February 6, 2024 • 34 mins
In our continually ridiculous mission to explore the funniest events of yesteryear, Ben, Noel and Max often leave some stones unturned. In today's episode the gang pays their respects to the last shantyman, asks why President Taft adopted not one but two cows, and explores multiple historic hot tubs they are not currently allowed to enter. (We end with a shoutout to our favorite turkey.)
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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. We've done our ritualistic capiola, which
we are not going to explain. Clapiola. Excuse me, shout
out to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
What what I bet your No? Clapiola sounds like some
weird like kind of renaissance instruments that is no longer
do we go popular.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You can't pluck the strings, you have to clap on them.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
We have done so much cool research over the years,
and we make no secret that there's often a lot
of stuff we don't get to in the course of
one episode or another. But we're we're just sponges for
all the ridiculous, strange stories of people, places and events
throughout human history. So we we end up saving all
(01:18):
of this. We hoard these weird stories, and we decided
a while back that we're going to make a series
of all the stuff that got left over in a
burst of creativity. We call it the Stuff that Got
left Over, And this is part two of that series.
And Noel scrolling through our our research nibs, our odds.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
And snippets, so we keep all the snippets there we go.
I think we we found some stuff that we just
we just could not leave off the air. I don't
know where should we begin. Oh, how about Stan huge
Ol the last Shantiman. Yes, indeed, I don't know what
a chancy mean. I'm assuming we're talking about sea shanty's
(02:05):
or I don't know.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
We are, So I gotta jump in here real quick,
because Stan hue Gill or I don't actually know how
the last name is pronounced. I've been saying Hugh gill
for years. He is someone I've been trying to do
some sort of podcast episode about for forever. The problem
is there's like a couple out of print works of his,
and there's like a BBC obituary of him, and that's
(02:30):
about it. But he's this interesting story where there is
a chance that every sea shanty that we know today
is because this guy kept track of him.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I think I've mentioned before that I felt woefully excluded
from the sea shanty trend, like I didn't find out
about it until later. It's just one of those things
that just sort of passed me by. I don't know why.
But then we you know, we've talked about on the
show multiple times that you and our buddy Matt Frederick
had a nice sea shanty moments in southern California and
(03:03):
we were traveling together. We all maybe were a few
sheets to the wind, and we hung out on a
corner and her mossa beach and sang what is it? Yeah?
Soon made the Willeman come awful.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
We called them, We decided to call them street shanties.
I think that was back when when we were all
three of us a bit more fond of tipples than
we are presently, and we we had a wholesome time.
It was oh boy did it was celebratory and uh,
you know it being southern California, it was surprising to
(03:46):
me how people passing by would give us kind of
an improving nod. No one like, no one joined us
to be sure, to be certain, but people could. I
think our wholesome inner buzz energy was contagious. And it
turns out, as our pal Max indicated earlier, that we
owe a lot of this to a guy named Stan
(04:07):
Hugil or Hugil. This topic started as one for a
beautiful show that really shows us the potential of podcasting
called Ephemeral, that Max and Alex and several other of
our colleagues made available today. By the way you can listen,
you'll hear all sorts of familiar voices popping in and
(04:27):
out of various episodes. And like Max said, it's tough
to find research on our pal Stan. There really isn't
too much out there about him. Those out of print
books are incredibly difficult to find. But we thought we'd
give Stan his flowers or his his shanty credits. The
(04:50):
shantyman shance be denied. Let's learn a little bit more cants.
He can't can't, No, he can't be denied.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Simon Moffatt is an expert on this fellow and wrote
a really cool article for the BBC called The Last Shantyman,
where he says it should come as no surprise that
the king of the Sea Shanty, the legendary Stan Hugle,
came from Merseyside. And you know, I saw Mercyside and
it made me think of a popular I think music
(05:21):
publication that ended up kind of becoming the name of
a genre, mercy beat, which is kind of the proto
sound of like bands like the Beatles. So mercy Beat
was sort of this like folky kind of type of vibe,
and it sort of evolved into you know what we
know as some of the British invasion kind of sounds.
But Mercy refers to the River Mercy, and Liverpool, of
(05:45):
course is where the Beatles are from, is on the
eastern side of the river's estuary.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And this this idea of a sea shanty for anybody who,
like us, missed the original wave of resurgence. I'm not
taking it back. Let's explain what c shanties are. These
are work songs. They have a lot in common with
maybe songs that people would sing when they are doing
(06:12):
agricultural work in fields or in prison labor, which is.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Much more grizzled.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
And so what you would do is you'd be sailing
in the eighteen hundreds or the early twentieth century, and
you have a lot of hard, repetitive, difficult work involved
just to keep a sailing vessel on the move. Liverpool
figured prominently in a lot of these shanties, as are
pal Moffatt tells us, because most of the crew of
(06:41):
these ships either came from that city or passed through
it at some point. Now, Stan who was born in
Hoylake in nineteen oh six became the sort of.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I don't want to say gatekeeper because I don't like
that connotation, but he became the great aggregator, the great collector.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Of this tradition. And who was that guy in the
US who collected all those traditional songs in the world
of folklore?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Oh gosh, you know who I'm talking about. It was
brothers Lomax Yeah and his brother Yeah, brother as well.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
A free sea shanty, do you sir? Congratulations, Yes, the Lomaxes.
So our buddy Stan first goes to see when he's
just sixteen years old in nineteen twenty two. It's not
uncommon to get involved in that industry at that age,
even earlier. To be honest, he spent more than two
decades working on the seas before he retired in nineteen
(07:36):
forty five, and according to the experts, he is the
last shantyman to sail on the last British commercial sailing ship,
which was called the garth Pool. Ah, the garth Pool.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
But despite you know, you can take the man out
of the sea, but you can't take the sea shanty
out of the man. He is love of the sea,
never wane for an instant, and he became sort of
a like he said, ben like, kind of like a
vanguard of this oral tradition. He became an instructor of
(08:09):
an outward bound sea school and a marine artist and
produced actually a lot of paintings as well.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, and he made Yeah, he made over two hundred
and fifty oil paintings of ships and sea landscapes or
sea scapes. I should say. He also was a prolific author.
He wrote five different books on sea shanties. Those are
very specific books. And he made a lot of appearances
on radio and television. He was also, to our earlier
(08:40):
conversation about translations, he was also a polyglot. He was
fluent in Spanish. Okay, good, that's an achievement. But he's
even more impressive to note he was fluent in Japanese,
and he spoke malte yeah, and Chinese and Maori because
he was sailing around all the time, and you know,
in at least some of those legs of work, his
(09:02):
shipmates probably spoke these languages, which is the best way.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
To learn one. I was about to say, it just
comes from being around it, being sort of steeped in
it through his travels. He knew various dialects of Polynesian.
I didn't even know that was a thing. But it
is this sort of honorific of being the last shantyman
that he will largely, you know, his legacy kind of
rests on and this article, you know, kind of collects
(09:28):
in the spirit of the oral tradition. A lot of folks,
you know, who are kind of part of this community,
you know, which is a little bit niche you know,
this is the shanty community. And Jack Coots is one
of them, who is originally from Dundee but now resides
in Liverpool, and he sings with a group based out
of Merseyside called Storm Along John. I'm really waiting for
(09:50):
it to have and the something something, but it's okay.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
It's Hugh Gills and stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
When Storm Along John and the Albatross Boys would be
a gag reference. It's crazy because everybody in the sort
of sea shanty uvou knows of Stan, and Jack says
the following. He says, Stan was a legend. Literally he
wrote the Bible as far as shanty singers are concerned,
(10:17):
and Jack recalls he traveled to Krackau in Poland with
Storm Along John and Stan when Stan was already in
his eighties and he saw Stan the Man himself entertain
an audience of more than a thousand people much younger
than him, by the way, with his shanties, which apparently
(10:38):
still slap to the point about the resurgence of Sea
Shanty's a few years back, which which we relate to.
I got to tell you, guys, my favorite parody shanty
comes from the Trailer Park Boys, remember them, the Canadian.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Huge fan I don't think I'm remembering a Sea Shanty episode,
though I might have missed that one else.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I think they just filmed it for kicks because they
are out all actually friends outside of the show. And
the guy with the coke bottle glass is Bubbles. Bubbles, Yeah,
actually has a really good voice, singing voice, and they
have a sea shanty entirely about kitties.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You know. He loves the kiddies and Bubbles I forget
the actor's name, He's just Bubbles to me, actually has
a touring band called Bubbles and the Shit Rockers, and
they are supposed to be coming to Atlanta. There's someone
that I met through podcasting in the past who's Canadian,
because they're Canadian, and he actually plays second guitar in
(11:47):
the Shit Rockers. So I really hope to let you
guys know when Bubbles and the Shit Rockers are coming
through Atlanta. I mean, we can all go check it out.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
And back to our friend the legend stand. Stan sadly
passed away in nineteen ninety two and Aberstwyth in Wales,
and he was in his pretty humble abode to up
to down cottage, two rooms on the upstairs, two rooms
on downstairs, and by that point it had become a
living museum for marine historians, shanty singers, and fans of
(12:19):
shanty music. And you can still find some of his
shanty books, but they are out of print. Just to
be clear, most people will tell you that the majority
of sea shanties, if not all, of the traditional sea
shanties we know today, come to us thanks to Stan
and his lifelong work preserving this bit of history.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah, it makes sense. I mean these would have kind
of existed spontaneously in these very isolated, you know, kind
of niche groups of folks. Unless he has someone making
a conscious effort to preserve them, they probably would have
just kind of, you know, be been ephemeral. You know,
it's just sort of what their very nature was. And
you also have to wonder too, like how many of
these did he write? How many of these was he
(13:04):
sort of tweaking based on versions of them that he'd heard,
you know, here again, editing and translation kind of comes
into the picture here because it's all about what was
the spirit of the sea shanty? Did he take a
little creative liberty with them? You know, I'm curious, but
we'll probably never really know.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Also, one other crazy fact I could not get any
confirmation from this, So this is from the Wikipedia article
about San Hugill. Once again, there's not that much right
about it. He was a prisoner of war in World
War two for four and a half years.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Jesus.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, Yeah, there's only one sentence in the Wikipedia article
about that too, so there's no more reference.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
But I did want to throw that in.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
You can understand why he might not want to talk
about that too much, right, But there's this brings us
to another another thing that got left over from previous episode.
In August of twenty twenty two, we had a follow
up conversation speaking niche interests. We were very taken at
(14:04):
the time with presidential pets. We talked about how Abe Lincoln,
most famous for being an amateur wrestler, of course loved.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Cats, but got to go reach on it. Yeah he
had the reach.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
But we didn't get to talk about William Howard Taft,
who had some unusual pets. He really was into cows.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, mooy woolly, not to be confused with Wooly Bully,
which is a sixties song. Yeah, with very deep lyrics
watch He'll Get You So. Taft was as if you
may or may not know the twenty seventh president of
these United States. During his time in the White House,
he was at a reputation, like you said, for having
(14:49):
some kind of quirky pets around, specifically cows. He did
have a more traditional pet than a dog, but he
also had two cows that are regularly listed uh in
the presidential account of his pets. We have Wooly Molly
and Pauline. Yes, no, mooly wooly. See it's really easy
(15:11):
to mix those up. Mooly mooly. Is it a molie
It must be a move mooly wooly, or maybe is
it mooly wooly. That's complicated, Moulli Wally Molly wooly. That's
what we make goal. Why wool why they pronounce it? Yeah,
of course the much more standard polly.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
So of course Taft has a first lady. It's his wife,
Helen Taft, popularly known as Nelly. And when they go
to the White House they take their children. They also
take Moolly Wooly, and it's a bit controversial, but the
boffins and the legislators look around and they say, hey,
(15:51):
there are no ordinances against it. There are no laws,
there are no local regulations. So they let let this
cow out to graze on the south lawn of the
White House.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Also, as the president man, if he wants to have
cows on the lawn, he's going to figure out a
way to have cows on the lawn, you know, specifically
the south lawn. Yeah, yeah, But also we'd be munched
away at grass.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
We have to point out too that the there was
definitely propaganda and political points scoring at this time, but
it wasn't like the age of the internet now, you know,
Now a president could get excoriated for wearing a suit
that is seen as an inappropriate color. If a president
now bought a cow to the White House, there would
(16:35):
be a huge to do on social medium. It's a
different time. But we have to go to some research
by Molly Maijior Warethheimer in her book Inventing a Voice,
The Rhetoric of American First Ladies of the twentieth century.
She said that Nellie Taff played a big role in
having cattle at the White House because she was trying
(16:56):
to get the First Family out of the horse and
buggy era. And yeah, so Nellie looks at the prices
of automobiles and she says this through the roof, it's
bad financial decision. And she goes, Okay, look, if you
give us a discount, we will allow auto manufacturers to
(17:17):
advertise at the White House. And she's still kind of
troubled by the cost, so she looks for other ways
to save money for the First Family and for the nation.
And adding a cow was actually part of their plan
to be thrifty because they could use Molly Wooli's milk
and butter at the White House. So you know, this
(17:40):
way before the farm to table movement, This was just
when that was a legitimate reality.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Well, not only is it thrifty, but it's delicious. You know,
I can't beat the fresh stuff you really can't. But
didn't she also allow the auto manufacturers to like advertise, Yeah, yeah,
that's at the White House. I don't understand what that
consists of, like put a billboard. It's like, what are
we talking. She just perhaps hosted events for them, or
(18:07):
it could be a couple of things. It could be
a lot, It could be up to hosting events. I mean,
it wasn't something as tacky as a big banner in front,
like at the front door.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
But you could also see advertising as access, like allowing
auto manufacturers into into formal events where they can maybe
talk about the American automobile and its advantages. That that's
the kind of advertising that will be tremendously powerful. But
the thing is thinking out of the box. Yes, it's amazing.
(18:40):
It's part of American innovation. The problem was that Mooly
Woolley apparently never quite made enough milk or you know,
in the later butter to satisfy the needs of the family.
At this point, without body shaming, we do have to
we do have to mention that Molly ware Timer in
(19:01):
her book says that Taft weighed around three hundred and
fifty pounds, so he might have wanted more milk and butter.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Than you mean more milk and butter. Yeah, I'm totally
I could get out of this by myself exactly. Yeah,
that's a true story.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
But now they have a really large bathtub in the
White House.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
See win win. And so what about Pauline the cow?
Sources reports that Pauline was brought in to replace Mooly Wooly,
but there are other sources that say the moe Wooly
unfortunately passed away due to an overabundance of oats, overindulging
in oats two years earlier, in nineteen ten, it tasted
(19:44):
previous cow Mooly Wooly. This is the quote here, did
in fact die after eating too many oats. She had
never been instructed by experts that oats are for horses.
Dang it, Mooly Wooly. If only someone had told you,
I know this, I thought hey was for horses. Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Uh Well, the Washington Evening Star publishes something like you obituary,
but it's a bit tongue in cheek and they say
poor moly Wooly. But still a presidential pet is it
is an accolade that most animals cannot attest. To and
(20:24):
we can say confidently that these two cows probably had
a better life than most of the other cows in
America than and today.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
So let's pivot from from presidential cows to hot tubs,
the flurry, flurry of activity, the bubbling waters, natural segue, right,
those two these topics followed Actually yeah, October twentieth, there
we got okay, yeah, good save No October twenty twenty
(21:01):
twenty two. We talked about hot tubs. We talked about
the history of hot tubs, and then we started talking
about very cool, super posh or stunning hot tubs that
none of your faithful correspondence it can afford to go to. Now,
just to be honest with you, like we make our
livy doing podcasting, and Nolan and I have various side gigs,
(21:25):
but we're not quite in the echelon of people who
go to hot tubs like the observatory at Alta Lakes
and tell you Right, Colorado. They don't invite us to
the hot tubs at Davos yet, you know, yeah, no, yet,
tell you Ride does seem like a beautiful place. I've
really never been to Colorado at all, but I have
heard tell Your Right is beautiful and they have a
film festival there called the Tell You Right Film Festival.
(21:48):
But the Observe I mean, I'm sure this Observatory at
Alta Lakes is highly trafficked by film festival goers of
the upper echelons. The Observative tat Alta Lakes is a
super posh lodge just outside tell of Yourrides ski boundary
area that you can only get to by snowmobile or
(22:09):
on skis because it's like Overlook Hotel in the winter style,
you know, as no access via road because it just
gets totally snowed over.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
And we also know that if you go there you
will have some fantastic skiing opportunities right outside your door.
You can also hire a guide from the local San
Juan Outdoor Adventures company to show you the lay of
the land. In summer, you can climb these thirteen thousand
foot peaks. There are these amazing mountain bike trails right
(22:44):
from the lodge. But the best part of it, as
advertised often is the view of the San Juans from
the decks outdoor hot tub.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Now, I'll tell you you know what rich people love
for vacation spots. What's that inaccessible places? God yeah, because
you can only get there via snowmobile, a helicopter like
jet pack.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
You can only you can only reach this exclusive grotto
in a magic boat where you have to answer three
questions from a gnome and then and they can only
happen in like the eclipse times.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
How else are they going to keep the riff raff out?
You know, it's it's it's understandable.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
I've been you know, you guys know I've been in
those situations, and it's weird because once you get to
those places. I'll be completely honest, Once you get to
those places, a lot of it feels like people trying
to justify why they're there and trying to make things
feel maybe a little more fun than they are because
(23:52):
you really are in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Well you know, we're sort of ragging on the super
wealthy here a little bit. But this place, when you
actually do the math, if you had enough pals not
insane considering it's I think two thousand bucks a night
and it will accommodate up to twelve guests. It's only
one hundred and sixty six bucks a night, you know,
(24:14):
per guests. I mean that's hell. You can't get a
holiday in for that price.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, and this is not the only cool hot tub.
We've got two others we wanted to mention. There's the
Puma Lodge in Chile, and in twenty fifteen a company
named Earth River Expeditions began offering lodge to lodge trips
down Chile's legendary Futa Lufa River. You spend nine days
(24:41):
rafting through some pretty intense whitewater Class four and Class five,
and you sleep in these deluxe, primo accommodations each night.
The remote Puma Lodge, which will be the home base
for two nights, has a wood fired outdoor tub super high, sure, classy. Yeah,
wood fire tub just seems so inconvenient, Like.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It does a little bit. But I would assume that
the the premises come with you know, servants or footmen
to stoke the fires of the wood fire.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
I don't think they're asking people to keep an eye
on the fire themselves, obviously.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I don't know what would hope fires in the tub
with you if you look at the photo, But I'm
assuming somebody comes by every few minutes and puts a
new piece in for you.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Oh yeah, that makes sense. But one thing I think
we all appreciate it. On the original hot tub episode
is when we sort of started venturing out past just
like traditional hot tubs and more into like sauna culture,
which is huge in Iceland. I think we even ended
up talking about like how popular it is to like
cook meats whilst taking us Schmitz.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
You knows Finland where they have the cutouts in the
sauna put the meat in.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Such war episode on News Expedition at All there you go.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Also Finland, And one thing that I love about the
apartments there, it's so weird what's considered basic accommodation from
country to country. In Finland, it is considered basic accommodation
for your apartment to have a sauna.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, that's is pretty neat. Well, you know, sauna culture
is big in Iceland as well. In Holstvlore, I'm gonna
say hvolsvo umlaut llu r there's a place called the
Hotel Ranga. Ah yes, yes, ah, yes, the Hotel Ranga.
You can spot the Mount Hecla volcano from three outdoor
(26:36):
riverside hot tubs at Hotel Rinka, located in a pastoral
corner of South Iceland. Visit during the northern lights and
you can request an Aurora alarm clock to make sure
you catch a night skylit with color or stargaze from
the hotel's standalone observatory, complete with retractable roof but's wing
the suns up. You ask, well, you'll explore glacial caves,
(27:00):
take a scenic flight over Mount Hecla, and fish for
salmon in the east Mango biffo. He just reach in
there and grab them with your hands. They're just lous
them with salmon. Also cheaper than going to the restaurants
in Iceland. To be honest, apparently everything is prohibited, and
it makes sense because it's so remote, you know, it's like,
you know, hard to get that. It's like, I don't
know if you guys have been keeping up with the
(27:20):
new season of True Detective where they're in allowed, but
there's one really telling kind of not like particularly exciting detail,
but like Oreos costs like twenty five dollars there because
like it's the important export is getting the funians there.
You know, it's a it's a it's a difficult proposition,
it really is.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And I know that show is quote unquote controversial to
some folks.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
But I like it. I love it a new episode
that came out yesterday I thought was a banger. No,
I'm excited to see where it No. No, I'm really
excited to see where it goes.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, And I think it's smart to keep it to
six episodes there.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
It's leaning into the supernatural stuff, like one of them
to season one. I think it's cool. I think they're
doing a five know, I love it. Man. And and
speaking of weird things, we have been doing that for
the last thirty minutes or so. Shall we continue? Yeah,
speaking of one thing before we move on.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
True Detective Night Country, I think a beautiful thing they
did is so surreal is any of those moments that
we see can be occurring at eleven am local time?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
And it's really disorienting even just watching the show and realizing,
like what time was it supposed to be? Like are
they are they going to bed late or early or
like anyway, it's very very interesting. I highly recommend and
put aside any preconceived notions about what you might think
about the previous season. I think it's very well done.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
And do know, do be honest with yourself, folks, and
realize that a lot of the criticism of that show
is coming from the internet's love of misogyny.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Just absolutely, just to be honest, because the showrunner used
to be pretty manly man, you know, Nick Pittsilao, and
now this season's helm by a woman, and I think
a lot of people that kind of brokes him the
wrong way. Yeah, Nick was acting out a little on
his Instagram. Nick can say, you see he's he does that.
I'm not a huge I'm not a huge fan of
(29:18):
his vibes in that respect. So these people can dump
a bucket of cold water on your head. That's all
I've got to say. You know, no hot tough for them.
You know what we are speaking of frozen things? Yeah right,
we've got We've got double seguayes here.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
What we are fans of is weird commercials and food.
And we thought, dating back to our November twenty fourth,
twenty two and twenty twenty twenty two Keep It All
in Max episode on How the there was a massive
screw up on the part of Swanson that led to
(29:54):
the dawn of Frozen TV Dinners. They actually they ordered
way too much turkey that they thought they were gonna
move move during the Thanksgiving season, and since they didn't
sell the Turkey. They couldn't take a loss on it,
so they made television dinners. We found we found a
lot of weird, weird TV dinner commercials. As a matter
(30:17):
of fact, what if we do know this was your idea.
What if we do a little bit of a montage
of TV dinners and then we'll just come back for
the credits.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
You gotta have a montage.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Hey, you gals think you're lucky you can get Swanson
TV Turkey Dinners.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
But I say Swanson TV Turkey Dinners are a bigger
break for husbands. Now you take me. I could be early,
that can be late, that can bring pals to dinner anytime.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
I please.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
And get this, My wife never panics. She just takes
Swanson TV Turkey Dinners from the freezing compartment of our
refrigerator when I'm a little off schedule.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
And right you are, Jack, you a world away from
the every day with the new Swanson International Dinners. Take
you away from there every day to a world makes
you want in from Swanson.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
A fine wine is a perfect balancing of taste. So
is a fine dinner. You Le menuel Le menu frozen
dinners from Swansen so extraordinary. You dares have them with
a vintage wine. This is an ordinary man. Honey, come home,
(31:35):
this is a baby today, your bodyslfusial. I'll starve it.
What's for de I made your favorite.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Hungry and there we go, big, big thanks to the
super producer, the man, the myth legend, mister Max Williams
for that lovely montage which I.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Don't know about you. Noel left me a little famished. Yeah,
specifically for some kind of weird meet and three with
some brown gravy, uh gelatinous.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Also, just to jump in to bring this fact back
up for the original episode, they didn't have a place
to store this stuff, but they had a train that
as long as the train was moving, it would refrigerate.
They've had a train going between like I think it was,
Ohio and New.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Jersey, back and forth. With all that back and forth.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
That was their solution was to just keep doing that.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Because they were there. They were in desperate danger of
having these things spoil because they had way too many
of them, right.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
And they also uh, they also pulled off quite a
coup because the American public in the beginning didn't bother
to ask why the main entree for all of these
was Turkey.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Inevitably. Uh so rest is history though, you know, and
as we experienced uh through the magic of editing. M
h and uh speaking to Magic, Turkey's big shot out
to the Quist Jonathan strick big big thanks A J.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Jacobs the Puzzler, check it out, check it Uh. Noel's
going to be on.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
His show at the Puzzler pretty soon. They just did
a live show in New York. I sign that a
lot of fun. Yeah, I really liked that guy, super cool.
You know what, Let's let's let's drop the facade. We
like Jonathan Strickland too. I'm gonna be the first one
to say I said earlier episode. I know, I know,
we we we always say we love you. Jonathan's huge
thanks to Eves, Jeff Co, Chris frasciotis here in spirit,
(33:32):
Alex Williams who composed this banging bippity bop that you're
hearing in your ear holes right now, and big big
thanks to you, Noel. Here's two more episodes in the future,
and also with you. We'll see you next time, folks.
(33:53):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, 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. We've done our ritualistic capiola, which
we are not going to explain. Clapiola. Excuse me, shout
out to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
What what I bet your No? Clapiola sounds like some
weird like kind of renaissance instruments that is no longer
do we go popular.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You can't pluck the strings, you have to clap on them.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
We have done so much cool research over the years,
and we make no secret that there's often a lot
of stuff we don't get to in the course of
one episode or another. But we're we're just sponges for
all the ridiculous, strange stories of people, places and events
throughout human history. So we we end up saving all
(01:18):
of this. We hoard these weird stories, and we decided
a while back that we're going to make a series
of all the stuff that got left over in a
burst of creativity. We call it the Stuff that Got
left Over, And this is part two of that series.
And Noel scrolling through our our research nibs, our odds.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
And snippets, so we keep all the snippets there we go.
I think we we found some stuff that we just
we just could not leave off the air. I don't
know where should we begin. Oh, how about Stan huge
Ol the last Shantiman. Yes, indeed, I don't know what
a chancy mean. I'm assuming we're talking about sea shanty's
(02:05):
or I don't know.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
We are, So I gotta jump in here real quick,
because Stan hue Gill or I don't actually know how
the last name is pronounced. I've been saying Hugh gill
for years. He is someone I've been trying to do
some sort of podcast episode about for forever. The problem
is there's like a couple out of print works of his,
and there's like a BBC obituary of him, and that's
(02:30):
about it. But he's this interesting story where there is
a chance that every sea shanty that we know today
is because this guy kept track of him.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I think I've mentioned before that I felt woefully excluded
from the sea shanty trend, like I didn't find out
about it until later. It's just one of those things
that just sort of passed me by. I don't know why.
But then we you know, we've talked about on the
show multiple times that you and our buddy Matt Frederick
had a nice sea shanty moments in southern California and
(03:03):
we were traveling together. We all maybe were a few
sheets to the wind, and we hung out on a
corner and her mossa beach and sang what is it? Yeah?
Soon made the Willeman come awful.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
We called them, We decided to call them street shanties.
I think that was back when when we were all
three of us a bit more fond of tipples than
we are presently, and we we had a wholesome time.
It was oh boy did it was celebratory and uh,
you know it being southern California, it was surprising to
(03:46):
me how people passing by would give us kind of
an improving nod. No one like, no one joined us
to be sure, to be certain, but people could. I
think our wholesome inner buzz energy was contagious. And it
turns out, as our pal Max indicated earlier, that we
owe a lot of this to a guy named Stan
(04:07):
Hugil or Hugil. This topic started as one for a
beautiful show that really shows us the potential of podcasting
called Ephemeral, that Max and Alex and several other of
our colleagues made available today. By the way you can listen,
you'll hear all sorts of familiar voices popping in and
(04:27):
out of various episodes. And like Max said, it's tough
to find research on our pal Stan. There really isn't
too much out there about him. Those out of print
books are incredibly difficult to find. But we thought we'd
give Stan his flowers or his his shanty credits. The
(04:50):
shantyman shance be denied. Let's learn a little bit more cants.
He can't can't, No, he can't be denied.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Simon Moffatt is an expert on this fellow and wrote
a really cool article for the BBC called The Last Shantyman,
where he says it should come as no surprise that
the king of the Sea Shanty, the legendary Stan Hugle,
came from Merseyside. And you know, I saw Mercyside and
it made me think of a popular I think music
(05:21):
publication that ended up kind of becoming the name of
a genre, mercy beat, which is kind of the proto
sound of like bands like the Beatles. So mercy Beat
was sort of this like folky kind of type of vibe,
and it sort of evolved into you know what we
know as some of the British invasion kind of sounds.
But Mercy refers to the River Mercy, and Liverpool, of
(05:45):
course is where the Beatles are from, is on the
eastern side of the river's estuary.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
And this this idea of a sea shanty for anybody who,
like us, missed the original wave of resurgence. I'm not
taking it back. Let's explain what c shanties are. These
are work songs. They have a lot in common with
maybe songs that people would sing when they are doing
(06:12):
agricultural work in fields or in prison labor, which is.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Much more grizzled.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
And so what you would do is you'd be sailing
in the eighteen hundreds or the early twentieth century, and
you have a lot of hard, repetitive, difficult work involved
just to keep a sailing vessel on the move. Liverpool
figured prominently in a lot of these shanties, as are
pal Moffatt tells us, because most of the crew of
(06:41):
these ships either came from that city or passed through
it at some point. Now, Stan who was born in
Hoylake in nineteen oh six became the sort of.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I don't want to say gatekeeper because I don't like
that connotation, but he became the great aggregator, the great collector.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Of this tradition. And who was that guy in the
US who collected all those traditional songs in the world
of folklore?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Oh gosh, you know who I'm talking about. It was
brothers Lomax Yeah and his brother Yeah, brother as well.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
A free sea shanty, do you sir? Congratulations, Yes, the Lomaxes.
So our buddy Stan first goes to see when he's
just sixteen years old in nineteen twenty two. It's not
uncommon to get involved in that industry at that age,
even earlier. To be honest, he spent more than two
decades working on the seas before he retired in nineteen
(07:36):
forty five, and according to the experts, he is the
last shantyman to sail on the last British commercial sailing ship,
which was called the garth Pool. Ah, the garth Pool.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
But despite you know, you can take the man out
of the sea, but you can't take the sea shanty
out of the man. He is love of the sea,
never wane for an instant, and he became sort of
a like he said, ben like, kind of like a
vanguard of this oral tradition. He became an instructor of
(08:09):
an outward bound sea school and a marine artist and
produced actually a lot of paintings as well.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, and he made Yeah, he made over two hundred
and fifty oil paintings of ships and sea landscapes or
sea scapes. I should say. He also was a prolific author.
He wrote five different books on sea shanties. Those are
very specific books. And he made a lot of appearances
on radio and television. He was also, to our earlier
(08:40):
conversation about translations, he was also a polyglot. He was
fluent in Spanish. Okay, good, that's an achievement. But he's
even more impressive to note he was fluent in Japanese,
and he spoke malte yeah, and Chinese and Maori because
he was sailing around all the time, and you know,
in at least some of those legs of work, his
(09:02):
shipmates probably spoke these languages, which is the best way.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
To learn one. I was about to say, it just
comes from being around it, being sort of steeped in
it through his travels. He knew various dialects of Polynesian.
I didn't even know that was a thing. But it
is this sort of honorific of being the last shantyman
that he will largely, you know, his legacy kind of
rests on and this article, you know, kind of collects
(09:28):
in the spirit of the oral tradition. A lot of folks,
you know, who are kind of part of this community,
you know, which is a little bit niche you know,
this is the shanty community. And Jack Coots is one
of them, who is originally from Dundee but now resides
in Liverpool, and he sings with a group based out
of Merseyside called Storm Along John. I'm really waiting for
(09:50):
it to have and the something something, but it's okay.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
It's Hugh Gills and stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
When Storm Along John and the Albatross Boys would be
a gag reference. It's crazy because everybody in the sort
of sea shanty uvou knows of Stan, and Jack says
the following. He says, Stan was a legend. Literally he
wrote the Bible as far as shanty singers are concerned,
(10:17):
and Jack recalls he traveled to Krackau in Poland with
Storm Along John and Stan when Stan was already in
his eighties and he saw Stan the Man himself entertain
an audience of more than a thousand people much younger
than him, by the way, with his shanties, which apparently
(10:38):
still slap to the point about the resurgence of Sea
Shanty's a few years back, which which we relate to.
I got to tell you, guys, my favorite parody shanty
comes from the Trailer Park Boys, remember them, the Canadian.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Huge fan I don't think I'm remembering a Sea Shanty episode,
though I might have missed that one else.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I think they just filmed it for kicks because they
are out all actually friends outside of the show. And
the guy with the coke bottle glass is Bubbles. Bubbles, Yeah,
actually has a really good voice, singing voice, and they
have a sea shanty entirely about kitties.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You know. He loves the kiddies and Bubbles I forget
the actor's name, He's just Bubbles to me, actually has
a touring band called Bubbles and the Shit Rockers, and
they are supposed to be coming to Atlanta. There's someone
that I met through podcasting in the past who's Canadian,
because they're Canadian, and he actually plays second guitar in
(11:47):
the Shit Rockers. So I really hope to let you
guys know when Bubbles and the Shit Rockers are coming
through Atlanta. I mean, we can all go check it out.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
And back to our friend the legend stand. Stan sadly
passed away in nineteen ninety two and Aberstwyth in Wales,
and he was in his pretty humble abode to up
to down cottage, two rooms on the upstairs, two rooms
on downstairs, and by that point it had become a
living museum for marine historians, shanty singers, and fans of
(12:19):
shanty music. And you can still find some of his
shanty books, but they are out of print. Just to
be clear, most people will tell you that the majority
of sea shanties, if not all, of the traditional sea
shanties we know today, come to us thanks to Stan
and his lifelong work preserving this bit of history.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah, it makes sense. I mean these would have kind
of existed spontaneously in these very isolated, you know, kind
of niche groups of folks. Unless he has someone making
a conscious effort to preserve them, they probably would have
just kind of, you know, be been ephemeral. You know,
it's just sort of what their very nature was. And
you also have to wonder too, like how many of
these did he write? How many of these was he
(13:04):
sort of tweaking based on versions of them that he'd heard,
you know, here again, editing and translation kind of comes
into the picture here because it's all about what was
the spirit of the sea shanty? Did he take a
little creative liberty with them? You know, I'm curious, but
we'll probably never really know.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Also, one other crazy fact I could not get any
confirmation from this, So this is from the Wikipedia article
about San Hugill. Once again, there's not that much right
about it. He was a prisoner of war in World
War two for four and a half years.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Jesus.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Yeah, Yeah, there's only one sentence in the Wikipedia article
about that too, so there's no more reference.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
But I did want to throw that in.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
You can understand why he might not want to talk
about that too much, right, But there's this brings us
to another another thing that got left over from previous episode.
In August of twenty twenty two, we had a follow
up conversation speaking niche interests. We were very taken at
(14:04):
the time with presidential pets. We talked about how Abe Lincoln,
most famous for being an amateur wrestler, of course loved.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Cats, but got to go reach on it. Yeah he
had the reach.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
But we didn't get to talk about William Howard Taft,
who had some unusual pets. He really was into cows.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Yeah, mooy woolly, not to be confused with Wooly Bully,
which is a sixties song. Yeah, with very deep lyrics
watch He'll Get You So. Taft was as if you
may or may not know the twenty seventh president of
these United States. During his time in the White House,
he was at a reputation, like you said, for having
(14:49):
some kind of quirky pets around, specifically cows. He did
have a more traditional pet than a dog, but he
also had two cows that are regularly listed uh in
the presidential account of his pets. We have Wooly Molly
and Pauline. Yes, no, mooly wooly. See it's really easy
(15:11):
to mix those up. Mooly mooly. Is it a molie
It must be a move mooly wooly, or maybe is
it mooly wooly. That's complicated, Moulli Wally Molly wooly. That's
what we make goal. Why wool why they pronounce it? Yeah,
of course the much more standard polly.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
So of course Taft has a first lady. It's his wife,
Helen Taft, popularly known as Nelly. And when they go
to the White House they take their children. They also
take Moolly Wooly, and it's a bit controversial, but the
boffins and the legislators look around and they say, hey,
(15:51):
there are no ordinances against it. There are no laws,
there are no local regulations. So they let let this
cow out to graze on the south lawn of the
White House.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Also, as the president man, if he wants to have
cows on the lawn, he's going to figure out a
way to have cows on the lawn, you know, specifically
the south lawn. Yeah, yeah, But also we'd be munched
away at grass.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
We have to point out too that the there was
definitely propaganda and political points scoring at this time, but
it wasn't like the age of the internet now, you know,
Now a president could get excoriated for wearing a suit
that is seen as an inappropriate color. If a president
now bought a cow to the White House, there would
(16:35):
be a huge to do on social medium. It's a
different time. But we have to go to some research
by Molly Maijior Warethheimer in her book Inventing a Voice,
The Rhetoric of American First Ladies of the twentieth century.
She said that Nellie Taff played a big role in
having cattle at the White House because she was trying
(16:56):
to get the First Family out of the horse and
buggy era. And yeah, so Nellie looks at the prices
of automobiles and she says this through the roof, it's
bad financial decision. And she goes, Okay, look, if you
give us a discount, we will allow auto manufacturers to
(17:17):
advertise at the White House. And she's still kind of
troubled by the cost, so she looks for other ways
to save money for the First Family and for the nation.
And adding a cow was actually part of their plan
to be thrifty because they could use Molly Wooli's milk
and butter at the White House. So you know, this
(17:40):
way before the farm to table movement, This was just
when that was a legitimate reality.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Well, not only is it thrifty, but it's delicious. You know,
I can't beat the fresh stuff you really can't. But
didn't she also allow the auto manufacturers to like advertise, Yeah, yeah,
that's at the White House. I don't understand what that
consists of, like put a billboard. It's like, what are
we talking. She just perhaps hosted events for them, or
(18:07):
it could be a couple of things. It could be
a lot, It could be up to hosting events. I mean,
it wasn't something as tacky as a big banner in front,
like at the front door.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
But you could also see advertising as access, like allowing
auto manufacturers into into formal events where they can maybe
talk about the American automobile and its advantages. That that's
the kind of advertising that will be tremendously powerful. But
the thing is thinking out of the box. Yes, it's amazing.
(18:40):
It's part of American innovation. The problem was that Mooly
Woolley apparently never quite made enough milk or you know,
in the later butter to satisfy the needs of the family.
At this point, without body shaming, we do have to
we do have to mention that Molly ware Timer in
(19:01):
her book says that Taft weighed around three hundred and
fifty pounds, so he might have wanted more milk and butter.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Than you mean more milk and butter. Yeah, I'm totally
I could get out of this by myself exactly. Yeah,
that's a true story.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
But now they have a really large bathtub in the
White House.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
See win win. And so what about Pauline the cow?
Sources reports that Pauline was brought in to replace Mooly Wooly,
but there are other sources that say the moe Wooly
unfortunately passed away due to an overabundance of oats, overindulging
in oats two years earlier, in nineteen ten, it tasted
(19:44):
previous cow Mooly Wooly. This is the quote here, did
in fact die after eating too many oats. She had
never been instructed by experts that oats are for horses.
Dang it, Mooly Wooly. If only someone had told you,
I know this, I thought hey was for horses. Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Uh Well, the Washington Evening Star publishes something like you obituary,
but it's a bit tongue in cheek and they say
poor moly Wooly. But still a presidential pet is it
is an accolade that most animals cannot attest. To and
(20:24):
we can say confidently that these two cows probably had
a better life than most of the other cows in
America than and today.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
So let's pivot from from presidential cows to hot tubs,
the flurry, flurry of activity, the bubbling waters, natural segue, right,
those two these topics followed Actually yeah, October twentieth, there
we got okay, yeah, good save No October twenty twenty
(21:01):
twenty two. We talked about hot tubs. We talked about
the history of hot tubs, and then we started talking
about very cool, super posh or stunning hot tubs that
none of your faithful correspondence it can afford to go to. Now,
just to be honest with you, like we make our
livy doing podcasting, and Nolan and I have various side gigs,
(21:25):
but we're not quite in the echelon of people who
go to hot tubs like the observatory at Alta Lakes
and tell you Right, Colorado. They don't invite us to
the hot tubs at Davos yet, you know, yeah, no, yet,
tell you Ride does seem like a beautiful place. I've
really never been to Colorado at all, but I have
heard tell Your Right is beautiful and they have a
film festival there called the Tell You Right Film Festival.
(21:48):
But the Observe I mean, I'm sure this Observatory at
Alta Lakes is highly trafficked by film festival goers of
the upper echelons. The Observative tat Alta Lakes is a
super posh lodge just outside tell of Yourrides ski boundary
area that you can only get to by snowmobile or
(22:09):
on skis because it's like Overlook Hotel in the winter style,
you know, as no access via road because it just
gets totally snowed over.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
And we also know that if you go there you
will have some fantastic skiing opportunities right outside your door.
You can also hire a guide from the local San
Juan Outdoor Adventures company to show you the lay of
the land. In summer, you can climb these thirteen thousand
foot peaks. There are these amazing mountain bike trails right
(22:44):
from the lodge. But the best part of it, as
advertised often is the view of the San Juans from
the decks outdoor hot tub.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Now, I'll tell you you know what rich people love
for vacation spots. What's that inaccessible places? God yeah, because
you can only get there via snowmobile, a helicopter like
jet pack.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
You can only you can only reach this exclusive grotto
in a magic boat where you have to answer three
questions from a gnome and then and they can only
happen in like the eclipse times.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
How else are they going to keep the riff raff out?
You know, it's it's it's understandable.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
I've been you know, you guys know I've been in
those situations, and it's weird because once you get to
those places. I'll be completely honest, Once you get to
those places, a lot of it feels like people trying
to justify why they're there and trying to make things
feel maybe a little more fun than they are because
(23:52):
you really are in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Well you know, we're sort of ragging on the super
wealthy here a little bit. But this place, when you
actually do the math, if you had enough pals not
insane considering it's I think two thousand bucks a night
and it will accommodate up to twelve guests. It's only
one hundred and sixty six bucks a night, you know,
(24:14):
per guests. I mean that's hell. You can't get a
holiday in for that price.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah, and this is not the only cool hot tub.
We've got two others we wanted to mention. There's the
Puma Lodge in Chile, and in twenty fifteen a company
named Earth River Expeditions began offering lodge to lodge trips
down Chile's legendary Futa Lufa River. You spend nine days
(24:41):
rafting through some pretty intense whitewater Class four and Class five,
and you sleep in these deluxe, primo accommodations each night.
The remote Puma Lodge, which will be the home base
for two nights, has a wood fired outdoor tub super high, sure, classy. Yeah,
wood fire tub just seems so inconvenient, Like.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It does a little bit. But I would assume that
the the premises come with you know, servants or footmen
to stoke the fires of the wood fire.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
I don't think they're asking people to keep an eye
on the fire themselves, obviously.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I don't know what would hope fires in the tub
with you if you look at the photo, But I'm
assuming somebody comes by every few minutes and puts a
new piece in for you.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Oh yeah, that makes sense. But one thing I think
we all appreciate it. On the original hot tub episode
is when we sort of started venturing out past just
like traditional hot tubs and more into like sauna culture,
which is huge in Iceland. I think we even ended
up talking about like how popular it is to like
cook meats whilst taking us Schmitz.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
You knows Finland where they have the cutouts in the
sauna put the meat in.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Such war episode on News Expedition at All there you go.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Also Finland, And one thing that I love about the
apartments there, it's so weird what's considered basic accommodation from
country to country. In Finland, it is considered basic accommodation
for your apartment to have a sauna.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, that's is pretty neat. Well, you know, sauna culture
is big in Iceland as well. In Holstvlore, I'm gonna
say hvolsvo umlaut llu r there's a place called the
Hotel Ranga. Ah yes, yes, ah, yes, the Hotel Ranga.
You can spot the Mount Hecla volcano from three outdoor
(26:36):
riverside hot tubs at Hotel Rinka, located in a pastoral
corner of South Iceland. Visit during the northern lights and
you can request an Aurora alarm clock to make sure
you catch a night skylit with color or stargaze from
the hotel's standalone observatory, complete with retractable roof but's wing
the suns up. You ask, well, you'll explore glacial caves,
(27:00):
take a scenic flight over Mount Hecla, and fish for
salmon in the east Mango biffo. He just reach in
there and grab them with your hands. They're just lous
them with salmon. Also cheaper than going to the restaurants
in Iceland. To be honest, apparently everything is prohibited, and
it makes sense because it's so remote, you know, it's like,
you know, hard to get that. It's like, I don't
know if you guys have been keeping up with the
(27:20):
new season of True Detective where they're in allowed, but
there's one really telling kind of not like particularly exciting detail,
but like Oreos costs like twenty five dollars there because
like it's the important export is getting the funians there.
You know, it's a it's a it's a difficult proposition,
it really is.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And I know that show is quote unquote controversial to
some folks.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
But I like it. I love it a new episode
that came out yesterday I thought was a banger. No,
I'm excited to see where it No. No, I'm really
excited to see where it goes.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, And I think it's smart to keep it to
six episodes there.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
It's leaning into the supernatural stuff, like one of them
to season one. I think it's cool. I think they're
doing a five know, I love it. Man. And and
speaking of weird things, we have been doing that for
the last thirty minutes or so. Shall we continue? Yeah,
speaking of one thing before we move on.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
True Detective Night Country, I think a beautiful thing they
did is so surreal is any of those moments that
we see can be occurring at eleven am local time?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
And it's really disorienting even just watching the show and realizing,
like what time was it supposed to be? Like are
they are they going to bed late or early or
like anyway, it's very very interesting. I highly recommend and
put aside any preconceived notions about what you might think
about the previous season. I think it's very well done.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
And do know, do be honest with yourself, folks, and
realize that a lot of the criticism of that show
is coming from the internet's love of misogyny.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Just absolutely, just to be honest, because the showrunner used
to be pretty manly man, you know, Nick Pittsilao, and
now this season's helm by a woman, and I think
a lot of people that kind of brokes him the
wrong way. Yeah, Nick was acting out a little on
his Instagram. Nick can say, you see he's he does that.
I'm not a huge I'm not a huge fan of
(29:18):
his vibes in that respect. So these people can dump
a bucket of cold water on your head. That's all
I've got to say. You know, no hot tough for them.
You know what we are speaking of frozen things? Yeah right,
we've got We've got double seguayes here.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
What we are fans of is weird commercials and food.
And we thought, dating back to our November twenty fourth,
twenty two and twenty twenty twenty two Keep It All
in Max episode on How the there was a massive
screw up on the part of Swanson that led to
(29:54):
the dawn of Frozen TV Dinners. They actually they ordered
way too much turkey that they thought they were gonna
move move during the Thanksgiving season, and since they didn't
sell the Turkey. They couldn't take a loss on it,
so they made television dinners. We found we found a
lot of weird, weird TV dinner commercials. As a matter
(30:17):
of fact, what if we do know this was your idea.
What if we do a little bit of a montage
of TV dinners and then we'll just come back for
the credits.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
You gotta have a montage.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Hey, you gals think you're lucky you can get Swanson
TV Turkey Dinners.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
But I say Swanson TV Turkey Dinners are a bigger
break for husbands. Now you take me. I could be early,
that can be late, that can bring pals to dinner anytime.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
I please.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
And get this, My wife never panics. She just takes
Swanson TV Turkey Dinners from the freezing compartment of our
refrigerator when I'm a little off schedule.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
And right you are, Jack, you a world away from
the every day with the new Swanson International Dinners. Take
you away from there every day to a world makes
you want in from Swanson.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
A fine wine is a perfect balancing of taste. So
is a fine dinner. You Le menuel Le menu frozen
dinners from Swansen so extraordinary. You dares have them with
a vintage wine. This is an ordinary man. Honey, come home,
(31:35):
this is a baby today, your bodyslfusial. I'll starve it.
What's for de I made your favorite.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Hungry and there we go, big, big thanks to the
super producer, the man, the myth legend, mister Max Williams
for that lovely montage which I.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Don't know about you. Noel left me a little famished. Yeah,
specifically for some kind of weird meet and three with
some brown gravy, uh gelatinous.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Also, just to jump in to bring this fact back
up for the original episode, they didn't have a place
to store this stuff, but they had a train that
as long as the train was moving, it would refrigerate.
They've had a train going between like I think it was,
Ohio and New.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Jersey, back and forth. With all that back and forth.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
That was their solution was to just keep doing that.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Because they were there. They were in desperate danger of
having these things spoil because they had way too many
of them, right.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
And they also uh, they also pulled off quite a
coup because the American public in the beginning didn't bother
to ask why the main entree for all of these
was Turkey.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Inevitably. Uh so rest is history though, you know, and
as we experienced uh through the magic of editing. M
h and uh speaking to Magic, Turkey's big shot out
to the Quist Jonathan strick big big thanks A J.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Jacobs the Puzzler, check it out, check it Uh. Noel's
going to be on.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
His show at the Puzzler pretty soon. They just did
a live show in New York. I sign that a
lot of fun. Yeah, I really liked that guy, super cool.
You know what, Let's let's let's drop the facade. We
like Jonathan Strickland too. I'm gonna be the first one
to say I said earlier episode. I know, I know,
we we we always say we love you. Jonathan's huge
thanks to Eves, Jeff Co, Chris frasciotis here in spirit,
(33:32):
Alex Williams who composed this banging bippity bop that you're
hearing in your ear holes right now, and big big
thanks to you, Noel. Here's two more episodes in the future,
and also with you. We'll see you next time, folks.
(33:53):
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, 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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