August 8, 2019 • 34 mins
The guys often end the show by asking you and your fellow listeners for your own takes on everything from strange town names, crackpot military experiments and more. In today’s episode, Ben and Noel explore some of their favorite listener feedback and — for some reason — decide to check out their worst reviews online.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. So
(00:28):
one of the memes that I get sent most frequently,
I would say several times a month is that image
of a person sitting by a sign of three people eating,
laughing and talking, and the person sitting by the sign
they have a bowl of something and they're looking at
the sign and laughing, so they're in conversation, and the
(00:50):
caption is always something like this is how it feels
to listen to podcasts, and I get it. But today
we're going to mitigate that a little bit, right, I'm that.
I'm no, it's not really a meme, but one of
my the you know, an image that I used to
kind of define my life by is of that cartoon
dog sitting in a room on fire saying everything's okay.
(01:10):
That's how I feel when I read UH iTunes reviews,
And we'll get to those as well. But one thing
that always UH lights up our studio and our day
is our better third are super producer Casey Pegram Casey.
I've got to ask you. We've been in this business
for a long long time. Now, do you ever read
(01:32):
reviews of shows you create? I do, Actually, I read
all the reviews. Um, I feel like I'm in a
maybe a little bit better position to do that because
I'm not typically the on air personality. It's it's a
little less personal. But I do like to be aware
at least of what the people are saying out there,
even if they're jerks about it. You know, It's it's
good to know sometimes the truth can hurt. Casey on
(01:54):
the case Well, you, my friends are in our living
in interesting times for this episode because we are going
to explore some reviews, and you occur in a few
of them. In fact, we're not just going to explore reviews.
We're not just going to explore emails. We're explored everything.
(02:16):
This is sort of a moment where we say, enough
about us, what about you? Because on this show we
always ask, or we frequently ask a question towards the end,
like what are some weird town names in your neck
of the global woods? Or what are some other strange
military experiments, etcetera, etcetera. At all are we talking about
(02:38):
military experiments today? Ben? I mean we might get to it,
you know, because every single time we do an episode,
we get this flood of amazing correspondencies from you, specifically
you and your fellow listeners. And although it's tough for
us to respond in a punctual manner in writing, we do.
(02:58):
Each of us read everything that you said, and we
enjoy them. We think you make important points. And today,
in this very special listener Maile episode, we'd like to
share some of the things that your fellow listeners have
told us recently, recently being since we started making this show. Yeah,
(03:18):
we we were not done a listener mail episode before.
Surely we have. We've done one, Casey, Yeah, we've We've
done at least one before. At least we've done like
to probably who knows Casey on the case. Okay, well,
I guess I will go first with a listener email.
This one comes from Sophie s um And She is
a student at Stanford University. Subject is of the Spooky
(03:41):
Stanfords and reads as such, Hi, Ben Nolan Casey, my
name is Sophia. Excuse me Sophia, and I am a
history major at Stanford and a huge fan of the show.
First of all, I just wanted to say thank you
for endlessly entertaining me with your podcast. It's my absent
is very very sweet and kind. It is my absolute
favorite show I listened to and I have recommended it
to all of my history friends. Each episode reminds me
(04:02):
why I fell in love with the subject of history
in the first place, and continue to fall in love
with it. The more I learned. That fills my heart
with joy. It's always so nice to hear from people
who are actually history majors who liked the show. Uh
that I think. I think I speak for both of
us when I say thank you for the kind words, Sophia.
So let's get to the juice of this email. This
past year I took two classes about Victorian America and England,
(04:25):
and one of the phenomenon from that time that pulled
my interest the most was spiritualism. You guys touch on
this in your episode about the cock Lane Ghost, which
was fantastic, but I found tons of other stories about
it which I thought were really fascinating. I'm not sure
if you guys have ever heard about spiritualism or occultish
practices at Stanford or in the Stanford family. If you haven't,
(04:45):
I highly recommend going to school here. This topic was
something I didn't know much about, but once I dove
into some research, I found it was very present in
the school's origins in early years. Oh you're speaking my language, Sophia,
because this is true and this would make a great episode,
Sophia continues. While it's highly contested that the Stanfords were spiritualist,
(05:08):
it is known that Jane and Leland Stanford did at
least participate in seances and other spiritualistic practices in an
attempt to contact their deceased son, Leland Jr. For whom
the university is a memorial. It's even rumored that the
spirit of Leland Junior came to Leland Senior in a
(05:29):
dream and told him to build the school. Here's where
it starts getting fun. The wackiest of the Stanford spiritualist
was Thomas Welton Stanford, Leland Senior's brother, who was known
to hold sciences in his home in Australia, where mediums
would conjure spirits and cause objects to fall into the
lapse of participants. These objects, called supports, were various, strange
(05:51):
and supposedly ancient artifacts which would materialize out of thin
air thanks to the help of the medium. Of course,
this is me talking. We we know a lot of
this was. These were plants. These were special effects employed
for the purposes of kind of bamboozling these folks out
of their money and tricking them into thinking they had
actually had a spiritual experience, when in fact it was
all just kind of smoke in mirrors. Uh. She goes on.
(06:13):
Welton donated these objects to the university to be studied
and put in the museum, and while they were initially
dismissed as junk by the school's administration, they reside today
in our special collections. The type of items included are
ridiculous in themselves, despite their supposed supernatural origins. Sophia continues,
My personal favorite thing about all of this is that
(06:34):
Welton also acquired a large grant for the School for
Psychical Research, which is the study of the possibility of
phenomenon beyond known human capabilities, such as telepathy, esp and
other stuff like that. So I'm just gonna interjected psychometry, clairvoyance, telekinesis,
(06:54):
etcetera researchers, says Sophie did experiments on students testing to
see if these phenomena were possible or not, but eventually
the branch dissolved and the grant went to solidify the
now famous Stanford Psychology department, Uh famous, infamous, A little column,
A little column b uh. And this, uh, this is
(07:17):
explored in another show we do call stuff they don't
want you to know, Sophie continues. While not really related
to spiritualism, the mysterious death of Jane Stanford would also
be interesting to look into. It was originally announced that
she died from heart complications, but some claim she was
actually poisoned by her own secretary. Yikes, this is a
(07:39):
long one, but I think this is almost like Sophia,
thank you so much for doing all of this incredible
research on our behalf and helping us uh fill out
a nice listener mail episode. And also I think there's
something we could explore further. Um. Despite there being so
much spiritualist history at Stanford today, it's almost entirely unknown,
most likely due to the administration covering it up for
the sake of the school's right mutation. Lots of stuff
(08:01):
to unpack there, but here are some great articles to
sum it up, and she gives us a handful uh
that I think we will definitely use a jumping off
points for a deeper discussion on this topic. UM. So
sorry for this absolute novel of an email again, no
apologies necessary. Thank you in fact from Ben and I,
but thanks again for all the fantastic shows. You guys
are the best. Sophia. Thank you Sophia. This was as
(08:25):
as I believe you mentioned at the top. This was
great to read anytime someone who is in the history
buff rights to us and tells us that they enjoy
the show. Uh, what would you like an angel gets
its wings? Absolutely? You know, Uh, we have looked into
some of the fascinating stories of the spiritualist movement in
(08:46):
the US and Europe. We could do an entire show
on that, by which I mean in a completely different podcasts.
But I think this is this is an idea we
have to do. Wouldn't you agree? Yes? Absolutely? And uh
it's true. She gives us links to several pretty deep
dive research materials on various accounts of this this, these
(09:06):
these stories of spiritualism in the Stanford UM kind of
university family. So I am ready to go and do
a Stanford UM. I don't know. Maybe we could make
it a crossover with stuff they don't want you to know.
We've never done that yet. Maybe we could also, maybe
we could go to Stanford and do the cross over there. Yeah, sure,
why not? And here's a letter from Tory McKenna regarding
(09:31):
our recent episode on Albert cash Sheers. You remember that one? Yes,
of course the Soldier yep, just so. So, Tori writes
and says, Hey, I just listened to your July eleven
episode on Albert Cashiers, and I just wanted to say
that as a non binary person, I really appreciated the
care you all took to always refer to Cashiers with
(09:52):
he him pronouns, and you never dead named him using
the name given to a trans person before they transition,
except the brief man at the end of the Gravestone modification.
I know this doesn't sound like a lot, but a
lot of podcasts that discuss historical trans or non binary
people really don't handle them well, so much so that
I definitely almost didn't listen to the episode because I
(10:15):
was really worried about it. But I'm glad I did,
and tend to miss gender them, usually accidentally, but it
still makes it kind of hard to listen to. So anyway,
I just wanted to reach out and let you know
that your care on the topic was appreciated and came through.
I love the show. I download episodes on my phone
so I can listen to them in my mc garage
when I'm working on stuff. Uh. They're informative and entertaining. Cheers, Tory. Uh.
(10:38):
You know, we received several um communication memos notes about this,
and we appreciate it because I think Noel, you and
I were very mindful of of how to tell these
stories that need to be told in a respectful manner. Yeah,
we always try to be and we do definitely have discussions,
you know, off air before we go on. And Ben,
(11:01):
it was you actually that that cluded me into this
idea of dead naming being referring to a person who
has transitioned by the name they were born with, rather
than the name they chose for themselves. So that was
an important thing that I learned and realize that it
was important to use that name not only from the
point of the story when this figure transitioned, but just
(11:21):
from the start, because that is the name that they
would have wanted to be called by. In discussing this legacy,
you know, it's clear that this is a learning process
for us. These stories are important and they should be told,
and they need to be told in a respectful way.
And and We're not reading tories email here to give
ourselves a bath on the back, not at all, because
(11:43):
I think we I think, well, I don't know about you, man,
but I spent the week thinking like, oh boy, did
we Did we mess up on that way? Absolutely? And
that's the we think about stuff like that all the
time because it's very easy, the Internet being what it is,
for people to get the wrong idea as to like, oh,
you guys just don't care or you didn't bother to
do your homework. We always care, and we usually do
(12:07):
our homework, but it's very important for us to get
stuff like that right and be respectful of everybody. And
this is just a good example of us hopefully getting
it right. And we're not always going to but um,
we're always going to do our best too. There's one
thing we're not gonna read this next email full, but
(12:28):
there's there's one huge point that came out of the
Albert Cashier's episode that everyone needs to be aware of.
Ryan Zentmeyer writes to us and says, I'm a trans
person living in San Diego, which has a strong military presence.
I have several trans friends who are veterans. While we've
made some progress in society at large, the military remains
hostile to trans people, as evidence by the ban on
(12:51):
trans people in listing and Ryan goes through several examples
of this. It's important for everyone to remember that history
is still being written, and in this case, your voice
and your opinion and your uh your work matter. So please, please, please,
(13:11):
please please do not feel that Albert Cashier is an
isolated story or something distant in the past. Right. It's
this kind of stuff is happening now. That's why it
was such an interesting story because it was uh, such
a different time, and it was someone who was successful
and even um colleagues you know, who served alongside Cashier
(13:35):
came to his defense. When faced with being stripped of
all his accolades and of all of his uh you know,
pension and and you know, the things that were due
to him for his military service. He had colleagues who
you would have thought would have been absurdly transphobic or
you're not even known what to make of it, that
came to his defense and said, no, this person served
alongside me and was very brave and did every bit
(13:58):
the same amount of work and you know, exhibited the
same amount of courage that I did or anyone else
in the team. More so even because the stories of
Cashier's heroism spoke for themselves, you know, in terms of
I think he kicked someone's ass and like escaped back
over enemy lines. Right. Um, So that was a really
cool part of the stories to hear other folks from
that time who you would not have thought would have
(14:18):
gone to bat for a person like this doing so.
So you know, you're right, history is continuing to be written.
But it's also nice to think that everybody back in
the day wasn't um completely ignorant, I guess, product of
their product of their environment, able to think for themselves.
So thanks for those perspectives and for checking out the show. Uh. Next,
(14:39):
we have um something that we put out there a
while back in our episode about the Giants of Prussia,
where I believe in a quintessentially ridiculous history esque side conversation,
we asked for people to submit us the names of
weird towns. I think it was because of King of
Prussia Pennsylvania that it came up in. Yeah, that's a
that's a weird flex is a town name, and it
(15:01):
really is, if I recall correctly, we asked everyone what
the strangest names they had heard were, you know, in
their local area or just passing through. And what we
realized just now too is that while the Ridiculous Historians
Facebook group is a great place for a conversation, not
the most searchable situation in the whole wide world of history.
(15:21):
So we had a hard time. We knew we had
some really great ones on there, but moving forward, in
terms of promising to do better, we're gonna try to
maybe like tag those or screenshot them and we see
something that we want to, like, you know, save for
a future you know, listener mail or listener feedback episode
text each other or to text each other. It's true.
But in the meantime, we have this one from k
Sullivan that does a pretty good job of of of
(15:43):
throwing some pretty great ones at us on its own.
So this will kind of be a stand in for everyone. Sorry,
if you send us good ones on the page and
we didn't get we didn't get to it. Um, So
I just listened to the Prussian Giants episode where you
call for weird town names. My parents live in Horseheads,
New York, which is quite near to Paint Post, New York.
Plenty of good town names around there in the finger Lakes.
(16:04):
Drive down to Pennsylvania, of course, and you have more
than just King of Prussia, which I used to live near.
You have drumroll Please Intercourse, which is ironically in the
heart of Amish Country. Nine years old. Yeah, we're all.
We're all. We're all nine years olds here. Um. These
(16:26):
days I live in Scotland or we have plenty of
delightful and the delightfully rude place names like Twatt. I'm
gonna pronounce it like that just to keep the sensors happy,
cock Bridge and Dick Place. We've also got Broken Wind,
Hell's Glen and the always charming town of dull Dullsville, Right, Um,
keep up the ridiculousness. Best case Allivan, those are great.
(16:48):
Shout out to while we're on the case. Shout out
to Kevin Hitchens, who decided that he had to tell
us about Dildo Newfoundland, fun rude, delightfully rude. Shout out
to Cindy lou who who writes to us and says,
toad suck Arkansas, toad suck, toad suck. That's right up
(17:11):
there with Dick Place. You know, I feel like when
you're exploring new lands and naming a town, you should
put a little more thought into us, a little bit more. Um.
Just around this off, me and Ben found some weird
town names of our own UM, starting with Accident, Maryland.
Welcome to Accident is with the you know when you
(17:32):
when you when you come crossing into that town is.
There's also slick poo Idaho. Yeah. And there's a great
article on Thought Catalog fifty two weird names of places
in the United States, and um. Third on their list
is Chicken, Alaska. And I bring that up because there's
a really great little roadside attraction where there's like a
chicken coobe and a egg cut out, like a wood
cut out, and it says I got laid in Chicken Alaska.
(17:56):
There's Uh, there's also gas Kansas, you got cut and
shoot Texas. I'm just thinking, you just passed gas. You
sure did embarrass Minnesota. Uh Yeah, Santa Claus Indiana. Experiment Georgia.
The whole place is kind of one big experiment if
you think about it. Did we already mention Hell Michigan? Okay,
(18:19):
Well that's the thing. It's a hell on Earth. It's
fifteen miles northwest of Ann Arbor, following up with that,
we've got Frankenstein, Missouri. We've got tight Wad Missouri. Oh
and by the way, the there's a sign on a
post in this Thought Catalog article pertaining to Hell, Michigan
that says the road to Hell is paved with good
intentions and lots of potholes. I just want to point
(18:41):
out that there is a both a Fartsville, Indiana and
a Poopsdale. And why shouldn't there be both of those things?
Why shouldn't they be able to co exist? You know?
Sometimes you uh, sometimes you go for a fart, you
overshoot and you end up in a poop. There you go. Oh,
we are indeed children. Now. We hope you folks are
are enjoying this as much as we are. Just highbrow
(19:03):
MPR approach to town names, it's true and uh And
speaking of folks enjoying things or you know, not enjoying things,
we thought we would do a thing that we haven't done.
We're always asking you guys to leave us uh iTunes
reviews or Apple podcast reviews. Um, that's what they're calling
it now. But we thought we would go through and
read a couple of our favorite choice reviews from folks
(19:23):
that don't enjoy what we're doing here on ridiculous history,
just you know, because it's fun and like, in the
words of nine inch Nails, I hurt myself today to
see if I still feel Yeah, And there's a there's
a bit of Catharsis here. Also, you know, I do
this comedy stuff on the side, and one of the
big rules about comedy is if you have missed the mark,
(19:44):
try to fail in an endearing way. So with that said, casey,
this is this is what we were alluding to earlier.
Are you ready, my friends, I'm ready. Let's hear it
all right, fantastic, let's uh, let's babe get a just
a bad reviews? That was pretty good? Do you like
that one? I loved? Okay, So let's dig into the
(20:07):
bag here of um of terrible, horrible, awful, no good, very,
unkind unpleasant reviews. This one, um, this is sort of
what you would consider kind of a middle ground of
of bad reviews. This one comes from Devil Doc DVL
Underscore Doc and the subject is could be a lot better.
I used to really enjoy this show, but lately it
seems like a couple of stoners just reading articles off
(20:29):
of Wikipedia. Uh. They also bring on a guest that
really brings down the show. I wonder who they might
be referring to. I don't know, no, no, no way
of knowing. It's gotten to the point where I've had
to unsubscribe one star. Womp wamp. So Uh, should we
address these these things here, these concerns the mystery guests. Well, no,
(20:49):
we we I think we can do that. Um, but
the fact that we are stoners are not the fact
the notion that we are stoners reading things off Wikipedia. Uh.
And I can assure you we do not use Wikipedia
on this show. Look in the in the world of research,
Wikipedia is most valuable. I'm not gonna just entirely dismissive,
(21:09):
but Wikipedia is most valuable for these sources and bibliographies
at the bottom. You know what I mean. And go
go check those out of check them out and see
if they're viable, see if they're actually worthwhile. Um. No,
we don't use Wikipedia. I can neither confirm nor deny
that we are stoners. Next review by a millennial philosopher,
meandering and boring, filled with self righteous virtue signaling I
(21:32):
get it, You're better than everyone. Because you're woke white
men liberals, which is interesting because technically one of us
is not, you know, quote unquote white. Everything in history
is problematic. White people are evil, Colonialism is evil. Men
are evil. This is so painful to listen to. And
that's when they actually get to the topic, which takes
(21:55):
around twenty minutes. Do not waste your time. First of all,
the stories themselves, of the episodes of themselves are never
that much longer than twenty minutes, So I think we
get to the topic a little quicker than that. Sir
what is his name again? Woke millennial millennial philosopher? Got it?
Got it? Well? Um, right on, sir. You know, I'm
thanks for checking out the show, and we'll try to
(22:15):
get to the topics quicker. I guess now we're not
thank you for making your opinion. Indeed, Okay, this one
comes from Susie seven with a z um and the
subject is uh, these idiots are annoying right to the point. Um.
I listened to this for the first and last time.
I'm assuming that that all happened in the span of
one episode. These two idiots take an interesting story and
(22:39):
constantly interrupted with their lame attempts on trying to be funny,
can't delete this app fast enough? Whoa hold on, let's
unpack this real quick casey uh do you think she
means that like, we ruined podcasts for her entirely deleted
the entire app. Yeah, we we wrecked the whole medium.
So it's just done. Now. Can you even delete the
Apple podcasts up on your iPhone? I believe you can.
(23:02):
Yeah you could. Also if if you're still listening and
you're like, why am I cursed listening to this app?
You can also use a root kit to get that
stuff off your phone. Be careful, you might break it.
I do have to say, I like the idea of
someone reading a book so bad that they burned a
library down, the entire library, not just the book. Um
(23:23):
so one star? Oh okay? Good? Wouldn't it be funny
if there was one? There was five stars that just
totally drug us to the dogs and that Here's a
review that says has potential by Jill four five seven
good interesting topics. Research seems to go beyond the first
page Google results mostly upbeat tone, but as others have mentioned,
the host really need to tighten the delivery and rein
(23:45):
in the non sequitors. Lately, they've even joked about knowing
this is an issue, but they do it anyway. I
don't know if they realize just how boring the personal
anecdotes and inside jokes are. There's a lot of repetition
because they lose their a place so often. Most accidental
two parters are due to a lack of editing, not
(24:06):
an abundance of relevant content. First of all, I'm sorry,
I don't mean to be combative here. That's not what
we're that's not we're about on ridiculous history. Um, how
many accidental two parters have we actually have had accidental one?
How many two parters period have we ever had? Not
too many? I think really only the Wayne Fetterman ones
George Washington, that's right, But that was with Christopher Hasciots
(24:28):
and it just ended up being an abundance of stuff
that was longer than our typical thirty five to forty
minute episode run times. Weird flexes, weird flexes again, same difference, right,
there were four of us on that one. Yeah, idiomatic
for the people, yep. But again these are not accidental
two parts. These were purposeful, which maybe makes it worse
but the review goes on, right now, oh boy does
(24:50):
it ever? I can also live without all this sound
effects and fawning over producer Casey Casey. What do you
think about that? I don't know what you guys are
talking about Casey on the case. I mean I could
answer that we fawn over Casey because he's awesome and
he's the best part of the show and he's what
makes it all happen. All right, Ben, that's true. That
(25:13):
is absolutely that is absolutely true. And the review goes on.
But you know what I thought was really cool as
that Jill four or five seven left us three stars
and also this delightful sentiment. I was shocked to hear
one of the guys mentioned having a dream about Dave
Matthews band while in high school or middle school. UH.
I would have sworn they were early gen X or
(25:35):
older by the way they talked and their senses of humor,
but apparently they're older millennials. Go figure three stars and we,
of course, you don't want to trick anyone into listening
to UH an episode. That's just us reading bad reviews
(25:56):
about ourselves. That's very that's very strange way to pray
an episode. So We're gonna move on to some other stuff,
but we do want to thank everyone who took the
time to write a review. You know what I mean?
Like this? We always say podcasts are free, but they're
not really. Probably heard me mention this on the show before.
We we maybe don't use money to pay to listen
(26:19):
to a podcast, but we use the most important currency
of our age a lot of time. Now time. Yeah, So,
so thank you for spending time with us, paying attention.
And you know, uh, not every show is for everyone,
But I'll tell you what is for everyone. Ben his friends. Yeah, friendship,
m you and I actual facts friends, Casey, all of us.
(26:42):
We hang out outside of uh this podcast shipping container,
which I believe we owe the ridiculous historians. Yes, that
came up. We will take a picture of that today
and post it. What do you say? Let's do uh
one more email each? What do you think? What do
you think? You got a good one? And get anything
up to sleep? Yeah, that's a pretty short one, and
a fun one at that. The subject here is death
(27:05):
of Tohoe the Monkey. That doesn't sound like fun at all.
Whether there's more Ireland rom in the U. S Air Force?
This is from Ross m my dear esteemed and learned
gentleman of ridiculousness, very very nice, nice use of the Yeah. Firstly,
many thanks for your work. I love your show and
have been studiously trawling through your back catalog since discovery
(27:26):
Ridiculous History some weeks ago. I'm particularly fond of the
listener mail Hey and uh. And while I was listening
to the Hartpool Hartley Pool Rather Monkey episode recently, UM,
I was reminded of the story of Toho, the US
Air Force monkey who drank himself to death in Ireland
in ninety three. Woof not not familiar with this story, Ross, Uh,
(27:47):
he goes on. I first heard this tale on a
recent trip back to my homeland. The tale was recounted
by my friend John Fitzgerald, a host of dudecast check
it out at dudecast dot net. UM in his incredible
carry accent in a pub during a wake wow that's stacked,
all of which added to the feeling of a wind up,
meaning a like a practical joke or like messing around
(28:09):
with somebody. Sure Enough, though some cursory searches through a
results immediately beyond the headline. Though there's not a lot
of detail, and I'd love to hear the ridiculous history
slant on how Toho came to be in Ireland and
ultimately meet his demise. No doubt you and your intrepid
researchers will unearth more question Mark question Mark, question mar
question Mark Ross m of of of St Kilda. Thank
(28:33):
you so much for writing in Ross. I love that story.
I've got one that really stuck out to me and Uh,
i'd like to share this. I think you saw this
one as well, Noel. It is from Amanda D. Amanda
D says, Hi, guys, I recently listened to Clara the
World's most Famous Rhinoceros. Like your other episodes, I loved it. However,
(28:54):
I'm writing for another reason. I wanted to say this
one's about you, buddy. I wanted to say thank you
de Noel, understanding my fear of ostriches. I'm often ostri
sized for this by my family, all in fun, of course, Uh,
Amanda's spelled it correctly. I just think there's a great
pun there, my nephews finding particularly amusing. Let me take
(29:14):
you back in time. The details are a kind of
vague around why this happened, so bear with me here
I was in elementary school and the school was hosting
some sort of animal day with live animals for us
to see. I'm not sure why, but I went into
the equipment room in the gym only to be confronted
face to face within austrich is my literal worst nightmare.
(29:35):
Talk about a surprise. The thing was absolutely terrifying for
the little nine year old me. I hold onto that
fear to this day. Birds in general are creepy to be,
but ostriches stand in a whole other category. That's my
little story. I appreciate all your hard work and look
forward to more episodes until then. I'll keep listening to
the old episodes until I get to the end, and
then I guess I'll just have to listen again. Best
(29:58):
Amanda d Yeah, I don't even know how to respond
to that, other than the only thing scarier than an
ostrich to me is a castuary. You're familiar with these birds.
They also stand on two legs, and they apparently have
claws that they can disembow you with in one slice.
I think they are native to Australia or New Zealand.
But yeah, I got no use in my life for
(30:19):
big muscular birds. With weird gangly necks. Uh and oh
my god, they also Papua New Guinea, Indonesia. I feel
I feel bad. I think I showed you a picture
of a cast were I'm sorry, don't mean it's interesting.
It's yeah, I went interesting to see me squirm. And
I also I just need you to be aware of that,
(30:39):
just in case I ever see one. Yeah, things got
pretty dicey. Case you were there one time when we
were in New York. Uh, we were exploring something. You
got shut down because Kanye West was doing an impromptu
fashion show. But you got you know, I could tell.
I could read the room. You got pretty uncomfortable when
the goals got too close. So it's trying to physically
get between you and the goals. I'm not tell you
(31:00):
that as I think the source of my ornophobia or phobia.
When I was a kid, my grandpa took me to
the beach and he threw breadcrumbs every which where, and
my tiny little child body was swarmed by seagulls. And
I just picture the perspective of being so small and
having these terrifying things co calling and coming down at
you from on high. Um. And I'm pretty sure that's
(31:21):
that's what started the whole, the whole thing for me,
and much like my frankly paralyzing fear of touching metal,
we can only hope that our personality works are are
at least amusing right our personal traumas are at least
amusing to all of us listening today. Thank you so
(31:42):
much for tuning in. We know we didn't get to
spoiler all of the emails, Facebook messages, tweets and other correspondencies,
but we do like to check in and make this
what do you say, a semi regular thing. Yeah, I
would like to do that for sure, and I just
I only want to bring up one last one from
the Facebook group from Henry S because of the episode
(32:03):
we just recorded, uh that had some Gaelic pronunciations in it. Okay, guys,
you really must work on your Gaelic. It's guard not Guardia,
and Finian not Finian, which I'm pretty sure we butchered
similarly in the last episode we just recorded this very
afternoon on was it St. Columba? Yeah, but also St.
(32:25):
Finnian is how he said it in the entire episodes.
I believe it would be St. Finian Um, so hey,
Mia Colpa for that one in advance. Um otherwise great
episode on the Finian Invasion of Canada, and Cameron Z responded,
I absolutely couldn't listen to the episode because the pronunciation
was so broken as I learned about this in history
class that it broke my brain and I couldn't listen.
(32:48):
So hey again, always striving to do the best we can.
Gaelic is tough. Gaelic is tough. And that's just one
of the mini post on our Facebook group Ridiculous is
Warrians that we would love for you to check out. There,
you can run into our favorite part of the show,
you and your fellow listeners. They're not all roasting us
(33:10):
over mispronunciations, but we do appreciate every post like that
because it helps keep us honest and it makes the
show better. You can also find us on Instagram and Twitter,
both as a group and as individuals. I'm at Ben
Bowland on Instagram. You can find me at how Now
Noel Brown and if you want to get in on
(33:30):
that Facebook group action, all you gotta do is answer
a simple question of name. Someone tangentially even involved in
Ridiculous History could be me, could be Ben, could be
super Producer Casey Pegram could be Christopher Haciotas, could be
Gay Lousier, could be a funny name from one of
the episodes. Anything to make us laugh, and you are
in like Flynn my Friends. Big thanks to Alex Williams
(33:51):
who composed our theme. Thanks to Christopher Hasciotas here in spirit.
Thanks to the quizter also known as Jonathan Lynd. Thanks
to you, Noel. Thanks to our research associates Gabe and Ryan,
who we will spoiler alert maybe have on the show
pretty soon. And as always, thank you, thank you, thank
(34:15):
you to Cheryl Crowe love her. Let's see you next time.
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. So
(00:28):
one of the memes that I get sent most frequently,
I would say several times a month is that image
of a person sitting by a sign of three people eating,
laughing and talking, and the person sitting by the sign
they have a bowl of something and they're looking at
the sign and laughing, so they're in conversation, and the
(00:50):
caption is always something like this is how it feels
to listen to podcasts, and I get it. But today
we're going to mitigate that a little bit, right, I'm that.
I'm no, it's not really a meme, but one of
my the you know, an image that I used to
kind of define my life by is of that cartoon
dog sitting in a room on fire saying everything's okay.
(01:10):
That's how I feel when I read UH iTunes reviews,
And we'll get to those as well. But one thing
that always UH lights up our studio and our day
is our better third are super producer Casey Pegram Casey.
I've got to ask you. We've been in this business
for a long long time. Now, do you ever read
(01:32):
reviews of shows you create? I do, Actually, I read
all the reviews. Um, I feel like I'm in a
maybe a little bit better position to do that because
I'm not typically the on air personality. It's it's a
little less personal. But I do like to be aware
at least of what the people are saying out there,
even if they're jerks about it. You know, It's it's
good to know sometimes the truth can hurt. Casey on
(01:54):
the case Well, you, my friends are in our living
in interesting times for this episode because we are going
to explore some reviews, and you occur in a few
of them. In fact, we're not just going to explore reviews.
We're not just going to explore emails. We're explored everything.
(02:16):
This is sort of a moment where we say, enough
about us, what about you? Because on this show we
always ask, or we frequently ask a question towards the end,
like what are some weird town names in your neck
of the global woods? Or what are some other strange
military experiments, etcetera, etcetera. At all are we talking about
(02:38):
military experiments today? Ben? I mean we might get to it,
you know, because every single time we do an episode,
we get this flood of amazing correspondencies from you, specifically
you and your fellow listeners. And although it's tough for
us to respond in a punctual manner in writing, we do.
(02:58):
Each of us read everything that you said, and we
enjoy them. We think you make important points. And today,
in this very special listener Maile episode, we'd like to
share some of the things that your fellow listeners have
told us recently, recently being since we started making this show. Yeah,
(03:18):
we we were not done a listener mail episode before.
Surely we have. We've done one, Casey, Yeah, we've We've
done at least one before. At least we've done like
to probably who knows Casey on the case. Okay, well,
I guess I will go first with a listener email.
This one comes from Sophie s um And She is
a student at Stanford University. Subject is of the Spooky
(03:41):
Stanfords and reads as such, Hi, Ben Nolan Casey, my
name is Sophia. Excuse me Sophia, and I am a
history major at Stanford and a huge fan of the show.
First of all, I just wanted to say thank you
for endlessly entertaining me with your podcast. It's my absent
is very very sweet and kind. It is my absolute
favorite show I listened to and I have recommended it
to all of my history friends. Each episode reminds me
(04:02):
why I fell in love with the subject of history
in the first place, and continue to fall in love
with it. The more I learned. That fills my heart
with joy. It's always so nice to hear from people
who are actually history majors who liked the show. Uh
that I think. I think I speak for both of
us when I say thank you for the kind words, Sophia.
So let's get to the juice of this email. This
past year I took two classes about Victorian America and England,
(04:25):
and one of the phenomenon from that time that pulled
my interest the most was spiritualism. You guys touch on
this in your episode about the cock Lane Ghost, which
was fantastic, but I found tons of other stories about
it which I thought were really fascinating. I'm not sure
if you guys have ever heard about spiritualism or occultish
practices at Stanford or in the Stanford family. If you haven't,
(04:45):
I highly recommend going to school here. This topic was
something I didn't know much about, but once I dove
into some research, I found it was very present in
the school's origins in early years. Oh you're speaking my language, Sophia,
because this is true and this would make a great episode,
Sophia continues. While it's highly contested that the Stanfords were spiritualist,
(05:08):
it is known that Jane and Leland Stanford did at
least participate in seances and other spiritualistic practices in an
attempt to contact their deceased son, Leland Jr. For whom
the university is a memorial. It's even rumored that the
spirit of Leland Junior came to Leland Senior in a
(05:29):
dream and told him to build the school. Here's where
it starts getting fun. The wackiest of the Stanford spiritualist
was Thomas Welton Stanford, Leland Senior's brother, who was known
to hold sciences in his home in Australia, where mediums
would conjure spirits and cause objects to fall into the
lapse of participants. These objects, called supports, were various, strange
(05:51):
and supposedly ancient artifacts which would materialize out of thin
air thanks to the help of the medium. Of course,
this is me talking. We we know a lot of
this was. These were plants. These were special effects employed
for the purposes of kind of bamboozling these folks out
of their money and tricking them into thinking they had
actually had a spiritual experience, when in fact it was
all just kind of smoke in mirrors. Uh. She goes on.
(06:13):
Welton donated these objects to the university to be studied
and put in the museum, and while they were initially
dismissed as junk by the school's administration, they reside today
in our special collections. The type of items included are
ridiculous in themselves, despite their supposed supernatural origins. Sophia continues,
My personal favorite thing about all of this is that
(06:34):
Welton also acquired a large grant for the School for
Psychical Research, which is the study of the possibility of
phenomenon beyond known human capabilities, such as telepathy, esp and
other stuff like that. So I'm just gonna interjected psychometry, clairvoyance, telekinesis,
(06:54):
etcetera researchers, says Sophie did experiments on students testing to
see if these phenomena were possible or not, but eventually
the branch dissolved and the grant went to solidify the
now famous Stanford Psychology department, Uh famous, infamous, A little column,
A little column b uh. And this, uh, this is
(07:17):
explored in another show we do call stuff they don't
want you to know, Sophie continues. While not really related
to spiritualism, the mysterious death of Jane Stanford would also
be interesting to look into. It was originally announced that
she died from heart complications, but some claim she was
actually poisoned by her own secretary. Yikes, this is a
(07:39):
long one, but I think this is almost like Sophia,
thank you so much for doing all of this incredible
research on our behalf and helping us uh fill out
a nice listener mail episode. And also I think there's
something we could explore further. Um. Despite there being so
much spiritualist history at Stanford today, it's almost entirely unknown,
most likely due to the administration covering it up for
the sake of the school's right mutation. Lots of stuff
(08:01):
to unpack there, but here are some great articles to
sum it up, and she gives us a handful uh
that I think we will definitely use a jumping off
points for a deeper discussion on this topic. UM. So
sorry for this absolute novel of an email again, no
apologies necessary. Thank you in fact from Ben and I,
but thanks again for all the fantastic shows. You guys
are the best. Sophia. Thank you Sophia. This was as
(08:25):
as I believe you mentioned at the top. This was
great to read anytime someone who is in the history
buff rights to us and tells us that they enjoy
the show. Uh, what would you like an angel gets
its wings? Absolutely? You know, Uh, we have looked into
some of the fascinating stories of the spiritualist movement in
(08:46):
the US and Europe. We could do an entire show
on that, by which I mean in a completely different podcasts.
But I think this is this is an idea we
have to do. Wouldn't you agree? Yes? Absolutely? And uh
it's true. She gives us links to several pretty deep
dive research materials on various accounts of this this, these
(09:06):
these stories of spiritualism in the Stanford UM kind of
university family. So I am ready to go and do
a Stanford UM. I don't know. Maybe we could make
it a crossover with stuff they don't want you to know.
We've never done that yet. Maybe we could also, maybe
we could go to Stanford and do the cross over there. Yeah, sure,
why not? And here's a letter from Tory McKenna regarding
(09:31):
our recent episode on Albert cash Sheers. You remember that one? Yes,
of course the Soldier yep, just so. So, Tori writes
and says, Hey, I just listened to your July eleven
episode on Albert Cashiers, and I just wanted to say
that as a non binary person, I really appreciated the
care you all took to always refer to Cashiers with
(09:52):
he him pronouns, and you never dead named him using
the name given to a trans person before they transition,
except the brief man at the end of the Gravestone modification.
I know this doesn't sound like a lot, but a
lot of podcasts that discuss historical trans or non binary
people really don't handle them well, so much so that
I definitely almost didn't listen to the episode because I
(10:15):
was really worried about it. But I'm glad I did,
and tend to miss gender them, usually accidentally, but it
still makes it kind of hard to listen to. So anyway,
I just wanted to reach out and let you know
that your care on the topic was appreciated and came through.
I love the show. I download episodes on my phone
so I can listen to them in my mc garage
when I'm working on stuff. Uh. They're informative and entertaining. Cheers, Tory. Uh.
(10:38):
You know, we received several um communication memos notes about this,
and we appreciate it because I think Noel, you and
I were very mindful of of how to tell these
stories that need to be told in a respectful manner. Yeah,
we always try to be and we do definitely have discussions,
you know, off air before we go on. And Ben,
(11:01):
it was you actually that that cluded me into this
idea of dead naming being referring to a person who
has transitioned by the name they were born with, rather
than the name they chose for themselves. So that was
an important thing that I learned and realize that it
was important to use that name not only from the
point of the story when this figure transitioned, but just
(11:21):
from the start, because that is the name that they
would have wanted to be called by. In discussing this legacy,
you know, it's clear that this is a learning process
for us. These stories are important and they should be told,
and they need to be told in a respectful way.
And and We're not reading tories email here to give
ourselves a bath on the back, not at all, because
(11:43):
I think we I think, well, I don't know about you, man,
but I spent the week thinking like, oh boy, did
we Did we mess up on that way? Absolutely? And
that's the we think about stuff like that all the
time because it's very easy, the Internet being what it is,
for people to get the wrong idea as to like, oh,
you guys just don't care or you didn't bother to
do your homework. We always care, and we usually do
(12:07):
our homework, but it's very important for us to get
stuff like that right and be respectful of everybody. And
this is just a good example of us hopefully getting
it right. And we're not always going to but um,
we're always going to do our best too. There's one
thing we're not gonna read this next email full, but
(12:28):
there's there's one huge point that came out of the
Albert Cashier's episode that everyone needs to be aware of.
Ryan Zentmeyer writes to us and says, I'm a trans
person living in San Diego, which has a strong military presence.
I have several trans friends who are veterans. While we've
made some progress in society at large, the military remains
hostile to trans people, as evidence by the ban on
(12:51):
trans people in listing and Ryan goes through several examples
of this. It's important for everyone to remember that history
is still being written, and in this case, your voice
and your opinion and your uh your work matter. So please, please, please,
(13:11):
please please do not feel that Albert Cashier is an
isolated story or something distant in the past. Right. It's
this kind of stuff is happening now. That's why it
was such an interesting story because it was uh, such
a different time, and it was someone who was successful
and even um colleagues you know, who served alongside Cashier
(13:35):
came to his defense. When faced with being stripped of
all his accolades and of all of his uh you know,
pension and and you know, the things that were due
to him for his military service. He had colleagues who
you would have thought would have been absurdly transphobic or
you're not even known what to make of it, that
came to his defense and said, no, this person served
alongside me and was very brave and did every bit
(13:58):
the same amount of work and you know, exhibited the
same amount of courage that I did or anyone else
in the team. More so even because the stories of
Cashier's heroism spoke for themselves, you know, in terms of
I think he kicked someone's ass and like escaped back
over enemy lines. Right. Um, So that was a really
cool part of the stories to hear other folks from
that time who you would not have thought would have
(14:18):
gone to bat for a person like this doing so.
So you know, you're right, history is continuing to be written.
But it's also nice to think that everybody back in
the day wasn't um completely ignorant, I guess, product of
their product of their environment, able to think for themselves.
So thanks for those perspectives and for checking out the show. Uh. Next,
(14:39):
we have um something that we put out there a
while back in our episode about the Giants of Prussia,
where I believe in a quintessentially ridiculous history esque side conversation,
we asked for people to submit us the names of
weird towns. I think it was because of King of
Prussia Pennsylvania that it came up in. Yeah, that's a
that's a weird flex is a town name, and it
(15:01):
really is, if I recall correctly, we asked everyone what
the strangest names they had heard were, you know, in
their local area or just passing through. And what we
realized just now too is that while the Ridiculous Historians
Facebook group is a great place for a conversation, not
the most searchable situation in the whole wide world of history.
(15:21):
So we had a hard time. We knew we had
some really great ones on there, but moving forward, in
terms of promising to do better, we're gonna try to
maybe like tag those or screenshot them and we see
something that we want to, like, you know, save for
a future you know, listener mail or listener feedback episode
text each other or to text each other. It's true.
But in the meantime, we have this one from k
Sullivan that does a pretty good job of of of
(15:43):
throwing some pretty great ones at us on its own.
So this will kind of be a stand in for everyone. Sorry,
if you send us good ones on the page and
we didn't get we didn't get to it. Um, So
I just listened to the Prussian Giants episode where you
call for weird town names. My parents live in Horseheads,
New York, which is quite near to Paint Post, New York.
Plenty of good town names around there in the finger Lakes.
(16:04):
Drive down to Pennsylvania, of course, and you have more
than just King of Prussia, which I used to live near.
You have drumroll Please Intercourse, which is ironically in the
heart of Amish Country. Nine years old. Yeah, we're all.
We're all. We're all nine years olds here. Um. These
(16:26):
days I live in Scotland or we have plenty of
delightful and the delightfully rude place names like Twatt. I'm
gonna pronounce it like that just to keep the sensors happy,
cock Bridge and Dick Place. We've also got Broken Wind,
Hell's Glen and the always charming town of dull Dullsville, Right, Um,
keep up the ridiculousness. Best case Allivan, those are great.
(16:48):
Shout out to while we're on the case. Shout out
to Kevin Hitchens, who decided that he had to tell
us about Dildo Newfoundland, fun rude, delightfully rude. Shout out
to Cindy lou who who writes to us and says,
toad suck Arkansas, toad suck, toad suck. That's right up
(17:11):
there with Dick Place. You know, I feel like when
you're exploring new lands and naming a town, you should
put a little more thought into us, a little bit more. Um.
Just around this off, me and Ben found some weird
town names of our own UM, starting with Accident, Maryland.
Welcome to Accident is with the you know when you
(17:32):
when you when you come crossing into that town is.
There's also slick poo Idaho. Yeah. And there's a great
article on Thought Catalog fifty two weird names of places
in the United States, and um. Third on their list
is Chicken, Alaska. And I bring that up because there's
a really great little roadside attraction where there's like a
chicken coobe and a egg cut out, like a wood
cut out, and it says I got laid in Chicken Alaska.
(17:56):
There's Uh, there's also gas Kansas, you got cut and
shoot Texas. I'm just thinking, you just passed gas. You
sure did embarrass Minnesota. Uh Yeah, Santa Claus Indiana. Experiment Georgia.
The whole place is kind of one big experiment if
you think about it. Did we already mention Hell Michigan? Okay,
(18:19):
Well that's the thing. It's a hell on Earth. It's
fifteen miles northwest of Ann Arbor, following up with that,
we've got Frankenstein, Missouri. We've got tight Wad Missouri. Oh
and by the way, the there's a sign on a
post in this Thought Catalog article pertaining to Hell, Michigan
that says the road to Hell is paved with good
intentions and lots of potholes. I just want to point
(18:41):
out that there is a both a Fartsville, Indiana and
a Poopsdale. And why shouldn't there be both of those things?
Why shouldn't they be able to co exist? You know?
Sometimes you uh, sometimes you go for a fart, you
overshoot and you end up in a poop. There you go. Oh,
we are indeed children. Now. We hope you folks are
are enjoying this as much as we are. Just highbrow
(19:03):
MPR approach to town names, it's true and uh And
speaking of folks enjoying things or you know, not enjoying things,
we thought we would do a thing that we haven't done.
We're always asking you guys to leave us uh iTunes
reviews or Apple podcast reviews. Um, that's what they're calling
it now. But we thought we would go through and
read a couple of our favorite choice reviews from folks
(19:23):
that don't enjoy what we're doing here on ridiculous history,
just you know, because it's fun and like, in the
words of nine inch Nails, I hurt myself today to
see if I still feel Yeah, And there's a there's
a bit of Catharsis here. Also, you know, I do
this comedy stuff on the side, and one of the
big rules about comedy is if you have missed the mark,
(19:44):
try to fail in an endearing way. So with that said, casey,
this is this is what we were alluding to earlier.
Are you ready, my friends, I'm ready. Let's hear it
all right, fantastic, let's uh, let's babe get a just
a bad reviews? That was pretty good? Do you like
that one? I loved? Okay, So let's dig into the
(20:07):
bag here of um of terrible, horrible, awful, no good, very,
unkind unpleasant reviews. This one, um, this is sort of
what you would consider kind of a middle ground of
of bad reviews. This one comes from Devil Doc DVL
Underscore Doc and the subject is could be a lot better.
I used to really enjoy this show, but lately it
seems like a couple of stoners just reading articles off
(20:29):
of Wikipedia. Uh. They also bring on a guest that
really brings down the show. I wonder who they might
be referring to. I don't know, no, no, no way
of knowing. It's gotten to the point where I've had
to unsubscribe one star. Womp wamp. So Uh, should we
address these these things here, these concerns the mystery guests. Well, no,
(20:49):
we we I think we can do that. Um, but
the fact that we are stoners are not the fact
the notion that we are stoners reading things off Wikipedia. Uh.
And I can assure you we do not use Wikipedia
on this show. Look in the in the world of research,
Wikipedia is most valuable. I'm not gonna just entirely dismissive,
(21:09):
but Wikipedia is most valuable for these sources and bibliographies
at the bottom. You know what I mean. And go
go check those out of check them out and see
if they're viable, see if they're actually worthwhile. Um. No,
we don't use Wikipedia. I can neither confirm nor deny
that we are stoners. Next review by a millennial philosopher,
meandering and boring, filled with self righteous virtue signaling I
(21:32):
get it, You're better than everyone. Because you're woke white
men liberals, which is interesting because technically one of us
is not, you know, quote unquote white. Everything in history
is problematic. White people are evil, Colonialism is evil. Men
are evil. This is so painful to listen to. And
that's when they actually get to the topic, which takes
(21:55):
around twenty minutes. Do not waste your time. First of all,
the stories themselves, of the episodes of themselves are never
that much longer than twenty minutes, So I think we
get to the topic a little quicker than that. Sir
what is his name again? Woke millennial millennial philosopher? Got it?
Got it? Well? Um, right on, sir. You know, I'm
thanks for checking out the show, and we'll try to
(22:15):
get to the topics quicker. I guess now we're not
thank you for making your opinion. Indeed, Okay, this one
comes from Susie seven with a z um and the
subject is uh, these idiots are annoying right to the point. Um.
I listened to this for the first and last time.
I'm assuming that that all happened in the span of
one episode. These two idiots take an interesting story and
(22:39):
constantly interrupted with their lame attempts on trying to be funny,
can't delete this app fast enough? Whoa hold on, let's
unpack this real quick casey uh do you think she
means that like, we ruined podcasts for her entirely deleted
the entire app. Yeah, we we wrecked the whole medium.
So it's just done. Now. Can you even delete the
Apple podcasts up on your iPhone? I believe you can.
(23:02):
Yeah you could. Also if if you're still listening and
you're like, why am I cursed listening to this app?
You can also use a root kit to get that
stuff off your phone. Be careful, you might break it.
I do have to say, I like the idea of
someone reading a book so bad that they burned a
library down, the entire library, not just the book. Um
(23:23):
so one star? Oh okay? Good? Wouldn't it be funny
if there was one? There was five stars that just
totally drug us to the dogs and that Here's a
review that says has potential by Jill four five seven
good interesting topics. Research seems to go beyond the first
page Google results mostly upbeat tone, but as others have mentioned,
the host really need to tighten the delivery and rein
(23:45):
in the non sequitors. Lately, they've even joked about knowing
this is an issue, but they do it anyway. I
don't know if they realize just how boring the personal
anecdotes and inside jokes are. There's a lot of repetition
because they lose their a place so often. Most accidental
two parters are due to a lack of editing, not
(24:06):
an abundance of relevant content. First of all, I'm sorry,
I don't mean to be combative here. That's not what
we're that's not we're about on ridiculous history. Um, how
many accidental two parters have we actually have had accidental one?
How many two parters period have we ever had? Not
too many? I think really only the Wayne Fetterman ones
George Washington, that's right, But that was with Christopher Hasciots
(24:28):
and it just ended up being an abundance of stuff
that was longer than our typical thirty five to forty
minute episode run times. Weird flexes, weird flexes again, same difference, right,
there were four of us on that one. Yeah, idiomatic
for the people, yep. But again these are not accidental
two parts. These were purposeful, which maybe makes it worse
but the review goes on, right now, oh boy does
(24:50):
it ever? I can also live without all this sound
effects and fawning over producer Casey Casey. What do you
think about that? I don't know what you guys are
talking about Casey on the case. I mean I could
answer that we fawn over Casey because he's awesome and
he's the best part of the show and he's what
makes it all happen. All right, Ben, that's true. That
(25:13):
is absolutely that is absolutely true. And the review goes on.
But you know what I thought was really cool as
that Jill four or five seven left us three stars
and also this delightful sentiment. I was shocked to hear
one of the guys mentioned having a dream about Dave
Matthews band while in high school or middle school. UH.
I would have sworn they were early gen X or
(25:35):
older by the way they talked and their senses of humor,
but apparently they're older millennials. Go figure three stars and we,
of course, you don't want to trick anyone into listening
to UH an episode. That's just us reading bad reviews
(25:56):
about ourselves. That's very that's very strange way to pray
an episode. So We're gonna move on to some other stuff,
but we do want to thank everyone who took the
time to write a review. You know what I mean?
Like this? We always say podcasts are free, but they're
not really. Probably heard me mention this on the show before.
We we maybe don't use money to pay to listen
(26:19):
to a podcast, but we use the most important currency
of our age a lot of time. Now time. Yeah, So,
so thank you for spending time with us, paying attention.
And you know, uh, not every show is for everyone,
But I'll tell you what is for everyone. Ben his friends. Yeah, friendship,
m you and I actual facts friends, Casey, all of us.
(26:42):
We hang out outside of uh this podcast shipping container,
which I believe we owe the ridiculous historians. Yes, that
came up. We will take a picture of that today
and post it. What do you say? Let's do uh
one more email each? What do you think? What do
you think? You got a good one? And get anything
up to sleep? Yeah, that's a pretty short one, and
a fun one at that. The subject here is death
(27:05):
of Tohoe the Monkey. That doesn't sound like fun at all.
Whether there's more Ireland rom in the U. S Air Force?
This is from Ross m my dear esteemed and learned
gentleman of ridiculousness, very very nice, nice use of the Yeah. Firstly,
many thanks for your work. I love your show and
have been studiously trawling through your back catalog since discovery
(27:26):
Ridiculous History some weeks ago. I'm particularly fond of the
listener mail Hey and uh. And while I was listening
to the Hartpool Hartley Pool Rather Monkey episode recently, UM,
I was reminded of the story of Toho, the US
Air Force monkey who drank himself to death in Ireland
in ninety three. Woof not not familiar with this story, Ross, Uh,
(27:47):
he goes on. I first heard this tale on a
recent trip back to my homeland. The tale was recounted
by my friend John Fitzgerald, a host of dudecast check
it out at dudecast dot net. UM in his incredible
carry accent in a pub during a wake wow that's stacked,
all of which added to the feeling of a wind up,
meaning a like a practical joke or like messing around
(28:09):
with somebody. Sure Enough, though some cursory searches through a
results immediately beyond the headline. Though there's not a lot
of detail, and I'd love to hear the ridiculous history
slant on how Toho came to be in Ireland and
ultimately meet his demise. No doubt you and your intrepid
researchers will unearth more question Mark question Mark, question mar
question Mark Ross m of of of St Kilda. Thank
(28:33):
you so much for writing in Ross. I love that story.
I've got one that really stuck out to me and Uh,
i'd like to share this. I think you saw this
one as well, Noel. It is from Amanda D. Amanda
D says, Hi, guys, I recently listened to Clara the
World's most Famous Rhinoceros. Like your other episodes, I loved it. However,
(28:54):
I'm writing for another reason. I wanted to say this
one's about you, buddy. I wanted to say thank you
de Noel, understanding my fear of ostriches. I'm often ostri
sized for this by my family, all in fun, of course, Uh,
Amanda's spelled it correctly. I just think there's a great
pun there, my nephews finding particularly amusing. Let me take
(29:14):
you back in time. The details are a kind of
vague around why this happened, so bear with me here
I was in elementary school and the school was hosting
some sort of animal day with live animals for us
to see. I'm not sure why, but I went into
the equipment room in the gym only to be confronted
face to face within austrich is my literal worst nightmare.
(29:35):
Talk about a surprise. The thing was absolutely terrifying for
the little nine year old me. I hold onto that
fear to this day. Birds in general are creepy to be,
but ostriches stand in a whole other category. That's my
little story. I appreciate all your hard work and look
forward to more episodes until then. I'll keep listening to
the old episodes until I get to the end, and
then I guess I'll just have to listen again. Best
(29:58):
Amanda d Yeah, I don't even know how to respond
to that, other than the only thing scarier than an
ostrich to me is a castuary. You're familiar with these birds.
They also stand on two legs, and they apparently have
claws that they can disembow you with in one slice.
I think they are native to Australia or New Zealand.
But yeah, I got no use in my life for
(30:19):
big muscular birds. With weird gangly necks. Uh and oh
my god, they also Papua New Guinea, Indonesia. I feel
I feel bad. I think I showed you a picture
of a cast were I'm sorry, don't mean it's interesting.
It's yeah, I went interesting to see me squirm. And
I also I just need you to be aware of that,
(30:39):
just in case I ever see one. Yeah, things got
pretty dicey. Case you were there one time when we
were in New York. Uh, we were exploring something. You
got shut down because Kanye West was doing an impromptu
fashion show. But you got you know, I could tell.
I could read the room. You got pretty uncomfortable when
the goals got too close. So it's trying to physically
get between you and the goals. I'm not tell you
(31:00):
that as I think the source of my ornophobia or phobia.
When I was a kid, my grandpa took me to
the beach and he threw breadcrumbs every which where, and
my tiny little child body was swarmed by seagulls. And
I just picture the perspective of being so small and
having these terrifying things co calling and coming down at
you from on high. Um. And I'm pretty sure that's
(31:21):
that's what started the whole, the whole thing for me,
and much like my frankly paralyzing fear of touching metal,
we can only hope that our personality works are are
at least amusing right our personal traumas are at least
amusing to all of us listening today. Thank you so
(31:42):
much for tuning in. We know we didn't get to
spoiler all of the emails, Facebook messages, tweets and other correspondencies,
but we do like to check in and make this
what do you say, a semi regular thing. Yeah, I
would like to do that for sure, and I just
I only want to bring up one last one from
the Facebook group from Henry S because of the episode
(32:03):
we just recorded, uh that had some Gaelic pronunciations in it. Okay, guys,
you really must work on your Gaelic. It's guard not Guardia,
and Finian not Finian, which I'm pretty sure we butchered
similarly in the last episode we just recorded this very
afternoon on was it St. Columba? Yeah, but also St.
(32:25):
Finnian is how he said it in the entire episodes.
I believe it would be St. Finian Um, so hey,
Mia Colpa for that one in advance. Um otherwise great
episode on the Finian Invasion of Canada, and Cameron Z responded,
I absolutely couldn't listen to the episode because the pronunciation
was so broken as I learned about this in history
class that it broke my brain and I couldn't listen.
(32:48):
So hey again, always striving to do the best we can.
Gaelic is tough. Gaelic is tough. And that's just one
of the mini post on our Facebook group Ridiculous is
Warrians that we would love for you to check out. There,
you can run into our favorite part of the show,
you and your fellow listeners. They're not all roasting us
(33:10):
over mispronunciations, but we do appreciate every post like that
because it helps keep us honest and it makes the
show better. You can also find us on Instagram and Twitter,
both as a group and as individuals. I'm at Ben
Bowland on Instagram. You can find me at how Now
Noel Brown and if you want to get in on
(33:30):
that Facebook group action, all you gotta do is answer
a simple question of name. Someone tangentially even involved in
Ridiculous History could be me, could be Ben, could be
super Producer Casey Pegram could be Christopher Haciotas, could be
Gay Lousier, could be a funny name from one of
the episodes. Anything to make us laugh, and you are
in like Flynn my Friends. Big thanks to Alex Williams
(33:51):
who composed our theme. Thanks to Christopher Hasciotas here in spirit.
Thanks to the quizter also known as Jonathan Lynd. Thanks
to you, Noel. Thanks to our research associates Gabe and Ryan,
who we will spoiler alert maybe have on the show
pretty soon. And as always, thank you, thank you, thank
(34:15):
you to Cheryl Crowe love her. Let's see you next time.
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio 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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