that I have largely like
men in black behind, erased it from my But one
thing I do remember, Ben distinctly, is the snot sucker.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yes, Edge, I didn't know it was branded.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
But as our wonderful research associate Wren pointed out, she
recently discovered some of these things in attending a baby
shower for her sister who recently had a little one,
and mentioned this idea of nasal congestion for the tykes. Well,
the answer to that is the snot sucker, and she
(02:34):
spelled it out the capital snot capital sucker capital s
connected right up to snot. And I just always thought
that was a pro pejorative. But it is in fact
a rubber bulb that you stick into the baby's nose
and you squeeze it and it sucks the snot right
out of it.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
She describes it as a slurpy straw for snot. Not
quite how I remember it. Yeah, some of them look
like bulbs.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
They look like the top of a turkey baster.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
That's the one that I had.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Maybe things have come a long way since my time
as a new parent. But she also mentions if your
baby is sassy and gassy, there's something for that too.
She should have been in baby product advertising. Colic is
no match for Windy the gas passer with an eye,
which may sound like a character from amany python film,
specifically fully Grail, but it is actually a sort of
(03:23):
an alien looking fart hose that's packaged up to look cutesy.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
It's pretty gross.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
And yet, you know, a comfort to new parents because
manacious exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, yeah, because it shows us the parents will do
anything to ensure that their newest addition to the family
is safe, healthy, is comfortable. And you know, there's a
lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of well
intentioned I'll say it, well intentioned hogwashed and it can
(03:57):
be challenging when you're a parent. You're already, especially in
the United States, you're already paying a lot of money
for various unexpected expenses. So it can be stressful, as
we said, to have a bunch of people coming out
of the woodwork and saying, I know this thing is
fifty to one hundred and fifty or more dollars, but
(04:19):
you absolutely must have.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It for sure.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
And I mean marketers know that they have parents kind
of by the jimmies. As you say, Ben, they are
in fact a captive audience in terms of like, they
gotta have some of this stuff, whether it's their version
or another version, things like car seats. We're going to
get into the history of that. But it occuraged to
Ren in going to her sister's baby shower and seeing
all of these new fangled products targeted parents who want
(04:46):
nothing but to do right by their new babies, that
this likely has been the case since the dawn of time.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
However, parents of yesteryear.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Relied on a lot of anecdotal advice from generations past
than science to care for their little ones, which resulted
in some admittedly creative, possibly ridiculous remedies for you know,
taking care of little ones.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, yeah, and Wren, we can't thank you enough for
this perspective and this excellent research, and we want to
represent you accurately to our fellow ridiculous historians. You like
some of us in the crowd. Tonight did end up
on the receiving end of some of these inventions, particularly
(05:34):
those human leashes that attached to a child's back. And
this is the beginning of the ridiculous history of baby gear.
We got to get to one real quick. No, this
reminds me of an episode I did years ago for
(05:56):
my very first official podcast, kar Stuff. Not the most
creative name, but it was a fun show. We hope
you tune in. No'll produced a lot of it. We
all know about car seats for babies. Now they're necessity.
There are tons of variations or brands out there, But
during the early nineteen hundreds, before automobiles were ubiquitous, the
(06:21):
car itself was a luxury item for the rich, the
decayed aristocracy, you know, the one percenters of the Gilded Age.
It wasn't until the Model T came out that the
automobile became increasingly mass produced and democratized.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, and in doing so, I mean, we know that
safety was not exactly the prime selling point for some
of these early automobiles, and in order to make it
safer for children, they needed a little bit of modification.
So nineteen thirties did, of course bring it a little
bit of a hiccup known as the Great Depression to
(07:02):
your point, but nothing great about it, which means that
a lot of the less fortunate folks in the United
States were more concerned with feeding their families than getting
the latest car. However, after World War Two, much like
the soft served craze that we talked about in the
last episode, the country was rescued from economic peril and
(07:24):
it gave folks some new options once they settled back
in after returning from the war. Families, mothers, fathers needed
larger vehicles to transport themselves and of course they're growing
heard of children and their groceries, of course, to and
from their home.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah, because grocery stores were also modernizing at this point, folks,
the days of the counter service are falling, falling into obscurity.
And now we've got the supermarket, which is entirely designed
to make it easier and more tempting to buy more
(08:01):
and more stuff. So you need room in your car.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Well.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
And like we said, Ben, while safety wasn't exactly top
of mind for the design of the first model TS,
neither was its top of mind with the design of
the first car seats that were invented during the nineteen
thirties by.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
The Bunny Bear Company. What is he man? Is he
a bunny or is he a bear? He needs to
make up his mind.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
It looked like something you might see in a sanatorium,
some sort of torture device. It was designed, however, for
the fun of the tyke, not for safety. It was
made from wood and fabric, and it was designed to
quote elevate children so they could see their surroundings during
(08:43):
car rides.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, and it also did something that we see time
and time again in children's toys. It allows you, the
tyke or the brood of the family, to emulate the
activities of adults, of your parents, of other grown people
you've encountered. That's why children's kitchen toys are so ubiquitous
(09:09):
even now. That's why this car seat would include stuff
like a dummy steering wheel and maybe some you know,
pretend buttons you could push. It does look like the
first model, which came out in nineteen thirty three from
Buddy Bear. It looks like one of those bring your
(09:31):
own lawn chairs that you would have at a concert
or a picnic.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah, but from hell right right.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
But it's canvas. It's got several straps to keep the
tike in and it has an elongated rack at the
bottom ending with a wooden bar that is probably too
far for the average kid's feet to reach. I hope
based on this image that Wren gave us, but it
(10:00):
I think it most likely was meant to securate it grace.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yeah yeah, yeah, but it also seems like in the
event of a crash, it would just be I don't know.
Rend pointed this out actually in the name of the
section car Seats aka the Artist formerly known as Little
Baby death Trap. And this big old hunk of chunk
of wood would likely become a deadly projectile in.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
The car, just like those steering wheels that were so
popular in the forties and fifties that had the torpedo
design pointing at the drivers.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Oh did yeah? Final destination? Anybody come on?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
And in the nineteen forties a bunch of French guys
agreed with me and Noel here a company called ben
Hall fol decided that the current baby car seat models
that they were seeing were probably uncomfortable for kiddos. There
(10:56):
were also a pain in the keyster to install. They
made a new kind of baby car seat. It hooks
over the front passenger seat, the shotgun seat. Yep, babies
are still sitting in the front at this period of time,
and then you had a single strap across the waist.
Now this is totally in opposition to modern safety standards
(11:20):
because as we know, you're not supposed to put a
baby car seat in the front of the car because
airbags could really harm a child. But people liked being
able to see their kid next to them again, riding
shotgun as they.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Drive, and they like where like a little baby Maggie's
got their own little hack Hawk with marsh.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
It pops out. Yeah, and they also loved how easy
it was to install this. But if you look at
a picture of this French baby seat, what you'll see
is that the kid is strapped in at the top
of the seat, but the seat go down far enough
(12:01):
to put them on the actual car seat. They're just
hanging out, kind of like an extreme mountaineer who straps
themselves to the side of a rock face to sleep.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Yes, definitely, and it's equally treacherous just so, and we
know if we fast forward again, every company is aware
there's a huge market for this.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Parents will do anything they can for their children, so
car seat technology continues to innovate. Go to nineteen sixty two,
we see the Jena car seat. I am doing the
forest gumbaccent, but it is spelled jee inay.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I think that's the only way to say it.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Ben Frankly, this one would be the first model on
the market designed for backseat use, and it did have
safety in mind, so good on them. Moving on, we're
going to get into to the idea of you know, bassinets, cradles.
(13:04):
They don't really call them cradles as much anymore, play pins.
All of that is another category of baby gear, maybe
exactly like a crate for your baby. The first automatic cradles,
however colloquial all know as rockers, were created and patented
by a master mechanic and the serial tinkerer named John
(13:26):
Boulcolt in eighteen ninety seven. He used a clockwork mechanism
to automatically kind of swing the basinet to help lull
the baby to sleep. It was born out of a
request from his wife, who, being exhausted as a new mother,
dreamt of a machine that could rock her baby to
sleep so that she could focus on her household chores.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
I you know, I think really according to Bulkan, Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
According to the official story. But I'm with Ready here.
I think it was probably more realistically. Boo called spouse saying,
why do I have to stay up and rock the
kid to sleep? Like, when is it your turn?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Dude? And so he's busy tinkering, right, He's like.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I'm a serial tinkerer. He got to work and he
was literally investigating this in his garage over in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
And this research he was doing while he was not
rocking the baby, by the way, led him to patent
the first automated cradle. You can see pictures of this online.
(14:34):
You would not have considered it automatic by twenty twenty
six standards because you had to if your parent, you
have to hand crank the cradle to start the rocking motion.
You're powering up a spring and then the spring slowly,
you know, expands over time, creating that rocking sensation. Still
(14:56):
is way better than having to sit there for hours.
Just back for sure.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah, And like a lot of these types of things.
His original company name was Mega Dry if descriptive. It
was the automatic cradle manufacturing company. It did see some
pretty early success, and so you figured that was a
good que two rebrand. There's something a little more pleasant
the Lullaby Furniture Corporation.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
So, by nineteen thirty, the company sold three additional products.
They had bassinets, a three and one high share slash rocker,
and a go kart for children that seems super safe,
as well as something called the Flivver Flyver.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Uh, let's call it the fliver because of the CVS,
or we could call it the Fliur if we want
to shut out as the shitch. To be clear, that
go kart folks is not the go kart you're thinking
of from Andretti's or something like that. It's it's just
something they could sit in.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
That has wheels.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Got it so more like a power wheel minus the
power Yeah, yeah, just so.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
And by the end of nineteen thirty, the Lullaby Furniture
Corporation is just mad cap with success. They're gross assets
in nineteen thirty are two hundred and seventeen thousand, two
hundred and twelve dollars and fourteen cents, which means it's
time for our inflation calculator.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Oh can we beep? Can we boop?
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:25):
We must we mustop with deep there.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
We are, so a little bit north of two hundred
and seventy thousand dollars in nineteen thirty thanks to inflation,
is now in twenty twenty six four million, two hundred
and forty two one hundred thousand, ten dollars and sixty
three cents.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Nice one. Heck, yeah it is right.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
I mean, still modest by today's standards, but they're on
the way up. As his success grew, bull Colt had
his share of competitors, of course, entering the market, including
an inventor named Luther P. Jones who came up with
this spended baby hammock situation which could self rock for
up to two hours after being wound. Sorry, I got
(17:06):
to jumped the gun on this one. This was the
clock mechanism. So like a wristwatch that you wind and
it has power reserve, you wind this up and then
it will it will essentially rock itself for up to
two hours with that stored energy. So, judging from the
illustrations that we have here, that ren provided it was
pretty high up and the mechanism on top, you probably
(17:29):
would have had to have like some kind of step
ladder at the very least, if not a full a
frame ladder to get to Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
And also this is clearly for people who are a
little bit more well to do big time. This thing
is do you know what I mean? Like there you
can see the design clearly. It is definitely going to
dominate whatever room you put it in, just on an
interior decoration rate. So you probably need to afford your
(17:57):
own specific room in your domicile for this. And then
you know at some point you'd have to have somebody
service the machine, right.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Oh, clearly it's that level of machine and the ad
illustration it says at the bottom, don't waste time rocking
yo baby's cradle. Let theimoto rock it for you. And
when baby wakes he can watch the wheels go round.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Absolutely, and we know that bullcult soldiered on despite this
emerging competition. In nineteen thirty six, this guy buys an
island expressly for the purposes of logging hardwood. A few
years later, as to historians, you will remember, World War
Two began because Germany invaded Poland, which meant that the
(18:40):
Lullaby Corporation, like so many other Allied businesses, shifted to
the war effort, and so instead of building baby cradles,
now or flivvers. They ended up providing Allied countries the
raw materials that would later be used to build mosquito
(19:01):
bomber airplanes.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Yeah, and they were nicknamed wooden wonders. These airplanes, which
I hadn't heard of before the to Havel the land
d H ninety eight mosquito bomber airplanes, to be precise,
could reach a top speed of four hundred miles per
hour while carrying around four thousand pounds worth of explosives.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Absolutely, yet, is this is gonna sound kind of crazy
when we're saying that these are, you know, wooden planes,
But that's that's where the technology was at the time.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
For sure.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
We know a lot about what is it, the HH
Huntley or the HS Hunting. The wooden submarines was also
a thing.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Oh yeah, well, wood is a great way to start
building something. It's also real flammable. It's also really it's
not perfect, but it's a great way to start ed
for sure. So yeah, over time, the wars come and go.
The Lullaby Company has several name changes, ownership back and forth.
(20:01):
Eventually Lullaby ends their business, but they don't do that
until nineteen ninety five. So good on you, lullaby. I
think we've got time for one more we really wanted
to talk about. This is crazy, Nola Max. This reminds
me of an infamous viral photo from years and years
(20:24):
ago where the controversial legendary musician Michael Jackson held his
baby out a lot out of a wimbo style, Simba style,
lion king style to a bunch of reporters. And I
think he wanted it to be a wholesome moment. Look
(20:44):
at my child, look at what I had wrought. But
the reporters and the paparazzi immediately said, what the heck
are you doing? Hold it a child out the window?
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Well, bet he clearly wanted it to get fresh air
required to renew and purify the baby's blood, because those
who sleep out of doors are stronger children. Man, he
must have been reading.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
He must have been reading Luther Emmett Holtz eighteen ninety
four book The Care and Feeding of Children, which made
these very claims. That is delightful. That name alone is
worth the price of admission. That is talking about them
like their marmots or something.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And doctor Holt is a qualified pediatrician.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Tay, I really loved kids, the care and feeding your children.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah, it's also a it's still a practice in parts
of northern Europe to bundle a baby up and leave
them outdoors in the cold.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Sure, so they will die of exposure because they were
born the wrong sex or something. For their Viking tribe,
that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
It's to renew and purify the blood, just like dogholes.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
I see, if you sleep outdoors, you're a stronger child.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
It does occur to me, Ben, and it probably occurred
to the inventor Ernest J. Henry Pattent did the first
window crib in nineteen nineteen. That not only was this
maybe something that parents might glom onto because of the
Holt Book, but parents living in small apartments or tenement
buildings in New York City for example, or Chicago places
(22:23):
like that, you know, they might not have had much room,
so they take advantage of having like a little cage
that hangs out the window exactly. Because again these are practical.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah, these are not the super well to do people
who can dedicate an entire room in a nursery. Often
they can't dedicate an entire room to individual bedroom for
their older kids. So a lot of these folks during
the second wave of the Industrial Revolution, leave their homes
in rural areas of the country to seek a job
(22:58):
opportunity in the big city. And this is compounded by
a lot of immigration at the time, mostly from Europe
at this point in US history, and those folks automatically
go to cities because typically they're going to have a
community that pre exists of people who are from their
(23:19):
home country. This means that real estate goes through the roof.
If you live in a major city at this time,
like your Chicago's or your New York's, you were probably
living in an apartment. You are probably, as you said,
no super super squeezed for any kind of space. You're
(23:39):
living in a tenement, right, you might share a bathroom
with an entire floor of people. I gotta say it.
The photo that Red has attached here of an actual
window crib. It looks like chicken wire. But the baby
looks happy, confused. The baby doesn't look angry.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
I don't think it looks angry. It doesn't look looks
a little bewildered in the mall. It's actually kind of
a creepy photo, Ben, because the mother's facing away and
the way the lighting is it almost looks like she
has no face or something like. It's a little bit
of a It looks like an art piece, like a
disturbing dystopian art piece, because I keep saying the cage,
because that's what it looks like. It is essentially a
(24:25):
cage like enclosure hanging out the window god knows how
many stories up. And they looked at this as not
only a way of saving space, but potentially in the
cities of a way of providing their children with fresh air. However,
during the Industrial Revolution and the Second Wave, the air
weren't so fresh, right. Yeah, we have to remember the
(24:46):
EPA wouldn't be established the Environmental Protection Agency until nineteen seventy,
and we don't know how long it's going to be
able to stick around the modern day. So a lot
of these folks, and these are all very well ent parents,
a lot of these folks in the city. They want
fresh air for their kiddos, but they are not aware
(25:07):
of the invisible dangers in polluted city air. We're talking
about toxic byproducts made by the smelting of metal, chromium, arsenic, benzene, lead,
all the nasty stuff in a terrible cocktail. And when
they were purchasing these window cribs, which were relatively affordable
(25:27):
by design, they were actually putting their kids, especially like
the higher you get as well, they were putting their
kids in the front lines in the atmospheric trenches of
stuff that history and health studies have conclusively proven is very,
very bad for humans for sure. So it is in
(25:50):
fact they wonder that any of our grandparents survived long
enough to have our parents and allow us to you know,
enjoy our own resh air.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, this is wild.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
A lot of these inventions, as Bren points out, could
be categorized as dumb, bad, and even deadly. And there
are of course plenty more where that came from. We're
going to talk about just a few more here at
the end and then save some for a future Tangents
and Trivia episode.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah. Yeah, So the window caage, just so you know, folks,
mounted just like a window based air conditioning unit, still
very common in cities across the planet, so that's kind
of its legacy. We talked about how our buddy Johnny B.
Buckolt was an inventor or what you called a serial tinker.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Ren.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Let's talk about one of the other things he invented.
He made an automatic cow milker, which is very unpleasant
for the cows. I imagine it latches onto the cows
utters and it uses a lot of them. The spring
mechanisms that he pioneered for the automatic cradle, you squeeze
the utter and get the milk out. He called it
(27:03):
the Western milky machine. It was super unpopular with cows
at being diplomatic.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
For sure, and that didn't really take off because farmers
didn't want to freak their cows out lest they kicked
the farmers in the teeth. That pollution, though, Ben, we
were talking about in American cities was so bad from
the late eighteen hundreds through nineteen twenties that carbon emissions
actually coated birds in soot, changing the colors of their feathers.
(27:30):
And to this day, scientists observe birds to gauge the
severity of pollution and other environmental factors that could negatively
impact human health. Ben, we've talked about this on stuff
that I want you to know. Another way scientists to
use animals to test for environmental contaminants is at nuclear
(27:51):
super fun sites like at Savannah River site near where
we live here in Atlanta, Georgia, where Legacy nuclear waste
from the creation of nuclear warheads was stored and disposed of,
contaminating the groundwater and buried in these open pits, and
so scientists there as part of I believe the Army
(28:11):
Corps of Engineers test wildlife on a regular basis with
Geiger counters. They tag them and then find them and
then test them to make sure that the decontamination processes
are going well.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
And further, folks, here's another look. This is my favorite
example of how crazy the pollution was during the Industrial Revolution.
If you go over to England, you see that the
soot was so widespread it actually caused the population of
peppered moths to shift their colors. As a species, they
(28:46):
used to be pale and speckled, and because the air
in their natural environment got so dark and sooty, they
began to become dark black. For so it actually changed
the color of some animals. This is nuts, And you
(29:06):
also shouted out stuff they don't want you to know.
This is a great thing for anybody who's interested in
some of the darker sides of pollution. In a previous
episode on Her sister show, we talk about the idea
of lead creating serial killers. So check out a book
called Murderland published twenty twenty five, wherein the author Caroline
(29:28):
Fraser talks about the pollution related to smelting and how
it could have been the cause of the Pacific Northwest
serial killer explosion during the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
We talked about this stuff that I want you to
know very recently. Yeah, and do.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Check out that episode, folks. We know it's a little
bit of a dark turn for a show about baby gear,
but we hope you enjoyed it well.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
But Ben, this also kind of ties into the notion
that pollution from smelting could have led to the downfall
of the Roman Empire because of you know, environmental contaminants
that led to cognitive decline.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Yeah, good call.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
And also check out our earlier Ridiculous History episode on
the fall of the Roman Empire as well as the
fall of the Ottoman Empire. And while you're on the internet,
why not give us a nice little rating on your
podcast platform of choice and stay tuned for our upcoming episodes.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Absolutely please do.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
You can find us on Apple Podcasts, where the reviews
really go a long way to helping people discover the show.
We're also on Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcast. Ben,
this was a fun one, man, a little on the
shorter side, but absolutely delightful.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, big, big thanks to our super producer Max the
Bouncing baby Boy Williams Bouncing Bleshing baby Boy Williams. Big
thanks to Alex Williams who composed this track, as well
as Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance and aj Bahamas Jacobs.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Thanks again to Wren for doing the research on this episode.
Will look forward to hearing more from her in the
not too distant.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Future as well.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Christopher Hasiotis and Eaves Jeffco Thanks to them here in spirit,
and Ben, thanks to you man.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
This was a fun one and.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
A hearty goo goo gaga to all our young ridiculous
historians tuning in.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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